278. Question Time: How reliable are the polls?

What happens at Number 10 when there is a change of government? Are polls a help or hinderance to the parties pre-election day? What are the benefits of Joe Biden staying on as Presidential nominee? 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 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Podcast Editor: Nathan Copelin 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.

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• 1:58Speaker 02

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• 2:05Speaker 04

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• 2:29Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:32Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And Rory, first question allows us to talk about our splendid interview with the former Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, which is the latest episode of Leading.

• 2:42Rory Stewart?

  It's what even my mother says, God, G O D.

• 2:44Alastair Campbell?

  G O D. Well, when we were there, he used to put, you know, notes to T B, Tony Blair, C C, J H, Jeremy Haywood, J Poe, Jonathan Powell, then he would say, God, Gus O'Donnell. Anyway, the question from Ben Reed, what happens behind the scenes when there is a change of government, change of Prime Minister? Presumably, there are a lot of operational things that would need to be handed over to the new PM. How does this happen? Does the outgoing PM have any involvement? Or is it entirely civil service and security service led? How long does it take? So there's something called the access talks, and this is something that God, Gus O'Donnell, talks about.

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  In our leading interview, which people can listen to now.

• 3:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So basically, the existing Prime Minister gives permission for the civil service to talk to the opposition parties. Now, obviously, there's only one opposition party that might take over, but they do actually go through the same process with the Lib Dems and other smaller parties.

• 3:33Rory Stewart?

  And it's been going on for months. And my memory of this is the civil servants will have been preparing huge contingency plans. They'll be going through the Labour manifesto with a fine tooth comb.

• 3:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Rory Stewart?

  And they'll be trying to guess what the new Labour administration will want and they want. So the civil servants will turn up with briefing files, they'll get their minister. The minister may be someone, we're assuming Bridget Philistin will be the Education Secretary, Wes Streeting will be the Health Secretary, that'll be their assumptions. But that might not inevitably happen. They might decide to bring someone else. And was there anybody who was a shadow minister in 97 who didn't become a real Secretary of State?

• 4:07Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Lord, I can't, I honestly can't remember.

• 4:09Rory Stewart?

  I bet there were, though.

• 4:10Alastair Campbell?

  I'm sure there were. Well, because the other thing is, even if, even in a landslide, you sometimes get freak results. So for example, In this election, there is a lot of talk about whether one of the seats the Greens might pick up is Thangam Debenhay's seat.

• 4:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Alastair Campbell?

  Which then means, and I hope Thangam wins because I think she's terrific and it'd be great to have a Culture Secretary who really gets culture. But let's say that happened, then one of the first things he has to do is to find the new Culture Secretary. Well, that might be an existing Cabinet Member who moves into that position, then there's another gap somewhere else and all of a sudden you're playing jigs.

• 4:40Rory Stewart?

  And then the poor civil servants are turning up and they've prepared a briefing, assuming it's Thangam Debenhay. And then suddenly, somebody else comes in and they've got to come up with a new line.

• 4:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, just on that, for example, at the Treasury at the moment, so if Rachel Reeves becomes Chancellor, she'll be the first female Chancellor. Well, I have been in the Chancellor's lavatory and there is a stand-up urinal in there. I mean, not to get too sort of delicate about it. So if you have a female Chancellor, is that a sort of, you know, do you want to change that?

• 5:07Rory Stewart?

  And then you have this thing I said I don't talk about, which is simply things like office spaces and accommodation. So if you've got a young family, sometimes people choose the premises.

• 5:16Alastair Campbell?

  Which both of the current contenders do.

• 5:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and are you right, was it Tony Blair chose to go into the apartment above number 11, the Chancellor's office?

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  Correct.

• 5:24Rory Stewart?

  Because that's slightly more comfortable for families?

• 5:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So the flat above number 10 is smaller than the flat above number 11 and 12. So Tony moved into the bigger flat, Gordon had the smaller flat, Alistair Darling moved into the smaller one because by then his kids were at university.

• 5:42Rory Stewart?

  And then one of the things the ministers get to do is choose where their offices, and I remember this because I remember Justine Greening, who'd been the Secretary of State in the Department for International Development, she'd been an accountant, she had a pretty puritanical view of the world, had placed herself in a tiny little box up in the attic, surrounded by an open plan office. And I suggested to Priti Patel when she came in that she needed a bigger office. And sure enough, she came in and took over what had been a place for, I think, probably 20, 30 civil servants. Michael Heseltine famously said, "My office isn't big enough." And the response from his public sector was to take the biggest meeting room in the place and try to turn it into Michael Heseltine's office so he could have an office.

• 6:26Rory Stewart?

  My cousin has many, many virtues, but great modesty and humility, not fame.

• 6:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, anyway, there'll be lots of changes. And of course, the other thing that I got some very interesting traffic over the weekend about the extent to which, within some departments in particular, the Treasury being one of them, there has been quite a lot of politicisation of staffs. You'll find quite a lot of Sunak people who are there as civil servants. Remember, I got quite angry recently when the Treasury Press Office were tweeting out stuff which I felt was straightforward Tory Party propaganda. I discovered the other day, Roy, the head of the government car service is a former Tory MP.

• 7:05Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes, yeah. This is one of the things that's going on in the background as well, that all these parties, the way the whips enforce discipline is with these patronage things, that the biggest patronage used to be allowing people to be on select committees. So the Foreign Affairs Committee was a great opportunity to get travel around the world. That was taken away from them, democratic change, now these people are elected. Whips have lost their power. So they've only got two things left. They've got things like giving someone a job in the government car service, which, these very few jobs. And again, in the seventies, when we had nationalised industries, you could push your MPs into run British Steel, British Rail, British Telecom. They were all full of kind of ex-Labor and Tory MPs. That's all gone away now because of privatisation. So they've got these niche things. Or they've got the House of Lords, which is why you cannot expect actually Starmer

• 7:47Rory Stewart?

  to get rid of an appointed House of Lords, because it's the way that he's going to be running discipline within the party.

• 7:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but also, one of the first things he'll have to do is to appoint hundreds of peers to get a majority in the House of Lords, because presumably Sunak will have a resignation on his list. Those resignation on his list should just be got rid of. Absolutely outrageous. Now, here's one, future of the Tory Party, Adam Puncar. Many people are discussing what happens to the Conservative Party if they lose the election, but what about the right wing press? I know Alastair says they will go down with the Conservatives, but is there a possibility they just lurch further to the right too? Let's talk about the party first, the Tory Party first, and then the press. I did a, when I was at Sky on Sunday. I don't read the papers, to be honest. I think you've come armed with lots of newspapers. I just don't bother anymore. But on Sunday, before I did Sky, I was in there, all the papers lying around. So there was the front page of the Mail, Sunak warns Starmer will ruin Britain in a hundred days.

• 8:38Alastair Campbell?

  Front page of the Sunday Express, Sunak warns Starmer will ruin Britain in the first hundred days. Telegraph, Sunak warns Starmer will bankrupt Britain. The Sun, the same. I mean, it is amazing the extent to which they're just part of the press office.

• 8:50Rory Stewart?

  Just step back for a second, yeah. Explain that. So if you wanted to achieve that when you were Labour's Director of Communications, what has actually happened there? Presumably, there are people high-fiving inside the Conservative press office. So just talk us through, they will have come up with an idea, they will have polled it or focus grouped it, and then they...

• 9:08Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if they've done that. The Sunday newspapers...

• 9:11Rory Stewart?

  Before the election.

• 9:12Alastair Campbell?

  Before the election, they're not as important as they were, but they think they're unbelievably important.

• 9:17Rory Stewart?

  Partly because they used to be very important.

• 9:18Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. And they're desperate, they're desperate for a line.

• 9:21Rory Stewart?

  So in ninety-seven, there were far more people reading those newspapers. I mean, you know, we've talked about the fact, the Evening Standard, since this twenty nineteen, it's gone from nearly a million readers down to two hundred thousand in just five years. So these papers, you know, as you say, I'm the last person in Britain actually reading the newspapers. I mean, they're kind of hemorrhaging readers. But let's, let's take that, assume they've got it in their head, partly because they're all trying to copy you, that they've got to get the headlines in the Sunday papers. How do they achieve that? What's the mechanism of getting those headlines?

• 9:47Alastair Campbell?

  I think with this one, you see, normally what they would say is, well, yeah, we'll use that line, if it's coming from central office, say.

• 9:53Rory Stewart?

  Yep. So central office has come up with an idea.

• 9:55Alastair Campbell?

  They basically said, our line to give to the Sunday newspapers is to say, Sunak's making a speech tomorrow where he will warn Starmer will bankrupt Britain in a hundred days.

• 10:06Rory Stewart?

  And is that speech partly designed around those newspapers?

• 10:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I don't even know if he made the speech.

• 10:12Rory Stewart?

  But that's potentially the hook for the newspapers, that a speech is coming.

• 10:15Alastair Campbell?

  Rishi Sunak will tomorrow warn, will today warn.

• 10:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Alastair Campbell?

  They then get on and they probably indicate to those papers dishonestly that they're only giving that line to them.

• 10:26Rory Stewart?

  So exclusiveness.

• 10:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So for example, the Sunday Express ran it as an exclusive, Sunak to warn Labour will bankrupt Britain in a hundred days. And of course, it was in all the other papers. I just think for, for a Labour person, it's much, much harder because the only paper that the Labour people can really rely on, you know, take their line is the Mirror. The Guardian, the Observer, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. They don't like to be seen to be too close.

• 10:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Alastair Campbell?

  So the Mirror is the only, the only one you've got. Whereas the right wing, the Tories have half a dozen papers.

• 10:55Rory Stewart?

  And how cynical is it? Is it literally that the head of the Tory press office rings the editor of the Mail on Sunday and says, this is the line we want you to take, like the Bulgarian Communist Party?

• 11:05Alastair Campbell?

  There'll be a little bit of that.

• 11:06Rory Stewart?

  Or is it a bit more subtle? How, how do you have the conversation away that doesn't actually put their back up?

• 11:11Alastair Campbell?

  You probably have the conversation by understanding how desperate the political editor is to get a decent line that they know will work well with the editor who's already been talking to the leader.

• 11:20Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 11:20Alastair Campbell?

  A couple of times a week.

• 11:21Rory Stewart?

  So Rishi Sunak remains in regular contact with the editors of these newspapers?

• 11:26Alastair Campbell?

  He may do, I'd have thought so, I'd have thought so.

• 11:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Alastair Campbell?

  So for example, whenever we made a, a big speech, a really big speech that you really wanted to land, if you had half an hour in the back of a car, coming back or going to the event, you might say, let's have five minutes on the phone with the Mirror, with Tony Blair in the car.

• 11:41Rory Stewart?

  With the editor, not the political editor?

• 11:42Alastair Campbell?

  With the editor, yeah.

• 11:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Alastair Campbell?

  And sometimes the owner.

• 11:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Alastair Campbell?

  So like, for example, if you notice that, so the Sunday Times came up for, out for Labour at the weekend.

• 11:49Rory Stewart?

  And that's Rupert Murdoch?

• 11:50Alastair Campbell?

  That, well, that is Rupert Murdoch. Will the Times do the same? Will the Sun do the same? I doubt it. I think even if they do, it will make no difference to how they cover a Labour government.

• 11:58Rory Stewart?

  Sure, but the ownership matters because Murdoch appoints the editor. So he does have some control over the directions.

• 12:05Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, whether, I don't know, I mean, people sort of have varied views about the extent to which Rupert Murdoch is still engaged.

• 12:10Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 12:11Alastair Campbell?

  But certainly in our day.

• 12:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Alastair Campbell?

  In our day.

• 12:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Alastair Campbell?

  Rupert Murdoch frankly told them what to do. No doubt about that at all.

• 12:17Rory Stewart?

  Got you, got you.

• 12:18Alastair Campbell?

  And so we, yeah, we did manage that relationship and, you know, and we got a lot of flak for it, but I think it was, I do, I do think it's become so much less important. I was at an event yesterday with lots of young people, asking them what newspapers they read. They looked a bit like I was asking them whether they spoke so heely. I mean, like they, they just don't. They get everything online, of course, and TikTok has become such a big thing in terms of their political consumption.

• 12:39Rory Stewart?

  This is something that's relevant for the, the US election and we've got a question that's come in here saying, Duncan Southkell, what is the argument for Biden staying on? And I've been barraged with arguments for Biden staying on, partly because you and I have said that he should step down. And one of those arguments relates. To what you've just been saying, which is many people are saying only one in six Americans watch the debate. Almost everybody is getting their news from clips.

• 13:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Rory Stewart?

  Now, I'm not sure that helps the argument for Biden staying on because that just makes me think you're even more likely to get a clip of Biden being completely incoherent and hopeless. And it actually makes your situation worse. What are the other arguments from staying on? Well, the fundamental argument.

• 13:18Alastair Campbell?

  Experience.

• 13:19Rory Stewart?

  Well, and fundamentally, they think that it's more risky to try to find another candidate with all the chaos of the Democratic Party. You're less likely to beat Trump going through a painful six month process. Stick with the devil that you know. And then they have this other line, which I think is quite undemocratic that we talked about a little bit in the last podcast, which is he's got a great team around him. But I think that is undemocratic because to say we're asking you to vote for somebody who isn't really up to doing this for another four years, and he obviously isn't up to doing it for another four years, because he's going to have a great team. It's an unelected team, isn't it?

• 13:54Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, lots more questions. Let's take a quick break.

• 13:59Speaker 02

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• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  Here's one, Nicola Morgan. How does the USA with all its extensive resources in education and talent have a political system that ends up with such inadequate leaders? At least Sunak and Starmer are suitable candidates, even though some are disappointed by them, they can at least give the job a good go. I mean, that is a question that a lot of people ask around the world, isn't it? I mean, you hear it everywhere. How did this country that's so amazing, has so many amazing people, that this is the choice? And I guess it is because of what politics has become. First of all, you have to be able to generate literally billions of dollars in fundraising. Now, that's a big ask for most people. You have to be able to tolerate unbelievable pressure, unbelievable digging into everything you've ever done in your life.

• 16:32Alastair Campbell?

  You have to be able to make really, really big decisions. And do you remember when we interviewed Tucker Esqu for leading? He was the Republican strategist we talked to a while back. And he said, you've got to have something a bit weird going on up top that you think you can do that. So not many people actually think in reality that they can be president.

• 16:49Rory Stewart?

  We also don't focus enough on just the mechanics and structures. So part of the answer is that the Conservatives traditionally in Britain largely generated their leaders from the views of the MPs who sat alongside them, knew them. And that is more likely, if you ask the MPs, to produce a sort of Rishi Sunak figure. In fact, one of the problems the Conservative Party is, and the reason we got Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, is that when you start reaching out to the Conservative Party members, they don't know these candidates so well and are more likely to go for these kind of slightly boisterous, buffoonish Boris Johnsons. Labour Party had a bit of a problem, which is that a lot of our people we liked in the Labour Party thought Jeremy Corbyn was a problem, the MPs, but they couldn't get rid of him because the structures, the Labour Party like that.

• 17:34Rory Stewart?

  Get to America, it becomes much, much more difficult. You'll hear in a lot of the commentary, people saying the Democratic Party is getting behind Biden, or the Democratic Party will only accept Kamala Harris as an alternative. But of course, it isn't the Democratic Party. That doesn't mean the Democratic senators or congresspeople, nor does it mean the general public, millions of people who support the Democrats in the primaries. What it means is these very, very mysterious groups, the Democratic National Convention, or the DCCC, it's to do with donors, it's to do with money, and then you get into very, very strange worlds of ideology, which is how somebody comes through can end up with a very, very weird result, and getting rid of someone becomes very difficult.

• 18:14Rory Stewart?

  And in a way, Britain, with its, in inverted commas, less democratic system, where in the conservative case, the MPs have much more say over who becomes leader than the general public, can often produce a more moderate result than the US with all its apparent more democratic openness.

• 18:29Alastair Campbell?

  Now, there's a question here from Queen Mary University about universities. The crisis in universities is one of six problems that Sue Gray identified for Labour to tackle with urgency. I think this was a note that sort of emerged, where she was talking about the big policy challenges. Yet it has not been part of any election discussion. We know why, but could you reflect on whether you think this deflection of what needs to be done is healthy for democracy? Well, no, it's not. If you think about the big issues that have not been debated, one of them is Brexit, we've talked about that before. But the other thing, you will know, and I keep hearing from people inside the prison sector, that we're very, very close to real problems within our prisons because of overcrowding, summer coming up, et cetera. That's barely been debated.

• 19:11Alastair Campbell?

  I think that mental health has barely been debated in this election. So we've had a long campaign, for us, six weeks is a long time, but there have been big issues that haven't been on the agenda. And universities, I mean, an incoming government is going to have a really, really big challenge on its hands.

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  Almost every sector that she talked to, and university is a really good example. See extreme crises which have many, many different factors. This is part of the problem for the incoming government. So what are the problems in universities? It's partly about funding. It's partly about tuition fees. It's partly about visas and the number of foreign students coming in to keep these things going. It's partly about the courses they're offering. But equally, NHS fixing that is unbelievably difficult. You know, we keep coming back to this, you know, 1.1 million employees, 365 million GP appointments a year, trains, right? I mean, all of us are struggling with national infrastructure. Somebody's really got to sort out. I mean, someone like my mother would say, I'll vote for any party that just makes things work.

• 20:12Rory Stewart?

  Nothing works in this country. I mean, Heathrow has just got a completely unmanageable. I got, you know, as you can imagine, like everyone else, suddenly find myself stuck, abandoned because they're short of everything. I was trying to talk to someone about how do you sort out the problems that Heathrow? Turns out that the problems are everywhere. They don't have enough people to man the planes. They don't have enough planes. They don't have enough maintenance staff. They don't have enough catering people. They don't have enough baggage handlers, have enough anything. And then we get to the bigger things, which is where's the money coming from? If you're not going to borrow the money, you're not going to raise taxes. I really want to challenge you. So I had a scratchy half hour with Andrew Neil yesterday where he kept saying to me, but Britain's got the largest tax burden ever on record.

• 20:56Rory Stewart?

  And, and as we discussed last week, this is really unhelpful, really misleading. In fact, Britain doesn't have a very high tax burden compared to many other countries. And actually taxes for median incomes have been reduced insofar as there are high taxes. It's actually on higher income taxpayers and it's on corporation. There's a lot of space actually to raise tax, but none of this stuff is being discussed. And if Labour would come in and just say, we're going to make things work. I think my mother's right. They'd get a huge number of votes.

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  But it would cost money. Some of this big infrastructure stuff is going to cost money. What I think will happen, and you and I both spoke at a conference a few weeks ago, this is related to the housing sector, but you do have a sense of a private sector that really does want to work with the government to try and get the economy going again. So there will be a lot of investment, I think, on the back of, on the back of change. Maybe this one to, to close off before we, we head off and prepare for our all nighter with Channel Four. Michael Cross, should polls be banned once a general election is called? And S A Wood, I'm slightly wary of polls because I've never been polled. Where are polls taken and how do I know they represent me? I do feel that maybe because the result has been seen as a foregone conclusion, which as you know, I don't think it is.

• 22:09Alastair Campbell?

  But because of that, I do feel that the polls have been getting way too much share of the debate. You know, we've done polls and we've talked about, we've tried to do it in perspective. But actually, when you see the polls leading the coverage of the election, I think that's a bad thing.

• 22:22Rory Stewart?

  I know you've spoken about this, you've spoken about the fact that in France, polls dominate everything. There's polls every day from huge numbers, it's actually pretty accurate in France, they did pretty well in predicting the result. In India, polls are banned throughout the entire very, very long electoral campaign because they see them as influencing. And as you say, if Labour doesn't end up with a really big majority, the number one reason for that will be the polls.

• 22:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Rory Stewart?

  The number one reason will be that the polls suggested that Labour was so comfortable, so in need to vote. Polls can really make a huge difference. So banning polls during the election is an interesting idea. And it takes us back to something that you've been chipping away at, we've both been chipping away at for a long time. There's huge opportunity without spending money for Labour to bring some very fundamental reforms into the way that politics works. You could ban polls, you could do what you've pointed to, they're doing the Welsh Assembly, which is to demand that people retract statements that are not true. I still do not know why Labour is not saying that ministers must serve a minimum of two years and that they get a proper training before they come on. Of course, I'd love to see them return to making more use of things like citizens' assemblies. And that's even before you get into things like.

• 23:32Alastair Campbell?

  I've not heard anybody mention that during this campaign, nobody.

• 23:34Rory Stewart?

  And very sad because it's one of the things that we believe in and it's something Sue Gray obviously believes in. It's something that Labour began to get interested in and they've backed off from. And these things don't cost money, you could do some very exciting things that don't involve taxing and borrowing.

• 23:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, maybe they'll come in and do more than we expect, let's hope so. First of all, though, they've got to come in.

• 23:51Rory Stewart?

  Pretty good.

• 23:52Alastair Campbell?

  And that only happens, Rory, if people vote for them. So I'm going to have one last go. One final go, how are you going to vote in this election? Like, come on, Roy, you're a public figure.

• 24:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'm being very, currently feeling very, very charmed by Joe Powell, the Labour candidate in Kensington. And when I go into that voting booth, I will be thinking about the work that he did in Afghanistan.

• 24:13Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. So what we say at the doorstep is, on a scale of one to 10, are you leaning six, seven, eight, nine?

• 24:21Rory Stewart?

  I think I'm probably leaning seven.

• 24:25Alastair Campbell?

  Seven, okay, okay. So that's exactly, yeah, that's okay, that's, that means...

• 24:30Rory Stewart?

  Tell you what, though, if Labour comes out in favour of a bigger role for citizens' assemblies, I guarantee my vote. Not sure they care enough about my vote, but I guarantee my vote.

• 24:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I bet Joe does. Joe will be straight on to you. That's going to be my first demand. Right, well, listen, thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and we'll see you soon.

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  Thank you, Alistair, bye bye.

• 24:52Speaker 06

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• 25:36Speaker 08

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• 25:48Speaker 09

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• 25:56Speaker 09

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