Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 65. Question Time: Imposter Syndrome, the Commonwealth and fox hunting About this episode How does public backlash affect politicians' mental health? Do Labour and the Liberal Democrats have an unwritten agreement to win seats? Should we support political parties the same way we do football clubs? Alastair and Rory answer these questions and discuss the fate of the Commonwealth, US/China relations, Thérèse Coffey's comments on antibiotics and more in this week's Question Time.
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Transcript 7,642 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair Campbell? And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:43 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to another episode of the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.
1:47 Rory Stewart? And me, Rory Stewart.
1:48 Alastair Campbell? And this is all a bit muddled, listeners, because we decided last week that the best time for Rory and I get together was Monday morning, in different continents as ever. But Monday morning has thrown up something of an unexpected development, which is Jeremy Hunt's going to make a statement later in the day. So what we're going to do is we're recording Question Time. Time now and we're going to steer well clear of trusonomics and conservative mismanagement. We're going to Q and A on lots of other issues and then at the end of today, we will record the main podcast, which will be out before this one. I hope that all makes absolute sense. Rory's
2:30 Alastair Campbell? looking confused at his hotel room in Malawi, but there we are. So are you clear Rory, what we're doing?
2:35 Rory Stewart? I'm absolutely clear. We're not going to talk too much about trusonomics. We're going to focus on other questions coming in on other issues of which there have been well over a thousand questions coming in in about 24 hours. So, and you of course, Alistair, being the hardworking one of this pair, the wise out of the more common wise have been through all those thousand questions, haven't you?
2:55 Alastair Campbell? And I'll tell you one subject that comes up a lot, and that is the so-called Deputy Prime Minister for how long Theresa Coffey and her role as Health Secretary. Let me just give you a flavour. Deb's White, working in the health service, things are awful. Nurses and junior doctors are likely to strike. People are dying waiting for ambulances. There's no serious plan from government. This is going to impact millions over winter. Why isn't this higher on the news agenda? Oh, and what would a serious plan look like? Mike Foster, do ministers now completely ignore civil servants' advice? I'm really puzzled at Coffey's statements on allowing surplus medicines to be handed out on request, for unused antibiotics to be shared with friends, for pharmacists to dispense
3:37 Alastair Campbell? antibiotics to people whose medical histories are unknown. And this one, Jenny King, should Theresa Coffey be arrested for saying that she supplies prescription drugs to her friends? I mean, Rory, we have a Health Secretary who says she doesn't really care whether the nurses go on strike or not because they're going to get them from abroad. Good luck with that post Brexit. She says that she gives out antibiotics to her friends. She is going back on anti-obesity, anti-smoking strategies that I think most of us thought were good things to do. She is the one woman anti-health coalition.
4:14 Rory Stewart? It's it's pretty amazing, isn't it? And it's also interesting because she's she's actually a very, you know, she's somebody with a doctorate. She's unusual. We've heard a lot about the fact that MPs and ministers often don't have any scientific background. And she's somebody who had a PhD in chemistry and actually began working as a practical scientist in in British companies. So it is particularly bizarre. And I think, I mean, it's one thing for her to try to argue that there could be reforms on access to antibiotics. That's very controversial because obviously there are people who think that antibiotic control is essential to prevent the development of antibiotic resistance. But Theresa Coffey is right that in much of the world, you can get antibiotics at a pharmacy without a doctor's prescription. So if this question of antibiotic resistance is a global issue,
5:00 Rory Stewart? it's certainly true that most of the countries that I work and live in, if you want antibiotics, you just go to a pharmacy and get them. That's one thing, which is to make a policy argument about access. But the second thing is for her to say that she's been handing out antibiotics to friends illegally at the moment before she's changed the policy.
5:16 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. But I I was having my usual swim this morning and swimming alongside me in the medium lane was Dr Jim Down, who's a wonderful chap. And he's also, he's the guy I've mentioned before, who's written two splendid books about life as a an intensive care consultant. But he said that he was explaining to me that if you go, for example, in some countries, he mentioned Greece particularly, you can get the antibiotics over the counter, but that they actually are no longer effective to the treatment of most things that historically antibiotics were treating. And of course, Jim O'Neill, who was a minister in the last government, might be a minister in the latest Labour government as well, the way things are going.
5:57 Alastair Campbell? But he he's done this big review about the the growing resistance to antibiotics. I just think it's an extraordinary thing for the Health Secretary to say. And I can't, I can't help thinking that if we weren't in the middle of this other sort of bigger economic and political convulsion, would that not be like huge news? The, the Health Secretary says it's okay to give medication without consulting a doctor. Is that not libertarianism gone insane?
6:26 Rory Stewart? Well, I think it, I think it would be huge news. I do think there's a very, I mean, all these things are tough and interesting debates. And as I say, you would have people from the World Health Organisation and health ministers in many other countries backing her view that we're over restrictive on prescriptions in Britain. But I agree with you, that's a policy debate that we should be having openly. And certainly what she shouldn't be doing is saying that she's handing out antibiotics to her friends before the policies change. On antimicrobial resistance, I mean, it is an extraordinary thing. Between 700,000 and several million deaths a year are coming because bacteria are adapting very quickly to antibiotics. And we're having to move from these more broad spectrum, I think, to more narrow spectrum antibiotics to try to pick up on these diseases.
7:10 Rory Stewart? And some of that is to do with people not completing their prescriptions so that the drug learns during the course of the prescription to fight. But it's a very difficult thing to deal with because of course it's not something that is primarily driven by a small country of 70 million people. It's driven by the billions of people in the world and exactly whether people in South Asia or Africa as well as in Europe are completing their prescriptions. And certainly if you're very poor, and this is another thing I've seen a lot of in many parts of the world, if you're very poor, if you begin to feel better, a few pills into your antibiotics, you will stop taking them and try to save them up from another occasion because if you're living on $2 a day, you, you simply can't afford those antibiotics.
7:54 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
7:55 Rory Stewart? Now, honestly, you did this incredible job on pulling together questions, so I'm going to have a look at some of these questions. One of the things which I thought was very striking this week are the number of questions around Liz Truss's mental health. And there's been a sense that although people are horrified by what Liz Truss has done, there is interestingly quite a lot of empathy being shown by our listeners towards personally, psychologically. What she must be going through, people are beginning to sense, along with the horror of what she's inflicted on the economy, the horror of what she must have inflicted on herself. So she took over as Prime Minister a few weeks ago. It's the job that's presumably she's been looking for, for her entire life. She's been in the Cabinet for 12 years, presumably
8:38 Rory Stewart? sitting there in the Cabinet, thinking she could do a much better job than the other people who were sitting in the middle of the table. And now she's taken over the job and she has had, I think I'm right in saying, the most disastrous public humiliation of any Prime Minister on historical record, because it's true, there were disasters in the 18th and 19th century, but that was before the development of modern media and social media. So the humiliation wouldn't have been quite as public. So here's a question from Jane Hillier. While I despise her politics, I'm finding myself concerned for Liz Truss's mental health. The level of pressure she is under is unfathomable. Are the safeguards in place to help senior politicians? And are they sufficient?
9:20 Alastair Campbell? Well, I remember at the last general election, I was approached by more than one MP, because of my kind of mental health campaigning hat, more than one MP, and not just Labour, one Tory and two or three Labour. And there were people who were on the edge and who could not decide whether they could face another term. In a couple of cases, they couldn't decide whether they could face the humiliation of being defeated, which they thought might happen. As it happens, they all stood again and they all came back. But I was able to tell, one of them knew, but the others didn't know, there is actually a psychological support scheme for MPs. I actually did put one of them in touch with,
10:04 Alastair Campbell? so they, this person didn't want to go down that road. I put them in touch with somebody else outside that system. So there are systems in place, but I think the difference, if you get to that level of scrutiny as Prime Minister, and only the Prime Minister is, that's the only job where this kind of scrutiny really happens. Yes, Chancellors, yes, Secretaries of State when you're really high profile, yes, if there's a big scandal. But in terms of systemic, sustained relentless pressure and scrutiny, it's the Prime Minister where that goes. And I think to get there, as Tony Blair did, as John Major did, as they all did, all the previous Prime Ministers, we could maybe talk a little bit about your friend Theresa May, because I think maybe she's interesting in this regard as well. I think you have
10:48 Alastair Campbell? to have a little bit of imposter syndrome. You have to have an understanding in yourself that this is a bit weird to be here. And I think that one of Liz Truss's problems, I could be wrong about this, I don't know as well as you do, but I have a sense that she doesn't suffer from imposter syndrome. She doesn't think there's anything remotely odd about the fact of her being Prime Minister. She didn't think there was anything remotely odd about her going around the hustings and coming up with these balmy ideas that Sunak was calling out as being ruinous, but because they were her ideas, she felt they were right. And I don't know if she's just, I think she lacks any real self-awareness. And it's only
11:29 Alastair Campbell? if you have self-awareness, that if you do get into psychological distress, that you actually have the wherewithal to know that you need help. Now, I could be wrong, she might be seeing somebody for all I know.
11:40 Rory Stewart? In a sense, maybe that would make us, if that's true, I don't know whether that is true. I mean, it is true that she doesn't publicly show much introspection or that kind of self-awareness. But as you say, that may actually make it more dangerous and more fragile, because then the tension between the way in which she might see herself and what's happening becomes more extreme. Andrew Mitchell, who I know is somebody that is a friend of mine and is a friend of yours, who was the Conservative Secretary of State for International Development, has written a book called Beyond the Fringe, which is about his time in Parliament. And in it, he goes In a lot of detail into what happened to him mentally after.
12:23 Alastair Campbell? Plebgate.
12:25 Rory Stewart? Yeah, plebgate. So this is the occasion where he turns up at the gate of the house, comes on his bicycle and he gets into an altercation with a policeman. And he claimed right the way through to a legal case that he did not call the guy a pleb. And certainly one of the policemen passing who claimed to have witnessed it turned out later to have lied. But anyway, the question of what happened or what didn't happen isn't the key. The key is that he found himself receiving, you know, a thousand abusive emails a day, the journalist camped outside his front door. His elderly mother receiving abusive letters and people shouting through his letterbox and he went into quite a serious two-year depression. And there are other MPs that I know who
13:06 Rory Stewart? there was an MP when I joined who very sadly threw himself under an underground train and by some complete miracle wasn't killed very shortly after the 2010 election. And one of the problems, actually, I think for MPs going to counselling in the House of Commons or being honest with the whips is that they fear quite rightly that often colleagues here and it affects their careers and their ability to get a job. There was another MP who was known to have had a breakdown in his ministerial office. And again, that kind of helped him.
13:34 Alastair Campbell? Actually, I spoke to Andrew quite a lot during that period because it is quite odd how Tory MPs seem to think that they can't trust me an inch when it comes to anything political, but they'll talk to me about the deepest secrets of their mental health. But, you know, I've known Andrew for a long, long time. I'll tell you a funny story. When I was back in my days on the Mirror, I was asked to write a piece tipping six people for the very top in politics. This is way, way, way, way back before John Major became Prime Minister. And I tipped John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Mo Mollum, one other that I've forgotten and Andrew Mitchell.
14:13 Alastair Campbell? Andrew always says that, you know, I've got three prime ministers and a sort of legendary secretary of state who um who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, plus her. Um, yeah, so look, and I also do think that the Tony Madrid said as well, how much does a battering like the prime minister is getting affect a politician's self confidence? I know you need a thick skin in that job, but surely it must create self doubt in their ability to do the job. Um, and the point I was making about Theresa May, or is that, look, again, you can probably, you know, better than I do, but I always felt that with Theresa May, she did have imposter syndrome. I had a sense that she didn't maybe feel that she was meant to be there as the prime minister. And that may be what sort of made her come across sometimes as very unconfident, very unsure of herself.
14:58 Alastair Campbell? But that, I think, can make a certain sort of politician much more effective. I always felt with Angela Merkel that there was no arrogance to Angela Merkel, because I think she woke up most days thinking, can't quite believe that I'm chancellor for so long. I think you need a bit of that.
15:15 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, to tell us a bit about imposter syndrome, how is it you define imposter syndrome?
15:19 Alastair Campbell? Well, I, I think is when you, when you feel, I think it's just a moment of checking yourself. I think if you're the, very few people get to be prime minister, although with this law at the moment, it's kind of by the end of it, most members of the cabinet will be prime ministers, because they're going to change them once a week, it would seem. But very few people get to be prime minister. And you obviously have to have very, very special qualities to get there. But I think one of the things that makes you, keeps you rooted in the real world is if you occasionally say to yourself, I can't quite believe that I'm doing this. I actually think it's imposter syndrome. I quite often get asked, why don't, why didn't I go into frontline politics myself?
15:59 Alastair Campbell? Not just as somebody helping other people, but, and I think part of it is, I mean, I used to get terrible imposter syndrome when I was, frankly, whenever I was in a room with Nelson Mandela, I used to sit there thinking, what on earth have I done to, to deserve to be here? And to feel that I'm alongside this extraordinary human being and to be, I mean, I remember once Nelson Mandela asking me a question about what I saw. What he should do in relation to a situation that he was managing. And I thought, I can't quite believe this. And I think that maybe that's what stops me, but I think you need a bit of that to check yourself and to check the decisions that you're making, because what obviously happened with Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng is that they decided that because it was them in the position they were in, they were right.
16:42 Alastair Campbell? And that's what pushes away, you push away advice and you push away doubt. And I think that's very, very dangerous.
16:48 Rory Stewart? Yeah. And what they're going through at the moment, I mean, is completely horrifying because it's not simply, I think, getting the balance right between saying that one can disagree profoundly with their politics, but also try to empathize slightly with what they must be going through, because remember, they're not just finding themselves with a hundred thousand Twitter comments attacking them and the media attacking them day in, day out. But also all their colleagues that they've been in parliament with for 12 years, turning against them almost immediately. So they will feel humiliated, attacked, betrayed.
17:26 Alastair Campbell? But I don't, I wonder if she does, Rory, I wonder if she does, because I think if you did, you wouldn't have behaved as she behaved at that press conference, you wouldn't have performed as she has in recent days. And I also do think there is the old adage, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But also, I think at that level of politics, if you have any doubt about being able to stand the heat, don't go into the kitchen in the first place. I think, look, one of my favorite stories about politics and mental health was the Prime Minister of Norway, who had very, very bad depression and he stood down. He wanted to resign completely and the cabinet wouldn't let him. He was called Brundevic, I think. And he, so he said to the cabinet, I'm going to resign because I can't, I can't do the job in the state of mind that I'm in.
18:11 Alastair Campbell? And they rebelled and they said, no, no, you're going to stay as Prime Minister, but you're going to take a break. And the deputy prime minister will stand in. His poll ratings went stratospheric. He came back and was pretty successful by most prime ministerial standards. And I think that's a great story because I think that's what we should be able to do. But I think in our system, because it is so brutal. Um, I think if you get to that job of being prime minister, you have to be able to, to deal with the heat. And I think that what's got her there, it's a bit like Johnson. The things that got him there are the things that proved his undoing. And I think the things that have got her there, this absolute iron belief that what she says is right, even if it's the opposite of what she said the day before, I think it's going to be her undoing.
18:55 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, lots, lots more to think about. I mean, I think there are lots of contradictions and paradoxes there that we've got to unpick. Because on the one hand, we're saying the job is too big for anyone. And it would be perfectly rational to have imposter syndrome and that anybody who thought that they could do the job completely probably shouldn't have the job. And then on the other hand, we're saying if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. So there's a lot of things to unpick, but let's take a quick break and then maybe come back to something which I think will probably appeal to you, which is the telegraph on Project Fear.
19:24 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
19:35 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
19:41 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.
19:45 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
19:48 Speaker 04 I'm not the earth, then.
19:49 Speaker 03 Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.
19:54 Speaker 05 Priceline Negotiator.
19:56 Speaker 06 It's me, the.
19:57 Speaker 05 Priceline Negotiator.
19:59 Speaker 06 We don't need the jingle twice.
20:01 Speaker 05 What about a third time?
20:02 Speaker 06 Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars.
20:09 Speaker 05 Seems like they decided.
20:11 Speaker 06 Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.
20:15 Speaker 05 Time to read the tagline.
20:17 Speaker 06 Fine, no one deals more deals than.
20:19 Speaker 05 Priceline.
20:20 Speaker 06 Please stop.
20:21 Speaker 05 Priceline.
20:22 Speaker 06 Touche.
20:22 Speaker 05 Priceline.
20:24 Speaker 06 Priceline.
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21:24 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.
21:27 Alastair Campbell? And me, Oscar Campbell.
21:28 Rory Stewart? So here we are, as I promised just before the break. Julia Mitchell, Telegraph, published an article stating that Project Fear was correct and that Brexit is to blame for our current situation. How surprised are you that this was published by this newspaper? Lots of questions on this. So this is something that I've been slightly teasing you about occasionally, which is that you tend to regard these right wing newspapers as completely monolithic. But I often observe, because I probably read The Telegraph more than you do, and The Mail more than you do.
21:58 Alastair Campbell? Well, if you read them, if you read them at all, that's, that is a statement of truth.
22:02 Rory Stewart? That often you do find bits of dissension and disagreement. Not always, but at the moment, they're being incredibly brutal, for example, towards the Conservative government. And The Times, which you often write off as a right wing newspaper, has been publishing some pretty positive pieces about Labour's economic growth plan and Jonathan Reynolds and sort of thing. Anyway, how surprised were you that The Telegraph has come out and said that Project Fear was right all along?
22:26 Alastair Campbell? Well, as you say, it's one columnist, somebody called Warner, I think his name was. Is it Jeremy Warner?
22:34 Rory Stewart? Jeremy Warner, that's right.
22:35 Alastair Campbell? There are still people, there are still people in The Telegraph banging on about how they've got to stick to their guns on the mini-budget. I wasn't that surprised because I think it's, I think it's kind of a way of moving towards a position of saying, oh, it wasn't really our idea, nothing to do with us, Gov. Don't blame us, you have to blame the politicians because they're the ones who led you into it. But of course, I've said before, I don't think we know the right-wing media that we would have had the referendum in the first place. I think they helped to frame the argument that forced Cameron into having the referendum at all. Brexit is an unmitigated disaster. I can't see anything good about it at all. I think the consequences of it are getting worse, not better. And I think The Telegraph are just probably reflecting the fact that they're seeing in
23:16 Alastair Campbell? the reaction of their readers that that's how a lot of them are feeling too. And it's interesting how the European Research Group, as this, the kind of right-wing, absolute extremist people, as the truss implosion is happening, they're keeping very, very quiet, I notice. For example, prior to the implosion, the idea of Jeremy Hunt being appointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, you voted, you voted Remain, you know, or he voted Remain, he's a terrible human being. So they, they would have rebelled at that, but they're kind of keeping their, I think they realise that they are basically seen now as part of the problem. They thought they were masters of the universe and they no longer are.
23:56 Rory Stewart? Okay, Charlie Winstanley, would be great, given Rory's fondness for semiconductors, if you could talk a little about the move Biden has just made to stymie Chinese production of advanced semiconductors.
24:06 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely.
24:07 Rory Stewart? So just update people for a little bit and then, then we'll get your views on this. So a slightly obscure bureau in the United States called the Bureau of Industry and Security has just announced a whole series of measures, extratorrestrial measures, which are to limit the export to China of advanced semiconductors chip-making equipment. And this has tightened up an enormous amount from where they were before. So the number of Chinese companies on the list has gone from 130 to 532 in the last four years. And Huawei, which is this giant Chinese company, this giant Chinese entity, is a kind of, sort of, has this immense presence on the list.
24:49 Rory Stewart? So Huawei has all US export controls are now banned to Huawei. And when the US does this, it has far more consequences than just the US because any company dealing with the US doesn't want to fall foul of US regulators. In fact, it was one of the things that made dealing with sanctions with the Taliban in Afghanistan very, very complicated back in August last year because once the US Treasury had imposed sanctions, it was very difficult for any other company or any other country to do anything other than follow their lead. So this is a very aggressive form of technological decoupling taking place.
25:25 Alastair Campbell? Well, it's also incredibly interesting and it shows, Rory, how, I mean, I remember when that guy did the rest is politics bingo and your obsession with Taiwanese semiconductors was one of the first things that they spotted, but it shows you're ahead of your time on this because it depresses me the extent to which whilst you have the in Duncan Smith of this world sabre rattling about the Chinese, what Biden is doing in this move is actually to recognize that the Chinese dominance in some of these spheres is having a direct impact upon future prospects for the American and therefore the global economy. So he's kind of, he's reacting. And so I thought it was a very, very interesting move and it showed that he understands, I
26:09 Alastair Campbell? think, that this kind of conflict in small C between America and China is moving into a different phase. And maybe it's worth just reflecting in that context on the fact that Xi Jinping just had his, they're in the middle now of the Chinese Communist Party's annual congress. And of course, he's there, standing up there and he was, he was making some pretty provocative statements about the West, about America. He was also warning the Chinese people that there are some very, very difficult storms ahead and most insignificantly, he was cementing his own power. Sufficient, I think, for us to be able to say, I think it's now a very close toss up when we say, we always have, most of our lifetime, we've said that the most powerful
26:53 Alastair Campbell? man in the world or woman in the world, whether ever to happen, is the President of the United States. But I think we could argue that Xi Jinping is at least on a par now. But I thought it was very, very interesting and I think that the, it is part of this broader economic battle. And that's the bit of our debate that I just feel is missing.
27:13 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, can I, I mean, just on this, I think one of the things that As we get into this, that's very striking in the United States and in Britain particularly, is the lack of voices cautioning in the other direction. This decision to go very, very hard in on decoupling the Western economies from China, and it's not just Western economies, the US has put huge pressure on Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to come along with them, has incredibly deep impacts. And that decoupling, even over the last few years, has already had a very unsettling effect on the global economic order. So I think it's striking that all the cards are now on the hands of people pushing for
27:57 Rory Stewart? more and more restriction, that there's no real debate at all in the US, that the Democrats are trying to out-compete the Republicans on being anti-China. But we do need voices to remind us of just how extreme economic consequences could be if we end up getting into a trade war with China. I think it's perfectly possible, if this keeps going, that China will take a case at the WTO. China could restrict the export of essential raw earths and minerals, it controls 85% of the world's raw earths and minerals, and the whole global economic order, since China joined the WTO in the early 2000s, has been based around a very deep intimate relationship between China and the global economies. And at its most extreme, if we pushed very hard and radically for decoupling and China
28:40 Rory Stewart? began to respond, you could end up with a potential 30% loss in the global economies. So it is worth raising these points, that we're getting into a world where geostrategic arguments are trumping economic arguments, and we can see the economic consequences already that are very tough actions. Sanctions, counter-sanctions on Russia, Ukraine are one of the major things that have driven the European economies into recession and will drive the US economy into recession. But it's nothing compared to what will happen. If we up the sanctions and rhetoric against China. So there's a very interesting trade off now that we're living, that we were never living five years ago, between our economic interests and our geostrategic interests.
29:25 Alastair Campbell? Well, so you would presumably be felt comfortable when Cameron and Osborne were getting much, much closer to China and now I think that we've maybe gone too far the other way.
29:34 Rory Stewart? Um, I wasn't a big enthusiast for their push for China. I've always felt that China is a highly nationalistic country that cares primarily about Chinese interests and that it's a mistake to imagine that China is an altruistic player. I was saddened that Britain, under Labour and under Cameron, didn't reach more into the other emerging economies of Asia. We were late to get, really develop our relationships with Indonesia, for example, which is a huge population and a huge producing country. So we could have done much more to balance our approach to Asia. But I also think that somebody needs to start reminding people of the risks and the costs of this kind of confrontation with China.
30:17 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
30:18 Rory Stewart? And I think eventually we'll be going to be feeling it in our pockets at a time when I think we're going into a 10 year recession. Now, Lise Topfer, hi, the current affairs class at Lise Topfer, Geneva, here again, still waiting for a mention of our Fab teacher, Mrs. Harris. And we'd like to ask, why you rarely mention the Commonwealth? What's the point of it? And do you think the Commonwealth has a future?
30:40 Alastair Campbell? Well, Lise Topfer, Geneva, that's the first time, I've looked at every question we've ever had and I've never seen that one. So unless you've been sending them to one of the channels that I don't look at. So we're very, very happy to mention your Fab teacher, Mrs. Harris. It's very important to remember who our good teachers are. I can remember all of my good teachers, and particularly the ones that taught me French and German. Why do we rarely mention the Commonwealth? What's the point of it? And do you think it has a future? Do we really, we probably do really mention the Commonwealth. I think we might have mentioned it around the point of, around Chogham. What's the point of it? I'm going to leave that one to you. Do you think it has a future? It definitely has a future. And I think actually the Commonwealth got a bit of a markup in some of the coverage around the Queen's death. I think people had a better sense of what it was for. It's
31:24 Alastair Campbell? a kind of bringing together of those nations that feel they have this special connection to us, the UK. I guess the debates of colonisation have been pretty strong within it. There are quite a few who I think will be, look at the debate about who the Queen is going to be head of state for, is going to carry on in certain countries, not least Australia, I was reading at the weekend. But what do you see, Rory? You've had more to do with the Commonwealth than I have through your different work.
31:49 Rory Stewart? So the Commonwealth began, obviously, with a very ambitious idea that it could retain Britain's sphere of influence in places which were former British colonies. And of course, that model hasn't survived. It can't survive because nobody's interested in being stuck in an alliance with a formal colonial power. It's now expanded. It's now taken on countries which weren't part of the British Empire. Rwanda, for example, just joined the Commonwealth. It's not a trading bloc, obviously, and it has much less power and influence than its creators imagined. India is obviously the most powerful expanding economy within the Commonwealth. And one of the problems is that India has never taken the Commonwealth that seriously. So when we talk about the size of the Commonwealth's
32:34 Rory Stewart? economies, we're often thrown off balance by India. Last time I checked, India had only two people in their foreign service focused on the Commonwealth at all. That's all said, I think it is another possible route for soft power. It's done some interesting things on education. It's done some interesting things on values. And I think it could be a mechanism, for example, for leaning in on issues such as climate change and the environment. So I think it's an organisation people are happy to belong to. It's interesting that Rwanda wanted to join it, but it very much is the softer end of soft power.
33:08 Alastair Campbell? Christopher Wilson, fox hunting is still taking place under the lie of trail hunting. These people claim their vile sport is tradition. Is it time to put a final end to this barbarity? Now, I don't really know much about fox hunting or trail hunting, but is that true? Are they doing it under a different guise?
33:26 Rory Stewart? So a lot of the time when you you set off on a trail hunt and people, I don't hunt, but my understanding is that often when people are trail hunting, they will pick up the scent of a fox and the dogs will kill the fox. In Cumbria, a lot of the hunting was done on foot. It's not a sort of upper class pastime. It's the foot packs which go across Blencathra around the Lake District are often local farmers, but definitely many of the opponents are pointing out that foxes continue to be killed.
33:54 Alastair Campbell? David Mackenzie, given your recent conversation on what awaits for the Liberal Democrats, do you foresee any Tony Blair, Paddy Ashdown-style unwritten agreement on seats? I'm not sure we had much of an unwritten agreement. I do think Keir Starmer and Ed Davey, I hope they're talking to each other. I hope they've got their lists of seats. And I hope that where the Lib Dems are a better place to win, that Labour don't fight too hard. I mean, how would you approach, if you were Labour and the Lib Dems, or you were the Lib Dems looking to maximise your support from a pretty low base, how would you handle the next election?
34:27 Rory Stewart? Well, one of the challenges is that Labour is so far ahead in the opinion polls at the moment. I mean, they're up above 50 points.
34:33 Alastair Campbell? That's not going to, that is not going to last. That's not going to last. No way.
34:37 Rory Stewart? So you think as it gets closer, those polls will narrow?
34:40 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely, even with trust.
34:42 Rory Stewart? But if we got back four weeks, I guess the argument would have been that the Lib Dems are much better positioned to win some of those seats, Devon, Cornwall, some of the seats around London. I'm not talking about inner London seats, I'm talking about things just outside the M25 than than Labour would be. And it would make sense if one was trying to build a centre-left coalition for the Lib Dems to step back on some of the Labour battlegrounds and vice versa.
35:08 Alastair Campbell? And the Tories will try to make that sort of look a bit underhand, as they did. You know, they'll talk about the coalition of chaos if they're going to still try that one. Which is not the same thing as the Anti-Growth Coalition, but I just think Labour and the Lib Dems should be upfront about it. We are absolutely determined to get the Tories out, yeah.
35:24 Rory Stewart? I don't think anyone minds. I think what people would mind is if Labour started doing a deal with the SNP, because then the unionists would be able to say this is about independence for Scotland. But I think the Lib Dems are not particularly controversial. And I think it actually, it might be good for both their brands. It might help the Lib Dems win seats and it might reassure people that Labour is genuinely committed to the centre ground. So I think it could be a smart thing for them to do. Um, final, final question as we wrap up question time, a more personal question for you from Daniel. Oh, no, sorry, I had two quick questions, one, one more challenging, one nicer. So Patrick Chapman, I've noticed a tendency for Campbell Clarrett to speak about his loyalty to the Labour Party, much like his loyalty to Burnley. Is it right to support parties like football clubs?
36:07 Rory Stewart? Or should we be more flexible based on incumbent views and policies? And then I've got a nice one from Daniel, once you've answered Patrick.
36:13 Alastair Campbell? Uh, Patrick, well, look, I can, I, I, I no longer remember the Labour Party, I was kicked out. I must tell you, by the way, Rory, I had to, even my tribalism to Burnley, I was questioning at the weekend, because it was in my diary that we were playing Swansea. I have all the fixtures in my diary and I don't know why, but I got it into my head that it was an away game. And I booked my train ticket from Paddington to Swansea. And I got as far as Paddington before discovering in a text exchange with one of the players that we were at home. So I don't know how I did that, but.
36:47 Rory Stewart? Oh, oh, oh, that would have been very bad. Swansea's quite a long way away.
36:51 Alastair Campbell? It was bad.
36:52 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
36:52 Alastair Campbell? No, but Burnley's even further, Burnley's even further. So I actually couldn't, I didn't have time to get across London, get to Euston, get a train.
37:01 Rory Stewart? Oh, I'm sorry.
37:02 Alastair Campbell? So I missed the game and we, we, we won 4-0, so all's, all's, never, I'm, I am a tribal person, but, but what I recognise is that most people aren't. So the point about Burn, the football team, the football team has tried to win every game. A political party in opposition is necessarily having to go out and reach people who didn't support them the last time. So there's a, there's a limit to how many bum this party can have because there's only 22,000 seats in the stadium, but politics is very, very different. So what I guess I'm saying is that I accept that my, my tribalism is not what most people feel and it's the most people that parties have to focus on.
37:40 Rory Stewart? Very good. Okay. Final question from Daniel. I'm having a very hard time at the moment caring for my dad and inspired by Alastair, I've turned to diary writing to help rationalize a storm of feelings. How do you manage such a vast amount? Do you type or handwrite? Do you have rules about regularity or length?
37:58 Alastair Campbell? Uh, no rules, mainly handwrite, but latterly in recent years I've taken to typing more and I wish I'd never started down that road because I think it makes you lazy and I've become less disciplined about doing it. And I think, I think my memory has started to suffer with it as well, which is probably why I'm going to the wrong railway stations. In fact, I can tell you, I was at the Bodleian Library last week because they were being very, very nice to me, giving me a lovely special tour. And I realized halfway around that what they were after were the originals of my diaries. But I, I really, I think handwritten is better. I really do think if you write with your, with a pen, you write with your hand, I think your mind works better.
38:38 Rory Stewart? Very good. Okay. Thank you very much, Alastair. Well done on putting up with the delays from Malawi. In fact, the president of Malawi is currently in trouble locally because he flew to London to do a virtual meeting claiming that he got a better broadband connection there. But I'm beginning to sympathize with him a bit.
38:53 Alastair Campbell? Oh my God. No, Rory, I don't, can I just say, you get enough flack already for your un-green credentials with your flight. I do not recommend that you fly anywhere in protest at broadband width. Okay?
39:06 Rory Stewart? Well, here, here I am in Malawi and so I thank you for putting up with the delays. Goodbye from me.
39:11 Alastair Campbell? All the best.
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39:21 Speaker 03 On October 2nd.
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