330. The US Election: One week to go

With one week to go until the US election, what media outlets can you trust? Is Australia immune to the populist wave that seems to be sweeping Europe? What do the elections in Austria and Georgia convey about the growth of far-right politics in Europe and beyond? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in today's The Rest Is Politics. 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. Assistant Producer: India Dunkley and Aaliyah Akude Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. 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.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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

• 1:35Speaker 03

  A Payday Candy Bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, wrapping you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Restless Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell. So Rory, where are you now? Which bit of Australia are you in?

• 2:07Rory Stewart?

  I'm in Queensland, where there's just been an election, as you've been concentrating on. I'm actually speaking to you. I've just come down to Cairns, which is up, for people that don't know Australia well, it's up at the northern edge of Queensland. If Australia looks like a sausage, it's like a pointy stick sticking off the top right hand end.

• 2:28Rory Stewart?

  And I've been in Melbourne and I'm on my way to Sydney tomorrow morning and then I'm going to be in Brisbane and then I'm going to be in Canberra and then in Perth.

• 2:35Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. So we're going to talk about that election in Queensland because it was actually quite interesting, I think.

• 2:41Alastair Campbell?

  But we're going to start with the American election, not long to go. More elections, fascinating election in Japan. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the election in Georgia, which is already proving out to be very, very controversial. And then we'll look ahead to the budget. Although there's not much to say beyond what we've already said. And we're going to be doing a special episode on Thursday morning. We've managed to get our clocks roughly aligned so that we can both follow the budget and then comment on it, hopefully in an informed and intelligent basis the next morning, UK time. That's the best we can do.

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's, let's start on the US media and I'll give a little explainer and then over to you for the, for the commentary. So the three big newspapers, serious newspapers in the US are the New York Times, the Washington Post and the LA Times. And we're now obviously just coming to the election where you and I are going to be meeting in the States. A little brief plug there, we're going to be doing a lovely election coverage about which a bit more later in the show. And the New York Times has come out and endorsed Kamala Harris. But very unusually, the Washington Post and the LA Times have refused to endorse a candidate. And when I say very unusually,

• 3:56Rory Stewart?

  the Washington Post has basically regularly endorsed a candidate all the way since the 1960s, early 1970s. There was an exception in 1988, I think. But broadly speaking, even with pretty mild things like, you know, John McCain running, they will have chosen one candidate or another. And The Washington Post has been very, very clear in its criticism of Donald Trump. Some of the best reporting on some of the travesties the Trump administration were done by The Washington Post. But it's decided not to endorse, and The LA Times the same. So over to you for some commentary.

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the obvious conclusion, and if, sorry to the relentless plugging listener and viewer, but the other thing we can plug is our interview on leading this week with Timothy Schneider, who is fascinating on the subject of freedom and fascism and tyranny. And one of the points he makes about avoiding tyranny is not to bow down to it even before it's happened. And my very strong sense is that that's what has happened. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who until Musk came along was reckoned to be the richest man in the world, owner of Amazon, gets hold of The Washington Post. The publisher, which is kind of like an editor superior to the editors,

• 5:11Alastair Campbell?

  is a guy well known in Britain called Will Lewis, former right hand to Murdoch, former right hand to Boris Johnson, accepted one of Johnson's ridiculous resignation honours. And he is the one who was given the job of telling the staff that they were not going to be picking sides between Trump and Harris. And it is widely reported, I don't know, but widely reported, that this is Jeff Bezos not wanting to offend Trump before the election. And then emerged that people, senior executives from Jeff Bezos's space exploration side of his business have been in discussions with Trump about a big NASA contract on the same day.

• 5:53Alastair Campbell?

  So the very strong sense at the least of it's, they've dressed it up as a sort of, you know, going back to our tradition of just letting the reader make up his own mind, her own mind. But it smacks to me of absolute cowardice and deservedly, they have been losing an awful lot of subscribers in the last four years.

• 6:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the whole thing's a bit weird, isn't it? Because the sympathies, The Washington Post and The LA Times are very clear. The editorial boards are very pro Kamala Harris and against Donald Trump. And Woodward and Bernstein, who famously from The Washington Post blew open water gates, have put out a statement on Twitter condemning what Washington Post has done. And very, very few of the core supporters of Donald Trump read the Washington Post. So what on earth is happening? I mean, it would be a bit like, I don't know, a newspaper like The Guardian suddenly deciding it didn't really know what it thought about Donald Trump. So it's not going to have any impact. Everybody knows what the Washington Post thinks.

• 6:54Rory Stewart?

  It not endorsing isn't going to change anybody's electoral behaviour. So presumably in the end, it has to come down to the business interests of Bezos.

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's what I mean by cowardice. I also think, by the way, that if that is the motivation, Donald Trump is not going to be impressed by that because he will be thinking, well, why aren't they backing me? Because we know what he's like. And maybe this is quite a good bridge via Musk into the whole, the question of this enormous rally that Trump did in Madison Square Garden, where Musk and Tucker Carlson, this just shows you the way that, you know, we talk about the kind of incestuous media politics world in the UK, but this is where Musk and Tucker Carlson, two media figures, were very much part of the kind of headline act ahead of Donald Trump as the sort of top headliner.

• 7:48Alastair Campbell?

  And, you know, it's very, very hard. I didn't watch the whole thing. Peter Hyman, my former colleague from Number 10 was there and he sent through, I passed on some of his comments.

• 7:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, some of them are quite interesting. Do you want to give us some of them or should I read them out?

• 8:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, what did you make of what he was saying?

• 8:04Rory Stewart?

  Let me quickly. I mean, I've had actually a couple of things, which I think, I mean, obviously we get a lot of stuff from different people who are out there on different sides of the campaign. But I thought your Peter Hyman stuff was interesting and I'd like also to bring in a friend of mine who's been campaigning on the ground, trying to get out the votes in swing states for Kamala Harris. So here we are, here's your friend Peter Hyman. This is describing the Trump supporters in the crowd. One said that Kamala Harris was pathetic if all she's got left to close the campaign is abortion and Hitler. So comparing Trump to Hitler. Many of them saying she's vacuous and airhead, doesn't have a single idea. Lots of talk of Harris's word salad.

• 8:44Rory Stewart?

  Largest mass deportation, which is this Trump idea of mass deportation of immigrants, very popular. Strangely, given that Kamala Harris will be the first black woman president elected, Trump seems to have a better personal story to tell, the comeback kid. Every speaker repeats, they tried to jail him, shoot him, et cetera, but he got back off the ground and fought back and will restore America's greatness as celebrity with genuine grit.

• 9:09Alastair Campbell?

  So virtually everybody, I didn't watch the event, but I've been following, looking at lots of it on social media this morning, virtually every speaker used this phrase about, they tried to kill him. They, the person who tried to kill him, was a registered Republican. So the way that they just, they, the Republicans, the Trump people, just rewrite history as they go, is pretty extraordinary. I thought that the bits that I saw were, I thought, pretty horrific. And I think May in the end, Anthony Scaramucci, our US colleague, he said that he thought this could be an election losing event. And I don't know, because there was this terrible joke about Puerto Rico.

• 9:54Alastair Campbell?

  And do you remember when we met the Marshall Scholars in that trip organized by the Marshall Scholars in London recently, there was a Puerto Rican Congresswoman who was a Republican? And I was sitting next to her at the dinner and she was trying to persuade me that Trump wasn't as bad as I thought, et cetera. Salazar, she's called, and she has put out a thing this morning saying she's absolutely disgusted by the jokes that were made at the expense of Puerto Rico. There are apparently 450,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania. So they may be brewing some of the warm-up acts. That guy Stephen Miller, who, I think we've got to be careful with the Hitler comparisons and the fascism stuff, and I'll come on to why.

• 10:34Alastair Campbell?

  But he was being, I mean, there is a physical likeness between Herbert Goebbels, but there's somebody who's running this thing of the words that he was using, and then finding words that Goebbels has used that were very, very similar. You know, America must only be for the Americans, Germany must only be for the Germans, and so forth. The reason why... I think that they've got to be careful on the fascism stuff. I mean, I think Trump is a fascist. I think Musk is a fascist. I think that they have very, very, very dangerous fascist tendencies. But there's a danger at this stage of the campaign, just a few days to go, that it sounds like when you're attacking him as a fascist, you're attacking anybody who supports him as a fascist.

• 11:15Alastair Campbell?

  And it might go into that sort of, you know, when Hillary Clinton talked about the deplorables. So I think they've got to be a little bit careful. And I think the reason, the other thing that worries me about the, I mean, Trump is such a great sort of, he's got this, even as I'm talking, I'm moving my hands like him. He's such a, he's so brilliant at what the Germans call this insensile, where this projection, he absorbs the oxygen. But I would like to hear more from Kamala Harris about, less about Trump now.

• 11:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Alastair Campbell?

  And more about her.

• 11:47Rory Stewart?

  A couple of small things. One of them is that we interviewed Bill Gates on leading. And one of the things that people will pick up if they go back to our interview is how reluctant Bill Gates was to say anything public about Trump or indeed any other world leaders. It seems as though he's given $50 million to a political action committee to basically finance in Kamala Harris's campaign. And it also seems as though Jamie Dimon, who's also this kind of great celebrity banker, is lined up for positioning Kamala Harris's team. But again, they won't come out and criticize Trump publicly. And it feels as though that's a little bit also connected with these. Someone got that sense, didn't you, when we were talking to Gates?

• 12:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Rory Stewart?

  That, you know, he feels he's running a lot of businesses. He's running this huge foundation. I mean, and it's sort of paradoxical, isn't it? Because in some ways, you would have thought if you're, you know, amongst the very three or four wealthiest men in the world with this incredible power, you'd have the freedom to speak your mind. But it almost seems with most of them, with the exception of, I guess, Elon Musk on one side coming out strongly for Trump and another one of our subjects, Reid Hoffman, coming out very, very strongly for Kamala Harris. But many of them seem to be ducking it out.

• 13:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, although, although when it comes to the sort of mega celebrities, then it's Kamala Harris is winning hands down. I think you, you know, I think if you're going to go for Beyonce or Tucker Carlson, I think I know who most people would be.

• 13:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but they're not, they're not the big business billionaires, are they? The business people seem to be more, more cautious.

• 13:17Alastair Campbell?

  And that's what's a little bit different to the last time. I think the last time Silicon Valley was very much on the. On the side of the of the Democrat candidate. I mean, Musk Musk is extraordinary. I mean, in in many, many ways, but I did watch a little bit of his speech. I mean, the guy, he's almost as bad as Liz Truss at public speaking. I mean, I I felt at one point he was going to say pork markets, but it was just so bad.

• 13:42Rory Stewart?

  But he's very, he's very, he's quite shy, isn't he? I mean, he doesn't, doesn't. And I felt this when when I listened to the, well, maybe shy is the wrong word, but I listened to the Twitter interview that he did with Donald Trump. He's an awfully bad interviewer. He doesn't know when to let the other person speak. He he speaks quite awkwardly himself. He's clearly not.

• 14:00Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, if you if you think about, look, he's turned Twitter into a kind of propaganda weapon for Trump. That's worth a lot of money. He's given a lot of money to Trump's campaign. He's he's got this million pound, million dollar a day thing for voters in Pennsylvania, which I think the electoral authorities are probably already looking at. So he's so Trump sees him as a very useful financially supportive ally. I have got, and he's given, he's promised him this job, Department of Government Efficiency. There was one bit last night where Musk was sort of blathering at the at the microphone. And there was a guy there, I don't know who he was, he was like a compare type person, who sort of butted in and asked him a question, said, how much money are you going to take out of this multi trillion pound wasted government budget that we have? And he just sort of said that, oh,

• 14:45Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know, two trillion? And the guy goes, two trillion, two trillion. And it sort of, it just felt, it just felt bizarre, weird, not thought through. I think Musk is just enjoying being a mega celebrity.

• 14:58Rory Stewart?

  Um, to to quote Caddy Kay, um, so that you don't have to, I I listened to Joe Rogan's podcast interview with Donald Trump. And that's that's some commitment. That's and I didn't make it through all of it because it's three hours long, right? And, you know, we're obviously our own kind of mini version of this. Joe Rogan and podcasts, and particularly the Joe Rogan podcast, the big podcast in the US, are incredibly influential, probably much more influential than questions like what the Washington Post chooses to do or not do. Um, I thought it was fascinating because I have never heard, and this is going to be depressing, I've never heard Trump so confident.

• 15:37Rory Stewart?

  So relatively understated, so relaxed. I mean, he, in a very, very odd way, he spent quite a lot of time asking Rogan questions. They broed out about an hour through about boxing and martial arts. And Trump was just very confident, just saying, can you just help me understand what changed between the 15 round boxing rules and the 12 round boxing rules? And then Rogan would talk for a couple of minutes and Trump would be like, uh huh, uh huh, that's very interesting. And that guy that was killed, what happened there? And then Rogan would talk a little about dehydration. And then, so that's one thing. Second thing, I totally

• 16:21Rory Stewart?

  disagree, I'm afraid, with Anthony Scaramucci's idea that there is strong sense of mental decline. That is a three hour interview where I didn't see any sense of mental decline. I mean, I think what we're picking up when they talk about Trump's mental decline is Trump's personality, which we've known about for 15, 20 years.

• 16:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and his inability to differentiate between truth and lie.

• 16:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But he is crisp, he listens, he responds. And of course, one of the things he does is he fires out statistics and details all the time, much more than Kamala Harris. A lot of them are wrong, I mean, a lot of them are lies. But, you know, when he's talking about Springfield, he'll say, it's a very nice town of 52,000 people. It's just received 32,000 immigrants. Of course, the hospitals are full and the schools are full. And then, then he'll move on and he'll, I mean, but almost everything he does is much more, if you haven't heard a long interview with him, it's quite interesting. It's much more filled with data, much more filled with anecdotes, concrete examples. He's, one of the things that makes him a very good speaker is that he's always able

• 17:26Rory Stewart?

  to reach for the detail, even if it's complete fakery, right?

• 17:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he makes it up. The, I thought, the bits I saw, I didn't watch the whole thing. I sort of flitted in and out and fast forward. But the bit, one bit that really caught my attention was when Joe Rogan was challenging him to substantiate this claim that the election was stolen. And I thought Trump got very, very lost. And at one point, actually seemed to concede, rarely for him, that he'd lost against Joe Biden. He said, I lost by like, and he was, he was going to say a few, he said, no, I didn't lose, I didn't lose. So, you know, he got wandered. So I think the other thing, I sent you this thread from a guy who was saying that what that Madison Square Garden audience felt like was the culmination of all these male dominated,

• 18:15Alastair Campbell?

  in fact exclusively male usually, chat groups in the early days of the internet, 4chan, Reddit, where they were telling each other, and then the whole incel community, essentially saying that, you know, their power, their strength was being taken away and they've got to get it back. And they see in Trump, somebody who will get it back for them. One other thing about the Trump rally, Rory, he normally wears a red tie and a red Make America Great Again hat, cap. He wore black and gold, and they're the kind of the young boys. And they're the ones who sort of did the, you know, were part of the January the 6th insurrection.

• 18:52Rory Stewart?

  You're being much more trendy and technically adept than I am. And I very vaguely, all this stuff you're putting out about 4chan and Reddit, I vaguely picked up because I listened to a podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, which made the case that quite a lot of different stuff on both sides of the trans debate emerged initially on these quite detailed discussion groups and channels. But anyway, yeah, thank you. Okay, I'm learning something there. I'll have to check that stuff out.

• 19:17Alastair Campbell?

  I still feel that Kamala's going to win. And the reason I feel that is because I think that women, I thought it was, the other big event in the campaign, I thought this week was Michelle Obama's speech. You and I both thought that Michelle Obama was probably the best speaker at the Chicago convention. And I saw her speech the other day. I mean, it could have done with a bit of a trim at points, but I thought it was a brilliant piece of oratory. And I thought the way that she was speaking to men directly about the impact of Trump upon their wives, their sisters, their daughters, their nieces, I thought that was very, very powerful.

• 19:57Rory Stewart?

  A couple of quick things coming behind you. You mentioned women, and I still think that's the number one big fact. I am incredibly confident that Kamala Harris is going to win this and win this by a large margin.

• 20:09Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Lord.

• 20:09Rory Stewart?

  And I would bet £100,000. And you know, I'd make £160,000 on top of my 100. Whereas if you bet for Trump at the moment, you'd make about £40,000. It's a huge spread.

• 20:21Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, you would, you just said you would bet £100,000. Would you really?

• 20:26Rory Stewart?

  But I would. I'm very, very confident Kamala Harris will win. And I think the odds are ridiculous. I think the fact that they're favoring Trump so much don't reflect your big point is the number one fact that you, I think, all that really matters is, apart from my belief that the polling companies have panicked and their models are broken, is that women support Kamala Harris, young women, much more than young men. So we've talked about this. There's a 16-point lead amongst young women in Pennsylvania, where Trump has a 17-point lead amongst young men. And all you need to know is young women are much more likely to vote than young men. And the turnout is what's going to fling this. And I wanted to come back in a second. I let you talk, but I want to come back in a second to my friend who's been out campaigning in Michigan and what he's picked up there.

• 21:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. The point I was going to make about the polls, and again, this goes back to the Joe Rogan interview. And Trump does do a lot of sort of thinking out loud. And he actually said out loud at one point, he says, you know, you pay like half a million bucks to these polling companies. And he's speaking there as you, the candidate, you the campaigner. And they go out and they talk to 251 people, and they come back and tell you this stuff. And what he was admitting, this is the thing that Scaramucci and I talked about at the O2, was that there's this kind of concerted buying of polls to come out with a certain outcome that you want. So what I think this rally is about, what I think a lot of the stuff with the polls is about, what the whole sort of, all this kind of stuff moving on

• 21:52Alastair Campbell?

  the markets is about, and Musk is at the heart of this, is getting to a point so that if and when Harris wins, they can be in a far better position to say, this was stolen.

• 22:04Rory Stewart?

  Right, right, right, right. Now, let me, let me just quickly on the question of turnout. So my friend is canvassing in Michigan, and he did Pennsylvania in the last two elections, now doing Michigan. So I've spoken to enthusiastic voters for both Trump and Harris, people who are not planning to vote, the famous undecided voter who needs more information and families who are voting in different directions. But by far most importantly, I've talked to people who still don't know where their polling place is, or more dramatically, when the election is.

• 22:32Alastair Campbell?

  Wow.

• 22:32Rory Stewart?

  Right. All this does not play the huge role in every swing voter's life that we imagine it is, which is why turnout in these last few days is so important. Each day of door knocking literally takes me from a trailer park called Grinding Poverty to an opulent gated community. And he really believes that, you know, I know that I've personally moved hundreds of voters across the line to actually cast their ballot in the years I've been doing this. On a given day, it may be only one or two, and a few days it does them. But when things are this close, it really matters. So, and this is his point to you, Alistair, he says, "Remind US listeners to knock on doors before election days. Get out of the vote. Knocking on doors is the ultimate way to disagree agreeably, having real human exchanges with decent people of all political persuasions."

• 23:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, there's a lot in that. I mean, and again, the other, the other point about Michelle Obama's speech, a couple of things. This is the same, she used the same message that she had at Chicago. Don't just complain, do something, get out, get people to vote, drive them to the polling station, find out where they're going to vote, et cetera. And the other thing she, she made the point, and Liz Cheney did the same when she was on the stump with Kamala Harris, is saying, directly saying to women, "It's a secret ballot." In other words, you don't have to listen to your husband, or your brother, or your dad to tell you how you vote. You decide how you're going to vote. And it is

• 23:57Alastair Campbell?

  really interesting the extent to which this sort of gender divide has become so big. So listen, I, I, I'm not as confident as you. I wouldn't bet a hundred thousand pounds. I've been speaking to too many Democrats who are just sounding very, very, very jumpy. Now, partly, I think that's just a feeling you always get at this stage of the campaign, particularly when the polls are so close. But I still, and I also think that in the closing days, I'd like to see less of the celebs, less of the straightforward, let Trump, everybody knows what they think about Trump. Keep the attacks going, but at a lower level. I think at the Kamala Harris campaign level, I want to see her

• 24:40Alastair Campbell?

  As her, because I think she's a very attractive personality. And I get all the stuff that Peter Hyman is saying. What's that? What that's about is that the negatives that they've been pumping out about her, they're getting through. But, you know, the more people see of her being at her best in the closing days than the best, the better that is.

• 24:58Rory Stewart?

  And, and sorry, just finally on that, you you'd want her talking about the economy, talking about costs of living, talking about what she's going to do for the American middle class, talk about what she's doing for the American economy, this kind of stuff.

• 25:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, just giving a bit of hope and things feel terrible, but and the climate, I mean, the climate's just kind of gone from the debate. So I, I, I just, I think that, that speech she made at Chicago, what Michelle Obama did, basically, I know it's easy for her because she just dips in and out. And one of, one of her best lines in the speech was, everybody knows I hate politics, right? But she made the same speech in a different context to the one she made in Chicago. Kamala Harris, I think, has to do the same. She has to recapture that sense of optimism. This is a big change moment, and we've got to make the right choice for the future. And, and here's what I can deliver to you. And let everybody else take out Trump.

• 25:48Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Well, that, that brings us, just before we go to the break, to, to touch briefly on Australia. So, Al, you just pointed out that I'm in Queensland where there's just been an election. And tell us a little bit about why you were interested in the Queensland election. Just to, again, to explain for listeners, Australia is really interesting democracy, and it's interesting for many different reasons. Compulsory voting, which we love, preferential voting, which gives opportunity for these people called the teal independents, we often speak about, but also because it has a very strong state system as well as the federal system. Anyway, over to you on the Queensland election.

• 26:20Alastair Campbell?

  The reason I found it interesting and a bit depressing as a, as a Labour supporter, if you have a map of Australia right now, okay, you've got the, the federal government is Labour, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. So that's all red. The whole of Australia is red at the federal level. And then if you go state by state, it is also red, apart from Tasmania, which is the island at the bottom. So until Queensland, the other day, with this guy David Crisafulli, who's become the new premier with a majority of one, but it was quite a big swing, although he lost a lot of support during the campaign. And the thing I think is interesting at the moment about all elections, we're going to talk later about Japan, is the challenge of incumbency. Labour has been very, very dominant in Queensland for quite a long time.

• 27:04Alastair Campbell?

  And yet, the Liberals, which just to remind people, that's their equivalent of their sister party is the Tory Party, not the Liberal Democrats. So the Liberals seems to be streets ahead. They lost traction during the campaign itself. But the other thing that was really, really interesting, I sent you this morning, Roy, I don't know if you had time to look at it, but I sent you an analysis by the Australia Institute, which is a research organisation. And the headline is the steady decline of voters choosing the major parties is reshaping Australian politics. And there's a graph which we can put in the newsletter, state by state, showing how, over the past four decades, the share of votes that's going to smaller parties and independents has risen in both state and federal elections.

• 27:48Alastair Campbell?

  And it's really quite dramatic. And one of the most interesting things in Queensland was this guy, you know, we've talked about the Sarah Wagenknecht in Germany, I don't know if you picked up about the Katar Australian Party, because they managed to get three seats. They managed to get abortion and abortion rights right into the heart of this debate. So again, we can romanticise about the Teals, but this is a party literally started by a guy, he then gave the leadership over to his son, and it looks like they're going to get three MPs out of this one, but they really, really impacted upon the debate.

• 28:20Rory Stewart?

  Stepping back for a second, I mean, so you're right, there's a lot of interesting things happening day by day in Australia. But the big picture, knowing very little about Australia, and I'm speaking to you only having been here for just over a week, with another week and a bit to go, is just how healthy, in some ways, democracy feels in Australia. Very unusual. I mean, we're normally on this podcast, talking in a gloomy way about the far right in Germany, or whatever nonsense is going on in Britain, or what's happening in the US. This is a very surprising country. It's a country where there's a strong liberal democracy, where the GDP per capita, how wealthy average people are, is much, much stronger compared to Britain than it was 25 years ago. So 25 years ago, it was about kind of just slightly below Britain, it's now well above Britain. As we all know, all

• 29:05Rory Stewart?

  our doctors are hoiking it off to Australia to get jobs, the healthcare system works. Obviously, the sun shines quite a lot up here in Queensland. And there isn't the equivalent of Really on a national scale, the sort of far right populism that is tearing Germany to pieces, France to pieces, Hungary to pieces, et cetera.

• 29:25Alastair Campbell?

  And they're very, very proud of compulsory voting and they think that's a reason for it.

• 29:29Rory Stewart?

  Compulsory voting is amazing. And I also think preferential voting. So this thing that, you know, which was the way the London Merrill used to work, that if you didn't make it, get enough in the first round, you went through to a standoff, which allows these independents to come through. I also wonder though, to be a bit controversial and maybe wind you up a bit, whether one of the reasons why there isn't a far right movement here, we're not seeing the kind of populism we're seeing in Europe, is paradoxically because Australia did take quite brutal control of its immigration. And obviously, the thing that's really tearing Europe to pieces is the perception that people don't have control over immigration. That's what's giving the gift to the AFD in Germany. And of course, people talking about boats in Britain.

• 30:08Alastair Campbell?

  That doesn't wind me up because I think there's something in it. I think a lot of Australian politicians who listen to what you just said will be surprised because I think they do feel a lot of the same pressures that our politicians do. But I think you're right. I think they've got far more cause to be optimistic and remembering that they're in this place on foreign policy and big strategic stuff, which is really quite difficult. They worry a lot about China. They probably feel that their relations with Britain have weakened because of Brexit and they're much more focused now on the European Union. They worry as much as we do about what's going to happen in the United States. But I think in terms of their own politics, the point I was making about incumbency though, so if you take Albanese, I mean, he won and he won pretty well against Scott Morrison, but he's already, his ratings

• 30:53Alastair Campbell?

  are already pretty low.

• 30:54Rory Stewart?

  Just quickly on that one. I mean, he, so just to remind, he won on a very impressive, positive campaign. So Scott Morrison was very sort of mini populist, us versus them. And Albanese was all about a new politics and common interest and unions working with business and reaching out across the aisle. And that's slightly come off the rails, hasn't it? I mean, Dutton has managed to punch into the middle of that.

• 31:17Alastair Campbell?

  Interestingly, the guy in Queensland, I watched his acceptance speech. Now, this is a guy who's got a majority of one. And he's also in Brisbane, the capital, he got very little support. What happened was a really big rural urban divide. So they got a lot of support in rural areas, less so in urban.

• 31:35Rory Stewart?

  Just again, to bring that lesson out, I mean, that's the way in which, although I think we both agree, Australia is in a much stronger position than many other liberal democracies. That's the sort of parallel, isn't it? Because there's a sense that Labour, the left, is increasingly becoming a party of better off urban people and rural communities. You know, in Trump's case, that would be Flint, Michigan. In Boris Johnson's case, the Red Wall are increasingly voting Conservative for cultural issues, Conservative for cost of living issues, whereas the left is getting the cities.

• 32:03Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. But I think Dutton, who's this former policeman, he's got, he's literally completely bald. He looks, looks like a bit of a hard man. And he is proving to be quite a difficult opponent for Albanese because he's just going pretty much full on pressing the populist buttons. Now, we'll see if it works. We'll see if it works. But my point is, I just think incumbency is such a hard thing in modern politics. And I think that's why Labour have lost in Queensland.

• 32:32Rory Stewart?

  Incumbency very hard and also trying to hold the centre, trying to hold the progressive centre is very difficult. I mean, the classic example for Albanese is that even though the Australian economy is in a position that would be the complete envy of the British economy and, you know, able to run budget surpluses and things we can even fantasize about. Nevertheless, of course, cost of living really matters. People are feeling it. People don't like what's happening on interest rates. They don't like what's happening on housing prices. So that stuff makes it feel like the Netherlands or Canada or Britain. It's got a lot of things in common. There's also a problem of stagnant median wages. So another problem they've got in Australia that we all have is this problem about what's happening to people on lower wages.

• 33:13Rory Stewart?

  But Israel, another classic example of ways in which Australia is not that different to the rest of the world. Albanese's stuck, you know, on the one hand, he's accused by the Murdoch press. And I'd love to hear you a little bit about Murdoch press in Australia. But he's accused of abandoning Israel by them. And of course, the progressives and the Greens accuse him of being complicit in genocide.

• 33:32Alastair Campbell?

  Murdoch and Murdoch papers in Australia. Politicians probably talk about them way more than ours do. He has this big network of regional papers and they are pretty vile about Labour. They always have been. They love these sort of, you know, a bit like with the Freebie row with the UK Labour Party. They've had this great thing to get their teeth into recently because Albanese and his partner have bought this multi-million pound luxury beachside house.

• 33:57Rory Stewart?

  How did he afford that? He came from quite a modest background. Where does the money come from?

• 34:00Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. I don't know. I can't say I've looked into it as deeply as the Australian papers have. All of those is causing him a lot of grief.

• 34:07Rory Stewart?

  Also, Freebie's on Qantas is also causing some problems. He's been getting upgrades on Qantas, yeah. So I think there's some echoes of Britain there too.

• 34:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that stuff never helps, does it? Well, at least he's not going around getting into fistfights with constituents as one of the Labour MPs is right now. Anyway, shall we take a break and come back on Japan and Georgia?

• 34:27Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Looking forward to it. Thanks.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, wrapping you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog, a coastal-inspired style, a style with studs, straps and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crocs.com or a store near you now.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  Botox, otobotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic Allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 36:05Speaker 05

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 36:18Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 36:21Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. And coming very, very close, just to remind people to tune in on YouTube, we'll be sending out all the details to people, but it's very exciting. We're going to be on with our US politics opposite number, on with the great Anthony Scaramucci, but also on with Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest is History, on with Marina Hyde from The Rest is Entertainment, doing an amazing US election special out of the US.

• 36:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 36:44Rory Stewart?

  So looking forward very much to seeing you flying straight from Australia to see you there. In the last podcast, we raised the issue of Georgia and Japan. Both were going into elections and both have turned out to be really, really fascinating. So to depressed listeners who are already worried that I've miscalled the US election. Georgia, where it looked as though the opposition parties were in a pretty strong position and most of the polling was suggesting they were going to win and the exit polls suggested they were going to win. Skippy do, sudden surprise. The pro-Putin authoritarian Georgian Dream Party has suddenly brought in a massive victory, up from 48% in 2020 to 54% in 2024,

• 37:26Rory Stewart?

  getting over 90% of the vote in some of these rather remote rural minority areas of Azeri Shia Muslims and Armenians and various else who've turned out in astonishing ways as far as possible from the election monitors in Tbilisi. Anyway, over to you.

• 37:41Alastair Campbell?

  There were a number of exit polls that came out as soon as the polls closed and most of them gave the combined opposition, several parties who are all united by their opposition to Georgian Dream, gave them the win. And then a polling company with very close links to Georgian Dream came out and basically said, no, no, no, they're all wrong. It's 54% for Georgian Dream. And then the Electoral Commission, which also has pretty close links to Georgian Dream, they came out and said Georgian Dream has won. And then you've had the president, no less, the president of the country has gone out and said this election is being stolen and is calling on people to take to the streets and protest against it. And meanwhile, you have, just to give you a sign of whose side people are on, Viktor Orban, as we speak

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  on Monday, is on route to Tbilisi to congratulate Georgian Dream on their wonderful historic win. And Georgian Dream have always said that Orban is like their model. And one of the things that people should be really, really worried about, and Giefa Hofstadt, another of our previous leading guests, he has constantly been very, very critical of the European Union, the European Commission, for not being strong enough on Orban and the anti-democratic tendencies that he is, you know, exporting to different parts of the, of that region. He is basically saying that, you know, surely this is now the sign that the European Union has to take far more seriously the way that Orban operates, the way that it links up with Russia and their interference in elections and so forth. So

• 39:07Alastair Campbell?

  this is a big deal and it's a bad deal. And, you know, you've just got to feel for people in countries like this where they cannot trust their own electoral processes.

• 39:16Rory Stewart?

  Let's just develop for a second this Giefa Hofstadt thing. So it's, again, just to give an explainer to listeners. Basically, in 1989, the Communist Parties collapsed in Central Europe, and then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. And the story really from 1989 to 2004 is that in Central Europe and in the Baltic States, there were all these countries that were desperate to join the EU and NATO. And basically by 2004, they had succeeded. Meanwhile, in other places, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which are these countries in the Caucasus, so just on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, up above Turkey and Iran and below Russia, collapsed into war.

• 39:58Rory Stewart?

  And Moldova collapsed into war and Ukraine basically vanished. So you had two different stories happening in these sort of former communist states and on the edge of the Soviet Union. On the one hand, states moving rapidly towards Europe and NATO successfully, of which, you know, one of the real poster children, I suppose, was Romania. I mean, Romania was a pretty desperate, poor place. Lithuania was pretty poor, but by 2004, we're looking pretty successful. And that then meant that these states, as they came out of their civil wars in the 90s, began looking at that European model and thinking, well, wait a second, if Romania and Lithuania can set off on these pretty positive paths, maybe we could too. And these led to these things called these colour revolutions, where many of these countries

• 40:40Rory Stewart?

  had, you know, orange revolutions, other revolutions called off in different colours. And it was at this point that things became existential. And this is where I think your friend Giva Hosh said is right. The European Union essentially took its eye off the ball. And instead of really focusing on the question of the eastern edge of the European Union and enlargement, they allowed Russia to make the play. And particularly after 2014, which is when Putin takes Crimea, so 10 years ago, the first time he changes these borders. He has had a determined effort to make sure that Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and these other countries are going to remain within the Russian sphere of influence. And the opposition parties that are trying to push for a pro-European Western model

• 41:24Rory Stewart?

  are on the defensive and they're just not getting the support from Europe that they'd hope, partly because there's no leadership in Europe.

• 41:29Alastair Campbell?

  On the the actual day itself, there was a European Parliament mission that was there, along with lots of other election observers. And the general view was that the election day itself was pretty well organised. But they did say that they saw a lot of pressure, a lot of tension, physical assault of observers, lots of instances of stuffing ballot boxes, all the stuff that you associate with the kind of ballot rigging that we've seen before. And the final result, the official result as it were, Georgian dream 54.08% and the union of these pro-Western opposition alliances, 37.58. So that's according to the Chair of the Electoral Commission. That's a very, very big.

• 42:10Alastair Campbell?

  Gap compared to even the Georgian Dream supported poll that came out. So that means they've got 91 seats and 150 member parliament. What it doesn't give them is the super majority, which they need to make constitutional change. And one of the changes they were planning to make, this is absolute Putinism, was to ban all the main opposition parties. So you can see why the opposition, they do see this as existential. Because if they don't, you know, at least establish that this election was somehow taken from them unfairly in the international public mind, then it'll be like Putin. And this is, you start at this sort of game and then once you get away with one, you get away with the next one.

• 42:50Rory Stewart?

  My friend, Garry Canaus, who I seem to be quoting almost more than I normally do my hero, David Gork.

• 42:55Alastair Campbell?

  Or your mum, your mum hasn't even had one mention yet.

• 42:57Rory Stewart?

  My mum hasn't had a fish yet. He would ask, why is it that it's Viktor Orban who's out on a state visit? And why are the other European leaders not playing the other side? Why are they allowing Orban to have a foreign policy in Georgia, a pro Putin authoritarian policy? I mean, the Orban fantasy obviously now is this is great. You know, France is going to go with Marine Le Pen. My friend Alice is doing better and better in Germany. The Netherlands has gone with Health Builders. Austria has had a far right party come out top in the polls. So he knows what he's about and he's obviously looking and hoping that Trump's going to go in that direction too.

• 43:37Rory Stewart?

  Why are we not seeing the other European states, other European leaders pushing in the other direction? Who else could be on that plane?

• 43:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, what would they do? Are they going on that plane in order to say, well done Georgian Dream, you won, or we accept the result? Or are they going on a plane to say, we share the concerns of the opposition?

• 43:56Rory Stewart?

  Or go on the plane before the election?

• 43:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they did sort of, Verso Von D'Alia did set out this sort of big financial package. But I think that for Hofstadter's point is that they don't fight hard enough for the values that are meant to be at the heart of the European Union. And that's what allows Orban just to get away with doing whatever he feels like. By the way, just briefly on Austria, Rory, really interesting there. As you say, Kikl won, a hard right party won in that they topped the poll. But every other party has refused to form a coalition with them. And therefore the president has taken the very unusual step of not asking Kikl to form a government. He's gone to the next party down, which was the governing party, the Chancellor Karl

• 44:41Alastair Campbell?

  Nehammer, and asked him to form a government if he can. So that is, I mean, God knows where that's going to end, but it's going to take a long, long time to sort out.

• 44:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm worried by that, too. I don't think necessarily this is going to hold together. I think we're assuming that these politicians are going to hold their nerve. I'm worried that just for self-interest and power, some of them are going to break away. These coalitions won't work. And again, you know, potentially Germany, really, it's just the CDU that stands in the way of this sort of centre-right stand in the way of the F1 taking place. But I think there are lots of people in the Austrian less far-right, you know, for example, Kurtz, former Chancellor, who might be tempted to come to some kind of arrangement with the far-right. So I think it's still possible we could end up with a very dangerous situation in Austria.

• 45:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think he's pretty discredited. But the other thing is the numbers. I mean, even if you put what would be a grand coalition of the Conservatives and the Social Democrats together, you end up with a majority of one, which is why they're now talking to the Liberal Party to try and build something bigger. But the point again is that I suspect that Kickel, they will be enjoying to some extent the fact that he's basically saying, we topped the poll, but they won't even let us talk to the other parties about forming a government. And therefore that might lead to another election down the track.

• 45:58Rory Stewart?

  Which presumably Marine Le Pen is going to lean into. I mean, that'll be an obvious narrative for her going into presidential election. So let me just finish then on this. What has gone wrong with European foreign policy? Now, they spent a lot of time between sort of 2004, 2014, mucking around with treaty change. And a lot of the treaty change was about creating an external action service and a common European foreign policy. And basically, they put a lot of money into the Middle East, but they now feel completely irrelevant in the Israel-Gaza-West Bank-Lebanon debate. They seem to have taken their eyes off the Caucasus and Georgia. The Balkans is not going well. Serbia is not going well. Kosovo is not going well. Bosnia is not going well. Afghanistan, they seem to just throw in the towel as soon as the US announced that it was leaving and that they had no independent

• 46:43Rory Stewart?

  policy at all. So what's going on? What's happened to the idea of European foreign policy?

• 46:48Alastair Campbell?

  I think you're underestimating. The impact that the drive towards nationalism is having on the big international institutions. You could say the same question about the United Nations. You could ask the same question about NATO, particularly with what's happening in relation to the upcoming American election and the possibility of Trump. So there was a very good interview I saw, by the way. Can't remember the name of the guy, a French politician was interviewed and he was arguing for much stronger European foreign and defence policy. And by the way, I thought it was interesting, I was pleased that John Healy, the UK Defence Secretary, signed a pretty serious, significant alliance with Pistorius, the German Defence Minister. I've always thought that Britain's way back into the European debate is through security

• 47:33Alastair Campbell?

  and defence, and I hope that's just the first step. But this French guy was making the point, he says, are we really going to sit around every four years, dependent upon the votes of a few people in Michigan and Wisconsin, to decide the security of Europe? And he was basically saying that the reliance, the dependence upon America for our security has just gone on too long. We can no longer rely on it in the way that we have done since the Second World War. So I think you're being a bit harsh about foreign policy. I think it's actually, the deeper question is, why has the politics of international institutions become so bloody difficult?

• 48:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but it's also a question of European leadership, isn't it? Because Macron is seen as a sort of slightly pompous Louis XIV figure, holding forth in the Elisee, if you're German or Swedish. And your friend Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor in Germany, doesn't exactly have a real credibility or legitimacy.

• 48:26Alastair Campbell?

  You normally say my friend Macron, not my friend Scholz.

• 48:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Alastair Campbell?

  I think you're picking up a few Aussie habits. You're basically sort of, you're whacking the ball, you just hit the ball hard.

• 48:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but where's the European leadership? Where are the people who are really going to be able to articulate what that foreign policy is? Or lead on issues like the Middle East or Caucasus or Balkans?

• 48:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, Ursula von der Leyen has got another term, and, you know, I think she's a pretty impressive figure. But I think it's very, very difficult at the moment as the head of any of these big international institutions, they're dealing the whole time with politics that has become much, much more fractured, much, much harder to coordinate. And Orban, this is where Faust is right, Orban is just taking the piss. He's not waiting for a concerted, consolidated, agreed line between all the countries of the European Union about how to respond to the Georgian election. He's just saying, right, okay, my side won, I'm in there to say, well done.

• 49:21Rory Stewart?

  That I suppose is the other alternative, isn't it? Which is maybe accept that you're not going to get a unified European foreign policy with people like Orban around. And therefore, the other European states, and Hungary is a mini, mini state with a declining population, a small economy. So why are the other states, I mean, going to stake? Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, I mean, why are they not leaning in? Why is Orban being allowed to make the running? Why can't they be making the running as individual states more for liberal democratic values in the West?

• 49:54Alastair Campbell?

  I think those that try, like Macron, as you say, has become unpopular in his own country. And all of them are having to address really difficult politics within their own borders. And a lot of it goes back to the point you made earlier about immigration. Immigration has become a really big challenge. You talked about the way the Australians had approached it. Now, Australia is an island and it's a big country, massive country with a population of fewer than 30 million. But you're then, within the European Union, you're talking about, you know, dozens of smaller countries, but all of whom are having to address a problem. And I think that what's happened is that the internationalisation of institutions worked very well for a while and is now working less well.

• 50:36Alastair Campbell?

  And that is forcing everybody to respond to lesser and greater degrees to this old America first, Germany first, France first, Hungary first, whatever it might be. And don't forget as well with Orban, there's a guy whose domestic record is actually pretty poor. But first of all, he's got a grip of the media, got a grip of the legal institutions, played the Putin playbook. And now is able to sort of parade as this big foreign policy figure.

• 51:02Rory Stewart?

  That's very depressing. Which brings us finally, just to conclude with an update on Japan. So attentive listeners to the podcast, and indeed attentive followers of world news, will have followed the fact that there's been a new prime minister in Japan. And the new prime minister chose to do the one thing that the rest of his politics advisers against, which is calling a snap election. Did not work for Rishi Sunak, who, had he held his nerve and held on, would now be looking at better economic figures. Worked for Macron, who got himself in a bit of a mess, and it hasn't worked for the Japanese Prime Minister, who looks like the domination of the LDP, which has dominated Japanese politics since the 1950s, had a bit of a wobble in the 90s, but has been absolutely the dominant force since the late 2000s, has basically come to a grinding halt.

• 51:44Alastair Campbell?

  It really has, yeah.

• 51:46Rory Stewart?

  A disparate coalition has come after him and he's managed to blow his majority.

• 51:49Alastair Campbell?

  And I think I'm right in saying, I think you predicted that. I think when we talked about it, I said that I still reckon the LDP would somehow pull it off, but they haven't. With their coalition partner, Komito, they've got 215 out of the 465 seats, so they're pretty well sure. You need 233 to get a majority. And Shigeru Ishiba, who's the former Defence Minister, this was his sixth attempt at becoming party leader, and he said that he called the snap election to bolster his position. Well, it really, really has backfired very, very badly. He's going to stay on, he says, he's going to try and build a coalition. The guy who ran his campaign has basically decided to fall on his sword. But I think it's very, very hard to see how this guy lasts long term,

• 52:34Alastair Campbell?

  not least because he's actually not very popular with his own MPs. And if you're not very popular with your own MPs, and then the election suggests that you're not very popular with the public, it's hard to see how he survived much longer, to be honest.

• 52:48Rory Stewart?

  Just to make Japan, which is a very, very, just the most fascinating country, but to make it more real for British listeners, there's a little bit of the Ming Vars strategy stuff going on that we talked about in the way that Labour ran against the Conservatives. So Mr. Ishiba himself had initially sounded like he was very radical. In fact, one of the reasons he was unpopular with MPs but popular with the public as a whole is he was always seen as a real kind of radical guy and he was going to be doing stuff on interest rates and capital gains taxes and a nation version of NATO and all that. And he abandoned almost all of that. Meanwhile, the opposition, and this again is a little bit out of the Keir Starmer playbook, ran a campaign where it was almost impossible to see any policy difference.

• 53:31Rory Stewart?

  What they were really running against is the LDP being a bunch of corrupt, elite, out of touch guys.

• 53:37Alastair Campbell?

  Who've been in power for too long.

• 53:39Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. It's your anti-incumbency, it's general sense, these people are corrupt and useless, rather than any grand, specific policy proposals.

• 53:47Alastair Campbell?

  The opposition clearly have, you know, increased their presence in the Parliament.

• 53:53Alastair Campbell?

  It'd be very interesting to see where he goes to try to form this coalition. I can't see them putting up with him for that long. They're pretty ruthless, the Japanese, when it comes to their political leaderships.

• 54:04Rory Stewart?

  Great.

• 54:05Alastair Campbell?

  We shall see. And meanwhile, you and I are going to be back tomorrow, Wednesday with Question Time. And then Thursday, we're going to give our views on the budget. Are you going to be able to watch the budget somewhere, Rory?

• 54:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I will be able to watch the budget somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane.

• 54:19Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. And then we'll listen to what Paul Johnson says and we'll say, yeah.

• 54:23Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. That's right. Exactly.

• 54:25Alastair Campbell?

  Our usual approach to budgets.

• 54:27Rory Stewart?

  That's our usual approach. Exactly. Very good.

• 54:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Alastair. Well, thank you. Thank you for the time. Bye bye.

• 54:32Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 54:37Speaker 07

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 54:53Speaker 08

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 54:58Speaker 07

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 55:01Speaker 08

  I'm not the first then.

• 55:02Speaker 07

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 55:07Speaker 09

  Espolón Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead. Espolón Tequila. Balanced, delicious. Perfect for nights out, nights in, and people who like to drink tequila. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. Then hold on tight. 100% agave, 0% ego. Espolón Tequila. For a real margarita. Ride the rooster.

• 55:31Speaker 07

  Espolón Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Comparia America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.