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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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- [01:22]
Unknown
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- [02:29]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the Rest Is Politics Question.
- [02:31]
Rory Stewart
Time with me Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. First question for you from one of our very favourite countries, which is Australia. Tom says what on earth is going on on the Australian election and Alistair in particular. Are your predictions on Dutton's faltering performance being vindicated?
- [02:51]
Alistair Campbell
Well, of course, you're the master of election predictions, Rory. You know you who put a large sum of money on Kamala Harris. I'm not a betting person but if I were a betting person I would put my money on Albanese right now because I don't think Dutton is fighting a good campaign. And by the way, we should tell listeners that all being well, our next guest on leading will be Mr. Albanese. Mr. Albanese, the prime Minister of Australia.
- [03:18]
Rory Stewart
Unbelievable. Congratulations. That's amazing to get the Australian Prime Minister right in the middle of an election campaign.
- [03:23]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, but I think we have a lot, I think we have a lot of listeners out there. He wouldn't be doing it for the good of his health. I think he's finding a pretty good campaign. I listened to an interview he did with Latika Burke who's a somebody who knows Britain Australia very, very well and actually her first question was, you seem a lot more confident than you were last time in the last campaign and I wonder if that is because he's sort of feeling the Dutton balloon slightly bursting.
- [03:51]
Rory Stewart
So what is it that Dutton's done wrong? So we've seen people saying that his anti woke drive hasn't worked out. There's been a certain amount on his pitch somehow being out of date that he's sounding too Trumpian. What's your basic take on what he's doing wrong?
- [04:08]
Alistair Campbell
I mean possibly a bit unfairly. He's being allied very closely to Trump and he's trying to get away and the more he tries to get away, the harder it's getting. He wasn't helped by one of his candidates talking about making Australia great again and he was standing in the background wincing as she said it. But also this working from home thing. I think he just thought that as part of the sort of Trumpian and anti woke so called agenda saying there'd be a big crackdown and working from home would go down really well. It went down really badly. There's a new thing that's developed today. The big story today is about Russia doing some sort of defense deal with Indonesia which Dutton is trying to get up as a sort of, you know, Labour week on security. But it, it felt a bit desperate to be honest. The next debate is happening I think on Wednesday but it's feeling, it's look a long way to go but it's feeling that Dutton's just not really cutting through in the way that he probably wanted to. And I think. I think some of his MPs are starting. Candidates are starting to say there wasn't really a very strong plan.
- [05:09]
Rory Stewart
One of the problems seems to be that he had some strong plans, like the stuff from Working from Home, but that he dropped them. And two quick things. There's a guy called Kos Samaras who I follow a bit on polling in Australia, who said that the big difference is emerging in housing policy and that labor is targeting individuals who struggle to save for deposit, middle urban areas, regional Australia. But the weakness is that this is an electorate that doesn't believe that the government will build the promised homes. And in contrast, the coalition is focusing on outer suburban communities, particularly resonate with the Indian Australian diaspora and people who favor new home ownership in those areas, but may not resonate with the bulk of renters. Anyway, that was a sort of detail around housing policy, but sort of the bigger question for you, which I think relates to a question that we've just got from Will, which is, is Kemi Badenoch right not to have any policies? It may be a bit unfair to Kenny Badenoch, but it sort of relates this Dutton point, which is that in the modern world there seems to be a real problem with announcing too many policies because as soon as you announce a policy, people attack you and you frequently feel inclined to backtrack on it. You could argue that labor to some extent won the British election without putting out too many policies and without seeming largely relying on, I don't know, the Conservatives just seeming hopeless and useless and everybody wanted to get rid of them. But the reason, the question to Kemi I wanted to pose is she's presumably between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, she could think, okay, I don't want to put out too many policies because I'm going to be attacked for them. On the other hand, if she doesn't say anything, she's going to lose momentum. Reform is going to develop, Labour will develop and she'll become almost invisible. Over to you on that.
- [07:01]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a bit harsh to expect her to be putting out policy in the same level as somebody like Dutton, who's right in the middle of an election campaign, wants to be prime minister come May 4. She's got a while to go if she gets there. I think at her stage in opposition, you need policy, but more than that, you need policy argument and you need a story that you're telling the country about yourself, about your party and about the country. And my sense of her is that the story that she's telling is very locked in that sort of right wing media ecosphere. And I'm just not sure the public are listening to it. So, like, I'd be very hard pressed and I'm somebody, you know, like you follows this stuff fairly closely. I can't really think of anything that she has said or done that has made a lasting positive impression upon me. I could look at Dutton, who I don't think is having a good campaign, but I have seen him, for example, I've seen him sometimes in the Australian Parliament being really strong and really quite powerful in the way that he speaks. And I've seen him say stuff about defense and foreign policy. And I've thought, oh yeah, he's kind of thought about this. I really don't quite get where she's going. And of course she's up against Farage, who gets away with murder partly because the media. I see he was on the Laura Kuenssberg show again, doubtless beyond question time next week. He sort of gets an easy ride from the media, but he also gets her an easy ride from his opponents. You know, Labour and the Tories don't seem to me to have worked out what is the best way to attack reform. And that means that he just sort of floats from one talking point to the next. So I don't think it's about policy for her. I think it's about overall big picture strategy. And what's the story she's trying to tell about the country. Farage does have a story about the country. Basically he says it's wrecked and it's terrible and everything is awful and put me in charge and it will be fine. That's his basic story and he's allowed to get away with it.
- [09:05]
Rory Stewart
Okay, so Alison, just to try to get our heads around this, because this is, I guess, central to what Badenoch is going to be thinking about, but politicians all around the world think about, which is you could have a sort of completely novel economic analysis of how you transform British growth, but nobody's got that. There's no economist that anyone's got in their back pocket who has some brilliant new analysis the country. You could be a really strong House of Commons performer. And I guess you also. We keep coming back to New labor and what you guys did in opposition and how you got yourselves in a position by 97 to win. Part of that is that Tony Blair was a very good House of Commons performer. So presumably, unlike Kemi Badenoch, he was getting quite a lot of good press for how he was performing at Primus's Questions. We're also told, but maybe this is ridiculous, that these big speech on tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime was an example of how he managed to find a way of seizing the national narrative. I mean, can you just make the case for. If you were looking at New Labour coming in and applying to Bednoc, what sort of things were you doing 94 to 97 that Badenoch should be thinking about doing now and she isn't doing.
- [10:18]
Alistair Campbell
Analysing where they've gone wrong? I think we did a lot of that working out how she can insert herself into the national conversation in a way that's interesting rather than predictable, I'd say when I see her at question time, and I do, I agree with you. I think when you're the leader of the opposition, question time is incredibly important because it's, you know, even though it's not that millions of people watch it, but it sort of somehow feeds into the national conversation about whether you're doing well, whether you're doing badly. And generally, Tony, most weeks, people thought he was pretty good. I think with her, she's predictable in that the subjects that she goes on are the subjects you might expect her to, but they often, it feels to me, don't speak to a bigger narrative that she's trying to develop. I just have no idea about what she's trying to say about the country. So when you say tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, that was a message about an issue that people really cared about and it was a framing. It was a framing. What has she. What argument is she framed? And then if I look at what she, you know, the thing we didn't have in our day of the whole social media thing, I look at her social media and the conservative social media and again, I don't understand what they're trying to do with it. They're just attacking labor all the time. Well, that's fine. You've got to attack the opposition or the government, but I just. I just don't know what the story is.
- [11:47]
Rory Stewart
Well, so final thing, you're being surprisingly polite, but let me ask you more bluntly and to be more outspoken, do you think she's going to be here at the time of the next election?
- [11:56]
Alistair Campbell
No, I don't. I don't. I think the conservatives will look, the Conservatives look, I don't know. A lot of the ones I know, have kind of gone. They vanished. But the Conservative Party generally is pretty ruthless and brutal about its leaders. And I was talking to a Labour MP the other day who said, it's really interesting watching the Tories during PMQs. They started off thinking Keir wouldn't be very good at it and he's got better. And they say that when she's on her feet, they look just a little bit soulless and lost. Now, she will feel that if she's got any empathy at all, which I think sure she has, she will feel that she won't survive unless she finds a compelling narrative about who she is, how she relates to the party she leads and how that relates to the country. Till she gets that, she's not going to break through at all.
- [12:51]
Rory Stewart
Very good. Okay, now we have a question on Labour and the trade unions, the trade union movement. Mel, Alistair, you often mention Labour's role in the trade union movement. Can you tell us a bit more about it and how you see the relationship evolving today? And I guess also Captain Kushner, given the Birmingham bin strikers have rejected another offer. Is there a government overwrite? End of strike. Some complaints from Birmingham that we were not serious enough about what this bin thing means. Can we just explain to listeners, particularly international listeners, just how bad many people in Birmingham feel things have got?
- [13:28]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Although there were two Birmingham people on the radio this morning saying they were fed up of everybody saying that everywhere you go, Birmingham, all you see is rubbish. Because actually it's being. One of the interviewees actually said the bags are being piled up very nicely. Come to Birmingham. The bags are piled up nicely. No, this is a strike over changes to working conditions, job descriptions, which the unions say means that some of their members are going to be thousands of pounds worse off over a year. They've had another ballot and they voted to continue the strike. The government wants the bins off to clear it up. So it's a pretty grim situation. I mean, Labour and the unions is a really interesting story, this. I actually wonder if at some point we shouldn't. We keep promising these. These miniseries and we're going to do. We're going to be doing one. Hopefully not too long on J.D. vance, but I wonder whether at some point there isn't one to be done on Labour in the unions, because it's a story that's more interesting than the caricature. I mean, the Labour Party essentially was formed and funded in part by the trade union movement round about, you know, 1900 and membership. So today there are something like six and a half million trade union members, or that was 2023, the last sort of reliable figures, the peak, you won't be surprised, the year that trade union membership peaked, it was 1979, 13.2 million. So that was the year that Margaret Thatcher was elected. And the decline since then, interestingly, most of the decline has been in the private sector. Public sector union membership is still pretty high. And the other thing is that partly because of Thatcher and because of the power of the Thatcher myth, which I think a lot of it is, and also the fact that she did. There's no doubt she did bring the trade unions down. And also the fact that most of our media framing about the trade unions is very negative. It's still very negative, but it overlooks the fact that. That historically, and particularly, I would argue, during the Second World War, the unions were very, very popular. Union membership soared during the war. And I think a lot of the reason for that was we all know about Nye Bevan, who created the National Health Service. But Ernest Bevin, who was this amazing guy, born in the early 1880s, orphaned at 8, next to no formal education, started work at 11 and by 1922, so he would be in his. What was 1922, he'd been about 30 odd. So by 1922 he'd basically created and was running the Transport and General Workers Union, which became the biggest union in.
- [16:16]
Rory Stewart
The country, which is connected to the Birmingham Bin Strikes. Right, this is the Birmingham Bin Strikes. Well, this is Unite, which is the descendant.
- [16:23]
Alistair Campbell
Exactly. So the TNG no longer exists.
- [16:26]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, it's the Char. Ernie Bevin's union.
- [16:28]
Alistair Campbell
I think he'd have sorted it by now. But the big thing was that during the interwar years, even though he was not in Parliament, he was a big figure in the Labour Party. In fact, there is an argument that he was responsible for Attlee because he made this amazing speech at the Labour Party conference that essentially led to Attlee replacing George Lansbury as leader of the Labour Party. But then come the war. Churchill clearly recognized something very, very special in Ernie Bevin and he put him in the Cabinet, essentially in charge of turning Britain into a war economy. And he did it very, very well. And that's when trade union membership doubled. So you had a union leader, the leader of the tng, in the Cabinet, big part of the industrial war effort.
- [17:15]
Rory Stewart
This leads us to the disagreement that we had as fractious disagreement last week about the composition of Parliament. And I was trying to use Ernie Bevan as a classic example of this. Incredible Foreign Secretary who came in older, actually, you just pointed out older than I realized at the time. I mean, he's almost 70 when he's coming into that job, and proved to be this incredible Foreign Secretary, replacing the sort of moustache twirling Anthony Eden and demonstrating that he was incredibly good at managing the Russians, managing the American threat. And I was setting up this story that in the good old days, instead of having a bunch of people whose parents were politicians and a bunch of political professionals, we had these amazing trade union legends that gave Labour this incredible confidence and presence in the House of Commons that was lacking. And you then came back to me to say this was all complete nonsense and all your friends who are Labour MPs have been rioting since.
- [18:12]
Alistair Campbell
They weren't rioting, but no, because coincidentally, I was asked to go and talk to lots of people who work for Labour MPs, young researchers and what have you. And. And so I was asking lots of them about the background and somebody's done a thing using AI which says that something like 22% of labor MPS have what he defines as very political parents. I don't know what a very political parent means, but the ones that I talked to, very few were children of MPs, some were children of counsellors. But I think yours was a bit of a caricature.
- [18:48]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Samuel Colvin, who's one of our members, in response to restless politics discussion, politicians political parents spent a couple of hours using pedantic AI to extract political relatives from wikipedia pages for UK MPs. 23% of UK MPs have political parents. 66% more than the general population.
- [19:07]
Alistair Campbell
No, I think it means 66 times more.
- [19:10]
Rory Stewart
Sorry, 66 times. 66 times more than the general population. IPPR has also done some really good stuff on this. What they've pointed out is that Parliament's become much more diverse in terms of far more women. So I think it's now 35% of parliament are female more diverse, 10% from minority ethnic backgrounds. Both those are lower than the general population. But it's getting up there. Big transformation in sexuality. But when it comes to people from working class backgrounds, there have been a couple of different studies. Oliver Heath, 1964, 20% of parliament was working class, now 5%. And in 64, that was when the general population was 50%. It was 20%. It's now 5% compared to 25%.
- [19:56]
Alistair Campbell
We got a lot of pushback on this as well, because what's your definition of working class then and now?
- [20:00]
Rory Stewart
So IPPR defines working class as manufacturing or manual backgrounds or unskilled service work, for example, care work, or trade union employees who came from the working parts of the trade union. And on those metrics they say that in 1987, 28% came from working class occupations. Today, 13% come from working class occupations. So the big discrepancy, the way in which Parliament doesn't represent the general population is no longer in terms of women, no longer in terms of diversity. It's increasingly in terms of two things. Far fewer people from working class professions and far, far more university graduates. There are, in fact, more university graduates in the Labour Party than in the Conservative Party.
- [20:45]
Alistair Campbell
In part, that's because there are more university graduates and also there are fewer traditional working class jobs.
- [20:49]
Rory Stewart
But IPPR sets up that, so it compares to the general population. So, you know, 34% of the general population go to university, 89% of MPs. And when it comes to working class occupations, again, the number of working class occupations, the country has come down, but it hasn't come down anything like as steeply as the Number, number of MPs from working class backgrounds.
- [21:13]
Alistair Campbell
I think it's partly, though, that class has changed. I think our understanding of what class means has changed. So, for example, if you're a university student working in a bar and then you end up going into the gig economy for a while, we used to have a much clearer sense of what working class was and I'm not sure now that. I mean, I agree with you, more Labour MPs are now educated degree level than would have been the case in Ernie Bevins time. And I also agree, by the way, that we could do with a few more Ernie Bevins. But the other point you made last week is there are, there aren't so many characters then. And now as then, I think people like, you know, it's rare that you get somebody as special as he was and who was clearly so capable. And I think, by the way, you could make the case that in part because of, of Attlee as the Deputy Prime Minister in the War Cabinet and Bevin doing the job that he did, I think it was partly because of that and the country getting used to them as figures of government that helped lead to the landslide that they got in 1945, which included then the implementation of the Beveridge Report, which was in the, I think came out in 1942. So he was a transformational figure. I mean, just to close off the sort of brief history of Labour and the unions, the first really big falling out was when Wilson was Prime Minister and that was over Barbara Castle's famous white paper on industrial relations in place of strife, when the unions ultimately forced the government to back down. And then the winter of discontent and the social contract, which the Tories, you know, the winter of discontent they still talk about, because that was, if you imagine the bin strike in Birmingham, but that sort of thing happening all over the country. But what I think is interesting about the way that Bevin did it, he tried in, as a wartime leader, tried to bring business and unions together. And Tony, when Tony was Prime Minister, that was his approach, trying to not like the Germans with the kind of, you know, the whole tripart economic structure, but trying to get better relations between business and unions. And I think when they feel that there are opposite sides of every argument, then I think your economy is likely to be less efficient. But anyway, we should maybe revisit this because I do think there are some fascinating characters and stories going way back. And of course, when I was growing up, these trade union leaders, they were household names.
- [23:46]
Rory Stewart
So just as we go to the break, I mean, Joe Keenan, as someone who looks at becoming a politician but works odd hours and is very much part of the gig economy, do you think part of the problem in entering politics. Politics is the amount of unpaid work and time that's required by local branches of parties? Absolutely. This is the other thing we don't, we're not honest with the public. About to win a marginal seat now, you basically need to be full time in that seat for two years before the election. That means leaving your job, moving to that constituency screws up your mortgage. If you are not employed by a professional, if you're not a spad with your party, if you're not a. A comms person with your party, or if you don't have a private income and a family supporting you, how on earth are you supposed to do it? How on earth is somebody from a genuinely working class background supposed to find the money to spend two years completely without an income, working full time on trying to win a marginal seat? And that's what the trade unions used to do. They used to pay people's salaries to help them get into Parliament.
- [24:48]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Last time around you had organizations like Labour Together who were supporting certain MPs. And the trade unions still do try to help MPs, but, you know, that's a fair point. But Joe, don't let it get you down. Do it. Find a way you can do it. Get stuck in. I'm assuming now that you're a kind of modernizing labor person who wants to help the Labour Party, let's have a break. This episode is brought to you by Nordvpn. Long term partners of the Rest is Politics.
- [25:22]
Rory Stewart
And I guess we could say the Internet's a bit like politics, isn't it? Sometimes on the surface things seem to be moving smoothly, but underneath all strange and slightly troubling things are happening.
- [25:32]
Alistair Campbell
Just like politics. You have to protect yourself on the Internet because these days, hackers, trackers, data harvesters, they're all over the place, even when you're doing something as simple as logging onto public WI fi in a cafe.
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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- [26:07]
Rory Stewart
That's nordvpn.com restispolitics completely risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee. The link's in the episode description.
- [26:16]
Unknown
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- [26:51]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question time with me, Alistair Campbell and me, Rory Stewart. Here's a nice, polite, friendly question. Rory Ross Martin. Do you two represent the failed old politics of the past that's enabled the rise of populism by not allowing enough political bandwidth in an essentially two party winner takes all system? Take that.
- [27:11]
Rory Stewart
Oh well, good chance to plug our leading interview with Ezra Klein, which is doing very, very well because Ezra Klein formulates it as people from the center like you and me have fallen into the trap. When he's being rude, he says that the trap is that the center left end up defending the government even when it's indefensible, and the far right end up always attacking the government regardless, and that this is actually the basic dynamics of politics. So I guess there are bigger things we can say about how we screwed up. 2008, financial crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan, horrifying wars, the sense of so many economic problems that are leaving people online. But perhaps more fundamentally, the risk is that we got into a habit of always saying, oh, you can't do that. You know, that's too risky. That's, you know, not in accordance with the law. We can't do the process. And every time anyone said, this is ridiculous, the government's screwing up, that the default is to spring to defence.
- [28:12]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, Ross, when you say the failed old politics of the past, I worry. I worry that what you're saying in that is that actually democracy has failed. And that's why I have a really big worry that that's what's happening in America right now. That essentially what the Trump people say the whole time is everything's broken. The Democrats feel they have to defend the institutions, and it's the institutions like the courts and the rule of law and a free media, they come to represent, in Trump's eyes and his followers, the failed old politics of the past. And I worry there's too much of that in our politics at the moment as well. So if you're saying that politics has failed, you're basically saying democracy's failed, because I would argue that the democracies have done better in terms of delivering prosperity for an opportunity for people than the dictatorships. But if we're not careful, that is the road that we go down. And the other thing I think that you mentioned, Ezra Klein there, Ori. The other thing I was really struck by in the interview with him, he was great and he's such a clever guy, but he was making the point in a way that most politicians can't make the point, because it sounds like you're saying people are stupid, but he made the point that actually we are, as people, becoming more stupid. We are becoming less curious, we are becoming less able and willing to use our powers of reason to think beyond an instant reaction to anything. And I mentioned that piece that David Brooks had written in the New York Times. It was. The data backs that up. You know, when you look at exam results in America and you look at people's ability to do, maybe this is why Trump's obsessed with his cognitive test. Because the thing about Trump is you usually have to, you know, whatever he's saying is the opposite of what he actually thinks. So he's saying, I'm really clever. I passed this cognitive test. Maybe he's worried about his cognitive skills deep down but no. So I don't think we represent the fella politics of the past. I think we represent a different generation, and we need a new generation to come along and devise the new politics of the future. But don't throw out democracy in the process.
- [30:16]
Rory Stewart
Very good. Okay. Tat. Kieran B. This might be a bit basic, but how important is the party's color for its perception?
- [30:23]
Alistair Campbell
Ah, well, Rory, do you know why my book, the book I wrote for kids. You know why the color was pink?
- [30:28]
Rory Stewart
No, why was pink?
- [30:29]
Alistair Campbell
Because the publisher didn't want it to be red because that would be too labor, and they wanted it to be unbiased. And pink is the only major color that's never been used by a political party. Ah, so there you go.
- [30:42]
Rory Stewart
Very good.
- [30:43]
Alistair Campbell
I think the important. I think the. I think the color's important. I think. I think labor being red is important. And I hate the fact that in America, it's the Republicans that share the same color.
- [30:52]
Rory Stewart
And red's important because it is revolution. It's socialism. It's.
- [30:57]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, it feels passionate. It feels passionate. Red feels passionate to me. Blue feels sort of dull and safe and conservative. So that's why it works for the conservatives. Green feels green.
- [31:09]
Rory Stewart
And how about. How about black? What would you think about a party.
- [31:12]
Alistair Campbell
That was using black, the Christian Democrats in Germany? Ah, I wouldn't go for black. I don't like black.
- [31:22]
Rory Stewart
Does it not feel a bit kind of extremist black, or am I getting something wrong?
- [31:25]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, it does. No, it does.
- [31:26]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [31:27]
Alistair Campbell
It's like we see a lot of football hooligans, you know, the ultras, they get together, they all wear black. It looks a bit scary when they wear white. They look quite. Quite sort of lively and nice and friendly.
- [31:37]
Rory Stewart
Do you think yellow might be. Isn't that a bit of a problem for the Lib Dems? That it might come across a bit sort of wet and yellow's traditionally associated with cowardice, isn't it?
- [31:46]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, but yellow is more smp. Yellow and black and the Lib Dems are orange. The trouble is there aren't that many colors. I think. I think more important is the design and the style around it. But no, I think. I think red is. You probably won't be surprised to hear this, Right? I think red is the best political color.
- [32:07]
Rory Stewart
Well, this stuff really, really matters less than the United Kingdom, but in many, many developing countries, where many of the key voters in rural areas are not literate.
- [32:17]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [32:17]
Rory Stewart
The question of colors, the question of your slogan, the way that that's presented on the ballot paper. If you can't read the name of the party, candidate really matters. And one of the things we've seen in, in electoral chicanery stealing elections around the world is changing the rules on how you display symbols and colors on the ballot paper can have a huge impact.
- [32:37]
Alistair Campbell
What's your favorite color? I've never asked you that question.
- [32:40]
Rory Stewart
Oh, thank you. Oh, oh, I like dark blue. There we are. You see, I'm a Tory, it's been proved.
- [32:48]
Alistair Campbell
I like cloud. See, my favorite color is claret because of burnley. But my favorite color is definitely red, apart from, look at me at the.
- [32:56]
Rory Stewart
Moment, I'm in dark blue from head to toe.
- [32:58]
Alistair Campbell
It's literally nothing with a, with a branding logo. Right. Finally, Rory Sandra Stephens, you've not done book recommendations in a while. What have you read or reread? That's Rory that you enjoyed? We did, actually. I was rather. If you've listened to Ezra Klein, I hope people understood my last question. What he give us three book recommendations because that's what he does at the end of his podcasts. So what have I read recently? One of them I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I think it was. And that is this book here, Israel Le Piage de Listoire Arrow. I hope an English publisher translates it because it's really, really good book about if you want to understand Israel from the perspective of a European diplomat who's. Who's worked there and tried to be fair to both sides. It's a really good read. We've got coming up on would I have read this anyway? I might have done, but we've got coming up soon on leading Jonathan Haidt, who's written this brilliant book, the Anxious Generation, how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. And it's one of those books that did convince me. It moved me in the way I think about this stuff because it's just so well written, so clearly written. The data backs it up. So when that interview comes up so people enjoy it. And my third one is a book that actually was dropped off for me by a fellow swimmer who's Scottish but lives in Australia. And she knew that I swam at the, the Lido around the corner. And she'd left a book for me called Going Under. She's called Shana Smith and it's a very, very, very powerful account of her descent into alcoholism and her, her, her recovery. And there've been lots of recovery books, but hers is really good, mainly because she uses diaries from as it Were, you know, all the different stages of her life. So there's three for you. What about you?
- [34:51]
Rory Stewart
Very good. A couple for me then. New book coming out by John Gantz called When the Clock Con Men, Conspiracists and the Road to Trump's America. He basically argues that a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now really begins in the beginning of the 90s. We've talked about this kind of Newt Gingrich polarization America, but also the way in which Reagan, the Thatcher.
- [35:12]
Alistair Campbell
Reagan revolution.
- [35:14]
Rory Stewart
Thatcher, Reagan revolution, that's right. So he's absolutely with you on that, with you and your friend John McDonnell and Jeremy on that. He's, you know, he very much finds the story in the 1990s and the beginnings of America's collapse back at that period. The other book, which I didn't talk about enough when we did our Greenland stuff is one of my favorite books in the world, which is called An African in Greenland by Tete Michel Campassi. And he's from Togo. And it's just absolutely astonishing. This is a book written 1950s. Tete grows up. His dad is a small time employee in the local electricity company, but at home he's like this sort of grand patriarch. And he has different wives and different huts around his own larger hut. And each month he invites a different wife in to feed him delicious food.
- [36:05]
Alistair Campbell
This is in Africa.
- [36:06]
Rory Stewart
This is all in Africa before he goes to Greenland. So what happens is Tete gets ill as a little boy and his dad is like, don't worry, I've got this. And he comes out and he starts ripping a chicken to pieces and doing a voodoo dance. And Tete's mother, who's this very sort of put upon junior wife, suddenly loses it with the dad and says, you are a total idiot. You have no idea what you're doing. I want my son to see a doctor. And this is the beginning of Tete's break with his father and his decision to go off to Greenland. So he arrives not in the Greenland of today, but in the Greenland of the 1950s. Right. As an African, how did he get there? And he basically hitchhikes across Europe. Yeah, he basically hitchhikes his way across Europe. Bloody hell. And then he finds himself obviously in a pretty unique position because nobody in green had ever seen an African before. So it is the most incredible travel book because you have the perspective of somebody who's grown up on the edge of literally on the edge of the jungle in a very, very traditional polygamous society in Togo. Suddenly looking at this, the extremity of northern Europe, that sounds brilliant.
- [37:15]
Alistair Campbell
It also sounds like a really good film. Look, talking to Green and Rory, I was going to mention this on the main podcast, but I thought I'd probably rant and rave about Trump and Vance. Enough. How pathetic was it that the woman who runs the American military base in Greenland has been sacked because she sent an email after J.D. vance's visit to Greenland, where she and I've got to hear she said this. I've spent the weekend thinking about Friday's visit, the actions taken, the words spoken, how it must have affected each of you. I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the US Administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffic Space Base. In other words, she doesn't agree that Denmark is a heap of shite, which is what he said. Words to that effect. So she's been sacked. This is the country of free. These are the people of free speech who now want to shut down CBS Because 60 Minutes did an item that Trumpy Wumpy didn't like. Oh, God.
- [38:13]
Rory Stewart
Right. Well, on that cheerful note, farewell speak soon.