Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 37. Question Time: Scottish Unionism, growth, and cannibalism About this episode Join Alastair and Rory for the latest episode of TRIP: Question Time, where they answer your questions on Bhutan's Gross Domestic Happiness, Scottish Unionism, political biographies, cannibalism, and more.
Show notes:
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin
De Gaulle - Aidan Crawley
The Years of Lyndon Johnson - Robert Caro
The Power Broker - Robert Caro
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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 Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 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/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:14 Alastair Campbell? Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.
1:18 Rory Stewart? And me, Rory Stewart.
1:20 Alastair Campbell? And Rory, I know that we don't do self-congratulation because we're so modest, but Stephen Clark.
1:26 Rory Stewart? We do an enormous amount of self-congratulations. You're not going to do it again.
1:31 Alastair Campbell? Well, I'm just simply pointing out the question by Stephen Clark. Why did so few pundits spot PM Truss coming? And I just would like to remind you that when we did our live show at Leicester Square, I think I said it'll be Liz Truss.
1:46 Rory Stewart? Yep, it's extraordinary. It's one of your great predictions, isn't it?
1:51 Alastair Campbell? I think great is not the word I would apply to it.
1:54 Rory Stewart? We're going to follow you on the betting odds with your son.
1:57 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, he certainly does a lot of that. Vicky Charles, here's one for you, Rory. Vicky Charles, isn't Nadine Doris as stupid as she seems?
2:04 Rory Stewart? Taking on Nadine Doris. Look, I don't like Nadine Doris's style of politics at all. I've been horrified by her culture wars. I think she is picking up a really unpleasant populist tone. I'm completely bewildered by her adoration of Boris Johnson, who I think is a terrible... Prime Minister. But I think, again, this is kind of boring thing I keep coming back to. It's important not to underestimate these people. I don't think that Nadine Doris is stupid. In fact, she's, it's quite a remarkable story. She came from a working class background, grew up in a council estate. She's a non-graduate. She became a nurse and she fought her way into the British Cabinet. And you can't do that unless you've got a certain amount of toughness, resilience.
2:48 Alastair Campbell? Well, you can't do that unless you've got Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.
2:51 Rory Stewart? You definitely can't do it without Boris Johnson.
2:52 Alastair Campbell? I think it's, I think it is, I think it's quite stupid to go to address a room full of people who represent the sport of rugby league and say that Jonny Wilkinson's drug drop goal in rugby union was her favourite rugby league memory. And I think it's quite stupid to launch the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and say it was the last major sporting event since the 2012 Olympics, when we had the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in between the two. I find that quite stupid. I have to be honest.
3:19 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, not, she's obviously not very careful, not very well briefed, is she?
3:23 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think if you're a minister, that's stupid.
3:26 Rory Stewart? And now, now, listen, listen, we, one of the things that we, just to push back there on your omniscience and your amazing predictions. You also said in that same live event that Keir Starmer could go on holiday and win the next election if Liz Truss won.
3:39 Alastair Campbell? It was a figure of speech. No, it was a figure of speech. It was a figure of speech. What I meant by that was I think it was, I think of all the people who looked like they might win, I think that Liz Truss is the best for Labour. That is, but you should never, ever underestimate your opponents, and I wouldn't. And I think that it's really, really important. If there's one lesson that Labour need to take from what's happened to Rishi Sunak, and this is, this is me saying that Truss's campaign did well on this. You have to identify and brand your opponent before they brand you.
4:15 Alastair Campbell? And she managed to do that very effectively with Rishi Sunak. And I'm slightly worried, if I'm being honest, I don't think Labour have been nearly active and visible enough within the Tory leadership debate. I think they've just sort of sat back and thought they're tearing lumps of each other. That's fine. And the wonderful Labour Liam that we've talked about, who makes these great videos based on what the Tories are saying about each other. Fantastic. More of that. But Labour have to brand these people. So that's what I would say. So no, you can certainly not go on holiday. You never underestimate your opponents. If you're going to win a general election, you have to work 24 hours a day and you just don't stop.
4:49 Rory Stewart? And Liz Truss has proved to be a much more formidable communicator than people thought before.
4:55 Alastair Campbell? But speaking to a very narrow electorate.
4:57 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. But boy, is she hitting the target with a particular chunk of that Tory electorate. I mean, it's something that will, I think maybe I can resonate with more than you, because obviously I was in the Conservative Party for a decade. And when she was standing up in that Leeds hustings and talking about how she was behind people who did the right thing, she wanted to abolish top down Soviet planning, that she was a local councillor. Remember, many of these people have served as local councillors and said that these were hours of her life she'd never get back. When she talked about Northern powerhouse rail, when she talked about wanting to get behind farmers, when she talked about increasing defence to 3%. These things are, as Rishi Sunak points out, often extremely
5:39 Rory Stewart? irresponsible. They're not costed. They're going to cost Xiechek an enormous amount of money. But as soundbites, they're very, very well judged to hit the sweet spot of that electorate.
5:49 Alastair Campbell? I agree with that. You didn't, when we did the main podcast this week, you didn't engage in the thing about what she said about Nicola Sturgeon. Did you not agree with me? That was a stupid thing to say?
5:59 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I don't think when Nicola Sturgeon, like her or dislike her, is the elected leader of a devolved parliament, and you have to get the right balance. It's the same reason why I didn't agree with Gavin Williamson, saying that Vladimir Putin should just bog off, whatever he said.
6:16 Alastair Campbell? Shut up and go away.
6:17 Rory Stewart? Shut up and go away. Yeah.
6:19 Alastair Campbell? I also, we got, we got a bit of, we got a bit of criticism last week, Roy, and I, and I think I'm more willing to take it on the chin than you. When we talked about whether the, whether they have a mandate for the referendum, a lot of people emailed in basically saying.
6:35 Rory Stewart? Those people are just, just think, without exception, Scottish nationalists who want to have another referendum and who are absolutely outraged at any, ideal was.
6:45 Alastair Campbell? No, no, no, let me, let me, let me finish the point for them. Rory, this is, you're getting too defensive. The point they made was that the Scottish election, the question of whether it was about the right to have a second referendum was fundamental to all of the main parties. The SNP saying it was and the other parties saying that it was not, but it was on the ballot as it were. So that's what I was, I was answering legalistically. Making the point that constitutionally only the UK Parliament can agree to a referendum. They were described defining mandate as whether they had actually made the case for that within the Scottish electorate. And I think that's a fair point. And I don't think you can dismiss it just because they're members of the SNP.
7:26 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. And, and remember, in the 2019 election, if people are interested, the SNP received 45% of the vote, which was a, a big climb from what they'd got last time, but is obviously not the majority of the Scottish people. But coming back and forth on this, for, for those who, you know, I'm talking to you from Scotland. And it is an incredibly fraught issue. And people like myself who are proud to be Scottish and are in Scotland are treated by the SNP as though we have very little right to speak about this. And that we don't understand Scotland and that we are somehow betraying the Scottish people because we're not on their side. And I.
8:10 Rory Stewart? Feel very, very strongly that I and the majority of the Scottish people expressed clearly in a referendum that we are proud to be Scottish, but we're also proud to be part of the United Kingdom. And we're not going to be bullied and intimidated into feeling that in order to be Scottish, you have to want to rip the United Kingdom apart.
8:30 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Anyway, I hope Glasgow Red, as he called himself.
8:33 Rory Stewart? He won't be happy with what I said.
8:35 Alastair Campbell? Who was a Labour supporter at one point. He told me the 1997 election was the happiest political day of his life, but he's since then become a nationalist. But I hope he feels that at least we gave some vent to his feelings.
8:47 Rory Stewart? Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a minute.
9:02 Speaker 02 The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.
9:09 Speaker 03 We assessed Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.
9:16 Speaker 04 Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.
9:18 Speaker 05 They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.
9:21 Speaker 02 Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!
9:34 Speaker 06 We would need to understand the policy context.
9:36 Speaker 02 All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.
9:45 Speaker 07 A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?
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10:40 Rory Stewart? So Alistair, what's next?
10:42 Alastair Campbell? Fantastic question here Rory from Hannah Sweetnam. We keep all going on about growth. Do we not need to look beyond GDP to measure how well a country is doing? Now, this is the whole Bhutan thing. I once wrote a book about Bhutan, a very short book about depression. Because Bhutan, a very small country where they define their success or otherwise by what they call the GHP, happiness. Their big metric is happiness. Now, do you think we have, is it, do you think there's a way of a, of a major democracy economy? I remember Sarkozy used to go on about, he saw transport as a happiness issue. Whenever he saw people stuck in traffic jams or on a crowded train, he felt that actually we should think about trying to make their life happier.
11:25 Alastair Campbell? And David Cameron flirted with this whole happiness thing as well, didn't he?
11:29 Rory Stewart? He did, he did, he did. And you're, you're right. And Bhutan, amazing place. People who have an opportunity to go to Bhutan, right? We went there on our honeymoon. Very special place.
11:38 Alastair Campbell? Did you have the ring then? Was the ring on your finger then?
11:40 Rory Stewart? Yeah, the ring was then on my finger. Ring now no longer on my finger. But hey, good news. I found on eBay for £150, a bronze Byzantine wedding ring with pictures of two people a thousand years ago getting married.
11:57 Alastair Campbell? Listen, why are you holding your pinky finger when you're saying about a wedding ring? I don't want to go out about sort of Eton again, but what is it with pinky rings and you lot?
12:07 Rory Stewart? Fortunately, everybody listening to this on a podcast can't see what I'm doing with my finger. But yes, it's true. I was, I was proposing to put it on the wrong finger. Um, listen, the reason why people want to talk about happiness is they feel quite rightly that economic growth isn't everything. But of course, there are many other problems with economic growth. One problem is that we talk a lot about GDP, but we don't talk much about GDP per capita. So growth doesn't make much difference to people if they individually are not getting any better off. I used to feel this as a constituency MP in Penrith. People would come and say, well, we need to double the size of Penrith. And I'd say, why? Nobody in Penrith wants to double the size of Penrith. And they'd say, for growth. And I'd say, well, what do you mean? And of course, they weren't talking about GDP per capita.
12:52 Rory Stewart? They weren't talking about the existing 20,000 people in Penrith getting any better off. In fact, their lives would get worse off. All they were saying is that if you increased it to 40,000 people on paper, you have a bigger, you know, GDP. The the other thing, though, which is maybe more fundamental, which maybe we can talk about when we have more time, is growth itself may be a very, very disturbing vision. And this this is very difficult to say, and of course, runs against everything that we do in contemporary economics. But there are many reasons, obviously environmental, to feel that pushing endlessly for growth is not a good idea. There's reason to look at Japan, which hasn't been growing now since the 90s,
13:36 Rory Stewart? but which remains in many ways quite a stable, fulfilled society. And it's also worth thinking about one of the reasons why we should be suspicious of pushing for growth, which is that actually the growth we are creating is fueled on extraordinary debt, massive asset inflation, weird reliance on China for goods, Russia for energy. And it's very difficult to believe that any of this is a thoughtful, sustainable way of living our lives.
14:05 Alastair Campbell? I agree with all that. Unethical Tories, very good Twitter handle, I'd say, Unethical Tories. He wants us to talk a little bit about the influence of think tanks and particularly 55 Tufton Street, where all these sort of, you know, climate change deniers and right wing libertarians hang out. And Andy Compton wants to know whether we think that dark money, as we call it, is behind the Conservative parties drifting towards, you know, scrapping net zero. There has definitely been a shift on the carbon debate, hasn't there?
14:36 Rory Stewart? There's definitely been a big shift on the carbon debate. I think as, I mean, all around the world, but particularly when you go into a leadership contest, it turns out, of course, that the environment is much lower down on the list of priorities of voters than people want to acknowledge. And when people are really feeling their energy bills doubling, they are much less tolerant. And there's something we keep talking about, that, you know, all that debate of David Cameron with, which we just talked about in the last question, gross domestic happiness, the talk about big transitions, net zero, were all happening at a time when people felt more economically secure. They felt they could take more risk, we could afford to do these things. When the financial pressure is on, and this is going to be a problem, because I think we're going in, there's a very high likelihood, we're going
15:19 Rory Stewart? into a 10-year global recession. That is going to cause a real problem for climate transition, because people are, at the moment, voters are struggling to feel that the cost is worth it. Question for you, Chris S., are you familiar with distributism, which is similar to Germany's economic model? Do you think it can make a viable economic model in the UK? Do you think its emphasis on cooperatives, localism, antitrust regulations, and tempered anti-globalism might prove popular with the electorate? What do you think about that?
15:50 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, possibly, but I'm not sure that's how I would define the German economy, though. I think they do have elements of that, but I don't think that's the main driver of the German economy.
15:59 Rory Stewart? Okay, Alex, you often complain about the danger of populism in politics while also hosting the number one podcast, where you criticize the rotten establishment and tease your return to politics. Why is this not a form of populism too, Alistair?
16:14 Alastair Campbell? Well, because I think that Alex is confusing popularity with populism. The podcast is very, very popular, in part because we call out populism. And I don't think we do tease about a return to the frontline. I think we're both, if I can speak for you, you can correct me if I'm wrong, I think we're both still very passionate about the things that we believe, but very, very frustrated and can't really see a way in. To do the things that we want to do. So that's not populism, that's frustration.
16:47 Rory Stewart? So I think that it's true that all politics has one popular structure, which is most politics of all sorts involves attacking establishments. It's a very common form of all kinds of democratic politics, pitting the people against the establishment. But hopefully you'd also say with your Moses and Aine point that we're avoiding the post-truth elements and hopefully we're trying to avoid the excessive polarization. Question from Mary Ambrose, what are the best political biographies or autobiographies apart from ones about either of you? You notice she put that in? She thinks we're getting really smug and self-satisfied. Apart from ones about either of you for summer reading.
17:24 Alastair Campbell? Wow. Well, I always recommend Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is about Abraham Lincoln. And it's, it's on, it's the best, I think it's the best political biography ever written. It may be out of print, but I may have mentioned before, a fantastic book by a guy called Aidan Crawley, who was a TV executive, but he was also a Labour MP and a Tory MP at different points in his career. He wrote a book about, it's called De Gaulle, but it's essentially about De Gaulle's relationship with Churchill. Now, there's two from me. What about two from you?
18:01 Rory Stewart? So first thing is, if somebody's listening who's feeling ambitious, we still do not have a really good biography of Mussolini. I've been struggling to find a good biography of Mussolini. So somebody, please go out and write one. Robert Kerr's biographies and Lyndon Johnson are extraordinary, completely extraordinary. And as a niche addition to that, if somebody's got time, look also at his biography of Robert Moses, the great kind of creator of the New York infrastructure.
18:24 Alastair Campbell? You won't believe this, you may believe this, but that book is actually, as we speak, propping up my laptop. It's the power broker.
18:32 Rory Stewart? Very good. Thank you.
18:34 Alastair Campbell? And also, we went recently, I think I mentioned, Fiona and I went recently to see the extraordinary play with, at which the Bridge Theatre, if it's still on, about Moses. It is the most fantastic play. So yeah, that's a good one. And what about, um, give me a British one.
18:52 Rory Stewart? So a quick plug on plays. Anyone in Edinburgh on Saturday, come and hear me and, and the Edinburgh Festival, where I'll be talking to the amazing Ian Dale.
19:02 Alastair Campbell? You can't, you cannot plug in Dale. And if you're plugging anybody at Edinburgh, anybody who's listening, do not go and watch Ian Dale and Rory Stewart. Go and see Grace Campbell, probably the greatest comedian in Europe at the moment, who's at the Gilded Ballou. That's Grace Campbell, Gilded Ballou. Don't go and listen to Rory at Ian's. Carry on Rory.
19:24 Rory Stewart? Very good. Okay. Finally, we're just coming to an end here. Um, well, I wanted to take Charlotte Bradley on, on, uh, globe reading for kids, but did you have a question before that? Was there another one you wanted to do?
19:35 Alastair Campbell? Well, there's one here, which I did. I've been really agonising about this one. And, and, you know, you talked a few weeks ago about, about loving me, which was very touching, really very, very touching. But I find with love, I, I know who I love and I love them a lot. Um, and, but this question really, honestly, as I've been, as I've been going around on my bike, I've been thinking about this a lot, Rory.
19:58 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
19:59 Alastair Campbell? Barry D. Kelch.
20:00 Rory Stewart? Yes.
20:01 Alastair Campbell? Alastair, you have the last two spots in the final lifeboat leaving the Titanic. There is rube for a bike or for an ex Tory MP?
20:14 Rory Stewart? I don't think we need your answer to that.
20:16 Alastair Campbell? Well, I did it. Do you know what I thought about that, Rory? I've thought about, because the truth is, I think I'd have to leave the bike, because how the hell am I going to ride a bike in the sea? And also, the other thing I thought, though, is if I was going to take an ex Tory MP, it would have to be a woman.
20:29 Rory Stewart? No, Alastair, we know why you're taking the Tory MP, which is that when you get hungry, you can't eat the bike. Now, here we are.
20:39 Alastair Campbell? Right, Rory, somehow we've managed to end this week's question time on the subject of cannibalism. That was not in the plan, but there we go. These things evolve and happen in their own sweet way. I'd also like to say to all the people who sent in questions that we haven't answered, we honestly really do look at all of them and we thank you for them. This week's question time has been a little bit shorter than usual because we're recording on the same day that we're speaking to William Hague and I trust and hope that you enjoyed that one yesterday. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.
21:10 Rory Stewart? Bye bye.
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