Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 343. What Happens Next: Israel vs. the International Criminal Court About this episode How has the world responded to the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for top Israeli officials? What does Trump have planned for the war in Ukraine? Is Chancellor Rachel Reeves really embarking on a ‘growth agenda’?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all this and more in today's episode of The Rest Is Politics.
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Transcript 11,348 words · 11 speakers
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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 Creef. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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2:43 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
2:46 Rory Stewart? And with me Rory Stewart. And Alistair, I can tell from the Scandi declaration that you are in fact in Scandinavia somewhere. Where are you?
2:54 Alastair Campbell? Scandinavia, this is a new continent.
2:56 Rory Stewart? It's a new continent, yeah.
2:57 Alastair Campbell? I'm in Oslo. I'm looking out on a very kind of cold, grey day. I've just had a meeting with the Prime Minister, which is very interesting. He's a big fan of the podcast Rory. We should have him on in the new year.
3:09 Rory Stewart? Oh, very good. You managed to seal that deal, did you, in the meeting?
3:12 Alastair Campbell? Well, I can't say it was that difficult. You know, unlike you Rory, if I meet these heads of state and government, I do tend to sort of, you know, get them on. Listen, today I think we should, there's a lot going on on the international front. And if you think about COP, about Israel and the International Criminal Court, about Ukraine, I wonder if a way we can look at it is through the lens of whether the international organisations are remotely up to the job that they're trying to do. I think we should talk a bit about the British economy and also maybe just reflect a little bit on Norway. It's a very, very interesting country. But also I sometimes feel Scandinavia doesn't quite, because people sort of think Scandinavia is still pretty cool and works.
3:55 Alastair Campbell? Maybe it doesn't get the attention it deserves. There's a lot happening here that's worth talking about, so we'll do that in the second half.
4:00 Rory Stewart? Well, then let's put those three things just together for an instant, just to to frame them in an obvious way, which is if we go back to the 90s, early 2000s, I think all those things coincide. It was a period where it really felt as though there was a strong push to build international institutions. So you remember that we created the International Criminal Court in Yugoslavia, and that was also the moment at which the International Criminal Courts in general that we're going to be talking about today emerged. The UN felt pretty strong. It was a time when the British economy was performing strongly. GDP per capita growth was, for the first time since 1870, growing faster than the US. And it was a time when we all looked to countries like Norway as forms of utopia,
4:44 Rory Stewart? which a lot of our policy was arranged around. So that's a kind of good background. Let's start, though, maybe with a bit of a summary on where we are on the ICC. Do you want me to do a brief summary, or do you want to do ICC summary? So just to remind people, there are two different international courts that people will hear about a lot. There's the ICJ, which is the International Court of Justice, which rules on relationships between states on behalf of the UN. And that actually has also featured in the debate about Israel Gaza, because it ruled on illegal occupation of Gaza and it's discussing genocide. The other court that matters, which is a more recent court, which is the ICC, which
5:27 Rory Stewart? was set up by something called the Rome Statutes through negotiations that actually had been going on almost since the First World War, but finally came into fruition in the early 2000s, rules on individuals. And the controversy there is that traditionally, it ruled on individuals. And The Washington Post has made this point in slightly disturbing terms. The Washington Post basically wrote an editorial saying, no, no, no, this court was supposed to be ruling on people in Africa. It's not supposed to be on people in the developed world. And that's one of the reasons why the Global South has traditionally been a bit uncomfortable with the International Criminal Court. It made its reputation. Going after people who'd committed war crimes in Africa, most dramatically of all
6:09 Rory Stewart? the president of Sudan, but it also has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. And of course, so long as it was doing that, broadly speaking, the US and Europe were pretty comfortable with it. What it's now done, of course, is issue arrest warrants for Hamas leaders. But unfortunately, the Hamas leaders it's issued warrants for have subsequently been killed by Israeli operations. And it's also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and for Gallant, the defence secretary, who just stepped down. And in relation to that, much of the world has been very, very divided, with the global south generally embracing this, and the Muslim world very much embracing this decision.
6:52 Rory Stewart? But many other countries, most notably the US, criticizing the decision of the ICC and refusing to accept it. Over to you.
7:01 Alastair Campbell? I mean, it's the first time that what is defined as a Western leader of a developed democracy has been charged in this way. As you say, you know, we're talking in the past about Bashir in Sudan, Taylor in Liberia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. So this is a really, really big deal. With some exceptions, it seems to have united Israeli politics against the ICC. But I do think it's, this just goes to the heart of how diplomacy, I mean diplomacy has always been political to some extent. But when you look at the reactions around the world, there's a very good mapping of the whole decision, which we should put in the newsletter by an organization called
7:45 Alastair Campbell? Just Security. And they've gone country by country through all the different reactions that people have made to this. So as you say, America, even before the work was done on the case, right from the start, they said, this is unacceptable. It's putting Israel on a par with Hamas and given what Hamas did on October the 7th, that is completely unacceptable. And they've stuck absolutely to that line. Orban, prime minister of Hungary, immediately invited Netanyahu to say, essentially, come to our country because there's no chance, whatever, that we're going to arrest you. Because what happens is if you're a signatory to the ICC and somebody is indicted by it,
8:28 Alastair Campbell? then when they try to visit your country... You should arrest them. And South Africa, for example, very interesting example, where I think it was Bashir who went to South Africa and wasn't arrested. And the South African Supreme Court judged its own government to have been in breach of international law for the failure to arrest. So just as, you know, remember Putin didn't go to South Africa for the meeting of the BRICS last year because he was worried about arrest. He did go to Mongolia quite recently because the Mongolian government had told him they were not going to arrest him. But what's happened, when you look at the list of the countries who have said this is a good thing, Turkey, by the way, Erdogan was essentially sort of celebrating this.
9:13 Alastair Campbell? So there's those countries that have often been critical of Israel in the past. Ireland's another one, came out very, very strongly saying it has to be supported. Then you see the ones that sort of basically are just conscious of the very difficult politics. UK I would put in that category. France is in that category, where they find it very, very difficult. It's a really interesting development, but it just shows the sort of the extent of polarization now even around something like this.
9:38 Rory Stewart? And I think you framed this at the beginning as a statement about international law and the international system. So we're in a world that is much, much more violent than it was when Trump took over in 2016. When Trump took over in 2016, the Middle East was pretty peaceful. Eastern Europe was pretty peaceful. Africa was in a reasonably good state. We're now in a world in which there is horrors in the Middle East. There are horrors in Ukraine, Russia, and there are horrors in Sudan, just to take three. And, you know, we could add to that Myanmar, Nagorno-Karabakh, et cetera. So it's a real moment at which the international system is being tested to its limits by people like Putin breaking international borders, by civil war breaking up.
10:23 Rory Stewart? And this court was really created as part of an attempt to bring peace and solve conflict by holding people accountable for war crimes. So it was set up to deal with future Saddam Hussein's, Milosevic's, Pinochet's. And the hope was that by having a clear international system in place, leaders would be deterred from committing acts of brutality. So I think it's maybe worth taking a step or two back to see what's at stake here and why many countries, you know, for example, Belgium, some of the Scandinavian countries have come out and said very, very strongly, there is a principle of international law here.
11:08 Rory Stewart? It doesn't matter who the arrest warrant is issued for, we must support this international court. And part of the strength of these courts is that they attempt to issue arrest warrants for people on both sides. And this is why the question of equivalence is important. So the Americans and others have tried to say that the problem with this ruling is it creates an equivalence between Hamas and Israel. But that isn't a good argument. If you look at the court on former Yugoslavia, one of the things that actually gave its strength is that it issued arrest warrants not only for the Bosnian serbs, for the Miladiches
11:53 Rory Stewart? and the Kariciches, who were clearly on the wrong side. It issued arrest warrants for Bosnian commander who was on the right side. Because the argument was, yes, he was the victim of an illegal aggression and invasion, but in his conduct of the war to defend himself, he broke international law. The allegation was he committed atrocities. The other thing that's important is that these courts in the past, and this was true of a Croat commander, have heard cases and in the end decided that people should not be convicted. So I suppose what I'm getting at there is that you can't use the fact of equivalence as a way of challenging a court.
12:37 Rory Stewart? That's a very kind of worrying grounds. The stronger case that could be made against it, which has been hinted at by some of the objections, is that the court is supposed to come into place only when the national courts and the national judiciaries are not capable of dealing with it. So the way in which the US or the UK would traditionally say it doesn't need to go to the ICC is by saying, we have very strong courts in our own country, which will investigate war crimes committed by our soldiers and our leaders internally.
13:07 Rory Stewart? So it doesn't need to go to the ICC. And there, the question is, is Israel still in a situation where it can honestly say that its judicial process is so strong that it will fairly investigate war crimes committed by its own people? Or are the critics correct to say, actually, in practice, if you look at Israeli judicial practice over 20 years, it's been very, very reluctant to hold anyone accountable for war crimes?
13:32 Alastair Campbell? And also, if you go back to Israeli politics before October the 7th, then the big issue was the fact of Netanyahu and his justice reforms, which, if you remember, led to, you know, huge protests in the streets because they actually felt that the justice system was being co-opted for political purposes. I mean, look, it's very, very hard to know exactly what's happening in Gaza because it's, you know, access is so limited. But, you know, I was talking this week to somebody who's just got back from the West Bank, somewhere where they have, this person goes regularly, has done for many, many years,
14:11 Alastair Campbell? has a pretty significant role to play, and does not normally speak in what I would call dramatic terms. And this person says that what's happening in the West Bank, although he thinks that it's wrong to talk about apartheid, because that is very much a sort of about a specific system in South Africa, he doesn't think we should be talking in terms of genocide, but does say that what is going on there is ethnic cleansing. And in a sense, that what's happening is that there is a deliberate strategy to make the place as uninhabitable as possible for people who see it as their home, and that
14:52 Alastair Campbell? the Ben-Gavir Smotrich side of the Israeli government is absolutely in charge. Now, at this stage, always, we should say, October the 7th was horrific, Hamas, you know, deserved a lot of what went their way. But have we reached that point? And is there anybody within the Israeli system that is able or willing to stand up and make the point that if the goal in Gaza was to wipe out the Hamas leadership, the fact that in this indictment, the three people who were named originally, they're all now dead, but what's happening in the West Bank, and there was a huge piece in the New York Times yesterday about this, they had this word Gazification.
15:34 Alastair Campbell? The Gazification of what's going on in the in the West Bank. But if you have, you know, we talk a lot about the theme of impunity. And you do have a sense that because they can say we are taking out our enemies, we're taking out the people who were responsible for October the seventh. We've kind of moved to a point where you sort of feel, well, have they not for some time now been going beyond that? And then the other point that's worth throwing into this about all of these international institutions, the return of Donald Trump as president. Now, given that we've all grown up with the idea that nobody is above the law in a democracy governed by the rule of law, and we've just seen arrive as president, somebody who is clearly above the law, not least because of what's happened to all the cases for which
16:19 Alastair Campbell? he was being investigated. So I think that sense of a world of impunity, a world of nationalism, a world of where governments can kind of do what they want, I think that's where we are. And that's why these responses have all been, well, this is our national policy in relation to the issue of Israel Gaza, therefore that's the line we take. So the institution itself is now fundamentally weakened.
16:41 Rory Stewart? Yes, and of course, you're speaking to us in Norway, and it's probably no accident that the countries that have come strongly out in favor of the International Court, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands are, I suppose, classic Northern European countries that have a strong, strong abiding commitment to the idea of trying to create international law.
17:04 Alastair Campbell? Well, let me say, Roy, when I was having breakfast with the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Karlstorra, this morning, he showed me in the residence, the table. I couldn't believe it, actually, because, you know, sometimes historical artifacts can be, you know, you really get a sense of them. And the table in his residence is the table literally on which the Oslo Accords were signed.
17:28 Rory Stewart? And to remind people, the Oslo Accords was the last really strong attempt at a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
17:33 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. And it was, you know, Oslo, fundamental, it was a couple of Norwegian diplomats, a husband and wife team that were right at the heart of it. So you see this desk and you think, my God, how far have we come from that? Well, now we have elected in America, a president who has just appointed an ambassador to Israel, he says there is a one-state solution. And of course, the person we were talking to about the West Bank, of course, what a lot of this is about is that that area has to be taken back, that's Judea and Samaria, and it's part of the goal of One Israel. Will that be the American policy? I don't know, but that is certainly the view of the American ambassador.
18:17 Rory Stewart? Yeah, just finally to finish, I mean, why is it that so many Israelis have been critical of this ruling? And it's been pretty universal, I mean, slightly shockingly, mostly opposition leaders, et cetera, people who traditionally one would have hoped would support international law, have come out against it. I think there's a couple of reasons. Firstly, of course, Israel feels brutally under attack still. Whatever the realities on the ground are, and I actually happen to believe that Iran poses lesser threat to Israel than people suggest, but that's almost irrelevant. What matters is that people in Israel feel profoundly under threat and have since October last year. And they feel the world is ganging up against them. Secondly, of course, as we've discussed,
19:02 Rory Stewart? there's very little information about what's happening in Gaza really available to Israelis, and actually even very little information. You were talking about the West Banks, about what's going on in the West Bank. Israeli citizens for a long time now have not been allowed to go to the West Bank. So I had a Jewish friend who, I think I mentioned this, travelled recently to Hebron and walked through the settlements with a Palestinian friend, was subject to unbelievable abuse, and came back really shaken, feeling that he'd been lied to for his entire life about what was happening in the settlements, because he literally had no idea what they were like. So there is a sense of this, that when you feel under attack, when your media is not showing you anything, and when you can't
19:46 Rory Stewart? visit these areas, you can have a very unrealistic sense of what's actually going on. And you feel that people complaining about the settlements or the operations in Gaza are just antisemitic, rather than taking seriously the possibility that you can hold the position, which I think you and I hold, which is October the 7th was a horrifying, unforgivable attack that Hamas is a terrorist group, Hezbollah is a terrorist group, that Israel has a right to self-defense. But also that some of the things that are happening in the West Bank and much of what's been happening in Gaza is entirely unacceptable. And Israel did not need to do those things.
20:22 Alastair Campbell? Every time we discuss this, we tend to get attacked from both sides. I think actually we've been a little bit slow, both of us, you probably quicker than I, but to get to a place of saying that a lot of what the Israeli government is doing now is wrong and is being shown to be wrong. And that leads to every time you say something like that, and this is what, you know, if you saw Netanyahu's response to the ICC, he said that this was antisemitic. And that's a kind of easy thing to say. And by the way, the person that I was talking to, and you know them by the way, who's been there and who goes there regularly, is somebody who has fought antisemitism all their life.
21:03 Alastair Campbell? And I think that's one of the reasons why they've been maybe holding back a little bit, which is why I'm not actually saying who they are, because they're making a judgment about whether to kind of come out strong and say this. But I think it's such an easy thing. It's like if you were to, if ever I'm discussing Europe, anything to do with Europe, with somebody who's a well-known Brexit person, they will just say, oh, well, you're a Remainer. Like, that means you aren't allowed to have a view about something today, 2024. And likewise, now, if you say anything like we've just been saying about the reactions to the ICC, or the fact that you should at least take it seriously if the international
21:47 Alastair Campbell? institutions to mean anything, they say, well, that's being antisemitic. And it's just a way of shutting down. Any reasonable debate. So that's why I thought it was interesting. And as I say, we'll post this thing. You can map it country by country. It pretty much followed the current policy of that government in relation to the bigger issue. And that means it's impossible to kind of make progress.
22:09 Rory Stewart? And the stakes are unbelievable because if we end up in a situation where the US and very major allies reject the authority of the International Criminal Court, we have just dealt a death blow to one of the central institutions that was supposed to preserve global security. I mean, this is very big stakes, which brings us, I think, onto Ukraine, which you want to discuss. So Ukraine, I think there are probably three or four issues. I wanted to come to you again on this question of whether if Trump pulls back, whether Europe can go it alone. So just to remind people, Trump's got basically two camps pushing against involvement in Ukraine. One of them, broadly speaking, is isolationist. We don't want to
22:51 Rory Stewart? have anything to do with anyone else. And the other one of which is represented by this man that I know about, Mike Walz, his new national security adviser, which I'd called the priority camp, which says, it isn't, we want to have nothing to do with anywhere, but we want to focus on China. And that any weapons that we send to Ukraine are undermining our position on China. Now, the reason that's a problem is that there is a potential option for the US to say, we're not providing any more money. We're not going to send any more weapons. But if Europe wants to buy our weapons, they can still do so. And I put that little caveat in because Europe simply does not have the industrial production capacity. It's not just a question of cash. Europe could theoretically be a huge stretch, but if Germany,
23:35 Rory Stewart? France and Britain came in behind Poland, they could probably find the extra $50 billion a year to support the removal of US spending. The problem is, we're simply not creating enough missiles. And we don't have the equivalent of Patriots. We're not able to deal with their defence properly. So would the US sell the kit? There'll be part of Trump that would say, yeah, sure, I don't want to have anything to do with it. But if that's money for Americans, money for American defence contractors, I'll flog it to the Europeans. Incidentally, at an inflated price, which is one of the problems that the Ukrainians have been facing. We just can't buy this American kit at the price that the defence contractors sell to the American military. But people like Mike Walz might say, no, no, no. Because actually even selling this kit removes our air defences from the Pacific,
24:19 Rory Stewart? where we want this kit in place. So let me just come to you on this, can Europe go to London? So the Poles, the Baltics, the Nordics, Finns and Swedes particularly, would like to say, let's ally with Britain. We take this very seriously. What Putin is doing in Ukraine is genuinely a massive threat to the world. So even if Trump pulled out, we're going to step up. Do you think that's credible?
24:42 Alastair Campbell? It's very, very difficult, that's for sure. And this just underlines the power that is in the position of the American presidency. I was talking to somebody who was at the G20 in Brazil, and who said that, you know, a lot of the discussions were about, well, what's it going to be like when Trump, just in the same as at the COP, Trump was kind of hanging over COP, he was hanging over the G20. But one of the people who was there, who'd listened in to one of the conversations that Trump had been having with one of these other leaders, sorry to be all secret squirrel today, I'm not going to say who this one is either.
25:17 Rory Stewart? Can I just point out, I'm going to let you get away with it, but generally when I do that, you push me for the name, your journalistic hackles come up and you start saying, go on Rory, was it the King, was it the Prime Minister?
25:27 Alastair Campbell? Okay, right, okay, well, it wasn't the King. It wasn't the King, okay. And I should say, the person we've talked about in relation to the West Bank, you do know who it is, because I've, because I've told you.
25:38 Rory Stewart? You've kindly told me who it is on WhatsApp.
25:40 Alastair Campbell? And I've explained the sensitivities.
25:42 Rory Stewart? I accept why you're not mentioning him.
25:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And likewise with this person, I think it's quite, I'm not going to mention the, but anyway, there was a conversation in which Donald Trump said that he felt that Ukraine, the Ukraine situation had the capacity to be as complicated as the Middle East. Now, I thought that was interesting, because the sense we have, I'm going to do a deal in 24 hours, is that he sort of doesn't understand any of the complexity. So we shall see. I think it'd be very, very hard for Europe, not least because of the politics in Europe. We've talked about Germany, where the hard right and the hard left parties are both against further engagement in, in Ukraine.
26:24 Rory Stewart? Just to remind people, 30% of the German population currently supports these parties, which seem to not want to have anything to do with Ukraine. That's a big voting block.
26:34 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, interestingly, here in Norway, the reason why I had a very, very early meeting with the Prime Minister was because he was heading off to Parliament, because there's a big debate today about Ukraine. Where he is going to be committing three billion for next year, the pressure he is under is to spend more.
26:51 Rory Stewart? Yep.
26:52 Alastair Campbell? There's none of that, there might be a little bit at the margins, but there's even from the the right wing progressives, as they call themselves, the progress party, there's no pressure other than to do more for Ukraine. So I think you're right about that, and they're really, really, really keen on a big strategic partnership with the UK.
27:09 Rory Stewart? Just to explain why, I think the reason why the Nordic and Baltic countries in Poland feel this very strongly is that they feel much closer to Russia and they focus on it and they study it and they're worth taking more seriously than almost US, UK, French analysts, because we just.
27:26 Alastair Campbell? I mean, his geography and his history, they're staring at you the whole time.
27:30 Rory Stewart? So their conclusion is that the stakes are unbelievably high. And broadly speaking, the worst case scenario is that if Putin manages to take a chunk of eastern Ukraine and then get Trump to agree essentially to demilitarise western Ukraine, which is what he'll demand, he'll say, you know, the price of a peace is western Ukraine or what remains of Ukraine, not only doesn't join NATO and EU, but it basically disarms. He will then have two temptations which will be very strong. One of them is to roll through Ukraine in four, five years' time and have a chomp at Moldova, which is a former Soviet state. And perhaps the more likely one is that he helps himself to a bit of one of the Baltic
28:15 Rory Stewart? states. And there again, it may not be about invading and taking an entire country, maybe just taking a sliver of territory. But the reason that matters is that if he takes a sliver of territory in the Baltic, those are NATO member states, so we're signed up to defend them if they're invaded. He will hope that he can take a chunk of them, sit there and then threaten to use nuclear weapons if anyone intervenes to retake it. And if he's successful in that, he's destroyed NATO forever.
28:43 Alastair Campbell? What did you make last week of him first time using this kind of intercontinental ballistic missile, which could carry nuclear warheads but didn't, but was sort of, it looked to me like a pretty performative, very expensive message?
28:55 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, I think that is the message and I think that's the bluff he'd hope to pull off. I think his gamble. Is that most Germans, most Brits probably, I'm afraid, would not be prepared to fight and die to defend Baltic countries. Now NATO is based on the assumption they would be prepared to do that. But the risk is people will think, you know, a bit like Chamberlain, you know, this is a distant country of which we know nothing. Are we really going to fight and die for these countries? The Baltics are gambling, we will. But much smarter from their point of view is to make sure that Putin is never in a position in Ukraine to be able to claim the victory, settle down and then have a go at something else. Because
29:37 Rory Stewart? I think a combination of taking a small bit of territory, Germany and Britain not being motivated, and nuclear threat might allow him to break NATO and that article of protection entirely.
29:49 Alastair Campbell? On the other hand, let's imagine that Trump did sort of do some kind of deal with Putin that was not at all acceptable to Ukraine and that destabilized frankly, the whole of Eastern Europe and parts of the West. Does he really want that to be his first big foreign policy thing? Is that not going to show him to be weak as opposed to strong?
30:10 Rory Stewart? Well, one possibility, of course, which people who voted for him keep trying to say is, well, he never does all the things that he says he's going to do anyway. So maybe we don't need to take seriously the fact that he said this. I think, though, most of his top team have spent the last four years digging into the idea that Russia doesn't really matter. What matters is China. And that they could do with making friends with Putin to bring him more on to their side against China. So whatever he thinks, there'll be a lot of pressure in his team. And I certainly think, I would imagine, I don't know, maybe you've got views on this. Do you think it's politically possible for him to write another large check for Ukraine, given everything he's said in the last two
30:55 Rory Stewart? years? I mean, forget about peace and 24 hours, but all he has to do is not send another $50 billion for Ukraine to be in really big trouble.
31:04 Alastair Campbell? I think it is possible for him to, because I don't think he has been as hard over on this as some of the people that are now in the administration. And we know that he's quite always prepared to kind of to switch positions. I don't honestly don't know. But I'll tell you what, I'm reading Angela Merkel's book at the moment.
31:19 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
31:19 Alastair Campbell? Which we're talking to in the next few weeks. Very interesting when Trump won. You know, Trump, number one, his first term. So when Trump came in, and let's say, for example, we're going to talk in a minute about COP. Obviously, he had a very, very different position to most of the countries that were at the top table of the climate change debate. And she sort of took the view, well, we're going to have to step up and meet this challenge without him in a different way. Now, I guess the question you're asking is on something like defence. Would leaders be willing to do that? And would their countries be willing to follow them on that? But most of the countries we're talking about, they are increasing defence spending.
32:01 Alastair Campbell? They are looking to up the game on defence, including our own, including the place where I am now, including Germany. Look, it's a tough one, but I don't think it's a given that he's going to pull the plug on Ukraine quickly.
32:13 Rory Stewart? Well, two final things from me. For more details on Ukraine, do please read Shashank Joshi, who's about to write a great article in The Economist, kind of forward, who knows much more about Ukraine than I do. Secondly, on this question of going from EU-NATO unanimity, in other words, these big bodies all acting together towards a world in which some of them might make smaller alliances, for example, Poles, Baltics, Nordics and Britain, working on Ukraine. Again, my friend Gerhard Knauß at ESI has done quite a lot of work on this. Thank you, Arista.
32:43 Alastair Campbell? Okay, Rory, quick break. See you in a minute.
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34:34 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
34:36 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alice Campbell.
34:38 Rory Stewart? And Alice, I think we really must do stuff on cop and climate. But I think for time reasons, let's move it into our next podcast, which is the question and answer podcast where we'll do a serious amount on cop.
34:49 Alastair Campbell? Great.
34:50 Rory Stewart? Which brings us to some other issues that you've raised. You wanted to tell us a little bit about Norway, where you are. There's also been an extraordinary result in Romania. So tell us a little bit about Romania because I think it's quite an interesting example about the way that politics is changing.
35:04 Alastair Campbell? Well, this goes against what we were talking about earlier, where the people closest to Russia are more likely to be most worried. We know about Orban, we know about Slovakia. So this is Romania, this is the presidential campaign. And the president, it's not a sort of Macron-type president. They don't have as much power as some presidents. But the truth is that a far-right pro-Russia candidate, a guy called Kalin Georgescu, he has won the first round on 23%. And the person who was favorite, who was the prime minister, a social democrat, came third, so he's now out of the runoff. So what happens is that Georgescu is now going to go up against somebody called Elena Lascone from the Save Romania Union in the second round.
35:48 Alastair Campbell? But it's very much, I mean, this guy is, you know, we're talking far-right here, we're talking somebody who sort of regularly echoes the kind of Putin talking points. Pretty low turnout, 51%, but a big, big, big rise. I mean, this guy was on, not that long ago, was on sort of single figures in the polls.
36:05 Rory Stewart? Yeah, there's a lot of trends here in Romania, which oddly reflects what we've seen in America and across Europe. So you've just pointed out very low turnout. Number two, opinion polls completely wrong. I mean, the opinion polls has barely rated this guy. Thirdly, the power of social media. So he had no ground game. He didn't have much money. He's done it almost all entirely on TikTok, which again, you remember, people like me who were profoundly wrong about Trump were trying to point out he didn't have a ground game. He didn't have people knocking on doors. He didn't have offices in Michigan. And of course, he proved that he didn't really need any of that stuff and that the Democrats' investment in that turned out to be almost a waste of money. They didn't really get much result for that. This guy has proved that you can go from almost nobody knowing
36:50 Rory Stewart? who you are, none of the polls is rating you, to actually coming first in the presidential election. And then finally, of course, what you've pointed out, which is that he is violently pro Putin against the American missile bases in Romania, which are absolutely central for NATO security, is running on a very strong Christian ticket. He's got this line that he's been sent by God to try to revenge sins. So even if he doesn't win, and the likelihood at the moment, but who the hell is supposed to trust the opinion polls, given how wrong they're getting everything?
37:21 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
37:22 Rory Stewart? But anyway, the opinion polls suggest he may not win. Still, this phenomenon that somebody coming out of nowhere, almost certainly aided by Russian and Chinese interference coming in on TikTok, because this is a big other issue. If you think about it from Russia's point of view, a lot of the things that are happening really suit them. They love the idea that obviously a pro Putin populist can come out of nowhere, pumped up on social media. They also are really enjoying, I think, stoking up sadly, the Israel Palestine crisis on both sides. It really suits Russia's agenda to have social media algorithms endlessly
38:03 Rory Stewart? creating tension between those two sides, because that will both build up anti Islamist populist parties in Europe who will feed off this. And God forbid what would happen if there were another Islamist terrorist attack in Europe just before elections in France or Germany.
38:19 Alastair Campbell? Maybe that's a good bridge into the UK, because one of the things that's getting a lot of attention on British social media at the moment is this petition. I don't know what it's at now, but it's a petition basically saying there should be another general election.
38:31 Rory Stewart? And it's heading towards 3 million people.
38:33 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
38:34 Rory Stewart? Just to remind you, I mean, as an MP, we used to see these petitions. And in the old days, we debated in Parliament when they crossed 100,000 people. And getting to 100,000 was a lot of effort. And it was a sign that something really mattered.
38:46 Alastair Campbell? I would say this one hasn't required much effort at all. Because when you delve into it, there seem to be an awful lot of people from different parts of the world who are suddenly taking a massive interest in the need for a general election in the United Kingdom. Added to which, the wretched Musk has been pushing this as well. And I do think it's wonderful, I must say this. Nigel Farage, who used to get very, very aerated at the idea that we should have a people's vote, a referendum on the final Brexit deal, suddenly thinks that we should have a second vote of a general election, which delivered a massive majority, rather bigger than 52, 48. This, I think, is doing two things. One, it's showing the ability of the whole kind of that social media architecture
39:28 Alastair Campbell? to drive what I would argue is total non-news. So Keir Starmer goes on the television yesterday and does an interview where he's asked, you know, well, you've got 2 million people saying there should be a general election. The answer is, well, no, you don't. And likewise, somebody else saying Nigel Farage is more popular than you. Well, you know, up to a point, Lord Copper. I think it's just weird. These petitions now, frankly, I think Parliament's going to have to relook at this because these petitions are pointless. They don't actually accurately reflect, I don't think, any strand of opinion. So it means you can't really work out what's a proper petition and what's not.
40:02 Rory Stewart? It's very worrying because, of course, these petitions were part of trying to bring Parliament into the modern world. They were part of thinking about how digital democracy could work. And what we're discovering with the loss of moves on digital democracy is how easily they can be undermined by the way that social media works. Musk has driven this, and he's proving to be increasingly powerful. But if you step outside the UK and you look at German and Austrian social media, he is retweeting and promoting posts by far-right activists in Germany and Austria too. And he seems to have a real bee in his bonnet for anybody that he perceives as being part of the moderate centre, hence the fact he keeps trolling Keir Starmer.
40:43 Alastair Campbell? It was very odd because he didn't always, when he was sort of busy going around governments hoovering up massive subsidies to make himself the richest man in the world. He appeared to be quite reasonable. In fact, funnily enough, I was talking to the Norwegian Prime Minister about him this morning because Tesla is a massive in Norway. They really, really have sort of driven on the on the electric car market. And he was saying that, you know, he met Musk a few times and he met him in, he was over in Norway a few years ago, and he said he was quite modest and quite, quite reticent and almost shy. And yet he's now become this sort of radicalised weaponiser of this extraordinary social media thing. But there's a method in his madness, there's no doubt. He keeps promoting, yeah, actually Lenin,
41:25 Alastair Campbell? the so-called Tommy Robinson, he keeps promoting his video, the one that's landed him in jail, saying Britain's now a police state. I do think the Musk-Trump thing will end in tears, but in the meantime, he's doing an awful lot of damage to the sort of the public square in so many countries. Talking of social media arguments, we talked on leading this week to Kim Ledbetter, the Labour MP who's brought forward the assisted dime bill. That's out this week, you know, I think it's a very interesting issue. She's a very interesting woman and the vote, of course, is on Friday. Can we talk about the British economy? I want to throw an idea at you. Okay. So Labour's come in. We've talked for a while about how there's this very long gap of four months between the election and the budget. The budget's
42:10 Alastair Campbell? happened. The budget, they say, has been about fixing this black hole in the economy. National insurance has gone up and that has sort of caused a lot of quite a lot of grief. There was quite a lot of negativity at the CBI yesterday. You've had the protest of the farmers, et cetera. What's been lost in that, I think, has been, because if you remember, Rachel Reeves called it a budget for growth. But the growth message and the plan for growth has not landed. So here's my thought. We're now in November, December next month, then you've got Christmas, then you've got the new year. My thought is that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves come out and the new year, say, the first months of government were about fixing the mess, we've laid the foundations of that. Here is the plan for growth.
42:53 Alastair Campbell? And here are all the issues that we need to address and here's where we're doing it. And there was a very, very interesting article on, funny enough, on Sam Friedman's Substack by John Kingman. John Kingman is somebody I used to work with very closely because he was a Treasury spokesperson during Gordon Brown's chancellorship. But then he went on to be a pretty senior at the Treasury and he was actually the growth policy guy. And he's written this very, very, very, quite long, but really interesting piece where he's gone through all the different areas that you could address in a plan for growth, some of which we talk about. Transport links, obviously. Planning an infrastructure where the government is saying the right things, but now you've actually got to show how you're doing it. Fixing the
43:35 Alastair Campbell? mess of Brexit, city devolution, more powers to the cities, redeveloping that whole Oxford-Cambridge corridor. You know, he's just, he's throwing out all sorts of different ideas, which when you read them, it's actually quite dramatic. Heathrow's another one. Are we finally? At the moment, there's yet another kind of review process around Heathrow. That's a strategic decision for a government to take, knowing that there's going to be opposition. And I'm not saying it's the right thing or wrong thing. I'm saying that it should be part of a growth plan.
44:03 Rory Stewart? Yeah. Now, I've been criticised a lot, as you can imagine, by colleagues who feel that I've not been clear enough and haven't played my role of devil's advocate, being a bit critical of Labour. And that's partly because I've been trying to encourage you on this painful journey of finding things that you can occasionally point out that Labour's not doing well. So let me just give a brief explanation of the sort of bleak facts about where Labour is. Keir Starmer is on a popularity rating at the moment of minus thirty-eight. To put that in contrast, Tony Blair, at about this stage, his government had an approval rating seventy-six in favour, thirteen against. So sort of net popularity about plus sixty-three
44:46 Rory Stewart? against minus thirty-eight. So Keir Starmer is almost as unpopular as Liz Truss was by this stage, and that's quite an achievement. The economy is not doing well. The pound is slightly down. Business confidence is down, retail's down, manufacturing activity is now at a nine-months low. The Purchasing Managers Index, which is a good indicator of growth, has now gone into negative territory.
45:12 Rory Stewart? Private sector activity in general, thirteen months low. Budget, in retrospect, the budget, although big, and we pointed this out, seventy billion pounds extra spending, forty billion pounds extra tax, had investment spending, but that investment spending is mostly going towards things like schools and hospitals, which is very understandable, and my goodness, they need investment, but is not the obvious thing if you're trying to get your economy off the ground.
45:38 Alastair Campbell? And a lot will go on pay as well.
45:39 Rory Stewart? A lot on pay as well, yeah. But what isn't there? There's been no tax reform, there's nothing obviously there for growth, and it's very difficult to understand where she goes in a couple of years, because although she's put spending up by three point four percent, if Rachel Reeves does not get growth, there's not going to be revenue coming into her coffers, and she's going to have a very, very uncomfortable spending conversation. In other words, she's going to have to basically cut spending in two years' time. And she's ruled out tax increases yet again, no more tax increases, Parliament. That doesn't seem realistic, I'm afraid. She's going to have to probably break her word again.
46:16 Alastair Campbell? Or, Rory, just on tax, maybe she goes actually at some point in this Parliament, goes in the opposite direction, makes tax changes in the opposite direction, not necessarily on on income, but on some of the kind of, you know, business taxes and the entrepreneurial stuff. I mean, is it too late, six months into your first Parliament, to come out and say, right, here's the plan for growth? Is it too late to do that if you've had the budget?
46:41 Rory Stewart? No, it's not too late. And I guess the optimistic view is that Keir Starmer, a bit like Churchill's joke about America, is often considered to eventually do the right thing, but at the very last moment. But doing the right thing is all the things that you've mentioned, which are largely investment, but it's also reform to trade policy, competition, education, regulation, and the tax system, right? There should have been reform in this budget to capital gains tax. Fuel should have gone up. What they did on stamp duty rises was completely mad. And what they did on ENI, which is basically raising the tax on employing people, is again very bad policy.
47:23 Rory Stewart? It's driven a wedge between self-employed and employed people in a very unhelpful way. So absolutely, they can still do it, but that was a budget which, when you look at it, increasingly looks like a sticking plaster budget that avoided. Making the big reform choices. And that's the question, why? Why? Why with a huge majority?
47:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
47:44 Rory Stewart? Did they not take the opportunity to be bold?
47:47 Alastair Campbell? Here's where I'm going to be constructively critical, Rory. Okay. I think we did, both of us, because the numbers were so big, we thought, hmm, this is big, it's bold, and therefore it's interesting and it's going to move the dial. And as they know from the response of business, there's, there's lots of people who still kind of, as you know, from the events that we've done together with business, there's still a lot of goodwill. They really want this government to succeed. But, you know, you've got to be very, very careful about running down the reserves in your kind of reputational bank. At the moment, their messaging is essentially is, you know, we're doing really tough things because we've got no choice. And they've got to move from that to we're making really big positive choices because we've got a really clear and compelling
48:27 Alastair Campbell? plan for growth. And I think you come out in the new year and you say, right, transport, you know, there were some of the most important transport links were cut. Right. Got to invest in that. Infrastructure, that means absolutely cutting through lots of the kind of regulatory stuff. They're going to have to fix the damage of Brexit. I'm sorry, we will keep banging on about this, but it won't be enough to tinker on that one. Likewise, I think on migration, you know, that figure you keep quoting, which is absolutely haunting. When the pension age started, when the pensions started, 20 working people for every pensioner is now under three. That's just impossible to fix that without an honest debate about migration. One of John Kingman's ideas, by the way, and this would be politically very difficult.
49:12 Alastair Campbell? But if we are going to move away from fuel consumption in terms of driving, is it time to think about road pricing is something he brought in, which I know there'd be absolute sort of, you know, people would go bonkers about that. But is that the sort of big, bold thing you need to do? John Kingman had a huge piece about affordable housing and the finances of affordable housing in relation to the, the housing associations and the assets that they've got. The other thing, Jonathan Reynolds is developing this industrial strategy. That, I think, is where you can put in the stuff that you're talking about. But I think coming along and say, we've got a big majority, therefore we're going to do big things. We're going to make big change in this country. At the moment, it just feels too much like we're fixing a mess.
49:54 Alastair Campbell? Now, we know they're fixing a mess, but the big, bold plans for the future, what we need to hear.
49:58 Rory Stewart? And I think there's a really interesting question of how you do this because, of course, there's howls of pain if you reform anything, there's always losers. And we've seen the trouble they've got into just with farming.
50:11 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
50:12 Rory Stewart? So I wonder whether, does it make sense to put all the things together, inflict all the pain at once quite early? So let's say you're doing planning reform, tax reform, all the other competitiveness reforms, regulation reform and all those infrastructure investments you're talking about. Or is that dangerous? I mean, could you just smack in, rip off the Band-Aid, accept weeks of the media dredging up every single person who's negatively affected, but lean into that? Because I guess presumably that's what the Thatcher government would have felt like in eighty four, eighty five, when they were really pushing ahead with stuff, that they must have had an incredible incoming barrage
50:57 Rory Stewart? of abuse, from which, to some extent, their reputations haven't recovered even thirty years later, but they did go on to win the next election and they did achieve huge reforms in the economy.
51:05 Alastair Campbell? And also Thatcher's reputation as a kind of, you know, a leader of consequence who made real change, whether you liked the change or you didn't, is secure in history. So I think if you're in power and you've got a big majority, you've got to do big things. And I sort of feel very, very strongly the need for something really big coming out of the new year, that essentially is learning a few lessons from the first few months, but ultimately saying, we've got a big majority and we're going to do big things with it and we're going to take a lot of heat along the way. Final point on it is, you know, when Labour were in opposition, I used to talk the whole time about, you know, the potential for Britain to be a cultural superpower. John Kingman, again, sorry to keep quoting, but I thought it was an excellent piece.
51:48 Alastair Campbell? He says, "The case for the arts needs to travel the same policy journey as the case for spending on science. Over twenty five years or so, the science budget went from being a minor spending programme Obscure interest of boffins to being seen by all political parties, an important economic engine. We have to see the arts in the same way. I think the world's open for that. So listen, Rory, should we finally close off a little bit on Norvega, on Norway?
52:13 Rory Stewart? So very quickly before we go to little summary on Norway, why we're focusing on it. In some ways, one of the great pin ups the world and something that the Labour government might well subconsciously be trying to make Britain a little bit more like because it's leading the world in human development indicators, does fantastically well in PISA on education, eighty nine thousand a year GDP per capita, greater quality indicators on the Gini coefficient, sovereign wealth fund of over a trillion dollars. But curiously, even Norway is facing some problems that will be familiar to American and British listeners. Housing affordability, immigration now at twenty percent, quite a high tax burden, some grumbles about the
52:55 Rory Stewart? decentralized health service and still quite dependent on oil and gas. Anyway, over to you for what you learnt.
53:00 Alastair Campbell? I also think Norway is very important to Britain. We now get a third of our energy from Norway. That is a hell of a lot, a one third. So this is a country, population wise, roughly the size of Scotland, and we're getting a third of our energy from Norway. We have very, very important defence links with Norway. It was interesting, Johannes Garstori, he's, you know, left of centre politicians. And as you say, you look at all the data for Norway and you think, wow, that's pretty impressive. That's pretty good. And the sovereign wealth fund, by the way, which is the biggest in the world, it now funds a quarter of all state services. One of the arguments in the politics is here is that we should be able to take even more from the sovereign wealth fund, but they have a fiscal rule that says you can only take
53:41 Alastair Campbell? three percent each year. But they've also got political issues. So the incumbent party, the Labour Party in coalition with the the centre, and last week there was a poll for the first time, this hard, well, it's a sort of far right party in that it's to the right of the Conservative Party called Progress, for the first time, they're top of the polls, twenty five point three. They've got more support than Labour and the centre party, which is the smaller coalition party. They're on twenty two point nine and the Conservative Party is on twenty one. So you put twenty one and twenty five together, that's the right. So it's going to be difficult. Now, he's, he's a very impressive guy and he certainly thinks he can pull it round. And the other thing, this relates to to America.
54:27 Alastair Campbell? This stuff about young men, what's happening to young men in politics is really, really quite interesting. And they had a commission several years ago now, where they were looking at men in relation to physical health, mental health, falling behind in schools, suicide rates, all this sort of thing. And this sense that men are falling behind women, or that it's all been about women's rights, and we need to have more about men. So there was one survey, for example, said that forty seven percent of Norwegian men aged eighteen to twenty nine said they would have voted for Trump.
55:01 Rory Stewart? Right.
55:02 Alastair Campbell? The overall figure in Norway is eighty percent plus Harris.
55:06 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
55:06 Alastair Campbell? Almost half of young men. Now, what's that? What is that that they're tapping into? How is that being weaponized in that way?
55:13 Rory Stewart? And of course, it's very worrying, isn't it? Because the story when it was the elderly that supported right wing groups was that ultimately demography was against them.
55:21 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
55:22 Rory Stewart? When it's the young supporting right wing groups, you begin to worry that the right wing groups have a sort of a long term future if those people remain right wing through their lives.
55:32 Alastair Campbell? And also, there's a guy here called Simon Vella, who's twenty three. He's not in parliament, he's going to go for parliament. This is a guy, he's been very open about taking drugs, he's been convicted for possession of of soft drugs, but he's become like a big figure. There's another one in the Conservative Party, a guy called Olas Fennerby, he's twenty seven. And they're tapping into this idea that if you want to be cool and you want to be hip, it's on the right rather than left that you do that. And the thing that was interesting talking to Jonas this morning, he's a very, very, very intelligent guy, and he really thinks quite deeply about stuff. And he was saying that, take Canada, for example, we talked last week, and he'd heard us our discussion about Justin Trudeau, that
56:15 Alastair Campbell? we both think, I think, is in real trouble. But Trudeau had told him that a couple of years ago, when you polled Canadians on the issues of most concern to them, climate was number one, okay? It's now vanished.
56:30 Alastair Campbell? The cost of living has driven out everything, you know, so every incumbent government is having to address this cost of living stuff. And here in Norway, he says the real political problems have started because there's been a series of interest rate rises. He thinks in the new year that will start to reverse. And even though you're not responsible for them, he says he's getting the blame for all of it.
56:48 Rory Stewart? Okay, well, finally, just tell us a little bit about what's happening with the monarchy and these espionage cases.
56:53 Alastair Campbell? Oh, my God, Rory, you want to talk about a monarchy that's in trouble. You of all people, Rory.
56:59 Rory Stewart? I'm actually very much in favor of the British monarchy. It's not that I'm universally in favor of all monarchies.
57:04 Alastair Campbell? Right, okay, but you're probably quite keen on the Norwegian monarchy. Let's do the spying one first. They've arrested a security guard working in the American Embassy here on suspicion of spying for the Russians and the Iranians. So that's all happening. And the royal story is the son of the Crown Princess who's currently in custody on rape charges, you know, which is pretty heavy, pretty serious, and domestic violence, and violating a restraining order. So, you know, certainly our royals have had a lot of, have had difficulties down the years. And, you know, Andrew in particular has had all sorts of stuff going on. But this is a young,
57:45 Alastair Campbell? he's 27, had issues with drugs, but he's currently in the nick. Well, maybe a more positive note to end on, Rory, the Christmas tree. I think I'm making my tree of the day today.
57:58 Rory Stewart? There was some grumbles about, so Norway traditionally honors its longstanding relationship with Britain and, and actually our cooperation during the war, famously by sending this enormous tree that goes to Trafalgar Square every year. And people like my mother who remember it first arriving after the war, it's like an incredibly exciting thing. But I believe there was some disappointment last year about the state of the tree.
58:18 Alastair Campbell? So I've checked into this, and in fact, I'm looking at a picture of it now. Yeah, I think I might make it my tree of the day. Essentially, this thing has to be chopped down.
58:26 Rory Stewart? Yep.
58:27 Alastair Campbell? And then it has to be transported across the sea. So by the time it goes up in Trafalgar Square, it can look a bit sort of, you know, like luggage that you've just sort of pulled out your suitcase. And of course, what happens is that our wretched newspapers, what they did last year was they sort of took pictures of it and they had it looking at its most ragged. So they've gone to great lengths this year to get a tree that they hope will transport well, hope will look good and will thereby strengthen Anglo Norwegian relations even further.
58:57 Rory Stewart? It's also our view, just this is me as a bit of a conifer geek. Our views on which trees make good Christmas trees have also changed over the last 70, 80 years. So this is a Norwegian spruce, which is a magnificent tree in Norway and indeed have planted in Scotland, but it is no longer the tree of choice for domestic Christmas trees because it doesn't quite have the tight form that we're used to. We're increasingly using different forms of things, Caucasian firs, other forms of spruce.
59:26 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, when the tree comes out of its wrapping and it goes up, I am looking at it now in its full glory and it's a very, very impressive tree. So just give it a few days to kind of get back to the shape. Daily Mail, lay off. There are big issues at stake here. Let's just say, for example, the Norwegians get fed up with our press criticizing their Christmas tree and as a result decide that this massive, there's a massive frigate deal in the offing at the moment and we're one of four countries that might be up for it. Biggest defence deal, right? So let's not ruin it, Daily Mail. Let's think about the jobs and prosperity of the future. Be kind to the tree.
1:00:08 Rory Stewart? Super. Well, thank you, Anna. Looking forward very much to getting into climate in tomorrow's episode.
1:00:14 Alastair Campbell? See you soon.
1:00:15 Rory Stewart? See you. Bye bye.
1:00:16 Alastair Campbell? Bye.
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