46. PRIME MINISTER LIZ TRUSS

In an emergency podcast, Rory and Alastair react to the news that Liz Truss has won the race to become the UK's next prime minister. Plus Kwasi Kwarteng, Joe Lycett, a PM's first 24 hours, Instagram politicians, a potential whip problem, what it means for Keir Starmer, and the next general election. Blackpool live show tickets: Saturday 8th October: wintergardensblackpool.co.uk/events/the-rest-is-politics-live/ Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in 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/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:48Rory Stewart?

  And we're here for an emergency podcast, which is that we have our fourth Prime Minister in Britain in six years. So fourth Prime Minister in six years. Liz Truss is now our Prime Minister. Just to remind people, if you've not been paying attention over the last few weeks, 60 ministers resigned in protest, which toppled Boris Johnson, went into a leadership contest, which was a bit like the Grand National, huge numbers of starters. Liz Truss initially wasn't really seen as much of a runner in the early days of this contest. People were predicting Rishi Sunak maybe against Penny Mordaunt, and she came gradually creeping up the inside. She was behind in the first couple of votes, made it through to the last two, but Rishi

• 2:30Rory Stewart?

  Sunak well ahead on the MPs votes, which means that in the old ways that the Conservative Party used to select its leaders, which was done by the MPs, in fact, that had always been done until very recently, because Theresa May, of course, got in by default. Rishi Sunak would have been Prime Minister, that would have been the normal way they did it, but they went to the Conservative Party membership, and although Rishi Sunak had the endorsement of most of the MPs, Liz Truss comes through as Prime Minister, meaning that she becomes Prime Minister with the majority of her MPs not having voted for her. What do you think of it all, Alistair?

• 3:04Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I do actually think that four Prime Ministers in six years is conduct that we normally associate with failed states.

• 3:12Rory Stewart?

  Or Italy, which is not exactly a failed state.

• 3:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Italy as used to be, although Mario Draghi is now being sort of given the boot, but he gave them a little bit of stability. But I do think that for the opposition, there is a lot of material that's been provided by the contestants in this leadership election, because essentially Liz Truss has won a contest in which one of the battles seems to be who can say the worst things about the Conservative Party's 12 years in power.

• 3:44Rory Stewart?

  And the nicest things about Boris Johnson, it's very odd, isn't it?

• 3:46Alastair Campbell?

  I know, and what, so the Conservative Party and the MPs and the ministers get rid of Boris Johnson because he's a liar, he's a charlatan, and actually he hasn't done very much. And yet, even in her acceptance speech, which is the opportunity to signal change and a break, and I am the future. She actually, the first catastrophically badly delivered clap line in her speech was really a tribute to Boris Johnson, where she ended up by talking about what he'd done in relation to Ukraine and saying that he was respected from Kiev to Carlisle. And then there was the pause because obviously on her, on her speech, he'd written the word

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  clap underlined four times. Nobody clapped. Eventually, somebody, probably her press officers, started a ripple of applause. And I thought the speech as a whole was like, you know, what are you, what are you for? What is the point of you? So I find the whole thing very disparaging.

• 4:43Rory Stewart?

  And that, big questions on that. Why Kiev to Carlisle? I mean, obviously, I was a Cumberley MP, so that was my, my local city. Why not Kiev to Cardiff? Kiev to Clackmannenshire?

• 4:55Alastair Campbell?

  Cock-a-mouse.

• 4:56Rory Stewart?

  Cock-a-mouse.

• 4:57Alastair Campbell?

  I, I, look, it was a really odd thing to say because it was basically saying, I have just been elected the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but it stops before the Scottish border, which at a time when there is quite a kind of support for independence. And the other thing, I don't know if you saw, Nicola Sturgess was very fast out of the traps, pointing out that Liz Truss, having said that Scotland should only be allowed to go independent if 50% of the vote, not just they win, 50% of those who vote, but 50% of the population of the electorate votes for it. On that basis, she is now an illegitimate leader of the Conservative Party because she didn't get 50% of the vote because of

• 5:40Alastair Campbell?

  the 18% or whatever it was who didn't bother to vote.

• 5:43Rory Stewart?

  And, and also because actually it was a surprisingly close election. Rishi did, Rishi Sunak did much better in relation to her than Jeremy Hunt did against Boris Johnson last time round. Much, much closer election.

• 5:55Alastair Campbell?

  Or indeed. I mean, I, but as ever, I think what happens with these things is that the media develop a conventional wisdom based partly on polling and partly on assessment and their own hunch. So I, I think actually it probably was, as you say, I mean, do you remember back in the day when this whole wretched, never ending, or thankfully now has ended, leadership election started? And I was quoting from the real Rory, who was telling us that the favourite had never won, apart from Johnson?

• 6:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do remember.

• 6:22Alastair Campbell?

  And here we are yet again, the favourite has not won.

• 6:25Rory Stewart?

  Yep, very good. She was not the favourite, was she?

• 6:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Rory Stewart?

  No, you're absolutely right. And, and, and that's caused a real embarrassment for some of the MPs and ministers who endorsed Rishi Sunak and then had to back tail and endorse her. Robert Buckland, for example.

• 6:37Alastair Campbell?

  The Welsh Secretary, a very distinguished Welsh Secretary. Do you think, but he was the one put out the other day to to defend the the idea that Boris Johnson should no longer be investigated for telling a pack of lies to Parliament. Do you think, by the way, that all these the briefings that there have been, which seem pretty well sourced and the journalists who are writing them seem to be doing so with confidence, this cabinet of Kwangteng, cleverly Foreign Secretary, Braverman, Home Secretary, do you do you think this is right? Because if that is the case, she is not bringing the party together, that's for sure.

• 7:11Rory Stewart?

  No, that's a very, very right wing cabinet. It's incredibly diverse cabinet, of course. It would be the most startlingly diverse senior leadership in in British history. But it very much is from the right wing of the Conservative Party. And actually, there's an interesting question there, too, which is maybe quite hard to examine. But interesting that some of the most diverse people in the Conservative Party are on the right of the party and why that's happened. Was that something to do with the way that people were selected? When did they come in? So I and and also, I guess, looking at the sort of deeper history without being pretentious. But if there have been four prime ministers in six years, what is it about the moment that does? And of course, it is largely Brexit, isn't it? Because it's Brexit that brings down David Cameron, it's Brexit that brings down Theresa

• 7:54Rory Stewart?

  May, it's Brexit that produces this manifestly unsuitable Prime Minister in Boris Johnson and then provides the opportunity for Liz Truss. Another odd statistic, I guess, which is that three out of the five last Conservative Prime Ministers now women. Can I can I push you on that one? Because obviously, you and I are probably united in most of what we think about Liz Truss. But let me let me try to ask you about this. Why has the Labour Party not been as successful at producing women leaders?

• 8:21Alastair Campbell?

  I honestly, I really don't know the answer to that, because I think we did, back in 97, for example, we had, you know, we really did break eggs to make omelettes of getting more women into Parliament. And there were some very good women into Parliament as well. I could, I can, if you go back through all the leadership elections, so for example, when Tony Bear became leader, Margaret Beckett was one of the, the three contestants, John Prescott being the other. You go through at various points, Margaret Beckett and, and Harriet Harman have been, as it were, acting leaders of the Labour Party. But then there has been this sense that it would be the man. Now, whether it's because of the history of the trade union movement being quite masculine, but then you look at the trade unions today, and quite a few of them have got some, you know, women leaders. So it can't

• 9:06Alastair Campbell?

  just be that. Whether it's to do with the broader culture of Labour Parties, but then if I think about a lot of local Labour Parties that I've been involved with or spoken at, or often it is the women who are driving the, you know, really sort of driving the local party. So I really don't know. I, I, but I, but I think it is a, I think it is a problem for the Labour Party. Now, I, I, I don't believe, I've never believed that for a position as important as the Prime Minister, you should say, well, we should, as it were, rule out 50% of the talent pool, be that men or women. But I think it does, the longer it goes on, I think the harder it becomes for Labour to present themselves as, as genuinely progressive, when women are not seen to be in these senior positions. And I think on the, on the, your point about diversity though, and I think another thing

• 9:51Alastair Campbell?

  that, not just Labour, but I think your party as well, and much of the media, I think there's been an assumption that because historically, uh, black and minority ethnic voters have tended to be Labour, tended to be poorer when they first maybe, you know, started to enter into the, the political mainstream, uh, through, through various ways of, of immigration. I think there's just always been an assumption that black and ethnic minority people will be more left wing than right wing. But if you go around the world to quite a lot of, of, of countries that are predominantly black population, you find a lot of very right wing people.

• 10:28Alastair Campbell?

  So I think it's a sort of patronizing assumption.

• 10:30Rory Stewart?

  I think it is, and I think as Britain becomes more diverse, it's going to be much more likely that we see all the political parties being more diverse across the board.

• 10:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that would be a good thing. I think that would be a good thing.

• 10:40Rory Stewart?

  I think a very good thing, and it's probably a sign that as Britain gets more confidently diverse, that's the direction which we're going to go. It's going to be very interesting, though, to see them in their new positions and in their new performances. I was just watching, if people are interested in getting a sense of Kwasi Kourou, who's likely to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, there's probably the most interesting interview he's ever done, which you can pick up quite easily on Twitter or YouTube, is with Anand Menon, and it's Beer and Brexit interview from 2019. And it's Kwasi Kourou, very sort of relaxed for an hour, relaxed in a very sort of quasi way, which is that he can be quite kind of pugnacious and sort of sardonic and dismissive when it suits him. Credibly intellectual.

• 11:25Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he did go to Eton, of course.

• 11:27Rory Stewart?

  No, no, he's got a doctorate from Cambridge and kind of the coinage crisis, the 17th century or something. He's going to tell me it's the 18th century. But kind of effortless kind of dropping of very grand names in journalism. He was an economic historian, his father's an economist, but at the same time, of course, very, very dismissive of expertise, you know, really doesn't want to go anywhere with Anand saying, what do you make about the economic forecasts as a consequences of Brexit? He says, you know, because he's incredibly sort of confident, very grand in his manner, he sort of says, well, you know, economics, you know, my father's an economist, I'm an economic historian, it's not really a science, is it? And sort of poo-poos the whole idea. Anyway, anyone interested in Kwasi Kourou, that's a small recommendation.

• 12:12Alastair Campbell?

  The, talking about Anand Menon, I mean, he did a very good interview with Liz Truss that I saw as well.

• 12:18Rory Stewart?

  Oh, in the same Beer and Brexit interview?

• 12:20Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know whether it was the same Beer and Brexit thing or not, but, and she, I have to say, she did not come across in a sort of grand and confident way. She came across as being rather lightweight and superficial. I find Kwasi Kourou. I had lots of encounters with him, mainly in TV studios during the people's vote thing. And he would always say to me, you're wasting your time with this thing. Brexit is a done deal and nothing's going to stop it. As you say, very kind of, quite dismissive. There's a lot of rumour about him being very, very close to Liz Truss. Is this true?

• 12:55Rory Stewart?

  I haven't fixed up on that one.

• 12:57Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay.

• 12:58Rory Stewart?

  I haven't fixed up on that one. But he's also strange for somebody who's incredibly intelligent and is sort of, you know, an academic. As you say, you've put your finger on it. He doesn't really want to, often if you get in an argument with him, get into the meets the argument. He just takes position, you're wasting your time. No, no, not going to happen. Don't be so ludicrous. No, Rory, forget it. You're never going to get there. You know, he's got this very kind of overly pragmatic, kind of dismissive tone.

• 13:24Alastair Campbell?

  What's your sense from having, you know, we've talked about this before, but now that she is going to be the Prime Minister, once you've seen her much. What is your sense of actually what she will be like as Prime Minister? And I guess before that, did you see anything at the time when you were working as one of her ministers that made you think, hmm, I could see her in number 10?

• 13:43Rory Stewart?

  No, I wasn't. I definitely wasn't expecting this. I mean, I think at the time, to be honest, we perceived her as very ambitious. She was liked a lot by David Cameron. I mean, she's here because David Cameron promoted her very early. He promoted her within two years and got her into the cabinet within four years. Very rapid promotion under David Cameron. Why did he promote her? He promoted her because I remember his chief of staff saying they thought that she was a brilliant communicator. What they meant by that is that she was incredibly disciplined about just repeating whatever the party slogan of the day was. You know, her great line, which I think I mentioned to you before is, you know, she used to say to me, never be interesting, Rory. And she went through.

• 14:28Alastair Campbell?

  She followed that rule in her acceptance speech.

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  She went through a lot of difficult times. She didn't get her first seat that she tried for in 2005, which was fine. I think that was a difficult seat to win. But 2010, she, there was a scandal where her constituency association tried to turn against her. There were these famous people called the Turnip Taliban, these kind of very conservative Norfolk Conservative Association turned against her because she'd had an affair. Then she was teased a lot when she was the DEFRA minister for a speech on cheese, which you can see on YouTube. And pork, was that, was that the pork market speech? Yeah, that's, that's it. So there was a very unfortunate delivery of the word pork. And then there was a strong promotion of, of how English cheese was better than French cheese. And she kept saying, it's a disgrace. And again, she has this technique which goes

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  wrong for often, which is she delivers what's supposed to be a laugh line or an applause line. And then there's dead silence because something in the intonation doesn't quite work for the audience. They don't really know that she's got to the end, I think is the point. I think the point is that the conservative audiences are trained in, in party conference to applaud. But yeah, they need to know when to applaud. So you need to slightly move your voice up for a crescendo. From Kiev to Carlisle. Exactly. As opposed to from Kiev to Carlisle. That's all you're doing. Yeah. Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a minute.

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• 17:51Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics special episode on Liz Truss with me Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. And did you see Laura Koonsberg's new program? I didn't watch the program, but as soon as I got back from my morning swim, I realized that it's fair to say the comedian Joe Lysat had made more of an impression than than Sunak or Truss. It was amazing. Mesmerizing. Go on, tell us about it. Describe it. So basically what happened was that the Liz Truss finished her interview and there was a panel of a former Number 10 adviser, Emily Thornbury, shadow cabinet member, and Joe Lysat, comedian. And Joe Lysat proceeded to cheer and whoop Liz Truss's performance

• 18:36Alastair Campbell?

  as though he was one of the Liz Truss supporters at the Tory Party listings. Laura Koonsberg sort of, I think, looked very unsure as to how to deal with it. And then what happened was that Joe Lysat basically said the kind of thing, almost word for word, that Truss supporting MPs and client journalists were saying and had been saying about Liz Truss. She was terrific. She was so clear about what she was saying and so forth. And of course, what was his story? Because he was a comedian, and it was fairly obvious that he was frankly taking the piss, nobody quite knew how to how to deal with it. But I found it one of the and I do think it was a wonderful expose of I've written a piece for the New

• 19:18Alastair Campbell?

  European about this, which you can read online. It was a wonderful expose of the. This sense that if you're in that media bubble, there is a narrative that you kind of have to follow. And the narrative was Liz Truss is going to be the prime minister, therefore we have to take this very, very, very seriously.

• 19:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Alastair Campbell?

  Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday had run this piece about, you know, as part of their never ending campaign to lie that the BBC is sort of, you know, terrible left wing organisation. They'd been running this thing about all these left wing comics. The Taylor front page today, of all the things happening in the world, the front page lead is about, and now a comic mocks Truss on TV.

• 19:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's amazing. And the article goes on to then say, and in Have I Got News For You, they made scurrilous and rude comments about it. Whereas obviously Have I Got News For You has been doing that forever.

• 20:05Alastair Campbell?

  If it wasn't for Have I Got News For You, I think you can make the case, we would never have had the up till now worst prime minister in our history.

• 20:12Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. They created him, didn't they? They created this guy. Yeah.

• 20:15Alastair Campbell?

  I also think, I do think that Joe Lysat, who must be absolutely loving this, because of course it's made him the comedian du jour. He'll now be able to just, basically, he could go around the country now just reading Liz Truss's speeches and people are going to laugh. So he, but he, what I absolutely, what I loved about it as well, he actually, when you look back through his Twitter feed, he signaled what he was going to do. Because when they announced him, they said, coming up on Laura Kinsberg's show, Brishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Emily Thornbury and Joe Lysat. And he's tweeted immediately, I'm so forward, looking forward to this episode of, of Would I Lie To You? So it was obvious he was going to take it seriously.

• 20:53Rory Stewart?

  It was amazing, wasn't it? It was so cool. Cause he, and he was wearing this incredibly bright yellow sort of rain jacket and sitting there very solemnly saying, well, of course, I'm, I'm very right wing. And, you know, I think she's been very clear.

• 21:06Alastair Campbell?

  Very clear. Very, very clear.

• 21:08Rory Stewart?

  Here's some questions. I thought we got some really good questions, actually. We got nearly hundreds of questions, actually. So Alex, hey, here's, here's one for you. Alistair, what do the first 24 hours for a new PM look like?

• 21:20Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Lord. By volume one and volume two.

• 21:26Alastair Campbell?

  It was chaotic in some ways in that I think the first thing I'd say, and I don't know whether this will be the same for Liz Truss, I guess it will be because it's been such a long campaign. But as you know, there are a few more exhausting exercises than general election campaigns. So you're pretty tired, you get in there, there's a bit of a buzz. Prime Minister walks in, there's a whole load of civil servants, they're all lined up. The Cabinet Secretary greets the new Prime Minister, takes them through to the Cabinet Room. Because it's slightly different for Liz Truss because, you know, she's been a Cabinet Minister for most of the 12 years that the Tories have been running the country into the ground. And then essentially the civil service, they'll have done a lot of work, they'll have tried to sort of second guess what she'll want to do in the first few days.

• 22:11Alastair Campbell?

  But you're very, very quickly trying to read and find out exactly what it is that they want. So obviously, one of the first things that has to happen, she has to appoint a Cabinet. It looks like she's pretty much decided who that should be. But that will be fraught, there'll be all sorts of ministers who won't want the job that they're offered, and that will take a bit of time. She'll have her first Prime Ministers to prepare for, there'll be lots of messages of congratulation from world leaders, and she'll have to decide who she should speak to first, and when should she do that. And essentially, what you're looking for in those first 24 hours is for the machine to be given a sense of priority. Now, again, I don't think that that was clear from what she said, either through the campaign or in her acceptance speech today. So you have to hope that there has been a lot more work going on.

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  And are there big wins that you were trying to get? Were you in that first week or two trying to land big speeches, trying to land a call with the US President? Were there certain kinds of things that if you were her Chief of Staff, you'd be trying to push her to do?

• 23:08Alastair Campbell?

  I think in her case, she has to do something about this cost of living energy crisis straight away, otherwise I think she's in real trouble from the word go. I mean, don't forget, you know, within less than 24 hours, Gordon Brown was out making the Bank of England independent, and then we were setting out the first Framing of the first Queen's Speech. So, you know, we, we did have a pretty big, bold stuff right from the word go, but that was, that was with a change of government on the back of an election. I think it's very different if you've been a newly elected party leader. It was the same when Gordon Brown went in. It was, you know, Gordon Brown, if you remember, there were quite a few problems immediately. He had floods, he had a terrorist attack.

• 23:47Rory Stewart?

  Just to remind people of that. So Gordon Brown, like Liz Truss, came in midway through. So since 1945, there have been eight prime ministers who've come in with a general election and nine prime ministers who've come in midway.

• 24:00Alastair Campbell?

  That's amazing. That's a good start. I didn't know that one.

• 24:02Rory Stewart?

  And, and as Alistair says, if you come in as a general election, you're in a very different situation because you've been the leader of the opposition for a few years. You've had a long time to get your manifesto together, think about what your policies are, and there's a change of, change of government. You're getting rid of the old lot, bringing in the new lot, and you're coming in with your big plans.

• 24:20Alastair Campbell?

  And that gives, that gives an amazing energy. There was, there was an extraordinary energy. And I, I listened to Gus O'Donnell this morning, the former Cabinet Secretary, and he was making the point that he felt one of the first things she should do is to stop this incessant ministerial attacking and talking down of civil servants. The fact is, if you're going to deal with some of the crises that are coming down the track now, let alone try to deliver on some of the promises you've made, most of which most people inside government probably believe are undeliverable. I mean, for example, you know, eye-watering sums of money that are going to have to be spent on defence if she's to deliver on her three percent pledge. The, the tax cuts that she's talking about, there is obviously going to have to be both borrowing and probably another windfall tax to pay

• 25:03Alastair Campbell?

  for an, an energy package. So you're talking about really, really big stuff. And if I were, if I were her, I would just, you know, she's, she, she's got to get in there now and start, start governing and doing it pretty quickly. And again, I'd be interested in your take from when she was a colleague of yours. I don't know as many civil servants who worked with her as you do, but the ones that I do know all pretty much universally say that she's not very good at listening to advice. She gets her head stuck on sometimes rather idiosyncratic, wacky ideas that she can't let go of, and she's not very good at prioritising, which strikes me as potentially a bit of a disaster zone.

• 25:41Rory Stewart?

  I think that that is probably right. I also think, just listening to you there, very interesting because you're talking about getting right out there and framing the government's agenda, aren't you? Am I right? Your idea is that she should come out?

• 25:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 25:56Rory Stewart?

  That isn't really, in my experience, her strength. She's not somebody who gives a sort of grand overview. She doesn't, she doesn't sort of think in those terms. She will have a particular policy that she wants to drive ahead. So if I think about her at DEFRA, she, for example, would be very interested in data. She was very interested in trying to to release all the data holdings of DEFRA and doing more digital stuff. She wasn't the kind of person who would want to stand back and say, this is Britain's environment and agricultural vision. She doesn't really think in those terms. So I think what we're likely to see is a bit what we've seen in leadership campaigns. Obviously, it's not a difficult guess, which is that she's more likely to be able to say, I'm going to, you

• 26:36Rory Stewart?

  know, stop the national insurance rise, I'm going to deal with the corporation tax rise, and I'm going to cut VAT, but not, and this is who Britain is, this is, this is where we go.

• 26:49Alastair Campbell?

  But I think, I think one of the reasons that Johnson will go down in history as a failure is that he didn't do the big picture either. He was, he was much more at ease when he was either in a day to day fight, or when he was dealing with crisis, or when he was just frankly being the centre of attention. But there was no sense of a, of a narrative for Britain that was being knitted together. I get the feeling with her that it's very much about the day to day. Now, look, she has to now try and prove everybody wrong. But she does so not just with these massive challenges, but also, well, if one of the questions we got, you were probably better placed to answer this from Lydia Messiah. What a great name, Messiah. How will Conservative Party MPs be feeling about Truss? And I suspect it'll be very, very mixed.

• 27:31Rory Stewart?

  It will be mixed because she's not somebody who's particularly popular in the tea rooms. She did these famous karaoke parties with her best friend, Theresa Coffey, who's now slated to be the Health Secretary.

• 27:42Alastair Campbell?

  And Deputy Prime Minister.

• 27:44Rory Stewart?

  And Deputy Prime Minister. And so she, you know, she would smile at people. But, you know, I talked to an MP who voted for her, saying that in 12 years Liz Truss had never exchanged a word with her. And I think that's quite possible. I mean, she's somebody who isn't, you know, she's, she's friendly and she's smiley, but she's not necessarily somebody who's socializing with colleagues.

• 28:07Alastair Campbell?

  Did you not find it extraordinary that she didn't even shake Sunak's hand?

• 28:10Rory Stewart?

  I thought that was strange. I think she was caught off balance.

• 28:13Alastair Campbell?

  Was the guy sitting next to her, was that her husband?

• 28:16Rory Stewart?

  I think that is her husband, yeah.

• 28:17Alastair Campbell?

  Because that, there was no, there was nothing going on there either.

• 28:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, I think, I think that's right. I think that's right. So how the MP's going to be feeling? Well, remember, the majority of them voted for Rishi Sunak. So the majority of them thought that Rishi would be a better Prime Minister than she did. Some of them will think that she's not up to the job. So one of them said that she was as mad as a box of snakes and then immediately endorsed her and is hoping to be in her cabinet. So there are going to be people who, who are in her inner circle, who think that she's round the twist. The left of the party is obviously going to be troubled if the rhetoric is more culture wars. So if she brings in Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch in senior positions, you can expect a ratcheting up of the culture wars. That's not a big thing

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  for her, interestingly. She hasn't been a big culture warrior.

• 29:09Alastair Campbell?

  But isn't she slightly a prisoner of the newspapers that have backed particularly the Mail and the Telegraph and also the ERG and Boris Johnson, who's going to hang around like a bad smell?

• 29:20Rory Stewart?

  She's, I think she's relatively socially liberal. I think her producing this line, a woman, a woman is a woman, is not something I see as being particularly in character or particularly in line with the way that she's conducted herself. I think she calculated very early on that her way to win this was to get the right on her side, to win over people like Ian Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, to make sure that she was seen as the heir of Boris Johnson and that she was seen as the reliable Brexiteer. And posed as Mr Thatcher, of course. I mean, a lot of this has been an Instagram victory.

• 29:51Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think that she'll dump a lot of the stuff that she talked about in the leadership election? And what does that say that we've now had a prime minister elected on what would then become something of a false prospectus? Or do you, as I think, believe that she'll stick out with that very right wing agenda because she knows that if she doesn't, they'll chop her legs off?

• 30:06Rory Stewart?

  I think that she will definitely stick to the right wing economic bit of the agenda because she is right wing in economic terms and she and her likely chancellor are very much on that side.

• 30:18Alastair Campbell?

  And do we mean by that, Roy, that they, are we talking here, the old style trickle down economics? Is that what they really believe? That's what she seemed to be saying on the, on the Joe Lycett show?

• 30:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's trickle down, but it's an odd kind of trickle down because remember when Nigel Lawson and people were talking about that, they paired it with a belief in what they would have called fiscal responsibility. In all the words they didn't believe in driving up the debt and the deficit. And of course, that's, you know, George Osborne also was very much a man of trying to reduce the debt and the deficit. That was the justification for austerity, something we argued about a lot. She, on the other hand, has decided that she's going to delay debt repayment. She's produced this wonderful phrase, COVID related debt. It's, it's really a sort of jargon point. I mean, debt is debt is debt. It's just cash. It's just money. But by calling it COVID related debt, she's trying to find

• 31:08Rory Stewart?

  a justification for why she's going to let debt rise to more than 100% of GDP. Question for the British economy. I mean, I guess many countries are in that situation. But as we've discussed before, one of the differences is that in the case of Japan, most of that debt is owned internally. In the case of the United States, as Rishi Sunak kept pointing out, it's the world's reserve currency. Britain may be in a more vulnerable position on all this stuff.

• 31:30Alastair Campbell?

  I see Scholz in Germany yesterday announced a 65 billion pound package to help households and companies facing the energy price rises. I mean, that's the sort of scale that we're going to be talking about, probably within a couple of days.

• 31:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, listen, I mean, there's got to be something enormous. And this is going to be a question of where her pragmatism comes against her, her, her sort of economic beliefs. So her economic beliefs, quite clearly, she kept saying, I don't, during the campaign, I don't believe in handouts. And clearly what she would like to do in an ideal world is to use tax cuts. Now, of course, tax cuts don't help the very poorest in the country because the very poorest in the country don't pay tax. And there will be very, very strong pressure on her now to either cap energy bills or give a very large handout to people, which will be something that she and Kwasi Kourting, I think, will be ideologically reluctant to do, but they're also very practical politicians

• 32:29Rory Stewart?

  may decide they have to do it practically.

• 32:31Alastair Campbell?

  Hassan Patel, will Boris Johnson actually be the backseat driver? If Johnson loyalists are given cabinet roles, how long before we see another vote of no confidence?

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  He can't be the backseat driver because backseat drivers are people who know what direction they're travelling down the road.

• 32:45Alastair Campbell?

  Not necessarily. Backseat drivers are the ones who say, go through the red light and turn right down that no, that one-way road.

• 32:53Rory Stewart?

  I don't think he's got any very strong views. I don't think he's really like that. I think he may plot to replace her or topple her. I don't think he's a great one for giving advice, largely because he doesn't have very strong views about very much.

• 33:04Alastair Campbell?

  I think the question, I think what Hassan means is whether he will be giving advice to those who are inside the tent, possibly trying to bring her down. I mean, there is talk of people who've got letters ready already, which sounds absurd to me, but there we are.

• 33:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, I think any driving that Boris Johnson does is in the direction of Boris Johnson. And he has very, very strong, very developed, very confident, and I think very successful views on how to promote Boris Johnson. But that's be what he's been thinking about more than direction of the country. Here was a question from Rattish Paja, and actually it was a similar question that I got from, on Twitter, from Mia Lederman. So, Alistair, what advice would you give Keir Starmer on PMQs? It seems Liz is rather stilted in delivery. So, okay, we're going into PMQs, I guess, on Wednesday. What should Keir be doing?

• 33:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think I've said to you before, I don't think Labour has done enough during the leadership election to brand her. I think the thing I would want to do right from the word go is to tie her absolutely to the 12 years of Conservative government. She's been there, she's been a minister, and by most people's reckoning, the country is in an absolute mess. And even though there are elements of that that have been beyond government's control, pandemic, elements of the pandemic, Ukraine war and so forth, I think that Labour has been too soft at letting the Tories away with that narrative. We've now had four prime ministers in 12 years. She's been a minister for, I think she's been a minister longer than anybody apart

• 34:38Alastair Campbell?

  from Gove. So I think he should be thinking about how do I absolutely pin her to the mess that the country is in. He should be perfectly polite and welcoming of her to the role, et cetera, but I think Labour's got to get really, really tough with these people because they're going to think, the game they're going to try to play is that she is now the leader of a brand new government. Now, I think that she didn't help herself in that task with the over-the-top tribute to Johnson, which failed to get a clap line because of the intonation on Kev to Carlyle. And she hasn't helped herself by the way that she's conducted herself through the leadership campaign. But I do think she will try, and you know, Joe Lycett will be on to the fact, that the

• 35:21Alastair Campbell?

  media will help her to portray herself as a new force and as a new driver of the government machine. She has been part of the government machine that's driven us to the mess that we're in, and I think that's what Kier has to pin her on.

• 35:32Rory Stewart?

  And is there anything in her manner or her delivery which you think he can use to try to trick her up? I mean, I can't really envisage what it'll feel like, the two of them talking to each other, because of course, the Kieran-Boris show was very much kind of loud, bombastic on one side and quite sort of dryly, loyally and forensic on the other. How are you viewing this one?

• 35:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Johnson, because of his extraordinary ability to say that black was white and something he'd said the day before was the exact opposite of what he said today, that is a very difficult thing to pin down. Added to which, he does have a certain, you know, way with words and he's got nerve, et cetera. So I think that, I think Liz Truss will lend herself much, much more to Kier's more forensic. And loyally approach. But I think what Labour will be wanting is for Keir to be a little bit less loyally and a little bit more aggressive. And I don't mean aggressive in a nasty way because I don't think that works. And I do think, I mean, I hope this

• 36:34Alastair Campbell?

  doesn't sound sexist, it's not meant to. But I do think when men are attacking women, it doesn't always land well in that parliamentary setting. If you remember, we're coming up quite soon to the 10th anniversary of Julia Gillard's famous misogyny speech. And I'm pleased to be able to say that we're going to be interviewing her around that time. Right, good. And, and, and, but, but I do think that one of the things that the Australian macho politicians underestimated was the extent to which actually that whole sort of, you know, attacking her, people thinking that they were attacking her because she was a woman. I think you've got to be very careful about that. But I think, I think the style that Keir tried to work against Johnson probably will be the right approach with, with Liz

• 37:17Alastair Campbell?

  Truss. But ultimately, I've always said that Prime Minister's Questions is a strategic anvil. That is where you have to be testing your own arguments and exposing the weaknesses of your opponent's arguments. And if you're the opposition, not least in preparation for a general election.

• 37:34Rory Stewart?

  Anybody interested in her advisors, special advisors and things, good article, which you can see online from the Evening Standard, from the Insider, which lays out the key players, analyzes people like Ruth Porter, Adam Jones, Sophie Jarvis, and her Instagram experts, just, just something to remind people of. I mean, this is our first real Instagram Prime Minister.

• 37:54Alastair Campbell?

  Is this also, Rory, the first Prime Minister in your lifetime that is younger than you? I've had two.

• 37:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it is, it is the first.

• 38:01Alastair Campbell?

  How does that make you feel, Rory?

• 38:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, it makes me feel extremely aged. I would like to point out, of course, that she was eight, you were 18 when she was born. I don't know how that makes you feel, says he coming.

• 38:12Alastair Campbell?

  Not great.

• 38:13Rory Stewart?

  Not great, but, but no, I agree.

• 38:14Alastair Campbell?

  I, I, I voted against her, against her predecessor, Margaret Thatcher.

• 38:20Rory Stewart?

  So I, I think the Instagram thing is interesting. I mean, the Instagram thing, if you wanted to make a kind of grand vision statement, she is the first Prime Minister who really built her career off Instagram.

• 38:32Alastair Campbell?

  Do you really, do you think that's, do you think you can't really say that?

• 38:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean firstly, she is an incredibly active user of it. She was even when I was in Parliament, even 2014, 15, she was known as being the leading person amongst our whole generation on Instagram. And you can see that in the incredibly carefully framed photographs with which almost every policy was put forward. Do you remember when she was the Trade Secretary? Basically, what would happen is once or twice a week, there would be a photograph of her in front of another flag, shaking hands with another person, apparently achieving another trade deal for Britain. Of course, what she was doing almost all the time was simply rolling over an existing deal that existed with the European Union. But the visuals, I remember my mother saying to me, gosh, Liz Truss is really busy.

• 39:16Alastair Campbell?

  She's only got 56,000 followers on Instagram. Cristiano Ronaldo's got tens of millions.

• 39:22Rory Stewart?

  All those images were picked up in the newspapers, picked up on Twitter, celebrated by Conservative columnists. And, and you remember, in a sense, a lot of her early campaign was a sort of dressing up box, where a bit like a sort of Barbie doll or an action man figurine, she'd appear in a new costume almost every day, often a sort of Mrs. H tribute costume or something demonstrating that she was tough on tanks. So I think she is part of a new appearance of image because I don't think her writing or her speaking is anything like as important.

• 39:56Alastair Campbell?

  I know. She, I mean, her speeches are, her speeches are really bad, really badly written, really badly delivered. She has to improve that because you, you can't, you can't operate at that level if you can't do those very, very basic things. I must read you this, Rory, because while we've been talking, I've just been, I'm not being rude, but I've been flicking through my emails as you do.

• 40:15Rory Stewart?

  I've got to say, that's pretty rude.

• 40:17Alastair Campbell?

  But I'm trying to keep on top of what's going on.

• 40:19Rory Stewart?

  Looking on your Instagram account while I'm speaking.

• 40:21Alastair Campbell?

  No, I was looking up her Instagram followers as I could contribute to the debate. Alistair, can you please do an Instagram Live as soon as possible? I'm feeling really sick at the thought of Truss being Prime Minister and I'm sure everyone else is. We all need you to articulate our disgust for us on your Instagram Live. It's so cathartic to hear you say it is as it is. This silly, self-obsessed woman voted in by a lot of silly Conservative Party members, for fuck's sake. The only thing that will make us feel better for a moment is you doing one of your Instagram lives. But I can't do an Instagram live when we're doing the podcast, can I, Roy? That's just not on.

• 40:50Rory Stewart?

  You can't do it. Well, you can't do it actually as we're speaking. I think you might be given permission to do it after we hang up.

• 40:55Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, I think we have to. We have to get the podcast out first.

• 40:58Rory Stewart?

  Actual view of you doing an Instagram live while I'm wittering on about.

• 41:01Alastair Campbell?

  You're not wittering, Roy. You've been very concise. You've been very, very interesting. And here's one for you. Darren Gange, I think. What next for Rishi? Is California his best option?

• 41:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's a big question, not just for Rishi, but a lot of other people. So Rishi Sunak is going to be very, very, is going to be in a very difficult position because traditionally, until Boris Johnson, the tradition was always that you brought a team of rivals in. You brought big beasts into your cabinet. John Prescott, of course, brought in by Tony Blair, who'd run against him. I think Margaret Becker, as you pointed out, ran against him as well. And in the case of Theresa May, she actually made Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary.

• 41:39Alastair Campbell?

  Big mistake. David Davis Brexit Secretary, big mistake.

• 41:43Rory Stewart?

  But all of that was about bring the big beasts in. So the tradition would have been until Boris Johnson that Rishi Sunak would automatically have been Chancellor, ran against her, would have been the Chancellor coming out of it. And of course, I sense that's what I suppose Tony Blair did with Gordon Brown. But she's not going to do that. She's not going to give him a job senior enough. She's effectively going to offer him a demotion from Chancellor to a more junior cabinet position, which is what Boris Johnson did to Jeremy Hunt. And I think the likelihood is that Rishi Sunak will not take that. But here's another problem for her. Three of the leading chief whips were in Rishi Sunak's campaign. Mark, who was the chief whip for

• 42:18Alastair Campbell?

  Mark Harper, yeah.

• 42:20Rory Stewart?

  So Mark Harper, Mark Spencer, who was the Boris Johnson's chief whip, Mark Harper, who was the chief whip under David Cameron, and Gavin Williamson, Sir Gavin Williamson, the famous baby-faced assassin. All those people are on Rishi Sunak's side. Again, she probably won't give a job to Dominic Raab, who was the Deputy Prime Minister, and is quite a big figure in the party. And listen, because I can hear it in the background, I just want to apologize. I'm in Kampala in Uganda. And if you can hear music pumping in from the side, I'm in a hotel which for some reason really goes for kind of big music.

• 42:54Alastair Campbell?

  I love that. I love that.

• 42:56Rory Stewart?

  You go, come and stay in this lovely hotel. Here, I can recommend it strongly. It's called the Onomo Hotel, the Onomo Hotel in Kampala.

• 43:07Rory Stewart?

  Anytime you want to come and see us. Right, here's a last question for you and we should probably wrap up. Tom Parkin, Truss mentioned a general election in 2024. What are the chances sticking to that timetable?

• 43:18Alastair Campbell?

  She, I noticed that, that she specifically said, you know, we've got two years. I think the chances of sticking to that timetable are at the moment quite high, because I think the Tories will be looking at the state, the landscape and thinking they are not in good shape. But if at any point between now and then she felt they would be better than they will be in 2024, she'll go for it.

• 43:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's going to be fascinating. She's a long way behind, I think, in the polls. I'm right at the moment. So it is an opportunity for Labour, but the question is, can she turn it around? Can she surprise people? And this is going to be a big test for Keir Starmer, to be honest, because he's been given the benefit of the doubt, running up against Boris Johnson, because Boris Johnson, for his many, many horrible flaws, and obviously anyone listening to this podcast knows that neither of us have any time for Boris Johnson. But people, I suppose, acknowledge that he's a very tricky character to deal with. He has a certain kind of strange, unruly charisma. That is not true of Liz Truss. And Keir Starmer is coming into a primus questions with a cost of living crisis that is crushing people, with an economy that is teetering on the

• 44:28Rory Stewart?

  edge of a recession, with debt soaring, a government that's been in for 12 years, with fourth prime minister in six years, and a prime minister who is nothing like the type of communicator that Boris Johnson was. So this is Keir Starmer's great opportunity. And I think, and here's a provocative thing for you to conclude on. If he doesn't succeed in really making an impact on Liz Truss, let's say in a year's time, she's ahead of him in the opinion polls, do you think that's the end of Keir Starmer?

• 44:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the Labour Party, we talked about the difference between Labour and the Tories in terms of getting women leaders. The Labour Party does not have a history of defenestrating leaders. Um. No, you can argue that's a good thing or a bad thing. And I just don't sense that that is going to happen with Keir. But the fact is that this, the Tory party is now absolutely, undeniably beatable. Uh, I think there is a real mood in the country. I don't think she might, she'll, look, she'll come in, she'll do a big economic package, she'll do something big on the energy thing, and she may get a bit of a bounce out of that. But it won't be as, nearly as big as the Tory party and their media supporters would want it to be. Um. So, so it's wide open for Labour. And I just think it's interesting, you, you, you talk about PMQs, it's got to be about much more than Keir, it's got to be about the

• 45:42Alastair Campbell?

  whole shadow cabinet's got to raise its game and raise its profile. But also, it's about, it's about party campaigning across the country. I was asked, I was out at an event recently, and somebody said to me, what are the Labour Party's current campaigns? And if you're the opposition, you should be campaigning on certain things the whole time. Now, you could argue cost of living and energy. And to be fair, it's not impossible that in week one of her premiership, she will take a Labour policy off the shelf and take it as her own. Now, for the opposition, that's a little bit frustrating on one level, but actually, it's not a bad place for Keir to start, especially if he's going to present himself as the serious guy for serious times against somebody who's a bit of a flibbertigibbet and sort of moves with the wind. And you never quite know where she's coming from.

• 46:26Rory Stewart?

  But if she doesn't, he's got a real chance, hasn't he? Because I think capping energy bills has got real appeal to voters.

• 46:31Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, sure.

• 46:32Rory Stewart?

  If he can hold that line and she doesn't take it, I think that is something to give him some.

• 46:36Alastair Campbell?

  I'd be amazed if she doesn't take it, because I, I just, I just can't see how you cannot do that. You're talking about millions of people that are going to get plunged into chronic poverty. Um, that's a big thing. But I've got to say, the tone of her, of her interview on the Joe Lycett Show was very much against the whole sort of, you know, redistribution from rich to poor and so forth. So maybe she will just sort of stick to these newfound very, very right wing principles. We'll see.

• 47:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you guys very, very much. Um, so bye bye from me.

• 47:08Alastair Campbell?

  And, and from me, we'll speak to you very soon.

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