Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 279. The Day Britain Decides About this episode What do politicians actually do on polling day? How does it feel to hear you’re the next prime minister? Should we care that The Sun has backed Labour?
In the final episode of The Rest Is Politics before polling day, Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair Campbell? And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:05 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
1:16 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
1:22 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there. That's what.
1:26 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
1:29 Speaker 04 I'm not the first man.
1:30 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
1:43 Alastair Campbell? Hello. Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
1:46 Rory Stewart? And me, Rory Stewart.
1:47 Alastair Campbell? And this is our last podcast before the election. We're recording it in the bowels of these sort of swanky Channel 4 studios somewhere.
1:55 Rory Stewart? And in Hammersmith, there's something called the Queen Caroline Estate. And that's really interesting. So it's a sort of, I guess, 1950s looking tower blocks.
2:03 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
2:04 Rory Stewart? Named after either the wife of George II or the wife of George IV.
2:08 Alastair Campbell? Well, thank you for that, Stuart.
2:09 Rory Stewart? What's going on?
2:10 Alastair Campbell? The thing that I've just been asked to read.
2:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah, sure, sure.
2:12 Alastair Campbell? So we're, we are, we are going to be rehearsing why we have to, we don't rehearse the podcast too.
2:17 Rory Stewart? No, no, no, no.
2:18 Alastair Campbell? Anyway, we have to rehearse. And we're going to be with the likes of Emily Maitlis, Krishna Guramurthy and Hannah Fry.
2:23 Rory Stewart? Not Queen Caroline.
2:24 Alastair Campbell? Not Queen Caroline. She's, she's probably dead. In fact, she's certainly dead. If you were looking forward to our trip US episode this week with Kati Kay and Antis Karamouchi. Due to everything going on with our election in the UK, it's on a separate standalone US podcast feed this week. Just search The Rest is Politics US, wherever you get your podcasts. They've got a new episode out now where the Mooch explains why he thinks Joe Biden will not be in the race by the end of July. So they'll be back on our feed next week as normal. So Rory, what are we going to talk about today?
2:55 Rory Stewart? Well, I'm afraid we're going to have to begin with the awful subject of Boris Johnson and something you hate perhaps even more than you decide Boris Johnson, The Daily Mail.
3:04 Alastair Campbell? They, they, they run each other close. They do.
3:07 Rory Stewart? There we are. And this is the front cover of The Daily Mail. And on it, it says Boris and Rishi unite to stop Starmergeddon. And, and the quite interesting thing is that because they're not united, they barely spoke. That's the first time seeing each other. In fact, it's extraordinary. The only reason that Boris has turned up is to stamp on Rishi Sunak at the last moment. And get some weird credit, having not helped in the campaign.
3:30 Alastair Campbell? And also.
3:31 Rory Stewart? And then to stop Starmergeddon, they're not going to stop.
3:32 Alastair Campbell? In red, Starmergeddon in red.
3:34 Rory Stewart? And they won't stop Starmergeddon either. So there are two different views on this. You'll be astonished to hear The Daily Mail thinks he looks really healthy. Whereas The Guardian actually, so this is the front page of The Daily Mail and The Telegraph and The Times. They're all pictures of Boris Johnson comes to rally the Tory faithful at the last moment and turn it all around. The Guardian, because usually, you know, the papers have roughly the same story somewhere.
3:59 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
3:59 Rory Stewart? I literally, page one, nothing about him. Page two, nothing about him. Page three, nothing about him. Four, nothing about him. Finally, you get a sketch about him.
4:08 Alastair Campbell? John Kreis.
4:08 Rory Stewart? Saying he looks, and, and, and it's another example of this weird world that we live in, two completely parallel universes. Quentin Letts is telling us, at last, this was the speech that we needed over the last six weeks that could have saved the election. And John Kreis is like, is there literally anybody left in the country who doesn't think Boris Johnson's terrible?
4:26 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well.
4:27 Rory Stewart? And who won't be put off by him appearing?
4:28 Alastair Campbell? We, we've, we've, we talked on the Q and A about, you know, we've sort of slightly fed up with polls. But if we do look at the polls that we've been doing, the JLP. Rest his politics polls Boris Johnson regularly is along with Liz Truss the least popular politician in the country. So why on earth does Rishi Sunak allow that to happen? And also, can I just say, I don't want to touch the paper, just hold this up for you again.
4:50 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
4:50 Alastair Campbell? Boris and Sunak unite. If, sorry, unity means to me that you appear on stage together, you say the same message. He didn't even mention Rishi Sunak.
4:59 Rory Stewart? But it's profoundly revealing, right? There is James Cleverly, there's Steve Barclay behind him. They're all grinning. I mean, there's something about him that makes even people who understand his limitations sort of spontaneously smile. And the speech, which I wouldn't particularly recommend anybody reads.
5:16 Alastair Campbell? No.
5:16 Rory Stewart? But is an example of something that Rishi Sunak didn't do, which is very odd. And what's really odd about it is that he's meant to be a very smart guy, Rishi Sunak. He voted for Brexit. He could have been trying to make the arguments for Brexit. Now Boris Johnson does so, you and I would disagree with all of them, but at least he's trying to lean into the narrative he's saying.
5:38 Alastair Campbell? But hold on, most of the people who, I've yet to meet anybody who believes a single word that he says about Brexit now because of the lies he told back then. I think, I honestly think, when you talk about these people behind him who are all smiling and laughing, what have you, they're so trapped in a world where they were winning and they don't understand that one of the reasons why they're now losing is because of that. I actually think when I heard they wheeled him out on the day before the final day of campaigning, I thought Labour game.
6:06 Rory Stewart? Yet again, strategic mistake.
6:08 Alastair Campbell? Totally. I mean, if you're going to have the, and even this idea that he's a great campaigner, a great campaigner is somebody who shifts votes towards them because it's them. Now, he's had that, he's done that in the Brexit referendum.
6:23 Rory Stewart? And 2019.
6:25 Alastair Campbell? And in 2019.
6:26 Rory Stewart? He won an extraordinary vote share.
6:27 Alastair Campbell? Right. But if you look at the data that John, John Byrne Murdoch put out, I think it was yesterday, the extent to which actually it was Jeremy Corbyn driving Boris Johnson's vote should not be underestimated. If you talk about a great campaigner, campaigns have to be judged by their results. If the Labour Party get the result that people say they're going to get. Nobody's going to say Keir Starmer's a great campaigner because he doesn't do this charisma stuff that Johnson does, but I just think people are sick to death of it.
6:52 Rory Stewart? Strategically, do you think that their calculation was that they didn't want the Tories' central office or whoever's coordinating this campaign, Isaac LaVita or whatever? Do you think they made a calculation that they, he wasn't going to help them by spending six weeks campaigning, but that they needed eventually to let him appear and the time to make him appear was at the last moment?
7:13 Alastair Campbell? I don't know, I don't know.
7:14 Rory Stewart? Because it helps Boris, isn't it? I mean, that's the awful thing about it, is that he has the vanity of now appearing on the front page of every newspaper as having played no part in the campaign, no part in the government.
7:27 Alastair Campbell? Part of those ridiculous videos.
7:28 Rory Stewart? Having been thrown out of Parliament, not being a member of Parliament anymore, and there he is dominating all these newspapers as though he's single-handedly, and he's going to use that narrative, isn't he, when they lose, to say, if only they'd deployed him earlier, he would have turned it around.
7:40 Alastair Campbell? But I, I just, look, I could be wrong, but I just think he's, I think he's toast. I think he's, he's a historic figure in that he brought about Brexit.
7:49 Rory Stewart? And why does the Telegraph and the Times want to still present the story? Here is this great savior waiting on the wings who came in at the last moment?
7:59 Alastair Campbell? I think they're a bit desperate. I just think that they've, they've run out of road and, I mean, the campaign has been pretty poor. He can make a speech to sort of tickle the private parts of people like James Cleverly. Great. Did you see the video of James Cleverly on social media?
8:13 Rory Stewart? No.
8:14 Alastair Campbell? Well, I mean, it was a lot of expletives.
8:16 Rory Stewart? James Cleverly is our Home Secretary.
8:17 Alastair Campbell? He's your Home Secretary, he's our Home Secretary, for another 24 hours at least. And he was campaigning in his constituency in Braintree and somebody was filmed shouting at him from the upstairs window and then James Cleverly trying to engage in conversation with him. There was a lot of bleeping going on.
8:32 Rory Stewart? From both sides?
8:33 Alastair Campbell? No, just from the side of the member of the public. James Cleverly was trying to hold it together, eventually he slightly lost it. But the guy was essentially saying, and I will warn listeners in advance that there will be one F word in this, he kept saying, do you not people understand, you have fucked the country, you have fucked this country, he kept saying it to him. And then he did a bit of C word and all that stuff. But this is the problem with them. Every time you wheel out Johnson or Truss, Sunak reminds people that Johnson and Truss are part of the problem and further reminds them, this is the problem with the Unite thing, that he didn't distance himself at the one time that he had the chance to do so.
9:11 Rory Stewart? Looking at. The many reasons Rishi Sunak's gone wrong. So we've talked about not distancing himself from Johnson and Trust, right, which you think he should have done immediately.
9:20 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
9:21 Rory Stewart? We've talked about this mad decision to call the election at almost the worst conceivable time. We've talked about, you know, D-Day and stuff. But there's another question I've got, which is just about his skills as a politician, if we look back. The Conservatives have a story, which they're now beginning to produce, on things that they've achieved. And the truth of the matter is, most of the public, I think, and we can see this in some of the polls we've done, literally cannot think of anything the Conservatives have done in 14 years. And one of the reasons they're going to lose the election, that people are going to be like, well, okay, Brexit, but literally otherwise, you've done nothing. They've got a story against that. So they've got a story that they have improved educational
10:06 Rory Stewart? standards, right, for example. Let's just take that as an example. Let's say it were true, and maybe you want to disagree that they did or did not
10:12 Alastair Campbell? The pieces, they
10:12 Rory Stewart? Drive up the pieces, and actually Phonics has been a great success, and people are really good. Why has he not spent two years just beating the education drum, preparing himself for this moment, rather than just sort of pulling it out in the last sort of two weeks?
10:28 Alastair Campbell? I don't know.
10:28 Rory Stewart? If that's something they genuinely could boast about, why didn't they really lean into that and just talk about it all the time, to give themselves space to talk about it?
10:36 Alastair Campbell? Because I actually think, I was in school this morning, I think if you talk to teachers and head teachers, they are absolutely at the edge. The school I was in, was actually my kid's primary school, they've had to lay off teachers. They're talking about, you know, the demands now of special educational needs being such that schools are in real trouble. So I don't think they could do that.
10:56 Rory Stewart? So the problem was that even if they've improved reading and writing ability amongst British children compared to where it was, and compared to the world, what would happen is that you would have this massive disconnect between them saying that and teachers just coming out.
11:11 Alastair Campbell? I think so. And also
11:12 Rory Stewart? And I guess parents are going into their schools, so they're meeting angry teachers all the time.
11:16 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, absolutely.
11:17 Rory Stewart? How about four million more people in work, which is another thing they're very proud of?
11:21 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
11:21 Rory Stewart? Could they have, could they have run big on employment and tried to use that in the last bit?
11:26 Alastair Campbell? I think, I think all of these things are only, the, an election campaign has got to be a mixture of what we've done, what we're going to do, and what we think of our opponents.
11:37 Rory Stewart? Okay.
11:37 Alastair Campbell? Their campaign essentially has been all about the opponents. It's been all label tax this, label tax that. In fact, I don't know if you saw the tweet that Rishi Sunak did yesterday, Labour's going to tax absolutely everything. And the best response was, what, what, including your wife?
11:54 Rory Stewart? But it's also been very unpleasant. I mean, I've been really put off because, you know, obviously, one of my roles on this podcast is to try to make the case for the Conservatives. But I thought their attack on Keir Starmer, suggesting he was going to knock off at 6pm, was just pathetic and stupid.
12:10 Alastair Campbell? Well, especially as he, it also, it helped Labour in a way, because even though Keir Starmer, I think, has been pretty good at doing what he said he would do, tearing antisemitism out from its roots, the reason he explained he wanted to knock off on Friday at 6pm was because of his wife's Jewish faith.
12:29 Rory Stewart? Right.
12:29 Alastair Campbell? So the media reporting of it today is Jewish groups condemning the Conservatives, oh, there you go, it's flashing the Guardian, condemning the Conservatives for trying to weaponise the fact that he said that. But it just shows how pathetic it is.
12:43 Rory Stewart? There's a sort of bigger thing, isn't there? I mean, obviously, it's also daft, because if you were running against David Cameron or Boris Johnson, the narrative that they're knocking off at 6 o'clock might play into a stereotype you might already have.
12:56 Alastair Campbell? Nobody thinks Keir Starmer doesn't work quite hard.
12:59 Rory Stewart? Yeah, he gives the impression of a rather kind of serious, hardworking guy. So it seems a bit weird.
13:03 Alastair Campbell? But also, the sort of, the kind of pygological nature of this, that this is what they're talking about, 24 hours from the election. And the other one, down in Torbay, is this story is broken, that the Tories are going around saying that the Liberal Democrat candidate who is blind is not really blind. So there's a guy with a guide dog going around the place, and they're saying he's not really blind. I mean, what are these people on? And that happens. But can you imagine? And there was a picture. So, and by the way, we'll come back to Ed Davey's picture. He did another one yesterday, by the way.
13:36 Rory Stewart? What did he say?
13:37 Alastair Campbell? It was a sort of, it was another water park, but it was good. It was a really good one. He looked like he was falling off the end of the earth. But there's a lovely picture in one of the papers today of him with the guy's guide dog, a library picture. But that just shows, I think, how they've, there's no sense of leadership, there's no sense of what the final day message is meant to be. And then you have a situation today, I didn't hear it, but Mel Stride.
14:00 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
14:01 Alastair Campbell? On doing the rounds again.
14:03 Rory Stewart? Who I like.
14:04 Alastair Campbell? Right.
14:04 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
14:04 Alastair Campbell? But he's doing the rounds again today. And he's, he's not, you know, he was asked whether, whether he would miss being a minister.
14:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
14:11 Alastair Campbell? And he said, yes, I will. It's been a great privilege. He was talking in the past tense. And then, and he talked about this, you know, tomorrow, we will have, not, you know, there is the risk of, we will have the biggest majority there's ever been. And the question is, what do you want as an opposition? Now, unless they've, that is throwing in the towel, I think, to try and say to people, you don't need to vote.
14:32 Rory Stewart? So I was, I've been in email touch with somebody who was just at one of Rishi Sunak's recent events, reaching out to Tory donors, trying to get them to reach deep into their pockets for the final election. And in the same speech, he spent the first half of speech saying, I'm going to win this election. And the second half of the speech saying, don't give Labour a super majority.
14:51 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, exactly.
14:52 Rory Stewart? And the person just spontaneously sent me an email saying, you can't say both things in the same speech.
14:56 Alastair Campbell? You can't say, we are winning, therefore give us money, and we are losing, therefore don't vote. Because that seems to me to be the, the sort of the twin strategy at work. And it just doesn't work. Did you see, by the way, I sent you something from the Electoral Reform Society, who've done some polling, showing that they reckon one in four people will, are prepared to vote, intend to vote tactically. Now, obviously, there's a, I guess what the Electoral Reform Society wants to do is say, an electoral system where people feel they, they, they don't, they, they can't vote for the person they actually want to vote for, because the electoral system takes it nowhere. But it was, I thought that was really interesting.
15:35 Rory Stewart? Well, so one of the, so I think there are three things to watch out for tonight, when, when the results come in. And I hope people can be watching with us on Channel Four. And the reason, and I'm disappointed in these papers, I'm disappointed they're not making these three points. They've basically given up on covering the election. They don't think it's interesting anymore.
15:54 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
15:55 Rory Stewart? They're just writing profiles of Keir Starmer, what he's going to be like in office.
15:57 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
15:58 Rory Stewart? So, but actually, it's a really exciting election for three reasons. Number one, it's going to throw up incredibly weird things about our electoral system. Quite possible that Labour will come in with quite a small percentage of the vote.
16:08 Alastair Campbell? Thirty-eight.
16:09 Rory Stewart? And a huge seat majority.
16:11 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
16:12 Rory Stewart? Quite possible the Lib Dems get a small amount of percentage of the vote, but a large number of seats, and Reform will get a large proportion of the vote and almost no seats at all.
16:19 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
16:19 Rory Stewart? Number two, this is going to decide whether Keir Starmer is able to be a centrist or whether he's going to be dragged to the left. So that's the thing to look for. Big Labour majority is going to allow him to get on with his agenda. Small Labour majority, it's all this stuff that actually The Guardian's talking about, which is the left of the Labour Party wants to pull him along.
16:39 Alastair Campbell? I reckon all this paper turning is fine for the video, but I reckon people who are listening, they're just going to get irritated.
16:44 Rory Stewart? No, no, no, they're going to love it.
16:45 Alastair Campbell? They'll love it, they'll love it.
16:46 Rory Stewart? It's like you, it's like you not liking people eating crisps. So here's a list of stuff that the left of Labour would like to do, right?
16:51 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
16:52 Rory Stewart? Challenge Starmer on Israel Gaza, reverse his climate twenty-eight billion pound cut, get rid of the two-child benefit cap, fight him on transgender.
17:05 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
17:05 Rory Stewart? Um, challenge him on migration and do stuff on race and push him on Brexit because he's just come out saying he doesn't think we'll reach on the customer in our lifetime.
17:14 Alastair Campbell? Well, in his lifetime.
17:15 Rory Stewart? In his lifetime, so.
17:16 Alastair Campbell? So maybe your lifetime's okay. His lifetime covers my lifetime, but your lifetime's a bit...
17:20 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, I'll try to keep, keep healthy. So I think if you're voting, believing that Keir Starmer's serious about what he's saying, and I think that's your basic message, your view is you look at Keir Starmer, you look at Rachel Reeves, when they say they're going to cut borrowing, they're not going to raise taxes, they're serious about it. This isn't just some bluff that they're going to rip off the mask. Then he needs a substantial majority. So that's the second thing to look at. And the third thing to look at is this is going to totally determine whether we end up with a populist far-right conservative party or a party that remains in the moderate centre. So this is one of the most high-stake elections we've ever seen.
17:56 Alastair Campbell? And a fourth point is, is whether opinion is changing significantly in Scotland, leading back to Labour, that Labour I don't think will ever be as dominant as they were when we were in power, but whether that is moving back as well. No, I agree, there's a lot of interesting stuff, added to which there'll be some really interesting... Individual battles going on. Thangam Debenair, Culture Secretary. So here we're talking about a Labour landslide, but she's up against the Carla Denia for the Greens. And that's going to be really tricky. There's some very interesting Tories that are going to go. We're going to go for a break, Roy, but during the break, I want you to think about a quiz question.
18:31 Rory Stewart? Yep.
18:32 Alastair Campbell? Can you name?
18:33 Rory Stewart? Yep.
18:33 Alastair Campbell? Any of the four longest-held Conservative seats or the three longest-held Labour seats? Thanks to my friend Darren Hughes from the Electoral Reform Society. I have them here in front of me.
18:45 Rory Stewart? Very good. Thank you.
18:46 Alastair Campbell? Take a break.
18:49 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rear on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
19:00 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
19:06 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.
19:10 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
19:13 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
19:14 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
19:25 Alastair Campbell? Welcome back to Rest of Politics with me, Ellis Campbell.
19:27 Rory Stewart? And with me, Rory Stewart.
19:28 Alastair Campbell? So have you got these seven seats?
19:30 Rory Stewart? Okay, I haven't at all. And let me expose my ignorance. So obviously my guess would be that the Tories would be strong in kind of sort of Wiltshire Somerset-y area.
19:43 Alastair Campbell? Okay.
19:43 Rory Stewart? That that would be sort of heartland for them.
19:45 Alastair Campbell? And Labour.
19:47 Rory Stewart? And Labour, I guess there's got to be some places they managed to hold on to in the North East, despite the kind of Red Wall collapse, which would have been old Labour heartland. But maybe the East End of London too. Maybe the spits in East End London that they've never lost.
19:59 Alastair Campbell? Well done.
20:00 Rory Stewart? Poplar Limehouse.
20:01 Alastair Campbell? The Tories, the Tories, their force Exmouth and Exeter East has been held by the Conservatives since 1835.
20:08 Rory Stewart? Since 1835.
20:10 Alastair Campbell? Ghoul.
20:10 Rory Stewart? Exeter, Exeter East, oh wonderful.
20:13 Alastair Campbell? Ghoul and Pocklington, 1837. Aldershot, held by the Conservatives is 1857. North East Hampshire, also 1857.
20:22 Alastair Campbell? Top three longest held Labour seats, all 1906, so that's just a few years after the foundation of the Labour Party. West Ham and Becket.
20:29 Rory Stewart? Very good.
20:29 Alastair Campbell? There you go. North Durham.
20:31 Rory Stewart? Very good.
20:32 Alastair Campbell? And the third one is Makerfield, which is part of Wigan. So.
20:37 Rory Stewart? Gosh, near Lee Sinandy.
20:38 Alastair Campbell? Indeed, indeed.
20:40 Rory Stewart? But not Lee Sinandy's seat. But that's great to have a seat that's been, I mean, imagine being a Tory who had a seat since 1832, because actually 1832 is basically.
20:48 Alastair Campbell? 1835.
20:48 Rory Stewart? 1834, that's the foundation of the modern Conservative Party. I mean, that's, that's just post the Great Reform Act.
20:55 Alastair Campbell? It'd be interesting to see if any of these days, 104 Conservative seats have not changed hands since World War Two.
21:01 Rory Stewart? Well, so my constituency, old constituency, Penrith and the Border was like that, that being Willie White laws, seats, this kind of stuff, yeah. But it's very vulnerable now.
21:09 Alastair Campbell? 99 Labour seats have not changed hands for 50 years. And if you think that the last time, so like Sedgfield, I'm pretty sure that had been Labour pretty much forever and then it wasn't. So whether there'll be more of that kind of churn.
21:22 Rory Stewart? Hartley Pool was another one, wasn't it?
21:23 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely, yeah. So whether there's going to be more churn of that sort would be very, very interesting. So listen, are you, is there any part of you that regrets that you won't be at a count tomorrow with your name on the ballot paper?
21:35 Rory Stewart? Well, it's an amazing experience. I mean, it's, I remember, and I went through three elections as a candidate, as a Member of Parliament, and it's firstly, people underestimate how wonderful it is in some ways, particularly before you get really senior. When you're really senior, you're right at the top, you're doing the news rounds, you're travelling around the country. But my first two elections, I was just the Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border and then a junior minister. I had nothing to do with the national campaign. So you get to leave Westminster, you spend six weeks in the beautiful Northern Lake District. Elections always in the spring generally, certainly in my time.
22:18 Rory Stewart? And so you'd have the gorse bush flowering on the hillside. My first election, I travelled around in a trailer on the back of a tractor. It was actually really embarrassing. It was that kind of big thing saying Rory the Tory and stuff like that, it was awful stuff. And then you get to sort of, you justify to your volunteers, like walking half an hour up a farm track to knock on a door.
22:42 Alastair Campbell? To get one, to get turned away by one voter.
22:44 Rory Stewart? Exactly, and then come back in.
22:47 Alastair Campbell? And what about in the night, did you get nervous even though you knew?
22:50 Rory Stewart? Well, so my first time I ran, I I remember contacting my friend Matthew Paris and saying to him, what do I do on the on the day of the election itself? Because basically, it's pretty late by now. And there's a bit of get out of the vote. You're trying to get people into cars.
23:04 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
23:04 Rory Stewart? You're turning up at polling stations, but you're mostly turning up polling stations to thank your volunteers who have ticked people off on lists. And he said, it's okay to go for a solitary walk in the hills and say, he's a bit sacrilegious, may this cup be taken from me.
23:20 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
23:20 Rory Stewart? That's the way it's always going.
23:22 Alastair Campbell? Is that what you did?
23:23 Rory Stewart? I I did go for a bit of solitary walk in the hills, yeah. And then you get to the count. And then in in my case, my father, then in his late eighties and finally in his early nineties, turned up in his tartan trousers.
23:34 Alastair Campbell? How many, how many you allowed? You allowed about fifteen, you allowed about fifteen people or something?
23:37 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I'd bring in five or six. It'd be my mum, my dad, Shashana. For the last one, little Sasha came in.
23:44 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And are you all that? Because because when people are watching on the TV, they'll see all these sort of people watching the count and watching people put the ballot papers in piles.
23:54 Rory Stewart? So you've got all your, you've got, you've got all your, exactly. If those fifteen, a lot of those are your key organizers. So in my case, you know, Isaac Henderson, who'd been the chairperson of the Penrith and Board of Conservative Party, it's kind of real stalwart. Some of the key Conservative councillors, my friend Robert Craig, who's a dairy farmer, they positioned themselves up and down with the Labour and Lib Dems.
24:14 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
24:15 Rory Stewart? Staring at the ballot boxes. And then usually there's some guy, in my case, he was usually a kind of large musty guy with a shaven head and a sort of parachute berry who represented whatever form reform had in those days. Who'd wander around and wouldn't really have any friends with him, but would sort of wander around saying democracy is broken.
24:35 Alastair Campbell? Right.
24:35 Rory Stewart? And generally, my father would end up in a conversation with him and say the wrong things. And then I'd get a lot on social media from this guy over the following weeks and months saying, even Rory's dad admits democracy is broken, kind of going on my screen. And then you're you're trying to, what your people are doing is they're trying to see if there's any sign that
24:57 Rory Stewart? The councillors who are usually county council employees and they've got a tough job because they're opening the ballot boxes that come in, they cut them open. And then they're sorting.
25:06 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
25:06 Rory Stewart? Into piles, the votes for different people. And two things going on, one of them is trying to find out if someone's put something in the wrong pile and then you'll challenge if it's too close. But generally what happened in my case, because I tended to come in with, you know, well over fifty percent of the vote. I mean, there'll be people who win elections this time with thirty eight percent of the vote. But I was coming in at sixty one percent of the vote, so.
25:28 Alastair Campbell? So it was never close. You you never had anything to worry about.
25:30 Rory Stewart? Well, I've of course worried all the time because.
25:33 Alastair Campbell? And if you're in a safe seat like that, do you worry about turnout?
25:36 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, and actually the safe seat just south of me, the South Lakes, which had been a very safe seat, Michael Joplin's seat, identical to mine. Had been taken by Tim Ferrin, so this lip damage has chipped away.
25:47 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
25:48 Rory Stewart? And turned it around. So I was never complacent because I had. Tim Ferrin over my shoulder, trying to keep up with the number of press releases he does, the number of constituency surgeries he's doing, I'm a real machine. So never complacent. And of course, you also have a bit of a worry that maybe you won't do as well as your predecessors. So. David McLean took over, it's my predecessor, took over from Willie Whitehall. Almost lost the seat. Willie Whitehall had a majority of twelve thousand. David McLean come in, won with a majority of about five hundred. And then spent the next sort of twenty five years.
26:19 Alastair Campbell? Building it back up.
26:19 Rory Stewart? Yeah, feeling really sort of guilty, ashamed. Sort of slightly feeling that maybe he wants to be a little bit chippy about Willie Whitehall because he doesn't like this thing. So I take over from David McLean. Of course, David McLean's very right wing compared to me. Doesn't like me, starts attacking me a bit in the press, so I'm determined to prove I can get a bigger majority than he can. A lot of that stuff going on. But anyway, what's happening is that people will come to you and they'll say, oh, Rory, I think it's looking pretty good, pretty pretty good. I've just been looking at the Appleby boxes, a lot of, lot of, lot of. Lot of papers piling up on yourself.
26:52 Alastair Campbell? When do you know about the postal votes?
26:53 Rory Stewart? I don't think I ever really concentrated on that.
26:55 Alastair Campbell? There's been a lot of postal voting this time, twenty two percent or something.
26:58 Rory Stewart? Right, but they would have been counted separately, I guess, yeah.
27:01 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, and usually probably slightly favour the Tories.
27:04 Rory Stewart? I've just done a recording, you know, my sister has Downston Room.
27:07 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
27:08 Rory Stewart? For the Downston Room Association on people with learning difficulties voting. And, you know, obviously I was doing my slightly biased thing, trying to explain about, you know. But what happened, I remember my sister is she went into the polling booth and she shouted out to my mother. Mummy, mummy, which way am I supposed to vote? And my mother was like, oh, God, this is illegal. I'm going to be put in jail.
27:35 Alastair Campbell? So what did she vote?
27:35 Rory Stewart? Labour. Yeah, absolutely.
27:38 Alastair Campbell? On, I was in a primary school this morning, as I said. And honestly, you talk about hope. These kids, well, this is my, the kid, the school that my kids went to, Gospel at Primary School, these kids were amazing.
27:51 Rory Stewart? But is this not like sort of super overeducated parents? And all your kids went to Oxford, didn't they also?
27:57 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, no, no, one did, but the other two went elsewhere. But no, but these, we live in a very, very mixed community. And there was, so there's a lot of working class kids that were right next to one of the biggest council estates in Europe. And so you've got a mix of kind of, you know, BBC, NHS executive types and very working class families. But some of these kids were amazing. One of them was literally quoting me stats about defence spending.
28:20 Rory Stewart? Age eight.
28:21 Alastair Campbell? Well, eight or nine.
28:22 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
28:23 Alastair Campbell? And there were, there were, when I was asking them.
28:25 Rory Stewart? He was like, you know, we need to get from two percent to two and a half percent.
28:28 Alastair Campbell? He wasn't giving me two percent to two and a half percent, but he was saying that he'd read that if we went to war with Russia, we'd only got stockpiles for three days fighting.
28:36 Rory Stewart? It's good stuff.
28:36 Alastair Campbell? Which, which was that general, that retired general.
28:39 Rory Stewart? Was he pro Trident like you?
28:40 Alastair Campbell? We didn't discuss Trident, he was pro building up defences. But we had all sorts of stuff. And so anyway, I was, I was blown away by it. I was really, really, it was fantastic. So I, and anyway, we got on to lowering the voting age. And there was, there was a child there who was saying that he, he actually thought we should bring the voting age down to two.
28:57 Rory Stewart? Very good.
28:57 Alastair Campbell? What do you think of that?
28:58 Rory Stewart? Well, I think it's absolutely brilliant, Ted. I mean, why stop?
29:00 Alastair Campbell? Who would you rather have voting?
29:02 Rory Stewart? Compulsory voting all the way down to two.
29:04 Alastair Campbell? Who would you rather have voting? Those kids that I was with today, or the guy who told me that Jeremy Corbyn was Prime Minister?
29:09 Rory Stewart? Did I tell you, well, I mean, my, my seven year old, you know, he's, he's got the lines on, on Trump. I mean, he just thinks Trump is the biggest liar and buffoon. And if you put him in. He'd vote for Joe Biden for you straight away. He'd do it straight away. He's also said to me, you've met either. He said to me, Daddy, and maybe he's been, it's because he's been reading your book.
29:27 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
29:28 Rory Stewart? So he said to me, Daddy, you know, I really want to be a wildlife photographer, or if not that, a dinosaur archaeologist. But now I'm thinking for my third choice, I could be a politician.
29:36 Alastair Campbell? Excellent.
29:37 Rory Stewart? Okay, so we've talked through what it's going to be like on this last day. We've talked through what it's like being an MP, getting a vote count, counting. Now, tell us what happens if a government's elected when they get in. How's it working time? Remind us of 97. When did you know that you'd won? Or famously, you were still denying you'd won when you had obviously won.
29:57 Alastair Campbell? I don't know if Channel 4 will show the clip of me doing an interview with John Simpson after we'd won, when I was talking as though we'd lost. And say, don't get ahead of yourself, don't be complacent.
30:06 Rory Stewart? And about two minutes later, even John Major actually literally conceded the whole election because he conceded.
30:10 Alastair Campbell? He already had, because John Major conceded before we left Tony's house. So what happened was the.
30:16 Rory Stewart? And did he concede because he could see where it was swinging, or you already had a majority when he conceded?
30:21 Alastair Campbell? I don't think he did. I don't think we did have a majority, but they knew.
30:24 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
30:24 Alastair Campbell? So I think that whether, although I'm sure they'll all be saying no complacency, no complacency. So we spent much of the day, there's a wonderful moment when John Prescott came up to see Tony. And we didn't particularly want there to be a big sort of shebang about Tony and John negotiating over jobs and all that sort of stuff. And what his title was going to be, because the press would have loved that.
30:46 Rory Stewart? And just to remind listeners, John represented more of the traditional left of the Labour Party.
30:51 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, and he was deputy leader, he'd been elected.
30:53 Rory Stewart? So a little bit like Angela Rayner represents the left against Keir Starmer's more centrist right.
30:58 Alastair Campbell? And so John wasn't just about his own position. Was he going to be called Deputy Prime Minister? That hadn't been, you know, it wasn't sort of formalised because we didn't want to get ahead of ourselves in terms of public.
31:09 Rory Stewart? And were the Tory attack lines on you, were they trying to say John Prescott's a danger? This is the left's going to take over the Labour Party or not so much?
31:16 Alastair Campbell? They tried at the start of the campaign, they did this thing called New Labour, New Danger. Do you remember with the devil?
31:20 Rory Stewart? That's right, that's right, yeah.
31:21 Alastair Campbell? And that was one of our great trials. We got the Bishop of Oxford was willing to action to say that this is sort of, you know.
31:27 Rory Stewart? Disgraceful.
31:28 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely disgraceful, playing with the devil in this way. But no, so then, so there was a lot of discussions of that nature going on. We managed to get John in with that. People realised he was there. And then. The exit poll came out and it was like, you know, so the the news came on and it was this the exit poll, it was a massive picture of Tony
31:47 Rory Stewart? And then come sort of ten at night.
31:48 Alastair Campbell? Ten o'clock.
31:49 Rory Stewart? And and and the exit polls suggested a massive Labour landslide.
31:52 Alastair Campbell? Labour, it said Labour landslide, Tony Blair is the new Prime Minister.
31:55 Rory Stewart? Okay.
31:55 Alastair Campbell? It didn't say. So we were up in his constituency, in his house, Myra Bella in Sedgfield, watching on the TV. And it's very interesting because neither Tony or I cheered. I remember that. There were other people, the family and friends.
32:07 Rory Stewart? But you were still like quite nervous.
32:09 Alastair Campbell? Totally. Let's wait and see the results. That's where to see. So then we went into this little quiet room and we're sort of chatting about things we need to do and what have you. Then you go to the count. So as every MP
32:20 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, goes to his count.
32:21 Alastair Campbell? And of course, by then.
32:22 Rory Stewart? Did you come into the count with him?
32:24 Alastair Campbell? I went to the count, yeah.
32:25 Rory Stewart? So you saw it.
32:25 Alastair Campbell? I didn't go, I didn't go into the, I I went into the the place where the count was.
32:30 Rory Stewart? Okay. Which is like a leisure centre.
32:32 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And by then, there were loads of results coming in. They were coming in like every two minutes.
32:37 Rory Stewart? And were some of them already pretty positive for you?
32:39 Alastair Campbell? Oh, they were, they were, they were. I remember Michael Forsyth, when he went, oh, that's interesting. And then there was, there was, there was some in.
32:44 Rory Stewart? It was the Conservative Scottish Secretary.
32:47 Alastair Campbell? That was in the sterling.
32:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
32:49 Alastair Campbell? And then there were lots that came through all of, all of a sudden in in the Midlands. And I remember there's one point where we were looking at a count and this MP's face came up. We were going, who is that? One of our, one of our new, because we hadn't campaigned there. We didn't know them.
33:02 Rory Stewart? Oh, my goodness. Were you at that stage, when you did the campaign, was it just like Keir Starmer's, where he's actually campaigning in places with Tory majorities of twenty twenty five thousand? Or were you going more for Tory majorities at ten thousand?
33:14 Alastair Campbell? I remember the day before, we went to Darlington, which, looking back, was like, you know.
33:19 Rory Stewart? A surefire win.
33:20 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely. But we we went to Darlington.
33:22 Rory Stewart? So you weren't actually on the Starmer's track. You were a bit more cautious.
33:24 Alastair Campbell? We'd been to Dorset. We went to Dorset.
33:26 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
33:26 Alastair Campbell? There was a, I remember a rare moment of relaxation. We actually had a little kip on a, we were sort of laid down on this, this sort of grass near this cafe. So by now, John Major's conceded, he's being described as the next Prime Minister. And then we get on a, we got in cars, I was with Fiona in a car, Tony and Cherie in front. You do notice the police getting a bit more numerous around you. And then we headed to this airfield, got on a plane, flew down.
33:56 Rory Stewart? Flew down from Sedgefield.
33:58 Alastair Campbell? Flew down from Sedgefield.
33:58 Rory Stewart? It's a bit Rishi Sunak, isn't it?
33:59 Alastair Campbell? It is a little bit Rishi Sunak, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll give you that. And it was like, I think it was a private plane, in fact, I know it was a private plane. I was shocked at the time, I said, Tony, this is not good for the environment. He said, I know, but we've got to get back because there's a big party at the festival hall. So then we arrive at the festival hall.
34:17 Rory Stewart? And the festival hall being booked by Labour?
34:19 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
34:20 Rory Stewart? Hoping that there's going to be a big party, but presumably a bit nervous because Kinnock had gone into 92 looking like he was leading in the polls and they would have booked a big venue and then it would have been already sat. Because there would have been all these balloons and nothing happened.
34:32 Alastair Campbell? It's the same in football, you know, the Champions League final, they all have big venues booked for the after-match, you know, booze up if you win. And if you don't win, you go to bed.
34:40 Rory Stewart? So you turn up in the festival hall and it's the, it's the, it's the big auditorium of the festival hall.
34:45 Alastair Campbell? No, no, it was outside.
34:46 Rory Stewart? Outside.
34:46 Alastair Campbell? Outside, so it was outside on the river, Tony goes up, a new dawn is it not? And then off we went and then he got a couple of hours sleep and then the next day he gets picked up.
34:56 Rory Stewart? And then the thing that we all saw, I guess, was him, I remember this very vividly, watching the streets and it's daylight and he's moving through. And I guess he's on his way to Number 10 and on his way back to Downing Street.
35:07 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, that was on the way to, no, that was on the way to the palace.
35:11 Rory Stewart? Right.
35:11 Alastair Campbell? And then to Number 10, and we got out at the bottom of the street. And, you know, we had made this decision to fill the street.
35:17 Rory Stewart? Right.
35:17 Alastair Campbell? With people.
35:18 Rory Stewart? What do you mean that's the decision?
35:20 Alastair Campbell? Well, because you can't just sort of, people can't just turn up and fill the street. So we'd arranged with Downing Street.
35:26 Rory Stewart? Ah, to let them through.
35:27 Alastair Campbell? Beforehand that if we, if we won, we wanted to bring loads of, the, the right way, the press went mad saying, these are all Labour supporters. Of course they were.
35:35 Rory Stewart? And they'd never been done before.
35:36 Alastair Campbell? Well, it had been done before in the times when you didn't have security.
35:39 Rory Stewart? But not done for a long time since then.
35:41 Alastair Campbell? I remember from Margaret Thatcher when she became Prime Minister, there did seem to be a lot of people in the street.
35:45 Rory Stewart? Got you.
35:46 Alastair Campbell? So, so, so we had to organise that.
35:48 Rory Stewart? Yep.
35:48 Alastair Campbell? Give them names, give them, you know. And so up we come and then in he goes and he's suddenly the Prime Minister, getting told how to do the nukes, as Gus said, on leading.
35:58 Rory Stewart? Wow. Okay, well that.
36:00 Alastair Campbell? So for Keir Starmer, I mean, it's a huge thing.
36:02 Rory Stewart? It's.
36:03 Alastair Campbell? And it's for the country as well. I think if there is a change, he will be just the fourth person if he wins. Just the fourth person ever to lead Labour from opposition into government. So.
36:14 Rory Stewart? So who the four?
36:15 Alastair Campbell? Clement Attley.
36:15 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
36:16 Alastair Campbell? Harold Wilson.
36:17 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
36:17 Alastair Campbell? Tony Blair.
36:18 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
36:18 Alastair Campbell? Keir Starmer.
36:19 Rory Stewart? Wow.
36:20 Alastair Campbell? The others became Prime Minister, you know, Jim Callaghan followed Harold Wilson, Gordon Brown followed Tony Blair. So, you know, it's a, it's a huge, huge thing. And I just think that, you know, people remember Thatcher's speech. I can remember Theresa May's.
36:36 Rory Stewart? And Thatcher's speech was, was the St Francis's C C prayer. Yeah, yeah.
36:40 Alastair Campbell? And I can remember Theresa May talking about the, the injustices and all that. So these are moments that really, really matter in the kind of life of the nation. But then there's also a part of you thinking, there's a human being who a few years ago probably had no idea he was going to be the Prime Minister. There's his wife who wants to carry on working in the National Health Service. They're the two kids that he doesn't want anybody to know what they look like. And you've got all this stuff going on as well. So as Gus said, Gus O'Donnell said, you know, you're starting a new job, quite a big job. You're moving into a new house. You're facing new challenges as a family. And then in the day, and he's, he talked about the Uncle Bob problem.
37:18 Rory Stewart? This on leading, aren't you?
37:19 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And, and, and you have, it was this weird mix. It was us who wanted to work and the family who wanted to celebrate.
37:24 Rory Stewart? The Uncle Bob problem that Gus describes on leading is that you suddenly get a call from the Downing Street switchboard. And switch is this amazing thing, which, you know, even I as a minister was using all the time. Incredible sort of omniscient people who push, push calls around. But yeah, switch come in and say, yeah, Uncle Bob's on the phone and wants to congratulate him. And Gus O'Donnell has to work out, is this?
37:44 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I think Gus O'Donnell would be involved in Uncle Bobbing. But certainly you have to find somebody to check.
37:49 Rory Stewart? He's got to work out whether this is his Uncle Bob and does he want to talk to Uncle Bob?
37:53 Alastair Campbell? And the truth is, unless, I mean, we were close enough to Tony's and I were family with him, but often you won't be. So actually the only person to ask, do you have an Uncle Bob?
38:01 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
38:01 Alastair Campbell? Is the Prime Minister, is Uncle Bob likely to phone you? What does he sound like? And do you know his phone number? We'll check him out.
38:09 Rory Stewart? It's not an Australian prankster.
38:10 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. Yeah, because there'll be plenty of that going on.
38:12 Rory Stewart? Um. Can I just finish with one final thing? And uh this thing about not showing your children's faces very, very interesting. You know, often when I was campaigning, I'd have the kids with me. I never allowed them to do interviews. For about 10 years, I didn't mention them. But then towards the end, I did occasionally mention them when people ask questions. But Keir Starmer's done something much clearer and more radical from the beginning, hasn't he?
38:36 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
38:37 Rory Stewart? So he said he's not going to give them their names. He's not going to. And that's partly because he learnt from Tony Blair.
38:43 Alastair Campbell? I don't know.
38:43 Rory Stewart? Because because Tony had problems, right?
38:45 Alastair Campbell? We did have problems. I mean, Tony, when Tony.
38:47 Rory Stewart? Because his kids ended up in the media.
38:49 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, or Ewan ended up in the media for.
38:51 Rory Stewart? Forgetting drunk.
38:52 Alastair Campbell? Rather drunk, yeah, yeah. And actually, the public were great about that.
38:56 Rory Stewart? But but that's not great for the kid to to.
38:58 Alastair Campbell? No.
38:58 Rory Stewart? Because we all go and get drunk and we don't really want to be in the.
39:00 Alastair Campbell? No, I think it's also, you know, the fact that while he's been doing the election campaign.
39:05 Rory Stewart? The Sun might just be doing stuff at school and getting on with his term.
39:08 Alastair Campbell? Exactly, exactly. And then also, the other thing that happened with Tony's kids is that you do find people inside the school, including to this day, I'm convinced, people who were on the teaching staff, who were talking to the newspapers.
39:22 Rory Stewart? Right.
39:22 Alastair Campbell? So if you have an absolute black and white line.
39:25 Rory Stewart? Yep.
39:25 Alastair Campbell? That says, I am not putting my children into the public domain. That means that when the media decide to put them into the public domain, they know that they're doing something.
39:32 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
39:33 Alastair Campbell? Essentially wrong. Final point on the media, um, the Sun has come out for Labour. Do you think that matters?
39:38 Rory Stewart? Well, I don't know, but it's big news.
39:41 Alastair Campbell? Is it?
39:42 Rory Stewart? I think it is big news. I mean, I think that is big news. I mean, I think far fewer people read the Sun. And of course, you you question how much influence it had even in 97, how much more, less influence now. But yeah, that's a, that's a dramatic thing, isn't it?
39:55 Alastair Campbell? You don't think it's just the way.
39:56 Rory Stewart? It's a right wing newspaper coming out. That's, that's interesting.
39:59 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. So if you go through them now, you've had the Sun, you've had The Economist, I thought that was interesting. Sunday Times, that's two of the Murdoch titles. I can't see the Express or the Mail or the Telegraph coming out of there ever.
40:11 Rory Stewart? No.
40:11 Alastair Campbell? The Mirror always has.
40:12 Rory Stewart? But they haven't come out, they haven't really come out for Sunak either. They seem to have come out for Boris Johnson.
40:15 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, a little bit.
40:16 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
40:16 Alastair Campbell? And and I don't know if you're aware, Rory, but the Daily Star have come out for Camp Binface.
40:20 Rory Stewart? There we are. Believe in the bin. Hashtag believe in the bin.
40:24 Alastair Campbell? Anyway, here we go. Remember to vote, everybody. Take your voter ID and we'll see you on Channel 4 all night.
40:31 Rory Stewart? See you on Channel 4. Bye bye.
40:37 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.
40:40 Speaker 03 On October 2nd.
40:42 Speaker 02 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
40:46 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
40:54 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.
40:58 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
41:01 Speaker 04 I'm not the first daddy.
41:02 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
Previous 278. Question Time: How reliable are the polls? Next 280. Starmer’s Labour Landslide - 3:30am update Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
