463. Question Time: How Truth Became Optional In Trump’s America

Summary

The Rest Is Politics – Episode 463

Question Time: How Truth Became Optional In Trump’s America
Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart
Date: October 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Rest Is Politics dives deep into the contemporary crisis of truth in politics, focusing extensively on Donald Trump’s America and the erosion of constitutional norms and civic trust in the U.S. The discussion moves from the implications of Trump's ongoing influence, both domestically and internationally, to reflections on British politics, mental health, and rural communities. Alastair and Rory probe the complex dynamics of power, democracy, media, and optimism in the current political landscape, offering both incisive critique and hopeful stories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump, Truth, and American Democracy

• The ‘Demolition of the East Wing’ & Erosion of Norms

  • Trump’s disregard for American traditions (e.g., architecturally altering the White House) is seen as symbolic of his “do whatever the hell he wants” approach ([02:14], Alastair).
  • The lack of consequence after the January 6th Capitol attack is highlighted as a troubling signal about American democracy ([02:59], Alastair).

  “...the way that they're talking up the troubles that they expect around the midterms, more National Guards going to more cities...the fact that it [January 6th] isn’t [career-ending] means that we should be very, very worried about some of these other things...”
  — Alastair Campbell [02:14]

• Republican Party's Alignment with Trump

  • Most senior Republicans have signed onto “the big lie,” and those complicit still dominate party leadership ([03:33], Rory).
  • Trump’s politics (and that of his deputy, Stephen Miller, and Vance) are increasingly defined by “power, force and violence, not laws and process” ([04:50], Rory).

  “...what matters is power, force and violence, not laws and process. And that’s the kind of big overall theme that we see again and again.”
  — Rory Stewart [04:50]

• Weaponization of the Department of Justice

  • The DOJ, once prized for its independence, is now a “weaponized instrument of Trump’s state,” with direct interference in corruption cases and targeting of enemies ([05:16], Rory).
  • Norms are being shattered, unlike the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, which remains independent.

2. Media, Murdoch, and Political Influence

• Rupert Murdoch & Fox News

  • Discussion of a new Rest Is Politics Plus series on Murdoch, with the thesis that without Murdoch there would be no Fox News, and without Fox News, no Trump ([11:33], Alastair).
  • Trump’s ability to co-opt Fox News for his own influence, despite Murdoch’s personal disdain for him, is explored ([11:33], Alastair).

  “...without Murdoch, there is no Fox News and without Fox News, there is no Trump.”
  — Alastair Campbell, quoting Michael Wolff [11:33]

• Social Media & Political Instability

  • The rise of anti-establishment figures like Zora Mamdani in New York is credited in part to social media, which has enabled outsiders to circumvent party structures and traditional media ([14:28], Rory).

3. International Perspective & the Illusion of Stability

• Elites' Failure to Fight Back

  • Rory suggests that American institutions have not shown the resilience many expected in standing up to Trump ([08:18], Rory).

  “...these American elites are much less self-confident...than people thought. The universities haven’t really stood up. The media hasn’t really stood up. The financial community hasn’t really stood up...”
  — Rory Stewart [08:18]

• Polling Surprises and ‘Independent’ Surges

  • Unexpected election results (Argentina’s Milei and New York’s Mamdani) serve as reminders of expert fallibility ([14:28], Rory).

• Happiness as Political Predictor

  • Recent research cited shows that voter happiness is a stronger predictor for voting behaviour than any demographic or economic variable ([14:28], Rory).

4. British Politics, Rural Life & Rory’s New Book

• Dispatches from The Borders (“Middleland”)

  • Rory’s new book collects years of dispatches reflecting on rural Cumbria and broader questions about the “good life” in modern Britain, offering a counterweight to the high drama of national and global politics ([20:11], Alastair; [24:54], Rory).
  • Discussion covers rural identity, the disconnect of metropolitan policymakers, landscape, and rootedness.

  “...I suppose it’s about, as an mp, what a relief it is to have an area of the country where you can really have a feeling that people are rooted somewhere, that the landscape matters.”
  — Rory Stewart [24:54]

• Challenges Facing Rural Communities

  • Labour’s lack of understanding of rural communities is highlighted ([26:45], Bobby Bowers’ question; [26:52], Rory).
  • The impact of Brexit, trade deals, and policy (especially on small farm viability and inheritance taxes) is discussed ([30:00], Rory).

  “...in the end, these small family farms...what really is wrecking them and taking them down now is Brexit took away the single farm payment...Australian trade deal...Labour government...inheritance tax...”
  — Rory Stewart [30:00]

• Land Ownership Changes

  • Large-scale buying up of farms by wealthy individuals and charities for rewilding and carbon credits is reshaping rural England ([32:22], Rory).

5. Mental Health, Inspiration & Optimism

• Marcus Skeet’s Story

  • The hosts share the remarkable mental health journey of Marcus Skeet, a teenager who overcame serious adversity and has become a leading fundraiser for the charity Mind ([33:29], Rahima Figueiredo’s question; [34:49], Alastair).

  “If anything bad happens, try to get something good out of it. I think that’s what fuels a lot of people who work for charities. And I try to do that in my own life.”
  — Alastair Campbell [36:24]

• Stigma, Treatment, and Stories of Hope

  • Alastair bravely shares his own experience with depression and alcoholism, underscoring the power of therapy, openness, and the need for active, continuous recovery ([36:24], Alastair).
  • Both hosts advocate for greater government ambition on mental health policy ([36:24], Alastair).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump and Constitutional Norms:

  “He feels he can do whatever the hell he wants in whichever way he wants.”
  — Alastair Campbell [02:14]

• On the Elites’ Failure:

  “Almost nobody from finance to or certainly Congress seems to be fighting back.”
  — Rory Stewart [08:18]

• On Fox News and Trump:

  “He became the bigger voice within Fox, and according to Michael, Murdoch, despises Trump, thinks that he’s basically stupid, thinks that he’s very dangerous, but the Fox became so important to his business empire that he had to go along with it.”
  — Alastair Campbell [11:33]

• On Social Media and Instability:

  “It’s a very unstable world.”
  — Rory Stewart [14:28]

• On Mental Health Recovery:

  “Admission of ‘I can’t do this on my own’ was the first step.”
  — Alastair Campbell [36:24]

• On Happiness and Voting Behaviour:

  “If you are somebody who says that you are more unhappy than happy with your life, it’s the most reliable predictor that you will vote for Trump...”
  — Rory Stewart [14:28]

• On Rural Life and Belonging:

  “I found in Cumbria it was a place where it was possible to sort of define what the good life might be like...”
  — Rory Stewart [24:54]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:45] — Start of substantive episode: Question Time begins
• [02:14] — Alastair on Trump’s psychology & January 6th
• [03:33] — Rory on Republican support & erosion of constitutional norms
• [05:16] — Weaponization of the Department of Justice
• [08:18] — Christine Doyle’s question: “Is America headed for civil war?”
• [09:17] — Protests and New York’s Zora Mamdani discussed
• [11:33] — Discussion on Murdoch, Fox News, and their relationship to Trump
• [14:28] — Surprising elections, social media’s destabilizing effect, and happiness as voting predictor
• [20:11] — Rory’s new book “Dispatches from the Borders” (“Middleland”) introduced
• [26:45] — Rural issues: Labour’s understanding and the plight of family farms
• [33:29] — Uplifting mental health story of Marcus Skeet and broader discussion on mental health policy
• [36:24] — Alastair’s personal reflection on mental health and strategies for recovery
• [39:38] — Concluding tone: optimism and historical anecdotes about Cumbria

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Episode Tone and Style

The discussion balances critical, sometimes urgent analysis (especially on Trump and threats to democracy) with their characteristic wit, personal storytelling, and a consistent commitment to hope and pragmatic optimism—most notably through the rural and mental health sections.

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Conclusion

This episode provides a rich, multidimensional analysis of how “truth became optional” in modern politics, using Trump’s America as a focal point but consistently drawing illuminating parallels and lessons for the UK. The interplay between violent politics and the resilience (or lack thereof) of democratic institutions is offset by grounded stories from British rural life, the media’s complex role in shaping democracy, and the power of hope in the face of personal and collective adversity. For listeners in search of both insight and optimism, The Rest Is Politics delivers a thought-provoking, engaged conversation.

Transcript

[Alastair Campbell]

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[Alastair Campbell]

Welcome to the rest is Politics Question time with me, Alistair Campbell.

[Rory Stewart]

And with me, Rory Stewart. First question for you, Mordecai Stones from London. I'm often amused and delighted. Well, that's quite flattering at your insightful commentary around Donald Trump's psychology and decision making. Without lapsing into hysteria. Considering the background of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, how closely do you feel that Trump's demolition of the East Wing speaks to the likelihood of him not leaving the White House come 2029?

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, he's already been musing. He was musing again on his plane to the Far east that he would love to have another term. He didn't like the ide being the constitutional trick of being vice president for one term and then coming back. Or, you know, the President Vance, presumably, then sort of stepping aside and he would then constitutionally take over. He thought that was too cute, he said. But I find this, and bear in mind as well, the demolition of the East Wing is another breach, because he said he wasn't going to change the architecture of the White House. I think what it all speaks to is the sense that he feels he can do whatever the hell he wants in whichever way he wants. More worryingly, to my mind, is the way that they're talking up the troubles that they expect around the midterms, more National Guards going to more cities. And, you know, The Mordecai mentions January 6, 2021. I still can't for the life of me think why that wasn't a complete, you know, end of the road end, career ending moment. But the fact that it isn't means that we should be very, very worried about some of these other things that he's doing, which I know you want to talk about.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. And I think career ending, not just for him. It should have been career ending for all the senior Republicans that supported the big lie about his apparent election win and got behind him after January 6th. And yet they are now the dominant figures right across his entire administration. All of them have signed up to the story that he defeated Biden, and, of course, all the senior Republican leadership. We talk a lot about the international stuff, and we are struggling like the rest of the world to get the right balance on how you describe this strange mixture that he does abroad of kind of gangster like extortion. You know, I hope you in Ukraine, if you give me $500 billion worth of minerals or let my friend Bolsonaro out of jail or hit you with 50% tariffs, and I'm going to bomb you, or I'm going to let someone else bomb you. And then I'm oh, and by the way, give me this. I'll have a $400 million plane, thank you very much. But domestically, it's more difficult because it is about the erosion of constitutional protections and the rule of law and the way the Department of Justice works and the way the FBI works and what he's doing to universities and what he's doing to the media, what he's doing to law firms and what he's doing with ICE agents. And we're creating a culture which I think is fundamentally about Stephen Miller, particularly Trump's deputy chief of staff, but actually pretty much Vance and Trump, too, believing in the end that what matters is power, force and violence, not laws and process. And that's the kind of big overall theme that we see again and again, a couple of examples and maybe sort of hand back to you. One of them is, of course, what's happening in the Department of Justice. So the Department of Justice, since Watergate, since the 1970s, for the whole of my life, has operated with norms that basically says it's supposed not to be a political tool. It's supposed to look at cases on their merits, and the prosecutors then pursue them. And they don't do it with huge press conferences, and they don't do it on a partisan basis, and they don't use it to settle scores, and they don't comment on the cases. Trump has ripped all that up. He stopped them pursuing the case against the mayor of New York, big corruption case involving the Turks, and he stopped it because the mayor of New York was his ally. He's accelerated cases against his enemies, including the former director of the SBI Comey, including now John Bolton. He regularly says, I'm going after this person. And then he, of course, being Trump, he then changes to, well, I'm not going after them, but I hear people going after them. And probably if they're going after them there, because they're very bad people. And in the center of this is this figure, Edward Martin, who is basically acting as the interim attack dog, who's out there all the time. He went after the interim New York Attorney general, basically turned up outside her house in a very threatening way with all the television cameras, and then said, oh, I was just looking at some property around this area. And because of the lack of norms, because it's not like Britain, where the Crown Prosecution Service is independent of the government, the Department of Justice is increasingly becoming a weaponized instrument of Trump's state. Over to you.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah. No, and the other thing, don't forget, while he's talking about this sort of massively expensive ballroom, at a time when we're into the fourth week of a government shutdown, we're only one week away from it becoming the longest shutdown in history. He was speaking to the troops in Japan, and they're having to get some sort of, you know, multi billionaire business guy who's actually simultaneously involved in all sorts of legal things, which presumably will now get cleared up because of his generosity, who's helping to pay the military. So this. This is kind of, on the. On the one hand, this, as you say, this global peacemaking, spread the love, America will do this if you do this. And all that back home is this policy of creating division, creating hate, being. Building a sense that he might go for a third term, that the midterms may happen, may not happen, depending on the outcome, blah, blah, blah. It's so sort of profoundly un American. But it does say to me that when he says, does the demolition of the East Wing speak to the likelihood of him not leaving? He's creating not just the new Trump in term two and a new White House and a new politics. He's kind of creating new America and he's using it to try to create a whole new world. Now, maybe overreach will get him before too long, but I find it very, very scary.

[Rory Stewart]

There was a question from Christine Doyle, who's a trip member from Oxford, getting back to this question of whether America's headed for civil war. And one of the things I'd love to get your sense on is whether, oddly having thought, you know, I thought maybe the real threat is civil war. In other words, all these American institutions would resist Trump and the country would be torn apart as people f now beginning to worry that actually these American elites are much less self confident and much less good at standing up to him than people thought. The universities haven't really stood up. The media hasn't really stood up. The financial community hasn't really stood up, despite this crazy stuff he's doing with the American economy. With tariffs now at an average of 18%, with the employment figures looking dubious, with very strange moves affecting the international trade system, the markets are continuing to fly upwards. People are making huge amount of money. They're not pricing in the Trump risk. Almost nobody from finance to or certainly Congress seems to be fighting back. What's your sense of the fight back.

[Alastair Campbell]

In the U.S. well, I think the thing to look forward to in the next few days, of course, is the election in New York. Zora Mamdani, who he had this extraordinary huge crowd, almost as big as ro2 crowd Rory turned up for a rally that he did with AOC and Bernie Sanders. Now that's if you like the left, okay? I think we're the more maybe centrist and left voters. I think you're right that the institutions are not fighting back. But my God, those marches last weekend, the no Kings marches, they were big. They were big and a lot of them were happening in places that you would not expect people to be turning out against a Republican president. And of course he then just comes out and says, well, Mamdan is a communist and he's a loser and AOC's got, has got a low IQ and all his usual insults. And he also says these marches, they were all losers. They were all, you know, and they weren't very big crowds. He just does the. He goes straight into the fake news polarization stuff. But I think the Mamdani election will be really interesting. And of course, it speaks. It speaks to what we talked about in the main podcast. Why has he cut through in the way that he has now? They can try to identify him as a communist. I think by British standards he'd sort of, you know, is he even as left wing as Jeremy Corbyn? I'm not convinced. But what's interesting about it is that he has cut through. Yes, he does all the attack stuff, but he doesn't go on about Donald Trump the whole time. He goes on about what he wants to do for New York. He's got a big, bold, positive agenda, and that's what seems to be getting people out in the streets for him.

[Rory Stewart]

Can I just bring you to this amazing series that you've done on Rupert Murdoch, which is a member zone series, which I think we're now just getting into. The fourth episode coming out on Friday. And the fourth episode focuses on this relationship between Murdoch and Trump, which I guess is sort of part of this story. Because Murdoch, in my understanding, thought that with Fox News and with his amazing position in the media, he could almost decide whether Trump got through or not. And maybe will have thought at one stage in his life he could kind of block Trump and thought Trump was a bit of a loser. And yet somehow Murdoch lost to Trump. Is that right? I mean, tell us about this episode and what you found.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, we're getting very good feedback on the murder series. And again, to those who want to listen to these members only series, you just join [e-mail] Michael Wolf, with whom he's my sort of my Rory Stewart on this series, he is of the view that without Murdoch, there is no Fox News and without Fox News, there is no Trump. And what I think Trump did, and this is where you have to understand how instinctively smart he is as a politician, by his own lights, achieving what he sets out to achieve, he basically decided he had to become the most important person inside Fox, not Murdoch. So when Murdoch came along and said, I'm not backing that Trump guy, and he had a time when they were flirting with Ron DeSantis and, and the ratings just started to collapse and you had people like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity saying, this is a fucking joke. You know, why are we allowing this senile old Australian guy to decide our strategy when it's clearly not failing. We've got to get Trump back on. And Trump, you know how many other leaders can actually guarantee fawning coverage by picking up a phone on a dodgy mobile line from the back of a car and saying, put me on the Hannity show. And so he became the bigger voice within Fox, and according to Michael, Murdoch, despises Trump, thinks that he's basically stupid, thinks that he's very dangerous, but the Fox became so important to his business empire that he had to go along with it. And so, yeah, it's very, very interesting. And I think Michael's right. I'm not sure that without Trump, without Fox, not sure Trump wins. I hate to say that, because I don't like giving power to these people, but I think it's true. So if you want to hear the episodes we've already done or the ones still to come, become a member. You do that by signing [e-mail] and you'll get a free trial. So if you decide at the end of the day, now, I don't want that, then no skin off your nose. But we are getting a lot of really good feedback on the Murdoch series. We mentioned very briefly in the main episode, we mentioned Milei. So, Imogen Phillips, how much of Milley's midterm win can be credited to Trump's bailout? We talked about this a couple of weeks ago because Milei's party did very badly in a local by election, and we thought if that was followed in these elections, then he'd be in real trouble. Trump comes up with his $20 billion bailout and he's had a bloody landslide. And that means. And bear in mind, this is a guy who had very little support inside the parliamentary bodies and he's now got a lot. So it changes things big time.

[Rory Stewart]

It's amazing, isn't it? A couple of things. One is it's a reminder of how unreliable the polls are and how unreliable consistently experts are. I mean, all the authorities on Argentina, almost without exception, thought Milei was going to poll at about 30, 35, and he came in well above 40. And even Milei was astonished by it. And we're seeing this also. We saw this with Caerphilly, where everybody thought reform would win and actually Plaid would win. And we've seen it repeated again and again and again. In fact, almost the only predictable election that we've seen was Keir Starmer's, where everyone thought he was going to defeat the Tories, and he certainly did. Second thing is this Whole story which you were talking about yesterday with Ireland of independence suddenly being able to come through, or people like Mamdani who were not part of the Democratic establishment at all. I mean, Cuomo, from this huge political family with tens of millions of dollars, is suddenly defeated by Mamdani. And this again, keeps coming back to this question of social media. It's a very unstable world. There was another thing that was picked up in this wonderful Chris Clark article that you raised yesterday. He refers to a piece of American research about the relationship between happiness and voting. And there's a graph that we can share, which actually our producer brought together, which shows that people voting Labour and Conservative in Britain, and indeed people voting Democrat in the US disproportionately register as being happier than the people voting for the smaller parties. And in fact, in the US, this piece of research in 2024 said if you want the single biggest predictor on whether somebody will vote for Trump or Biden, it's not whether they have a university degree, how old they are, whether they're white or black, how many immigrants there are in the community. It's whether or not you reckon that you are by and large more happy than unhappy with your life. And if you are somebody who says that you are more unhappy than happy with your life, it's the most reliable predictor that you will vote for Trump, both as an individual and as a county.

[Alastair Campbell]

The other big demographic shift, of course, relates to, to some extent to class and education. So some polling I saw last week, people with a university degree and indeed people who were educated at private school, are now more likely to vote Labour than Tory. And what Johnson did through the Brexit thing and then in his own election is that quite a lot of working class people who would never have thought of voting Tory because their parents and grandparents would turn in their graves, actually decided to vote Tory. Once you've made that shift, you'll always, in general, I think the human being in us tends to want to stay with it and find the reasons to stay with it. Once you've made the shift, it's very hard to peel people back. Okay, well, let's take a break and then we've got to come back and do some relentless plugging of your new book.

[Rory Stewart]

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[Alastair Campbell]

Now.

[Rory Stewart]

Welcome back to the Rest Is Politics. Question time with me, Rory Stewart.

[Alastair Campbell]

And me, Alastair Campbell. Here we go. Alana Phillips. Rory, do you now see yourself more as a writer than a politician? And does that allow you more scope for positivity? And the reason Alana sent that question is because we put out a plea to questions about Rory's new book, which is called Dispatches from the Borders. Now, Rory, do you want to explain what your book is or do you want me to do it?

[Rory Stewart]

I'll give you a chance and then maybe we can disagree agreeably about what it's about. What did you think it was about?

[Alastair Campbell]

It's Dispatches from the Borders. Rather grandly. Throughout, you describe these not as articles for the local newspaper, but as letters and essays. So you talked about Chris Clark's article, which in fact was a sort of, I think, a very considered thesis. But you are letters, dispatches and essays. But first of all, to put your mind at ease, I found it very, very readable, very enjoyable in many respects, very interesting. And what it is just to tell those who haven't heard about the book yet, it's called Middleland. And Rory will explain why it's called Middleland and why that's so important in the context of a book about Cumbria. But when Rory was an mp, he wrote a weekly article for his local newspaper. And this is about a third of the of the columns that he wrote with these quite short analytical pieces that sort of, you know, order them around certain themes. And it's interesting, Rory, your personality that has sort of come through the podcast over time. It comes through the book over time as well. There are certain themes and interests that you return to to again and again and again. Landscape, farming, you know, history. There are touches of where you sort of clearly in despair about your life as an mp. So there are. You can see politics on the edge being born within these columns as they go. I hope you won't be hurt to hear that my favorite bit in the entire book. And there are many, There are many, okay. But my favorite bit was not written by you, it was written by your father. And I shouldn't laugh because it's actually a column that you wrote when your father died, but he left the funeral instructions and you've talked a lot about your dad on the podcast, but I felt, I feel I know him a lot better having read this. So this is him on how he wants to be funeralized. One, I have no strong views on the subject, but all things being equal and if legally possible, I should prefer to be buried or with my dogs at home. 2. If, however, Sally, your mum and Rory and the other children would prefer something different, so be it. 3. I am disinterested in whether I'm cremated or not. Once again, the views of my family should prevail. If there is to be a formal farewell, I should like a piper to play a traditional lament followed by a bugler to pay the last post. In memory of my brother and all my friends who were killed in action at the war. And he goes on, he goes on to sum up gaiety, even perhaps song and dance should be the hallmark of the exercise. If the weather is fine, a farewell strip. The willow ate some dashing white sergeant and gay Gordons would not tax the young or the old. And also I was thrilled Rory to learn that his favorite regimental marching song is Highland Laddi, which is the first march I ever learnt.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, and would your funeral instructions be very different?

[Alastair Campbell]

Oh, I write them all the time. I adapt them all the time. I'm even wondering, Rory, whether I should do the eulogy as an AI version of me. No, I want very similar. I want lots of music. It's interesting. He doesn't mention whether God should be involved. I thought that was interesting.

[Rory Stewart]

I asked him about God and he said, I'm not so sure about God, but I love church music.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, he likes church music, and my mum was a great church music fan, but I would like lots of music. I've actually got this idea that a piper should pipe me in, which my mate Finley MacDonald from the National Piping center, and my nephew John, and at the end, my favorite Scottish folk band, Skip Inish. I want them to play alive because I'll be dead, but everybody else will be alive. But, yeah, loads and loads of music. No, but I thought that was wonderful. And I do think, you know, joking aside, I think your stuff about Cumbria, I learned an awful lot. I didn't. I didn't know why Cumbria was called middle. I didn't know this stuff about them being basically more Welsh than Scottish. And I love all this stuff about. There's a line in there that struck me about where. And it's true, because, you know, Longtown, this in you in your constituency. I spent the 1966, the day the England won the World Cup, I was stuck in Longtown and I watched it there. But you made the point that the accent, literally 200 yards away in Scotland, it is a different accent to what you get in Longtown. Anyway, really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, the thing that I was really happy about is the chance to tell a different story about British politics, because obviously what we tend to do on the podcast is do what we did in the first half Trump. We could have got on a Xi Jinping ping melee and it's general sense of catastrophe and disaster. And even in yesterday's podcast, when we were talking about what's happening with Labour and the Conservatives and reform and stuff. But I found in Cumbria, it was a place where it was possible to sort of define what the good life might be like, what it might be like for farmers, what it might be like for people living in towns, what it might be like for the incredible number of young retired people who've moved to Cumbria. A lot of, you know, retired schoolteachers from Manchester who are volunteering for Mountain rescue or supporting the Haas marathon or working as environmental consultants. And I suppose it's about, as an mp, what a relief it is to have an area of the country where you can really have a feeling that people are rooted somewhere, that the landscape matters. And they're not all from Cumbria. In fact, many, many people, probably half the population moved there, but they have such a kind of attachment to it. And I. I sometimes worry that that's one of the challenges that we face in modern politics, in social media age, that everything becomes virtual. It's all about someone looking at their TikTok about crime in London when they're not actually living in London. Or it's about talking about these very abstract words like growth or productivity, rather than getting it down to how many houses do we want on the edge of this village? Do we want a supermarket in Penrith? What kind of high street do we want to support? How can we support charities? How can we support hospice at home? How can we stop people dropping stuff on us from 300 miles away?

[Alastair Campbell]

Question here, Roy, from Bobby Bowers. Do you think Labour understands rural communities? As a young farmer, I don't think they get it.

[Rory Stewart]

No, I'm afraid they don't. So I had about 2,000 farms in the constituency and they're declaring average incomes at one point of £8,000 a year is kind of completely staggering. Now, there's some complications around that, but basically these are people who are living on very low incomes, but they're not victims. They are incredibly proud of what they're doing. These are often family farms, often their children want to take them over. They're small. So all the kind of jargon of economists that you might get from the treasury in London about scale growth, productivity doesn't really apply. If it did, you'd be going on a New Zealand system of many thousands of acres, very few people, huge numbers of sheep. And I think trying to communicate how much pride there is and how even though this was an area with low incomes, it was also an area that was consistently, and this is what the book is about, consistently appeared as one of the happiest parts of Britain with very high employment. But that employment was nothing to do with big industrial projects and industrial strategies. It was thousands of little businesses with people doing thousands of different things. It felt at its best, maybe the best analogy is at places like rural Austria. Did you feel when you were in government that people did talk enough about these sort of areas that you grew up in and the kind of people that your father worked with?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, I think we did because we had, you know, the scale of our majority was such that we'd had this. A bit like Keir Starmer's government now, a sudden influx of a lot of rural MPs. I think actually one of the downsides of the whole, the way the fox hunting debate played out, that came to dominate any debate about relationship between town and country, urban and rural. And I don't think that was good for anybody, to be absolutely frank and I. And I think the extent to which that the countryside alliance weaponized that whole debate. We talked to Simon Hart about this when he was on leading former Tory Chief Whip. I don't think that was good for the. For the debate. And I do think there is a sort of taking for granted of the landscape. You know, we all drive. Every time we drive to Scotland or, you know, and you go through Cumbria, you cannot but be struck. Struck by the. As you clearly are in the book. And it's interesting to sort of see you slow, not slowly, actually quickly kind of really falling in love with this place. And particularly the kind of the scenic part, the side of that, the landscapes. And it's impossible not to, because it is so beautiful. I still think Scotland edges it, in fact, edges it considerably. But as parts of England go, I think the lakes are. And Cumbria right up there. Tis the point about scale. You know, you've got. Yes, you want to. Any government has got to take account of people living in rural areas. Give me the question of scale. How many electors did you have in what size of a constituency? And then compare that to Manchester, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, whatever it might be.

[Rory Stewart]

You're completely right. I had about 70,000 electors when other people had a hundred thousand. And I had the largest, most popular, sparsely populated constituency in England. So it was. I had the most sparsely populated constituency, I had the most sparsely populated district, I had the most sparsely populated parish. I mean, we broke the record on everything. Final thing, before we move back to questions and thank you for being so generous, is also understanding how much policy and trade and Brexit affected these areas because in the end, these small family farms, of course they're driven by the incredible energy and resilience of the farmers. But. But what really is wrecking them and taking them down now is Brexit took away the single farm payment that underpinned, basically driven by French farmers, because French farmers were the best allies, because they are also small family farms. Secondly, this Australia trade deal that Liz Truss and Boris Johnson made, which is now going to let in cheap Australian meat, will Wipe out these areas. And thirdly, sadly, the Labour government, its changes on inheritance tax and the fact that basically it ran out of money on its environmental schemes is the final blow.

[Alastair Campbell]

The inheritance tax won't touch these small farms, will it?

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, it will. Very strangely. It will, yeah. Yeah. Because the land values are so weirdly inflated that even people on very, very low incomes have land that's worth a lot of money. They're not trying to monetize it, they're not trying to sell it because they want to hold onto their farm. But the theoretical value of it, yes, would tip their successors into inheritance tax and that would force them to sell when they don't want to sell. And the problem for labor is that they inherited a system where the Tories had said, we're leaving the common agriculture policy, we'll keep the old budget and we'll just spend it. Michael Gove was the great one on this, on public money for public goods. But of course, it wasn't properly ring fenced, so that understandably, when Rachel Reeves ran out of money, she stopped those schemes. And largely the big farms, the biggest states, had got into those schemes. The small farmers hadn't had time to get into those schemes. So it's at a whammy where they're being attacked from every direction. But at the root of it, I'm afraid, was Brexit.

[Alastair Campbell]

Do you have in northern England the same issues that you've got in parts of Scotland where farms are being sold up and then bit by bit, they're being taken over by big money, by hedge funders. And the richest man in this country and the richest man in that country, Is that going on in Cumbria as well?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. And sometimes it's charities, sometimes it's big national charities pursuing rewilding projects, sometimes it's people farming carbon credits, sometimes it's larger farms trying to achieve scale. But I couldn't. When I was the Minister for Environment in the Department of what used to be the Department of Agriculture, I couldn't even get people to measure the number of farms. They were very reluctant to even count what was happening to the number of farms. But when we got those data on things like dairy farms, we found the number of dairy farms had halved in something like 15 years. I mean, it's a. But catastrophic fall off a cliff happening. Final question for you, Alistair, from Rahema Figueiredo. Thank you both for your thoughtful, in depth discussion of the charity Mind's recent report on the state of the nation's mental health. Rahema is then Very, very positive about what you did. And asks whether either of us are familiar with Marcus skeet, a remarkable 17 year old who overcame serious mental health challenges in childhood. But to come, one of the UK's most inspiring campaigners and was recognized for the Pride of Britain award. Do you think stories like his could help shift the narrative and bring mental health back into the political spotlight?

[Alastair Campbell]

I am very well aware of Marcus Skeet and I'm obviously very, very well of mined and we got a lot of good feedback last week for the discussion on their report which got next to no coverage in most of the media. I noticed. I did a Google search on it the next day and it's so frustrating because I think this is such a big issue. But in the spirit of Rahima responding to our spirit of trying to be more positive at times, let me just tell you about Marcus because it's an incredible story. So this boy, he's 17. When he was 12, his dad was diagnosed with early onset dementia and Marcus became his carer and as a result of which his mental and physical health worsened. He developed type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, OCD, intrusive suicidal thoughts, became a school refuser and later attempted to take his own life. And then last April a friend of his did take his own life and something happened within Marcus that, that sort of changed him and he decided to do this, what he called a mile a day challenge to raise money for mind.

[Rory Stewart]

What was the challenge? Alistair?

[Alastair Campbell]

He ran a mile a day but that evolved into ultra marathon running from Land's End to John o' Groats, which made him one of mine's best fundraisers. I think they're up to over 200,000 and he's kind of doing loads of stuff for mine going. And then as well as winning the Pride of Britain award, which is the Daily Mirrors attempt to be positive and celebrate heroes and all that stuff. He's now sort of started to get global attention for what he's done and he's been signed up by Apple to advertise their new watch.

[Rory Stewart]

Gosh, how brilliant. Oh well that is amazing.

[Alastair Campbell]

If people want to check him out on social media, this will give you some idea of his background. He is he. So thank you for that question, Rahima. Thank you for all the work that mine do. Thank you for I thought was a fascinating and insightful report which I hope the government reads from start to finish and well done Markus.

[Rory Stewart]

Final one on me which I wanted to ask last time we talked about because we never really able to talk about it this Seems to be a story of real hope. It's a story about people really turning around their mental health and we don't hear enough about that, I think. I mean, you understand this, right? You understand how both medicine and talking therapy and other things can really help. But can you just give us a bit of a sense of whether actually we should be quite optimistic and hopefully if you're suffering from mental health issues or if you have a friend who suffered from mental health, that actually something can be done that it's not. And talk us through how things can be done and how improvements happen.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I think you've alluded to them. I mean, look, I, in common with a lot of people who've struggled with, in my case, depression, lived in denial of it for many, many, many, many years. It's probably why I drank to excess. It's probably why I became a workaholic. It's probably why I, you know, I've had intrusive, suicidal thoughts and so the depression. And it's because I wasn't confronting. It was only when I finally confronted, when I was actually to some extent self harming that I realized I had to see somebody. Saw somebody and saw him for many, many years, right up until his death fairly recently. And that admission of I can't do this on my own was the first step. The other thing I think that's important is not to think there's any one person or any one treatment or any one drug that's necessarily going to change everything. You've got to kind of, it's a kind of active thing. And the reason why I find Marcus's story so inspiring is I've got this. If I turn my laptop around, you'd see these post its I have all around the office and one of them is this one. GG O O B Get good out of bad. If anything bad happens, try to get something good out of it. I think that's what fuels a lot of people who work for charities. And I try to do that in my own, in my own life. When stuff goes wrong, okay, it's gone wrong. What can you learn from it? How could we have handled it better? But more importantly, what can we do now to take this forward? And so I think what works is particularly, I think for anxiety, depression, these, these kinds of illness, I think schizophrenia and psychosis is maybe a lot harder. But even there, a lot can be done. A lot can be done. I saw that with my brother. But I think that, you know, when Theresa May, when your friend and hero, Theresa May Created the first minister for suicide prevention. I don't think it achieved much, but I actually do think it's the right mindset. I think virtually every suicidal suicide is preventable if you have the right people to be in touch with, if you have the right support. And so I think it's. That is being open to the idea that you can get help. I think that is the key to this. And. And you know, when you see Marcus, if you check him out on social media and check out some. The films he's done and what have you, you can. I see in him this sense of, you know, I've been dealt a pretty hand by life and it's really given me a lot of problems along the way. But I'm kind of. I'm gonna use them. I'm gonna try and use them to put good. Put them to good use. So I think we should come back to this fairly regularly because I think it's. It was interesting, Chris Clark's paper, God, he's had a lot of publicity from us this week. This week. But he mentioned that one of the big things that the Labour government could do to show radical, exciting, bold things is really not just to say big mental health strategy, but then to show it and deliver it in a way that people go, wow, that is what I wanted a Labour government to do anyway. Well done, Marcus. You're a top bloke.

[Rory Stewart]

Thank you. Thank you for that, Alice. Good to finish again on a whole second half of optimism and hope.

[Alastair Campbell]

So optimistic. We're so optimistic. Those 2 million sheep in Cumbria. The other thing that leapt out to me that I didn't know, I learned a lot in this, but I never knew that Robert the Bruce had leprosy.

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, that was a big, big deal. And that he and Edward I basically, while fighting for Scottish and English independence, what really mattered them was getting to Jerusalem. Completely obsessed. And Edward I managed to die in a place called Brough by Sands, which is on the northern edge of Cumbria, just by the Solway Firth. And he thought that he'd been told in the dream that he was going to die in Jerusalem. And then he realized that he'd misheard, actually he was dying in Bra by Sands. Meanwhile, Robert the Bruce sent off his heart with his mate Douglas to take him to Jerusalem. And Douglas managed to get in a fight in Spain and ended up chucking the heart into the midst of the enemy cavalry and charging to his death. So none of them actually made it.

[Alastair Campbell]

Nonetheless, I cannot let you go, Roy, without pointing out on page 139. A piece of the sort of hypocrisy in MPs that we really, really hate, don't we? Penrith and the border you wrote in the local paper should be a wind turbine free constituency and you argued it would destroy tourism. Ha.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

Explain yourself.

[Rory Stewart]

One of the things I like about the book is that I get a chance to reflect on this. So I've concluded I was right about some of the wind turbines, but I was wrong to say the whole constituency should have been turbine free. And actually I give an example of somewhere where I think we could have built turbines, which at the time I opposed, and other areas in the central Lake District where I think it would be a catastrophe. I mean, these things are 400ft high. They're like three times the height of Nelson's column and they diminish the Lake District landscape. But you're right, we should find space for them. So I try to be constructive and suggest where we could find space for them. Anyway, book is published on Thursday. This Thursday. Available from all good bookshops and I think also available to members through our newsletter. And it's called the Middle Dispatches from the Borders. And I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well done.

[Rory Stewart]

All the best, Blummy.