93. Question Time: Rishi Sunak's doctor, Rory's Brad Pitt deal, and Iranian regime change?

**RORY AND ALASTAIR'S NEW PODCAST... The Rest Is Politics: Leading** Rory and Alastair are launching a new podcast - 'Leading'! Starting on Monday 16th January, a weekly episode will be released where they speak to captivating individuals - from both inside and outside of politics - about life, leadership, and leading the way in their chosen field. As you'll hear in the excerpt at the end of this Question Time pod, Michael Heseltine is the first guest, with his episode coming out this Monday, 16th January. To find this episode and subscribe to our new podcast feed, on Monday morning just search 'Leading' and 'Michael Heseltine' wherever you get your podcasts, or head over to our Twitter and Instagram pages to find the link to listen. Question Time: Is it practical to ban private schools? Should it be compulsory for students to be taught Maths until the age of 18? Is it true that Brad Pitt bought Rory's life rights? Listen to this week's Question Time to hear these questions answered, plus questions on Sunak, Starmer, Iran and NHS working conditions. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, join the TRIP Plus Discord chatroom, 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. 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.

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  So I'm going to start off with a question from Neil Garner, which was quite interesting. He says, surely it's completely understandable that the PM has private health insurance and that they'd not need to wait for an appointment. Why is the need for Rishi to avoid the question? What exactly does he gain? Surely it makes it a bigger issue. And here's Ian on the same thing. Sunak's been getting grief for refusing to say if he uses private healthcare. But if an individual can afford to go private for care and it frees up a space on the NHS, is that a bad thing? Why is it such a bad thing if he can afford to pay for it?

• 2:18Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it was a very, very bizarre thing that he... Because Margaret Thatcher, about whom we talked a fair bit with in our interview with Michael Heseltine, out soon. She was asked the same thing and she said, yes, I do. And I think Sunak is just worried about this whole sort of out of touch thing. I think people would have understood if he'd have said, I've always had private healthcare, I've always used private healthcare, but it doesn't mean I don't support the National Health Service. He could have done that.

• 2:44Rory Stewart?

  And do you think, how about the argument in this, this question that came in from Ian, which is that you could almost argue that you're relieving pressure on the NHS?

• 2:50Alastair Campbell?

  I don't like that argument because I think that is one of the arguments that they, they use to undermine the National Health Service by stealth. Somebody sent me this week a wonderful quote from Nye Bevan in his book, In Place of, In Place of Fear. And this was, this was five years into the existence of the National Health Service. And Bevan wrote, expenditure exceeded the estimates by large amounts. And Mr Churchill, with his usual lack of restraint, plunged into the attack. In this, he showed less insight than his colleagues, who watched his antics with increasing alarm. They knew the service was already popular with the people. If the service could be killed, they wouldn't mind, but they would wish it done more stealthily and in such a fashion that they would not

• 3:35Alastair Campbell?

  appear to have the responsibility. And I would argue within this that Churchill is the sort of hard right of the Tory party. Let's smash the NHS. And the government is being pretty stealthy about the whole thing. So, so we had a question from Alice Hornby, who's a doctor, and he wanted to ask you, he said, I'm a doctor, I've moved to Australia, I'm treated with respect, I have a good salary and a good lifestyle. Can you tell me why I should come back to the UK?

• 4:02Rory Stewart?

  It's tough. It's tough. A lot of doctors are going to Australia. And it's been true, actually, I think for a number of years now. I mean, it is tough. And I think you, you get the same with teachers, get the same with a lot of people.

• 4:12Alastair Campbell?

  But doctors always used to be seen as kind of pillars of the community and respected. The other thing I read this week is that a brain surgeon, a newly qualified brain surgeon, after 10 years of training, is earning 24 pounds an hour.

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  Amazing. Amazing.

• 4:31Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, that's unsustainable.

• 4:33Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing, amazing.

• 4:34Alastair Campbell?

  So why would somebody stay?

• 4:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, when they can go.

• 4:37Alastair Campbell?

  And so we have, we have this.

• 4:38Rory Stewart?

  Make much more money as well.

• 4:39Alastair Campbell?

  And the real problem at the moment is workforce. Brexit has exacerbated it. Pay is exacerbating it. And I, I just, I can't see what the government's strategies and this idea that a sort of, you know, Keir Starmer was running this line about plaster, putting the plaster on. I mean, if they do decide that the solution to this pay dispute is a one-off payment,

• 5:00Alastair Campbell?

  how is that going to resolve anything?

• 5:02Rory Stewart?

  I'm with you. Okay, here's Hans G from Discord. So Discord, and so for those of you listening, it's our new app where you get to debate and argue with us, connected to the rest of politics. So Hans G is coming from Discord and he said, if we banned private schools, as Alistair suggests, how would we deal with the issues it brings, such as more kids in the state sector, but no equivalent increase in funding? Ideologically, I'm against them, but I want to know how you get rid of them without creating more problems. He also asked, would you still allow overseas students to attend by paying? So the idea there is Labour's going around saying that if you took away, for example, the VAT on schools, you'd save 1.4 billion. But many of the head teachers I talked to in smaller private schools around the country,

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  you know, some of the ex-grammar schools that became private schools, schools charging 10, 12,000 pounds a year, parents on middle income say, the school have to close. We put 20% up on those salaries and all those kids are going to find themselves back in the state sector. And so that money that you made, the 1.4 million you made by the VAT on private schools, then has to be used to pay for the kids going back into the state sector.

• 6:07Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, look, I, I've always said, I, I think those countries that have next to no private education sector, like Canada, like Finland, they're always up there at the top. And I think the reason, one of the reasons for that is that everybody feels a sense of belonging to a state education system. And I think that because of our history, because of our culture, I might like to think there were never going to be private schools, but I think that is even for me, a total pipe dream. So I've never actually, he's slightly misrepresented my position. However, at the moment, the state is subsidizing private schools.

• 6:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Alastair Campbell?

  Now, is that a good use of state money?

• 6:47Rory Stewart?

  Well, if it's saving the state the money on educating them in the state sector, yes.

• 6:52Alastair Campbell?

  Why don't we, why don't we use that argument in relation to the health service then? Do we think that it's a good thing for people to leave the National Health Service? Because I think what you do when that happens, it loses its political power. You have half a million kids in private schools in the UK. You have eight million kids who are in state schools. Because so many of the powerful people in the country and the opinion formers are in this private sector, I think you lose a lot of that political power that you would have if we all felt a sense of commitment to and ownership of a sector. And I just think it's unfair. Rishi Sunak, okay, I won't personalize it, but those who use the top private schools are basically saying,

• 7:36Alastair Campbell?

  my kids deserve to have three times more spent on their education than the people for whom I'm actually responsible as the Prime Minister or the Education Secretary, and I just think that's wrong.

• 7:46Rory Stewart?

  So I think the only thing, though, that in the debate sometimes gets lost is that this question about putting 20% tax on private schools isn't going to affect the kind of Etons and the Winchesters this world with these super wealthy parents paying these very high school fees.

• 8:03Alastair Campbell?

  But why do they get any benefits at all?

• 8:06Rory Stewart?

  The schools that will be wiped out are going to be the small cathedral choir schools, the ex-grammar schools, the sorts of private schools that I've seen in the north of England, where people, sort of private schools that you see around Birmingham, where people are paying £10,000, £15,000 a year, those schools will all close.

• 8:22Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 8:22Rory Stewart?

  You won't get rid of the Etons this way.

• 8:24Alastair Campbell?

  But why should, okay, you made a buy, not me, why should Eton qualify for any public subsidy at all? It's got 40, we talked, it's got 40 football pitches.

• 8:37Rory Stewart?

  I'm with you on that. I think it's much more difficult to defend the tax exemption on these super wealthy schools. I couldn't agree more. Because I don't think that's a policy, I don't think it's a workable policy. You'd either put it on all the schools, you put it on none of the schools.

• 8:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's a very convenient way of saying you put it on none.

• 8:53Rory Stewart?

  Well, at the moment, I would argue the reason why you put in on none is that you'll end up with a lot of pressure on the state sector if you end up closing a lot of private stores.

• 9:00Alastair Campbell?

  And I would argue.

• 9:01Rory Stewart?

  And you don't have the capacity.

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  And I would argue that the political power and the necessity to develop the state sector in a way that it is being developed in countries that are being better educated than we are would improve if that happened.

• 9:14Rory Stewart?

  I can understand that. Let's take a quick break on that and come back in a second.

• 9:17Speaker 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.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 9:54Alastair Campbell?

  Hello, welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 9:57Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 9:58Alastair Campbell?

  And before we get into the second half proper, fabulous to see over 1,300 members of the Rest is Politics Plus on our new chatroom on the website Discord. Now, I've got to be honest Rory, because I'm technologically so challenged, I tried to get in and I couldn't, but somebody's going to give me a tutorial. I think you and I should occasionally go in there and have a chat.

• 10:17Rory Stewart?

  My mother, whose age I'm not allowed to say on the podcast, is using Discord. And, you know, she was enough a contemporary of Michael Heseltine to be able to see him in his glory in the Oxford Union. She's on Discord.

• 10:28Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I'll get there. I will get there.

• 10:31Rory Stewart?

  So there's a channel on Discord already dedicated entirely to language learning, which is real, a reason for you to get in there.

• 10:37Alastair Campbell?

  I totally love it. I do love that. And I saw a survey recently from the British Council. Which was all about how the damage that we were doing to ourselves as a country by just going backwards, ever further backwards in relation to the learning of foreign languages. Well, here's one, Rory.

• 10:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to admit a mistake of the last Labour government.

• 10:56Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 10:57Alastair Campbell?

  How rarely do I do this?

• 10:58Rory Stewart?

  Very rarely.

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  Right, well, I think getting rid of a compulsory language teaching was a bad thing.

• 11:02Rory Stewart?

  Good, good, glad to hear that. Now, if you're interested in joining, just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up to The Rest is Politics Plus and get the Discord invite in your welcome email. If you're already a member, you should have had an invite last week. And any problems, just send a message to [email protected]. Okay, Alison, here is a question, you just talked about language learning, from Fintan Lallor. What's your view of Prime Minister Sunak's plan to bring maths in for the full duration of UK pre-university education? What other subjects, Fanny, should be taught throughout the entirety of education?

• 11:35Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, who's going to teach this maths? We haven't got enough maths teachers now. I mean, I honestly thought that was one of the most bizarre new year announcements I can ever remember. That was what he came back into.

• 11:47Rory Stewart?

  If you could get enough teachers, do you think it's a good idea?

• 11:51Alastair Campbell?

  I certainly think it's a good idea to make people more numerate.

• 11:57Alastair Campbell?

  But maths, everybody maths to A level, I'm not convinced.

• 11:59Rory Stewart?

  Just one thing to, very rare for us to do this, but praise the Conservative government. One of the things they've done since 2010 is we have actually moved significantly up the rankings on maths and numeracy, the comparative international rankings. Eight, nine points up in these PISA rankings. We're now leading the pack just below the kind of stars like Japan and South Korea. Getting closer within touching distance of Finland and Sweden, that's quite an achievement.

• 12:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I'm all in favour of our kids leaving school or going to go into college and university, better educated across the field. Whether I would pick out maths as the universal priority for all, I'm not sure. Right, here we are. Rory, what is, somebody just says Meghan. I don't think it's that Meghan. I'm assuming it's not that Meghan. But it does say, what's happening to Rory's movie? What is this movie about?

• 12:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so Brad Pitt brought the rights to my life.

• 12:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Rory Stewart?

  But this was back in 2008.

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Rory Stewart?

  Before I became an MP, when I was a slightly more interesting glamorous figure than I am today.

• 13:00Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 13:01Rory Stewart?

  And then he paid me, he paid me my life rights, paid me for a number of years. But then basically I became a Conservative MP and he decided I was no longer a sexy subject for a movie anymore.

• 13:10Alastair Campbell?

  But does he still own the rights to your life?

• 13:12Rory Stewart?

  No, I've got the rights back again.

• 13:13Alastair Campbell?

  You've got them back?

• 13:14Rory Stewart?

  I've got them back again. I've got my life back again.

• 13:16Alastair Campbell?

  Was he thinking about playing you?

• 13:18Rory Stewart?

  Actually, very interesting. Orlando Bloom wanted to play me and came up to see me in Scotland. What, do you remember Orlando Bloom vaguely?

• 13:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he seems like an elf in the Lord of the Rings. And I was going obviously very strongly for Danny DeVito.

• 13:32Alastair Campbell?

  I'm aware of your absolute obsession with Danny DeVito.

• 13:36Rory Stewart?

  Okay, does Keir Starmer, this Mark Hotsock, refusal to rejoin the European single market, risk Labour failing to win a majority at the next election? I'm in a Redwall constituency and my vote is going elsewhere at the next election because of this.

• 13:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's not alone. I know that. And I, I do understand why Labour don't want to make the next election all about Brexit. But I think that this business of being more Catholic than the Pope, or trying to appear to be more Catholic than the Pope, we talked about the Take Back Control Bill.

• 14:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Alastair Campbell?

  Which is a way of trying to sort of wrap devolution in a Brexit flag. I was recently swimming and there's lots of people I know who go swimming and some, some of them I know want to talk about politics, lots of them don't. There's one guy-

• 14:23Rory Stewart?

  It's freezingly cold. How do you talk about politics? You're in the water for about 90 seconds.

• 14:27Alastair Campbell?

  It's the showers where the conversation is. The showers, that's where the conversation, and sometimes the sauna, Rory.

• 14:32Rory Stewart?

  I don't think I want to infest it, you in the sauna.

• 14:34Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, well, this guy who I've never heard him express a political view. And I've never forced my political views upon him. There's the people there who like to talk about politics, people who don't. And he just volunteered to me the other day. He said, what do you think about Keir Starmer? I said, he's doing a good job and I think I hope he'll be the next prime minister. And he said, well, I can't vote for him. I said, why not? It's just because of this Brexit thing. And so I think there are people like that who think that they want a grown up conversation. I hope people listen to the conversation we have about with Michael Heseltine, because I think on the Europe point, it is so important to our future and we're not having a grown up conversation about how we fix the mess. So listen, it's not going to lose in the election.

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Alastair Campbell?

  But I don't think it helps if you lose a even a small part of a constituency. Because they think you're not facing up to one of the biggest challenges the country faces.

• 15:28Rory Stewart?

  Very good. So here's a question about from Bryony Burnham. Like to know your thoughts on the regime in Iran and the resistance young women are showing after years of being dictated to about their clothing lifestyles and personal freedoms. Are we about to see change in Iran or devastation? I'll put in my penny worth and hand to you so we can finish. So I think this is very, very serious. There has never been a time since the revolution when so many moderate Iranians are so desperately against the regime. And the big change has been the change from the opposition, which would have been talking 10, 15 years ago about reform, to just saying, we want to get rid of the whole regime entirely.

• 16:06Rory Stewart?

  And the level of repression, the level of anger, the level of resistance that brave women are showing by removing their headscarves to the streets. Now, whether that's the end of the regime, I mean, I still remain convinced, looking at Myanmar and others, it's remarkable how brutal regimes can last much longer than anyone can imagine. But there's no doubt they have lost the support of the entire educated urban population away they haven't before.

• 16:30Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing that's hopeful. Is that despite the repression and the barbarism and the killings, there's a lot of killings going on, hangings, that the resistance keeps rising up and keeps coming up in some pretty surprising quarters as well. So those people, particularly the women, but they are unbelievably rave and probably back to our old problem, the news media moves on, don't get the recognition they deserve, don't get the international support they deserve. But I think probably the fact that they just keep going gives us grounds to be a little bit hopeful.

• 17:07Rory Stewart?

  Good.

• 17:07Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, let's hold it there. Gives us the chance to give everyone a quick taste of our new podcast, which we've called The Rest Is Politics: Leading. We've decided to put all our new interviews into one place. We have lined up a whole variety of people, some in politics, some not in politics. Not going on The Rest Is Politics because as people have already heard, they're not all going to be politicians. Podcast is going to be released weekly on Mondays until we run out of people to interview, but I guess we never will.

• 17:35Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Well, looking forward to it very much. So our first ever guest on The Rest Is Politics: Leading is?

• 17:40Alastair Campbell?

  First up is Michael Heseltine, former Deputy Prime Minister, a man who's been around for many, many decades, a big, big beast in the British political scene and a major part of the rise and fall of Margaret Thatcher. Our first guest, Lord Heseltine.

• 18:04Rory Stewart?

  We're facing strikes at the moment, train strikes, NHS strikes, potentially teacher strikes. Do you think that Rishi Sunak and the Conservative government is doing the right thing in trying to hold the line against the unions and not increase wages? Or would you be making more concessions?

• 18:17Speaker 05

  No, I think that Rishi has brought sanity back to British politics. It's a very interesting contrast. I think I understand what he's doing and I respect it. We've had a rollercoaster and you use quite dramatic language, if you like, about recent prime ministers. But what I think Rishi has said is, look, we've really got to do some hard grind on these big issues. And that means sitting in number 10 with people who understand and working out the details and bringing back the changes that are needed.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  And that's all rather boring, because what people want is someone flying all over the place and waving a flag or jumping in and out of a tank.

• 19:04Alastair Campbell?

  He doesn't seem to be doing that, though. He doesn't seem to me to have a plan either.

• 19:07Speaker 05

  Ah, well, this is, this is where we will see, because he's got five plans. And in his interview with Laura Koonsberg, I think he repeated them at least six times.

• 19:19Alastair Campbell?

  I think he thought he was doing a clip, when he was actually meant to be doing a half hour interview.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  But you, you as a genius of the, of the PR political world, would have said to him, Rishi, you've got five points, keep repeating them.

• 19:30Alastair Campbell?

  No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. There's a difference between repeating yourself and saying, making the same point. But I don't think a plan for the country came over in that interview or in his speech.

• 19:39Speaker 05

  Well, it, it did come over in the sense that he had thought about the issues. He had thought about what people were concerned about. And he was trying to identify with people's concerns, which I suspect he did, that people heard all these points. And, uh, right, he's, he knows what he's doing. Now, what I would expect to see him do is to start trying to say, month by month, these are the ways in which the things I promised you are happening. Where we haven't yet seen, and maybe that's because he, he's not that sort of person, where's the vision, where's the language, where's the rhetoric, where's

• 20:21Speaker 05

  the high ground? And he's helped, of course, because his opponent hasn't much skill in that direction either.

• 20:28Rory Stewart?

  What would your advice be to him dealing with RMT and train strikes at the moment? Or indeed NHS strikes, nurses?

• 20:37Speaker 05

  Well, I think that, in a sense, it's what he's saying. He, and I would, if I was advising him, I would say, look, let's be upfront. You're talking about honesty in politics. Now, let's be honest. Here is a guy who spent extraordinary sums of money, of taxpayers' money, borrowed money, in order to combat the most horrendous threat, which Covid was. And now it looks less of a threat, but at the time, completely unpredictable, and with the most... Awful consequences and Rishi first of all provided the cash to deal with Covid, but produced enormous sums of money to subsidize the people's jobs. And he should be upfront about that.

• 21:21Speaker 05

  This is what I spent. Of course, it's part of our problem today and there's a price to pay and all of us are going to pay it and I wish it was otherwise, but I would not have changed anything I did to produce the circumstances we've got. We've now got inflation and of course I can say what people are saying, give a bit more, give a bit less, but this is never one off. Every time you give something to someone, someone else says they got it, I want it. And so the inflationary pressures build on themselves and the only alternative is an element of sacrifice.

• 21:56Alastair Campbell?

  But then it's about who makes the sacrifice.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  About who makes, yes.

• 21:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and that I think is where, at least when you were doing what you were doing and you, for example, doing the stuff that you were doing regeneration in Liverpool and you could go up there as a bit of a Tory toff and people would like you and you've given the freedom of the city and all that stuff and you did deliver something for those people. I don't see in Rishi Sunak, somebody who has a sense of who those people are, the lives that they lead and the challenges that they face. And that's what came through to me from that interview was a guy who doesn't understand people's lives.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  You see, this is the advantage of hindsight. When I did the things I did, starting in London, not Liverpool, no one believed that I knew what I was doing. When, well, I can tell you, when I was in Liverpool, I'll never forget someone on the streets shouting, give us jobs, not trees, because I'd given them a garden festival. And so the only benefit I've had, and I'm very proud of it, is years later, and this is, I mean, we haven't talked about regeneration, but there is no short term fix for regeneration. It's a long term grind with certain very clear objectives. And so Rishi can take comfort from the thought that he's

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Gun to articulate what he wants to try and achieve. If it works, then he'll get the credit and he he's short of time, let's be frank, the general election not very far away.

• 23:27Alastair Campbell?

  You voted Lib Dem in the European elections, as did I. You got you lost the whip, I got kicked out the party. You can't vote in the general election because you're a member of the House of Lords, but what I'm I'm assuming you're now back in the fold. And with Johnson gone and Truss gone, you will you would vote Tory.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  No, no, I lost the whip because I voted for Parliament to be given the last say on Brexit. And three weeks after I lost the whip, the government decided that was what they were going to do.

• 23:57Rory Stewart?

  It's a policy anyway.

• 23:57Speaker 05

  The policy anyway, and that curious enough, my first revolt on the Conservative Party, which was in the sixties, was over the race relations legislation, Wilson, I think, Wilson legislation.

• 24:09Alastair Campbell?

  You abstained.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, and my party three weeks later came round to what I'd done.

• 24:15Rory Stewart?

  Obviously, the time when you were losing the whip was was also the time when Boris Johnson effectively threw out of Parliament. Ken Clark, Nicholas Soames, Philip Hammond and all these people. Um, do you think that was a change in British politics? Can you imagine a previous Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, Jim Callaghan, throwing out such senior figures from the party for voting against them?

• 24:35Speaker 05

  Uh, well, I haven't done a search to find out what penalties Margaret applied in in given the circumstances.

• 24:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, he not only took the whip away, he took the whip away immediately before a general election, so they were unable to.

• 24:48Alastair Campbell?

  She also liked having arguments.

• 24:50Speaker 05

  Margaret?

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  She loved having arguments, whereas I don't think Johnson does.

• 24:54Speaker 05

  But but curious enough, Margaret, that was one of her, she started here, you know, foreigners, we don't like foreigners, Europe, we don't like all that.

• 25:03Alastair Campbell?

  For those who for our listeners, Mr. Heseltine was Lord Heseltine, Michael was punching his gut there, she started in the gut.

• 25:09Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, quite right, but but when you talk to Margaret and you argued with her, you could persuade her and that, of course, you see, one of Margaret's greatest achievements, without any shadow of doubt, is the single European market. People, the ignorance in this country as to what goes on in Europe. British civil servants queue up to fly to Brussels to be part of the machine. And Margaret was not prepared, quite rightly, to let the French and Germans fix the single market like they fixed the common agricultural policy when we kept away. So she sent Arthur Cofield there to fix it for Britain, quite rightly, and brilliantly did he achieve it.

• 25:49Speaker 05

  So the idea that there are all these nameless foreigners out there, they're all Brits or French or Germans, or whatever it may be.

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, by taking us down the path you took us there, you allowed Michael to avoid my question about whether he would vote Conservative in the next election if he had a vote.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Well, I don't have a vote.

• 26:05Alastair Campbell?

  I know you don't have a vote, that's why I said, if you had a vote, would you vote Conservative? Would you urge people to vote Conservative in the next election, given what's happened in the last decade?

• 26:13Speaker 05

  It would be difficult for me. I'm a member of the party. It was a very important point, since they took the whip away, but they don't mind taking my money. And so I deliberately give money to the Scots Conservatives because they're actually pro-European. And so my conscience is absolutely clear. But the question, the real question for me is, do you leave the party and leave the field? Or do you stay and fight? And my position is clear. I am a Conservative. You cannot be more Conservative in record or conviction in a lifetime than me. And so I'm not prepared to be silenced within the party.

• 26:56Speaker 05

  If the party wants to move its policies, that's up to it. But they're not going to make me change my fundamental views.

• 27:03Alastair Campbell?

  Where does that leave you in terms of, if somebody comes to you and says, I'm really struggling with what to do with my vote in the next election, I respect you as a human being, as a political figure, my politics are very similar to you, who do you think I should vote for? What do you say to them?

• 27:15Speaker 05

  Well, I get this so often every day.

• 27:17Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  That's my problem.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  So what do you say?

• 27:19Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm not going to, but I could name you a great swathe of my friends, even my family, who are saying just that to me.

• 27:27Alastair Campbell?

  And what do you say to them?

• 27:28Speaker 05

  I think probably, I don't know what I'm going to say to them, because I don't really know what the Conservative platform's going to be. But equally, it's very difficult to see how I could vote for somebody else.

• 27:41Alastair Campbell?

  Let's hold it there. Search for The Rest is Politics leading in the description to this episode. Well, there we are. Thank you. See you soon.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You starved, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.