Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 155. Sunak slides to defeat in Selby and Somerton About this episode How happy should Labour be with Thursday's by-election results? Can Sunak take some solace from holding on in Uxbridge? Will these constituencies be Labour, Tory, and Lib Dem holds at the next election?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair 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.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. 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.
0:42 Alastair 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?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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1:56 Rory Stewart? Welcome to an Extra Restless Politics podcast with me Rory Stewart.
2:01 Alastair Campbell? And me Alice Campbell. That's every day this week Rory, this is getting ridiculous.
2:04 Rory Stewart? It's unbelievable. And where are you? You seem to have a lot of sporting trophies behind you.
2:08 Alastair Campbell? I'm in a school in Blackburn.
2:10 Rory Stewart? Very good.
2:11 Alastair Campbell? I've just had a talk with some of the students, most of whom want us to go back into the European Union, I should tell you, as per every school in the country. One young man who was a supporter of the Reform Party, I found one. And so he was giving me a very enjoyable hard time. But yeah, they're all the school, the school trophies.
2:30 Rory Stewart? So Alice, and you're on your way to Buxton.
2:32 Alastair Campbell? I'm on the way to Buxton where a year ago this weekend, you lost your wedding ring.
2:38 Rory Stewart? That is exactly right. And you're going to speak at the same festival, that beautiful, beautiful hall?
2:42 Alastair Campbell? No, I'm not. I'm just going to look for your wedding ring. I'm not going to take part in the festival at all, just go and pump the ring. No, yeah, I am. I am. I'm going to, I'm going to speak at the festival with Mr Ian Dale interviewing me. He's back from his travails and injuries.
2:56 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, that's, I'm giving my very best. That was very, very sad. He's had a couple of, couple of tough times. So very, very quickly to remind people what we're talking about today, we've just had these by-election results. And this was Boris Johnson stepped down from Parliament, so his seat was up. Nigel Adams, who was one of Boris Johnson's sort of key lieutenants and key allies, also stepped down. Some feel because he was angry that he'd not been put in the House of Lords. And then there was a final case of an MP who'd been a bit mired in scandal, who stepped down in Somerset and Froom. So three Conservative seats came up for election. And the results were that Labour took one, the Conservatives took one, and Lib Dems took one. What's your sense of the, of the results?
3:39 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think if Uxbridge hadn't been involved in the, in the results, if you'd just been talking about Selby and Ainsley and, and Froom, then I think the Conservative Party would be frankly. Absolutely in a state of total shock and despair. And I'll come on to Oxbridge in a moment. So the swing in Selby, where we now have a 25 year old MP insulted by Johnny Mercer as out of the in between us, which I'm not sure was smartest thing to say.
4:09 Rory Stewart? Johnny's Johnny's one of your great, great heroes, isn't he?
4:12 Alastair Campbell? No, I didn't. He's, he's definitely not one of my heroes. He's one of the few Tories that I don't, you know, want to sort of knock their head off. But although a couple of times in recent weeks, he's got a bit close. But I think that I actually think it's good to have a 25 year old. And I think it'd be, it'd be terrible if every MP was only 25, but we definitely knew young blood in our politics. And he seems like a very, very engaging and intelligent young man. So that, that was a huge swing. I think it almost as big as our biggest swing back in the, the mid 90s. And then the West Country, I think, is really interesting because that is the Lib Dems now, four in a row. And that was, that was huge. That was also well into 20% plus, which is pretty big. And I think some of the Tory West Country MPs will be very, very worried.
4:53 Alastair Campbell? And also makes the Lib Dems feel that they can possibly target the Tories in some of the seats closer to London, where they'll, they can perhaps persuade people that the tactical voting, that it clearly happened, a lot of tactical voting in both of those seats, to a lesser extent, I think in Oxbridge, but it was happening in Oxbridge as well. So I think those two are devastating for the Tories. But obviously, they, we talked before about the expectations game. They were playing a pretty good expectations game. I think I said to you last week that I don't, I didn't think Oxbridge was in the bag. And I did say as well, it was because of the way that the ULEs, the ultra low emission zone policy of, of the London mayor was, was breaking through. But all in all, they're pretty bad for the Tories.
5:33 Rory Stewart? So let's, let's, let's drill into this a little bit more. Somerton and Frum, when I was in Parliament, was an MP called David Heath, who was a DEFRA minister. So I guess a traditional Lib Dem seat in the way that I viewed it in 2010, from 1997 through to 2015. But when the Lib Dems went into the coalition, it was one of those seats where the Lib Dems were completely eviscerated in that 2015 election, basically punished for being in the coalition, lost that seat. So them taking it back, I think, is encouraging for the Limb Dems, but it's them taking back a seat that they held traditionally. The Selby result is spectacularly good, spectacularly good for Labour. I mean, that's a real landslide victory. That was a seat that was a proper, traditional Conservative seat, and it was being held with a 20,000
6:17 Rory Stewart? majority. So that will leave a lot of Conservatives very worried around the country if seats with 20,000 majorities are being lost. But Labour will be very, very disappointed about Uxbridge. Uxbridge is a seat which has got increasingly marginal. Boris Johnson was holding it on to it by a majority of a few thousand. Normally, when a party like Conservatives are 20 points behind in the polls and when they're in government, you would definitely expect them to lose that kind of seat in a by-election. Small majority, unpopular government, last MP hadn't exactly crowned himself in great favours. So Labour will really be asking questions about that. What's your analysis of what went wrong for Labour in Uxbridge?
6:55 Alastair Campbell? Well, literally while you were speaking, I got a text message telling me that the party chairman, the Labour Party chairman in Uxbridge, just resigned and criticising, says that it has nothing to do with the by-election and he was always planning to, but is very, very critical of Sir Keir Starmer's leadership and the party's, quotes, "moved to the right". So, look, there's no doubt at all that this issue of ULEZ, ultra-low emission zone, really broke through. And it shows that the Tories, despite having been in government for 13 years, are still very effective as campaigners when they can sort of almost be operating like an opposition. So if you think about this, a policy that was introduced by Boris
7:37 Alastair Campbell? Johnson, who was the mayor of London, who then went on to become the MP of, um, via Henley, become the MP in Uxbridge. So in a way, it's his policy, which Sadiq Khan is taking forward for air quality reasons, but also is part of a settlement that he's done with Grant Shapps, who's the Transport Secretary. It's almost like you could say it's a co-owned policy. And yet Labour didn't seem to manage to explain to people any of that. So it just became, they managed to turn it, the Tories for a lot of people into almost like a referendum on ULEZ, which actually the new MP, the new Tory MP will be able to do precisely nothing.
8:11 Rory Stewart? Just on that issue of the ultra-low emission zone. I mean, this is something we've talked about in the podcast before because it matters for much more than Uxbridge.
8:18 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely.
8:18 Rory Stewart? This is an attempt to try to introduce a measure which is about improving the environment, cleaning up air quality by putting taxes on cars that emit a lot of pollution.
8:30 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
8:30 Rory Stewart? And when I was running to be Mayor of London as an independent, I remember a very, very powerful figure in London politics saying to me, I can win this election for you. All you've got to do is put on your pamphlets in outer London that Sadiq Khan is planning to extend the ultra-low emission zone to these outer areas of London, which in those days was calculated. I know that it's still true, but when I was running, they were calculating was almost 60 pounds a week on the bill of somebody on a low income in outer London for driving their old car. And he said, I'll guarantee you, I can win you this election if you're prepared to do this. Now, I wasn't prepared to do that because actually I agreed with Sadiq Khan's policy. I thought it was really important, in fact, that we did this. And in fact, I wanted to extend it to the Heathrow area as well. And
9:13 Rory Stewart? I thought that could bring revenue into London. But my goodness, it's a reminder of how difficult it's going to be to get through environmental policy.
9:22 Alastair Campbell? And I mean, I do worry now that the Tories, having seen the effect of their campaign there, that they'll now push back even further on some of the environmental stuff that they are committed to. And I think it's fair, in fact, I wrote my new European column about this this week, that I don't get the sense that Sunak sees the climate as a, as a big priority on any level, really. And this will, I think, I think also the Tories will try to find these, this sort of single issue right in different constituencies right around the country. And as we both know, there aren't that many constituencies that they're really going to have to fight hard in, in terms of, you know, which are going to decide the outcome of the general election. So if they can do that sort of policies, and Labour's really got to think through this thing of how do you fight?
10:04 Alastair Campbell? A government that is behaving like an opposition, because that's what we've seen in in Uxbridge, and it's been successful for the Tories. I just should say, by the way, on on tactical voting, tactical voting, essentially, when you have an incumbent government that a lot of people want to get rid of, we saw a lot of tactical voting in the in the two constituencies that we've talked about. There was considerable tactical voting in Uxbridge. But if you just look at the numbers of the other parties, so the Greens got 893 votes. Now, Labour lost by 495. Now, that might be real sort of, you know, strong Green Party voters might actually have not liked the fact that Labour, the candidate and the leadership tried to move away from the the Sadiq Khan position. Laurence
10:48 Alastair Campbell? Fox, the kind of, I don't know what he calls himself these days, he got 714 votes, Lib Dem's got 526, Social Democrat 248, Independent 208, Piers Corbyn, Jeremy Corbyn's brother, got 101 votes, Christian Alliance 78, Raving Looney 32, and on it goes. So it wouldn't have been that difficult for a bit more tactical voting for Labour to have won. And of course, if Labour had won this by election by one, we'd all be saying this was an absolute disaster for the Tories.
11:13 Rory Stewart? That's right. But I I think those figures actually are about as good as you can hope to get with tactical voting. I mean, a lot of those people lost their deposits. So it was a very, very heavy Labour Conservative thing. There weren't many votes in in proportional terms going into small parties.
11:27 Alastair Campbell? No, I agree with that. I agree with that.
11:28 Rory Stewart? I I think, just following up on your point of what this means. So it shows the Conservatives, and this is a point David Gork's been been making in in his new statesman pieces, are still capable of weaponising issues.
11:40 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
11:40 Rory Stewart? It's also, I think, a reminder, and again, I'm stealing from David Gork here, that this is potentially going to be a pocketbook election. In other words, an election which is really all about how people's finances feel. People are in real pain in terms of their incomes, in terms of inflation hitting their incomes, just the whole cost of living issue. And Labour's biggest point of vulnerability. As they get into the election is if the Conservatives are able to suggest to people that they're going to put up taxes and the ULEZ is just one example of that. And then I wonder whether that maybe isn't an argument against the two of us, an argument in favour of the Mingvar strategy, because if it's like in Selby where it's simply a referendum on the Conservatives, Labour wins very easily.
12:23 Rory Stewart? But if it becomes a fight over an issue on taxes, the Conservatives can Sunak through.
12:28 Alastair Campbell? When you talk about it being a pocketbook election, I think if you look at the kind of macro picture on the economy, the Tories are in bad, you know, really bad state, whether it's inflation, it's debt, it's cost of living, it's all the stuff that we've talked about endlessly. But as you say, what they managed to do was, within the context of a cost of living crisis, make it about Labour. And on the point about the Mingvar strategy, I think there's a, that one of the reasons why Labour perhaps didn't get a proper, really strong strategy around the ULEZ issue was that they, they just hoped to kind of park it. As opposed to, what I think this should be saying to them is they actually have to have really strong coherent positions on every single issue.
13:11 Alastair Campbell? And because the Tories, as you say, they do, partly because they've got the press, partly because they're, they're very good at the blow the radar campaigning on social media and fake newspapers and all that other stuff that they do. Labour, I think, has got to have stronger, clearer positions that they can defend. Now, Keir Starmer seems to be saying today that they're going to, you know, take a look at ULEZ and see whether it can be, I don't know what.
13:33 Rory Stewart? And can I just sort of question that? Yeah, because the rumour is that Keir Starmer is now trying to blame Sadiq Khan for the ultra-low emissions zone, rather than what I would hope he would do, which is come in behind him and defend the policy.
13:44 Alastair Campbell? Or get together and work out how the policy can be better explained and better articulated in the context of a general election campaign. And I think that's what wasn't done in this. It just became a sort of blame thing. And I don't think anybody, it ever looks good if you're sort of casting around a blame. There is, there is a real possibility, by the way, that when you get back to the dynamics of a, of a general election, it's not impossible, you could envisage a situation where Labour don't hold Selby but do win Uxbridge.
14:12 Rory Stewart? Yeah. So Keir Starmer's quote, there's no denying that the ultra-low emissions zone was the reason we didn't win in Uxbridge. We all need to reflect on that and the mayor needs to reflect on that. And that's worrying, I think will be worrying for people like you, like me, like indeed Sadiq Khan, who believe in these things for environmental reasons.
14:31 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely.
14:32 Rory Stewart? Final, final point, I think, is there is a hint of what the Tories' strategy could be for the next election, which is whoever gets in next is going to have to put up taxes. It's going to be very difficult to pay for the teachers' salaries, doctors' salaries, the NHS transformation plan, before you think about any of the other investments you want to make in public finances. And it'll be very tempting for the Conservatives to say, Labour is proposing to do a £28 billion Green Prosperity Fund, how on earth are they going to pay for it? And of course, Labour can't, are in a difficult place. They're saying, we're going to delay it, but we're going to introduce it when we're ready for it, which still allows the Conservatives to suggest this is a big spending, big taxing party coming in.
15:16 Rory Stewart? And the danger is that the public is more likely to believe that Labour's going to raise taxes and the Conservatives, if this election becomes about people feeling under financial pressure, that's a problem, no?
15:26 Alastair Campbell? Even though the Tories have got taxes at record highs across the front, and, as we've said before, are spending merrily and got massively in debt as well. So I just think it's about Labour being much, much more confident about owning some of that space. Because the one thing that's going to happen, we know this election after election, the right wing media will manage to frame it as though it's only Labour's tax and spending plans that have to be costed, have to be thought through, have to be worked out. But when we talked the other day about where Labour gets kind of boldness from and new ideas from, I don't know if you had time to follow any of that Future of Britain Tony Blair conference that Keir spoke at, but I do think there are areas of policy that are not really being addressed in the way that they should, that are about a different
16:10 Alastair Campbell? sort of future for the economy and some of the technological solutions and so forth. And that's what we're not hearing anything about.
16:16 Rory Stewart? 100%. And I think Tony Blair is completely right. And what he was largely emphasising is that artificial intelligence could lead to huge savings in the government budget. And that's something we're going to discuss, I think, a little bit more when we interview Yuval Noah Harari and when we also interview Mustafa Suleyman and others. But one of the problems with that, of course, is where are those savings coming from? Those savings are coming because artificial intelligence will be able to replace people with AI.
16:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
16:44 Rory Stewart? And the question is, is Labour going to be brave enough to embrace the policy which is going to involve laying off a lot of public sector workers?
16:50 Alastair Campbell? Within the context of a general election debate, Labour needs to get to a position where the Tories and their cheerleaders, just banging on about old fashioned campaigning, tax and spend, where they're going to do this, you know, double whammies, exploding bombs and all the stuff that they do. Labour has to get a sense of the future and ownership of a different sort of future. And I think that is rooted in these issues of we can modernise public services, modernise the way the economy runs. And I mean, they have to do all the other stuff as well, but having, this is why I say that the Ming Vars, the Ming Vars holding on to things is fine. And I get why they want to do that. But this sense of a debate about who owns the future and what that future looks like, that's the bit that I feel is missing from our politics at the moment.
17:36 Rory Stewart? Very good. I agree very, very strongly. So I think a by-election result that probably doesn't change our joint view, which is that Labour's still well on, on track to win the election, doesn't feel like it changes that. But a slight reminder in Uxbridge that there is an issue about how Labour deals with environmental policy, how they deal with accusations that they're the party of increasing taxes. And I love the point that Tony Blair made and that you're now endorsing, which is that AI is going to change everything and will begin to be changing things very fast by the time we're going into the next election. And Labour, if it's to have a hope, needs to own that agenda. And my goodness, I think the Conservatives will be trying to own that agenda too.
18:11 Alastair Campbell? Well, it's very much where Rishi Sunak is most comfortable, isn't it? The whole sort of tech thing and Silicon Valley and all that stuff. One final point, by the way, which I think may be worth bearing in mind, which I haven't seen much debate about. There is within that kind of outer ring in London and places like Uxbridge, and we've seen it, we saw it elsewhere in the local elections as well, fairly large Indian community that I think historically would have been seen, first generation immigration in particular, historically very, very pro-Labour. And I think that has shifted significantly and probably shifted even more with the advent of a, of an Indian heritage prime minister. This is purely anecdotal, but I was in a taxi recently with, with an Indian, British Indian taxi driver, who was saying to me, you've got a bit of a problem with the Indian
18:56 Alastair Campbell? community at the moment. And I was, oh, why is that then? And he said, well, they, they don't like all this attacking Sunak over how wealthy he is because, you know, we're very, very aspirational. And I thought that was an interesting insight.
19:07 Rory Stewart? It's a fascinating thing because it was the thing that during my whole time in politics, the Conservatives were trying to crack because many of our members of parliament from those areas of London would say, look, our Indian community should be natural Conservative voters. They're often people who seem to embrace Conservative values, but they're still voting Labour. And the question was, how were you going to tap into people who were often running small and medium sized enterprises, who were very focused on low taxes, on hard work and entrepreneurial activities? How would you bring them over? And if the Conservatives actually are managing to do that, that will make a significant difference in particularly areas of North West London.
19:42 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, absolutely. I see that, I was just flicking through some of the media earlier and there was a report from Betty's Cafe in Uxbridge and the final line said that the one thing that everybody was agreed on was that they couldn't, they were glad that the area would now go out of the limelight, having had weeks of visits from politicians and journalists and too many leaflets through the door. But I do, I do think the point you made right at the start though, if you think about, there are so many issues you can look back on where the short term political interest was very much in not doing something. You can think about, you know, seat belts or smoking in public places and things that were very, very difficult at times and quite hard to sell, or some of the tax rises that
20:23 Alastair Campbell? had to be done at various points. But ultimately, I think that what Sadiq Khan is doing is the right thing, but politically, Labour have to find a way of doing it in a way that doesn't allow it to be weaponised, to use your word, and doesn't allow the Tories to exploit it in the way that they've done in this pilot.
20:40 Rory Stewart? If I could just finish with a small tribute to John Randall, who was the MP in Uxbridge before Boris Johnson, who was Deputy Chief Whip when I was in the party, a really lovely man who was from the centre, I'd sort of sound like I'm giving you a bittery, still alive, but lovely man from the centre right of the Conservative Party. Very interested in the environment, became Theresa May's Environment Advisor, but he was a real Uxbridge man born and bred. His family's department store, Randalls of Uxbridge, was there for 127 years in the middle of the High Street. And he was the man who handed over this great majority to Boris Johnson and then then saw it almost lost. But just a small reminder of a great MP who was there for many, many years.
21:19 Alastair Campbell? Can I make one final point, which we haven't in all this, even the tactical voting thing, we haven't mentioned the Greens. But the Greens actually, it would seem, didn't indulge in quite the same way in tactical voting as Labour and the Lib Dems did for each other. And that's worth watching as well. They actually, they got 10% in Somerton, which was their highest by-election vote ever. Now, this was a wipeout. This was not close at all. But you can imagine Lib Dem, Tory and Labour, Tory marginals, where 10% could actually be the difference between winning and losing. So I think although tactical voting is definitely happening in a way that perhaps it hasn't in the past, I think the Greens feel that neither of the main parties are really pushing the environmental
22:02 Alastair Campbell? agenda in the way that they want. And they're going to stick to the Greens.
22:05 Rory Stewart? Maybe that's why the chairman, the Labour chairman in Uxbridge has resigned criticizing Keir Starmer of being too right wing, maybe that he's aware that he could have got more of those Green voters over if he hadn't felt he had that problem. And I think the second issue is that it's difficult for the Greens to tactically vote, because with the Lib Dems and Labour, it's obvious that they're going to be given seats in return for their tactical voting. The Greens are a very small party, and it's difficult to see what they get in return for helping the other parties in.
22:32 Alastair Campbell? Jolly good. Well, I don't know whether we've added anything to the billions of words that are doing their rounds, but doubtless a few people will find it interesting what we say, Rory.
22:40 Rory Stewart? Let's hope so. And Sir Paul Nurse on Monday, amazing.
22:44 Alastair Campbell? Sir Paul Nurse on Monday, yeah.
22:45 Rory Stewart? British scientist, Nobel Prize winner, on leading.
22:48 Alastair Campbell? Let's have an agreement now, though, that we're not going to do five podcasts next week.
22:51 Rory Stewart? You know, I was meant to be on a silent retreat this week. I was meant to be literally inaccessible and out of, out of contact. But somehow we've put five in a week. It's not much of a silent retreat.
23:00 Alastair Campbell? And Rory, I don't want to intrude into, into your private life in any way, but I'm looking behind you and it looks to me like a pretty standard hotel room, but it's got single beds. What's going on there?
23:10 Rory Stewart? That's because it's me and my two sons. I've got a spare bed as well, in the corner of the room. So it's, I'm not going to get much sleep as my sons snore their way through the night.
23:19 Alastair Campbell? Lovely. Well, have a lovely time.
23:21 Rory Stewart? Thank you very much. Bye.
23:22 Alastair Campbell? See you soon. Bye bye.
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