527. Are American Tech Billionaires Threatening British Democracy?

Given Palantir’s controversial manifesto – described by some as having “techno-fascist” tendencies – why is the UK Government expanding its work with the company? Why has the Foreign Office closed its international humanitarian law unit, and what does this say about the UK's commitment to international law? Is the government doing enough to address mental health issues, particularly among young people and Gen Z? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. __________ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Stream Secret Service now on ITVX. Visit https://www.itv.com/watch/secret-service/10a3104 __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Video Editor: James Clayden, Lorcan Moullier Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter 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.

• 0:00Rory Stewart?

  A lot of people feel very, very angry about a US company connected to defence and CIA getting their hands on British data. Would Palantir be prepared to set up an independent European subsidiary which couldn't be instructed by the White House suddenly to switch off all access?

• 0:19Alastair Campbell?

  Why is a company publishing a manifesto argues it's a moral duty for tech firms to build weapons?

• 0:26Rory Stewart?

  Karp, he's somebody who believes that the world is out to get him and out to get the West.

• 0:33Alastair Campbell?

  I think the public feel very, very scared that guys like this are right at the heart of the wars in the Middle East, right at the heart of Ukraine. Are these the people that now have not just economic power but a developing military power as well? Isn't that a bit scary? This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

• 0:53Rory Stewart?

  Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long, usually arrives for the bill. And from the 1st of April, 75% of renewables obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation.

• 1:08Alastair Campbell?

  So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching?

• 1:12Rory Stewart?

  Because policy sets the floor. The saving itself is automatic. What suppliers offer beyond that isn't, and that's where real competition operates.

• 1:22Alastair Campbell?

  Fuse goes beyond the mandated saving. Customers who switch save around an additional £200 on average. In the Fuse Energy app, you can see exactly what you're using and what it costs with 24/7 support if you need it.

• 1:36Rory Stewart?

  Listeners to the show will also receive a free Trip+ subscription when they switch.

• 1:41Alastair Campbell?

  Get more than just lower rates. Switch today at fuseenergy.com/politics using the code POLITICS and save around £200 on your bills.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  Visit fuseenergy.com for full details and terms and conditions.

• 1:59Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 2:01Alastair 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.

• 2:14Rory 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.

• 2:37Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:44Rory 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/racistpolitics. That's nordvpn.com/racistpolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 3:00Speaker 02

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• 3:25Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Racist Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 3:28Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 3:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, we've got a lot of really interesting questions this week. We're going to begin with a conversation about Palantir, under a lot of scrutiny and criticism recently of this enormous American tech company having access to all this data and what does it do with this data. We're then going to get into the issue of why the Foreign Office has closed its international humanitarian law section.

• 3:52Rory Stewart?

  We're going to talk about mental health, young people, Gen Z, including the question of how people reported the war in Gaza, the language they use, the types of adjectives they use, and the way in which bias can be identified simply almost through sampling statistics of the use of words. Now, where do you want to start?

• 4:13Alastair Campbell?

  Andrea Mihalz here. What do you think about Palantir's impact so far globally? Its recent public manifesto, seen by some as evidence of techno-fascist tendencies, its ongoing contracts with the UK government across defence and health, and its subsequent access to sensitive data. We've had a lot of questions about Palantir in recent weeks.

• 4:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, look, the Palantir debate, in terms of the public debate, involves a lot of people who feel very, very angry about a US company connected to defence and CIA getting their hands on British data. The story is, of course, like a lot of these stories, a little bit more complicated. What does Palantir actually do? Well, what it does is it deals with how data is managed between different databases and government, and through looking at data, promises to deliver real efficiency. So, when I was the prisons minister, for example, was pitched by Palantir. And what they pointed out is that it was impossible for me, for example, to find out how many prisoners had an undergraduate degree, which was important in terms of my funding of that. They pointed out that, well,

• 5:17Rory Stewart?

  I can't remember what, like 92 different databases in the prison service, and none of them speak to each other. You know, some of them were essentially put together in very old software systems. Often the data entry is no good. You type in a prisoner's name wrong, or you don't format it right. And what Palantir developed to do is to develop plumbing to connect all these database systems together. So maybe a good illustration was after the debacle in Afghanistan, where the US were trying to evacuate people from Afghanistan, Palantir was brought in to connect information on which American planes were currently in maintenance, which had spare capacity, who was on the runway. They would even connect

• 6:00Rory Stewart?

  this with social media, and they were able to, they argue, bring together a much more efficient operation. Now, why are they controversial? They're controversial because that pitch that came to me in prisons. Has been successfully made to the NHS, to the Ministry of Defence, to police forces and others. And what are they saying? They're saying to a police force, listen, there will be a lot of data and information that you have, which will give you a lot of ways of predicting where crime is likely to occur, when it's likely to occur, what kind of crime will help you target resources. NHS, you'll be able to manage your waiting lists much better and you'll be able to do patient aftercare much better if you can put together all the complicated information.

• 6:42Alastair Campbell?

  Is there any evidence that that is happening, that that is working?

• 6:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, this is another question of debate, right? So Palantir claims that there are reductions in X percent. I mean, they're not like President Trump's style percentage reductions, right? We're talking about, you know, some 12%, 18% increase in efficiency in particular types of post-op and stuff.

• 7:01Alastair Campbell?

  But presumably they're setting the metrics for that. Do we actually know whether this stuff is delivering as promised?

• 7:06Rory Stewart?

  I think it's delivering and it's improving. My instinct, before I get sued by Palantir, is that it's making a difference at the margins and probably if you're running the NHS, the difference at margins actually results in saving hundreds of millions over time.

• 7:21Alastair Campbell?

  What was the cost going to be to the prison service?

• 7:23Rory Stewart?

  Initially, they were pitching to come in almost for free. Basically, what Palantir said is the first response for some, you come in and say, you know, we're going to clean up your data, we're going to make it talk to each other and we're going to give you better information, is we don't have any money, we can't do it. So Palantir said, well, why don't we do it for free? We'll provide the product to you and if you like it, you can pay for it after you've seen what we've done. Anyway, fast forward, British government's now using it a lot, but not just the British government. I mean, the US government, it's across absolutely everything. Why is it controversial? One anxiety is around data, so obviously they're getting all this data information. Do they have access to it?

• 8:01Rory Stewart?

  Palantir says, no, that is absolutely not true. They don't have access to data any more than Microsoft does to the stuff you're putting into Excel. They are the software plumbing process.

• 8:11Alastair Campbell?

  And do you believe that?

• 8:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that seems reasonably plausible. I don't think what they're essentially doing is they've got a secret vault where they're keeping all our data somewhere in the United States. I don't think that's what they're, I think the bigger issue. Is around dependency, that as they become more and more central to the way in which we manage all the information in government, the fundamental bet that Alex Karp, their boss, has made, which is that he believes he lives in a Western world where the US and Europe and increasingly Israel are all one team and that's there and we're all developing our hard power together and there's never going to be any tensions between any of these players and therefore, he would argue, there's no risk to using a US company as the back hall for almost everything you do with your military.

• 8:56Alastair Campbell?

  Well, if you go back to our discussion on the main podcast, that's being tested profoundly at the moment.

• 9:01Rory Stewart?

  And that's probably the biggest strategic threat they face. So they have a good software package. I mean, I think they have good software engineers and they would argue that they are just another American product, like, you know, Microsoft or cloud computing or increasingly AI platforms, which we're going to run on. And we don't need to worry about the fact that they're domed out in the US if it's a good product, just buy it. But as you said, the last show raises real questions about dependency. You know, would Palantir be prepared to set up an independent European subsidiary which couldn't be instructed by the White House suddenly to switch off all access? So there are always two questions with these American companies. Data, which is what we've traditionally worried about,

• 9:46Rory Stewart?

  you know, can they read our private data? But I'm more worried about the second question, which is sovereignty and control and the US's ability, you know, present Trump's ability to say to Google, I'm switching off the accounts of the head of the International Criminal Court and Google complies.

• 10:00Alastair Campbell?

  Why is a company publishing what's been labelled a manifesto, an extension of arguments that Karp made in one of his books, Technological Republic? So this manifesto claims, some cultures have produced vital advances, others remain dysfunctional and aggressive.

• 10:17Alastair Campbell?

  Debate says the West must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism, whatever that means, calls for mandatory national service, what the fuck's it got to do with you? Argues it's a moral duty for tech firms to build weapons, embraces religion in public life. And of course, Mr. Thiel, who is a big promoter of J D Vance, nothing wrong with that, he's a democratic elected politician, but we kind of, we know where he's coming from. And he said this about our great country, highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb, and the NHS make people sick.

• 10:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Alastair Campbell?

  This is not a guy who, it strikes me, has our values in the same place.

• 11:02Rory Stewart?

  No. So I've read Alex Karp's Techno Republic.

• 11:05Alastair Campbell?

  And?

• 11:05Rory Stewart?

  And I've also read a biography of Karp. Well, I think the first thing is that you're right, broadly speaking, the guy claims to be a registered democratic voter, but his worldview is not a million miles away from J D Vance's worldview. And some of it is sort of weirdly traditional. You know, there's a whole chapter in the book where he bangs on about Kenneth Clark's civilization. Essentially, like, it's an Edwardian gentleman in the 1970s pontificating about Michelangelo and Leonardo and all this kind of the great. So he clearly has a kind of hankering for Western civilization and Western values. And he's clearly worried that the whole world is getting flattened out and we're all losing

• 11:45Rory Stewart?

  our definition. He's obviously also somebody who is very driven by fear. He's somebody who believes that the world is out to get him and out to get the West. And he particularly felt this after October the 7th. He sees Israel as being part of the West. And he thinks that we've got to wake up, invest in hard power in order to fight Russia, China, the Middle East, or whoever it is, they're coming to get us. So it's quite a paranoid worldview. He's also obsessed, I mean, you'd have a connection with him on this, he's completely obsessed with Germany, did his doctorate in Germany. He speaks German.

• 12:18Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Karp now.

• 12:19Rory Stewart?

  Karp, surrounds himself by Germans. A lot of his staff are either Germans or Norwegians and he talks, he spends about half the day talking in German.

• 12:27Alastair Campbell?

  Are they good Germans or bad Germans that he's surrounded with?

• 12:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's sometimes they're German bodyguards, they're like Norwegian personal trainers. So there's quite, quite a lot of that kind of edge going on. But to make it more complicated, because there's bits of it that sound a bit kind of fascist. He's also half Jewish, half African American.

• 12:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Rory Stewart?

  So i- it's not a sort of straightforward story here. And, and you know, even with a, you know, the guy did a doctorate in Germany.

• 12:49Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 12:50Rory Stewart?

  But in his book, he sort of refers to Jürgen Habermas in a book that's essentially saying, the world needs to be about decisiveness, executive power, tech, getting on with things. When Habermas is really about kind of deliberative democracy.

• 13:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Do they not understand that because, I don't think they've explained what they do well at all. We, we once discussed them on the podcast and they called me in for a briefing. And it was interesting and they were obviously putting their best foot forward and trying to persuade me. They're really good people. But I actually don't think they've done a very good job explaining who they are and what they do. Is that the sort of tech bro arrogance that I think most of them share? They don't think it's their job to do that. But I think the governments that are using them have done a very good job either. So essentially governments who are using them are very much back on the defensive.

• 13:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Alastair Campbell?

  And the public, you talk about them being scared. I think the public feel very, very scared that guys like this are right at the heart of the wars in the Middle East, right at the heart of Ukraine. You know, are these the people that now have not just economic power, but are developing military power as well? Isn't, isn't that a bit scary?

• 13:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the, the fundamental thing, just to finish before we move on to the next question, is that Karp, like a lot of the big tech bros, essentially doesn't really believe in institutions. He believes in heroic. Good people, generally good men.

• 14:13Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 14:14Rory Stewart?

  And the general idea is, you know, the good men should be given the power. The good men should be given the technology and the weapons and the good men will save the world.

• 14:23Alastair Campbell?

  It's amazing how these people see themselves as good.

• 14:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  When Elon Musk, they probably don't like this, but I'd say Elon Musk and Sam Altman are probably the two most famous.

• 14:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Alastair Campbell?

  Zuckerberg, baby.

• 14:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Alastair Campbell?

  Any of them knows Trump is a good people.

• 14:34Rory Stewart?

  And of course, the most powerful people pointing out that those people are evil are those people themselves. So Musk points out that Altman's evil, Altman points out Musk is evil, they all point out Zuckerberg's evil. A huge amount of what Alex Karp does is attack Facebook and Zuckerberg. So quite a lot of what's going on is I have to get there first because I'm good and all the others repeat.

• 14:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Rory Stewart?

  And and given that those people you're calling evil say that they're the good ones and that the person speaking is evil. The problem with the idea of decisive executive power is that you end up with someone like Trump operating that decisive executive power. The problem with no regulation is you end up with someone like Musk. That's why we build all the things that Karp's so suspicious of, which is slow moving, bureaucratic, institutional, liberal democracies, which he says, because they're not run by founders and not capable of changing the world overnight.

• 15:27Alastair Campbell?

  Right, let's go on.

• 15:29Rory Stewart?

  This is Gemma, Trip Plus member of Bristol. Foreign Office has quietly closed its unit responsible for tracking potential breaches of international law, including by Israel and Gaza and most recent eleven. What does this say about the UK's commitment to international law and practice? And why does nobody seem to care?

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you care, I care.

• 15:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but it's part of a bigger programme, isn't it? I mean, this is just one tiny glimpse of what's going on. We're talking about a world in which we hope that Starmer's going to reach into a bigger international position, reshape Europe, reshape the global alliance, stand up for the rules based international law. What is he actually doing? He's basically, a lot of the funding decisions feel like mini Trump, cutting international development aid, shutting down the department that does international humanitarian law, dismantling so many bits of British soft power. Foreign Office being cut by twenty percent, international aid down five point seven point three. So it's really, really strange, given that. Starmer is an internationally minded person with a background in human rights law. What on earth would he be doing shutting this down?

• 16:28Alastair Campbell?

  I'm assuming that this is a is a consequence of the cuts to overseas development or the merging of the Foreign Office. It's a budget thing.

• 16:35Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. But the amount of money saved on this will be tiny, right?

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  Peanuts. This is a time when we need more tracking of breaches of international law, not less. By the way, I was listening to Tommy Vita's Pod Save America. He did a brilliant interview with a guy called Nick Enrich, who has written a book called Into the Woodchipper. I haven't read it yet, but I've ordered it. And this is a guy who worked in, he was on the receiving end of Doge. And it's just incredible. Elon Musk goes in there, Doge, okay? The people are now living with the consequences, which are mind blowing in their in their reach. The number of projects that have been cut, the number of people who are now dead because Elon Musk went in and decided, I'm just going to chop things out.

• 17:21Rory Stewart?

  You mean things like the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are now dying of malaria because of the cuts?

• 17:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And and so all these projects, the the USAID was running, the projects that Doge went in and cut in all across the government and then just walked off. And he describes, this guy Nick Enrich was describing these kind of, you know, 20 year old tech kids who were coming in and didn't have a clue about what USAID was, what it did. And we're just in there with a spreadsheet that had been given to him by Elon Musk and his parasites. So this, the Foreign Office cut is bad. But honestly, when you listen to this guy talking about what he was responsible for and which no longer now exists, there is, we talk about good and evil. There is a special place in hell, in my view.

• 18:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, he's done some amazing things, but what he did in relation to Doge is an absolute abomination.

• 18:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, first obvious thing to say in relation to Gemma, I think, is that This is a cut that's not going to save much money. And it's interesting that of the things they chose to cut, they chose to cut this. And I wonder whether it isn't that it's a little bit uncomfortable having a whole section whose job is to keep telling ministers, this may be against international humanitarian law, so you can't sell these weapons, you can't allow these over flights, et cetera. And that maybe not having someone saying that might be a bit convenient.

• 18:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, okay.

• 18:45Rory Stewart?

  The second one, though, is that if we're looking for the big test, you know, is Starmer going to stand up and really show he cares about middle powers and a bigger conception of Europe and a new world order? The first things to look at, the canaries in the mine are, is he going to get international development going? Is he going to stand up the international humanitarian law department? Because that's what rules based order is about. Is he going to put more money into the foreign office? Is he actually serious about international policy? Because it feels to me at the moment as though we're putting a lot of emphasis, it's kind of almost Alex Kart like, on the good man, who in this case is Jonathan Powell, who seems to be doing an incredible job flying around the world. Everybody's very impressed. Every time you talk to anyone on the Iran file or in the Gulf or Ukraine, they all

• 19:29Rory Stewart?

  say Jonathan Powell's doing a great job. But that is not a long term institutional solution to Britain, Europe and the United States. And that's where we want to look at funding aid sections.

• 19:44Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one from Janet, Trip Plus member from Exeter. Have you come across any issues recently where there is actually a surprising level of consensus? Have you?

• 19:52Rory Stewart?

  I do think it's really interesting how much Europe and the world has moved on the US just in the last 18 months. I don't think America's caught up to this. I just keep feeling when I go to the US, they don't realise the change. I had some amazing figures. US perceptions of the UK have gone from, in one year, from 38% of Americans thinking the UK is their most important ally to only 28%. And from people saying that the big reason for alliances in the US is democratic values, in 12 months, it's now become trade and defence, not democratic values. This Emerson College polling, which Harvard's Kennedy School's just shared. So I think a consensus is emerging that the world is changing. I think this this thing that we've been banging on about for four years, people now agree on. What do people agree on for you?

• 20:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm going to go on mental health because I because we were in Belgrade, I couldn't be at the the launch of a campaign I was supposed to help launch in the House of Commons, which is a campaign called Head On, which is bringing together 20 organisations in the mental health field, plus people with lived experiences, it's called. And the Wellcome Trust funded this, and they've been good on mental health for a long, long time. And they did some polling with More in Common. And it is really interesting because three quarters of Britain say the government should do more. But you know, when we did our populism series with Liam Byrne, and he had these polling groups, and More in Common have got these groups, progressive activists, politically

• 21:19Alastair Campbell?

  active left, incremental left, they are left-leaning but not very political, established liberals, prosperous pro-remines centrists who trust institutions, I guess I'll be one of them, rooted patriots who are the red wall, sceptical scrollers, online, don't like elites, traditional conservatives, says what it is, and dissenting disruptors who want radical change. And which of those groups would you reckon is the most believing that we need to do a lot more on mental health?

• 21:51Rory Stewart?

  One assumes that people who are more to the centre-left are going to be more sympathetic to mental health. Is that wrong?

• 21:57Alastair Campbell?

  Eighty-one percent of rooted patriots. So what that says to me is that the red wall that we often get portrayed as homogeneous, it's all about Farage, populism, Brexit, et cetera. Probably because of their lived experience of family or self, they are the keenest or the strongest believers that we have to do more on mental health. I thought it was really interesting.

• 22:25Rory Stewart?

  Really interesting because it shows that the left right division isn't what you'd expect because sometimes when you hear the kind of Trumpian right, they would almost portray, you know, sort of almost 19th century, people talking about mental health, they're just kind of weak and everyone needs to pull themselves up and stop, weak and woke. Yeah.

• 22:40Alastair Campbell?

  No, I thought I thought it was really interesting and and the and what it says to me and and look, I've been saying this ever since the the election that I think the government should be doing way more on mental health and I keep hearing that something is coming and let's hope that that's true. What that polling says to me is that politically, this is a much stronger and more important issue than people realise and it also relates a lot of it to young people as well who are feeling a bit kind of let down by the government.

• 23:07Rory Stewart?

  And without being, again, a bit over grandiose about this, how do we differentiate solutions which are targeting mental health head on compared to an analysis that maybe says, actually, this is partly caused by a society where the schools are no good, the NHS is creaking, work doesn't seem to be delivering dignity to people and that really what one needs is a a country that's really sorting that stuff out.

• 23:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I guess the question is there is how much of this is a consequence and how much is a cause? And look, you've got to deal with all of those things, but I think on its own terms, and you will get people still who will say, although I hope this polling might actually get people to dial down on the kind of woke, you know, generation, Gen Z, just everything is terrible and anxiety was, there's no doubt anxiety is a real thing and has grown particularly amongst young women.

• 24:01Rory Stewart?

  And is it, is it? Dealable with. I mean, if I, if I made you.

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  Totally.

• 24:05Rory Stewart?

  If I mentioned the mental health cell, what, what are some relatively straightforward things that a government could do that could help people?

• 24:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's the things that we've already done. It's talking therapy. And the, there is the data there to show how effective. It's not always effective and it's not effective for everybody.

• 24:20Rory Stewart?

  It is for a huge number of people.

• 24:21Alastair Campbell?

  For, for, if you can get talking therapies for people who are starting to feel anxious, depressed, anorexic, whatever it might be, all the kind of common mental health issues.

• 24:31Rory Stewart?

  Fund it properly, have it available.

• 24:33Alastair Campbell?

  And also recognise that if you do put the money at the right end, you end up saving so much money further down the track.

• 24:41Rory Stewart?

  And, and is there, I mean, it's ridiculous, but would you, you know, can technology help? Would doing more of the stuff online help? Or do you feel it needs to be traditional face to face?

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's really interesting. On the, the other thing that they did in the survey was they, they, the most trusted communicator of mental health remedy were people who talked about their own mental health experience.

• 25:03Rory Stewart?

  Like yourself, yeah.

• 25:04Alastair Campbell?

  The least trusted was online chatbot. Now, I think there's a place for that. I do think there's a place for that.

• 25:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Alastair Campbell?

  But it's, you know, I've seen this so often with people is, is how much, I'm, I've got a friend at the moment who's really struggling with depression. He's got an absolute blind spot about medication, just does not want to take medication. Now, and that's fine, that's fine, you can do that.

• 25:23Rory Stewart?

  But medication is hugely helpful for lots of people. Yeah.

• 25:25Alastair Campbell?

  Totally. And for me, it's been a lifesaver, as you know, and so.

• 25:30Rory Stewart?

  Did you have a block initially? Were you initially?

• 25:32Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yes.

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 25:33Alastair Campbell?

  For you, I had a block about seeing somebody.

• 25:35Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 25:35Alastair Campbell?

  Nothing wrong with me, it's everybody else who's crazy. And I had a block about using medication for a long, long time. And this is why the thing about talking therapy is so important, because in the end, I found somebody, a guy called David Sturgeon, who's suddenly in her debt, who I totally trusted.

• 25:49Rory Stewart?

  And on the medication, one of the things that you, that one of the, I don't know if it's an urban myth, but the story that you often hear is people feel that it sort of has side effects and they don't want to keep taking it because they don't.

• 26:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it can, it can. It does have side effects and you, you just have to manage those. I mean, the medication I'm on now, sertraline, is probably the. Sixth medication that I've been on and some of them have been had terrible side effects.

• 26:14Rory Stewart?

  Okay. You have to keep experiment.

• 26:18Alastair Campbell?

  You do, and you have to kind of, this is why the relationship is so important. And I had this, this David, he was so wonderful because he wouldn't say this is gonna work. He'd say, let's give this a go.

• 26:26Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 26:27Alastair Campbell?

  And you give it a go and eventually you find something. And I, I find too many people give up too soon on the talking therapy and they give up too soon on the medication. But this really, really interested me because that says to me, if you're thinking the traditional Trumpian, Farageist view, I bet Farage's view of mental health is very much, oh, pull yourself together.

• 26:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know that, he won't come on the podcast to tell us. But I think if this says to me, if you're going into tough working class communities, a lot of the stuff that is making their life worse than it should be is about mental health. And that's, this to me is those people saying that and government needs to listen.

• 27:05Rory Stewart?

  We also had a question about grief that interested me and it may, maybe that's, it's a good segue because you've just been reading a book on grief. So the question is from Emily. Which is, do we talk enough about grief, think enough about how to cope with grief?

• 27:19Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I've got to declare an interest. My name is, we, we've talked before about when your name is on the front cover of a book.

• 27:23Rory Stewart?

  Which, which, which mine was with Gary Stevenson, but it didn't stop us having quite a spicy.

• 27:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Rory Stewart?

  If you buy Gary Stevenson's book, mine's the only name on the book.

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  That's, well, well, I'm in the middle here on this book by Lindsay Nicholson. And I should declare an interest. Lindsay Nicholson is one of my oldest friends. When Fiona and I were training journalists half a century ago, nearly, Lindsay was also a trainee journalist and her husband was a guy called John Merritt, who was my best friend.

• 27:46Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 27:47Alastair Campbell?

  Who died in his thirties.

• 27:48Rory Stewart?

  This is like a Tavistock's thing.

• 27:50Alastair Campbell?

  We were all in the West Country.

• 27:50Rory Stewart?

  West Country.

• 27:51Alastair Campbell?

  All down in the West Country. And the book's called How to Survive Losing It All. And now Lindsay has written a previous book about John, my best friend, her husband dying, followed by her daughter dying. Both died of leukemia.

• 28:03Rory Stewart?

  And her, her daughter died.

• 28:04Alastair Campbell?

  She was aged nine.

• 28:06Rory Stewart?

  And her and her husband also died of leukemia, age in his sort of late twenties.

• 28:10Alastair Campbell?

  Thirties, in his thirties, yeah, and and.

• 28:12Rory Stewart?

  And is that related and presumably genetically?

• 28:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they say not, they say not. And then Lindsay was pregnant at the time with her daughter, Hope. So the the book, the thing is, is how to survive, losing your husband, losing your child, losing your career, which she did recently, losing your health, she had breast cancer, losing your hope and losing your mind. So it's how to survive, losing it out, losing it all without losing hope. She's a brilliant writer, which helps, but it is just a kind of, and she talks very openly about the fact that there have been times when she's been completely suicidal.

• 28:43Rory Stewart?

  Um, so, I mean, I still think one of the strongest interviews you've done with leading is with Nas Shah. But some people felt that it was a bit depressing. I actually felt it was quite uplifting to hear, actually. I is this book a bit depressing?

• 28:57Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think it's uplifting because it is about keeping hope and and she does get through these. I mean, she's this.

• 29:03Rory Stewart?

  How do you survive those things?

• 29:07Alastair Campbell?

  She would argue friendship, she would argue family, she would argue the ability just to kind of keep going. And the fact that she was pregnant when John died with Hope, I think Hope has kept her going. Um, and Hope's now married with a family and and so she's a grandmother. She did find another guy and they got married and it seemed to be a kind of perfect second marriage. Uh, but it all went wrong when he ran off with somebody from his swimming club. But so she went through and she's, I mean, there's the reason she had a terrible car crash in the middle of all this. So it feels like she's got a misery memoir to tell, but it's not, it's like, it's how you keep going.

• 29:49Alastair Campbell?

  And she talks, she says there's not a single hour of the day that she doesn't think about her daughter Ellie, who would now be thirty seven. And we've, we've stayed very, very close to her. We go, we, she comes with us to Scotland every Christmas, New Year. It is incredible. And so John's death, her husband, who was my closest friend and he died. I don't quite know how you get over that, but she then had the all the other stuff on top. But I think it's important, the point about grief. I mean, you do get through it in the main. People do get through it.

• 30:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, this is very different, isn't it, with different people? I mean, I think this, I was thinking about this a bit on the way in today, that sometimes if you were to, I don't know, go online, you'd get a sense that this is sort of recipe. You know, grief follows these paths and it's what you say. I thought about it a lot because my father died when he was like ninety two. I was with him when he died. And actually, I think it's, I haven't felt sort of shattering grief. I was very sad, but I also felt that I'd got to know him very well. We talked about everything we could talk about. He told me every story he could, and I'd been expecting him to die for fifteen, twenty years, partly because from about the age of seventy five, onwards, he kept saying, I'm almost done.

• 31:07Rory Stewart?

  And we talked about death and I was with him at the end and.

• 31:12Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's how you create a good death. Another great book about this, Philip Gould, another, I've had so many close friends who've died. And he wrote a book called When I Die, because he knew he was going to die. And I just think we don't talk about death enough. We don't think about it enough. We're scared of it. I mean, Fiona's mum's in, she's a hundred and one. And so, you know, we know she's not going to be around for long. She doesn't want to talk about it, which I think is fine, but I think there is something, I think there is something.

• 31:39Rory Stewart?

  It is helpful if you do.

• 31:40Alastair Campbell?

  I think so.

• 31:41Rory Stewart?

  I find it very helpful that my father was happy to talk about it.

• 31:45Alastair Campbell?

  And he'd had a good life. He'd had a good life. All did have an amazing life.

• 31:48Rory Stewart?

  And if you won't talk about it, then you're slightly sort of accelerating towards the edge of the cliff and dropping off. And you just have to assume that they sort of knew they were going to die.

• 31:56Alastair Campbell?

  And it feeds, I think it feeds panic when you're alive, if you're not thinking, actually, there's a kind of natural, logical, perfectly healthy conclusion to this. So your dad died in old age.

• 32:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 32:08Alastair Campbell?

  My dad died in, he was, he was, your dad and my dad were born in the same year. He was, my dad was eighty two, my mum was eighty eight.

• 32:16Rory Stewart?

  Did you feel great grief at that? Or did that feel sort of more natural?

• 32:18Alastair Campbell?

  My dad felt, I felt, I'll tell you why I felt is I wasn't there for either of them. My dad, because I was doing, I was doing a marathon. And by the way, we must give a shout out. To the Mr Sebastian Saway, the first sub two hour marathon. Obviously, I thought I was going to do that one day, but you know, it turned out.

• 32:38Rory Stewart?

  Do you want to tell us your time?

• 32:40Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, that year was three fifty three oh one.

• 32:42Rory Stewart?

  Three fifty three, which is actually almost identical to Shashana's time.

• 32:45Alastair Campbell?

  And she, and I was probably twenty years older than Shashana.

• 32:48Rory Stewart?

  You, you, you, so, um, we were going to have a shout out, sorry, while we're talking about heroes, Yomf Kacheltsha, the Ethiopian.

• 32:55Alastair Campbell?

  I feel so sorry for you.

• 32:56Rory Stewart?

  Who came in just fifteen seconds behind, broke two hours and was second.

• 33:00Alastair Campbell?

  And he's buzz altering, isn't he, in the history books?

• 33:02Rory Stewart?

  Very extraordinary to break two hours, set the world record and then find there's another guy fifteen seconds ahead of you.

• 33:07Alastair Campbell?

  Wonderful, Tom, parents, there was a wonderful interview with Sebastian Saway's parents this morning. We're talking about, he's going to come home, he's going to build a new church for the village, he's going to buy us a new car. He's like, the guy, and he was so kind of diffident and modest about it. That's what I found amazing, watching a big interview afterwards. So with my dad, I wasn't there because I was doing this marathon and then he, he, he, it wasn't like he was expected to retire that day, but he did die that day. And with my mum, it was even worse because I was in Jordan, in your old neck of the woods.

• 33:36Rory Stewart?

  For, for the King of Jordan's funeral?

• 33:38Alastair Campbell?

  No, I was, no, no, no, I was just doing some work there and, um, and I was in a meeting and came out and there was ten missed calls from Fiona, five from my sister. And what was this? My mum had a stroke. Uh, but you know, I now think it's the best, I, I think her death in a way was amazing.

• 33:54Rory Stewart?

  And was the one of the two of them that, that, that was easier with you or were they both very difficult?

• 34:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think my mum's is more difficult because I think, I think when you've lost your second, but your mum's still alive, I think when you use the second parent, you feel that sense of, it's now your generation.

• 34:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Alastair Campbell?

  You're in charge kind of thing. And so, um, and, and, and also that fact that she died unexpectedly. My dad was expected, my mum was unexpected.

• 34:19Rory Stewart?

  Are you doing a good enough job with your own kids in case you got knocked over by a bus?

• 34:23Alastair Campbell?

  In take, in talking about.

• 34:25Rory Stewart?

  Death and would they be able to cope with it and handle it? I mean, have you prepared them for your own death?

• 34:29Alastair Campbell?

  No, don't know, probably not. In fact, Grace regularly talks about, I had a terrible dream, I dreamt that you died and she wakes up crying and da, da, da. No, Grace finds all that stuff very, very difficult. But I definitely will do. I definitely will do. I'd love to be like Philip Gould and say, right, I'm going to die. I'm going to plan it. These are the hymns that I want. This is the service I want.

• 34:50Rory Stewart?

  We can get on with it.

• 34:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I've got the music. I've already sorted the music.

• 34:54Rory Stewart?

  Okay, good. All right. That's all been written down.

• 34:56Alastair Campbell?

  I've got the music. The music changes.

• 34:58Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 34:58Alastair Campbell?

  This is the great thing about music, but basically it's going to be a lot of Scottish folk music, a lot.

• 35:03Rory Stewart?

  Is Burnley going to feature in this?

• 35:04Alastair Campbell?

  I think there'll be a claret and blue flag somewhere. Yeah, yeah. I did say to Tony Blair, Tony Blair and I were at a funeral a couple of weeks ago. And I said, by the way, just so you know, Sean Dyche is going to be doing the Bade Eulogy at my funeral.

• 35:20Alastair Campbell?

  Former Burnley manager. And Tony just said, not if I'm alive, he's not.

• 35:24Rory Stewart?

  Oh, that's very sweet.

• 35:26Alastair Campbell?

  So there we are. Okay, let's take a break and then come back and talk about. People seem to love knowing what we read, Rory, so we're going to tell them what we read again.

• 35:36Alastair Campbell?

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• 35:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the premise is simple. What if Russia had an asset right at the very top of the British government? I mean, I think it's a great story, isn't it?

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• 36:21Rory Stewart?

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• 36:36Alastair Campbell?

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• 38:01Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest of Polities, with me, Asda Campbell.

• 38:03Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 38:05Alastair Campbell?

  Talking of books, we've also been asked, who is this, Josh? What have you been reading or watching this week? And I know you keep saying you want to mention this documentary on Channel 4.

• 38:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I just did a documentary on Channel 4 on the Suez Crisis. And I just thought maybe it's a good way of wrapping up my contribution, then back over to you. I've done a number of documentaries recently on history, a bit on, which I did with Tom Holland on Caesar against Cato, just on Suez.

• 38:32Alastair Campbell?

  So, hold on, Dominic Sandbrook stood in for you here.

• 38:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Alastair Campbell?

  And then you stood in for Dominic Sandbrook.

• 38:37Rory Stewart?

  On the BBC history thing.

• 38:39Alastair Campbell?

  A bit of adultery going on.

• 38:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, adultery going on. Suez is really interesting. So, it's interesting for two things. Firstly, the Suez Canal was thought about in the same way that we think about the Straits of Formos. Today, this was the great artery which everybody was dependent on for their oil. And the idea is you cannot let a kind of anti-Western nationalist regime have their hands on our throats. And that was the reason why Israel, France and the United Kingdom intervened to reopen the Suez Canal. And that feels a lot like what Israel and the US are saying about the straits of war moves in Iran at the moment.

• 39:12Alastair Campbell?

  Similar consequences.

• 39:13Rory Stewart?

  Similar consequences, right. The second thing is it's about US power. Because actually, it's really a story about the fact that the UK, France and Israel assumed that the US would have their back. And actually, what happened is the US turned entirely against them, organised the United Nations to vote them down. And then threatened to bankrupt the entire British economy and destroy sterling. So that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Macmillan, has to go in and see even the Prime Minister and say, we need to be out of this war in 24 hours or we're bankrupt. And this is fascinating because it's a moment, only 10 years after the Second World War, tells you a lot about special relationship. Where Britain is still manufacturing 25% of the manufactured products in the world. I mean, Britain is still a pretty major country.

• 39:57Rory Stewart?

  It's still spending nearly 10% of gross national product on defence. 7% of the British population is directly employed by the armed services in some way or another. And Germany is spending about less than half of what Britain's spending on defence. Japan is spending about a fifth of what Britain's spending. And their economies are beginning to take off. And we keep going with services, navy, army, air force, even after the humiliation of Suez. Spending and spending on these, on defence. Meanwhile, Germany and Japan gets to a situation where Britain goes from 25% of the exports world to only 10% of the exports world in 20 years. And Germany flops up to 20% and Japan's overtaking us. So it's a really, really, you know, tells you a lot about power.

• 40:43Rory Stewart?

  World Waterways and the United States.

• 40:46Alastair Campbell?

  So is this a one, is this one episode?

• 40:48Rory Stewart?

  There's, there's two episodes.

• 40:49Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 40:49Rory Stewart?

  Two episodes.

• 40:50Alastair Campbell?

  It says already.

• 40:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and you can see it on Channel Four catch up, yeah.

• 40:52Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, listen, I had a fabulous weekend because Bernie weren't playing. Um, because one of the other teams we mentioned playing were in the cup semi-final. I stayed in the house all weekend, apart from going swimming in the morning and taking the dog for a walk.

• 41:09Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 41:10Alastair Campbell?

  And I sat on the sofa.

• 41:12Rory Stewart?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:13Alastair Campbell?

  With three books.

• 41:15Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 41:15Alastair Campbell?

  And non-stop football on in the background, which occasionally I watched, okay?

• 41:20Rory Stewart?

  So you sort of read and then you look at the screen, read.

• 41:22Alastair Campbell?

  And I did a bit of work.

• 41:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Alastair Campbell?

  And then on the Sunday.

• 41:25Rory Stewart?

  Sound on, on the television?

• 41:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yes.

• 41:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, okay.

• 41:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, um, and I only put it up when there's something sort of, so I've got a feel for whether it's going to be exciting or not. Some of the Scottish football in particular was fantastic in the weekend. So I was reading these books and I then decided on Sunday morning, when I heard what had happened to Trump or what hadn't happened to Trump, when the guy going into the hotel a long distance from where Trump was, and I thought this is going to be a complete news sponge. So much blather and babble is going to be spoke, I don't want to watch it.

• 41:54Rory Stewart?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:54Alastair Campbell?

  So I just didn't, I didn't look at my phone, I didn't watch the news, I just read and watched football.

• 42:01Rory Stewart?

  Much better for your mental health and better for, actually instantly for all of our mental health, because then we don't get so many WhatsApp messages from you. I'd like to encourage this to happen over the weekend more often.

• 42:11Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, exactly, exactly. You mean, okay, sorry, don't give away our trade secrets.

• 42:16Rory Stewart?

  That's right, sorry.

• 42:17Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, the, but the, one of the books I read, we've already talked about, how survive? The next one, which was this. Peter, and I wonder if the, do you remember my book of the year last year, Carlo Masala, What If?

• 42:29Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 42:30Alastair Campbell?

  Russia wins?

• 42:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:31Alastair Campbell?

  Peter Chappell, What If Reform Wins?

• 42:33Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 42:34Alastair Campbell?

  A scenario, and it is, I mean Ferdinand Mount on the cover says hilarious, terrifying. Anthony Selden says we all need to take this scenario very seriously. So it's a scenario, so it basically starts and Farage is winning the election.

• 42:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Alastair Campbell?

  And then it goes through, it's written as a diary and it goes through the utter total chaos that ensues. And what he's done is he's taken policy positions that Farage, Tice, Youssef, the rest of them have set out. And he then goes through the process of them being brought, put into practice. So he goes, coming out of the ECHR, he goes defunding the BBC. He goes, he doesn't do much on health, he doesn't do anything on health. And of course, net zero. Okay. And I won't give away the ending, but shall we just say it doesn't last long before it goes completely, totally tits up. And it's partly, it's very, there's a bit where I'm reading it, thinking this is actually happening, it's very credible.

• 43:31Alastair Campbell?

  But then as you get into the thing working, it's a complete and total disaster. So I strongly recommend that one. And then this one, I'm, I'm three quarters of the way through. How to Sell a Genocide.

• 43:42Rory Stewart?

  Which I've read, yeah.

• 43:43Alastair Campbell?

  And what did you think of it?

• 43:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I thought it was really, really moving. I mean, what, what Adam Johnson's doing there is he's forensically documenting the way in which people reported the Gaza War. Everything from the adjectives they use, the way they described the two combatants, the amounts of attention they pay to casualties on the Israeli side compared to the Palestinian side, over to you.

• 44:09Alastair Campbell?

  No, I, I, I, and, and what's interesting is he doesn't cover Fox News, he doesn't cover the right wing media, he covers the, the liberal media, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times.

• 44:22Rory Stewart?

  And I guess his point is that that's a more powerful case, that if it was just Fox News, you know, all our listeners would be like, yeah, well, obviously Fox News does that.

• 44:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And, and, and essentially what it does is it, it, it paints a, a pretty credible picture of what I think they sometimes call it the BBC institutional bias. And the bias is very much against any real portrayal of the Palestinians as anything other than kind of barbarians and anything other than Israel as victims. Though it changes, it changes over time.

• 44:56Rory Stewart?

  He also makes the point that, uh, he uses headlines to illustrate that in Ukraine. The headline will always be Russia bombed somebody.

• 45:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Rory Stewart?

  And in Gaza, the headline was always a bomb went off with no subject.

• 45:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Rory Stewart?

  So Israel's never identified. He also points out that when it comes to Russia, they're very happy to use the word genocide, to take the views of the Ukrainians, to always be skeptical of the claims the Russians make. Whereas when it comes to Gaza, they assume that the Israeli military is always speaking the truth. They make no real attempts to verify. They refuse to report things which the Israeli military hasn't itself verified. And they also talk about institutional pressure. So, I mean, this, this will make, I think, some of our listeners very, very uncomfortable and will feed into their general sense that we are anti-Israeli. But I think if you can bear to read it, it's definitely worth looking at.

• 45:54Alastair Campbell?

  And interesting, when you say if you can bear to read it, because it, it sort of feels at times like you're, you're being hit over the head with a hammer. It's utterly relentless. Uh, I mean, it is compelling, but I, I several times had to put it down and go back to one of the other ones or go back to the football because I found it really, not just disturbing, but, and you know, I, I, the one thing I'd like to have seen is whether he couldn't have also maybe have done Al Jazeera or a Spanish TV station that was very pro, just, just to see whether there was another.

• 46:27Rory Stewart?

  Be interesting to see actually if he did us, what he'd find.

• 46:30Alastair Campbell?

  I think he'd.

• 46:31Rory Stewart?

  How much, how much do we pull our punches?

• 46:33Alastair Campbell?

  I think in the first, I was thinking about that. I think in the initial period after the October, the October seventh, he'd have felt we were very much in this space.

• 46:42Rory Stewart?

  Like, like the New York Times.

• 46:43Alastair Campbell?

  Like, we were like the New York Times.

• 46:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, being, being instinctively.

• 46:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And I think over time, we got, but do you think, by the way, he's used AI to do things like, I mean, it literally sort of says, you know, they use the word massacre three thousand six hundred and fourteen times. How do you, how do you get that?

• 47:01Rory Stewart?

  That, that, that's relatively easy to do with.

• 47:02Alastair Campbell?

  Is it?

• 47:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:03Alastair Campbell?

  How do you do it?

• 47:04Rory Stewart?

  Well, you simply get a program that gets into those articles and counts the words. Yeah.

• 47:08Alastair Campbell?

  Is it, is, am I sort of missing a trick with it, with some of our research?

• 47:11Rory Stewart?

  I, I, I often, I often, I often do it. So for example, if you, well, let, let's say you took a, one of my running jokes is I will get the South Sudan development. Project and I will search for the word, you know, one of the tribal groups Dinkra and it'll appear zero times. You go to find and it tells you how many times.

• 47:28Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 47:28Rory Stewart?

  And then you type in a word like sustainability and it'll be like three hundred and fifty two times will come up. So you can do that with all these.

• 47:34Alastair Campbell?

  The your point about Russia as well is a lot of, you know, in the first hundred days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, two hundred and sixty two children were killed. In the first hundred days of Israel's assault on Gaza, more than ten thousand children were killed. Mentions of child deaths and related terms were thirty three point four percent higher for Ukraine than for than for Gaza. He really goes for Jake Tapper on CNN. There's an introduction that really goes for the BBC, talks about people who who have been interviewed about Palestine for years, who suddenly find they can't get on the show.

• 48:05Rory Stewart?

  And a big hit on Morning Joe, which is what.

• 48:07Alastair Campbell?

  Morning Joe, absolutely. They they get a real big hit. Yeah. Anyway, as I'm I'm glad you felt like I did. It's a it's a really tough read. There will be some of our listeners who think it'll just be completely biased, but the, you know, it's got a lot of data in here. It measures it. He's clearly done the work. And and I it's it's a horrible read in a way, but I think it's important that people do do see it for what it is.

• 48:31Rory Stewart?

  And he's clearly very much on the Palestinian side. So I imagine that, you know, if you are on the side of Netanyahu, you could go through that book and you could point out that he's equivocating about Hamas atrocities and lots of other things. But some of that stuff, the direct comparison on reporting on child death.

• 48:48Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 48:49Rory Stewart?

  Uh, whether or not you actually accept that the Israeli government claimed that the Al Shifa hospital had a massive underground terrorist bunker underneath as their reason for attack. And then it turned out there was nothing there and that was never reported.

• 49:01Alastair Campbell?

  Or right at the start, immediately after October the seventh itself, the stories of forty babies being beheaded.

• 49:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Alastair Campbell?

  Which became a fact.

• 49:08Rory Stewart?

  And which which then actually, I mean, he also points out, of course, that Biden repeats a lot of the stuff without fact checking.

• 49:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. That's the other thing that that strengthens the case here. This is not this is not a left wing pro Palestinian guy going at Donald Trump. This is all during this is one year of the Biden.

• 49:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, Biden's term. And then this thing, this headline from the The Onion, a satirical publication, ran the ran the headline, dying Gazans criticised for not using last words to condemn Hamas. It was the thing that, you know, you wouldn't get heard.

• 49:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Alastair Campbell?

  On any of, in any of this, unless you first went on and said, of course.

• 49:44Rory Stewart?

  He, he also had something I thought was interesting in terms of government communications. He points out that the Biden administration's strategy for dealing with this was to use unnamed sources inside the administration to brief headlines in New York Times saying, the president is powerless, he can do nothing, or the president is very angry, it's about to change. And he said it was like a skip, not a story. The same line would be repeated again and again, nothing would ever change. But clearly the administration, aware how uncomfortable people were, despite the fact, clearly the US actually had enormous power. They were providing so many weapons, so much money for this. And in fact, the Israelis are very open. He quotes them saying, thank goodness Biden never asked for a ceasefire because we would have had to do it almost immediately.

• 50:29Rory Stewart?

  But the administration briefing, he's powerless or he's angry, he's powerless, he's angry.

• 50:35Alastair Campbell?

  And it is, it's a very, very interesting, challenging read. So that's, that's what I was doing at the weekend, Rory, and I'm sorry if you missed all my WhatsApps.

• 50:42Rory Stewart?

  To be encouraged, more weekends with books and football, please. Um, Kate, what does the government need to start prioritizing to help young people?

• 50:52Alastair Campbell?

  Well, mental health, definitely part of it. I actually, yesterday, was sitting here in the studio with Vicky Spratt, who is a journalist, who has talked to thousands and thousands of Gen Z, and she's doing a mini-series for us. We're now commissioners, Rory, we're commissioners as well as presenters. She's doing a series on the Gen Z story.

• 51:15Rory Stewart?

  I, I'm really sorry, but roughly Gen Z, roughly how?

• 51:18Alastair Campbell?

  Fourteen to twenty-nine.

• 51:19Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very much.

• 51:20Alastair Campbell?

  Born in nineteen ninety-seven.

• 51:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 51:22Alastair Campbell?

  And fifteen years on, otherwise you become a millennial.

• 51:25Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 51:26Alastair Campbell?

  And she's looking at debt, student loans, she's looking at the housing.

• 51:32Rory Stewart?

  So broadly speaking, teenagers and young people.

• 51:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. So she's going to be looking at her housing. Debt, student loans, we get so much feedback on on student loans and also social media as well. Um. So she's she's doing several parts and then we're going to wrap it all up. She and I are going to talk about it. And then we're also going to talk to Angela Rayner, who's um done a lot of the stuff that's actually been aimed, you know, particularly in the housing and the renting rental market. And then I think at some point you and I should listen back to the whole series and talk about it, too.

• 52:03Rory Stewart?

  Lovely. Looking forward to it. Thank you.

• 52:05Alastair Campbell?

  And the first episode is out on Friday. That's the Gen Z Story presented by Vicky Spratt. Starts Friday. Go to the rest is politics dot com and you'll find it.

• 52:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alison, let's just just to finish on a very serious note, Bella, how tall is the president of Serbia?

• 52:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, shall we guess? I'm gonna guess at six. I'm six, three, and I reckon he was a good four inches taller than me. So I'm gonna guess that um six, seven. What are you saying?

• 52:35Rory Stewart?

  God, they're tall people. I mean, all I know is that he his staff are complaining that he's taller than Eddie Rama and Eddie Rama wears platform heels to make himself look taller.

• 52:43Alastair Campbell?

  That's not true. Ah, well, Wikipedia says he's one meter ninety nine. What is that in feet and shillings and pence?

• 52:51Rory Stewart?

  Famously, Wikipedia is really, really bad on height. I I really struggled to find out what Arnold Schwarzenegger's height was, Rishi Sunak's height was, Boris Johnson's height. I'm often quite interested in this. And a lot of film stars, their height is not public. It's actually surprisingly difficult.

• 53:07Alastair Campbell?

  Who is the one who stood on the box? Alan Ladd, he used to stand on the box, didn't he?

• 53:10Rory Stewart?

  Humphrey Bogart stood on a box.

• 53:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:12Rory Stewart?

  I got Tom Cruise is not tall.

• 53:14Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 53:15Rory Stewart?

  But it's it's actually surprisingly difficult getting.

• 53:17Alastair Campbell?

  Do you feel you need a box when you and I are doing a show together?

• 53:19Rory Stewart?

  Should do, should do. I quite like being little and large. Little and large is good.

• 53:22Alastair Campbell?

  You think it's good?

• 53:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:24Alastair Campbell?

  I'm surprised he's only one ninety nine because that's six foot six. I had to thought he'd be bigger than that. And also, I think Eddie's taller than that.

• 53:30Rory Stewart?

  Okay, now, Alasta, thank you very much. So we covered a lot of ground, but I think maybe the things that stick with me most, palter in international humanitarian law, which is about how Britain thinks about a little bit more sovereignty and independence, and then a lot on grief, mental health, and the complicated issue of how you report conflict and war, how you actually get balance. And finishing with this extraordinary controversy over the height of President Vucic. See you.

• 54:00Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

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