283. Did Reform UK create a fake general election candidate?

Does the Prime Minister hold constituency surgeries? Did Ed Davey's campaign tactics work? How has the South African election results affected the country? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Podcast Editor: James Hodgson Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Botox on a botulinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 1:58Speaker 02

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• 2:05Speaker 04

  A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty, crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, wrapping you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:31Rory Stewart?

  And me Rory Stewart.

• 2:32Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, Josh Widdecombe seems to have started a trend. He sent us a question in recently about prime ministers, new prime ministers and sleep. And now Joe Lysit, another very, very, very funny man, who you may remember once lit up the Laura Koonsberg programme by pretending to be a massive supporter of Liz Truss. And I think he may be taking the piss out of us a little bit now, but let's see. His question is as follows.

• 2:57Speaker 05

  Hi, Ant. Hi, Dec. I love the Rest is Politics podcast and you guys are the best. Now, my question is, now that Liz Truss has gone, I feel politically homeless. No one entirely aligns with my views on the world as she did. How do I and other people who feel that none of the options are entirely satisfactory, make a decision who to vote for? Do you vote with the best interests of others at heart, or vote for the most vulnerable in society? Or is there some other approach? Do let me know. Lots of love. Bye.

• 3:28Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, what would you do if you're like Joe Lysit pretends to be, a real supporter of Liz Truss? Where do you go now?

• 3:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's assume we were taking it seriously. This would then be a question from those Tory party members who were very angry that Rishi Sunak came in, like Nadine Doris, who we were on with on Channel 4, felt Boris Johnson was the great hero of the party and that Liz Truss was his great successor. The other people who'd probably follow would be the Daily Mail, who also think the Conservative Party's gone too far to the left, or Andrew Neil, who I just did a big interview with, who kept saying to me that the Tory party's massively left wing and needs to become more right wing. So what are these guys supposed to do? Probably they're supposed to either vote for Reform, or they're trying to get behind Kemmy Badenoch, or Suella Braverman, or Priti Patel in

• 4:18Rory Stewart?

  the forthcoming Tory leadership election. Obviously, I very much hope that the view is defeated, because I think if you look at the maths, we lost more seats, many more seats to the Lib Dems, the Conservatives, than they did to Reform. And therefore, you cannot possibly win by just trying to appeal to Reform voters.

• 4:38Alastair Campbell?

  So maybe Joe Lysit should go off and start to pretend to be a massive supporter of Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson. That would be a good. A good comedy schtick. I can't see him doing much with the current Tory contenders. Now, talking of Reform, Tom asked this question, do you think Reform will be able to prove that all of their candidates in the election were real people? Are you aware of this story?

• 5:00Rory Stewart?

  I saw the headline in The Guardian, but tell us a little bit about this.

• 5:04Alastair Campbell?

  Well, essentially, the story is that there was this amazing picture of one of their candidates, and it looked like, you know, those sort of 1960s movie posters where film stars just looked like they were kind of made out of clay. Well, this guy, his hair looked fake, his eyes looked fake, his skin looks fake. And it turns out, so somebody ran this story, I think it was Private Eye broke this story, are they actually fielding fake candidates? Which, by the way, is a criminal offence. So this is why this is more serious than just a bit of a joke. The guy has now come and said, yes, I am a real person, but I did use AI to create the picture because we didn't have time to get together with a rosette and the right

• 5:48Alastair Campbell?

  backdrops and so forth. But I wonder, because if you think about the Reform Party's famous vetting company that was paid, much to the disgust of Nigel Farage, they paid £144,000 to a company that didn't actually vet anybody. Did they actually, in the vetting process, were there a few people who actually thought, you know, we need candidates in seats where we've got no chance of winning, which is get them on the ballot box so that we can add up all the votes and have a greater vote share. So at the moment, Reform are going along and saying we had a million votes per MP, maybe some of them were for fake candidates.

• 6:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, my guess is that what will turn out is that they weren't fake candidates, but that they were a pretty ropey bunch of people who will then turn out to not have been properly vetted, as we know. But we'll see how this develops. I suspect they're real people, they're just real people who have nothing to do with those constituencies who they leveraged in, and probably everybody's nephews, cousins, interns, and anyone they could stick in.

• 6:47Alastair Campbell?

  In which case Rory, Mr Farage, the party's owner and Mr Ties, the party's bankroller, I think they should give a fair and reputable newspaper like The Guardian access to the full candidates list and just say, right, here you go, here they are, and this is their address, go and talk to them.

• 7:03Rory Stewart?

  The reason they're not doing that is presumably, I think, not that they're AI, but that half of them are unbelievably embarrassing and that they're not keen for anyone to see who they put up as their paper candidates at the last moment.

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:15Rory Stewart?

  Dylan Schultz, you've talked quite a bit about Palestine. Could you please talk about the countries and the conflicts and what peace we need in other areas, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, et cetera. So this is something, Alice, that you've done quite a lot of, which is to remind people of the fact that the world is getting more and more dangerous and we're reporting on it less and less. So remind people a little bit about Sudan and then I maybe can do a bit on Myanmar.

• 7:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Sudan is probably the worst conflict anywhere in the world at the moment, if you actually measure it by people displaced, scale of violence. And this is a, we talked in some length about the actual, the issues a few, a few weeks ago. But I think there's a, we used to talk about, you know, the CNN factor in politics, where what's CNN? When CNN became the first sort of big global news media organisation, if CNN were reporting something, the politicians kind of took it seriously. And I find it remarkable how the world's media is, I mean, I'm in this hotel in Istanbul, last night I was channel hopping. You can literally get hundreds and hundreds of TV channels from all around the

• 8:27Alastair Campbell?

  world, you know, watching, watching the news. And you can very, very quickly spot that there are two or three big stories happening at any one time. But that's it. Al Jazeera, to be fair to them, they have continued to feature all of the three that we're talking about here, but very, very, very few do.

• 8:47Rory Stewart?

  And the result is, of course, for a normal listener, that you just don't get a sense of whether things have improved or got worse. So you get a snapshot. I mean, things that you follow closely, let's say France, if you hadn't been concentrating, you'd get the idea that the far right were about to sweep and then it would turn out they came third. But in the equivalent of Sudan or Myanmar, you never get the second bit of the story. You never know how the whole thing actually turned out. So, look, we talk about a lot on the programme about Israel and Palestine. We talk quite a lot and we could do even more on Russia, Ukraine. And I think we should really push to try to get an interview with President Zelensky and try to get out to Ukraine. Sudan has actually changed a

• 9:28Rory Stewart?

  bit since we spoke, but nobody's obviously following it. People remember that basically it's a standoff between two factions, a man called Burhan, who represents the old Sudanese armed forces, and against him, a man called Hameti, who used to be associated with the Janjaweed militia. And when we were reporting last, they were driving east Hameti's forces. But in fact, they didn't get as far as people thought. There's been a slight standoff there. There's a lot of horror going on around the Darfur region still. Khartoum, the capital city, is basically completely uninhabitable. I mean, it looks like some of those images you see of Gaza. It's just sort of a total, or Berlin, the end of the war. I mean, it's

• 10:11Rory Stewart?

  beyond imagining. Very complicated politics of different Middle Eastern countries, particularly in African countries, supporting different sides. So the UAE continuing to funnel supplies into Hameti through Chad while denying it. It's very sad when these peace talks happen in places like Geneva, UAE are like, what are you talking about? Despite the fact that we now have satellite imagery of their planes landing, the military supplies being unloaded.

• 10:36Alastair Campbell?

  There's two things going on there. One is the impunity that now goes in a lot of diplomacy with saying things that aren't true. And one of the reasons for that relates to the point in the question, which is that we don't have, there aren't the journalists there, either with the access or the resources or the know-how and the wherewithal to explain what's happening. I just, while you were talking, Rory, I just went into, put in Sudan war and clicked on news, okay?

• 11:06Alastair Campbell?

  So, and I've mentioned Al Jazeera, the top story is a day old.

• 11:10Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 11:11Alastair Campbell?

  What's Sudan like after fifteen months of war displacement and brutality? That's Al Jazeera. The next one is two days old from Arab News. Cairo Conference urges immediate end to Sudan war. We're then into BBC, three weeks, three weeks ago, it says. Sudan conflict, millions face starvation.

• 11:27Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 11:28Alastair Campbell?

  CNN is the next, two weeks ago. NBC News, three weeks ago. Voice of America, one week ago. And Vatican News, four days ago.

• 11:36Rory Stewart?

  Be interesting to know when the UK papers properly report it last. And the change is very dramatic. So when I was, you know, in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, back in the day. So we're now going back, or even Indonesia in the, in the nineties. There was a very, very large foreign press corps, who I would often see in each place. So, you know, almost every place I turned up in, Mary Colvin would be there with her eye patch. John Lee Anderson from New Yorker. But there would also be some very regular correspondents from the big UK newspapers. Obviously, New York Times correspondents, people like Carl Otto Gaul. And Anthony Lloyd, who's an amazing Times correspondent, very, very courageous.

• 12:17Rory Stewart?

  I mean, almost a recklessly courageous Times correspondent, who's just got back from Afghanistan this week. But that, my goodness, is dying. And part of it is the way in which newspaper editors in the UK now use data on how much an article is shared to decide what they want to print. So we talked about this with a friend of mine who was an Africa correspondent. As soon as the editor starts looking at how much articles are read and shared, it turns out that doing reporting on what's still going on. So the question was about conflicts and the answer is, in Africa alone, there are conflicts at the moment in the Central African Republic, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in South Sudan, in Sudan itself. Of course, ongoing in Somalia, an ongoing conflict in a loss of the Sahel,

• 13:02Rory Stewart?

  where these military coups have happened and democratic governments have been toppled. But what he found is that if he did a report on new discoveries, on Neanderthals or early hominids, suddenly, you know, everybody wants to share stuff about early human evolution in Africa. Nobody wants to share anything on conflict in Africa. And the result is the editors just say, well, stop giving us stories on that. We're not going to, and to think about the expenses, you know, we're not going to buy a flight for you. To fly to, you know, Eastern Congo because nobody's going to read the story.

• 13:33Alastair Campbell?

  That's why journalism has to be about not just about profit and not just about ratings. It has to be, you know, we have to rediscover somehow the role of it being educative and informative about things that really matter to the world. And if if the whole world sort of gets to a place where we just sort of don't care about these places, I think we become we become less serious and we become less civilized. While you were talking there, Roy, I just had a quick look at that top story, the Al Jazeera one.

• 13:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Alastair Campbell?

  What's Sudan like after 15 months of war displacement and brutality? And the figures of starvation and of death are absolutely horrific. And, you know, you do, there is no this sort of hierarchy of suffering. Unless at the moment, you know, we have Israel, Gaza, Russia, Ukraine, as you said. But, and you mentioned Zelensky, Zelensky still has to fight so hard to keep the story at the front of world leaders. And of course, helped by Putin, you know, dropping bombs where we then have pictures of children being, you know, massacred while they're undergoing chemotherapy.

• 14:40Rory Stewart?

  Which is why communication is so important. And that's, of course, one of the geniuses of Zelensky. He's an extraordinary communicator and charismatic performer. But you're absolutely right. What the world chooses to pay attention to has always been very, very arbitrary. It's not that we step back and look in absolute terms at the exact numbers of people being killed or who's in poverty. It's very, very random. And this is true in so many things. I just did a British Museum debate. British Museum very kindly hosted a debate, which was partly about the Elgin marbles. But what suddenly struck me is that even in there, we just talk about certain things like the Elgin marbles and the Benin bronzes. And we don't talk about, you know, 2000 other objects that we might be talking about.

• 15:25Rory Stewart?

  And that's largely because of effective communicators hammering their message again and again. I mean, communication has never been so central. Myanmar, just to finish, Burma, there, people remember the lady Aung San Suu Kyi was toppled in a military coup, a military junta is in place, military government again, and brutal fighting. So that's both on the fringes of the country, which are these minority areas in the hills, you know, more ethnic groups like the Shan, Kachin, Karen. Rakine, where the Rohinge, of course, is you, you remember. But also now in central Burma, where there are a lot of more kind of progressive democratic minded young Burmese demonstrating continually against the military, using 3D printing to make weapons.

• 16:10Rory Stewart?

  The military seems to have stabilized the area, sort of Yang gone up to Napidore. But it's terrifying how far Burma is going backwards and how little, you know, the US and China, for example, are really doing to stabilize that situation. And that's why we need an American president who can communicate because it's not just about, I mean, this is the problem with Biden, it's not just about running things day to day, having a good team. It's about having the charisma and the communication skills if you're going to get involved in peace work. Over to you.

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, let's stay abroad. Carmouth Taylor, South African election impact. And this is a good example where we talked a lot about the election as it was happening. But the question is, what has been the impact of the recent South Africa election? Because we haven't sort of revisited that. I mean, it has been very interesting. We said at the time, it's first time ever that the ANC have not won a kind of, you know, an overall majority. So Ramaphosa, President Sir Ramaphosa, has had to put together a coalition. He's unveiled a cabinet of 32, which is pretty large for cabinet. The ANC have got 20 positions.

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 17:14Alastair Campbell?

  And the Democratic Alliance, which is the, the kind of, which came second in the election, they have got six. Their leader was appointed as agriculture minister.

• 17:24Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 17:24Alastair Campbell?

  The leaders of four other parties were also named ministers. So this is a totally different way of governing South Africa. It'd be very, very, very interesting to see how it works.

• 17:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and to take a step back, we were pretty gloomy about the South African election. And actually, this is the better result than people thought. So people assumed that what he would do is try to reunite the ANC, which would mean reaching out to pretty far left groups and also reaching out to Jacob Zuma, his, his former rival. And it seemed unlikely that he would reach out to the DA, which is a sort of more center right, progressive, free market party, which the traditional ANC has often characterized as a white party. Actually, not, not totally fairly. I mean, it does have a lot of white voters and white representatives, but it's also got a lot of black voters.

• 18:19Rory Stewart?

  But the assumption was political reality would mean that he would end up going to a less and less realistic, more nationalist populist position. Instead of which, he's made the rather brave decision of reaching out to the DA. Very difficult negotiations about the roles they take, but a good direction for South Africa. So here, the fact that we're not following South Africa and updating people means that people are missing out on good news.

• 18:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Rory, quick break and then we'll have more questions.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 19:40Speaker 02

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• 19:47Speaker 04

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• 20:02Speaker 06

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• 20:38Alastair Campbell?

  Now here's one from Mushroom3D. Great name. "How much does something as strenuous as election night affect an MP's mental health? Watching what happened to Jess Phillips got me very emotional. I can't imagine how hard it was for her, even if she is tough." Did you find, when you were running as a candidate, did you find it an impact on your mental health?

• 20:59Rory Stewart?

  No, I found the big impact is the kind of day-to-day grind, the gap between the expectations, reasonable expectations of the public, and what you actually deliver, that you're just disappointing and letting people down all the time. I think what Jess went through was particularly horrible. I mean, for people who didn't watch that, she was one of a number of Labour MPs who got caught up in very, very strong campaigns by people who felt that Keir Starmer had not... Angry about Keir Starmer's position on Gaza. And this ended up with her being shouted at by a group of men at the count, but also attacks beforehand. I mean, what was your sense of that, watching that?

• 21:39Alastair Campbell?

  I thought she was very emotional. I mean, look, Jess wears her heart on her sleeve. She's a very emotional person. And I think she's a... You know, you talked earlier about charisma in communication. Jess is a terrific communicator. And this was the whole Galloway Workers' Party lot, who were just vile to her. Vile to her staff, vile to the people campaigning for her. These are the same people that, in Batley and Spenn, when Jo Cox's sister, Kim Ledbetter, was standing to replace Jo Cox, the Galloway's mob were up there. Do you remember the time when Kim was sort of, you know, forced to sort of take refuge away from them? There's some really horrible stuff going on. And I thought it was interesting, on the night,

• 22:22Alastair Campbell?

  how many people, I think, were touched by Jess Phillips' speech. But then there was this discussion about there should be some sort of... And by the way, I know that Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, is kind of obsessed about this issue of MP safety. There was another candidate who became an MP who reported that, you know, the day after he'd been elected, his home had been smashed up with a sledgehammer. You know, it's like when I talk to my sister, you know, as you know, my nephew got elected and my sister's like, you know, worried about, you know, should, why do people put themselves up for this and what have you? And that's a real danger when people think, you know, you shouldn't put yourself forward. So I, and I think the mental health point, candidates, campaigns are unbelievably tiring. And I was pleased, by the way, Roy, that a lot of the MPs, although

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  my Twitter feed honestly could have, if there was one more picture of a new MP getting onto the train to say, heading to Westminster, looking forward to represent XXX, we'll give my all, et cetera, there were hundreds of them. But I thought it was interesting how many spoke about, they did feel they had a sort of proper induction process. So maybe things have changed since you were first elected.

• 23:32Rory Stewart?

  That's very encouraging. I mean, there's some great young MPs coming in, actually, really, I mean, of course, most of them coming in on the Labour side, rather than because Conservatives lost so many seats. And some of the really talented Conservative candidates, sadly, didn't make it. You know, Will Tanner, Rupert Harrison, who would have been great additions.

• 23:49Alastair Campbell?

  And don't forget the Lib Dems, Roy, the Lib Dems, whose strategy worked, given the record number.

• 23:54Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. And, and the Greens, you know, really interesting, really interesting development. But no, I mean, there's, there's some really great Labour candidates, young Labour candidates who come in. I wonder whether we couldn't do a leading interview with three or four of the new candidates and get a sort of representation of new MPs coming in. Here's a slightly geeky question, which I'd just like to deal with because people often ask it, we don't do it. Stuart Bertie, please, can you explain the national debt? How much is it? How much did it grow? Is it even important? So the national debt, which is the amount that the country's borrowed and needs to pay back, is usually expressed in

• 24:37Rory Stewart?

  relation to the gross domestic product. So, you know, how much the country produces in a year. And the European Union tried to have very strict rules about the relationship between those things. And in the UK, from the sort of time of sort of late Thatcher through Major, through Tony Blair, you know, it kind of hovered between the sort of thirty, forty percent. And then the financial crisis hit. It exploded after the financial crisis up to about eighty percent. The Conservatives made this one of their big objectives to try to bring it down, but they didn't make much impact. By about twenty seventeen, eighteen, they'd got it down from eighty percent to maybe kind of seventy something percent.

• 25:18Rory Stewart?

  And then it shot up again with Covid and Ukraine. And it's now over a hundred percent of GDP, so a hundred and one percent of GDP, two point seven billion dollars. But the real problem with it is is not the debt, it's the deficit, which is the amount that we borrow additional every year. So we keep adding another forty billion to it every year. That's the problem that Labour Government's inherited. And of course, interest payments are much higher. So people used to say back in the day, oh, well, it doesn't really matter because it's very low interest. So the government can borrow a lot of monies, pay for big infrastructure projects and make its money back. But we've now entered

• 25:59Rory Stewart?

  a more high interest rate environment. And that's means that just servicing the debt interest is costing us tens of billions of pounds a year, which could be spent on other stuff.

• 26:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So the gross debt at the end of December twenty twenty three was two thousand seven hundred and twenty point eight billion for that quarter now. And by the way, you're in France, one of the big issues that really damaged Macron in the run up first to the European elections and then the National Assembly elections was the fact that in a way that it hasn't really cut through in Britain. The the cost of debt repayment has really got into the French political system. People are very, very conscious of the fact that a lot of the money that they pay in tax, and France is a relatively high tax country, that a lot of that money is going on debt repayment. So on the one hand, you have these very left wing forces like Mélenchon saying,

• 26:53Alastair Campbell?

  let's ramp the debt up even more. And on the other hand, you have lots of people really, really worried that debt is not being addressed properly. Very good question, that Stuart Burtie. I've got a question here, Richard Adamson. Does the Prime Minister still hold surgeries in their constituency? How does that work with security and such a busy schedule?

• 27:12Rory Stewart?

  Over to you, come, tell us about Tony Bled and how that worked.

• 27:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, Tony Tony Bled did do, I mean, he tried to get to his constituency once a month. It'll be a lot easier for Keir Starmer because he's a London MP. I suspect Keir Starmer will want to continue to do constituencies, but he'll find it harder and harder simply because of the workload. So, as you know, MPs have caseworkers, they have people who deal with specific cases. I don't know whether Boris Johnson ever did constituency surgeries, and I don't think he probably wouldn't have done that many, even when he wasn't Prime Minister. But yeah, that my bet is that Keir Starmer will want to.

• 27:49Rory Stewart?

  The person who was really incredibly assiduous on this was Theresa May, who, as you can imagine, put constituency absolutely front and forward and continued to do really serious constituency surgeries all the way through. I mean, just a little tribute to her because she's now stepping down. I was really struck during the election campaign while I was supporting more moderate Conservatives. She was actually out there, I mean, pounding the streets of Cheltenham, knocking on doors, putting leaflets through doors. Former Prime Minister, stepping down, no reason to do that, no incentive for her, just still believing in the system, still fighting for the the side of the Conservative party she believed in.

• 28:26Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody posted the the video of her. Ringing on, you know, with those doorbell video things and she rang on the bell and said, oh, hello, it's Theresa May, I'm campaigning for the local Conservative Party candidate. I'm popping a leaflet through your letterbox and I hope you'll give your support to the Conservative. There was obviously nobody in. So they posed anyway, it was sort of pretty remarkable. I can't think of that many Prime Ministers who'd still be door locking. Um, no, but the, the, there's another one here related, Carl Lake. If Keir Starmer had lost his seat at this election, what would have happened?

• 28:56Rory Stewart?

  It's a good question because it, it, it's a difficult one to handle because traditionally now our Prime Ministers come from the House of Commons. I mean, obviously back in the day, Lord Salisbury sat in the House of Lords, but that's the 19th century. So normally, I guess what you would have had to do is get a Labour MP in a very safe Labour seat to agree to step down and for Starmer to run in that seat. Is that right?

• 29:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but then, but, but let's take some, you, you would have said, let's say Wes Streeting had been the leader of the Labour Party.

• 29:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Alastair Campbell?

  Right?

• 29:24Rory Stewart?

  And he only won by 500 votes.

• 29:25Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. In what people thought was a safe seat. Jonathan Ashworth probably thought he was in a relatively safe seat. So I, I guess the technical answer to the question is I don't think here could have become, the King has to ask the leader of the party which can form a majority in the House of Commons to form a government. Does that person have to be part of that majority in the House of Commons? I think they probably do.

• 29:48Rory Stewart?

  It's a constitutional crisis because, you know, there are ways around it. I mean, you could immediately pop Keir Starmer into the House of Lords and have him be Prime Minister from the House of Lords and then resign from the House of Lords to run for the House of Commons. But I think basically you're, you're right. In practice, he couldn't be Prime Minister. However cunning the lawyers and constitutional people try to be. Um, in which case, the great Angela Rayner, who incidentally, listen, I've just been re-listening on leading. Unbelievable. If people want to understand the new Labour Cabinet, Angela Rayner, I mean, she is so frank. Funny, brave, self reflecting. I mean, she's had a life beyond, listening to it again,

• 30:30Rory Stewart?

  to be reminded what she went through in her life, how frank she is about, you know, she just says, you know, I said, what's your mother do? She said, my mother didn't do anything. What did her parents do? They didn't do anything. I never learnt to hug anyone because my mother wasn't interested in the kids and I still feel jealous of people who can hug people. But she's just, there's nothing pompous about her. It doesn't feel like a backstory that she's using for political purposes. It's just a totally, and she's so brutally self reflective and so forgiving, so forgiving of her mother, her father, the whole context, amazing.

• 31:09Alastair Campbell?

  No, I agree. I think it was one of our, without doubt, one of the best interviews we've done. You know, because of her, it wasn't because we were necessarily asking great questions. I just think she's a, she just is an extraordinary person. I felt very moved watching her walk up down in street and also those videos of all the new ministers being welcomed into departments and so forth. This is the most state educated cabinet in our history. There is only one member of that cabinet who went to a private school.

• 31:35Rory Stewart?

  Who's that?

• 31:36Alastair Campbell?

  Louise Hague, I think it is.

• 31:37Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 31:38Alastair Campbell?

  And you've even got a situation, you've got two members of the cabinet from Sunderland, Jonathan Reynolds and Bridget Phillipsen, and you've got two members of the cabinet who went to the same school.

• 31:48Rory Stewart?

  The same state school.

• 31:49Alastair Campbell?

  Lisa and Andy, the same state school, Lisa and Andy and Lucy Powell.

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  Amazing.

• 31:52Alastair Campbell?

  So that, you know, I think that sort of stuff does matter. I think it does, it means that we're looking at people who look more like ours, sound more like ours. But I agree with you. I honestly do, we've done a lot of leading interviews, but if people want to, you know, the ones that we've done from, we've did Keir Starmer quite a long time ago now, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipsen, Rachel Reeves, and obviously we want to do more in the future. But I agree with you. I thought that interview with Angela Rayner was, and it's amazing how many people I've met. Who have said to me that interview transformed their view of her.

• 32:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it is interesting. And I also think that some of the rest of the Labour Cabinet could learn from that. I mean, they could learn to talk more naturally and with more self-reflection and humour and honesty, rather than, I mean, I, there's a stiffness about quite a lot of the other interviews we've done, where they have very powerful backstories, but they're not beginning to open up and be honest and thoughtful about them in the way that Angela Rayner is.

• 32:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Right. My final question, Rory. This is, this is from Edward and it's for you. Will Rory now admit that Ed Davey had a great campaign?

• 32:59Rory Stewart?

  I think I have to admit that it definitely worked. And it's depressing when I'm proved wrong, but it definitely, definitely worked. I still think it's unbelievably embarrassing and depressing that that's what you have to do to get attention, but it definitely worked. Here's my last one. Stuart Bertie. Sunak's resignation speech showed an actual human being with lines like, Starmer's successors will be all our successors, and I wish him and his family well. And again, Sunak said of Starmer, he's a decent, public spirited man who I respect. Why can't this positive attitude be part of everyday politics? We also saw some great tributes from Jeremy Hunt. Talk us through that, because in a way, there's that lovely line on my great political hero, Charles the First, that nothing in his life became

• 33:43Rory Stewart?

  him so much as the, as the departing from it.

• 33:47Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there is, I think somebody else who I thought made a very, very gracious departure speech was, was Nigel Evans, who lost after 32 years, I think it is, in River Valley. And he, but he said, it was a lovely sunny morning. And he just said, look, you know, I wasn't to be, I've lost, but I've loved every minute of working for you people. I really wish my successor well. I wish Keir Starmer well. It just, it was just, and he's quite funny and quite self-deprecating. I think the, and I agree, we said on Channel Four, I thought both in his acceptance speech and in his farewell speech in Downing Street, I thought Rishi Sunak spoke well.

• 34:27Alastair Campbell?

  And it underlined to me, I just wonder whether he was just not cut out for that campaigning, where he's been fed lines and he's been told how to behave and told how to conduct himself. And I really hope that Labour maintain this sense of being respectful to people. I thought the way that Keir Starmer said, you know, whether you voted for me or you didn't, I'm here for Labour voters, for Tory voters, for the Dem voters. Like I said, you know, the first thing he did, when we said in the main podcast, one of the first things he did, get on a plane, go to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and meet the first ministers, show respect to the office. And I thought a very interesting answer is press conference, really, I don't know if you caught his press conference at the weekend, was when somebody said quite jokingly, are you getting used to being called Prime Minister?

• 35:11Alastair Campbell?

  And he said, well, I don't mind people calling me Keir, but you have to understand for the civil service, it's important to them because they are working for the office.

• 35:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Alastair Campbell?

  You know, they're not working for me, Keir Starmer, they're working for the office of the Prime Minister. And I think those sort of that, that respect for institutions that Johnson and Trust so undermined. So, you know, I think Rishi Sunak probably was thinking, you know, I want to go out well, but I think the way that he spoke meant that he, on the day, he did.

• 35:40Rory Stewart?

  I think he did, and, and it was so encouraging for people, particularly in the light of how divisive politics had been and how badly, you know, in America, obviously, Trump took his defeat, how easy and gracious the transition was. And, no, I, I really like that and we need that tone back. I think this is really, one of the things I hated in the House of Commons was the kind of nasty, kind of tribal football chants back and forth during Prime Minister's Questions. Labour has got a honeymoon, it's got a real opportunity to reassure floating voters like myself and make us feel that this is a party that actually cares about the whole country, understands about the whole country. And there'll be many different bits of the country that will want to be reassured.

• 36:25Rory Stewart?

  Business will want to be reassured, farmers will want to be reassured, rural areas want to be reassured, the military will want to be reassured, the police will want to be reassured. So having a narrative that keeps on saying, not just from Keir Starmer, but from the rest of the Cabinet, you know, we're very proud to come from very different backgrounds, but actually we're ruling for everybody, regardless of what background you come from, I think it's going to be important.

• 36:48Alastair Campbell?

  Good, see you soon.

• 36:50Rory Stewart?

  See you soon, thank you, Alison, bye bye.

• 36:52Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

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