23. Question Time: Roe v. Wade, military MPs, and Ismail Kadare

Roe v. Wade, the impact of military service on sitting MPs, Britain's global reputation, Labour's stance on strike action, progressive alliances, John Smith, Alexander the Great, and the novels of Ismail Kadare. Join Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell for the fifth episode of The Rest Is Politics: Question Time, where they answer your questions on all of the above and much, much more. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Reading list: Broken April - Ismail Kadare Spring Flowers - Ismail Kadare Producer: Dom Johnson 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 Creef. 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the fifth episode of the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:48Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  We hope you enjoyed yesterday's special episode with Tony Blair. If you haven't listened already, it's the episode before this in your podcast feed. In today's show, we'll be making our way through as many of the extraordinary questions you've all sent in during the week on Twitter and email. So, Alistair, a question from you.

• 2:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, my question of the week is from a gentleman called Bobby McDonagh. You may remember him. He was the Irish ambassador to the UK. His question is as follows: Ireland inherited so much from the UK: rule of law, parliamentary democracy, independent civil service, ethics in public life. Do either of you see any chance of these being restored in the UK anytime soon?

• 2:29Rory Stewart?

  It's so depressing. I mean, I can't, I can't tell you how depressing it is because-

• 2:32Alastair Campbell?

  And he's a diplomat. He's a diplomat.

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  And he's a diplomat. I'm having to defend the UK now, round and round the Middle East, and it's really sad. I mean, it's very, very sad for British diplomats, I'm afraid. Because it is true that with all the grumbles about Britain, there was a general sense that, you know, maybe we were hypocritical, maybe we had a very complicated past, but there was a sense that the rule of law mattered, that decency mattered, that moderation mattered. And my goodness, we're ripping it up. I mean, it's just horrifying, just week after week after week.

• 3:06Alastair Campbell?

  It's just, and as you say, everywhere you go in the world at the moment, people are just sort of saying what's going on. And when I watched Johnson, I mean, like, I know, we're both sort of, everybody knows we're not fans of Boris Johnson, but when I watched him at the G7, did you see him sort of grabbing Macron, sort of grabbing him and pulling him and saying, "Oh, on top of Cordial, on top of Cordial", and sort of rubbing himself up against him, desperately trying to pretend that they were somehow very, very close. And it was just revolting. Then the thing where he's around the table, and you've got a woman there, Ursula von der Leyen, and he's saying, "Why don't we take all our shirts off and show our pecks, show that we've got a better pecks than Putin"? I mean, the guy's just a fucking embarrassment to us. Sorry to swear, but he just does my head in.

• 3:48Rory Stewart?

  No, no, it's, it's, it's very sad.

• 3:51Alastair Campbell?

  Shall I get, shall I try something a little bit, a little bit funnier?

• 3:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on then.

• 3:54Alastair Campbell?

  This goes back to your unbelievable vision in 30 seconds last week, Rory. John Greenwood, "My wife lost her glasses. She thought they were in the car or in her handbag. They weren't. Rory, you were wrong."

• 4:06Rory Stewart?

  So I had a good, I had a good chat with my friend John, who's a very, very active listener, but quite, quite an active critic of this programme too. And he'd lost his mobile telephone, and he found it in a Tupperware jar in the fridge with some mealworm that he'd been keeping to feed an owl.

• 4:29Alastair Campbell?

  That's excellent. Now, listen, talking of criticism, Andy Fuller, it's a bit of an existential question, this. Much as I like to listen to you two, what is the point or the objective of political podcasts like yours?

• 4:44Rory Stewart?

  Hold a second, hold a second.

• 4:48Alastair Campbell?

  I think we're part of the same thing that we were talking about with Tony Blair yesterday. We're trying to find new ways of expressing a new approach to politics and new ideas. But he's got a point. I mean, what is it? Come on, Rory, what is the point? Why are you doing this?

• 5:00Rory Stewart?

  I think the point is, here's my best stab at it. I think politics, democratic politics, is about dialogue. And the reason why, when this podcast works, it works best is that as humans, we work best through two voices engaged, sometimes in argument, sometimes agreeing, but working our way through opposing views together. That's what that's what makes for democracy. That's what makes for civil society. Here's a question for you. If either of you had to, this is from Martin Edwards, if either of you had to have a week off ill, who would you choose to guest on the show on each other's behalf? You can choose anyone, living or historical.

• 5:39Alastair Campbell?

  Or to stand in for me?

• 5:41Rory Stewart?

  I guess, yes, that's right. You get someone to stand in for you. Yeah, that's right.

• 5:46Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to say, the face that popped into my head when you said it was Alan Johnson.

• 5:52Rory Stewart?

  Alan Johnson, very good.

• 5:54Alastair Campbell?

  He'd be quite good, wouldn't he?

• 5:55Rory Stewart?

  He'd be great. He'd be great. Great, great replacement for you. I was thinking for me, Danny DeVito.

• 6:03Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, my God. Now, listen, you're obviously not in a serious mood, so I'm going to take you to a serious place because, do you know what subject we had more questions on than any other by a mile this week? By a mile?

• 6:14Rory Stewart?

  I'm praying it's not the Northern Ireland Protocol.

• 6:16Alastair Campbell?

  No, it was not the Northern Ireland Protocol. It's Roe Wade.

• 6:19Rory Stewart?

  Ah, OK.

• 6:20Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, that is pretty extraordinary. That's an American change. We are two Brits, most of our, not all, but a lot of our listeners in the UK. And Charlie Hancock, with Roe Wade being overturned, can the US continue to function with such legal divergence between states when abortion access is such a divisive issue? Tom Parkinson, why does, why does centre-left progressive side of politics struggle to point out the many extreme conservative beliefs in the US and UK are no longer conservative, e.g. Roe Wade? There's just so many questions. And I just wondered, you're married to an American. I mean, how does she feel when she heard this news?

• 6:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think, like many, many people in the United States, deeply depressed, deeply sad about it. I mean, remember that, I mean, that rovers way that judgment was made in the month that I was born. And I'm almost 50. We generally assume the world gets more progressive over time. That over 50 years, we definitely found this in Britain with attitudes to capital punishment, attitudes towards homosexuality, attitudes to gay marriage. Changes are made, and as the decades pass, more and more people become comfortable with them. And I think it would have been unimaginable in 1973 to say, look, we'll get this passed, and it will hold for 50 years. And then in 50 years' time, a conservative backlash will undo it. So I think she's shocked and horrified.

• 7:40Rory Stewart?

  I think she has been trying to get her head around the types of arguments that the conservative judges were making, which are these originalist arguments about the Constitution. They're basically trying to argue that at the time when the Amendment on Privacy was introduced, the majority of states in the United States were outlawed abortion. And I think it's important, actually, and I think, I don't want to speak too much for her, but it's important for Democrats like her and people who are very much against this ruling to make good legal arguments. Not just get drawn into the rights and wrongs of abortion, which is a hugely important issue,

• 8:21Rory Stewart?

  but also work out how, if, God willing, we had some more thoughtful and sensible Supreme Court justices in place, we can get the argument right. Because this is sadly very, very dangerous. Because the same arguments, basically that the Constitution was framed by a bunch of white guys living in the 18th century, could be used to overturn most of the progressive legislation in the United States.

• 8:45Alastair Campbell?

  My Fiona, not your Fiona, my Fiona, she said, can you imagine it even happening if you had a group of seven women? Telling the world's men that there came a time in their life when they had to have a vasectomy, or whatever, you know, there's just, it's just kind of, it's seven men who've sort of just taken

• 9:02Rory Stewart?

  And one woman, of course.

• 9:03Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry, and one woman, taking America back. And then there's lots of questions like this from eight eight. Lots of people are saying this couldn't happen, this could happen here. Evidence, ninety nine MPs voting against the lifting of the Northern Ireland abortion ban in twenty nineteen. And then Lord Moylan, who's one of the most ridiculous persons in British politics, he and Lord Frost are my two least favourite Tories at the moment, probably, apart from the entire Cabinet. He said, apparently he has said that he thinks it could come here. And there's a debate going on Twitter, on our, on the Rest is Politics Twitter feed, between that Baratheon girl and Caliphatevia six. Baratheon girl saying that the abortion overturn would never happen here, because we're a much more liberal society.

• 9:46Alastair Campbell?

  And Caliphatevia six, saying that worrying that with the NHS possibly up for takeover by US healthcare, and with people like Steve Baker pushing on issues like this, that actually thinks it could happen here. Do you think we can be sanguine or not?

• 10:01Rory Stewart?

  I think we should be a little concerned, because one of the odd things about a more connected world is it's not just a way of progressive views spreading quickly, it's also a way of conservative views spreading quickly. One of the reasons, for example, that Uganda suddenly became much more reactionary about reproductive rights, so the president of Uganda, for example, ruled against people wearing condoms, is because of pressure from evangelicals in the United States. And I can see in some of my conservative colleagues that they have a lot of interaction with evangelicals in the United States. Now, admittedly, in the Conservative Party, it's still a fringe, but it was a fringe in American politics

• 10:45Rory Stewart?

  fifty years ago. So I do worry. I worry about how these things are organised, and it's part of the general polarisation.

• 10:53Alastair Campbell?

  And it's also the power of the religious right. We were talking to Somebody who's engaged in a kind of international conference recently, which lots of women's issues were being discussed. And it was somewhere, I can't remember exactly where it was, it was somewhere in Africa. And the religious right, American religious right, were in hotels. I'll tell you what it was, it was a church meeting, it was the World's Churches. And the religious right, American religious right, were banned from the conference, they were in hotels all around the conference, texting, following the debates and texting their delegates from these churches to tell them how to vote. They're an incredibly powerful force now, and they're very, very, very right wing.

• 11:33Rory Stewart?

  And weirdly, that, of course, they famously made this unholy alliance, to quote your friend Tony Blair, with Donald Trump, that they're capable of, and in the same way as the ERG did with Boris Johnson.

• 11:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Rory Stewart?

  Here's a question from Joe Greenfield. Why won't the Labour Party support workers on strike? Why are they sanctioning MPs who supported people on picket lines? I just don't get it.

• 11:54Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 11:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it's a good question though. I, I, I think, I talked earlier, we've talked earlier about my sense that Labour's just in a very defensive crouch about too many issues. I was talking at Bradford Literary Festival this week, I was interviewed by, do you remember Richard Lambert, the ex-editor of the FT?

• 12:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:11Alastair Campbell?

  And it was a very, very interesting, Bradford, it was okay, it's a literary festival, but it's, it's a very different sort of festival to say Cheltenham or Hay. They give out lots of free tickets to poorer, people from poorer areas. It was a kind of middle-class, working-class audience. And honestly, they were, they, every time I said anything about my loathing of Johnson, sort of wild applause. Anytime I sort of, it went on about Brexit and how awful it was for the country, they were all with me, pretty much. And yet, there was this sort of, you know, why aren't Labour kind of speaking out like you are about this, this, this and this? And I do think that on the, on the strikes, they're in a defensive crouch on that. I mean, I don't think you have to even say, we support, you can go out and say, these

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  strikes should not be happening, we wish they weren't happening, but trying to make this about Labour's relations with the unions is ridiculous, this is about austerity, it's about people not being able to afford to live, and the unions are absolutely entitled to make the case that they make for their members. You, you don't have to be so defensive about it the whole time.

• 13:13Rory Stewart?

  And do you think they should allow MPs to support people on picket lines instead of sanctioning them?

• 13:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, put it this way, if I was an MP... And I had the rail strike going on in my constituency. I would see nothing wrong in going down to talk to the fact that they go and talk to people on the picket line. Does that mean you're supporting the strike that you're standing on the picket line? Some of them do, fair enough. That's a sort of gesture politics, if you like. But the idea that because they're on strike, you don't engage with them. And added to which, I think the old Mick Lynch, we talked about this last week. I think he's sort of, he's kind of carving out a sense of himself being a bit of a national treasure.

• 13:47Rory Stewart?

  It's extraordinary, isn't it? It's really bizarre because I've been watching his, his technique. People say, obviously on Twitter, his supporters say it's just because he speaks the truth. But it's more complicated than that. He's got an extraordinary deadpan expression. He's got a great way of letting the other person dig a hole.

• 14:04Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 14:05Rory Stewart?

  And one of his strongest things. Yeah, strongest way is to turn around and say, what on earth are you talking about? Or, or just accept it if they say, you know, what's a picket line? He says, well, what do you think a picket line is? It's to stop people who want to go to work from going to work.

• 14:21Alastair Campbell?

  What about this one? Let's stay with Labour for a while. Amy, was Keir Starmer over egging the pudding in saying that by election win in Wakefield was putting Labour on route to government?

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  I think he is over egging the pudding because of course they did not do remotely well in Tiverton and by goodness.

• 14:37Alastair Campbell?

  That was my choice though, Roy. That, I mean, they basically pulled out, they didn't campaign.

• 14:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, which was your advice, wasn't it? You told, told the lady to hide in the dance studio. Oh no, that was the other one.

• 14:46Alastair Campbell?

  Liz Poll.

• 14:48Alastair Campbell?

  Dance studio?

• 14:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, famously, famously, your, your, your advice was for the lady to hide. And then it wasn't the Labour candidate who took your advice. It was a Conservative candidate who went and hid in the dance studio during the count because she was so embarrassed about herself. So, yeah, Wakefield, of course, was a significant Labour victory and a big swing against the Conservatives and a big, big problem. And.

• 15:11Rory Stewart?

  But it's Tiverton that's really going to make Boris Johnson, or should be making all Conservative MPs really worried about Boris Johnson. I mean, you know, it actually, on that score, Boris Johnson will lose his own seat, Jacob Rees-Mogg will definitely lose his seat. Hooray! Dominic Raab would definitely lose his seat. So, yeah, I think that's the big one. And Wakefield- Vote Monica Harding. Wakefield, my goodness. I mean, if Labour didn't put in a good performance in Wakefield when the previous MP had just been done for rape of a minor in a traditional Labour Heartland seat. You know, here's a question, which maybe I suppose we're going over old ground again, but what can Keir Starmer learn from John Smith and Tony Blair's leadership and the run-up to power when the Conservative Party was then mired in scandal

• 15:56Rory Stewart?

  and waning support? Surely there are parallels to be drawn, and that to be the not Johnson option on its own isn't enough. That's from Alex Fenner.

• 16:04Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I would say the one thing I would learn from John Smith is to have a policy development process like he had with the Social Justice Commission. I was talking about that, funnily enough, in Bradford yesterday. I think the Social Justice Commission was a really effective piece of policy development because it was basically saying, these are the big challenges, these are the potential policy options we can look at, and it was a way of kind of dominating the debate without coming up with the detailed policy until much later. And I think what you can learn from Tony Blair is, is kind of, you know, I think we saw this yesterday, it's all about the detailed policy and the strategy around that. So I would, I'd just like to say, be more strategic, be more strategic, be more

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  aggressive, understand that campaigning is a 24/7 occupation in opposition.

• 16:50Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful. Right. Ready for the break.

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• 18:58Rory Stewart?

  So, welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 19:03Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Asda Campbell. And let's start with this question, Rory. It's from somebody on Twitter called Begging Your Pardon. Why is Rory the one who always seems to call time for the break or the end of the show? Is he the junior partner in this podcast just in charge of timekeeping?

• 19:17Rory Stewart?

  It could be that. There's another possibility, which is that I sometimes wonder whether it isn't that what happens is you get on to the subject of the one thing where you're super, super earnest, which tends to be your immense abiding respect and admiration for Tony Blair. And I find a strong temptation to draw you to a close before you get a bit boring.

• 19:38Alastair Campbell?

  Fine, thank you very much indeed for that. I'm actually much more earnest. I'm much more earnest about the Northern Ireland Protocol, Rory. Shall we go to that one?

• 19:46Rory Stewart?

  And Burnley, of course, which famously I raised a long time.

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  Right, listen, there's one here, Will Young, I'm sure it's not that Will Young, but it might be. How relevant do you think time spent in the military is for the job of an MP? It seems to me that the only MPs with any moral compass on the Conservative side are ex-forces. And I guess he's meaning Tobias Elwood.

• 20:07Rory Stewart?

  Tom Tugendhat, maybe?

• 20:09Alastair Campbell?

  Tom Tugendhat, Johnny Mercer, possibly Rory Stewart, but of course you're not an MP anymore. But there's something in it. Is Bob Stewart, he's ex-military, isn't he?

• 20:18Rory Stewart?

  He is, yeah, yeah.

• 20:19Alastair Campbell?

  Not sure about him, though. Ben Wallace?

• 20:21Rory Stewart?

  Ben Wallace, that's right. So I guess it's an interesting one. Firstly, I was only very, very briefly in the military and those guys served much longer. I think there is, though, something important for all of them in their training, which is that the Army at St. Tust, and actually in all sorts of training in the Army, put a huge emphasis on honour and decency and leadership. They feel very, very strongly about moral qualities of leadership. I think there is a downside, though, sometimes. I mean, there was a guy who was a Daily Mail, a very, very longstanding Daily Mail journalist now died, called something Alexander?

• 20:57Alastair Campbell?

  Andrew Alexander.

• 20:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I want to say Andrew Alexander. And I remember having lunch with him just after I'd become a new MP.

• 21:04Alastair Campbell?

  He was a business writer, wasn't he?

• 21:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he did a lot from the Tory party. He's a bit of a sort of Brexiteer. And I remember him saying to me that he was always a bit suspicious of, when I suppose I knew him, he was in his 80s, he was saying suspicious of too many Army people because he thinks they're too obedient, that they're trained to be frightfully kind of loyal and follow whether the issue goes.

• 21:27Alastair Campbell?

  I'd say Oliver, Tugendhat, Tobias and Mercer and Stewart are not really showing that at the moment.

• 21:32Rory Stewart?

  They've kind of cracked, I mean, I think that's what's fascinating about Boris, is the way in which he's managed to break that.

• 21:37Alastair Campbell?

  Boris Johnson.

• 21:38Rory Stewart?

  Boris Johnson, is that he's managed to break that, because I think all those people with somebody like Theresa May, even if they disagreed with her profoundly. Would probably try to keep it under wraps.

• 21:49Alastair Campbell?

  In the Commons, did they not used to say if you were in the military, you were the honourable and gallant member? When did that stop?

• 21:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, actually, weirdly, Priti Patel still did it whenever I spoke. It's, it's, I think you can still do it. Um, I think.

• 22:05Alastair Campbell?

  The honourable gallant member.

• 22:07Rory Stewart?

  There we are.

• 22:08Alastair Campbell?

  Here we are, I love this question. Catherine Manning. If you had to spend the day with three people, different stages of the day, who would they be? And while you're thinking of it, I'll give you mine.

• 22:17Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 22:18Alastair Campbell?

  It would be a room service breakfast with Princess Diana.

• 22:22Rory Stewart?

  What?

• 22:23Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, it would be.

• 22:25Rory Stewart?

  We don't want to get that far inside your head.

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, we do, we do. Fiona knows, she's read the diaries, it's sort of, you know, so definitely. Uh, it would be playing football, Diego Maradona, to relive the best day of my life. And it would then be going to the theatre with Shakespeare to watch one of his play. I take to watch a Shakespeare play with Shakespeare would be wonderful. And then going for dinner and Jack Brel and Elvis would be playing at the piano.

• 22:50Rory Stewart?

  Oh, it's beautiful, Alison, it's really beautiful. I don't, I don't think I can do better than that.

• 22:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you're going to have to. Which three people? Oh, by the way, while you're thinking of it, somebody else, somebody else said that you said you'd like to be number two to Alexander the Great, but you didn't give any reasons.

• 23:03Rory Stewart?

  That's true, I didn't give any reasons. So let me talk about what him. Um, I, I fascinated by him. Uh, one thing I love about him is that as well as being a extraordinary military commander, he was a great founder of cities. He built, for example, Kandahar in Afghanistan. He believed, and this is a stretch to, to apply this to people who lived 2300 years ago, but his approach to Iran, Persia, was to insist that his Greeks married Persians. And he embraced the language, he embraced cultures. He genuinely tried to create a multicultural, what we now call, I guess, a pluralist society.

• 23:45Rory Stewart?

  And, but the thing I've always loved most about him is that when his soldiers mutinied, his immediate instinct was to jump right into the centre of the crowd, when all his generals were begging him not to because they thought he'd be murdered. And just trust that he could, by being face to face with people, talk them out of it, win them round. And I, I'm hypnotised by that. I think, I think there's a reason why people put him on their coins, why people remembered him for 2300.

• 24:13Alastair Campbell?

  He's one of your three then, who's the other two?

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, the problem is, I'm a bit like, it's going to sort of slightly irritate you because I, you know, I love people like that. I'm obsessed with Tolstoy. He's just not just very smart. I think he's much funnier than people realize. I love his sense of humor.

• 24:31Alastair Campbell?

  Number three.

• 24:31Rory Stewart?

  But he was, but he's famously a bit dull to spend time with. That's the problem with a lot of these people, I guess.

• 24:36Alastair Campbell?

  Number three.

• 24:37Rory Stewart?

  Number three.

• 24:37Alastair Campbell?

  You'd rather be with Tolstoy and Dolly Under the Great than Prince Diana?

• 24:40Rory Stewart?

  So I think, since I'm being so high-minded, I think it's gonna, yeah, it's gotta be Alexander the Great, Leo Tolstoy, and Natalie Portman. Obviously, for her extraordinary Yale education.

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one for you. Kath Foster, "Do Secretaries of State actually do anything, or is the work all done by civil servants? How is it possible that somebody can move from education to the Foreign Office and remotely be across the brief?" It's a good question, and of course, good Secretaries of State can adapt pretty quickly and they can, they can learn very, very fast. But it is a bit of a weird system, isn't it?

• 25:13Rory Stewart?

  It's completely weird. And I went through, I think, six ministerial portfolios in my pretty short time as a minister. It's mad. It's completely mad. And of course, it means that an enormous amount of power must rest with the civil service. And that's why I'm heartbroken about the fact the government hasn't been recruiting more fast streams of civil servants, especially frozen recruitment at the moment. Our whole system relies on an incredibly high-quality civil service because frankly, ministers are amateurs and they're moved around very quickly. And so, you know, somebody like you or me, or, you know, many of my colleagues, we can master a brief, we can sound pretty articulate and confident, and we'll have instincts about certain kinds of things. But if I think about

• 25:54Rory Stewart?

  my job in DEFRA, I was responsible for all the chemical regulation in the country, all the flooding, all the national parks, the Environment Agency, Natural England, biodiversity, tree health, air pollution, recycling, waste. And the idea that actually I was on top of all those things, let alone, you know, rural affairs, community development, all of which sat within my portfolio, is obviously for the birds. And I wish we were more open and honest about this because our whole system is, pretends that people are responsible when they can't possibly be responsible because they just don't know enough about it.

• 26:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I want to answer a question directly from Tony Stokes. He said, I'm taking up Alistair's advice and I'm going to go on holiday to Albania.

• 26:41Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good.

• 26:42Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know, can you give me some advice on places to visit in Tirana? First thing, restaurants in Tirana are fantastic, very Italian influenced, they're very cheap and incredibly good. There's a very, very nice park near the main hotels in the centre. And there's a wonderful museum where you can go and look at what Tirana was like in the days of the dictatorship and all the kind of surveillance stuff that was done on citizens. And it's really, really, really interesting. So if you've got one museum, that's the one. There's a very nice art gallery, fabulous restaurants and very, very, very nice people. So I'm glad you're going there, Tony, and have a lovely time.

• 27:24Rory Stewart?

  And let me add on to that as my final thing before we wrap. A huge recommendation for somebody that both Alistair and I like a lot, which is the Albanian writer Ismael Kadari. And if you want one to start with, great 1970 book called The Siege, which is an extraordinary account of an Ottoman siege, which takes you right into the heart of Ottoman and Albanian culture.

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  My favourite Ismael Kadari book is the one about, I can't remember the title, but it's one about blood feuds in a family.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 27:52Alastair Campbell?

  Is it called Blood Money? Anyway, we'll find out, we'll put in the chat. There was one question I think we ought to cover, just.

• 27:58Rory Stewart?

  Go on then.

• 27:59Alastair Campbell?

  And we'll do this to close. A question from Tom Hill. In light of last week's by-election losses for the Tories in Wakefield and Tiverton, should Labour and the Liberal Democrats be pursuing a united approach at the next general election?

• 28:11Rory Stewart?

  I think they barely need to. I think what's extraordinary is that people have learnt how to vote tactically, almost intuitively. It was extraordinary how basically the Lib Dems and Labour lost their deposits and the seats.

• 28:25Alastair Campbell?

  But do you think that will happen at a general election in the same way? I mean, I'm loving the fact, I'm loving the fact that the right wing papers and the Tories and the ridiculous Suella Braverman are getting so aerated about this. Every time the Mail has a go about all this tactical voting, it just makes people more aware of the power of tactical voting. So long may the rancid Dacre before he's elevated to the House of Lords, long may they continue to do that.

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  The Duke of Dacre.

• 28:49Alastair Campbell?

  No, it'll be Dacre of the Downing Street Press Office. I agree with you up to a point, but actually, I think particularly if Johnson's still there, but even if he's not, I think the loathing of this government is such that now the driving political force is actually to get rid of them. And I think that means Keir Starmer being Prime Minister, getting a majority of government is going to be incredibly difficult because of the, you know, just how many seats have to be won over. And therefore, I see nothing wrong at all in saying, you know, and I would openly say, even if I were back in the Labour Party, if I was living in a Liberal Democrat Tory marginal area, I would say, I'm voting Liberal Democrat. I hope everybody else doesn't. And I hope Liberal Democrats tell Labour people to, you know, do the same and Liberal

• 29:34Alastair Campbell?

  Democrats to vote Labour where the Tories can be beaten.

• 29:37Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And here's here, just in case, this is the books you're talking about, the two Ismail Kadare books that I can remember is Broken April is about medieval vendettas and Spring Flowers is about more contemporary vendettas.

• 29:50Alastair Campbell?

  No, there's another one.

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  Oh, there was. No, okay.

• 29:53Alastair Campbell?

  Fine. I've got it on my bookshelf at home, so bookshelf at home. So after the podcast, I'll post a picture of it.

• 29:58Rory Stewart?

  Very good. All right, Alastair, thank you very much.

• 30:01Alastair Campbell?

  Lovely to see you. Have a great conference. Bring peace to the world from Jordan. Sadly, I won't be at Tony's conference. I I'm continuing to spend my time with Said Uwasi, trying to find the Channel Four's alternative Pride Blister.

• 30:13Rory Stewart?

  Give a give a kiss to your bicycle from me and see you next week.

• 30:18Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

• 30:19Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.