211. Question Time: Taiwan’s new president, Macron's successor, and the difference between Tories and Conservatives

How did Ecuador’s notorious gang leader escape from prison? What does Taiwan’s new anti-Beijing president mean for the country’s future? When is it right for MPs resign? Listen to Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 1:34Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, big or small. We're here for all of it, celebrating 125 years with new moments still ahead. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 2:11Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics. Question time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, we said on the main podcast we were going to kick off with Taiwan, which we'd planned to do on the main podcast, but we got sidetracked in relation to the Middle East. Sean Winter, will the election result in Taiwan give greater stability or taunt China into action?

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  Well, first, let's a little bit on what actually happened in Taiwan, Alistair.

• 2:38Alastair Campbell?

  So, we talked about this a few weeks ago, and we said this was going to be one of the first really big ones in this election year. And the DPP, they won. That is the governing party. The outgoing president couldn't stand because she'd already done two terms. So Lai came in and he has won with just over 40%. Now, the other two parties, which at one point looked like they might come together. The KMT and the TPP, the Taiwan People's Party, they split the opposition vote.

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  And what's happened is that they've ended up with, it's a very good win. It's a third win in a row for the DPP. But it does give a sense that they're moving from a two-party country to a three-party country. And within the assembly, within the legislative assembly, they won't have a majority. They got 52 seats. KMT, the second party, got 51, and the third party got, I think it was eight or nine. So it means that they don't quite have a majority, but it's a pretty good win. And it's a win that was secured despite a pretty aggressive campaign by China to try to persuade people through various means to vote for the KMT.

• 4:01Rory Stewart?

  And just to remind people, so KMT, the Kuomintang, was the nationalist party and sort of founding party of Taiwan. It was the party of generalissimo Chiang Pai-shek, who moved the national government of China to Taiwan after the Communist Revolution. And they are supported by the Chinese state because they're seen as much more friendly towards China. They tend to emphasize deepening economic and diplomatic ties with China, whereas...

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  The DPP, so the lot that just won, have tended to talk a bit more about de-risking and diversifying and balancing their investments in China with investments elsewhere.

• 4:38Alastair Campbell?

  Now, you know, we talked on the on the main podcast about the Red Sea being such an important shipping route. Almost a half of the world's container ships pass through the Taiwan Strait every year. And as you've been saying, ever since we started this podcast, focusing on the role of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. So the reason why this election was getting so much attention around the world was because of China. It wasn't because of Taiwan, it was because of China and China's intentions. And some very interesting reactions from China. Xi Jinping has said nothing so far. What they've done is they've focused in their reaction in commenting on the comments by other countries around

• 5:20Alastair Campbell?

  the world. So for example, David Cameron said that he welcomed this as a testament to Taiwan's vibrant democracy. And immediately, Chinese Embassy in the UK said, we firmly oppose the wrong practices of the British, and we urge them to stop any words or deeds that interfere in China's internal affairs. Almost word for word, they said that to the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yoko Kamikawa, and Joe Biden, although he came out and said, he reiterated, the US doesn't support Taiwanese independence, the US official line is, once again, Taiwan has demonstrated the strength of their robust democratic system

• 6:03Alastair Campbell?

  and electoral process. And again, straight out comes from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, we have lodged solemn representations with the US over these comments. So that is, they are making clear, they don't like the result, and they're also making clear to powers around the world, don't get too excited by this, because we still see this as ultimately a place that is going to be reunified with China.

• 6:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And I guess to get just finish on Sean's question, the likelihood is, I guess, that Xi Jinping is not going to take military action until he sees what happens in the US election, because he may be gambling that Trump coming in may make it easier. To push ahead with reunification. Big change in the calculus, obviously, the Taiwanese is the way that Hong Kong has been treated. So had China really found a way of integrating Hong Kong in a way that really respected one country, two systems, they might have had a better hope of a peaceful unification in Taiwan. And then there's this calculation about how the economy plays in. So some commentators say because the Chinese economy is weaker, Xi Jinping is less likely to want to do military action.

• 7:12Rory Stewart?

  I have a part of me that thinks that sometimes when your economy gets weaker, you look for distractions and kind of national adventures to try to get the public back on side. So I think actually a weaker Chinese economy may increase the chance of him acting.

• 7:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, I said on the the main podcast that the the subject which was raised by more questioners than any other was Michael Gove's appearance at a select committee where he was grilled by Liam Byrne in particular about the Freeport in Teesside. So Sheila Kennedy, what exactly is going on in this Teesports scandal? And should we get Toby Jones to make a TV show about it? Should he play Michael Gove? Julie Harrison, this week we saw Gove at the Freeport scrutiny committee. Why do the mayors not have to report to the House of Commons? The Tees Valley mayor hardly attends his own scrutiny committee.

• 8:09Alastair Campbell?

  Graham Gardner, I saw a clip of Michael Gove at a select committee hearing squirming on the subject of Tees Works part of the Freeport's project. Is this another Tory managed scandal in the making where millions find their way into the pockets of donors and shady characters? And so it goes on. Mistress Purdy, please can you just Michael Gove at the Teesside Freeport? He avoided all questions and his links to Michelle Moan PPE contract seems to show a concerning pattern. Have you followed this Freeport story?

• 8:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, just a little bit of background. So this is the first and the biggest of these free ports which have been announced, and the free ports, of which I think there were eight of them initially announced. The idea is that it allows, it's a bit of land in Britain, but it's a place where you allow goods to be imported without tariffs, excise duties, and other taxes being paid before materials are shipped on again. So it's loosely based on the way that China developed through Shenzhen, where they set up essentially a special economic zone on the edge of Hong Kong. And the particular idea from the government is you would go to areas the country is part of the levelling up agenda, which have been more left behind.

• 9:22Rory Stewart?

  And their hope was that by getting rid of the regulations, getting rid of the taxes, they could create some amazing kind of private sector heaven, which would create 18,000 jobs. And since then, it's found itself mired in lots of different types of controversy. Back to you.

• 9:38Alastair Campbell?

  So as I understand, it's very, very complicated. So Private Eye have actually been, a bit like the Post Office, Private Eye have been banging on about this endlessly, but most of the mainstream media have not been picking it up. And I think it does have a feel of one of those slow burn scandals. And essentially, it is hard. And like all of these things, it's complicated. But essentially, a firm was set up by people who were friends, associates of Ben Houchen, who's the Tory mayor up there. And they were given options to buy this land at one pound an acre, including the rights to all the scrap metal on the lands. So they've exercised those rights. Then they lease back the land for development for, as it happens, a wind

• 10:21Alastair Campbell?

  farm maker. They sell the metal. In the first year of their accounts, they're up by about 134 million, profits of over 50 million. Next to zero procurement process, so what Liam Byrne seemed to be saying in his grilling of GOV was at the very least, this is an absolutely dire approach to securing the best value for taxpayers. At the worst case, there is corruption at the heart of it. GOV commissioned a report last year to look into some of these allegations that were made. It was supposed to report last summer and there's still, there's still no sign of the report, no sign of a timetable. And the feeling is that they're looking to sort of bury this until after a general election.

• 11:03Rory Stewart?

  So in the worst case, we're looking at corruption. And even in the best case, we're looking at another classic example of how badly the government does procurement and deals with the private sector, that it appears to be giving enormous financial windfalls to the private sector by selling them assets at well under market value.

• 11:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And, and, and these are, I mean, I don't think Ben Houchen is denying that these developers, a guy called Musgrave and another one called Martin Corney, that they are kind of quite close to him. And they've been given this remarkable deal, which has made them an awful lot of money. I've always felt these Freeport's are part of this anarcho-capitalism drive of the radical right. And so you said that the government projects this as part of the levelling up, but this looks like levelling up for a few people, not the many, as it were.

• 11:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Good. Well, let's, let's get the next question coming in. And I think it worth, worth watching that because it does sound like it's pretty terrifying. And as you say, a lot of people coming in. Anyway, loads more questions. Let's take a break.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 13:06Rory Stewart?

  So one that I quite like from Percy. You've spoken a lot about the challenges in Afghanistan and Myanmar, more eastern and Middle East. What is it about these places still gives you hope? And is there anything listeners can do to help? I mean, this is a good opportunity to talk about the amazing work that Shashana, my wife, does with Turquoise Mountain.

• 13:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, Rory, rather than you do it, because that would be sort of almost like a form of kind of weird nepotism.

• 13:30Alastair Campbell?

  I, you and I were at an event last night run by the Marshall Scholars with some American congressmen and women of both Republican and Democrat. And part of the event was Shashana doing a presentation about Turquoise Mountain, the charity that you set up and she works on. And it was, I've got to say, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And you say what makes you hopeful. The thing that made me hopeful was her saying, look, the Taliban kind of know that we are employing women and we are doing, they just sort of let us get on with it. And she talked about, you know, the private sector being maybe treated a little bit less brutally, as it were. But I have to say, the, the products that they were making, be they carpets, be they

• 14:12Alastair Campbell?

  jewelry, be they wood crafts and so forth, were absolutely beautiful. So, yeah, I can see why you were very, very proud of that.

• 14:20Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you. And I think, just to finish on that, I mean, I think one of the things that Shashana feels strongly, and Turquoise Mountain works with Palestinians in the West Bank, with her refugees, works in Myanmar, she's just got back from Burma, and in Afghanistan, is that working on cultural heritage, supporting traditional craftspeople, supporting traditional architecture, has one big benefit, which is that it gives people a sense of positive pride. It's not a sort of patronizing act where you're telling people what they're lacking. In her words, it's a type of development that works on an asset, not a deficiency. It allows people to really feel If you're an Afghan female cross woman, that you're producing something genuinely

• 15:02Rory Stewart?

  beautiful that people around the world want to buy and that you can make an income off. So anyway, thank you for saying that.

• 15:09Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Rachel Lee Horstfield, in his book, that's your book Rory, and by the way, you got five stars in a Dutch paper I saw the other day. So well done on that one.

• 15:19Rory Stewart?

  That's very good. That's very good. That was because of your amazing Dutch. Listen on that. I was interviewed on a Dutch podcast and they repeated your phrase in Dutch.

• 15:26Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, excellent.

• 15:27Rory Stewart?

  And they said it was very good.

• 15:28Alastair Campbell?

  It kept the feel of my noodles, that was well. In his book, Rory states that even if not conservative, he is Tory. What does that mean? I'm trying to persuade, says Rachel, my staunchly Labour partner to warm to Rory by saying he's not a real Tory. But this statement in the book isn't helping. I've been accused of being a Tory apologist. So what is that? What's the difference between being a Conservative and being a Tory?

• 15:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think it may be semantics, but for me, I think Conservatives can be associated with a sort of Liz Truss view, which is cut the welfare state, radical cutting of taxes, radical free market stuff, quite revolutionary. For me, a Tory, I guess, is somebody who respects tradition, respects history, tends to think if it isn't broken, don't fix it. And, you know, is my love of landscape and the monarchy and the British Army and history and tradition. Now, Shoshana, listening to all this, of course, says this is complete nonsense because on any actual policy issue, she says, I'm usually pretty radical and

• 16:32Alastair Campbell?

  And you want big change.

• 16:32Rory Stewart?

  and to establishment. And I want big change. And I'm always trying to introduce, like you, compulsory voting, proportional representation and generally in every department. Yeah, every department I'm in, I'm trying to shake it up. So maybe I misunderstand myself. I have this kind of mystical idea that maybe I'm sort of completely in love with the British institutions. But in practice, whenever I actually get close to them, I want to, I want to rip them up.

• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Well, let's just follow on from that with Jason Kopsidis. If you had to join one of the mainstream UK parties today and campaign for them in the election, which one would it be? Fairly obvious for Alastair, says Jason, not as obvious for Rory.

• 17:10Rory Stewart?

  It's not not obvious for me at all. I'm very, very, I mean, the natural one, of course, I was a Conservative MP and I'd love to say the Conservative Party because I feel loyalty to my colleagues and party members. But the truth is that I find it very, very difficult at the moment. I mean, we've got this horrible sense that the right of the party is still got a kind of death grip. I mean, we're talking at a moment in which the vice chairman of the party, Lee Anderson, who's this extraordinary right wing figure who actually came originally from a Labour background, is now saying as a senior party fish, he's going to vote against the government's Rwanda bill because he thinks it's not tough or right wing enough. And this kind of stuff I find very troubling.

• 17:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think we should, if our listeners can stomach it, we should put in the newsletter a video that was put out last week by the Tory party of Rishi Sunak doing a joint Q and A with Lee Anderson that was honestly one of the most cringe worthy things I've ever seen in my life. But what it was showing was obviously Rishi Sunak trying to sort of, you know, show that he's, he's down with Lee, as it were. And they were telling each other how well Brexit was going. They were telling each other why we should all be so proud to be British. It was utterly cringe making. And this is what happens, I'm afraid, Rishi, when you give power and status and influence to people who ultimately are not going to buy you. And I think you need to lead.

• 18:35Rory Stewart?

  One really interesting thing from John Curtis, this famous pollster, this famous professor of polling, was he seemed to be saying the polls vindicated your strong instinct, which was that Rishi Sunak's biggest mistake was not coming out very, very hard in favour of the parliamentary standards committee. Tell us a bit about that, because you watched that polling presentation.

• 18:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I've written about this in my New European column, because what he was essentially saying is that, and this is absolutely right, remember we said last week, Peter Kellner always says, follow the signal, not the noise when it comes to polling. If you look at the polling in recent years, only two episodes have fundamentally shifted the dial. Okay? One was Partygate, and the other was the mini budget. Partygate led to a massive decline in Johnson's ratings, in the Tory party's ratings, and they have not really recovered from it. Truss and the Kuateng and the mini budget led to a massive decline, and they haven't really recovered from it.

• 19:36Alastair Campbell?

  Now Sunak, in not endorsing and supporting the Privileges Committee report, but instead running away from it, trying to avoid it completely, he missed the opportunity to signal that he was a genuine change from those two events. By not endorsing the report, he essentially said, oh, Partygate's not as big a deal as you seem to think. And of course, what the polls show is that the public thought it really, really mattered. And they thought the trust mattered. I think the Post Office actually has the capacity, and this is, I think, is why they are trying to focus it so much on Ed Davey, Keir Starmer, is because it does have the capacity to be damaging, but not in the same, in polling terms, not in the same league as Partygate and Trust. So, yeah,

• 20:21Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I think John Curtis is right that Rishi Sunak missed a major opportunity there.

• 20:25Rory Stewart?

  But it's, it's something that you, you said at the time, but it would have been historically difficult because there would have been a massive problem of party management, wouldn't there? Because he's trying to deal with-

• 20:33Alastair Campbell?

  He's got a problem with party management anyway.

• 20:34Rory Stewart?

  So he needed to just be brave and lean into it. But, but obviously, the reason he didn't do it, the kind of counter argument to you, if you're playing devil's advocate, is the members had voted for Liz Truss, lots of the members of Parliament felt that he'd betrayed Boris Johnson, he was trying to re-heal the party, and if he'd really leant in to going anti-Boris, anti-Liz Truss, he would have alienated a lot of party members, alienated quite a lot of MPs, but maybe, you say, restored his position in the opinion polls, maybe brought the public on side.

• 21:03Alastair Campbell?

  Let's say you start from the premise, I'm the fifth leader since, since David Cameron. So you've had Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and now me. That's what he says. And the public are beginning to wonder whether we're actually a serious party of government. My responsibility now is to show that we are. That means showing I am very, very different. So when he said integrity, professionalism and accountability, it was the right thing to say. But then in not endorsing the Privileges Committee report, he didn't deliver on those words. And so he's ended up with the worst of both worlds. He's ended up, people not respecting him because he hasn't shown the necessary leadership, and the party management problems,

• 21:44Alastair Campbell?

  which prevented him from doing that, he's still got them with spades, to the point that, as you say, a guy he appointed to be Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party is, without any seeming sanction, going around the place telling MPs to vote against a government piece of legislation. Mad.

• 22:01Rory Stewart?

  Maybe what you're saying is, look, it couldn't be worse than it currently is, and there might have been some risk. He might have blown up the party, he might have had a really difficult management issue, but in the long run, it was worth taking that risk because it was the only way of getting the public back on side.

• 22:14Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Because what I think the public is seeing is, and I honestly, I really think he's got to stop doing all this non-stop, sort of embarrassing communication stuff, these endless videos showing how marvellous he is. It's back to the point we discussed with Gillian Keegan. People don't feel the country's in great shape at the moment. So stop telling us that it is. And stop telling us, when we know that you're flying around in helicopters and jets and you're massively wealthy and people are starting to think that you're going to move on to California pretty soon anyway, do the job. Do the job. Doing the job is not sitting down with Lee Anderson, having these jokey videos about,

• 22:58Alastair Campbell?

  you know, questions put in by public or party members. And I'll tell you the other thing I thought over the weekend, is that on the Houthis, and what's happening in the Red Sea, if you were watching in, who would you think was the Prime Minister right now? David Cameron. David Cameron's the one who's-

• 23:15Rory Stewart?

  Leading on so much of this, isn't he? Leading on so much of this, yeah.

• 23:18Alastair Campbell?

  So do the job and show some leadership.

• 23:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and the jokey stuff doesn't really suit him anyway, I think. I mean, when I see him doing the jokey stuff, it doesn't really seem to be his style. Portugal elections, LP. 2024 seems to be the year of all elections. Would he be looking into Portugal? From alleged corruption scandals, the Socialist Party to the main opposition party refusing deals for the rising populist right, rebuilding historic coalition from 1979. Quite a lot to get your teeth in. I'd love to hear your take. So we've done a little bit about this. To remind people, we covered this when Prime Minister Antonio Costa, very, very interesting figure. He comes from a mixed parentage. His father was a Goan from India with these very radical parents. His mother, very much on the radical left, and his father, a radical writer. A much loved and quite successful

• 24:05Rory Stewart?

  Prime Minister of Portugal, suddenly found himself drawn down by incredible corruption scandals involving public infrastructure projects, cash going missing, weird payoffs from state companies. Any thoughts on Portugal, Aniston?

• 24:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we definitely will talk about it. I think the election's in March and it's an election of the whole assembly. And I think it will be interesting within the European context, because of course we've got the European elections coming up to sort of get a sense of Portuguese public opinion. Because Costa is Socialist Party leader, who was, as you say, pretty popular. He got over 40% of the votes last time. He got 120 seats in the assembly. Main opposition, the PSD, Social Democrats, they were 77 seats. And the far right, Chega, which is Portuguese for enough, they got 7%. So it will be interesting to see and to see whether, just how damaging it is for a party of government, where the

• 25:03Alastair Campbell?

  guy's seriousness and experience and feeling that he was a bit different to most politicians when he gets caught up in a corruption scandal. And I think his argument is that, yes, there was corruption, but as it were, he's not the big corrupt guy, but he presided over it. That's why he's stepping down. So yeah, in answer to the question, we will be talking about it and it will be one of the more interesting European elections this year.

• 25:26Rory Stewart?

  This question of, and we talked about in the last podcast, about apologising, taking responsibility, and I guess the question of resigning. One of the things that's happening increasingly in British politics, and I guess this was true even under New Labour and Mandelson, which is that people take responsibility, resign, and then they pop back again, six, seven months later. And I guess that probably wouldn't have been true in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. You know, when Profumo resigned, he didn't come popping back again. When Carrington resigned, he didn't come popping back again. It's as though we've developed quite kind of short attention spans, haven't we? We, people kind of resign and then everyone thinks, oh, that's fine, he's resigned. And then a few months later, they come back again. I mean, Grant Shapps, I think, was booted out twice. Famously, Suella Bravman was back within a few weeks, wasn't she?

• 26:10Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Well, that was, that was another point of Rishi Sunak weakness, I think. You know, for her to have been sacked for breaking the ministerial code and then brought back in within a matter of weeks, I think was a terrible signal. But again, it was him trying to, putting party management ahead of the opportunity he had to show, to show real leadership. Now, Bettina Struff, interesting name, but she sent in a whole welter of questions. Let me just throw two of them, both interesting. She says, I've just been blocked by Green Jenny Jones, Jenny Jones being a big figure in the Green Party, for saying that I'll vote tactically at the next election rather than green. Now Bettina is a green, she says, because under first past the post in my constituency,

• 26:55Alastair Campbell?

  green would be a wasted vote. Would either of you guys vote tactically in the next election if it came to it? Also from Bettina, Alastair, bearing in mind Sadiq Khan's recent statements, do you think the time is yet right for Starmer to start talking about joining the single market? And if not, why not? On the first one, I would vote tactically. Would you, Rory?

• 27:14Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I, I think tactical voting makes sense. I don't know why people are so against tactical voting.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, if you're Jenny Jones and you're trying to fight for the Greens, you probably are quite angry when people who see they are deep down there, Greens, say they're going to vote Labour or Lib Dem. But I think that they should embrace tactical voting as well, I really do. And then the second point, so Sadiq Khan commissioned a report which, like several other big economic reports, have indicated that Brexit has done fundamental damage to the economy. The, the answer is Bettina, I wish that Labour would move much more towards a position that recognizes if their growth mission is to be met, then we have to get serious about trying to repair the damage done by Brexit and in particular by the, the new trading arrangements now in place. So. As to whether he thinks the time is right, clearly he doesn't.

• 28:02Alastair Campbell?

  He's the leader of Labour Party, Rory is convinced he's going to be the next Prime Minister, and he probably will be. But that is a that is a knuckle that is going to have to be grasped, I think, sooner rather than later.

• 28:11Rory Stewart?

  Good.

• 28:12Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one, Rory. This is a big one, big question.

• 28:15Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 28:16Alastair Campbell?

  Box marked other. What are things you regret in your personal life and also in your professional lives?

• 28:23Rory Stewart?

  Blimey.

• 28:23Alastair Campbell?

  Personal life, I think I do regret the extent to which I underestimated just how 24/7 all-consuming the job that I did with three young children growing up was going to be. Not sure I could have done anything different, but that is kind of a regret. And in my professional life, as I've said to you before, I do regret not standing as an MP probably back in the mid 2000s.

• 28:52Rory Stewart?

  Very good. So, personal life, I mean, I don't want to go too deeply into personal stuff.

• 28:58Alastair Campbell?

  Go on.

• 29:00Rory Stewart?

  No, I think it's I think it's about I think it's about about relationships when I was younger and the way in which I don't think I treated girlfriends properly. And I think in my professional life, regrets are a very interesting thing, aren't they? I mean, I don't think much about the past, but I'm very aware that, for example, I was flattered into taking a job as a Harvard professor in 2008, which really didn't suit me. And I think it's a real warning of the way in which you can take a job because it sounds great, or it's well-paid, or it's got a big title, without really stopping to think, is this really what I want to be be doing with my time? I mean, the most satisfying job I ever had was working on Turquoise Mountain, which

• 29:42Rory Stewart?

  was restoring, you know, a small city block in Kabul, and it seemed very tiny, but it was much more fulfilling in a way than many of the bigger jobs I've done. And I think a lot of my regrets are always about being tempted into things that sound impressive but are actually pretty debilitating.

• 29:58Alastair Campbell?

  That's really interesting, though, because you talked about being flattered into into taking on something that you probably shouldn't have done. That's exactly what happened to me in the mid 1980s, when I was flattered into being made the youngest news editor in Fleet Street. I was 28. And within a year, I was in a psychiatric hospital. Because that sort of was a factor probably in what led to my breakdown. So I I definitely regret that move. And yet, I think in a bizarre sort of way, it led to the breakdown, which I think led to, in some ways, to me making myself. So yeah, interesting. But being flattered into doing things you don't want to is a is an ever present risk, I think. Now, shall we talk about Mr. Attal?

• 30:42Rory Stewart?

  Yes, go on. Tell us about this. This is absolutely fascinating. So so for listeners, this is to do with the the new prime minister and the new foreign minister of France. Tell us, give us a bit of the background.

• 30:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Jacob Jones, will Attal's youth and charisma revive Macron's government as the right is rising in France? So Gabriel, again, I sometimes talk about how Vukic was sort of, you know, my level during the Kosovo conflict. And he's now gone on to be this very, very, very, very powerful leader of Serbia. And Gabriel Attel is is one of those guys that I kind of very briefly met when I first was sort of, you know, talking to Macron when he was a presidential hopeful and candidate. And he's now the bloody prime minister at thirty four. And he's just appointed. I mean, could this happen anywhere apart from France? I don't know. His foreign minister, replacing the excellent Catherine Colonna,

• 31:34Alastair Campbell?

  who's a very, very old friend of mine, but she's now been moved out, to be replaced by a guy called Stephane Sejourne, who, until a year ago, was was Attal's civil law partner. So will it revive Macron's government in a funny sort of way? I think it already has. I think Attal has really brought a sense of immediate energy and vibrancy. And I listened to, I think it was the World This Weekend, had a reporter in Paris going around people, asking French people what they thought of this new thirty four year old prime minister. And they were almost overwhelmingly positive. It was very, very interesting. So he's clearly got charisma, great communicator.

• 32:19Alastair Campbell?

  In the end, it will be about delivery. The other name to watch out for is this this guy, the number two in the National Front party in Marine Le Pen's rassemblement, the new National Front Party. This guy, Jordan Bardella, he's 28 and he's a deputy and he's going to be a big figure in the campaign as well. So yeah, youth definitely much, very much on the agenda in France.

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  And presumably, this this really matters because the next presidential election in France, 2027, Macron can't run again. And the frontrunner at the moment is Le Pen. So is this guy that he's brought in, your charismatic young prime minister, the potential successor for Macron? Is that the person who's going to be running against Le Pen?

• 32:57Alastair Campbell?

  Put it this way, if you are the prime minister, I mean, it's very different. When people say prime minister, a French prime minister does not have the same profile or power as a British prime minister, because the British prime minister is the head of the government. Macron is the head of the government. Macron is also the head of state. He is immensely powerful in the French system. But if you're looking for a platform from which to build, then being prime minister is a very, very good one. The only downside to that is that within the French system, as Elizabeth Bourne has just found out, the French prime minister tends to act as a bit of a lightning conductor and take a lot of the blame. So that's the bit that Attal will have to avoid. But certainly, he's, I would say, I don't know what the book

• 33:39Alastair Campbell?

  is saying, but I'd say it puts him in a very, very strong position. And he would then become the youngest president in French history.

• 33:46Rory Stewart?

  Amazing, amazing, amazing. Don Lefebvre, I had to get out of Ecuador pretty quickly last week. So my question for RNA is, by declaring a state of emergency, is the current course of action the correct one in Ecuador? How can the country regain its safety? So Ecuador is something that we were talking about November, because there was an election in Ecuador and a horrible election in which one of the major candidates was assassinated. President Daniel Nebeu was elected and last week, there was an explosion of gang violence, including a gang seizing a television station in a major city. And going on air and a man called Fito, who is one of the most famous gang leaders in Ecuador, who'd been associated with the assassination, his lawyers managed to get

• 34:29Rory Stewart?

  him moved out of maximum security, he released a music video and now Fito seems to have managed to escape from jail, from his 34 year sentence.

• 34:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and it's also led to a lot of violence within the jails. In fact, I think today, the Ecuadorian military is saying they've, they've finally managed to get control back of the, of the prisons, because dozens of prison officers were being held hostages. But they, they seem to have sent in their elite forces and they've now got a grip of it. And of course, Ecuador has been relatively peaceful compared to other countries in the, in the region. But I think what's happened here is that it became part of the drug trading routes. And because Ecuador wasn't the main kind of focus of it, that was more sort of Colombia in particular, I think there was quite a lot of sort of turning a blind eye

• 35:22Alastair Campbell?

  to some of the, the crime that was going on. And I think that part of what's happened is that Ecuador has then become in its own right, a very, very big part of the global drugs market, which has led to a lot of the gang warfare that has now spread to the prisons and spread into real difficulty for the law enforcement authorities. I think the listener probably did do the right thing. I think it's going to be pretty scary there for a while, which is such a shame, because it's actually not been, it's not been seen in the same light as Colombia and some of the other countries that have, that have really, really struggled with this for many, many years.

• 35:54Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's heartbreaking, isn't it? Because it is one of the big themes, Central Latin America, that we've talked about populism and the way in which democracy and elections are going in Central Latin America. We've talked a bit about Venezuela and the spillover of the refugee crisis there. But of course, this question around drugs and gangs connected both with narcotics, but also smuggling gangs of migrants into the United States. As you say, it's now destabilizing previously relatively stable countries and drawing more and more people in. And in some cases, as in El Salvador, provoking these very, very aggressive authoritarian right wing responses to try to bring these gangs back under control in a certain state.

• 36:33Alastair Campbell?

  What I don't quite get about this, and you know, so this guy Fito, who is this gang, gang leader, who's Adolfo Villamar, so he was in prison.

• 36:47Alastair Campbell?

  And the plan apparently was to was to move him to a smaller prison because they felt they'd be able to sort of take care of him and stop him being so influential within the prison system from this this smaller prison. By the time they went to the cell to move him, he'd gone.

• 37:07Rory Stewart?

  They just couldn't find him. They looked all the way around the cell, they looked under the bed and there he wasn't there anymore.

• 37:13Alastair Campbell?

  And so he's he's out, the how do you, when you're one of the the most heavily guarded prisoners, how so two apparently two, a couple of prison guards have been arrested and have been charged with helping him to escape. And meanwhile, his release and then the release of another gang leader has kicked off these riots. But there were some really sort of eerie pictures I saw on the on a German news site of kind of the streets in the capital because of course they've they've imposed a curfew. So it's pretty, yeah, pretty scary.

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, as to so many other great questions, which I'd love us to get on to next week, but I think we're coming towards the end of question time. Let me just one final one.

• 37:52Alastair Campbell?

  Go on.

• 37:53Rory Stewart?

  Shane, I enjoy all your book suggestions, but curious to know how you retain the info. What's your book note taking strategy?

• 38:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you're much better at this than I am. I mean, you have this capacity to read a book and then three weeks later on the podcast, say you've read it and we were doing an event last night with some American congressmen and women and and I, if you remember, I mentioned a book that I'm reading by a woman called Monica Guzman, an American book called I Never Thought of It That Way, which is a fascinating book, actually, because she is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and she's a pretty ardent Democrat and both of her Mexican immigrant parents are two time Trump voters. And the book is about how do you manage relationships when you don't really understand why somebody else thinks like they do.

• 38:42Alastair Campbell?

  And so what I do with books, I tend to, I do write on them, I mark them, I'm afraid. I know some authors hate that, but I do write on them. And when it's something I want to commit to memory, I take a photograph of the page. And I just keep it with me for a few days and I keep looking at it from time to time. But even with that, I forget most of the things that I read, to be frank. You've got a better memory than I have, that's the truth.

• 39:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'm helped a lot by Kindle, of course, which has got a great note-taking facility, which allows you then to go back on to all the passages you've noted and you can get it all in a file. So all their extracts from all the different books you've read in the year, you can see and it's a good, good way of getting up to speed. But I like your photograph strategy. I'll try that, too.

• 39:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, you just take a picture and then occasionally, when you're flicking through your photos to pick your tree of the day, you see, oh yeah, there's that thing that I wanted to know about, the fact that there are more sales of nappies to adults in Japan than there are to children.

• 39:35Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And on that, best, best wishes. Bye bye.

• 39:38Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  There we are, getting a statement from Number Ten. On that flight, with 350 passengers on board.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 40:04Speaker 06

  We assess, uh, Prime Minister, with high confidence, it was Russian.

• 40:10Speaker 07

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 40:12Speaker 08

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 40:16Speaker 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!

• 40:29Speaker 09

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 40:31Speaker 05

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

• 40:40Speaker 10

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 40:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

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