426. Corbyn's Comeback, Musk's New Party and The Broken SEND System

Is Corbyn’s new party a bold move — or a boost for the Tories? Can Labour fix SEND — or are vulnerable kids being left behind? Is Bosnia ready for the EU — or is Europe looking away again? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics Plus: Join with a FREE TRIAL at therestispolitics.com, for exclusive bonus content including Rory and Alastair’s first ever miniseries The Real JD Vance, early access to Question Time episodes and live show tickets, ad free listening for both TRIP and Leading, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away FREE TRIP+ membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP+ gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ⁠⁠GetFuse.com/Politics⁠⁠ ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ ⁠⁠nordvpn.com/restispolitics⁠⁠ It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to ⁠⁠www.goalhanger.com⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠@restispolitics⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠@RestIsPolitics⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠ Assistant Producers: India Dunkley, Evan Green Video Editor: Josh Smith Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas Social Producer: Celine Charles Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:52Alastair Campbell?

  Hello, welcome to the Rest is For You's Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:55Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:57Alastair Campbell?

  And before we get going Rory, just want to say a big thank you to all of our viewers and listeners who bought tickets for our live shows. Very excited to be going out again. We're going to London, Glasgow, Manchester and Bournemouth.

• 3:10Rory Stewart?

  And a little bit of music, I think, could be expected.

• 3:12Alastair Campbell?

  I hope so, especially in Glasgow, dropping a hint there.

• 3:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  I'm actually going to, not that far, actually it's quite away from Glasgow, I'm going to Scotland next week to be photographed for the Woodland Trust with my favourite tree.

• 3:24Rory Stewart?

  That's wonderful, that's something I really wanted to do and I'm afraid I've ducked out of, so I'll try to do it next year.

• 3:29Alastair Campbell?

  I assume your favourite tree is in Cumbria or Scotland?

• 3:32Rory Stewart?

  It's in Perthshire, yeah. It's an oak up by Burnham Wood. I'm really looking forward to Glasgow and these live shows. Remind me what the theatres are in some of these places?

• 3:39Alastair Campbell?

  So we kick off November the 9th in Bournemouth at the BIC, which is where lots of party conferences get held, but it'll just be me and Rory. Then 11th and 12th of November at the Eventim Hammersmith Apollo in London, following the footsteps of my daughter Grace. Saturday the 15th, we're in Glasgow at the SEC Armadillo. And then on Sunday the 16th, we finish up in Manchester at the O2 Apollo.

• 4:05Rory Stewart?

  So to go to your tickets, just go to aegp.uk/trip25. That's alfaecongolfpapa.uk/trip25. Can't wait to see that.

• 4:18Alastair Campbell?

  Right, let's get going. Lots of new party talk in the air. Finley, given the Green Party already provides a political home for many on the progressive left. Doesn't Jeremy Corbyn's new party risk doing little more than split the left wing vote inadvertently strengthening the electoral chance of the right?

• 4:33Rory Stewart?

  That's a good loyalist argument. That's what they always said when I was trying to run as an independent. It's what my Tory colleagues, oh, you're splitting the vote.

• 4:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's not wrong. It's not wrong. And then we've also got questions about Musk. Francesca Vills, what do you think about Musk's new America party? Could it disrupt the Republicans' 2026 electoral chances?

• 4:52Rory Stewart?

  Splitting the vote again. Splitting the vote again.

• 4:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it sort of does.

• 4:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, look, I think, I'd love to bring you in, but let me just begin. I think that our systems in Britain and America are really broken. I mean, I can't get back to it enough. I tried to write this whole book about it. I don't think I did it properly. I don't think I explained how I think a lot of our problem in democracy is these systems. You talk a lot about polarization, post-truth populism, and now this is superpowered, I think, by these first past the post systems. The Republican Party being dragged off by Trump. The Democratic Party totally lost. And I think there is so much room to try

• 5:35Rory Stewart?

  to rebuild a sensible, exciting, good-humored, active, socially media savvy centre ground. We need independent parties.

• 5:45Alastair Campbell?

  And you think in the UK, that would be somebody who has beautiful ears?

• 5:49Rory Stewart?

  Obviously, obviously, I'm trying to try to hold off saying that Jeremy Corbyn or Elon Musk is the answer to anything. But I think the only point that Musk has got, because I think he's got no political judgment, I think this idea may be like Dominic Cummings' new party, something that spats out on social media and disappears the next minute. Well, presumably, thousands of American political consultant mercenaries are writing little tax forums and slide presentations to try to convince him that they're the people who can do it.

• 6:17Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect not just American, probably. I think the thing with Musk, look, I don't think, you know, there's that old joke, how do you make, how do you make a small fortune in America?

• 6:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Alastair Campbell?

  You start with a huge fortune and you found a political party, right? And a lot of the people have done that.

• 6:35Rory Stewart?

  Ross Perot, Ralph Nader.

• 6:36Alastair Campbell?

  Ralph Nader, Ross Perot. Actually, Teddy Roosevelt went off to a new party for a while.

• 6:41Rory Stewart?

  Some time ago, over 100 years ago.

• 6:42Alastair Campbell?

  1912 or something, I don't know, a long time ago. But it's never worked. And I think one of the reasons it never worked is the tribalism, the two-party system. In America, it's never worked as well because of the money. And of course, Musk has got the money. What I don't think Musk does have is either the political judgment or the political appeal.

• 7:03Rory Stewart?

  Or indeed the ideas. What on earth are his ideas? I mean, sorry, we know, we know his central idea, which is government needs to be run more like one of his Silicon Valley companies.

• 7:12Alastair Campbell?

  Run by him and his mates.

• 7:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, run by him and his mates, sack all the civil servants, become more productive, become more efficient. But I don't think he's got an answer at all to the fundamental problems that affect America. What is he really saying about people on low incomes? What's he saying about welfare? What's he saying about defence? What's he saying about immigration? We don't know the answer to any of that stuff, right?

• 7:34Alastair Campbell?

  He polls very badly. And I think let's, let's just be frank about this. He look, he's obviously got something about him to become, quote, the richest man in the world, however that's defined. He's very clever in lots of different ways, but he's hopeless at politics. I think he he was very good at throwing money at Trump. Why? Because Trump is actually quite good at politics. And Trump needed money and he found a guy who would give him limitless quantities of money. He's loathed by people on the progressive side because he helped Trump. And he's now loathed by the Trump people because he's gone against Trump. So I don't think he's the vehicle at all. So let's come closer to home. So Sarah Soltana elected as Labour MP, suspended for defying a whip.

• 8:13Rory Stewart?

  Over what, two child benefits or something?

• 8:15Alastair Campbell?

  Two child benefit cap, very, very strong against Israel, pro Gaza. And she shot the bolt to some extent by announcing that she and Jeremy Corbyn would be co-leading a party of the left. Jeremy then, we were back. Do you remember when every night with the news, we had cameras outside Jeremy's house and he would trot out and not say anything? I always admired him for that, the fact that he just got into the cab and, and went off. But we had a bit of that. And he came out and said, yeah, there is going to be something happening because he's now not in the Labour Party because he's been expelled. What they're saying is the polls would say they could take 10%. Um. My answer to that is, well, maybe. I think this is all much more just symptomatic

• 8:59Alastair Campbell?

  of this sense that we talked about last week of the left of politics not feeling at one with itself.

• 9:04Rory Stewart?

  Part of the problem that Keir Starmer is dealing with, because of course, that that ten percent is driven by people who feel that Starmer particularly has let down Labour voters on social justice. So there's a report that just came out this morning as we're speaking about explosions in child poverty, which is putting a huge emphasis on the fact that the cap, that you can only get benefits up to two children, and you don't get it beyond that, is a real contributor to increase in what what the report describes, almost Dickensian levels of poverty. People living in houses today in Britain with no running water,

• 9:45Rory Stewart?

  eating mouldy gone off food, rats running around their apartments. And so that, I think, is core. But there's also a sense of moral outrage and where is the courage of the Labour Party around international law and around Donald Trump. And I think that nobody should underestimate Jeremy Corbyn's appeal. I mean, in 2017, he got far more votes than Ed Miliband had managed to do, in fact, far more votes than any Labour leader had got for some time.

• 10:15Alastair Campbell?

  And more than Keir Starmer got in getting his landslide, it's just the way the votes fell.

• 10:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Alastair Campbell?

  This takes us to the next question then. And this is from Send Network. They are right at the heart of this debate. The recent news that education and healthcare plans for children and young people who send might be under threat without any clarification from Brigitte Phillipson about what could replace these legally binding documents is causing great concern for families and educators alike. Can Alastair and Murray please discuss?

• 10:42Rory Stewart?

  I mean, it's very strange. I mean, at the moment. There's a legally binding commitment on schools to develop a personalised plan for a child. And and why? Well, imagine that you are, like many, many people in Britain, maybe twenty percent of children in Britain, and you have dyslexia and you could be very, very bright at verbal reasoning and equally have very significant memory problems on numbers, or significant memory problems on certain types of words. And you can deal with this. A good school can deal with this and give somebody with dyslexia fantastic opportunities through simple things. Could be making sure that they know what the work

• 11:26Rory Stewart?

  is going to be in the week ahead and give them the chance to prepare. Could be a little bit of revision at the end of the week, maybe watching a little BBC film on history to embed the knowledge they've developed that week. And teachers doing this well have completely transformed the opportunities of children who frequently are incredibly talented and creative, but who if you just put them in the conventional system would be exhausting themselves trying to work in a way that doesn't work for them and end up feeling stupid and excluded when they're not. So e- even the Conservative Party at its very worst was not trying to get rid of these personalised plans. I cannot imagine what Bridget Philipsen is talking about.

• 12:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't think she is talking about getting rid of them, but they are talking about reform. And the reason why, and by the way, Kimmy Badenoch seems to be against them and thinks that we're over-medicalising mental health and all that sort of stuff. So there's an argument coming on the Tory side on this as well. But I know somebody called Sam Carlisle who campaigns on these issues a lot. And their worry is that Labour are looking at everything through the prism of the cost. Because why wouldn't they? Because money money is so tight. But the worry is that on this one, they look at it from the cost perspective, as opposed to genuine analysis of the need.

• 12:48Rory Stewart?

  And also potentially because of Rachel Reeves, which we'll get on to, and this moment where she broke down in the House of Commons and the pound collapsed temporarily and the bond price went up, and the fact that they're now really trying to get behind her and prove that they're tough. They're really pushing down this, but but but the problem isn't cost, it's short term cost against long term benefit. If you think about twenty percent of the children in Britain not getting the support they need now, you might save some money now, but the long term consequence for the economy of producing children who are not as able, creative, skilled as they could be in ten years' time, that is devastating for our productivity, our businesses, our industry, and indeed for their well being and fulfillment.

• 13:34Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry to do the opposite what I said they should do, but just let's look at the cost. So the number of young people with an education and healthcare plan, these E C H Ps, this used to be called a statement and the last government changed it, is more than doubled, okay? And you talked there about dyslexia, the main area where the costs have gone up has been autism, then what's called B E S D, behavioural, emotional and social difficulties in speech and communication, okay? There've been some rise in physical disabilities and severe learning disabilities, but these accounts have much less of the rise. But the reason why this is such a massive problem for the government is because, as I say, the the the numbers have

• 14:13Alastair Campbell?

  doubled, the costs have trebled to twelve billion a year since twenty fifteen. And you talk to people in local authorities, I do, they are so struggling for cash. And they've been given this thing called statutory override. They can actually, it's complicated this, but they can park the costs, so it doesn't go on the spending that is set out in all the kind of, you know, the the the red books and the green books and all the rest of it. And that, if they were actually to confront the the real costs, you're talking about a lot of councils that frankly are bankrupt already. Now, then go on to the point about why is why has this rise happened? And and where is

• 14:57Alastair Campbell?

  the argument coming from? One of the things that some of the people on the right say Oh, this is all because parents who, if their children aren't geniuses, they want to think that they're special and they need special support. Right. Most of the demand for these extra ECHPs is coming from the teachers and the schools. Because they're finding that so much, this is what I said about the head teacher I talked to last week. So much of their, their resources and their time and their work is going on children who clearly need to have extra support. So I think what Bridget Phillips is looking at is how do we continue to give proper support to children who need it and keep them in mainstream education? And at the same time, get a proper understanding of why these numbers are going so high.

• 15:40Alastair Campbell?

  Think a lot of it, we think a lot of it's to do with Covid, we don't know that. And then bring in some sort of reform that allows the system to work better. But it is go, politically, this is a nightmare.

• 15:51Rory Stewart?

  It's a complete nightmare. And Bridget Phillips also, in a Sunday interview, strongly implied that Labour would not now have the money to revise the two child benefit cap. And all this is, and I mean, let's take it back to the basics and sound more like a Tory for a second.

• 16:08Rory Stewart?

  Country basically has been stagnant since 2008. GDP per capita grew 2.5% from 1989 to 2008. It's grown by about 0.7% now. We're about 33% poorer than we would have been if we'd been on the previous trend rate. And one of the interesting things that the government is struggling with, which nobody pretty talks about, is nobody really knows why. It's really strange. There's a very, very good article written in the FT by Martin Wolf on this, where he says the problem is productivity, but actually nobody really knows how to sort it out.

• 16:49Rory Stewart?

  And that there's a massive need for really rigorous, serious intellectual work, understanding what on earth is wrong with our economy. And if we can't fix that. Labour is in the most terrible situation, which is our public services get more and more expensive. We have a more richer and richer understanding of people's needs and their real needs, as you pointed out. These children genuinely need support. Their lives will be much better if they get support. And the stuff that we can offer in the National Health Service is better than it was thirty years ago. But we simply don't have the economic growth and the tax revenue to pay for it, meaning that there are basically two ideas out there and Labour can't decide what it's doing. One idea is the very old idea, which is austerity.

• 17:32Rory Stewart?

  We can't afford this. We're going to cut services. We're going to cut quality and children will suffer.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  Fifty-four deaths.

• 17:38Rory Stewart?

  And the other one is to go Jeremy Corbyn on this, which is that we need to tax people more, we need to spend more, and we need to become more like a kind of classic nineteen-eighties social democratic Scandinavian country.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  And there's a danger that's where they get driven, and it's better to get there by your own volition rather than constantly being driven there. But I also think, I think, I do think Kemi Badenoch and the Tories that are going for Labour on this have got a lot to transfer. This was definitely in that basket marked, let's leave it for the next lot to sort out.

• 18:05Rory Stewart?

  I don't understand, Kemi Badenoch, maybe we can get on to this in a second. It strikes me that her most silly tactical error was actually she should have supported Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves on their welfare reforms last week and given Keir Starmer a very difficult choice, which is she could have said, I'm providing one hundred and twenty MPs, I can get your bill through for you. And that would have put Starmer in a very difficult position because then he would have had an option of passing his bill but doing it with Tory support. I can't understand why she didn't do that. It was very weird.

• 18:36Alastair Campbell?

  You would know better than I. I'll tell you, there's a piece we should put in the newsletter, Sam Friedman, who was a special advisor on the GOV in education.

• 18:42Rory Stewart?

  And who writes really well.

• 18:43Alastair Campbell?

  He does, yeah. But he's written a very long piece about about special educational needs and starts actually with this sense of Farage and Badenoch basically coming at it from a, we've got to cut the money, we've got to get the money down, without actually analysing the issue.

• 18:57Rory Stewart?

  So can I, sorry, I keep interrupting you, but it just made me think about another thing. One of the things that we've learnt about Farage and Reform voters is that they're disproportionately, often people whose children have special education needs, who are benefiting from send, they're disproportionately elderly, they're disproportionately receiving welfare payments. So one of the odd things is that Farage can't really go full Musk because his voter base actually really depends on the welfare state.

• 19:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he'll go wherever. The wind takes him at a particular time, won't it? That's what he does. But anyway, I think it's a story we're going to have to come, we'll come back to. And the other, the other big difference this time, I think you've got amongst the new cohort of M, Labour MPs, you've got quite a few. Who are either from teaching backgrounds or actually have kids with special educational needs as well. Rory, before we go to break, can I pin you on another educational matter? Did you vote in the Oxford Chancellorship?

• 19:47Rory Stewart?

  Um, I was supported William Hague.

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, so you didn't vote for my friend Peter Mandelson?

• 19:51Rory Stewart?

  No, William Hague.

• 19:52Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. And, and, and tell me who, there are, there are lots of people going for the Cambridge one, and apparently I get a vote in that. Who should I vote for between the ones that I know are Chris Smith, former Cabinet Minister, under us, Gina Miller,

• 20:04Alastair Campbell?

  anti Brexit campaigner, Sandy Toxfig, John Brown, former chairman of BP.

• 20:08Rory Stewart?

  And my candidate, Mohamed El Arian, who is the president of Queen's College Cambridge.

• 20:13Alastair Campbell?

  And you would vote for him?

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  I'd vote for him. And, and of course, my candidate in Oxford, William Hague, uh, won. So I wonder whether this is going to help.

• 20:19Alastair Campbell?

  And why would you vote for him?

• 20:20Rory Stewart?

  So firstly, I think it's great that somebody who has, uh, a real deep love of Britain, but also has an international background, is a really serious international player, loved running Queen's College Cambridge. He's somebody who was a great master of the college, has incredible, um, affection for the university.

• 20:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they've all, they've all got that, surely.

• 20:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I, I was really struck by Mohamed because a lot of people, you, you will know people who run these colleges who often get a little bit thrown off balance by having to manage academics. I, I've had to manage academics, but it was difficult to do, right? They're, they're extremely intelligent, independent people with tenure. They don't want to be.

• 20:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, full of themselves. We don't even, yeah, carry on.

• 21:01Rory Stewart?

  Um, so I think he would be really good. And I think it'd be very exciting to have Mohamed El Arian as the, as the Chancellor of Cambridge. Who are you going for?

• 21:07Alastair Campbell?

  I think John Brown.

• 21:08Rory Stewart?

  John Brown?

• 21:09Alastair Campbell?

  I think so, because I think he's got, I, listen, I think these jobs are all about fundraising.

• 21:13Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 21:14Alastair Campbell?

  I actually, I don't know if you've spoken to William Hague, but I'm sure he loves all the sort of blah and the blah and the blah. But ultimately, I think these are people who've got to get around the world with education in such a parlous state.

• 21:25Rory Stewart?

  And why are you not, why are you, why are you not running?

• 21:28Alastair Campbell?

  Cambridge?

• 21:29Rory Stewart?

  Cambridge, yeah. Oh. You really hated it, didn't you?

• 21:31Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't like it, no. And also, I, do you know what? I'm going to throw that one back at you. Why do people want these jobs, these positions?

• 21:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I didn't run to be Chancellor of Oxford.

• 21:40Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 21:41Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 21:41Alastair Campbell?

  But would you might your next time?

• 21:42Rory Stewart?

  I don't know. Would he, William Hague will be there for ten, fifteen years.

• 21:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you'll still be a young man.

• 21:46Rory Stewart?

  By that time, I'll be completely forgotten about. I'll be on the dustbin of history. I'll never be relevant to anyone.

• 21:50Alastair Campbell?

  You'll have written another thirty books. But no, I think ultimately it is about fundraising. I think, I think that you need somebody properly networked, can do lots of leadership stuff, does genuinely think about education, which is, you know, I'll be getting lots of Chris Smith. I like, I like lots of them.

• 22:04Rory Stewart?

  They're all your mates, aren't they? Most of those people.

• 22:06Alastair Campbell?

  Not all my mates, but I'm quite friendly with a lot of them.

• 22:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Alastair Campbell?

  Which is why it's difficult. Maybe I've.

• 22:10Rory Stewart?

  Pretty difficult. Were you going to go for Mandelson in Oxford if you'd had a vote?

• 22:12Alastair Campbell?

  I would have done, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 22:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:14Alastair Campbell?

  And then would have, I'd love to see whether you could have been ambassador and chancellor and had all those titles. Okay, well, shall we take a break and then come back and talk about your old party in Israel? We've got quite a few questions on that.

• 22:25Rory Stewart?

  Very good. See you after the break.

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• 24:28Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics question time with me Rory Stewart.

• 24:31Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, Ollie Glover wants to know, given there's been so much coverage and focus on Labour's position on Gaza and a lot of criticism, all well and good, but what are the Tories doing about it?

• 24:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think the first thing is that the Conservatives and right-wing parties in general, for reasons that are a little bit mysterious, have always traditionally been very, very pro-Israel. And but part of the story, I think, in the case of the Conservative Party, in my experience, and when I came in in 2010 as an MP, is that Linton Crosby, the Australian strategist, had very much decided that one of the dividing lines they could provide with Labour is by trying to make Labour seem as though it was obsessed with Palestine, kind of Corbynista, antisemitic, and that they could mobilize a right-wing vote that was basically anti-Muslim and use it to seem pro-Israeli and challenge Labour.

• 25:29Alastair Campbell?

  But the Conservatives' pro-Israel position goes way back beyond that.

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it goes all the way back to Balfour, doesn't it? Yeah, it's a very longstanding position. There is a Labour equivalent of it. I mean, of course, Tony Blair was striking because he came in, and I remember this, because we sat down, didn't we, with David Mensah, who's now the spokesman? For Netanyahu, who was leading Labour friends of Israel on those days. Yeah. So there's also very complicated questions about who the senior figures in the party are, where support's coming in from, and that again becomes very sensitive because there's antisemitic tropes, which are deeply disturbing and misleading around the question of funding of parties. But there is obviously a question around funding and incentives. Let me though say that the Conservative Party, quite interestingly, is beginning to change.

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  And one of the big figures in this change is somebody called Kit Mulhouse, who you might have heard of. So Kit was Secretary of State for Education. He was close to Boris Johnson. He's somebody who pretty much you would have thought was on the right of the Conservative Party. He'd been in charge of policing. He'd done a big job in London. He'd been a big champion of challenging antisemitism, supporting Jewish community in North London. And now he's come out incredibly strongly on Gaza. He raised in the House of Commons, for example, this is a Conservative MP. He challenged the Labour Minister and said, why is the Labour Home Office refusing to give visas to injured Gazan children?

• 26:56Rory Stewart?

  This organisation called Project Pure Hope has raised all the money to pay for disfigured children from Gaza to come and be treated in Britain. And the government's given two visas. Only allowed two in, and Italy has taken well over a hundred. In fact, Italy is taking people who are all lined up to come to Britain because the Home Office won't give visas. And the Home Office won't explain. So won't explain why they won't give visas for injured children. You wouldn't have thought there was any controls for injured children, right? So that's Kit Mulhouse. But he's got quite an interesting group of people coming behind him. So some of them are the kind of old and bold Conservatives, people you remember, like Sir Edward Lee, people like Martin Vickers, who came into the House of Commons with me. But I think he was probably 60 when he came into the House of Commons. Mark Pritchard, who made this big speech, saying he changed his mind. Jeremy Wright has now proposed-

• 27:41Rory Stewart?

  Former Attorney General, was he a Secretary General or Attorney General? Attorney General. Yeah. Proposed recognition of Palestine. He was quite a senior figure. And then against them is a different bit of the Tory right. Suella Bravman, Oliver Dowden, Nick Timothy. Priti Patel. Yeah, Priti Patel, though, quite interesting, having been challenged hard by Lammy, slightly softened down her position. But Kemi Badenoch is right out there on the Michael Gove spectator, Israel always right, never criticize position. I think, finally, just to think a little bit about this, I think Kemi Badenoch is getting politics wrong every week at the moment.

• 28:19Rory Stewart?

  She should have, as I said just before the break, come strongly out in support of Labour's welfare cuts last week. That would have been consistent with Tory policy and put Keir Starmer in a difficult position, because she would have been agreeing with Keir Starmer against his rebels. And this week, I think she should have come out in favour of special educational needs, because that's something that Gillian Keegan, who we interviewed, the former educational secretary, actually, as a Conservative, invested more in special educational needs in schools. And if Kemi Badenoch had done that, she would have again put Labour in a very uncomfortable position. Instead of which, she took the wrong position on both and keeps giving Keir Starmer a free pass.

• 28:54Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  Question here, Alistair, from Willow D. Please discuss the devastation of the Texas floods, Trump's role in the disaster. It's impossible to deny that his scaling back of climate regulations has essentially eliminated climate progress. Do you share my fear that these floods will simply lead to further conspiracy Texas floods?

• 29:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Lolly, I mean, if this had been Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever that within forty eight hours, they would have been there. A lot of people died, a lot of children died. But I think Trump is so locked into this idea that the climate crisis is overblown, that it's not real, that it's not manmade, that he can't quite bring himself to show even the most basic empathy.

• 29:41Rory Stewart?

  And what happened was unbelievable, wasn't it? I think the water rose from something like three foot to thirty five feet high in an hour and a half. And essentially, as the climate warms, there's more and more saturation of water in the sky. And the amount of rainfall and flooding in Texas is up, I think, by ten percent this year. So essentially, as the planet gets warmer, Texas will experience more and more of these kinds of events, more and more flooding.

• 30:07Alastair Campbell?

  There was an amazing shot on one of the channels I saw of the, it was an aerial shot from a drone of the sight of this water chasing people down a street. And it was uphill as well, it was going uphill and these people running, running away from it. But he can't bring himself to say that this is climate change. He was then asked whether he thought that the sacking by Doge, Elon Musk's outfit, they sacked lots of the weather forecasters and whether that might have contributed to this. And he said, no, I don't think so. We won't be rehiring them. This is just a one in a, this is like a one in a million thing. Nobody could do anything.

• 30:45Rory Stewart?

  So not to be depressing, but in the United Kingdom, in Humber Hull, there are nearly 100,000 people basically below sea level and a chance of, I don't know, maybe one in 30 year event of people being hit by water. When that last happened after the Second World War, thousands of people were killed. And one of the things that we're going to have to do in Britain, it'd be another problem for the government, is put more and more money into flood defences, modelling as we deal with surface water flooding, sea flooding, river flooding from rainwater.

• 31:20Alastair Campbell?

  There was a, the nonprofit Mercy Corps, do you know that?

• 31:23Rory Stewart?

  Yep, yeah, very well, yeah.

• 31:24Alastair Campbell?

  They did a report this week saying that Kabul, which is now home to 6 million people, not least because lots of people have come in from all around Afghanistan, they're predicting they may become the first modern city to run out of water in the next five years.

• 31:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, because.

• 31:37Alastair Campbell?

  Climate governance.

• 31:39Rory Stewart?

  So Shoshana's in Kabul at the moment as we're speaking. And one of the problems is that the main aquifer, I mean, Afghanistan's actually quite a dry country anyway, and the population of Kabul, when I first saw it, just after nine 11, was down at about 600,000. And as you say, now it's pushing towards 8 million. They've built all over the aquifer that's supplying the city. And it's almost impossible to understand how you're going to continue to be able to supply people in Kabul with drinking water.

• 32:05Alastair Campbell?

  So that's why this water thing is going to lead to more migration and, anyway, until we get a grip on the politics of the climate, I think this is going to get worse and worse and worse. So yes, I do share your fear that these floods will simply lead to further conspiracy. Rory, Rachel Reeves, Gordon Larkhor, wants to know if you ever cried in the Commons? And if you did, do you think you'd have got the same reaction that Rachel Reeves did?

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  I didn't cry in the House of Commons. Um, I, I mean, I thought that was a very, I mean, that was a really, really disturbing the way that people were so cruel and unpleasant on social media. Sajid Javid came out, um, very strongly in support of Rachel Reeves.

• 32:44Alastair Campbell?

  Stephen Flynn, the SNP guy did. You're talking about Cymru Baiden, by the way.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  Well, that was again, that again, I mean, look, I think it was cruel, but it's also massive political misjudgment to basically mock and bully Rachel Reeves in that situation was just such a stupid thing for Cammy Baiden not to do. She had an incredible opportunity to be gracious and she missed it.

• 33:02Alastair Campbell?

  It's tricky, isn't it? Because the House of Commons, the whole thing is set up on the basis of conflict and debate and division and so forth. So there's Rachel Reeves is sitting there. Funny enough, I was watching, I don't normally watch PMQs, but I was watching it live. And I actually took a picture of the television and I sent it to Fiona. I said, is that Rachel? Because it didn't even look like her. These huge bags under her eyes, she slumped.

• 33:26Rory Stewart?

  And, and the history, just quickly to explain to international listeners, is that what had happened is that uh, the Chancellor, our, our Finance Minister had just been through a bruising incident the day before where Labour rebels had essentially destroyed her fiscal plan, almost certainly going to have to force her to raise taxes, frighten the markets. And she basically lost this battle of will because Starmer gave in to not going ahead with his welfare reforms. In the context of that, she came into the House of Commons, sat down next to him. Starmer was extremely sort of ebullient, cheerful, optimistic and, and appeared to be paying absolutely no attention to her. There was no attempt to put an arm on her. She chose to turn up rather than what I would have done in that situation, which is simply not turn up on the benches at all.

• 34:10Rory Stewart?

  And so this whole thing was played through and the markets concluded that she'd been fired. So there was this drop in the pound, there was that drop in the bond markets. Starmer, again, very flat footed, didn't manage to defend her when Baidenock said, are you going to fire her? He didn't say, no, I'm not. He said it afterwards, which then restored faith in the markets, but it was a very, very odd moment, wasn't it?

• 34:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's really interesting about that though. If you think about it, when Liz, when, when the markets thought Liz Truss was going to stay, they crashed. Then they, they picked up again where she, where she went. So it's actually bizarrely with the markets has strengthened Rachel Reeves' position. They, they didn't want her to go.

• 34:50Alastair Campbell?

  The point about, so people talk about, you said flat footed and somebody said, you know, he lacks emotional intelligence. What he said the next day was that when you're in PMQs, you are absolutely focused and you have to be absolutely focused. He's getting up and down, sitting down. So he wasn't aware of what was going on. I think the thing that should have maybe triggered him to be aware was when Baiden did what she did, which was to say, look at the chances, she's absolutely miserable. Look at her, she's miserable. Which was, as you say, I think a sort of a mistake. But I think that what I really like about what's happened since then, so they came out and said it was nothing to do with politics, it was a personal matter, right? And we still don't know what that means. So I think that's quite good. I like a bit

• 35:32Alastair Campbell?

  of sort of, you know, hardball, you get the line, you don't move off the line and what have you. But I think what we're, we talked about SEND earlier, Special Educational Needs, you look at all the big challenges in the health service, in schools, in crime and policing and transport, they are facing a level of challenge that is beyond a lot of governments. I think at some point they're going to have to be much, much more upfront with just how bad this situation is. And I know that people get sick to death of saying, we inherited a mess. But I actually think Labour have underdone the mess that they've inherited.

• 36:08Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I, I mean,

• 36:09Alastair Campbell?

  Because they're only all the problems.

• 36:10Rory Stewart?

  Part of the reason that Rachel Reeves is under enormous strain is that they set themselves up for failure. I mean, we did an interview with her before the election when it was already incredibly obvious that they would be taking over without any money and that the promises they were making were completely undeliverable unless they raised taxes. Totally obvious. And I remember challenging Rachel Reeves about this. How on earth are you going to pay for the NHS without raising taxes? How on earth are you going to do any of the things you want to do without raising taxes, right? You can't sign up to saying, we're going to stay within the Tories' spending plans, effectively keep austerity in place, and also suggest to your Labour voters that you're going to improve public services. Not possible, right? And she totally refused to acknowledge it because

• 36:55Rory Stewart?

  somewhere in their heads was this naive idea that the only reason things weren't working is because the Tories weren't doing it right. That's why you get Keir Starmer saying, fundamentally, the system's fine, Britain's not broken, all we need is a little bit better management. No, the choice is this. Do you go tight on public spending, keep taxes down, run down public services, or do you tax more and spend more? And Rachel Rees has never got to grips with the one central question in her chancellorship. She should have done it before the election, she should have done it after the election, she should have done it when Trump gave an opportunity. They're just ducking the leadership in this country and we're a year on and I think we're giving them too easy a ride.

• 37:35Alastair Campbell?

  Right, Melinda Gould, 30 years on from the Bosnian War. Wow, 30 years. The country's more divided, politically volatile than ever. Not sure it's quite as politically volatile and divided as then, but okay. What are the chances of it emerging as a functioning state eligible for EU membership? They've certainly got big challenges right now.

• 37:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, big challenges. I'm going to make an optimistic case. So there was a very gloomy article in the FT on Dodik, who is the leader of Republika Srpska. So just to remind people, the end of the Bosnian War, 30 years ago, Bosnia was effectively a double state. There's Republika Srpska, which was the Serb bit, and then there's the other bits in Bosnia that integrates the Bosnian and Croat populations. Dodik has pushed things hard, but ultimately, if you look at the really big picture, over 100,000 people were killed, war criminals were on the loose, checkpoints everywhere, the war criminals were arrested, the killings stopped. And despite all the problems in Bosnia, the institutions are still functioning. Dodik agreed to go to the courts to answer

• 38:35Rory Stewart?

  charges. There isn't any violence. And if you go to central Bosnia, I had a friend who was in central Bosnia just last week. You can go back to those areas where horrible fighting was happening and you can see mosques have been rebuilt, churches have been rebuilt, communities are living together again. And actually, I think the European Union needs to make much more of the running and return to the idea of bringing them into the single market, offering other forms of membership for all those countries in the Western Balkans, rather than panicking now. Now, here's a question for you. In George Eaton's article on Morgan McSweeney in last week's New Statesman, a Number 10 source stated that Campbell wouldn't last two minutes in Morgan's

• 39:17Rory Stewart?

  job and was utterly clueless about the sentiment and state of the country. Any response?

• 39:23Alastair Campbell?

  Last, isn't it?

• 39:26Rory Stewart?

  And who's this source? Do you think it's Morgan Mouswini himself, isn't it?

• 39:30Alastair Campbell?

  There is a lot of briefing goes on in there. I mean, I was with, I had lunch yesterday with Godric Smith, who was my deputy in Downing Street. And he said, God, a lot of them seem to talk to the press quite a lot. And he did say those words that I promised never to say, didn't happen in our day, did it?

• 39:50Alastair Campbell?

  There was always a pretty clear line going.

• 39:51Rory Stewart?

  And why are they so cross with you at the moment? Why?

• 39:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't, I don't think, Georgine doesn't make stuff up, does he? I don't, I don't know him that well, but it didn't strike me as a sort of Daily Mail type person. Daily Express, Sun, you know, all those sort of, you know, in senior source. I've always longed for somebody to say, a junior source who doesn't have access to any real information said, because there's a lot of people just hang around pubs and talk to journalists. I guess if any of them do have info me, it might be because I don't see my role as being a cheerleader. I actually get quite a lot of flack from people who think I'm too soft. In fact, you just said you think we're a bit soft. I'm a bit soft.

• 40:31Rory Stewart?

  On Labour.

• 40:32Alastair Campbell?

  On Labour, yeah. Fiona constantly says I'm being too soft.

• 40:36Rory Stewart?

  You're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

• 40:37Alastair Campbell?

  It's hard, yeah. But then, and even, and Tom Baldwin, my mate Tom Baldwin, who's Keir's biographer, who regularly gets told, you know, you're just a propagandist, you're just a cheerleader. They were briefing against him last week. So I don't know. I don't know.

• 40:53Rory Stewart?

  But you don't accept with them that you wouldn't last two minutes in the job? And you're utterly clueless about the sentiment and state of the country?

• 40:59Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think I'm clueless about the sentiment and state of the country. And I did survive about a decade in, you know, circumstances that weren't necessarily quite as challenging economically, but we had quite a lot of really difficult things and people to deal with. But I would say, and by the way, I should just say for the record, Morgan Mouswini did send me a message saying that was not his view. So there we are. But I think somebody probably did say that. And I think it's probably because they think, and they're right to think this, that once you've been in those jobs. And you're outside, it's easy to sort of castigate and say they're not doing well enough and what have you. But I am determined not to be Roy Keane. I'm never going to be that person who says.

• 41:42Rory Stewart?

  You're not going to be Roy Keane.

• 41:43Alastair Campbell?

  It's, you know, it was a lot better in our day.

• 41:45Rory Stewart?

  We had quite an interesting example of this, just as we come to the end, which is that the most senior former ambassadors in the Foreign Office wrote a letter saying that we should recognise, Britain should recognise Palestine.

• 41:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Rory Stewart?

  And it was an interesting example. It's, it's Lord Haney, it's Jeremy Greenstock, it's William Petrie. I mean, I don't, people won't know all these names, but these were people right at the very, very top of the Foreign Office saying that we should recognise Palestine. These are people who know the Middle East unbelievably well. And I suppose one of the questions there is, is what is it that happens when you leave? That suddenly, when you're a former ambassador, you can see things much more clearly than you can when you're outside.

• 42:25Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it's the same. You, you, you often make the point, including about people that we've interviewed, that there's something that gives you a broader perspective when you're not in it at the centre 24 hours a day, having to defend the line, having to be bound by collective responsibility and you've just got more time to think. Most of my family, I have to tell you, would say all of the time to me, I have got a unique position and I should be far more robust about calling them out on A, B, C, that most of them say that to me all the time. I think you've got to be careful with that. I, I've never hidden the fact that I want this Labour government to succeed. I want them to win again. I, when we go back to the new party thing, I do think that's a bit of kind of left wing self-indulgence that does help the other side.

• 43:08Alastair Campbell?

  But equally, I want to try to be helpful and constructive about what I think they could do better. Um, I think you're in a slightly different place with the Conservatives. I think you basically think they're no longer your party.

• 43:21Rory Stewart?

  Correct.

• 43:22Alastair Campbell?

  Right. So that's, that's, that's different. But at the same time, I don't want them to think that I'm sort of going around the place saying they're all shit. And, you know, it was much better in our day.

• 43:30Rory Stewart?

  Well, you're, you're good at keeping your cool on this one. Now, final one for me. Hamish, you often give out book and film recommendations, but I'd love to know your anti-recommendations. Have you ever been lulled by hype into going to see something you wouldn't usually see? Give us an unpopular opinion. Ooh, that's more chatty.

• 43:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I do. I, I have got absolutely made for this because it happened this weekend. Right, so I I'm not a big fan of reviewers, because I think in the end it's a bit like we're just be talking about, you know, they're spectators pretending to be players, right? But I am often, I think the F T review pages are really, really good, both on books and on film. It's very rare that if I read the F T and they give a film four or five stars, it's not good. And likewise, Matthew Dankona, who's my fellow editor-at-large at the New World, he does a brilliant culture column, and he regularly points me towards films that I wouldn't otherwise go to see. So this weekend, Fiona and I, based upon a very

• 44:29Alastair Campbell?

  good review in the F T, and Matthew Dankona saying, I don't like Formula One, but this film was amazing, Fiona and I went to see F1, Brad Pitt.

• 44:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it was absolute shite.

• 44:40Rory Stewart?

  Ha!

• 44:41Alastair Campbell?

  And I'm sorry to say that. And I have to say, Richard Curtis, one of the greatest filmmakers, British filmmakers, he was actually in the same cinema, and I saw him afterwards, and I said, what do you think of that? And he said, I thought it was really good. Then I felt terrible, because, well, he knows about films.

• 44:54Rory Stewart?

  So all these people who know about films think it's brilliant, and you think it's rubbish. Why do you think it's rubbish?

• 44:58Alastair Campbell?

  Because, two things. The story was ridiculous, and a lot of the story was told through a race commentator, giving a commentary that he would never give, because he was talking endlessly about the two cars at the back, rather than the cars at the front. And the thing that drove me almost to leave the cinema early, I know Formula One's a big industry, and I know this film is part of the development of that industry. The marketing, the product placement, the advertising within the film was hideous. I'll tell you what, however much Heineken paid, however much Qatar Airways and Etihad, however much Rolex paid, D H L, Pirelli, however much you paid, you've got your money's worth. You have got your money's worth.

• 45:40Rory Stewart?

  You're actually advertising the brands on the show, to finish it. Okay.

• 45:43Alastair Campbell?

  And you're welcome to sponsor the rest.

• 45:45Rory Stewart?

  Um, let me finish, let me finish with a, with a positive one. Drops of God, really fun. It's about a young French woman and a young Japanese man who are given a challenge for a hundred and sixty million euro to taste wine, and it's a story about. And it's about taste buds and it's about French culture and it's feel good and funny.

• 46:10Alastair Campbell?

  What's one language is it?

• 46:11Rory Stewart?

  It's in Japanese, French and English with subtitles.

• 46:14Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 46:14Rory Stewart?

  You hear all three languages. I saw it on Apple TV.

• 46:18Alastair Campbell?

  But so you weren't, but sorry, Roy, the question was about whether you were lulled into hype. I've not seen any hype for that film until now.

• 46:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'm hyping up drops of God. And if you want me to be anti hype, uh, Blue Eyed Samurai on Netflix.

• 46:31Alastair Campbell?

  You know, you're very Japanese week.

• 46:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, very Japanese. Blue Eyes Samurai Netflix. I was sold it as being a wonderful example of using um, comic book manga imagery to tell a moving story. I find it horrifying. Like a lot of stuff like that. There is extreme violence, spattering blood, soft porn, totally unnecessarily. And I don't know why we inflict this stuff on ourselves. And I slightly feel that was Game of Thrones as well.

• 46:59Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, right. I've never seen Game of Thrones. I wasn't lulled at any with that one. Um, I should just say for the record as well, I do think Brad Pitt is a good actor and I think he's very, very good looking.

• 47:08Rory Stewart?

  And I can understand why people just. If you'd like to, if you'd like to come on the show, we'd be happy to.

• 47:11Alastair Campbell?

  Bring David Beckham, that'd be great.

• 47:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Alastair Campbell?

  But no, that film really was not for me. And um, sorry.

• 47:17Rory Stewart?

  There's your, there's your Formula One invitation gone out the window, isn't it?

• 47:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's fine because I, I have been to a Formula One uh, race a few times and that's just not for me.

• 47:25Rory Stewart?

  All right.

• 47:26Alastair Campbell?

  And thank you all for listening or watching and Friday, J D Vance, part four.

• 47:32Rory Stewart?

  Much more exciting than Formula One. Listen to our mini series on J D Vance by going to the rest is politics dot com and signing up to become a member.

• 47:47Speaker 06

  We are getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

• 47:56Speaker 07

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 48:04Speaker 08

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

• 48:10Speaker 09

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 48:12Speaker 10

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 48:15Speaker 07

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not?

• 48:21Alastair Campbell?

  You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 48:28Speaker 11

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 48:31Speaker 07

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

• 48:39Speaker 09

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 48:44Speaker 07

  Yes.

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