Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 203. Question Time: How dangerous is Giorgia Meloni? About this episode Should Joe Biden choose a new running mate? Who is the real Giorgia Meloni? Which reality TV show would Rory and Alastair appear on?
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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. 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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1:57 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.
2:01 Alastair Campbell? And me Alastair Campbell.
2:03 Rory Stewart? Very good. And I'm still sitting in Utah, amazing place. And where are you? You're looking very smart.
2:08 Alastair Campbell? I'm in London about as soon as we finish to head to Edinburgh for Alistair Darling's funeral.
2:14 Rory Stewart? Right, right, right. Very sad. And you did a funeral again last week.
2:19 Alastair Campbell? Yep, three funerals. I've done three funerals in a week. So I don't know whether it's a sign of my age or I don't know what. But anyway, there we are. So look, Joe Adams Rory, what are your thoughts on Rishi Sunak and Eddie Rama, my friend from Albania, hanging out with Georgia Maloney? Why is Rishi attending the festival of a politician who's oppressing the rights of same-sex couples? Well, she's doing all sorts of other things as well. What were your thoughts of the optics Rory?
2:45 Rory Stewart? I think it's very interesting in two, two big ways. One of them is it raises the question of what Georgia Maloney's doing. So Georgia Maloney, to remind people, was a far-right politician who's become the Prime Minister of Italy and has been remarkably successful in keeping her popularity ratings up, keeping her coalition together, which is difficult to do in Italy. She's a strong anti-immigration voice. That's a lot of what she's about, as well as doing some of the other culture war stuff that we've discussed at the far-right all over Europe does on family values. She was out there in Lampedusa, for example, talking about the islands being overwhelmed by people crossing in boats.
3:26 Rory Stewart? Many Italians that I talk to have a tendency to say, oh, she's less bad than you think. She's moderated a lot in office. And the big example they give of that is that she's become much more pro-EU. And, and of course, people are then using that as a way of wondering whether Marine Le Pen might not be more moderate when she comes in and whether we don't need to be as worried about the Swedish Democrats, who is this, this party in Sweden, which not only is in government, but literally sort of every couple of weeks, one of them's being fired for being, having Nazi roots. So I'd love to hear you on Maloney. I mean, clearly in some cases, Viktor Orban, who we talked about. On the last episode, absolutely is a proper right wing nationalist of a very, very
4:09 Rory Stewart? dangerous sort. I think the same is true of Vucic in Serbia, even though he sometimes couches it in more charming language in the English media. What do you think about Giorgia Maloney? Do you think she is sort of moderating? Do you think she's a threat to Europe? What do you make of her?
4:24 Alastair Campbell? Look, it's very hard to know, but it's interesting how Joe Adams in The Question mentioned Eddie Rama. So there's Rishi Sunak, who is UK Prime Minister, came in, I think, wanting to project himself as pretty centrist, but actually I think is a very, very, I think Denny's Hart is a pretty right wing politician. And he was very much having a bit of a kind of love in with Maloney. Now Eddie Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, he was there as well. So yes, it was a right wing festival, as The Question put it. And Eddie Rama is a left wing leader. He's, I would say, you know, certainly centre left. And if he was British, he would definitely be in the Labour Party. And he's somebody who I know and like
5:09 Alastair Campbell? and trust. And he is, I've talked to him about Maloney, and his argument, I think, would be, she's not a neo-Nazi, she's actually very smart, and she's already worked out there are certain things that you maybe do differently in government than you do when you're on the campaign trail. Now, I don't know. I hope you welcome this news, Rory. I did say to him, well, look, can you try and talk her into coming on the podcast at some point? And I'm now in discussions, as they say.
5:38 Rory Stewart? That's, that'd be great to interview Giorgia Maloney on, on, on leading.
5:42 Alastair Campbell? I think she is clearly interesting. She clearly is smart. When you look at her backstory and some of the things that she's certainly says she stands for, she is very, very, very right wing. And I think would be quite a dangerous politician. But she, she's without doubt trying to project herself in a slightly different way. Just briefly, Rory, the other thing I want to talk about in relation to this was we talked on the main podcast about this whole sort of standards in public life. This will probably, to most Conservative Party listeners, sound ridiculous, but this addiction that Sunak has to very expensive travel, and I think in his trip to Maloney, to see Maloney in Rome, I think he broke the ministerial code. Because he was at a political party visit in the northeast of England,
6:28 Alastair Campbell? he got an RAF plane to fly to pick him up in Stockton and fly to Rome. Now, unless I'm wrong, or unless the ministerial code has changed, the Conservative Party should pay a very large slab of that.
6:45 Rory Stewart? It's interesting he's doing it, isn't it? So he's, he's obviously, Rishi Sunak is the wealthiest prime minister that Britain's had for a very long time. And he's clearly decided that he wants to make a real point of the fact that he thinks the British prime minister, like the American president, should be able to take private travel to get wherever he wants as quickly as possible because he thinks every minute that he's wasting, travelling around is a waste of time. I sympathise with part of that. I mean, it is pretty strange being a British minister. I remember the number of times that I was completely unable to get to places which I felt I needed to get to, inaugurations of presidents and things, because the civil service rules wouldn't let me travel or they couldn't get an economy class flight. Or I think, sorry, that's not fair.
7:29 Rory Stewart? Sometimes we could travel business class, but there was a lot of real hair surgery. And often you must have felt this when you see your US colleagues. You know, in Iraq, for example, I had to get myself accredited, I think as a one-star general with the US military, so I could fly around and get to meetings.
7:46 Alastair Campbell? Oh, my lord, are you a general? Do you want me to call you general? I can call you general if you want.
7:50 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I'd like that, yeah. You get a dodgy equivalent civil service rank. And this was important because if you were travelling with the UK system, you'd sit in an airport waiting for an RAF plane for 24 hours and the Americans would put you on a helicopter immediately. So I guess Rishi Sunak is saying this is the most serious job in Britain. We need to be able to get around. I mean, I'd like to see a sensible conversation about this that isn't too party political. I do think that prime ministers ought to be able to travel, but I think they need to be open about it. I was sometimes a bit annoyed with David Cameron because he was often playing the other type of politics, which is introducing extra weeks, completely unnecessary extra weeks of parliamentary sitting, just so that he could say to the media, we're working harder. And trying to, so anyway, I don't know, I'm waffling around the subject,
8:33 Rory Stewart? but I do think there's a question about, well, we also saw it this week with Graham Stewart, who was the minister at COP.
8:39 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
8:40 Rory Stewart? Who was made to fly back from COP, so we had no British minister at COP so that he could vote in the House of Commons because our AKX system doesn't allow pering.
8:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. The other thing on this travel thing though that emerged over the weekend is that Ben Wallace, when he was Defence Secretary, decided that he was going to stop this contract that was worth thirty, forty million with a private helicopter company that was being used to sort of fly VIPs, including ministers around the place. And this has only come out because in an RAF Northolt in-house magazine article, somebody called Tom Woods has written, "In mid September twenty-three, the new Secretary of State for Defence, Grant Shapps, reversed this decision at the request of the Prime Minister."
9:22 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I think, well, clearly Rishi Sunak clearly cares about getting ministers travelling, doesn't he? Here's a question from Will P. Spousal visas. Any comments on the increase in the spouse visa limit to thirty-eight thousand seven hundred, meaning only the relatively wealthy can fall in love with foreigners? And this relates, obviously, deeply to immigration, which is also at the heart of what's going on with Maloney and Rishi Sunak. Anyway, any thoughts on that?
9:50 Alastair Campbell? Well, Phil, let me ask you first of all, because you were married to a non-Brit.
9:53 Rory Stewart? I am indeed, and I had to go through all of that and had to deal with a spouse visa limit. Luckily, as a member of Parliament, I was above that figure.
10:01 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
10:02 Rory Stewart? But I think one of the issues there is that, well, at the heart of it, obviously, is governments desperately trying to find levers to reduce net migration. One of the elements in migration is people often from, maybe this is unfair, but certainly when I was in government, and I think about issues in my own constituency, people who were not born in the United Kingdom from other parts of the world would come to the United Kingdom and then they would often marry somebody from the community from which they came, meaning that they were then bringing over more people than was expected. And there was a question then on whether there was enough money to support them and the burden that put on the welfare state, et cetera. So I guess it's coming out of that, am I right?
10:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. What really annoys me about this whole debate, though, and, you know, in relation to the earlier question about the visit to Maloney's conference, Rishi Sunak, the speech that he made was, I think it's a speech that I can't imagine a Conservative Prime Minister ten, fifteen, twenty years ago making that speech. He was talking pretty powerless language about essentially saying unless we manage to stop the boats, we're going to be overwhelmed, they're going to take over the country, they're going to change our culture beyond recognition, blah, blah, blah.
11:14 Rory Stewart? Who's they in this case, coming from Rishi Sunak? What is his vision of they?
11:19 Alastair Campbell? His vision of they is the people on the boats, which is an illegal migration, as he calls it, completely overlooking deliberately the fact that it is a miniscule proportion of the net migration figures, which, as we discussed recently, are close to three quarters of a million. So he's deliberately making this focus all about a small number of people.
11:39 Rory Stewart? Can I come in on a second? So I think we agree with that. We're both very uncomfortable with this kind of language and uncomfortable with the direction Conservative Party is going. However, immigration remains the biggest issue in most of Europe and actually increasingly almost the biggest issue in US politics. And one of the biggest drivers of votes for the far right is people's sense that the centrist parties have failed on immigration. And there's a real risk that if the centrist parties just ignore that issue, that just provides more fuel for Trump, for the AFD in Germany and others. So go on.
12:19 Alastair Campbell? Well, I don't agree that it's the biggest issue for most people in most of Europe. I think the cost of living is the biggest issue for most people in most of Europe and certainly in the UK. Immigration is a big issue for some people, but the truth is that Sunak has made it deliberately, badly advised in my view, he's made it, and particularly this question of the boats, he's made it a much bigger issue than he needed to do. None of that negates the fact, you're right, there have to be systems of immigration that are fair, that are well-run, and that is what I agree with you, centrist parties and left-wing parties have to look at as well. But they have deliberately inflated this issue, and I think they're paying a price for it.
13:00 Rory Stewart? And how does one get the balance right? Because I think this is probably the biggest issue in European politics at the moment. On the one hand, if you seem to ignore the issue entirely, don't talk about immigration.
13:11 Alastair Campbell? Can't do that.
13:12 Rory Stewart? You're giving huge space to the far right to use that issue. And that's why Orban and others dominate it.
13:18 Alastair Campbell? Correct.
13:18 Rory Stewart? If, on the other hand, like Sunak, you speak too much about it, right? You risk elevating the issue and making it into more of a scam than it actually is. How do you get the balance right on this so that you sound to voters who care about controlling immigration? That you've got a plan to do it without providing more encouragement to the far right?
13:36 Alastair Campbell? Your answer is in the question. It has to be about having a genuine plan to deal with it. The problem that Sunak's had is that, under pressure from people like Swala Braverman, he hasn't had a plan. He's come up with all this nonsense, with these gimmicks. Rwanda is a gimmick. The thing, do you remember that we had the time about, you know, making the waves in the sea bigger? As they have all this nonsense, what they don't have is a plan, systems to deal with it. And as you and I think agree, you can only operate. This is now going to be, and climate change is going to make it worse. Economic inequality around the world is going to make it worse. This can only be addressed at a regional and global level. And that requires honest debate and discussion between partners and allies. And we've lost all that because of Brexit.
14:21 Rory Stewart? Can I come in one more time? So, question from Sally. Why does it seem to be impossible to control immigration numbers in Britain? And I was reminded of this because I was talking to Craig Oliver three days ago, who was Cameron's comms director for five years. So doing a sort of version of the job that you did for Tony Blair.
14:37 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
14:38 Rory Stewart? And I was pointing out to him that Cameron had come out and said that he was going to get net migration down into the tens of thousands, and he completely failed to do it. And Craig Oliver basically said, well, yeah, you're right, Rory. It seemed obvious to Cameron that that's something that people wanted and that he should be able to do. But it then turned out it was impossible to do it. And then I looked back at your record in office. You passed an Immigration Asylum Act in 1999, a Nationality Immigration Asylum Act in 2002, which increased restrictions further. You then had a five-year department plan called Controlling Our Borders in 2005. You then had an Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act in 2006, which was all about further restricting appeals, sanctioning employers.
15:21 Rory Stewart? But none of this seemed to make much difference since when we've had thirteen years of conservative governments passing legislation after legislation after legislation on top of all the legislation you guys were doing. The fact of the matter is that the numbers remain incredibly high. I mean, they remained well into the hundreds of thousands through New Labour, through David Cameron, and now even higher still.
15:41 Alastair Campbell? Sure. No, but I think those, I'd forgotten a lot of those specific things that you read out there from our time in government. But I think they did make a difference. I think they made a difference both in terms of processing. It was always very difficult because the, you know, the Home Office is not the sort of greatest department in the world. I don't know if it's improved much. But it was always difficult to get the processes in place and get them working. But actually, I think the other thing that we did was there was a targeting of some of migration into those sectors where we were being told it was most needed. I think a lot of our improvement in the public services was in large part because we we went out and found the teachers, the doctors, the nurses that we that we needed. I think what's happened since then, I go back to my point about gimmicks. I'm not saying that we weren't occasionally
16:26 Alastair Campbell? able to come up with the odd gimmick here and there, but I think what you were describing there.
16:31 Rory Stewart? You were definitely very good at coming up with gimmicks here and there.
16:34 Alastair Campbell? No, no, we weren't very good. In fact, the only one you've ever been able to throw at me successfully was my cash point justice. That's the only one. So I think we were pretty good at not doing that many gimmicks, but I'd say they were serious policy proposals addressing a real problem. What I do think we've had particularly in recent years is a succession of statements and positionings which aren't really detailed, serious plans.
16:59 Rory Stewart? I'll absolutely give you that. I agree. And obviously, there's no doubt now that you're completely vindicated that putting stop the boats as one of his five pledges was catastrophic.
17:09 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
17:09 Rory Stewart? Just as it was catastrophic for Cameron to say that he was going to reduce net migration to tens of thousands. Don't make a pledge if you can't do it. That's also the problem with Boris Johnson saying early last year that he was going to send people to Rwanda without doing his homework to work out how incredibly difficult it is to do. But can I just bring you back to the bigger one, bigger issue? Why is it, what's the fundamental reason that you discovered in government? Why it proves absolutely impossible to ever reduce immigration below the hundreds of thousands in Britain, however many laws are passed, whatever the government's tried to do?
17:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think a lot of it is down to the fact that politicians don't like admitting. That we need immigration to keep our economy, public services going, and we're going to need them more as we get older. Now, the only party, I think, in mainstream politics that is even willing to say that is the SNP and sometimes the Greens. But that is, that is the truth about the nature of our demographic change is the answer. Demographic change. Now, you also have then, you do have, and Sunak's not wrong when he says that there are these criminal gangs that are exploiting it, but the numbers involved are tiny compared to the numbers in those net migration figures who are coming here in large part because we want and need them to. And I think it'd be far better if politicians admitted that.
18:27 Rory Stewart? Right, okay. Now, we've got, we've got, we've got a couple of questions coming in, and many questions coming in. Ben Parrish, would Biden stand a better chance of reelection if he chose a different vice president? I think that's a really good question from Ben Parrish. I actually believe it would have been preferable if Biden had been celebrated as a great one-term president and we had a different candidate going in. I remain very worried, even though it's not something that is comfortable to say about his health, but I definitely think in the absence of being able to do that, a different vice president would make a difference because sadly Kamala Harris has not been impressing and it's allowing the Republicans to say that Biden may well have some health issue and she could step up. What do you think?
19:06 Alastair Campbell? I don't think it would change the dial that much. I think the big question in, in the presidential election is who the two presidential candidates going to be. The, the running mate always gets massive coverage, massive profile, can make a difference at the margins, can do campaigning in different places in a different way, but I honestly don't think it makes that much difference. So the big question remains, is he going to stand? Is he going to stay as the second term candidate? And if he does, what are the implications of that? But I don't think, I mean, I think it's widely sort of viewed that Kamala Harris has not been, you know, not, not been great, not been terrible, but not been great. But has that, would it change if he brought in somebody a bit different? I don't think so.
19:50 Alastair Campbell? What the only big change that's left open to him is, does he stand or doesn't he stand?
19:53 Rory Stewart? Right then, we'll be back in a second. So let's just take a quick break.
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21:20 Rory Stewart? So Angela Proben, Women in Afghanistan. Please could you explain to us just what the Taliban want from reducing their women and children to destitution and possible death through draconian restrictions and widespread famine? Is it their intention to wipe them out and tighten their grip on the rest of the populace? Is there any hope and how in this scenario are you managing to continue with your charity? It's a very difficult issue. So, I mean, clearly on the record, the Taliban have very, very restrictive, chauvinistic views of women. They do not want their supreme leader, who sits in Kandahar, issues edicts saying he doesn't want women in education beyond the age of about 11, that he doesn't want women working for NGOs and the UN. So what do we make of what's happening?
22:04 Rory Stewart? Well, I think it's to be understood, and this is not me defending the Taliban, it's just me trying to answer the question. They're not doing it, feeling that what they're trying to do is starve women to death. They're doing it because they have an extraordinary conservative view of women's place in society, which comes from their own tribal traditions. It's not even mainstream Islam, it's a long way beyond that. It's to do with push-to. Tribal traditions often. On Afghanistan in general, the strange thing is that in many ways, security, not many ways, in almost every way, security is much, much better than it was before the withdrawal. It's now possible to travel through most of the country much more safely than has been true really since the late 1990s.
22:47 Rory Stewart? The economy has contracted very dramatically by about 25%, but the Taliban have also stopped a lot of the opium growth. There's been a very, they've been burning opium, cropping, big reduction in the drug trade. They've had a big clampdown on corruption. So if you were, and it's not my position to do this, but if you were making the case for the Taliban, what you would say is it's become terrible situation, very restrictive for women, but drugs are much more under control, corruption's much more under control, security's much more under control. Afghanistan remains a very poor country, but it doesn't feel like there's any significant opposition within the country, which is likely to topple the Taliban government anytime soon. Over to you for a question.
23:28 Alastair Campbell? A question about Gaza from Rosie Westby. Watching Gaza on the news, despite caring deeply about the human suffering, I just cannot watch the news from Gaza at the moment. Are the viewing numbers down, do you know? I don't think I have compassion fatigue. It's about self-care, but does that mean it fades from the collective consciousness? I think that's a great question because I've found myself slightly turning away. My response to that has been to force myself every day, I've been doing this now for the last two or three weeks, I watch Al Jazeera for about half an hour when I know that they're covering it, you know, one of their main sort of programs.
24:08 Alastair Campbell? And they don't hold back, they don't sanitize, and I do think it's important to keep watching, and I do think it's important to keep trying to understand. The other thing I do is I just every day put in certain names into a search engine. And so Netanyahu would be one, Hamas would be another, some of the key players, you know, Biden on the Middle East, whatever it might be, and just sort of choose when I'm going to read about it and watch it, rather than allow it to bombard me, because I think that's what happens, Rosie.
24:39 Rory Stewart? Yeah, it is, it is, it's terrible, isn't it? And I, I think there's a cycle which people felt very quickly with Yemen, they felt almost immediately with the horrors in Sudan, where people stopped paying attention within about two days.
24:49 Alastair Campbell? It's terrible. I mean, that, that is so bad, that one. You, you don't hear anything about Sudan and Yemen in the news at the moment, nothing.
24:56 Rory Stewart? And Ukraine, of course, fading. And, you know, we're, we're hoping to do a visit in order to try to bring that back to people's consciousness. I think there's been some interesting movements from David Cameron, the new Foreign Secretary for Shu Zinek, who clearly feels that he's not got much time and he'll be Foreign Secretary for, I guess, a year or so at most, but he's been very, very active. He did quite an interesting thing, I thought, which there wasn't as much reporting on, on saying that he was going to impose sanctions on settlers who committed violence against Palestinians.
25:28 Alastair Campbell? He also had a, a, an interesting article, co-signed with Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party Foreign Minister of Germany, which I thought was interesting and quite sensible.
25:40 Rory Stewart? What did that say?
25:41 Alastair Campbell? I'd say it was a pretty much a restatement of their position, but definitely moving towards a more critical position of the tactics being deployed by Israel.
25:50 Rory Stewart? Great reporting, if people want to get a short clip. Clarissa Ward, well, I'm a great fan of Clarissa Ward, she did some great reporting in Afghanistan. I, I know her a little bit. We did an event together on, on Afghanistan Taliban, but she's been in Gaza and one of the first Western journalists who's been able to get it.
26:08 Alastair Campbell? Unaccompanied.
26:09 Rory Stewart? Unaccompanied, exactly. And you can hear her very, very moving engagement where she's speaking in Arabic to one of the injured Palestinian children.
26:17 Alastair Campbell? You posted that and I watched it last night. I thought the most interesting thing was the fact that she's clearly in the back of a car. The cameraman is alongside her and when she's speaking to the camera, I just found myself mesmerised, looking beyond her at literally everything seemed like a scene of destruction.
26:34 Rory Stewart? Look, I think there are times in politics, as he's sounding a bit schmaltzy, where doing the right thing is also electorally smart. And it seems to me very clear now that for both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, doing the right thing is to now call for a ceasefire and that actually that's not going to damage them politically, but it's also ethically correct.
26:55 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. Tim Northants, we're back to public standards. Why are MPs never charged with misconduct? At what point would Scott Benton have committed a criminal act? Why are MPs and PMs never charged with misconduct in public office? I should point out that some of them went to jail for expenses. What would make the next government prioritise a written constitution, updated roles, responsibilities, terms and conditions and independent governance for MPs? The other round of applause that you got Rory, we've got lots of rounds of applause, but the other one that I thought got a huge round of applause was when you made the point that you've made often on the podcast, this was the Alba Hall, about Keir Starmer should say, no minister will serve less than two years in the same job.
27:37 Rory Stewart? I really like that. And I love your stuff about known principles. And it seems to me a pretty simple thing for Keir Starmer to sign up to. And actually, it would also help him in party management because it would mean that instead of endless bitter backbenchers plotting and fantasising every nine months that they're about to be reshuffled, they would know perfectly well that they had two years to get their teeth into whatever committee they were on before another reshuffle was coming around.
27:59 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Let me just bring to those listeners who weren't at the Alba Hall, we did a very, I hope you enjoyed the polling thing we did. So we basically, we asked people through social media, people who were there and I think some who weren't there took part as well. But we got, we got 4,000 responses to this and we asked them a series of questions. Who will be Prime Minister in December 2024? 88% said Starmer, 7% Sunak, 5% other. Who will be President in America? President elect it will be in December 2024, Biden 45, Trump 42, 13, other.
28:32 Rory Stewart? And certainly that that bets on other is a really good one because I may I may be saying this because I've got a bit of a bad cold at the moment, but both Biden and Trump are not.
28:41 Alastair Campbell? Rory, what did I tell you about politicians and colds?
28:44 Rory Stewart? But just never admit that you ever.
28:46 Alastair Campbell? Never admit you're not well.
28:47 Rory Stewart? Never admit you're not well, but both Biden and Trump are gentlemen of a certain age and it seems to me not unlikely that some health incident will happen between now and then. So if you were a betting person, betting on a third candidate in the US might work out.
29:01 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I've got one. Gary Hemingway, have you two ever had a proper slangy match where you failed miserably to disagree agreeably? If so, what was the topic? We had one.
29:12 Rory Stewart? We did have one. I can't really remember the topic, but it was absolutely terrible. It was literally involving me saying things like, you'd say, I know what you're saying, Rory, and I was going, Alastair, what did I say? No, that isn't what I said. And it's a really kind of petulant horror, but I can't remember what the subject was.
29:27 Alastair Campbell? It was about Northern Ireland and you were trying.
29:29 Rory Stewart? That's right. I was trying to say that, oh, that's right. I really hit a raw spot there. And I said.
29:33 Alastair Campbell? You really did.
29:34 Rory Stewart? I suggested that Tony Blair was being naive in his solutions to Northern Ireland. That that is not something to say to Alastair Campbell. That's that's a combination of two things that you don't you don't try to tell him off about Ireland and Tony Blair in a single sentence.
29:48 Alastair Campbell? We've had a lot of agreeable disagreement, but that was the only disagreeable one, I think.
29:53 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that was that was really bad, that. Robert Saunders, who I read historian on Twitter, who with Tim Bale is one of the two people that I follow very, very closely on British politics and who's been really good, I thought, on the way in which the COVID inquiry has revealed so many problems in the way the British government's run and so many ways in which we can improve it. He says, great to hear Alastair bringing Restless Politics to Wales. I believe Rory's in Amare of Gladstone. Why not do a pod at Gladstone's library? Would be wonderful to hear a session from the home lovingly restored by Gladstone. Now a major library in research and very exciting for me. Would you be up for doing a recording of the Restless Politics in Gladstone's library?
30:29 Alastair Campbell? And Rory, the answer is?
30:31 Rory Stewart? For me, yes.
30:32 Alastair Campbell? No, Rory, the answer is it depends how much capacity there is.
30:36 Rory Stewart? Oh, well, capacity, I'm sorry.
30:37 Alastair Campbell? We might want to do the Millennium Stadium.
30:39 Rory Stewart? The Millennium Stadium. Okay, we'll look into this. Anyway, it's a very tempting idea. Thank you, Robert Saunders. Last question from you.
30:44 Alastair Campbell? My last question was was one we got from Geraint, who I presume is from Wales, who wanted our assessment of Mark Drakeford's legacy. So
30:55 Rory Stewart? Well, can I just, before you go on to the legacy, just encourage people to listen to the interview that we did with him? He's not necessarily a household name to people who aren't in Wales, but he was a very, very dominating figure in Welsh politics. And I thought a really interesting leading interview going into the texture and the nature of politics. Over to you.
31:12 Alastair Campbell? Well, I'm glad you said he thought it was an interesting interview because at the end of the interview, in the debrief at the time, you said you found it rather boring. So that's fantastic that you've changed your view.
31:23 Rory Stewart? Maybe my memory is just bad.
31:24 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a bad memory. I actually think Mark Drakeford, in terms of of legacy, what would I say? I think he came in, if you remember, he came in at the time of a terrible sort of tragedy involving the death of a colleague called Carl Sargent. And the Welsh government was in a bit of a mess. And I think he restored trust and competence. He led the reform of the of the Senedd, the Welsh Parliament with, and he managed to build cross party support for that, which led to, means it's now larger and it's also got a new electoral system. I think he did very, very well during Covid. I think he showed what the difference is between having a serious person in charge as opposed to what we had in England.
32:07 Alastair Campbell? He's lower profile, definitely been lower profile than Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmon. But I think part of his legacy is that he became the best known of the Welsh first ministers. And that's that of itself will leave a legacy. I think towards the end, he was losing popularity in part because of the 20 mile an hour speed limit that he'd been imposing in a lot of places. But I think Mark Drakeford can look back on his time as first minister and say that, yeah, he has left a considerable legacy, not least the fact that he's changed the Senedd, changed the electoral system, led well during Covid. And I think has really established the Welsh Parliament in the UK consciousness.
32:44 Rory Stewart? Very good. Well, perhaps less serious question to end our question time on from Sean. If you had to go on one reality TV show, which one would it be and why?
32:53 Alastair Campbell? I hate reality TV, as you know, but I did Comet Relief does The Apprentice for charity. And hated every minute. But I guess Soccer Aid was a reality TV show.
33:04 Rory Stewart? Now Soccer Aid, just remind me, who were you playing with in Soccer Aid?
33:07 Alastair Campbell? Well, you know, I hate to talk about it, but it was, it was a guy called Diego Armando Maradona.
33:11 Rory Stewart? And, and not just Maradona. We actually, we, we showed this footage at the Royal Albert Hall. It was incredible. Gazza was playing. Who else was playing?
33:17 Alastair Campbell? Gazza was playing, Les Ferdinand was playing, Dunga, Desai, Zola, Ginola, Schmeichel, Lotte Mateus. David Seaman, Tony Adams. Rory, I'm telling you, it was the greatest day of my life.
33:28 Rory Stewart? And then even on the celebrity side, actually, you were all reasonably good football players. I was incredibly impressed by Damian Lewis getting around to you in the corner and getting it in towards the goal.
33:37 Alastair Campbell? I think that was two different pieces of footage being spliced together to make me look fat and old.
33:42 Rory Stewart? Then you had a celebrity chef who was an unbelievably good football player too.
33:45 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, Gordon Ramsay's pretty good.
33:46 Rory Stewart? Was he not semi-professional before he became a?
33:49 Alastair Campbell? I, I think he might. I think there's something about having a trial at Rangers or something. But my daughter Grace, she does a great sketch in her comedy shows about footballers who've had a trial at Queens Park Rangers. She meets a lot of boys who've had a trial at Queens Park Rangers.
34:04 Rory Stewart? So he didn't completely blow you away on the pitch?
34:06 Alastair Campbell? He didn't blow me away in the way that Diego from Gazza did. Put it that way.
34:11 Rory Stewart? So I'm, uh, get a lot of requests to go on reality TV shows and some of them are quite humiliating. So I'm a friend of Bear Grylls and we actually went together, we were part of a little karate team that went to Japan together when we were in our teens. And then when he, when he climbed Everest, he was actually rescued after a small avalanche by an Iranian friend of mine who was a climber. So we've had a sort of bond going back a long time. And I think you will have seen maybe last year, a picture of him and me jumping out of a helicopter together. Anyway, I suddenly now got a request for a reality TV show where the idea was supposed to be that I was going to be put in the bear pit, where Bear Grylls was going to be bossing me around and I was going to be there with another 12 celebrities, which I thought was probably slightly humiliating.
34:53 Alastair Campbell? And you thought, why should I get bossed around by an alpha male when I could do it twice a week without a camera on the podcast?
34:58 Rory Stewart? Right, exactly. You are my reality TV show. You've got the answer. I don't need to go on a reality TV show. I'm living it out every week. Okay. Well, Alastair, thank you all very much and see you for our Christmas special next. Have a great, great next few days. Bye bye.
35:12 Alastair Campbell? See you soon. Bye bye.
35:16 Speaker 05 Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.
35:20 Speaker 06 On October 2nd.
35:21 Speaker 05 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
35:26 Speaker 06 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess.
35:29 Speaker 05 And Digger's gonna dig us out.
35:31 Speaker 06 From the director of Birdman and The Ravenette.
35:33 Speaker 07 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.
35:37 Speaker 06 With great power comes great deniability.
35:41 Speaker 07 I'm not the first nanny.
35:42 Speaker 06 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.
Previous 202. How Labour should fight the election, taking on the British press, and Orbán's future far-right axis Next 204. Scotland's pivotal role, the moment everything changed, and whether to serve under Starmer (Part 1) Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
