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The Rest Is Politics
483. The Future of British Politics, How The World Order Is Changing, and The Power of History
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- [00:00]
Alastair 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.
- [00:29]
Rory Stewart
And they're making it happen. Thanks to you. Fuse Energy is putting the power in your hands by inviting you to refer land to Fuse that can then be used for renewable projects.
- [00:37]
Alastair Campbell
So we already know Clean Energy has cut at least 104 billion pounds from the UK's energy costs since 2010. But Fuse wants you to benefit directly from the green revolution. That's why you can win £2,000 for a successful land referral. Be it your land or somebody else's.
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Rory Stewart
Land that is 20 acres or over could be transformed into the renewable backbone of this nation, benefiting all of us for the generations to come.
- [01:01]
Alastair Campbell
I'd love to know how many of our listeners have 20 acres of land. We should maybe find out. You can watch the energy revolution from the sidelines or you can join it today.
- [01:08]
Rory Stewart
Turn idle land into forward progress with Fuse. Contact fuse@landusenergy.com to start a referral and have the chance to win £2,000.
- [01:19]
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- [01:45]
Rory Stewart
Carvana.
- [01:47]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
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- [02:25]
Alastair Campbell
Welcome to the Rest Is Politics on New Year's Eve with me, Alistair Campbell.
- [02:30]
Rory Stewart
And with me Rory Stewart. New Year's Eve is where both of us are to be found. In Scotland. Yep, getting ready for New Year's day. I think you're probably a little bit further north than me in Perthshire. Is that right? Bit further northwest.
- [02:41]
Alastair Campbell
No, way further north. Up in Argyll, near Fort William.
- [02:45]
Rory Stewart
Lovely.
- [02:46]
Alastair Campbell
Near Glencoe. Rory, scene of.
- [02:48]
Rory Stewart
Oh, don't, don't, please.
- [02:49]
Alastair Campbell
We don't. We don't.
- [02:51]
Rory Stewart
I went to the Glasgow Art Gallery when we were doing our performance in Glasgow and sent you a very, very fine photograph of the massacre of Glencoe. Yeah, everybody just general as we all feel after the Campbells have been through.
- [03:03]
Alastair Campbell
Have you ever been to the Glencoe Massacre Museum? There is a museum, just.
- [03:07]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't normally go there if I was called Alastair Campbell. I'm not sure that's that. But, you know, never been scared of controversy or pushback.
- [03:16]
Alastair Campbell
Luckily for you, Rory, you're not called Alastair Campbell, you're called Rory Stewart. And New Year's Eve is also the time when we pathetically sort of sit down and do a few New Year's resolutions. Let's not do them for ourselves, let's. Let's do them for the political parties instead.
- [03:29]
Rory Stewart
Let's do that. Well, let me start you off then, Asta. What do you think the New Year's resolution should be for your own dear party? What should Labour's New Year's resolution be?
- [03:39]
Alastair Campbell
Well, I've actually gone down the three word slogan route and I've got two. They're linked. Okay, Go for growth and get a grip. Growth was meant to be the number one mission of the Labour government. The recent budget that we talked a lot about was, as you kept pointing out, not really focused on growth. Growth is the key to all the things the government wants to achieve. So really, really focus and get a grip. Because too many of the wounds of the last 12 months, I would argue have been self inflated. And that is because of this lack of coherent messaging, coherent narrative and a grip where everybody knows what everybody else is meant to be doing. So that is my New Year's resolution for Labour. Go for growth and get a grip.
- [04:21]
Rory Stewart
I was slightly, sadly re listening to this episode that we did 12 months ago. And what was interesting then is that we already could see that Starmer was no longer using the word growth. He'd started talking about rising living standards or faster GDP growth per head. I mean, stuff which basically was much, much lower bar stuff that we've mostly seen since the Second World War. And last night I was talking to my friend Felix, who's an economist, Felix Martin, and he was saying that the sort of things that labor should be doing to get that growth are fourfold. Number one, much more imaginative about changing the way banking and finance works in Britain. One of the big changes that allowed the US to grow very strongly over the last 10, 15 years is that the banking regulation they put in after 2008 was a better balance between managing risk and actually allowing people to invest and take risk. So we've got to sort that out. Secondly, something that will be music to I think the ears of many people in Labour, which is planning, where I think Labour has actually done quite a lot. There's been some very interesting recent announcements. Maybe we didn't give enough credit during the budget to Labor's announcement that in Marlowe a big new film studio will be built, which I think be a really good sign for the British economy. Third thing, where I think we tend to agreeably disagree, which is energy prices, that Ed Miliband needs to really work out how we're going to get energy affordable for people and above all for businesses. And then I think the final thing is this whole question around deregulation and the endless creep of bureaucracy and rules into every bit of life, which most of us on the slightly more soft right side feel is choking business and entrepreneurship. Would you agree with those four as part of your growth recipe?
- [06:03]
Alastair Campbell
I would. And also there are others that would add, I would add Europe and post Brexit, fixing the mess, which Keir Starmer did signal in that speech he made after the budget. But it's interesting, given you've introduced these themes, one of the things we're going to be talking about later is politicians to watch out for in 2026. And one of them that I was going to mention, but I'll mention it because it relates to what you've just said. And even though he's quite well known, I think he should be much better known. And that's Peter Kyle. I think what's really interesting, the reason why I would say he's worth watching, because in that Keir Starmer speech where he talked about asking him to take on the findings of the Fingleton Review on nuclear power and address them across the economy. And I thought one of the things that happened late in 2025 that didn't get nearly as much attention as I thought he would, was this compromise that Peter Carter brokered between the unions and business on the implementation of the Employment Rights Bill. And I thought that was a really interesting sign because what he did essentially was to get unions and business in together and say, okay, Angela Rayner brought Forward this bill. Business hates it because it's basically saying you will get employment rights from day one, including unfair dismissal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he seems to have managed to, to bridge that divide in a way that didn't create mayhem when he announced it. He had a few MPs shouting at him. And then the next thing I think was interesting. I just wonder whether what Keir Starmer was signaling in relation to him specifically saying, I've asked Peter Karl to take this across industrial strategy is actually whether he's signaling that Peter Karl's job in a way is going to be to focus on growth.
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Rory Stewart
And I think Peter Karl could be great at this. And a couple of things. One, it'd be great to see him sitting down with people like my friend Felix to try to work out how you do this. But the second thing which I think is exciting in terms of politics is that many of these things are, in technical jargon, supply side reforms. In other words, they're not necessarily things where Labour needs to have a huge fight with its backbenchers about tax. These are Peter Kyle issues, many of them, not Rachel Reeves issues. They're things that the government could change without getting into brutal conflicts with pensioners, welfare. What they take is some political courage. I mean, obviously there will be pushback. There'll be pushback from people who don't want housing built. There might be pushback from some bits of the environmental movement if you started taking some of the radical steps to drop energy prices. There might be some pushback from people worried about risk in banking. But I think that's probably an area where Peter Karl really could do stuff. He's got opportunities there in the whole regulation. I believe the Financial Conduct Authority, for example, has gone from a few hundred people when it was set up to nearly 3,000 now, which is a really sort of interesting bit of data. That's the Tories fault. I mean, they allow this huge ballooning bureaucracy to emerge. And of course the reason why it happened is we were all very frightened about the financial crisis. But what we mustn't do is get into this very simplistic black and white. Either you have a financial crisis or you need total choking over regulation and no risk at all. Peter Karl's opportunity is to say that's a ridiculous choice. If we're thoughtful and sensible about this and look at what people like the US have done, actually maybe we could get capital markets going and just to sort of end that story. Part of the story about this famous thing which is that we create these amazing companies in Britain and we have great ideas in Britain and Demis Hassavis creates the AI revolution in Britain and then it all moves to the US is that we just don't have flexible enough credit markets to provide the money for these businesses to get them going in Britain and indeed, actually across Europe.
- [09:47]
Alastair Campbell
That's on the kind of big picture, international side of things. I also think we haven't focused sufficiently on regional development and the role of the regions, so I hope there's a kind of devolution agenda attached to this as well. And your point on energy? So, for example, one of the kind of debates that's been going on, we talk a lot about, you know, AI and these massive data centers and Peter Carl's very much been pushing on those and we know that they're going to require an awful lot of electricity, so they've got to be sort of linked into the Green agenda debate as opposed to being seen as in conflict. Anyway, I think we're on the same page on this. I think that growth was one of the promise of growth was one of the reasons why business did get behind the Labour Party in opposition and then the government and the lack of focus on it is one of the reasons why they've got a little bit pissed off. So I think that we're singing from the same hymn sheet for Labour. What about your old party, the Tories? If you are sitting down writing their New Year resolution, what should it be?
- [10:44]
Rory Stewart
One of the questions here is about people showing grip. I like your grip. Or another word be agency.
- [10:50]
Alastair Campbell
Oh, no, no, no. Agency is not the same as grip agent. No, no, no, no. Grip is different, Grip is different.
- [10:56]
Rory Stewart
Basic idea is that you can make a difference. The world doesn't have to be, you know, 2026 doesn't have to be a sort of gentle, pessimistic drift of continuations of 2025. If it were, you know, you could tell a story where the Tories just continue to be pretty ineffectual, factional, unable to resolve, go to the right or the left and really unable to get support behind them in the polls. You can tell the same story. I think for most of these parties that 2026 is just a sort of slightly disappointing version of what they did in 2025, which is where leadership comes in. Or maybe your grip point. My hope for the Conservatives is that they seize this message around growth and that they really compete with Labour. Let's say this is where Peter Karl's going, let's see the Conservatives lay out a platform on this and really explain what they would do. So, for example, the Conservatives could pursue a more radical energy policy. Could be very controversial. They're already beginning to. You can see this Claire Catino, the Shadow Energy Secretary, talking about dropping net zero and she says coming up with a different vision of how you can reduce Britain's carbon consumption and footprint without tying itself into these very strange subsidy financial knots. Second thing I think they could be doing is really thinking about this question of how we ended up with a million extra people out of the workforce. And that's not about aging. We often say that our choices are constrained because we're getting older and older, but there's a million extra working age people who've remained outside the workforce, many of them on different forms of welfare and disability payments, many of them with mental health challenges. A Conservative message that really talked about how you get the incentives right there to get people back into work, I think would be a smart thing. So that's my Conservative one. Let me come to you on what the New Year's resolution might be for the party that you're sometimes sympathetic to, the Green Party.
- [12:48]
Alastair Campbell
Excuse me, Am I, am I, am I like to comment on your party.
- [12:52]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, go on.
- [12:53]
Alastair Campbell
You gave a full spiel about the Labour Party. I was sticking with a three word slogan for the Tories, that is own your past and what I mean by that. I think all the things you're saying are perfectly sensible thoughts for them, but I don't think they're going to get a proper public hearing until they are honest about the extent to which the problems that the current government are dealing with are the consequences of choices that the Tories made. And I think until they do that, the things that you've just said there, which they could present in a very sensible way, I think will be seen entirely in the context of them trying to take on reform.
- [13:26]
Rory Stewart
Presumably there are two things they could do, though. One of them is to say we screwed up, did a lot of things wrong. They may not want to go quite as far as what you just said, which is all the problems that the current government is dealing with were caused by us.
- [13:38]
Alastair Campbell
No, I didn't. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. Mean by own your past is have a proper analysis as to why you lost the general election so badly and admit within that some of the decisions that you made are part of the problem that the country faces right now. And you see the fact that they have got a new leader, even though she was Part of that Cabinet. It does give them agency to use your word to try to shape a new agenda. I don't think if they do come along with a new agenda, I think at the moment it will not be listened to properly. Out with the context of they're worried about reform. That's what people will think if they hear what you just said on energy. And then the other thing, I think when we talk about get a grip, I think that Kemi Badenoch, and I think she's in a stronger position than she was. I think she needs to get a grip of Robert Jenrick, because you have a sense of two strategies playing out at the same time. So I think the thing that unites both of them is them just being more honest with the public. So every time that Labour says something at the moment, the Tories come out and say, well, what are you talking about? You've had 15 months, you've had 18 months, whatever it might be. But I think there has to be some humility and some honesty, otherwise they wouldn't have got smashed in the way that they did.
- [14:50]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And maybe you identify people who are responsible. You define, this is what Boris did wrong. These are the two big policies he marked up. He mishandled immigration, he mishandled Covid, he mishandled Brexit. And this is what we've learned from it. This is what Liz Truss did wrong. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then maybe you don't lean very hard into Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt. You might explain them as being products of the kind of Boris Truss catastrophe. But above all, I think you need an analysis of where our economic policy went wrong since 2019. So from the point that Boris took over, because I know I'm often accused of being myopically, madly anti Boris, but if you look at the data, the real problem with our productivity, GDP per capita compared to other countries, particularly compared to the US, starts in 2019. That actually the story 2010 to 2019 was disappointing. But in relative terms, the real catastrophe goes wrong in the Boris era.
- [15:47]
Alastair Campbell
Okay, Rory, what about the Lib Dems? They don't get, you know, They've got more MPs than the reform Party and Greens put together by some considerable margin. But my thought for them is that they need. And they're kind of getting to this. I think they need a big national message that doesn't contradict with their traditional, very effective local campaigning. And I think that relates to Europe and Brexit. Take Brexit, where they are pretty outspoken, but they need to. But they're getting competition from the Greens on that now. But they then need to localize it. So they have to sort of have a big national message that allows them to campaign locally. And that for me is Europe. So I would say focus even more than they do now on Europe.
- [16:28]
Rory Stewart
And is the risk that they feel, if you're a local candidate, that almost any national message is going to alienate some of your voters? And Lib Dem Local MPs hate having to defend a national platform. It's much more comfortable for them in the short term to just be campaigning about local issues. And almost whatever the national party says, they then think, oh, God on the doorstep, I've got to defend what they said on tuition fees or what they've said about Brexit or what they've said, whatever.
- [16:56]
Alastair Campbell
Well, look, the downside for the Lib Dems is that they don't get as much coverage nationally as they'd like to. The upside from that is that they can actually do both. They can pursue a national message. And of course, the thing about Brexit, it takes you to the economy, it takes you to foreign policy, it takes you into all the areas that you want the leaders to be talking about. So I don't think they're necessarily inconsistent. I just think that would be my plan for them. I would say, like, you've already started on this journey, really own it and really go for that as your big.
- [17:23]
Rory Stewart
Thing in the most ambitious world. For the Lib Dems, what would it take for them to break through and become the second largest party in Parliament over the next three years? What would they have to do to do that?
- [17:32]
Alastair Campbell
Well, they'd have to see the others collapse. And of course, at the moment, you know, the focus. We'll talk about reform in a minute. The focus on reform has been part of this debate about are we seeing the end of the sort of traditional two party dominance? And that used to be the Lib Dems that featured in that. And in many ways they should still be featuring that. But I don't think that's where they want to be. I think they want to be building on the success they had at the last election electorally. And I just think their problem is always people don't quite know what the Lib Dems stand for. And I think this would give them a big way.
- [18:05]
Rory Stewart
You're saying their aim at the next election should be to get, let's say, another 10 or 20 seats and that it's the election after where they want to be the first or second largest party in Parliament.
- [18:15]
Alastair Campbell
Well, no, listen, I mean, look, things are so volatile. We've said many times on the podcast over the year, we've now got a kind of five, six party politics in a two party system. The Lib Dems are very much in the mix of that, of the churn that could come in that. So if I were, I'd aim very, very high. But all I'm trying to say is I think they need a national message that knits with their very, very effective local campaign. What about reform then? We mentioned reform there. What about reform? What should they be doing?
- [18:41]
Rory Stewart
Well, reform, you know, if they have their dream, they replace the Conservative Party as the default party of the right and they capitalize on all those problems you pointed out, which is the Tory party basically lost the one thing that mattered to them. And we kept saying this during the Liz Truss period, the one card that the Tories had to play is they were considered to be a little bit more cautious and sensible with your money, right? The story that the Tories always sold was we may be the nasty party and Labour may be nicer, more compassionate people, but in the end we're cautious and careful about spending and taxing. And Liz Truss blew that by scaring the markets and feeling irresponsible. So what reform has to do is to present to all those natural Conservative voters and in many ways Britain is a much more small seat Conservative country than people quite understand. Compared actually to many European countries on lots of different issues and opinion polls, you'll find the British are more in favour of pro business, pro market small government policies and a bit suspicious of the left. You know, it's not very difficult to say to the public at the moment. Listen, what really is the. I had this with a talking to a Greek person recently who said, what's happened to Britain? It's completely mad. She's a Greek doctor thinking of leaving Britain and she said, I don't understand what's happening, I don't understand as government's doing, all our wealthy friends are looking at leaving Britain. And I said it's pretty straightforward. We've elected a left wing government and their instincts are obviously going to be a bit left wing. And you should be familiar with this from Greece, right? When you get a left wing government in, they're less pro rich people, they're more pro equality, they're going to put your taxes up, they're going to spend more, they're going to be in favor of big governments. Not very surprising, right? But that instinct that sense is what reform needs to use. They basically need to say, listen, all you need to know about labor is that they're more left wing than you think. And all you need to know about the conservatives is that they're hopeless and they're finished.
- [20:33]
Alastair Campbell
Well, that. That is kind of what they say. But I think if I were reform, I think that they've got. I think this could be, and I hope it will be a much more challenging year for reform. I still think the Russia influence story has not been remotely fully told, and that needs to be told. I also think that they had, you know, considerable success in the local elections. That means they now have quite a lot of power in local government. Virtually everything you hear about them in local government is bad for reform. So Nigel Farage loves being the sort of big guy and he gets loads of media and what have you, and he likes the big moments. If I were them, my new resolution would be actually to focus on their performance in local government and get a grip of it, because I think that that will become a theme as we go over the year. And the other thing I'd say is I think they've got to be very, very wary. If it is true, and it may not be true, but if it is true, as Nigel Farage says, that there is no way he's ever going to deal with the Tories. I think they've got to be really wary of all these Tory retreads that keep coming their way. I mean, when they were trying to celebrate the arrival of Jonathan Gullis, a man who said, you know, over my dead body would I ever join reform? And now he's there. I mean, Danny Kruger's got a bit of a kind of, you know, Etonian intellectual feel to him. You could sort of say, yeah, well, okay, I can see that one. But, you know, Nadine Dorries, Maria Caulfield Gullis, Anne Marie Morris, Anne Widdicombe. It's looking very much like the Tory Party that the country really couldn't stand any longer. So I'd be wary of that. I get why they like getting the sort of publicity hit every now and again and then. So I think that's a couple of things. I really hope this will be the year that Reform come under proper scrutiny, because we haven't had that yet.
- [22:15]
Rory Stewart
We're going through these New Year's resolutions, a lot of detail. So I'm going to give you three Greens, Plied and smp. What do you think their New Year's resolutions should be?
- [22:23]
Alastair Campbell
Okay, well, Greens, not least because of the extraordinary sort of. I mean, I don't know if you saw, Rory, just how much analysis there was on the left, and particularly by Green Party supporters of our interview with Zach Polanski. But my advice to him would be to get an economic voice, possibly one of the people he mentioned, like Richard Medway or Grace Blakely and the other people you mentioned, and actually get them to become your economic spokesperson. A bit like, you know, Zia Yousef has been dragged in by Farage to sort of project a sense of, you know, business voice and what have you. So I would do that for the Greens if I was the snp. This relates a little bit to the Tories, I think. Own a bit more of the critique. Stop being more defensive and saying that everything you've ever done is great. Own a little bit more of the critique as a way of saying, and this is how we're going to do the next steps applied. I've got a very interesting and unusual suggestion here. So Fiona and I have been watching this TV series called the Beast in me. I don't need to go into the story, it's a pretty dark kind of American drama. But anyway, the actor who the main star is this guy called Matthew Rhys, R H Y S and I thought that sounds really Welsh because he's playing an American guy. So I looked him up and he is Welsh. And not only is he Welsh, he's a supporter of Plyde. His first language is Welsh, is probably why he's so good at. I honestly, you wouldn't know he was not British when you were watching him play this thing. So if I was plied, I'd phone up Matthew Rees and I'd say, come on, come and get involved in this campaign. We need a bit of kind of. We need a bit of showbiz and a bit of life. And of course, the reason why it matters a lot, the performance of the so called smaller parties is because one of the big events in 2026 is going to be the local elections alongside the Welsh and Scottish elections. And I think there's a feeling abroad that if they are very, very, very bad for Labour, then we're going to revisit the whole thing about, you know, Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and all that. So this is going to matter. And a while back, I think Anna Sawa, who you and I both like a lot, I think he was looking, you know, not nailed on, but he was looking very, very strong in the upcoming Scottish elections. The national picture has really helped the SNP and hurt Labour and don't underestimate reform in Scotland either. And meanwhile in Wales it's looking pretty bad for Labour and again reform threat, but I think Plyde looking pretty strong. So once we get to May we will be talking a lot about Wales and Scotland.
- [24:52]
Rory Stewart
Well let's take a quick break on that and come back after the break and let's open up to what we think the world is going to look like as opposed to Britain in 2026.
- [25:07]
Alastair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
- [25:09]
Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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- [26:00]
Alastair 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 right now.
- [26:16]
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- [27:20]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Rest Is Politics. New Year's Eve special episode with me.
- [27:25]
Alastair Campbell
Rory Stuart and me, Alistair Campbell. So first half, Rory, was entirely uk. Where do you want to go as we look at the rest of the world?
- [27:32]
Rory Stewart
Well, I think, look, the rest of the world is very interesting and we can get into this a little bit more when we do our New Year's Day episode tomorrow. But I've been thinking back to all our predictions last year and we can talk a little bit about that and what we got wrong. But there are so many problems in trying to think about the world over the next 12 months. One of them is we tend to be very Western centric, so we tend to talk a lot about uk, Europe and the us and we are not really talking about what's happening in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia. The second thing is black Swans, these high impact, low probability events that could come out of nowhere and totally throw the balance of the world off. We talked last year about what would happen if there was a dirty nuclear bomb. I'd add to that, what would happen if we suddenly had very, very different drone technology in the hands of unfriendly states like Russia or even in the hands of terrorists, different forms of climate catastrophes that could happen. What could happen with AI, what could happen to the global financial system? So there's a slight tendency, inevitably, when humans think about the future, to think about a kind of straight line, that 2026 will be a bit like a version of 2025. And we talked about one problem for the break, which is that that doesn't take into account Choice Agency, the way in which people can change the world. But there's a second problem, which is things that we don't normally think about as politics. Let's take, I don't know, antibiotics, which can no longer be absorbed by humans or are resisted by our bodies so that all medical procedures begin to collapse, or the emergence of a new pandemic. Things which will make our calculations around the sort of normal stuff that political nerds look at suddenly thrown off balance. Anyway, what are you thinking about for next year?
- [29:16]
Alastair Campbell
I'm mainly thinking about the Football World Cup.
- [29:18]
Rory Stewart
Oh, God. Tell us about that then. Go on. What's going to happen in the Football World Cup?
- [29:21]
Alastair Campbell
Well, Scotland are going to win it, obviously.
- [29:22]
Rory Stewart
Very good.
- [29:23]
Alastair Campbell
No, that probably won't happen. I mean, I worried. I think Last year, my book of the year was that German book I read about 1936 and how Hitler used the 36 Olympics. I've got horrib horrible feeling about the way that Trump is going to try to use the World Cup. It is the most high profile sporting event on the planet. There are going to be more countries involved than ever. And I think Trump will move heaven and earth to politicize it in all sorts of ways. So I think that is worth watching out for the politics of it. I think we'll be talking just as much this year about Gaza and Ukraine as we did last year. I think if I had a New Year's resolution for Trump, several One, stop lying. Two, stop being so corrupt, and three, stop being played by Putin. I think none of those are likely to happen.
- [30:06]
Rory Stewart
I'm afraid these resolutions are a bit confusing, aren't they? Because the question is, is that what you would like for the world or what you would like for Trump?
- [30:14]
Alastair Campbell
That's what I'd like. I'd like Trump to stop lying, stop being corrupt and stop being played by Putin.
- [30:18]
Rory Stewart
But I think from Trump's point of.
- [30:20]
Alastair Campbell
View, his new resolution will be to get even richer and get even more powerful and get Jared Kushner and Witkoff into more places to make deals.
- [30:27]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. I mean, I think in predicting Trump's behavior, one of the. Is to try to get into this. Keep leaning into the basic idea of the reality TV show, leaning into this idea that what we actually know about him increasingly is that he loves the drama of oscillation. He loves the hokey cokey. You know, we saw this with Mamdani. You know, Mamdani's an evil communist. Suddenly, Mamdani's my best friend in the White House. I'm very angry with Putin. Putin's a terrific guy. I'm going to sanction him. No, I'm not. I'm going to take all the land off Ukraine. Zelenskyy's rude and ungrateful. Zelenskyy's a war hero. Right?
- [31:05]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. But hold on. I think one of your most interesting observations through 2025 is this point that for all the hokey cokey on the substance of Ukraine, Russia and USA Europe, Trump has not moved an inch.
- [31:21]
Rory Stewart
Exactly. I think that's. Maybe that's a better way of looking at it, which is that. But the broad trend line is something that I think we can be pretty confident about. The broad trend line is he's going to be pro tariffs and protectionism against free trade. He's going to be pro America first and against any global systems. We're talking just after he's boycotted the G20 and cop, he's going to be broadly pro Russia. He's going to be pretty skeptical of Europe. He's going to not care too much about his allies. He's going to continue to be corrupt. But month by month, there are going to be many moments where you'll be thrown off balance, where it will suddenly seem for a moment as though he's flipping back. Yeah.
- [32:03]
Alastair Campbell
And of course, the huge. We should talk a little bit about some of the elections around the world. The one that will get the most attention is going to be the midterms in the States in November. No, there is an assumption the Republicans, because of Trump, are going to do very, very badly. And we should just maybe point out Trump every day says I've got the best ratings and the economy is doing this. I mean, he lies all the time about pretty much everything thing. His current rating satisfied to dissatisfied 38 to 57. That is very, very low for a serving American president. So he might be thinking, and I'm sure some of the people around him will be thinking, if we do do very badly in the midterms, he will be weakened. He will then have to start reaching out more to Congress and so forth. And his thinking in that, given the way we've seen him operate, because we shouldn't, no matter what predictions we made for Trump last year, he has exceeded them by doing far more stuff than we thought he would getting, being far more extreme, being far more outrageous in so many ways. So he will think, maybe this is my last full year of real power. I'm going to use that big time. So I think this could be a very difficult, troubling year. And then the other point I would make that you mentioned in relation to the kind of bigger geopolitical picture, I think there was a fantastically interesting piece by the Finnish president, Alexander Stubbing in the Foreign affairs magazine recently, and he talked about the kind of the world is reshaping around these three spheres. The traditional west, the traditional east led by China, traditional West led by America. But that's kind of a bit in flux. But then said we don't focus nearly enough on the south and the global south and Africa, Latin America and so forth. And he has some very interesting ideas for how actually that is where geopolitics are going to play out. And there's got to be changes in the international structures to meet that. So I think that debate may take off now. Of course, Trump won't want to be part of that because he just thinks it's all about him.
- [34:02]
Rory Stewart
Let's lean into this stub idea then. So again, if 2026 is just sort of business as usual for the last 10 years, you could say that there's a 50% chance that the south, so Africa, Latin America, et cetera, would continue to be a bit muddled and divided. But you're absolutely right, there's another world in which they could begin to really step up and develop a non aligned infrastructure. So this is something India often talks about, never quite pulls off. It's something that China and Russia have tried to play with, but a basic idea that, and it's certainly something that would appeal to the Gulf states, that you create a third way which doesn't make you beholden to either America or China. And that would be interesting. I mean, would they be able to develop independent standards? Would they be able to get themselves off the dollar? I mean, there's been talk about, you know, brics currencies, would they be able to sort of independent tech platforms? But it's again, the reason why I think there's only a, probably, let's say a 20% chance of them being able to do that. And the 50% chance is that it's, it sort of feels like a sort of muddled, pessimistic version of today is that the world is surprisingly kind of fragmented and cowed in its response to Trump. It isn't really developing a kind of coherent, strategic, bound together vision of what a kind of post American world is like. You get this sense that things are being picked off, that Trump will sort of try to pick off Honduras or Argentina or play Hungary in the FD against Europe.
- [35:38]
Alastair Campbell
I think China do have a strategy.
- [35:40]
Rory Stewart
But that's more your east than your south, isn't for sure.
- [35:42]
Alastair Campbell
Oh, I see. You think the south aren't doing that. But I think what China has been doing and what Russia has been doing has been to focus much more on the global south in a way that America has been vacating the field. And so, for example, every time Trump does goes off, as he did recently, one of these awful racist rants, he did a thing about Somalia that was so disgusting. And I think every time that happens, it plays into the China strategy for how they're developing and the Belt and Road initiative does the same. I'll tell you the other thing that I think could be really interesting in 2026, and this may be a bit of a weird point, and we're not the rest is history, we're. The rest is politics. I think historical narratives are going to become a big part of this year. And I think we saw some of that last year, the extent to which China and Russia were using anniversary events and China even in Xi Jinping's phone call with Trump. I read recently to kind of give a different narrative about the Second World War and who the good guys and who the bad guys were. And I think this relates to Japan, it relates to Taiwan. So I think that whole sense of historical narrative, and of course they do this with so much greater ease, partly because they're dictatorships, but also because they're kind of, they do have this sense of their own historical perspective, whereas we are very much media driven in the moment, focused on the here and now.
- [37:02]
Rory Stewart
I think that's really interesting and I hadn't thought about that, but I can see that a little bit when I engage with students in the US and in the UK at universities that we've learned in the US And Europe to be suspicious of our own historical narratives. And Russia and China can exploit that. So they could say, the obvious one is to say, wait a second, you're suggesting that Japan and Taiwan are the good guys and China's the bad guys. Well, hold a second. Remember what Japan did in the 1930s and 40s in China? Remember the. That Japan occupied Taiwan. It was a Japanese colony. They conquered this country. You can see, of course, Russia doing the same with Ukraine. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're saying all these Baltic states and Ukraine are the good guys? No, these guys were Nazis. They were big, big Nazis. They were big. You can see it obviously happening very dramatically with Israel, Palestine, where very rapidly the global south and China and Russia will recast that as this is settler colonialism, an imperial project of the US and the uk. We're on the side of Palestinian freedom. And then that will then be used all over the world to say that the post war American project since 1945 is a form of cruel neo imperialism associated with, I don't know, whatever, exploitation, racism, et cetera. And so there's a very powerful story, as you say, where you can. And of course there's a lot of truth in it. You can tell a story, absolutely. That the Second World War was won by Russia, not by the U.K. right. Or the U.S. and that Asia was one of the really great battlefields of that war.
- [38:36]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. One of the things the Russians, I think, do get very, very worked up about. And I've heard, you know, sometimes when when we used to go to Russia quite a lot and you'd have conversations and they'll see it, they'll see the way that we commemorate the Second World War. And I think it's important that we do. But it, you know, we can't get away from that. They think we have virtually written them out of the script. When they lost more people fought for longer. So for, I think within Europe as well, I don't think we're, this is why I was so impressed by Alexander Stubbs piece. I don't think we're, we're not conscious enough of our own history and we don't talk about our own history enough. And so I think that the pace of change and the way that these new alliances are forming, I think history will become a big part of how we debate those.
- [39:23]
Rory Stewart
I love your statement about history because in the end it's a battle of ideas. And one of the reasons why America and the west had to be so careful after 1945 to try to talk about global solidarity, international development, human rights, liberal democracy is because of course they were very, very conscious that the non aligned states in the south and the communists were saying the west is evil and hypocritical and colonial. So they had to try very, very hard for 70 years not to be, as it were, the ugly American. It was a battle of ideas. And the problem is that Trump is now playing straight into the very worst propaganda prejudices about what the west is. They can now say, ha, we told you so all the time when they were talking about the rule of law.
- [40:11]
Alastair Campbell
It's about money and power.
- [40:13]
Rory Stewart
Actually they were massively corrupt.
- [40:14]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah.
- [40:15]
Rory Stewart
When they said they cared about human rights, they don't care about human rights at all. Look what they're doing in Venezuela. They claim they care about global development. Look, they've just shut down USAID and stopped all the payments and actually they've admitted themselves that USAID was a corrupt boondoggle designed simply to placate democrats, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, no, I think this battle of ideas is one of the things that we're losing most rapidly thanks to Trump.
- [40:37]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah.
- [40:37]
Rory Stewart
On a more positive note, your politician to watch in 2026. And how do you hope UKM global politics changes in 2026?
- [40:45]
Alastair Campbell
Look, I think there's going to be massive focus on Mumdan in New York. The politician I'm hoping does very, very well is Peter Magyar in Hungary. One of the elections taking place is in, in Hungary. Orban is the longest serving European Union leader. I love following guy for Hofstadt, who interviewed a while back on leading the former Belgian Prime Minister, who obsessively goes on about why do we keep allowing this guy to sort of, you know, abuse the hospitality of the European Union, etc. But that election, I mean, it's Magyar, who is also on the right, like Orban, they were in the same party. He resigned over a scandal that kind of disgusted him, in which, weirdly, his wife was also involved. He is now about 10 points ahead in the polls and I think if he could defeat Orban, that would be a very, very big moment. So I'm definitely keeping an eye on him. The other elections worth mentioning, Rory, is No later than October 27th Knesset election. Elections that is going to be important if and when they happen. And then the other elections I'm watching very, very closely are the lender elections in Germany. I was looking yesterday at the polls. There are five states, five German states where these elections are happening. And the two where the AfD are doing frighteningly well, Saxony Anhalt and Mecklenburg for Pomeran. And they are. I mean, I've got the polls here, I can tell you that they are. So in Saxony Anhalt, for example, they're on 40%. They are 19 points up from the last time that they went to the polls. And in Mecklenburg for Pomran, where the SPD are leading a coalition, the AfD are now on 38 and they're 21 points up. So they are elections to watch, I.
- [42:30]
Rory Stewart
Think, just to reinforce to listeners, because we get into this world where we're boiled like frogs are supposed to be in water. Although someone tells me you can't actually do this to frogs in water. But anyway, we're beginning to forget how unbelievable this is. Forget firstly how extreme the AfD is and anyone who wants to get into that again, we had that conversation with Gerald Knauss explaining actually just how right wing fascist the roots of the AfD are, how dangerous their pro Putin views are, their anti immigration views, their remigration. And then the second thing is that 40% point, which is we're now in a state in European politics where almost no party party gets 40%. I mean, we used to think that that sort of extreme right could toggle along. Let's say we went back three years when we were first doing this podcast. Those sort of parties, maybe they get up to 20%, but often they're bumping around 10, 15% at 40%, right. You're now getting a much higher percentage the vote than Labour Got in the last election, which won this big majority for them.
- [43:32]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, just look at Mecklenburg for Pomeran, the spd, the amount by which they have fallen since the last election is bigger than where they are in the polls now. So they were on 40 and they've gone right down like that. So this is a big, big deal. Those two in particular. I think the others will be kind of fairly conventional. Christian Democrats, Social Democrat, Greens, FTP. But those two, I think are going to be very, very important. So let me throw the second question you asked there back at you. Hopes for change in 2026.
- [44:01]
Rory Stewart
My big hope is that this is the moment at which Europe and its democratic allies wake up to the threat posed by the us by the US by the US I thought you were.
- [44:14]
Alastair Campbell
Going to say the threat in Ukraine. I suppose they're linked.
- [44:15]
Rory Stewart
Threat posed by the U.S. yeah. I think the narrative that we've allowed ourselves to be sucked into is that the big threats are China and Russia and we don't need to worry about our U.S. alliance. And we've made ourselves very, very much more dependent on the US than we are on China and Russia. We've made our entire financial system completely dependent on the US and we haven't. We ain't seen nothing yet. We've seen him weaponized tariffs. Wait till you get a new person in at the Fed. I mean, imagine what Trump could do with the dollar and the American financial system if he wanted to torture Europe. Our entire defense system's dependent on them. Our cloud computing, our AI, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think this is the moment where Europe needs to understand that true strategic autonomy is not just learning the lessons of not being dependent on Russian gas, which we should have learned, not being dependent on Chinese tech, which we should have learned, but also not throwing all our eggs into the American basket. And assuming they're going to be under Trump, or indeed under one of Trump's successors, a stable, reliable, values based ally. So the big opportunity is, can the uk, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Korea create a much more resilient, autonomous hedged bloc? There are structural things, customs, unions, single market, bring in the western Balkans, all this kind of stuff. But fundamentally the analysis needs to begin in Brussels. Unfortunately, even in NATO, although that's very uncomfortable because America is the underpinning of NATO. What would it really mean? By all means, you can push back at the U.S. and say, Dear J.D. vance, you told us to do this. You've kept saying to us, you want to spend 5% on GDP. You've told us you don't want us to be dependent on you. You. We're taking you at our words. We're not going to be dependent on you. We're going to develop an entirely autonomous system. We're not going to come to you for help. Thank you very much. We're also not going to be told what to do in Ukraine by you. We're not going to take your instructions that we can't put troops into Ukraine. We're not going to take your instructions that we can only put planes in Poland. We're not going to take your instructions on what kind of alliance we can bring Ukraine into. You're done.
- [46:23]
Alastair Campbell
Well, related to that, my hope for 2026, this is the year there where across Europe, but particularly close to home, the real nature of right wing populism is properly examined and properly exposed. The closeness to Russia that you've mentioned, this sort of weird crush that they all have on Putin, the desire to smash institutions that are actually incredibly important to civilization and democracy and peace, and also that we expose their uselessness at local level. And my hope more globally relates to what you've just said as well, which is that I think we've got to find a way of dialing down the sycophant on to Trump that so many world leaders are showing. And you know, when you watch these cabinet meetings, there was one the other day that Trump literally slept through. He slept through a succession of his ministers telling him how he was the greatest president ever, nothing could happen without him. And we've sort of eaten into that approach to Trump. And I, I think we've got to dial that down. My, I, I'm looking for the first leader, I think. I wonder if he might be Mess Merz in Germany, who comes out and actually starts to really call this out.
- [47:28]
Rory Stewart
I think so much depends on Metz. If you'd asked me which leader I'm hopeful for, I would have said Metz. I'm putting so much hope in Metz. Germany is the biggest economy in Europe. It's got the most serious fiscal policies, it's got the deepest industrial base, the deepest training infrastructure. They've made some errors. Yeah, they got too dependent on Russian gas, Chinese exports. But Germany is still our best hope, I'm afraid. And Metz is probably the most credible, serious leader that we've got in the European context. When Starmer's feeling weak and Macron's feeling weak, it's Metz we've got to look to.
- [48:04]
Alastair Campbell
That's why, though, these German elections are going to be so important and it's going to be bloody tough for him to hold the line. Right. Well, on that happy note, see you tomorrow.
- [48:12]
Rory Stewart
See you tomorrow for New Year. Bye. Bye. This episode was brought to you by Penguin Audiobooks. There are audiobook club partners selecting the titles that illuminate the deeper patterns in modern politics and how power operates around the world.
- [48:30]
Alastair Campbell
And regular listeners will not be surprised that a title that we both think is essential listening right now is Autocracy, Inc. By Anne Applebaum.
- [48:39]
Rory Stewart
One of the lovely things about it is that actually Ann's reading it herself itself. So you get all that kind of clear, calm authority. But it gets into all those issues. Cross border flow of money, surveillance technology, a lot of the stuff we've been talking about recently, which is the way in which autocrats, populists, the far right coordinate across borders. Hungary inspires what the US does, the AfD then tries to learn from the US et cetera.
- [49:02]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. And it also underlines that a lot of the people in positions of leadership like to project to the public the idea that the guardrails are there and, and we've got this, folks. But in a sense she's basically saying, we don't have this, folks, because these people have been at this for a long time. They're working together and it is unbelievably dangerous.
- [49:21]
Rory Stewart
So visit penguin.co.uk trip to browse our audiobook club or find a link to Autocracy, Inc. In our bio and find Penguin Audiobooks now on Spotify.
- [49:32]
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Alastair Campbell
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