269. Question Time: Orban in person, Biden's fragility, and the subtle art of focus groups

Just how beneficial are focus groups to political parties? Will Biden's age cost him the US election? And why does Alastair hate vox pops so much? Join Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell as they answer all these questions and more on the latest episode of The Rest Is Politics: Question Time. 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. TRIP UK TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter 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.

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• 1:33Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:35Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:37Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, we've got a very nice question here from Rhiannon, who's an American. Says she loves the Rest is Politics US with Scaramucci and Katie Kay, but she feels that because of them, she worries that we've not been talking as much about America as we normally do. I think that's probably because we've got our own elections going on now, but she's got a fair point. She wants to know what our current take is on the American elections.

• 2:00Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, I'd love to hear from you, but very quickly, just as a bit of an explainer from me.

• 2:06Rory Stewart?

  The opinion polls in America are absolutely astonishing. First thing is that it's a knife edge. And this is the sort of thing that's been happening over the last few years in American politics. The Republicans, the Democrats are getting closer and closer. If you go back in time, go back 50, 60, 70 years, there are often periods where one party would be, have the presidency for many terms. And you'd often have a situation in which they would dominate the Senate or Congress, you know, get 60 Senate seats, 59 Senate seats. We're now in a world in which, particularly over the last 30 years, the president often loses control of the Senate and Congress.

• 2:50Rory Stewart?

  And where even if a party wins the Senate, they're celebrating if they're up at sort of 51 to 49. So it's on a knife edge. Second thing is that Biden is presiding over a Democratic Party which is changing very, very dramatically. It's very much a party of the cities. And the Republicans are very much a party now outside the metropolitan areas, rural areas. Biden is also, for the first time, unlike any previous Democratic president, doing a bit better, holding on to certain groups like older white men. Now, why is that strange?

• 3:32Rory Stewart?

  That's strange because normally, look at Britain, look at Europe, you'd expect older white men to be voting right wing and to be going over towards Trump. In a complete inversion of our expectations, Trump is now picking up a surprising number of Hispanic voters and African American voters, and particularly picking up young voters. So there's a very interesting phenomenon going on, which is that Trump has almost certainly taken a lot of the seats, a lot of the states in the South. All the way from Florida across to Arizona, which used to be swing states, now look partly from Hispanic voters as though they're going to go over to Trump.

• 4:11Rory Stewart?

  That means the election is going to come down basically to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and in those three states, the question will be turnout. If Biden wins comfortably, it will be because some of these voter groups, for example, young black men who say they want to vote Trump will not turn out. That will lead to a comfortable Biden victory in those states. If, on the other hand, he can mobilize them, and mobilizing them is weird because he doesn't have a ground machine. Trump is, the Republicans never had a ground machine for mobilizing young black voters in Detroit because traditionally they always voted left if they voted at all. And anyway, he doesn't build a ground machine. He's doing it all on social media.

• 4:56Rory Stewart?

  But he is by far the best known figure in American politics. He's on everybody's social media every day. And the question is, is that going to lead to turnout? Anyway, over to you.

• 5:05Alastair Campbell?

  Since we interviewed Anthony Scaramucci on Leading quite a long time ago now, I have quoted him to people so many times because he gave that very compelling analysis to why he thought Trump couldn't win. I noticed this week on The Rest is Politics US, I sensed a bit of doubt in him for the first time. He was still saying, ah, I think Joe will do it in the end, but he sounded more doubtful. I think he was worried about the way that the debate was going. And I wonder if this question from William Hogg might be behind some of the reasoning. William Hogg, I'm no fan of Trump. I think the man lacks some moral compass. But why is it that you both don't seem to give enough attention to Biden's physical state? It's striking that he often resembles my late grandfather in the latter part of his

• 5:48Alastair Campbell?

  life when he was suffering from Alzheimer's, often seems unaware of his surroundings, what's going on around him. There was a clip of Maloney at the G7 where Biden did look like he was just wandering off and Maloney went and sort of grabbed his arm and pulled him back. I think Biden, look, he is old, there's no doubt about that. I've told you before about this thing with the way that he walks is actually an old kind of knee injury as much as, you know, the unsteadiness on his feet. But and you've said, you've said, to be fair to you, you've said for a long time, you thought that this age thing for Biden and energy was going to become a big deal. But if you just think about last week, he had to be in America, governing, doing some pretty big things on all sorts of different issues. He then had to go overseas.

• 6:33Alastair Campbell?

  He then went back to, and Katty Kay and Scaramucci talked about this, I thought, rather movingly, go back to kind of be with his son Hunter when he was in trouble in court, then get back on the plane and go to the G7. Where actually, notwithstanding the moment where he walked away, I thought he looked okay. But there's no doubt the age is, is, is an issue, that you're right that the Democrats have always been pretty good at the get out the vote mobilisation. I suspect the Republicans will have a better operation on the ground this time than they did last time Trump fought it.

• 7:05Rory Stewart?

  And Trump has set up surprisingly few campaign headquarters. I mean, it's very, very weird how little ground operation he has and how little ground operation he had when he won in 2016. The big issue, though, that seems to matter for Trump voters at the margin, so the key swing voters that they need. In the background, of course, are all these big kind of cultural things, a culture war going on between the two sides on many issues. So a very large number of Trump voters, when you ask them, say that they feel that the world is basically prejudiced against white men. So they feel that there's racism against white people, they feel that there's sexism against men. So there's a lot of that in the background. And of course, on the Democratic side, a lot of people voting because they're very,

• 7:50Rory Stewart?

  very angry about the Supreme Court's decision on abortion.

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  But the people that are going to make the difference at the moment look like they're people who are voting on cost of living. And that's where you can see in focus groups, young black men saying, look, I don't like Trump. I agree he's a racist, I agree he treats women badly, but to be honest, I felt better off in my pocket when he was in office than I do now. And, and, and this is a couple of things that's very difficult. Obviously, you and I are passionately anti Donald Trump, you know, we're not open on this. But we also have an obligation to try to be open about problems here. And I often get attacked for this by my friends in the US who say, how dare you say that people are feeling cost of living pain?

• 8:35Rory Stewart?

  How dare you say Biden's too old because that's playing into Trump's hands? But the truth is, it cannot make sense for the Democrats to now think that they can campaign on the economy. Because it doesn't work to say to people, this is Rishi Sunak's mistake too, to say to people, you may feel worse off, but let me point you to some macroeconomic indicator that shows that inflation's down or the economy's growing or employment's up. It doesn't work. I mean, if you feel you're paying more for your groceries, you're paying more for gas, it doesn't matter, the politician.

• 9:07Alastair Campbell?

  But Biden does have a pretty powerful economic story to tell. I don't think he should give up on that. But I think where you're right is that he needs perhaps to be speaking more to the the actual reality of people's feelings about their the state of their life. And that's definitely true of Sunak. I mean, that's the thing he doesn't get at all.

• 9:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, so my question, I guess, asked for you is, should he not, given that most of the polls suggests that if you ask people who's better on the economy, Trump wins by quite a long margin? He needs to move the argument on to why Trump is a fundamental threat to democracy.

• 9:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, and also because of that, a fundamental threat to Americans' standard of living, Americans' place in the world, et cetera. No, I think there's something in that. Similar question. Lord Byrd, I didn't know that John Byrd was in the House of Lords, founder of The Big Issue. I'm sure you're a regular reader, I am. As founder of The Big Issue, I wanted to ask, with 50% of people who have cardiac illnesses suffering from food poverty, according to the BMA, do you think Keir Starmer will make his dismantling of poverty central to his administration? Well, I hope so. But I've said before that I don't think that poverty is as central to the debate at the moment as it should be.

• 10:19Alastair Campbell?

  You know, if you go back to the manifesto launch, and you and I both read the manifesto in full, you would definitely know that Labour wants to tackle poverty. But I don't think you could say that it was central to the way that they were projecting the manifesto.

• 10:34Rory Stewart?

  It's not, and I think it's a great pity. And there was an interview which Wes Streeting gave, which... You know, got a bit of play on social media where he was asked, you know, why he was being supportive of pensioners and not young people in poverty. And he gave what sounded, maybe he regrets it, but like a pretty right wing answer.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  What, what did he say?

• 10:53Rory Stewart?

  He said, I, if I was, I'd go out and get a job. And it was a little bit like when I was interviewing him and trying to talk about prisoners and I think I raised the homeless. He said that he would prefer the money going into education and health. And I, I can understand that, but I think Labour's missing a huge opportunity to be a party that represents better values, hope, and that they could do it in a way that didn't damage them in the election, might even help them.

• 11:27Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 11:28Rory Stewart?

  Let's imagine you're, you're appealing to somebody like me, who's the kind of old sort of centre left Conservative. I would want to feel that I was voting for a party that said, it's disgraceful and disgusting that there are people living in such extreme poverty in Britain, that there are this number of homeless, that prisoners are treated in such a horrible way. These are things which are quite cheap to address.

• 11:52Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 11:53Rory Stewart?

  And an incoming Labour administration should be able to put that at the centre of its moral mission and project. It wouldn't cost that much money. And I think it would sit very well with traditional Labour values.

• 12:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think some of those things would cost a lot of money, but I, I, I agree with you. And also when we talked to Bridget Phillips on Leading this week, she rightly pointed out that Sure Start, which I think was one of our most successful policies, I'd forgotten this, but she was right. We, we proposed that and implemented it in government, not as a kind of, so we said vaguely in the manifesto, you know, we will try to tackle child poverty. And then the programme followed. But I just feel that it goes back to the point I made on the main podcast about apathy as well and turnout. I think that if people feel they're not central to the election debate that they hear and follow, and bearing in mind, as we said yesterday, that lots of people are just ducking out of the debate completely, then it makes them less likely to go out and vote. And so I think that people

• 12:49Alastair Campbell?

  who are living in poverty have to be given some hope. That the next government is going to put them centre stage in terms of its priorities.

• 12:56Rory Stewart?

  It's interesting, it's an argument that would appeal to the right as well as the left. When we interviewed Alex Chalk, who's the Justice Secretary, Conservative Justice Secretary on leading, he produced something which I think he called the visiting French minister test, which is, you know, would I be proud to show a visiting French minister? And the answer is you would not be proud to show them the homelessness on the streets of London. You would not be proud to show them the type of poverty people are living in. I mean, part of being a serious economy, a serious country, a beacon to the world, an example of what a democracy should be, is about looking after the most vulnerable, marginalise the poorest best. Alistair, a question from Joe Waldock. You both told us what your fathers did for a living, but the question was about parents. So what about your mothers?

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  And before I get on to that, I noticed that in a tribute to your father, maybe because it was Father's Day yesterday, you finally decided to put on your Northern Vet shirt, which we don't often see. In fact, you're often mocking me and I'm wearing a sort of version of the same thing. What is it, Alistair, that finally has led you to embrace your father's dress sense on the rest of his politics?

• 14:01Alastair Campbell?

  You're right, it is definitely a Northern Vet shirt. I'll tell you what it is. I, as you know, whenever I travel, I never, ever, ever, ever put luggage in the hold.

• 14:10Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 14:10Alastair Campbell?

  I went to Australia for several weeks with a suit carrier and a wheelie, a short, small wheelie bag. So what I do with shirts, if I'm going away for more than a few days, I wear, I take shirts that are less likely to crease in a suit carrier that's going away. So this material is just better for not, but I'm glad that you saw some deep paternal.

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  Can I just push the deep paternal one more time? And I know I'm not your therapist, but when we were talking about it just offline, not being in view, but just chatting, you said you remembered your father being sort of spattered with cow poo and coming in and his check shirt. And you have, haven't decided to live a life as a rural vet handling large animals. You've chosen to live a life more absorbed with ideas and newspapers and you live in a city. Tell me about that. Why did having a father who was there struggling with unwieldy cows and getting spattered with cow poo not lead you to think what I want to do is embrace the remote rural existence?

• 15:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I do notice, Roy, and I think our feminist listeners will notice, you've taken a question about mothers to talk about fathers. So I'll answer this before I then talk about my my mother and what she did with her life. I think the answer is that I was absolutely useless at science. I was always, I used to love going out with my dad and his rounds. I did. I used to love that, particularly when we lived in Yorkshire because it was so beautiful. And he was a big farm animal. He was Harvey Smith's vet, you know, the show, the famous show jumper. We used to love going to see him and and he liked being out on the big farms. But and and I worked on a farm most of the every summer holiday, I worked on my uncle's farm in Scotland.

• 15:47Rory Stewart?

  And you liked it?

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  I loved it. I loved it. The only thing that really did put me off is that I I got then and I still get terrible hay fever. The hay season is absolutely horrific. But no, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I would love to have been a vet in some ways. But I just, you know, I was very, very good at school, apart from at physics, chemistry and biology, the three things that you need. Now, on my mother, I don't know about your mother, but my mother, when she got married to my dad, and when my brother Donald came along, she just decided that was going to be her her role in life. She did what the Paul Dakers of this world thinks that all women should do, is she basically became a full time wife and mother. And we're hopefully all the better for that. But in terms of

• 16:31Alastair Campbell?

  what she had done, she grew up on a farm, my uncle's farm where I used to work. She was born in that farm.

• 16:38Rory Stewart?

  And this is in a remote part of Scotland, is that right?

• 16:40Alastair Campbell?

  It's in Ayrshire, a place called Moscow, near Colman. And with through with this little river, this little stream going through, which they call the River Volga. And so she was born there, grew up there, worked on the farm quite a lot. Only time that she ever kind of left there was to go and work. She worked in a London hotel, kind of, you know, cleaning and all that sort of stuff and and what have you. But then when when she got married to my dad, you know, and also being a vet's wife, there is a part of you that has to be kind of working on the the practice as well. So that was my mum. What was your mum?

• 17:17Rory Stewart?

  So my my mother was a GP's daughter. Father was a doctor. She went to Oxford in the 1950s. My mother's down staying with me in London at the moment. She is, I hope she is now old enough to not be embarrassed to hear. She's now 88 years old. We walked probably about three miles yesterday through the streets of London with my eighty eight year old mother and my two little children. So thank goodness, touching wood all over the place, she's in, she's in very good form. But she went to Oxford, she worked for Television Wales, she jumped in a Land Rover and drove from London to Kuala Lumpur in the late nineteen fifties. For Television Wales? Yeah, worked for Television Wales, yeah. What was she doing with Television Wales?

• 17:59Rory Stewart?

  She was a producer and the way she describes it is those were the glory days of television. She was travelling first class on the train up and down to Wales. She loved the Welsh producers, very interested in Welsh language. Anyway, then she moves to Kuala Lumpur. She became a advertising executive in Malaysia and then she taught at the University of Malaysia, taught agricultural economics relating almost to your dad, met my father, came back to London and then we moved back to Malaysia and then Hong Kong where again she was different forms of academic. She ended up being the head of Hong Kong University Business School. Blimey, she's got a much longer adult CV than my mum.

• 18:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, in a way you wouldn't really believe it if you met her. She's also incredibly interested in clothes and shoes. She's very laid back. She loves doing her tapestry and and reading trashy novels on the sofa. And she's also somebody, I don't know, she's a sort of counter example to the way that we're told to live our lives. She's somebody who took absolutely no exercise at any point in her entire existence. Wow. And consequently, age of eighty eight, is really fit and well. No, she's amazingly fit for eighty eight, no doubt about that. And I think her argument is she didn't wear her knees out, unlike Joe Biden, by doing whatever he was doing. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Rory, quick break and then we'll have more questions.

• 19:58Alastair Campbell?

  Now here's a question, I love this question, thank you Louis Hoskin. Why do political journalists think that vox pops are useful? They nearly always interview people in a high street in the middle of the day, inevitably leads to a completely unrepresented sample, mostly old people who bang on about immigrants. Why do they do it? I love hearing the voice of the people when I'm out and about. But I hate vox pops on the television, I absolutely hate them.

• 20:26Rory Stewart?

  Presumably they're anxious that too much of the commentary sounds like it's a bunch of fancy people living in a little bubble in London, sharing their kind of liberal views, and they're hoping somehow that they're going to get another voice into the conversation.

• 20:40Alastair Campbell?

  Let's be honest, the media analysis of this campaign so far, Nigel Farage has been the third most covered political figure. This is the leader of a party with zero MPs. I just, my beef with vox pops is that essentially, they present them as, you know, they always say, let, we went to Stafford to find out what you think. Well, three people on a high street doesn't represent you, which is the totality of the country, right? And they're right, they say, and listen, they go and they probably talk to 20 people and they have to get one person who says this and one person who says that. It's utterly formulaic, it's absolutely pointless, and I wish they'd stop them.

• 21:20Alastair Campbell?

  Getting people in a studio or covering a focus group, different, but vox pops, 20 seconds to say, I think Rishi Sunak is a twat, I think they're all the same, I'm not voting for any of them, is utterly pointless, please, please stop it.

• 21:35Rory Stewart?

  Very good. I like the idea of the focus group, actually. Listen, just to, you used focus groups when you were in government.

• 21:42Alastair Campbell?

  Oh yeah.

• 21:43Rory Stewart?

  People throw the phrase around, but what is a focus group and why do politicians use it?

• 21:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, in a campaign, what you do with a focus group, essentially you recruit people, you might say, so at the moment, if I was running a focus group, what would I be interested in? How do I get somebody, kind of a bit like you, wants to find reasons to vote Labour but is holding back? Why are a lot of young people saying, I'm not voting Labour, I'm going to Green or Lib Dem? So you send people out in the street, you find eight or nine people in the target group that you're thinking about. You get them in a room, you tell them that they are part, you know, you're going to talk about politics. You then warm them up. I mean, Philip Gould, who was my, you know, closest friend and he used to, he used to love doing focus groups. He was genuinely somebody who loved talking to people about politics.

• 22:31Alastair Campbell?

  And he would always warm them up and say, what have you been doing today? Have you got any kids? What's your favourite football team? What's your favourite telly programme? Just get people chatting and it's amazing how very quickly people are all talking. And then you throw in the thing, we're going to talk about politics tonight. And then usually you get, oh, good. But then you start to say, you know, what do you think? What have you noticed about the campaign? And it's very rare. I latterly became a bit too well known, so I would get recognised. And so I used to have to then go and watch them through two way, I used to go and sit behind a two way mirror and watch them. And, but I always got something out of it. I always got something out of it.

• 23:09Rory Stewart?

  There's something interesting here, isn't there? Because it's about the fact that the really valuable stuff doesn't come from the 20 second or 45 second snapshot. Doesn't come from the poll. I think you're often a bit suspicious of opinion polls. It's as though real truth emerges quite slowly through giving people space and time to debate, explore ideas, maybe change their opinion a bit. Develop, and you're getting, I guess, into the nuances, aren't you? So it's the sort of third or fourth question. People start by saying they're all the same.

• 23:41Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing you can do is you can see which arguments work with people to persuade them. And often you can see that those arguments don't necessarily come from you hosting this or Philip Gould hosting it. They come from people talking across each other and talking to each other. But I'll give you an example. I mentioned on the main podcast, these four young lads I met on the train coming out of the game in, in Berlin. And there was one of them, I mean, he started off, he really was just sort of taking the mick and he was quite funny. Telling me his hero was Marine Le Pen and, you know, stop the boat, stop the boat, stop the boat. So you're turning it all into sort of football chants and.

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  Was he a little drunk by any chance, Alison?

• 24:18Alastair Campbell?

  He might have had, he wasn't very drunk. He wasn't very drunk. He might have had a couple of beers. He wasn't very drunk. He was, he was actually quite funny. Anyway, I then engaged in a proper, it was about half hour journey. So it was like a focus group. It was four guys, four young guys who were, they really weren't stupid. They kind of knew, they knew about stuff. They knew who all the big characters were. They talked about, one point at one point saying, I reckon the Tories should have stuck with DC, should have stuck with big DC, you know, Davy Cameron. So they weren't.

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  Did you get a sense of what they do for a living? How old they are, that kind of stuff?

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  They were mid twenties, one of them twenty eight, I think he said he was. We didn't talk about their jobs, but they're working class. One of them told me he voted, did vote Reform. One of them said he'd voted Tory last time. Maybe it was because I was there. He said he would definitely not vote Tory and probably vote Labour. One of them, I worry whether he'd vote or not. And this, and the other one was this guy who said, well, there's no, I would vote Labour, but there's no point because everybody else is going to vote Labour, et cetera. But what was interesting was at the end, after half an hour of me taking the banter, listening to them, genuinely trying to say to them, listen, because he was saying, by the way, at least Johnson was funny. At least Farage makes a laugh, you know, and da, da, da. And I was trying to, trying to explain to them, that is dangerous and what have you.

• 25:34Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, as we got off the train, the Reform one, they were going a different direction. It's just, anyway, listen, good to meet you. All, all, all in good, good spirit. And I think you've, I think you've won me over. I think I'll vote Labour.

• 25:45Rory Stewart?

  But, but I guess the point that you were getting to is, is it isn't just about, the point of it isn't you convincing four people. It's what you learn through the practice of trying to convince them about what arguments resonate, what don't.

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  Right. So what I learned from that and fed back to friends that I know.

• 26:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the man, the man beginning with Keir, who goes for a walk with your dog in the park.

• 26:05Alastair Campbell?

  There is, there is, there is an issue. There is a real issue here. And I think this is something, reading between the lines of the, the, the way that the campaign's been written up at the moment. I think this is an issue that Morgan McSweeney is definitely aware of. That too many people are either saying, not going to bother because there's no point. Don't hate Keir Starmer. Don't rage at Rishi. They, by the way, I should tell you, every single one of them was utterly dismissive of Rishi Sunak. I mean, in a, almost in, almost in like a kind of, you know, the guy's ridiculous.

• 26:34Rory Stewart?

  So I, I did another little focus group-y type thing. I mean, in the sense that I sat around a table with 12 people in London on Wednesday and had a very long, three hour conversation. Admittedly, these were. A group of lawyers from pretty diverse backgrounds, but I guess that particular slice of society. What was interesting to me is that they started by saying, well, the problem is that politicians are no good. If only we got really highly qualified, highly intelligent people, paid them properly, made them politicians, things would be fine. And I said, well, wait a second. Rishi Sunak, presumably he would be like a successful banker. You could imagine him as a lawyer in one of your law firms. And they said, oh, yeah, I suppose that's true.

• 27:16Rory Stewart?

  So then I said, so what ultimately is the problem with the guy? It's not that he's not bright. It's not that he doesn't work hard. It's not that he's not reasonably competent. He's missing something else, isn't he? And that's when we got on to leadership, charisma, vision, confidence.

• 27:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, interestingly, the guy who was winding me up, and at one point, his mates were saying to him, listen, what are you doing trying to take him? He's going to run rings around you. He's going to destroy you. And he said, well, of course he is. He's done it all his life. That's his job. I'm still going to say what I think and da, da, da, da. But he actually said at one point, he said, you lot need more John Prescotts on your team. Now, if you think about that, John Prescott's really quite old now, not been on the scene for a while. These were kids, these were young guys in their twenties, but then all of them said, did the thing about the Prescott jab.

• 28:07Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 28:08Alastair Campbell?

  You know, at least John Prescott went around, kind of, you know, livened his things up a bit. And so they were, what age would they have been in 2001? They would have been five.

• 28:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:17Alastair Campbell?

  But that, but they knew about that because John Prescott is one of those politicians who does cut through to people.

• 28:24Rory Stewart?

  This leads us on to a question from Patrick Ball. Can things with the far right get worse? Do you think issues around public services, education, poverty, et cetera? This is Patrick Ball's question. Will improve substantially enough in one term of this incoming Labour government to hold off a resurgent right, far right comeback next time? I'm concerned it won't and things will get far worse in five to 10 years.

• 28:47Alastair Campbell?

  So at least the question alerts us and will alert a Labour government to that being the problem. That's what I was talking to, trying to talk to Bridget Philpson about. I think this, built into Labour's governing and political strategy has to be the understanding.

• 29:03Alastair Campbell?

  That that is now part of the problem, and I am utterly convinced the way to deal with that is not in any way to pander to it, because I think that is what has made Rishi Sunak's position far worse.

• 29:15Rory Stewart?

  The problem that we're in, and you talked about this when we talked about the fact that all the leaders of the G7, the world's major economies, have incredibly bad popularity ratings, and that the far right is doing better and better in Europe. A lot of this is about performance, something about democracies not performing, and that must be partly about our economic system. There's something broken about the way markets are working maybe, or free trade's working. People just don't feel that government is making their lives better. In fact, the majority of voters now in polls say that they fear their children are going to be worse off than they are.

• 29:56Rory Stewart?

  It's also true that we're going into an election in which trust in politics is very low. I mean, it's now worse than it was during the expenses scandal. John Curtis, Sir John Curtis, who we talk about, is this famous pollster at University of St John's, says that this is really striking, how bad trust in politics is. So, performance, you know, can Labour actually sort this stuff out? And sort it out, unfortunately, with very little money, which means the big word is reform. If you haven't got more money, the only way you're going to improve the NHS is by very, very radical reform. You're going to have to rethink the way the system works. And we had a bit of this from West Street when we interviewed him on Leading, which

• 30:41Rory Stewart?

  is about moving from hospitals to the front line. But you're going to have to challenge unions, you're going to have to challenge vested interests, you're going to have to really shake the thing up. Otherwise, in five years' time, this volatility, the fact that we're going to lurch from a massive Conservative victory in 2019 to what I think will be a massive Labour victory this time. Can swing back in another direction and potentially in the direction of Farage.

• 31:04Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, let's have this as a last question from Ermun. Will the House of Commons now switch? You know how we like to educate our listeners about how the crazy House of Commons works. If Labour win the general election, do they move across to sit on the benches to the right of the Speaker? If so, why is that? Now, Ermun, you're obviously a young person because, you know, otherwise you'd have maybe remembered from previous elections. So you're a perfect, perfect target for my new book out this week, Alastair Campbell Talks Politics, which explains why everybody is where they are in the House of Commons from the Speaker and the clerks and everybody else. So when we talk about the bit in the middle where the mace sits and the dispatch boxes, to the right of the Speaker, those are the government benches.

• 31:49Alastair Campbell?

  So whoever is the government, that is where the government goes. So the Prime Minister and ministers, when they're at question time, they stand at the dispatch box on that side and their MPs sit alongside and behind them. Opposition benches are the other side. So they, yes, they will switch and that is the reason why.

• 32:06Rory Stewart?

  And it's going to be a very strange moment because the Conservatives have been in so long now that if, as we predict, Labour wins, there will be very few people left in Parliament who will remember having sat on the other side of the House. They all will have got used to getting into their benches. I'm going to very, very wickedly, given you've promoted your book, just say that if anybody's interested, I've now got my books out as a four-part series, so you can read all the way through Afghanistan, Iraq, Cumbria to Politics on the Edge. It's beautifully bound.

• 32:37Alastair Campbell?

  Politics on the Edge has already gone to number one in the paperback bestseller list. You don't, don't flog it like that.

• 32:44Rory Stewart?

  I can't believe you're telling me not to flog. All right. Well, Alistair, listen, I just wanted to maybe finish with a final jolly question for you from Nicole. Alistair, what are your predictions for the results of the Euros? What's going to happen in the football? You're right there at the front line. You're talking to us from Berlin. You've been watching a lot of matches. And above all, what's your honest sense, not your patriotic sense? What's your honest sense of how England's going to perform? Are they going to win?

• 33:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, as I said on The Rest Is Football, where I think my punditry far excelled Lineker, Shearer and Richards. I suspect the new match, the match of the day team will be thinking, I wonder if he could take over from Gary. I think Germany or France will win it.

• 33:27Rory Stewart?

  What's about their teams that makes you think that ultimately they're going to be stronger than England?

• 33:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, Germany, I went to the Germany-Scotland game and although Scotland played really quite badly, Germany were really, really good. I mean, they just looked very, very strong. I think the French have got some really, they've got some of the best players in the world, Mbappe being one of them. They sometimes don't gel, but I think those two should be the favourites. But England, England would, would definitely be in with a shout. They started very, very well in their first game against Serbia. First 20 minutes, they looked really world beating. But then it's, they sort of, they sort of faded a bit. Who do you think, do you think Brazil or Argentina?

• 34:06Rory Stewart?

  Wait a second, is that a trick question? I see you got me.

• 34:08Alastair Campbell?

  It might be, it might be, it might be. It's been, I've got to say though, that the, there was trouble at the Albania-Italy game. Where Albania scored the, the fastest goal in Euro Championship finals history. There was a bit, there was trouble around and about the England-Serbia game that probably less than people were predicting. The Scotland fans were amazing and the Germans absolutely loved them. I think Scotland will still qualify because they're, they're going to beat Hungary in the third game. And I will be going, I'm going to France now to sort of check in on the French elections. Then I'm going to go to Stuttgart.

• 34:44Rory Stewart?

  So the Scotland-Hungary game in Stuttgart is your chance to get Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary, on the show. Because he will once again hear your bagpipes, he'll remember you and second time lucky. So good luck.

• 34:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I've now admitted, Roy, on the, on the main podcast, that I broke a UEFA rule in taking the instrument of war into the stadium. So they're going to be watching out for me now.

• 35:03Rory Stewart?

  You'll, you'll do it, Alsa. I have full faith in you. And just a final, final bit of sort of, a bit of local colour. Please say in German, imagine I'm a, I'm a security guard at the gate. Explain to me why it is you want to get your bagpipes into the game? And how would you say that in German in a way that might charm me into letting you through?

• 35:21Alastair Campbell?

  I'd say, ich hoffe wirklich, dass Sie verstehen können, dass es so seltsam ist, dass Schottland hier in so einen Spiel spielt. Und das ist unser nationalen Instrument. Und ohne das fürchte ich mich, dass unsere Mannschaft nicht so gut spielen wird.

• 35:41Rory Stewart?

  It's beautiful.

• 35:42Alastair Campbell?

  You'd fall for that, wouldn't you?

• 35:43Rory Stewart?

  I would, and it's one of the reasons we love you, and it's one of the reasons that we need to get more language education back into schools. Okay, thank you very much. See you soon.

• 35:51Alastair Campbell?

  Take care.

• 35:51Rory Stewart?

  Bye-bye.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 36:24Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: do you want to play, or not? You're the Prime Minister. You have done nothing!

• 36:41Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 36:52Speaker 05

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 37:03Speaker 06

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom Macduff, Duffy!

• 37:07Speaker 05

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 37:09Speaker 06

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 37:13Speaker 05

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