481. Polanski, Macron & al-Sharaa: The Best & Worst Politicians of 2025

Summary

The Rest Is Politics – Episode 481: “Polanski, Macron & al-Sharaa: The Best & Worst Politicians of 2025”

Date: December 24, 2025
Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart

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Overview

In this Christmas Eve special, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart engage in their annual deep-dive analysis of the UK and international political landscape. They reflect on the best and worst politicians of the year, headline interviews, political speeches, major moments, and under-discussed issues shaping 2025. The episode is marked by the show’s signature blend of expert insight, sharp disagreement, and friendly banter, culminating in an unexpectedly moving meditation on hope, frailty, and political leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Christmas, Theology, and Personal Traditions

[02:28 – 04:30]

• Rory teases Alastair for being a Christmas “grinch”; brief light-hearted talk comparing Christmas’s religious and cultural meanings.
• The two discuss reading books in different languages, notably about trees—setting a tone of broad curiosity.

2. Best UK Politician of 2025

[05:24 – 08:46]

• Rory’s Nominee: Zach Polanski (Green Party Leader) – Highlighted for tripling party membership, boosting poll position, and capturing left-leaning voters.
  “If Farage was the story of last year, I think Polanski is the story of this year.” (Rory, [06:44])
• Alastair’s Nominee: Ed Miliband (Labour Cabinet) – Praised for resilience and clarity on the green brief despite internal opposition.
  “I like resilience. I like perseverance. I like people who just keep going…” (Alastair, [07:58])

Notable Mention

• Al Khan: Former Royal Marine, now Defence Minister. Lauded for real-world experience, candor, and literally climbing Everest in six and a half days during Parliament recess.
  “If we were the United States, he would already… be talked of as a future Prime Minister.” (Alastair, [10:25])

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3. Worst UK Politician of the Year

[11:12 – 14:24]

• Rory: Rachel Reeves – Criticized for lack of vision in the Budget and “buying off” backbenchers.
  “That was extraordinary... it was not a budget driven by a big economic idea or what you would call, I don't know, a narrative or a story or an argument.” (Rory, [12:10])
• Alastair: Nathan Gill (former MEP, convicted of bribery); with “supporting actor” Nigel Farage for enabling and downplaying the scandal.
  “I think that Gill is my worst politician of the year because of what he did. But I think it's foolish if we don't realize that there is a lot more to this story than is yet known.” (Alastair, [14:24])

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4. Favourite “Leading” Interview

[14:32 – 18:47]

• Ahmed Al-Sharaa, new Syrian leader: Standout for candor on his past in jihadist movements, his vision for Syria, and being the most listened-to episode in both Arabic and English. “We got him at a moment where he was being extremely frank in a way that he probably wouldn't today...” (Rory, [15:35])
• Also praised: Baroness Hale, Alex Younger, Ben Wallace, Marwan Barghouti, Jonathan Haidt, Michael Gove, Gareth Southgate, Jonas Gahr Støre, and Jacinda Ardern.

Notable Moment

• Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s White House visit, where “Trump sprayed him with perfume” in an odd diplomatic gesture.
  “One of the big moments of the year really was Ahmad El Shara going to the White House and having Donald Trump spray him with perfume, which was extraordinary.” (Alastair, [18:32])

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5. Best Foreign Politician of the Year

[18:47 – 23:38]

• Rory: Mark Carney (Canadian Prime Minister) – Noted for his seamless transition from central banker to politician, remaining authentic. “What’s amazing about Mark Carney … is that he is a surprise.” (Rory, [21:28])
• Alastair: Maia Sandu (President of Moldova) – Recognized for standing up to Russian interference, winning a contested election, and leading with courage. “She fought an election with massive interference from the Russians and she saw it off and she won. And I think she's got guts.” (Alastair, [19:16])

Other mentions: Rob Jetten, Greek PM Mitsotakis, Jonas Gahr Støre (Norway), Jacinda Ardern.

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6. Worst Foreign Politician of the Year

[24:03 – 27:13]

• Both hosts exempt Trump (“assumed, let’s not bore the listeners”).
• Alastair: Ben-Gvir and Smotrich (Israeli cabinet), for undermining peace and Palestinian rights; Netanyahu as responsible for empowering them.
• Rory: Emmanuel Macron (French President), for failing to live up to centrist potential. “I think Macron has absolutely demonstrated the most catastrophic failure of what could have been the incredible potential of a highly intelligent centrist politician...” (Rory, [25:09])
• Honorable (dishonorable) mentions: Boris Johnson (referenced due to the ongoing COVID inquiry).

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7. Political Speech of the Year

[28:21 – 34:20]

• Alastair’s Picks:

  • Most Consequential: J.D. Vance in Munich, laying bare US foreign policy drift. “He basically said, you lot think that Putin’s your biggest threat. Your biggest threat is you don’t believe in free speech.” (Alastair, [28:36])
  • Best Parliamentary: Kemi Badenoch’s Budget reply as effective and brutal for solidifying her leadership hopes.
  • Best Overall: Pep Guardiola (football manager), for a heartfelt Manchester speech on Gaza and humanity. “I’m not speaking here about taking sides or ideology. I’m speaking about our basic humanity.” (Alistair, [30:46])

• Rory:

  • Most Revealing: Stephen Miller at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, chilling invocation of “civilization and warriors” rhetoric—echoes of fascist language. “We are the light, they are the darkness.” (Rory, [32:29])
  • Uplifting: Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee mating call during an honorary degree acceptance, a moment of levity and humanity.

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8. Biggest Political Moment of the Year

[40:10 – 47:30]

• Alastair: Zelenskyy’s tense Oval Office meeting—symbolizing US-Ukrainian rupture under Trump. “They were doing it by saying to Zelenskyy, you’re little, we’re big. Putin’s big. You’re still little, you’ve lost, give up.” (Alastair, [41:09])
• Rory: Trump’s “Liberation Day tariffs” – Dramatically increased US tariffs (from 3% to 18%), undermining global order, especially hurting allies. “If historians looked back in 30 years time, this was the big change, because it changed so many things in a single moment.” (Rory, [43:12])

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9. Most Under-Discussed UK Issue

[48:33 – 54:08]

• Rory: Persistently high inactivity (those not working; e.g. disabled, long-term sick) in UK—still “a million people out” of the workforce, straining welfare spending.
• Alastair: Special Educational Needs (SEND) crisis—huge local authority debts, system at breaking point. “SEND has grown and grown and grown and grown as a problem… and it sparked this debate finally about whether…is it going to come out of education budgets, or…another massive spending cost?” (Alastair, [49:32])
• Wider concern: Is Britain able to fund a responsive modern welfare state as needs/expectations grow?

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10. Most Under-Discussed International Issue

[55:27 – 58:57]

• Rory: The AI revolution – Nvidia’s $5 trillion valuation symbolizes a world where tech companies, not states, dominate geopolitics, yet politicians aren’t prepared. “Here is something which, in technology terms, potentially could change the world more than the Industrial Revolution and far more quickly…” (Rory, [55:40])
• Alastair: The ongoing suffering in Gaza, post-Trump “peace” – Despite headlines, the misery beneath the news narrative remains. “You would think, to all intents and purposes, that he’s brought peace to Gaza and the Middle East. Life for most people in Gaza remains utterly horrible.” (Alastair, [58:26])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Polanski:
  “I have a big issue with Zach Polanski, which is that I’m completely horrified by the fact he doesn’t think it’s necessary to get the most basic economic data. …But there is no doubting that he has done something unbelievable.” (Rory, [06:33])
• On Mark Carney’s rise:
  “He’s just the same person. He’s totally comfortable inside his own skin.” (Alastair, [21:18])
• On Macron:
  “Through sheer vanity and ineptitude, blown his position in Parliament, blown the power of his presidency…” (Rory, [25:09])
• On the burden of leadership:
  “I’m just so moved by how at the center of the Christian message is the sense of human frailty and weakness and that nothing’s ever perfect.” (Rory, [59:58])

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:28] – Show proper begins, Christmas banter
• [05:24] – Best UK Politician
• [11:12] – Worst UK Politician
• [14:32] – Favourite “Leading” interview
• [18:47] – Best Foreign Politician
• [24:03] – Worst Foreign Politician
• [28:21] – Speech of the Year
• [40:10] – Biggest Political Moment
• [48:33] – Most Undiscussed UK Issue
• [55:27] – Most Undiscussed International Issue
• [59:02] – Closing reflections

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Tone, Banter, and Final Thoughts

The episode delivers a balance of somber reflection, keen political analysis, and hearty humor, leaning at times into moving commentary on the psychological toll of leadership. Campbell and Stewart disagree agreeably, showcase rare political optimism, and close on notes of vulnerability, community, and hope.
“It is other people, other voices and whatever, in different ways people are trying to get at when they talk about God, which in the end provides that final consolation at Christmas.” (Rory, [61:57])

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For more, tune in to their Christmas Day episode or join The Rest Is Politics Plus for bonus content.

Transcript

[Alistair Campbell]

Thank you so much for listening to the Rest Is Politics. Here's a thought for Christmas you can gift somebody membership to the Rest Is Politics. Plus ad free listening bonus episodes, early access to Q and A book discounts. So spread a little political peace and goodwill, head to therestagepolitics.com and click Gifts. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. Now, a lot of politicians like to talk about the future of renewables, but Fuse is on the ground building clean energy for the here and now and.

[Rory Stewart]

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[Alistair Campbell]

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[Alistair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

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[Rory Stewart]

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[Rory Stewart]

Welcome to the Rest Is Politics. Christmas Eve special with me, Rory Stewart.

[Alistair Campbell]

What's special about it?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, you You. You sometimes can be quite grumpy about Christmas, but recently I've noticed you. You were saying Christmas is all about Jesus, which I thought was something that would appeal to your old friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[Alistair Campbell]

That was why I'm grumpy, is because we all go on about what is not about all the time, and it doesn't make me any more or less of an atheist. I'm exactly the same. But.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I thought we had a bit of hope. Well, you know, I'll try to do a bit of a. Bit of a. Bit of a promotion job.

[Alistair Campbell]

Perfectly happy with people wanting to be happy, but, you know, it's not my favorite time of year, I'm going, to be honest.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I see. Okay. All right. Well, there's. There's lots of things to be said for Christmas. There's the. The miracle of. The miracle of the birth of God, and then there's all those wonderful birth of God presence. Yes. He. He's God.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay.

[Rory Stewart]

That's the thing about the Trinity.

[Alistair Campbell]

You don't say that. The miracle of the birth of God. You say the miracle of the birth of Christ.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, that's the amazing thing about the Trinity. But where we can get onto that when we. We get more of our theology. Christ is God and so is the.

[Alistair Campbell]

Holy Spirit, and he's with us all the time.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. Three and one. One in three. Yeah, yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

Are you back on your Gareth Southgate football tactical permutations again? Well, listen, Rory, Merry Christmas.

[Rory Stewart]

Happy Christmas to you, too, and to.

[Alistair Campbell]

All our listeners and viewers.

[Rory Stewart]

Have you managed to get onto. I know you opened presents early. Gave you a little book on trees in French.

[Alistair Campbell]

I did, and I loved it. Oh, good. Yeah. A third of the way through on the oak.

[Rory Stewart]

It's quite technical. Language. Is that stretching your French tool a little bit.

[Alistair Campbell]

A little bit. As did the. Because the great book, the Hidden Life of Trees, which was written in German originally. So I read that, and that stretched my German as well. And Luchenne does some of the French is very, very technical.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. I found. Even in English, to be honest, I must confess that I've been reading it in English, and even in English, I'm looking up some of the words and trying to work out one another.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's what's great about reading books in foreign languages or your own language. But in your case, you learn. You stretch your.

[Rory Stewart]

My own language, in my case. Very good. Okay. Now, Alistair, what we were going to do, which we traditionally do every year, and maybe we could look back at what we've done in some of the last years on this is we do things like best UK Politician of the Year, favorite leading interview speech of the year, biggest political moment, all this sort of stuff to remind people. We recorded this last year at an amazing moment where we were actually hadn't quite got into Trump, so we were still very much in the top optimism about AOC at the Democratic National Convention. But we were already six months into a Labour government and into a very interesting British politics, which wasn't quite where it was now, but we were maybe already beginning to see some of the seeds of it 12 months ago. So let's start with best UK politician of the Year. Last year you chose Kim Ledwater, who was taken through her sister Dying act, which is still sort of slightly, in.

[Alistair Campbell]

Part because the Lords are being incredibly difficult about in putting down hundreds of amendments to try and slow the whole thing up, which I think would be a terrible thing. I have really, really struggled on UK Politician of the Year this year, I must be honest. Last year you chose Nigel Farage, which is a sort of easy populist thing to do.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, it's actually, I think I feel a little bit vindicated because although he was doing okay in the polls, we go forward 12 months. My instinct and of course in my defence, best UK Politician does not mean I support Nigel Farage. I think he would be a terrible thing for the country and we must do all we can to make sure he doesn't become Prime Minister. I'm talking here about technical skills and I think to some extent I've been vindicated. I mean, it's an incredible story given he only got five seats in the last election, the fact that he is now well ahead consistently of the Tory Party and the Labour Party in the polls shows he's got something. Despite all his problems, despite being a one man band, being unable to work with colleagues, people resigning, all of that's happened a year, but his rise still seems pretty unstoppable.

[Alistair Campbell]

So is he getting your title for the second year running?

[Rory Stewart]

No. Second year running, I think, again, although I profoundly disagree with him, probably Zach Polanski, as people will have heard on leading. I have a big issue with Zach Polanski, which is that I'm completely horrified by the fact he doesn't think it's necessary to get the most basic economic data. What's the difference between a debt and a deficit, what's the tax rate, all this stuff. But there is no doubting that he has done something unbelievable. He's taken over the Green Party this year and he's tripled its membership, tripled its position on the polls, taken a lot of the left away from Labor. And I think if Farage was the story of last year, I think Zelensky is the story of this year.

[Alistair Campbell]

Right. Well, you've stolen my thunder slightly, so I'm now going to go to the second name on my list.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, very good. Was Polanski your first name?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I was also going to caveat it even more heavily than you. I was going to say that I would never vote for him, because if you're going to vote for somebody who's a party leader, you've got to imagine them in a real position of leadership. But I think technically, as you say, to have gone from where the Greens were to where they are now, the only thing I'd say is I think that that is as much to do with the. The Labour Party and its strategy of having appealed too much, tried to appeal too much to the right and reform voters. That's what's opened the door to Polanski. But he's gone through the door and he seized it. So I think that is a fair judgment. But because you've said that, I'm therefore going to pick Ed Miliband.

[Rory Stewart]

Ed Miliband, yes.

[Alistair Campbell]

Because.

[Rory Stewart]

Controversial choice.

[Alistair Campbell]

I think it is a controversial choice. But as you know, Rory, I like resilience. I like perseverance. I like people who just keep going. And Ed was one of our leading interviews, and actually a lot of people seem to like it. He's come under a lot of flak internally. There's a lot of suggestions that Keir Starmer wanted to move him from this brief because, like you, he worries that the Green agenda is being pushed back and the government has to go with that. And even though Polanski, in the interview we did with him, was sort of pretty condemnatory of Ed Miliband's Green credentials, I actually think he has stuck to his guns. And I think if you go through the cabinet, there aren't that many where you can say, I am very, very clear about what they're trying to do in their brief. So I was going to go Polanski, but I'm sticking with Green, but going for Ed.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay. My final one, if I'm allowed, on Labour politicians, I have been very, very impressed by Al Khans, who just remind people it's this amazing full colonel, originally a Royal Marine who was plucked out of Ukraine, I guess, by Keir Starmer a few weeks before the election, and is now the minister of the Ministry of defence, focused on operations. And he's a really. When people are worried about professional politicians, people without real world experience. This is a man with a lot of experience. He joined the military at the age of 18, comes from a straightforward background in Scotland. He is funny, he's wise, he's worked. He's worked with the most senior American generals. And I was saying, this is this year. I said, you know, he'd went off these. We have these tiny recesses occasionally. Apartment And I said, what happened during the recess? And he said, I climbed Everest. And I said, how long did that take you? And he said, well, I didn't have much time, so six and a half days from leaving Britain to getting back to Britain. I would have liked to climb it slower, but, you know, our recess is quite. I don't think he's going to be doing it again. As you know, climbing Everest is unbelievably dangerous, as I know. Several times two of his Sherpas turned back saying, this is too dangerous. Before the summit, he and his friends, they were raising money for a veterans charity, pushed on through terrifying weather that had driven basically all the other climbers off the hill. So they had Everest to themselves. Popped out on the top, sun came out, turned round, straight back home to the voting lobby.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, if we were the United States, he would already, just because of his military record, being talked of as a future Prime Minister.

[Rory Stewart]

And I think could be amazing for the Labour Party to look at him as a really serious thing, because if you're taking on Farage, if you're worried about populism, if you're worried about relating to ordinary people, this is a straightforward hero.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. I'm all in favor of people in positions of leadership who are al citude and Scott, I'd said to you on the. When we. In November, that when the Senator was being filmed on television, they just. The camera, I didn't know they knew it was him.

[Rory Stewart]

Right.

[Alistair Campbell]

But the camera kept coming to this group of Green Beret chaps and he was banging there in the middle. He's very charismatic with a lot of medals, a lot of medals. Worst UK politician.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, last year I said Rachel Reeves. And I'm afraid I feel a little bit vindicated, full of rs vindication. And I'm only feeling vindicated because I, I obviously my big misprediction at the end of last year is I thought that Kamal Harris would win the US election. So I'm really falling over backwards pointing out that I got some things right this year, despite getting that call Wrong. Look, I think that she's revealed other bits of weakness that I hadn't maybe noticed before. And I'm afraid the latest budget this year reveals them. I mean, that was extraordinary. It now seems Robert Peston, our colleague on the Rest is Money, has pointed out that the entire tax rises in the budget now seem to have been almost entirely unnecessary and that it was driven purely by trying to buy off her backbenchers with a policy that she had rejected and that she then gave in on and building up a bit of Headroom. But essentially that.

[Alistair Campbell]

Do you support the building up of headroom?

[Rory Stewart]

I do support the building up of Headroom. I do support the building up of Headroom. But the sense that this was not a budget driven by a big economic idea or what you would call, I don't know, a narrative or a story or an argument, that's one of the less you like the word argument, right? It's not Gordon Brown saying this is my argument for growth, but instead something which is buying off the labor backed benches and buying off the bond markets survive.

[Alistair Campbell]

Worst politician of the year. Somebody that very few people outside whichever prison he's now in have heard of. Mr. Nathan Gill, MEP, former MEP Convicted or admitted to charges of bribery. Some argument as to whether it shouldn't have been treason. Bribery act came in and he was certainly the first politician to be done under it with a supporting actor. Can we give a supporting actor role?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, absolutely. Just like the Oscars.

[Alistair Campbell]

To Nigel Farage.

[Rory Stewart]

Nigel Farage, you seem as your form.

[Alistair Campbell]

Apologies.

[Rory Stewart]

We've got to get our definitions right here. Right. There is the Machiavellian definition which is like success. And then there's the moral judgment which is do we approve of them? I mean, obviously, let's take Trump for example, right? In some ways he's very successful. In other ways we think he's an absolutely terrible human being.

[Alistair Campbell]

Some people would say Trump is the politician of the year because he dominates everything will come on to Trump. But the reason I think that Farage has to be put in the same breath as Nathan Gill is partly because of the way Farage has handled this since with the help of the media being so supine about the whole story so that most people still don't know who Nathan Gill is because when he went to jail it was a sort of one day wonder. But I think that the fact of Nigel Farage's leadership of all these right wing populist parties, Nathan Gill's centrality to Nigel Farage's political rise and political experience in Brussels, where he led the campaign to get Britain out of Europe. I think that makes him a very, very close. More than a close associate. So I think that Gil is my worst politician of the year because of what he did. But I think it's foolish if we don't realize that there is a lot more to this story than is yet known.

[Rory Stewart]

Very good. Okay, well, we'll keep our eye on that now, favourite leading interviews. Rather jolly thing. As we come into Christmas, we get off politics.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I think we're going to agree on this one. Okay, so should I go first?

[Rory Stewart]

Yep, I'll try. I'll try to be honest. Yep.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay. The ones that came close were Baroness Hale.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, she loved it.

[Alistair Campbell]

Former leader of the Supreme Court. I thought she was great.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely lovely. People haven't listened to her. She's extraordinary woman, I think. Was she the first woman to lead the Supreme Court? Absolutely. And she did this extraordinary ruling on the proging of Parliament by Boris Johnson. Upheld the Constitution with a spider on her chest.

[Alistair Campbell]

Correct. So I liked. She was terrific. I love the fact that she never arms, never ahs and speaks imperfectly formed, grammatically perfect, which some people say about you.

[Rory Stewart]

You don't.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, I occasionally go, you know, and like and all that. Alex Younger came close, the former head of MI6. I thought he was stunningly in, informed, insightful, interesting, etc. But I'm afraid I think we have to go to the one that has, by some distance, had the most listeners, which was Ahmed Al Shara.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, I can't describe that. I mean, that was really exciting. As people will remember, we traveled together to Syria.

[Alistair Campbell]

You almost felt like a proper journalist, didn't you?

[Rory Stewart]

Proper journalist, yeah. Few weeks. Just a few weeks after he got into Damascus, we were one of the very first live interviews, which is why it got such coverage. We did it in this incredible moment where he'd just come back from his first ever foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, which turned out to be completely decisive because actually that led to the US lifting sanctions, the whole recognition of Syria. We got him at a moment where he was being extremely frank in a way that he probably wouldn't today about his past in Al Qaeda and the terrorist movements. And there was the added drama of your. And my involvement with the Iraq war, where he'd cut his teeth and been locked in prison. And as you say, an interview which got an incredible number of listeners in Arabic as well as in English.

[Alistair Campbell]

It had more listeners in Arabic than in English.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. No, so I think that's right. Just to go through Some of the other interviews, because I thought it was the most extraordinary list. So jumping out at me. Ben Wallace, who I thought was charming and funny, the former UK Defence Secretary.

[Alistair Campbell]

It's interesting how many former Tories that most of our listeners, Many of our listeners loathed. They actually quite liked when they heard them. Jeremy Hunt was another one.

[Rory Stewart]

Jeremy Hunt. You liked Jeremy Hunt, didn't you? We should probably get some more Tories on sometime next year. I'm sure we got that many in the line. Marwan Barghouti, I thought was very moving. Moving Palestinian.

[Alistair Campbell]

And just on that. I mean, just those who haven't listened to that. You should. His dad is lot of people's favourite to lead a new Palestine, should such a thing happen. But he's still stuck in jail.

[Rory Stewart]

Right. And I think we would both agree it would be a good idea to release him for sure. Probably the best path. Last couple for me. There may be others. You think? Jonathan Haidt talking particularly about the impact of mobile phones on children. And then a very, very good listen. Scratchy, controversial two parter with Michael Gove. I thought.

[Alistair Campbell]

I'm very sure you haven't mentioned Gareth Southgate because I thought you had a total, massive crush on him, Rory.

[Rory Stewart]

I mean, God certainly did. As I said to you at the time, the only guy whose number I've tried to get, I'm going to have lunch with him in the new year. And put it in context, the only people I've been having lunch with recently are Church of England clergymen, which. So I must somehow have my head, have Gareth Southgate in my head as an almost religious figure.

[Alistair Campbell]

Are you thinking of becoming a priest?

[Rory Stewart]

I don't know. Would I still be able to do the podcast if I was?

[Alistair Campbell]

The rest is God, the rest is Christ, the rest is Christmas, the rest.

[Rory Stewart]

Is the Holy Ghost. It's all the same. As I was trying to explain at the beginning.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay.

[Alistair Campbell]

The other one I saw you was Jonas Gastora, the Norwegian Prime Minister. Because you loved him as well.

[Rory Stewart]

He was terrific. And he was. He's your friend, right?

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

And he's quite an unusual politician, I thought. Did you enjoy Jacinta Arden?

[Alistair Campbell]

Very much. We've had a great year on the leading front. We really have. But I think Ahmad Elshara. And what was so interesting about it was having done that interview at the time that we did it, and him saying the things that he said, particularly about his goals in relation to getting sanctions lifted, to trying to persuade the Americans that he wasn't still a terrorist. And all this sort of stuff. So I guess one of the big moments of the year really was Ahmad El Shara going to the White House and having Donald Trump spray him with perfume, which was extraordinary.

[Rory Stewart]

He kept saying, this is a male scent. And then he was like, give some to your wife. I got very confused by the whole direction in which that whole thing was traveling.

[Alistair Campbell]

Right. Best foreign politician. I don't think it's going to be Donald Trump for either of us.

[Rory Stewart]

No.

[Alistair Campbell]

Where are you going?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I would probably here. I suspect we're going to agree, unfortunately, sometimes. Sometimes we agree.

[Alistair Campbell]

Hold on, hold on. Let me guess what. You're either going to say Mum Dani or Mark Khan.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, I was gonna say the latter. Mark Carney.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay. He's definitely on my list, but he's not my number one.

[Rory Stewart]

He's not your number one? Okay, go on, then, give us your number one.

[Alistair Campbell]

My number one is Maya Sandhu.

[Rory Stewart]

Maya Sandhu. Okay, talk us through Maya Sandhu.

[Alistair Campbell]

So, Moldovan president of Moldova. Good news for our listeners and viewers. And by the way, she didn't know I was going to say this or even that we do this, but she is going to be one of our first interviews in the new year. Very good for leading. I think what she's done is amazing because she is a tiny country, feels inevitably, hugely a risk because of where it is geographically in relation to Russia. She fought an election with massive interference from the Russians and she saw it off and she won. And I think she's got guts. I think she's got real leadership skills and I'm really looking forward to interviewing her.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, one of the themes to try to get a bit of optimistic Christmas messaging going is that next year we will be interviewing some people on leading who actually represent a bit of hope for the kind of progressive centre, which.

[Alistair Campbell]

Carney does, by a long way.

[Rory Stewart]

Carney definitely does and Maya Sandhi does. We're also going to be interviewing Rob Yetten, the extraordinary Dutch centrist leader who did so well in the Dutch elections. And I think we should keep thinking about these people around the world who really do give us a sense of hope. I mean, I. When I think about liberal democracy and where to feel hopeful, I often end up in Australia. But I also think there are some fascinating things. The Greek prime minister who interviewed, I thought, was actually a really interesting example of somebody who had something to him. I'm sure some Greek listeners at this point will be throwing their phone out of the window in rage. That's one of the things I noticed that you And I will think these guys are absolutely terrific. But of course, politics remains so divisive that even in the best case scenario, you're always going to have about 48% of the population that thinks you should be in jail.

[Alistair Campbell]

So you tell us why Carney. Look, I think Mark Khan is terrific. I'm really happy that he's the Prime Minister. And the thing I like about watching him when he speaks, and I think sometimes, especially if you've known somebody before they become a politician, as you and I have with Mark, he's just the same person. He's totally comfortable inside his own skin. You see that when he's making a big speech in the Parliament. You see it when he's on Instagram messing around with kids, playing football. You see it in his dealings with Trump. Whatever he's doing, he's just the same guy.

[Rory Stewart]

And I think what's amazing about Mark Carney and the reason I've chosen him as best Foreign Politician of the Year, is that he is a surprise. I mean, there are so many smart, very able technocrats with big brains who communicate very fluently who you would have thought could be great Prime Ministers in a sort of romantic set sense. People said this about David Petraeus, who we interviewed last year. They'd say it about Gareth Southgate, who we just interviewed. But generally speaking, when they become politician, I certainly felt this with Michael Ignatieff that we interviewed a couple of years ago, that they struggle that it's true for a lot of really, really nice, able people. Let's say, for example, I thought Hillary Benn was wonderful. Maybe if he became Prime Minister, it wouldn't all work out. And I don't know, maybe some of the other people I love in the Labour Cabinet, maybe if they became Prime Minister, it turns out to be very, very different. I mean, for example, I was a very pro Gordon Brown person and it didn't really work out as Prime Minister. So I was worried with Mark Carney that we've all fallen in love with the story of the Governor of the bank of Canada and the Governor of the bank of England. But generally speaking, particularly in Europe, when central bank governors become leaders, that looks pretty rubbish. I mean, Italy didn't exactly fall in love with Mario Monti or Mario Draghi. This kind of dry, technocratic.

[Alistair Campbell]

Is it because it's Christmas? You keep talking about love. What's going on in your life at the moment. You think you're becoming a priest, you're talking endlessly about love.

[Rory Stewart]

I'm God and God, God is Love.

[Alistair Campbell]

God is love. God is love. That's why do I think of that is when you go into Tobermory and the father of somebody, I think a child fell and survived. And God is love is per. Painted there.

[Rory Stewart]

I saw this extraordinary thing on that. Just quickly. There's a Buddhist meditation which the Buddha taught his monks when they were frightened in a forest. It's a love meditation. One of the benefits, the love meditation, because Buddha likes numbers, is I think he gives 40 benefits for the love meditation and the tradition.

[Alistair Campbell]

You should be the chancellor.

[Rory Stewart]

And one of them is. That could be the chancellor. One of them, though she didn't come up with this in the budget, is that if you do the love meditation properly, he says that if you fall off a cliff, you will be caught by a tree. Oh, yeah. So connect to the October more.

[Alistair Campbell]

And I think that's what happened, you see? I think that's what happened.

[Rory Stewart]

There we are.

[Alistair Campbell]

Right, let's leave God and love for a moment and go on to our worst foreign politician. And I think we've got to have a rule here that you can't say Trump.

[Rory Stewart]

Right.

[Alistair Campbell]

Were you going to say Trump?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I mean, yeah, we could give our normal speech on Trump, but I think that's a bit boring for listeners. Let's take it as red that we think that Trump is the threat and an atrocity and all that.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, Yeah. I am going for the deadly duo of Ben Gir and Smric. I think their influence on Israeli politics, the Israeli government, the Middle east peace process, and their clear belief that there shouldn't really be one that involves any sort of rights or respect for Palestinians. I think they are terrible people doing terrible things.

[Rory Stewart]

I agree. I think they have done more damage than almost anybody conceivable, really, to the reputation of Israel. But I also think that Netanyahu needs to take full responsibility for including them in his cabinet and making them his security ministers and finance ministers.

[Alistair Campbell]

So is he your worst politician?

[Rory Stewart]

He doesn't get away with it. No. My worst politician here, of course, is, predictably, Emmanuel Macron, who I think is the most catastrophic bluffing.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's the first time you've ever said those words without your friend in advance, mon ami.

[Rory Stewart]

That would have been a bit aggressive before Christmas. Say your friend was my worst politician of the year. I think Macron has absolutely demonstrated the most catastrophic failure of what could have been the incredible potential of a highly intelligent centrist politician has, through sheer vanity and ineptitude, blown his position in Parliament, blown the power of his presidency, failed to achieve any of the things he should have done in the big picture on Europe.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yes, I think you completely blow. I think he was in for February, but.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, you know, I think he should come on and prove me wrong. I think you should come on and prove me wrong because I'm sure I'm underestimating him and I know how much you admire him and I know how much the Economist correspondent in France admires him.

[Alistair Campbell]

Now you are kidding, my friends.

[Rory Stewart]

So Macron should come on and prove us wrong because I think he's somebody who again and again and again I've thought em, the great Emmanuel. Oh come, oh come em, Manuel. And he says the right things about Russia and he says the right things about AI and he says the right things about Europe. But when it comes to the real stuff, making the alliance with Starmer and with Merz really working together, how do you stop Farage getting into British politics? You work ambitiously and bravely to fix the boat issue, which only Macron can really fix and which he's, he's half heartedly failed to address again and again. When you look at the big issues on defence and European security, industrial policy for Europe, reforms on the European budget, he talks a good game. It just doesn't happen. And all of us are beginning to get a bit frustrated with the gap between rhetoric and reality.

[Alistair Campbell]

God, you sounded like Boris Johnson then. The gap between rhetoric and reality. By the way, Johnson has to be mentioned in the worst politician of any year ever. And given we had the COVID inquiry this year, the latest stage of that, I think we should give him an honourable mention. Look, I'm not going to pretend that Emmanuel Macron has worked out as I had hoped, but I think you're being very, very harsh. There is the point about arrogance and I think that that is something that he's never properly dealt with in relation to people's sense of him. I don't see him as being arrogant and I've seen him with quotes, ordinary people, where I think he's got far better relationships with people that he meets than he gets credit for. But I think where you're right is I think this is a sign of just how bloody hard politics is without making big own goal mistakes. The truth is you were right about this on the day, I remember you said it on the day that he called that snap election. I could see the logic for it, but I think actually it was one of those moments where he really damaged his own authority and he's never fully recovered for it. But I still Think he's one of the brightest and we've got one of the best brains in politics. But that took me. That one took me aback.

[Rory Stewart]

Speech for the year.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I might take you back here. Ah, I'm going for three in different categories, most consequential, which I'm going for J.D. vance in Munich.

[Rory Stewart]

Wow.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay.

[Rory Stewart]

Just to remind people what happened there. Tell us about the JD So JD.

[Alistair Campbell]

Vance turned up at the Munich Security Conference, where all the great sort of brains and policy makers and diplomats and military figures turn up to talk about defense and security at a time of kind of peak opportunity as well as threat in relation to the Ukraine war. And he made the most awful speech. But the reason why I think it was consequential because I think this was at the point at which America's real foreign policy intentions were laid bare. He basically said, you lot think that Putin's your biggest threat. Your biggest threat is you don't believe in free speech. Most of the people sat there thinking, what the F are you talking about? He then went off to have a meeting with Alice Fidel, the leader of the Alternative for Deutschland, a neo Nazi party that he basically said should be running Germany and therefore in their minds of the Americans, Europe. So I think that was the most consequential speech. I think the best parliamentary speech. This is where I think I'm going to shock you was in fact Kemi Badenoch's response to Rachel Reeves in the Budget. Now, a lot of people hated it and we got pushback on the day that we did our special episode on the Budget, we got a lot of people say, well, we both said we thought it was a very effective, brutal speech. A lot of people saying it was horrible, it was personal, it was nasty, there's still the nasty party, etc, etc, etc. But she did three things, actually. The first is important, especially just before Christmas. She settled, I think, any doubts within her party that she's tough and so therefore she might have what it takes. Doesn't mean she has, but she settled that in their minds. The second thing she did was she. And a lot easier when you'd been given the budget in advance. But she really, I think, went to the heart of a dividing line that they're now going to drive, which is Labour is putting up tax and putting up welfare and we believe in bringing both down.

[Rory Stewart]

And so she's making an argument to relate to your Brown point. She had a clear argument.

[Alistair Campbell]

She's creating a very clear divide line.

[Rory Stewart]

She knew what that argument was.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. Now, whether she can then bring forward the policy to deal with it. That being said, my speech of the year. Do you know who Pep Guardiola is, Rory?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, yes. He's a football manager.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's the one. He's a manager of Manchester City. Well done. Round of applause, Rory. Manchester City. He got an honorary graduate thing at Manchester University and he made a really quite beautiful speech about Gaza. The thing I remember about it most was he had this line. He basically said, this whole thing hurts me. It makes me scared. I hate the lack of humanity that's attached to it. I'm not speaking here about taking sides or ideology. I'm speaking about our basic humanity. And he told this story of this parable of a bird that can fly and fill it at a fire, fill its mouth, fill its beak with water, fly back, drop a bit of water, fly back, drop a bit of water. Bang on. Message for what? Can I do a great book, as you'll. So, you know, the point is, we can all do something. So I thought it was, you know, for a football manager, we can all.

[Rory Stewart]

Do something small and that all those little beaks of water ultimately can put out the forest fire.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

So beautiful.

[Alistair Campbell]

He's my speech of the year.

[Rory Stewart]

Beautiful. Well, look, I don't want to be too gloomy at Christmas time, but following on from your point about J.D. vance, I thought the most revealing speech, if you want to understand what's most dark and terrifying about the direction which Trump is leading, not just America, but Europe, is for people to watch Stephen Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's funeral. This was a speech in which he says that Charlie Kirk and his family, to quote, stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women, who raised up families, raised up cities, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves, out of the darkness, into the light. We are the light, they are the darkness. And the implication here goes right back to the rice in America after the Civil War. This is all this language, civilization, warriors. He then goes on, we are Athens, we are Rome, is about white European civilization. And originally, this whole language was simply developed to attack African Americans, to say, these are people who live in primitive societies.

[Alistair Campbell]

I can't remember who did it, but somebody did an analysis of that speech related to a speech that Goebbels had made in the 30s. I mean, when I see Speech of the Year, I'm trying to find the good speeches, but you're basically. You're going with my consequential.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, and I sort of just sort of tore the mask off. Because you're absolutely right. Yeah. Even the language about the warrior stands up to the storm. We are the storm. This stuff, as you say, is exactly. Is taken very much from that.

[Alistair Campbell]

Did you have a good speech, a nice speech again?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I thought Mamdani in his short snippets on social media, I mean, it's a very different way of doing speeches to the kind of honorary degree at Manchester University. But I guess, yeah, my speech of the year is a sort of memory speech from a university acceptance speech which I talked about at the time, which was the extraordinary Jane Goodall. Watching her deliver an acceptance speech for her honorary degree at the American University in Paris, where not only was she modest, funny and charming, but she did a full, I don't know, it felt like minute, two minutes maybe. It was only 45 seconds. Full chimpanzee mating call to an audience of two and a half thousand people.

[Alistair Campbell]

I mean, it says something about the state of our politics that we both really quite struggle to go for politician of the year and for our speeches of the year I've gone for football manager, you've gone for somebody imitating a chimpanzee primatologist.

[Rory Stewart]

That's true. That's, that's not very inspiring. I think both of us have been impressed by some of the people speaking in the Senate and the House exposing Trump. We talked about Senator Murphy getting into some of Trump's corruption.

[Alistair Campbell]

James Comey did a very, very short speech in response to some of the different stages of the persecution of Trump by Trump, of him.

[Rory Stewart]

Smith, who's one of the prosecutors that Trump is going after, did an incredible thing at LSE where he, he talked about the basic elements, the root of law, which I thought was very moving. That's an American standing up for the root of law. But yes, we're struggling a little bit and we keep coming back to the chimpanzee mating call. I can do a good impression of a white handed gibbon, but I can't do a chimp.

[Alistair Campbell]

What?

[Rory Stewart]

A white handed gibbon, like that sort of owl?

[Alistair Campbell]

It's sort of an owl to me.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I just heard it at the Cotswold Zoo. If people can do better than that, they can.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, we've done that. We've done the Christmas card competition. Let's now have a gibbon imitation.

[Rory Stewart]

They're very noisy and their whole chest vibrates. It's one on your environmental stuff. If you ever have an opportunity to go to the rainforest and to see the gibbons flying through the top canopy with this Noise erupting across the jungle. It is just the most exciting thing in the world.

[Alistair Campbell]

Excellent. Okay, Rory, well on Gibbons, let's have a quick break and then when we come back, biggest political moment. And we're going to talk about issues, people that are under discussed, undercovered, under debated, even on the Rest.

[Rory Stewart]

Even on the Rest of Politics.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, see you then. As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and division one, national consensus still stands firm. Roast potatoes.

[Alistair Campbell]

Oh, God, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to the Rest Is Politics.

[Rory Stewart]

Plus, it's the thoughtful kind of present ad free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q&As, book discounts, and perhaps, I think most interesting, it's our miniseries, available only to members, focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics. We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J.D. vance, and we're doing many more subjects to come.

[Alistair Campbell]

So think of this as a civilized gift to allow families to disagree agreeably over Christmas. What could be nicer?

[Rory Stewart]

And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is it's digital. No cues, rapping or panic. The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.

[Alistair Campbell]

So spread and a little political peace and goodwill. Head to therestispolitics.com and click Gifts. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

[Rory Stewart]

December should be the season of peace and joy. But there are some people, some bad actors, who don't take a Christmas break.

[Alistair Campbell]

So we have to hope that the cyber criminals are visited by the three ghosts on Christmas Eve. But in case they miss out on redemption this year, we can safely protect ourselves from their online crimes, thanks to NordVPN.

[Rory Stewart]

NordVPN's powerful software encrypts your data. A threat protection pro blocks malicious links and scans downloads for viruses.

[Alistair Campbell]

And it's not just online safety. NordVPN knows that some online retailers like to change their prices depending on your location. Sneaky stuff. Fortunately, NordVPN ensures that your Christmas list is not by algorithmic prices.

[Rory Stewart]

NordVPN protects up to 10 devices, so they can be installed directly to your router to cover your whole house.

[Alistair Campbell]

To get the best discount on your NordVPN plan, head to nordvpn.com restispolitics. You'll also get four extra months free on the two year plan plus a 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the episode description.

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[Alistair Campbell]

Welcome back to the the Rest Is Politics Christmas Eve special with me, Alistair.

[Rory Stewart]

Campbell and and me, Rory Stewart.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

Are you feeling now more Christmassy now we've made it through the break? Did you spend the break reflecting on. Are you. You're becoming a bit like Scrooge. This is kind of terrible.

[Alistair Campbell]

It's really straight. It is strange. There's definitely something in my psychology. I don't like things where everybody is meant to feel the same.

[Rory Stewart]

Are you sure it's not some sort of grim Scottish Presbyterian anti Christmas thing? DNA, you remember the Scots, you know, basically banned Christmas for some time.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. As you know, I'm not really a party person, I'm not a wedding person. Don't mind.

[Rory Stewart]

If you ever found God, would you become a slightly grim Presbyterian minister?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, Tony Blair always used to say he was really worried I'd become. I'd get God because he thought I'd become an Islamic fundamentalist.

[Rory Stewart]

That's another possibility.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

I think one thing you would. The one thing the ministers used to do which he might not do, which is ban the playing of Sport on Sunday.

[Alistair Campbell]

100. Wouldn't do that.

[Rory Stewart]

You wouldn't do that? No, no, no. You're allowed to play sport.

[Alistair Campbell]

Anyway, happy Christmas, everybody. I hope you're having a lovely, lovely, lovely time, as we all are, because we're all meant to go on.

[Rory Stewart]

Tell us about your biggest political moment of last year.

[Alistair Campbell]

Zelensky in the Oval Office.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, wow. Okay, so this is, this is. This brings us not just to TRUMP but to J.D. vance. So everybody remembers Zelensky. It's the big moment. Trump says he's going to fix the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Comes into office for a few weeks in, everybody's a bit off balance. Zelenskyy's first big meeting. Is he going to get US financial support? Is America going to support his borders? He comes in, he's wearing his trademark fatigues, walks into the Oval Office and very unusually, the whole format changes for the first time, doesn't it because traditionally, you point out, it would have been a short little thing before a private meeting.

[Alistair Campbell]

I think Trump had already sort of set that precedent that he was going to use these as big, rolling, rambling press conferences.

[Rory Stewart]

And it wasn't just Trump and the president speaking, because the vice president was sitting there like a peanut gallery weighing in. Talk us through this moment.

[Alistair Campbell]

I thought it was truly horrible. I watched the whole thing on my sofa, and I felt sick, because I think we had kidded ourselves that Trump was going to try to bring this war to an end. Now, in his head, that's what he was doing, bringing this war to an end. Vance lit the fuse. But once Vance lit the fuse, Trump went along with it, and he was basically. They were doing it by saying to Zelenskyy, you're little, we're big. Putin's big. You're still little, you've lost, give up. That was the basic message. I don't think Zelenskyy had any sense that was coming in the way that it did. I did an interview that night on Channel 4 News where I almost said the F. And even worse, because I was so angry and that. I think it was just. I used the word consequential for Vance's speech. I think this was part of that pattern. It was hugely consequential because it was basically saying, you lot in Europe are sitting there thinking, we're on your side. We're going to say that from time to time. But this is us. This is really us. And I saw Zelensky behaved as he does so often, with amazing kind of courage and dignity, but, you know, to be the leader of a nation at war and this, and essentially get asked to leave the White House because he's not buying this idea that you have none of the cards, and then pushing this line that Zelenskyy shouldn't have started this war if he didn't, if he couldn't win, as if Zelenskyy had started the war. Playing into the kind of Putin narrative that NATO provoked there. So. And all this stuff. So I thought it was horrible. And the thing is about Trump. We'll talk about this a bit more in the next episode where we're talking about what surprises about this year. So much stuff happens with Trump that we don't kind of hang on long enough to reflect on these massive moments. It just moves on to the next.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, the moments are unbelievable, aren't they? I mean, as you're thinking through. I mean, we're talking after this astonishing revelations that basically witkoff Took the entire Russian talking points on Ukraine and tried to drive peace deal. We're talking in a year in which Trump pushed through this ceasefire in Gaza in the most extraordinary, strange, last minute, brutal fashion. We're talking about a year in which Iran has been attacked by American missiles, in which Qatar has been attacked by Israeli missiles, in which Syria has begun to bring itself together, in which Sudan continues to disintegrate, in which military governments backed by Russia all over the Sahel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But my big choice is that moment at the very beginning of April, just after April Fool's Day, the Liberation Day tariffs. And again, I think if historians looked back in 30 years time, this was the big change, because it changed so many things in a single moment. The first thing is it showed suddenly that the American President had a type of power that people weren't really aware of before. He found an obscure law, an emergency power ready for war, which allows him personally to move up and down tariffs without congressional approval. Hadn't really been done for decades. Right. And it suddenly showed Trump can do stuff. And it was perfect for Trump because as you point out, it means that every country in the world has to.

[Alistair Campbell]

Come and just watch him do the signature. Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

And give him weird presence. And the Swiss will turn up with gold bars and the Japanese have to give him $300 billion sovereign wealth funds to spend at his discretion. So sort of tribute bearers. But not just countries. American companies having to come and, you know, Apple has to give him special gifts to get changes on whether or not they can do stuff with iPhones in China, et cetera. Power. Second thing is unpredictability. What we discovered is what you call a hokey cokey. The tariffs go up, the tariffs go down, the tariffs go up, the tariffs go down. And the whole thing is completely bewildering. I mean, so that most people in America and in the world would still have absolutely no idea whether the tariffs are really up or down. But the reality is the big picture is at the end of last year, the average tariff rate in the US was 3%. Today, the average tariff rate in the US is 18%. Last year, global trade growth was projected at 3%. This year it's projected at it's 0.3%. So massive consequences for the global economy. And then I think the final thing that comes out of that is tearing up the whole world order. He's broken this whole American idea since the Second World War that American power was behind certain kinds of multilateral institutions and rules. Like the World Trade Organization, which tried to balance the interests of small countries and big countries with relatively transparent rules that you could apply to courts, etc. Blown that all out of the water. And he's gone after his allies. I mean, what's so astonishing about it is that everybody assumed that if he was going to go after China, he would correspondingly try to keep allies on side. India, Vietnam, Switzerland, Japan, Europe, because he'd need them. Instead of which it's turned out that he actually inflicts more damage on his allies than he does on his enemies.

[Alistair Campbell]

Partly because China and Xi Jinping has stood up to it in a way that he didn't expect.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I think that's partly because China knew that the United States was its enemy and therefore spent the last 10 years making sure they couldn't be taken for. Right. We thought the United States was our allies, so we opened up our entire economy to the US we allowed them to do open heart surgery on us. Consequently, we had no defenses. I mean, it's like letting a virus into your body with absolutely no defenses. We've allowed the United States over 70 years to become totally central to every element of our defense security, economic life. And so that's what allows the long con. That's the real long con. It's that America spending 70, 80 years being so well behaved that Europeans, Japanese, Canadians allow themselves to be that vulnerable.

[Alistair Campbell]

Right. But the reason for that is not, not the United States of America, it's Trump. I think every previous president would have not. I think, I can't think of a president, living or dead, that would be sitting there approving what Trump is doing in relation to their relations with Europe.

[Rory Stewart]

No, but of course, the problem is, once Trump has revealed it, once he's really brought out into the open the fact that we are this vulnerable, that America has actually done more damage to Europeans, Japanese, Canadians in the last 11 months, the last year than the Chinese or the Russians. Actually more damage to our economy, more damage to our security, more damage to our democracies. And the problem is that we've always in the past asked the question, when we're looking at our enemies and adversaries, is this country a liberal democracy? Are they part of the Western alliance? And if they're not, we think they're an enemy. What we fail to understand is this question of vulnerability if you integrate too much. I mean, we saw this in microcosm with Russia where we integrated too much with their energy. But our dependency on the US is 90 times greater than our dependency ever was in Russia and this is what Trump's exploiting. And now suddenly, I mean, honestly, if he decided to invade Greenland, we could do absolutely nothing about it.

[Alistair Campbell]

Most under discussed, underappreciated domestic moment or issue. Last year I went for Brexit and you went for unemployment in the uk. So I don't think, I don't. I think unemployment's looking not too bad at the moment. Rory. Brexit's still a disaster.

[Rory Stewart]

Unfortunately, unemployment is a little bit up in the uk. And what I'm really talking about here, which hasn't been fixed, is the million people who just aren't working. And this is people living on different forms of disability benefits and payments, which hasn't been fixed. I mean, it's been. It's the one big difference between the UK economy and all our peers, that everybody came out of COVID with a lot of people out of the workforce, but only in the uk, out of the major economies, have all these people remained out of the workforce. And if you don't get those million people into the workforce, the benefits budget is skyrocketing. I mean, this is part of the problem that Rachel Rees is struggling with in trying to generate growth, get the public finances going. I don't think in the last 12 months they've really come up with anything to do about.

[Alistair Campbell]

I'm going to go for send special educational needs. And I think this relates to the change in media landscape as well, because the whole kind of Internet revolution and the way the media's developed has sort of destroyed so much of our local media. Local authorities are trying to do more and more with less. And I think SEND has grown and grown and grown and grown as a problem. And it was briefly mentioned in the budget in the context of what is now a 14 billion pound black hole. Call it what you want. And this is where there's been this thing called the override, where debts that the local authorities are building up and building up, they've not been going on the books, they're now going to be taken over by central government. And it sparked this debate finally about whether, if it's not coming from local authority budgets, is it going to come out of education budgets, or are we now going to look at another massive spending cost that the government's just going to have to fix?

[Rory Stewart]

And the issue behind it, I guess, is that we've become increasingly thoughtful about understanding how different children are and how many needs there are. So I suppose there are probably two things happening. One of them is a genuine increase in certain kinds of conditions. And the second is more awareness of them and more sensitivity to them. And schools realising that there's a lot more that they can do to help children at different parts of the spectrum, from relatively mild, who also benefit from a huge amount of support, through to more serious cases. And also the ways in which Covid feeds into that, social media feeds into that in loneliness, people facing serious challenges with their mental health. All this stuff with young people. And how on earth do you finance this? Because it's clearly vital. If you can get that intervention right in early childhood, it's incredible what you can do with results. I mean, again, I don't want to make this too much personal, but our kids school has, with my 8 year old, been so thoughtful about thinking about how to occasionally give them a few more minutes in an exam or. Or just helping him write down what the homework is for the night. And the result's been unbelievable. I was very, very worried in September that he would find it incredibly academically tough. He's come out at the end of his first term so confident, cheerful. He was saying yesterday it was kind of an extraordinary parental moment. You know, I'm so grateful for the fact I'm learning something every day. So they've turned somebody who could have been incredibly anxious, insecure and was saying six months ago, I just can't do this, I can't do school. It's into somebody who feels really confident and these are small tweaks and we're very, very lucky. But of course, this takes funding and backing.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, I mean, I think the. The other thing is, you've got all these graphs showing massive rise in diagnosis, a lot of controversy, debate about reasons for it. Then you have, you know, lunatics like R.F. kennedy coming in saying it's related to taking, was it paracetamol or whatever it was. And so you've got experts divided, you've got medics divided, you've got families divided, but it's an issue the government is going to have to grip.

[Rory Stewart]

Is it a bigger issue, though, just listening to you? Can we put this in a bigger issue about how we think about the future of looking after citizens, the welfare state, in other words. Presumably there would be an analogy in healthcare too, which is as the state tries to provide more and more thoughtful, tailored care in education, health, as people's expectations go up, things become more and more expensive. I mean, I noticed, because I teach in America, that in American healthcare they will do a lot of things the NHS wouldn't do on more minor lifestyle things, dermatology diet, whereas the NHS is really, really good at the kind of extreme kind of surgery for the acute cases. And this is partly about the fact that to provide the really tailored care for people at every stage on an autism spectrum is a little bit like thinking about the full challenges in somebody's health. This is the problem. Can we afford to do this? Have we got the tax balance right? You know, one thing we talked about during the budget is that in the UK, we're actually very oddly skewed. The top 0.1% is paying as much tax as the bottom 50% now in the UK. So it may be that we need to also talk about increasing the basic rate of tax.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, that was. We're now revisiting the arguments that preceded the budget. But I think what this speaks to, you know, you mentioned social care. Social care, we have still not got a grip of. We've talked a lot about. There is going to be, whether we like it or not, got increasing demand on defense and security because of what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. Have we really got a grip of that? Have we really got a grip of this issue? What this said to me is that they're starting to try to get a grip, but the sums of money involved are absolutely astronomical. And I'll tell you who, if he manages to crack it, our politician of the year next year might be Pat McFadden, because I think he's got one of the toughest jobs in government and think I now Labour tried to do welfare reform. MPs rebelled against it, weren't able to do it. One of the factors behind the tax rises in the budget. I think there are some really, really big issues here. And I do think the Labour MPs have got to understand it's the easiest thing in the world to stand up and say, no, you can't do that, because that's going to affect some of my constituents. Sometimes I'm afraid you have to look and you have to really sit back and say, why is this happening? Why is the scale of this problem now so big? There we go. Most under discussed, underappreciated international moment.

[Rory Stewart]

I'm going to go with Nvidia stock reaching $5 trillion in October. Nvidia is, of course, the chip manufacturer that's at the core of the AI revolution. And this, of course, brings us to the miniseries that I've been doing with Matt Clifford on AI, which, if you sign up, become a Trip plus member. And I hope some people are considering doing this as a little gift for each Other at Christmas, you'll be able to listen to it. Because what we're trying to say is that here is something which, in technology terms, potentially could change the world more than the Industrial Revolution and far more quickly, far more important basically than politics, transform all of employment, all of defence and security, all of the way that our lives work and potentially pose a massive existential threat to our politics, our security, our lives. And yet almost nobody's discussing it. I sat down with a friend of mine in the US Congress just two days ago who said to me, frankly, none of us are discussing it because none of us understand. We feel very, very insecure dealing with technology issues and therefore we don't want to go there. And which is why the politics of today often can feel as though it's stuck 20, 30 years in the past, that those. Nothing's really changed. That in some sense the kinds of things that people are discussing in Parliament are not very different from what they were discussing in 97.

[Alistair Campbell]

And in the same way.

[Rory Stewart]

And in the same way, yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

Point of order, you can't say this, you can't say that.

[Rory Stewart]

So anyone who's interested in the bigger argument around this, please sign up and listen to our miniseries where we really get into everything. We get into what AI is, we get into what it could mean for the economy, what it can mean for defence and security, what it can mean for existential risk. But that for me is the most undiscovered, just international limit.

[Alistair Campbell]

I think this year the UK economy is going to work out as being worth about 3.9 trillion, so smaller than.

[Rory Stewart]

A single American company.

[Alistair Campbell]

This feeds into one of my. I don't know if we're going to do a book of the century at any point, but it might be My Sovereign Individual by Jacob Rees Mogstad. Because this is kind of playing out pretty much as he said. These tech guys are going to become way more powerful than any country and.

[Rory Stewart]

Far wealthier than any person on Earth. And maybe there could be the other moment. This is the year in which it was announced, if he, Elon Musk, meets his targets, he will get $1 trillion. And so to repeat, because Elon Musk is obsessed with this, because he's obviously obsessed with how rich he is. To put it in context, a million seconds ago is 12 days ago. A billion seconds ago is 1994. A trillion seconds ago is 30,000 BC. To get a sense of how different a trillion is to a billion, right?

[Alistair Campbell]

My most under discussed, underappreciated international moment, you might be surprised by this because it relates to Gaza. Now, Gaza has had a lot of discussion, but my most under discussed episode is what's happened in Gaza since the so called bringing of peace by Donald Trump. It's almost as if Trump is such a brilliant salesman, con man, communicator, you would think, to all intents and purposes that he's brought peace to Gaza and the Middle East. Life for most people in Gaza remains utterly horrible. People are still being killed. We're recording not long after the Pope visited Lebanon at a time when Israelis were dropping bombs on Lebanon. So I just think it's one of those things where Trump manages to shape a moment and go bang, that's the end of that chapter.

[Rory Stewart]

So, Alistair, I think that's a moment maybe to finish.

[Alistair Campbell]

I thought you were going to maybe weave effortlessly from that into telling me a story about Bethlehem or something. Well, something biblical, something Christmassy.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, that's a great thing.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, well, of course, imagine you're a priest. Let's imagine these meetings you're having with clergymen.

[Rory Stewart]

What would they say? Well, one of the things that I've got for them, I mean, you're right, you could make a little pivot to the fact that Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the west bank with Palestinian Christians. We often forget Palestinian Christians in the story and a place that's very, very difficult at the moment to access. My wife's charity, Turkos Mountain, is working with craftspeople in Bethlehem. And a lot of the proposals that are coming now from Smart Church are about cutting Bethlehem off from Nablus and the other parts of the West Bank. But I think the move I wanted to end on is this. A lot of the people I've been having lunch with recently, these priests are getting older and they are.

[Alistair Campbell]

So you want to replace them?

[Rory Stewart]

No, I'm saying they're going through extraordinary personal challenges, sometimes their own health, sometimes aging, sometimes tragedies within their own family. And they're having to try to apply consolation to themselves that they've spent 50 years providing to other people. And that is an extraordinarily difficult moment. I mean, what's the moment in which one of them said to me, he's somebody who's a man who meditates a lot and had a family tragedy beyond imagining and was saying to me, honestly, he couldn't meditate anymore and he was literally flattened back on his bed. But then he turned to listening to other people he admired giving little talks on meditation, 10, 15 minutes. Listening to it just pulled him back enough to keep going. But I'm just so moved by how at the center of the Christian message is the sense of human frailty and weakness and that nothing's ever perfect. It's not like some of the Buddhist traditions where you pretend there's a moment where you're suddenly enlightened and you become a saint and everything's over. That right the way through to the end. People are learning, struggling, and sometimes finding that they can't cope.

[Alistair Campbell]

We can't end a Christmas Eve episode on the words can't cope.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, they can't cope. And they would say without God, without other people, and that they're not alone. And that actually it's an unbearable burden to think that you've somehow become a super hero saint who can do it all on your own. That for them it is other people, other voices and whatever, in different ways people are trying to get at when they talk about God, which in the end provides that final consolation at Christmas.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well done. You got it back. You wrestled it back. Happy Christmas to you and your family, Rory. And because we're just sort of. We never stopped, let's do another episode on Christmas Day. Should we do that?

[Rory Stewart]

We will. We'll be back on Christmas Day with our message and I'll try to make it a little less heavy. Bye bye.

[Alistair Campbell]

Bye bye.

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[Rory Stewart]

As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and Division 1 national consensus still stands for roast potatoes.

[Alistair Campbell]

Oh, God, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to. The rest is politics.

[Rory Stewart]

Plus, it's the thoughtful kind of present ad, free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q&As, book discounts, and perhaps I think most interesting, it's our miniseries, available only to members, focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics. We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J.D. vance, and we're doing many more subjects to come.

[Alistair Campbell]

So think of this as a civilized gift to allow families to disagree agreeably. Over Christmas. What could be nicer?

[Rory Stewart]

And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is it's digital. No cues, rapping or panic. The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.

[Alistair Campbell]

So spread a little political peace and goodwill, head to therestispolitics.com and click Gifts.

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

Hello, I'm Professor Hannah Fry.

[Rory Stewart]

And I'm Michael Stevens, creator of Vsauce. We thought we would join you for a moment completely uninvited.

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

We are not going to stay too long. Unless you want us to.

[Rory Stewart]

Of course. We're here to tell you about our brand new show. The rest is science.

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

Every episode is going to start with something that feels initially familiar, and then we're gonna unpick it and tear it apart until you no longer recognize it at all. You know, banana flavor doesn't taste like bananas.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, what is that about?

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

So it is supposed to taste like an old species of banana that was wiped out in a bananapocalypse, and now you will only find it in botanical collections in the gardens of billionaires.

[Rory Stewart]

Wow. Banana candy is actually the ghost of a long extinct banana.

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

So if you like scratching the surface.

[Rory Stewart]

Thinking a little bit deeper or weirder.

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

Yes, definitely.

[Alistair Campbell]

That too.

[Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens]

You can join Michael and I every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.