329. Question Time: Technology, privacy, and the battle for the NHS

Will disability benefits ever be means tested? Could cross party collaboration fix the national health crisis? And how are Alastair and Rory staying humble post-tour? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Podcast Editor: Becki Hills Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen and Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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.

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• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:03Rory Stewart?

  First good question, I think, Alistair, from India, which is, it is the 100th anniversary, as we record this, of the fall of the first Labour government. So, Alistair, over to you. Any thoughts on the fall of that Labour government 100 years ago and maybe some parallels that might be interesting for today?

• 2:21Alastair Campbell?

  Why are we talking about the fall of a government Rory? We've only just got the Labour government. The only reason I'm kind of aware, even aware of this anniversary, well done India for knowing that it's the anniversary, is because I spent the Saturday with David Blunkett, who said to me, David's a great one for Labour Party history, and he said it's almost exactly 100 years since the first minority Labour government fell. So this was the government led by Ramsay MacDonald, Chancellor Philip Snowden, who went on, the two of them went on to be something of almost hate figures really within the Labour movement because they formed the national government which relied more upon opponents

• 3:04Alastair Campbell?

  of Labour than it did of Labour. It is remarkable, I've said to you before Rory, three times as many Etonian prime ministers as Labour prime ministers, and Ramsay MacDonald was the first, and yet 100 years. So I think it was October 29th, 1924 was the election, and it lasted about nine months before they fell. Did some interesting things on welfare, interesting things on housing. He was the first Prime Minister from a working class background, had no university education, governed without a majority in either house. But I guess the connection that people might be making in really Philip Snowden, the Chancellor...

• 3:49Alastair Campbell?

  Is that he was somebody who fairly left wing, actually came from my part of the world, cowling near Keithley, and he worked in Burnley for a few years and eventually became, he was MP for Blackburn, then he lost, then he was MP for Coal Valley.

• 4:03Rory Stewart?

  Quite a modest background. His father was a weaver, left school at 15 and became an insurance office clerk and then passed the civil service exams, didn't he?

• 4:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, people think he was posh because he became a viscount. So people think viscount Snowden, but actually he became a viscount after the event of his political career.

• 4:22Rory Stewart?

  So he came in, he had a reputation being pretty left wing, in love with socialism. But then as the chancellor, he set about trying to cut taxes and tariffs to balance the budget.

• 4:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he was pretty orthodox, it's fair to say, as chancellor. And that's why ultimately he and McDonald, I mean McDonald was expelled from the Labour Party because of his role in the national government from 1931 to 1935. But that first, you know, if you're a Labour person, it's quite a thing to think it was just 100 years ago that that first Labour government was formed. And actually managed to achieve quite a few things, even though, as I say, they had no majority, either in the Commons or the Lords. So the message for Labour today is when you've got a big majority, you can do lots of things. So let's see them done.

• 5:16Rory Stewart?

  But it's also the strangeness of politics in that period, because as we went into the late 20s, early 30s, the junior Labour minister who was pushing for high spending on public works to combat unemployment was Oswald Mosley, who then went on obviously to found the British Union fascist. Meanwhile, obviously Snowden was pushing for this very, very kind of austerity policy. And as you say, he was then kicked out and of the Labour Party and attacked it as Bolshevism run mad and became this sort of hated viscount.

• 5:50Alastair Campbell?

  And talking of Bolshevism, Rory, the other famous thing that happened around that period. And showing that some things never change was the Daily Mail and fake news. They published this letter that became known as the Zenobia of letter, suggesting that Labour was getting ready for the imminent revolution and communism was going to take over.

• 6:13Rory Stewart?

  It was amazing that moment. We should do something on that, actually, because it's a really interesting example of fake news that was so successful that historians had to reinforce again and again and keep pointing out to people today that that

• 6:25Alastair Campbell?

  It was along with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is another famous one of the period.

• 6:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Alastair Campbell?

  Was a massive forgery. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So the Daily Mail talking, spreading lies about Labour. Hey, what's new? Shall I tell you a little bit about David Blunkett and football?

• 6:40Rory Stewart?

  Yes, that is strange because David Blunkett is obviously blind. So how do you watch football with David Blunkett?

• 6:46Alastair Campbell?

  So it was Sheffield Wednesday against Burnley at the weekend. We won, Rory. We went top of the

• 6:50Rory Stewart?

  And he's a Sheffield supporter, right? So you were supporting different teams?

• 6:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So we were disagreeing agreeably as we sat there. He has headphones on.

• 6:59Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 7:00Alastair Campbell?

  He's got a commentary coming through from the, the, either, it used to be the hospital radio, then it became the club radio. And he admits, you know, as you know, I sometimes do the Burnley commentary and it's very biased.

• 7:12Rory Stewart?

  Was he having to listen to your biased Burnley commentary when he was supporting Sheffield?

• 7:17Alastair Campbell?

  He had the Sheffield commentary in his one ear and he had me sitting next to him in the other ear. But what's incredible is he, he really does follow the game. He, he listens to the crowd, he listens to the songs, he listens to the sort of conversations around him and he's got the commentary. So for example, just to give you a tiny example, when the Sheffield Wednesday announcer announced the sponsors' man of the match, there was a guy called Valery. And David turned to me and he said, he didn't play very well, which is amazing when you think about it. And the fact is, he hadn't played very well. He was the man of the match because that's who the sponsor chose, probably wanted to meet him. And the other thing, I've written about this in my, in my new European column. He said at one

• 8:00Alastair Campbell?

  point, there was a guy made this pass and he goes, what a great pass. Right. And I I turned and said, how do you know? And he said, I heard it.

• 8:11Rory Stewart?

  That's amazing.

• 8:12Alastair Campbell?

  He heard what was happening. And it was, it was a guy called Barry Bannon, who plays for Scotland, as I'm sure you know. And it was, it was an amazing pass. And he heard it, a combination of the sound of the foot on the ball, the crowd, the response. He just said, what a great pass. And it was.

• 8:28Rory Stewart?

  Always somewhat at risk of this show becoming the rest is football. So to remind people that we did a fantastic interview with David Blunkett on Leading, two episodes back in June. Really worth listening to.

• 8:40Alastair Campbell?

  And also to to plug our current leading, the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, told me that it was his favourite interview that we'd done. So there you go.

• 8:48Rory Stewart?

  It was astonishing and a real kind of, again, a reminder of what a considerable figure David Blunkett was and how important he was to that new Labour government. And how, to some extent, I feel Keir Starmer's government would benefit from having a Blunkett figure.

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, Rory, here's a question you're going to love. This is David Gork's got a job with the government, and this is the one that I know you want. Kaya Washington, why is the NHS allowed to be used as a political porn? Surely it would be better if it was handled as a bipartisan issue? Thoughts? We had lots of questions on on the health, this health review and whether the government shouldn't try to bring in the opposition on it.

• 9:25Rory Stewart?

  I think with the NHS and with adult social care and with transport, you're looking at things which clearly need ten, twenty year plans. And therefore, one great advantage of doing cross party stuff is you're less likely to have it derailed by a new government. The second advantage of it, as we found with trying to fund social care, is that funding always requires tax increases. And the first thing that happens, so Theresa May tried to work out a way of funding social care and immediately was attacked by Jeremy Corbyn, who called it a death tax. And basically lost the 2017 election on the back of it.

• 10:04Rory Stewart?

  We've seen Rishi Sunak's health and social care levy reversed again by the incoming Labour government, which I guess they're probably regressing at the moment. Because that would have been a very hefty increase in VAT, which could have been very useful for them for funding things. So I really do think these things could happen. And it's also worth looking at Sweden because Sweden.

• 10:28Rory Stewart?

  Is very dramatic in the way that many of the core issues, and you can see this in the way that prisons are run in Sweden, you can see it in public health and the way that Covid was done in Sweden. Big issues removed from politicians and given to independent bodies, which really allow them to take much more radical, bold lines that would be pretty difficult for politicians to take. So why isn't there the appetite for that? I mean, there must be a reason why, apart from obviously not liking Rory Stewart, but what's the reason why they're not bringing together big cross-party commissions on these things?

• 11:02Alastair Campbell?

  I think what Wes Streeting seemed to be saying when he set out the process of this review for this 10-year plan, they've created this new website where people can submit their own ideas, and some of them, I have to say, are quite funny, but some of them, I think, will be genuinely interesting. And he did say, I saw an interview he did where he did say he would more than welcome ideas coming from the Conservatives on this. Now, when it comes to it, though, I think whenever people say, why can't we take the politics out of something, they're basically saying, why can't we take the politics out of our lives? Because the truth is that healthcare is a very, very political issue. Education is very political, how we treat crime and punishment, these are political

• 11:47Alastair Campbell?

  issues. So I think, I think it's more, I wouldn't, I would prefer, rather than having a cross-party commission, I do think, we've talked before about citizens' assemblies and so forth, I think actually building a totally different structure that isn't just about the main political parties would be the best way to do this. And if you talk about 10 years, they're talking about producing this plan by spring of 2025, say, well, that gives you quite a lot of time. Alongside that, I'd love to see a citizens' assembly on the future of healthcare.

• 12:19Rory Stewart?

  I think that's right. Institutions is the thing to think about. When you were talking about citizens' consultations, I think the government should be learning from Audrey Tang.

• 12:31Rory Stewart?

  The digital minister in Taiwan that we interviewed on leading, they, in this case being Audrey Tang, set up a much more interesting system than just a website. The forms of consultation they were doing, and actually a lot of it was about rural healthcare, was very clever, partly because of some of the ruses going on. So she was able to get junior civil servants to contribute anonymously to these chat forums and to propose ideas that their bosses had squashed, almost by pretending to be ordinary members of the public. And a lot of what they learnt through doing this is that the convening is essential, the way in which the citizens are organised, the way in which you use machine learning to

• 13:12Rory Stewart?

  group these ideas, the way in which the discussion forums are taken forward is vital. It's not enough just to, you know, drop an idea in from time to time. And then citizen assemblies, I couldn't agree more. I mean, that's so fascinating because that really does take the politics out of it, much more than putting Tories and Labour together on a panel. Because they aren't elected, because they're not running for election, they can approach the ideas, even if they're not great experts, just much more naturally and much more objectively.

• 13:41Alastair Campbell?

  I also thought Wes Streeting was interesting in the way that he talked about, he intends to rely on experts. He was very deliberately making a difference between the Michael Gove, we're fed up of experts, he wants expert opinion. There's something about the way Wes Streeting does interviews that I really like. He doesn't take any crap. I think there's something very defensive about a lot of the Labour ministers, but Wes just sort of basically says, you know, no, here's what I'm going to say, here's how I'm going to say it. There's a confidence to what he says, and he accepts, by the way, he says, he was asked a question, you know, you've been in government now, can you honestly say that through the winter, there will not be people lying on trolleys waiting to be seen in A and E?

• 14:24Alastair Campbell?

  And he said, worse than that, there will be people right now lying on trolleys, and that is what we've got to fix, and it's going to take a long time to fix it. You know, I think the other ministers could learn a lot from watching the way he pushes back on some of these interviews.

• 14:37Rory Stewart?

  Is he able to use the fact that Rishi Sunak during the campaign had the same vision for healthcare reform? In other words, if you watched Sunak's debates against Starmer, Sunak was saying, we've got to move money from hospitals to frontline. We've got to do more preventative care, which is exactly the West Streeting vision. Do you think he can use some of that to try to spike the guns of conservative attacks a bit? Or is the problem that as soon as Sunak steps down, the new Tory leader will come in and ignore everything that Sunak said?

• 15:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I certainly think that, you know, I mean, it is extraordinary to think that Rishi Sunak is a kind of moderate compared with Jen Rick or Badenoch. And I think you and I both know that Rishi Sunak did not have much time for either, either in terms of their politics or their competences as ministers. But I think that isn't a bad thought, actually. I was at this health conference the other day, and the one thing that has definitely got through to that sector, to people working in that sector. And once you've done that, then you can take it to the public. And I think it is starting to get through. You know, I can now quote verbatim things that they're saying. They want to move from hospital to community, analog to digital, and

• 15:50Alastair Campbell?

  they want to have a focus on prevention rather than cure. Now, that's a very, very good frame. So once you've got that framing, if we go back to our citizens' assembly structure, you would probably say, okay, there's a group over there. They're going to work on the how do we get from hospital to community. There's that law. We're going to bring in the tech people because they know how to do this analog to digital. And over here, we're going to talk about prevention. That's where we talk about mental health. That's where we talk about fitness and obesity and all this stuff. So he's got a big challenge, which came out in the Aradazza report that we talked about. But I've got a feeling about West Streeting that he's got a plan that he's not fully telling us yet, but he's working towards implementing it.

• 16:31Rory Stewart?

  One more thing on healthcare. When they talk about analog to digital, there's so much that technology can do. I mean, I'm talking to you wearing this Oura ring on my finger, which gives me real time data, not just on how many steps I've taken, but exactly how much REM sleep I got, how much deep sleep I got, where my pulse rate is, my HRV variation. Other people will be picking up stuff on VOA. All of this incredibly helpful because, you know, you can pick up early signs of COVID. You can pick up lead indicators on much more serious conditions.

• 17:07Rory Stewart?

  But in order to do this and really benefit from the fact that the NHS has this enormous swarm of data, I mean, it's almost unique in the world in just how much data it has. There are some very interesting questions around data privacy that need to be overcome. And the Conservative government from 2010 onwards kept saying that the NHS can really leap the world because it has access to all this data. But of course, what happened is when they began bringing in digital companies to try to harvest this data and gather this data, privacy campaigners became very anxious, including your friend David Davis, who we interviewed on Leading. I remember being a big critic of this. So one of the challenges, I think, that Wes Reading will face is he's going to have

• 17:52Rory Stewart?

  to have this very, very old battle, which is at the heart of so much of the problem with social media at the moment, which is striking this balance between the huge benefits that you can get from accessing people's data and using machine learning to go through anonymized data to find patterns in order to massively improve health, against, on the other hand, people's concerns about their privacy.

• 18:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, we've talked before about Pallantir and Peter Thiel in relation to the access that they have to our data in their work in the NHS. And as a result of some of our conversations in the past, Pallantir asked me to go in and they did a presentation, which was fine, it was very interesting and so forth. But I really worry about this guy, Peter Thiel, because he and Musk, between them, they are the ones who pushed Vance upon Trump. They are the ones, and Musk's behaviour is becoming more and more unhinged, I'm above the law, I can do what I want. And so, yeah, I think that is a really, really big problem which the government is

• 19:00Alastair Campbell?

  going to have to work through. And the NHS app idea, which Wes was talking about, and by the way, you know, I've used sort of digital stuff in relation to my own healthcare. But I think I would worry about the extent to which that can then be sort of bundled, taken, used in different ways. And, you know, so the government's got its work cut out in explaining that.

• 19:20Rory Stewart?

  This is the key, isn't it? There are so many advantages. And how rational are these concerns? And what exactly is it that you're worried about, Alistair? And, you know, what exactly they're going to be doing with this stuff? Is it a sort of, I guess, if you were working for Palantir, or you were somebody who was much more optimistic about technology, you'd say that a lot of these anxieties are very unfocused, and a little bit kind of superstitious, and the benefits are obvious. Jim Waterston posted on Twitter, to bring another voice into the Q and A conversation, "I hate doing personal posts, but when my mum was dying last year, NHS data sharing failures, and prioritising

• 20:00Rory Stewart?

  GDPR, that's the data protection, over pain relief, repeatedly left her in agony. In desperation, I began to build a Google Doc of her records linked to a QR code for doctors to scan. Systems broken." And that got two and a half thousand likes on Twitter. And that was actually him replying to Wes Streeting.

• 20:19Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, quick break, then back with more questions.

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• 22:11Rory Stewart?

  Question from Jenny, on which I'm going to self-interestedly answer myself. So Jenny asks, what can we learn from the Tory leadership candidates about how Parliament and politics is changing? And here are a couple of things I noticed, which maybe political commentators haven't made enough of. The first is that Jenrick and Badenoch are very recent MPs. I mean, I was only elected in 2010, but I was in before them, right? I was in a Parliament before them. Secondly, they were both people who were very much not on the Rishi Sunak plan. So Jenrick was not put into Rishi Sunak, didn't make him Secretary of State,

• 22:53Rory Stewart?

  and he resigned in protest at Rishi Sunak's Rwanda policy, thought it wasn't tough enough. And Badenoch, famously, as we kept saying, wasn't really rated by Rishi Sunak, and there was a huge briefing war between them. So. I think one thing we can learn is that the old days of politics were often leadership candidates were people who'd been in politics for 20, 25 years and were senior loyal figures in previous people's administration in the way that, you know, John Major was in relation to Margaret Thatcher, or Gordon Brown was to Blair, maybe the loyal bits pushing it back. First, suddenly a senior trusted member of the administration, or, you know, even Theresa

• 23:35Rory Stewart?

  May to David Cameron, has been replaced by a very, very strange new world where British politics began to feel more like Dutch politics, where a lot of the leading figures have been in Parliament for such a short time. Well, Keir Starmer only coming in himself in, I think, 2015, Rishi Sunak in 2015. And why is that? What does it tell us about politics? That whereas in the past, that the people making it to the top had often been in Parliament, you know, Macmillan, or Eden, or all these kind of people, let alone Wilson, Callaghan, or Heath?

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know what it says. I don't, I really don't know. Does it, does it say that people are constantly looking for the new? Does it say that people get bored with people more quickly than they used to? I don't know what it says. I don't think it's very good, though.

• 24:19Rory Stewart?

  It isn't good because you would have thought the obvious candidates in the Conservative context would have been Jeremy Hunt, you know, in Parliament a long time, had a lot of big Cabinet posts, last chance to the exchequer, but instead of which you have these people who are relatively junior, I mean, definitely junior.

• 24:34Alastair Campbell?

  I think the Tories are making a terrible mistake. I could be wrong about this, but I think whichever they choose, Badenoch and Jenrick, I just, I just don't think they're very good. I think their ideas are kind of plot-losing. I think they exacerbate the problems that led to the Tories losing rather than address them.

• 24:54Rory Stewart?

  And they give a gift to Keir Starmer, don't they? Because if he's struggling with his narrative, and if he was elected largely because people were fed up with the Tories, getting a non-credible Tory leader in is a fantastic opportunity for him to keep reminding people every week in Parliament, at least I'm not this lot, which he can't do and hasn't been able to do for the last few weeks.

• 25:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I mean, Rishi Sunak really has sort of... Vanished from the scene, hasn't he? I mean, he sort of pitches up to Primus's questions. He clearly is a bit of an ordeal. He's really not, he's not really putting the hours in, let's be honest.

• 25:31Rory Stewart?

  Means testing benefits, Lewis Craven. With the recent change in the winter fuel allowance to become means tested, should the government be looking at personal independence allowance and disability living allowance as the next two benefits that should be means tested? Can I just comment on that? There's an amazing figures now coming on disability living allowance. The number of people who are now receiving disability benefit has doubled since 2019. And this is not, you might have thought it's just because of Covid, it's a long Covid story. But it doesn't seem to be because it's not happening anywhere else in Europe or in any comparable state.

• 26:10Rory Stewart?

  It may be something to do with the cut in other welfare benefits, which makes the disability living allowance that much more valuable. But it is a huge problem for the Labour Government going into the budget, working out how they're going to pay for it because the welfare bill is going up and up and up. And they really want to get those people back into work. But presumably that's going to be pretty unpopular with a lot of the Labour backbenchers if they try to push ahead with Tory plans on how to do that.

• 26:38Alastair Campbell?

  I think the, this thing about getting people back into work, that was the other big thing that came through the Darcy report and also through what West Streeting was saying yesterday is the health service playing a more productive role in actually helping to get people fit for work. Just on, you talk about the budget, Roy. The other thing that happened last week that I, I had sort of sent shivers down my spine was when the inflation figures came out and they were better than expected. And then it was announced that this is the set of figures when we have, when we talk about index linked benefit payments, this is the set of figures that will decide those rises of benefits. And the reason why it's sort of set to shiver down my spine is because one of our,

• 27:21Alastair Campbell?

  one of our most difficult periods early in government was when we were patting ourselves on the back about how well we'd done to keep inflation low. And what it meant was that there was a tiny, I think it was seventy five pence rise in the basic state pension. And we ended up having to change it because there was such a kind of outcry over the fact there was this pitiful minimal rise in the pensions. And as the government is finding, taking on the pensions is never, never really much fun. So I wonder whether they might tweak that along with all the other stuff they're going to tweak in the budget.

• 27:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's likely that pension benefit, because the triple lock goes up much more than than other benefits. But we're in a situation now where one in ten working age people are currently receiving benefits. And in the Welsh Valley, it's in Blackpool, it's one in four. With older people mostly getting disability benefit for physical issues and younger people for for mental health issues. And I'm not sure that the DASI stuff is going to be quite enough. It's very, I mean, it sounds great, if you say it quickly, that, you know, we can work to improve people's health and that be the way to get them back into work. But the scale of the problem, the doubling of the bill, doubling the number of people on disability benefits in three years, I don't think you're going to turn it around just by by therapy.

• 28:38Alastair Campbell?

  This health conference I was at, I was speaking on, I was sharing a platform with Richard Meddings, who's the the current Chair of NHS England. He was saying that one in eight people in Britain have a contact with primary care every single week.

• 28:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Alastair Campbell?

  That felt very, very high to me.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's amazing. I mean, there are three hundred and fifty million GP appointments a year for a country of, you know, whatever it's seventy million people.

• 29:04Alastair Campbell?

  He also said there is a huge percentage, I can't remember the exact figure, but it was a big number of GPs who will be retiring in the next few years. So where are we going to get all these new GPs? You know, they're going to be, dare I say, that some of them may have to come from the European Union, Rory.

• 29:22Rory Stewart?

  Yes, and from other countries too. So just, just to come back to this question. So spending on health and disability benefits is up thirty one percent. So this question around means testing from Lewis Craven, I mean, is there any possibility at all that the government would look at means testing, personal independence allowance and disability living allowance? Or do you think that's just inconceivable for a Labour government?

• 29:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I guess it goes back to your point about whether a Tory government is more able to do things like prisons.

• 29:52Alastair Campbell?

  So I don't know, I think I hadn't really thought of it. I think that, look, the fact that the first big fight they took on, I think they might be regretting it as their first big fight, but the first big fight being the changes to winter fuel, the universal winter fuel allowance, maybe that is a path they eventually will have to go down, but I think they'll be very reluctant to do so. Now Rory, my final question, Georgia Gibbons.

• 30:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 30:17Alastair Campbell?

  At your show, this was at our recent tour, you had a tribal buzzer for Alistair. This is a question for you, but I'm reading out because I know you're going to ignore it. You had a tribal buzzer for Alistair, but why is being tribal such a bad thing? Isn't there a need for some tribalism?

• 30:34Rory Stewart?

  Goodness gracious me. Firstly, just quickly, I mean, given we've been quite serious on policy rights through Question Time, the shows were amazing. I mean, really extraordinary. We ended up with over 13,000 people coming to see us in the O2 with a setup as if we were on a boxing stage. So it was in the round. And I had this wonderful buzzer, this red buzzer, which I could hit, which put up the word tribal all the way around the thing.

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that was quite, that was dramatic, wasn't it? When the word tribal went up in line.

• 31:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, amazing. Lovely article in The Economist, slightly teasing of saying, but it was a moment where we got a little bit more serious in the show when we were showing Dan Needle's tax projection statistics on a screen to 13,000 people in the O2 and people in the audience were shouting, more, more.

• 31:22Alastair Campbell?

  The Economist piece is very nice. I love the subtitle. The headline is, why rest is politics, a British podcast is a hit. Put the subtitle at the top, it says, the most sensible show on earth. I think we should have that as our new banner, the most sensible show on earth. So you basically kept doing this show of hands about whether I'm tribal.

• 31:45Rory Stewart?

  You're an interesting balance because I think you do get the balance right between being profoundly passionately tribal, pro Labour, anti Tory, but also being interested in policy. But the reason I really dislike it is when you get to the Liz Truss extreme, which is increasingly normal now in Parliament. All they're interested in is the party politics bashing the other side in campaigning, and they have absolutely no interest in governing. I'm afraid I felt this with people like Kwasi Koting, and I catch a little bit of a whiff of this with some of the people in Keir Starmer's cabinet, too. You can see just how triggered they are by the whole idea of Tories and how little they want to get involved in conversations about what to do, because the whole culture of

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  the House of Commons, many of them have been joined, well, they boast of joining political parties when they're in their early teens, of having been student politicians, and they just love thinking about the business of opinion polls and leaflets through doors. And they're not awfully interested in discussing details of adult social care.

• 32:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. Maybe we should do this one, Rory. I said that was the final question, but this is related. Marina Cantacusino, MBE, says podcasts are the new rock and roll, packed-out stadiums, T-shirts, merchandise, celebrity punters. How do you stop all this going to your head? Is it going to your head, Rory?

• 33:09Rory Stewart?

  No. I hope not. I hope not. Maybe it is. Have I become pretty unbearable? Do you think we're becoming pretty pompous?

• 33:16Alastair Campbell?

  No more unbearable than you were at the start.

• 33:18Rory Stewart?

  What does Grace say about you after coming to see you in the O2? I know that she turned up with a whole team who just irritates you. She was wearing a Rory Stewart T-shirt merch, wasn't she?

• 33:26Alastair Campbell?

  All her friends were wearing Alistair T-shirts. She was wearing Rory. No, I don't think she thinks it's gone to my head. I think the reason why I don't think it's gone to my head is because I find it very, very weird. I found the whole thing weird. There's part of me, I'm sitting there, there was one point at which I was actually talking, and I was thinking, what are they all doing here? Why have they all come out and paid money? So, no, I don't think it's gone to my head. I did love thinking that in that dressing room that I was, that Paul McCartney had been there. And I hadn't realised, Rory, and I must admit, I hope you don't mind, but I've dropped you in it in the New European, because I pointed out that you

• 34:08Alastair Campbell?

  seem to want to stay in my dressing room rather than your own.

• 34:12Rory Stewart?

  You don't think it's possible that one common theme in the Tories, that your dressing room was always considerably larger than mine?

• 34:18Alastair Campbell?

  I hadn't even noticed that, Rory.

• 34:20Rory Stewart?

  That's because you never came into my dressing room.

• 34:26Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, it was thoroughly enjoyable. It was great to spend some time with Anthony Scaramucci and Kati Kay as well. And yeah, we had more than 30,000 people over the course of the 10 days, whatever it was. And I think the two big takeaways from me are those 30,000 people, by a massive majority, think the Tories have made a terrible mistake in ruling out James Cleverly. And they also still have a lot of goodwill for Labour, but they want better and they want more.

• 35:00Rory Stewart?

  I was also really struck by the fact that although they really enjoyed some of our showmanship, and they loved you playing the pipes and jokes around pots and things, just how much appetite there is for serious conversation.

• 35:13Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. They wanted the serious stuff, yeah.

• 35:15Rory Stewart?

  I really, that really cheered me up. And also how young the crowd was. I mean, I think that's the other thing that was surprising people. Well, so thank you very much.

• 35:22Alastair Campbell?

  So you soon will enjoy Australia. Give it my best. One of my favourite countries in the world. Wish I was there.

• 35:26Rory Stewart?

  I can see why. They're sports mad for a start, but like you.

• 35:29Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, listen, Rory, you're in Melbourne. I know you're not into sport, but go to the Melbourne Cricket Ground just to take a walk around, look at the statues.

• 35:38Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 35:38Alastair Campbell?

  I promise you, they're the best sports statues in the world. You'll like them, I promise.

• 35:43Rory Stewart?

  Thank you, Aston. All right. Have a great evening. Bye bye.

• 35:46Alastair Campbell?

  Bye.

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