89. Where will we be in 2023?

Join Alastair and Rory for a bonus episode as they discuss their political predictions for 2023! 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 + Nicole Maslen 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. 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.

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

• 1:14Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome to another episode of The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:17Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. And it's a bit of a short sort of holiday season episode, this, isn't it?

• 1:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, we're just going to briefly look forward to next year.

• 1:24Rory Stewart?

  And take a few Q and As. So let me start with a question for you. It's a very bad question for you. Toby Smith, would Alistair rather see a Burnley promotion or a Labour government next year?

• 1:35Alastair Campbell?

  Labour government.

• 1:36Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Thank you.

• 1:38Alastair Campbell?

  Here's one more serious. David McFarlane, how do you predict the war in Ukraine will end? And will it happen in 2023?

• 1:44Rory Stewart?

  I think it's going to be, very sadly, difficult for it to end in 2023. The best chance now of it ending? Is paradoxically to follow Biden, not Macron. This is not going to be solved through trying to find some understanding or compromise with Putin. I'm afraid that the best hope now is to keep strong support up to the Ukrainians and to get Putin into a situation where he has to withdraw. And it's a very, it's going to be very dangerous though, because, you know, at the same time as I'm saying that, I'm very conscious that's a nuclear armed power. It's got enormous reserves and he will not want to be humiliated, but I cannot see a route

• 2:26Rory Stewart?

  to anything other than lasting stalemate unless people get on with it.

• 2:31Alastair Campbell?

  Do you not think though, we talked in the, the awards podcast, we talked about, you were saying that your surprise of the year was the extent to which Europe had hung together. Do you not think this, the inflation, cost of living crisis, energy prices, do you think that this, the holding of this will, which there seems to be at the political level, certainly, do you think that's going to be maintained through another, another 12 months?

• 2:54Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing, isn't it? You wouldn't have predicted it and you would have thought this huge opportunity for populist politicians to say, there's an easy solution to all your economic ills. Let's just cut a deal with Putin and abandon Ukraine. And it's very odd that political entrepreneurs haven't filled that space, that we didn't really see that happening with Giorgia Maloney, who's the populist right wing leader in Italy. Even Farage hasn't been out there trying to argue for that. The Republican right, you've got a little bit of that in the US, but it's very interesting because there is a direct relationship between people's energy bills, inflation and the sacrifices that people are making to support Ukraine.

• 3:35Alastair Campbell?

  We've got one of those smart meter things that's been installed. I sit there watching it now, you watch the bill going up and up and up and up.

• 3:44Rory Stewart?

  But still something extraordinary, like 70% of the British population is still firmly, firmly behind supporting Ukraine.

• 3:50Alastair Campbell?

  And supporting the nurses, Rory.

• 3:52Rory Stewart?

  Is it 70% supporting the nurses?

• 3:54Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, the latest poll I saw today, I think it was 68.

• 3:58Rory Stewart?

  Wow. And the nurses were asking, some of them asking for an 18% pay rise, which is quite a big, big rise. That's interesting.

• 4:04Alastair Campbell?

  I, I don't understand the strategies of government of sort of saying, we're not going to talk to them about pay. I mean, I just don't get it. Listen, Neil Walsh, very simple question, almost as short as Charles Walker's four word speech. Will 2023 be less mental?

• 4:19Rory Stewart?

  Yes, maybe. I mean, I think, I think actually there's real reason to think it could be more mental. I continue to think that there is a significant risk of China moving against Taiwan, that Xi Jinping's window of opportunity is closing. He will see the West at the moment on the edge of an economic recession, facing energy challenges. His own reputation has been shaken a bit by his response to Covid and the demonstrations against him. So I would put forty percent chance that he may go into Taiwan this year, in which case we're going to see economic and geopolitical impacts such as we have never begun to consider, ten times worse than Russia.

• 4:59Alastair Campbell?

  That's two wars you've predicted in a week, because you were saying Kosovo Serbia is going to kick off as well.

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, Kosovo Serbia is also in a lot of danger. So I'm afraid next year could be pretty bad.

• 5:11Alastair Campbell?

  I guess what the question might mean relates to what we've mentioned a few times now about Rishi Sunak trying to be a bit sort of low profile and not be as quite as crazy as his predecessors.

• 5:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I think that's true. I mean, I think you were reminding us in the last pod, how Boris Johnson followed the Trump playbook, the sort of dead cat playbook, which is that you distract from one scandal by producing another scandal the next day and another even bigger the next day, which creates this sort of media frenzy of outrage, which has left the British and American media, I think, with a bit of a hangover. I mean, they've come out of the Trump Johnson years still reeling, trying to work out how to report more traditional politics again.

• 5:50Alastair Campbell?

  I've noticed myself spending far less time on social media, and I think it's partly because of Musk, but I think it's also because Trump's gone and Johnson's gone and things aren't quite as crazy. Now, what about this one? Peter O'Brien, what crisis is bubbling under the surface, waiting to reveal itself in 2023?

• 6:09Rory Stewart?

  I'm going Kosovo Serbia. What's yours?

• 6:11Alastair Campbell?

  I've got a feeling that the whole post-Grenfell housing situation has not been properly addressed and that there are there are real housing crises that are going to erupt.

• 6:21Rory Stewart?

  Is there any chance of dissension within the Labour Party? Or do you think Keir Salma's got a grip on that? Is there any chance that he wouldn't lead them into the next election?

• 6:30Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think he's in a very, very strong position in the Labour Party. I think you still get people grumbling, but you always do. You know, I've said many, many times, I do worry that that the Labour Party is relying too much on the government being dreadful, which they are, and being unpopular, which they are. But I think really to seal the deal with the British public, you've got to give them that sense of clarity about what you want to do. You've got to get a real sense of hope. Now, I think Keir, look, don't get me wrong. I think Keir has done an extraordinary job to go from where Labour were in 2019 to become leader, five years after becoming an MP, to decontaminate the brand with all the antisemitism stuff and so forth, to really be able to hold his own against such

• 7:11Alastair Campbell?

  a difficult opponent as Johnson, to see off two prime ministers. But I really do think now it's got to be, it's got to be stepping up on the big policy agenda. But no, I think he's absolutely safe.

• 7:21Rory Stewart?

  We've got a number of questions coming in to Twitter about Afghanistan, pointing out that the government completely failed to follow through on their offers to bring over 20,000 Afghan refugees. And in some of these schemes, it seems not one of them has come over.

• 7:36Alastair Campbell?

  It's horrific.

• 7:37Rory Stewart?

  We had a question from a woman at the Royal College of Music. We also had a question actually from John Barron MP, who just WhatsApp me. He's a Conservative MP, not from my side of the party, Brexit Party, but listens to podcasts, says still not a single visa has come through. And the British government got all that sort of press from claiming they were going to bring in 20,000 Afghans and then didn't at all.

• 7:57Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, you mentioned the press there. I think this is something else that I really believe that the the press and the broadcasters have to reflect on very, very carefully. If there's one thing they need to learn from the Johnson Trust era, it is that politics and news and media management is not just about making big announcements. It's then the job of the media to keep tabs on whether those promises are being fulfilled and whether pledges are being followed through. I think Sunak's, I accept, he's nowhere near as bad as Johnson at this, but he still has a tendency to make big announcements and then actually not put forward plans to see them through. And, you know, I really wish that our

• 8:40Alastair Campbell?

  You would understand that its role in a democracy, particularly at a time like this, is not just to set of tellers what the latest promise is, it's also to focus on whether they've delivered on the stuff that they promised in the past.

• 8:53Rory Stewart?

  I found it bizarre as a politician. So one of the things that I tried to secure for my constituency was dueling, making a two lane road on the A sixty six, which connects Yorkshire at Scotch Corner across to Cumbria. So made the announcement. And then a year later, the government made the announcement. It was dueling the A sixty six again. Then I noticed the Secretary of State Transport made the announcement a year after that. Then I went, then my successor, Neil Hudson in the constituency, announced the dueling the A sixty six, then Grant Shapps announced it again. We're now five years on from the initial announcement. And as far as I know, the work on this road still isn't going to start until about twenty thirty two.

• 9:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and we, this is what gets my goat. When we were in government, we used to get criticised the whole time for re-announcing things. When what we were actually doing was announcing things and then reporting on the progress being made in policies that we were taking forward.

• 9:44Rory Stewart?

  It's this thing, as you see, everybody's learnt the wrong lessons from you. There's a lot of re-announcing goes on, doesn't it?

• 9:49Alastair Campbell?

  I don't like it one bit. Okay, all right, let's have a quick break.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Here we are getting a statement from Number Ten on that flight with three hundred and fifty passengers on board.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 10:21Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing three hundred and fifty people.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 10:37Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 10:39Speaker 03

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

• 10:48Speaker 08

  A FRAGO that says to kill the president of Russia?

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

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• 11:40Rory Stewart?

  Okay, now here's a question where you can kind of give us a good answer. So one of the questions is-

• 11:44Alastair Campbell?

  You're saying I don't normally give good answers, Rory?

• 11:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, this one you're going to be able to give a very, very good answer to because Andrey Dobrovolsky wants to know about speculations of great Labour big beasts returning to Labour in the not-too-distant future. She basically wants to know, where is David Miliband and what's he doing?

• 12:01Alastair Campbell?

  David Miliband is in the kitchen, having a cup of tea, waiting for me to end this podcast, then I'll go in there and we'll have a chat about stuff.

• 12:08Rory Stewart?

  That's very good. You've got the Lionel Messi of international development making you a cup of tea. Are you by any chance avoiding the fundamental question, which is when is David Miliband returning to front bench politics?

• 12:19Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not avoiding the question, I just don't have an answer for you.

• 12:22Rory Stewart?

  Our producer said, if only we could ask David Miliband, but that would require-

• 12:25Alastair Campbell?

  And the trouble is if I do that Lionel Messi's downstairs, he will want to have a chat as well. And I just think that would be very, very, very, very difficult. Here's one, Rachel Hughes, what's the question we should all be throwing out for discussion at the Christmas dinner table?

• 12:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, my question, this isn't much fun at the Christmas dinner table, but my, my fundamental question is, why have people given up talking about global poverty? Here's one fact, 1980, 170 million people living in extreme poverty in Africa, today, 470 million people. And do you remember we were going to be making poverty history? There's the SDG eliminating extreme poverty. Why is nobody talking about it anymore? Why is it, why, why have people lost focus on this?

• 13:06Alastair Campbell?

  So you're going to sit down with your mother and your sister and your two little boys and your wife, and you're going to say, let's have a chat about global poverty?

• 13:17Rory Stewart?

  No, that's true. I'm probably not going to do that.

• 13:19Alastair Campbell?

  Surely your children have want to talk about so?

• 13:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, I tell you what they want to talk about, literally all they want to talk about is Pokemon, and I don't understand anything about Pokemon. They're completely incomprehensible. Sasha Wheatcroft, do either of you like Brussels sprouts? If so, how do you like them? And do you eat them year round?

• 13:36Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely hate them.

• 13:37Rory Stewart?

  I hate them. I'm afraid it's not a very good question. Yeah. I've always had, and apparently it's to do with the fact that, I was told, this is probably nonsense, but both of us have our taste buds intact, that the only people who like Brussels sprouts are missing one key part of their taste buds.

• 13:50Alastair Campbell?

  Is that right? I'm going to go real Grinch mode now. I have a bit of an aversion, maybe this is a big difference between you and me, because you love this whole tradition, this idea of tradition. I have an aversion to events or dates that everybody is meant to be feeling and doing the same thing.

• 14:08Rory Stewart?

  Huh.

• 14:09Alastair Campbell?

  I don't really get the turkey thing. Fiona's a vegetarian, right?

• 14:13Rory Stewart?

  Oh, she's vegetarian, and you've stopped drinking, which is the other thing that everybody does.

• 14:16Alastair Campbell?

  And I don't cook, and we're not Christians. So why do we have to worry about thinking that we feel social pressure to eat a bloody turkey? I don't understand it.

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  Fortunately, as a fine old conservative, I love all of it. I'll be going to church on Christmas morning.

• 14:29Alastair Campbell?

  Will you?

• 14:30Rory Stewart?

  Blomping that, yeah. And so insanely, Trish, are we, we will be eating a goose, and therefore covering the entire kitchen floor in deep goose fat, because it always overpours the pan.

• 14:39Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so you're going to church on Christmas Day. How many times, how many other times during the year do you go to church?

• 14:44Rory Stewart?

  I do go to church quite a lot, yeah. I like going to church. You know, I'm quite, I'm quite serious about that sort of thing, yeah.

• 14:49Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 14:50Rory Stewart?

  We can talk about that a bit next year.

• 14:51Alastair Campbell?

  I love talking to, talking about religion.

• 14:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, you're quite interested in religion, aren't you?

• 14:55Alastair Campbell?

  I'm very interested in religion. I just, I just don't have faith other than in... Stuff that I think.

• 15:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, so the the thing that really changed my life was I went on an eleven day silent retreat.

• 15:06Alastair Campbell?

  I remember that, yeah.

• 15:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and that really was amazing. I think.

• 15:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, did you find God?

• 15:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think I did find God, yeah.

• 15:13Alastair Campbell?

  Wow. Did you not have him before that?

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  Not really, no. No, no.

• 15:19Alastair Campbell?

  This is the thing you went to where you you literally weren't allowed to speak to another human being?

• 15:23Rory Stewart?

  For eleven days, yeah, I meditated, whatever it was, fourteen hours a day for eleven days. Um, question for you then, Dr. Lucian Sanchez, is there a single thing that we can look forward to in twenty twenty three?

• 15:36Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, there's always things to look forward to. Burnley Room is certainly going to get promoted. I am going to make more regular trips to Glasgow to play the pipes with my tutor, Finley McDonald, at the National Piping Centre.

• 15:50Rory Stewart?

  Uh, Finley McDonald, yeah, the great, the great piper, your, your tutor.

• 15:53Alastair Campbell?

  And then I think on the, on the political front, oh, no, I really hope that the, the continuing drive towards the expulsion of the Tories from government will march on inexorably. I'm looking forward to that.

• 16:06Rory Stewart?

  So I'm looking forward to a continuing consolidation of more moderate voices. That the move away from populism in Britain and the United States, I'd like to see moving on through Latin America and Asia. I very hopeful that we will finally next year make a bit of progress on climate. And in particular, the next climate conference, which is in UAE, think more about the people who are at the receiving end of climate.

• 16:35Rory Stewart?

  People like Somalis who contribute almost none of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but have been through the fourth year of drought. There's a hundred billion dollars sitting around. And one of the things that I'm plotting with your friend David Miliband, when he gets out of his kitchen.

• 16:48Alastair Campbell?

  It's my kitchen.

• 16:49Rory Stewart?

  Your kitchen, yeah, is how he and I might be able to work together to really think about development for climate. In other words, how do we provide support for the very poorest as they suffer the extremity of climate effects? And I think that's something that next year could be the year for getting the focus back on poverty.

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, that would be a great thing. I thought it was really interesting last week, or was it this week? When the biodiversity COP, the equivalent, ended and, okay, they came to an agreement of sorts. But do you think that really, really, really depressed me? Was the line in the one of the parts of the communique that said that not a single part of the agreement of the previous COP had actually been met by governments.

• 17:36Rory Stewart?

  It's unbelievable.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  So it's really good. I mean, there has to be.

• 17:38Rory Stewart?

  And I think keeping the focus on biodiversity is a good one, Alistair, because we think a lot just about global mean temperature and climate change, but the loss of biodiversity is staggering worldwide. The loss of forest cover, the loss of biodiversity in Britain, the loss of biodiversity in Europe. And, you know, we're talking nature and all its richness. The number of species that are going extinct and being lost forever, the number of habitats that are devastated and lost. And final one, I think, as we come towards an end, Kate NS, she asks, I've got an answer for this, but I'd love to hear your answer. If you had a magic wand and could get one piece of legislation through parliament next year, what would it focus on?

• 18:15Alastair Campbell?

  Go on, the new first.

• 18:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, so my, my one is I would take legislation through to take the whole of the Green Belt and turn it into the largest forest in England. I'd want to get 300 million trees, full public access through the Green Belt, protect it from any more housing development, and create a breathing lung all the way around London to purify our air and help us with climate change.

• 18:38Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I would like the Secretary of State for levelling up, a department created to give meaning to a slogan, I think it's Michael Gove at the moment, I would like him to bring forward a bill which reinstates Sure Start and regional development agencies as key levers of levelling up.

• 18:59Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay. Well, that's a lot to discuss next week. Thank you all very much and a very, very happy, I think we would say to you, holiday season. And on that, very happy new year.

• 19:09Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.