Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 99. Question Time: Missing refugees, the best type of MPs, and are universities left wing? About this episode Are academics generally left-leaning? Should the theatrical nature of PMQs be reformed? What makes an MP 'talented'? Listen to hear these questions answered, plus positive stories about politicians, cultural recommendations, what makes an MP 'talented', and the relevance of vocational education.
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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 Creve, 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/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:43 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. Very good. Where do you want to start? Well, okay, I think this is a good one to start with Kevin Montgomery, because this is something I think you've been tweeting about. Babas, the ex-prime minister of the Czech Republic, has played a nasty and populist campaign. But it looks as though he's been beaten by Pavel, an ex-NATO general. Is this a good result for Europe, Alastair? I think it is. We talked about this.
2:10 Alastair Campbell? A few weeks ago, he's won and he's won convincingly. And I think it is, um, Babas is the arch populist. Pavel, we shall see, but certainly he was the one projecting himself as a, you know, serious, understanding the challenges, pretty sound on Ukraine, uh, pretty sound on Europe. So yeah, good, good result, I would say.
2:30 Rory Stewart? It's terrific, isn't it? And, and Roma, we, we raised it in the podcast a few weeks ago because the key question had been initially around the prime minister position where Babas had been kicked out. And then he tried to do a, a fight back for this president position. He's been beaten there too. So that definitely, definitely a good, good direction.
2:45 Alastair Campbell? Here's a historical, historical question. Well, historical related today. Claire Muller, in nineteen twenty-three.
2:52 Rory Stewart? Pliney, yeah.
2:53 Alastair Campbell? Shropshire woman, Eglantine Jebb, drafted the statement of children's human rights that evolved into the UN CRC.
3:02 Rory Stewart? Pliney.
3:02 Alastair Campbell? One hundred years later, two hundred unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have disappeared from Home Office-commissioned hotels here in Britain. Where is the outrage? What is being done? Have you been following this one?
3:15 Rory Stewart? Yeah, no, I have. But firstly, I didn't know that a Shropshire woman had been at the heart of this. I'm afraid I have, from a very American perspective, always given the credit to Eleanor Roosevelt.
3:24 Alastair Campbell? Hmm. Well, listen, if Claire Muller is telling us the truth, Eglantine Jebb is your man.
3:29 Rory Stewart? Well, tell us a little bit about the story for this, as.
3:31 Alastair Campbell? I, I first was aware of this, not through the media, not through anything really. I didn't have any sense of it until I saw a speech. We talk sometimes about you don't see any good speeches in parliament. Peter Kyle, Brighton MP, Labour MP, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary.
3:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
3:48 Alastair Campbell? He did a really, really powerful, passionate speech about this. And essentially was asking that same question from Claire, you know, what is being done? There is an inaction. So what's happened is that lots of asylum seekers have been. Put into hotels. And as you and I were discussing yesterday, Rory, a lot of the overseas development budget now is actually spent on housing people in hotels within the UK. And there appears to be a pretty major trafficking operation going on. So lots of these young men in particular, but they are minors, have literally disappeared.
4:25 Rory Stewart? And presumably they've disappeared because they want to go and get work, or they, do we know what's happening?
4:32 Alastair Campbell? Well, there appears to be very little action from the government side in terms of trying to find them or find out what's happened. But the assumption is that they've been, they've been sort of, you know, assumed into organised crime or into trafficking. So it's truly horrific. And the question there from Claire, where is the outrage? I do think it says something truly awful about us as a country, that we don't seem to care very much. And I must admit, when I watched Suella Braverman and that guy Gullis, I mean, he is an education minister, just beyond belief to me. He's the guy who, when this was raised in Parliament, shouted across the chamber, well, they shouldn't have come here in the first place, should they?
5:11 Rory Stewart? And he's now had to issue a massive apology, hasn't he?
5:13 Alastair Campbell? Well, you say, I don't think it is an apology. I think apparently that's a fake account, Rory.
5:17 Rory Stewart? Oh, really?
5:18 Alastair Campbell? Apparently it's a fake account apologising on his behalf.
5:22 Rory Stewart? Oh, my goodness.
5:23 Alastair Campbell? I don't believe he has. But both of them, him and Braverman, both posing the other day in front of Holocaust Educational Trust posters, and looking all sort of pious and talking about, you know, we must never let this stain on humanity return. But, you know, I'm not remotely equating this with the Holocaust, but I am saying that there is something truly awful that we seem as a country, and certainly as a government, genuinely not to care about the fact that asylum seekers have been kidnapped from hotels that are meant to be under the control of the British government.
5:57 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
5:57 Alastair Campbell? And by the way, we get a lot of love, Rory, for our film and book recommendations. I don't know if you've seen The Swimmers, but I watched The Swimmers the other night.
6:06 Rory Stewart? Oh, good. Tell us about that.
6:07 Alastair Campbell? It's incredible. It's a true story about two Syrian young women who left Syria when it really, really, really got dangerous. The film of their journey across the sea, ending up in Lesbos and then eventually walking to Germany and going through some absolute horrors, and I won't do spoiler alert as I sometimes do, but the the young woman, the better of the two in terms of swimming, she ends up swimming in the Olympics. And it's a true story. But I really, really, really do hope that somebody puts it in front of Swallow Braverman and all those who demonize refugees. When you watch the film of the crossing that these girls went through, and
6:50 Alastair Campbell? okay, it's a movie, but they've written books and they've told the story and this is, you know. So when we think about these people coming across in boats, I mean, I think this should be part of all of us, Home Secretaries and Prime Ministers included, who understand the humanity of those people. And by the way, listeners, if you want to get links to these wonderful cultural references that we make, we are sending out this weekly newsletter that seems to be going down well with our trip members.
7:18 Rory Stewart? I've got a small cultural reference. I've been reading a book this week by someone called Thomas Ashbridge, and it's called The Greatest Knight. And it's about this incredible figure called William Marshall, who was the greatest knight in medieval England. His story is mind blowing. He essentially was the man who helped negotiate Magna Carta and published it and pushed it out there. He saved England from becoming a colony of France in the early 13th century. He put his life on the line defending four kings once one after another, and finally saved the nine year old Henry the Third. And he did it all with the most incredible kind of sense of loyalty, honour, chivalry. So I would recommend everybody, please, The Greatest Knight by Thomas Ashbridge.
8:00 Alastair Campbell? Okay, well, I don't know whether this is, I'm reading Michel Barnier's Secret Brexit Diary.
8:08 Rory Stewart? Oh, very good.
8:09 Alastair Campbell? Call me obsessed.
8:10 Rory Stewart? Do you think we could interview him, Alison?
8:12 Alastair Campbell? I think I think that might might even be on the cards and might even be in the diary very, very soon, Rory. That's why I'm reading it.
8:18 Rory Stewart? Very good.
8:19 Alastair Campbell? Now, here's one for you. And this comes, did this come from Discord? That's the other thing members get is the Discord debate, which I've been, you haven't dipped in yet, have you? I've been Dipping in and out.
8:27 Rory Stewart? I can see you in the Discord debate. I must get in there.
8:30 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. So, Tim, when you leave government, does the work find you or do you have to look hard to find it? I assume it's the former. And if so, how do you decide what to take morally, partially, politically, et cetera?
8:42 Rory Stewart? Well, the answer, I think, is that it's actually much tougher for ex-MPs to get jobs than people realise, partly because, well, there are a number of changes. One of them is that back in the day, in the sixties and seventies, they traditionally went on to run nationalised industries because the governments controlled those industries. They could easily push ex-conservative Labour MPs into run British Rail or run British Gas or whatever else they were doing, the Coal Board. But the second thing is, of course, the reputation of MPs has collapsed. So it's no longer a big thing for boards to want to have ex-MPs with their knighthoods on their board. That was a thing, I think, in the seventies and eighties. It's not really now. Doesn't help you if you're running a big company to have an MP on your board.
9:24 Rory Stewart? So many of my former colleagues are actually in trouble. I remember the guy who I took over from in Defra making a joke, which wasn't really a joke, that he was going to be going back to stacking the shelves at Tesco's when he lost his job.
9:36 Alastair Campbell? Who was that?
9:37 Rory Stewart? He was called Dan and he was the Liberal MP down in Cornwall who'd lost his seat. I don't know whether he quite did that, but before he'd gone into politics, he'd been working in the Cornish Plasity Factory in Bodmin. So one of the things that many MPs end up being drawn into is lobbying and public affairs jobs, which is a bit depressing. You sit in, I remember this as an MP, you sit in the House of Commons pork colours coffee shop, which is a sort of strange thing that looks like a Norwegian airport terminal, where you get really horrible cappuccino. And you'd see your ex-colleagues very politely making their way from table to table with strange sort of packets of leaflets, saying, Rory, can I have a word with you? I'm now representing this company.
10:19 Rory Stewart? And my assumption usually was that it was a pretty hopeless thing, that they weren't really hoping to get anywhere. They were just hoping to go back to their company and say, I spoke to four MPs and hope that the company somehow thought that that was going to make a difference to the world. But it was pretty sort of depressing, debilitating work. So there's the kind of superstars, people who are three or four MPs of each generation, the kind of William Hagues.
10:40 Alastair Campbell? Well, George Osborne makes a fortune, doesn't he?
10:42 Rory Stewart? George Osborne, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
10:44 Alastair Campbell? He's done pretty well for somebody who's, you know, smashed the economy with austerity, hasn't he, Rory?
10:48 Rory Stewart? Yeah. So I think if you're Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary.
10:52 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
10:52 Rory Stewart? You can still go on to these amazing careers after. And obviously Tony Blair has made an incredible fortune after he's left being Prime Minister. But for most MPs, including many, many ministers, I think they really do struggle to get work.
11:05 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Here's one from Paul Smith, which relates to your point about the reputation of MPs. Is it time to get rid of the ridiculous labels of honourable and especially right honourable, given the litany of scandals showing so many MPs and ministers as being plainly anything but honourable?
11:21 Rory Stewart? Well, I think the answer is that it's always been a joke there, hasn't it? And it's stuck into the language of the House of Commons, partly as part of all these traditions, which are about stopping people putting knives to each other's throats. So famously, there's a space between the two benches, which is meant to be a sword's length. So we can't actually stab our swords through each other. So we call each other honourable, partly to take some of the drama out of the debate. But I don't think MPs, even in the early 20th century, when they were doing Marconi scandals and all the horrors of the Lloyd George administration were ever particularly honourable. Okay, here's a question coming back at you. Actually, we've had some lovely questions this week. Here's one. Steve JT. On nearly every episode, Rory will say, we'll have to do an episode on that, in reference to a topic that's touched on, but there's never
12:04 Rory Stewart? a follow up, stroke of deep dive. Would it be good, Alistair, to have an episode on one topic, perhaps with a guest or expert, and really pick something apart? What do you think about that?
12:14 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, possibly. But I think that particularly when we're doing the Q and A, I always feel really bad because we get thousands of questions and we only answer half a dozen, or sometimes 10 or 12. And yeah, look, I think we did a bit of a deep dive on Negordo Karabakh.
12:29 Rory Stewart? Yep.
12:29 Alastair Campbell? We're going to be interviewing Fiona Hill in the near future.
12:33 Rory Stewart? Yep.
12:33 Alastair Campbell? The wonderful working class woman from the north east of England who became a senior advisor in the White House. It's a great story anyway. But why don't we decide on a couple of foreign policy areas on that one and we do a bit of a deep dive? Russia, I suppose, would be a good one to do with her.
12:48 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
12:48 Alastair Campbell? But then even as I say that, I think, no, but I also want to know what she thinks about Latin America and I want to know what she thinks about Asia. And so I'll tell you what I'll do, Rory.
12:57 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
12:57 Alastair Campbell? You're always saying to me, you're always saying to me that you let me off too lightly about Iraq.
13:02 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
13:02 Alastair Campbell? So why don't we do, at some point, we'll do a deep dive, just you and me on Iraq?
13:07 Rory Stewart? Good. Let's do that because we're coming up to the 20th anniversary.
13:10 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Now, if you're going to throw, I'm going to throw this one at you, right?
13:15 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
13:15 Alastair Campbell? This is somebody with the wonderful name Gibson Fender.
13:18 Rory Stewart? Oh, right.
13:19 Alastair Campbell? It sounds like a guitar, doesn't it?
13:21 Rory Stewart? It does. It sounds like a beautiful guitar. Yeah.
13:23 Alastair Campbell? He says this, and I think this is something that far more people think than the media or the political classes really understand. New Labour, Rory, under Tony Blair, was the best government in 50 years. It's massively underappreciated, even at times from its own members. Discuss.
13:40 Rory Stewart? Well, after my love-in with Alan Milburn, I'm coming round to that view.
13:46 Alastair Campbell? Excellent. That's enough. That's all we need to say. That's all we need to say.
13:49 Rory Stewart? Okay. I'll leave it at that then. On the other hand, here's somebody arguing the other view. So Johnny Sells, does Alastair see a parallel between the current government's plan to scrap the B-tex and Blair's disastrous target to get 50% of the country to go to university? When will the UK recognise the value of vocational education? What do you think about that?
14:10 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think that, I think we should recognise the value of vocational education, and I do, but I think Tony's, that goal and that aspiration, I think, was a really, really important message about what sort of country we want to become. I don't accept that was a disaster.
14:24 Rory Stewart? Okay.
14:25 Alastair Campbell? All right, let's go for a little break.
15:18 Rory Stewart? And here we are back from the break. Alistair, here's Rob Hughes. This is quite niche, this question. You're going to have to make some sense of this for me.
15:25 Alastair Campbell? Okay.
15:25 Rory Stewart? Did Alistair enjoy his visit to Portman Road? Looks like he was enjoying himself. Hopefully, next time he's there, it'll be for a premiership fixture. Come on, explain for those listeners what that means. What does that question mean?
15:40 Alastair Campbell? Do you know what Portman Road is?
15:42 Rory Stewart? It's the Ipswich Stadium or something.
15:44 Alastair Campbell? That's it, that's it. So I suspect that's one of three people who was sitting in the row directly in front of the press box, which is where I was doing the commentary for the Burnley website, Clarits Plus.
15:58 Rory Stewart? Wait a second. So you're like, when I watch Harry Potter and there's a guy doing the commentary on the Quidditch match, is your voice echoing around the stadium or it's just on, no, it's just on this website?
16:07 Alastair Campbell? Rory, I can't believe you didn't say, when I'm watching Croatia against Brazil, you're the Gary Neville or you're the Roy Keane. I am the Gary Neville of the Burnley FC website, okay?
16:21 Rory Stewart? Fantastic.
16:22 Alastair Campbell? Phil Bird is the proper commentator who's brilliant and I'm the guy sitting next to him. It wasn't the greatest game, it was a 0-0 draw, but there was a bit of a disaster actually Rory. As I was doing the commentary, I didn't realise, and it's probably my fault because I'm such a technological idiot, but it transpires that Phil and I, for the second, the whole of the second half, were literally talking to ourselves. Because something had gone wrong with the machinery and somebody had, I don't know whether it was sabotage by an Ipswich fan, but somebody had unplugged something.
16:54 Rory Stewart? Cheerfully chatting to each other.
16:55 Alastair Campbell? And because we weren't looking at our phones, we didn't see any of the messages that were saying, can't hear you, can't hear you, can't hear you. Where's the commentary gone? So I didn't really enjoy that.
17:04 Rory Stewart? Here's a question on PMQs, Prime Minister's Questions for people who are not in the UK. Chima from Discord asks, what was it like for me during Cameron versus Miliband, having to be forced to sit in Parliament and watch PMQs every week? And then I guess for Alistair for you, do you believe in any reforms to make PMQs better? Personally, give every MP a limit of one question, including the opposition leader giving more time for backbench questions. And the part of the opposition leader versus PM is pure political theatre, pre-scripted questions responded with pre-scripted answers. The public deserves better. What's your view on PMQs?
17:36 Alastair Campbell? I watched PMQs recently with a classroom of 14-year-olds, most of whom had never seen it before. And it was really, really interesting to watch it with them because the first bit, they thought, oh, this is quite interesting. And by the end, they were like, oh, my God, this is awful. It really was quite instructive. I think I've been really disappointed that I thought Rishi Sunak, when he came in, would have tried to change it a bit and actually played into the fact that Keir Starmer tries to be a bit more serious and a bit more forensic. But he's very quickly gone into the sort of, you know, PMQs as theatricals and PMQs not really being about answering questions. I wish that the speaker, I don't know what the rules are for the speaker. I know the speaker's there to keep order and make sure
18:21 Alastair Campbell? that the rules of the House are obeyed. But I do think the public feel that increasingly questions aren't answered. And I think that's a real problem.
18:28 Rory Stewart? Well, one of the things that really irritated me, if I was looking for a big reform, the first thing that struck me when I came in is that there should be alternate sessions. One session, really domestic, focused on your constituency. And then the next week, or maybe once a month, a session that focused on big national and international issues. Because I got so fed up with going into PMQs when there was something really big happening. Horror in Afghanistan, big national scandal, and hearing MP after MP stand up and say, will the Prime Minister congratulate my local football club that just won this? Or will the Prime Minister please congratulate the students of Billington Primary School who just got to the second round of this, that and the other? And I can see why they're
19:13 Rory Stewart? doing it. Many, many MPs on every side of the House are just interested in getting a little story in their local newspaper for what they said in PMQs. But it's a total waste of the session. It's a disgrace and they should feel ashamed of themselves. And if they won't stop doing it, I'd like to have one PMQs a month where you're not allowed to do that.
19:32 Alastair Campbell? Hmm. Or I think, I don't agree with the question, by the way, that the leader of the opposition should be restricted to one question. I think it's really important that you see both Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition kind of go at each other over a Over a sustained period. And if you remember, when we came in in nineteen ninety seven, Betty Boothroyd was speaker. And at that point, there were two sessions of PMQs a week.
19:53 Rory Stewart? Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah.
19:55 Alastair Campbell? And they were fifteen minutes each. And I think the leader of the opposition got three questions. And we persuaded Betty to to agree to a change. And I think the Tories were sort of broadly up for it as well. Other parliaments, I mean, you know, I think I'm right that Jacinda Ardern and certainly the Australian Parliament, they have to do it every day that Parliament sits. I think the Irish Parliament is the same in the Doyle. I think the Taoiseach has to go there every day and answer questions.
20:19 Rory Stewart? And contrast, of course, is the United States, where they are mesmerized by PMQs because they can't imagine a US president having to go through that every every week. I mean, there is a nice bit of sort of leveling there, of forcing a prime minister to stand there and take the abuse in a way that a US president wouldn't.
20:36 Alastair Campbell? I can, when I was a journalist covering politics, that it was very, very rare that you didn't, out of PMQs, get something genuinely significant to go off and write about. I think these days it's it's less common. And I think that's because I do think Sunak has has followed in the sort of Johnson Truss tradition of really just sort of seeing it as something you've got to get through and not really answer the questions. And I think he's making a mistake. I think he should be engaging in the questions much more than he does.
21:04 Rory Stewart? And here's a here's a question which I think will throw you off balance, but we'll be interested to see what you make of it. So it's from Siddharth Kari. And Siddharth asks, politics across academia, particularly Ivy League and elite Russell Group universities, is often taught from a predominantly left-leaning bias stroke presumption. Why is this and how could this be rectified? What do you make of that?
21:27 Alastair Campbell? Isn't that true, though?
21:29 Rory Stewart? Well, that's what I thought you were probably going to question the question. Yeah.
21:32 Alastair Campbell? Am I doing a Reese Mogg here?
21:35 Rory Stewart? It's probably true that broadly speaking, most academics tend to lie a bit to the left and most teachers tend to lie a bit to the left, no?
21:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, possibly, possibly, but I, but I think they, I think unless they're driven by their politics, I think an awful lot of them compensate for that. I think at the moment, everywhere you go, you get the feeling people don't like the government very much and, you know, we haven't talked about the teachers' strike, they're going on strike. But I don't know, I think maybe it's maybe more so in America, would that be the true? You know that better than I do.
22:04 Rory Stewart? Definitely, that's the complaint of the, of the sort of right in America. I think it is true that when the Conservative government came in in 2010, we definitely had a feeling that Labour had been very, very successful in doing this trick, which was called the march through the institutions. We felt that a loss of the very senior jobs in non-governmental organisations, in, in cultural life, in educational life, were dominated by people who were broadly speaking sympathetic with the new Labour project. And one of the things the Conservatives tried to do when they came in was to try to replace them with people who were a little bit more to the right. And I think they've done a bit of that, but it was surprisingly difficult because it
22:46 Rory Stewart? turned out that a loss of the candidates for these jobs, often very, very well qualified candidates for the jobs, tended to be more from the left than from the right.
22:55 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
22:56 Rory Stewart? I remember when I joined the Conservative Party, a very senior diplomat saying to me, what on earth are you doing, Rory? The Tory party is the stupid party. That was, that was, that was his view on it.
23:06 Alastair Campbell? No, I, I think, I, I guess the other thing is, I see quite a lot of, I think on balance, yes, the question is probably right, but I do see a lot of right wing academic treatises being pumped out. And I, and I actually think that when you talk about the march of the institutions, I mean, we didn't talk on the main podcast, I mean, this BBC chairman, head of the appointments commission, who's had to recuse himself because he seems that he's quite close to him, whose daughter works in Rishi Sunak's policy unit, that all feels very, very cosy and march of the institutions.
23:36 Rory Stewart? That's pretty shocking. I absolutely agree. Thank goodness he recused himself because as soon as I saw that he'd been appointed, I thought, whoa.
23:43 Alastair Campbell? Now, listen, we do, we do spend a lot of time. Of criticizing, right? So here's one from David Edmund. My MSP, says David, was a brilliant support to me last week. Her name is Shirley Anne Somerville. Her response time and action was on point. Should there not be a platform to shout about MP and MSP local successes? I feel like a few charlatans tar so many with the same brush.
24:08 Rory Stewart? Oh, that's lovely. And I think that's right. I mean, I think. I think there are awful things about politics and I think there are many awful things that politics does to your brain. But there are also fantastic dedicated local constituency MPs and, and you know, I, I felt that. If I sort of reach across the. The board for different people, this will irritate different people in different ways, but you know, I was a huge admirer. Of various Labour MPs, I, I really liked Madeleine Moon, who was in. In Bridgewater, who was on the Defence Committee with me. I had huge admiration for Richard Benyon, who was a amazing, I mean, really relaxed, cheerful, honourable. Thoughtful, dedicated Conservative MP.
24:53 Rory Stewart? Tim Farron, this will really irritate my ex-cumbering. Conservative Party colleagues because we're always trying to topple them from the seat, but. He was a man who lived them, had a really strong reputation in his local seat, took a marginal seat, turned it through hard work and to a personal seat. Through some pretty hard work. I remember one summer when I was trying to measure myself against him. He did something like forty two local surgeries during the summer holidays. So there was barely a day when he wasn't in a different village. I think it was in forty two different places up and down.
25:21 Alastair Campbell? Well, maybe we should encourage people to. Start a new chain on Discord where you can have new subjects that actually to say good things about your MP or MSP or. AM or whatever. I'm pretty sure that Shirley Anne Somerville, I'm pretty sure is SNP.
25:38 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, I guess so, which is why I was giving shout outs to other parties.
25:43 Alastair Campbell? Now, related, Sam Proctor. When you say a politician is talented, what do you mean by that? Good at mastering their brief, handling media, doing deals and arm twisting for support, making good decisions, I'd be keen to know. I think really talented politicians are very, very good at. Framing arguments, making decisions and communicating those decisions as they're made.
26:05 Rory Stewart? Okay, so what were your three again then? Framing arguments, making decisions and communicating them as they're made.
26:09 Alastair Campbell? Well, when I say communicating, I mean, the decision is made and then you follow through.
26:14 Rory Stewart? That's good. So I think that my ideal politician is somebody who's effective, but also has a sense of honour or honesty to them. And the risk is that politicians, the worst ministers, are either ineffectual and incompetent, or they're effective but pretty evil. And I think what I love about, you know, I talk about heroes, I've talked about Alan Milburn, my real hero is a man called David Gork, who was my boss when I was in Monsieur Justice. He was extraordinary because he was incredibly clear-thinking, very effective, brought some really strong reforms in, but did it with real modesty, no side, never really a sense. He was trying to promote himself, often didn't take the credit for these things.
26:55 Rory Stewart? And I think as a result, got the civil service right behind him, so that I imagine even now years later, people really miss him.
27:01 Alastair Campbell? Hmm, well, apparently, I didn't see it, but apparently he was on Newsnight last night, and according to the Twitter sphere, was doing very, very well. So there you go. Now, here's one that I want to dismiss. Jay, I'm going to disagree agreeably with Jay Byers. Should the minimum age to be an MP be 40 plus? By that age, you should know who you are, have made most of your mistakes, be settled, have good judgment, et cetera. I'm hearing of 22-year-olds applying to be a candidate for Labour with Stockton North, and I just shake my head. I want more young people in politics.
27:33 Rory Stewart? And I believe you've written a book about it, haven't you?
27:35 Alastair Campbell? Oh, Rory, stop plugging my book, But What Can I Do?, published May the 11th.
27:39 Rory Stewart? Okay, look, we're coming to the end of our question time, but I'm going to finish with a final question from Jeffkeepsmiling from Discord. He says he would still love A and R to commit to a once-a-month podcast that concentrates on positive achievements from any politicians or impressive people they've come across in their lives. Think it would be good for mental health in these seemingly never-ending, dark and chaotic times. How about that, Alistair?
28:07 Alastair Campbell? Oh, let's do it, let's do it.
28:08 Rory Stewart? Good, all right.
28:09 Alastair Campbell? So that basically means that I can talk about Tony Blair, you can talk about Alan Milburn, then I'll talk about Gordon Brown, that you could talk about...
28:19 Rory Stewart? Alan Milburn again.
28:21 Alastair Campbell? Brilliant. No, that'd be good. We could do, we could do. We could do Heroes of the New Labour Era. We could do Abraham Lincoln. We could do Mandela. We could do. William Marshall, The Great Knight, that I want everyone to concentrate on. Michel Bardier, The Secret Brexit Diary. Yeah, exactly. Right. Well, thank you, Alastair, very much for lovely Q and A. Thank you. See you soon. Bye bye.
28:47 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd.
28:52 Speaker 03 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.
28:56 Speaker 02 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
29:04 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze to death. That's what.
29:08 Speaker 02 With great power comes great deniability.
29:11 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
29:12 Speaker 02 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
29:17 Speaker 05 Espolone Tequila. Balanced, delicious. 100% agave, 0% ego. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. For real margarita, ride the rooster.
29:28 Speaker 06 Espolone Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Campagna America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.
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