487. Is Starmer Rethinking His Approach to Europe? (Question Time)

What do Keir Starmer’s comments on 'closer alignment' with the EU single market actually mean? After the Bondi terror attack, how can a centrist government respond to national trauma without fuelling culture wars? And, according to teens, how seriously should we be taking AI? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away free TRIP Plus membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP Plus gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ⁠fuseenergy.com/politics⁠ ⚡ Get a 6 month print and digital subscription to the London Review of Books and a free tote bag for just £6. Subscribe now at LRB.me/politics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:05Alastair 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.

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  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.

• 1:41Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:47Rory Stewart?

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• 2:04Speaker 02

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• 2:38Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart. And me, Aniston Campbell. So Rory, we're going to talk about your AI series, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. We're going to talk about Keir Starmer and the customs union and the single market and a few interesting things he said about that. We're going to talk about the Bondi Beach terrorist assault and the continuing political fallout. We're going to talk about Roman Abramovich and his lawyer, Tory shadow attorney general. And we're going to talk about the curious world of the release of national archives. First question, we had a very foreign policy based main episode. Let's start with a more, well, it's a bit foreign, but quite domestic. Finley Morris, who is from Devon, is a Trip Plus member. Is there anything in Keir Starmer's comments about the single market worth getting hopeful

• 3:23Alastair Campbell?

  about? Or is this yet another lukewarm statement which doesn't excite anyone? This is a comment on an interview that Keir Starmer did with Laura Kunberg on the BBC. It follows some interventions from West Streeting, David Lammy and others suggesting we should get closer and closer and closer to the European Union, particularly the single market. Sum it up, I would say Keir Starmer was basically saying, got to protect these trade deals that we've done with the US, India and the European Union. Not going the whole way, but we've made lots of different progress on food, agriculture, Erasmus, other areas, and we're going to keep going in that direction. Cue headlines the

• 4:04Alastair Campbell?

  next morning of the right wing papers, Starmer prepares for full Brexit betrayal. I wish.

• 4:10Rory Stewart?

  Right, yes, you wish. So, yes, the story that I got at least was that David Lammy, Manoush Shafik, who's the economic adviser, West Streeting, were pushing more for a customs union. And just to remind again, listeners, customs union is basically not free movement of people. It's instead a big trade deal from the point of view of the farmers in Cumbria, who I care a lot about, definitely much more beneficial, don't have the customs problems, and you also don't have the problems of cheap meat coming in from Australia and New Zealand. Single market is essentially the situation that Norway finds itself in, which is it's not in the customs union, it's in the single market, but it has free movement of people,

• 4:53Rory Stewart?

  etc. I would have thought of the two, the single market is probably tougher for Keir Starmer to sell because the free movement of people bit is the bit that-

• 5:03Alastair Campbell?

  And he was clearly wasn't going that far.

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  So I then want to come back to you because, again, you were saying in the car that if Labour is looking for something to do now, what they need to do is come full out for rejoining the European Union, hold a referendum on it. And actually, it's almost their only option left, given where they are in the polls.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  I wasn't quite saying that. What I was doing was I read a very interesting piece by Peter Kellner, pollster, strategic thinker, and he was saying that even accepting that these are really volatile times and that it's very hard to find popular leaders anywhere in the world right now in democracies, that Keir Starmer and Labour's ratings under Keir Starmer, although he said actually historically they've not fallen as fast as, for example, in Thatcher's second term.

• 5:51Rory Stewart?

  First term, I think, just before the Falklands.

• 5:52Alastair Campbell?

  Before the Falklands, that's what it was. And then the second one was, was it Sunak or Truss? I can't remember. But anyway, there was another example where there was an even more cataclysmic fall. However, we're talking about sort of 18, 20% satisfaction ratings. That is not good. And Peter was making the point that they need, Labour really needs something. He calls it a kind of wow moment or a wow thing. And I don't necessarily agree with that, but it needs something that that breaks open this current sort of very negative, very gloomy, very downbeat, negative assessment of the government. And I think it could be that we just, you know, come right out and say, this is the speech I made when we did our

• 6:34Alastair Campbell?

  Rest is Politics tour, we come right and say, look, let's, we've got to face the truth. Brexit has been catastrophic economically, strategically, politically, and actually over time, my big legacies I'm going to take is back in. I'm simply saying that is what I would recommend as a possible. Now, I, there will be people in Downing Street listening to this thinking the guy's completely nuts. But I just think we need, you know, we talked about the stakes in Moldova, right? We've got to be fighting for big things, big things.

• 7:04Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I'm trying to sort of understand what the downside is. What I'd say to the people in Downing Street is you're doomed anyway. If you continue in the current way you are, you know, Stalin's not going to be able to win the next election anyway. He's going to struggle to remain as leader through to the next election. So why not go out with a blaze? Why not try to come up with one big idea? Now, you, you, you'd presumably have to reorient your electoral coalition because you'd worry that there would be people up in red wall seats who remain pretty firm on Brexit, who will feel alienated and betrayed. So you'd be hoping to pick up what Lib Dem, Green voters, centrist Tories. But you'd certainly win back, I think, uh, remain Tories like me might look more kindly at a Labour government. Because instead of what we currently do, which is look at it and say,

• 7:49Rory Stewart?

  this is a bunch of slightly odd socialists who don't really like rich people and are going after wealth and shutting down private schools and putting up taxes and don't feel right. Suddenly there's a big thing where we can be like, oh, all right, actually Stalin's not too bad. And he's doing something big and exciting in geopolitics.

• 8:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and, and, and which would lead to a better, stronger economy, would allow us to build on, because I think one of the successes of Keir's leadership has been this E3 thing. And the Madsen Macron really do appear to have taken term to rely on him. The E3 thing is meaning something. And so I just, I just think that you're right. I think they're going to need something pretty big.

• 8:26Rory Stewart?

  And it's, you do it through geopolitics. In a way, the argument that didn't work. During the Brexit campaign, but should have been pushed much more powerfully, which was the European Union, which had been the key to peace in Europe for 70 years. Suddenly now with Trump in place, with Putin in place, you can put a very, very different argument. It feels statesmanlike. You can start invoking Winston Churchill. You can start talking about the benefit for the UK Defence Industry. What we don't need is to all push up our NATO defence spending to 2%, 3%, 5% and then find that we're buying 70% of our kit from the United States and becoming ever more vulnerable and dependent.

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  Or that we're all as European countries buying the same things for the same reasons which we could be doing together.

• 9:07Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 9:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Okay, Rory, here's a question from Daniel, Trip Plus member in Sydney. Following Australia's deadliest terror attack at Bondi Beach, Albanese Prime Minister is resisting intense pressure for a federal royal commission while facing extraordinary personal attacks, including claims that he bears personal responsibility for the 15 deaths. Is this principal leadership or political miscalculation? And are the attacks on him legitimate or the populist exploitation of tragedy?

• 9:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, look, this is now the rawest, most contentious issue, I'd say, in Australian politics. We have a huge number of Australian listeners. One Australian listener sent me no less than 256 separate WhatsApp messages, no fewer than 256 WhatsApp messages, not correcting me on my grammar, but in this case, talking about what happened over in Bondi Beach.

• 10:02Alastair Campbell?

  All bad for Albanese?

• 10:04Rory Stewart?

  All of them basically saying, these were endless sort of Australian newspaper articles and photographs, saying that Albanese was essentially complicit. And the line that's being run, particularly by members of the Australian Jewish community, but by other Australians too, is that Albanese and the Labour Government did not do enough to clamp down on antisemitism. They didn't spot the signs of increasing radicalisation. They didn't really follow through with the national security measures that they could have taken and that therefore they must bear some responsibility and a royal commission must be set up. And these, and these things have become, you know, there's a Josh Freidenberg, who is a former treasurer.

• 10:51Rory Stewart?

  Who is Jewish. This has really been a moment where he's been very dominant in the media. He's emerged very, very visibly moved on Bondi Beach, embracing people. Whereas Albanese's response seemed a bit more wooden. He kind of reading a speech. In fact, if you watch him coming down Bondi Beach and another Australian friend of both of us sent us a video of him going down that beach. Instead of Freidenberg, who was hugging people and as we moved, you had a sense of that prime minister moving with security guards around him. So Albanese's team are going to be horrified to hear me say this. And I suppose I'm going to hand over to you to disagree agreeably and put the, put the case for Albanese.

• 11:29Alastair Campbell?

  Do you agree with the, I mean, the question was about this idea that there should be this sort of royal commission. I'm not persuaded of it.

• 11:36Rory Stewart?

  I think he needs a royal commission. I think he needs a royal commission. This is the

• 11:39Alastair Campbell?

  To do what?

• 11:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, firstly, it is for Australia, their nine 11 moment. This is the worst terrorist attack they've experienced. And there will be endless questions around what could have been done to prevent it. And what lessons could be learned?

• 11:54Alastair Campbell?

  But there is an inquiry by this guy Richardson.

• 11:56Rory Stewart?

  Why not have a royal commission? Everyone is asking for a royal commission. I predict here on the show Albanese will agree to a royal commission within the next week anyway. In which case, and if that were true, why doesn't he do it early?

• 12:06Alastair Campbell?

  He may do. I'm simply saying, I'm not convinced that it would be the right thing to do.

• 12:12Rory Stewart?

  Do you think it's the right thing to do, what he will actually do, I believe, which is drag your feet for four weeks. So you're not going to have it and then announce it.

• 12:18Alastair Campbell?

  If you think you're going to do it, do it. But I, I can remember having lots of discussions on all sorts of different situations about what we would define, I guess, as public inquiries. Okay. I remember, for example, that when Marjorie Mollum, Northern Ireland Secretary, was really pushing us to go full out for an inquiry into Bloody Sunday. And there were, you know, Tony Blair just wanted to kind of really think it through and really say, well, what's this, where's this going to lead? Now, I would argue actually that was a good thing to do. And it did lead to a sort of a form of closure.

• 12:53Rory Stewart?

  Was it ever been a bad thing to do? Where's a royal commission ever gone wrong?

• 12:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, on that, I was just about to say, when you put the cost of that against what was actually achieved, I think you can make the case both ways. Whereas what Albanese has done has basically said, he's got this former head of the Australian intelligence services, who's doing a review and with access to everything that he needs, and to try to answer that question that you just put, what could have been done differently. I think when politicians come out and say explicitly to the prime minister of their country, where something terrible has happened, this is on you, the blood is on your hands. I just think that's completely unreasonable.

• 13:36Rory Stewart?

  I think that's totally unreasonable. I agree with you. Totally unreasonable. And I also think that I don't support Australian Jewish friends of mine who are saying that this is a direct consequence of criticism of Israel.

• 13:47Alastair Campbell?

  If anybody who thinks that it is, I think that is a very dangerous argument.

• 13:51Rory Stewart?

  It's very, very important to say that one should absolutely be able to call out Israel, call out Donald Trump's United States, call out our own governments, point out when people are doing wrong, and not be drawn into the, oh, yes, but that might give succor to your enemies. Because that's always the way in which criticism is shut down. However, I'll lean into this once more. I don't think you, and you're a very good communicator, I don't think you're really convincing me, and I suspect you're probably not convincing most listeners, why they're not having a royal commission. And that's why I think Albanese is going to have to fold.

• 14:25Alastair Campbell?

  Do most of our listeners, hugely intelligent and well informed though they are, do they know what a royal commission is, as compared to, for example, an independent inquiry, or a public inquiry? Or, I mean, royal commissions, to me, are what you do when you're going to, when you have an issue which cannot be resolved in any other way, and which is going to lead to fundamental consequential change for the country. That's why you have a royal commission.

• 14:51Rory Stewart?

  Why doesn't he want a royal commission? I mean, that's what he has to answer. That's the problem. Because, and that's why I think he's going to concede one next week. Because in every interview, it's going to be like this. They're going to be like, why won't you do a royal commission? And the answer is, what, it costs too much?

• 15:04Alastair Campbell?

  No, the answer is, cost is a factor, but that's not the answer that you necessarily give at this stage. The answer is that a terrible, terrible thing has happened since when the government has already made changes, for example, in relation to gun ownership, for example, in relation to hate crime, and hate preachers and so forth. He's actually done quite a lot. And what happens in these situations, and it's very hard to stand up against this. And I, and I get the kind of the sense of pressure upon him to do it. But I think if you're a leader, you, you actually do have to sometimes step back and say, well, is it actually the right thing to do? And I think what he will do, all these people who've signed petitions and said that this would happen, all the sports people who've come out and all the sort of celebs and all the rest of it.

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  Is that by the time it happens, years down the track, look at how long this COVID inquiry is taking, right? Well, you're going to talk about something here. Okay, it's not maybe as complicated as that, but it could be. And I've yet to see a royal commission or a public inquiry, at the end of which all of the people who asked for it then said, oh yeah, that's answered all the questions.

• 16:09Rory Stewart?

  I, I think that's right, but again, you're, you're much savvier on politics than me, but I think the line you're taking. Might have worked if he'd been better in the immediate aftermath of the event.

• 16:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we said.

• 16:21Rory Stewart?

  If he'd communicated more powerfully.

• 16:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Rory Stewart?

  If he'd been more emotionally literate, if he'd seized the public mood more, then the credibility and legitimacy he would have to resist a royal commission more. Given where he is, which is basically everybody thinks he's defensive, he hasn't got it. And he's trying to cover up. He's go with the royal commission. What's he got to lose? Nothing really.

• 16:44Alastair Campbell?

  We shall see. I mean, the, the other thing I would, whether you make this part of the argument or not, I don't know, but there have been other. Okay, nothing quite as horrific as this, but there have been previous disasters that have not had royal commissions. They, I, I just think sometimes we want to blame. We want to say that there's some sort of easy solution that could put this right, and there isn't. And I think the blame game is just, I just think it's, I think that plays into the.

• 17:11Rory Stewart?

  But some of these commissions came up, but I mean, I'm not, you know, I don't have a dog in this fight, but I was just rereading the nine 11 commission report. It is fantastic. I mean, the world should be hugely grateful for that. That was an unbelievable bit of work. And we learnt so much about failure in US intelligence services, coordination, everything.

• 17:29Alastair Campbell?

  But is, is there not a case with this that, you know, how, one of the guys is dead. Um, the other one, I presume is going to spend an awful lot of time in, in prison. Are we really through two people and we have a royal commission looking at all aspects of all gun laws and all this and all that, are we really, really going to get to a place where you uncover the sort of scale of the thing that you had within nine eleven? Look, I could be wrong and I suspect that we quite a lot of Australians listen to this thinking, what the hell are you on about and you deserve to get smashed in the ashes. But I really, I feel, the other thing is I feel for Albanese on this because I think he's actually a decent guy. He's not the most natural charismatic speaker.

• 18:11Alastair Campbell?

  He probably did make a mistake in, you know, reading from a script and not maybe going out and Chris Mim, I mentioned the New South Wales Premier, Chris Mim, he just got the tone right and it was a question of tone. But when you're dealing with something like that, I think, I just, I guess I come from the place of thinking we should be a little bit more sympathetic to politicians when they're dealing with stuff which is fundamentally, he didn't give the guy a gun. He didn't say, I want you to go and sort of, you know, kill Jewish people because I, because I'm recognizing a Palestinian state.

• 18:41Rory Stewart?

  I'm with you, but there, okay, we're not going to resolve this agreeable disagreement, but I think the fundamental issue here is that the Jewish community in Australia has a higher survival, Holocaust survivor population than any population about Israel. They have been very, very conscious of antisemitic attacks and hate crimes in Australia over the last few months. They have been predicting this would happen and it happened with them publicly celebrating their most holy religious festival on a beach with people turning up, asking, are you a Jew or not? And then killing 15 people, including a 10 year old.

• 19:21Alastair Campbell?

  No, listen, it is, the thing was utterly horrific on every level. But ultimately it was one guy and his son who went out with a specific intent of doing what you've just described. And I think, however horrific, I think it is unreasonable and unfair to say Albanese should have known how to stop that. And then worse, Albanese caused that. I just think it's unfair and we should, you know, be fair.

• 19:52Rory Stewart?

  I agree with you on that.

• 19:53Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about your excellent series on AI.

• 20:03Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by the London Review of Books.

• 20:06Alastair Campbell?

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• 20:18Rory Stewart?

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• 20:29Alastair Campbell?

  So, for example, recently a brilliant article by Tony Wood, who writes about something Rory and I have talked about on the podcast, which is the rise of populism in Latin America. And he really delves into some of the characters historically, some of the current characters, the relations to Vox Party in Spain, and how this has all come together to impose a considerable change on the politics of that region.

• 20:51Rory Stewart?

  So, classic example of the LRB, London Review, producing a brilliant article, and you can get a subscription for only £6.

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• 21:02Rory Stewart?

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• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  That's lrb.me/politics.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.

• 21:54Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 21:57Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And Rory Mohale is a TripPlus member in South Africa, who says, "I'm really enjoying Rory's AI mini-series." And for those who don't know, this is an excellent mini-series for Rest is Politics members, where Rory is talking with Matt Clifford, who has been advising UK governments of both colours on AI. Mohale goes on, "As a teen myself, I feel the debate has lost serious momentum in schools. It was once heavily discussed, now teachers and students seem bored." To the point where it's not allowed in debate classes. We talk a lot about informing ministers of this issue. How do we engage the younger generation so that children maintain their creativity and authenticity whilst not rejecting AI completely as they develop?

• 22:41Alastair Campbell?

  Before we answer the question, what did you learn from from doing it? I've learned a lot from listening to it. I thought the first episode, I felt I understood a lot better at the end of it. Kind of what it was and how it worked. And the second episode, I actually found really interesting. I actually thought it was more about the politics of it. I was fascinated by your suggestion that actually you do not buy the idea that this the artificial general intelligence has to happen. You actually think that if Trump and Xi Jinping got together, they could just say, no, we're not doing this. I sense that you're moving to a much more sceptical.

• 23:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I'm, I think the reason to be terrified is that the people making these decisions have so much vested interest and money bound up with it. So one fact, which I think is really important, is that Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Moda are on record back 10 years ago, saying that they are seriously worried that artificial general intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity. 10 years later, they're all running companies which are racing to build this thing and are predicting that artificial general intelligence could emerge in a year or two.

• 23:56Rory Stewart?

  And they're still saying that there is a 20% chance, or in one case, a 15% chance, that it could kill us all.

• 24:02Alastair Campbell?

  Is this, to go to the question, is this why, are people getting, I don't think people are getting bored. I think people are still fascinated by it. I wonder if it's part of the numbing down thing. We're not willing even to acknowledge and to process what that might mean. Because Matt Clifford, you're into Lockett.

• 24:18Rory Stewart?

  I sense is just in that place, well, it's happening anyway, just get on with it. Yeah, so the the story that they're telling is it's too late, the genie's out of the bottle. Somebody's going to build artificial general intelligence anyway. So I, you know, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, need to build it before the bad guys. And my artificial general intelligence will be able to control this. So if you're Musk, you think you have to build it before Demis the Sabbath. If you're Altman, you feel you have to build it before Musk. All of them feel they have to build it before Mark Zuckerberg. And all the Americans feel they have to build it before the Chinese. Because they're not exactly driven by public service, these people, are they? Well, they think they're saving the world. So they the story they tell themselves is if I can build the super intelligent super robot first.

• 25:03Rory Stewart?

  My super intelligent super robot can protect the world from everybody else's evil super intelligent super robot. You then talk to the other. I think we've seen enough of Elon Musk's super intelligence in other forms. To to be worried. Yeah. You then talk to the other ones and they're like, no, no, that guy's evil. If he builds it first, he's going to destroy the world. That's why I have to build mine first to stop him, etc. But the actual madness of this, I came across a quote from Sam Altman at lunchtime. And I just want to share with you to get get a sense of how very, very strange. This is not a joke. This is Sam Altman giving an interview. Sam Altman is the head of OpenAI, so responsible for ChatGPT. I quote, I think that AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. Where do you say it? Source?

• 25:47Rory Stewart?

  It's quoted by a guy called Dan Wong, but it. Real? It's a, yeah, I believe it's totally real. I think that AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. Now, look, who knows whether it will lead to the end of the world? It might be only a one percent chance it's going to lead to the end of the world. If the people building it keep telling us that there's a significant chance of lead to the end of the world. The obvious question is, why are we not stopping it?

• 26:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Rory Stewart?

  And they say, well, it can't be stopped. In fact, actually, at the moment, of course, it could be stopped in theory because it requires such enormous data centers. You can see these things from space. There are basically only five companies in the world that's able to do this. So if Trump and Xi Jinping wanted, they could shut it down now.

• 26:30Alastair Campbell?

  And just, do you really think they could?

• 26:32Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely, because in the end.

• 26:36Alastair Campbell?

  Planning permission.

• 26:37Rory Stewart?

  These things require.

• 26:38Alastair Campbell?

  We're going to, we're going to slow down planning.

• 26:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, these things require the kind of energy to power a city of a million people. I mean, that, that, and all you would have to do is get these five companies shut down. And you could stop the whole thing now. Of course, for many reasons why you wouldn't do that. One of them is that they represent 20% of the entire global stock market. And they have bet trillions on this technology and there would be a big dip in the stock market if you did it. You might worry also about lots of other issues, but there's something very awkward going on at the core of this. You've got scientists, including the godfathers of AI, the people who produced the first large language models. So Geoffrey Hinson, for example, Joshua Bengio, who we're interviewing, saying they're terrified and they want to stop.

• 27:24Rory Stewart?

  You've got Mustafa Suleman, who we interviewed, going out on the Today Programme, sounding, I think, much more cautious about this technology we've heard. And even before you get into the existential risks, like wiping us all out. There's a serious possibility that it would lead to massive disruption, loss of jobs, wipe out of economic value because Dara Mere is talking about creating trillion dollar or billion dollar companies run by two people.

• 27:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Rory Stewart?

  There were no employees.

• 27:50Alastair Campbell?

  And, and, and Matt Clifford just kept coming back and talking about a hockey stick and the industrial revolution was marvellous.

• 27:54Rory Stewart?

  The, the problem is that somebody like me who's grumbling about this is increasingly being excluded from meetings with the people reading this industry who now increasingly call me a luddite.

• 28:07Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, because you started out, when you first started talking about this, when we first started the podcast, you were a, you were a bit of a fanboy for the whole thing.

• 28:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I use it all the time. I'm absolutely obsessed with its power. And I'm very, very aware of how much more powerful it's getting, that, you know, it was doing GCSE mathematics two years ago, then A level, it's now doing advanced graduate level mathematics very powerfully. Its improvement in terms of its ability to write software code is going up and up. So I can completely see.

• 28:34Alastair Campbell?

  But, but if I can plug this week's leading.

• 28:39Alastair Campbell?

  It thinks that Kate Garvey, Jimmy Wales' wife, is actually married to Peter Mandelstone.

• 28:45Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 28:45Alastair Campbell?

  So it gets a lot wrong.

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  It gets a lot wrong. It hallucinates, it makes errors. So then you have this very strange thing of this very powerful, very plausible, very articulate, but somewhat inaccurate thing being inserted right into the middle of our society, our economies. I think politically, part of the problem is that I remember talking to a US Congress person about this. She said, frankly, we don't understand this. We feel very insecure about it. You talked to us about technology and we all slightly don't want to talk about it. And consequently, I've been talking about this since the election, that despite the fact this is probably the thing that in the next 10 years, for better or worse, will change the world more than anything else.

• 29:31Rory Stewart?

  Election campaigns are still run as though they were happening in the 1980s.

• 29:34Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I know you've done two episodes. You've got a third one coming out on Friday, which is where you're joined by Tino Quella to talk about who's winning the AI race. One thing, I don't know whether you do cover this in future episodes, I'd be interested to know Matt Clivered's assessment of the politicians and AI. Does he talk about whether Rishi Sunak knew what he was on about, whether Keir Starmer knows what he's on about, whether they're actually asking the right questions?

• 29:58Rory Stewart?

  He's quite favorable towards them. I mean, Rishi is an uber geek.

• 30:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 30:03Rory Stewart?

  And, you know, I've seen him with these guys and he really does. But he's a techno optimist. I mean, so I'm fond of Rishi Sunak, but he's well over on the techno optimist side on this. Peter Carr, I think, really got into this, but then, of course, was reshuffled off. There's an amazing Labour junior minister now leading on AI who actually worked with me when he was in DEFRA, called Kanishka Narayan, who I worked with very closely because he was one of the key advisers at DEFRA when I was a junior minister at DEFRA. And he's taken over this. He's been listening to the mini-series corresponding with me. He really gets this stuff. He's unbelievably smart and over the detail of this stuff.

• 30:45Rory Stewart?

  What's lacking is the bigger, broader political conversation, the engagement of ordinary MPs, of political messaging, of the public, because in the end, the public gets to have a say. Does the public want this developed? Do we want to be completely dependent on the US for this stuff? Or do we want to develop our own UK European large language models? What kind of risk could we... I mean, these are the biggest questions in in politics today, and we haven't begun on them. Listen, if you're interested in this or any other issues around AI, because we don't just talk about threats, we also talk about the incredible opportunities that it can provide to transform our economy, transform productivity. Please sign up, become a member of The Rest is Politics by going to therestispolitics.com.

• 31:30Rory Stewart?

  And you can listen not just to this mini series on AI, but some of the other great mini series that have been done, including some of our recent series on JD Vance and Rupert Murdoch. Question for you, coming from Thomas Matthew from Dorset. Can the Tories credibly lead on Ukraine when their shadow attorney general is representing a sanctioned oligarch?

• 31:54Alastair Campbell?

  The sanctioned oligarch being none other than Mr Roman Abramovich.

• 31:59Rory Stewart?

  Owner of Chelsea Football Club.

• 32:00Alastair Campbell?

  Ex-owner of Chelsea Football Club. Look, I think there is...

• 32:02Rory Stewart?

  Did you ever meet him?

• 32:04Alastair Campbell?

  I met him once at a Chelsea game, not to talk too properly. And then I remember once when Chelsea played at Burnley, when we first got promoted to the Premier League, Abramovich's security people came ahead of the game to stake it out. And they said they wanted 12 seats for something like this, you know, in quite a small section of the ground where the Burnley directors and their guests all sit. So in the end, he didn't, he never came. And I met him once at Chelsea, and I've just read a book over Christmas, actually, which, where he figures quite large. It's called Where's the Money Gone? And it's by a guy called Adrian Goldberg, who works for Byline Times. And it's, it's an assessment of modern football.

• 32:49Alastair Campbell?

  And Abramovich and Putin actually figure quite large in this. And I I actually do think that Abramovich, he quotes in the book, he quotes Tony Banks, our former sports minister, sadly no longer here. And Tony Banks, who's a massive Chelsea supporter, and he was one of the rare voices that said, I'm really, really worried about this guy coming in and buying a football club. We don't know where his money's come from. We don't know anything about his character.

• 33:15Rory Stewart?

  We then discovered, didn't we? Because there was this amazing, very, very long moment where Russian oligarchs trusted the British courts to provide fair justice.

• 33:24Alastair Campbell?

  So the reason and for the question is that David Wilson, who is the shadow attorney general, so that is Kemi Badenoch, the person, Kemi Badenoch is appointed as the Conservatives' attorney general, should there be a Conservative government.

• 33:36Rory Stewart?

  And to put it in context, a really big senior lawyer. I mean, you know, more so than Keir Starmer, like a really big leading lawyer.

• 33:42Alastair Campbell?

  My, Keir Starmer was the director of public prosecution.

• 33:45Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, maybe like Keir Starmer. Anyway, a big, big name in the professional bar, maybe like your friend Helena Kennedy.

• 33:51Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so he is now representing Abramovich in a case where the government is seeking to get back from Abramovich money which Abramovich said as part of getting rid of Chelsea should be going to, quote, the victims of the war in Ukraine. Okay, so that case is going on in Jersey, I think it is.

• 34:09Rory Stewart?

  And is this, is this the fund that was supposed to be, Chelsea Football Club was sold and this is sort of supposed to be a charity fund?

• 34:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, this is a fund that was going to be used to help people in Ukraine, which has been stuck.

• 34:18Rory Stewart?

  And before it was helping people in Ukraine, the idea was, I think it was also for UK charities, because at one point, a charity that's involved was applying for this fund and the money never got released.

• 34:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the money's been stuck and Keir Starmer's set a deadline, I can't remember what it was, but unless you get on with this, then we're going to take it to court. Wilson is representing Abramovich. So the question for you, Rory, as Kemi Badenoch spokesman, is that appropriate that Lord Wilson, her shadow attorney general, is representing Roman Abramovich in what is clearly a politically incredibly sensitive case?

• 34:52Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think it's, I think it's probably unwise. I mean, it looks pretty peculiar. I, I guess presumably the defence that Wilson would make.

• 35:01Alastair Campbell?

  Is the old tax write thing.

• 35:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, is to say, look, he, to be fair to him, never criticised Keir Starmer for defending. Yeah, whatever Kierstam's accused of defending, or indeed the current Attorney General of Labour Government.

• 35:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that's when they were lawyers. He is now the shadow Attorney General.

• 35:19Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:20Alastair Campbell?

  So if there were an election tomorrow and Kemba Baden not became Prime Minister, this guy is the Attorney General.

• 35:24Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:25Alastair Campbell?

  Is that remotely appropriate? I think it is very, very weird.

• 35:28Rory Stewart?

  Right. Well, I'd be interesting to talk to friends of yours. Have you talked to friends of yours who are lawyers? Is there a view that it's a bit weird? Or are they saying lawyers just get to defend whoever they want?

• 35:37Alastair Campbell?

  Look, probably technically, I think if you went to the Law Commission with a complaint about this, they'd probably say, well, no case to answer, as far as I know. But I think the politics of this are really ugly, and they should have seen it coming. Unless, I think we can assume that Lord Wilson is getting very, very top dollar to be representing Roman Abramovich. Anyway, I think it's a mistake.

• 35:58Rory Stewart?

  But in general, this case aside, we do agree that, in general, it was not fair to attack lawyers for who they happen to be defending or representing.

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  No, and in fact, one of the most unpleasant parts of my job when I worked for Tony Blair was that Cherie, his wife, was constantly being vilified for, frankly, whoever she sort of stood up and defended, they would find a reason to say, you know, why on earth should you do this? As though she was part of the government. But this guy would be part of a government. So I think this is, in many ways, a lot worse. We're agreeing agreeably, but we're uncomfortable about the facts of the case.

• 36:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 36:34Alastair Campbell?

  Right, last question. This is from Katie in Bath, or Bath, as you would call it. The National Archives released 600 Blair-era files this week. Different outlets led with entirely different stories from the same material. The Guardian on a speech to the Women's Institute, painful memories. The Times on Zimbabwe regime change. Al Jazeera on what it called Iraq war crimes. How do journalists decide which details become the story? In releases like this and what determines, who determines what is newsworthy from decades old memos?

• 37:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's, it's, it's pretty amazing, isn't it? And so these are, this is, these are, these are archives from the very beginning of your time in government.

• 37:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the Women's Institute, which was one of the most

• 37:18Rory Stewart?

  Oh yeah, and remind, remind people, this, this way he was slow clapped.

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  I was actually quite pleased at the way this was reported because I think we could put it into the Alastair was right all along category. I was very, very worried about this speech.

• 37:32Rory Stewart?

  About him going to talk to the Women's Institute at all?

• 37:34Alastair Campbell?

  No, talking to the Women's Institute is fine. But don't go along and talk to the Women's Institute and make a sort of big speech about the future of the country and the future of government and the big political message. Cherie had just given birth to Leo. So maybe there was a bit of kind of, you know, new Labour, new life, new hope around. He went and made this speech and what was so funny about these memos? So there was me, Jonathan Powell, Angie Hunter, Peter Hyman, I think The Guardian was the main coverage of this. And I, I was saying things like, I'm really, really worried about this speech. You're sounding like John Major. And I, this is not what they want, this is not what they expect.

• 38:16Alastair Campbell?

  And it became one of these sort of, it went on for days, these arguments.

• 38:20Rory Stewart?

  Why did he think the Women's Institute was the appropriate audience for some grand speech?

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  Middle England, in fact, on the day, we, we, we very rarely fell out, we didn't fall out over this, but I basically said, I thought this is a really bad idea. He should just go up and sort of, you know, be nice and be Tony Blair and not worry too much about a big speech. It's a big audience, about 6,000 women.

• 38:45Rory Stewart?

  So there could be a speech where he'd just be like, the Women's Institute are wonderful, aren't you wonderful? Let's celebrate.

• 38:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I know here today, I'd love to talk to you about, you know, the future of something or other, but it was like a big, and we briefed it. He wanted us to brief us, this is like a big moment in the calendar and this is the fight back starts here. So anyway. I decided I'm not going to go to Wembley, you know, on your own head bit, off you go. And Angie Hunter went with it with the car. Angie had been arguing very much for this speech. She saw herself as the middle England voice, which she was in many respects. So I used the time while Tony went off to have this meeting in my office in Downey Street with John Prescott. And John and I were talking about whatever we're talking about. And I

• 39:31Alastair Campbell?

  had the TV on in the background and Tony's speech was live on the news because we'd billed it as a big deal. And at one point, John Prescott's just looking at, telling he goes, oh, what's going on? He says, he's got his bambi look on. And his bambi look was where he just looked a little bit scared. And what happened was, he started the speech, and then there was a few tuts, and then there was a little bit of sort of heckling. And then eventually, there was this, one person starts to slow. And before you know it, he's got thousands of women basically slow hand clapping the speech. So the headline in the Daily Mail the next morning was death. Middle England turns its back on Blair. It was heaven

• 40:16Alastair Campbell?

  for them. So yeah, but anyway, that, so The Guardian series newspaper, and this is the answer to Katie's question, there are hundreds of these memos get released.

• 40:25Rory Stewart?

  Of which the more controversial one, certainly from the point of view of people in the least, is the, what Al Jazeera picked up on, which is that Blair seemed to be resisting, we seem to be coming back to royal commissions, a big investigation into allegations of British soldiers conducting atrocities in Iraq.

• 40:41Alastair Campbell?

  So what happens with this is that the papers, I mean, the system's changed over time, but essentially, some papers get released fairly early after the events have been covered. There's a whole kind of system where, so loads, so for example, I think a couple of years ago, loads of stuff came out about the Good Friday Agreement. And some of it was quite controversial, so it was quite difficult. Because what's happening is, you're in the, you've been there as a minister, you're in these meetings, there's somebody in there who's taking notes, who's writing it up, who's filing it away. Now, the truth is, most of the people who are involved in that, and players in that, they're not reading the notes of the meetings because they're on to the next thing. These meetings get recorded.

• 41:21Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 41:22Alastair Campbell?

  And then out they go. And then of course, big decisions, there's all the kind of internal correspondence. And of course, we, you know, to Tony's regret, we brought in Freedom of Information anyway. So we always assumed this stuff's going to come out at some point anyway. So I just thought it was fascinating to see the the different stories that people picked on. The question, Katie's question about how the journalists decide. I think actually these days, because journalism isn't kind of what it was. And there are fewer of them doing more stories and covering more. I suspect most of them rely on the Press Association. The Press Association go in there, they sit down, they get quite a lot of time, they go through everything. They put out loads of stories and then the papers kind of make their, take their pick.

• 42:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alex, so thank you. That was a wonderful kind of insight into that weird and wonderful world.

• 42:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you'll be coming up. How long ago were you a minister?

• 42:13Rory Stewart?

  Uh, I left in, I was there 2015, 2019.

• 42:16Alastair Campbell?

  So you're 10 years from the start, so it won't be that long, Rory.

• 42:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Alastair Campbell?

  Before you be New Year's Eve or come along and wake up and something really stupid that you suggest. Do you remember the one that came out a couple of years ago when I suggested that Rangers play Celtic? But they swap shirts before the games.

• 42:31Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 42:31Alastair Campbell?

  And bad ideas.

• 42:33Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Well, Alex, so thank you. Lovely to see you in Moldova. Look forward to speaking again soon.

• 42:37Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 42:38Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  The Great Game. Strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  We assess Prime Minister.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  With high confidence, it was Russian.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 43:12Speaker 06

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• 43:15Speaker 03

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not?

• 43:21Alastair Campbell?

  You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 43:39Speaker 07

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• 43:44Speaker 03

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