347. Question Time: Biden’s Pardon is Unforgivable

Is Starmer right to dismiss the two million people calling for a general election? What are Georgia’s chances of EU integration? And, if they were heading up British Intelligence, how much information would Rory and Alastair share with America? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in 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.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

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• 2:43Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Part of It's Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  And with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:47Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, we mentioned in the main podcast that Schultz was in Ukraine and Olivia Holman hot off the press. Olaf Schultz has pledged $680 million to Ukraine. Will this be enough to help them win before Trump comes to power in January?

• 3:04Rory Stewart?

  So firstly, no, absolutely not enough to help Ukraine win. I mean, Germany has been very generous, given maybe 15 billion euros, but to put it in context, the US has given north of 100, 120 billion over the last couple of years. And Ukraine is losing ground fast. Russia's made a lot of advances, even over the last three days. It seems as though Russia still has a huge superiority in the number of men it's able to deploy. Zelensky has been reluctant to conscript 18 to 30-year-olds at the rate at which we'd expect, and we'll hear a bit more about that in another one of our leading interviews coming up. But it raises the bigger question of whether if Trump decides to stop the $50 billion

• 3:49Rory Stewart?

  a year from the US, whether Europe would want to step up and find that money itself? And finding that money would mean some pretty difficult choices about stopping funding of health, education, infrastructure programs in Europe in order to give money to Ukraine, which it's not currently giving. And secondly, are they going to try for unanimity? So what happens when Viktor Orban from Hungary tries to veto them from doing this stuff? Are they going to form smaller coalitions? And thirdly, what do they do about the fact that there's still some kit that we don't produce in Europe? It'll be many years before we can. We don't have any real equivalents of US Patriot

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  missiles, for example. So we'd still have to buy from the US. And this is all about stopping Putin continuing advances. This is not about Zelensky winning, as it were. Anyway, over to you.

• 4:39Alastair Campbell?

  Look, the sums of money involved already are enormous. I wonder whether Scholz will get criticised in Germany. I mean, it's always difficult when you're into an election campaign and you start doing these massive spending things. Because he's not always been, if you remember, we were very excited at the start of the Ukraine, the crisis, when Scholz made that speech talking about this being a Saitan vendor, complete sort of epochal change in German attitudes and so forth. And yet, he's often given the sense of having to be sort of pushed into things, very, very cautious and so forth. So this is definitely a signal of real support and intent, whether it's partly with

• 5:20Alastair Campbell?

  Trump in mind, I just don't know. You know, last week, Rory, we discussed whether Trump might be a little bit less obvious on Ukraine than the cartoon. And then Anthony's Karamouchi and I talked about that on when I was manfully standing in for KATIK. And I had a couple of calls from people in the American system who thought, and maybe one of them said, maybe this is wishful thinking, but it is kind of the developing theme here, that he won't just be ready to give over Ukraine. And the point that Anthony made, that Trump hates this label of being Putin's little lackey. Anyway, we'll see. Let's stick with America for a while. Rory, what about this one?

• 6:00Alastair Campbell?

  Poppy, which is worse, Hunter Biden or Charles Kushner? So Hunter Biden has been pardoned by his dad, Joe. Charles Kushner is the father-in-law of Ivanka. He's an ex-convict, dad of Jared, who made a lot of money out of being the advisor to Trump first time round, very close to the Saudis. So which of these you think is worse? They're both bad, Rory. Which is worse?

• 6:29Rory Stewart?

  So I'm going to really annoy you and most of the audience by saying Hunter Biden's worse.

• 6:36Alastair Campbell?

  Oh.

• 6:36Rory Stewart?

  I think it's totally shocking that Joe Biden has pardoned his son. It's unforgivable and it feels to me corrupt. Charles Kushner at least served time in jail. I think it's ridiculous that Donald Trump is making his daughter's father-in-law the ambassador of France, but I hold Trump to very, very low bars. What Biden's done is just shocking. And to remind listeners, there is no equivalent in Britain. There is a royal pardon, but we use it very, very occasionally to pardon dead people. So Alan Turing was pardoned for being convicted very unfairly for homosexual acts after the Second World War, the great computer genius.

• 7:19Rory Stewart?

  The idea of using your position as president to pardon your own son from a criminal offence, I mean, hell does that say about the rule of law?

• 7:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I mean, my criticism and my anger over it is more to do with the politics. It won't surprise you to know where Joe Biden has a point is when he says that none of the stuff where they've gone after Hunter Biden would have happened had his name not been Biden. I think we can kind of accept that. It's been, it has been weaponized, it has been politicized, but that happens in politics.

• 7:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, yes, exactly. And can I just point out that that's exactly what Trump supporters say. They say none of these cases would have been brought if it wasn't going against Donald Trump. Both of them are saying the entire US legal system is prone to political bias and they don't trust the rule of law.

• 8:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think Joe Biden is making a different point about Hunter Biden. He's making the point that had it not been for the Republicans going after Hunter Biden like it was the only thing in town, it would not have become the case that it did. Whereas what Democrats will say about Republicans rightly is Donald Trump, you have broken a lot of laws yourself.

• 8:27Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, no, hold on, no, no, I mean, just to push this too far, but obviously Trump's point is that the case for which he got his 32 felony convictions, I'm perfectly prepared to believe would not have been a priority for prosecutors, that kind of case, if it had not been Donald Trump. And he's probably right that the incredible flurry of cases that have been mounted against Trump reflected a concerted Democrat campaign to try to make him ineligible for office, or at least discredit him. And exactly the same is true about Hunter Biden. In both cases, these are people using the law to go after their political opponents.

• 9:04Alastair Campbell?

  I don't agree.

• 9:04Rory Stewart?

  In both cases, the proper response from the Democrats and Biden is to say, "I believe in the rule of law, I believe in just process, and don't go around pardoning your son." My great hero, when I was at school, we read this story about this Russian general, Torquattus, I think it's called Manlius Torquattus, who's-

• 9:22Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I saw your, I saw your tweet about that. I thought, my life is too short to look it up, but hopefully he'll tell me later.

• 9:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So his son had, he'd issued an order to his army that nobody was to engage with the enemy. They weren't to advance. And his son was challenged by an Etruscan to single combat. He went out to fight the Etruscan in single combat, defeated the Etruscan, took his arms, the whole army cheered. He came back to his dad with a big grin on his face and said, "Look what I've done. I've just won this great victory." And his father ordered him to be executed at once.

• 9:58Alastair Campbell?

  Ooh. And you admire that?

• 10:00Rory Stewart?

  Yes, and the Romans admired it greatly. It was a story the Romans were told again and again. And of course, the point of the story is that not only are you not supposed to do what Biden does, you're actually supposed to prosecute the law with greater rigor against your own children.

• 10:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Anyway, Donald Trump has also, he's put another father-in-law into another senior job today, Tiffany's father-in-law. So there's a sort of big father-in-law theme going on. Listen, I think the whole pardon thing is utterly ridiculous. There's much vaunted American Constitution. I mean, it's got some pretty ropey bits in it. It really has. I just think the whole pardon thing is awful. I get why you wouldn't want, if you've got that power. Of course, Bill Clinton did the same with his brother. He pardoned his brother over something.

• 10:38Rory Stewart?

  It's shocking. Just in case I sound like I've suddenly weirdly flipped from being Kamala Harris's biggest champion to Trump's, the Charles Kushner case for which he was sent to jail was absolutely beyond imagining awful.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Rory Stewart?

  So Charles Kushner, in court, apologised to his sister, get this, apologised to his sister for soliciting a prostitute, sending the prostitute to her husband, seducing her husband, videotaping the encounter between her husband and the prostitute, and then posting his sister the videotape.

• 11:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Rory Stewart?

  Because, because, because his brother-in-law was planning to testify against him in a federal prosecution.

• 11:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. No, they're lovely people, Rory. They're lovely people. I think the equivalence you make with the Joe Biden family is absolutely so well-made, brackets, I are being, very ironic. Now, listen Rory, there's a question here, which I think we should discuss, it's got a link. Philip, with two former Conservative ministers on the Question Time panel last week, is the pretence of BBC neutrality finally dead? Well, let me answer that one, because one of the ministers was Reece Mog and the other one was you. So I don't think that's a, I really don't think there's a kind of neutrality issue there. But there's another one. Should Question Time be doing longer deep dives with the specialised panels for bigger issues like immigration, climate, unemployment? 10 minutes per question never seems to do them justice. Also, is Rory's finger okay? I noticed your finger, Rory,

• 12:05Alastair Campbell?

  was that pen?

• 12:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's a really embarrassing, it was a red pen, and everyone thought that sort of scarred my knuckle in some fight with Jacob, yeah.

• 12:13Alastair Campbell?

  But what were you doing? Were you drawing on your finger?

• 12:15Rory Stewart?

  I was, I was trying to take notes with my red pen before Question Time, which largely involved drawing all over the only space that you can find in the Times newspaper, which is the cartoon section. The result that I realised that you could see on television that I'd drawn red marker all over Benjamin Netanyahu's face.

• 12:33Alastair Campbell?

  I saw that.

• 12:34Rory Stewart?

  Who was the cartoon of the moment. So I thought I was going to get in trouble for that too.

• 12:37Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, have you ever heard, have you ever heard of this stuff? It's called paper.

• 12:40Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing.

• 12:41Alastair Campbell?

  And you wrote on it with a pen.

• 12:43Rory Stewart?

  Get some of that stuff, that's brilliant. Listen, I think I know what your answer would be to deeper dive on immigration, because you said to me, when you watched me, that that was the most boring Question Time you'd ever seen in your life. We were trying to do these really sort of serious deep dives.

• 12:59Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't quite say that. I did find it quite dull. Jacob Rees-Mogg has decided to be even more courteous and polite than ever because he's got this TV, reality TV show coming up. I thought that Mariella Frostrup and Anne Menon were good on immigration. I liked what they had to say on immigration, but they were kind of slightly echoing each other. I thought you couldn't quite decide whether you were on the podcast, talking like you are now, or you were on a kind of cutthroat TV programme and you couldn't quite get the balance right.

• 13:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I definitely, I mean, I noticed, so for example, I try to say something I often say on the podcast, which is, we need to be very humane and honest about the immense benefits that immigration bring us. And we also have to demonstrate that we can control the numbers of people coming into Britain.

• 13:56Alastair Campbell?

  Very on même temps.

• 13:58Rory Stewart?

  And I realised that, boy, you don't get any applause for that. And when it was put out there, I noticed that on Twitter, nobody knew how to respond because the left were really alienated by my talking about controlling immigration and the right were completely enraged that I said we needed to be humane and accept the contribution that immigrants make. So that's another problem. I think it's a huge vacuum if you try to do on même temps.

• 14:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I also think you had a very flat audience. It was a smaller than usual audience and it seemed very flat.

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, now, good news, though, is for the listeners, because it's not going to be flat this week, is it? Because we're going to have Alastair Campbell and none other than our friend Nigel Farage on the same panel.

• 14:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So what's your advice for that one, Rory?

• 14:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, you see, I mean, I'm afraid, last time I thought, you know, the answer was to be kind of courteous, sort of do what Jacob Rees-Mogg does, kind of avoid by being very polite.

• 14:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Rory Stewart?

  But I think you're up for a fight, aren't you? You're really, you're going to try to show us what a more entertaining question time looks like.

• 15:01Alastair Campbell?

  It kind of depends what comes up, but I don't think I'll let him get away with a lot of his nonsense. By the way, they've told me that they've, I don't know whether this is as a result of yours, but they've told me they've decided to go back to a panel of four this week.

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, I do think five was too many. It's absurd. I don't know why they put five on or what they think.

• 15:22Alastair Campbell?

  If you get a stopwatch, I mean, how many minutes in total do you get on the whole thing? It's not many.

• 15:28Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, no. You barely, barely speak at all, do you?

• 15:31Alastair Campbell?

  So you do all that research on the train on the back of the Times cartoons with your red pen?

• 15:34Rory Stewart?

  That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And you get four subjects. You get about two and a half minutes on each, don't you?

• 15:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 15:40Rory Stewart?

  That's why podcasts and the long format future, well, we're all going to be really looking forward to watching you. Right. Here's a self-serving question for me. Percy, when Rory talks about visiting Afghanistan this summer, sounded like the charities working there are still able to help women and families despite the international community leaving when the Taliban returned. What can we do to help this work? So answer on that, Turquoise Mountain, which is the charity that my wife, Shoshana, runs, is still running in Afghanistan. It's supporting 4,000 female weavers. It's keeping education, health going in a very difficult situation under the Taliban. And this week is an amazing thing called the Big Give, where hundreds of British charities who raise funds will have their funds matched.

• 16:25Rory Stewart?

  Turquoise Mountain is an example of that. So would encourage people to look up Turquoise Mountain, the work that it's doing.

• 16:32Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you, Percy, for that searing question, which allowed Rory to do, even by his standards, a blatant plug. While we're talking about plugging, Rory.

• 16:41Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 16:41Alastair Campbell?

  What did I say to you before you went on question time?

• 16:43Rory Stewart?

  I have to plug the podcast and I completely failed, didn't I?

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  And what did you get? You get a question that was basically about Kim Ledbetter, who happens to be the guest that we just had on the podcast.

• 16:54Rory Stewart?

  Leading interview on the podcast. And I completely failed to say, as you would have heard if you'd listened to the rest of this politically.

• 16:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Or you can even be more subtle. You just say, we had this really good interview with Kim this week where she said X.

• 17:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, never mind.

• 17:07Rory Stewart?

  It was terrible. No, I did walk off thinking I was going to be told off and sure enough I was.

• 17:11Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, I don't want question time to think I actually watched the programme. I watched it to see how Rory got on. I watched it to see whether the audience reacted when they announced that Nigel Farage and I were going to be on, which they did. And I watched it to see whether Rory would actually make any notes that didn't make his hands look like he'd been in a fight.

• 17:34Rory Stewart?

  Okay, question to you. What do you think about the chance of Georgians, so that's the country in the Caucasus, to break away from Ivan Shvili's autocratic wishes? So remember, Ivan Shvili is the oligarch who basically controls Georgian politics, very pro Putin against the war in Ukraine. And Elena says, I'm a Russian living here in Tbilisi since March 2022. So hello to our Georgian listener. Young people here really want the euro integration, but still there are a lot of older people in the country who do not. Alistair.

• 18:05Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think what's going on in Georgia is really interesting and actually quite inspiring. You've got three nights on the trot now, thousands of people out on the streets. The latest provocation is the government saying that they're basically stalling on the discussions, the negotiations to get into the European Union. But it's becoming, you know, we talked about proxy activity, there's a proxy element to this as well. The Russians are very much driving the Georgian dream and the Georgian dream government in setting the direction that it's setting. And in addition to Elena, we got some really amazing emails this week

• 18:46Alastair Campbell?

  from people in Georgia, talking about why this matters so much to them. I think they really do have this sense of their country being at an absolute inflection point, that it can go, it can go the Russian route, or it can go the European route. And it's clear that certainly the people that listen to us, maybe this is obvious, it's clear the direction they want to go in.

• 19:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Quick reminder to everybody. So Georgia, obviously, former part of the Soviet Union. And whereas Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, which were part of Soviet Union, joined the EU, joined NATO, and in the cases of places like Lithuania, their economies have been completely transformed, they've become double democracies. Georgia looked like it might have been on that journey, had one of these colour revolutions, was a huge amount of optimism around a technocratic Georgian government, got candidate status, so on its route to joining the European Union and on its route to joining NATO. And of course, that is real anathema to Putin. I mean, that's what really frightened him about Ukraine, the idea that NATO could be getting closer, the idea that EU membership

• 19:48Rory Stewart?

  could be coming to Ukraine. And so he's really set out to make sure that that future is locked off. How could Europe get Georgia back on track again? Well, the most powerful thing it's got, which no other body in the whole world's got, which makes the European Union completely unique, is it can offer membership. And offering membership means that you can offer people free movement of people, access to single market, enormous amount of money and pre accession, post accession funds. You know, America doesn't begin to have power like that. It can't offer those kind of carrots to a country to transform.

• 20:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:22Rory Stewart?

  But of course, Europe's lost its nerve. So one question I had to you is whether maybe there's a middle ground of whether they could think about offering things like single market membership, which is what they offered to the Scandinavian countries before they joined for you, as part of that carrots to places like Georgia or Serbia to to begin moving in a better direction.

• 20:41Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting reading Angela Merkel's book, how keen she still is on growing the European Union, giving continue to give countries in the East, hope that they can come in. I think the politics in Europe make it very, very difficult at the moment. So I think you will have to start looking at different kind of options. And I guess this sort of idea of a multi-speed Europe is part of what Macron talked about when he first came in. Talking of Macron, by the way, you know, I saw this wonderful interview with the president of Georgia on one of the French channels. I thought, my God, she speaks incredible French. So I looked her up, she's French. So it's amazing. We should get her on because

• 21:23Alastair Campbell?

  she also speaks fluent English. This is President Zourabishvili, Salome, Zourabishvili, born in Paris. Parents, Georgian political refugees, became a French diplomat, rose to the level of ambassador, was sent to be ambassador in Georgia, and then with the French government's permission, became a Georgian citizen, then joined their diplomatic service, and she's now the president. And she's refusing to go because she says the election that they had recently was not legitimate. They cannot choose who the president is because they're not legitimate. So she's basically staying put while these protests go on.

• 22:05Rory Stewart?

  The sooner we can get her on, the better. So if our Georgian listeners have access to the president of Georgia, it couldn't be more relevant or more timely. That's a great idea.

• 22:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, she was great.

• 22:14Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Alistair, quick break.

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• 23:38Rory Stewart?

  So this special segment of today's show is brought to you by Google. Now, if you're a keen listener, you'll know that Google has been sponsoring the podcast and has been giving me some training in some of their AI tools, all to better understand how Google are making AI work for everyone across the UK. In other words, they're giving me the same training they're giving a lot of people in Britain.

• 23:58Alastair Campbell?

  They're also looking at policy and they've released a number of policy recommendations that they're trying to get the government to adopt. And they've got a question for us, Rory. Google wants to know which of the recommendations that they put forward in their AI opportunity paper, which we've read, which do we think are the most critical at making AI work for everyone across the UK?

• 24:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think it's a lot of interesting stuff here. So one of the things they point to is all the productivity gains that you could bring in health. And the very obvious one that we often talk about is that AI is very good at looking at X-ray scans, better generally than a human radiographer. But it's not an either or. You know, we talk a lot about the idea of super agency. In other words, what AI is really doing at the moment is not necessarily replacing humans, but supplementing, sitting alongside them like an incredibly bright assistant. So in the case of health, AI can pick up stuff that human eyes miss because it's able to go through a far larger data set and isn't constrained in the way that we often are psychologically by what we're looking for.

• 25:06Rory Stewart?

  So that would be one really strong example, one that's really relevant to Wes Streeting, who's always talking about this shift from analog to digital, which, you know, I'm always a bit doubtful of. But I mean, I think what Google's doing is quite interesting. I mean, I think they've recognized that the technology on its own doesn't work. You've got to think about it in terms of how it works with government and how it works with citizens. So what they're trying to do is think thoughtfully about how AI can actually help the government in the government's priorities, whether it's health or the environment, and then think about how to make it feel relevant and useful to citizens. And then connect it to what can the UK do to have a bit more of a stake in this industry,

• 25:48Rory Stewart?

  develop its own AI industries, and how we can also think about involving citizens in the management of the risk that could go along with AI as well as its benefits. So congratulations, I guess, that they're trying to think about the bigger political dimensions, because often technologists just throw out a tool and then assume that people are going to love it as much as they do.

• 26:09Alastair Campbell?

  I also think the fact that they're addressing it in that political context, making the point that actually the countries which lead in this are going to be countries which benefit in the long term. And, you know, to be fair to Rishi Sunak, I thought it was what he did, having that kind of AI summit, was a very, very good idea. The current Labour government is going to have to get on top of this, both in terms of its relation to government and government public services, but also what sort of economy we're going to build for the future. I'll tell you what I like about the Google paper. You keep saying that nobody in the world knows what these Labour five missions are.

• 26:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Alastair Campbell?

  So I was very, very pleased and encouraged to see that they've partly related their entire strategy to the Labour's five missions on the economy, on health, on crime, on the environment, on education. So I just think that's clever politics from their perspective, I would say, because government is going to have to be persuaded that the sort of arguments that you've raised are worth having in order to improve productivity and improve growth of the economy.

• 27:19Rory Stewart?

  Final thing on Google and AI. I think the other thing that's interesting here is that they're setting out to make sure that a million people in the UK already have been exposed to these models, that the best hope of getting AI. Through a skeptical public, getting support is to make sure people know what these things are and have used them and understand the power of them and understand the potential of them. Because if you are pitching this kind of technology to a skeptical public that's never used the stuff, it's going to be very difficult to get people to adopt it.

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  There you go. Proving yes again, Rory, that you know more about this than I do. Concluding this special segment brought to you by Google. Lots to be excited about when it comes to AI, and we cannot wait to see what Google is working on to make AI work for everyone across the UK. Here's a great question, Rory. So this one is from somebody called Anna Hack Eving. I usually listen to every episode of your podcast, but I cannot muster the energy since the American elections and the UK press turning on the UK government. Brackets, no government was out, fail, give them a break, it's not been that long. What can you say or what can I do to reverse that? The only thing I thought when I read that question is how is she going to know? Because you can't, if she's not listening anymore.

• 28:29Alastair Campbell?

  So if anybody's listening who isn't Anna, but is a friend of Anna, please tell Anna to listen to this bit of the podcast. Anyway, the short answer is you can't just give up. It is depressing, turning on the news every morning. There's bloody Donald Trump appointing, you know, Mickey Mouse to be in charge of transport and Pluto to be in charge of the fight against crime. But, you know, we've got to stay engaged and stay involved.

• 28:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, if only if it was Mickey Mouse and Pluto. Here's a, here's a question from Nick in Tokyo. When you gentlemen refer to someone with a foreign name, it seems to me you both attempt to pronounce it properly. But when referring to the Mooch, you both pronounce his first name with a hard T, whereas he pronounced it with a soft th sound. Actually, I disagree. I say Anthony. Any reasons why Pierce loves the show? Yeah, I say Anthony.

• 29:16Alastair Campbell?

  I say Anthony. I mean, as I keep telling Mr. Scary Moochie, it is the English language. And Anthony is pronounced Anthony.

• 29:26Rory Stewart?

  Wait a second, in English, Ajax is pronounced Ajax.

• 29:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but that's because Rory, the Dutch, as a sovereign nation with their own language.

• 29:36Rory Stewart?

  You don't think you can be a sovereign, a sovereign individual with your own name?

• 29:40Alastair Campbell?

  You can, that's exactly what this is about, isn't it? The mooch wants to have his own language as a sovereign individual. I'm glad that Nick in Tokyo noticed that we do try. I balls it up on Maccabi Tel Aviv. I think it is important to give it a go. But the truth is, you know, we can't all be polyglots. We can't speak every language in the world. But no, I'm sorry, the mooch is Anthony, as far as I'm concerned. It just sounds weird to me, Anthony. It doesn't make you scared of him.

• 30:09Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 30:09Alastair Campbell?

  Right Rory, here's one. Lee Clough, I know both of you support mandatory voting. I want to know if you think MPs should also be subjected to mandatory voting in the House? If we can't abstain, why can they? Good question there. I support mandatory voting, compulsory voting, but you must have the right to say on the ballot that you choose none of the above. Likewise, I think MPs should be allowed to abstain very, very rarely. What do you think? Did you ever, did you ever abstain?

• 30:38Rory Stewart?

  I did. I actually abstained on a number of important bills. Sometimes because, well, I think some of them, I was travelling abroad as a minister. I mean, part of the problem is that you, you are registered as abstaining when you're not in the country. So.

• 30:52Alastair Campbell?

  What about pairing? Weren't you able to pair up?

• 30:54Rory Stewart?

  No, no, the whips basically destroyed that system when I came in in 2010.

• 30:58Alastair Campbell?

  Oh.

• 30:59Rory Stewart?

  There's no proper pairing system left. I mean, I think the whips do have pairing. So when I abstain, they probably agree with the Labour whips that someone's abstaining on the other side. They never tell you who it is.

• 31:06Alastair Campbell?

  But you don't go down as having voted, right?

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  There's no, no defined individual, yeah.

• 31:11Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 31:12Rory Stewart?

  I think there are things that abstaining is an important option because you're under so much pressure from the whips. And it gives you a chance of registering a protest, short of an outright rebellion. And if you took away that option, I think you'd find an even more. Compliant parliament in an unhelpful way.

• 31:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, let me throw this one to you because I know we get questions from email. We get them on social media. We get them sent to the podcast. This one comes from a name we both know, Raghe Omar. I'd like to turn your attention to what's just happened in Somaliland. Somaliland has just held what was deemed a completely free and fair election. First in the world to use biometric voter registration. The incumbent lost and conceded, and there is going to be a peaceful transfer of power on December the 14th. Please tell us why this is significant in relation to the politics of the Horn of Africa.

• 32:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think the first thing is that the really central is that, yes, Somaliland is an unusual success story. It's more peaceful, more democratic than other parts of Somalia. But the trick is that answer than other parts of Somalia. Somaliland is not recognised by the UK or the US or most countries in the world as an independent state. It sees itself as an independent state, and that goes back to colonial history when it was separate. But in international law, most people see it as part of Somalia, and it wants to gain international recognition. So I have a lot of sympathy for what Raggy says. I've always been really moved and impressed by my visits to Somaliland, and it's an incredible

• 32:42Rory Stewart?

  example in a really difficult area of the Horn of Africa, of a country or a province that's really making a go of it. But the problem that Raggy's not pointing to is there's some risks involved. Now, if you are sympathetic to Somaliland, you would say UK and others should recognise it and it'll be fine. But people on the other side will say, no, you are tearing apart one of the most vulnerable countries at one of the big international hotspots of the world. So in Somalia, it's right along the Red Sea and all these different countries. Ethiopia is trying to get a port by creating deals with Somali land.

• 33:22Rory Stewart?

  But UAE, Turkey, many, many others are trying to get ports dealing with other states, Qatar backing the government in Mogadishu. So it's a very, very fraught situation. It's on the edge of starvation and has been for the last seven, eight years. It's a conflict almost nobody talks about. It can draw in a lot of proxy actors and neighbours. And that, I guess, is the reason why if you were a risk averse diplomat in the Foreign Office, despite the amazing achievements of Smiling Land, you might suck your teeth about recognising its independence.

• 33:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, although Rory, I think if you were the, the head of station, listening to the diplomat who sort of accidentally said province, country, nation.

• 34:10Rory Stewart?

  You might be in trouble.

• 34:11Alastair Campbell?

  I think you'd be called back for retraining. Anyway, Raggy, thank you for listening and thank you for sending in your question. Here's one Rory from Ed Hillier. What do Alistair and Rory think of Keir Starmer's dismissal of the petition to change the government, saying that is not how our system works? He is of course right, but do you think there should have been more engagement with the 2 million people who signed it?

• 34:33Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think you can't ignore 2 million people signing a petition, even if it's been pumped up by Musk, who clearly is now, I mean, just small digression on this, I mean, it's unbelievable what Musk is doing. He's now deliberately amplifying far right voices from Germany and Austria. And he is determined to troll Keir Starmer. He seems to be completely obsessed with taking down Keir Starmer. So he obviously was involved in promoting this petition, but you can't ignore that number of people. And petitions with far fewer numbers got on to the House of Commons. And we've passed a, a rule in the House of Commons, the petitions that get that numbers get debates. We may have to change that rule, but in the meantime, you've got to take it seriously, whatever your private reservations are.

• 35:18Alastair Campbell?

  I don't agree. I actually think I would be very dismissive of this. I mean, it doesn't mean that there aren't people who are very angry with the government. Doesn't mean there aren't people who think that, you know, they want to get rid of the government. But to talk about having, getting rid of the government a few months after it's been elected on a three-figure majority, I think it's absurd. And then when you do see that something like 150 countries, people from 150 countries were on this, you realise that it's a sort of tech thing as opposed to. A political thing. So I think there's a danger if you say, yes, I'm sure they're, you know, raising legitimate concerns about this, that and the other. I'd be very dismissive.

• 35:53Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Barry D. Kel, how much information would you share with America? If either of you were the head of Britain's intelligence service, this follows on from you teasing me about being a, what the head of station would say if I'd managed to call Somali land a country. If either you the head of Britain's intelligence service, how much highly sensitive information would you be willing to share with your American counterpart if that person was suspected of being very sympathetic to Britain's enemies? Over to you.

• 36:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, interestingly, John Sawes, ex-head of MI6, who we interviewed a few months ago, he had a piece in the Financial Times at the weekend, and he had a passing reference to this. He was actually, the piece was about the challenges that Donald Trump's reelection throws up to the world and to Keir Starmer and what have you. But he mentioned this Tulsi Gabbard, or Tulsi Gabard or Gabbard, I don't know if it's a Macabre or a Macabi, but he asked that question, whether you would feel comfortable sharing all your intelligence when you know that there's somebody there who's broadly sympathetic to your enemies. I think that is a serious question that the agencies will be

• 37:01Alastair Campbell?

  having to think about. America is clearly the bigger player in all of this, but at the same time, you look at some of the stuff these people put out already and some of the stuff they say. And you were defending Donald Trump over his criminal stuff, right?

• 37:19Rory Stewart?

  I think that's a little, I think it's a little bit of spin.

• 37:23Alastair Campbell?

  Don't rise to the bait, Rory. You were sort of coming out as Donald Trump's biggest fan when it came to his criminal activities and saying Joe Biden was far worse. Right. But the one that I think is just unforgivable is the stuff about, you know, his transportation of classified documents around the place.

• 37:42Rory Stewart?

  I mean, you just can't do that when you're in that position. I'm not, I'm not going to rise to your bait. Listeners can make up their own mind on the basis of listening to the beginning of today's podcast. But this is a good opportunity also to do something that I very rarely do, which is to plug something. And I am plugging The Rest Is Classified. The Rest Is Classified is the latest iteration from the astonishing stable, which includes The Rest Is History, The Rest Is Politics, The Rest Is Politics, US, The Rest Is Entertainment, The Rest Is Money, and The Rest. And this looks at secret intelligence. And what you'll find, I mean, they're getting into a great conversation this week to launch, which is on the amazing,

• 38:23Rory Stewart?

  amazing shenanigans around the US and Afghanistan. But when they get back to the story of the setting up the CIA, this question of how much information you share was absolutely central because the CIA, quite understandably, thought Britain was completely rife with the kind of people you hate, sort of old school tie, public school boy, nonsense people. Yeah, that's right. All these old Etonians, Guy Burgess. Exactly. And they were bloody right to be worried. And absolutely. These posh boys running around selling us out. Yeah, I think Philby went to, maybe, maybe went to Westminster, like Nick Clegg. Oh, okay. Yeah, he was a working, working class sort of kid. Yeah. And, and of course, they thought, listen, we can't share too much intelligence with the

• 39:06Rory Stewart?

  Prince because it's riddled with Russian spies and the stuff will all get back to Moscow. I also remember having a meeting years ago with the CIA about a particular country in the world where they kept saying to us very charmingly, you know, of course, you know, you know much more about this region than we do. And we're so sorry, we can't share any information with you about it because frankly, we don't know anything about it. And then finding out a few months later that a whole country in question was kind of rife with their officers and staff. And so the question of what you share is central. And we have this thing, which you were right to the heart of, called the Five Eyes Relationship, where Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand traditionally

• 39:49Rory Stewart?

  share information very, very freely. But even within that, there is a limit. And with your most sensitive agents, you're certainly going to be very, very reluctant to go beyond a need to know basis. You might share the intelligence take, but not the identity of the individual.

• 40:05Alastair Campbell?

  You've been plugging so much. I'm going to plug the New European because in my column this week, I've told this very funny story about the Alex Younger told at this event we did together in Oslo. And he was, we were being interviewed by this, what I describe as Norway's equivalent of Michael Parkinson, a guy called Frederick Skavland. And he was

• 40:23Rory Stewart?

  Gosh, was he just like Michael Parkinson?

• 40:25Alastair Campbell?

  No, he wasn't just like Michael Parkinson, but he's the most famous chat show host is what I'd say. But he's got similarities. And but he said to, he was talking to Alex about this thing about whether it's true that you can't, if you work for, as a spy, you can't tell anybody what you do. And Alex Younger told this story about when he got married, his then girlfriend who became his wife said that one of the conditions for getting married was that she, she wasn't prepared to live with this nonsense that his own mother didn't know what he did for a living. So she insisted that he tell his mother that he was a spy. So they went and had dinner, whether they sat down and said, mother, mum, there's something I must tell you.

• 41:08Alastair Campbell?

  I'm a spy. And his mother said, oh, how marvelous, darling. So was I.

• 41:14Rory Stewart?

  That's very good. It's a great line. That's a great line. Now, this reminds me of the great Michael Parkinson line as we just sort of transitioned. So he's interviewing Muhammad Ali and he says to Muhammad Ali, I'm not going to argue with you. Muhammad Ali gets a beat pause and he says, you're not as dumb as you look.

• 41:33Rory Stewart?

  Okay, final question for me.

• 41:35Alastair Campbell?

  Two geniuses.

• 41:36Rory Stewart?

  Trip Christmas charities.

• 41:37Alastair Campbell?

  Question, Rory, it's got to be Ed Davey.

• 41:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Yeah, there you are. Antonio Rodriguez, will you be bringing out a Christmas charity song like Ed Davey? Now, this for listeners who don't follow the grinding details of the horror of British politics is the latest massive indignity vested on us by the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, who decided to appear in a Santa hat, dancing around as far as I could see at the bottom of some staircase in somebody's front room. I mean, what on earth? I mean, I look, the whole thing was initially justified on the basis that he was going to win elections. Then he said to me, it was a brilliant tactic and look how well they'd done the elections. Indeed, they did do very well in elections. But why is he still rolling on this?

• 42:17Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I'm going to read out to you a message from sources close to Ed Davey.

• 42:24Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 42:24Alastair Campbell?

  Hi, Alistair. Happened to notice that your Rest Is Brother in Arms has been having a go at our campaign style again. Thought you might be interested to know that our slightly weird TikToks have all been in aid of the Carers Trust and we've released a Christmas single with a choir of young carers, all for a good cause. So I just think you should lighten up, Rory. He cares about the issue. He's raising money for carers charities and it's quite funny.

• 42:53Rory Stewart?

  And how's it going? Has it become a top single? Has he made it to the top?

• 42:57Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think so. I don't think so. But we should probably, maybe we should, you know, that stuff we did at the O2, we should maybe set it to music and put out as a Christmas single. What do you think?

• 43:09Rory Stewart?

  What, like an agreeing disagreeably signal?

• 43:16Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the rest.

• 43:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think getting the phrase agree disagreeably in a hit song, that is my ambition for 2025.

• 43:27Rory Stewart?

  And perseverance, we could get that in.

• 43:29Alastair Campbell?

  I failed on that one.

• 43:30Rory Stewart?

  Show some perseverance. Give us the line, show some perseverance in your best crooning voice.

• 43:35Alastair Campbell?

  Show some perseverance. How about that?

• 43:40Rory Stewart?

  Lovely. Thank you. So that's a good end to the podcast. Thank you very much.

• 43:44Alastair Campbell?

  Jolly good. See you soon.

• 43:45Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

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