Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 230. Question Time: £91,000… Should MPs be paid more? About this episode Why do so few people know who the Lib Dem leader is? Should the arts feature more prominently in school curriculums? What are freeports and should we be concerned about them?
Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's TRIP Question Time.
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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 and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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1:32 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.
1:35 Rory Stewart? And me, Rory Stewart.
1:37 Alastair Campbell? Now Rory, what do you think was the subject which was raised by most of our listeners this week?
1:43 Rory Stewart? I had a clue because you've been sending me WhatsApps. It's Freeportz, isn't it?
1:47 Alastair Campbell? Correct. Let me just go through. We'd literally had dozens on it. And I don't know whether this was because... I don't know why it's suddenly sort of taken off, but I think it's important that it has. So let's just go through some of them. David Powell, who's actually something of an expert on this, is, please, please talk about soon at 12 free ports and 74 special economic zones. I've been researching these for five plus years, spoken at public meetings. This is very serious. The UK has been privatised. It's all because of Brexit. Russ Ferri, I'd like to know more about special economic zones and free ports. Why are these massive changes being done so quietly? Is this what Brexit was about? Pete Coates, what is Labour's policy on free ports and special economic zones? Did Keir Starmer box himself in by stating so clearly that Labour would not rejoin single market or customs union? And so it
2:32 Alastair Campbell? goes on.
2:33 Rory Stewart? Let me, let me just sort of take straightforwardly the case on free ports. So as we've said before, the idea of a free port is to create an area in a country which has different types of incentives for investment, trying to get for direct investment in. So you offer tax breaks, you offer lower regulation, you make trade easier. And in Britain, they're combining this, so combining creating a zone which they hope investors are going to flood into because they'll find it a place where they're going to be able to do business more easily, make money more easily. They're trying to combine it with levelling up and regeneration. So they're choosing bits of the country where they really want to get the economy going,
3:14 Rory Stewart? and they're creating these areas. And as the question said, there are 12 of these in Britain. The biggest one is on Teesside and probably the most controversial, where I think something like 4,500 acres of land have been designated as a free port and.
3:30 Alastair Campbell? Sold for a pound an acre.
3:31 Rory Stewart? Yeah. And the idea is if you go and if you're a business investing there, you get much better capital allowances, so you get huge tax write offs on your investment. You get reductions on your stamp duty, reductions on employers' national insurance, so it makes it cheaper for you to employ people. As the free port implies, if you import a product... You can turn it around, manufacture it and export it without complicated customs procedures or duty. So basically, you bring it in, put it in, ship it out again. And the councils get a hundred percent of the growth in business rates. So in the optimistic idea on T side, it was supposed to produce something astonishing like five point two billion pounds worth of economic benefits because of the links to transport links. And that the optimistic
4:14 Rory Stewart? story is this is how China most dramatically got its economic development going. So in a place called Shenzhen, which was a kind of sleepy fishing village near Hong Kong, they created one of these zones, investment poured in, technology transfer poured in, Singapore's done it, UAE's done it, India's done it, and Bangalore, Vietnam's done it. And it wasn't in this relation, this question about European Union, wasn't possible when you remember the European Union, because you had to follow European Union.
4:40 Alastair Campbell? But there are free ports in Europe.
4:42 Rory Stewart? Of this sort?
4:43 Alastair Campbell? Not, not, well, it is true that these may have greater freedoms. I mean, the T port is a very interesting example, though, because you talk about the, this sort of vast area of land, which has been sold to a couple, few local businessmen for a pound an acre. They've already made tens of millions. These guys are seen sort of swanning around Middlesbrough in their Bentleys and their private jets and all the rest of it. And yet, so I do think, I, I, I am not by nature, kind of, you know, leftist paranoid conspiracy theorists, but I do think, and I wrote about this in my book, that the, the Jacob Rees Mogg father's vision of the sovereign individual, I think this is partly what this is about.
5:24 Alastair Campbell? This is about taking people who are already pretty powerful and pretty wealthy out of government. So these are places where people will be able to bring in their own environmental protections, or lack of, their own employment laws, their own tax regimes, as you say. And we're talking, we're not talking about a country as vast as India, we're talking about the United Kingdom. And some of these, so for example, the one down in the West Country, covers the whole of Dartmoor. The whole of Dartmoor is now part of one of these special zones where these special measures will be allowed for those who invest. So we are effectively handing over vast swathes of territory to private corporations. And when you look at the guy driving this, this guy who I think should be a lot more famous than he is, Shankar Singham, who's
6:09 Alastair Campbell? this, you know, very libertarian, right wing, currently sort of promoting Liz Truss because she's on this current bandwagon. I worry about this and I, and I do think it's, I worry as well that, so for example, Byline Times did a forty four page special on this. We should actually put it in the, it was, it was some time ago, but we were talking about Wales in the main podcast and, you know, Mark Drakeford was, was welcoming these, a couple of free ports into Wales. But I, I, I think that the way these are going and the lesson of, of T-Sport is we're losing any sense of democratic control. So last week you had Michael Gove shoving some of the money, council money into this. Well, you know, where is the local democracy in that?
6:53 Rory Stewart? So to make the argument on the other side, we're desperate to try to get investment into Britain. And, and, you know, you and I both agree that one of the problems here has been Brexit has led to a real problem for direct investment, real problem for manufacturing in Britain. Personally, I'd like to see us rejoin the customs union. I don't, I don't think it's the right thing to do. And I also think that from a theoretical economic point of view, it'd be much better to do this stuff across the country, be serious about trying to produce growth everywhere, not in little areas. But we've also talked a lot on this show about the fact that we can't get anything built in Britain. You know, it costs twice as much to build a road here as it does in France. You know, you make jokes about the fact that the third runway was being talked about when you were in a ninety seven, signaling
7:37 Rory Stewart? on Piccadilly line's still not being fixed. So we are a country where our planning regulations and lots of things which are good, right? Local democracy, civil society, activist groups fundamentally mean that we're completely stuck. We're not making infrastructure investment. We just had to abandon HS2, basically, because every group along the way threw so many objections in the way that the thing increased from 25 billion to over 120 billion in its estimates. So the only way, I think realistically, that the government's going to be able to make really strong, quick infrastructure investments and get investment in is by defining parts of the country which are not controlled by those regulations.
8:19 Rory Stewart? Because even though, you know, from a theoretical point of view, if you think we've got too many regulations, too much bureaucracy, too much red tape, we want to get infrastructure done, and therefore you need to change it across the whole country, that's not going to happen. No government is going to be able to take on the battle of infrastructure right the way across the country.
8:34 Alastair Campbell? Okay, but if your argument is that the country is not going to wear that being done across the country, why is the country seeming to wear this being done in these pockets around the country? And why is there such a debate about it?
8:50 Rory Stewart? I suppose the answer is that the government has tried to find areas which have been excluded, where there's been a lot of inequality, where there's been a lot of poverty, and they're trying to bring economic growth into areas. They're not focusing on London, right? They're focusing on areas like Teesside. And so what they are trying to say is if we're serious about growth, and this is why Labour's position on this is quite complicated, and I think Labour's, you know, Drakeford did welcome this stuff. If you're looking for ways to generate growth, you've got to get investment in, you've got to get infrastructure built, you've got to get businesses going. And boy, oh, boy, is it difficult to do it across the country as a whole.
9:29 Alastair Campbell? Well, the thing in Teesside has an absolute whiff to me. You're flogging off land at a pound an acre to local business people, the product there of which thus far appears to me to be close to zero.
9:42 Rory Stewart? So this is the same... Problem that you have always when the government negotiates with businesses, which is government tends to get ripped off.
9:50 Alastair Campbell? Well, in this case, it seems willingly.
9:52 Rory Stewart? I so I think what what happens usually, and this is true when, you know, I don't know, when Toyota or some big carmaker says, we're only going to build a factory in Britain if you write us a cheque for 400 million. I mean, these are big inward investment grants and stuff where you get tax breaks. The business always says, this doesn't make financial sense for us. The government says, okay, what have we got to offer you to come in? And the business says, well, for us to make money, we've got to, you know, get a really ridiculous deal. It's particularly extreme, of course, in in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, right, where mining companies come in and sign a deal with the local government and agree that you're going to get 30 years tax-free income. And they claim they need that to have the confidence to make an investment. So my guess is the government's been ripped off in Teeside again, but I don't think.
10:37 Alastair Campbell? But that's their flagship freeport. That's their big project.
10:39 Rory Stewart? But but I guess where I'm I'm not sure that I buy into your conspiracy. I don't think it's corruption. I think it's government in a tearing hurry, desperate to get this thing off the ground, being out negotiated by businesses, as you were, unfortunately, with PFI's a lot. I mean, I think government's really bad at negotiating with businesses. And this is one of the problems about getting the private sector in, that the
10:59 Alastair Campbell? But this is willing.
11:00 Rory Stewart? The private sector always pretends that it needs this stuff, and often it doesn't need half as much as the government gives it.
11:07 Alastair Campbell? But I think this policy has been hiding in plain sight. I I do think if you if you go back to this libertarian right vision of the world, this is fundamental to it.
11:17 Rory Stewart? Oh, yes, because because, I mean, remember when people doing Brexit, they were talking about Singapore on Thames.
11:21 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely.
11:22 Rory Stewart? And what they're trying to do is trying to do these Singapore models.
11:25 Alastair Campbell? Little patches of Singapore.
11:25 Rory Stewart? Yeah, little patches of Singapore around the country. Yeah.
11:27 Alastair Campbell? If you look at the map, I'm just got the got the map here of the of the one in Dartmoor. So look at that. That's Plymouth, Tavistock, Dartmouth, and the whole of Dartmoor.
11:37 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I don't quite get that one.
11:38 Alastair Campbell? South Devon Charter City.
11:39 Rory Stewart? I think we need to understand a little bit more about that. It's a bit weird.
11:42 Alastair Campbell? It is very weird.
11:43 Rory Stewart? Dartmoor is largely a protected landscape. I don't really get how that works.
11:46 Alastair Campbell? The other thing I think that when you look at the OECD analysis of these free ports.
11:51 Rory Stewart? Dartmoor, as far as I know, is kind of shaggy ponies, isn't it?
11:53 Alastair Campbell? And prisons, and a prison.
11:54 Rory Stewart? Exactly.
11:55 Alastair Campbell? That's where Fiona and I courted.
11:56 Rory Stewart? Very good. Dartmoor Prison.
11:58 Alastair Campbell? Dartmoor.
11:58 Rory Stewart? It's actually quite a good prison. It was run by, run by.
12:02 Alastair Campbell? Pretty bleak.
12:03 Rory Stewart? Yeah, it's a bleak, bleak place. But Bridie Richardson, who ran it, ran a really good prison there.
12:07 Alastair Campbell? Well, stop getting me off prison. I'm staying on free ports despite Dom trying to move me off. So for the OECD, very, very clear about the link between the sort of free market, laissez-faire, ultra neoliberal free ports and organised crime. We hear nothing. There's just so little debate about this. So fair play. And I'm going to give a shout out to Carol Vorderman, who's been presenting on LBC. She's been banging on about this, and I think that might be the reason we've had so many questions.
12:35 Rory Stewart? Great. Well, let's talk about it more because I think it's worth having the debate. I mean, I think there will be a lot of particularly right wing economists and businesses out there who will be saying this is.
12:44 Alastair Campbell? That's who's been done for.
12:46 Rory Stewart? This is just what we need, that this country, the taxes are too high, the regulations are too thing. We can generate massive economic growth in a deprived country, but not under the current regulations.
12:56 Alastair Campbell? I would say that Shankar Singham is singing all the way to the bank.
12:59 Rory Stewart? There we are. You see? Okay. I don't know what that Shankar Singham and his bank. Anyway, thank you for raising that.
13:03 Alastair Campbell? Okay. Now, here's one on the back of our leading interview this week, Mint Kondish. The Albin Kurti interview, that's the Prime Minister of Kosovo, was interesting. Thank you. Especially agreeing on where to compromise and where not to. In an increasingly polarised political world, what are both your approaches on compromising with parties and actors that don't align with your politics and values?
13:24 Rory Stewart? Well, one quick thing before we. So if people haven't listened to Albin Kurti, do because. We are very, very close, I fear, to the risk of a conflict again in Kosovo and possibly also spilling over into Bosnia. And it's heartbreaking because Bosnia and Kosovo were the successors of the 90s and we're in a world in which we've, I guess, we've had terrible failures in Libya and Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan and Ukraine and in Israel Gaza. And Kosovo and Bosnia were clinging on to as one of the few success stories. And it's at real risk. And you can hear it. I mean, one of the tricks, I think my friend Gerald Klaus, who I love from ESI, says is
14:09 Rory Stewart? the trick is listening to politicians speaking in their own local language and their local media. And you can see Vukic in Serbia very, very explicitly building up to annexing northern Kosovo. And another thing we should talk about a little bit more, which is the other war, which may be about to break out, which is Azerbaijan going after more bits of Armenia. Anyway, but back to you on what do you think on Cotty and then we'll get on to compromise.
14:35 Alastair Campbell? Well, I listened back to it yesterday and I thought it was in relation to the question, this thing about compromises is really interesting because he was very, very uncompromising, perfectly prepared to upset the Americans, to upset the Europeans, to upset the Serbs, to upset the Russians. And it's a very, very small country. It's like, as you said, I think the size of between Cumbria and Yorkshire. And one of the people I talked to in advance of interview, I think I said on the interview, had said that he's a little bit like a cross between Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. If you see him as that sort of absolutely, he knows what he believes, he's not being budged off it. And yet, he seems to think that is the best way for him to approach his job. So it was interesting.
15:20 Rory Stewart? Well, I guess we sort of like to talk about this in Freeport's because it's certainly true in negotiation that some people do very well by just sticking to their guns and not shifting. And it's, I mean, in life, right? You do come across people where I'm always somebody who has a slight tendency to split the middle. And often you can do quite well by just digging your heels in and saying, I'm not shifting an inch. Were the politicians who you thought in New Labour, who you thought were quite good at just digging their heels in and saying, we're not going to find it? Another shift on this.
15:48 Alastair Campbell? Do you mean politicians that we were dealing with? Or I'd say that Sinn Fein were very, very good negotiators, I'd say, on that basis. I always felt with the with the unionist side that even when they were digging the heels in, you kind of you sensed.
16:03 Rory Stewart? They might move.
16:04 Alastair Campbell? Where well, you sense where they might move to.
16:06 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
16:06 Alastair Campbell? Sinn Fein, less so. I think Robin Cook was a very good negotiator. I think Robin was somebody who was was prepared to dig heels in. In terms of the other sort of European leaders, I remember Schroder always struck me as somebody who was, you know, never far away from sort of punching you in the mouth if you if you pushed him too far.
16:28 Rory Stewart? Of course, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel has a reputation for being quite wily and compromising domestically, but has been very uncompromising internationally.
16:37 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. No, it's an interesting, it's an interesting. Anyway, I I agree with you. I think the Balkans are a fascinating region, and I think it is quite worrying what's going on there. Which is also just say, by the way, we talked in the main podcast about, I think we had a question on this about the Americans in Niger, because that's yet another country where the Americans are being pushed out.
16:55 Rory Stewart? No, it's and and this is, this is, you know, without returning bitterly to my argument with our friend Jamie Rubin, when I was suggesting American power was waning, and he was mocking me and saying, oh, you get the impression it's waning, you get the impression how convenient for you.
17:10 Alastair Campbell? How did you know what the world is thinking?
17:12 Rory Stewart? One of the reasons I think I can sense what the world is thinking is that we can see how America is being pushed out of places like the hell, and how so many bits of US Western policy have collapsed pretty recently. So that whole belt of Africa, we talked about the Middle East just now, the complete inability to do anything about what's happening between Azerbaijan and Armenia. You know, we talked in the last podcast about UAE and India congratulating Putin on his reelection. I mean.
17:43 Alastair Campbell? Now, here's one, a public service announcement. We don't even need to discuss this, really. Just let's read it out. Brian Keating, please remind everyone ASAP that they, family, friends, especially younger friends and family, are properly registered to vote. What kinds of ID can be used, that they can apply for ID? Around 4% of all non-voters said they didn't vote because of the voter ID requirement. So this is the new thing. I think it starts on May the 2nd with local mayor elections. You have to have voter ID, passport, driving licence.
18:12 Alastair Campbell? All the usual ones, but if you're in London and you're young, you cannot use your Oyster card.
18:17 Rory Stewart? Right, right, right, right. Okay, Alison, let's take a quick break.
18:57 Rory Stewart? Art of Building Towns, Toby Lloyd. Seems we've lost the art of building and growing towns as opposed to land-hungry, drive-to-cul-de-sacs. So, Cretes Streets has produced a new... Cretes Streets, very interesting organisation, which I think is actually now working quite closely with Labour, which is very encouraging. Anyway, new report on growing new towns. Stepping off the road to nowhere shows how we can build on less than half the land by using more terraces and mid-rise housing. What's stopping us from doing this at scale across the UK? What's your advice on making large structural changes like this happen in the government? So, one of the points here is that Britain tends to do one of two things. It either, in the past, used to build skyscrapers, and quite a lot of those going up in London, or it has this low-rise sprawl, so sort of single-house dwellings.
19:43 Rory Stewart? In fact, the most dense bits of London are weirdly things like Sloane Avenue, kind of Chelsea South Cam, where you have these seven-storey mansion blocks, which is how Paris is kind of operated. And the real way that we can conserve things like the Greenbelt, build more housing without getting in huge fights with people, is to go up to gentle density, five, seven stories. And the problem at the moment is that the government is just not allowing the planning to make it easy for people to go upwards.
20:15 Alastair Campbell? So, you're easier if you're in a sort of, you know, Canary Wharf-type place, you can go up to eighty, hundred stories, but if you're... In most of London, getting up to five, six, seven.
20:24 Rory Stewart? It's very difficult. And the, and the problem with a hundred stories stuff is that you then, because the regulations have to have a huge bit of green space around the base of it. So you actually end up putting fewer people per acre than you would if you went to six, seven stories. So I think it's a really good challenge. And, you know, if you looked at a map of London, the real potential is to put more gentle density into these huge areas of suburbs that sprawl out towards the M twenty five.
20:49 Alastair Campbell? But you'd be knocking down an awful lot of houses to rebuild, presumably.
20:52 Rory Stewart? You would have to knock down and rebuild a lot, but potentially if you were sitting on a house and the government gave you permission to turn it into a dwelling place for three people.
21:02 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
21:03 Rory Stewart? It might make sense.
21:03 Alastair Campbell? So we need to think more about homes and less about houses.
21:06 Rory Stewart? More about homes, less about houses, and more about, you know, not apartments. I mean, of course, Germans, I guess, live more in apartments.
21:13 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, own less.
21:15 Rory Stewart? Own less, yeah.
21:15 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. Um, now Grenfell, Joey McCarthy, Alastair and Rory, your conversation about Theresa May's legacy was really interesting. However, it feels remiss not to mention her mishandling of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. She failed to meet with survivors immediately after, failed to properly house residents quickly and properly after, and failed to act decisively on cladding regulations to prevent another tragedy happen again. How can this not play a role in her legacy? We got a lot of good feedback, actually, in our discussion on Theresa May, uh, which I thought was quite balanced and rounded. But did we not men, did we talk about Grenfell? Maybe we didn't.
21:51 Rory Stewart? We did, we didn't. And it was, and it was, um, it was a, a huge, uh, scar on her legacy because Grenfell, as people remember, was just such an iconic symbol. I mean, it went out like, up like a kind of Roman candle on them. I, I went to, to Grenfell, um, soon afterwards and it was just astonishing to see something like that in, in Britain. I mean, the deaths, but also the sense that it was a very poor area of the country, that people living in those blocks were often from very low income immigrant backgrounds.
22:24 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
22:25 Rory Stewart? You saw churches and mosques doing an incredible amount around the base. But my goodness, it was, it was a horrible symbol of a bit of London that had gone really, really badly wrong. And, and there's a, if people are really interested in the details of this, Andrew O'Hagan wrote a very brave and quite controversial long article in London Review of Books, which was, yes, critical of Theresa May and the government, but very, very critical of lots of other people. Including Labour, including councillors, including the property developers, including the regulators. And Andrew Higgin was really attacked for the article because people were trying to make it into a real black and white reality tale. What he tells is basically a story of an entire establishment problem of twenty different
23:10 Rory Stewart? organisations of all different party political complexions failing to deal with a problem that was, should have been easy to predict.
23:18 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think we've talked before about how little, given how many people are living in what we would define as abject poverty at the moment, how little they actually feature in the political debate or the media debate. Now, Rory, here's a polling question. Harry from Ipsos, what do you think of the fact that under a third of British people can name the leader of the Liberal Democrats?
23:43 Rory Stewart? So Ipsos have done a poll for us and it's really interesting. And so we'll put the results in the newsletter. So seven in ten can name Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, but only, I think, twelve or thirteen percent can name Richard Tice and about thirty percent can name Ed Deby. So that's pretty dramatic. Seventy percent of the country don't know who the leader of Lib Dems are.
24:04 Alastair Campbell? Now, hold on a minute, but a third, thirty percent don't know who the Prime Minister is? No, that cannot be right.
24:10 Rory Stewart? I think surprisingly is right. I think it is surprisingly right. I mean, remember Darren Bent thought that one of the two of us was Prime Minister, didn't he?
24:18 Alastair Campbell? I hope it was me. But, I mean, how can you not know who the Prime Minister is? Isn't that one of the things that when you were first tested for dementia, people ask you who the Prime Minister is?
24:31 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, that's why a lot of my older friends think it's a bit unfair because they think a lot of these questions, nobody knows the answer to.
24:37 Alastair Campbell? Well, that's depressing. I find that incredibly depressing.
24:40 Rory Stewart? Well, it is. It's very interesting. I mean, let's say it's true, and of course, figures often.
24:45 Alastair Campbell? Have you ever met anybody?
24:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
24:48 Alastair Campbell? Well, who doesn't know who the Prime Minister is?
24:49 Rory Stewart? Lots of people. I mean, as I say, Darren Bent genuinely got confused about who the Prime Minister is. No, no, I mean, lots of people who don't know the Prime Minister, particularly young people when I'm in schools. If you ask.
24:58 Alastair Campbell? I am. Oh, no.
25:00 Rory Stewart? If you ask people to stick their hands up if they know what the name of the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition is, it's remarkable how you can always find someone in a classroom who doesn't know the answer to that question.
25:10 Alastair Campbell? But third, thirty percent.
25:12 Rory Stewart? No, no, I, I, it's pretty consistent. I think, I think with Theresa May, the number at one point was worse. The only people that have sort of almost universal recognition are the kind of the crooks. I mean, it's people like Boris Johnson. It's sort of off the stratosphere. How many people were able to recognize his name?
25:29 Alastair Campbell? I finally watched the Channel Four series, by the way. It really is upsetting.
25:34 Rory Stewart? That's about, it's called The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson. Yeah. Is it good?
25:38 Alastair Campbell? It's very well made, but it's incredibly depressing because you just watch it thinking, how the hell did we as a country ever allow this to happen?
25:48 Rory Stewart? Anyway, just to come back to this.
25:51 Rory Stewart? If it's true that thirty percent of people don't know who Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak are, that also is a reminder when we talk about citizenship and newspapers, I mean, their names are in the newspapers and on the news.
26:03 Alastair Campbell? All the time.
26:04 Rory Stewart? All the time, front page, front page, front page, day after day after day. So it's a reminder that about a third of the population is paying zero attention to anything in the newspaper or on the news.
26:16 Alastair Campbell? Is that not a reason? This is something I discussed a lot in Australia. I think compulsory voting would help. I think it would make people feel, hmm, I ought to take a bit of an interest, even if I'm not that bothered.
26:26 Rory Stewart? Yeah, although of course I suppose, I mean, I'm with you, I agree in compulsory voting, but my friend John, who's very anti compulsory voting, is like, that's exactly why you shouldn't have it because a third of these people don't even know who the Prime Minister is. So why should they be voting?
26:36 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
26:38 Rory Stewart? Exactly. I'm with you on compulsory voting. On, on the Lib Dems.
26:43 Rory Stewart? They are in real trouble, aren't they? And they're always in trouble because they don't know what they're going to do. I mean, I, we interviewed Ed Davey, you quite liked him, didn't you? We interviewed him on Leading. But I felt, and I've been reflecting on this over the last couple of days, that the challenge he faced is that he really struggles to appeal to someone like me. And I should be the kind of person he wants. So somebody who's left the Conservative Party can't quite bring themselves to vote for Labour. The Lib Dems should have an offer and they should be saying, one nation Conservatives, you know, come to us.
27:14 Alastair Campbell? I think they are saying that in those parts of the country where they're campaigning.
27:18 Rory Stewart? But in the thing.
27:19 Alastair Campbell? But without a national message.
27:20 Rory Stewart? Yeah, but the thing with Ed Davey on Leading, you know, the emotional reaction I took from it was that he was saying to me, everything good that happened on the coalition government had been done solely by the Lib Dems and the Tories were kind of evil. And if their Lib Dems hadn't been there, we would have been even more evil.
27:37 Rory Stewart? So I really felt it was quite kind of partisan and quite kind of, he was trying to draw a dividing line between the Lib Dems, the Tories, which I don't think is smart because I don't think he's going to get many Labour votes. I would have thought his strategy needs to be to appeal to moderate Tories. And I don't know, am I missing that?
27:55 Alastair Campbell? I mean, I, I think that the seats where they are most likely to win are seats that they take off the Tories. There aren't that many seats that are going to be Labour Liberal marginals. I think Nick Clegg's old seat might be one of them.
28:09 Rory Stewart? Sheffield.
28:09 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but the Tory seats that they're going for, I think the message that they need is one that ought to be tailored towards somebody like you. I mean, I watched a little bit on the news of their, of their spring conference and I, I don't, I think it's hard to say there was a crystal clear message coming through that they're, they're going to, they're going to take to the country.
28:27 Rory Stewart? They've got this famous problem, haven't they, in First Past The Post, which is that they could do a strong national message, sort of thing that we would like, you know, come out strongly for customs union immediately. And then their fear is that they could get up to, let's say, twenty, twenty-five percent of the vote nationally.
28:42 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
28:43 Rory Stewart? But what really matters then is trying to win these individual seats.
28:46 Alastair Campbell? They are, that's what, that is their strategy.
28:48 Rory Stewart? It's to go after.
28:49 Alastair Campbell? So for example, I, I was talking to one of them when the whole Rochdale by-election thing was saying, and I said, look, you know, Labour are pulling the plug on their candidate, surely there's an opportunity. They said, you know, Rochdale's so far down our list that we're not even going to go for it. Um. So they didn't. So they, they, I think they've got a pretty focused strategy.
29:06 Rory Stewart? But that may have been a mistake, right?
29:07 Alastair Campbell? It might have been, but they'd obviously worked out with the limited resources they've got. It's not worth putting it all into that. They've got local elections to fight, local elections coming up and made this.
29:15 Rory Stewart? I would have thought that's a mistake because Rochdale was getting so much coverage.
29:18 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah.
29:19 Rory Stewart? And if you had a really exciting charismatic Lib Dem candidate in a bi election.
29:22 Alastair Campbell? I think you could have gone for it. Yeah, yeah. But they decided not. And then likewise, I think that there are some seats down in the West Country that they're absolutely fixated upon going for and the others that they're ignoring.
29:31 Rory Stewart? And that's why, of course, they won't come out and do the bold things we'd like, like coming out immediately for a custodian.
29:36 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, they'll be fighting very localised campaigns.
29:37 Rory Stewart? Because they're worried that their local voter may not be won over if they're seen as too pro EU.
29:42 Alastair Campbell? But if under a third of people know who the leader is, that suggests there's a bit of a message issue going on. Now, the arts, from one Rory to another, this is from Rory, brother of James, as in muscles, mules.
29:58 Alastair Campbell? In light of Labour's Access to Arts Plan, how important do you think the Arts for the UK as soft power in the current geopolitical climate are? Should it be more prominent in the curriculum? Uh, yes, definitely. I actually liked Keir Starmer's speech on the arts. I liked the fact that he was putting the arts, yes, as part of an economic message, but also per se, it is good that kids learn about the arts. I think we need a bit more of that. I think, I, I, I think the arts are a big part of what makes the country special and what's, what makes people's lives special.
30:32 Rory Stewart? Well, it's, it's definitely, I mean, judging by my, uh, my six year old, when I ask him what his favourite subject is in school, it's, it's always either football or art, seems to be.
30:40 Alastair Campbell? Football?
30:40 Rory Stewart? Football and art. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You should come play, yeah, exactly. Come play football.
30:43 Alastair Campbell? Well, that's why you can't send him to, you know, one of these awful posh schools where they think that rugger.
30:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah, exactly.
30:48 Alastair Campbell? And the wall game.
30:49 Rory Stewart? That's right, exactly. No, football, football and art seem to be, seem to be his things. Little trail for an amazing, uh, interview we've just done with Anthony Gormley, who is, um, we're not going to make assumptions, given that certain people don't know who Rishi Sunak is. Uh, Anthony Gormley, Britain's probably most famous living sculptor, who, most famous for Angel of the North.
31:12 Rory Stewart? For example, extraordinary thing that you see when you go out the east coast road. And in that, I think he talks very, very movingly about both why government support for the arts is important. Why allowing artists to criticize governments is important. You know, he's really good at calling out a tendency which this conservative government has to say, why are we funding all these bunch of lefty artists to criticize us? But also, I think, making the case for just kind of art and giving meaning to life, giving fulfillment to life.
31:40 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think it's out next week. So, no, I really enjoyed talking to him. I think it, I think people will enjoy it. And he was, this was before, we recorded it before we knew that Keir Starmer was making this big speech about the arts. But he actually was already sold on Labour because of the commitment to the arts. No, I think people will really, really enjoy that interview. He's a very, very smart guy. And will reveal to the world his, his little notebook. Where he does his little scribbles as we're talking and he's, he's never off, he's never off. And yes, will also reveal that he and I are doppelgänger.
32:18 Rory Stewart? Yes, that's true. Yes, I'd forgotten that. You actually basically look like the same. It's like me and Danny DeVito.
32:23 Alastair Campbell? Or you and the guy in the bear.
32:25 Rory Stewart? Maybe that's more flattering than Danny DeVito. Red J, is it possible to halt privatization in the NHS or is it commodification inevitable? That's a question which maybe unfairly suggests a particular political commodity capitalism commodification.
32:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, also the name Red J.
32:44 Rory Stewart? Red J may also give stuff away.
32:46 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I think it's Jeremy.
32:47 Rory Stewart? We did this interview, which was actually, I think, quite successful on leading again with Sacha Javid, who was the Health Secretary. And people should listen. One of the points he makes in it is that when Gordon Brown came in, health spending as percentage of the sort of current flexible spending government was about 27%. It's now got up to 45% and it's heading towards 50%. That's the CDEL, particular type of flexible government funding. And.
33:13 Alastair Campbell? Is that health and social care?
33:14 Rory Stewart? No, it's just health, but but within the C D A L budget, which is the government budget is divided into two bits, but of that important flexible bit, nearly forty five percent is now health. So he argues very strongly that firstly, we need to be obvious about it across party commission to talk about this stuff openly. But clearly something's not working and it isn't, as I keep saying, just a question of money. It's true that Gordon Brown put in a huge amount of money, but actually Boris Johnson turned the taps on. Theresa May turned the taps on because she was trying to follow through on this ridiculous promise on the side of a bus about three hundred million. So a lot more money's gone into the N H S and it's not resulting in service that patients want and or doctors
33:58 Rory Stewart? or nurses, I mean, people feel whole things creaking. So thinking about what we can do to harness new technology and A I, which I think can make an incredible difference to healthcare and delivery, thinking about how we get the balance right on managing, thinking about, you know, my favorite leading interview ever, Alan Milburn.
34:18 Alastair Campbell? Is that your favorite of all of them?
34:19 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I'm still absolutely in love with Alan Milburn, who is the Labour Health Secretary.
34:24 Alastair Campbell? Get over it.
34:24 Rory Stewart? Who who brought some of this private stuff in and he would say that it's not an either or, that you need to have a bit of space for the private sector, it's not going to function.
34:32 Alastair Campbell? It was interesting when I was over in Australia recently, how they're very, very proud of their health service, but they do have a kind of hybrid system. And also, I think I said to you, I bumped into several people, doctors and nurses, who'd gone from the U K to Australia and said they just found it so much better to be there. And it wasn't just lifestyle and it wasn't even just money.
34:54 Rory Stewart? Although the lifestyle's great.
34:55 Alastair Campbell? The lifestyle's great and the money's better. But one of them actually said that you've got no idea what how nice it is to go to work as a doctor and not be insulted and abused all the time. So there's something going on within, I mean, I think the NHS, I think we've got to be very, very careful not to, not to throw out the fundamentals. But at the same time, I do think West Streeting is starting to make noises that recognise there's going to have to be some pretty big changes in the systems and how they operate without necessarily coming along with this sort of vast set of Lansley-type reforms that make things worse. It's going to be, it's going to be one of Labour's biggest challenges right now.
35:33 Rory Stewart? We should get West Streeting on leading. I think that'd be great. Very good. Well, let's, let's get him on because I think the NHS has got to be, I think. This slightly relates to Thomas Johnson. Last week, it's announced that MPs will be receiving a pay rise linked to inflation in April, met with the usual backlash on social media. However, it seems to me the biggest issue is not with the pay rise itself, but instead what MPs do or have done to deserve the pay rise, many having second, third jobs. Do you think there's a case to be made for MPs having a full-time contract, as most employers around the country do, with set working hours and annual leave? I mean, it's really interesting this because being a member of parliament is the last completely undefined job. You've got a no-job description. I mean, MPs do work very long hours, but in a way, it might not just be better for
36:15 Rory Stewart? the public, it might even be better for the MPs' general wellbeing and health if there was this sort of stipulation. I mean, a lot of my colleagues did work 18, 90-hour weeks and it wasn't good for them. It's not actually often the other way around that everyone thinks we're idle, but I think this, this, in the modern world, this is also why I'm sort of slightly coming around to a written constitution. There's something to be said for slightly more predictability, a clearer contract, clearer expectations, rather than this weird sort of muddled kind of half-spiritual vocation, half-boondoggle. And, and, you know, talking about salaries, you know, frankly, one of the reasons that a lot of people go to Australia or the States is that they're paid more, right? And that's because the US spends much, much more money on a private healthcare system
37:00 Rory Stewart? and we're not really working out how to deal with markets. You know, we also talk on the podcast about, in fact, in Singapore, ministers get a million dollars a year. I don't know how one does that, but my personal view is reduce the number of MPs, get down to, I don't know, House of Commons half the size and double their salaries.
37:19 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but you said, you made the point that as an MP, and I, Keir Starmer, who's my local MP, and he had, he had an article in the local paper this week where he said he was. Somebody complained that he'd become less accessible since he became leader of the Labour Party. And would he be worse if he was Prime Minister? He said that he was as accessible as ever in terms of going around the constituency. But I think he said he had eleven hundred constituency cases on the go at one time, which his staff are having to address as a constituency MP. And you tell the story about, you know, Willie Whiteley used to do all his handwritten letters to the half a dozen cases he got. So the demand, I think the sort of, the bit you didn't add to the list of what an MP is,
37:59 Alastair Campbell? is sort of social worker, Citizens Advice Bureau, legal adviser, all these things that they have to take on.
38:06 Rory Stewart? When I was running to be leader, one of my colleagues, who's an MP for Swindon, wrote to my constituents, telling them basically to vote for Boris Johnson and not, not vote for me, on the grounds that he thought that I wasn't spending enough time in my constituency. At the time, I was the Secretary of State for International Development.
38:23 Alastair Campbell? That was a very friendly thing to do.
38:24 Rory Stewart? And my constituency, very friendly. And my constituency was three hundred and fifty miles north of London. So I made a real effort to get up there, but I couldn't be there all the time. And he was trying to introduce, I think, almost legislation in Parliament to define, I think that he wanted people in their constituencies three days a week. But that doesn't sit with our ministerial system. You know, I was trying to say, A, your constituency is much closer to London. B, I don't think Boris Johnson turns up in his constituency very much. C, I'm meant to be the Secretary-
38:55 Alastair Campbell? Certainly didn't turn up for the recent ballot.
38:56 Rory Stewart? Secretary of State for International Development, right? My job is trying to fly around the world and do development programmes in forty different countries. And therefore, I can't be in the constituency all the time.
39:05 Alastair Campbell? What was the name of this friendly person?
39:06 Rory Stewart? It's called Justin Tomlinson.
39:08 Alastair Campbell? Ah, a huge figure in our national party.
39:10 Rory Stewart? Huge figure, huge figure.
39:10 Alastair Campbell? Is he still around?
39:11 Rory Stewart? I believe so, although I don't think Swindon's going to be that safe. So I'm not sure he'll be around after.
39:16 Alastair Campbell? Where do you think is safe these days?
39:18 Rory Stewart? Well, this is-
39:19 Alastair Campbell? I think your old seat is safe.
39:20 Rory Stewart? No, I think it's, I think, I think my seat has been split up by the Boundary Commission, disappeared. I think it's, it's a loss of these sort of deep rural kind of Wiltshire seats that Tories will probably hang on to. There's going to be quite a lot of sort of, I think after next session, we'll quite a lot of sort of Buffton, Tufton, old MPs who've been in for a very long time.
39:39 Alastair Campbell? Penny Mordaunt safe?
39:40 Rory Stewart? No, no, no, very, I think-
39:41 Alastair Campbell? Michael Gove safe?
39:42 Rory Stewart? Actually, even there might be in trouble. No, the kind of people are safe, people who won't necessarily be always on your lips. Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, James Gray, these kind of figures who've been in for quite a long time.
39:55 Rory Stewart? Well, yes, I mean, Drax, as we've talked about, his family, I think it sort of owns most of the constituency, certainly, different as you may.
40:02 Alastair Campbell? Right. Final question, Rory. Sam Dyson. Rory, if offered, would you accept a position as an ambassador under a Starmer government? If so, which country would you like to be an ambassador to?
40:13 Rory Stewart? God, that's incredibly kind. I don't think the offer's been made.
40:17 Alastair Campbell? Sam's suggesting that it might be.
40:18 Rory Stewart? I think to be ambassador to the US would be unbelievably interesting and important for Britain, because I think Starmer's big priority, I think, has got to be to rebuild the UK-US relationship. You need an ambassador who knows the United States well and can deal with the US foreign policy system.
40:37 Alastair Campbell? I think Nigel Farage is pitching himself.
40:39 Rory Stewart? Hopefully. I don't think I've got much chance of getting that job, but I might have slightly more chance than Nigel Farage.
40:47 Alastair Campbell? I thought you might have said Myanmar or Afghanistan or...
40:52 Rory Stewart? Yeah, we don't, we don't have a name.
40:54 Alastair Campbell? What about, you see, I think the other thing that we should do is have regional ambassadors. We should have ambassadors for regions.
41:00 Rory Stewart? Gosh, okay.
41:01 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
41:02 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that's interesting.
41:03 Alastair Campbell? Middle East.
41:04 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
41:05 Alastair Campbell? Southeast Asia. We do it all very country by country.
41:07 Rory Stewart? So you could imagine a sort of super ambassador.
41:09 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. Would you fancy being a super ambassador? Or should I have that, next time I bump into Keir on the Heath, should I say?
41:14 Rory Stewart? This is really kind of you. If you're bumping into him on the Heath, my real pitch, which I need to make the West Streeting, is I would love to chair a kind of independent cross-party commission on the NHS. That would be my dream.
41:26 Alastair Campbell? Okay. Have you decided what it's going to conclude?
41:28 Rory Stewart? No.
41:29 Alastair Campbell? Or are you going to take it, are you going to be genuinely open-minded about this?
41:33 Rory Stewart? No, I think I'm genuinely open-minded. I think hopefully it can be a bit of practicality, a bit of open-mindedness. And I think the advantage of my not being Labour, not being Conservative, is that we might be able to get a bit of cross-party movement.
41:44 Alastair Campbell? Okay, I think that sounds quite interesting. We'll get Wes in and we'll put it to him.
41:47 Rory Stewart? Very good.
41:48 Alastair Campbell? Wes, I know you listen. See you soon.
41:50 Rory Stewart? See you soon. Bye-bye.
41:51 Alastair Campbell? Bye-bye.
42:06 Speaker 03 The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.
42:13 Speaker 04 We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.
42:20 Speaker 05 Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.
42:22 Speaker 06 They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.
42:25 Speaker 03 Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: you want to play, or not? You're the Prime Minister! You've done... NOTHING!
42:38 Speaker 07 We would need to understand the policy context.
42:40 Speaker 03 All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, and disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.
42:49 Speaker 05 A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?
42:54 Speaker 07 Yes.
42:56 Speaker 05 New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?
43:00 Speaker 08 You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy!
43:04 Speaker 05 An audio drama journey like no other.
43:06 Speaker 08 Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.
43:10 Speaker 05 Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.
43:13 Speaker 07 We have two types friendly key.
43:15 Speaker 05 Where Britain plays its strongest hand... He's the best. ...against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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