366. Question Time: Why do dictators bother with sham elections?

What stops billionaires spending their money in their lifetime? How can you stay engaged with politics without sacrificing mental health? Who are the hidden actors in the Israel/Gaza conflict? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. Stream brand-new drama Brian and Maggie now on Channel 4. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across England, Scotland & Wales. Use referral code POLITICS after signing up for your chance to win a TRIP merch bundle. Learn more at GetFuse.com/Politics Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: India Dunkley & Evan Green Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen & Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  The Rest Is Politics is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

• 0:03Rory Stewart?

  And there's still time to win one of our merch bundles signed by Alistair and me if you switch energy suppliers to Fuse by the end of January.

• 0:11Alastair Campbell?

  All you've got to do is go to getfuse.com/politics and use the referral code POLITICS to sign up. And merch or no merch, it is worth considering switching to Fuse. They're a green electricity supplier, generating power from their own solar and wind farms, and they invest 100% of profits into building more renewables.

• 0:33Rory Stewart?

  Their tariffs are cheaper than any of the big six competitors, so you'll still be saving money, even though the price cap has gone up. And their customer service is excellent. Fuse offer 24/7 support and promise they'll answer any query within a minute on the Fuse app.

• 0:46Alastair Campbell?

  So download it now, use the referral code POLITICS after signing up. Visit getfuse.com/politics for terms and conditions and to learn all you need to know.

• 1:01Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:03Alastair 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.

• 1:16Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 1:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think you're not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 1:46Rory 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/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day, every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/restpolitics.

• 2:40Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:44Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And Gemma Brooks Rory wants to know what we think about Lukashenko winning a seventh term in Belarus, when the EU and the UK both say it cannot have been free or fair.

• 2:59Rory Stewart?

  Quick reminder just on Belarus and then tell us about the election. But so Belarus people not completely concentrating. It's a big chunk of territory, just north of Ukraine, just west of Russia and just east of Poland. So it's like, it's like the, the yellow bit of a fried egg and the white around it would be Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine. And it's a bit of, I think I've said before in a podcast, I was angling to be the ambassador to Belarus in 2006. And in those glory days, I was being encouraged to do it on the grounds that this was going to be the last autocracy in Europe that was going to become a democracy. And I'd be there, you know, at the moment of the transition when Belarus came into the European Union, this kind of stuff. Anyway, over to you on what's happened since.

• 3:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, let's just congratulate Lukashenko. He won 87.6 of the vote. I mean, this is a compelling win, seven in a row, but it's remarkable. No, this is, I think it was Conde Rice who said that Lukashenko was the last European dictator. So he's been there now for 30 years. It is literally a sham election in that the four other candidates spend most of their time saying how well Lukashenko does. There was one bit, there was one bit during the campaign when he was asked about how the election was going and Lukashenko said, oh, I'm not really following it very much.

• 4:21Alastair Campbell?

  But then, of course, I said, I don't know if you saw, I sent you the video of the kind of celebrations this morning of this sort of, it was amazingly well-produced thing. And there is a question, why do these dictatorships bother having these sham elections? And the fact is that because they do get written up around the world as, you know, Lukashenko wins seventh term. And we all know, but a lot of people don't necessarily know that the sort of deeper background of what's going on. And of course, the reason he matters more than just being the leader of this very dictatorial, authoritarian leader of, as you say, quite a sizable country, is because he is very, very close, well, I mean, the Belarus opposition called him Putin's puppet.

• 5:05Alastair Campbell?

  He is Putin's puppet. He does what Putin tells him. It's partly the Ukraine assault was launched with Belarusian help. So, but it's a kind of pretty, it's a pretty depressing state of affairs.

• 5:17Rory Stewart?

  It's interesting also because a reminder of people of that age, so I guess he's, he's 70.

• 5:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 5:23Rory Stewart?

  And Donald Trump, I guess, is in his mid 70s now.

• 5:25Alastair Campbell?

  Seventy-eight.

• 5:26Rory Stewart?

  Seventy-eight, right. So how these people, their careers, of course, stretch back into what feels like a very different world. Lukashenko was very much part of the old Soviet Union, served in, I think, the border troops in the late 1970s, and then ran a proper collective communist state farm through the 1980s for Belarus, and then joined the Supreme Soviet of Belarus as a member of parliament. Established his reputation weirdly as an anti-corruption campaigner. So there was a brief moment, kind of early 90s, where people thought, or some people might have thought, there was a bit of a glimpse of some other possibility with this guy, which was just enough in that moment in the early 90s, when obviously the Soviet

• 6:10Rory Stewart?

  Union was collapsing, to leverage himself into position as the president. And then, as you say, since then, this autocracy. It's a country, population just under 10 million people, so comparable, I suppose, to the population maybe of Israel, about that population. It's got a GDP per capita, though, very, very low. I mean, so, you know, about, in real terms, maybe $6,000 a head a year. Places like Lithuania now would be two or three times. Wealthier per capita in nominal terms, having started at the same level. So what's really happened is it's a story of the way that I think Belarus wasn't a long way off places like Romania and Lithuania in the early 90s and the difference that's

• 6:55Rory Stewart?

  been made for those countries that joined the European Union, joined the West in their development and Lukashenko sticking Belarus where it is.

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  There's a parallel with Trump and what's happened with Trump's second term. Okay, we're talking here about seventh successive term. But we talked when we did the live with Scaramucci recently about how strangely, not silent, but how strangely muted the feeling of resistance to Trump was compared to the first term. This time in Belarus, it feels strangely muted, other than with there are protests worldwide, there have been protests going on in different parts of the world because most of his real opponents are either in prison or they're in exile. But this is because the last time, when he definitely lost the election, but claimed, I think he got 82% in the claim last time, but they ended up arresting 65,000 people, thousands were sort of beaten up in jail.

• 7:47Alastair Campbell?

  And so this time it feels that the opposition is abroad rather than there. I've got to, we've got to give a shout out, by the way, to old Steve Rosenberg for the PBC. I watched parts of the press conference that Lukashenko did to celebrate this historic win and Steve Rosenberg, you know, gave him some pretty direct questions about, you know, can you really say this is an election when most of your opponents are in prison or exiled and there's been no campaign as such at all. And Lukashenko clearly knew who Steve Rosenberg was and said, well, you have prisons in Britain. You know, you put people in prison and Steve Rosenberg was maybe, yeah, but not just for

• 8:32Alastair Campbell?

  sort of opening their mouths. And Lukashenko said, well, prison is a place for people who open their mouths too wide. The other thing that he did was Steve Rosenberg asked him a question, no, just made an observations. It's a very strange election, very strange kind of election. And Lukashenko says, well, that's a nice new experience for you, Steve. And lots of the Belarusian journalists and people then sort of laughing and applauding this great wit. So it's bloody depressing, but of course, Putin will be happy with that one, just as he's been happy with other elections that have happened recently.

• 9:05Rory Stewart?

  Brits may also, funny, just before we leave Belarus, remember it a little bit. Because in 2021, there was quite a famous case where people on a Ryanair flight from Athens to Lithuania were cheerfully on their way back home, when suddenly the plane was diverted in Belarusian airspace and forced to do an emergency landing in the capital city of Belarus. And they did it because, very unfortunately, the Belarusian dissident journalist, I think called Protasiewicz, was on the plane, just trying to fly from Athens, Lithuania, and found himself, of course, abducted off the plane and has now been chucked in prison. But terrifying, these planes. It's a trick of autocratic regimes which comes up occasionally, which is that people

• 9:49Rory Stewart?

  think they're safely flying not to that country and then suddenly find, in this case, a Ryanair plane forcibly diverted and they get abducted.

• 9:57Alastair Campbell?

  Peter Judge, Distribution of Wealth. Do you agree that the current distribution of power, wealth and resources is gross, unjustifiable and unimaginably damaging? If not, what adjectives would you use to describe the current distribution of power, wealth and resource?

• 10:13Rory Stewart?

  Quick start on that. So the three wealthiest people in the United States, who are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, I think. Their wealth is now the same as the entire bottom 50% of the United States. And their wealth is also an astonishing amount of the entire global population. Because they are in the many, many hundreds of billions of dollars. But there's also, I mean, there's so many ways of looking at this. There's the work that was done on equality. It's our friend, The Mooch, who points out that when Mitt Romney's dad was the head of General Motors as chief executive of this big company, he lived in a relatively modest home in Detroit.

• 10:55Rory Stewart?

  He drove a pretty ordinary car, whereas by the time you get to his son, Mitt Romney, you're in a completely different universe where Mitt Romney has multiple houses, private jets, and the multiple between a CEO and a worker, which was in Britain and the United States, sort of thirtyfold, is now well up above two hundred, three hundredfold in many cases.

• 11:16Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know what adjective you would use, but the it's appalling, it's horrific, it's getting worse. And I mentioned to you the other day that I'd been rereading, to use that great Tory phrase, I'd been rereading The Gospel of Wealth by Carnegie. And of course, Carnegie was one of the richest people in the world at the time that he was alive, eighteen, I think he wrote The Gospel of Wealth in the late eighteen eighties. And I'll just give you a couple of quotes from it. "The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship." Well, I've never seen that on Elon Musk's Twitter feed, that thought. And he then goes to say, "There are but three modes in which

• 12:00Alastair Campbell?

  surplus wealth can be disposed of. It can be left to the families of the deceased, it can be bequeathed for public purposes, or finally, it can be administered during their lives by its possessors." And he goes on to explain why in his view, the third is the best. And he basically comes out for massive inheritance tax for those who don't use their wealth judiciously during the time that they're alive. And I just think we are now looking at people, as I keep banging on about the book, The Sovereign Individual, I think that is what we have now, people who feel they're above the law, above democracy, above politics, but also above really having to do things for their fellow man and woman.

• 12:42Alastair Campbell?

  And I do think this is the single biggest political issue, and it is a big driver, I think, of this far-right stuff, because the sovereign individuals somehow persuaded the common man that he, it's almost, with the exception of Maloney, it's almost always a he, that he's on their side. But what's going to happen, we're seeing already with Trump in power, they are going to get wealthier and more powerful and care less, it seems to me, about the people they claim to. Claimed to be four.

• 13:10Rory Stewart?

  It's astonishing. I'm looking a little bit at this because I was in the Channel Islands and I was talking to somebody who manages money for big Middle Eastern families in the Channel Islands. And I was trying to say, what do they do with this money? What's the point of being worth a hundred million, two hundred million, three hundred million? You can't really spend it, can you? And they said, what they're doing now is they're setting up trusts to try to make sure, if you're in the many billions, that you can provide for the seventh generation. So you're not just thinking about your grandchildren, you're trying to sort of create this insane structures. The other thing, I've often thought about this, that we've got this very odd thing that everybody in Parliament says they

• 13:55Rory Stewart?

  believe in equality. Tories maybe talk about equality of opportunity, others might be brave enough to talk about equality of outcome. But in fact, before we even begin talking about equality, we are a million, million miles away from anything touching equality in any of the programmes of any of these parties. The Labour Party's not going to get us anywhere close to equality. But we could be at least aiming to reduce inequality.

• 14:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Rory Stewart?

  We could be aiming to look more like Sweden, these Scandinavian countries, where, again, this stuff from Piketty is very convincing, that you have better mental health outcomes, you have better health outcomes, you have better education outcomes, that having a society with less extreme inequality is good. But I don't know how you get that into the... I mean, you can have that conversation, maybe in Europe, and you can look at Scandinavia and talk about that.

• 14:43Alastair Campbell?

  But even there, Rory, you're finding a bit of a backlash to it. And I think the peculiar British problem is this belief that we are entitled to low taxation and exceptional public services. The Scandinavians, and the French actually, kind of accept that if you want exceptional public services, you're going to have to pay for them. And the best form of payment is through the taxation system. We don't necessarily at a deep level have that. And the, the, the, let me just, just to show you though, how, how far these, remember, these are the people, the Carnegie's of this world, who were called the robber barons. They had, they had as bad a reputation in some ways as, in fact, probably a worse reputation in many ways than the current tech robber barons.

• 15:28Alastair Campbell?

  But just, he says this, he, he's talking about inheritance tax. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community in the form of the state cannot be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death, the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.

• 15:56Rory Stewart?

  Very good, very good.

• 15:57Alastair Campbell?

  Brilliant.

• 15:58Rory Stewart?

  Really, really interesting. So I was talking to some very wealthy people on the West Coast and trying to understand why they don't give away more money when they're alive. Cause many of them have signed up to this giving pledge, which Bill Gates and Warren Buffett did.

• 16:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:11Rory Stewart?

  And the weirdness is they've all signed up to it, but they're just not handing over the money. And initially they say to you, well, it's just that we can't find projects good enough to absorb our money. So we're just thinking more. And they can be thinking for 10, 12 years, trying to find the right kind of project to give their money to, right? So then you come with real evidence. So, you know, obviously we've talked in the past about that's very good evidence that direct cash transfer makes difference to very poor people in, you know, Sub-Saharan Africa. And then they say, oh, well, you know, we're just waiting just in case there's a new tech innovation or AI innovation. One of them, they finally over a drink said to me, what you don't understand is that the amount of money you're worth has an incredible impact on your influence at the very top level of American society. And if you give your money.

• 16:56Alastair Campbell?

  But that's part of inequality. That if you measure, if you measure status by wealth, that is part of inequality.

• 17:01Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. So he was explaining that, let's say you're worth um four billion, right? Four thousand million. And, and some of these people, some of them live relatively modestly, right? They're only spending a tiny fraction of that.

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  But if they were to suddenly give away 3.9 billion, their fear is that suddenly nobody wants to talk to them. The White House wouldn't invite them to staff, their friends wouldn't care about them, they wouldn't appear on the right lists, they wouldn't be getting their honorary degrees, they wouldn't be able to influence stuff. And of course, a lot of this is competition between them. I mean, obviously, this is going to upset listeners. Getting into the mindset of these people is pretty unpleasant. But there's a very, very strong sense that they're all measuring. And of course, Musk is part of a movement that believes the richer you are, it proves how clever you are, and that people who aren't wealthy aren't clever.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  I was talking to somebody who knows all of these people and who has worked with all of these people as well, and has listened to our podcast, was it last week or two weeks ago, and said I was 100% right that Zuckerberg was entirely driven by getting as far up Trump's backside as Musk had already got. Musk having already penetrated deep, deep, deep into the backside. The Mooch is right, by the way. Susie Wiles has said, no office for Musk in the West Wing.

• 18:18Rory Stewart?

  He's got to move across the executive office, which just crossed the street. Did your friend confirm what I'd heard, that Zuckerberg is genuinely worried that he might be put in prison?

• 18:27Alastair Campbell?

  No, no. Asked about that and felt, no, probably not. But is genuinely scared, not necessarily going to jail, but I think more the commercial business stuff, that if, if he doesn't get in with the programme, then there is an awful lot the government do to damage him. But, you know, Trump, as you know, is on record as saying he would have gone to jail. So it's, you know, you can't not have that hovering in the back of your mind. Now, Rory, let's get on to one of my favourite subjects.

• 18:51Rory Stewart?

  Okay, good. Yes.

• 18:52Alastair Campbell?

  Guess what it is?

• 18:53Rory Stewart?

  Could it be Brexit by any chance?

• 18:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, funnily enough, somebody called Graham Murk, he starts his question with the word perseverance, which probably means he's asked it 20 times before. Why won't Labour face up to the fact that Brexit is a disaster and that addressing it would provide the instant growth they're looking for? Are they scared of Farage and the mob? Mo, why is Labour so afraid to talk about Brexit? Despite the reach out from the EU, Labour only seem to want security cooperation. Then goes on to add, should Canada join the European Union? Which is quite an interesting thought. But I don't know if you saw over the weekend, there was a poll, a YouGov poll done for Best of Britain, fifteen thousand people, one of these MRP polls. And it said that almost half, forty six percent, say the European Union should be the government's top priority on trade.

• 19:39Alastair Campbell?

  Twenty two percent the US, four percent China, six percent another country. And in every single constituency, including Clacton, including Boston and Skegness, the places where reformer top. There is overwhelming support for Britain prioritising trade relationship with the EU over the US.

• 20:00Rory Stewart?

  And I think actually Trump's election is going to change things a lot. Because when people were voting in Brexit, they were voting in an environment in which the relationship with the US was very stable, seemed as though Britain had this special relationship. And actually, the world was pretty stable. People were less worried about China and therefore for the Brexiteers who were saying, you know, we can leave the European Union. Look, there are these, and Europe's not growing very fast, its economy's not very strong. So let's hitch ourselves to these big growing economies in China and the US. It almost seemed plausible. And two things happened. The first thing, of course, is that relationships with China collapsed.

• 20:41Rory Stewart?

  And so suddenly it seems very dangerous to tie your economy too closely to China, and China's not growing very fast at the moment. But now Trump's election, I think, whatever people feel, you know, day to day, they must in their back of the mind be beginning to pick up on the fact that this guy is not to be counted on. That in the end, Britain is not going to be able to rely in the way that it has for seventy or eighty years on a stable, pretty predictable United States that's going to have its back. And when that happens, if the world's beginning to splinter into an American bloc, an Asian bloc, a European bloc. Well, strategically, I mean, not just economic, but strategically, where should the UK be? And I would argue with Europe.

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to give my friend Neil Kinnock another name check because we talked about him last week in relation to populism. He had an interview in the Eye paper this week, and I know Neil very, very well. And I can, I could read the words. And the headline was something like, you know, Kinnock calls for Labour reset to start meaning something. That was the sort of theme of it. But I think beneath it, I could sense a real feeling that we're in danger of giving up a huge opportunity. Because you, you know, you and I heard in Davos from the Europeans, they, they still have a kind of lingering respect for, for the UK. They want the UK deeply involved, particularly on defence.

• 22:07Alastair Campbell?

  But I remember I was talking to one European, not a leader, but a minister who said that, you know, we're sort of sitting there thinking, well, we keep hearing about reset. What is it? When is it coming? What is this going to mean? And I think to go back to the questions on this, I, I think there is a sense of where they're, they're still trapped in a debate that was a few years, a few years behind us. Farage has kind of moved on to other things now. So I, I, I think we are missing a trick. And, and I think in relation to growth, unless and until we fix the damage of Brexit, the growth mission is going to be, is going to be muted.

• 22:39Rory Stewart?

  Okay, let's take a quick break, Alastair, come back for more questions.

• 22:48Rory Stewart?

  Support for this episode comes from Channel Four and their new two-part drama, Brian and Maggie, about the infamous grilling of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by Brian Walden. Now, Alastair, since it's question time, what in your opinion are some of the most disastrous moments in political TV history? And what happens behind the scenes?

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  I'm trying to think of Brian Walden interviews. I mean, younger listeners may not remember, Brian Walden was a terrific interviewer. And he was really serious, really did his research. He was a former MP, a Labour MP. But he was a Labour MP that Tories didn't mind being interviewed by because I think they felt he was fair. And Margaret Thatcher, what this programme, this two-part drama Brian and Maggie is about, isn't just about the interviews and where they go. It's also about this sort of curious relationship that developed around it. And I'll be absolutely frank, Rory, I think the podcast is maybe filling a little bit of that space, but I wish we had more Brian Waldens around.

• 23:48Alastair Campbell?

  I wish we had more viewers who would actually want to watch very long, very detailed TV interviews.

• 23:56Rory Stewart?

  And were there any interviews that really did bring down people? I mean, I suppose it was Frost Nixon. I mean, were you sometimes terrified with big, big interviews with Tony Blair that this could be the end of everything?

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  Not the end of everything, but I, I think that there were, there were definitely interviews where you came out and thought, oh God, that didn't go so well.

• 24:14Alastair Campbell?

  But no, nothing that was, that was absolutely destructive. I think I've told you before about the time when Ron Davis famously resigned after a moment of madness on Clapham Common. And I'd, I'd lined up for John Sargent to come and do this pooled interview. So John Sargent, chief political correspondent at the BBC. And he sat down and I said, Ron, you've got to be apologetic, you've got to apologise for this. Because otherwise people won't understand and da, da, da. Anyway, and so he did, he duly apologised, but it was kind of undermined by the fact that written across his hand was the word sorry.

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  As a reminder that he should say sorry. So that didn't go down, didn't go down terribly well. There was the famous interview, I'm at, I'm going to be at, on the day this comes out, actually, I'll be playing the backpipes at John Prescott's funeral. And there was this famous time when John Prescott was doing an interview and said, he gave his answer and they said, oh, sorry, that was absolutely shit. Can we do it again? And the interviewer said, this is live, Mr Prescott.

• 25:22Alastair Campbell?

  So there was all sorts of things, but I, I think, do you know what I think about the way interviews have developed is that because we're into the sort of gotcha style journalism a lot of the time, the politicians have just got very, very good, the best ones at working out where the balls are coming from, you know, how to play them. And, and they've become a bit sterile because I think that, and I do think that what Brian Walden did, he made the, he made the encounters interesting. He was, funny enough, his voice and his, because he had a Midlands accent, wasn't sort of classic, classic broadcast. And he was very, very thorough and very, very serious, respectful, but really, really steely.

• 26:08Rory Stewart?

  Lovely. Well, there we are. So we hope that's answered the question and you can stream both episodes of Brian and Maggie now on Channel Four.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  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 keep the blame on me.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  I'm not the first man.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under seventeen and under age without parent.

• 26:49Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac. Lace up and get your game on because the Tic Tac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper Tic Tac. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mints. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper Tic Tac today.

• 27:15Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 27:18Rory Stewart?

  And me Rory Stewart.

• 27:19Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Amy Taylor Rory wants to know, if I leave X, which a lot of people are doing, is there another way to submit questions?

• 27:26Rory Stewart?

  Well, the answer is there are many ways to ask questions. So we can get questions by emailing us, get questions on Instagram. You can also become a subscriber, which has a huge number of benefits. And one of them allows you to engage on our Discord platform and ask questions there as well as getting ad free listening. Ian Barnard, why is Canada important? Rory recently mentioned that Canada is important. Why? And how should Canadians stave off the rise of populist politics than this engulf the Western world?

• 27:57Alastair Campbell?

  I think we have very close historic ties, the UK with Canada, which are important to us. Big player in the Commonwealth. But importantly, Canada is one of the G7 countries of the world. It's a major developed economy. Right now, Canada is important because of the way that this debate around Trump's relationship with Canada is going. We've got an election in the not too distant future where that relationship with Trump is going to become central to it. And depending upon who leads the Liberals, and you and I both think that Mark Carney would be a good shot. Both he and Polievra are already out there with some pretty strong language about the need to push back.

• 28:39Alastair Campbell?

  I also think Canada, whenever you look at the soft power lead tables, you know, Britain's always up there. America's always up there, but Canada's one of those countries that kind of, its alliances are pretty strong. It's got a lot of kind of raw materials. It's a, yeah, it's a big deal.

• 28:54Rory Stewart?

  It's a very, yeah, very substantial, serious economy, serious part of our Five Eyes relationship, which people will remember as this intelligence network that links the UK, Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand. It's also, I think, in a world in which is beginning to split apart, countries like that, which I guess are kind of... Upper middle powers are going to become more and more significant. Their money, their ability to get involved in helping crises. Candace often really taken the lead on things like humanitarian crises around the world. I think will really matter. So we've got to keep watching that. How optimistic are you at the moment about the ability to defeat Poliev? After you've said that he's such an impressive performer.

• 29:35Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, I think it's going to be very difficult. The Labour Party here was what 20 points ahead and for quite a long time. And that sort of is what happened. That was the outcome. Now, I guess there was a possibility that the Tories could have changed the leader last minute, which is what the liberals are doing. There is some kind of suggestion in the polling that Trump sort of arriving as this 300 pound gorilla is having a detrimental effect on the populist right because they've always been so pro-Trump, as it were. But it's going to be a very, very, very tough fight for whoever gets there. There's a question here from Rob Steele, which allows us to talk about what I think has been a really fabulous interview on Leading this week, which we've just posted. Rob asked, we hear a lot about the role of Netanyahu and Hamas in the Palestine-Israel conflict.

• 30:21Alastair Campbell?

  Can you talk about other political actors, e.g. Herzog, Israel's president, Palestine Authority, et cetera? What role will they play in negotiations? What power do they have? And before you answer that, let me just say a little bit about Uzi Arad, former head of intelligence at Mossad, former foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu. When we announced that we had him on, we had lots of people saying, this is an outrage. You're giving this guy a platform on Holocaust Memorial Day and blah, blah, blah. And I thought if ever there was emails and tweets coming in that underline this idea that you really don't want to listen to anything. Because for a start, what is wrong with speaking to Jewish Israelis who perhaps he didn't actually

• 31:03Alastair Campbell?

  talk much about the Holocaust, but maybe he might, you know, it's quite a good thing to do around that time. But also the idea that this was some kind of Israeli government stooge. He had some very, very, very sharp criticisms of the current government, particularly Netanyahu and Ben-Gavir, who he thinks is just an abomination. But also he had, I thought, some very, very thoughtful analysis, which maybe was aimed at trying to get us to think a little bit differently about the Israeli perspective as well.

• 31:32Rory Stewart?

  I thought it was really interesting and I thought it was interesting both in the ways that it will have provoked and angered some people and also in the ways that it will have surprised people. And I think as we move into territory where we are infusing people on the edge of conflict, we're going to find this more and more, aren't we? Just quickly on the question from the subscriber, let me just lay out the problem. So the problem is that, of course, Gaza was run by Hamas. There was a disputed election back in the late 2000s, then there was effectively a coup d'etat and Hamas took over the territory and ran it for just under 20 years.

• 32:12Rory Stewart?

  And then, of course, after October the 7th, huge response, enormous number of people killed and the Hamas leadership killed. So you had not just the killing of the military leadership, but also the killing of the civilian leadership, Ismail Haniya. So then the question is, if we think about reconstruction or trying to bring some normalcy back to Gaza, and it's a big if, who can play a role? Well, obviously, the most sensible thing has to be a Palestinian leader. Israel neither wants nor could, I think, try to run a full occupation in Gaza.

• 32:54Rory Stewart?

  They've tried it before, they tried in Lebanon, but this is going to be the most horrendous, costly experience for Israel if they tried to run a permanent occupation of Gaza. So which Palestinians, though? Well, the problem is that Smotrich and Ben Gavir, who are the far right of Netanyahu's government, hate the idea of doing anything that would strengthen the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. And they'd be very worried if the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank took over Gaza and was successful in Gaza, then you have more and more pressure for a two-state solution. In addition, of course, Hamas may well not want the Palestinian Authority coming in. I mean, they were at violent loggerheads, they fight each other, and there could well

• 33:38Rory Stewart?

  be a civil war if the Palestinian Authority tried to assert itself and Hamas resisted. Then you add to that possibly Egypt, which, of course, has a land border with Gaza, huge interest in what to do with the Palestinian community. Jordan, the majority of whose population were originally Palestinian refugees, maybe countries like Saudi. But all of that depends on the United States because it was the US that was trying to bring together the deal and Biden and Blinken had put this whole thing together with all these different moving parts. Israel, very, very reluctant to sign up, might just have got there if the US had really put the pressure on. But the only way the Palestinian Authority would sign up, the only way the Saudis would sign up, is if there was a

• 34:22Rory Stewart?

  two-state solution at the end of the line, and Netanyahu doesn't want that, Smotrich doesn't want that, Ben Gavir doesn't want that. And now it looks very much as though Donald Trump doesn't want it either, which basically means everything I've been saying for the last minute can be ignored because Trump's destroying the whole thing.

• 34:36Alastair Campbell?

  I know President Herzog quite well because when he was leader of the Labour Party and when he was the Labour candidate in the 2015 election, I think it was, I went out there for, had quite a few visits to Israel and meetings with him and he wanted to pick my brains about this, that and the other. And I find him very likeable. I didn't think at the time he was going to win. So he goes on to become the president. I mean, his politics are way away from Netanyahu. But as president in this current situation, he is absolutely full on, you know, essentially part of the government communications machine in a way.

• 35:18Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect his basic views at the heart of his politics haven't, haven't changed. How much power the Israeli president has in this situation? I think in terms of policy, it feels to me like he is quite closely integrated, but whether that's power or just a reflection of the decisions that get taken by those who have the executive power, I don't know. And of course, the problem with the Palestinian leadership, Palestinian Authority, is partly its reputation down the years for corruption, for kind of gerontocracy and people just sort of staying well past their sell-by dates.

• 35:54Rory Stewart?

  Including the leader, Abu Mazen particularly.

• 35:56Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So I think until, unless and until it becomes a bit clearer what the structures are going to be, who the outside players are going to be. I think, I mean, it's a great question that I don't actually have the answer. And I think that it's going to evolve as the post-war Gaza situation develops.

• 36:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, we mentioned this in the main part, but of course, your three hundred pound gorilla, I'm afraid, again, is the fact that Trump has said that he's called the Egyptians and the Jordanians and told the Egyptians to take a million people from Gaza and Jordan to take a million, which is the whole population of Gaza. Which is called ethnic cleansing. And at the same time, he's put out tweets saying he sees it's got great potential as a kind of Mar-a-Lago beach resort on the Med.

• 36:40Alastair Campbell?

  Incredible, absolutely incredible. Now, listen, I know you say that I don't criticize the Labour government enough, or you think I pull my punches, and maybe I do. Lyn Williams, why is a Labour government so intent on targeting and using damaging rhetoric about disabled people? Why do ministers keep conflating PIP with income support benefits? Both points are linked really, says Lyn. Now, whether it's targeting, I'm not sure I do accept. Using damaging rhetoric, I do. I think there is far too much, and I understand you've talked about this a lot on the podcast, the need. If our economy is going to recover, then we are going to have to get a grip of the the scale of welfare spending.

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  And we're going to have to make some, you know, pretty difficult choices. But the most important thing is actually, I think, to give people a positive sense of an economy that can work for them, jobs that can give them a good life, et cetera. I think there has been too much of this sort of, you know, the sort of Osborne thing, that Labour aren't quite at the sort of, you know, people peeking out through the curtains to see if the bailiffs are coming around. But it's too much for me about, you know, they're there sponging off the state as opposed to being in genuine need, needing help. And I think you've got to do a bit of both. I think the the problem is real. The government is right to take it seriously. The government is right to try to get the the budgets under control. But I think using kind of language of sun editorials is really not not the way to do it.

• 38:06Rory Stewart?

  Remind me, just just back in the day, when Tony Blair's government came in, how did you handle this? Because I guess this story around benefits cheats or people living off the state's been around for a long time.

• 38:20Alastair Campbell?

  Been around forever.

• 38:21Rory Stewart?

  And there's a big chunk of the British public. Who want to hear politicians in their minds saying as it is and calling out people who they think are cheating on benefits. Were there moments where you did sound a little bit more Daily Mail like?

• 38:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, there were, where there was a real plan and a real approach to try to deal with specific issues. So, for example, look, benefit fraud is a massive thing. The scale of benefit fraud during Covid was another example of it. And that was something that we that we went after pretty aggressively. And I do understand why this government feels it has to get these budgets under control. But I've just felt, watching some of the recent communications, and actually, we're seeing it a little bit more broadly into the, like, for example, the planning stuff recently. Now, we know that nimbyism is a problem. We do know that nimbyism is a problem. But we're not all nimby's. And I think what gets around that kind of thing is if you give people a bigger strategic argument about what you're

• 39:21Alastair Campbell?

  trying to do as a country. So with planning, it's about, you know, do we want to get building again or not? Do we want to get innovation? Do we want to get infrastructure or not? And with the benefit system, I think it's this sense of giving people a vision of what the economy looks like if we can get people back into work.

• 39:36Rory Stewart?

  It's about saying, we're going to do something that's going to be uncomfortable for a group of people. You know, maybe we're going to build some housing estates which are going to affect the quality of life of people, or we're going to reduce benefits for people who are currently getting disability benefits, without necessarily saying that you're doing it because those are bad people. I mean, I felt that a little bit, actually, in the way that Keir Starmer communicated much better than Bridget Phillips and around the private school fees. Bridget Phillips, when I said, look, how about kids who are going to have to leave private schools and re-enter the public sector, said, I don't care about the top 7%, I'm here for the 93%. Keir Starmer, by the time he was up against Rishi Sunak, had what I thought was the right answer, which is, of course, we care about

• 40:21Rory Stewart?

  everybody. And that will be difficult. Unfortunately, we have to make difficult decisions, and this is the reason why we're doing it, and this is why it's going to make for a better education system. So I guess what you're saying, unless I'm missing something, is that you could say, we completely understand why people find it difficult to have development. We completely understand that there are people who really need disability benefits. Unfortunately, there are tough choices to be made. And here's the big picture of growth, and this is the way that we're going to sort out the public finances.

• 40:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly. I think a little bit is about tone and about communications. It's really odd, the way that You know, we talked on the main podcast about the press in relation to Prince Harry. But the fact is that for me, the problem with our press in its relation with politics has always been this sense that they have a power that is about setting the agenda. And I just feel at the moment, a Labour government with a big, big, big majority that can get stuff done, has them in their heads too much. They're going to slag off the Labour government, whatever they do.

• 41:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:19Alastair Campbell?

  And I'm not saying you wouldn't find life better if they didn't, but they are.

• 41:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, you could always imagine that Labour could have played it a different way. They could have come in just sort of pretending, in a way, I mean, I'm pretending maybe it's an unfair way of putting it, but really going hugely positive. We've won this enormous majority, we're turning the country around, we're going to be big and optimistic and cheerful, and we're not going to get too dragged down by the madness of Trump and Farage. And, you know, they're in a very, very, if you step back and look at them objectively, Labour's in a very good position. The Conservatives are in trouble because Farage is eating their lunch. They're strong electorally, they're strong in Parliament. They should be able to be kind of breezier about things, instead of which they seem a bit defensive, don't they?

• 42:05Alastair Campbell?

  There's an article we should put in the newsletter by somebody called Anna McShane. She's the director of the New Britain Project think tank. And, I mean, the headline will probably alarm quite a lot of left of centre people. Star must learn from Trump, act fast, prioritise, visible change, keep showing voters you're on their side. But if you take away that first, star must learn from Trump. Actually, you know, yes, because you come in, I was talking to somebody, a kind of shadow minister the other day, and she said, well, you know, we do still have a bit of time. And I said, you haven't got long in a Parliament. This four years goes really, really quickly. And obviously, the positions are different. Trump is a president, he can do all these executive

• 42:49Alastair Campbell?

  orders. You regularly raise the issue of Gordon Brown and Bank of England independence. Why was that such a big thing? That was the equivalent of one of Trump's big executive orders. It said, this is going to be a government of big change.

• 43:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Alastair Campbell?

  And then, then we had the New Deal, then we had the minimum wage, then we had the Scottish Parliament. Now, Labour are doing lots of stuff, but act fast, prioritise visible change, and keep showing voters you're on their side. That is a communications thing. It's like, we had a question this week, which we basically said, the government's done lots of things, but I can't remember many of them.

• 43:27Rory Stewart?

  Right, right.

• 43:28Alastair Campbell?

  And what that means is, if you do have a press that is concert, they certainly remember winter fuel, because, you know, the press keep banging on about it. They certainly remember national insurance, because it's on, it's still on the front pages months after the event, because now businesses are reacting to it. So when that is happening, you have to have a counter narrative that is even stronger. So this piece is actually quite interesting, because, you know, it's not saying, oh, let's bow down before Trump. And I don't think we should, don't think anybody should bow down before Trump. But it is saying, he has shown way more than he did in the first term. The first days, the first weeks, the first months, they're really, really, really important about the direction you set. So there you go, Labour, act fast, prioritise visible change, keep showing voters you're on their side.

• 44:11Rory Stewart?

  And, and I suppose one way of putting it is that every single time you do something, it should be easy for the voters, if someone said to them, why did they do it, for them to be able to answer the question. Doesn't matter what answer is, could be growth. Oh yeah, they did that because their thing is growth, right? I mean, whatever it is, right?

• 44:27Alastair Campbell?

  Here's where it gets tricky on the strategic side, because let's say, they've just recently, they haven't sort of confirmed, but it's sort of in the ether, that they're going to be revisiting the idea of a third runway at Heathrow.

• 44:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Alastair Campbell?

  Now, there are very, very, very strong arguments for it. There are very, very, very strong arguments against it. Both will be met. Now, if you're Green growth, it's tricky. If you're growth, so yeah, well, we get that, we totally get that. So that's where you have to be absolutely clear. So when I heard that, I thought, oh, I wonder what Ed Miliband thinks of that. I can guess what Rachel Reeves might think about that because that's growth, right? So that's where these have to be set within this bigger strategic framing.

• 45:11Rory Stewart?

  We should talk a little bit more about that, I think, in maybe next week, because it's also an example of something that is never going to be built within the lifetime of this parliament, ever. So it may or may not be a good thing to do, but of course, it's an example, a little bit like HS2, of a very grand and doubtless unbelievably expensive project that will, knowing Britain, take 10, 15 years to come through. And by the time it's finished, the whole world of technology may well have changed and the whole thing may turn out to become useless.

• 45:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now Irene wants to know, Rory, this is my last question for today. How do we stay engaged with politics without sacrificing our mental health, given that everything feels so depressing at the moment? Irene Nagali, what advice would you give to young people like me who are passionate about making a difference but feel more disillusioned than ever by how toxic and polarised the debate has become? How do you stay hopeful and push for something better in such a divisive climate?

• 46:04Rory Stewart?

  Oh, okay. Well, let me just try a very quick one on that. I think one of the issues is developing heroes, role models, ways of describing what good public life is like. I think we've become very, our culture's become a very private and domestic. When we think about morality, when we think about being a good person, we think about how you treat your family, your friends. And we tend to imagine that when you get into the bigger scale, government, public life, they're all a bunch of shysters. And we just don't really have a good way of describing what it would mean to be a practical and effective leader,

• 46:45Rory Stewart?

  right? And that's about accepting that leaders are not saints, they have to compromise, they have to do a lot of politics. They have to do a lot of communications, they're going to do stuff you don't like, but that there still is objectively an enormous difference between Theresa May and Keir Starmer on the one side and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump on the other. And we need to get better at explaining what that difference is and kind of living it out. But also, I think, I know, conscious when I said that to you, of course, that Theresa May and Keir Starmer may be seen by some people as being at the slightly boring end of things. What would it be to give a vision of somebody who is startling, exciting, lively, funny, but also represented good values?

• 47:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And I think my role models is very, very interesting. It's like, who do we admire? And of course, because at the moment, and listen, let's be frank, there are lots of people who admire some of the populist leaders. I think it's hard to sort of work out who the role models are. But as you were speaking, I was thinking, do you remember last week I told you in Davos that my favorite event was this Be Hope event for the Sustainable Development Goals? And the highlight for me of that entire event, there were prime ministers there, there were presidents, there were Bill Gates, there were all sorts of huge names there. But the highlight for me, which I've written about, we're actually going to reprint in the New European, a poem. And it was a poem delivered by a 19-year-old Nigerian-American called Salomi Agbaroji, if I've got that right.

• 48:15Alastair Campbell?

  And the poem is called Hope. And we'll actually, we'll put it in the newsletter as well, if she's happy with that. Because it was just fabulous to see a 19-year-old who wrote and read, from memory, quite a long poem about why she stayed hopeful. And she had this wonderful line, it was, "We aren't crossing our fingers, we're crossing finish lines." In other words, hope is active. Hope isn't sort of, "I am hopeful," because that is passive. Hope is saying, "This is what I want to do, therefore I'm going to find out how I can do it." And it was extraordinary. I've never seen a poem get such a big ovation in my life.

• 48:55Rory Stewart?

  Such a great subject, isn't it? And such a great word, "hope." Such a difficult word, because people can always say it's kind of over-optimistic, or it's unrealistic. But in the end, it's the key to everything, even if we don't really know how to... Put our fingers on it.

• 49:08Alastair Campbell?

  She had this, this, you know, talked about how hope in the end is a hero in all of history's great battles. In the end, sort of, you know, hope wins through and it was honestly, it was, it was when you say, where do you get hope? Where do, I've always been asked, where do I get hope? And so are you and, and I, I, it is hard. I've, I've got to be honest, my mental health's not been good in the last few weeks because of lack of sleep, because of, you know, I woke up this morning and I, the first thing I did was reach for my phone. I wanted to see basically what's Trump done while I've been asleep. Yeah. Well, that isn't, that is not good for your mental health. It really isn't.

• 49:48Alastair Campbell?

  And then if you, if you add that to the sense that you and I both picked up in, in Davos, that, you know, Britain's really got to be watching itself. It's really got to be careful about where it fits in all this. And you sort of feel, well, you know, women to be political figures, we can get engaged, we can get involved, we can make change. But then some days I wake up and think, no, this is hopeless. Now, once you've got the, once you've got that in your mind, it's very hard to shift. So actually saying to yourself, no, I don't give a shit what they say. I don't give a shit what my enemies say. Hope is about believing that it's still worth fighting for the things that you believe in.

• 50:23Rory Stewart?

  And, and believing in a sense that something can happen, that things do happen, that the world does suddenly get better in a miraculous way that you couldn't anticipate, that you look around you and it seems very bleak and then suddenly the world surprises you.

• 50:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. She had this great line, I've just looked it up. Hope is not the way that we cope, but the way that we conquer. Well, and salome, I like that. So there you go, Irene and Arina. You just got to keep believing, you've got to keep fighting.

• 50:52Rory Stewart?

  Thank you. Well, that word of hope, bye bye.

• 50:55Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 51:02Speaker 04

  On October 2nd.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 51:15Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 51:23Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 51:29Speaker 07

  Espolone Tequila. Balanced. Delicious. 100% acave, 0% ego. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  Espolone Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Campari America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.