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- [00:01]
Alistair 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 the rest is politics is powered by Fuse Energy and Fuse are now offering £20 credit and free trip plus membership if you switch to a fixed tariff before the end of August.
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Rory Stewart
They've listened carefully to their customers and the number one request was gas tariffs. So now at last you can switch both your gas and electricity to Fuse. One supplier, one bill, one less quagmire to navigate.
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Alistair Campbell
It's also cheaper. Fuse gas and electricity customers typically save £150 versus the price cap.
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Rory Stewart
Today's political climate is full of talk about control and clarity. Well, Fuse have quietly exercised some, at least when it comes to your energy.
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Alistair Campbell
Bill, and they began with a mission which was to make electricity cheaper, cleaner, simpler. And Fuse now supplies over 50,000 homes across the UK, all done quietly, efficiently and without a single campaign bus tour.
- [01:08]
Rory Stewart
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- [01:16]
Alistair Campbell
So go to fuseenergy.com forward/politics to switch your gas and electricity to Fuse and get your £20 credit and free trip membership.
- [01:32]
Rory Stewart
Welcome to the Restless Politics Question time with me, Rory Stewart.
- [01:36]
Alistair Campbell
And with me Alistair Campbell. And Rory, I think we did that must be the first time in a long time that we got through a main episode without talking about Trump or Israel. We're going to do both in Question time. Let's start with Trump. John Nixon, Trip plus member from Malvern if it's true that Trump is sending the military into blue states, Democrat states, Illinois, is it also conceivable that he plans to incite such civil disobedience that he can claim a national crisis, cancel the midterms on the basis of preventing civil war, and Repeat for the 2028 election? We've got a lot of questions on this sort of theme.
- [02:10]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, I mean, I think it's absolutely stunning. I mean, basically what we're seeing now is stuff that would have been unimaginable a few months ago in the way that Trump is using the military. I mean, traditionally the military is only deployed into civilian context in the most extreme situations conceivable. He's now making it almost the norm for the National Guard, who are really the equivalent of the territorial army. In fact, a much better armed, much more full time version of the UK Territorial Army. People who deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan are now being deployed into Washington, dc, deployed into California. And now the story is they're going to be deployed into Chicago in order to deal with what he calls an epidemic of crime. And basically, what with pumping up Homeland Security and deploying the National Guard in this way, Trump is essentially creating a militarized state. And part of this is just about intimidating opponents. I mean, part of it is he raided John Bolton, who was his national security adviser, and he's become a prominent critic, sent people into his home. And you can see this. I was talking to American lawyers who, over the last five months, I've been shocked at how people I knew who were very critical of Trump are now beginning to be very careful what they say about him, because they're seeing what's happening to real people in their careers. Universities, another example. Anyway, over to you.
- [03:35]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, just to go through some of the things in recent days that sort of play to this theme. So they sat the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Why? Because he contradicted Trump's contention that Iran's nuclear sites have been obliterated. They fired now, I think, two dozen law enforcement investigators who were involved in investigating January 6th. They've sacked the director of dance programming at the John F. Kennedy center for being too woke. And then here's another one which relates to the discussions we've been having about energy. They've ordered that all construction stops on Revolution wind, and a 4 billion wind farm off the coast of Rhode island is already almost built. And that that is a classic example of doing something because I can and because it speaks to what I think. And I think this whole thing about, you know, this is about making people feel that they can't speak out against something that is non Trumpian. And one of the most extraordinary sites this week was, I think it was Hexath Vance and Stephen Miller being heckled. My favorite heckle was a guy shouting out, did you shag the couch, Vance? I thought, I quite like that. But Miller, I mean, the guy is just, he's not even a kind of politician, he's an advisor. It would have been like me when I was working number 10, standing up and in his case saying that we've got all these 90 year old hippies protesting against what we're doing. They don't belong here. These were people who were protesting against the National Guard stuff in Washington. So I think it's very hard to say these are not. Well, they're more than creeping signs of authoritarianism. They are very powerful signs of authoritarianism.
- [05:24]
Rory Stewart
Well, John Nixon's question on whether he might cancel the midterms on the basis of preventing civil war, I think it's very worth thinking now about all the different ways in which Trump can play with the midterms and use intimidation in the military to do that. So he could say, unfortunately, we can't hold elections in these strong Democratic voting states because there's too much for a crime wave. He could say he could refuse to certify him. And of course, the majority of his team still insist he won the 2020 elections. But I think what he's proving is this line that Bannon produces again and again, which is, we're not afraid. We'll do anything. And we sense that our opponents are afraid. Great speech there. Just a shout out. Before we move on to the next question, to Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. I don't know whether you caught his incredible response, but the bit that struck me most, which I think you'd like, is to the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country. I'm asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. And that's something you say a lot about the British press. But this idea that there are always two sides to story or reducing everything to who's up and who's down and distracting people from what's really going on. Because as Pritzker points out, it's putting the National Guard in an impossible situation. They have to deploy because they could be court martialed if they don't. But there are Republican governors in other states talking about sending their National Guards from their states to Illinois, which is really testing the boundaries of the US Federal settlement.
- [07:17]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's horrific in getting ever more so. And he did one of his sort of ramble weave press conferences yesterday, which is just. I mean, I didn't watch the whole thing, but just the clips of it were absolutely mind blowing. We're now up to 10 wars that he's solved. He's decided 6 was boring, 7 was boring. He's now solved 10, hasn't explained yet what they are.
- [07:38]
Rory Stewart
Well, presumably the next war will be the civil war in the United States which, I mean, his secret isn't it is basically to encourage war, wars, and then claimed that he solved them by giving in to the aggressor.
- [07:47]
Alistair Campbell
Exactly. Gaza. Martin West Famine in Gaza. Can the international community create a group of the willing to provide Gaza with food trucks from the land borders? Would Israel bomb the trucks, do you say a way, see a way out of this horror? They wouldn't bomb the trucks necessarily, but I think there's no doubt that they have been pretty active in making sure that trucks don't get through. I mean, this has been a pretty horrific week on the famine front. So there's the Integrated Food Security Phase classification ipc, which is backed by the United nations, it's the world's leading monitor of hunger. And they have these three key indicators and you have to meet two of them for them to say that famine is taking place. Starvation. At least 1 in 5 households facing extreme shortage in food. Malnutrition. Roughly 1 in 3 children or more acutely malnourished. Mortality. Least 2 in every 10,000 people dying daily because of outright starvation or the combination of malnutrition and disease. So they have decided that is happening. The UN human Rights chief, Volker Turk has reminded us that it's a war crime to use starvation as a method of warfare. And yet of course, the Israeli line remains that this is all down to Hamas and it's all down to the failings of the international community and blah, blah, blah.
- [09:11]
Rory Stewart
Just a sort of short one on that. As somebody who was a development Minister, this IPC classification is a very, very serious international process with a lot of international NGOs involved and usually the IPC is accused of being too cautious. But definitely, if you take it back in the day when I was the DFID minister, if a official came in and said an IPC 5 classification, which is the most serious in the world, has been declared in Somalia or South Sudan or Congo or Ethiopia or Yemen. That would be the immediate trigger for the UK government suddenly announcing a massive hundreds of millions of pounds contribution to a big UN fund on dealing with famine. And for that to happen in what's basically a middle income country, I mean, there's other places I've described as some of the poorest countries in the world, But Gaza before October 7 was a country with one of the highest literacy rates in the world. It was a middle income country with people living lives very similar to what you would have seen in a lot of Southern Europe, the Middle East. To trip that into famine is extraordinary. And for The IPC to call it, as you rightly say, is very extreme.
- [10:25]
Alistair Campbell
And when you dig into the detail of the reports, I mean, obviously there's a lot of focus on death, there's a lot of focus on pictures of children with their bones sticking out. And what have you. Get this. Fishing facilities destroyed, 90% of commercial or industrial assets required for any kind of food production destroyed, 62% of the road network destroyed, 82% of agricultural wells destroyed. As of April 2025, 71% of greenhouses destroyed, 90% of cropland destroyed. As of June 25, 26% of sheep have survived, 34% of goats, 3.8% of cattle, 1.4% of poultry. So when you read stats like that, you're basically seeing the absolute breakdown of an ecosystem that is meant to keep people alive.
- [11:21]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, and let's just point out what's hidden behind those figures because Israeli journalists have now got hold of documents from the Israeli army that suggests that the Israeli army itself is acknowledging the very, very high number of civilians that are being killed, that this isn't a question of everybody being killed being Hamas, but the story on the killing of civilians, of course, is that they're used as human shields by Hamas. To put it very bluntly, that is not true of sheep. And it's very, very difficult to understand what the explanation is for the death of that number of livestock and the erosion of that amount of agricultural land. Unless it's a deliberate policy, I'm afraid, or a very, very odd policy of targeting munitions when you end up with that kind of destruction. And again, the water is electricity provided from Israel to run desalination plants in Gaza, directly controlled by Israel.
- [12:17]
Alistair Campbell
When the water's turned off, 96% of people report moderate to severe water insecurity. Municipal water production is 28% of what it was in 2023. 78% have lack of access to sufficient required toilet use, 80% no income, no savings during July. This is July and things have got a lot worse since. 43% of children had diarrhea, 58% reported fever, 16% had vomiting episodes, 25% acute respiratory episodes, and 49% of children had skin conditions. I mean, this is off the scale. It is man made and it can be address by the international community. But if Israel doesn't let people in, they don't let them in.
- [13:04]
Rory Stewart
The final thing, which I think you've said in the past, worth re emphasizing, is that that then contributes to so many other problems, so much more difficult to survive. Surgery, if you're malnourished. Much more difficult to get vaccines to work if you're malnourished. So the starvation then will contribute to a whole series of other very, very extreme life threatening conditions facing people in Gaza. Question from Tom McEwen, who is a trip member from assuming that Putin will continue to sacrifice men and materials until he's able to claim victory against Ukraine, do you think that he would be able to hold such a huge territory populated by a determinedly anti Russian population? And if not, what then?
- [13:50]
Alistair Campbell
When you think about how many words we and everybody else devoted to what happened at the meeting in Alaska and then the meeting with the European leaders in the White House, I mean, has there been any progress on the political front? None that I've seen.
- [14:06]
Rory Stewart
I think broadly speaking, that was our sense, which is that the only policy Trump really had was hoping that by conceding everything he could to Putin that that would bring an end to the war. There was no real sets of negotiations. I'm afraid this is returning to my boring metaphor that the Europeans feel all the time, so they're just sticking their finger in the dike that the basic direction of Trump is to get behind Putin and sell Zelensky down the river. And the Europeans have spent months hoping that they can sort of stop that from happening. But we've had revelations now from the Washington Post confirming that the Americans prevented Ukraine from using its attacker missiles and indeed from using British Storm Shadow missiles to fire into Russian territory, hoping that by reducing attacks on Russia they would encourage Putin to stop. But Putin isn't going to stop because he feels he's got momentum. He doesn't feel he has any incentive to stop. There's no leverage that Trump has over Putin and increasingly no leverage he has over Zelenskyy. On the question, though, and I'd love to hear a little bit about Independence Day and your reflections on that and your reflections on North Korea as well. But on the technical question, I think Putin's hope is to take control of the Donbass. He hasn't at the moment been talking about permanent occupation in Western Ukraine. If he attempted that, that would be a complete nightmare. I mean, that would be another Afghanistan for the Russians because he would be facing a continual insurgency from a profoundly anti Russian population against Western Ukraine.
- [15:41]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I thought the Independence Day was profoundly moving. I thought his speech was. I thought he was very nice that he wore a suit. It was a more traditional suit than the one that J.D. vance told him he ought to wear. I thought it was great that Mark Carney was there and I had an exchange with Mark Carney last night who said he found it one of the most poignant things that he's done in his entire life, never mind since he became Prime Minister. But I think there's an understanding that, you know, Zelensky is, as you've said in your radio series on Heroes, I think he is the closest we've got to a sort of modern day political hero and he's a very, very impressive guy. I think the fallout in a way from the whole sort of fuss that there was last week with Trump and Putin and then the European leaders is we are pretty much back where we were. And then a lot of this is about whether Zelenskyy can maintain the levels of political support. And I think he does. This is what's so remarkable about it. If you read Mark Carney's speech, you know, that was somebody who is not remotely moving away from a position of absolutely solid, solid support. The Kim Jong Un thing that you mentioned was, was fascinating. I saw this on Spiegel. I don't know whether he got much coverage in the uk, but have they. Have the North Koreans admitted that they've been sort of sending lots and lots and lots of soldiers to help the Russians?
- [17:07]
Rory Stewart
Because initially it was, initially it was a secret and initially it was broken by some very courageous journalists. I think it's no longer a secret, but initially it was a real surprise for people.
- [17:15]
Alistair Campbell
But what this was, and we should put in the newsletter because a pretty remarkable piece of film of it was from Korean North Korean state television covering live, so we were told, the return of troops, North Korean troops who had been killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine. Now they've now said they're going to send another, another 30,000. But he put medals, they had pictures of all the soldiers who'd been killed. I couldn't get the number, but there's a lot of them. And he was pinning medals to the pictures. He was hugging the children of these soldiers and then he was crying. And I don't know whether that was. You know, I don't imagine anything gets put out in the media without them wanting it to be put out in the media. But he obviously felt that this was an appropriate response to seeing these fallen soldiers and their bereaved families. And he was literally sort of weeping as he watched these coffins come off the plane.
- [18:17]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, well, you very kindly did a little plug. So the last episode of my five part BBC series on Heroes, and this one focuses on Zelensky, goes out on Monday 9am in the UK, as one says, you catch up on BBC Sounds. But it's been really interesting getting responses on trying to work out who our heroes are today. What do we make of Trump? What do we make of Musk, who of course dresses like a superhero? Is Zelenskyy really a hero? People now talk about corruption allegations in Ukraine and what does it mean to be a modern hero? But I wanted to finish with one last question about one of our mutual heroes, Mark Carney. There seems to be a debate in Canadian foreign policy about whether they should focus, for example, on Ukraine and Hawaii, or whether they should continue to be a big international convener going around with international coalitions. And I favor the latter. I think Mark Carney's in a very interesting position. He's got the credibility and the international leadership. And I think at a time of Trump, we desperately need Canada to help form these international coalitions with uk, Europe, South Korea, Japan, in a way that probably wasn't true in the past. And it would be a great pity if Canada said, instead of doing all this international stuff, we're just going to knuckle down and focus on a couple of places.
- [19:43]
Alistair Campbell
Well, the only thing I'd say about that, he was the world leader that was there in Ukraine for their Independence Day. I think he's very much of an internationalist mindset and I think he's obviously top of his agenda most of the time is going to be how he manages the biggest, the big bear next door. But no, I think he's absolutely stepping up to the markers and it'd be.
- [20:05]
Rory Stewart
Lovely to see him continuing what he's doing. And as I said, it would have been lovely to see Matt Cross, Starmer and Carney together doing their announcement on Palestine. It would be great now to see Carney really pushing because I think there isn't necessarily the international leadership there. And I think if Canada used to beat itself up a little bit a few years ago, because it sort of thought that it was just sort of meekly going along behind a Western consensus that now can really lead the Western consensus.
- [20:35]
Alistair Campbell
Agreed. Right, let's take a break. Then we'll come to walk back another hugely consequential leader that you're always very nice about. That's Ed Davey. This episode is brought to you by.
- [20:47]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
That's a very good reason to use NordVPN, which is what I use. It encrypts your connection. NordVPN masks your IP. It blocks unwanted trackers.
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com restispolitics Our link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the podcast Episode Description box.
- [21:48]
Gordon Carrera
Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [21:51]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst to Anonymous novelist.
- [21:54]
Gordon Carrera
And together we're the co hosts of another Goal hanger show, the Rest Is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of spies and secrets.
- [22:04]
David McCloskey
We have just released an absolutely cracking new series on the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. How the US Spent decades fighting a war on drugs to bring his cocaine empire to justice.
- [22:17]
Gordon Carrera
By 1989, Escobar was the the seventh richest man in the world, wealthier than the entire state of Colombia. He was a husband, a father, and the most feared narco terrorist in the world.
- [22:30]
David McCloskey
But to the poor in his hometown of Medellin, he was kind of a hero. He built roads, houses, soccer fields, became almost a Colombian Robin Hood to a nation weary with a very unequal and violent political and legal system.
- [22:42]
Gordon Carrera
Over the next few weeks, we'll take you deep inside the murky world of the hunt for Escobar. Using accounts from members of the secret military units deployed to find him, we'll reveal how Colombian and American forces work together to track down the man who controlled a global cocaine empire.
- [23:00]
David McCloskey
If this sounds good, we've left a clip for you at the end of this episode.
- [23:09]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics. Question Time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. This episode is brought to you by Fuse En.
- [23:17]
Alistair Campbell
And we're talking about how global politics has a direct link into the energy that you're using and the cost of the energy inside British homes. Wars and rivalries may feel very remote, but when Russia squeezes pipelines or China tightens supply chains, the ripple effect can Be on your heating bill.
- [23:36]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. We've had a great question from Kate Maddox from Brighton. Are we just too dependent on imports and is that why global tensions hit our energy bill so hard? I mean, definitely true. We're very dependent on imports. I mean, it is pretty amaz, the story of energy and geopolitics. People remember 1973, the Arab Israeli war drove up oil prices fourfold. And if you look at the kind of stuff we're talking about on the podcast, it can all push in very different directions. So, for example, if Trump's tariffs go wrong, we could end up with a situation in which global demand drops and the oil price drops. If, on the other hand, there are sanctions on Iran and Iran produces a million fewer barrels a day. If I got fewer or less there, Alistair, Fewer. That's fine, thank you. Yep. Then the price could go up again. And then there's other questions. Are we going to be able to develop our own domestic supply? There was an article by my old sparring partner, John Redwood in the Telegraph today. I think the combination of John Redwood and the Telegraph. Can I give you a bit of a pulsing?
- [24:38]
Alistair Campbell
But I did see it trailed on the front page. I can't pretend that I picked it up to read it.
- [24:42]
Rory Stewart
Well, he's pointed out that the government is really struggling to sell licenses for offshore windows at the moment. In its latest auction, it had offered £73amegawatt hour and couldn't get anyone to buy. It's now up to £213amegawatt hour and it's still struggling to get people to come in because some of the policy uncertainty and planning uncertainty means it's quite difficult. Anyway, any last thoughts from you on geopolitics?
- [25:06]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great question and it's true that this stuff has a direct impact on oil prices, the one that people always go to, but, you know, we regularly get asked by people, you know, why can't Europe just pull the plug on all Russian energy? And, you know, the honest, straightforward answer is that, you know, we've got to keep the lights on. So this stuff really matters. I think we're going to see it matter more because the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is going to continue to be a factor. We've got rivalry between China and the America, which is influencing supply chains and liquid natural gas flows and the energy market. You and I both talk to sort of people who work in these kind of risk assessment places and political consultancies. They now look at energy flows every bit as closely as they look at the politics of a country. So this stuff really, really matters because.
- [26:03]
Rory Stewart
In Britain, we have this very liberalized system. Changes in global energy prices hit very, very directly into your bills. So they can fluctuate pretty quickly. Which of course, brings us back to our sponsor, Fuse Energy.
- [26:16]
Alistair Campbell
So households can't control what happens on the world stage, but they can choose Fuse cheaper tariffs today with many saving £200.
- [26:25]
Rory Stewart
So switch your gas and electricity to Fuse before the winter price hikes. Find out more@fuseenergy.com politics okay, Rory, listen.
- [26:34]
Alistair Campbell
Let'S get back to the Lib Dems because we've talked about them the last couple of weeks and last week when sort of saying that they never say anything terribly interesting and nothing that goes through, we said to them, if any of the Lib Dem team were listening, could they send us some of the things that Ed Davies said and done in recent weeks and months? And they did speeches, big conference speech that sort of set out the whole agenda, one on Europe, one on the future of the economy, article on Brexit saying that Starmer must find the courage to change course. So what did you make of them and have you shifted your view at all?
- [27:10]
Rory Stewart
Well, look, I think some of them are good speeches. Some of them are serious good speeches. I really very strongly in favor of his idea that we should join the European Union Customs Union. I'm sorry he didn't make more of that in the election campaign. They'll probably say they made a certain amount about it. But I absolutely believe, and I think you do, too, that that's a critical part of restoring confidence in the UK and would make a lot of difference to trade. I think his policy on Palestine was very good and that was a very good speech. I'm much more skeptical, I'm afraid, about him on the economy. Good that he's speaking up for free trade. But really the speech which is the importance of education and training, something we've always emphasized as Liberal Democrats, or another speech which I'm afraid I, I sent you, which I was slightly, I'm sorry that I, I've put on a voice where I'm being mean to him, aren't I?
- [28:04]
Alistair Campbell
You are, yeah. You've got the Christian Schmidt yesterday at Ed Davies today, I don't know here.
- [28:09]
Rory Stewart
Is he's got a slight tendency to go for sort of grand rhetoric and then slightly pathetic final sentence. So because Donald Trump is not only betraying Ukraine, it's not only their sovereignty he's selling out, it's our security. The Security of Europe, the security of our United Kingdom. And that is unforgivable.
- [28:34]
Alistair Campbell
But, Rory, you read it in a certain way. I could deliver that in a way that you roll and you roll and you roll, and that is unforgivable. Round of applause. Round of applause. Round, APPLAUSE.
- [28:44]
Rory Stewart
Much better.
- [28:45]
Alistair Campbell
I thought his. I mean, conference speeches are very, very. They're hard gigs. And I saw the conference speech they sent was good. I thought his stuff on Brexit was good. This goes back to a point that we were making yesterday in the main podcast. It is absurd. So yesterday, the BBC news. I got off the plane, I get in the car, I'm having a look at sort of some of the websites, BBC News. One of the main headlines was, farage says immigration is a scourge. Tell me the newsworthy value of that. That is something that he said that's like. So if Ed Davies said care is very important, would that get covered on the BBC? I don't think so. So I think there is a real problem with our. With the way the media view Farage and the way they view the other parties. They've got 72 MPs. Yes. They could do a better job. I think, where they're caught. We talked a little bit about this last week. I think they're caught the whole time between local strategy and national strategy, and maybe they need to find the best single issue that brings those two together. Because, as you saw in the speech, he does have a very strong line on Trump, he does have very strong lines on Europe. But is that the thing that's going to bring a national and a local strategy together?
- [30:03]
Rory Stewart
It's so interesting because we're plugging the interview with Nicola Sturgeon, and the one time when she really sort of gets cross is when we suggest the Lib Dems to her. She really thinks that that's the most shocking idea. And it is something, I'm afraid, that traditionally, as a Conservative, and most of my labor colleagues too, we like to grumble about the Lib Dems. There's a hilarious piece for real political geeks. If you read Tim Shipman's account of Sam Jima trying to. My friend and former Conservative tried to defect to the Lib Dems during the 2019 election. And it was meant to be this big thing. They got this Conservative minister over and he was joining the Lib Dems and he was going to run. And. And the description of how the Lib Dem press team managed to destroy that moment is one of the funniest pages you'll Ever read in your life, I mean, begins with them putting Samjeema in a hotel which he describes as being like something out of the Shining. I mean, kind of peeling walls, kind of crazy. They then try to creep him up through the fire exit and distract by using I think it's somebody like Giet Verhofstadt or Franz Timmermans to make a speech which they think is really going to attract the, the attention of the media while they slip Sam in through the back door. And by the time they've got Sam in they've missed all the front pages, the newspapers, because they've got all the timing out. Just tell me, Alistair, seriously, I mean, why do you think, at a time when I believe there is a massive story to be told, I'm afraid Rachel Reeves hasn't got a grip of the welfare budget. I think she's going to be in real trouble with the next budget. They haven't managed to deal with the criminal gangs on boats. There's a real story about not getting the growth that we want. Massive space, I think for somebody to make a good, pretty technocratic argument for a different type of government. Why do the Lib Dems not fill that space? And why, when you're not endorsing Ed Davies book and I got you off camera, might you secretly agree that there's sometimes something a little disappointing about the Lib Dems?
- [32:02]
Alistair Campbell
No, it's not. I've always been slightly of the Nicola Sturgeon view that their problem is that where it suits them, they sort of, sort of, they lean towards labor style arguments and policies and where it suits them, they lean towards the Tories. What I'm suggesting is that they find something that sort of, that breaks through that. No, it's not that. I, look, I voted Lib Dem once and that was a protest vote and I, I, I'm, you know, I'm not a natural Lib Dem at all, as Nick Clegg and Miriam regularly tell me, because they say you're not really liberal is their view of me, so. But I, I, I honestly do think I, I think this media point is a fair one. I actually, if I were them, I'd make far more complaints about the way that our media culture has developed and the way that our media landscape is. I'll read you the message that I got from one of their team. He said, I know I've got a vested interest in making excuse for us not cutting through but at a time when the far right control one of the biggest social media platforms, the BBC follow around Farage waiting for him to say something mean about immigrants. The Conservatives are great fundamentals for the media and the government is having a bit of a shocker. It's pretty hard to get noticed by saying progressive things, doing okay in opinion polls and doing very well in local elections. That's their complaint. I think they should find they should keep complaining. There's nothing wrong with complaining about the way that our media is. I used to do plenty of that myself. But I think you have to have that bigger message and strategy that's cutting through. And I think that the closest he gets to it really is with the personal story, but that's not enough stuff. You've got to have a policy and an area that you identify with. And I think at the moment they caught. Because they're doing Trump, they're doing Gaza, they're doing Europe, and then they've also all this domestic stuff. Now, if I were there, might pick one max two and say, right, that is going to be our national story.
- [33:48]
Rory Stewart
Okay, well, let's keep coming back to it because I still think there's something difficult to explain to anybody, really, which is why when we all feel that there's a. This is Jacob's question, which he asked on the pod. Why is it, when we all feel there's a massive gaping hole in the center of British politics and we all want an alternative to far Conservative, and in my case, an alternative to Labour, do the Lib Dems not naturally occur?
- [34:14]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, no, it's fair.
- [34:15]
Rory Stewart
And it's been a problem since the 1920s. I mean, there is that space and I don't know what the problem is.
- [34:23]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, we'll come back to it, but thank you for listening, Lib Dems, and thank you for sending us. I, at least you thought that there was a bit of substance in them. That's. That's quite important. Here's one for you, Rory Nuala o', Connor. I'd love to understand more about how politicians get their data before making big policy decisions. Having never myself been asked to take part in a government survey, I wonder how representative these really are.
- [34:47]
Rory Stewart
It's a big problem at the Office on National Statistics, which is the key to everything. And I guess the two biggest views we've been talking about this week are probably immigration and the economy, I guess is where I was with Lib Dems. We don't have good data. And when I say that, I mean it's completely shocking. I mean, some of the government data has had to be removed and rejected something like seven or eight different times. And it's a problem in a whole series of ways. There's some very straightforward bits of problem. I mean, one of them is that but unlike most countries, you'll notice when you leave Heathrow, you don't go through a passport desk, so people don't actually know how many people are leaving the country. We don't have ID cards, all sorts of stuff. Secondly, I think there are also potentially problems around the UK census and how people respond, how much detail they respond. And there's another issue, which is that Scotland now runs a separate census from England, which causes, on a different day, which causes other complications on people moving around. But I think the basic stuff, immigration economics, is the stuff where we really know and we've had to continue revise. I remember Afghans saying to me, when the figure was there were 30,000 Afghans in Britain, my Afghan friends were saying, it's complete rubbish. We think there's 150,000, 200,000 in London alone. Thirdly, I think as our economy becomes more complicated, I really felt this in Cumbria, that we didn't really know what was going on. It's true in the Orkneys here, if you try to look at the economy of rural Britain, particularly, everybody's got multiple jobs and a lot of these jobs are very difficult to categorize and nobody actually from the government's going around asking what anyone does. All we've got is sort of basic tax statistics. So you're in a situation where policymakers are making decisions without really knowing what's going on. And that's why I think we see a lot of the problems. You see these situations where the government will say, we're going to put inheritance tax on farmers and they've done some treasury indication running through their figures and they've convinced themselves it's going to affect almost nobody. And then the NFU will come out and say, well, this is insane, this affects almost all our members. And the government will say, well, it's not what our figures say. Why is this happening? Well, it's happening because something's gone really badly wrong with statistics and most of our policy is based on statistics.
- [37:00]
Alistair Campbell
Final question, Lucy Parker, Strathfield and Avon. With the lineup for Strictly Come Dancing having now been announced, can either of you dance? Would either you ever consider going on the show? Well, my answer is no to both. I'm a very, very bad dancer. I've been asked God knows how many times to do it. And I see, I read that some bloke who's quotes famous, whatever that means in the modern age for saying bosh a lot and being a friend of Nigel Farage is on this year's Strictly.
- [37:30]
Rory Stewart
Come Dancing and is now being endorsed by Dominic Cummings to be the new Mayor of London. And met J.D. vance. There was this very odd meeting which J.D. vance held in the Cotswolds where he got Dan Kruger along.
- [37:41]
Alistair Campbell
Is this all part of the BBC's Getting with the anti woke zeitgeist that we have to get somebody who's famous for saying Bosch?
- [37:47]
Rory Stewart
Well, it's also something where we've got to be serious about how famous people become. I guess this is why Matt Hancock made these slightly embarrassing decisions to go on. What was it? Celebrity Jungle and sas. Are you hard enough because people become really famous? I was talking to your friend of mine, Krishna Guru Murthy, when he went on Strictly and he said it was absolutely unbelievable. Once he'd gone on Strictly, he couldn't walk down a high street without being stopped and photographed by every. I love dancing. Completely love dancing. You've been to one of my dancing partners.
- [38:18]
Alistair Campbell
I've seen you dancing with Theresa May.
- [38:20]
Rory Stewart
They see me dance at the Palladium on stage when you were.
- [38:24]
Alistair Campbell
You were channeling what's called the Cheeky Chap. Max Miller. The Cheeky Chap.
- [38:27]
Rory Stewart
Max Miller, the Cheeky Chappie. Yeah, but yes. No, I. I'm not going on celebrity shows like that.
- [38:32]
Alistair Campbell
No, I mean I'd love to be able to dance. I mean, I can dance like, you know, I used to do something called poly gliding when I was a student, which was this sort of thing where you kind of bit northern solely you move across. But I don't know, you just obviously the. Are you. Would you say you're a good dancer, Rory?
- [38:48]
Rory Stewart
I don't know about that, but I love it. I mean, I do a lot of it and I think it may be. Here's a completely, totally non scientific theory. I wonder whether, because I'm not actually that musical, whether I'm not more taken with a beat. I'm very, very. I think I would have been a decent drummer. I could have been a kind of Ringo Starr figure. But I think maybe if you're very, very musical, you get very caught up with the complexity of music and you're missing.
- [39:10]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [39:11]
Rory Stewart
The basic movements.
- [39:12]
Alistair Campbell
Well, there we are. Yesterday you were Luka Modric, today you're Ingestar.
- [39:16]
Rory Stewart
That's it, that's it. Good. It's good. Marvelous. All the best looking, best looking celebrities in the world. That's it.
- [39:23]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. See you Soon.
- [39:25]
Rory Stewart
See you soon. Bye. Bye.
- [39:26]
Alistair Campbell
Take it.
- [39:26]
Rory Stewart
Bye.
- [39:35]
Alistair Campbell
Hi again.
- [39:36]
David McCloskey
It's David from the Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier.
- [39:39]
Rory Stewart
Victory over drugs is our cause, a just cause. And with your help, we are going to win.
- [39:48]
Alistair Campbell
Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin drug cartel.
- [39:51]
Rory Stewart
The world's 14th richest man.
- [39:54]
Gordon Carrera
He was in many ways a terrorist.
- [39:57]
David McCloskey
This is an economic power concentrated in a few hands and in criminal minds. What they cannot obtain by blackmail, they get by murder.
- [40:05]
Alistair Campbell
And I don't think he express any regret at all.
- [40:09]
David McCloskey
He tries to portray himself as a man of the people. This kind of like leftist revolutionary outlaw.
- [40:15]
Alistair Campbell
Nearly everyone in Medellin supports the traffickers. Those who don't are either dead or targets.
- [40:21]
Gordon Carrera
If you declare war, you got to expect the state to respond.
- [40:26]
David McCloskey
This is the moment where he goes too far. 13 bombs have gone off of the weekend by the end of 87. Bogota is essentially a war zone. US spending for international anti drug efforts is going to grow from less than $300 million in 1989 to more than 700 million by 1991.
- [40:45]
Alistair Campbell
It is the certain knowledge that no one is really safe in Colombia from drug cartel assassins.
- [40:51]
David McCloskey
It's a conflict where the goal wasn't even to stop the flow of cocaine. It was to bring down this. This narco terrorist.
- [40:57]
Gordon Carrera
Everything has turned against him after this point. The whole thing he was building is collapsing. To hear the full episode, listen to the Rest is Classified. Wherever you get your podcasts.