575. Alastair Reacts to Burnham’s Speech and Rory’s Viral Stare

Will scrapping the triple lock be electorally perilous for Burnham, or can his vision of a national care service convince the public and his party that it’s time for pension reform? Did being Mayor of Greater Manchester make him a better orator? And what is Rory’s explanation for his viral Newsnight stare? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Mustafa Suleyman by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Sponsored by Lloyds. Move faster with daily global market analysis, the download on tokenisation and how to manage your company's energy transition all from Lloyds Corporate & Institutional Banking. Search Lloyds Corporate. 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] __________ Research: Evie Townend Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: James Clayden, Louis Mealing Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames 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?

  We like to say we want our politics to be about big issues and Andy Burnham has just given us all, friends and enemies alike, plenty to chew on. The building of a national care service, reform of the pensions triple lock, education reform, electoral reform, VAT, cut on electricity bills, greater public control of utilities, more council homes, leasehold reform, reform of right to buy, a warning to absent landlords. Some pretty big claims on AI leadership and clarity that Brexit has gone wrong and therefore plans for a new relationship with Europe. Barely a mention of the opposition parties as he renewed his call for a more consensual politics.

• 0:40Alastair Campbell?

  Plenty of mentions of his deceased father recently passed away and a lot of emotion as he promised to dedicate his leadership to building a country his dad would be proud of. He got a genuinely rapturous reception in the conference hall here in Liverpool, but given the number of big debates he has launched on so many big issues, what matters is the reaction outside. How do the other parties respond as the debate unfolds and the detail is thrashed out? And what does the great British public make of it all? So many big promises at a time of so many big challenges.

• 1:16Rory Stewart?

  This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

• 1:20Alastair Campbell?

  £100, that is what one message to a friend could earn for you.

• 1:25Rory Stewart?

  Fuse Energy has one aim, keeping energy prices down for everyone, not just for those who ring up and threaten to leave.

• 1:32Alastair Campbell?

  Their tariffs are already among the lowest on the market and now they're doubling their referral offer. Refer one friend and you will get £100 off your bills.

• 1:42Rory Stewart?

  And that's each of you £100 off your bills. So the maths does itself, you save on the tariff and then you both benefit from the referral on top. Simplicity rarely seen today in today's political climate.

• 1:53Alastair Campbell?

  And just remember the £100 is a limited offer and it drops back to £50 when it ends. Energy prices, as we keep reminding you, are not settling down.

• 2:04Rory Stewart?

  Switching takes three minutes. Go to fuseenergy.com/politics, use code POLITICS to get your free trip plus membership on top and start referring, earning money for both you and your friends. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 2:30Alastair 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.

• 2:43Rory 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 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.

• 3:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 3:13Rory 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.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day, every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/restpolitics.

• 3:58Alastair Campbell?

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

• 4:11Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart. And Alistair, you are in Liverpool at the Labour Party Conference. You were there for the big speech of Andy Burnham. Give us a sense of what it was like and how many conferences you've been to? You must have been to 30, 40, right?

• 4:26Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, my very, very first conference was Neil Kinnock's big speech in 1985. That was my first Labour conference. I've been to most since, not all.

• 4:34Rory Stewart?

  That's a good 40 years of conferences that you have come and gone.

• 4:38Alastair Campbell?

  It's a lot of conferences. We'll come on to that. And in addition to talking a lot about the conference and the Burnham speech, Rory, we are going to have to at some point, perhaps towards the end of the episode, reflect on your meme virality, I believe it's called, of the that, we're going to talk about that.

• 4:56Rory Stewart?

  We're going to talk about that, yeah.

• 4:58Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, let's start with Andy Burnham. You, I was there. It was, it was a very, really interesting speech and I thought very, very powerful. I mean, it felt incredibly powerful in Liverpool, in the hall. It really felt like the guy was connecting in a way that very few speakers do these days. And I think partly that was because they really wanted him to do well, but also it was a, I thought it was a well crafted speech, it was well delivered. I did think that there was, it was chunky, it was meaty. And so, yeah, I thought I counted 11 standing ovations.

• 5:35Rory Stewart?

  And before, before we get on to the content, which is obviously what people can, you know, see a little bit more of on the BBC, give us a sense of feeling of it. I mean, watching it on television, it looked like it was very, very, very natural. I mean, he was walking up and down the stage, but it wasn't sort of stagey. It sounded incredibly sort of relaxed. He managed to almost catch the tone as though he was speaking to a much, much smaller audience, working his thoughts out, when in fact he had this enormous call.

• 6:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it is, it is, of all the conference venues, I mean, they're all pretty big, but this is Liverpool is big and it's very wide and it's quite cavernous. He didn't have a lectern and therefore he didn't have a traditional autocue. I think he had a kind of Ed Sheeran type autocue somewhere down below. So he was kind of looking down a fair bit, but he was very natural. And also the, there were points of the speech where he allowed the kind of just very, very simple thought or concept just to land. He only got, he really only did the kind of rousing rhetoric when he was either coming to the climax or when the audience were kind of, you know, were getting going as he was speaking. Now, listen, I've got to say, one of the things I've said, I said this when we did

• 6:51Alastair Campbell?

  the Becoming Burnham series with Andy, with Steve Rotherham, the Liverpool mayor. He has grown so much as a politician, he really has. That was a, it was a pretty formidable performance, I thought, and so many kind of interesting angles to it as well.

• 7:07Rory Stewart?

  It's a speech, I wonder whether it's not a speech that really, a style that really benefits from having been mayor of Manchester, that it's not a House of Commons style. Nobody will let you make a speech like that in the House of Commons. Any pause you put, be interrupted by someone shouting from the back. It's not even the kind of speech you give to business people or fundraisers. It's the speech of somebody talking in a much more relaxed way to their constituents or their electors. I mean, it was, and you get a sense of real confidence that he's not worried about where the laugh lines are or he just trusts that his vision and story is going to be enough to carry.

• 7:51Rory Stewart?

  I also think he, maybe this is unfair, but I get the impression that he's also quite good at judging the eyes in the room and the reactions in the room and timing his, his rhythms to what he's getting back from the room.

• 8:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there's a couple of things I'd say to that. The first is I spoke, I did an event last night with Hamish Faulkner, the government minister in charge of Europe. And he was saying that his generation, younger MPs, he's in his early 40s, don't really think about big speeches as much as maybe my generation, let alone sort of, you know, previous generations did. And, but I think Andy's always been somebody who actually does think a big speech matters. I can remember when he was, became, I think it was Shadow Health Secretary ages ago and he was, you know, really worried about making his first big speech, you know, that was a really important moment. And so this was an important moment, but the style is very interesting. It's kind of, it's quite folksy.

• 8:48Alastair Campbell?

  It's very emotional. I mean, there was a point at which I think everybody in the hall thought he was about to start crying. And he is somebody, again, back to the chat with Steve Rotherham, Andy Burnham is somebody who really wears his heart on his sleeve. And you've probably had moments like this where you're making a speech, I get this maybe doing eulogies in particular, where you, there's a bit maybe when you've been practicing, rehearsing as it were, that you know there's a bit that can set you off. And I, you could see that he was coming up to a bit, it was obviously going to be about his dad. Everybody in the hall thought he's about to talk about his dad. But what was so interesting was the point that he made on the back of it.

• 9:29Alastair Campbell?

  He mentioned John Swinney, the SNP leader who said on, coincidentally, he didn't know that Andy's dad had died, but he said that Andy Burnham will be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. And he just, he went into this really, and I thought you, I actually thought of you, I thought Rory will love this bit because it was so powerful about kind of feeling for the union. And that sort of, that emotion kept coming out and I don't know whether you, you could see it, but he was, when, when there was a lot of applause, he was kind of walking over to where there was a kind of podium and just sort of taking a sip of water and coming back. And he didn't mind long pauses and quite long pauses. No, I thought, I thought as a, as a performance, as a speech, that we'll come on to the content,

• 10:13Alastair Campbell?

  but I thought he delivered extraordinarily well.

• 10:15Rory Stewart?

  And, and look, we spent the first five minutes talking about the performance and I know there will be people who'll say, well, that's not the point. And in fact, a lot of journalists, when I was looking at some of the reporting, have tended to ignore that and focus largely on, you know, what are the policy announcements in it? But I would say that

• 10:37Rory Stewart?

  It's incredibly important. I mean, what in the end brought down Keir Starmer? It was the inability to communicate. What do we know about Donald Trump? He is an extraordinary communicator. And so I think so much of modern politics is about this. And look at Mamdani. It's not exactly as though he's actually brought through an incredible number of radical policies yet in New York. It's the feeling of the guy. So I would begin by saying, actually, that communication thing is worth sitting with because the policy analysts are going to miss this, that one of the reasons why Andy Burnham might be in a position to win the next election is if he can keep that degree of confidence and communication.

• 11:21Rory Stewart?

  Because the fundamentals, and this is, I suppose, where we can flip it around a policy, the fundamentals remain unbelievably difficult. So let's sort of step back and take a policy look at the position he's inherited. Britain has had basically zero growth since 2008.

• 11:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Rory Stewart?

  Basically, zero growth for almost 20 years. It's unheard of. Britain's not been in that position since probably the Napoleonic Wars, like 200 years. And at the same time, median incomes have stagnated and inflation has grown and debt has grown. And in the last five years particularly, the amount of tax we take as a proportion of our national income has gone up by 5% of national incomes, huge increase in tax, which again is without any peacetime precedent. Massive transformation of the British economy. And he's stuck with a situation where broadly speaking, people don't really believe that the British economy is going to be able to get growth.

• 12:22Rory Stewart?

  And we can come on to that later, where he can't borrow because they've maxed out the borrowing and already they're paying. You know, they've added about 180 billion in tax revenue. They're spending about 160 billion just in servicing their debt.

• 12:36Rory Stewart?

  Credible amount of money. And he therefore has basically to raise taxes a bit, cut services a bit. And then on the side, he's trying to deliver a project of transforming and changing Britain and rebuilding the Britain that his father was proud of.

• 12:53Alastair Campbell?

  The thing that really struck me as well, I was at a business event last night and I was talking to this businesswoman. And she, we were talking about this vibes thing. And she said what you've just said, she said, it really does matter. Because you need, confidence breeds confidence. And she said, we have felt just a bit more confident since Andy Burnham has replaced the rather sort of doom and gloom, everything's going to get worse before it gets better, et cetera. And so I thought with all these big challenges that he set out, and I listed them at the top, there's some really big challenges. I mean, every single one of them, you think there's a lot of details got to come out on that. But on all of them, it was this kind of, you know, we can do this. We've done this sort of scheduling for, we can do it.

• 13:37Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that is a very, very important message. And I also thought, I thought, you know, we'll come on to the big policy stuff. I also thought it was genuinely interesting that he, I think the only non-labor politicians he mentioned were John Swinney, who I mentioned. Liz Truss as a bit of a gag, Boris Johnson because of the Boris, where so-called Boris Wave on Immigration. And Margaret Thatcher in basically saying, we're going to roll back a lot of the Thatcherism in relation to, you know, public control and public ownership. And he did it, as you say, with such kind of confidence. And not, I think, not caring. People sort of say he's a people pleaser.

• 14:16Alastair Campbell?

  And I was, I was actually watching a few of the, some of the journalists who were kind of, you know, nodding to each other, talking to each other, whatever. And I could see them not quite knowing how to go at this speech. It'd be very interesting to see how they try to. But one, I saw one journalist saying, I think they'll have a go at him for almost crying. Well, of course, the public won't mind him almost crying at all because what it shows is a man who, you know, loved his dad. We talked this week on the podcast about the triple lock. And I can't remember if it was you or I, but I know we both discussed before this idea that, you know, if you're going to do the triple lock, don't just do it by saying, get rid of the triple lock, link it to something big. And he's done that to social care. Now, I think that will settle down, maybe settle down the bond markets a bit.

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  But again, a lot of detail still to come. And it's a long-term thing. And he's putting it into the next parliament.

• 15:09Rory Stewart?

  Let's, let's start with the triple lock because it's a good central place to start. So the triple lock was this weird thing introduced by George Osborne. And it meant that pensions were always going to go up, whichever was the higher of the three measurements. And over time, that is adding 18 billion pounds a year more than might have been projected. So we're now at a stage.

• 15:32Alastair Campbell?

  And ratcheting and ratcheting and ratcheting.

• 15:34Rory Stewart?

  Ratcheting, ratcheting. And one of the reasons why Camille Badenoch didn't want to get rid of it is that in the short term, it doesn't deliver huge savings. Somebody calculated potentially in the next year or so, it would only cost 600 million. So she maybe looks at that and thinks, well, is it worth having the biggest political fight of my life? Despite the fact everybody in her party, you know, people like me have been against the triple lock, David Gork's against the triple lock. Tom Tugendhat called it a Ponzi scheme and he's now her shadow foreign secretary. So she, she, she ducked that. She ducked that because she could see political pain and not a great deal of, of gain.

• 16:12Rory Stewart?

  He's done it. He's done it 2030, which is, you know, unfortunately not as soon as it could be, but it's a good, bold statement. And he's come up with a formulation, a double lock instead of a triple lock, which softens it a bit. And the Institute for Fiscal Studies has come out and said, well, may not be perfect, but it goes a long way. And as you say, it's something more than vibes. It's a responsible, if you wanted to sell it, it's a responsible long-term move that the other political readers have ducked.

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:47Rory Stewart?

  So that's good. That's brave. And he did it, I don't know, you know, we all woke up as today programs this morning with one of the heads of the trade unions saying on no account is he to get rid of the triple lock. And the Lib Dems, you know, Ed Davey, your friend saying this was terribly regressive and pensions are going to pay the cost. So that's an interesting beginning.

• 17:07Alastair Campbell?

  And Farage has come straight out and said, he will cut your pension, I will stop the boats, I will cut the immigration, blah, blah, blah.

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  And I'll cut international aid, which incidentally barely exists anymore. There's, there's basically, yeah, yeah.

• 17:19Alastair Campbell?

  And I do think this will, if I were the opposition parties, they all come straight out with a kind of instant response on this because they know that it's going to be a sort of big deal and getting huge media coverage. I'd be wary about this if I were them. I would go away and think very, very carefully. Because I, I think the other thing that he did, I really, why are you laughing at that?

• 17:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, can I just come in on you that? Because I'm fascinated by this problem. Imagine you're a Tory. So imagine you're Camille Badenoch and you really wanted to get rid of the triple lock and you ducked it. And your whole party wants to get rid of the triple lock. And he does this. What's your best case scenario for responding? Are you able to ignore it? Are you able to welcome it? I mean, what the hell can she do?

• 17:58Alastair Campbell?

  I, I wonder if you don't go, you see, there was so much in the speech. So I wonder whether, for example, given that Margaret Thatcher has this hallowed status in the Conservative Party, whether they go into the whole housing agenda, but then, you know, the water agenda, but I mean, you know, standing up for the water companies, that's, that's not a very good position. Arguing it's more council houses, arguing it's leasehold reform. I think he's, I think, I think, of course, they could go on Europe. They could sort of go big on, you know, do we really want to revisit this? I actually wanted a little bit more on the European front. I kind of all, I knew he was going to say something about Europe, but it is, it's a start. And because he's, he's basically saying he's going to set out all the options. Well, the option does include, can we get back in?

• 18:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, let's, let's do that as the second thing because I guess that's the second big headline, which is that he stood up totally unembarrassed on that stage and said Brexit did more harm than good.

• 18:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Rory Stewart?

  And he basically dated the decline in the British economy to 2016, the Brexit referendum.

• 18:56Alastair Campbell?

  And the political instability of 10 prime ministers.

• 18:58Rory Stewart?

  And he blamed all the immigration that people hate on Brexit, which is quite a sort of clever jujitsu move. He's basically saying to the far right, they said the immigration that you're complaining about was delivered through leaving the European Union. And as you say, he's letting out all these options, which certainly should include a customs union, potentially a single market, potentially a route back in. And it's a good time to be doing it, I would say geopolitically, given Trump and China and all this thing. We do need that third, third leg, that middle power leg.

• 19:30Rory Stewart?

  But wow, I mean, why was Keir Starmer not able to do that? I never heard Keir Starmer stand up and say Brexit did more harm than good. I never heard him stand up, say all options were on the table.

• 19:40Alastair Campbell?

  Make Brexit work. I mean, make Brexit work. And the reason I was always so angry about make Brexit work is I just felt it conceded

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  a reality that just isn't real. It conceded that you can make Brexit work. I mean, you can live with Brexit. But you can, I don't think there's any way that you can say that Brexit can be good for the sort of things that both Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham said. I got, everybody after these speeches is always sort of pinging messages at each other and all that. And I got one message from an MP who actually was, you know, kind of pretty loyal to Keir Starmer to the end. And, and said, you know, it actually underlined just how little vision we really had for two years.

• 20:22Alastair Campbell?

  These changes are all hard to do, but it surely demonstrated why the change had to be made. And, and so I, I think there's, there was that feeling as well that, I mean, look, you've got to be very careful. You've been to lots of Tory conferences, I've been to lots of conferences of all the parties, but you do get this extraordinary kind of, well, first you're in a bubble, you've been in the bubble for a week, sort of trapped inside a secure zone. You then, you then have the bubble of the event with the sort of, you know, the buildup and what have you. But this one, and I've been involved in a few speeches where you come out thinking that was amazing. And it turns out it was, and the public felt as well the same, but other speeches, they're not the same. But it genuinely felt people coming out sort of just, wow, where did that come from? And I'll tell you the other one, Rory, that came on, which may be a little more surprising, was electoral reform.

• 21:07Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we've always known he believes in that, but that's another big fight. It's another big fight and another big debate.

• 21:14Rory Stewart?

  But, but you see, I think that, now that he's done them, and, and it's interesting because he's couched off and says people please there and now. You know, he wants to make everyone happy. Coming out that firmly on Brexit doesn't make everyone happy. In fact, the risk of us thing to do is to do what Keir Starmer did, which is sort of waffle around in the middle, pretending he's going to make Brexit work while signaling that actually he'd rather we remain, but he's not going to say it, right? So I think there's something interesting about Burnham, which is that. The sort of vibe charisma confidence gives him a form of political courage gives him and and what it then does and I don't want to sound too much like the Alastair Campbell disciple here but one of the um one of your moves here maybe is that you're then setting up

• 21:59Rory Stewart?

  an argument with the other side which I think you're going to win I'd really like to see the Brexit side come out and make a whole series of passionate arguments for Brexit at the moment because it's not that easy ten years on to make the great arguments for Brexit I'd love to see people make a great argument for our electoral system when everyone thinks everything's broken I I and as you say I mean you've made the point on the water companies already but even the housing stuff look I I am somebody who thinks that there was something very empowering for millions of people buying their houses but that's something that happened a long time ago in the nineteen eighties there are very very few people around today for whom that's current thing what people feel today is a million people on a housing waiting list

• 22:44Rory Stewart?

  unable to get houses so even if it transformed yeah a lot of working class lives and it did I mean there's good evidence that actually it delivered a lot of wealth to people on low incomes in the nineteen eighties in an extraordinary one time fashion I don't think there's many people who are enthusiastic about it now or defending it now

• 23:01Alastair Campbell?

  I thought he was also quite clever the way he he's he quite cleverly linked the one million people who are currently on the homeless register with the one million who got their own homes and then the sort of and also the you know the the loss of power and the loss of control for for councils the other confident bit that was shown in relation to Brexit wasn't in the Brexit section but it was through the speech this use of taking back control and the only really kind of very harshly sort of Alastair Campbell style go for your enemy hard line was when he said you know the people who lost control were the were the right not the left um and I so I so I thought that was a kind of another little judo move that that that he worked quite well

• 23:43Rory Stewart?

  Well so let me let me now channel my inner Tory um and

• 23:50Rory Stewart?

  I think there will be a lot of people from the right listening to that who'll be a little unsettled the the were there were moments on it where there were a little kind of hints of the pitchfork

• 24:03Alastair Campbell?

  Too much working class aspiration going or what

• 24:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah a lot of that not not not a lot of talk about what in America we'd call the middle class that's right um and actually it's so interesting I mean it's a very interesting and it's still such a powerful dynamic when actually Britain is in traditional social class terms a predominantly middle class country that we talk about it I mean Britain is very interesting compared to America are people on similar incomes in America identify as being middle class they overestimate their class and in Britain people underestimate their class they like to call themselves working class when in sociological terms they'd be different um and we've got a great interview coming next week where we get get into this discussion with a fantastic

• 24:43Alastair Campbell?

  And she gives and she is with Shabana Mahmood the home secretary she gives you a very good slapdown Rory I've really enjoyed it

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  Very good sat down by there anyway um let me let me make the critique there more serious which isn't this sort of tone it's that the nineteen seventies which he's implicitly seems to sort of gesture towards and he doesn't he's not and and that's where he's quite clever because it's a little opaque but if he's saying the problem was neoliberalism and basically Thatcher it's worth remembering the nineteen seventies were not that great right nineteen nineteen seventies we had effective top rates of tax at ninety eight percent we had inflation running at twenty eight at twenty five percent a year we lost seventy five percent of the value of the British Stock Exchange in the early nineteen seventies we had a call in

• 25:32Rory Stewart?

  the IMF and incomes grew pretty steeply during the nineteen eighties and actually this last forty years if you took the snapshot of nineteen ninety one to two thousand eight which was the kind of height of the neoliberal consensus was the first time since eighteen seventy when British GDP per capita was growing faster than that of the US where our productivity was the second highest in the OECD and most economists looking at the glory days that he's talking about nineteen forty five to nineteen eighty would say that yes there were great strengths in terms of equality Britain became a much more equal society the NHS was created but it was also a moment where British industry really struggled innovation struggled

• 26:17Rory Stewart?

  we got stuck in some very strange situations with unions and people were pretty depressed about the future of the British economy when many other countries Germany Japan and then increasingly the Asian tigers were shooting ahead so I there's something which if you're you know gentle soft right pro business person you're sort of slightly thinking well you know because he also said one of the things he was against with Thatcher was deregulation most businesses in Britain feel we are much much too regulated and that one of the ways in which we could grow growth is by quite a lot of deregulation so um that that that anyway that's over to you

• 26:58Alastair Campbell?

  No I I I that's why I say I think that is maybe where the Tories will try to go but it'll also be very interesting to see whether Farage who's from his initial reaction seems to think well I just carry on banging my old drum I don't need to adapt to this whether actually that adds to this sense that I think is developing about Farage that he's slightly yesterday's man in the political debate which is why I thought it was clever that Andy Burnham didn't even mention his name there has been a lot of talk of Farage at this conference I've heard a lot of people saying oh Farage this Farage that but not not so much in the speeches but just around the place because he's still probably a bigger

• 27:37Alastair Campbell?

  threat than um than than the Tories but no I I I was I left kind of pretty energized by the whole thing and uh but I I think on the the electoral just to go back to electoral reform that that is another by the way where you shouldn't think despite the fact it was one of the eleven standing evasions it was one of the eleven standing evasions because people were just loving the boldness of the whole speech right but I saw quite a few people standing up who I know are very much opposed to electoral reform but your point about winning arguments is I I this is what to me is what politics is at its best it's all about is having really big arguments over time and that's why the the chatter had been Amish

• 28:21Alastair Campbell?

  Fortner about you know they're the TikTok generation well Andy Andy Burnham's very very good on social media but what he's done today has shown that there is a lot more to him than that and you and I have always known that there is and the other thing I like about this going back to the bit the the and if people haven't listened to the series with Steve Rotherham I mean he really does understand Andy Burnham and and what I like about the sort of Andy Burnham Steve Rotherham stories they wrote that book Head North and so much of what we've seen today that we're sort of saying is is new and it is new a lot of it but it's actually stuff that he was writing about back then including electoral reform including including housing including pensions

• 29:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah may maybe the speech was so confident so fluent and so authentic because basically he's been giving versions of that speech in Manchester for many years now yeah and and it's really he's really sat with it and he really knows how those those values and ideas connect

• 29:17Alastair Campbell?

  On the working class point Rory did you did you were you sort of thinking that actually there's a middle class a middle class out there that maybe is thinks this isn't speaking to them because the care thing the care service speaks to the middle class as well as working class people

• 29:32Rory Stewart?

  Well I think what spoke to everybody and would speak to the middle class and would speak to someone like me is the idea of solidarity and unity and union you know the strongest bits for someone like me is is that he's describing a society where we all have obligations towards each other I mean I'm very happy to pay the top rate of tax so that other people can have good public services I'm very happy and I think many people will feel like this maybe not the you know the the full libertarian right but I think a lot of gentle soft right people feel that it's right that they pay forty five percent income tax and that and that and I think we all share his horror with homelessness I mean it and a real sense that that's something that's fixable and that he pretty much fixed

• 30:18Rory Stewart?

  in Manchester I mean there's been some debates around that but he made a lot of progress

• 30:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well part of what happened in Manchester is that because people knew that Manchester had this scheme to get people off the streets and give them accommodation that people were coming from outside Manchester the numbers went right down and they went went back back up again there's a really you know I mentioned in the was it last week I talked about James Graham's new play about Keynes

• 30:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah yeah

• 30:39Alastair Campbell?

  And I I know Keynes was a liberal but I I really do think Labour ministers should go and watch this play but it was really interesting how Keynes's big thing was about the the the purpose of economics being to have a good life for ordinary people and I don't know whether Andy's aware of the play but he used that phrase twice about you know about giving people a good life and I just think that is that should be their guiding light

• 31:02Rory Stewart?

  And putting housing at the centre of it I mean he one of the things he does in his speeches it's not all um a sort of complete logical argument right it's not actually true that maybe that maybe housing does quite as much work as he thinks it does but it's a good idea it's a lovely thing to get behind and it's um and it's an offer I mean if you can I do think that the universal offer he's got an instinct for that that if you can say to everybody in the country look we may not be able to sort out inequality we may not be able to sort out growth in the way that you want but we can say that you're going

• 31:42Rory Stewart?

  to get a good house you will get good healthcare you'll get a decent care system you'll get good education

• 31:51Rory Stewart?

  That's my sort of, that's where I hear Tessa Jau. I mean, that's what she was always saying to me, her endless test around saying, would I put my mother or my grandmother in this school, in this house? And he of course started as her researcher. Can we take a quick break though, Alistair? Maybe after the break, I'd love to talk to you about the Labour Party politics and where he might get into trouble. Because in the end, that's what undid Keir Starmer. It wasn't the public, he had this huge majority, it was the party itself. So maybe quick break and then back for more.

• 32:21Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, see you shortly.

• 32:23Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by Lloyds. One thing that politics teaches you is that certainty, predictability is often an illusion.

• 32:30Alastair Campbell?

  At Lloyds Markets Summit earlier this month, I sat down with Catty Kay from the Rest is Politics US, and we got into a very interesting discussion about the challenges that chief execs from large companies and institutions face every day. Governments come and go, markets can be unpredictable. The conversation kept coming back to the same point: ambitious organisations need more than capital alone.

• 32:53Rory Stewart?

  And one of the key issues for leaders of large corporates and institutions the world over is this: how do you act when certainty never arrives?

• 33:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the best leaders don't wait for that certainty. Instead, they build confidence through insight, expertise and trusted relationships.

• 33:09Rory Stewart?

  Whether it's through summits or their insights hub, Lloyds helps their clients understand the forces shaping global markets.

• 33:16Alastair Campbell?

  Search Lloyds Corporate for daily global market analysis, the download on tokenisation and how to manage your company's energy transition, all from Lloyds Corporate and Institutional Banking. Bank on Lloyds.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Did you know that psoriatic arthritis may progress over time and could cause permanent joint damage if left untreated?

• 33:42Speaker 03

  Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Trimfaya guselkumab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with active psoriatic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  Imagine being a million miles away. Explore the possibilities. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to see new joint data and learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information.

• 34:35Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics. From me, Rory Stewart.

• 34:38Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 34:40Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Alistair, this is the thing that worries me. So Keir Starmer won a stonking majority, had a majority of over 100, and he was taken down because the Labour Party turned against him. And actually, I got this, I had a conversation with one of the whips shortly after Starmer went, he's actually a Tory whip, who said, the point is that they don't have a working majority anymore. In fact, nobody has a working majority. Politics has changed so much that none of us can tell any of our MPs what to do. So his implication was Andy Burnham was absolutely screwed because he doesn't have a working majority. It doesn't matter what the figures look like, he's never going to be able to get anything done. Has something changed? And if so, how?

• 35:25Alastair Campbell?

  You almost pulled one of your faces there Rory, which I will promise our listeners of yours, we will talk about it. Essentially, if I may plug my splendid book Persevilliance, coming out soon, I actually write about Blair, Starmer, Burnham in the context of who's got Persevilliance as opposed to Resilience. And I make the point that Keir Starmer, in large part, became Prime Minister with such a majority by not being the Tories. Okay. Andy Burnham has become Prime Minister in the way that he did, to some extent by not being Keir Starmer. So you are right that the Labour Party, as it were, turned. But I think the Labour Party

• 36:08Alastair Campbell?

  turned because, for two reasons. MPs didn't feel their views were valued and respected. They did think there was a kind of number 10 operation that held them rather in contempt. But the most important thing was that Labour MPs were going out into the country and getting the dislike of the government, the new government, from the public, from their electorate, and starting to think, I'm in trouble here. And the reason why I think it was, and I said this like, this event I was doing last night, somebody was asking, you know, what should we know about Andy Burnham that we don't know? And I honestly didn't mean this as a criticism of Andy Burnham at all. I said, what you need to know about Andy Burnham, he's really ruthless.

• 36:53Alastair Campbell?

  He has become, he has become Prime Minister inheriting somebody else's majority. When he listed the great election wins of the Labour through history, he didn't even mention 2024, 1945 to 1997, then it stops. In other words, the next one is the one that he's thinking about. So he, and that was an extraordinary thing, but that was him. And look, I think I've told you in the back of a car once, I did have a conversation with him in Manchester a while back. Quite early on in Keir Starmer's leadership, he was basically, this isn't going to work, it's not going to work. They don't do, they don't do politics properly. So he's basically, he is basically going to take the MPs seriously. And that means they're more likely to stay inside.

• 37:37Rory Stewart?

  I was really struck when we interviewed him on leading the first time. We were, the way that you two were talking and the margins of that, and just how bleak his vision of what was going on was. And the ruthlessness thing, I mean, I think I'm right in saying that he basically turned up at last party conference as a fringe speaker, basically leading a kind of rebellion against Keir Starmer with all Keir Starmer's loyalists saying, who the hell is this guy? So this idea that he's a sort of people pleaser, he doesn't like making anyone unhappy, that takes a hell of a lot of balls to turn up at your party conference against the wishes of the National Executive and run fringe meetings,

• 38:20Rory Stewart?

  basically plotting how to topple the sitting Prime Minister.

• 38:24Alastair Campbell?

  No, and I mean, if you think about it, the main narrative around the conference last year, or one of them, was Andy Burnham's on the prowl. And the main outcome was Keir Starmer has seen off Andy Burnham for good.

• 38:38Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 38:38Alastair Campbell?

  A year later, he goes through the by-election where he was blocked, he then goes through, re-engineers another by-election, which he wins, and wins it in such a way that even Keir Starmer is sort of saying, well, it's obvious now, I've got to go, and he comes in. And people then saying, he won because he's a nicer guy. It's an incredible feat.

• 38:59Rory Stewart?

  No, it's very weird, isn't it? It's very weird. And actually, yeah, very weird. And a lot of the, he's all about the vibes and he's not serious, wasn't initially produced by the Tories. It was produced by Starmer loyalists trying to write him off a year and a half ago, saying, you know, he doesn't. And you sometimes got a bit of this from Starmer. He gets sort of impatient that Burnham, you know, didn't understand some aspect of, you know, fiscal policy, or had got his numbers wrong, or, you know, nobody can be Prime Minister if they, you know, say whatever he said about waspy women.

• 39:31Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:33Rory Stewart?

  So no, I think it's, I think he's, I think he's, yeah, there's something, there's something going on there. Okay, let's lean into the Labour Party though for a second. So my big idea that I had today, I was just up in Dunbarth and Loch Lomond. And I was with a conference, in one of these big conferences that you go to, and a friend of mine who I admire very much, he's an economist, was saying, all the politicians in Britain know how to create growth, they're just too afraid to do it. They quoted, I think, Jean-Paul Juncker, who said, we all know what to do, we just don't know how to get re-elected once you've done it. And I said, and I want to try this idea on you, that that's wrong.

• 40:14Rory Stewart?

  That the reason why the politicians are not doing what the economists want them to do is that they are prioritising other things over growth. Let's take a couple of examples. So, you know, why did the Tories not push through radical planning reform? Well, because actually, as Conservatives representing rural constituencies, they actually were really on the side of the NIMBYs. It wasn't that they were afraid of them, they agreed with them, they want to keep their green and pleasant land, they want it. Why does Labour stop big cuts to welfare or changes to the winter fuel allowance? Well, because broadly speaking, they're on the side of the people getting winter fuel allowance, welfare payments, and they're putting that ahead of growth. And you can keep developing this, you know, why

• 40:56Rory Stewart?

  is it that Ed Miliband stood behind his energy policy? Well, because he believed in what he thought he was doing to combat climate change and be an ambassador for the world on climate change. So this idea that there is a sort of range of options, which a lot of the economists are peddling, which is cut the energy costs, build, drill, deregulate, liberate the capital markets, and we all know what to do, it's just the politicians too cowardly to do it, isn't catching the actual reality of the values. And I think in many, many ways...

• 41:35Rory Stewart?

  The values of our politicians are not actually about growth. Let's take another example. Let's say that we actually needed some immigration for our economy. Well, Nigel Farage is going to put curbing immigration above growth, right? Um, so let's, let's center in on the Labour Party. This is, I, I, I think the bit that I find easiest to believe that he's going to get through is social housing and more control over water. But I don't think he's ever going to have the money to buy back the water industry.

• 42:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Rory Stewart?

  I find it much more difficult to believe he's going to be able to deliver growth in every postcode if growth means cutting welfare spending, cutting taxes, deregulating, because I just don't think his, his party's up for all that stuff.

• 42:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we shall see because I spent quite a lot of time up here with Alan Milburn. Um, I did an event with him yesterday, which is about young people and mental health, but I also was talking about a new campaign on getting involved in about young people and their wellbeing. And he, of course, he was really funny being with it because uh, and I've got to tell you, Roy, that the whole selfie thing is out of control at these press, at these conferences now. It is absolutely out of control. We were wandering around and, and Alan, Alan was being seen like this sort of, you know, oh, it's Alan Milburn. He's doing the neat review and the neat review was becoming like, and it was like, go on, Alan, you could do it. You've got to do it. Have you? Uh, but what was interesting about the way that, and this event I did with Alan was kind of was an audience, was public.

• 43:03Alastair Campbell?

  It wasn't as if he was just, you know, talking to me. And he's going to be coming up with some big stuff. He's going to be coming up with some big, you know, really big change, which fits, I think, with a lot of the stuff that, um, Pat McFadden's been talking about on welfare and that Andy's been talking about on welfare. And I think with that, you see, the other thing that's, that's interesting about this, where we are in the parliamentary timetables. We've had these two years where actually, you know, he mentioned Shabana Mahmood getting the small boats numbers down and getting, you know, the migration numbers more under control. They have done a lot in the first two years, but Andy Burnham is basically saying, right, we've got a new government now, but it's got a very short life. Now, what that means for the MPs,

• 43:44Alastair Campbell?

  you know, this is you get closer to an election, you've got to be very, very careful about the choices that you make. Some of the choices and including the weakening of your own government at, uh, at a time when it could be very, very crucial. So, and I, and I, and I wouldn't underestimate, you mentioned, you know, talking to a whip. Some of the whips I talked to under Keir Starmer said it was, it was just, they, they felt they didn't have enough to, to material to keep the MPs on board, not enough arguments. And I think what Andy's doing is, is, is showing, he's taking them serious. As one MP I saw said, I've seen Andy Burnham more in the 10 weeks he's been Prime Minister than I saw Keir Starmer during two years. Um, so he's doing politics. He's doing politics.

• 44:28Rory Stewart?

  Let's, um, take the idea that Alan Milburn's going to come in with some radical stuff and that Pat McFadden is going to come to radical stuff. What that means for listeners, or at least what I think the newspapers think that means for listeners, is that they're going to make significant cuts to welfare and that they're going to try to restore the public finances by changing a system which impairs to have contributed to a million people being out of work, who shouldn't be out of work.

• 45:00Rory Stewart?

  But that will mean that if you're a Labour MP in a constituency where a lot of people are out of work and a lot of the traditional Labour heartland are places where there are far more people on these benefits than would be true in a traditional prosperous Tory suburb. Um, they will have a lot of people coming into their constituency surgeries. And of course, any cuts are either slightly too generous or they're slightly too mean. And these will be slightly too mean and there will be lots of people saying, this is completely ridiculous. How the hell am I supposed to live on this? How could I have this cut?

• 45:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but Roy, how, how, how can it be that we now have one million young people not in education, employment or training? That, that is a failure of, and this is where systemic failure has to come into it. A million young people. And so, and, and the, I'd say that the arguments that Alan Milburn, I felt was starting to make was that we, we've got, we, we can either just sort of carry on paying the benefits and, and if you're on benefits, say at age 18, the chances of you being still, still being on benefits at 30 are so much higher than if you actually get, go into the benefit system later. Now, I, I think, so I think what he's saying is, you know, we, this, and, and Andy was starting to talk about this.

• 46:18Alastair Campbell?

  I thought one of the most interesting things, he did a big thing about older people. And then he, he, he just had a line, which I don't think he was expecting to be a clap line. And he basically said, you know, but we've also got to put right at the heart of our policy is young people and their, and their future. And, and I think this sort of idea of investing in young people. Um, so it is going to be welfare to work. It has to be welfare to work. And again, to go back to his Manchester experience, that is where you're sort of, you know, the way he talks to business and talks about business. A lot of the business people felt, I swear to you, felt they weren't getting enough out of this conference, but it was very much, you know, I think his, his message is going to be that they are going to be a big part of this as well. So, look, the Milburn stuff's going to be very, very interesting. And I think we should, I think you and I, I know you were impressed when we had him on the podcast first time around.

• 47:03Alastair Campbell?

  We should get him back. Of course, I think his report is going to be seminal for this government.

• 47:07Rory Stewart?

  Let's, let's, let's get him back. And because I think that'll be one of the big things that people will be looking at.

• 47:13Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 47:14Rory Stewart?

  And then the second thing is going to be this question around business, whereas you say the business isn't yet fully won over. Um, that they're not, they, they don't feel the love quite yet.

• 47:26Alastair Campbell?

  I'm sorry, but I have, I have to raise something else.

• 47:29Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 47:29Alastair Campbell?

  Because, well, virtually everywhere I went, two things were happening.

• 47:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Alastair Campbell?

  Most people under 30 saying, can I have a selfie? Because it seems to be obligatory now.

• 47:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Alastair Campbell?

  That if you're a national treasure like, like what I am, you know, you have to have a picture taken.

• 47:44Rory Stewart?

  Like what you are, yeah.

• 47:45Alastair Campbell?

  And, and thirty.

• 47:46Rory Stewart?

  Which must have been slightly annoying for the Labour ministers and MPs if you were getting more selfies than they were.

• 47:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I tried to do it in a low profile, soto voto kind of way.

• 47:56Rory Stewart?

  Brilliant, yeah.

• 47:56Alastair Campbell?

  Um, but the other thing that was happening, Roy, is everybody, everybody was saying to me, what on earth was Roy doing with the swivel and the stare on Newsnight?

• 48:07Rory Stewart?

  Now, did you, did you see it? Did you actually see it on Newsnight?

• 48:11Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't see it live, no.

• 48:12Rory Stewart?

  No, but you saw, you saw the clap, right?

• 48:14Alastair Campbell?

  And sorry, Roy, let me just tell you something. I was doing an event 24 hours later with 2,000 for the wonderful 93% club, which is for the state school network against you 7% posh boys.

• 48:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 48:27Alastair Campbell?

  And there were 2,000 teenagers, right? Somebody asked me about what on earth was going on with Roy on Newsnight. And I said, well, before I answer that, who's actually aware of that? Hands up. Who's aware of what that question's about? 2,000 hands went up. Everybody saw it.

• 48:43Rory Stewart?

  No, it's, it's absolutely unbelievable. And, um, one single post on it got 22 million views.

• 48:51Alastair Campbell?

  Was that J K Rowling?

• 48:52Rory Stewart?

  Uh, no, that wasn't even J K Rowling. It was someone else on a meme. I mean, Rowling got a lot, but that was another meme. And then my godson decided to just put up on social media him doing it without even referring to me and got 850,000 views immediately. I mean, it's, it's really extraordinary. And, um, but presumably you've seen me do that head gesture before or something like it. I mean, did it seem totally?

• 49:17Alastair Campbell?

  Not as dramatic, not as, not as dramatic as that.

• 49:19Rory Stewart?

  I was on stage today at this conference and I noticed actually when I was on stage at a conference, I do actually do that all the time. I'm like, okay, somebody else.

• 49:27Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, you don't do it like that.

• 49:30Rory Stewart?

  You don't do quite like that.

• 49:31Alastair Campbell?

  The, the thing you do more.

• 49:32Rory Stewart?

  And, and I, and I, and I, you go on, what do I do more? You know, grimace. I do a lot of grimace thing.

• 49:37Alastair Campbell?

  You're sometimes going without anything going on, you go.

• 49:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I, I grimace.

• 49:40Alastair Campbell?

  Like that. But this was like, anyway, they made me, they made me, um, mimic it. They made me sort of try to, but I found it very hard because I felt you, you had to go like that before you go like that. But you just go like that.

• 49:55Alastair Campbell?

  So what were you doing?

• 49:57Rory Stewart?

  Well, I also think a little bit like Ed Miliband. I'm kind of a bit weird. I mean, I think my body language and the way that I move is a bit weird. I mean, remember poor Miliband got in terrible trouble. Was he eating a banana or was that? Yeah, he was eating a banana, wasn't he?

• 50:09Alastair Campbell?

  No, bacon sandwich, bacon sandwich.

• 50:10Rory Stewart?

  Bacon sandwich. Um, I, I, I think I just, my, my physical energy and the way that I move is a bit. I mean, you pointed out the grimace thing.

• 50:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 50:20Rory Stewart?

  And this, I think, is part of the same thing. I.

• 50:22Alastair Campbell?

  But it's then you leant in, you leant into that poor woman. You were like, you were sort of almost in her space as she was trying to contribute to the debate.

• 50:29Rory Stewart?

  Let me, because she very, very sweetly wrote to me immediately afterwards and I don't know her at all. Um, and this is what she said, which I thought was really kind. Rory Hi just wanted to say solidarity on becoming the main characters of the internet today. I hope it hasn't bothered you, but I just wanted to reassure you in case it has, that I didn't mind and knew you were just being polite and attentive. Take care and all the best.

• 50:56Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, that's very nice. That's very nice. She's, she's from the new statement.

• 51:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, certainly in the studio, nobody thought I'd done anything weird. It's only when it appeared on television that it suddenly looked unbelievably weird.

• 51:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, it, it was, I, I had people all over the world sending it to me.

• 51:14Rory Stewart?

  Completely. So, I mean, if you think about, and, and New Zealand, that they've released, you know, there was a, it went totally viral in New Zealand. Every clip of the New Zealand Parliament had me going

• 51:26Rory Stewart?

  like this through every single clip of the New Zealand Parliament. I know it's, it's, it's amazing because we put all this energy into doing some of the greatest restless politics shows. And, you know, we might get three, four million if we're really lucky. I think literally, I think there must be, put them all together, 300, 400 million views for me doing this. And it's become like a permanent meme and a meme also that, like all memes, people sort of get, but they can't completely explain.

• 51:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think, I think you're, I think you pretend to be very naive, but I think you're a genius and you, you, this is a totally deliberate thing you thought. Because my friend, my friend Dan, who's one of the swimmers in the morning, he, he actually said to me, he says, listen, mate, you go up your game. Rory's getting all the attention these days.

• 52:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's also true that, it's also true that it was rather ironic because he said, why the hell are you going on Newsnight? Nobody notices anything that happens on Newsnight. And then sure enough.

• 52:19Alastair Campbell?

  There you go. Well, anyway, Andy Burnham will get almost as much attention as you in the next couple of days as people digest what I think is a very, very consequential speech. I really do.

• 52:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, really interesting, really exciting. And just to wrap up, I think you gave us the sense of what it was like in the room. You've given us the sense of some of the questions about how the Labour Party responds. You've set out whether there are going to be big cuts to welfare. We talked a bit about housing. We talked about adult social care. We talked about this amazing story around the European Union. But above all, I guess the story that you're communicating is that at the moment, it feels as though there is a sense of leadership, a sense of vision, a sense of appeal still to the Labour heart, which means that in the short term, it doesn't feel as though the honeymoon's over. He may only have added, you know, a few points to Labour in the polls, but if that allows

• 53:10Rory Stewart?

  him to have a working majority and get stuff done, business may cheer up even without the deregulation tax cuts if they think this is the government that's here to stay and that they can trust them to be pretty steady. In other words, he may be able to deliver that thing that paradoxically was the one insight of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, which was stability, which they couldn't deliver because stability relies on charisma.

• 53:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there you go. And we've got question time tomorrow. We're going to talk about USA-China on the back of the Trump Xi visit. We're going to talk about these really alarming events in Drum, Korea, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, equally alarming, Brazil election on Sunday, Jürgen Klopp and the Bayeux Tapestry. And as you said, on Monday, we've got a fabulous interview with the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood. And there's also your interview with Mustafa Suleiman is out on Leading Now, and I shall be writing from the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool for this week's newsletter, restispolitics.com/newsletter.

• 54:19Rory Stewart?

  And for those of you who are really absolute Rest is Politics super fans, the mini-series on existential risk is out at the moment, where you can hear Yuval Noah Harari, you can hear Carlo Rovelli, the great physicist, and many, many more to come. So I'd be fascinated to hear what listeners think of what we're doing there. And you and I getting really enthusiastic about mini-series. We're producing so many. I noticed they put out two of my interviews on a single day to try to get them out of the way.

• 54:47Alastair Campbell?

  Very good.

• 54:47Rory Stewart?

  My wife is drowning under trying to keep up with it all.

• 54:50Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, very good. All right. Well, I'll see you soon.

• 54:53Rory Stewart?

  Thanks. Bye bye. Speak soon.

• 54:54Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, bye.

• 55:04Speaker 04

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

• 55:13Speaker 05

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 55:21Speaker 06

  We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.

• 55:27Speaker 07

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 55:29Speaker 08

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 55:32Speaker 05

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 55:45Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 55:48Speaker 05

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

• 55:56Speaker 09

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia.

• 56:01Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 56:03Speaker 09

  New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 56:08Speaker 10

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy!

• 56:12Speaker 09

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 56:14Speaker 10

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 56:18Speaker 09

  Divized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.

• 56:21Speaker 07

  We have two times friendly key.

• 56:22Speaker 09

  Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.