383. Question Time: Farage vs. Reform, is Labour still socialist, and how to ‘out-Trump’ Trump

What’s going on inside Reform UK? Should Europe expel Hungary from the EU? Is there anything socialist left about Labour? Join Alastair and Rory as they answer all of this and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away FREE TRIP+ membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP+ gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit GetFuse.com/Politics ⚡ The Rest Is Politics Plus: Become a member to receive early access to Question Time episodes to live show tickets, enjoy ad-free listening for both TRIP and Leading, receive our exclusive newsletter, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and join our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: India Dunkley, Evan Green Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Head of Digital: Sam Oakley 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.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  Restless Politics is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

• 0:03Rory Stewart?

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• 0:07Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:22Rory Stewart?

  We will be providing many more offers for members, which I think can be great, including interviews for members only and questions for members only, which I hope you'll enjoy. But the other advantage of signing up, of course, is that you can protect your energy bills by fixing your electricity rates for the next year with Fuse, which is going to be very relevant with the price cap rising by 6.4%. Fuse's new fixed tariffs undercut the April price cap by over £100, with almost £150 of savings for a typical customer on the 18-month tariff. By fixing your electricity rate, you can lock in your price today and protect yourself from any rises over the next year.

• 0:58Alastair Campbell?

  So download it now, use the referral code POLITICS after signing up, visit getfuse.com/politics for the terms and conditions and to learn more.

• 1:12Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:14Alastair 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.

• 1:27Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:51Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:57Rory 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/restlesspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/.

• 2:10Rory Stewart?

  Rest is Politics and the link is in the episode description.

• 2:13Speaker 02

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• 2:50Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:54Alastair Campbell?

  And with me, Alastair Campbell. And yesterday Rory, we had a very, very heavy foreign policy, China, Russia, Syria. So we didn't have time for, as Carol puts it here, what on earth is happening inside Reform UK. Related questions, Ray from London, imagine you had to help Farage, God help you, with his messaging and stance on Trump and Ukraine. What would you recommend? Jack Regan from Cumbria, your old stamping around Trip Plus member, how do we know that Reform Nigel Farage and their billionaire funders aren't in cahoots with Russia to bring Britain into authoritarian rule? So there's a lot, let's unpack some of that.

• 3:35Rory Stewart?

  Let me try, you're in the UK and I'm not, let me try to give my sense of what I've picked up as happening and you can correct it. So it looks as though what's happened is that Rupert Lowe, who is one of the five, or was one of the five Reform MPs elected in Great Yarmouth, who had been a Brexit MEP alongside Farage in the European Parliament, and apparently they were recently good friends a few years ago, has begun to diverge from him. And the first signs of divergence were that Lowe came out in favour of Tommy Robinson,

• 4:11Rory Stewart?

  seeing this far right extremist as a martyr. He also, Lowe also talks about deportation of a million people. And Farage has said he doesn't think that's a good idea and has said he doesn't want having to do with Tommy Robinson. So there's a sort of policy disagreement. Then Lowe gave an interview in The Mail in which he said that Farage was suffering from Messiah complex and didn't have any policies and somewhere along the line, and one wonders whether one finds Dominic Cummings' hand in this, Elon Musk began taking a bizarre interest in the details of Reform Party politics, saying that Nigel Farage wasn't the person

• 4:55Rory Stewart?

  to run Reform and instead he started promoting Rupert Lowe. And the response to this, or maybe it's not a response to this, but it suddenly appears to be a response to this, is that Rupert Lowe has now found not only that the whip has been stripped from him by your friend Lee Anderson, the whip of the Reform Party, but also he has been accused of harassing his office staff, a KC has been employed. And rather bizarrely, he's also been accused of physically assaulting the chairman of the party. And given both he and the chairman of the party on the surface seem rather mild-mannered men, this vision of their fisticuffs is also intriguing. Have I misunderstood the story?

• 5:34Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think you've pretty much got there. Just on the staff, the other Rory in my life, he sent me a thing this morning, have I seen this? And it's a, it's an open letter that's been written by Rupert Lowe's staff, saying what a lovely man he is, and he's never seen any bullying, he's never seen any intimidation, blah, blah, blah, blah. I must admit, I know Rupert Lowe a little bit because when he was chairman of Southampton Football Club, whenever Burnley played there, he always quite seemed to quite like having lunch with me before I wandered off to the, to the away end. And I think I recorded in my diaries that I don't think I've ever met anybody quite as right wing as this guy. He's very, very, very right wing on the economy and all sorts of other things. And last night,

• 6:19Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I was Matt Ford, the comedian who was very, very ill not long ago, but he's now back in action. And I was a guest on his live show last night at the Duchess Theatre. And I've got to say, you mentioned Lee Anderson, who's not my friend, that was a joke, I know. Matt Ford's Lee Anderson is one of the best impersonations I've seen for a long, long time. But he was talking about this thing, he said that Elon Musk, taking an active interest in the leadership of a party with five MPs in the UK, he says, it's like Mark Zuckerberg suddenly decided, I'm going to decide who's the next leader of Sinn Fein.

• 6:55Alastair Campbell?

  There is something utterly bizarre about it, but I think you're right. I think what it's about, I think, look, I don't know, because I've not talked to either of them about it. But I wonder if partly it is the Messiah thing. Nigel Farage, not without reason, thinks that he is the prime driver of the support for Reform UK, just as he was for the previous parties that fell apart after a while. He was a prime mover in the Brexit referendum and a very effective campaign in the Brexit referendum, which is why we should never let him forget it. And Rupert Lowe does seem, this is strongly to say, he does seem on

• 7:34Alastair Campbell?

  issues like immigration to be even further to the right than Nigel Farage and his core. And I think what might be going on here is that Nigel Farage is watching how the Conservatives are operating under Kemi Badenoch. And I think you and I both think that Kemi Badenoch probably won't last very long. But her strategy seems to be, I can take over Reform votes by being a bit more like Reform. I think he is resisting that by saying, I'm going to stay pretty much where I am. I'm a sort of right wing Conservative. I rejected Tommy Robinson very deliberately to say I'm not extreme right. This is another opportunity to say that. Now, the risk for him, and I once, when I, I've told you before about

• 8:17Alastair Campbell?

  when I had a long chat with him at Question Time, he said to me, he said, the thing about Musk, it's not really about the money. It's the fact that he's very, very popular with young men. And we're targeting young men. And the member special that we did with Bruce Anderson, the Canadian strategist and pollster, he said Pierre Polievre will be really worried at the moment about upsetting Musk, because Musk does have a certain, it's not overwhelming, but he's, if Polievre came out against him, he risks losing support. And I think Farage may be worrying about that, too.

• 8:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, Farage is, is in the classic problem that all right wing parties across Europe are facing, which is what happens when somebody tries to outflank you further on the right. So obviously, the Conservatives have that problem with Reform. But now he's got the problem that Rupert Lowe is saying, I'm going to deport a million people, Tommy Robinson's a martyr. And Farage then has to decide, can he hold?

• 9:17Rory Stewart?

  Whatever the weird word for it is, the the centre of the far right against the right of the far right.

• 9:22Alastair Campbell?

  The far the far right centrists.

• 9:25Rory Stewart?

  The the left of the far right, it's it's like it's like people like me who describe themselves as a lower, upper, middle class. Anyway, so Farage is in this this world and of course, the conventional wisdom from political scientists in the 20s and 30s is don't endlessly indulge and move further to the right because that basically just gives the fascists their win. And that if you hold your ground, you are able to resist that. So good on Farage in a way, you know, the last thing I'm going to say is good on Farage because in many ways I think he's an absolute buffoon and I think he'd be a terrible prime minister and he was grossly irresponsible in Brexit.

• 10:06Rory Stewart?

  But I am at least pleased that he is not going full AFD and that he's trying to hold the line and I'm very disturbed that Lowe is trying to outflank him with Musk's support.

• 10:16Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. And you know, Lee Anderson being the chief whip, one of the points Matt Ford was making last night is that it's quite something when Lee Anderson, who's got, you know, a bit of a reputation as something of a bruiser himself, is the guy who's telling Rupert Lowe that, no, your language is a bit inappropriate and your your conduct towards women and all this sort of stuff. But it it seems to be a proper kind of internal meltdown. And of course, the fact they've only got five MPs, they've now only got four, which is exactly the same number as the Greens. Is it too much to expect that the media might start to pay a bit of attention to the the Greens as well as these four? And of course, one of them, this guy, James Murdoch, he's another one with a touch of violence in his in his past, as it were.

• 11:01Alastair Campbell?

  So a pretty run lot, I think we can say.

• 11:03Rory Stewart?

  Can I just, practical politics sense, so the the reason why this isn't just a comedy show is that Reform did in the polls at one point come ahead of Labour and Conservatives and in the Welsh elections coming. Reform again seems to be in a strong position. That's proportional representation system, not first past the post, so they can do even better than in the UK elections. And we've got this by-election coming in Runcorn because a Labour MP managed-

• 11:31Alastair Campbell?

  Mike Ainsbury.

• 11:32Rory Stewart?

  Mike Ainsbury, which was a, just again, sorry for listeners, people remember John Prescott punching someone, and Mike Ainsbury has punched someone. And what's the difference? What was it that Mike Ainsbury did that led to his resignation the way that Prescott didn't resign? What was the context to this?

• 11:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he got convicted for a very violent offence. John Prescott, a punch, good left jab,

• 11:57Alastair Campbell?

  because a guy had smacked an egg into the side of his face, and I think most people thought self-defence. Mike Ainsbury was an argument with a constituent in the street, he punched him, and then while the guy was lying on the ground, he punched him several times again. So it was a pretty violent thing.

• 12:13Rory Stewart?

  But okay, now by-election's coming, and presumably this is going to be a really important, or interesting anyway, for those who are interested in UK politics, on judging what's happening with Reform, what's happening with the Conservatives, whether Starmer has really got a bounce out of what I think many people feel has been pretty good handling of Russia-Ukraine so far, which we can talk about a bit later in the show.

• 12:36Alastair Campbell?

  Keir Starmer's definitely had a bounce from his handling of this, of the Russia-Ukraine situation. Reform, I think, were chomping at the bit for a few by-elections. This, I think, will damage them. Interestingly, I've been talking to some people up there who, not just in that seat, but in other parts of the North West, who say that the Conservatives really are completely flatlining, that there's no sense of people wanting to go back to the Conservatives. And I don't think Kemi Badenoch is really giving them much reasons to be positive about that. But just on Reform, the other thing that Farage was very keen to sort of emphasise when we had our long chat in the green room in Lincoln, was he

• 13:17Alastair Campbell?

  was singing the praises of this guy, Zia Yousaf, the Chair. And this is a guy, former Goldman Sachs, you know how much the populists hate these globalists who work for big banks like Goldman Sachs? Well, this guy worked for Goldman Sachs, then he built up his own company, flogged it for more than 30 million quid, big donor to the party. But what Farage said to me is he's absolutely professionalising the party. He said, "I've never had a professionally-run party, this guy's doing it." He's got Nick Candy, this sort of super wealthy sovereign individual property developer, who's got one of the big, if you ever go to One Hyde Park, you'll see this extraordinarily large sort of property he's got there. He's promised seven-figure sums. So he's got some,

• 14:01Alastair Campbell?

  they've got money. And interestingly on the money, Roy, the New York Times, shout out for your favourite newspaper, they did a big analysis of Reform's funding. And they worked out forty percent of their donations came from the basic climate change deniers, fossil fuels, climate polluting industries. And a lot of the, most of their, more than two thirds of the donations, came from millionaires and multimillionaires. So I hope Reform voters start to understand, this is not exactly man of the people stuff that we're talking about.

• 14:35Rory Stewart?

  Well, but let's, let's also watch the space of Paul Marshall, who we've talked about on the show before, but he is this very interesting individual, I mean massively, massively wealthy, has this huge office on Sloane Street with giant wooden elephants in the window that you can see, who began as a Lib Dem funder, then came to my notice as a big backer of Michael Gove, has this magazine called Unheard, which has now acquired The Spectator, is sponsoring some of these right wing conferences in Britain, seems to be sounding a little bit more as though he comes from the fundamentalist Christian right. That, I think, is a space worth watching. And the direction where The Spectator goes,

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  because Spectator is now edited not by Fraser Nelson, but by Michael Gove. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens there. It's not hugely influential, except within right wing circles where everybody reads it. It was an interesting magazine in the past, because along with sort of provocative right wing reporting, there was, there were great book reviews, there were some really funny travel columns, there was Low Life, which was this sort of fantastic Geoffrey Bernard column about his general collapse. And the question is, will Gove be able to sustain the kind of variety and diversity?

• 15:57Rory Stewart?

  In the Spectator, or is it in risk of becoming a slightly more monotonous Paul Marshall mousepiece? You know, we're going to get media ownership in what Jeff Bezos is doing with the Washington Post.

• 16:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:09Rory Stewart?

  And I'm beginning to see signs in the Spectator that they're beginning to get a little bit predictable. They're beginning to develop a rather kind of standard set of enemies, a rather standard set of friends, and some of that kind of liveliness is vanishing.

• 16:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Mr. Gove probably wasn't much behind his desk yesterday because he was giving evidence to the Covid inquiry about some of the dodgy contracts and he was given quite a hard time. He was very Govean in his response. He does that thing, doesn't he? Whenever he mentions, you know, he always says, for whom I have the utmost respect, or for whom I have considerable regard, as he's about to then sort of say why they're terrible, terrible human beings. But isn't that interesting? How the Covid, we're five years on from Covid, most countries have had their Covid inquiries, this one's still going on. But you've got a guy there who was fundamental to this VIP lane and to a lot of the stories that we've talked about and read about, and Michelle Moan and all this sort of stuff. And yet

• 17:07Alastair Campbell?

  again, it's sort of, oh, well, that's the past. The past is a foreign country, let's move on. And I think there is some, this is something that the sort of trumps and the musk of this world exploit very, very well. The attention span of the media ecosystem is ever shorter. And that does lend itself to Steve Bannon's flood the zone with shit. So I'm not that bothered about what happens to the Spectator, frankly. And these right-wing people who sort of buy influence, like Marshall. I think we should try and get him on the podcast, actually. If you're listening, Mr. Marshall, I know you love media ecosystem chat. We'd quite like to talk to you. Now, Rory, here's a really interesting question

• 17:47Alastair Campbell?

  from Tanya, who's a member in Exeter. Why doesn't Europe kick Hungary out of the EU and any other country which chooses dictatorship over democracy? John Graham, also a member from St Albans. Although the EU cannot expel Hungary, do you think it's time to fully suspend their rights under Article Seven, including voting rights and the right of veto? Now, before you say what you think about that, interestingly, last week at the European Council, so there was a European summit, to which obviously, post Brexit, we don't attend. Um. Where the issue was Ukraine, Zelensky was there. But there, I, for the first time, talking to people afterwards, got the sense that there are

• 18:31Alastair Campbell?

  senior people within the European Union, the European Commission, who think that this all band issue has got to be addressed. And so as one, one person said, you know, this guy has basically got us by the balls because of the rules that he exploits. Um. So that we've got to find a way of addressing it. So I think they're beginning to talk about that. Um. And, and, and quite right too, my way.

• 18:53Rory Stewart?

  If we're looking at, um, basically NATO without the US, so removing this enormous superpower with its giant economy, its massive military infrastructure. And Europe tries to pull itself together and pull itself together in the face of this kind of barrage of attack it's going to get. It's going to get the barrage of attack from Russia trying to divide and isolate us. It's going to get a barrage of attack from Musk and Vance. Trying to undermine our democracies from within. It's going to get a barrage of attack from almost everybody around the world that disagrees with European values. So as it tries to do that, it's got to deal with some very difficult things. One of them is people inside Europe. Hungary would be an example. But who knows Slovakia, Austria, who can begin to undermine

• 19:36Rory Stewart?

  European consensus. So can it do, create these sort of informal blocks that navigate around them? Can it bring in other states as allies? You know, can it think about really bolting on Canada, the UK, Ukraine, uh, Turkey? How do they do that? And are the leaders bold enough to do that? I mean, you saw, um, Renosha Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister. When Hungary said there should be an, uh, referendum in Hungary on Ukraine joining the EU, he said there should be a referendum in the EU on kicking out Hungary. So there's the beginnings of that kind of stuff going on. Um. But, uh, yeah. Here's a question from John, who's a member, which is, is Starmer going to be able

• 20:21Rory Stewart?

  to come up with a proper structure for connecting Britain to the EU? Or is it just going to be ad hoc? So there we are, over to you.

• 20:30Alastair Campbell?

  Before I answer that specifically, because you mentioned Austria there, worth pointing out, and we talked about Austria a lot after their election, and about this guy Kiechel that was, looked like he was in pole position to become chancellor, and it hasn't happened because we've finally got a government in Austria, but it's a three-party coalition that does not include the far-right, the Conservatives, the Social Democrats and the Liberals. So it's going to be tricky to hold that together, but it's interesting that the system in the end decided, no, we're not having that guy.

• 21:04Rory Stewart?

  Presumably in Austria, this is kind of last chance saloon. This is their last hope to try to hold Kiechel out. And Kiechel will try to use the fact he's been excluded to hope there's a new election where he can get even more votes and ultimately end up.

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  He'll definitely try to do that, and that is the same for Widel in the AfD in Germany, and it's the same in Romania, where the hard-right won then then lost or had the election taken away. So yeah, absolutely. And that, but I think this is what's so interesting about what's going on in Europe at the moment, is that it's kind of last chance saloon for everybody. You know, if a Labour government in the UK with a huge majority were to sort of be the subject of some kind of political miracle and they're out in a single term with that sort of majority, that's kind of last chance saloon in some ways. I think what Merz is doing in Germany, this sort of dramatic change to boost defence spending by changing the rules on this debt break, I think that's him recognising that, you know,

• 22:00Alastair Campbell?

  we're beyond the point where we can just tinker around and do okay or fail a bit. I think now they all recognise that democratic sensibles, mainstream parties have got to deliver, else they're all going to be in trouble. That's kind of what they think, I think.

• 22:15Rory Stewart?

  Back to John's question on whether Starmer would be up for being imaginative enough about formal structures as opposed to just ad hoc deals.

• 22:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I hope so, because I think these structures are going to have to happen. I'm increasingly of the view that we've all had a bit of confirmation bias, leaning towards the view that, oh, America's never going to leave NATO, America's never going to pull the plug on Europe. If Trump lasts four years, and let's let's remember that if he falls under a bus, it's J D Vance who takes over under the American Constitution. It doesn't feel to me like they are listening to our analysis as to what is good for America. So if that's the case, then I think new structures do have to emerge and you can see them emerging. Keir Starmer, again, to his credit, because he's, you know, he must be working every hour God sends at the moment, because he's not just got this, he's got the day job of all the domestic stuff

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  as well. He's he's he's announced that he's going to host another meeting, similar to the one he did at Lancaster House recently. And I think it will be interesting to see, you know, will Canada be at that one again? Will the Turks be at that? Will will that broaden? Some of the noises coming out of Australia are very interesting at the moment. They're in the middle of an election, but both Albanese and Dutton are pretty clear. I think it was Dutton I saw the other day saying that, you know, yeah, we'd have to think about Australia getting involved if there was a sort of boots on the ground type operation. So I think that whether that will live alongside NATO, I think we've seen this on the economy as well, the BRICS, I think will develop and change. And we had a question, we get lots of questions every week about, you know, what's the UN for?

• 23:51Alastair Campbell?

  And obviously, the UN is is struggling to find purpose in this sort of the world of strongmen.

• 23:56Rory Stewart?

  Just on on this point about Starmer, we did an interview with Peter Kyle, the Cabinet Minister responsible for IT and Technology. And the listeners will hear on Monday when they listen to it, him trying to navigate this question about what Britain's relationship with Europe can be. And they're obviously still in the Labour Party, really neuralgic about any talk about things like rejoining the Customs Union. And that's presumably partly, I think, because Morgan McSweeney and the kind of red walls theory holds that they need to rely on Brexit voters, they don't want alienating. I'm a bit anxious. Partly because of what they've done on international development, which is really sort of troubling and bizarre.

• 24:39Rory Stewart?

  And, and the possibility that they think that was a popular good move because it coincided with the moment that Starmer became more popular, which I think was largely to do with his handling of Ukraine and having to do with cutting international development. But number 10 seems to think international development is part of that.

• 24:56Rory Stewart?

  And all this together leaves me with my anxiety about Starmer, which is, is he going to be able to grow out of being a sort of solid technocratic civil servant into having the kind of big imagination and creativity to reimagine what the Western order is without the United States? I mean, this is the moment where we need our Jean Monnet's. This is the moment where we need the generation that we had in 1945, 46, where you really think, okay, this is the direction US is going. This is the threat that Russia clearly poses to us. This is where China's going. And we're going to reimagine something which isn't just, we'll do a little deal on fisheries and you give us a bit more access on services.

• 25:40Rory Stewart?

  But this is something permanent, an alliance we're creating.

• 25:44Alastair Campbell?

  My answer to that is I hope so, because I think that's what's going to be needed. And, you know, I really do think that what Merz did, I think people maybe underestimate just how big a deal that was that he announced, the, the change to the debt break. And to be so clear that it's about making Germany and Europe more independent of the United States. I must tell you, by the way, Rory, I was able publicly to invite him onto the podcast the other day because we shared an interview space on, on a German radio station and I got big footed. I'd done, I'd done my interview der Woche, the interview of the week, which, and I was very proud of it because I did it all in German and it was all very good and I said some very tough things.

• 26:28Alastair Campbell?

  But then they said, you know, it won't be running in the usual slot because Friedrich Merz is coming on. So anyway, so what they did, they said to him, we interviewed earlier today, we interviewed Alastair Campbell, who used to work for Tony Blair and now has a very successful podcast called The Rest Is Politics. And he made two points. He said he'd like you to keep Boris Pistorius as your number two, and he'd like him to stay as Defence Minister, and he thinks you should get on with delivering the Taurus project to Ukraine. Now, he parked the Boris Pistorius thing, but in a very kind of calm, polite way, and basically said, yeah, he's kind of, he didn't say the words, but I've read between the lines, he's with us on Taurus. So, anyway, and I managed to get an invite onto the podcast while I was there, so that's quite good.

• 27:10Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, also, as a dot, Rory, we're gonna get a pause, never mind.

• 27:14Rory Stewart?

  Very good, I'm looking forward to our pause, see you after the pause.

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• 28:48Rory Stewart?

  So now we've returned from Alistair's Powza and back from the break. I want to hit you again with something. We've done a lot of international, understandably. But here's a question from Jonathan, Pembrokeshire. With numerous dubious policy decisions, including drastic cuts to foreign aid and benefits alongside increased defence spending, is there anything socialist left about the Labour Party? It feels like Farage has dragged everyone right. Let me continue to develop that. I was talking to Labour activists over the weekend. Actually, I had not a very damaging, but a small car crash. And as I was waiting for insurance documents and police and things, I had this long conversation with a Labour activist who was saying that they weren't Corbynistas.

• 29:28Rory Stewart?

  They were very central Labour, but they campaigned very hard. And this included quite a lot of young people. And they've been really shocked that Labour hasn't raised the cap on two children on benefits. Really shocked by what they've done on international development spending. Instead of seeing an incredible opportunity as Trump cut for the UK to move into that space to just sort of copy it and almost suggesting from Number 10, actually one of the Labour MPs, that they'd done it in order to impress Trump, that it was one of the things they were, along with the invitation to the state visit, they were saying to Trump, look, we've cut international development spending.

• 30:11Rory Stewart?

  And essentially, they came out of this thinking that they're really worried that Starmer and Rachel Reeves don't really care about social justice and that they're making the mistake of chasing right wing votes, when in fact, they should be paying more attention to traditional Labour voters on these issues.

• 30:28Alastair Campbell?

  We talked about that polling last week that University College London had done, which suggested that Labour was just as vulnerable to losing votes in that direction, the direction of your car crash person, as opposed to on the right. I think part of this is that the media ecosystem in which we exist, I still think is very, very much to the right. So when Keir Starmer says at a private meeting, as he did yesterday, the welfare bill is unsustainable and it's unfair and it's not working. There's a left wing case that you can make for welfare reform, but that gets reported as this will upset, this will anger people on the, on the left of the Labour Party. And I think the other thing is that this is again something that we talked about Peter

• 31:12Alastair Campbell?

  Carl. And by the way, I really urge people to listen to the interview with Peter Carl, not least for his, his own life story is so kind of moving in, in so many ways. But when these Labour ministers are out and about, I bumped in last week, I bumped into Matthew Bazin, you remember Matthew Bazin, who was the ambassador?

• 31:31Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 31:32Alastair Campbell?

  American ambassador under Obama and who's remained very close to Britain and spends a lot of time in Britain. And I bumped into him the other day and he said, he said, listen, can't you go and help these younger ministers, sort of how they communicate? He says, what do you mean? He said, well, they all sound so nervous and they sound like they're, they're reading a script and they sound like they're not really, there's not enough confidence there. If I were to do that, I would say to them, look, whatever you're talking about, find a way of mentioning things like the workers' rights package, which is traditionally what you would call quite a left wing approach to the thing. So Angela Rayner pushes that, but it's not part of the language. Everybody knows about winter fuel payments. Everybody

• 32:16Alastair Campbell?

  now knows that they're planning these disability cuts. But does everybody know that they're making these changes to give workers more rights, which actually when you poll it is very, very popular. The fact that Labour have managed to deliver more NHS appointments than they said they were going to within the first year, done it already. That is the sort of thing that you have to keep reminding people has happened. I would argue that what Ed Miliband's doing in the great British energy space is actually, albeit he's got people sort of pulling, trying to hold him back a bit. I think that is, you could put into the left wing bracket, private education. Every business event you and I do, we get in the Q and A, there's always somebody saying, you know, why are Labour punishing

• 32:58Alastair Campbell?

  me just because I'm well enough to send my kids to private school? That is, if you like, traditionally on the left. So I think there's lots of things that they're doing. Water Bosses bonuses. I mean, there's loads of stuff, but they're not loud enough in the debate about what they're doing with them. Imagine what Trump would do with all that sort of stuff.

• 33:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I still think, though, this is something we need to keep coming back to, which is there is a bit of a question about where that moral compass lies. And also, above all, let's look at the big strategic question. Why did they not use this moment threat on defence to say, okay, now is the time to get rid of this ridiculous straitjacket we've put ourselves in around tax? In the way that basically Germany, as you say, has just done something quite brave on the fiscal break. They had handed them on a platter the biggest opportunity that they could ever be handed to say, okay, now we need to look again at VAT income tax and corporate pressures, and they ducked it.

• 33:55Alastair Campbell?

  And I guess the fundamental point, and this, by the way, and maybe our listeners skew a bit more left than right, but I think a lot of them are kind of people who really, really, really want this government to succeed. And a lot of them, I think, are saying, look, you know, we want to hear more about, if you like, what John Brusket used to talk about the traditional values in a modern setting as defining new labour. We'd like a bit more of the traditional values and a bit less of the, we're doing this because we're worried about the red wall, so called. Now, Rory, I've got a question for you. The question is about King Charles and soft power. Ian Murtaugh, Gosforth, Trip Plus member, could King Charles play a soft power role in broker in peace in Ukraine, given his relations with Zelensky and Trudeau?

• 34:39Alastair Campbell?

  It's quite a lead, but I actually want to talk about King Charles and music, Rory. The fact that King Charles has put out these musical choices, has this not pushed you towards accepting that music is actually? I mean, he says it all. He says that music is just so special and so important to all of our lives. And there's you. And actually, I've got to say, Bob Marley and the Wailers, well, I adore Bob Marley. Could you be loved? Good choice. Kylie Minogue, I know he's going for the Commonwealth connections, she's Australian. Grace Jones, La Vion Rose, excellent choice. Beyonce, do you know the only criticism I've got, Rory, when you speak to him? He said this was about celebrating the Commonwealth. Why was there no bagpipe?

• 35:22Alastair Campbell?

  In his musical choices. His mother would definitely have had the bagpipes.

• 35:26Rory Stewart?

  No, that's good, but I I'm very, very pleased that that you engaged with that, saw that and liked it. He's also done great stuff on on poetry, theatre. Um, no, I think I think that that's one of the the really positive aspects of it.

• 35:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you need to be educated and why life without music is not a proper life.

• 35:43Rory Stewart?

  I I I absolutely hear you. I'm an uncivilized human being. I I don't have the depths of your Beethoven soul. I I completely, if only I listen more to ABBA, my my sense of the world be different. No, I think that's probably true. And it's also true, you can make the same case on football. I think these are two big weaknesses in my life.

• 36:02Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think football, not liking football, even though I love it, I understand. Life without music is is life not worth living?

• 36:09Rory Stewart?

  Part of the problem is I I'm just basically tone deaf and it's very difficult to communicate to someone what that actually feels like or is like. As as I think I've said before, my father couldn't understand it. He believed that everybody could paint and everybody could play music. And dedicated his ninety two years to this slightly quixotic task of trying to convince non-musical, non-artistic people to do watercolours and compose music. Um, I think it's possible, weirdly, that we are sort of different, we're kind of differently wired. And I think it's probably true. Eighty percent of the world, music is central. Ninety percent of the world, food is an incredibly important part of their lives, but not maybe a hundred percent. I I'm also a bit bit lame on food.

• 36:52Alastair Campbell?

  I'm pretty lame on food. I did Ruthie Rogers podcast this week and I admitted I'm really not into food. I don't know why you're talking to me. We had a very nice chat. Are your boys into music?

• 37:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, Sasha's learning the trumpet at the moment and and enjoying that. And Iva really enjoys singing. I mean, he's got, he's got to work a little bit more getting getting in tune, but he loves belting out tunes. So I think there's hope there, hope for the next generation. Right now, back to serious stuff.

• 37:15Alastair Campbell?

  It is serious.

• 37:16Rory Stewart?

  Andy Mahad, Belfast. Why are the mainstream media and European politicians afraid to push back against accusations of freeloading? When the post-World War Two agreement was that the US were provided security umbrella. So let's start with that, because that's an important point. At the moment, what Trump is basically suggesting is that it was just US naivety and everybody's mooching off them and the Americans were paying all this money. What, of course, he forgets is that America did this deliberately so it could exercise power. It invested in NATO because it wanted to contain the Soviet Union. And it didn't want Europe to go weak at the knees or neutral towards the Soviet Union. They wanted Europe to be on the American side.

• 37:58Rory Stewart?

  And Eisenhower spoke explicitly about the US having that security responsibility. They didn't want de Gaulle to develop his own nuclear weapons. They wanted Europe to be dependent on US nuclear weapons. And you can see, actually even today, in two examples, Ukraine and Syria, it's quite clear that Trump is saying two completely contradictory things. On the one hand, he seems to be saying, I'm an isolationist, I don't care what happens outside the US. Go ahead, you pay for it, we won't pay for it. But on the other hand, when people actually step up and offer to pay, he doesn't let them. Because he wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to say, I'm not going to pay any money. But he also absolutely wants to be able to take Russia's side on Ukraine, which is

• 38:42Rory Stewart?

  why when Europe steps up and says, okay, we'll find $50 billion a year, can we please buy American kit and keep the satellites going? He says no. And when Saudi, Qatar and Turkey step up in Syria and say, okay, you're saying you don't want to spend a single American dollar in Syria, you don't want American troops on the ground, can we please provide the money? He won't let them do it. He puts sanctions in place to prevent it because in that case, he's taking a position against Syria, just as he's taking a position against Ukraine, while pretending to be isolationist and neutral.

• 39:12Alastair Campbell?

  Interesting, very interesting. Let's stick in over there, Heidi Legg, how does Mark Carney position himself? When so many democratic nations rejecting the liberal machine that seems to choose candidates further upstream, how does a candidate like Mark Carney stand out as his own person rather than a plant from the global elite? How can he show that he truly wants Canada to be wealthy?

• 39:32Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, I want you to answer this because you've been deep in Canada, but let me just do the little explainer to explain how weird it is. So it would not be conceivable in British politics for Mark Carney to do what he's just done. So Mark Carney was governor of the Bank of Canada, governor of the Bank of England, and successful banker. Mark Carney is, I guess, approximately 60, and he hasn't been an elected MP. He ran to be prime minister without even being a member of parliament, right? He was just a grand public figure, be like Gary Lineker suddenly deciding, you know, to run for leadership of the Labour Party without being an MP. And he has Ended up not just winning the leadership, but becoming prime minister and now is in

• 40:13Rory Stewart?

  pole position. And, and again, talk about luck in politics, right? If we'd been talking about this before Trump completely destroyed Pierre Polievre's chances, it seemed like a hospital path. Yeah, sure, Mark, you can become the leader of the Liberal Party for a few weeks, but you're then 20 points behind. You'll go to defeat from Pierre Polievre. What the hell's the point of you doing a few weeks as prime minister and then being leader of the opposition? And instead of which, he's managed to pull all that off. Okay, over to you, Arson.

• 40:39Alastair Campbell?

  The question, how does he position himself? I think he, he does a, a national version of what he's been doing in the party context. Polievre has been, I mean, up some of the polls, Bruce Anderson was telling us on the episode we did for Members, he was saying, this is the Canadian pollster and strategist, some of the polls, Polievre was 25 points ahead just a few weeks ago. And he's now well into single figures. We're now virtually within the margin of error. So if Mark Carney, when you say position himself, I would say, take the messaging that has won himself this landslide in the leadership election and take that messaging into the national frame. And part of that is about, this is not about the Liberal Party, this is now about bringing the whole of Canada

• 41:24Alastair Campbell?

  together. We are facing a really strong, powerful enemy. I think the fact that he called it out, what it is, and he linked Polievre, I thought, very cleverly to Trump. You know, basically, you either stand up for Trump or you stand up to Trump. I'm standing up to him. I think he positions himself as serious, grown up, experienced, not a politician. It becomes a strength that he says, I'm, I'm new to this game. I've just, I know a lot about politics because I've worked in central bank, he's over, I'm not a politician. Polievre is a kind of lifelong, he exists to be a politician. And then he's got to find some, you know, good, chunky policy ideas that make people feel this guy can

• 42:07Alastair Campbell?

  get stuff done. Um, look, you say that Polievre's crashed, he's not crashed, it's still, you know, what he will try to do is to make Carney part of the Liberal Party, global elite, all that stuff. And I'm not sure it's going to be very effective. We shall see. It's gonna be very interesting. And I think it'll be soon. I think it's gonna be, I think he won't hang around to call an election.

• 42:27Rory Stewart?

  Final question for me, and thank you for this, because it comes back to some themes you've been touching on last few days. Alison Matthews, Glasgow Trip Plus member. Thank you for being a member of Trip. Where is the US opposition to Trump advance? I see the odd thing on social media, but nothing of significance. Where are the Democrats? Now, can I just begin with my framing on this, which relates to our conversation yesterday? We have entered this reality TV, social media world, which Trump has sensed that he can release other people. It's not just him doing it. Obviously Musk has been given cover to do it. Vance has been given cover to do it. Donald J. Trump Jr. has been given cover to do it. They're all rolling.

• 43:12Rory Stewart?

  And we'll see more and more from Pete Hesketh and others as they, as they get going. And that's why he's brought in a lot of Fox News people into his central team. And I think that we don't quite understand how much this world is changing because we don't look enough at places like Russia. We still think that the way to respond is, you know, reasoned articles in the New York Times, whereas in fact, what's been created for better or for worse is a reality TV thing with an enormous audience, particularly on Facebook, which dominates a lot of this, but also on Twitter. Where what they want to see is you punch back. And in some ways, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were at their best in the campaign

• 43:55Rory Stewart?

  when they were doing their own version of this, doing things like, these guys are weird, viral videos. Good stuff with Saturday Night Live, mocking them back. And one of the questions for democratic politics is very disturbing, because if, you know, you, me, Keir Starmer, everybody feel the only way we can fight back against sort of Trumpian right is to, as it were, play them at their own game. You turn democratic audiences into people sort of watching popcorn and thinking, nothing's real. These are all a bunch of bluffers, but wow, that was a funny hit back. And the whole thing becomes like watching a pro wrestling match.

• 44:33Alastair Campbell?

  I was yesterday at that thing, you know, remember a year ago now, we did that thing at Methodist Hall with eighteen hundred six formers. Well, I did it. I did it again solo yesterday and some fantastic questions, but one of them actually was about whether. There should be populism of the left and whether there's anything that we can actually, people like me can actually learn from Trump. And that's something that we also, I also discussed with Tommy Vita on Pod Save America this week. And it, and it, the whole premise of him wanting to talk to me was actually goes absolutely agrees with Alison that the Democrats are frankly all over the place. There's no strategy for recovery. There's no analysis really going on. There's no, as far as I can tell, there's no formal review of what happened. And leaders are

• 45:18Alastair Campbell?

  the, the leaders that are emerging, they're either the people that we've known forever like Bernie, Sanders, or AOC, or whatever, otherwise new names that are coming up. But it doesn't feel terribly, terribly organised. But so many, and what I said in answer to this question at Methodist Hall, I said, if we define the kind of Trumpian way in Moses' names, three Ps, populism, polarisation and posed truth, then we don't want to go down that road. We don't want to become, you know, a, a left wing progressive version of that. But where we should, can and should learn from them is in relation to the incredible organisational skills that they've got, not least through the whole media ecosystem, think tankery and all that stuff. But also, whether we like him

• 46:01Alastair Campbell?

  or not, and you and I don't, Trump is in his own way, a genius communicator. Even if you strip away the lies, and even if you strip away the nonsense and the bullshit and the bullying, and you may say, well, you can't strip that away because that's part of it. But just technically to watch him as a communicator. Now, what is it about? So when we were talking about Matthew Barzan saying, go and help Labour ministers talk like human beings, whatever you think about Trump, there's something compelling about the way he communicates. Now, you can't sort of imitate that. But what you can take from that, what is it that he's got about it? And it's, it's being interesting, it's being entertaining, it's about saying things that people don't necessarily

• 46:43Alastair Campbell?

  expect, it's about having a very strong, powerful turn of phrase that commands attention. Now, he does it for bad, but you can use all of those factors for good. As you know, I'm full of praise for the way that Starmer, Macron, Merz and Tusk are handling what's going on now. But in terms of how they project and communicate to the public, I still think it feels a little bit last generation, not next generation. It's the next generation that we've got to get on side for what's coming.

• 47:11Rory Stewart?

  Part of the problem is the risk of becoming sort of defenders of the status quo.

• 47:15Alastair Campbell?

  That is absolutely right. And defenders of the status quo that we actually don't like and didn't create. That's the point. What's happened to the Democrats at the moment? There's a risk that they're defending a status quo for which they're not actually responsible. There is stuff wrong with the way government works. There is stuff wrong with institutions. Be the reformers, not the defenders.

• 47:35Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. So, you know, we've had a question from anarchist sheep. Would we benefit from having our own version of Doge? Now, it's a classic question, right? Because I get very, very wound up, understandably, by people coming to me saying, well, yeah, but, you know, isn't Elon Musk right? Isn't government inefficient? Well, of course, government's inefficient. You know, you and I have worked in government. We've torn our hair out about government. There's a lot that's inefficient about government, and we see it all the time. And anybody goes into a busy hospital can immediately spot quite a lot of things going on around them that wouldn't be the way they'd manage it. How on earth do you say to people, look, okay, yes, and yes, it's also true that quite a lot of international development assistance was also misspent. But that doesn't mean doing this, right? Doesn't mean a situation

• 48:19Rory Stewart?

  where we now have all the HIV AIDS medication currently stuck in ports with it expiring. So it can't be used to save lives. The same with vaccination on the most basic diseases. I was talking to a farmer in Zimbabwe who is now funding all the antiretroviral treatment for his own workforce out of his own pocket because 35% of people have HIV AIDS. And Trump has stopped all of that. It's going to explosion across the world of this. We've seen it with Musk shutting down the Federal Drug Administration. I was talking to someone in the FDA. Shut down all the testing centers, including the basic food testing centers, and then have

• 49:03Rory Stewart?

  to reopen them. Fires, you know, nuclear controllers. We talked to Michael Lewis about this. This was his fifth risk. Then rehires them. I mean, it's completely irresponsible, insane. You know, the other one we hear about, well, isn't it right that, you know, Europe should pay a bit more in defence? Yeah, sure. Let's say you had, for some reason, been, I don't know, supporting a charity, and you were supporting 50% of its income.

• 49:29Rory Stewart?

  And you wanted it to raise more of its own money and be less dependent on you, Alistair, right? Fair enough, but the way to do it is say, here is a five year plan. I'm going to reduce every year. There's going to be a thing and you're going to raise up. Not, I'm stopping all funding now. Thank you. Whole thing collapses. And that's what reveals who they really are. They're not really trying to help Europe become self-sufficient. They're not giving them time to do it. They're just knocking them off the cliff.

• 49:51Alastair Campbell?

  Your point about you as Zimbabwean farmer and the HIV AIDS, I'm really struggling. Maybe there's some Americans who could help us try to understand this. Why are the former presidents so silent? I mean, George Bush, that was one of his biggest, the biggest parts of his legacy. And we all know what he thinks of Trump. You can see it on his face when he sits there at the new organisation, but he's just decided he's just going to sit it out and say nothing. I, I just wonder, would there be something very powerful if Biden, Obama, Clinton and Bush got together and warned the American people, this is unbelievably dangerous what's happening. We have to wake up. Or do they just think, you know what, we're the past, people won't listen. I don't know.

• 50:32Rory Stewart?

  The answer is it depends how they do it and how smart they are and how alert to the modern media environment they are. Do it wrong and the story will be, here's a bunch of elite has-beens. Do it with real wit and inventiveness, troll them back. You could actually do a surprising amount of damage. But the question is, how, how fleet-footed are these people going to be?

• 50:54Alastair Campbell?

  My friend Greg Nugent, who's very good to a marketing guy, and he says we should stop calling it Doge and call it Dodge, as in dodgy as fuck. Because it is, it's totally, the whole thing's corruption. Scaramitch is right. They've opened the golden era of corruption. So Dodge, we do, well, let's stop calling it Doge. We're going to call it Dodge.

• 51:16Rory Stewart?

  You've put your finger on something we're going to end on, and I think it's so important. So what Peter Pan, Pranasev points out in Russia in 2000, and it's the analogy, I think, with Trump today, is that the reality TV stuff, all the chat about invading Greenland and Canada being the 51st state and all the noise creates a sort of pseudo-debate.

• 51:42Rory Stewart?

  And it distracts you from what's really happening. So it creates a kind of illusion of a kind of democratic debate. Meanwhile, Congress is becoming completely irrelevant. And the really big questions, which you've just raised, Alistair, of power and money, happen offstage, are completely opaque. All these fireworks are happening on social media. But what really is happening with Musk, with the data in the tax office, with subsidies, with personal relationships, with conflicts of interest, with Bitcoin? And that's what happened in Russia. All this stuff was happening on TV. And the journalists were like, I just can't concentrate. What is happening in gas and oil? You know, how's Abramovich working with Beresovski?

• 52:27Rory Stewart?

  I thought Beresovski owns this, now Abramovich owns this, now Putin's doing this. And so I think that's it. Let's keep trying to see the policy behind, see what happens behind this con evolution.

• 52:42Alastair Campbell?

  It's also why, going back to our discussion on the main podcast this week about China, is why ultimately we have to train ourselves to have deeper and broader attention spans. And sometimes just to say, oh, he said something really stupid again, let's ignore it. Not play his game, not poke around the turd the whole time. Now, where you and I disagree with Michael Wolff, I don't agree and you don't agree with Michael, that you just wait him out. You can't wait him out, you've got to fight him. But I think at the moment, this goes back to the question about the Democrats. If you fight on every single front that they're throwing out, or the chaff that they're throwing out there, you'll dissipate your energy, you'll dissipate your strategic thinking.

• 53:24Alastair Campbell?

  So I think part of our role should be to resist talking about Trump every week, to resist talking about everything that he does, but to try to maintain an attention span on the things that actually beneath the surface are of even more lasting damage than the absolute. crap that he comes away, it comes out with when he sits at his desk with his big marker pen.

• 53:45Rory Stewart?

  And then the problem is, how do you know when it goes from being a performance and propaganda to reality? How do you spot that moment which people missed with Putin, where he goes from sounding like a ethno-nationalist, saying he's going to take Ukraine, to the moment where he actually begins believing it and evades Ukraine? So how do we spot the moment where Trump goes from saying, well, I'm going to take Greenland, and everyone thinks, well, he's always saying that kind of stuff, to the moment where the troops get on the plane and he takes Greenland?

• 54:17Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Yeah, well, you have to win the big battles en route, and that's why actually the, the European response for all the sort of social media bullying, intimidation, et cetera, thus far, I think, has been the, the right way. Anyway, quite depressing, but JD Vance, I know he says that the left wing has banned comedy, it's one of these many lies, but comedy was alive and well with Matt Ford last night, and I'm on the last leg this week, following the mooch.

• 54:45Rory Stewart?

  Oh, brilliant.

• 54:47Alastair Campbell?

  So lots more piss taking.

• 54:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, well, well done you. I spoke to Rory Bremner last night, you remember the great guy who does these amazing imitations of voices? And he was saying one of the challenges for comedians is satirising this world is getting more and more difficult because it becomes so absurd and grotesque, it's very difficult to outdo Trump himself. When Trump himself is posting videos of him as a gold statue in Gaza with dancing girls and beards, I mean, what, what's the satirist supposed to do?

• 55:14Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, well, lovely to talk to you as ever. Speak to you soon.

• 55:17Rory Stewart?

  Speak soon. Thank you, Austin. Bye bye.

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