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- [00:01]
Alastair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com.
- [00:13]
Rory Stewart
The rest is politics is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy and Rory.
- [00:17]
Alastair Campbell
You know that Fuse have been very generous in their offers to members and to supporters of the Rest is Politics. So how about this one? Anyone who switches energy supply to Fuse, you get free membership to this wonderful podcast and the rest is politics plus for the rest of 2025.
- [00:35]
Rory Stewart
Well that's a very very generous offer indeed. All you have to do is go to getfuse.com politics and use the referral code politics when signing up and you.
- [00:45]
Alastair Campbell
Will get as a member of Trip all of the episodes ad free question time episode. You'll get that a day before everybody else. You get access to members only live streams. You get early access to tickets for our live shows days before the general.
- [00:58]
Rory Stewart
Public and we'd love to have you as one of our members and hopefully it's just the perk you need if you're considering switching energy provider. It's always worth mentioning that Fuse generate power from their own solar and wind farms and they invest 100% of profits into building more renewables.
- [01:12]
Alastair Campbell
Anyway, Roy, I had a look at Trustpilot and on there people give fuse 4.7 out of 5. That's a very, very high mark in the modern demanding age. And there is comment after comment about how helpful and attentive people find the service that they get. And I do think people appreciate speaking to real human beings rather than those awful chatbots.
- [01:36]
Rory Stewart
So download Fuse's app now and use the referral code politics after signing up, visit getfuse.com politics for the terms and conditions and to learn more.
- [01:47]
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- [03:12]
Alastair Campbell
Welcome to the rest of Sporitics Question time with me, Asda Campbell.
- [03:15]
Rory Stewart
And with me, Rory Stewart. And my goodness, we got a lot of questions. As always, huge thank you to subscribers. So just to remind people, you can subscribe to the Restless Politics plus, it gives you early access to a lot of our recordings, it gives you early access to our live shows. But we're also increasingly putting out content which is only available for Restless Politics subscribers. So thank you for people who've come in, subscribers who are asking questions. Where would you like to start?
- [03:42]
Alastair Campbell
Alistair Rory, I think if there's one subject we got the most questions on, it's actually what we discussed on the main podcast, which is America and Europe. But let's just maybe go with a couple of those. Will Taylor, how dangerous is Europe's exclusion from the Ukraine peace talks? JJ what would it look like for the UK to move away from the US as its closest ally? Ian May with the political disintegration of the eu, I'm not sure about that. Should the UK take the lead in creating a European military coalition to protect the continent against the threat from Russia?
- [04:18]
Rory Stewart
Well, I think the first thing is that being allied with Europe is very different from being allied with the US because despite all the talk about a common defense and security policy, the truth is that European nations still pursue their own interests. And you can see often very dramatic splits. Orban and Hungary famously won't go along with things. Poland will push very hard forward with initiatives which France might be resisting on particular issues. And basically what it means is that instead of getting one enormous economy, the U.S. which is 50% larger than the European economies, and this enormous integrated military behind you, you're dependent on this very difficult coordination between European countries. Now, there are other problems. I mean, of course, Europe isn't spending as much as the US in percentage terms or actual terms on defense. But even if it were, you have the massive problems as you've talked about in the past, the amount that Greece spends on pensions, on the armed forces, the fact that individual European countries often tend, understandably to invest a great deal in frontline troops, but much less in the logistics in the air pitcher and the coordination which then has to be provided by the us. So there's really good reasons now. I mean, as Trump becomes more and more unreliable as a partner, as he begins to signal his departure from European values, his increasing love affair with people like Putin, there will be more pressure, but it will be a very big transition.
- [05:51]
Alastair Campbell
That's why I think we have to accept that the Trump first term message, that NATO countries weren't spending enough on their own defence has been, I think, now finally heard. But I don't think anybody expected, first time around, that one of the reasons why Europe would be getting its act together on defence finally was actually because it started to see America in a very difficult and negative light. And that, I think, is what has sparked this kind of, you know, element of panic, I think, attached to it. And it'd be very, very interesting next week when Keir Starmer does meet Donald Trump and they talk about some of this stuff is just to work out how Britain figures within it.
- [06:32]
Rory Stewart
Well, so here's a question then. Peter Wright, presumably not the guy from the great spy scandal sent in Australia in the 1980s.
- [06:40]
Alastair Campbell
Spy cancer.
- [06:41]
Rory Stewart
On the last episode, you were bigging up a Customs Union. Whilst I agree completely, isn't that exactly what was put forward by Labour under Corbyn in 2019 and was roundly pooh poohed by many of your centrist listeners? What changed? Well, let me add to that. I was a big, big supporter of the Customs Union and in fact, in a desperate attempt to try to get a soft Brexit through, managed to corral with my friend Alex Chalk and Ken Clark, 32 of our Conservative colleagues, and to go into the voting lobbies with Corbyn to try to get a customs union through. But the reason we didn't get it through was not in the end because of opposition from Brexiteers, it was because of opposition from hard remainers who still believed that they could trigger a second referendum. And therefore the problem for them were the Customs Union. And I lost in the lobbies people like Sam Gima, whose votes I needed. I also lost some of the more extreme labor second referendum people because they sort of believed that destroying any Brexit deal, including a soft Brexit deal, would mean that they could stay in the European Union. Over to you.
- [07:46]
Alastair Campbell
That was a very nice Non threatening over to you. But basically, I know that you blame people like me for this. So my Fiona was saying the other day that, you know, there might be a bit of a sort of revising of the views of Jeremy Corbyn, because of course, she said, you know, he was always banging on about Israel, he was always banging on about America, he was always banging on about the Customs Union. I want to draw attention to a substack by Peter Kellner. Now, we know Peter Best for being a pollster, but Peter has actually written a very, very good piece which I'm sure he won't mind if we put it in the newsletter. And I think I'm going to ask the new European to take a look at it as well. But essentially he's been out talking to people, small businesses, the kind of people that we talked to last week that I mentioned, who were really wanting to see real change on this, on this reset. And he basically is just getting their story about what it is like to be a small or medium sized business person who's dealing with this paperwork. And bear in mind, this is why Farage should never be allowed to forget. They promised that Brexit was going to get rid of quotes, Brussels red tape. He basically is talking to people who used to have one form that they filled in, they now have three. He's talking to people who have seen their freight costs soaring. He's talking to people who often are seeing their exports facing double tariffs. And he's talking to people who have lost their goods in customs checks, processes. And he's talking to people who've lost lots of staff because they've gone back. And he says this. I asked each of these business leaders what they would say if they could ask Keir Starmer of one specific change when he seeks to reset UK EU relations. Their responses included, sign up to all EU standards so there is no need for customs delays. Radically reduce the paperwork involved in trading across the Channel, allow EU workers to come to Britain as easily as they did before Brexit, change the rules of origin system so that tariffs are never charged twice. So, you know, whether we're going to call it the Customs Union or not, that is the deal that somehow Keir Starmer has got to get out of Europe.
- [10:05]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, absolutely.
- [10:06]
Alastair Campbell
We don't disagree on this one, do we?
- [10:07]
Rory Stewart
We don't. I think we might have done back in 2019, but I don't think we disagree on it.
- [10:11]
Alastair Campbell
We did, we did, we agreed.
- [10:13]
Rory Stewart
Don't think we disagreed, don't think we.
- [10:14]
Alastair Campbell
Disagree on it disagree then, but now we agree violently.
- [10:17]
Rory Stewart
Got a good challenge from a guy called Richard Snowden. Watching Trump talk about usaid, I felt some similarities with the way Rory spoke about some aspects. The waste of money in dfid, Department for International Development while reading Politics on the Edge. Yet on the podcast last week, he was roundly criticizing the President's approach. Have I misinterpreted or are there not areas of agreement between Rory and Donald Trump that government aid spending is frequently wasteful? It's a really, really good challenge. And I got it from a lot of people. A lot of people said, hey, Rory, go easy here. You know, you're very aware of just what nonsense was going on in international development in DfID. You've been very clear about some of the madness in usaid. I got a friend of mine from Afghanistan called Benji writing to me saying, rory, I never thought I'd hear you become this kind of full throated defender of USAID in that way. I've had another friend saying, rory, the whole point about the charities that you used to run, like GiveDirectly or Turquoise Mountain, is they were doing stuff that these big development agencies often didn't want to do. And it's true. So, I mean, I think this is part of the problem of polarization, which is I don't know how you get the middle line and the temptation is never to give an inch. But obviously what I should have said is, look, of course USAID did some terrible programs. DFID actually often did some terrible programs. These aid agencies were far too expensive. The management costs were crazy. There were these beltway bandits that took huge commissions on implementing. But that doesn't mean we should have abolished dfid. That doesn't mean you should have got rid of usaid. It means that you need to reform and improve the way in which they operate. And the problem is, of course, that. And maybe it's a little bit like our debate about a soft Brexit. It's awfully difficult to hit that middle ground and say, look, there's something terribly wrong with it, but I still think it's better than the alternatives. Making the argument for the lesser evil, saying, if I had to choose between no international development aid at all or keeping DFID and USAID intact, I'd keep them intact. But it's the same with Afghanistan. People set up this false choice. Do you either put in 150,000 troops, $150 billion a year, or do you do absolutely nothing? Well, the answer is actually you do Smarter stuff in the middle. But there's not much room for that in the policy debate.
- [12:35]
Alastair Campbell
Right, here's one from another member, Roy, called Sleekit Scotsman. How would you define sleek? It sort of a bit sneaky. A bit sneaky. Anyway, Sleeky Scotsman asked this question. In the next year, could you see America, China, India and Russia breaking away from the United nations, disbanding brics and forming their own alternative security architecture and economic structures to replace the un? Phew.
- [13:03]
Rory Stewart
I'm still fixated with wee sleek it, cowering, timorous beastie, or what's a panic sin, et cetera. Yeah, go on then, you have a stab at that. While I think about Rabbi Burns, I.
- [13:14]
Alastair Campbell
Don'T think it's impossible that some sort of new structure would emerge because the United nations is struggling and it's struggling because of the weight that's put upon it and the inter. And the divisions that appear to me to be at times irreconcilable. America doesn't like the United Nations. America doesn't like any international institutions right now.
- [13:34]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. My problem though is that the likelihood is that you end up not with a new structure, but you end up with nothing. Because the reason why the UN is crippled is, is that the us, China and India and Russia basically can't agree on things, particularly us, China, Russia, Britain, France, Security Council can't agree on anything. And the point of these international institutions were supposed to be accepting rules, rules around state sovereignty, borders, peace. And so I can't quite see what this new institution that the Secret Scotsman, and thank you secret Scotts for being a member, is proposing, because we're losing all the things that the UN was supposed to be about. Above all, we're losing the shared values, shared principles, shared set of international law which the UN was supposed to implement. And I can't see what the new body would come together on. What's more likely is you'd have a series of ad hoc meetings like Putin meeting Trump in Saudi Arabia, where powers try to cook things up over the head of smaller members. But that's exactly what international institutions were supposed to prevent.
- [14:43]
Alastair Campbell
Probably slick it, Scotsman. Which modern day politician do you think best suits the adjective sleek? It.
- [14:50]
Rory Stewart
Oh, my goodness.
- [14:52]
Alastair Campbell
Gosh, Michael, go.
- [14:54]
Rory Stewart
Hey, that's very good. Very good. And he's Scotch.
- [14:57]
Alastair Campbell
Peter Mandelson.
- [14:59]
Rory Stewart
Peter Mandelson.
- [15:00]
Alastair Campbell
Very sleepy, our new ambassador.
- [15:02]
Rory Stewart
Very good.
- [15:02]
Alastair Campbell
He's gonna have to be quite sleek. He's out in America, isn't he?
- [15:05]
Rory Stewart
Maybe it's the language and the echoes that gives an impression of a se smoothly going through, or in fact, one of those Scottish mythical beasts that change from a seal into a sort of beautiful woman, and then just as you fall in love with them, slip back into the water again.
- [15:19]
Alastair Campbell
We do mean Machiavellian, don't we, really?
- [15:21]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And smooth and slippery. Okay, Konashian. The Irish military budget is rising. And in the wake of the war in Ukraine, polls are showing that support for NATO membership are growing in the Republic. Do you think Ireland will seek NATO membership in the near future? Now, to remind people, this is to do with neutrality. So traditionally, there were certain countries that just didn't want to get involved in anything, and amongst them was Switzerland, famously Ireland. But Sweden and Finland were also examples of countries that remained neutral and didn't get involved in NATO. And famously, Ireland found itself Republicans in pretty awkward positions in relation to Nazi Germany during the Second World War. I don't want every Irish listener immediately writing in and. And relitigating the question of what exactly Eamon de Valera's position was in relation to Hitler and British ships.
- [16:12]
Alastair Campbell
Talk about leading the chin there, Rory.
- [16:14]
Rory Stewart
Leading your chin. But definitely this question of neutrality is very fundamental to Irish identity. Do you think that there is a world in which it might follow Sweden and Finland into NATO?
- [16:24]
Alastair Campbell
I don't know about that. But I'll tell you a couple of things, observations that come to mind. The first is that we've seen since the October 7th that Ireland is very, very proud of its kind of pro Palestinian position. It's hard to say that Ireland is neutral in the question of Palestine, Israel. And the other thing I think that's interesting is whether whether Ireland feels that it has that very special relationship with the United States. It was there with Clinton, and Clinton was hugely committed to the Northern Ireland peace process. George Bush, to be fair to him, kept plugging away at it as well with Biden. When Biden was around, he never, ever stopped telling people how proud he was of his Irish roots. I don't know whether within the context of Trump, I don't know how Ireland feels or how it felt first time around.
- [17:20]
Rory Stewart
Is this not part of the question, Alastair, around smaller countries and how they deal with the US and whether we're going to see a world in which countries are going to begin to coordinate their response because there's all this divide and rule. As you point out, when people are going after Canada, Denmark's not speaking up for Canada. And when people going after Denmark, vice versa. And I wonder what it's going to take to get people to really form a group because they'll always feel, won't they, a bit like Britain seems to feel at the moment? Well, you know, maybe we can get a good deal here. We don't want to alienate and we don't want. I'm a bit depressed by how few, few of my former colleagues in the Conservative Party and even in the Labour Party are actually coming out and calling out Trump for what he's doing. Given that Trump, in his second term is such an existential threat to democracy in the US internationally, to the Middle east peace process, to Ukraine, why are so few MPs coming out on the record attacking Trump?
- [18:21]
Alastair Campbell
Well, it's worse than that. I don't know if you saw that Kemi Badenok was out making a speech, kind of echoing Vance's talking points on freedom of speech. We said when we talked to Mark Carney, I think all three of us are surprised that given how close the UK is to Canada on all sorts of levels, how nobody has really. Very few people have come out and call that out. I think it's a reflection of the fact that America is still the most powerful country in the world. They're treading very warily while these few first steps get taken.
- [18:55]
Rory Stewart
Just a footnote on that, which we touched on a little bit last week, is that Saudi unexpectedly came out very, very clearly against the US almost initially within 24 hours on Gaza, when you would have expected it to just keep quiet in the way that UAE and others did. So there are little chinks emerging of US allies beginning to come out more strongly, but it's still very muted.
- [19:16]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. And that hasn't stopped Donald Trump from saying, I'd like to have my meeting with Vladimir in Saudi Arabia. I just think that the one thing that Mark Carney was saying, which the Canadians have been emphasizing, is that this guy doesn't respect weakness. You've got to be strong. Here's a really good question from Martin when we do this before going to a break, Rory, should the US appoint an opposition leader, as there is in the UK and Australia? There does seem to be a real problem with the Democrats. Who do we look to for opposition to Trump? On the Democrat side, it's not Kamala Harris, it's not Joe Biden, it's not the Obamas, it's not the Clintons, it's not the guys really in the House who seems to me are struggling to find their voice and find their footing.
- [20:01]
Rory Stewart
The Republicans have often been better at it, haven't they? Because Newt Gingrich was a very central figure of opposition to Democratic administrations. And Trump, of course, acted as the major voice of the opposition to Biden. And as we've said, you can see Bernie Sanders putting out a lot of material, AOC putting out a lot of material, the senator for Connecticut putting out a lot of material. But no, we're not getting that sense that there's certainly not any equivalent of Newt Gingrich, let alone Trump coming out.
- [20:27]
Alastair Campbell
Against him, surely at some point as well, having lost the election the way they did and lost the popular vote and with all the kind of I even heard Katie K. And Anthony Scaramucci the other day talking about, you know, one day might California turn red, turn Republican? So there's clearly a big debate has to happen within the Democrat Party. How is that going to take place? Who is going to lead it? What is the outcome going to be? I mean, we're not in America. You are in America right now. Do you have a sense of that debate taking place?
- [21:00]
Rory Stewart
I think Americans are shell shocked. I mean, it's in the time after Trump's first election, there was an incredible flurry of really impressive articles and books pointing out what a threat Trump posed to the Constitution. So we interviewed on leading, for example, Tim Snyder, who wrote this book on tyranny and has did a lot of stuff on how you spot fascism rising. And I think there are two things happening. One is the sense that people cannot quite believe that despite all the work that was done, despite January 6th, we don't talk enough about January 6th. I mean, January 6th was such a big thing. A US president denying the result of an election, despite all the effort put into prosecuting him, despite the massive spend by many people, including Reid Hoffman, who we interfered on leading behind Democrats, that it failed. And I think people are just reeling. But the thing that I'm worried about, of course, is that the next step from reeling is that as Trump dismantles institutions, there's going to be an opposition in the US that is going to begin to feel more like feeding almost a civil war.
- [22:18]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. Okay. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back. More questions. This episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, long term partners of the rest is politics. That's NordVPN.
- [22:36]
Rory Stewart
And we're guilty. Sometimes, assuming the Internet is safe by default. We browse the same sites, we use the same passwords. Nothing normally goes wrong. And it's very easy to let your guard down. But hackers, as I'm sure many listeners have found out are always looking for ways to get into your system and they're trying to steal your money or they're trying to steal your data. And Internet service providers are happy to sell your browsing data to companies and marketeers.
- [22:58]
Alastair Campbell
And that's where NORDVPN comes in. It's your go to solution for secure Internet access. What it does is it creates a virtual private network. That's the VPN bit which you use to connect to the Internet. Just download their app and switch it on and it works in the background.
- [23:13]
Rory Stewart
It's got military grade encryption so you can browse with confidence, knowing your personal information is safe from prying eyes. Our listeners get an exclusive deal@nordvpn.com restispolitics and one subscription covers 10 of your devices.
- [23:28]
Alastair Campbell
So that's NordVPN.com restispolitics completely risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee and you can find the link in.
- [23:35]
Unknown
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- [24:00]
Rory Stewart
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. And here's a question from Jacob Alistair how would you handle managing the grid in a multi party coalition, which are common in countries with proportional representation? Is the control of the narrative and coordination of message really possible only when there's a single party government? Thanks.
- [24:55]
Alastair Campbell
No, I think you can manage a grid. So a grid, for those who don't know, is the sort of it's a mechanism by which you organize the communication in any big organization. And I suppose my closest experience that popped into my head as you were reading the question out was actually when I worked at NATO that was a coalition where you obviously had you had America, you had Britain, you had France, you had Germany, you had Turkey, you had Italy, you had all these different countries with different interests. And part of what I was trying to do was to manage the communications in a way that all of those different constituent parts felt that they were being involved, properly, engaged, properly got their moments in the sun. And I think you had to do the same in a coalition government. I think that if I look at one of the reasons, I think, why the coalition government in Germany has struggled, it's because I don't think they were giving each other enough space to have the moment when they were pushing their agenda. To be fair to Cameron and Clegg, I think actually they managed it pretty well from a communications perspective. It's just that the whole austerity thing was a complete disaster for the country. As we agree, Rory, you're presumably thinking.
- [26:11]
Rory Stewart
All the time about the way in which social media changes all this. So if you were to, I mean, I don't know, let's say a Labour candidate would come in, or even the Prime Minister would come and get advice around how you do communications grids and would have said to you, but come on, Alistair, you did this back in the late 90s in the world before Twitter and Facebook. How does Musk's X, how does TikTok and the way in which new populist politics dominate that change the way you do messaging? How would you answer that? If somebody said all that old stuff is part of an old world and social media has changed it all?
- [26:49]
Alastair Campbell
I would say that you have to embrace the new world, but without throwing out the kind of strategic principles which underpin any communication strategy. So, for example, if I were a modern leader of a major country, I'd actually learn a few lessons from what Trump has been doing. What could the British equivalent be of an executive order? I'll tell you one thing I would do if I was Keir Starmer, Macron, Merz, when he comes in, if he comes in as Chancellor Germany, I would do a podcast. I would have. Whether it's weekly, whether it's fortnightly, you know, you can decide, but I would use that, and that would go in the grid because I would make sure that whatever I was doing or saying on my podcast that week, the rest of the media are going to take note. I would use X. So sometimes, you know, like Musk did his interview with the AFD leader, Alice Vital, that got huge coverage in Germany. Now, you know, there's so many modern media stuff, so much modern media stuff you can do, but fit it in to the overall communication of your strategy over time, which is all that communications.
- [27:59]
Rory Stewart
Is a couple of other things on this. One of the things that's Interesting about the American communication is that it clearly revolves around people like Vance and Musk spending an enormous amount of time themselves on X. I mean, presumably when Vance was attacking me and saying that he disagreed with me about the ordo Amaris and St. Augustine, that's not part of any grit. Right. That's just Vance sitting up late at night thinking, I'll slag off Rory and say he has a low iq.
- [28:26]
Alastair Campbell
The Pope came out for you, though, Rory. He didn't mention you by name, but he basically. He came out on your side of the argument.
- [28:33]
Rory Stewart
Really interesting that, because when I then tweeted out, now that, you know, the Spectator and the Telegraph was so pleased, Rory Stewart's an idiot. Doesn't know anything about. About theology. J.D. vance is a Catholic, he understands this stuff. But then the Pope comes out on my side of this argument against Vance. So I tweet out saying, well, now what do people think about Vance being this great expert on Catholic theology when literally the Pope disagrees with him? And the answer, of course, from thousands of people is, the Pope's wrong, the Pope's a communist. J.D. vance is right. But just help me understand what's going on there. Would that be part of your strategy? Would you allow your Deputy Prime Minister to be on Twitter on X in that way? I mean, obviously it's a world in which the whole cabinet is released to slag people off and troll them.
- [29:21]
Alastair Campbell
I think you'd have to do it within the understanding of a messaging framework. So what Vance was saying, it sort of does fit with the overall MAGA approach. His basic thing was saying that, you know, we should look after our own first. Well, that is America first. So he's using Christianity and his very, very narrow definition of it. We got loads of feedback on that by the way. People saying they didn't respect his views on Christianity or Catholicism at all. But anyway, that's for them. But as long as it's within that broader framework, then, yeah, I think that's what you do.
- [29:57]
Rory Stewart
I guess also randomly attacking someone like me doesn't matter because it sits into the strategy of there is this out of touch elite that thinks smarter than it really is. And so random attacks against random people is fine, provided it reinforces the basic message, which is we're the real people, here's the elite, we're standing up to them.
- [30:16]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, providing that it fits an overall message that you're pursuing. I think that's absolutely fine.
- [30:21]
Rory Stewart
One more question for you on comps, because you didn't fully answer yesterday. I raised this question of David Cameron basically going to Pakistan to make a speech which seemed to be its main objective was to land in the Times, rather than what influence it would have on the Pakistanis who were listening. Is that something that you can explain to me that sort of makes sense? In a certain sense it can do.
- [30:44]
Alastair Campbell
Like you mentioned it yesterday in the context of Vance in Germany. Vance did an interview with the Wall Street Journal before he came to Germany, where he basically landed the message that he then delivered in Germany. So I think often you want to land the message in a specific place so that others will then alight upon it. It's why, I'm afraid, that if people rightly go on about TikTok and social media, what have you, but. But if you can get the message that you're trying to land in three or four of our national newspapers, you're still going to be right central in the political debate where you want it. So that's why I don't buy this idea that social media has fundamentally changed strategic communication. Ultimately, it is about the message, and you can still get that message out if it's properly thought through strong, and you're clear about how you getting it out there. And the truth is, we should just acknowledge the fact Trump is very good at it. He's very good at the old communication and he's very good at the new communication. Now, Rory, what about this one? Peter Judge, do you agree that we have all of the knowledge, resources, wealth and technology to create a wildly, wildly better world? Why is nobody making the case for that world?
- [32:00]
Rory Stewart
Let's come in on this. Yes, many, many things have improved. We are living much longer. We have far fewer children dying young. But the truth of the matter with technology, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that the big technological advances that changed our lives were in the 20th century, not in the 21st century. This thing I'm holding up, an iPhone, is of course, really, really impressive, and Google Maps is very helpful, but it doesn't begin to have the kind of transformatory impact that steam had, coal had the first airplanes and cars had that the fridge had that indoor plumbing has, that central heating has. Yeah, I think the. Really. And this is actually one of the reasons people are frustrated, one of the reasons they're all greater than the phone, much greater. And I think the only people who disagree are the techno optimists in Silicon Valley who think they've completely changed our lives. Famously, this great figure that, you know, computers are seen everywhere except in the productivity statistics, those things that I mentioned those kind of old bits of the first, second, third industrial revolutions completely transformed GDP per capita, made European and American countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s grow at unbelievable, unprecedented rates. My constituency in Cumbria, Penrith and the border, when Willie Whitelaw took over, Willy Whitelaw was only my predecessor's predecessor. A third of the houses didn't have indoor laboratories and a quarter didn't have electricity. So the change that you bring to someone's life with that is so much more than you bring with this funny little phone. And we're still struggling, maybe AI is this thing, but we're still struggling actually to find technological innovations that make that kind of change. Where the changes are happening are increasingly on things like health and life expectancy, but we're not seeing the optimism. And why are we not seeing the optimism? We're not seeing the optimism because people feel their jobs are stressful, they're working long hours, they feel they've got less freedom and independence their parents have. And these phones, in many ways, many, many of us would feel our lives were better if we weren't looking at them.
- [34:09]
Alastair Campbell
Well, I totally agree with that.
- [34:10]
Rory Stewart
You know, I just got off a plane yesterday, half the planes walking off, staring at their phones, stumbling into everything, ignoring their children, going in the wrong direction. I mean. Yeah. Anyway, over to you. Are you a techno optimist?
- [34:22]
Alastair Campbell
No, I'm not, because I think the. I think the Tech Bros have morphed into the sovereign individual about whom I've been warning for some time, ever since Jacob Rees Mogg's dad, wrote about it. Right. Julia, who is a member the BBC, has said that Rachel Reeves has not broken any laws. There's no evidence from her former employer that she breached any policy on expenses, yet they've run the story for the last three days. What does running stories based on allegations tell us about their values? Well, that sounds like an attack on the BBC. I've been away, so I've not followed. I followed this story in the past when it's been. They've been going on about it. But what is this story, Rory, about her CV and about how long she worked at the bank and all this. Can you shed light?
- [35:06]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, two stories. So Rachel Reeves obviously aren't Chancellor the Exchequer. She had said on her CV that she had worked for 10 years for the bank of England and that she'd been an economist at the bank of England and at HBoss, which is the bank she worked at. And what's happened since is that journalists have discovered that in fact she worked realistically More like five years at the bank of England because she took a year off to go to the lse and that for many of those years she wasn't an economist and at HBoss she was in a different department entirely doing a lot on customer support. That's one set of allegations and I think on that they've argued back a little bit, but she's also changed her LinkedIn entries and I think the story at the back of that is the pressure on would be MPs to pretend they have more experience in the outside world than they really have because a lot of these people are basically professional politicians who are starting running for seats quite early on in their careers. And it's interesting she got away with it until she became Chancellor. And I imagine many, many of my former colleagues will have exaggerated what's on their CVs to sound more impressive, to make rather thin gruel seem like a more impressive stuff. The problem is not so much the slight exaggerations, the problem seems to be more just how vehemently they're denied. So the other allegation is that she was investigated for not being entirely honest and reporting her expenses. Now this very old story, 16 years ago she was investigated around having bought a bottle of champagne on expenses apparently as a gift for someone and the person said they didn't receive the gift. And the problem here, and this is something maybe you can come into, is that number 11 and the press office denied it absolutely. So there was absolutely no truth in it. And then later had to retract and she said I'm sorry, I had no memory of the fact that I was investigated. And the man concern says complete bullshit. This must have been quite a big moment in her life. It's a pretty traumatic time when you're working for a company to be investigated. Now ultimately I don't think she was sort of convicted of it, so it wasn't put on her record. But the problem seems to be, as usual, not so much the original claim as the kind of COVID ups that come along behind it.
- [37:25]
Alastair Campbell
That is often, often the case. Particularly stuff that, you know, gets thrown up at people from their past. I mean, look, in general, you know, be honest and straightforward about your, about your past as well as your present. I guess there is in most people who end up in top flight politics. It's not something that they all sort of wake up age 16 and think that's what I'm going to do. And I think you'd be very hard pressed to find anybody who's not done stuff in their past as students or in the jobs market, whatever it might be. But the important point is the one you make if and when the questions come, make sure your answers are right.
- [38:01]
Rory Stewart
Let me defend her a little bit, maybe from my own experience, which is I had a lot of stories when I first went into politics describing me as an ex soldier. And the reality is I was a soldier very, very briefly. I was in a soldier between school and university on something called a short service Limited commission.
- [38:19]
Alastair Campbell
Very wise, as Gerry Adams said to you.
- [38:21]
Rory Stewart
Very wise. Exactly. It's very flattering for an MP to be described as a veteran or a soldier, just as it's very useful for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to be described as an economist at these big leading institutions and have the impression that you spent many years as an economist at these institutions. So you allow these things to happen in the press and you allow yourself to be introduced them. And it was actually Peter Hitchens, I think, who eventually challenged me on this and said, you said you were briefly a soldier, but a better description would be very briefly a soldier, wouldn't it? And I immediately said, yes, I'll put very, in fact, briefly a soldier. But I. So I do. I do sort of slightly feel. Feel for Rachel Reeves there. And. And then, of course, the. The complication of my. Then explaining that I was supposed to go back to the army, and then the Foreign Office bought me out of the army and. And I moved into the Foreign Office and I was in Iraq and Afghanistan with soldiers, but I wasn't a soldier. Becomes too complicated to explain to anybody. So, anyway, so some sympathy for. On that.
- [39:21]
Alastair Campbell
Can I just jump in on Peter Hitchens? He's an old colleague of mine. He and Fiona shared an office in the House of Commons for years when. When we were all in the lobby together. And Peter has got this absolute obsession that Tony Blair wasn't actually the Prime Minister, but that I was. Tony Blair was my. My little front man. So I wouldn't. I wouldn't worry too much, Rory. But I think the thing about being a soldier, though, don't knock it too much, because that means in the House of Commons, you're in the House of Commons, you could be called the Right Honourable and Gallant. And that's a great thing.
- [39:55]
Rory Stewart
It's a really great thing.
- [39:56]
Alastair Campbell
Rules of the House of Commons. Roy, I don't care how short your commission was, you should be referred to as the Right Honourable and Gallant Member for Penrith at the Borders.
- [40:05]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, absolutely.
- [40:08]
Alastair Campbell
Right. Last question. Mark Lynch.
- [40:10]
Rory Stewart
Yes, for you. We hear you talk about Serious books you're reading. But Harold Wilson loved Agatha Christie. JFK was an Ian Fleming fan. Does Alistair have a secret set of Lee Child first editions? He turns to. While Rory dips into EL James when his wife's not watching. What are your fun reads?
- [40:29]
Alastair Campbell
Well, first of all, Rory, you don't need to know how I know this. Yes, you may know it as well, but E.L. james is a big fan of the podcast. I know that. No fact.
- [40:39]
Rory Stewart
This is 50 Shades of Gray.
- [40:40]
Alastair Campbell
That's the one. That's the one. She's a big, big fan of the podcast. I am a reg. I. I still read the Bruins and. Or Wally.
- [40:50]
Rory Stewart
Very good.
- [40:50]
Alastair Campbell
Which are cartoons from the Sunday Post about life in. In. In Scotland. But I think if I have a guilty pleasure, it's Charlotta Link, who's a German writer and this is probably terribly insulting to her, but she, she's in that sort of, you know, she's in the. With Jeffrey Archer and all that sort of. She's a real page turner and I love her books. Lots of them, I think, have been translated into English. They definitely deserve to be and lots of them are in fact set in Britain. But yeah, she's my guilty pleasure. Charlotte Olynk.
- [41:25]
Rory Stewart
Here's a couple of guilty Protestant me. So John Lawton. Then we take Berlin about Jo Wilderness. It's a. It's a spy story about a working class guy, grows up in East End of London during the Blitz. His granddad is a cat burglar who gets recruited into MI6 and sent off to Berlin. A book I've been enjoying enormously by Michael Booth called the Almost Nearly Perfect People, which is about Denmark. He's married to a Dane. Hilariously funny book in which he investigates the fundamental question, which is why Denmark is described as being the most happy people on Earth when he finds them frequently pretty miserable.
- [42:04]
Alastair Campbell
Well, they were until Donald Trump came along and said he was going to take Greenland off them. Not as happy now, are they? This is quite high brow, low bride stuff, Rory.
- [42:13]
Rory Stewart
Well, there were real guilty one. I absolutely love James Clavell's Shogun and I want to apologize for that because there's a lot of sort of slightly dodgy scenes and in Japanese bath houses and weird bits of torture going on at the beginning. So there's a bit of games and throne going in, but my goodness, as a portrait of Japan in the late 16th, early 17th century, there's everything there. There's samurais, there's the tea ceremony, there's internecine warfare, there's politics, there's religion, and it's done on such an enormous scale. And Clavel was, I think, originally an Austrian Australian who was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the war in Singapore and emerged from it both with a real sense of the capacity for sort of cruelty from the Japanese officers who were maltreating them during the war, but also an incredible admiration for Japanese courage, honor and the strangeness of Japanese society. So there we are, James Clavell, Shogun.
- [43:18]
Alastair Campbell
Excellent. And I guess my final one on the back of the interview we did with David McCloskey about Syria and his work for the CIA, we started listening to Damascus Station. Now, I, I think you have to say, even though John Soares, former head of MI6, said it was the best book about espionage you'd ever read, if you're talking about spy thrillers, I think you have to put those down as guilty pleasures. There's no such thing as a spy thriller that isn't ultimately a guilty pleasure. And I love the thing, I love the thing that David's said in the interview, that the life of an intelligence officer was much closer to Slow horses than James Bond, because slow horses is definitely a guilty pleasure.
- [43:59]
Rory Stewart
Slow Horses, Shoshana and I, watching the box set. The only one that really tends towards literature beautifully is of course, John le Carre. David McCloskey, when we interviewed him, was talking about how these things are both doing glamorous stuff and also bureaucracies. But Le Carre really evokes the sense of mismatched filing cabinets, weird registries, people stabbing each other in the back, politicians getting into dodgy contracts with private security contractors, and in a perfect spy, I think, manages to do psychology, history. Yeah, that guy, David Cornwall, John Le Carrey, I think, is the one person who stretches spy literature out of guilty pleasure into real, real Nobel Prize winning stuff.
- [44:48]
Alastair Campbell
Excellent. Well, thank you for that question mark. Maybe people should let us know what their guilty pleasure readings are. Perhaps it's for some of you, it's Rory's book, Politics on the Edge. I was very chuffed that Mark Carney said that my book influenced him into deciding to go for it. I didn't know whether to believe that or not.
- [45:08]
Rory Stewart
He's a very charming politician, you see. That's what's made him very difficult to know, isn't it? But it was definitely the right thing to say when you're being interviewed.
- [45:16]
Alastair Campbell
I'll see you soon.
- [45:17]
Rory Stewart
See you soon. Bye.