85. Question Time: Harry and Meghan, the National Anthem, and Latin America

In today’s Question Time podcast, Rory and Alastair review the new Harry and Meghan documentary, discuss how we can improve our National Anthem, and analyse the political chaos in Latin America. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Theo Young-Smith Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair 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.

• 0:19Rory 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.

• 0:42Alastair 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?

• 0:49Rory 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/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:44Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  And it's rather nice. It's another in-person, unusual in-person thing. I can report from the frontline that Alistair is wearing a rather kind of fat, fetching, sort of down waistcoat.

• 1:59Alastair Campbell?

  Not a waistcoat. It's a body warmer.

• 2:02Rory Stewart?

  You call it gilet?

• 2:03Alastair Campbell?

  No, it's a body warmer, isn't it? I think it's a body warmer. Yeah, if it's in French, it would be a gilet, but it's a body warmer. It's a padded body warmer. You've got to remember Rory, that I was in very, very, very cold water not long ago.

• 2:14Rory Stewart?

  You literally went in with the snow, didn't you?

• 2:16Alastair Campbell?

  Three degrees, yeah. It was fantastic. I came out with...

• 2:19Rory Stewart?

  Is there a temperature where it actually gets dangerous to do that? Where your heart stops?

• 2:23Alastair Campbell?

  When I jump in, when it's really, really cold, because I'm used to it. I do sometimes think about if I wasn't used to this, you would panic because the shock, you feel like you're being stabbed. I know it sounds crazy that you'd want to do it, but, and it's like, when that feeling stops, it's quite nice, but that's when it's quite dangerous. So I only stayed in for, I stayed in for six and a half minutes this morning.

• 2:44Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 2:45Alastair Campbell?

  But yeah, no.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  But it definitely wakes you up.

• 2:47Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, you feel great afterwards. Yeah, yeah. But cold, but cold.

• 2:52Rory Stewart?

  Is there a hot shower when you get out?

• 2:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:54Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay.

• 2:55Alastair Campbell?

  Do you want to read his question?

• 2:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on then. Alistair Gaylor, Germany. What do you guys think would have happened if the German coup had been successful? And what does it tell us about how strong advanced democratic countries actually are? So this was the German coup. Tell us a bit about the German coup.

• 3:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, a German attempted coup. On the one hand, I look at these people with their ridiculous names, Prince Heinrich the 13th from Rice, and somebody double barrel, double barrel, double barrel the third, and all these, and then some ex commando guy. And I think this is just absurd. But then you think, well, in 11 of the 16 Lender, more than 3,000 police officers involved in simultaneous raids, there must have been something really quite serious.

• 3:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's something very weird, isn't it? They claim they raided over 150 properties, but they've only arrested 20 people. There seems to be a discrepancy.

• 3:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, so far they've arrested 23 people. I think they were searching for, they were searching for weapons, which they found.

• 3:50Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 3:51Alastair Campbell?

  They were obviously searching for documentation, which they found as well. But there is, it's not that long ago. I think the thing that worried me was that, I think, was it Ursula von der Leyen, who was still Defence Secretary, when there was a part of the special forces that were shown to have very, very strong hard right links. And one part, one branch of it has been shut down because they felt the whole thing had been infiltrated by the far right.

• 4:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's a bit weird, isn't it? And this is all, so the centre of this seems to have been Thuringia, part of it.

• 4:25Alastair Campbell?

  Thuringen.

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  Thuringen, which was a part of East Germany. And this. Very, very peculiar man. His family, I mean, he's actually quite, he's more of a big deal in Germany than than maybe people are reporting because on the one hand, his territory was tiny. His ancestors ruled a state which was about 300 square miles, which is considerably smaller than Cumbria or Cornwall. But when I was going to Germany in the, I guess, early 90s, lots of people talked about it. They're a very famous family because of this stupid Henry thing, which is that the Holy Roman Emperor in the 12th century, Henry, gave them their land. And ever since then, every single one of them has to be called Henry, and more recently Prince Henry, and they number from the beginning of the century and then start again.

• 5:05Alastair Campbell?

  So he's genuinely the 13th in that line?

• 5:06Rory Stewart?

  He's not in the line. So he's the 13th Henry this century from that family, but his father wasn't called the 13th. His father was called something like the 4th or the 5th. Another one of them, another one of the Prince Henrys of Royce is married to an Abba singer, or was married to an Abba singer.

• 5:22Alastair Campbell?

  What?

• 5:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's why she's a princess. Yeah. So I thought this was important for you. So I mean, I don't know much about Abba, but I've been trying to get into this.

• 5:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I know a lot about Abba.

• 5:31Rory Stewart?

  Anna Fried was married to his cousin, who was another Prince Heinrich.

• 5:36Alastair Campbell?

  To Heinrich's cousin?

• 5:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Alastair Campbell?

  The one with the Czech coat?

• 5:39Rory Stewart?

  Another, exactly.

• 5:40Alastair Campbell?

  The Tory hunting coat?

• 5:41Rory Stewart?

  Another Prince Heinrich, yeah. They're all called Prince Heinrich because they all have to be called Heinrich, regardless of which number they are. Every child has to be called Heinrich.

• 5:48Alastair Campbell?

  This is feeling a bit cultist.

• 5:49Rory Stewart?

  It's kind of weird, yeah.

• 5:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, what about the other name that stood out to me was Rudiger von Peskatory?

• 5:56Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 5:56Alastair Campbell?

  Which sounds like a sort of exotic dish that you would have somewhere.

• 5:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's the problem, isn't it? It's quite difficult to take it seriously with all the stuff going on.

• 6:02Alastair Campbell?

  It is, but that's what I say that they, but they're very into this whole sort of, they're anti-vaxers. They keep getting parking fines and speeding offences because they refuse to acknowledge things like German federal driving licences.

• 6:16Rory Stewart?

  They believe the German state, if I'm right, is a corporation. They refuse to call it a nation.

• 6:21Alastair Campbell?

  It was set up by the Allies after the Second World War to basically become a kind of a big retail centre for Americans.

• 6:30Rory Stewart?

  That's right. It's like a sort of massive McDonald's.

• 6:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:32Rory Stewart?

  So they kept.

• 6:33Alastair Campbell?

  So they don't recognise it.

• 6:34Rory Stewart?

  So the centre of their revolution was a little town of six, 7,000 people, about the size of Creef, where I come from in Scotland, where they were trying to convince everybody to sign up for the nation of Royce, which is this little princely state. And apparently it was really weird because it's a tiny 7,000 people. So the local grocer would be like, did you get that note through your door saying you've got to sign up to be a?

• 6:56Alastair Campbell?

  But if they're just a bunch of cranks, though, you would not have three and a half thousand policemen, police officers put on duty to go and get these guys, would you? Because I think the far right in Germany is, you know, we see them occasionally in sort of football hooliganism. But, you know, last year, there were fifty five thousand politically motivated crimes in Germany. And forty forty odd percent of those were seen as crimes of the hard right.

• 7:22Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 7:22Alastair Campbell?

  So that's quite a lot. Thirty eight percent neither right nor left. I don't really know what that means.

• 7:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Alastair Campbell?

  And this link into parts of the military and parts of the police.

• 7:32Rory Stewart?

  Thirty eight percent of them were aggressive centrists.

• 7:35Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm a bit of an aggressive centrist myself, Roy, as you know.

• 7:39Rory Stewart?

  I think in Germany, you might find yourself in trouble. Yeah.

• 7:42Alastair Campbell?

  Right, here we are. Subodh Kafle, please can you cover the madness that's going on in Peru? In the first round, Castillo got eighteen percent of the vote, while Fujimori got thirteen percent of the vote. How mad that Peruvians ended up having to pick between the two. And of course, now we've had Castillo, the winner, gone. I think he's now in a jail.

• 8:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he tried to do his own self coup d'etat.

• 8:06Alastair Campbell?

  He did.

• 8:06Rory Stewart?

  It's an amazing thing. So he was the president and he suddenly decided he was going to try to dissolve effectively the sort of parliament. And it all went wrong. I mean, so there was a total standoff. Castillo is an extreme left wing populist. Pretty poor background, very, very simple rural teacher, came up in the trade union movement. Seized power, not seized power, was elected empowered, but at this very narrow margin, as our question pointed out. Found himself with a right wing parliament he was dealing with. Finally, after they tried to impeach him two or three times, he tried to shut them down. So complete constitutional coup, like Trumpian beyond imagining. And he's now been toppled, as you say, thrown in jail.

• 8:46Alastair Campbell?

  His cabinet didn't back him, the police didn't back him, the military didn't back him. It was not a very good coup.

• 8:50Rory Stewart?

  No. He's a rather unfortunate figure. I mean, when you look at him, he does always look a bit hopeless.

• 8:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Well, he's now in this in this jail that was built for his predecessor, who's also, see, they're now just the two of them in this. These two former presidents in a jail together. And meanwhile, Dina Boluerta is the his successor.

• 9:11Rory Stewart?

  And when you said, is this the jail?

• 9:12Alastair Campbell?

  There's trouble on the streets already.

• 9:13Rory Stewart?

  Is this the jail where Fujimori was also held?

• 9:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  So I mean, it is also very interesting how much Latin American politics has changed quite quickly because obviously Fuji Moru was very much part of the right. And when you were dealing with these governments, Latin America through the late 90s, they were dominated by these very kind of big finance ministers who are very kind of orthodox, Washington consensus, balance the budgets, export foreign investment, hanging out with Gordon Brown at Davos. And now so many of these countries have gone to a form of populist left.

• 9:47Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, yeah. But I tell you, I listen, my good friend Moises Naim, the three Ps man.

• 9:53Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 9:54Alastair Campbell?

  I listened to, he was on a podcast the other day about Latin America.

• 9:58Rory Stewart?

  Was he from again?

• 9:59Alastair Campbell?

  He's from Venezuela.

• 10:00Rory Stewart?

  Venezuela, right.

• 10:00Alastair Campbell?

  And he said, yes, there's lots of really bad stuff going on in Venezuela. But he said that in Guyana, Dominique Republic and Panama, things are a lot better. And he's, and the guy who was interviewing him said, yeah, but, and the other ones he mentioned were Costa Rica and Uruguay. There are success stories in Latin America, they said.

• 10:19Rory Stewart?

  Meanwhile, Chile, Mexico.

• 10:21Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, right, Rory, your go.

• 10:22Rory Stewart?

  Brazil. Yeah, okay, here's a question for you. Hugh Ramsden, I worry too much emphasis is put on what happens on Twitter. I personally take no issue with a politician who has no active presence on Twitter, and I don't believe their activity on such a platform makes any meaningful difference for their constituents or real life. And this was David Cameron's view back in the days, like people go on Twitter at twats.

• 10:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. I think there's something in it. I think, look, funny if I did, after I had, saw Marina Litvinenko yesterday, I was interviewed by Brian Moore, the former rugby player, because as part of his degree course, he's doing a big thing on social media. And we were talking about, the question was, why do I use Twitter? Okay. And I don't, I've actually, because of the Elon Musk thing, I've been sort of thinking, would my life really change that much if I wasn't on Twitter? Because I do find Musk pretty repellent, I must be honest, I don't like him.

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  Well, his stuff about prosecute Fauci was extraordinary.

• 11:16Alastair Campbell?

  And he's, there's the whole sort of attention-seeking nature of himself and he talks absolute crap a lot of the time. So I was thinking about, and, and, and I've, I've definitely been engaging a lot less on Twitter. I've not been looking at Twitter as much. I tweet, so I'll probably promote tonight, the Albert Hall thing, I'll probably do.

• 11:33Rory Stewart?

  Do your tree of the day?

• 11:35Alastair Campbell?

  I always will do my tree of the day, but I could easily migrate that to somewhere else.

• 11:38Rory Stewart?

  Tree of the day can move to somewhere else?

• 11:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, so, um.

• 11:41Rory Stewart?

  That would be a pity with tree of the day.

• 11:44Alastair Campbell?

  So I don't, I, I think the, that that question has got a point.

• 11:47Rory Stewart?

  Twitter's a weird thing, isn't it? I, so David Baddiel has been off Twitter for a month, great comedian. And he was saying how wonderful it was.

• 11:56Alastair Campbell?

  It's not coming home though, is it?

• 11:57Rory Stewart?

  Got, got covered, not coming home, football's not coming home, got a couple of, couple of hours back in his life. But then he said, actually, there's also something that he really enjoys about, and I do love it. I really love it.

• 12:08Alastair Campbell?

  You, you spend way too much time.

• 12:09Rory Stewart?

  I've been having some very happy conversations about Neolithic archaeology recently, and I don't know where else I'd have those conversations, certainly not with you. You don't want to talk to me about Neolithic archaeology.

• 12:18Alastair Campbell?

  I'd love to. Well, listen, here's one on Twitter, Rory. Does it show, says Erica Neustadt, does it show concern for the ever deepening climate emergency to fly yourself and your family to Doha to watch football?

• 12:29Rory Stewart?

  It's a good, it's a good challenge. It's a very, very good challenge. I don't know what to say about that. I mean, I think, I live next to.

• 12:36Alastair Campbell?

  You don't care.

• 12:37Rory Stewart?

  I don't care, I care. Live next to Doha and I guess, um, you know, it's not like flying from Britain, so I'm flying from Amman to Doha. And I thought it would be a nice thing for little boys to see some football.

• 12:48Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm, that's fair. Okay. So Rory, Olivia Bright, remembering your, by the way, did you see that I did tree of the day from Cumbria?

• 12:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it was very good.

• 12:57Alastair Campbell?

  From your constituency.

• 12:58Rory Stewart?

  It's good. I spotted the spot, I think.

• 13:00Alastair Campbell?

  Good. If you still represented a Cumbrian constituency, where would you stand on the new Cumbrian coal mine? And now that you don't, does your position differ?

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  I think it probably does differ. So to put the history of it, there were a small number of people in my constituency who were very, very strongly against the coal mine, but the majority of people were very much in favour.

• 13:19Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 13:19Rory Stewart?

  And it was cross party.

• 13:20Alastair Campbell?

  Because of jobs?

• 13:21Rory Stewart?

  Jobs. Labour and Conservative. It's a relatively deprived area of West Cumbria, really struggling for economic activity and has been for a long time. And the coal mine was going to create 500, I think, direct jobs, 1500 indirect jobs. And so I would have been very unpopular with all my local councillors and actually pretty unpopular with a lot of Labour voters and most of the working class voters in my constituency, if I'd come out heavily against the country.

• 13:51Alastair Campbell?

  So had you been an MP, you'd have been in favour, but now you're not, you're against?

• 13:54Rory Stewart?

  Uh, I do, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm afraid it is impossible to square with our climate obligations. It just doesn't make any sense. That coal mine is supposed to be running till nearly 2050 and we're supposed to be weaning off coal by the mid 2030s. And we're meant to be getting steel off coal, which is what coal's used for. So it's a classic example of something. And, and it's also, I think it must be uncomfortable for Labour too, because remember, Labour was very, very associated with fighting to keep coal mines open.

• 14:22Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 14:22Rory Stewart?

  Which may be why there's a lot of Labour support for reopening that coal mine in Cumbria.

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  Let's just, right, let's have a little break and then we'll come back.

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• 14:46Speaker 04

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• 14:50Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and under 17 without parent.

• 15:05Rory Stewart?

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

• 15:09Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 15:10Rory Stewart?

  Question for you. Vicky Pales, listening to the anthems of other nations at the World Cup, has again highlighted how uninspiring, (musically), and out of date, lyrically, (rain over us), God Save the King is. Would you replace it and what would you agree? It's a bit of a droning song.

• 15:29Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it's awful. It's awful. It's awful. One of my favourite Billy Connolly sketches was when he suggested replacing it with the theme tune from The Archers.

• 15:41Rory Stewart?

  And what is it particularly awful? You just think it's a very boring, droning, droning tune?

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  It's dirgey. I think the...

• 15:46Rory Stewart?

  It's a bit weird, isn't it? Because the Germans have like, one of the greatest pieces of music ever. The French have an extraordinary...

• 15:52Alastair Campbell?

  The Italians, the Russians.

• 15:54Rory Stewart?

  The Russians are amazing, yeah.

• 15:56Alastair Campbell?

  The American anthem's good.

• 15:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Alastair Campbell?

  And when you saw, sorry to go on about the football, but when you saw, I mean, fair play, the England players were all booming it out, but they were struggling a bit. You saw the French, when they get to "March on, march on", I mean, it's, you know, it's proper. You're on the march. And I do think, I hate to say this, and Marina, if Marina Litvinenko was here now, she'd really give me one of those looks she gave me when we were talking about Tony Blair and Wladimir Putin. I mean, the Russian anthem is a bit special. So I think it would be, look, the Queen, R.I.P., God bless her, Charles, you know, they're trying to get, we've got Harry and Meghan doing the Netflix stuff, why don't the royal family sort of lead the charge for a new national anthem?

• 16:38Rory Stewart?

  And...

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  And turn it into a fantastic reality TV show.

• 16:40Rory Stewart?

  Potentially, they could keep some of the same. There is no problem with saying "God save the King", but you could have a better tune, couldn't you?

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but also, I think the ones that have, you could definitely have a better tune. I mean, my God, you just want to go to, I want to go to sleep when I hear it.

• 16:52Rory Stewart?

  And there's always good, we take a bit of Handel, take a bit of Bach.

• 16:56Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, no, I think we're going to have a British composer, Rory. And for God's sake, we don't want the British anthem. For God's sake. I honestly think a modern national anthem, get in some, get a citizens' assembly with Paul McCartney, Adele, Ed Sheeran, you know, the LSO.

• 17:15Rory Stewart?

  And you really think this should be local? You're not going to get in ABBA to do it? You've really decided this is going to be British-led?

• 17:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think so. I think so. Unless ABBA naturalise, which I don't think they will. They're very, very Swedish. Now, I had, what about, let's just do this one, right? Hillary Newton, have Alistair and Rory watched the Harry and Meghan programmes? I'm a no.

• 17:35Rory Stewart?

  I'm a yes.

• 17:36Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, wow. If so, does anything in it justify the bile and hatred being thrown at them by the British press? Why do the palace press officers continue to support papers who so debase British society and social cohesion? So you've watched it?

• 17:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I watched the first episode. I mean, it's a very difficult thing for me. On the one hand, I think that they... I... It's tricky. I mean, I feel for Prince Harry. I think that... And he comes across in it as very broken and understandably very shaken up by his mother's death, by his relationship with the media. I mean, basically, the programme is about his hatred of how intrusive the media was in every element of his life. And one of the subtexts of it seems to be a sense that the royal family has felt for a long time that to maintain their position in British society, they almost need to be

• 18:36Rory Stewart?

  in the press all the time. Do you think that's... I mean, as somebody who really understands press, is that true? Is it actually true that to maintain their relevance and popularity, it is useful for them to be covered almost every day, not just once a year?

• 18:49Alastair Campbell?

  Not necessarily every day, but I think they... Well, first of all, I think you're 100% right, and I've talked to him and to William about this. I think they... I think William hides it very well. I think they despise much of the British media and much of the world's media. And I think it is a lot of it about their mother. I think they do feel, and that's why the Queen's death was planned to the extent that it was, and the funeral and all that followed. I think they do feel that without that permanent sense of relevance and connection with the British people, that they feel very, very vulnerable.

• 19:23Rory Stewart?

  Right, right, right, right. Do you feel, and this is a question I've always wanted to ask, do you feel that it's true for you too, that it's important for you personally as an individual, for your brand, as it were, to be in the media regularly, sort of in every week or so? What would happen if you vanished for six months? Would it affect... How well known you are or not or.

• 19:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, probably, but I don't, I don't, I don't, I mean, I'm thinking a bit like you. I say no to way, way, way more things than I say yes to. But I think, I think like, look, to be honest, this podcast has given both of us a whole new kind of sense of a different sort of profile. I think now I see my, I see my profile developing through stuff, longer form stuff like books, films. Um, I don't feel the need to be in the papers at all. I don't care if I'm in the papers. I really have no interest to be in the papers at all.

• 20:11Rory Stewart?

  It's interesting. I've got colleagues like, um, I mentioned someone, Mark Francois, for example, was often in the newspaper, British, British MP, Brexit voting MP. But I felt that often they would be in the papers a lot, but people wouldn't necessarily particularly remember their names. I'm not sure the.

• 20:26Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 20:26Rory Stewart?

  MPs appearing occasionally in the papers.

• 20:28Alastair Campbell?

  It's amazing how, it's amazing how quickly MPs get forgotten as well. Uh, that's where you do need to kind of reinvent and do different things. I, I've noticed a lot of MPs who just, you know, I, I, I won't, I'm not going to say it because it's embarrassing. But I saw recently a member of our cabinet walking down the road. I was in, sitting watching them in a cafe and I walked and literally nobody batted an eyelid.

• 20:50Rory Stewart?

  Hmm.

• 20:50Alastair Campbell?

  And not that long ago, they were quite a senior cabinet minister.

• 20:54Rory Stewart?

  Question from Sally Davis, maybe to end. I don't know whether this is Dame Sally Davis, the great person who used to be the Public Health Chief of England.

• 21:00Alastair Campbell?

  Could be.

• 21:01Rory Stewart?

  Predecessor Chris Witty. She says, I used to despise ironing, ironing. I now listen to the rest of this politics podcast while ironing. So I now look actively forward to it, to the point that I even iron sheets so I can listen for longer. What examples do Rory and Alistair have of positive associations? Initially, I thought she meant iron sheets in the sense of wiggly tin on a roof.

• 21:23Alastair Campbell?

  No, she means on an ironing board.

• 21:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Alastair Campbell?

  Or an ironing board, as you seem to think she calls it.

• 21:30Alastair Campbell?

  Um, associations, I'll tell you, if I. The, when I ran the marathon in two thousand and three, I thought, why this portrait by a head when you asked the question. By the way, I don't think that is Sally Davis. I don't, I think if she'd asked, I think Dame Sally Davis, she might ask that, I don't know. If it is Dame Sally Davis, ex of National Health Service, please let us know. And if it's not, please let us know a little bit more about your life, other than your ironing. But when I crossed the line, this shows you how marketing stuff works. Somebody put a can of luca, a bottle of Lucozade into my hand.

• 22:02Rory Stewart?

  Very smart.

• 22:02Alastair Campbell?

  And now, whenever I finish.

• 22:05Rory Stewart?

  I think you, you want one of those.

• 22:06Alastair Campbell?

  I want, I want to drink a Lucozade.

• 22:08Rory Stewart?

  I wonder what it's stuck in people's heads with sheets. Maybe that's the thing.

• 22:12Alastair Campbell?

  I do, I do. The other thing I do is I, I never, I don't know if this is the same thing, but I once put my left shoe on before my right shoe.

• 22:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Alastair Campbell?

  And later that day, I fell down the stairs.

• 22:25Rory Stewart?

  And now you never do it again.

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  So since then, I've always, I will always put my right shoe on first.

• 22:30Rory Stewart?

  You can see that with footballers country. You can see that with Harry Kane taking the penalty, that there were obviously some rituals to do with his socks and stuff. I think they get these very, very big. And, and then of course, the other thing I picked up, which must be your life all the time, is the sense which you as a viewer, in my case, sitting in Emma and Jordan, watching him on the screen, I begin to worry that something I'm doing in the room when I'm watching the screen is going to affect his ability to get it into the goal.

• 22:54Alastair Campbell?

  All the time, all the time.

• 22:56Rory Stewart?

  Which is quite mad because it's like, umpteen million people watching.

• 22:58Alastair Campbell?

  No, it's totally insane. However, I'll tell you where I think it happens. So like, here's one. Right. Let's say you might have gone to the game.

• 23:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. So when they announced the crowd.

• 23:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Alastair Campbell?

  Right. And they said, tonight's attendance is sixty one thousand four hundred and thirteen. If you'd have gone.

• 23:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Alastair Campbell?

  It would have been sixty one thousand four hundred and fourteen.

• 23:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Alastair Campbell?

  And one of the players might have reacted slightly differently on that piece of information to had it been one fewer.

• 23:25Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 23:26Alastair Campbell?

  That's the kind of inactive butterfly effect. I genu-, look, I'll tell you the other thing. Queen's Park Rangers on Sunday, when Burnley, because real football was back in the weekend, Rory. Burnley away at Queens Park Rangers. And I went, I actually went with Charles Kennedy's son, Donald, who, unlike Charles, is quite a football fan. And, um, and I said to him, just before we scored our second goal, I said, I think if I put my gloves on, something might happen. Gloves went on, we scored.

• 23:55Rory Stewart?

  Unbelievable.

• 23:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Right, Rory, I've got to tell you, this is from Carl Seabird, your six word description of why you're still a Conservative went down.

• 24:04Rory Stewart?

  Very bad.

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  If I can make five words, like a bag of sick.

• 24:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Alastair Campbell?

  Um, so you included tradition. Now, I've, I was a bit pissed off with that because, and the one that really pissed me off was landscape.

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Alastair Campbell?

  I've loved landscape all my life. So why do you think Tories have a hold on this? And so he says, could you give some examples of British traditions you are particularly attached to and that you worry will be under threat when, says Carl, I think we know his political colours, when the Conservatives leave office?

• 24:33Rory Stewart?

  This is a really sensitive thing and it's a difficult thing. But if I think about why I became a Conservative rather than Labour, and I remember being teased by Tristram Hunt about it, it was a Labour MP. Basically, instinctively, my whole life, I grew up in a very different way, revering lots of bits of British history. I revered the monarchy, revered the British Army, huge admiration for British history and definitely, if I looked across the Labour benches and talked about the kind of books I read, the kind of films I watched, going with my father to Remembrance Day parades as a little late year old, standing there with my little red poppy on, saluting. This wasn't the life

• 25:17Rory Stewart?

  of most of the Labour MPs across the aisle. And the things that I cared about, many of my Tory MPs deeply romantic about British regiments, for example, about the abolition of the Black Watch. I didn't know any Labour MP who was deeply motivated by the question of whether or not the Black Watch was watched. Now, you might be a bit different, you had a brother in the Scots Guards, but it's the same, I just sort of feel that my emotional reaction to those things, like the monarchy, is, is different from the kind of emotional reaction.

• 25:42Alastair Campbell?

  No, but the question Carl's asking is what, which of those traditions would go if the Conservatives weren't there?

• 25:47Rory Stewart?

  Well.

• 25:48Alastair Campbell?

  I, I think, I think Labour are very committed to the military. Funny, I don't know why, when you were speaking, Neil Kinnock popped into my head. And I can see Neil absolutely making speeches about that stuff.

• 26:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think he, well, he was very much, I mean, he instinctively.

• 26:03Alastair Campbell?

  There's a very strong working class patriotic.

• 26:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but but it's but equally, that's obviously not the tradition of Jeremy Corbyn. Very much not. I mean, he definitely would not feel emotionally in the way that I do when I walk in the Remembrance Day.

• 26:16Alastair Campbell?

  But as Mick Winter reminded us on the radio this morning, Jeremy Corbyn is not the Prime Minister.

• 26:20Rory Stewart?

  No, he's he's he's definitely not the Prime Minister. So I think a Conservative, I mean, the clue is in the name that really we're about conserving things. And I think Labour has tended to.

• 26:29Alastair Campbell?

  Do you still feel like you're a Tory? Do you still feel Tory?

• 26:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, I didn't like this government, but I'm still on the old fashioned, traditional conserving side of things. I like, so when I talk about landscape, I'm talking about protecting and conserving what I love in the Cumbrian landscape. I'm, and this is where I disagree with people like Michael Gove. Michael Gove's, yeah, he's in the Conservative Party, but he's a radical. He's a radical Whigish liberal.

• 26:52Alastair Campbell?

  So here's one then, Chris Colpin, Roryless landscape is one of the reasons he's a Tory. I don't understand this. I love and understand the Marbors Bridge landscape, but it doesn't come near to making me a Tory, rather the reverse, because restrictive land ownership and capitalist farming have done so much damage to our landscapes.

• 27:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's again where where I probably disagree. So the Cumbrian landscape that I love.

• 27:11Alastair Campbell?

  What about land ownership, though? Come on.

• 27:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's part about, part about land ownership. I I love actually the patchwork of family owned farms right the way across Cumbria. I love the combination of sheep pasture with wilderness, and I'm very, very suspicious. And I've gotten lots of trouble with this. Someone's just written a book, it was the RSPB attacking me for this, with the rewilding movement, both on the right and on the left, and their attempt to transform the landscape into something it hasn't looked like for two and a half thousand years.

• 27:42Alastair Campbell?

  I remember my cousin giving me a book, Who Owns Scotland, a few years ago. I don't know if you read it.

• 27:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I've got a copy of it.

• 27:49Alastair Campbell?

  I bet you have. You're in it.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  It's all my neighbours.

• 27:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just like, it's a very, very, very small number of very, very, very, very wealthy people. Last one.

• 27:58Rory Stewart?

  Okay, last one. Part of the problem, this is George Clare, part of the problem in British politics is that the Prime Minister and Principal Secretary of State must balance their work as government ministers with their work as MPs representing a geographical constituency. If we were to transition to a party list system, the PM could focus on the departments and delegate their parliamentary responsibilities and constituency matters to the next candidate duly elected on the list. The system already operates in successful democracies such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Would this work for the UK?

• 28:27Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Similar question. Olls, been watching TV show Borgen recently, Danish political drama. Do you think the UK would benefit from a multi-party system which no one party can hold absolute power? Similar area. I don't buy the idea that just because you're a minister, you can't be an MP. I mean, yes, it adds to the workload, but at the same time, I think it's a really, really important point of connection. And you have to be good at delegating and good at building systems and making sure you've got people keeping everything tracked for you. So I guess, deep down, that's a question from somebody who wants to change the electoral system.

• 28:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think it's also, deep down, from something that I felt with my constituency switches, they couldn't understand how you could have a full-time job as a constituency MP and then suddenly become a cabinet minister, working full-time on running the health service. How could you have two full-time jobs? And the answer had to be that one or the other was going to have to suffer. You can't do everything.

• 29:17Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I think we should close with this one. John Thompson. Now, we can give very, this is a really complicated question, but I think we should give a one-sentence answer to it. You can only choose one of the following. Which is it and why? Burnley gained promotion until 2030, which means they win the triple. Global extreme poverty eradicated, carbon emissions at net zero or slightly negative, global female education levels, the same as male, all populist charlatans are brought to justice.

• 29:48Rory Stewart?

  I'd go for Burnley.

• 29:49Alastair Campbell?

  You're lying. You're lying. Okay. Let's leave it at that then.