Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 215. Question Time: An election in May, combatting homelessness, and investigating think tanks About this episode How are anonymous donors keeping Britain’s political parties afloat? Should the public know where think tanks get their funding from? How worried should we be about voter IDs?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more on today's episode of Question Time.
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Transcript 8,466 words · 11 speakers
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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:06 Speaker 02 This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.
1:34 Speaker 03 When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog, a coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crocs.com or a store near you now.
2:09 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.
2:12 Alastair Campbell? And me Alastair Campbell. So Rory, sleep.
2:16 Rory Stewart? Sleep.
2:17 Alastair Campbell? I think this is a very interesting question. Alex Smith, how did you both cope with such little sleep in government? With huge burdens of responsibility and complex problem solving a daily requirement, how did you both cope with your workloads with shut eye at such a premium?
2:32 Rory Stewart? Okay, now this is a big one, isn't it? Because of course Mrs Thatcher famously missed the Brighton bombing because she was up in the middle of the night writing her speech. And then people said, although apparently it isn't totally true that she only did four, five hours sleep a night.
2:44 Alastair Campbell? I think it was a bit of the mythology. It became a thing that she only ever slept four hours. I'm not sure about that.
2:49 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
2:49 Alastair Campbell? Only she and Dennis would really know, wouldn't they?
2:51 Rory Stewart? Only she and Dennis would really know. But it's definitely true that sleep suffers hugely, doesn't it? It suffers because partly because you're travelling a lot, you've got jet lag. It suffers a lot because you're up late voting if you're a member of parliament. It suffers because you're stressed. It suffers in your case presumably because you were having to get up really early to make sure you were ahead of any of the morning additions. But tell us about sleep and you when you were in Downing Street.
3:15 Alastair Campbell? I wasn't very good at it. But although funny enough, I feel more tired. Maybe this is just age, but I feel more tired. I get tired more often these days than I did when I was running hard the whole time.
3:27 Rory Stewart? How old were you, Alistair, when you came into Downing Street?
3:31 Alastair Campbell? I was late 30s.
3:33 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
3:34 Alastair Campbell? But I kind of, I had a very, very, very bad attitude to sleep for most of my life. When I was a journalist, I, Jordy Gregg, who went on to be the editor of the Mail and is now on the Independent, and he worked for me on Today Newspaper. And this was a few weeks before I was, went absolutely, completely off my head, literally. And I once called him in and said, Jordy, sleep. It's a waste of your time and mine.
4:03 Alastair Campbell? Now, I think he ignored me.
4:05 Rory Stewart? That's a great, great management technique. That's, that's, that's what, you know, that's often encouraged in business schools these days. It's management.
4:11 Alastair Campbell? I don't think I would have survived in the modern industrial relations, nor should I. But that was, that used to be my kind of attitude. You know, if you're asleep, you can't work. If you're asleep, you can't think. And actually now I'm, I love sleep and, and I've, I've learnt how important sleep is actually to how your mind works. I used to sleep whenever I could and I would regularly, I didn't watch the news at night. So I would regularly, if I got, if I managed to get to bed before 10, it would be to, you know, I'd hopefully get a few hours sleep. I did get up very, very early. I still do get up quite early. I never used to take naps. I now do have the occasional nap, but I think it's a very, very serious question. I, I think exhaustion in government is a real problem.
4:51 Rory Stewart? Well, it's a huge problem, isn't it? And, and there's a great book by Matthew Walker called Why We Sleep. And I'm now talking to you with this aura ring on my finger, which tells me exactly how I slept. So last night I can tell you, I got six hours and 25 minutes and I got an hour and 10 minutes of deep and 57 minutes of rambling.
5:07 Alastair Campbell? But listen, when, when you have all that data, what, what, what does it help? Do you, does it, can you do anything with it? Does it help you sleep better the next day?
5:13 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, yes. Because what you notice, you get really competitive. You would get really competitive. Obviously you are a very competitive person. So if you strap this to your wrist, you would want to get a better and better sleep score. And what you would discover is patterns. So you'd discover that if you ate late at night, you get a less good sleep score. Your heart rate remains elevated. If you had a drink in the evening. So basically the problem is it makes you kind of slightly boring and puritanical because the really work way to get a good night's sleep is to eat at about 5:30 in the afternoon and don't touch a drop of alcohol, then your sleep score goes through the roof.
5:44 Alastair Campbell? So eat early, no alcohol.
5:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah. And then you get a really good sleep. And but the great thing is you, you can then play around with it. You learn about temperature in your room, you learn about the type of bed you have, et cetera. The, I'll just back to politics though for a second. I'm exactly like you. I'm now obsessed with getting a good night's sleep and I'm kind of grumpy that I only got an 81 score instead of an 85 score last night. But when I was younger at university, I don't know whether it was like this. I was very proud of the fact that I never slept on the night before my essay was due. I would always stay up the whole night trying to keep myself going on shortbread biscuits.
6:18 Alastair Campbell? Shortbread biscuits?
6:20 Rory Stewart? Shortbread biscuits.
6:20 Alastair Campbell? You didn't take amphetamines?
6:22 Rory Stewart? My drug of choice to make it through, to make it through the night.
6:26 Alastair Campbell? Was this before or after your opium phase?
6:28 Rory Stewart? Exactly. Well, this was before my opium phase. And I would then stagger in to see my poor tutor, reading a completely nonsensical essay that I thought was really good because I'd been working at between four and 10 in the morning.
6:39 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I couldn't do the whole night, late night thing anymore. I don't think I could. Well, yeah, I could. I have worked through the night fairly recently, but I don't enjoy it. You mentioned Margaret Thatcher doing the conference speech on the day of the Brighton Bomb. I didn't enjoy doing conference speeches because my sense of Keir Starmer is that he likes to get his conference speeches kind of wrapped up a couple of days before the event. Tony Blair was somebody who he needed that sort of process of endless iteration and reiteration and rewrite to the last minute. There were actually a couple of times where he was still rewriting a speech as he was carrying it up to the podium. But I, so I just felt it was, we would regularly go conference week from the Saturday to the Tuesday with
7:24 Alastair Campbell? maybe six hours sleep total.
7:26 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, there's a great, it's completely apocryphal, but I think the story is that Lord Palmerston dreamt that he was making a speech in the House of Lords and then woke up to find that he was.
7:38 Alastair Campbell? Now, here's one. Peter Bell. How do you assess the recent actions of the Conservatives in attempting to reform the Electoral Commission, introducing new election laws such as increasing the spending limit to 35 million pounds, extending voting rights to expats, and introducing mandatory photo ID for voting? Specifically, what are the implications of these moves to the independence of the Electoral Commission? And the integrity of the democratic process. Interestingly, the Electoral Commission, which normally keeps a pretty low profile, but actually they've been giving pretty public interviews about this, including one in the FT, one in the Daily Mirror, essentially saying that this, you know, they're not at all happy. They say this is telling the umpire how to enforce the rules of the game. Have you been following this one?
8:21 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I have, and I have huge respect for them. And the guy, I think, was the head librarian of the House of Commons Libraries now running the Electoral Commission. Though sometimes, you know, I got really wound up about this, very upset about what the government was doing with photo ID. But then when I read the small print, it turned out that 14,000 people, so 0.25% of those voting in the local elections, were turned away because they didn't have the correct ID. And of those 4%, it was because their photo ID, which means about 700 people in the whole country. So I'm slightly less worried than I was when I first read these stories.
8:54 Alastair Campbell? What about the funding, which, you know, didn't seem to get any debate in Parliament at all, that they suddenly double the limit, which I presume means that they think they've got loads of money coming in, which maybe the Labour Party won't have?
9:07 Rory Stewart? Well, I do think funding is the big, big thing. I mean, and Britain's great thing, which we've got to cling on to, is these funding limits on how much you can spend in a constituency election. I think we talked about this before, the lovely thing, unlike the US, where I was talking to a Congresswoman who was saying, I think she spent four, five hours a day, every day, seven days a week fundraising. When I was running in Penrith and the border, the limit on our spend in the short campaign was £15,000. And you're not going to generally sell your soul for £15,000. You're going to be able to raise it from small donations. So that's the good bit. The bad bit is the way that businesses for the Conservatives and trade unions for the Labour can put in hugely disproportionate
9:48 Rory Stewart? amounts, quite unlike the US. And the US, for all its problems, in the key battlegrounds, 70% of the money coming to a senator or a congressperson is coming from small donations of $5, $10, only 30% from big donors. But if you look at the Labour and Conservative parties, it's the unions or business people writing million, two million pound cheques that are carrying them through. And that gives far too much influence to those people because they're then Sort of 10, 20% of your entire funding for the campaign coming from one individual, one organisation and.
10:17 Alastair Campbell? They're also, I mean, I know there's always been a little bit of this, but I think I'm right in saying that every single treasurer of the Conservative Party of recent years is now in the House of Lords. Many of their major donors are now in the House of Lords. I mean, our system is absolutely rotten. We've got to change it.
10:31 Rory Stewart? Yeah, and there's another bit, which I think you've mentioned in the past, but is absolutely critical, which is this whole dodgy business about the fact that if you've got a UK-registered company, even if it's not making any money in the UK, it can give money through to these parties. So, I mean, the US, of course, was destroyed by the Supreme Court ruling, which said that it's a constitutional right to be able to pump money into these super PACs. So all the campaign finance legislation becomes irrelevant because these super PACs with hundreds of millions of dollars behind them are determining these elections.
11:03 Alastair Campbell? There's a related question from Laura Shields. Now that another 2 million UK citizens living overseas can register to vote, do we need a national discussion on what UK citizenship really involves? I mean, imagine they're doing that because they assume that UK citizens who live abroad are likely to be a bit older and a bit wealthier, therefore more likely to vote Tory. Is that a fair assumption?
11:23 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely fair. I think these parties are all desperately trying to get as many advantages as they can.
11:29 Alastair Campbell? It's kind of a bit gerrymanderish, isn't it, the whole thing?
11:31 Rory Stewart? Well, the most dramatic example was what David Cameron tried to do with the Lib Dems in 2011, 2012, which is abolish the House of Lords in exchange for the Lib Dems voting to reduce the number of constituencies and redraw the boundaries in a way that was supposed to guarantee the Conservatives were going to get a majority in the next election.
11:48 Alastair Campbell? You were very cross about that.
11:50 Rory Stewart? I was very miffed about that situation. And now we've had these boundary commissions, but they haven't reduced the number of MPs. We're sticking at 650. We're not coming down to 600.
11:58 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Talking of David Cameron, I wonder if he is the answer to this. Tim Harris, this is a question for Rory. Really enjoyed your book. Since his publication, has anyone who featured in it approached you to dispute your account or apologise for their behaviour?
12:10 Rory Stewart? Oh, that's very kind. So I've actually had two colleagues who very kindly come up and said they wish they'd voted for me and they regretted not voting for me, which I thought was kind. And another colleague who said, I'm not sure it's true, but he said that if I'd made it through to the last two against Boris, he still thinks I might have had a chance with the membership. There are other people, I think, probably including David Cameron, who, if they've read the book at all, and I guess he probably remains the same by not reading that kind of thing, would probably be a bit cross.
12:40 Alastair Campbell? Hmm. You haven't had anybody dispute?
12:42 Rory Stewart? No, no. Oddly, Quentin Letts, who's a correspondent for the Daily Mail, wrote a very negative review of the book and contacted a colleague who I had accused of trying to punch me on the nose behind the speaker's chair. And not only did the colleague not deny that he'd done it, but basically gave the impression to Quentin Letts, he rather wished he'd carried through on his threat.
13:01 Alastair Campbell? The only one I remember from the time when I published my diaries was David Trimble took exception.
13:09 Rory Stewart? What didn't he like? Do you remember?
13:10 Alastair Campbell? He didn't think that I accurately reflected his position on some of the issues that we were discussing. And in fact, he ended up making a long speech about why he disputed. I can't remember the specifics, but he was quite cross. I did end up sort of writing a piece somewhere saying that, you know, if I got it wrong, I've got it wrong, I'll apologise. But it wasn't a factual thing. It was more that he felt I wasn't sufficiently understanding of the position he was trying to project.
13:34 Rory Stewart? Very good. Okay, Croydon, Rosie Beacon. Alistair, you promised at the event you did in Croydon last week that you would mention Croydon on the podcast this week. So it's a reminder of that promise. I would like you to say three good things about Croydon. Can you please start by reminding international listeners where Croydon is and what Croydon is?
13:51 Alastair Campbell? Croydon is to the south of London. Many of our overseas listeners, if they know anything about Croydon, it will probably be Crystal Palace Football Club. I should say, by the way, that that is a very good question, because it's impossible for me not to want to have that question asked, because I did make that promise at the meeting. It was a Q and A and somebody literally just said, will you mention Croydon on the podcast? And it's funny how they did feel, I think, slightly sort of put upon that people didn't think Croydon was, it's not London, but it's got its own identity, it's Greater London, et cetera. So three good things about Croydon. I like a tram. Do you like a tram, Rory?
14:26 Rory Stewart? I love a tram. Who doesn't like a tram?
14:27 Alastair Campbell? I love a tram. Well, Croydon's got trams. Croydon Women's Football Club.
14:30 Rory Stewart? Very good.
14:31 Alastair Campbell? Got a very good reputation. And I'm also, I'm going to give a shout out for the event I was speaking at. How can I put this without sort of making people alarmed? It got a bit tasty in that there were, there were protesters outside protesting mainly about Gaza. But once they heard that I was there, thought, let's turn it into a sort of big bun fight about Iraq. And the police had to come out and sort of help me get, help me get out alive. So I'm going to say that Croydon has got two very, very, very nice policewomen who managed to get me out unscathed.
15:03 Rory Stewart? Croydon's very remarkable, isn't it? Because it's, it's got a lot of high rise buildings, very unusually for somewhere which is sort of basically a bit of London. Got this amazing thing called Saffron Square, which is like this huge red and purple thing sticking in the air.
15:17 Alastair Campbell? It's got very good green spaces though. I noticed that. Some nice trees.
15:20 Rory Stewart? Very good. One more thing about Croydon that I like about Croydon is my friend Gavin Barwell was the MP for Croydon.
15:25 Alastair Campbell? He was indeed. He's a very sensible, sane voice in the current debate about the future of the Conservative Party, I would say.
15:32 Rory Stewart? He is absolutely. He's a tribute to Croydon.
15:35 Alastair Campbell? Here's one definitely for you, Rory.
15:37 Rory Stewart? Go on then.
15:38 Alastair Campbell? Jordan Coombs, 68 is too old for prison officers to retire. Your thoughts on this, please. Currently, prison officer's pension age is linked to state pension age. 67 year olds are expected to restrain 21 year olds. The pension contributions are less than the police, but so is the wage. Come on, former prisons minister.
15:56 Rory Stewart? Well, I, look, it's clearly a 67 year old is not going to be able to restrain an active 21 year old.
16:03 Alastair Campbell? Well, it depends on who the 67 year old is, Rory, may I say.
16:06 Rory Stewart? And who the 21 year old is. I mean, you obviously would be very different, right? I think if we're going to have prison officers work that long, it's necessary to have different kinds of roles for them. So I think firstly, being a prison officer is an amazing role, but it's incredibly challenging because it's a combination of being sometimes like a policeman, sometimes like a teacher, sometimes like a councillor. It's totally absorbing. There's an amazing programme called the Unlocked Graduates Programme, which is trying to bring very talented young graduates into becoming prison officers. I encourage anyone listening. But clearly, as you get older, you would have to design a system where you got into the less physical bits of the job. Otherwise, it's simply dangerous.
16:44 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Nick Simpson, with all of the speculation on the election date, how far out from the date does a prime minister need to make a decision? Is it not more likely that Sunak has a number of campaigns and stunts lined up through 2024 and will call the election if one gets sufficient traction?
16:58 Rory Stewart? Oh, do you think that's how it works?
17:00 Alastair Campbell? You can make it the decision quite close to the event. I mean, you know, we've had this sort of recent situation where David Cameron brought in the Fixed Term Parliament Act. So that was a way of saying, we know when the election is going to be. John Johnson got rid of that. So now it's back in the hands of the prime minister alone. The prime minister can decide when the election will be. Certainly from experience, when we were in power the first time, the decision about the election date is pretty tightly held. And also, I would say Tony Blair didn't finally make his mind up and, you know, until very, very close to the time when it had to be announced, you like to keep your options open.
17:38 Rory Stewart? Yeah, presumably though, if you're Rishi Sunak, you're not going to want to run anytime soon because you're going to be praying against all the odds that something's going to turn around. I mean, at the moment, he's at a catastrophic situation. He's, you know, Starmer's well ahead of him in terms of net popularity. Labour's ahead of the Conservatives on the economy. They're kind of 20 points ahead. I mean, I can't understand people who think he's going to call a may election.
17:59 Alastair Campbell? Well, it's interesting you say that. That graphic that we talked about on the main podcast, showing the narrowing of polls in the latter days of a campaign. Morgan McSweeney, who is kind of head of Labour Party Strategy, who, you know, I think shows that to as many people as he can. But he also is sort of saying internally that he still thinks there is a not insignificant chance that Sunak will go for May. Pointing to the bringing forward of the budget to early March, pointing to some of the kind of policy decisions that are being made. So I think it's probably part of the making sure Labour, you know, stay on their toes and don't get complacent. But I think the other factor which I think is relevant to this is that there's a lot of negatives for Sunak at the moment.
18:44 Alastair Campbell? What is the one thing he's got left? He does have the element of surprise. And so I think that that is for me.
18:50 Rory Stewart? I don't question the element of surprise. No, I mean, I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
18:54 Alastair Campbell? But that's all he's got left.
18:55 Rory Stewart? But if you're just like, surprise, and then you're still unpopular and the economy is still tanking.
19:00 Alastair Campbell? Why? The reason why that survey that we put around is so important. Is because if you look at the polls now and you say the Tories are finished, they're a dead duck, okay. But if you then ally them with those, that presentation which shows how much in this very volatile environment we're in, how much things can change. Imagine a campaign where an issue that Labour doesn't want to talk about becomes the defining issue of the campaign and it happens to be something that Tories do want to campaign about. So for example, if I look at the, the first graphic in that presentation was Australia back when Scott Morrison won. How did Scott Morrison win? What was the issue that turned
19:42 Alastair Campbell? it? It was the boats. He managed to make the whole election about the boats. Now, I don't think that's going to happen here, but imagine that if it did, imagine that similar narrowing came. So they might, you know, I, I think it's probably not going to be May, I think it's going to be October, but I don't think it's a done deal that he's ruled it out. And I suspect that Sunak will not be telling that many people internally what he's thinking is on this at the moment.
20:06 Rory Stewart? Okay. Now here's a question for you, and it's definitely not for me. Mary Page, Jürgen Klopp, Serena Vigman, Gareth Southgate, what can our present and future political leaders learn from these inspiring managers that the country might believe in itself?
20:23 Alastair Campbell? I think you could answer that. You know who they are.
20:27 Rory Stewart? Well, Klopp's great thing is that he seems to be quitting when he's ahead, which seems very unusual for a politician.
20:32 Alastair Campbell? Well, it is unusual, but actually, don't you think there's something in that?
20:34 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that's, that's impressive stuff.
20:37 Alastair Campbell? You know, let's, what is something that you've said on virtually every podcast since the last, in the last few weeks is that wouldn't it be great if Joe Biden stepped down? So no, I think what could you learn? Let me give you one thing from each of them. Jürgen Klopp, the importance of allying your passion to your personality. I think politicians could do with that. I think that we don't have enough passion in our politics at the moment. Serena Vigman, I think she has an extraordinary calm, which is really, really important. And Gareth Southgate is one of those team leaders who doesn't make it all about him. He makes it about the team. So I think there are three qualities.
21:18 Alastair Campbell? Passion and personality, calm and make it about the team. There are three qualities there that good leaders all have.
21:24 Rory Stewart? Here's one more thing I'd add, which I think isn't quite coming across in our leaders at the moment. It's about the combination of seeming serious and also giving the impression you're going to get things done. So it's their combination of seeming as though they're a serious person, but also that they've got a clear plan that they can communicate to people. People have got a confidence. They know what they're going to do. It's central in leadership, isn't it? I mean, I think for all her many flaws. I remember somebody saying that when they were working for Margaret Thatcher, everybody knew what she wanted. If you were one of her ministers, you could ask yourself quite easily, you know, what would Mrs. Thatcher want in this situation? And the answer would come immediately. And I think with both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, I don't think they've got that clarity.
22:08 Alastair Campbell? Now, I have been trying to get Jürgen Klopp onto the podcast for some time. I've written all sorts of sycophantic letters in his native language to Liverpool Football Club. If any of his friends, if any of his family, if any of his players, if any of his associates are listening, I would like him to know that my current top two people that I would love to get on, on leading are both German. Angela Merkel and Jürgen Klopp.
22:34 Rory Stewart? Very good. And of course, Pekka Haviste, the Finnish presidential candidate.
22:37 Alastair Campbell? Indeed, indeed, along with Alexander Stubb, his big rival.
22:43 Rory Stewart? Good.
22:44 Alastair Campbell? Okay, Roy, let's have a quick break and then we'll come back with some very exciting questions from a very exciting person, Jon Snow, asking about homelessness. We're also going to be talking about whether think tanks should be regulated. And despite you trying to stop me, I am insisting that we talk about the election in Tuvalu.
23:02 Rory Stewart? Brilliant. Looking forward to it. See you in a minute.
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25:06 Rory Stewart? Celia Richardson, who's your friend from the National Trust, said, "Someone said in the media last week, the next government, whatever its political colour, should set up a royal commission on the role of think tanks, their funding and influence on politics and media in the UK." Is this the right response to growing concern about this subject? Celia Richardson is somebody who's been particularly angry about the activities of Restore Trust, which is this more conservative leaning attempt to try to get involved in the way the National Trust presents its historic properties particularly. What do you think about regulating think tanks or investigating think tanks?
25:38 Alastair Campbell? I do think we've got a problem with this 55 Tufton Street mob. And there was a very interesting clip, which I saw on social media of George Monbiot, environmental campaigner, left wing journalist, probably thinks I'm terribly right wing and not somebody I know well, not a friend. But I saw him doing, I thought, a very good number on the BBC politics show, where he was on with somebody from the Institute of Economic Affairs. And he made the point that, under the BBC guidelines, when you have guests on, you've got to know their political provenance, if they're making political points. And he was making the point that he felt we, the public, should know who funds the Institute of Economic Affairs.
26:22 Alastair Campbell? And this very, I think, this right wing network that funds a lot of these campaigns, whether it be to slow down measures on climate change, whether to undermine Rishi Sunak, all these right wing organisations that are popping up left, right and centre. We had another question about polling and whether we should know who pays for the polls because of this huge poll that got done, massive story in the Daily Telegraph, debated endlessly for days. And it turns out that David Frost, the ludicrous Lord Frost, was the client, as it were, of the poll, but we don't know who paid for it. Now, I think that, so I think Celia's got a point. I think there is something a bit rotten about, this all relates to what we talked about earlier, funding.
27:04 Alastair Campbell? So whether it's a royal commission, I don't know, that might sound a bit heavy. But I think the public do have a right to know more about where these think tanks stand and how they They're funded because they have a real influence on politics and the political debate.
27:16 Rory Stewart? It's a very interesting question, isn't it? Because what's fundamental to this, I guess, is that think tanks are regarded as charities and charities in general. I don't have to disclose very much about who gives them money. And that's partly privacy concerns. It's partly some idea of freedom of donors being able to do this and not being politically influenced. But I tend to agree with you that if I was starting from scratch, I would like transparency on funding for all charities, not just think tanks. I don't really understand why we've ended up in a situation where we think that. I mean, if you're proud of what you're supporting, I don't really see why you would want your name to be concealed. Maybe it's because some people, some philanthropists, for good reasons, want to be anonymous.
27:58 Rory Stewart? Maybe that's it, that maybe if you're giving money to, to, I don't know, homelessness, you don't want to be seen as a kind of big pooh bar.
28:05 Alastair Campbell? A lot of the big philanthropists, they do want people to know and they want to have things named after them and so on. I was pleased that Keir Starmer spoke up for the National Trust at Alderweireld. But I thought Camilla Cavendish wrote an interesting piece in the Financial Times. The headline was something like, you know, speaking up for the National Trust is fine, but actually rebuilding civic society requires government to let the charitable sector do stuff properly to really kind of let them off the leash a bit. And I guess we're back to the point about whether that was what David Cameron meant by his big society. It never really happened.
28:37 Rory Stewart? Yeah, it's definitely the most exciting idea of what it might have meant, whatever he really did mean. I mean, I think his phrase was, there's definitely something called society, but it's a bit different to government. And actually, Britain has so many voluntary organisations, such incredible talent out there. And that if you could free up, I mean, in Cumbria, there were sort of practical examples of this. In things like laying super fast broadband or getting affordable housing built or getting renewable energy built. Often, some of the community groups in Cumbria were much, much quicker and more effective than central government in fixing problems and getting things through. So I did think the idea of getting some of the red tape out of their way and letting charities take on more was was not a bad idea. But what it can't be, obviously, is
29:21 Rory Stewart? just an excuse for austerity, which is where I think it went wrong for David Cameron. People thought it was just an excuse for cutting money for government.
29:28 Alastair Campbell? Now, there's another question here, Rory, which I think underlines that maybe this is very much a kind of our listeners sort of thing. And I guess they are likely to be interested in politics. But you and I both believe that the whole issue of standards in public life and standards in media and so forth is a big part of what's gone wrong. So Mark Lynch, thoughts on the piece last week? This is a piece by Alan Rusbridger in Prospect magazine about how the BBC is massively influenced by Robbie Gibe and his various friends, and yet still Tory MPs claim it's biased against them. So I don't know if you saw this piece, Rory, very, very, very long read by Alan Rusbridger.
30:01 Rory Stewart? Who's a good, good thing, Alan Rusbridger. We like Alan Rusbridger.
30:03 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but it was a very, very good piece of old fashioned journalism. He sort of pieced together lots of situations within the BBC where you have Robbie Gibe and this guy Dougie Smith, who's this very sort of shadowy fixer inside the Conservatives, just showing that this, you know, while we have MPs and ministers like Hugh Merriman and Lucy Fraser recently saying the BBC is biased, the real bias is with this very, very tight political force within the BBC that has ridiculously disproportionate influence in the past on its political output, and now from a position of pretty senior membership within the organisation. I think Robbie Gibe is a menace to the BBC. I really do.
30:45 Rory Stewart? How does one get this right? Because you obviously had big, big run ins with the BBC in your day. I mean, there was that huge run in around Iraq. We both agree that the BBC is a very good thing, that it should be independent of government. You can also presumably see why, if you were running communications at Number 10, there will have been times when the Tories think that the BBC is a bit lefty, because it's true. Most of my friends who work for the BBC are slightly less on the conservative end of the spectrum. I think it's probably true for a lot of different bits of government. How does one get that balance right and let the BBC be what we love about it, which is a proper, independent, non-partisan broadcaster?
31:21 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think we should, and this is something that people could legitimately say, well, you could have done it when you were in power and you didn't. But I think we have to take away the power. That government have for some of these major appointments. And I guess trust the BBC more to run its own affairs. But I worry that what's happened in recent years in particular is that the BBC has allowed itself to become intimidated. I think its news coverage is much tamer than ITV or Sky. I think it's constantly looking it's over its own shoulder in terms of the funding review. And I get that, but I think that we should. I mean, Tesco General had this idea about it being run almost like a mutual sort of, but distant from government. The current structure feels to me is still too reliant on the idea of the good chaps
32:06 Alastair Campbell? theory running government.
32:07 Rory Stewart? And I think this is a problem actually, which is for both Labour and Conservatives, that the temptation is for the government to appoint politically partisan people when what it should be doing is trying to get relatively kind of straightforward, neutral people. But I absolutely am confident, I'm afraid, that when Keir Starmer came in, he wouldn't make someone like me chairman of the BBC. He'd make somebody who's much more pro-Labour chairman of the BBC. So it's a challenge for both parties, isn't it?
32:37 Alastair Campbell? Oh, Rory, Rory, Rory, was that another job application? I think we could definitely put you down on the list for that. Well, I think you'd be excellent to get on to, certainly to get on to the shortlist.
32:46 Rory Stewart? Very good. Now, here we are, Jon Snow. Hundred and thirty six thousand young people became homeless across the UK last year, yet this issue gets no political attention. Please can you talk about the new Horizon Youth Centres campaign to call on the government to create a national strategy to end youth homelessness? Quick shout out here, firstly for Jon Snow, who's done amazing things in his life. And this is one of the many, many great things he's done.
33:08 Alastair Campbell? Is that, as it were, the Jon Snow?
33:10 Rory Stewart? This is the Jon Snow, the Channel Four news presenter with the extraordinary coloured ties.
33:14 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
33:15 Rory Stewart? The Vietnam War reporter and the rest of it. There's a petition actually at the moment on the government website of trying to get the government to focus on homelessness. A shout out also to Andy Burnham. I was really impressed with the steps that he took as Mayor of Greater Manchester, particularly kind of twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, to address homelessness in Greater Manchester. But any thoughts on this from you?
33:36 Alastair Campbell? I spoke a few weeks ago at a big housing conference where The last Housing Minister, not the current one, but the one before, was also present. And I think I'm right in saying that we've now had 16 Housing Ministers since David Cameron became Prime Minister. Now, that says to me, it is not a priority within government. I think the problem with our housing debate is that it's been, you know, you talked earlier about Margaret Thatcher and her continuing influence. I think our debate about housing is still influenced by these twin poles of a very old fashioned view of what social housing means, council housing.
34:14 Rory Stewart? Yep.
34:14 Alastair Campbell? And the fact that Margaret Thatcher, and it was politically successful for a time, allowed for council houses to be bought by their tenants. And on the other side, the sort of obsession with, if you like, the unearned income of rising house prices, particularly in the South East. And within that, there's this sort of vast issue called housing, which is about where people live and how people live, that the questioner is right, that doesn't get the political attention that it deserves. Now, I was pleased to see Angela Rayner this week made an intervention about housing. Labour's, one of Labour's big growth missions is about changing the planning system because you have to build more homes and so forth. But the fact is that when we have targeted people without
34:59 Alastair Campbell? a home, including these streams, if you remember during Covid, literally the government said, we've got to get people off the streets and into a safe accommodation every night, they managed to do it. So I do think it's one of those issues where, yes, we need brilliant initiatives like the one that John's talking about. But this will only work for the country as a whole if there is strategic leadership from the government that says housing finally is going to be a priority for the country.
35:23 Rory Stewart? I mean, the Conservative story inside government was a bit more complicated because it's not just about those 16 Ministers. I remember every year that I was in Parliament, that housing was seen as the number one priority. And it's partly because the polls were pretty consistent, that it was the thing that really alienated people, that it was the fundamental injustice, the biggest inequity, inequality in our society is not between the top 1%, the bottom 99, it's between the 60% who own houses and the 40% who don't. So it was talked about all the time. Oliver Letwin, who was Cameron's kind of resident policy thinker and intellectual, was put in charge of task forces on that. They brought in ministers who were meant to be high flyers. Dominic Raab kept Malte House, were brought into housing.
36:05 Rory Stewart? Gavin Barwell did housing, who I was praising just in the Croydon question. So there were some pretty talented people brought in sometimes to do it, and Number Ten talked about it a lot. But in the end, nothing happened, and it just got stuck in a morass of complaints about developers' land banking and about planning regulations, and he said and she said and whatnot. I think the problem that I decided when I was running for London Mayor was that the problem was that actually the government should just build it itself. That the problem was we were relying on the market. And actually, I would have liked to see the Mayor of London say, look, I've got thousands of acres of transport for London, the Mayor of London land, I'm going to borrow money on the bond markets, and I'm going to set it off building high-quality council housing
36:48 Rory Stewart? in London against that money and bring the interest in on the rent. And I think that's the way to crack it, if Labour's prepared to actually just build the housing, rather than trying to tinker around on creating incentives for markets. Now, Alistair, for my last question, the question that you've been waiting for all day, Laura Buchanan, what do you think of Tuvalu's pro-Taiwan leader losing their seat? And we know that the island of Tuvalu, a country in Oceania, which is very difficult, I'm afraid, to find on a map, is something that you're particularly interested in. Tell us a little about Tuvalu, a place with a population of 11,900 people, up from 10,645 in 2017.
37:32 Alastair Campbell? Well, I'm sure the listeners can detect in the tone of your voice the modest piss-taking that has been going on in the Rest is Politics WhatsApp group, when I've been saying, I think we should talk about the election in Tuvalu. One of four elections taking place, we've got coming up Azerbaijan, I think we know who's going to win that, Pakistan and Finland, we talked about on the on the main podcast where we're into the second stage. But the reason why I think Tuvalu is worth a discussion is that the issue or one of the issues is China, America. So this, as you say, is a tiny country. They have no political parties in Tuvalu. They all stand as independents.
38:16 Alastair Campbell? But the outgoing prime minister, a guy called Kozia Natano, has lost his seat. Now, the thing about him, he's a pro Taiwan leader.
38:24 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
38:25 Alastair Campbell? And one of the other regional, I wasn't going to say I was going to say powers, but Nauru, they cut ties recently and switched from, as it were, America to Beijing, which has crossed promised a lot more help in in their development. So I just think it's interesting that even in a place as small as that, there is this sort of tussle going on that relates to where do you stand when it comes to China and Taiwan. And so the American government has actually been watching this election in Tuvalu quite closely.
39:00 Rory Stewart? It's fascinating, isn't it? I mean, Tuvalu's also been hugely affected by climate change, very vulnerable to cyclones. King Charles is still its head of state. So God Save the King is one of its national anthems. It's 10 square miles big. That's pretty, pretty small. And I wonder what it's like, you know, running parliamentary elections in a government and a budget, which I guess the whole government budget will be maybe 20, 25 million dollars a year. What you can do with that thing. I mean, it's to put it in context, that's much smaller than Eden District Council, which was my Cumberin Council, which was the smallest district council in Britain.
39:39 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Well, thanks to the wonders of modern data, we can see how many listeners we have in every country in the world, week by week. And I'm just hoping that whatever we have now in Tuvalu, that there's an increase as a result of this fascinating discussion that we've had.
39:56 Rory Stewart? And hopefully on the percentage points. I mean, we may turn out to have as a percentage more listeners in Tuvalu than we have anywhere else.
40:02 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. Could be a huge, huge.
40:03 Rory Stewart? Are you are you angling for an invitation to Tuvalu? Is this where this is all going? You don't want a South Sea holiday? No?
40:09 Alastair Campbell? I'm not angling for an invitation to, I just think it's moderately interesting that. Even in that election, China, America's relationship becomes an issue. You mentioned Prince Charles there. I think we should, you know, as the resident non royalist, I think we should praise and thank him for the fact that he was open about having treatment for an enlarged prostate, which according to the prostate cancer charities has led to a massive, enormous uptake in men who are normally a bit shy about coming forward about these things, getting their prostate checked.
40:43 Rory Stewart? Yeah, very good thing. I'm going to go and get mine checked.
40:45 Alastair Campbell? Soft power, we call that.
40:47 Rory Stewart? Very good. Okay, thank you very much.
40:52 Rory Stewart? All right, well, thank you, Alastair. And I think just as we close the session, breaking news, there was one download in Tuvalu over the last month, which implies to me that 0.01% of the population of Tuvalu is currently listening to our podcast. So we could at least triple our listeners in Tuvalu, I think, with your intervention.
41:09 Alastair Campbell? Do we have a High Commissioner there?
41:11 Rory Stewart? I think, yeah, we should, we should have, yeah. I think, well, there's definitely been acting Governor General of some sort.
41:16 Alastair Campbell? We do have a lot of listeners inside the Foreign Office. I wonder if it's the High Commissioner.
41:19 Rory Stewart? I'm not sure we have someone resident there. I think probably the acting Governor General will be a local Tuvalu citizen.
41:26 Alastair Campbell? There is a government representative there. When, when King Charles and Queen Camilla head to Tuvalu, there has to be somebody to greet them on the red carpet.
41:33 Rory Stewart? Yeah, you don't, you don't think it's somebody from some other part of the archipelago coming over to?
41:38 Alastair Campbell? Could be, could be a British tourist on holiday. Anyway, I am, we will report back next week how many new listeners we have in Tuvalu for having talked about the election in Tuvalu.
41:49 Rory Stewart? Thank you very much. Bye bye, Alastair.
41:51 Alastair Campbell? Bye.
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