201. Question Time: Could the Tories remove Rishi Sunak?

Could Nigel Farage be the next Conservative Party leader? What is happening in Myanmar? How do Rory and Alastair deal with public criticism? Listen to Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] 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 Creve and of course the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

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• 2:29Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:32Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Well, here we go. And I want to start with Alejandro Dominguez. What do you think of Trump's interview on Univision, which is a very, very major Latino television station in the US? How will Trump's portrayal affect the Latino vote, Alistair?

• 2:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the reason I suspect why Alejandro Dominguez is asking this question is because Trump did this huge interview on Univision, and I don't know how to describe it. I think it's fair to say he was given a reasonably easy ride, which suggests that the new ownership of this station is on the turn.

• 3:08Rory Stewart?

  Who weirdly are close to Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

• 3:12Alastair Campbell?

  Kushner, exactly. Yeah. So there's obviously sort of, you know, I mean, Trump is a bit like all these sort of right-wing populists, same as Farage, utterly obsessed with media, utterly obsessed about sort of using media to profile themselves and project themselves. And of course, this is the channel that Trump had objected to their previous star interviewer, Jorge Ramos, because he was absolutely gunning for him over the whole build a wall stuff. So it seems like they're on the move.

• 3:41Rory Stewart?

  And Trump's racism. I mean, Trump's, you know, basically implied that Mexican immigrants are terrorists or gun-toting people. So it's extraordinary that Latino vote may be shifting towards him. There also seems to be evidence that the African-American vote is shifting slightly towards Trump. And Reid Hoffman, who we interviewed on Leading, the founder of LinkedIn, was saying to me over the weekend that this is the only thing he's really worrying about over the next year is how to do what he can to make sure Trump doesn't become president in the United States. He says at the moment, he feels like they're playing Russian roulette with three bullets out of six in the chamber. And his hope is to get it down to one bullet out of six in the chamber. He says he still wouldn't want to play Russian roulette.

• 4:17Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, he's playing the Russian roulette.

• 4:20Rory Stewart?

  So his idea is a 50-50 chance of Trump becoming president, which is basically like shooting himself in the head. And he wants to reduce the chance down to one in six from 50%.

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  How do you do that? Where is he on the Biden to run, Biden not to run?

• 4:33Rory Stewart?

  Well, he thinks at the moment there's no way out, that so long as Biden wants to run, there's nothing that can be done. I mean, people made a real concerted effort back in the fall to try to persuade Biden to step down. He's not prepared to do that. The polling does suggest at the moment that Biden is less popular than another Democratic candidate would be, although of course polling is a bit unreliable at this stage because you don't know what would happen if a new candidate came in. But one of the relevance of this is that a lot of it will come down to whether stations like Univision start putting out pro-Trump propaganda will make a huge difference. And it's not just Fox News, it's all these other right-wing media stations will be critical for this vote. And then social media and AI.

• 5:12Alastair Campbell?

  One of the things that the Democrats and other liberal Latinos really objected to is, for example, in this interview, Trump constantly claiming that the election was stolen and so forth, and there was no pushback at all. Now, the defence of the station was, well, you know, that stuff's been kind of done to death and what have you. But it was definitely, it was perceived as a big shift by a major media player in the Latino.

• 5:33Rory Stewart?

  Quickens, because we do think about this a bit, don't we, when we interview people? You know, whether we're interviewing Tony Blair, how much time we spend talking about the Iraq war, or doubtless when we interview Kwasi Kwarteng, how much time we spend talking about his omni-shambles budget. How do you, as a journalist, get the balance right between having an open interview where you get the person to talk about themselves and also landing the points you, because it can be very mechanical, can't it? When you watch some of the BBC interviews, sometimes it can be just, we feel we have to ask the following seven things to prove that we're...

• 6:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and they become really, really boring. I may be related to this, a question from John, ministers' media briefing is, when a minister is sent to a TV show, radio broadcast, are they briefed on the phrases to use and how to dodge questions? I mean, I think Trump is a very, very difficult interviewee because he doesn't mind lying, he likes to create distractions, he has his own talking points that he relentlessly pushes. I suspect they will have made a judgment. I mean, it sounds to me like they made a judgment to go soft on him. They were pleased to have him on there and they they knew it would get written about and talked about and be seen as a big political event.

• 6:35Rory Stewart?

  And might they actually have agreed to go soft on him as part of the negotiation to get him on?

• 6:39Alastair Campbell?

  Entirely possible, entirely possible. Although I don't think, I think Trump's one of those people who doesn't really care about the question. He just pushes back in in whatever way he wants. But, look, it's like when when you and I talk to each other about Iraq and I said to you before, I didn't think I was being asked anything I've not been asked before, but people listening did. Now, I think that's about the tone. If you'd have been the Stay Programme, if you'd have been Newsnight, even before I got there, I'd have been in a mode.

• 7:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Alastair Campbell?

  And it becomes boring very, very quickly. I think what people like about our interviews, by the way, in fact, somebody said this to me at an event I was at last night, they'd listened to the Angela Rayner interview, and they said, what I like about your interviews is there's enough of your presence in there, you and me, without it being overwhelming. You're genuinely interested in what the person has to say about their life. Whereas I think what happens with a lot of media interviews is basically the journalist is doing it for other journalists.

• 7:40Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 7:41Alastair Campbell?

  Am I going to impress other journalists by asking this really tough question?

• 7:44Rory Stewart?

  And often they're trying to get a line, aren't they? They're hoping to, they've sort of, the three or four lines.

• 7:48Alastair Campbell?

  We don't really care about it.

• 7:49Rory Stewart?

  Three or four lines we're hoping for, yeah. Right, well, here we are. Thoughts on the developments, the civil war in Myanmar. Anti-Hunther rebels appear to be gaining lots of ground. How can a lasting peace be built with so many rebel factions, many splits on ethnic lines, or wanting independence?

• 8:01Alastair Campbell?

  It can't.

• 8:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, so just to remind people, I mean, of all the horrors in the world at the moment, Myanmar is one of the least reported and most horrifying. So, quick reminder, military government for many decades, then Aung San Suu Kyi was, the lady came in in this sort of democratic revolution, disappointed many people because of her failure to condemn the genocide against the Rohingya, and was then toppled by a military coup and is now in prison. Since the military government took over, the country has collapsed into a horrible form of civil war. And Myanmar is defiant. By a Burmese heartland, ethnically Burmese heartland, and then a whole series of different minority groups around the fringes.

• 8:43Rory Stewart?

  So in addition to Throhinga, Shan, Kachin, Koren, Chin, many of them along the Thai-Chinese borders. So we're now in a situation in which drugs are involved. A lot of these groups grow opium poppies, warlords, Chinese money. China's very, very dominant in Myanmar, all of them now fighting the Burmese army along with a very, very brave, genuine democratic liberal group of people with 3D printed weapons out trying to take on the military. I mean, it's horrifying. And I was very optimistic about Burma in 2014, as was the British government. And, you know, I remember seeing 2012, 2013, thinking how much potential that country has.

• 9:24Rory Stewart?

  Incredible natural resources, perfectly located, very educated, could have been like Thailand or Malaysia or Indonesia, one of the Great Asian success stories, instead of which it's stuck in horror.

• 9:36Alastair Campbell?

  And as you say, falling right off the international radar because of the focus on the Middle East, just as Ukraine's falling off the radar.

• 9:44Rory Stewart?

  It could be a classic example for the UN to get involved, but for this one to be resolved, it needs China and the US to speak. Because China's the dominant power there. And of course, the US isn't prepared really to talk to China nor vice versa about this kind of issue.

• 9:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, more not happily because the content is a problem, but a happier subject. Tree Equity Score, James from the Woodland Trust. Are you aware, Rory, of the Tree Equity Score? Just launched in the UK by the Woodland Trust, American Forests and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. And the fact that the areas which need the benefits of trees most have them least. And it's an interesting, we should put it in the newsletter. It's a thing where you can, you can go online and you basically can, you can measure the density of trees and the benefit of trees in your area. I'm very lucky. I live in a very nice.

• 10:33Rory Stewart?

  Leafy area.

• 10:33Alastair Campbell?

  Fairly leafy, Hampstead Heath on our doorstep. And so we've got a very good tree equity score. But it's, you can see, this goes back to the sort of point about inequality. You go to the poorer areas in the country. And they are worse off for trees.

• 10:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and trees are so good for everything, aren't they? They're great for biodiversity. An oak tree can have over a thousand species in it, great for air quality and of course, great for carbon capture and climate. So it can actually clean up the air pollution. So absolutely, we need to plant more trees. And I'm always struck when I go to Paris that they're much more inventive about getting trees into the streetscape.

• 11:05Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 11:06Rory Stewart?

  I noticed that Sadi Khan is making moves in that direction, but we should be moving much, much, much faster.

• 11:11Alastair Campbell?

  They're also very good for my social media feed and my tree of the day.

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  Tree of the day, famous tree of the day. Now, IPP sentences, Donna, what impact will Alex Chalk's suggested amendments have for those serving an IPP in the community and for those stuck in prison? So IPP is just to remind people, these are sentences which were introduced by David Blunkett in the Labour Government where effectively for a minor crime, you can be detained indefinitely. And then when you're released from prison, you can be put on a licence period of 10 years. And if you commit any offence during that 10 years, you can be brought back to prison. So for many prisoners, it seems like an interminable life sentence where they may have done something quite minor and they're just stuck in the system forever. They have very high degree rates of suicide, people

• 11:57Rory Stewart?

  dying in prison, and it's fundamentally inhuman and completely in contradiction with the way that law should work. You should be sent to prison for a set sentence defined by a judge, not just locked up indefinitely.

• 12:09Alastair Campbell?

  David Blunkett had an interview in, I think it was in the House magazine, and he basically has said that this policy has been a disaster and that the problem is that the judges used it, he says, in a way that was never intended. They were thinking this was going to apply to a small number of people and it's turned out to have been applied to thousands. And as you say, thousands of people often ending up with.

• 12:37Alastair Campbell?

  This is really serious self harm and suicide.

• 12:39Rory Stewart?

  And although it was abolished by David Cameron 2010.

• 12:43Alastair Campbell?

  We're still dealing with the overhang.

• 12:44Rory Stewart?

  Thirteen years onwards, we still have an enormous number of these people within the system and it would be a lovely thing to see in a Labour manifesto when they come in as the next government to see them actually clear the sentences for all those people.

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, you confidently predicted not long ago, I seem to remember in this very studio, that a certain En Farage was going to be crowned the king of the jungle.

• 13:07Rory Stewart?

  That's right.

• 13:07Alastair Campbell?

  Marion Boyle wants to know, is the fact that Nigel Farage is in the final of a programme like I'm a Celebrity a sign that the Tory right might still be a lot more popular than we think with middle England? Now, first of all, would you like to apologise for your false prediction?

• 13:20Rory Stewart?

  I'd like to apologise to listeners. And in fact, it was very striking. There was I saying, he's definitely going to win. And our production-

• 13:25Alastair Campbell?

  And what did I say?

• 13:26Rory Stewart?

  Well, you said no. And our production team, who really understands this stuff inside out, was like, no way, there's no way. And they had some very complicated explanation of why Farage couldn't possibly win.

• 13:35Alastair Campbell?

  Although I saw that GB News had a thing on there when I was channel, I never stay longer than a second when I'm channel hopping, but they had a thing in the corner. You had to put your phone against it, you could get five free votes to vote for Farage.

• 13:48Rory Stewart?

  Five free votes?

• 13:49Alastair Campbell?

  They were, I don't know how it worked, but they were, so they were trying to rig the vote for Farage.

• 13:52Rory Stewart?

  That's rubbish. So Farage came third.

• 13:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:55Rory Stewart?

  And I noticed that some of the newspapers were running, I think it was The Sun, ran a huge front page with a picture of Farage, mentioning in smaller type that actually hadn't won. But the front page basically gave the impression that he'd won the whole thing.

• 14:07Alastair Campbell?

  We also saw his, the lady in his life.

• 14:10Rory Stewart?

  The lady in his-

• 14:11Alastair Campbell?

  She flew out there to greet him. And he flew straight back to do a really tough, rigorous interview with Richard Tice on Talk TV. So the leader of the Reform Party interviews Farage about how terrible the government are on immigration. So I don't know that he's, I think he's less popular. I mean, the, the truth is that ITV are putting this down as one and a half million pounds that wasn't a very good investment.

• 14:38Rory Stewart?

  Oh, he didn't, didn't get the viewers?

• 14:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they lost four million.

• 14:41Rory Stewart?

  Oh, gosh. And is it basically that apart from Farage, these shows are beginning to tank, that people- People are watching them less and less.

• 14:48Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, God, I hope so. I really hope so. But I don't know, but they apparently Anton Deck have decided that there should be no politicians in future. So I'm afraid, Rory, you won't be going on.

• 14:58Rory Stewart?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna most extraordinary number of offers for the most bizarre shows at the moment. And it's only my respect for you that stops me going on these various.

• 15:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, just put this in your head now. If the choice is between money and reputation, go for reputation.

• 15:12Rory Stewart?

  Go for reputation. Well, that was not the choice made by the people discussed by Nora Smith's question. Can you explain what's going on with the European Parliament's investigation into the Qatar Gate scandal? So, given the choice between money and reputation. So, in Qatar Gate, there's been an extraordinary range of figures, including Antonio Panzeri, former member of the European Parliament, a woman called Eva Kayley, who's a sitting member of the European Parliament, all bribed in order to influence voting at the European Parliament in favor of Qatar. And I think they've been arrested, allegations ongoing. We'd probably have to be careful making legal statements on this,

• 15:54Rory Stewart?

  but it is a mesmerizing case. It appears that Antonio Panzeri took two million euros in bribes from Qatar and Morocco in order to get a friendly resolution towards Qatar and Morocco in the European Parliament. It's extraordinary that they think it's worth two million euros to get a friendly resolution towards them in the European Parliament from one person.

• 16:13Alastair Campbell?

  Was it to organize the resolution?

• 16:16Rory Stewart?

  I don't know. I don't know what.

• 16:17Alastair Campbell?

  It could have been to sign something, was it?

• 16:20Rory Stewart?

  And Eva Kayley, her father was found with seven hundred and fifty thousand euros in cash in a briefcase and was arrested, but she's claiming that as a European member of parliament, she should have been immune from arrest. She's challenging the legal process.

• 16:34Alastair Campbell?

  How did the money get to the father?

• 16:37Rory Stewart?

  So, the the claim is that her partner was somehow working with Antonio Panzeri, who clearly was corrupt. She panicked and was trying to get the cash out of their flat and that she wasn't herself proposing to benefit from the cash. But there is an extraordinary number of wiretaps the Belgian police have been. All over it. And a lot of these wiretaps have been shared with journalists and the story is just going to keep developing.

• 17:02Alastair Campbell?

  We've talked about this before, haven't we? This has been rumbling for months.

• 17:05Rory Stewart?

  We have mentioned it before, but I do think it's worth remembering because when we talk about threats to democracy, it's this sort of cash in people's flats. The third person also, I think, had 250,000 euros in cash in the son's flat. Then it turns out that the son, who had 250,000 euros in his flat, was a business partner of the judge who was investigating the case.

• 17:23Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God. And this is in the European Union. I know there's somebody who writes to me every single week on the back of our podcast and picks something in our, in our podcast that says, do you still want to rejoin the European Union after this then? Now, what about this one? Laura Rutherford, is it time for a total rethink, rebuild of Ofsted? And how would you do it? Now, I'm imagining this is because of the awful conduct in the case of the head teacher who ended up taking her own life in the middle of an Ofsted inspection. Now, I think in general, inspection of schools, good thing. I think the culture of Ofsted has got a little bit out of control. You just hear from too many teachers and head teachers who are under massive stress anyway

• 18:05Alastair Campbell?

  because of cuts and all the rest of it, but who find that the Ofsted experience has become utterly horrific. Now, how you get that balance right, I don't know, but I thought that the response of Ofsted saying that they're going to get the inspectors in for a day's training on the back of this didn't feel to me adequate in the face of what the coroner's findings were pretty awful.

• 18:25Rory Stewart?

  It is, it is awful. I think a lot about this because in prisons, I was trying to get the prison inspectors to be more modeled on Ofsted, by which I mean getting the Department of Justice, Ministry of Justice, to take the inspection scores as a way of measuring themselves. And I did think that certainly in Cumbria, they were unbelievably stressful. When people got a negative report, they often felt it was deeply unfair. But it was also very important for parents to be able to have some kind of sense of an independent person coming in and looking. At how school was performing and often if you read the reports in detail, both for for education and for prisons, they were really helpful. And I do think in government in general, you need independent inspectors because it's impossible, really.

• 19:07Alastair Campbell?

  We don't have them for government, though, do we?

• 19:09Rory Stewart?

  We we need them.

• 19:10Alastair Campbell?

  We don't have R M Bs.

• 19:11Rory Stewart?

  National Order Office.

• 19:12Alastair Campbell?

  I suppose they do a bit, yeah.

• 19:13Rory Stewart?

  And one of the sad things is often they do these. The National Order Office has just done another astonishing account of the Ministry of Defence, which yet again is kind of billions of pounds over budget and crazy bad procurement. And it's about taking the time to follow up on those stories because they do so much.

• 19:28Alastair Campbell?

  Guy Fawkes, that was interesting on the way to save money on defence, wasn't he?

• 19:32Rory Stewart?

  He very interesting on that.

• 19:33Alastair Campbell?

  I think people will enjoy Guy Fawkes. That's my third plug of him so far this week.

• 19:37Rory Stewart?

  Okay, I understand. Loads more questions. Quick break.

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• 21:17Rory Stewart?

  Ben, does criticism from the public get to you? If not, did it once? How do you deal with it? Now, be serious about this. There presumably was a time when criticism from the public did bother you. I know that you're now more robust about these things.

• 21:30Alastair Campbell?

  I think I've always been quite robust.

• 21:32Rory Stewart?

  Come on, how was it during the Iraq stuff? That must have been pretty horrible.

• 21:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it was horrible, but it wasn't horrible because of the criticism. It was horrible because of what was happening.

• 21:39Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 21:39Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think it does get to me. Maybe it should more than it does, but I don't think it does.

• 21:43Rory Stewart?

  And when you go on Twitter and people just say more criminal.

• 21:46Alastair Campbell?

  Honestly, it doesn't bother me. It really doesn't bother me. I've never, ever blocked anybody on Twitter.

• 21:51Rory Stewart?

  I think I've blocked one person on Twitter, but I haven't for many years.

• 21:54Alastair Campbell?

  Who was it?

• 21:54Rory Stewart?

  A far right guy in my constituency who was making some pretty terrifying

• 21:58Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 21:58Rory Stewart?

  kind of nationalist threats.

• 21:59Alastair Campbell?

  I could be wrong about this, but I always think if somebody's threatening to kill you, the last place they're going to threaten is on social media because the police have got a pretty good place to start looking for a suspect. Now, I sometimes, I don't think it does get to me. I had a big row the other day with one of our kids and about politics. And, you know, when he says things to me, that gets to me.

• 22:19Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 22:20Alastair Campbell?

  If Fiona and I have an argument, that, politics, that gets to me.

• 22:23Rory Stewart?

  But a random stranger doesn't get to you?

• 22:25Alastair Campbell?

  No, not really. And I guess the other thing that we, I know you're finding weird because you told me, is this at the moment through, because of the podcast, people constantly stopping me and saying nice things. I don't feel any different about it than I did when people were more likely to say something unpleasant. It only gets to me if I feel physically threatened.

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I was, I was standing outside a shopping mall with my kids last week and a Frenchman came up to me in the street and said, basically, your country is shit. You should be ashamed of yourself. You're a terrible politician. Everything about this country is shit. And I, I got really angry.

• 23:03Alastair Campbell?

  He said, Monsieur le Président.

• 23:05Rory Stewart?

  I spent fifteen minutes shouting at this man and him shouting at me.

• 23:10Alastair Campbell?

  You shouted at him?

• 23:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, because I got really angry and I kept saying to him, you know, how would it feel if I went to your country, went up to you randomly in the street and said, your country's shit? Said, well, my country's not shit. He said, your country's shit.

• 23:22Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, my God. Does he live here?

• 23:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he lives here. He works here. Yeah.

• 23:26Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 23:27Rory Stewart?

  And I said, why are you here? As you can imagine. And he said, just to make money and then I'm going back to France.

• 23:31Alastair Campbell?

  Was he a banker?

• 23:33Rory Stewart?

  It was awful. Anyway, I didn't like that. Question for you. John McIntyre, if the Tories remove Sunak, would it enhance or diminish their electoral hopes next year?

• 23:42Alastair Campbell?

  I think it would finish them. I think it would be.

• 23:46Rory Stewart?

  Because you know, there are people on the Tory, right, who are now fantasizing about bringing in a sort of Boris Farage combination.

• 23:51Alastair Campbell?

  I know, I know. It's just, I mean, I think what's happening with the Conservative Party, I felt this on the main podcast, talking about, you know, the Star Chamber, Mark Francois has spoken. I don't think they have any sense of how ridiculous they look at the moment. I just think that Sunak looks to me like somebody who's floundering in the politics of all this. I don't think he quite knows how to do with it.

• 24:13Rory Stewart?

  All this is mad. I mean, if we if we just go back to this Rwanda thing, this was a, as the Home Secretary said, I think, James Kennedy said, a batshit idea of Boris Johnson's in twenty twenty two, spring of twenty twenty two.

• 24:23Alastair Campbell?

  Which he now expects us to believe he thinks is a fantastic idea and the government can't survive without it.

• 24:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And it's a classic example of a loss of the way that Boris Johnson did politics, which is that he didn't bother to work out whether it was credible, whether it would get through the courts, whether you'd actually be able to send people to Rwanda before, essentially signing a big cheque and saying he was going to do it. It then became sort of totemic, didn't it, for the right of the Conservative Party? So one of the reasons why, along with four much more mainstream pledges on inflation and growth he put in Stop the Boats, is presumably to placate the right of the party, right? And as we can see, they continue to judge him on almost nothing else.

• 24:57Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 24:58Rory Stewart?

  They care about. Yeah.

• 25:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think the two things he's got left, one is it would be absurd for them to try to get another prime minister before without general election. I don't, I mean, look, we've had since twenty ten, David Cameron, Theresa May. Boris Johnson.

• 25:13Rory Stewart?

  Don't forget Liz Truss.

• 25:14Alastair Campbell?

  Liz Truss and

• 25:16Rory Stewart?

  Rishi Sunak.

• 25:16Alastair Campbell?

  And Ranit. So we've had five prime ministers. We've now got more former prime ministers than any time in our history. We're looking pretty ridiculous on the world stage. Sunak's not really cutting it, either domestically or globally, I don't think. Better than Johnson, better than Truss, but you know, that's such a low bar. And who would they, who would they replace him with? Because the problems aren't going away.

• 25:38Rory Stewart?

  The idea being sold by Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail, which of course they're beginning to float all of them.

• 25:43Alastair Campbell?

  Did you read the Daily Mail?

• 25:45Rory Stewart?

  I did on Monday to prepare for this podcast.

• 25:47Alastair Campbell?

  Did you?

• 25:47Rory Stewart?

  I thought it was a very important thing to do.

• 25:48Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:49Rory Stewart?

  I also looked at

• 25:50Alastair Campbell?

  How come I managed to prepare this podcast without ever reading the Daily Mail?

• 25:52Rory Stewart?

  It's like the mirror. And suddenly there is no news in the mirror. It's absolutely extraordinary.

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 25:57Rory Stewart?

  There's like three news stories. The rest of it was celebrity stuff. I was sort of, I mean, I haven't looked at them recently.

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  They splash regularly on politics.

• 26:04Rory Stewart?

  The Sun had more political news than the Mirror, and the Mail obviously has far, far more.

• 26:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 26:10Rory Stewart?

  I mean, the mirrors seem pretty skinny to me.

• 26:12Alastair Campbell?

  The Daily Star had the best front page coverage of Johnson's Covid evidence.

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  What do they say?

• 26:17Alastair Campbell?

  It was an old cliche, but it was the, it was the longest no's you've ever seen. And it just said, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That's quite clever.

• 26:25Rory Stewart?

  So apart from defending the mirror, so in, what they were saying in the Mail, or what Glover was saying in the Mail is, and they're beginning to push, is this idea that Boris Johnson may have flaws, but he's an unbelievable campaigner and he's their one hope of trying to

• 26:39Alastair Campbell?

  Honestly, they're so deluded. They're so deluded. The public has seen right through that guy. Look, you've been at these events. We've done these events where you ask people their view. It's, I'd say his ratings are pretty close to zero.

• 26:54Rory Stewart?

  And I think it's a really good sign and it's quite encouraging. I don't know, we're often giving people gloomy news, but the fact that Britain has more than the US and a lot of European countries largely emerged from the complete madness of the sort of Corbyn Boris Johnson era. It feels less popular statchi. It feels as though Kiasama is going to be the next prime minister. Rishi Sunak is more in the centre than the right of his party. In some ways, Britain feels less divided, less polarised, certainly in the US, but also a lot of European countries.

• 27:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, interesting. Related question, Samuel Murray, who will be the next leader of the Tory party?

• 27:30Rory Stewart?

  Well, there, there is the big existential fight. I believe, and people say, obviously, I would believe, that the reason why the Tories are going to lose the next election is they went far too much to the crazy right and that when we lose, we should learn that lesson and move back to the centre left.

• 27:47Alastair Campbell?

  So who would that be?

• 27:48Rory Stewart?

  It's a tough call because I'm maybe somebody like Jeremy Hunt, I don't know if he stayed around, maybe James Cleverly.

• 27:56Alastair Campbell?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:57Rory Stewart?

  But I think the likelihood is they'll learn exactly the wrong lesson and they will say, we weren't right wing enough and they will, Boris Johnson will probably try again, Suella Bravman will try.

• 28:09Alastair Campbell?

  But Johnson can't, Johnson can't enter Parliament, he's banned from Parliament.

• 28:12Rory Stewart?

  That is true.

• 28:14Alastair Campbell?

  That's a bit of a problem, isn't it?

• 28:15Rory Stewart?

  A bit of a problem.

• 28:16Alastair Campbell?

  And are you revising your scoffing of when I said that Farage will go for it at some point?

• 28:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, it certainly feels as though some people are interested in that and I think that will be the real sign that the Conservative Party is finished. By the time Nigel Farage is in the Conservative Party, any shreds of the party that I joined in 2010 under David Cameron will have gone completely.

• 28:36Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 28:37Rory Stewart?

  Now, childhood books is my final question. Vicky Ellums, you both obviously love reading, what books do you remember from your childhood that inspired you?

• 28:46Alastair Campbell?

  Am I allowed to say The Bruins and Orwellie?

• 28:49Rory Stewart?

  The Bruins and Orwellie, that's very good.

• 28:51Alastair Campbell?

  I did look forward to them arriving every Christmas.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  Gosh, did you read Roy of the Rovers?

• 28:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, I did.

• 28:58Rory Stewart?

  You liked Roy of the Rovers?

• 28:59Alastair Campbell?

  I did, I did quite like those sort of cartoony books.

• 29:03Rory Stewart?

  I remember Roy of the Rovers.

• 29:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, what was his name, the name of the team?

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  I can't remember.

• 29:07Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's Melchester.

• 29:09Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 29:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Rory Stewart?

  Good skills. Well, I loved, I'm going to give it a stab, I loved some sort of medieval books, so I loved Ivanhoe, I loved a book called Bowman of Crissy, a lot of the books that I really loved and films I loved, I think now when I look back at them are not really very suitable.

• 29:22Alastair Campbell?

  Violent.

• 29:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think there's actually some pretty odd views about race and stereotypes. For example, I really liked a film called Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines.

• 29:31Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but watch it, watch it now.

• 29:34Alastair Campbell?

  Did you read all that sort of?

• 29:35Rory Stewart?

  The impression of the French and the Italians is a little stereotypical to put it mildly.

• 29:39Alastair Campbell?

  Did you read the Just William books?

• 29:40Rory Stewart?

  I didn't do Just William, you like Just William?

• 29:41Alastair Campbell?

  I like Just William, what about Jennings? Did you read Jennings? Jennings?

• 29:44Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 29:45Alastair Campbell?

  Jennings was a private school thing.

• 29:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe that's where my antipathy to private education.

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  Came from Jennings.

• 29:52Alastair Campbell?

  Might have done.

• 29:52Rory Stewart?

  Um, I read Molesworth.

• 29:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Rory Stewart?

  You remember Molesworth? So, yeah, Molesworth was like a comical private school guy, wasn't it? There was some posh bloke who had amazing conkers that he cooked in his castle oven.

• 30:03Alastair Campbell?

  I do remember Lord of the Flies having a big impact on me. I was quite young when I read that.

• 30:07Rory Stewart?

  It's a chilling book, isn't it? But it's a tough book to, I remember William Golding saying that he was finished as a writer once it became a school set text. But it's a terrifying book. I mean, my, my nine year old's been looking at it and just is, is very frightened by the era of that.

• 30:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. What are you reading right now?

• 30:22Rory Stewart?

  I'm reading a book by C S Lewis called Mere Christianity.

• 30:25Alastair Campbell?

  I am reading.

• 30:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Alastair Campbell?

  Dominion by Tom Holland.

• 30:29Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 30:30Alastair Campbell?

  Because he told me to read it in advance of us talking to him.

• 30:34Rory Stewart?

  Our Christmas podcast.

• 30:36Alastair Campbell?

  Christmas podcast.

• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  And finally, on this one, I, I had a lovely conversation with the grandson of Uthant, Uthant, who was the UN Secretary General.

• 30:44Alastair Campbell?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:45Rory Stewart?

  This amazing figure in the 1960s, friend of Kennedy, friend of LBJ, vital in the early days trying to resolve the Vietnam War. And actually ruined his career in the end in the sixty seven war. It's a sort of precursor of what we're seeing now. The UN was considered not to have taken the right position against the Egyptians in the sixty seven invasion. But he was saying that when he was interviewed by, Uthant was interviewed by Alistair Cook, the great BBC American correspondent. All they talked about was children's books. And Alistair Cook said, all you needed to understand about this Burmese man who'd lived in a village until he was forty two as a small school teacher, is he'd had a completely Edwardian British childhood and all he wanted to talk about were, was sort of G A Henty books and all these kind of books that people read in late Victorian, early Edwardian England.

• 31:29Alastair Campbell?

  Ahead of the Albert Hall on Thursday, I have the onerous duty and privilege of doing the eulogy at Kenneth Kinnock's funeral. And one of the observations I make about her is that when our three children were born, she didn't bring clothes, she brought books. Lots of books for babies up to five. So you brought a whole library.

• 31:51Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing.

• 31:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  My friend, Robert Craig from Cumber, he's a Cumber and dairy farmer. He and his wife Jackie, when, when our kids were born, brought some amazing books, none of which I'd actually seen before, which were the most lovely things. I think they introduced me to the Gruffalo. They also introduced me for the first time to Harry McLaren.

• 32:09Alastair Campbell?

  Harry McLaren.

• 32:10Rory Stewart?

  And all the dogs in Harry McLaren's team, which includes Hector Morse, as big as a horse.

• 32:15Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I used to, when the kids were growing up, I liked Shirley Hughes, Barbara, like Barbara.

• 32:20Rory Stewart?

  Barbara's brilliant.

• 32:21Alastair Campbell?

  Barbara.

• 32:22Rory Stewart?

  Brilliant.

• 32:23Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I think we're done, Rory.

• 32:24Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very much. See you next week.

• 32:25Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

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