489. Musk's AI Deepfake Disgrace & JD Vance's Minnesota Lies (Question Time)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics – Episode 489

Title: Musk's AI Deepfake Disgrace & JD Vance's Minnesota Lies (Question Time)
Date: January 15, 2026
Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart

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Main Theme & Purpose

This “Question Time” episode explores several urgent political and societal issues, both domestic and international. Campbell and Stewart scrutinize the deepfake AI scandal surrounding Elon Musk’s Grok, dissect the misinformation swirling around the Minnesota ICE shooting, and debate the enduring influence of class in British institutions. Throughout, they highlight the dangers of weak regulation, polarization, and the corrosion of basic trust in political systems, all while delivering their trademark informed disagreement and wit.

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1. Musk’s Deepfake AI Scandal and Regulatory Failings

Start: 02:04

Key Discussion Points

• The Controversy:

  • X (formerly Twitter), under Elon Musk, is facing a surge of users using its AI tool, Grok, to generate hyper-realistic, non-consensual nude images (deepfakes). This spans disturbing cases involving both adults and children.
  • Governments in several countries—including the UK, Indonesia, and India—have challenged X over its handling (or lack thereof) of this phenomenon. Elon Musk retorts by invoking free speech rather than taking responsibility.
  • Ofcom (UK’s media regulator) steps in to investigate.

• Tech Industry Accountability:

  • Musk fired the majority of his platform's safety and content moderation staff. “He doesn’t really have set safety things that you can analyze” (Rory Stewart, 02:45).
  • Musk responded that deepfake tools would now be “reserved to the paying clients of Grok,” further monetizing the problem (Rory Stewart, 04:28; Alastair Campbell, 04:28).

• Role of Government:

  • Campbell and Stewart stress that tech companies cannot be trusted to self-regulate:
    • “You can’t trust him… The only thing that’s going to control these companies is government regulation.” (Rory Stewart, 07:27)
  • They suggest the British government, and possibly others, should take the lead in meaningful intervention.

Insights and Notable Quotes

• On the need for external oversight:
  • “They keep saying, ‘Don’t regulate us, you don’t understand what we do, you can trust us.’ And what Musk has just proved again this week is you can't trust him.”
    — Rory Stewart (07:27)
• Philosophy versus Tech Bros:
  • “We've lost any sense of the importance of historians and philosophers and social scientists… these are massive philosophical questions about the future of the human race. And yet they get to decide what the game is, what the rules are, and who should be the winner at all times.”
    — Alastair Campbell (06:33)
• On banning social media for youth:
  • “Banning social media access for under 16s is the correct thing to do.”
    — Rory Stewart (05:57)

Timestamps

• Deepfake AI & Musk’s failures: 02:04–09:06
• Tech bros vs. philosophers: 06:33
• Banning social media for under-16s: 05:57

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2. Media Attacks and Political Polarization

Start: 09:06

Key Discussion Points

• Right-wing Press Attacks on Rory Stewart:

  • Stewart is criticized in multiple right-wing outlets, labeled as a “bedwetting lefty” and “wrong about everything,” prompting a discussion on coordinated media backlash.
  • Stewart acknowledges mistakes but contrasts his willingness to admit being wrong with political figures like Dominic Cummings.

• The Culture of Never Admitting Error:

  • Campbell and Stewart reflect on public figures’ aversion to admitting mistakes and the polarization that results when “the right is right about everything and the left is consistently wrong” (Rory Stewart, 13:51).

Notable Moments

• “I think the best one can do… is when you guess it wrong to try to analyze how you got it wrong.”
  — Rory Stewart (12:49)
• “If I challenge Elon Musk and say, for example, as I have, Britain is not in a civil war… immediately a thousand people come in on Twitter and say, I'd rather believe Elon Musk than you, Rory, you're wrong about everything.”
  — Rory Stewart (13:26)

Timestamps

• Media attacks/bedwetting lefty: 09:06–17:29

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3. Class, Access, and Social Mobility: The Cambridge Admissions Debate

Start: 18:36

Key Discussion Points

• Trinity Hall College’s Policy:

  • The College is accused of encouraging applications from elite private schools for subjects like languages, classics, art, music, and theology—allegedly in response to fears of “reverse discrimination.”
  • Campbell decries this as evidence of a persistent class war:
    • “If you are from one of these very expensive private schools… that is the real class war.” (19:15)

• Declining Private School Admittance:

  • Figures cited: 7% of UK kids attend private schools, yet they constitute 29% of Cambridge’s 2024 intake (19:15). First time in decades, the numbers are going down, but the new policy appears reactionary.
  • Both hosts agree efforts to diversify are overdue and beneficial.

• Possible Rationalizations:

  • Stewart raises the argument that reductions in funding for languages and arts in state schools may be causing a shortfall of qualified applicants, but Campbell calls out this reasoning as insufficient.

Insights

• "Social mobility should mean something in Britain… this is an attempt to reverse progress in social mobility."
  — Alastair Campbell (22:18)
• “I can't imagine why [the admissions tutor] thought it was a wise thing to write this letter because the reaction that you’re giving was completely predictable.”
  — Rory Stewart (23:55)
• “We've never actually tried comprehensive education.”
  — Alastair Campbell (25:16)

Timestamps

• Cambridge, class, and social mobility: 18:36–25:41

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4. JD Vance, ICE, and America’s Misinformation Age: The Minnesota Shooting

Start: 25:41

Key Discussion Points

• Incident Overview:

  • The tragic police shooting of a woman in Minnesota, widely recorded on cell phone video.

• Misinformation & Official Narratives:

  • While video evidence refutes the premise that the shooter was attacked, politicians (notably JD Vance) vehemently defend law enforcement and blame the victim, pushing misleading narratives.
  • Homeland Security and media outlets echo this storyline.

• Systemic Issues:

  • U.S. law enforcement's high rate of fatal shootings compared to the U.K. (three a day in the US, two per year in UK; 28:04).
  • Stewart and Campbell criticize America's “narco state,” where narcissism and partisanship override evidence and due process.
  • The absence of a clear separation between the executive and law enforcement undermines basic democratic processes.

Notable Quotes

• “If it had happened in the United Kingdom… you would not have had the entire Cabinet… immediately going out on the air saying this woman is a vile terrorist… It's a sign of a sickness that's got into the system.”
  — Rory Stewart (31:47)
• “Trump goes on about Venezuela being a narco state. The real narco state is the United States. And the real narc is the narcissism that he [Trump] represents.”
  — Alastair Campbell (33:48)
• “Imagine the kind of person who wants to join that kind of organization [ICE]. So you've got the wrong culture.”
  — Rory Stewart (34:37)

Timestamps

• ICE shooting, misinformation, Vance's statements: 25:41–34:39

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5. Cultural Malaise, America’s Direction, and Personal Reflection

Start: 34:39

Key Discussion Points

• Campbell's Decision Not to Go to the U.S. World Cup:
  • His reluctance is rooted in the U.S.'s current social and political atmosphere.
  • Campbell relays American friends’ remarks on the difficulty of civil coexistence in today’s U.S.
• Trump’s Attacks on the Federal Reserve:
  • Both hosts express alarm at Trump’s move to prosecute Fed Chair Jerome Powell, seeing it as a “major seed of fascism” and part of the broader erosion of institutional independence (36:08).

Notable Quotes

• “Unless you do in an independent job what the president tells you to, then they will find a way of prosecuting you… That is a major seed of fascism. 100%.”
  — Alastair Campbell (36:08)

Timestamps

• US World Cup feelings, institutional decay: 34:39–36:08

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6. Light-Hearted Questions: House Temperatures & Scottish Football

Start: 36:08

Quickfire Insights

• Thermostat Habits:
  • Campbell prefers a cool house, despite enjoying warm recovery after cold water swims.
  • Stewart is a fan of sleeping with the window open, even in winter.

Timestamps

• Thermostat talks: 36:08–37:38

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7. Recap & Closing Remarks

Start: 37:38

Campbell and Stewart summarize the diverse topics covered:

• “We've done Grok AI. We've done me being attacked for being dodgy… posh people at Cambridge. We've done Minnesota and JD Vance and his attitude to ICE. And we've finished with temperatures and your trip to the United States.” (Rory Stewart, 38:15)

They encourage listeners to participate in a poll about Alastair’s World Cup plans, maintaining their signature mix of gravity and humor.

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Memorable Quotes—At a Glance

• “You can't trust him… The only thing that's going to control these companies is government regulation.” — Rory Stewart (07:27)
• “Social mobility should mean something in Britain. As soon as I saw this, I thought, this is an attempt to reverse progress in social mobility.” — Alastair Campbell (22:18)
• “If it had happened in the United Kingdom… it's a sign of a sickness that's got into the system.” — Rory Stewart (31:47)
• “Trump goes on about Venezuela being a narco state. The real narco state is the United States.” — Alastair Campbell (33:48)
• “Unless you do in an independent job what the president tells you to, then they will find a way of prosecuting you. That is a major seed of fascism. 100%.” — Alastair Campbell (36:08)

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Episode Structure & Timestamps Reference

| Segment | Approx. Start | Main Content | |-------------------------------------------------|---------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Opening and ad skip | 00:00 | — | | Musk/Grok AI scandal | 02:04 | Deepfake epidemic, regulation, tech bros | | Social media, children, government role | 05:57 | UK/US approaches, need for regulation | | Media/mob attacks on Stewart | 09:06 | “Bedwetting lefty”, right-wing press, humility in politics | | Cambridge private school admissions debate | 18:36 | Class war, social mobility, 93% club, meaningful diversity | | Minnesota ICE shooting & Misinformation | 25:41 | JD Vance’s lies, systemic US decay, institutional rot | | America’s decline, World Cup reticence | 34:39 | Personal reflections, fascism, Trump/US Fed | | Light Qs: Thermostats & football | 36:08 | Temperature preferences, Scottish football | | Recap & closing | 37:38 | Episode review, listener poll, sign-off |

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Final Thoughts

This episode demonstrates The Rest Is Politics’ capacity to juggle headline-making international crises and philosophical questions with the kind of accessible, insightful debate that defines the series. It’s essential listening for anyone keen to understand contemporary politics at the intersection of technology, media, and society—laced with sharp humor and humility.

Transcript

[Alistair Campbell]

Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts, and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com.

[Rory Stewart]

That'S therestispolitics.com this episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

[Alistair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

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[Alistair Campbell]

Alistair Campbell, and Rory. I hate talking about Elon Musk because the guy's a complete monstrosity on so many levels. But I think we must Miranda is a TRIP member from Sussex. X is currently facing an epidemic where users tag Grok under women's post and ask it to generate images of them undressed, which it does with alarming realism. Should there be new laws to regulate this kind of generative AI? Or is it up to Musk and the tech companies to police themselves? Dan in Swansea We've got a lot of questions on this this week. I'm a father of two. This recent story about deep fake images of children being made and distributed on X is deeply disturbing. What was once confined to the dark corners of the Internet is now appearing on one of the world's largest social media platforms. How is this legal? Is the government doing enough to combat it?

[Rory Stewart]

Just quickly on the story. Elon Musk launched Grok. A lot of it derived from its relationship with X, or what used to be Twitter, as a rival to the other big, large language models, as a rival to ChatGPT that people will know, or Gemini, which is the Google platform, or Claude. And one of the reasons he did it very fast is that he got rid of almost all the people working on safety and content moderation. In fact, he doesn't really have set safety things that you can analyze with the result that with Grok, unlike the others, you can type in, will you please take this photograph of Alastair Campbell and show him a picture of me, you know, know, in a bikini or with no clothes on, and then you can post it up on X and you can share it around. Not surprisingly, this became a vile way of creating deep fake, pseudo pornographic images, initially of adults, then of children, which were then shared all over the Internet. This is unbelievable. I mean, it's completely illegal. Obviously, with child images and with adults, it is profoundly, psychologically distressing, humiliating. So, so the British government, but not just the British government, also the Malaysian government, the Indonesian government, the Indian government, began to challenge this. And Elon Musk, being Elon Musk, pushed back and said, this is free speech and the definition of a fascist state is one that wishes to put down on free speech. He tried to make a joke out of it by posting images of himself in a bikini. And when the British government finally stepped up and Ofcom decided it was going to mount a investigation, the only real concession that Musk has made is to say the ability to create a deep fake pornographic images of private citizens will be reserved to the paying clients of Grok. Instead of being available to all the.

[Alistair Campbell]

Cheap users, he monetizes it even more.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. I first came across this because he was boasting on X last week that Grok was the fastest downloaded of all the large language model apps. And I thought that's a bit odd because in many ways Grok isn't actually performing at the level that Gemini and ChatGPT. Why is it the fastest loading app? And obviously the reason it was the fastest loading app is everybody suddenly discovered in a few hours that they could ask it to take the clothes off women or men or children or whatever they were doing.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, Ofcom are looking into it. I hope they look into it with more vigour and rigor. Than they've been looking into GB news. And my sense of Musk is that he's constantly seeking to overreach. I mean, fascist to call. I know he's got this thing about Keir Starmer. He's had it ever since the, the Southport killings and he's getting, you know, he sort of runs out of hate speech to throw at him. So he's now on the sort of fascist thing. I would argue that we've seen more fascism in America in recent days and weeks, not least in Minnesota, than we have in, in the uk. And while we're on Musk and Trump, by the way, Rory, I think I note today that the homicide rates in London are at their lowest for God knows how long as this hellhole image that the American MAGA seemed to put of London gets debunked yet again. But I think on this, I mean, it's interesting yesterday, Kemi Badenok saying that the Conservatives would go down the Australian route of banning social media for under 16 year olds. Fiona, my Fiona said the other day, do you think the world would really be any worse if Twitter didn't exist anymore? I don't think it would.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, no, I think it would be dramatically better. Alistair. I was at a talk recently by one of these tech billionaires who said, you know, can you imagine how terrible our lives were before smartphones? And I was thinking, no. With Shoshanna. No, our lives are pretty. I can't think our lives are terrible for. Listen, I'm actually really sad that despite you and me banging the drum hard on Peter Malinowskas, that the Labour government didn't embrace this. And well done, Kemi Badenoch, but it's yet another example of Keir Starmer being leaden footed and missing a chance. Banning social media access for under 16s is the correct thing to do.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, I think it will happen eventually. The thing about this though is, is that I was talking to my friend Jim in the swimming pool the other day. He made a really interesting point. I thought he said, what's gone wrong with the world is that the tech bros have sort of won in terms of who decides what matters and who decides what works in the attention economy. And we've lost any sense of the importance of historians and philosophers and social scientists this debate. This goes back to your series on AI. The sorts of questions that you and Matt Clifford have been raising actually shouldn't be decided by scientists and boffins and tech bros. These are massive philosophical questions about the future of the human race. And yet they get to decide what the game is, what the rules are, and who should be the winner at all times.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. And they keep saying, don't regulate us. You don't understand what we do. You can trust us. And what Musk has just proved again this week is you can't trust him.

[Alistair Campbell]

Correct.

[Rory Stewart]

The idea that you can trust him to put safety measures place absolutely not. The only thing that's going to control these companies is government regulation. But of course, they have now this incredible economic weight, these trillion dollar companies that are essentially able to blackmail almost everybody. Why has Keir Starmer been slow to come out? I'm worried that it's partly that he doesn't want to fight with Donald Trump and he's worried that all this great investment coming in and these American tech companies building data centers will be put at risk if he challenges the domination of the tech Bruce.

[Alistair Campbell]

And to be fair, he's probably right to be worried about that because we are so dependent on, in so many ways on America. I think one of the things we've learned in recent months is we've allowed ourselves over generations to become way too dependent on a power the broad goodness of which we've taken for granted. We should have learned watching Boris Johnson. Once you get a good system trapped by a very, very bad man, then all sorts of bad stuff's going to happen. And I think that's where we are now. But listen, I would love it if Britain led the way in saying, I'm sorry, Mr. Musk, you know, you may be very powerful, you may be the richest man in the world, but you are now actually a force for bad in the world. And insofar as we can limit your influence within the United Kingdom, we are going to do it. What that would mean in practical terms, I don't know because I'm not as savvy on this stuff as you are. But I actually think we are moving to a place of saying these people have got to be confronted with the consequences of the badness that they do on so many levels just to get richer and richer and richer.

[Rory Stewart]

I'm with you 100%. 100%.

[Alistair Campbell]

Now, Rory, I know you're in, in Syria and you've been traveling a fair bit, but there is a, there is a question here from Louise McInally who wants to know why the right wing press is currently kicking lumps out of Rory Stewart. Are you aware that you're having lumps kicked out of you? Are you? Whether the former Prime Minister, no less, devoted his Mail on Sunday column to asking why you are. I think he called you a bedwetting lefty. You're leading the bedwetting lefties of the world in opposing Trump's triumphant stance in Iran, Venezuela.

[Rory Stewart]

You pointed out to me just before we came on air that I. There's also been a big article in the Spectator saying I'm a complete idiot and get everything wrong, and the Telegraph saying the same thing.

[Alistair Campbell]

The Telegraph said that Rory Stewart is wrong about everything, but he gets away with it because he's posh, which is a really weird thing for the Telegraph to say, because the Telegraph normally loves posh people being wrong and saying that they're right. So I think maybe they're just worried that you're associating with other lefties of a non bedwetting variety, Rory, such as my. My dear self. But listen, it looked a bit organized to me because you. If you think about it, Johnson, Spectator, Telegraph, you know, we're talking about the axis of evil here.

[Rory Stewart]

I triggered something bad. So I triggered it partly, I think, from a very aggressive interview with Michael Gove, which may have meant that the editor of the Spectator was not feeling very well disposed towards me.

[Alistair Campbell]

I thought you were quite gentle.

[Rory Stewart]

Boris Johnson is not a great fan, because amongst the predictions that I've made, my prediction that Boris Johnson would be a terrible Prime Minister, I think was massively vindicated. The core of it, actually was the fight with Dominic Cummings, who, for international listeners, was briefly Boris Johnson's chief of staff and was the architect of the Brexit referendum campaign, who put this sign on the side of buses, claiming, completely falsely, that we were losing 350 million pounds a week in our EU membership. And I challenged him about a claim he'd made, saying that the UAE had cut funding for students in Britain because they were worried about the Muslim Brotherhood. He turned out to be right. I was wrong. So I tweeted, you were right, Dominic, I was wrong. And then I apologised.

[Alistair Campbell]

Now, Rory, Rory, hold on, before you go on from that. So you said, you were right. I was wrong. I mean, I've had a few interesting exchanges with Dominic Cummings about Brexit. He's yet to say, you were right, I was wrong about that one. And to apologise for his role in that, even though it has turned out to be the biggest crock of shit since. I don't know what.

[Rory Stewart]

The very weird thing about this is that we all get things wrong. I get a lot of things wrong. Dominic Cummings gets a lot of things wrong. You get things wrong. I mean, we all get things wrong because we're engaged in trying to predict very uncertain futures. Some things I get right, right. I mean, Peter Sutherland walked around with a piece of paper on which I predicted that the Brexit referendum would be 152.486 weeks before the referendum. Now, am I pleased with that? No, obviously not. I was lucky. How did I know it was going to be 152.48 a few weeks out? All we really have about the world is probabilities, and it's really difficult. That's why the polling companies keep getting elections wrong. But we're surrounded with a world where everybody assumes, because they never remember what they got wrong, that they're right about everything. I was talking to someone recently who said to me that he'd got off a plane in Ghana, and as soon as he'd met the first taxi driver, he knew which way the election was gonna go. Never been to Ghana before, and he was vindicated. The election went in the direction of the ambassador in Ghana, was wrong. And I just thought, for God's sake. But you hear this all the time. Everyone's like, I knew Trump was gonna win. I knew Brexit was gonna go here.

[Alistair Campbell]

You knew Trump wasn't gonna win. That's part of your problem with this.

[Rory Stewart]

I knew Trump wasn't gonna win, absolutely. So I. I think the best one can do, given that one can't predict the future, and that's actually a fundamental problem for AI, too. It can't predict the future, is when you guess it wrong to try to analyze how you got it wrong. So why did I get it wrong on Kamala Harris? I got it wrong because I believed that young African American voters were not going to turn out and vote, and they did. And then try to understand what it is about me that made me underestimate what was going on, and then try to do better next time. But that, boy, is that not the world? No, I mean, the world is. If I challenge Elon Musk and say, for example, as I have, britain is not in a civil war. Britain isn't in a civil war, Incidentally, I think I'm right on that. And Musk is wrong. Immediately, a thousand people come in on Twitter and say, I'd rather believe Elon Musk than you, Rory, you're wrong about everything. And I try to say, is it possible Elon Musk isn't right about everything? Is it possible Dominic Cummings isn't right about everything? Is it possible Boris Johnson isn't right about everything? Possible Nigel Farage is right. No, absolutely not. The right is right about absolutely everything and the left is consistently wrong.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, no, well, that's, I'm afraid, is the sort of polarized social media world that we're in. But it did look like a sort of concerted little. I wouldn't let it worry your Pedrory, I really wouldn't. I'm pleased. You didn't even know about the Boris Johnson one.

[Rory Stewart]

Do you think it might have affect my return to conservative politics? Do you think I'm. That there's a tone there that suggests I may not be very welcome back?

[Alistair Campbell]

I think probably not. But the Conservative Party is of course, is, has become a very different beast and they've lost another one. By the way, Nadeem Zahawi has defected.

[Rory Stewart]

To Reform now, which is a mistake from Reform.

[Alistair Campbell]

100%. 100%.

[Rory Stewart]

Given that Reform's line was supposed to be we're not Boris Johnson's Tories, we're not what they did on Covid, we're not what they did on Austerity, we're not the way they managed the country to hire Boris Johnson's big champion.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, even when we interviewed Nadim Zahawi when he was out of government and Johnson was out of government and out of politics, he still defended him to the hilt. And also what happened happens. I'm afraid I can see this ending quite badly for Nadim Zahawi because what will happen now is that the scandals around him that kind of got quietly forgotten as the Tories sort of faded into opposition, they're now going to come back and haunt him. And as a result they will haunt. Even though our press doesn't want to do anything that damages Nigel Farage, they will damage Nigel Farage as well. So I agree with you. I think it, I think it's a mistake on both, on both counts.

[Rory Stewart]

They also took Nadine Doris, who was, you know, as we discovered when we hit the election coverage, adores Boris and believes he's come from a disadvantaged background and rose to great things. Yeah, they took Danny Kruger, who was Boris Johnson's chief of staff. There's something very interesting going on there about why they want to bring the Boris Johnson tribute acts into reform.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, if you look at the. If you're a sort of opportunistic politician of the right, you look at the opinion polls at the moment, you think, well, the Tories have finished. The only chance of getting into power are reform. Nigel Farage has got this reputation of being a one man band. He's trying to bring in somebody like Tyzia Yousef, two or three others to say he's not a one man band, but then he can expand it further by bringing these other people. The trouble is they're all Tory rejects and retreads. They're the thing that Farage said he was fighting against rather than fighting to simply to sort of be a sort of poor substitute of. So from their point of view, I can see why he wants to grow, but he should be actually be doing, getting more people from outside the political tent. He's not really getting anybody who's not a conventional politician. So these people, and you haven't met, mentioned, you know, Anne Widdicombe and others like that, they are thinking this is their only way back into the political front line. So that's obvious why they're doing it. But I think, I think you're right. I think it, I think it's damaging to them. I think it's. I think it's a big mistake. Well, look, should we. Have we talked enough about Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson? I think we probably have.

[Rory Stewart]

I think we have. And I, I mean, I, I don't know whether, I mean, it's just an interesting question whether it was a concerted attack. It was a pretty amazing thing though, to suddenly notice that three really big right wings newspapers on the same day are running headlines with Rory Stewart. Not in a positive way, not in a way that my mother would like. Headlines about Rory Stewart.

[Alistair Campbell]

You don't want to be a lefty bedwetter, Rory. That's not what you want to be.

[Rory Stewart]

Not sure I necessarily want to be wrong about everything and only listened to because I'm posh either. I mean, that doesn't sound that great.

[Alistair Campbell]

No, you don't want that. But neither of those things are true. You're not wrong about everything. You've been wrong about some things, but you've been right about a lot of things as well. I, as you say, am occasionally wrong. I got something wrong in the where is Moldova? Quiz at the airport the other day. I was shocked to do that, but only once. We should say just on Moldova. I, I really do recommend people listen to Maya Sandhu, the president of Moldova, the latest episode of Leading. I think she's unbelievably impressive. Really impressive.

[Rory Stewart]

And that was such a great trip. It was one of the, I mean, listeners don't necessarily get to go along with us in this trips, but I think the two great trips I've done with you, Syria and Moldova, was really, really wonderful.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, they were Both good. They were both. And I'm not really into wine, but anybody who's into wine, go and visit those wineries. They were something else. I saw you were very tempted to see whether you could nick Hermann Goering's wine collection. That bottle, well, it didn't look like.

[Rory Stewart]

They were looking after everyone. I also, slightly traumatically, did I tell you that I discovered that Hermann Goering was the same age that I am now, 53, when he went on the Nuremberg trials. It's making me feel very aged because Goering didn't look that young in my memory of him. It's a real sign of aging. No, Goering's my age.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, but think of it. You're also the same age as my son. Do I think you're a year older than her? So that's. That's a better comparison.

[Rory Stewart]

That's true, that's true.

[Alistair Campbell]

She's young, with a whole future ahead of her. All right, let's take a break and then I want to come back and rant about class war being waged upon us by the posh people.

[Rory Stewart]

Very good. Looking forward to it. Very much not. Bye. Bye.

[Alistair Campbell]

Welcome back to the rest of Sporadics. Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell, and me, Rory Stewart.

[Rory Stewart]

Now, Alistair, you wanted a bit of class warfare, so here's an option. Opportunity. Oh, it comes from Melbourne. Melbourne, where there's a little bit of class warfare going on. Now, Alistair and Rory, what do you make of one? Cambridge College's new policy to specifically target elite private schools for recruitment. Is it really about academic quality or is it to ensure the next generation of deep pocketed alumni remain firmly within their walls? So, Alice, that's a trifecta. That's Australia, that's Cambridge and that's posh private school people at Cambridge, which was your dominant experience at Cambridge. Go on, tell us about this.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, you say, I want class war. I don't want class war. I want an end to class war. And the class war that is revealed in this policy at Trinity Hall College is the class war. That says that if you are from one of these very expensive private schools full of very privileged people with parents who expect their children to be every bit as successful as they have been, that is the real class war. The reason I was so angry about this, and this is a letter from Trinity Hall Cambridge, saying they wanted more applications from these sorts of schools in languages, music, classics, art, history and theology. And they actually said that they worried that children from private schools were being ignored and marginalized because of reverse discrimination. The idea that you can say that private school kids are ignored and marginalized within our Oxbridge system is utterly, totally ridiculous. 7% of kids go to private school and 29% of Cambridge's 2024 intake was private school. Trinity Hall, 26% down from 32% in 2022. So I just think this whole thing is basically about saying we want to keep the broad social, cultural class system as it is and we're fed up of these working class O hoisted upon us from comprehensive schools.

[Rory Stewart]

I mean, does that make sense really for the kind of Trinity Hall's admissions tutor and I can't imagine the Trinity hall admissions tutor saying what I really want to do is keep the working class oiks in their place.

[Alistair Campbell]

No, they don't necessarily think like that. But I think that's where it, I think that's where the thinking comes from that if you come from a very privileged background, you are of necessity going to be a better student, cleverer, more intelligent and I think the opposite is the case. I think the fact of schools, some Cambridge colleges and Oxford colleges having gone out and admitted, we talked, you know, earlier about admitting when you were wrong, admitted that they've just relied too much on this sense of, well, there's the posh rich kids, get more of them in year after year after year. Hold on a minute. Why don't we go and try and find some really clever kids in schools that don't even apply? I think that's been good for the schools and it's been good for Oxbridge.

[Rory Stewart]

To defend Cambridge a bit. I suspect that when you were at Cambridge, the vast majority of people have been to private school and by the time I was at that age, I think it was probably 50% of the Cambridge intake was private school. They've now dropped it down to just over a quarter. So I think you've got to admit things are going the right direction, aren't they? And that's because exactly as you say, they've been out there doing really good jobs, reaching out.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's why I think this is worrying because he's trying to take us back. He's trying to take us back in the old direction. That's why I don't like this, I.

[Rory Stewart]

Assume, look, I'm trying to make up a defense. I have no idea what they think they're doing. It seems a bit weird to me because I'm not sure that Eton or Winchester or St. Paul's needs much help in being encouraged to apply.

[Alistair Campbell]

That exactly.

[Rory Stewart]

So I don't know what's going on. One possibility is that the cut of funding for languages and classics and art and music schools in state schools.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

Means that they're struggling to bring in people in those specific fields. So they need people to study Latin and Greek, they need people to study languages, they need study art. And maybe what's happening here is they're struggling now to find people coming in who have done any Latin at all.

[Alistair Campbell]

Maybe I'm being unfair to the guy who sent out the letter. When I read it, I felt that is the one argument I could have bought is if they said that because of state cuts, state funding being cut in some of these areas because there is this dearth of kids now learning languages in the way that they used to, which is. I've admitted back to admitting when you get things wrong. I think was one of the mistakes we made. It was no longer compulsory to have to learn a foreign language. I think that was a mistake. So they may be saying that, but they don't say that. They say that going to these schools, they're more aligned with what we're trying to do with our education. They're more aligned to me, Beans basically saying they want more people like us. Social mobility should mean something in Britain. As soon as I saw this, I thought, this is an attempt to reverse progress in social mobility. And by the way, Rory, there isn't. You know, you talk about the old. We talk about the old boys club, right? And we all know what that means. That's the 7% people should join something called the 93% club. I'm a member. I recommend everybody who went to state school joins the 93% club.

[Rory Stewart]

It also seems from the outside sort of slightly insane. I mean, whatever this individual thinks privately, I cannot imagine why he thought it was a wise thing to write this letter because the reaction that you're giving was completely predictable. I talk about not being able to predict the future, but I think I would have predicted that had I sent out that letter, there would have been a massive storm and backlash.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, but hold on a minute. Back to your point about the sort of the right wing media attacks on you. The right wing came out and completely supported it. You know, the Spectator was. What did they say?

[Rory Stewart]

What was their defense?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, they basically said that the reverse discrimination, as they call it, makes private school pupils feel unwanted. Bursary students, they're likely to be discouraged from applying. Trinity hall has been falling in the league tables. As if that's got something to do with the. The fact that they've got. They've only got one in four private school kids as opposed to other colleges which may have more. I mean, the thing is a complete nonsense. Maybe he didn't realize it would become a big deal. That says to me is not very bright because if you're gonna, if you're gonna send that out to loads and loads of schools, let's not pretend that there aren't a few lefty bed wetters working at Eton and Winchester and St. Paul's. Oh, there's a story. I'll get that one out of somewhere. Anyway, I hope I've not been too unkind to Trisy or. But the problem with this country, Roy, let me tell you the problem with this country. We've never actually tried comprehensive education. We've never actually done fully comprehensive education. That is the problem with this country.

[Rory Stewart]

Isn't that what the left always says? The problem is we've never really tried communism. We've never done it properly. Okay, here we go.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, you want to leave this with me being a communist? I am not a communist.

[Rory Stewart]

I'm going to move on to Vance and Minnesota.

[Alistair Campbell]

I'll rant even more on that.

[Rory Stewart]

I'll tell you as an old Etonian Oxford graduate, I'm obviously finding this a very uncomfortable conversation. So I'm going to change the subject massively. So James Coughlin does the reaction to the ice murder. So this is the horrible killing of this woman in Minnesota by an ice agent show we are in a misinformation age. And just quickly, I mean, I don't think. Again, with an issue like this, hardly anyone in the world will have missed it. Yes, he's right. It's a misinformation age because of the awful way in which Vance and Trump and others responded, which we can get into. But it's also an information age because the reason we know they're all lying is that we have this incredible depth of cell phone footage showing the killing from different angles and clearly demonstrating that here is a 37 year old mother in a car reversing in order to drive off while an ICE officer tries to pull at the handle. And apparently because she went well, certainly every angle demonstrates she's not running over the ice agent. An ICE agent steps forward and shoots her through the window. The car then crashes because she's been killed. Over to you.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, Jamie Clachlan's question. Does it show that we're in a misinformation age? Absolutely it does. Because Rory, you just said something very interesting. You said that when you look at all the videos from Every angle. It's perfectly obvious that she was trying to get away and not threatening, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I've just watched a video put out by the Department of Homeland Security where a young woman in a blue dress is standing there speaking on behalf of the American government, explaining the exact opposite of what you've said, where she says, these videos clearly show that this guy was under attack from a domestic terrorist. So, yes, we're in a misinformation age, and we're in a misinformation age where the misinformation is led by the elected President of the United States. And by the way, Roy, I mean, I mentioned earlier about the. The sort of difference between crime and the use of guns in America compared to here. Do you know that every year in the USA, law enforcement authorities kill somewhere between 1300 and 1400 people? In Britain, it is two per year, three a day in America, two per year here. So on one level, we look at it, and because there's such a focus on ice, there's such a focus on Trump, we maybe think this is kind of truly shocking, which it is, but actually it happens there more than we realize. But what this showed was that because ICE are identified as Trump's thing, although they were created by a previous president, but Trump has massively invested in them, he's made immigration his big thing. And they were obviously longer when you first saw the first footage of this guy just shooting at the car. And then it emerged that she was white, she was. She was middle class, you know, she sort of went against the agenda. Then I. I made the mistake of turning on to see what Fox News were making of it. I mean, they were finding anything to attack us, one of them was out there saying, you know, really? Objection. You know, she had pronouns in her bio. It's not just that we're in a misinformation age, we're in an age where every single thing by this American government is twisted in its favour for the narrative it's trying to promote.

[Rory Stewart]

At that time, it's worth maybe just taking a little time to remind people what Vance said. So most people now, I think, will have seen this video. And what quite clearly happens in this video is a woman is rather slowly backing her car back in order to drive off. Right? And this is Vance's statement. He gets very, very angry. He says that the ICE officer who shot her nearly died six months ago after being dragged by a car. And then he goes, so you think maybe he's a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile. Goode was part of a broader left wing network to attack, to dox, to assault, and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job. You have a woman who is trying to obstruct a legitimate law enforcement operation. Nobody debates that. You have a woman who aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. Nobody debates that. The reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car and the guy acted in self defense. You've got to be a little brainwashed to get to the point where you're willing to get to the point of throwing your vehicle in front of legitimate law enforcement officers and driving your car into them. What I'm certain of is the officer had every reason to think that he was under very serious threat of injury or in fact, his life. What I'm certain of is that she accelerated in a way where she ran into the guy.

[Alistair Campbell]

I mean, my, my Rory, my son, he sent me a message after watching that said, why is it every time I hear JD Vance, I want to take a shower? I mean, JD Vance, I think it was Scaramucci who said this. JD Vance lives to say what he thinks Donald Trump is going to watch him saying on television. And I think that's what we had there. Tom Homan, the Homeland Security guy, he actually came out and his very first words were, this has just happened. Let's take time, let's try to investigate what the facts are. Okay? Within no time at all, he'd clearly been bollocked. And he went out and said, it's quite clear she did this, she did that, she did the other. And this goes to the heart of something we talked about with Baroness Hale once. You don't have an acceptance that law enforcement authorities work within the law. And you have an acceptance that we should be entitled to know who they are and why they're asking us to cooperate with them and in their duties of law enforcement. And once you don't have a place where we can all accept this is a fact, rather than that is something that's happened and I will express as a fact my opinion of what it means, which is what Vance was doing, eventually. We don't have a democracy, and I think that's the road that they're on in America.

[Rory Stewart]

It's also the total lack of separation between the executive, the president, vice president, and these ICE officers. I mean, if you think about it, if it had happened in the United Kingdom, a police officer had shot a woman in her car. You would not have had the entire Cabinet, doesn't matter whether they're Conservative or Labour, immediately going out on the air saying this woman is a vile terrorist who is accelerating and ramming an officer. I'm absolutely certain that everything the officer did was entirely legitimate. It's a sign of a sickness that's got into the system. It's not just the lies, it's the fact that they're not even taking that second that Tom Homan is trying to take to say, well, the thing that you know and all of us know, I mean, if I came to you and said, alistair, look, there's been a story about this, what do we say? Your immediate reaction, presumably in Downing street, would be to say, well, we don't know very much. Let's wait and try to find out what the facts are. You know, presumably what you normally say is this sounds like an absolute tragedy. We're looking very carefully at the situation. A full, you know, police investigation will be conducted, et cetera.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, what happens in Britain, I think by law is that as soon as an incident like this happens, it is automatically referred to those who investigate the police conduct. It's kind of, is the opposite of what's happened in the, in the state where they have decided, go back to my point about Musk. They decide the game, they decide the rules, they decide the, the good guys and the bad guys. And they've decided based on the opposite of what they see with their eyes, they've decided she's the bad guy, the guy who killed her is the good guy. Vance even said at the end of that shower inducing speech that you refer to, he even said we should thank him for his service and we should pray for him. I think, pray for the kids of the woman, pray for the family that's just lost their, you know, their mother. You use the word sick is sick and I'll tell you, I think what the sickness is. Trump goes on about Venezuela being a narco state. The real narco state is the United States. And the real narc is the narcissism that he represents and that all these people around him feed at every level. They feed it rather than ever challenge it.

[Rory Stewart]

We did an episode on Ice. But part of the problem is that these guys have been deliberately recruited with extremely unpleasant, frequently pseudo racist images. They're encouraged to swagger around masks. They're bringing in very, very rapidly. It's a massively expanding budget, so they're recruiting far too many people without proper checks. They're encouraging this incredibly aggressive Culture. And they're signaling that they're exempt from the law. They're signaling that the Department of Justice won't prosecute them if they do stuff. They're telling them they don't have to reveal their faces or say who they are. And imagine the kind of person who wants to join that kind of organization. So you've got the wrong culture.

[Alistair Campbell]

Wrong.

[Rory Stewart]

Right from the beginning.

[Alistair Campbell]

I've decided, by the way, I am not going to the World Cup. I've made a decision on that. Rory, I just don't want to go.

[Rory Stewart]

No. Really?

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. I have.

[Rory Stewart]

No, you've got to. Scotland's qualified us, so you've got to go.

[Alistair Campbell]

Lots of people will go, and there'll be lots of Scots in America will go. But I don't want to go. And sort of, you know, I just don't want to. I just feels like it's not a place to go right now. I mean, I got a curiosity, but not. I don't want to go to have a good time. And we were with some American friends last night, and they were saying it's just. It's just horrible living there at the moment. They all know people who think like this, and they say it's becoming impossible to sort of. To live alongside each other.

[Rory Stewart]

Have you followed that? He's now announced the prosecution of the chair of the Federal Reserve, J. Powell.

[Alistair Campbell]

Exactly, exactly. That's a classic. There's a guy, you know, this is a guy whose job is to try and keep inflation low, keep the economy on an even keel. And he. And Trump tells him that he's a dunderhead, he's an idiot, he's stupid, and he should be cutting interest rates because that's what Trump would do. So there's. They're pretending that he's sort of broken the law in relation to the funding of refurbishment of the headquarters, as if he gives a damn and he's being subpoenaed, and he's absolutely come out and called it for what it is. This is them basically saying, unless you do in an independent job what the president tells you to, then they will find a way of prosecuting you. Well, I mean, that is. I don't care what anybody says. That is a major seed of fascism. 100%.

[Rory Stewart]

Final question, Alistair. And I'm gonna. Because we've been quite serious, I'm gonna go. Not that serious for you. Alistair, I was slightly distressed to hear you're not going to go and watch Scotland in the World cup because that. I know how much you love your Football. Anyway, here we are. Jacob Turner, given the cold spell here in the uk, what temperature do you like? Your house? Do you get into thermostat battles with anyone at home?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, Rory, it will not surprise you to know I don't have to work the thermostat. We. We. We have a very interesting relationship with the cold and the warm, because Fiona and I start each day in the winter going into very, very cold water. And so the. When we come back, we like the house to be quite warm, but then we don't actually like being hot, otherwise we wouldn't be jumping in cold water every morning. So I hate going into hotels where it's really, really warm. Hate that. So I'm a cold, cold temperature person.

[Rory Stewart]

I'm a big sleep with a window open person, too. I love fresh air at night.

[Alistair Campbell]

Even if it's cold.

[Rory Stewart]

Even if it's cold. I don't know what the evidence is in that, but I'm sure it's good for you.

[Alistair Campbell]

This book I mentioned, Polar War. There are some amazing descriptions of just what the cold does to you. He's got this whole thing about when people get. If they put on too many layers and then you start to sweat.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

And then the sweat turns to ice on your skin. You've got to be really, really careful about that stuff. Somehow we've gone from a fun question about thermostats to me talking about getting hypothermia and dying in the Arctic.

[Rory Stewart]

It's a sign of the way in which things are going.

[Alistair Campbell]

Look, we trust our listeners and viewers a lot. Maybe we should do one of our. One of our instant polls about whether I should go to the World cup or not.

[Rory Stewart]

Good idea.

[Alistair Campbell]

But at the moment, I'm very settled. I'm very settled against it. It would have to be a landslide in favor for me to change my mind.

[Rory Stewart]

Can I. Can I just remind listeners that your massively puritanical instincts where you're going to lecture Alistair, try to think about yourself and his situation. If you really, really loved football and Scotland had finally qualified for the World cup, he'd be giving the same advice.

[Alistair Campbell]

If you look over my shoulder, you'll see a picture of Scott McTominay's goal against Denmark.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, we've gone a lot of directions. We've done grok AI. We've done me being attacked for being dodgy and bad at predicting things. Wrong, wrong, wrong and posh. Wrong, posh and bedwetting. We've done posh people at Cambridge, We've done Minnesota and J.D. vance and his attitude to ice. And we've finished with temperatures and your trip to the United States. So let's get the answers from the poll. I'm in favor of you traveling. Right. Bye. Bye.

[Alistair Campbell]

See you next week. Have a nice time in Syria.

[Rory Stewart]

Bye. Bye.

[Alistair Campbell]

Take care.

[Rory Stewart]

Bye. Hi, it's Rory Stewart here. I've just recorded a very exciting series on artificial intelligence. This is the single most important opportunity challenge in our lifetimes. I'm afraid it's bigger, more trouble transformative than climate change. The Trump administration, what Russia is doing in Ukraine, you might be underselling it.

[Alistair Campbell]

Far from being in a bubble, AI is underhyped.

[Rory Stewart]

These companies aren't trying to build toys. They're trying to build something that can do everything that a human can do.

[Alistair Campbell]

Whether it's encoding, whether it's in radiology, whether it's legal work. We're already seeing AI models being able to outperform humans in certain domains.

[Rory Stewart]

And yet the basic debate is going to be able to write my essay.

[Alistair Campbell]

For school for me.

[Rory Stewart]

Most of these companies are relatively new and the people at the top of them are unbelievably personally wealthy. People have made AI videos and it's pretty coherent.

[Alistair Campbell]

It looks good.

[Rory Stewart]

The problem? These large language models exist only at the moment in China and the US AI which is taking over the world.

[Alistair Campbell]

My worry is that we say let's be cautious, let's not adopt, let's try and preserve of things as they are. But our competitors internationally don't do that. We need a solution to stagnation and it's very possible that AI is our way out of the mess or our.

[Rory Stewart]

Route into mass unemployment, increased inequality and massive threats to the future of humanity.

[Alistair Campbell]

I suppose the thing that is most urgent is that no one knows and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

[Rory Stewart]

To listen to our full series on AI, sign [e-mail] hello, it's Steph McGovern.

[Alistair Campbell]

Here from the Rest is Money.

[Rory Stewart]

If you want to know why. Despite announcing major plans for the rail network, the government keep derailing themselves. Give our latest episode a listen.

[Alistair Campbell]

There's also been another screeching U turn.

[Rory Stewart]

From the government on digital IDs, and we're talking about Trump, whose fight with Fed chair Jerome Powell has gone up a level. Has he met his match?