88. TRIP Awards 2022 (with a special guest...)

Rory and Alastair are here to discuss the highs and lows of a wild year in politics... Who was their most outstanding politician? What was the most surprising moment of the year? Who was the biggest villain of 2022? Listen to hear Rory and Alastair answer these questions and many more, with the help of a surprise guest who provides some guidance in this special political awards show. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, welcome to the Rest is Politics Awards with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart. And this, I'm going to give you a bit of credit for this, the awards. So I'm going to be guided by you a little bit through the system.

• 1:57Alastair Campbell?

  So what we've done, Rory, we've just worked out a few categories. And each of us have to pick a person, an event, whatever it might be. To fit these categories, outstanding politicians, event of the year, surprise of the year, moment of the year, film of the year, all sorts of things.

• 2:15Rory Stewart?

  Is it all about the World Cup or are there some other stuff?

• 2:17Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to try and get through it without even mentioning the World Cup.

• 2:19Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  Because unlike you, I'm just not obsessed with football. I'm just not a massive football fan like you. And then at the end, we're going to have a lifetime achievement award. But on that one, we have to agree. On all the others, we don't have to agree. We can say what we like. So the first one is outstanding British politician of the year.

• 2:36Rory Stewart?

  Gosh. Well, as a starter for 10 then, maybe the big theme of the end of the year is the way in which we have moved a little bit away, I guess, from the extremes of populism of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. And in their different ways, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party has, I think, completed the transition away from Jeremy Corbyn, made them a really serious electable party. You know, many, many points ahead. I know what they are, 20, 30 points ahead in the polls at the moment. And Rishi Sunak has, for all the grumbles we've done on the show, definitely compared to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, brought a bit more sort of sanity and restraint back to the Conservative Party. So.

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  So in your classic establishment way, Rory, you're going for the leaders. You go for the two leaders of the two main parties. I'm going to the back benches.

• 3:25Rory Stewart?

  Oh, go on then.

• 3:26Alastair Campbell?

  And I'm also going to the Tory back benches.

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  Go on.

• 3:28Alastair Campbell?

  And my 2022 politician of the year is Charles Walker.

• 3:32Rory Stewart?

  Charles Walker, Sir Charles Walker. Go on, tell us about him then.

• 3:35Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the reason I like, I've always liked Charles Walker because he was one of the first MPs of any party to come out openly and say that he had mental health problems, that he struggled all his life with OCD. But I think the reason he's impressed me this year, in a pretty unimpressive parliament, it has to be said, is he has genuinely, this is a guy who's never been a minister, he's been an MP for 20 odd years, he's never been a minister, but he has genuinely spoken truth to power with real passion and conviction. He did it to Johnson when Johnson was falling apart. He was one of the first people to call on Truss to go, said she was an absolute disgrace and a shambles, that he couldn't, he couldn't imagine why anybody would vote for her. And I think, I remember as well

• 4:19Alastair Campbell?

  when, during the Covid period, when he was.

• 4:24Alastair Campbell?

  He seemed to me, you had all these kind of anti-vaxxers who were really, really irritating, but he just had a passionate kind of view that we were doing massive mental health damage by locking people up for so long. We weren't thinking through the consequences. So I'm going for Charles Walker.

• 4:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's, that's great. So I, I, I always liked him very much. I mean, he's incredible. So he's the stepson of an MP. He's, he's sort of the kind of guy who I thought would be almost a kind of pinup Conservative MP of the 1950s. He's very kind of good looking, very charming, but as you say, has very much been a professional backbench. He was a big stalwart of the 1922 committee, which was this, it's the backbench kind of engine room of the Conservative Party. He could be very funny in the House of Commons. He'd make these incredible, I, I once saw him make a speech that I think was about four words long.

• 5:11Alastair Campbell?

  If not now, when?

• 5:13Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good. Oh, goodness gracious me. Well, there we are. You actually knew that.

• 5:16Alastair Campbell?

  That was during, mind you, that was him calling for a referendum. So I didn't like him for that.

• 5:21Rory Stewart?

  No, although I noticed in the new European, which we sometimes promote a little bit on the show.

• 5:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Rory Stewart?

  He gave an interview in 2019 saying, Brexiter MP colon, I was an idiot to ever think a referendum was a good idea.

• 5:32Alastair Campbell?

  I like him even better.

• 5:34Rory Stewart?

  So one of the nice things is he's, he's quite, he's quite good. Unlike most MPs that sort of contradicting himself. He says, I'm an idiot. I'm happy to admit to your listeners, I'm an idiot.

• 5:45Alastair Campbell?

  So there we are. That's the first award. Outstanding UK politicians are Charles Walker from ME and Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak from Rory. Now, outstanding overseas politician of the year. And I guess this was just really boring, isn't it? Because this one, this one, such an obvious choice currently in Washington.

• 6:06Rory Stewart?

  I know, but we've got to avoid him. We're not allowed to say, we're not allowed, not allowed to say Zelensky if that's what we've got.

• 6:10Alastair Campbell?

  I think we probably, I think we should probably say Zelensky. But here's a great question from Alex Skit. Outside of Zelensky and Putin, if you could pick one hero and one villain of 2022, who would it be and why? And I think I'm going to go for Joe Biden. I think Joe Biden has just been extraordinary this year. I mean, yes, he's very old and yes, he looks a bit dodgy at times and he gets his words all bottled up. But I think, you know, we've seen it just in recent days with Zelensky in Washington. For all that Johnson tried to take the credit on Ukraine, Biden has really showed incredible global leadership on Ukraine. He's done some pretty remarkable things on the domestic front and he's just a very, very nice bloke.

• 6:49Rory Stewart?

  It's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, I'm in the US at the moment and the last acts of this Democratic Party-dominated Senate and Congress is going to be to vote through another very, very large package of support for Ukraine. But there's an extraordinary dissonance because you're absolutely right objectively. He's got through this big stimulus package, one of the biggest environment climate packages ever passed in the United States, probably the biggest. He's done very well in Ukraine. But on the other hand, everybody that I talk to in Washington who works closely with him, literally says it's like the end of the film of El Cid. He's like this, he's this dead corpse being put on a horse and run out. So there's this sort of weird discrepancy between the sense of him being very apparently in

• 7:33Rory Stewart?

  public decrepit and forgetful, while at the same time getting these amazing things done. I'd like a shout out though to, to your friend Macron. I know he embarrassed himself a little bit, I thought, on the, on the World Cup pitch. There we are, I've got World Cup references.

• 7:46Alastair Campbell?

  You're obsessed or you're obsessed.

• 7:48Rory Stewart?

  He did, he did succeed in seeing off Le Pen in the elections.

• 7:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  We obviously had a major criticism last week of him, which is the way in which he's got in the way of blocking a lot of the accession of countries like Kosovo, Bosnia and Serbia to the EU, which was a very important part of what was drawing people into peace in the Balkans. But all that aside, I think he is a genuinely extraordinary figure. I mean, it's incredible how he's reinvented French politics, how he's shown that being an independent could work, how he reshaped the entire party system. I mean, I, I think if great politicians are creative people who create new circumstances, Macron certainly seems to have done that.

• 8:29Alastair Campbell?

  And so if we're not allowed Putin as the as the worst foreign politician of the year, I think we probably agree that he is. But if we're not allowed him, I think I'm going to go for Lukashenko, his poodle in Belarus. In fact, I one of the more interesting things I did this week, this year, rather, was the contact I had with the Belarus opposition, who are some pretty, you know, fantastic people who are doing some very, very brave things. And you mentioned the new European, let's give them another plug. They did a big piece. We got the opposition to do a big piece, and it was all about Putin's poodle and and so forth. But, you know, Lukashenko is one of the few last standing enablers. I guess Xi is to some extent in that Xi could, you know, he could push harder against him. But I'm going for Lukashenko as Putin's sidekick.

• 9:13Rory Stewart?

  I in two thousand and three, when I just finished in Iraq, two thousand and five, just finished in Iraq, and I was looking for a new job in the Foreign Office. And somebody tried to encourage me to apply to be the ambassador in Belarus and said, it's a great opportunity, two thousand and five. Lukashenko is on his way out. This is the last dictatorship on the edge of the European Union. You need to get in there as the ambassador in two thousand and five, and you'll have an amazing three years bringing Belarus into the fold of the European Union and spreading democracy to the edge of Russia.

• 9:45Alastair Campbell?

  We're not tempted.

• 9:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, here we are, seventeen years later, I might have a

• 9:48Alastair Campbell?

  That would have been a good job. You don't know, you might have made a difference. So what about domestic domestic worst politician of the year? I suppose Johnson and Truss are runaway winners.

• 9:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, I must say Liz Truss was pretty astonishing. I mean, she doesn't, I mean, Boris Johnson, you know, as I keep saying, is the most monstrous human being, but has a certain kind of political skill. I mean, he won elections, he almost got himself back in again, voted in by the Conservative MPs. He's standing against great survival. Liz Truss, I mean, I cannot think of a more catastrophic period, sadly, as Prime Minister for two or three hundred years. I mean, it broke records in every way, as well as breaking the British economy. On the international side, though, a little shout out for Pedro Castillo, who's who, although he lasted a bit longer than Liz Truss, is a pretty astonishing

• 10:41Rory Stewart?

  combination of both being a pretty uninspiring, this is this is the president of Peru, ex-president Peru, pretty uninspiring individual, not great intellectual skills and development, but also managed to culminate in trying to do a massive

• 10:58Rory Stewart?

  Anti constitutional coup d'etat, full on populism, trying to dissolve his own legislature. And has ended up, as you pointed out last week, in jail.

• 11:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but you say he's not inspiring, but he is partly inspiring from jail, these people to go out and fight on the streets. And it's leading to rather a lot of bloodshed.

• 11:15Rory Stewart?

  That's, that's true. That's true. I mean, he's a full on left wing populist. I mean, I think he's, and I, I was thinking about this also with Jeremy Corbyn, who's been popping up a bit on Twitter in the last, last couple of weeks. Holding forth on the World Cup, holding, holding forth on Palestine and the normal Jeremy Corbyn.

• 11:31Alastair Campbell?

  Which, which we all know, holding forth of the World Cup is exclusively your preserve.

• 11:35Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, exactly. Jeremy Corbyn and I competing for who is more expert on the subject of football. But it is extraordinary, thinking back to 2017 and the fact that he could pack Glastonbury and have the entire crowd chanting, oh, Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it is extraordinary and how somebody who, I, certainly when I entered politics in 2010 was a joke. I mean, I remember the Labour front bench, when he spoke, would all sort of turn around and laugh and people would walk out of the chamber when he tried to speak.

• 12:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, Roy, when, on the day that David Cameron won the election against Ed Miliband. And I'd been helping Ed a bit during the campaign and I was down at Labour Party headquarters. And they asked me to go and do the media round down on College Green. And I was due to do Radio Five with Peter Allen, Radio Five Live. And I was, went over to the tent and they said, oh, Jeremy Corbyn's in there at the moment, doing an interview. Would you mind doing it together? And I said, well, I don't mind, but you know, you better ask him. And so he didn't mind.

• 12:45Alastair Campbell?

  So we ended up doing this interview together where I was saying that, you know, saying nice things about Ed, but then saying the Labour Party has to regroup and continue to modernise and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, I honestly think if I had said at that time, do you know what, I think the next leader is sitting with us right here in this tent. I think I'd have been taken away and taken over to St Thomas's. And yet, a few weeks later, he was the leader. It was incredible.

• 13:12Rory Stewart?

  It's the most unbelievable story. I don't think it's properly been told. Has somebody written a really good book about how he managed to do this? Because I think if for listeners who are interested in politics, to take it back to it, this was a man who had never been considered suitable for even the most junior shadow front bench position under any Labour administration, had been put forward as a candidate, almost just because it was Buggins' turn for the far left of the Labour Party to rotate through different candidates and John McDonald had-

• 13:43Alastair Campbell?

  Didn't particularly want to do it.

• 13:44Rory Stewart?

  Didn't want to do it. John McDonald had done it, I think, the time before or Dine Abbott done time before, so they put him through. Got a couple of votes from more moderate figures who thought it was good for diversity to have Jeremy Corbyn in the

• 13:54Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Margaret Beckett, Sadiq Khan, where are you now?

• 13:58Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. And then next thing we know, he wins. So can you just tell us a little bit about how on earth did he manage to win from a position where nobody rated him to actually winning the whole thing?

• 14:07Alastair Campbell?

  I think it was an underestimation of the extent to which the party had changed. And, you know, the party, we'd had it in this era of pretty tight command and control, message discipline, so forth. Then I think going through the crash, because the Labour Party did sort of at least come together behind Ed and really try to go for it. Ed, I think, opened the door to the sense that we needed something a bit more radical. There is, by the way, a good book, and I've just remembered the name of it. It's called, it's Left Out, Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrand, who now writes some pretty good stuff for the, for the Sunday Times. Look, it's very hard to explain, but I think also don't underestimate, we're back to this thing about, and I'm not saying this has been critical of Corbyn,

• 14:51Alastair Campbell?

  but we were well into the populist era by then. And I think the sense of somebody going out and basically saying, you can have all this stuff that you want, you can, we can make all this massive change and we can do it without, you know, worrying too much about the detail. You know, he, he was able in a way that I never thought he would be able to, to galvanise an awful lot of young people. To say, yeah, I want to get behind this.

• 15:13Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing, isn't it? Because the candidates against him were Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, who's been doing an amazing job in Manchester. I really, you know, I grumble about Sadiq Khan, but I'm a great admirer of Andy Burnham's and Liz Kendall. And you would have thought any one of those three would have been a very, very plausible candidate.

• 15:29Alastair Campbell?

  I can't even remember who I voted for.

• 15:31Rory Stewart?

  He apparently won by the largest mandate ever won by a party leader.

• 15:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Rory Stewart?

  With almost no support from his own MPs.

• 15:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, Owen Smith was a, he challenged him later, didn't he? And I did, I did vote for him. But no, you got handed Jeremy Corbyn, he's got something. And now there he is, you know, sort of probably thinking about whether he's going to stand as an independent in Islington. And even very high profile figures, the history for independent candidates is not great. I've got one other shout out for the worst politician of the year.

• 15:59Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 15:59Alastair Campbell?

  Neil Parish.

• 16:00Rory Stewart?

  Oh, Neil Parish, the poor man who was watching tractor porn on his iPad.

• 16:06Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, this is, you said, we were just sort of talking about, we were, Fiona, right? For a walk earlier, talking about all these things, all these things that have happened in 2022 that you've forgotten. I mean, so the Johnson era was just one after one ridiculous incident doing damage to our body politic. And I think Neil Parish, that was without doubt the best excuse of misconduct or bad behaviour I've ever heard. I was looking, I was looking at some tractor websites and for some reason it led me to this pornographic site and it popped up as I was sitting in the House of Commons.

• 16:40Rory Stewart?

  It's also very sad, isn't it? Because there was a, there was a Labour MP who got in trouble when I was early in Parliament. I'm not going to humiliate him by mentioning him, but his excuse was, again, that he'd, again, been found with some astonishing male pornography on his screen. And he claimed he had no idea why Google had suggested this to him. But of course, there is a reason why Google suggests this stuff, but we don't need to go into algorithms. Okay, right. Moment of the year, moment of the year. What was your moment of the year?

• 17:09Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to stay in Latin America. I think my moment of the year was Bolsonaro losing.

• 17:13Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 17:14Alastair Campbell?

  And the reason for that is that even though I have no massive connections with Brazil, if you remember the build up to that, there was all this talk about Bolsonaro wouldn't recognise the outcome if he lost, that there was the possibility of the military and the police getting involved against Lula if he won. And actually, I hope, this could be wishful thinking, but it's one of the reasons I am a little bit more optimistic about the state of the world than I was at the start of the year, is Johnson's gone. And funnily enough, Johnson's departure didn't fill me with pleasure for some reason. I didn't, I just felt so sick at the idea he'd ever been there. But Bolsonaro going, I felt was potentially a really big turning point.

• 17:51Rory Stewart?

  And Trump, apparently so far, pretty much humiliating himself. I mean, not only now absolutely exposed for his illegal activity, but having really failed to move the dial on the midterms and having really embarrassed himself in the last few weeks.

• 18:05Alastair Campbell?

  The other politician who nearly got my foreign politician of the year award was Liz Cheney.

• 18:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I wrote down Liz Cheney. I would have talked about Liz Cheney. I'm a huge admirer of Liz Cheney's. Obviously, I am a great admirer of former conservatives who do the right thing and break against their party leaders. But I, I, I think Liz Cheney's been, been very brave. On moment of the year, I think my moment of the year, to be very boring, has to be the invasion of Ukraine, because it was something that changed 75 years of European history. And it's difficult to remember, it was just this year that it happened, that it opened the floodgates to challenging the entire global trade system, destroyed global energy security, wrecked our economies, raised the specter of conflict with China, and moved the world, I think, from an age of populism to an age of global

• 18:54Rory Stewart?

  conflicts. And I wonder, actually, whether that phenomenon you were talking about, which is some of the short term fading of populism. So.

• 19:04Rory Stewart?

  Trump humiliating himself, Boris Johnson Liz Truss going, Bolsonaro going, may not be connected to that, that maybe the spectre of global conflict, hopefully, unlike the way that it played in the Second World War, where it seemed to reinforce populist nationalism, may in fact be driving in favour of slightly more moderate figures.

• 19:25Alastair Campbell?

  And, and, and, and serious politicians.

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  And more serious politicians, yeah.

• 19:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. I've got to say, I mean, Zelensky is, has without doubt, I mean, he was Time Magazine of the Year. Let's give a third plug to the New European, he's the New Europeans European of the Year. Fernando was saying this morning, when we were, we were watching his speech in, in Congress, when you think of the, the stress levels, I mean, I'm used to operating under quite severe stress levels, but the stress levels that he must be operating under are off the charts. And yet he always seems to be able to come across as pretty authentic, pretty energetic, genuinely leading.

• 20:03Rory Stewart?

  It's wonderful. And there was a great tweet out from Dan Snow yesterday, historian, and he was responding to somebody who'd attacked Zelensky, saying this man's an actor, he's turned up in Congress in his, his combat fatigues. And Dan Snow reminded us that when Winston Churchill went to visit the United States, the early 40s, he turned up in his sort of blitz boiler suit. And I think it's right, it's completely legitimate for a war leader to show through the clothes they wear, that they are leading in a war. And that's what leadership is partly about, they're public figures.

• 20:37Alastair Campbell?

  It also helps with not having to put luggage in the hold, just take hand baggage, which is

• 20:42Rory Stewart?

  Very, very good. And you're correct.

• 20:43Alastair Campbell?

  As we both agreed, is, is very important, even if they send Air Force One for you.

• 20:46Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. Camouflage fatigues are also incredibly easy to wash in the hotel sinks. I think there's a huge

• 20:51Alastair Campbell?

  Now, just wait one second, because there's somebody at the door, you might want to say hello to.

• 20:55Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yeah. Good, good, good, good. It's, it's going to be a footballer. I'm warning you, it's going to be a footballer. It's, it's Lionel Messi is coming to the door. So he's coming in, it's meant to be Lionel Messi, but he hasn't turned up with Messi and he hasn't turned up with Ronaldo either.

• 21:08Alastair Campbell?

  No, I don't think you want to see a Flo.

• 21:10Rory Stewart?

  No Lionel Messi, no Ronaldo.

• 21:11Alastair Campbell?

  No, not yet. It was a florist.

• 21:14Rory Stewart?

  It was the florist. Oh, no.

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry, sorry. But we'll see, we'll see.

• 21:18Rory Stewart?

  Got really excited about that.

• 21:20Alastair Campbell?

  No message, no message.

• 21:21Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so the surprise of the year, apart from the fact that when your doorbell went, it was the florist. My surprise of the year is, I guess, Europe's willingness to stand up to Russia despite the incredible cost to its economies and the incredible threat to its energy supply. That is not something that Vladimir Putin predicted, and I would not have confidently predicted that the German chancellor would have stood up so strongly, that Europe would have stood up so strongly, that the UK and the US would have stood up so strongly.

• 21:50Alastair Campbell?

  And Sweden and Finland would apply to join NATO.

• 21:53Rory Stewart?

  For which a shout out to Santa Marin, the amazing Finnish dancing queen, stroke.

• 22:00Alastair Campbell?

  My surprise, Rory.

• 22:01Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 22:02Alastair Campbell?

  I will be absolutely frank about this. My surprise has been the success of this podcast.

• 22:06Rory Stewart?

  That's pretty surprising, I agree.

• 22:07Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, if you think about it, it is only nine months, 10 months, since the goal hanger team met me in the Pret a Monje, where you used to do prison pay negotiations, and said, did I think a podcast with Dominic Cummings would work? And I said, no, I don't think it would, not for more than one episode. And then we got ahold of you, and here we are, top of the charts and flogging out the Albert Hall.

• 22:34Rory Stewart?

  It's very weird, isn't it?

• 22:35Alastair Campbell?

  I have found that genuinely surprising.

• 22:38Rory Stewart?

  I think it's surprising, and it's surprising because I'm also sort of, I mean, it's obviously some kind of odd couple dynamic, but I'm still struggling to pin down exactly how the odd couple dynamic works. But I'm very, very pleased that people want to listen to us. So please, please keep listening.

• 22:53Alastair Campbell?

  So there's a question there, Rory. The question, Cecily Spelling, what did you hope to achieve with the podcast this year, besides lots of listeners, and what ambitions do you have for next year? I think we have managed to, in fact, I've written about this in the book I've written, that's coming out later this, next year, where I do think you have slightly changed the manner in which I approach politics.

• 23:14Alastair Campbell?

  And that's through us having this sort of motto of disagreeing agreeably. I can still be very combative. I can still lose my temper. I can still get very vituperative. But I've realised that actually it is better to have a more consensual approach to some of these issues.

• 23:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think you've also been very good for me. I mean, I definitely have a tendency to go off on slightly pompous, abstract digressions. I think you've been very good at rooting us. I think this is a good, this is a good tent. Anyway, we stop congratulating ourselves. What's your book of the year?

• 23:47Alastair Campbell?

  We've got one fiction, one non-fiction. My non-fiction book, and I think I read it this year, but I could be wrong, but it's one of the, it's partly what inspired me to write the book that I'm writing. And it is our old friend Moises Naim, The Revenge of Power. I think, I think it's the best encapsulation of a lot of the stuff that we talk about, about why our politics has gone as bad as it, as it has.

• 24:10Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 24:10Alastair Campbell?

  My fiction book is, I'm going to show off my German here. I have read it in German, but it is available in English. And I didn't realise until I picked it up at a German airport that it's been out for a decade. And in German, it's "ist wieder da". And the English translation is "Look Who's Back" by Timo Vermez. And it's this incredible book. And it's, it's really, it's very funny in parts. And you feel a bit guilty about it being so funny, because it's basically about Hitler. And, you know, we shouldn't really laugh about Hitler.

• 24:44Rory Stewart?

  Isn't, isn't there an amazing TV series on it?

• 24:47Alastair Campbell?

  There's been a film, yeah.

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  Film, yeah.

• 24:49Alastair Campbell?

  Which is also called "ist wieder da". And so basically, just to give you the sort of brief of the story, Hitler wakes up in a rubbish lot near the bunker. And he's got no memory or no knowledge of anything that's happened between 1945 and, and the Merkel era, which is when he, he arrives. And essentially, he goes around the place. Everybody recognises who he is, but nobody believes him when he says he's Adolf Hitler. They think he's, they think he's a comedian, or he's, he's an actor. And he eventually ends up on a TV show. And there are some incredibly funny bits, the bit where he's, he's trying to get an email address, somebody's explaining to him about the internet and emailers over,

• 25:32Alastair Campbell?

  and he can't understand why he's not allowed just to call himself Adolf Hitler. And there's two reasons, one is that Adolf Hitler's a sort of a very bad name, but also people have stolen every Adolf Hitler formula going, so it's a kind of satire, but it does, it does give you a sense of, of why people found him attractive as well, which I know is, you could argue is, is a bit dangerous, but anyway, so that's my, that's my novel of the year.

• 25:58Rory Stewart?

  That's good, well, my books here, one of them, very old classic, if anyone's got teenage children, but also actually, I think it's a great book for adults to read, although it is to some extent a young adult book, Ursula Le Guin, The Wizard of Earthsea Trilogy, very, very strongly recommended. She was an amazing child of an anthropologist, profound thinker from California, wrote very well about the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese mystical text, but produced this wonderful, probably the best book ever written about wizards, dragons.

• 26:30Alastair Campbell?

  So, sorry, is this, is this, this is non-fiction?

• 26:33Rory Stewart?

  This is the fiction one.

• 26:34Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it's the fiction one, sorry. Right, I figured, I thought you were talking about, I, I wonder whether you were going to tell me you also believe in UFOs.

• 26:39Rory Stewart?

  I also believe in dragons, yeah. The, a non-fiction one I was going to suggest is by Raphael Bear, and who, we almost lost him, had a amazing, you know, he's younger than me and had a terrible heart attack and almost died on a, on a jog, but anyway, he came back from it and has written a book with the title Politics, A Survivor's Guide, which I've read the, the, the proof of, and you can preorder it now.

• 27:08Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it's not out yet?

• 27:09Rory Stewart?

  Not out yet, but it is, preorder it, and it's a really, really thoughtful, interesting romp through his own history as a Jewish immigrant, his trips to Eastern Europe, his reporting in Moscow, and then his returning back to what he calls the perma-crisis of Boris Johnson. So Raphael Bear, Politics, A Survivor's Guide.

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  It sounds like you're promoting what might be a little bit of a competitor to my book, Roy, and so I may have to take him down at some point.

• 27:36Rory Stewart?

  He's gloo- gloomier than you, you're, you're the more optimistic one.

• 27:40Alastair Campbell?

  Film of the year.

• 27:41Rory Stewart?

  Oh, film of the year. Yeah, well, I'm gonna say Elvis, which you recommended to me and I thought was absolutely wonderful. Over to you.

• 27:47Alastair Campbell?

  I would say Elvis because I love saying Elvis, but I'm gonna go for Belfast, Kenneth Branagh. I absolutely, I absolutely loved that film. I think it was this year. I certainly saw it this year. Um, it is, it is really, it really is a beautiful film. The young boy who plays what, you know, you imagine to be a young Branagh is just so kind of warm and sort of lovable and the character, the, the parents have, you know, got, there, there's a real sense of authenticity about them and about their story and it's not self-indulgent. You get a real sense of what growing up during the troubles was like. And it also did, I think I said at the time, it, it, it, it sort of fueled my anger

• 28:31Alastair Campbell?

  at what this government is doing and continuing to mess around with the, uh, the peace process by not gripping uh, Brexit in the way that they should.

• 28:40Rory Stewart?

  I've, I've been, um, been watching Kenneth Branagh because the Hamlet that I've been watching is Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. It's full length, three and a half hour. And he's managed to persuade Charlton Heston to play the actor who does the play within the play. Uh, so that.

• 28:54Alastair Campbell?

  You're having, you're having, you're having some right or cultural experiences?

• 28:57Rory Stewart?

  Right, right. Or cultural experiences. Right. I think time for a cultural break.

• 29:02Speaker 02

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

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death. That's what.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under seventeen. Not a minute without parent.

• 29:39Rory Stewart?

  So, welcome back to the Rest is Politics Awards Ceremony with me Rory Stewart.

• 29:44Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, Rory, that wasn't good enough. So, welcome back to the Rest is Politics 2022 Awards Ceremony.

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  With me Rory Stewart.

• 29:53Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  The only person I've ever heard do that was Theresa May when she made me a minister, did that sort of voice. It sounded a bit like being made a minister by Paul Daniels. She was like, Rory, I would like to make you the Minister of State in the Department of International Development. Like that.

• 30:14Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, I heard a hilarious story about one of your appointments the other day. You can tell me whether this is true. I met a guy who is now a press officer at the Labour Party and he was a press officer at the Prisons Department.

• 30:28Alastair Campbell?

  And he said that when you were Prisons Minister, you were so sort of committed to your role as Prisons Minister that you were trying out a new tag for prisoners. And they knew that you were about to be appointed to the Cabinet by Theresa May because you were wearing your tag.

• 30:47Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. I was wearing an electronic tag and they were able to monitor me right the way across the road into Downing Street on my electronic tag. And then, of course, as you know, when you get made a minister in a new department, so I'd been made Secretary of State for International Development, I then jumped in this fancy electric Jaguar and was driven over to the Department for International Development.

• 31:05Alastair Campbell?

  With your tag.

• 31:06Rory Stewart?

  Still with my tag on. And of course, tags are designed for released prisoners not to be able to remove the tag. And the only way of getting the tag off was back in the Ministry of Justice, but I was now well into my working day in the Department for International Development. So I spent my first two days in the job with a, with a tag on.

• 31:25Alastair Campbell?

  So I'm glad, I'm glad that was true. That proves that Labour Party press officers always tell the truth.

• 31:29Rory Stewart?

  Always, always. What's your personal highlight of the year, Alistair?

• 31:33Alastair Campbell?

  It's a toss up. They both involve swimming.

• 31:38Alastair Campbell?

  The one country, I think I only went to one new country this year, and that was Cote d'Ivoire.

• 31:44Rory Stewart?

  Which you loved.

• 31:45Alastair Campbell?

  Which I really, really loved. And one of the swims I had there in these incredible waves with these guys who were playing music on the beach. And it was just absolutely beautiful. So that one, but probably the winner was actually last week when I set a new personal low of swimming in one degree water.

• 32:05Rory Stewart?

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

• 32:06Alastair Campbell?

  So I think that was my personal highlight.

• 32:08Rory Stewart?

  So just to a quick one degree, there is ice on it or there isn't ice on it?

• 32:12Alastair Campbell?

  You can see the beginnings of ice.

• 32:13Rory Stewart?

  You can see the beginnings, yeah. Yeah. So my highlight of the year, cheesily, is actually taking over as the president of GiveDirectly and re-engaging with poverty in Africa because after I left politics, I went into a bit of a hibernation. I taught at Yale. I was a bit out of the swing of things and it's been amazing to now be back in a proper job and to be able to travel properly in Africa and to take on a new team. We've got nearly a thousand people, 12 country offices, but most of all, I think we do have a crack at making a dent in extreme poverty in our lifetime. And I think cash transfer and the dignity it gives to people, the trust it gives to people

• 32:55Rory Stewart?

  are exciting, which is why I'm very keen as to try to invite you to come on a trip maybe with the pod to Malawi next year.

• 33:00Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Definitely. Definitely. That'd be great fun and interesting as well. Now, what about speech of the year?

• 33:07Rory Stewart?

  Ooh, speech of the year. You know, I'm, I'm not really a big, oh, actually, it's a bit, it's a bit last year, but I often don't give him full credit. But probably the best parliamentary speech I heard was Tom Tugendhat on the Afghan withdrawal, which was the most extraordinary five, six minutes of passion, anger, glimpses of humour.

• 33:35Rory Stewart?

  Real oratory and a very serious political point about the shamefulness of Britain's abandonment of Afghanistan. And yeah, I should, I should give a bit of a shout out on that. Who's your speech of the year?

• 33:47Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm going to get a bit of grief here from all my Labour friends because my runner up is Michael Heseltine, who did a brilliant speech about why we should never give up the fight to get back into the European Union. But my winner is a speech that John Major made and the headline of the speech was in democracy, we trust, question mark. And it was one of, in a very Major-esque, quite understated sort of way, it was the finest demolition of Johnson and the damage that he was doing to democracy. And I strongly recommend that people look it up and read the whole thing, just to be reminded, because there's a real danger we forget of the sort of slow erosion of standards and the long-term damage.

• 34:27Rory Stewart?

  I also owe you something because it's thanks to you that I've had another look at Tony Blair, who I was deeply, deeply sceptical of. And I was actually very impressed. I went to an event that he organised, very impressed by his speech and his engagement with technology, his thoughtfulness about the future of work. I think your doorbell's going though. Is this Lionel Messi turning up to see you again?

• 34:46Alastair Campbell?

  Let me go and see if Messi's arrived. It might be Ronaldo, I don't know, hold on.

• 34:50Rory Stewart?

  So we're waiting for Alastair to return. I'm looking at his bookshelf and I'm looking at a door and there's some, there's some strange guest coming in.

• 35:00Alastair Campbell?

  This person has even brought me a nice Christmas present.

• 35:02Rory Stewart?

  Oh, beautiful. Brought you a present? But who is this person? Because you're in the way of the camera. I can't see the person.

• 35:08Alastair Campbell?

  You'll have to put an ear, you'll have to put an earphone.

• 35:10Speaker 05

  You're not seriously in action, are you? Is this being filmed?

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  This is, it's David Miliband leaning at Alastair's feet. It's absolutely extraordinary. David, hello.

• 35:17Speaker 05

  David Miliband is playing Santa. I've brought Alastair his Christmas, Alastair and Fiona, but it's slightly Alastair focused, two Christmas presents.

• 35:24Rory Stewart?

  Oh, David, we're very, very excited to have you. And he, he talks you up a lot. So I wasn't quite sure whether you were going to be one of the most famous footballers in the world or whatever.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Oh my God, I feel like I've disappointed you as always. This is making me feel like I'm very close to kissing you. Can you put this in the other ear?

• 35:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, like that, yeah.

• 35:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, actually, we, Alistair and I were being photographed. We got very close to kissing each other. We were made to be photographed almost nose to nose.

• 35:52Speaker 05

  What, the Royal Albert Hall in front of 5,500 people?

• 35:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it was very disturbing. David, quick question for you. We're doing our events of the year. And somebody called Emily O'Brien's written it, and I'm going to give you a second because it's not unfair to you. I'm going to get Alistair to answer first. Mistake of the year in politics and personally. We'll give you a bit of time. I'm going to let Alistair think about it while you think about mistake of the year.

• 36:12Alastair Campbell?

  Do you mean being our own mistakes or other people's?

• 36:14Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, I think a mistake, someone else's mistake in politics.

• 36:17Alastair Campbell?

  Truss Quatting, without a doubt.

• 36:18Rory Stewart?

  That was pretty colossal, wasn't it?

• 36:19Alastair Campbell?

  That's the second award for Truss and Quatting.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  In the, in the, in the demerits of the year.

• 36:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on then.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  I think the mistake of the year was Putin's invasion of Ukraine. This was a bad year for dictators in various ways. It was a very bad year for people around the world in some extreme circumstances. But I think Putin's invasion will go down as grand hysterical error on Napoleonic scale.

• 36:47Alastair Campbell?

  I think David Miliband's mistake of the year is kneeling down at my.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  I'm not at your feet. I'm at exactly, I've got this rather difficult thing, but I want you to open the present because the, the, the tree's motif has got.

• 37:03Rory Stewart?

  He's opening a present, just for those of you who are listening to this.

• 37:06Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I see, look.

• 37:08Rory Stewart?

  What's he giving you?

• 37:08Alastair Campbell?

  How to be more tree.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  Now, just.

• 37:11Rory Stewart?

  Very, oh.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Look at it. Don't, don't, don't, don't do what children do and throw the book present away before you've looked at it.

• 37:16Alastair Campbell?

  Great Trees of New York map.

• 37:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh, was he expecting a Pokemon or something? And now he's really disappointed.

• 37:21Speaker 05

  But look, look, the, the thing is, it tells you how this now, I'm afraid, just in case you are suffering from low self-esteem, this will show that actually your obsession with trees is quite well.

• 37:30Alastair Campbell?

  It is.

• 37:30Speaker 05

  Grounded. Look at what the chapter.

• 37:31Alastair Campbell?

  Essential life lessons for perennial happiness. I've always believed trees can make you happy.

• 37:35Speaker 05

  No, the, the trees don't. The trees have figured out how to be happy. Look at the chapter headings.

• 37:39Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, beginnings are always small.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  Japanese maple tree.

• 37:43Alastair Campbell?

  Patience is a virtue. I've heard that one.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  Draw strength from others.

• 37:46Alastair Campbell?

  Draw strength from others.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  Aspen tree.

• 37:47Rory Stewart?

  Where'd you get with the patience is a virtue one, Alistair, there?

• 37:50Speaker 05

  Ask for help when you need it. The elm tree does that.

• 37:54Rory Stewart?

  Ah, that's very good.

• 37:55Alastair Campbell?

  Adapt to your environment.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  The American.

• 37:56Alastair Campbell?

  The Asian beach.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  Be authentic.

• 37:59Alastair Campbell?

  Hornbeak.

• 38:00Rory Stewart?

  Hornbeak.

• 38:01Alastair Campbell?

  Always have a plan B. What's your plan B, David?

• 38:04Speaker 05

  Plan, I'm on to plan N by now, I think, rather than plan B.

• 38:07Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you very much.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  Is this, are you podcasting in the questions podcast?

• 38:12Alastair Campbell?

  No, we're doing awards. We're doing a special awards.

• 38:15Rory Stewart?

  Special awards ceremony.

• 38:16Speaker 05

  How many have you won for yourself?

• 38:17Alastair Campbell?

  Haven't won it. Well, the podcast was the, the success of the podcast was the surprise.

• 38:21Rory Stewart?

  David, I want you to have a chance to talk properly to Anna, but can we just quickly just do the last bits on this pod?

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  No, David's not staying. He's going.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  I'm not. Well, he's got very important people to see.

• 38:30Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's do event, event of the year, sport, event of the year, culture, and then let you have five minutes chat to David. So come, what's, what's your event of the year, sport? What's your event of the year?

• 38:38Speaker 05

  The event of the year in sport? Well, you'd have to say the World Cup, I think, but the English cricket, English cricket has been amazing this year. Amazing. Just extraordinary.

• 38:50Alastair Campbell?

  I have to say, I think Burnley beat absolutely destroying Blackburn Rovers was up there. I do think Ben Stokes should have been sports personality of the year. I know it was fantastic. The women run the football. And Beth Mead is a great footballer, but the Ben, what Ben Stokes has done this year has been extraordinary. My cultural event of the year is ABBA Voyage.

• 39:08Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 39:09Alastair Campbell?

  And if you haven't seen it, go and see it. But it also has a political connotation this because it did, it did make me worry about the potential for deep fake.

• 39:18Rory Stewart?

  Because you, because you, you really thought you were watching ABBA, even though you were sitting next to ABBA.

• 39:23Alastair Campbell?

  You were watching the four members of ABBA perform live. It was incredible.

• 39:26Rory Stewart?

  Despite the fact they were sitting next to you. So my cultural event, just a reminder of all the things that have happened this year is the Queen's funeral. It's extraordinary that this year has seen so much. The Boris Johnson Liz Truss car crashes, Donald Trump temporarily imploding, Putin's invasion of Ukraine. But the Queen's, Queen's funeral, Queen's funeral, the death of the Queen, I think has been a massive epochal event for Britain.

• 39:47Alastair Campbell?

  Perhaps also worth mentioning as a, as a great cultural event, the Liz Truss curtsy.

• 39:53Alastair Campbell?

  Perhaps, perhaps we should just abolish the whole curtsy thing, Rory. What do you think? I think the curtsy thing-

• 39:57Speaker 05

  Does Rory curtsy to you when he comes into the podcast?

• 39:59Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think he curtsies to me, but I suspect he does curtsy when he meets Camilla.

• 40:03Rory Stewart?

  Well, at the moment, I noticed David's actually kneeling to you, which I've never actually done yet.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  You can't see me below my midriff or above my chin, below my chin.

• 40:13Alastair Campbell?

  I think we should let David stay because the other thing we're doing is a lifetime achievement award.

• 40:18Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 40:19Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, now, we've already decided who this is because it's the only one we had to agree on. And we've agreed to agree that our, the first ever Rest Is Politics Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Neil and Glenys Kinnock.

• 40:34Speaker 05

  Wow, that's very nice.

• 40:35Alastair Campbell?

  Neil because of his role in paving the way.

• 40:40Rory Stewart?

  And Glenys, Glenys, who's had a great public career, but also has been struggling a little bit with dementia.

• 40:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yep, about which they're now talking openly as a way of trying to raise awareness and better services, et cetera. Of course, Glenys worked for you-

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Glenys was a minister in the Foreign Office, very lucky for me. She was extraordinarily committed. She had this real experience from the European Parliament and the work she'd done in Africa. Neil was actually the chairman of the British Council when we appointed Glenys as the minister. And he then felt he had to resign from the British Council to avoid any suggestion that-

• 41:18Alastair Campbell?

  Just reminds you, can you imagine any of this?

• 41:20Speaker 05

  Honestly, it hadn't really occurred to anyone that there was a reason for him to resign. But he immediately said, I think it's fantastic that Glenys is being made a minister. She was briefly minister for Europe and then went, became minister for Africa. But he said, I can't carry on in this role because you know what it'll be like. People will say that something will come up and people will say that it wasn't right. So he resigned, and he'd done an amazing job. He'd been four or five years as the chairman of the British Council.

• 41:49Rory Stewart?

  Oh, well, that's, I think it's a very good thing to end on. And we're going to let Alistair and David chat for a few minutes. And thank you all so much for listening to the Rest Is Politics special events of the year.

• 42:00Alastair Campbell?

  You've got to do better than that. Thank you so much for joining us at the Rest Is Politics Awards for 2022. See you next year.

• 42:08Rory Stewart?

  See you next year.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 42:33Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.