570. Why Trump Acts Like a Russian Asset and Miliband’s West Bank Sanctions

After Trump’s latest betrayal of Ukraine, why does he act like a Russian asset? Has John Healy already missed his moment to be a radical Chancellor, and does Ed Miliband’s move to impose economic sanctions on Israeli settlements prove he would have been the bolder choice? Is the President of Serbia a fascist? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Anthony Scaramucci by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. 🌏 Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee! __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Lead Video Editor: Josh Smith Video Editor: James Clayden, Oli Ortega Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames 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.

• 0:00Rory Stewart?

  Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, have just held talks with Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky. It's the latest chapter in a betrayal that goes back to the start of Trump's second term. And here's what that betrayal actually means. In August, Russia fired 27 missiles at Kiev, and Ukraine was able to shoot down just one, because there were no US Patriot interceptors left. The reason has almost nothing to do with Ukraine, nothing to do with Russia. It's because they've been firing almost half their stock at Iran. Which brings us to Mark Carney's idea, a constellation of middle powers combining their weight to matter without Washington. But is that a real answer to the world that we're in now?

• 0:45Rory Stewart?

  Or is it just what you say once you've discovered you can't build a missile? This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

• 0:53Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:59Rory Stewart?

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• 1:06Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:16Rory Stewart?

  And that's each of you £100 off your bills. So the maths does itself. You save on the tariff and then you both benefit from the referral on top. Simplicity, rarely seen today in today's political climate.

• 1:27Alastair Campbell?

  And just remember, the £100 is a limited offer, and it drops back to £50 when it ends. Energy prices, as we keep reminding you, are not settling down.

• 1:38Rory Stewart?

  Switching takes three minutes. Go to fuseenergy.com/politics, use code POLITICS to get your free trip plus membership on top and start referring, earning money for both you and your friends. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions.

• 2:01Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 2:03Alastair 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.

• 2:16Rory 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.

• 2:40Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:46Rory 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/resterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/resterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 3:11Rory Stewart?

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

• 3:15Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alice Campbell.

• 3:16Rory Stewart?

  Today in Question Time, we are going to be discussing firstly, what's happening on the ground in Ukraine after the Kushner-Witkoff visit. Secondly, we're going to be looking at Mark Carney's idea of a constellation of middle powers. And we're also going to talk about the extraordinary funeral of the convicted genocidal war criminal Miladic, apparently greeted with a hero's welcome in Serbia. Alice, so we're starting actually with a question from a listener who is in Kiev. Beatrice, after the US's latest betrayal of Ukraine, is it finally time to admit that Trump is a Russian asset? So I'll start you on that.

• 3:52Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I've believed that Trump is a Russian asset for a long, long time. We talked in the main episode about this book Betrayal that Luke Harding has written, which is essentially about how the Americans, by the way, including Biden, have sort of sold out Ukraine. And but Trump has taken it to a completely different level. And essentially how Trump and Putin are both coming at Ukraine from both sides. And one of the things we talked about, when you're about a Russian asset, there's a line in Luke's book where, you know, you and I've said this before, that if he were a Russian asset, would he have done anything differently to what he's actually done in his second term? And the thing about, you know, people have all these sort of rumours and sort of guesses about this thing, what does Putin have on him? I can remember when we were in government,

• 4:35Alastair Campbell?

  we used to be told in advance, there was this little bubble inside the embassy, where they assured you that you could speak freely. But they basically said, there is nowhere else that we are going to be where you can speak freely. We now know as a fact that the hotels that most visiting Westerners stayed in, in the time that Trump was being cultivated, he was taking... It's not as if he went, I'll go and find out about Russia. The Russians approached him and said, we think you'd find Russia really interesting. And he was sort of fated.

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  And he started looking for commercial opportunities and loans when his business was not going very well.

• 5:09Alastair Campbell?

  And Russia has often helped him out when his business has been in trouble. So the idea that Luke was saying, for example, he discovered, as he said, I'm just a journalist, right? Who's a bit annoying to the Russians. He discovered that his bedroom was bugged for sound and film. The idea that Donald Trump wouldn't be bugged for sound and film, forget it.

• 5:29Rory Stewart?

  And regardless of how much it's directed by him, or whether it's just that he shares Putin's worldview, it would be impossible if you were the head of the KGB, the SVR now, to imagine any more perfect scenario. I mean, if you were literally sort of sitting there, 2015, and thinking, what would be the type of US president which would be most in Russian interest? Why don't we come up with a guy who could totally wreck confidence in NATO and take away basically any guarantee of the US security guarantees? Back the pro-Russian parties in Europe, undermine the European Union.

• 6:13Rory Stewart?

  If we invade Ukraine, remove all American financial support for Ukraine to facilitate our entry. I mean, it's very difficult to think of anything that Trump has done which is not like a dream. I mean, in fact, I actually worry that if you're sitting in SVR headquarters, trying to think of something more for him to do, he's already done it all.

• 6:33Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you know, like we talked a lot last night at the event about Alaska, the thing in Alaska. Based upon, I mean, honestly, you should read this book for his descriptions of Witkoff and Kushner. This was before this week's stuff, okay? And I felt this week to see, okay, they've done eight visits. Witkoff has been eight times to see Putin.

• 6:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Alastair Campbell?

  You'd have thought by now he'd done enough. I mean, Putin must have the cleanest shoes on the planet, because he has licked them every single time, including this time. He literally said, did you see the thing he did with Putin? He said, we'll look back at these meetings as the greatest moments of our lives. These are the highlights of our, we'll be able to have the memories of these meetings.

• 7:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, so they'll sit there when Putin's in jails, an international war criminal, they can reminisce while they're serving out their sentences.

• 7:20Alastair Campbell?

  No, not at all. No, no, he and Dmitriev and Kushner, they can sit around with Putin and just drink to each other and toast to each other. It was disgusting.

• 7:27Rory Stewart?

  And that happy retirement that Putin is going to have, where he's going to be able to.

• 7:31Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. And then so then they fly to Kiev via Poland. And so it's their first time there. Zelensky has to sit there at this joint press conference, where, to be fair to some of the journalists, they put some pretty tough questions. They basically said, you lot, you know, you go on about Iran, you failed on that. You failed on this. You failed on pretty much every peace initiative you've done. But Kushner sits there with Zelensky just a few yards away and says, we're working to satisfy Putin's aspirations. Putin's aspirations are to kill this guy, to destroy his country and to take the whole thing back into Russia. I honestly, Luke said last night, that Zelensky's self-control at these things is extraordinary.

• 8:14Rory Stewart?

  Let me explain on what's been happening in Ukraine. Tragically, the Ukraine war has now been going on for four and a half years. This is longer than the First World War. In fact, we started doing podcasts as this invasion was happening. And it's taught us so much about two things. One of them is resilience and the other one's technology. And somewhere in the heart of this is the fact that everybody has miscalled this war again and again, and doubtless we're miscalling it today. So in quick succession, story one, when Russia began its invasion, is Ukraine's doomed, Kiev will fall because Russia is this enormous superpower. Story two, when Russia failed to take Kiev, is the Russian army is so incompetent, Putin will collapse.

• 8:58Rory Stewart?

  Story three was, there's going to be this amazing Ukrainian counter-offensive with all these Western tanks, and we're going to push the Russians back. Story four was, Ukraine is screwed because it doesn't have enough manpower. And story five, which Trump and JD Vance were selling, was without American support, there's no way that Ukraine can continue. So we'll be able to force them to the power, because actually Europe's useless, Ukraine's useless. It's just American money that's keeping the whole thing going. Fast forward to today, we are in a completely different world. Everything's changed in four and a half years. Those tanks, those Leopard tanks that we discussed in this podcast, getting out to the frontline are completely useless. They're sitting in sheds, nobody can use them. Drones have paralyzed the frontline. Russia has lost now.

• 9:46Rory Stewart?

  Somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 killed and 1.2 million casualties. To put that in context, Russia has lost in this fight with Ukraine more than the United States lost in the entire Second World War, more than the United States lost in the entire Second World War. Or to put another way, they have lost something like 100 times as many people as the US lost in Afghanistan. I mean, the scale of the Russian deaths is beyond imagining. But now the problem is this, because the technology keeps changing. Ukraine can basically stop the Shahed drones, which are these Iranian drones, with its own counter drones. It seems to be able to stop cruise missiles, which are basically guided

• 10:28Rory Stewart?

  mini airplanes, and it seems to be able to deal with actual airplanes. But it's really struggling to deal with ballistic missiles, which are these things that give about four minutes warning, fly up into space and then come plummeting down again. Because in order to deal with those, you need Patriot missiles. Those are the only interceptors that can really take them out. And of 30 ballistic missiles fired last week, Ukrainians intercepted only one. And why? Because America are spending them like a drunken sailor in Iran.

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that's a good link, actually, to the question here, which we'll bring it back to Ukraine, but it relates to Ollie. What would a middle powers alliance actually look like? And is it actually achievable? I mean, I guess this is an example of where this is Mark Carney's vision, where the middle powers, which include ours, which include the Gulf, include Turkey, also Australia, Japan, South Korea, that we would actually form some kind of alliance. But I guess this is an example of where even though Europe is strengthening its own defenses, that is not necessarily going to work for Ukraine right now.

• 11:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, because, and we'll get on to middle powers in a second, but fundamentally, the problem is production timetables on Patriot missiles. And there is this idea that France is going to co-produce a brand new generation of missile that might be able to take out ballistic missiles. But if it doesn't, the next stage of this war over the winter will be energy and electricity. What Putin is doing at the moment is targeting all the electricity generation, which now in Ukraine is down to about a quarter of what it was at its peak. So that's not just heating in brutal winters, which will make cities in Ukraine almost uninhabitable through the winter if they don't have any heating. It's also the entire industrial production facilities that allow the Ukrainians to build the weapons

• 12:15Rory Stewart?

  to defend themselves. So now the war is getting into a much more complicated discussion, which, you know, is quite difficult to talk about quickly on a podcast, which is, how does Ukraine generate electricity? And that is mini generators, that's oil, that's quick fix transformers, that's what do you put in this factory, what do you put in this hospital? How do your alliances with Europe work? And all the time, Russia will be hitting generation transmission lines with these ballistic missiles again and again. And that's clearly the Russian strategy.

• 12:44Alastair Campbell?

  No, and also it was clear from what Zelensky said at the press conference with these clowns that, you know, they're really, really worried about this winter. In fact, the other great thing about Luke's book is not just about the geopolitics, it's also about real people in Ukraine. And he talks about visiting these people last winter, who are no lifts working, pensioners with no lifts because of no electricity, get into their flat and it's like two, three degrees. It's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. But I just think we have to give up on the idea that, I mean, obviously, you've got to try to press Trump to do the right thing. But, you know, Luke's description yesterday of what the Alaska summit, this is a hunted war criminal, international war criminal, who is being fated.

• 13:25Rory Stewart?

  With a red carpet.

• 13:26Alastair Campbell?

  And then gets in the car and then does a 12 minute press conference, totally dominated by Putin. What Trump's press conference is normally like, sort of 40 minute rambles by him, where the other guy is just a stand in. Putin totally owned that thing. And I go back to that point. If he wasn't a Russian agent, what would he do differently?

• 13:44Rory Stewart?

  Let's come back to the question that you gave us from Ollie. What would a middle power alliance actually look like? And is it actually achievable? So I was thinking about that. This is Carney's idea, which came from Davos. And I noticed in a piece of newspaper reporting, they said, Alastair Campbell has described this as one of the greatest speeches. So, you know, endorsing the Pope, I'll send it to you, endorsing the Pope encyclical, the Carney speech too. So what are the problems for this middle power alliance? And the idea, obviously, is something we deeply believe in, which is Europe, Canada, UK, Norway, who knows, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Ukraine, coming together

• 14:25Rory Stewart?

  as an alternative to US and China. First problem, these powers don't all agree on what the threats are. So if you're Ukraine, your number one threat is Russia. If you're South Korea or Japan, your number one threat might be China. If you're Canada, your number one threat might be US coercion. Secondly, these middle powers, which could be most of the G20, except for China and the US, have very different capacities and very different ideas themselves. So, you know, Brazil might actually see itself as being, or South Africa might see itself as being sort of skeptical of the West in general. And then finally, there's this collective action problem, which is that every single time what Trump or Xi Jinping can exploit is that we stay together until the moment comes when we want to cut

• 15:09Rory Stewart?

  a deal. And we're not really prepared to sacrifice for the others. You know, is Canada really going to sacrifice for the sake of the Philippines? Is Saudi Arabia really going to go out on a limb for a Canadian-US trade deal? Particularly, and maybe this relates to yesterday's podcast, in the domestic context, which is that we now have parties emerging, not just the AFD, but actually the way that our new Conservative Shadow Foreign Secretary is speaking, it's increasingly nationalistic, Britain first, slightly dismissive of international, traditional international rules based alliances, et cetera. If basically domestic politics becomes increasingly our country first, we don't care about international, there's less and less room for making these middle power arguments.

• 15:51Alastair Campbell?

  But I just think this is the only way forward. I just think we have to keep going with this and trying to build the alliances. I'll tell you the other thing, we did this live show at the festival hall, we did two live shows at the festival hall this weekend. And I don't know if you've seen today, Donald Trump's latest sort of AI fantasy that he wakes up in the middle of the night and does, is him playing ice hockey with Mark Carney and ends up sort of beating him up, saying, get up, governor.

• 16:19Rory Stewart?

  I don't know how much you play with AI.

• 16:21Alastair Campbell?

  Not at all.

• 16:21Rory Stewart?

  But in order to do that, he needs to write a prompt. And the prompt will have said, I want you to create, and it has to be quite specific, an ice hockey match between me and Mark Carney. Mark Carney must be referred to as governor, governor of 51st state, not as Prime Minister of Canada. And I must not just win, I want physical violence, I want you to show me beating him up. It's actually quite difficult to get an AI model to do that.

• 16:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he did it. And we, but the point I was going to make, we showed as part of the event that we did, a kind of compilation, the sort of most embarrassing AI slop stuff that he does. And I was really pleased because nobody laughed. Hardly anybody laughed. Now, I think a year ago, people would have found it funny. And I think he's just becoming more and more demented, more and more ridiculous. And the guys who are serious have got to stick together.

• 17:16Rory Stewart?

  There's also a connection to something you've talked about before in your definitions, or you're moving on from the three Ps to, I think, the three Cs, which is what you're describing is the theatre of cruelty. So we saw a little example of that in the Reform Conference, celebrating a woman having her hair pulled and being beaten with a stick. But it's the celebration of physical violence. It's Trump deciding to say to the AI model, no, no, no, I don't just want to score a goal. I want people to see me physically assaulting.

• 17:46Alastair Campbell?

  He does.

• 17:47Rory Stewart?

  The Canadian Prime Minister.

• 17:47Alastair Campbell?

  The stick, would you have had to tell him to break the stick? Because the stick broke.

• 17:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, you'd have to instruct it to do all that. Make it more violent, break the stick. I mean, because you had to go through many iterations of the video until it's got to the stage that you want. Its first version will be quite bland. It'll just be him scoring a goal.

• 18:02Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, you would think he had better things to do, wouldn't you?

• 18:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, except maybe what all these guys have worked out is the theatre of cruelty is the whole thing. That that's actually what their base wants. That's their whole appeal. That's what their authenticity is.

• 18:16Alastair Campbell?

  So do you think that, so Robert Jenrick, when he is quizzed on the television about the woman having been dragged out by the hair, and he says, boo hoo?

• 18:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, they must consciously or subconsciously sense that the modern political environment rewards them. For people who didn't hear the last episode, what happens is that a protester at the Reform Conference, a climate protester who's challenging Farage on corruption, she doesn't just get someone grabbing her hair and pulling it back. You can see the pain. Somebody comes forward and hits her with a stick, right? And what we then have is Lee Anderson, who's one of the chairs of Reform, saying, why don't we do a little collection for a new stick, right? So I think they must know, and Trump must know, that this is actually works for them. Their supporters absolutely love it. The more outraged you and I get,

• 19:06Rory Stewart?

  the more disgusted kind of mainstream opinion gets, the more terrific it is. And this was, you know, very core to fascism. I mean, if you look at the theory of fascism, and actually the theory of a lot of the communists, was always about that. Two things. One of them is, you can't overdo offending mainstream opinion in the mainstream media and being cruel, because actually your supporters love it. And secondly, and this is the problem with your AFD story, you know, people are saying, well, maybe if they get into office, they'll discredit themselves. That's the other thing that we learn, and we learned particularly from communism. It takes decades to actually discredit people on performance. Because they can keep saying, oh, we've been let down by our enemies abroad, or we've been let down by our enemies internally, or we're not doing it right yet. You can keep

• 19:51Rory Stewart?

  going that for decades.

• 19:52Alastair Campbell?

  Just to give you two examples of that, Donald Trump should have been finished by January the 6th. Nigel Farage should have been finished by Brexit. But neither of those things happened.

• 19:59Rory Stewart?

  I keep trying to work out what on earth the solution to this is. And I think the solution is to get away from the Trump Farage world, which is so much, that theatre of cruelty, those kind of AI generated images are so much about. Virtual abstract, they have nothing to do with people's lived reality, right? I'm in the case of Trump, obviously they're made up fantasies. So this is a chance, obviously, again, to plug not just my political philosophy, but my book.

• 20:25Alastair Campbell?

  I knew this was going, I knew this was going, I could feel it, I could feel the plug coming out.

• 20:28Rory Stewart?

  Well, how can you see the plug? What's the connection?

• 20:30Alastair Campbell?

  It was the way, I could thought, this is interesting. I think he's going to talk about Andy Burnham and devolution, but then I thought as he'd sort of made that little pivot, I could feel it coming. It was fine, it was fine.

• 20:39Rory Stewart?

  And did you feel when you read the book that there's a kind of point there that weirdly, one of the things that's gone wrong with politics is we're not finding a way of talking about real places, real people, real high streets.

• 20:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll tell you what, I know after the break, we're going to talk a little bit about the Middle East. We had that wonderful pairing at the Royal Festival Hall at the weekend, Mao Zedong, whose parents were murdered by Hamas in the October 7th massacre, joined by his fellow peace campaigner, Palestinian Aziz Abuzair, who lost his brother to torture in Israeli jails. And do you remember they were basically, we were asking about what's going to happen to the Israeli election, what's going to happen to Palestinian elections? And they were saying, well, it's kind of important, but far more important is actually what people do in their own lives and what differences they can make. And I actually think there's something that joins your book, Middle Land, to Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham's book, Head North, which we talked about a lot in the mini series

• 21:32Alastair Campbell?

  we did on Andy Burnham with, with Steve, is this sense that the gap between politics as practiced in Westminster and Whitehall, politics as conveyed by, I guess, people like us and the media more generally, is so divorced from politics as a force for good in local communities. And I think that's what you're trying to do with your book and also that Andy and Steve are trying to do there.

• 21:57Rory Stewart?

  And it's not just a negative story. It's not just that we've sort of ignored people, it's that there's so much to be hopeful about there, so much energy, so many of the solutions come from there. I mean, what I felt is that things that seemed impossible to fix in Westminster, when you turned up in Cumbria, actually, people had ideas because they really knew their neighbourhood, their street, what the problems were and what the solutions were, and were prepared to get involved in solutions. So actually, it's a lot of things. It could be, I totally agree with Andy Burnham partly about changing the structure of our politics, you know, getting power down locally, because local people know more, can do more than distant people. But it's also taking ideas from the ground, fixing things from the ground will sort of fix our politics.

• 22:38Rory Stewart?

  But one of the problems I've had with this book is how do you get people excited? Because the conversation in politics is still so Westminster related. If I say to people, actually, the answer to a lot of Britain's problems is places like Cumbria, look closely at this particular constituency, these issues, everyone's like, oh, well, that sounds a bit boring. But actually, it's the freshest, most exciting thing, and it's what we feel in our own neighbourhoods. The thing that actually makes us positive about our lives are what we see around us, not what we see in Prime Minister's Questions.

• 23:09Alastair Campbell?

  This week's newsletter extracts from Middle Land by Rory Stewart.

• 23:14Rory Stewart?

  And there will be a special chance to win a signed copy too. So to read that and enter the draw, go to therestispolitics.com/newsletter. Couple of prizes, you'll get a free signed book and you'll also get, slightly more bizarrely, a new sculpture that I've made, if anyone wants to own a Rory Stewart made work of art. And if you'd like to come to a live show to hear more about this, I will be on at the Dominion Theatre this Sunday with Lewis Goodall, discussing the themes of the book, and you can buy tickets with fain.co.uk.

• 23:43Alastair Campbell?

  Let's take a break and then when we come back, as I say, we'll talk a little bit about the West Bank settlements, we're going to talk about John Healy's first outing, big speech as Chancellor, and also what the Questioner calls our friend, Aleksandar Vucic, and what's happening following the death of Miladich, and a very interesting Putin-Medvedev style move by Mr. Vucic.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Here we are getting his statement from Number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  We assess a Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 24:32Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 24:36Speaker 03

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

• 24:42Speaker 02

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

• 24:45Speaker 05

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 24:51Speaker 03

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

• 24:58Speaker 05

  A fraggo that says to kill the President of Russia.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

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• 25:38Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 25:55Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 25:56Rory Stewart?

  So Alistair, first pretty challenging question from Michelle for you. Does Ed Miliband's speech and actions on Israeli settlements compared to John Healy's first statement as Chancellor suggest that actually Burnham made the wrong choice and Ed Miliband would have been a better Chancellor of the Exchequer?

• 26:12Alastair Campbell?

  Ah, a live debate, a live debate at the time.

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, tell us firstly about the John Healy speech.

• 26:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I didn't see it all. I saw bits on the news, I haven't read it, and as you know, I like to read speeches before I pass judgement, but sometimes you don't have time. But I did think there was a bit of a problem, that the main news that I picked out of it appeared to be John Healy refuses to rule out tax rises in budget.

• 26:41Rory Stewart?

  Right, and sorry, just to land that, I mean, it's obvious to you and it'll be obvious to all professional politicians listening, but that is exactly what you don't want to achieve as your press release, right? I mean, that is central. No positive story coming out of the Chancellor, all there is, is the potential attack line on Labour, which is they're going to raise taxes.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, so you had, and like I say, I haven't read it, but what that says to me is, Jeremiah always used to say, I don't know why Keir Starmer does that thing of making a speech and then taking questions. I'm imagining, I'm guessing that came out of questions.

• 27:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Alastair Campbell?

  After the speech.

• 27:16Rory Stewart?

  Otherwise, he wouldn't be refusing to rule out.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, otherwise he wouldn't, you're not going to say, yeah, exactly, exactly, you're not going to put in a speech, you know, and I hereby today refuse to rule out.

• 27:25Rory Stewart?

  But that means none of the speech made it into the headlines. It would be the failure to answer a question that made the headlines.

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think, what I think he did was to set out how difficult things are, which Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer did a lot, set out some of the positive agenda that Andy Burnham has been putting forward, particularly about devolution and some of the stuff we've talked about. But it said to me, and then on the, on the Tube in this morning, I was looking over somebody's shoulder as they were reading John Crace in The Guardian, the headline was something like boring, insubstantial, something, it was very, very, very, very hostile.

• 27:58Rory Stewart?

  It's really sad because I'm afraid one of the fatal problems from the beginning of the Starmer government was Rachel Reeves basically giving those sort of speeches, speeches which were, we've inherited a grim situation, we don't really have much answer on what we're going to do, and I'm not really communicating. And I was hoping Healy would be a different sort of figure. Now, people like me, who are, you know, more centre right, thought he was quite a reassuring figure, because we thought he was a safe pair of hands, he wasn't going to bankrupt the country, he wasn't going to do anything too reckless. But I would also hope that he will begin, as he keeps going, to get a bit of liveliness and fun and humour.

• 28:43Rory Stewart?

  He can take some risk, I mean, he's quite a veteran, he's not like Rachel Reeves, he's a relatively young politician. He's somebody who presumably could afford to enjoy himself a bit.

• 28:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, I think the most important thing is to have arguments that people want to debate and discuss and talk about and get moved by. And so, one thing I thought was very interesting at our live show is how much enthusiasm there seemed to be from, you know, there were a lot of young people there, but it was a fairly middle aged to older audience, but actually seemed to be completely up for the idea that they've got to look at the triple lock as a way of addressing intergenerational equality and also raising some money. And I know we're in London and London's very kind of anti Brexit, but that's another one where I just think we need to hear more than just the sort of mood music we've been having so far.

• 29:24Rory Stewart?

  And, and sorry, the really disappointing thing is that it signals that there is basically no new radical economic policy or vision. So he could have said, and I think you and I would have supported this, we're getting rid of the triple lock, that would have been an unbelievably exciting, and this is the moment to do it. It's the moment where Burnham's riding highest in the polls, this is the honeymoon period, this is where you take the risk, so get rid of the triple lock, announce that you're going to radically simplify the taxation system, who knows? Combine national insurance with income tax, announce that because of the defence problems, you're going to raise income tax, you're going to have a broader tax base, more Scandinavian tax base, instead of tinkering around at the edges. This is the moment, and he's missed it.

• 30:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he might.

• 30:09Rory Stewart?

  Does that mean it's never going to happen?

• 30:10Alastair Campbell?

  No, because it might be that he's, because what the Treasury will be saying to him and always do say, Chancellor, is don't put stuff out before the budget. But I think those days have gone. I think you need a big framing argument ahead of the budget. And the, so, listen, I am going to go back today and read the whole thing, because I may, you know, it may be that we're being unfair, doing what I don't like to do, which is just sort of absorbing the, the negative headlines. But I was hoping for something that, you know, I actually pencilled in the diary, he's making his first big speech on the Monday, you know, query, do we talk about it in the main episode?

• 30:42Rory Stewart?

  Well, here's another question for you. I mean, I know you like to go for a bit of a walk on Hampstead Heath with your friend Keir Starmer, right? Is he not in an absolute boiling rage? Because John Healy, who was his Defence Secretary, was the nail in Keir Starmer's coffin. He resigned from Starmer's Cabinet because Starmer refused to commit to spend 3% of GDP on defence.

• 31:03Alastair Campbell?

  And John Healy said that meant that defence wasn't safe in his hands.

• 31:05Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. Healy then becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer and announces he's not going to commit to 3% of GDP on defence.

• 31:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he hasn't quite announced it, but the mood music is on the move.

• 31:14Rory Stewart?

  So if you were Keir Starmer, how would you be feeling?

• 31:17Alastair Campbell?

  I'd be very pissed off about that. I think Keir Starmer.

• 31:22Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not saying I've been for a walk with him, Rory. I'm not saying I've been anywhere near him.

• 31:25Rory Stewart?

  But you're not saying you haven't spoken to him either?

• 31:27Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'm not saying I haven't spoken to him. I mean, you know, keep in touch with all people across the government and across all the parties, as you know. But I would imagine he is, I think actually when he was stepping down.

• 31:38Rory Stewart?

  Alastair refuses to rule out having spoken to Kier Starmer.

• 31:42Alastair Campbell?

  No, you don't rule out having spoken to you. You refuse to confirm or deny.

• 31:47Rory Stewart?

  Very good, very good.

• 31:47Alastair Campbell?

  But what I think he would be thinking, because I think when he stood down, I mean, announced he was stepping down. To be fair to him, and actually, there was quite a lot of, to be fair to him in that audience, we asked them.

• 31:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Alastair Campbell?

  Whether they're broadly sympathetic to Kier Star and what he'd done as leader of the Labour Party. But I think he said he was going to do it with good grace.

• 32:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 32:05Alastair Campbell?

  And without bitterness and anger.

• 32:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Alastair Campbell?

  And he did that.

• 32:08Rory Stewart?

  Although, listen, just quickly on this, I also think that.

• 32:11Alastair Campbell?

  I was going to do it, but, but carry on.

• 32:12Rory Stewart?

  Stepping down is a bit weird. I mean, without over praising Theresa May or indeed Rishi Sunak. Everybody said when Rishi Sunak lost the election, that he was going to go off to California, put his kids in, become a tech entrepreneur. Live the life of the super rich and he has remained in Richmond as a member of parliament, remained on the back benches.

• 32:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Rory Stewart?

  Continues to attend parliament. So if Rishi Sunak can do it and Theresa May can do it. Why is Kier Starmer not doing that?

• 32:41Alastair Campbell?

  I think a little bit different when you are stepping down as Prime Minister. I think if Rishi, so Rishi lost the election.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  Well, Theresa May, she stepped down.

• 32:49Alastair Campbell?

  She did, she did, she did. No, I think these are massive, I think they really, really, really, there's a big, big personal decision to make that, isn't it? Do you want to just hang around knowing that the only interest is going to be in you as a political figure is whether you're, is how you're then seen in relation to your, your predecessor?

• 33:05Rory Stewart?

  I think Theresa May and Rishi Sunak.

• 33:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think they've both done it well, but I, but I, I'd look back to one of my constant bugbears, I do think politicians on the left get treated and judged differently. So I sort, I sort of understand it, but I think the last time I did see him, he said, you know, he was, he genuinely seemed to think that it was a good thing that Andy Burnham was having such a good honeymoon.

• 33:23Rory Stewart?

  And does Labour need a by-election at the moment? Is that the ideal thing if you're a Labour strategist, for him to trigger a by-election?

• 33:29Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, right now, I don't think by-elections are any good for anybody, but I think Labour will win it. Obviously, I don't think Polanski is going to win this by-election. And interestingly, he's been, he's been challenged for the nomination by one of the Green councillors who says he's got six of their 10 Camden councillors backing him. So that suggests Polanski is maybe in the wrong part of town for this. But I think that he, but Kier will be, if there's one thing that I think will be making him utterly enraged, is this thing about defence. He knows that that was, I mean, we said on the podcast at the time, this was like a death blow. You know, we did, I think we did an emergency podcast, didn't we? Said that, you know, this could be the end for Kier Starmer. And it turned out it was the end of Kier Starmer. So then to see John Healy, sort of essentially, and Andy Burnham said, look, I made him Defence Chancellor because of, I know about his commitment to defence.

• 34:15Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that has to mean what he said he was going to do when he was Defence Secretary. So that's going to be very, very tricky. So you, I get from the, the way that you read out Michelle's question, I get the sense that you are probably more content with Ed Miliband's.

• 34:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Actually, I, you know, I, I owe an apology to Ed Miliband. I mean, which is that, um. I am, I, I've consistently underestimated him. I'd sound like you're from the biographer of Kier Starmer, but I think it, I think I've.

• 34:42Alastair Campbell?

  Tom Baldwin is his name.

• 34:43Rory Stewart?

  I see, I think.

• 34:44Alastair Campbell?

  He has a name.

• 34:45Rory Stewart?

  I think I've been consistently unfair to.

• 34:47Alastair Campbell?

  I love that you're so dismissive of my friends, your friend Emmanuel Macron. But you did it with the, your friend Emmanuel Macron.

• 34:53Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. I do that, don't I? Anyway.

• 34:56Alastair Campbell?

  Your friend, the king.

• 34:57Rory Stewart?

  Your friend, the king, exactly. So Ed Miliband, I think, has been really genuinely surprising. That was a big deal. Now, it's consistent.

• 35:06Alastair Campbell?

  Just to explain what he's done?

• 35:07Rory Stewart?

  So what he's announced is that there will be sanctions on goods produced in Israeli settlements, particularly agricultural goods, if they are grown in what Britain considers to be occupied Palestinian territory, illegal Israeli settlements. We will not be purchasing goods from those places. And it was very interesting talking to Maos about this. So Maos is obviously an Israeli and he's been doing a lot in London, talking in JW3, talking to the, the board of deputies. And he was saying, it's very striking that when he talks to Jewish friends in London, they're very much in favour of sanctions because they understand that

• 35:48Rory Stewart?

  being Jewish and being a supporter of Israel does not mean that you support illegal settlements. But when the British government does it.

• 35:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 35:56Rory Stewart?

  They're much more thrown off balance and worried. And I think a lot of the British Jewish community are very, very troubled by the idea that Ed Miliband could do it. So even if they privately feel that they don't support the settlements. When the British government makes a policy, and of course, what we've learnt with the recognition of Palestine, is that it can quite quickly embrace quite a lot of the rest of the world.

• 36:16Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 36:17Rory Stewart?

  You know, remember the Canadians recognise Palestinian state, French recognise Palestinian state. I'm also a little bit cross, as I was with that recognition, they haven't coordinated more. This goes back to our middle power discussion before the break. It would have been more powerful if a range of countries had done this together.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I mean, look, Ed's going to get a lot of blowback on this from all sorts of people. Mick Huckabee, the US ambassador in Israel, even before this had been announced.

• 36:39Rory Stewart?

  Said this was Jew hatred, didn't he?

• 36:40Alastair Campbell?

  He said this is Jew hatred. Well, I'll just point out to him that Ed Miliband is Jewish.

• 36:45Rory Stewart?

  And indeed, there were, and I noticed that there were Palestinian critics who said, you can't have a Foreign Secretary who's Jewish because they were assuming he was going to be two pros ready.

• 36:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And also, there, there is then also the, the argument about.

• 36:55Rory Stewart?

  Oh, and Tom Tugendhat's now been attacking him, saying, you know, we can't afford to imperil our.

• 37:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Rory Stewart?

  Relationships with this important ally. So it's really interesting, the way that the Conservative Party is reframing itself against the sort of more liberal values-based international order that Miliband is still championing. In fact, actually, what Tugendhat says is Ed Miliband is behaving like his brother, your friend David.

• 37:19Alastair Campbell?

  Look, I, I think this will be, I think broadly, this will be approved of by the British public. It will certainly be approved of by most people in the Labour Party. Who think that we've been too soft. But there is always a risk in this. I mean, don't forget, the Labour Party is still pained by the Corbyn leadership and the issue of antisemitism and the damage that did. So there will be, there is a balance to be struck here. But I, and it was, it was interesting to watch.

• 37:45Rory Stewart?

  I don't think, Ed, I mean, it'd be very difficult to accuse Ed Miliband of being antisemitic. I mean, his, his, his parents are literally Jewish refugees from Europe. I mean, it's not.

• 37:54Alastair Campbell?

  E- e- e- exactly. But, but it doesn't mean that they won't. It doesn't mean that the Americans, that there might be a price to pay with, with them. And I mean, did you not think it was extraordinary? Because when we had this whole Rest Is Fest where Gary Lineker was there and the Rest Is Money and the Rest Is History, and all the Rest Is podcasts at the South Bank. But the guy who was in charge of the whole thing told me that the loudest applause across the whole weekend was when we announced Mao's and Aziz coming on stage as surprise guests. And they were just, I mean, they were brilliant.

• 38:25Rory Stewart?

  And anyone who hasn't listened to our leading interview with them, please do. It doesn't matter what side you are in this debate. What they do, which is so radical, is they say you just start from peace.

• 38:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Rory Stewart?

  You don't start from the technicalities of a deal. You start from, do you or do you not want the killing to stop?

• 38:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And the truth is that, you know, the Israeli government, particularly that tale of it, Ben Gavir Smotrich. They don't, they don't want to stop because they basically think that, you know, Palestinians, Palestinian territories are theirs and they're going to take them. So look, I support what Ed Miliband has done in this, but I, I'm simply saying there's always a balance and it's a difficult balance because there's so many competing arguments around this.

• 39:02Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Now, here is a question which really hits this hard. This is from Marco.

• 39:07Alastair Campbell?

  Marco.

• 39:08Rory Stewart?

  Your friend Vucic is calling an election two years early. Is it a sign of confidence or proof the protests since the canopy collapsed rattled him? And Jared, what does Miladic's funeral reveal about the political identity of modern Serbia?

• 39:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when it says your friend, was that directed at both of us? Because we went to Belgrade.

• 39:28Rory Stewart?

  So I'll, I'll take that as well.

• 39:29Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. So we went to Belgrade. And if you remember, during the interview, I asked him whether he might do a Putin Medvedev. He's, he's, he's working his way through his second term as president. He can't do a third. And if you remember, he was basically saying, well, there'll be discussions in the party and we'll see. And it depends on the sort of, sort of pressure that might come on me, et cetera, et cetera. You and I both said afterwards, look, he's definitely going to be, he's going to run for Prime Minister. So his party is now, surprise, surprise, he is going to run as Prime Minister. There's going to be a, an early election. Um, and meanwhile. I don't know whether the timing is related to it or not, but the outpouring of nationalism

• 40:10Alastair Campbell?

  on the back of this, you know, convicted war criminal who died in the Hague.

• 40:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, let's just remind you of this because this is very much our world and, you know, we both worked on Bosnia and Kosovo. Rakam Ladic was convicted at the Hague of mass displacement genocide killing. This is the general who oversaw the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and more than anything else, went into the so-called UN safe area, Shrebenica, where there were eight thousand Bosnian Muslims, was filmed there with civilians who then proceeded to be murdered.

• 40:46Alastair Campbell?

  Filmed telling them that they were safe and patting the children on the head and all that.

• 40:50Rory Stewart?

  Eight thousand of them killed. I mean, it's, it's very, very difficult to think of somebody who is more clearly associated with the horrors of that war. So this guy is flown back. He comes off.

• 41:06Alastair Campbell?

  From the Hague.

• 41:06Rory Stewart?

  From the Hague. He comes off the plane with essentially everything that feels like a state welcome. He's taken into the main cathedral that we saw. Vucic's son is there. The head of the Orthodox Church is basically praising him as a martyr. And I, I sent you yesterday what's happening in the football stadiums, which is Serbian crowds, basically.

• 41:29Alastair Campbell?

  This is Red Star Belgrade with the huge tifo of Miladic. So that, that, those things take organisation.

• 41:36Rory Stewart?

  And essentially threatening a second genocide against their opponents. This is well beyond, you know, normal nationalism. And this is takes, and the fact that Vucic has refused to condemn this or distance himself properly from this thing, he didn't attend the actual funeral, but basically, yeah, a convicted genocidal war criminal has returned to a hero's funeral in Serbia. And, and Vucic, who tried to pose on the interview with us as saying it's a sort of intelligent chess playing, moderate, basically the mask is off, the guy's a fascist.

• 42:09Alastair Campbell?

  Wow, okay. So there was me thinking, I'll give Vucic a call and see if we can get another interview with him now that.

• 42:17Rory Stewart?

  Do you think I've helped with that?

• 42:18Alastair Campbell?

  I think you probably hindered it slightly.

• 42:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Alastair Campbell?

  But, you know, there's what is absolutely clear is that the, the scale of the Serb nationalism that was represented and the, and the, not just the tolerance of a convicted war criminal, but the celebration. Because that, that funeral was massive and it was a celebration. If you're celebrating somebody's life, above all, you're celebrating their values, their character and the things for which they're most remembered. He is most remembered for the events that you've talked about.

• 42:52Rory Stewart?

  So that, that banner, sorry, I didn't properly give it, but the, but the banner runs Diracson Potokari and Potokari is the Serbian word for Shrebenica. So it is basically like holding up a picture of Heinrich Himmler with the sign Direction Auschwitz in a football stadium.

• 43:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Rory Stewart?

  And Vucic doesn't condemn it.

• 43:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I'm wondering whether his calculation politically, because the timing is interesting. They've done this now around this.

• 43:22Rory Stewart?

  With his Minister of Justice meeting the casket at the airport.

• 43:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. When I was at my football match in Croatia, one of the players was Nemanja Vidic, who used to play for Manchester United, a very, very, very good guy and a very intelligent guy who's got a really good political mind. I'd love it if he went into politics one day, I think he'd be great. And he felt, as a lot of people felt, that we were way too soft on Vucic.

• 43:47Rory Stewart?

  We were, I think.

• 43:48Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and we probably were, and we probably were. And that was because our general approach was let the guy speak. Don't just get down and dirty about you were this in Kosovo. And even when he said I was unprincipled and all that, I didn't even respond. If I go back to the time when we were virtually opposite numbers, he was Milosevic's right-hand man, I was Tony Blair's right-hand man, and I was working at NATO during the Kosovo war. Would I have thought that somebody who was so close to Milosevic had the capacity to be as nationalist and aggressive and your word fascist as, as, is now can be seen? Probably, yeah, probably.

• 44:28Alastair Campbell?

  Did I think that because of his political skill, he had navigated a very, very different approach to this that had made, maybe made me think he was, he'd become a bit different? Yeah, probably. Would somebody like Nemanja Vidic and others say to me, maybe you were being a bit naive? Yeah, maybe.

• 44:44Rory Stewart?

  It's a big, it's a big problem though, isn't it? For the things that we all believe in, which is the Western Balkans coming into the European Union, Turkey coming to the European Union. When you see people like Vladjic and actually some of the ways that Erdogan behaves.

• 44:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Rory Stewart?

  You can see why people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're really up for Iceland coming in, happy with Norway. But this is pretty tough stuff, which is why actually I'm increasingly in favour of a single market for freedoms option.

• 45:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:08Rory Stewart?

  Rather than bringing them into the EU.

• 45:09Alastair Campbell?

  I am, I, I was talking to a, a European Commissioner over the weekend, not Marta Koscius in charge of enlargement, but somebody else who's on one of the, more on the economic side. And we were talking about enlargement in general context and, and I, we were going through the list of all the things, you know, Canada, we'd love it, Norway, we'd love it, UK, it's got to happen. Serbia was a very big no-no and this has not helped.

• 45:32Rory Stewart?

  To finish, Jenny really loved the two live shows. What did you make of the live shows and what's the difference between doing a live show and doing a pre-recorded podcast?

• 45:41Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting, isn't it? They are different, they're very different, they're very different. I think with both, it's kind of, how do you stay uplifted and how do you stay positive? We talk about all this grimness.

• 45:51Rory Stewart?

  You're also quite, I think you're quite a thespian. The more I see you on a stage, the more I'm sort of won over by the idea that actually you're quite a performer.

• 45:58Alastair Campbell?

  Like what?

• 45:59Rory Stewart?

  Well, you've got.

• 45:59Alastair Campbell?

  I play the bagpipes, I wrote it too.

• 46:01Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, not just the bagpipes, although it, it is true that you let me dance, which was cool.

• 46:05Alastair Campbell?

  You danced twice, you danced with the mooch and you danced with Mauz. Did you like the tune that I wrote for Mauz and Aziz?

• 46:10Rory Stewart?

  Lovely.

• 46:10Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it was really beautiful.

• 46:11Rory Stewart?

  Lovely.

• 46:12Alastair Campbell?

  I'm pissed off, I've not seen, nobody filmed the whole damn thing.

• 46:14Rory Stewart?

  No, really?

• 46:16Alastair Campbell?

  Nobody has sent me a complete film of me playing that tune, which I want to send to my friend Finley.

• 46:20Rory Stewart?

  I also, I thought Mauz danced much better than the mooch. He actually, he is set properly, but the mooch just spun around in a circle. I was also a little worried because with the mooch, of course, he looks so young, thanks to the amazing plastic zedrine hair, but I wasn't quite sure how long I could spin him for without the ticker going off.

• 46:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, or without him falling off the stage. Yeah, I was a bit worried, but that's why I only played one part of one tune.

• 46:41Rory Stewart?

  But those who'd like to get more of the unique personality and charm of the mooch, not just dancing live, can hear him on Leading, where we are interviewing him about Trump, himself, America and much more.

• 46:54Alastair Campbell?

  But I'll tell you the thing that really uplifted me, obviously Mauz and Aziz were just amazingly uplifting. And Fiona said afterwards, that was just like, you could have literally, they were hanging on every word and it was so moving and positive and et cetera. I also liked the fact that when I asked people, because we had been so grim, hands up who's feeling optimistic about their own life, virtually everybody put their hands up.

• 47:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, this is my sort of creep story.

• 47:17Alastair Campbell?

  This is your middle.

• 47:18Rory Stewart?

  This is my middle answer. Yeah, I did, basically, I, so many parts of Britain I go to.

• 47:23Alastair Campbell?

  This is brilliant.

• 47:24Rory Stewart?

  People are creating really worthwhile, valuable, interesting lives. They're not easy lives, but there's so much to be positive about. It's, it's a bit weird that the narrative is that Britain's broken because, of course, there are bits of Britain are broken, but so many bits of it seem so much better than they were 20, 30 years ago.

• 47:41Alastair Campbell?

  We also had a, we did our live polling thing. So, and I'm guessing, you know, I'm there pretty identified as Labour, you're there as sort of, you know, not very, not very fond of your old party, but we had, so probably a sort of centre, centre-left audience, but we, we did ask them, and this was very different to how it was a year ago. Who do you think will be Prime Minister after the next election? If you remember when we did that last year, we did it several times and Keir was struggling.

• 48:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, Keir, nobody thought he'd be the Prime Minister after the next election.

• 48:09Alastair Campbell?

  Keir was struggling.

• 48:10Rory Stewart?

  And this time, more than 80%, is that right?

• 48:12Alastair Campbell?

  Eighty-three percent Burnham, seven percent Badenoch, 1.5% Davy, eight percent Farage, 0.5% Polanski.

• 48:20Rory Stewart?

  But it shows you why changing a leader can make an enormous difference. I mean, you go from a narrative of an almost inevitable Labour won't win, to now people feeling it's almost inevitable that Burnham will be Prime Minister for the next eight years. And it's actually the same thing, of course, God forbid this happens to Burnham, but of course, the same thing did actually happen with Boris Johnson. You remember in 2019, people thought, oh, for goodness sake, the Tories have been in for nine years, there's no way they can win a majority. They bring in a new leader and they get a stonking majority. And if the guy hadn't been such a dishonest, incompetent wretch, he was actually in quite a strong position.

• 48:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. No, so that was, that, that, that, that was interesting. No, I, I really enjoyed it. I, I thought the, and I think it's great that people just want to sit down and talk about this stuff.

• 49:05Rory Stewart?

  I also, I also loved bringing on Mauz and Aziz and actually Cathy and Anthony. I think it takes some of the pressure off us. I find when it's just the two of us.

• 49:12Alastair Campbell?

  You find that hard?

• 49:13Rory Stewart?

  I find it's quite.

• 49:14Alastair Campbell?

  Is that why you've gone off with Lewis Goodall instead of me? Is that what's happened?

• 49:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's good, too pressured, yeah. And more people on stage for it's good because then we can do a bit of interviewing the back.

• 49:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when I do, I've just been going through my schedule for this trip I'm doing to Australia in November. I mean, bloody hell, I don't.

• 49:27Rory Stewart?

  You're attempting to kill yourself, aren't you? I had a long conversation with your, with your mentor, Neil Kinnock.

• 49:32Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:33Rory Stewart?

  Um, who's an absolutely lovely man.

• 49:35Alastair Campbell?

  Total ledge.

• 49:36Rory Stewart?

  Total ledge. But he was saying that he was a bit worried about how much you were working.

• 49:41Alastair Campbell?

  When did Neil develop this Scottish accent?

• 49:43Rory Stewart?

  Whatever, that's true, that's a preparation going around tomorrow. But anyway, he's worried along with me about that.

• 49:48Alastair Campbell?

  And Fiona, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll be fine, I'll be fine, I'll be fine. But I think most of the events I'm doing there are going to be kind of just me rocking up and wandering around the stage. Neil gave me and Fiona a lift home after the event because he was, he said, and he's, he's got a very interesting nickname for the Newcons, leader, leader of the Conservative Party.

• 50:07Rory Stewart?

  What does he call her?

• 50:08Alastair Campbell?

  He calls her Bad Enoch.

• 50:10Rory Stewart?

  Oh, Bad Enoch. Interesting. I think we're going to go with bad enough. Yeah, that's.

• 50:15Alastair Campbell?

  Bad Enoch, what do you think of that?

• 50:16Rory Stewart?

  Interesting, yeah, I get it, yeah, I get it. You know, that's what you want, I tell you this, one of my great moments in my life. So it's a young man, aged sort of 16.

• 50:25Alastair Campbell?

  Sixty?

• 50:26Rory Stewart?

  Sixteen.

• 50:26Alastair Campbell?

  Sixteen.

• 50:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I, uh, turned, I'd overslept at my boarding school at Eton and I went into the headmaster's study where they, before lunch, where we were meeting people and there was this old dude standing in the corner and I went over to him and nobody was talking to him and I felt sorry for him, you know, our grandpa. And I said, you know, what do you do? And he said, in my declining years, I translate the Greek New Testament. And I said, oh, well, and what did you do before your declining years? And he said, I was a politician, my first name's Enoch. And he stormed off, right? And it had turned out that I'd missed his sermon where he had apparently said, everybody has forgotten me except for you, the younger generation.

• 51:07Alastair Campbell?

  And you've forgotten him? And it was Enoch?

• 51:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Alastair Campbell?

  Ah.

• 51:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, anyway, it's interesting how actually sort of public figures are surprisingly vain and sensitive if you don't recognise them. They get quite chippy and offended quite easily.

• 51:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, although some people love it, some people love going from being very, very well-known, then not being talked about. Most, I agree, in the opposite direction.

• 51:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 51:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. We've done a lot of plugging as usual, Rory, you with your pedultrous relationship with Lewis Goodall. Uh, final plug, we've done this really good interview for members for, that was part of the Gen Z series, which went down so well with our listeners and viewers of all ages, where with Rosie Whiting and Keir Mayfair, who are two very young Labour MPs, both still in their twenties.

• 51:54Rory Stewart?

  Gen Z.

• 51:55Alastair Campbell?

  And we think that they, their voice needs to be heard more than it maybe is. So that episode is going out this Friday.

• 52:01Rory Stewart?

  Brilliant, looking forward to it very much.

• 52:03Alastair Campbell?

  To get that, you've got to be a member. Sign up at theracespolitics.com.

• 52:06Rory Stewart?

  And see you all next week.