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- [00:00]
Alastair 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 that's therestispolitics.com Meirtz is yet another one to discover that if you upset the Big Donald, he has a way of fighting back in a very spasmodic, non strategic kind of way.
- [00:22]
Rory Stewart
We can conclude from this that there isn't such a thing really as the Trump whisperer.
- [00:26]
Alastair Campbell
Trump is basically saying, well, if you upset me, I make you weaker, but you're also making America weaker.
- [00:31]
Rory Stewart
That is exactly, exactly the kind of thing that Putin will exploit.
- [00:35]
Alastair Campbell
Germany needs to move and Europe needs to move towards weaning itself off this military and security dependency.
- [00:41]
Rory Stewart
We're facing an existential threat. We're going to have to be serious about our defence.
- [00:47]
Alastair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.
- [00:49]
Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching?
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
Listeners to the show will also receive a free Trip plus subscription when they
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [02:30]
Alastair Campbell
Welcome to the Rest is Politics with
- [02:31]
Rory Stewart
me, Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart.
- [02:34]
Alastair Campbell
Today we are going to talk about Germany. We're going to talk about the battle rhetorical. And now also in terms of troop deployment between Donald Trump and Friedrich Merz that has been prompted in part by Friedrich Merz criticizing Donald Trump over Iran. We're going to talk about what that means for Europe and what it means for the transatlantic alliance. We're going to look ahead to the local elections on Thursday. Everybody is predicting they're going to be terrible for Labour, bad for the Tories, probably quite good for the SNP and for Plyde in Wales and also for reform and the Greens. But we'll try and get a bit deeper into that. And also we want to talk about why, oh, why the media are so determined to make sure that Nigel Farage is not properly held to account. So Merz is yet another one to discover that if you upset the Big Donald, he has a way of fighting back in a very spasmodic, non strategic kind of way.
- [03:30]
Rory Stewart
The talking to school children is also a bit of a. A problem. Our Ambassador Washington also managed to get headlines generated from a speech he gave school children. I hope you advise all politicians to be very careful when talking to schoolchildren.
- [03:44]
Alastair Campbell
I wonder whether there is something about you let your guard down a little bit because you think you're talking to people who aren't journalists and what have you. But I'm sure that Friedrich Merz noticed there was a wall of cameras at the back of the room in a
- [03:58]
Rory Stewart
way that our ambassador to Washington didn't, apparently.
- [04:01]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And he said something very interest, actually, the ambassador, he basically said that we talk about the special relationship. The only special relationship the Americans have got is the one with Israel. We'll maybe talk about that more in question time. So let's just go through this thing with Trump and Mertz. So Merz goes and says this thing about, you know, it's not thought through, they don't have a strategy and the Iranians are humiliating Trump in the United States. And Trump immediately comes back and says, you know, a little bit like a few weeks ago he was insulting Keir Starmer every day. Last week it was insult Merz every day. And he said he was useless. He said that he should sort out his own country, which is suffering under immigration and energy price rises brackets, a lot of them to do with Iran. And he also said, you know, he basically said, you know, stick to your own country, stay out of this. Oh, and by the way, we're going to cut the number of US troops stationed in Germany first stage, 5,000. So quite a big deal given America's centrality to European security and in particular in Germany post war and Last night, Rory, to save you doing it, and also because I know that you didn't study German at Eton. I watched a one hour interview that Merz did last night on ard, one of their main TV stations, with a very good interviewer by the name of Karen Mioska. And it was very, very interesting to watch because he wasn't exactly walking it back, but he wasn't repeating it. And he was essentially saying this relationship matters. He wasn't even really criticizing him for the cut in troops. He wasn't criticizing for the threat for new tariffs on European cars and lorries. So it said to me he thought, oh, maybe I overstepped the mark a little bit. Added to which, the interview, to be absolutely honest, was more than half about his current difficulties domestically with his coalition partners, the Social Democrats. So you got the sense of a guy who's not really enjoying himself that much as he comes up to the first anniversary of his chancellorship this week.
- [06:05]
Rory Stewart
A couple of things that strike me, one of them is that he was portrayed a little bit, I think, in the German media for a time as being a bit of a Trump whisperer. And there's sort of echoes of the way that Keir Starmer was portrayed by bits the British media, Meloni in the Italian media, maybe even Macron initially in France. And it's a general story that used to get out that our leader insert here, Starmer or Metz, is the only grown up in the room. He's the only one that Trump really listens to. He knows how to play him. He's getting the right balance between kind of dignity and pose and occasionally challenging him in the right way. And essentially what seems to happen in most of these cases is that it goes wrong. And probably we can conclude from this that there isn't such a thing really as a Trump whisperer and that leaders who seemed initially, well, I suppose we're hearing it about the King and we could talk a bit about the King's speech too. Very much being taken as this is how to play Trump. But that's one of the things that whipped the rug out from under Starmer. He suddenly went from being, I think this is a really good guy. He's very popular. Do you remember Trump kept flattering him and Britain got this good trade deal to then this guy's no Winston Churchill. This is pathetic. And the same with Mertz. We went from an idea that this was a guy who understood Trump's body language, knew how do the right handshake with him, got the right balance in The White House towards now this attack.
- [07:34]
Alastair Campbell
Well, it's not just an attack. I mean, it's been pretty relentless last week. And you sensed yesterday that Metz felt in this interview just he had to be. He was watching his words much more closely than maybe he was when he was talking to the school children. And, you know, at the height of the Cold War, there was something close to quarter of a million American troops station in Germany, but it's fallen down to roughly 36, 37,000. So 5,000 out of that is quite a lot. And of course, because of the way that Trump operates, he's basically saying, and the Pentagon openly briefing this is in response to Merz being rude, etc, etc, but actually, and that gives the impression these troops are there for you, for the Germans, for Europe, for your security, but they're also there for American security. Only Japan has more American troops anywhere in the world, apart from, obviously from the United States. The biggest hospital outside of the United States, the biggest American hospital is in a place called Landstuhl, and it's the American military hospital, which services, you know, lots of people who were injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. It services Africa. A lot of their Middle east operations are run out of Ramstein Air Base. You've got a huge training center in Bavaria. You've got the EUCOM, EUCOM and AFRICOM headquarters are in Stuttgart. The U.S. army in Europe is based in Wiesbaden. This is a big operation. Previous American presidents have not done this out of charity, they've done it for their own security as well. And of course, Trump is basically saying, well, if you upset me, I make you weaker, but you're also making America weaker.
- [09:11]
Rory Stewart
You've pointed to something really interesting, which is you're pointing to the fact that the troops that he's removed look as though those were the troops designed to protect Europe against Russia. But the troops that he's left are the troops which the US Would use to deploy into the Middle east, for example, which raises the question of what are these bases for? And if America continues to basically say, we want to keep bases in your country in order to pursue American objectives outside Europe and we're not going to defend Europe, it's more and more questionable what the value of these bases are to Europeans. It makes you a target, you know, if America gets involved in some war in the Middle east, but it doesn't give you security.
- [09:51]
Alastair Campbell
And that is a debate that is definitely starting. I think I said a few weeks ago, a book I'd read that Dasseer Wachteraland the grown up country was essentially on the basis maybe Germany needs to move and Europe needs to move towards weaning itself off this military and security dependency. Now, of course, complicating it further is the fact that the reason, one of the reasons why Europe feels it needs American support at the moment is because of the threat to Ukraine and the threat, if Putin does take Ukraine, the threat then into other parts of Eastern Europe. So it's very, very delicate. And of course, don't forget Trump's announcement that he was taking out 5,000 troops and then the subsequent announcement that he made yesterday that this is just the start it followed. Yet again, you talk about who the Trump whisperers. It followed another phone call with Vladimir Putin. So he does a phone call with Putin. Who knows what was discussed. But it's not impossible that Putin said, listen, I see these Europeans are really giving you a hard time, Donald. I mean, they've got to show you a bit more. Maybe if you just took a few troops out of Germany, that would show them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's what happened because we know that he just loves to be liked by Putin and by Xi Jinping and by the other dictators of the world. And then the other thing he's done, because the Italians, you mentioned Meloni, he said not long ago, Meloni, I used to think she was going to be great for Italy. Now I'm not so sure. Sanchez in Spain, he hates him because he's been so critical. So he's now talking, there are only 12 and a half thousand American troops in Italy, nearly 4,000 in Spain. He's talking about taking them out as well. So you talk about cutting your nose to smite your face. That is what he's doing with this. And that's why, thankfully, there has been a little bit of pushback within the Republican Party to say this is not just about European security, this is about American security as well.
- [11:41]
Rory Stewart
Just on Metz. I mean, unlike Schulz, who we interviewed on leading and again encourage people to listen to our interviews with, well, both with Schulz and Angela Merkel, to give you a sense the style of Metz's predecessors. But unlike them, Metz seems to be capable of moments of real eloquence and boldness. He feels less cautious than Schulz. But on the other hand, he also seems to be rather gaffe prone. There's a slight tendency for him to say things and then kind of walk them back again. I mean, your interview is just probably one out of dozens of examples of Metz getting out on a limb and then having to come back and clarify, is that because he's sort of experimenting with a more kind of popular style where he just says what he thinks and then suddenly remembers that he's not really a populist leader. What's going on?
- [12:25]
Alastair Campbell
Well, it's very interesting, Karen Miosco, who did the interview, and by the way, can I just say as well, Roy, that it was one hour long. It wasn't a Gotcha style interview. It was tough, but it wasn't rude, it wasn't sneery. It was prime time television. And looking at the media, the German media today, I get the feeling that people felt it was an important and interesting interview. That's my sort of memo to the Gotcha style interviewees, the interviewers that. That tend to dominate UK political media. But she directly asked him the question you just put. She said at one point, you know, she said, sometimes it seems to me that you're a bit free with. She called it free with your words. And I think probably an accurate translation would be a bit loose with your words. And it's true. And he said, look, I think that people have a right to know what their political leaders really think, and that's why it's important to try to express yourself accurately and freely. But it was interesting, she tried to get him to repeat the line that Iran was humiliating the United States. And he didn't. He just said, the American European relationship is very important. I'm going to work at it. We go through ups and downs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I got the sense that he was maybe sitting there thinking, yeah, maybe I do need to watch my words a bit more carefully. And, you know, one of my favorite columns in the New World is by a woman called Tanik Koch, who used to be an editor of Bilt, and she now writes this column, German Splaining. And she's written an analysis of Mertz this week, which goes through a sort of series of. You call them gaffes, but I think she would call them kind of strategic stylistic errors that he doesn't quite. He doesn't quite get the tone right in the different circumstances in which he finds himself.
- [14:10]
Rory Stewart
That sounded very German. Linguistically. You went from gaff to strategic stylistic error
- [14:19]
Alastair Campbell
failer. Yeah, that's not bad. Maybe I'm reading too much, I'm watching too much German. But what I think is interesting about him is he did look defensive last night. And I think that, you know, he's a year in and it's Very similar to Keir Starmer, this. I mean, okay, he didn't get a landslide, but he's the chancellor. Germans are used to coalitions. But most of the interview prior to the stuff about Trump, which was the end of the interview, was about why he's not been able to do more reform, why the relationship with the Social Democrats is so difficult, and his poll ratings, by the way, they've collapsed as much as Keir Starmers have. And he actually made the point when she was. Yeah, exactly. He made the point that he said in a previous interview. He did an interview with Der Spiegel last week where he said he got a bit of criticism for this because he basically said, I've been suffering as much attack and punishment as any other German chancellor. He was asked about that last night and he said, look, he wasn't saying he had a harder time. He was just saying the environment in which politicians operate is much harder. And he pointed to all these other leaders who are suffering in the same way.
- [15:23]
Rory Stewart
It is amazing. I mean, obviously the code for that for listeners is that it means he's catastrophically unpopular in the polls at the moment. I mean, he's more unpopular at the moment than even Schultz, who was considered to be a bit hopeless. However, my instinct is he can turn it around. My instinct is that he's got the ability to be a really strong communicator. He just needs to work out what his message is. So this is my pitch to you, if you're Metz. I would say what he needs to do is put security front and center, Russia in particular, and he needs to explain very clearly how everything connects. We're facing an existential threat. We're going to have to be serious about our defense. We're not just going to leave 5,000 German soldiers in Lithuania. We're going to really remodel our whole military. We're going to look hard at conscription. We're going to bring Ukraine into the single market along with the western Balkans, and then you're going to end up with a story which is going to connect Russia, Ukraine, European Union, your own taxing and spending policies at home, because we're only going to be strong in defense terms if we're strong economically. And then under the surface of that is how you position yourself in relation to Trump and the AfD, because the AfD again, is now ahead of him in the polls. AfD looks like this far right party looks like it could take Sachs and Anheit and actually end up with its own prime minister in charge of its own police force. How does that work for you?
- [16:53]
Alastair Campbell
It works well. He would say he's doing that, and that is part of his messaging, but it's being drowned out domestically, in part because there is this sort of constant toing and froing with the Social Democrats. There's one minister in particular, a woman called Berbel Bass, who he was asked about several times last night. And I could feel his kind of irritation and frustration coming through that he was having to talk about a kind of one of the lesser ministers, not one of. Not the big guy, Lars Klingbauer, but the. One of the ministers. And so he's having to manage that. So I felt the weakness of his interview yesterday was it was so much about political process and not about the kind of big message. He got to the big message a little bit when he got onto Trump, but again, it was very much unwinding the damage that maybe people felt that he'd done last week. But I think you're right that he's got something, and I've always felt about this, that he does have a strength, but he is not. I think he almost came close to admitting last night that he's not been communicating well what he's trying to do. And by the way, another very interesting element of what's going on, you know, you've got all the European leaders, plus Mark Carney, the honorary European, arriving at this European political group in Armenia, where Keir Starmer's just had a meeting with Zelenskyy, and they're all there kind of doing what they do. Merz is not going, and he has announced in advance of not going, because he's actually got some stuff in Germany that he's having to deal with. He's announced that Macron will be representing him at the meeting, including on any decisions that get taken. So that was quite a move as well.
- [18:28]
Rory Stewart
Gosh, that's an interesting positive on Trump. Just to sort of round it off, the huge elephant in the room is still Iran, because what Trump is doing, and he's now announced today, as we're recording, that he's going to deploy massive amounts of American ships and planes to escort vessels through the Straits of Hormuz. But essentially what he's doing is he's not managing to get to any kind of resolution with Iran. And so long as the straits remain blocked by the Americans and the Iranians, the impact on the world economy is probably the most significant fact of this whole year. Growth down by 80%, British growth plummeting, inflation maybe doubling in Britain. And that matters because that matters to the May elections which we're about to talk about in Britain. It matters for the AfD in Germany. I mean, one of the reasons the populist right is rising is because our economies are suffering. And that's directly connected to the straits for me. We've talked about the impact on Korea, Japan, the catastrophic impacts on places like Dubai which are trying to put a brave face on it, Jordan, where essentially all the tourism economies collapsed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the big question is, is the pain going to be felt in the United States enough for Trump to start concentrating? And for this, I share with you an article which I thought was very interesting, which is a key primary in Kentucky. And we don't often talk about Kentucky, but I thought it was quite an interesting primary because it's an article about the fact that there is an anti Trump candidate called Thomas Massie running in Kentucky. He's been the congressman since 2012. He's against the Iran war. And Trump has come out firmly against him and is backing a man called Galrain. And it's and it's quite close in some of the polls, 52, 48 and will be a real test of the extent to which the Republican Party is going to be able to emerge from under the shadow of Trump. Over to you.
- [20:22]
Alastair Campbell
There is, there's no doubt we keep seeing these sort of, you know, fissures opening up inside the MAGA movement. And now I did, I've read it with interest because I think Trump is still of the mindset that says if I back a candidate that's going to help them, it may not be the case anymore. And this looks like it could be actually the guy that he's trying to get rid of may emerge and win again. And just my final point, Rory, about this, so you're talking Iran and we've got this situation. And by the way, I sent you an article this week, I don't know if you saw it, about there are 20,000 people now stuck in the Straits of Hormuz. One of the big maritime charities called it a looming humanitarian disaster because there are these people there, they're running out of supplies. They don't know how to get supplies in because of the restrictions being put on entry into the straits, let alone exit. But one of the people I was talking to over the weekend about the European defense situation, this point about Iran and how this all links together. So they were explaining to me, like, okay, you've got this Trump coming in saying we're going to cut everything out. In Germany, they were saying that if you want to get a drone pilot who is being operated out of, say, I don't know, Las Vegas, Nevada desert, and you're trying to do something in one of the parts of the Gulf that you're interested in sort of taking something out. The fiber optic signal that you need to do that is underneath this big air base in Germany, Ramstein. So there's Trump saying, we're doing this to weaken you. This guy said, the far more dangerous thing to America is actually that Germany says, well, do you know what? If we can't rely on you, we're going to find ways of cutting you out of a lot of the stuff that we do and seeing whether we can't build partnerships elsewhere in Europe. And actually some people have been saying, let's just say, let's say to the Americans, okay, you've been here, very important, but actually we don't need you as much as we did. And just see how Trump reacts to that. Now it's a dangerous strategy, but I think that would help educate the public about why this is very much a two way thing.
- [22:35]
Rory Stewart
Final thing is the connection to this German defence debate and the AfD. So Lord Ismay's famous cliche about NATO, which was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down after the Second World War, and you're beginning to get muttering from the Polish president who's from the far right Law and Justice Party and actually from a think tank in Lithuania of people saying, are we sure that we really want Germany to have this massive military? What happens if Germany goes nationalistic? German defence spending is on track to be far larger than British and French defense spending combined. It's already the fourth largest defence spending in the world. If you end up with the AfD and nationalist governments being elected, that is exactly the kind of thing that Putin will exploit. He'll start saying, here is this dangerous nationalist Germany with weapons. It's probably something that the anti European MAGA right will exploit and say this is exactly why we can't trust Europe and it needs to be discombobulated and disintegrated and why America is key. So there's a really interesting balance here, which is on the one hand you want Germany to rearm, but you very much want it to do within the context of a democratic European Union, not within the context of a kind of nationalist AfD.
- [23:53]
Alastair Campbell
Well, you know, we spoke to Radek Sikorsky on leading a few weeks ago and of course, famously he said that. What was the phrase he used? He said that I fear German power less than I'm beginning to fear German inactivity. So I think. And Tusk this week, Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, and you're right, there's this curious relationship because the President is of, you know, let's say more leaning towards the Kremlin. Tusk is very much leaning towards Europe and the west, but has also been quite critical of the Americans and the way they've conducted themselves in relation to Ukraine. But Tusk has basically said he's worried about NATO collapsing from within. What he means, I think he means on America now. I'm glad we talked about this. I think Germany is central to this European debate. I think that the worries, the political problems that Germany, that Metz is having and making the leadership role that you're suggesting you should carve out more difficult to do. Maybe he should have gone to this big event in Armenia, but meanwhile what it shows is something we've talked about before. They're all just having to assess and reassess what it means to be a European leader at a time when Europe's closest historic post war ally, the United States, no longer feels like it's either close or in some instances like it's even an ally.
- [25:13]
Rory Stewart
Good. Well, it's a great line to go for a break on. So let's take a break and come back to the UK equivalent of the travails which Metz is facing with the afd, which is the question of our own May elections and what's going to happen to Labour, Conservatives Reform, the Greens, the Lib Dems, Plaid, the S and P and many others. All right, here we go.
- [25:33]
Alastair Campbell
See you soon.
- [25:36]
Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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- [26:43]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Restless Politics with
- [26:45]
Alastair Campbell
me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell.
- [26:47]
Rory Stewart
And now we're going as promised to get into the local elections, which is big news because what is happening seems to be a seismic shift in British politics. And we'll talk about the fact that often these are kind of overblown and the headlines try to make local elections more exciting. They are, but it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that something really fundamental is changing. We'll look at some of the figures. It could be thousands of seats being lost. Reform in a completely different position, not just in England, but potentially in Scotland. And the way in which Labour responds to this. Are there going to be leadership challenges against Starmer? And how in the end do we get to grips with the figure of Nigel Farage? So much more to do. Where do you want to start, Alastair?
- [27:29]
Alastair Campbell
So, Rory, May 7, I'm sure most people in the UK know this, but maybe our listeners around the world, not yet fully up to speed, but we've got very big local elections. More than 5,000 council seats across 136 local authorities in England, the Scottish Parliament, 129 Holyrood seats and also the Seneth in Wales. So essentially you've got the equivalent of national elections, general elections in Scotland and Wales and very big council elections. And not giving away too many secrets, if I say that the polling suggests that Thursday into Friday and the weekend is going to be very, very difficult for Labour, pretty difficult for the Tories, that reform and the Greens look like they're going to do pretty well and that it is possibly that ply the Welsh Nationalist Party will, for the first time ever, we will have non Labour election winner in Wales. The Labour Party in Wales has got the longest winning record of any party in any country in any democracy in history. And it looks like that's going to go.
- [28:40]
Rory Stewart
We've become weirdly by accident, sort of almost mini veteran local election commentators because we did a local election quite soon after we came in, in 2022 and we've done a number of them. I've been looking back a little bit at it and there's two themes. One is the tendency of the headlines in the newspapers to really lean into the local elections. Every local election. I think it's probably been going on for 20, 30 years saying this is existential. This local election will decide the fate of the Prime Minister. And the second one is the one that you've pointed to, which is the Ken Baker phenomenon, which is remind people of the Ken Baker phenomenon and how it operates and how it might apply to this too.
- [29:20]
Alastair Campbell
The Ken Baker phenomenon was he was in charge of the Conservative Party strategy at a time when Labour about to do very well in local elections against the Tories. And he persuaded the media, and given our media is so right wing, not difficult to persuade them at the time that the only results worth looking at were Westminster and Wandsworth. If the Tories could hold onto Westminster and Wandsworth, it was a triumph. And I just think that there may be some of that going on. But the problem is our media is generally so biased against Labour. But I think particularly there was an interview this week with the actor Mark Gattis, who, you know, he's a pretty well known and very, very good actor. And he was doing an interview, I think it was on the New Statesman and he was making the point, which is a point I hear more regularly than I ever see it on the media, which is basically that. And he actually said, look, Keir Starmer's not Tony Blair, okay, he's not that charismatic, he's not that exciting. But my God, the way the media talk about him, you think he was Vlad the Impaler. And I also, it does really annoy me and I'm trying to, I'm trying to be self critical here because I did the same when I was a journalist. You, you have these local elections, you barely leave London, you don't go torture any of the local candidates, you just turn the whole thing into a gigantic opinion poll about back then Thatcher, then, you know, the Tories and now with Keir Starmer. But the truth is it is going to be terrible in that it's going to remind people that just, you know, less than two years ago, Labour won by a landslide. And at the outer end of some of the predictions, we're talking about possibly the biggest loss or percentage loss of council seats that there has ever been. But I think that's partly because Labour is now, as we've said many, many times, being attacked from two sides. You look at somewhere like Sunderland, which has been, you know, Labour till I die, as they say. It looks like, you know, reform can take that's that part of the world. And meanwhile some of the London councils are going to go to the greens. And because this focus has been so much on Keir Starmer, will he survive? Will there be a challenge? All that stuff, which is perfectly legitimate questions, by the way, but what it means is, one, there's been so little debate about what these local elections are actually about in each locality, including my own, where I live in Camden. But secondly, I think that the two challengers, or those that are seen as the main challengers, it means that they are not getting anything like the scrutiny that they should be getting for what their actual policies for local government are. So, for example, I saw a leaflet from the Green Party here in Camden the other day. It was about. The leaflet I saw, I think was about Gaza and proportional representation. Well, very interesting to have views on that, but they don't exactly. They're not going to affect my council that much. And likewise, you know, Nigel Farage, I'm honestly, I'm out. The double standards at the heart of the coverage of this 5 million pound donation that he's taken from a guy who's given another X million to the party, but 5 million that he took from this crypto guy, Harborne in Thailand, within the 12 month period before he became an MP, didn't declare it, and now is asking us all to believe that this was a donation with no strings attached to pay for his CP security. And it's not even. It's barely a story. Rory, can you imagine if Keir Starmer, who, remember, got lacerated for having his specs bought for him and his wife getting a few dresses from Wade Alley. Can you imagine if that was him? So the media, which keeps telling us that Farage might be the next prime minister, still cover him like he's just a kind of, you know, celebrity influencer.
- [33:06]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? I mean, it's part of the Trump phenomenon too. I mean, totally great scale of corruption. I was talking to people in the financial industry this week. All of them have been looking at these trades and the way in which just before Trump sends out a tweet on Iran, people who appear to be very close to the White House are buying or selling oil and making hundreds of millions in a few seconds. There's been some extraordinary reporting around the way that crypto buys influence. We were just in the Balkans where political operators were talking completely openly about giving hotel contracts to Trump's family, giving $20 million to Trump aides in order to get access, et cetera. And somehow what's interesting about Trump and Farage is by being anti elitist, we're shaking up the establishment. We're not like them somehow. Also, none of the rules apply. The kind of things that would make you enraged if Keir Starmer did them, because the public would think this is totally hypocritical. He's been found out. If Farage or Trump does it, it's sort of priced in, isn't it? They sort of managed to create a personality where everyone just shrugs their shoulders and says, well, that's, you know, at least he's not pretending to be anything he isn't.
- [34:15]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, but he is pretending to be something he's not because they're saying that they're anti elite. There's nothing more elitist than using the system to, you know, to make yourself even wealthier, which, of course, is what Trump and his family are doing. And, you know, this is a story, as I say, about media double standards, without a doubt. But it's also a story about a country, in part because of our media, that, if we're not careful, is doing in America and it's sleepwalking to a Trump style populism. And if people go back to the series that we did with Liam Byrne about populism, his three appeasement, autocracy and avarice. And we saw with Orban, now, it took over a decade for the Hungarians to decide. Orban's, you know, too greedy for his own good. But what we see with Trump, what we're seeing with Farage, is the link between right wing populism and the obsession with using politics to make money. Whether that's cameos at 80 quid a whack to say happy birthday, or it's taking what could end up as tens of millions from crypto billionaires. This from a man, by the way, who's on the record in the past as saying one of his complaints about politics, you can't get rich. So you say it's priced in. It's only priced in if the media decides, well, it's a story if it's Keir Starmer or it's a story if it's Angela Rayner, but it's not a story if it's Nigel Farage or Jenrick. Genrick is under police investigation over a donation. How many of our viewers and listeners are even aware of that? If that had been Ed Miliband, if that had been Andy Burnham, it would have led the news.
- [35:43]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, quick explainer there. The claim is that somebody who gave a hundred thousand pound donation to Generic has said it seems that a large chunk of that, I think £37,000 of that came from an ineligible foreign donor who gave the money through this vehicle. And it's being investigated by the police at the moment, must put on the record, of course, that Robert Jenrick absolutely denies that any electoral rule has been broken. He denies that he's ever met or heard from the guy that is supposed to have given him the money. And no charges have been brought against Robert Jenrick. Reminder, though, again about structure of the elections to take you back to the kind of big, big picture again. So 2025 was the moment where fragmentation became kind of structure, where British politics. We've been telling a story for four years, really, and watching it from a situation in which Labour and Conservatives very much dominated. This was a country which was defined by a two party system towards these five or six party system that's emerged and it was almost precise a year ago that we suddenly had this moment where reform broke through, took I think 670 council seats from near zero, took the mayoralty in Lincolnshire and Hull. But it was the last election, there weren't that many Labour seats up for grabs. I calculated. I think there were 460 seats up last time for Labour, of which they lost.
- [37:06]
Alastair Campbell
Still lost a lot of them, yeah,
- [37:08]
Rory Stewart
lost 360, but this time they're defending 2,557 of which they could lose three quarters. So they could be losing nearly 1900 seats as opposed to 400, nearly five times as many seats. Reform is now consistently points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. And that's why you get these ambitious Conservatives like Robert Jenrick and Danny Krueger and others beginning to move over to reform, because they're betting both on the Green side and on the reform side, that Britain is going to feel more like a lot of European countries where effectively the major parties, the right and left, collapsed and these parties, either of the extremes of the centre begin to emerge. Jason Cowley wrote an article in the Sunday Times comparing Starmer to Francois Hollande. He said, a bit like Francois Hollande, leader of the major left wing party in France. He was a technocrat who had an ability to somehow alienate equally almost every faction of his party while failing to communicate a big narrative. And it was almost impossible to pin down what Hollandism really was, what Starmerism really is. And of course what happened to the Socialist Party in France is that it ended up collapsing down to 6% in the polls. I mean, Labour's not there yet.
- [38:25]
Alastair Campbell
It got lower than that. Rory, I was with Hollande on the day that it dropped to 4% and I was able to tell him that is exactly the percentage of the global population that thinks Elvis Presley's alive.
- [38:37]
Rory Stewart
Was there a direct overlap between the
- [38:39]
Alastair Campbell
Two, the great thing about fraud, he does have a really good sense of humor. So he did sort of. He saw the bright side. But look, there's no doubt these results are going to be bad. You talked about the stuff about priced in Farage is sort of, you know, misconduct and what have you priced in. There is an element to which Labor's defeat, as it will be defined on Friday is going to be priced in. But I think because of the scale of this, I think it's like one of those things, like, you know, something bad is going to happen, okay, and you can prepare yourself for that. But when it happens, it still feels really, really terrible and it actually feels worse because it's real. And you're talking about hundreds of councillors who are going to say to themselves and to each other, I work my balls off, I get next to nothing for it. We're coping with terrible funding and we're getting the blame for what is actually failure at the centre. And now we've got these terrible people coming in to take our place. And the other thing, by the way, I talked about how the media hasn't really covered it. Every single media outlet that has gone and actually looked at the effectiveness or otherwise of Reform councils has come away saying it is terrible. There was a huge piece in the FT at the weekend about reform in Staffordshire. I've read stuff about reform in the northeast, about reform in Kent. Sorry to plug the new world again, but they've got a thing this week, four pages, on things that reform councillors have said which are some of them absolutely breathtaking. A lot of them related to race and to Islam and all that stuff. So back to my point about sleepwalking, because we're treating these local elections like a national opinion poll, we're not really analyzing the issues that drive the demise if we're not careful of local democracy. And so I think we don't take it nearly seriously enough.
- [40:27]
Rory Stewart
Couple of things. Scotland. So we interviewed John Swinney. We also interviewed Anna Sarwa, the Labour leader in Scotland. And that's part of our story. And we'll see what happens in the election. But just to remind people that shortly after the general election, it felt as though Annas, Sawa and Labour Scotland were on course to become a majority and Anas was on course to become first minister. The most recent poll I've seen, just to give a sense of how much British politics changes and how quickly from Sir John Curtis, who we all defer to the in joke here for people who don't follow, is that he is the great pollster who has for many decades now been produced to comment on things. He was projecting possible SMP 57 seats, just eight seats short of a majority, which is significant because Swinney said he'd use the majority to go for another referendum on independence. But potentially Reform coming in second as the largest opposition party at 19, and then potentially Labour at 16 and the Tories at 16, with a little bit of a recovery under Russell Findlay, who's the Tory leader in Scotland there. And just to illustrate what that would mean for us, we would have to change the way we cover Scotland a great deal. I mean, it's perfectly logical for us to be focusing on Anna Sower and John Sweeney, because that's the way Scottish politics has been for the last 30 years. But if we end up in a world in which Reform's number two Tories and Labour neck and neck, you're going into a very different way in which we think about British politics.
- [41:53]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. And likewise in Wales. And we should say as well that Wales is complicated further by the fact that they've got a new voting system which people are going to have to get their heads around. But essentially, if Plaid becomes the largest party, that's going to mean that for the first time, all three devolved administrations, assuming the SNP are in charge, are going to be headed by nationalists, Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, Scotland, SNP and Wales. With Plaid, that is a big shift. So I guess then, the other question. Let's force ourselves to do what most of the media are doing with this event on Thursday, Rory, that say, what do we think happens to Labour and whether there will be a challenge to Keir Starmer? And it's probably fair to say I'm more plugged into this debate possibly than you are. But the truth is, it honestly does depend who you talk to. There is, I think, the feeling that if you look at the poll ratings and you have a sense of how bad these results are, are going to be, there is a mood that says, well, something's got to give. We can't go on like this. But then you'll get. Including people who are not happy with Keir Starmer saying, yeah, but hold on a minute. One of the things people hated about the Tories was the constant change of Prime Minister. You've got Ukraine, you've got Iran. Is this the right time? And then the other thing, which I can't quite get my head around, is the extent to which the two who we keep talking about as possible challengers, who have the numbers to Challenge. You need at least 80 MPs to put their name to it. They'd have to be public saying, I'm backing Angela Rayner, I'm backing West Streeting, whoever it might be. I'm not yet convinced that either of them, for all they've been dipping their toes in, whether or when they might do it. Famous last words. I don't think there's going to be sort of seismic events over the weekend, and I hope not, because I'm traveling. And then the other thing that's happening is I think there is a change of mood around the notion of that Andy Burnham should be allowed to find a seat in Parliament, and if he's not allowed that, he'll somehow find a way to do that. So that is all going on.
- [43:57]
Rory Stewart
That's interesting because, you know, I was very, very, very much, as you'll remember, on the grounds of Andy Burnham should have been allowed to run. An outrage at the way Starmer stitched that up and stopped him from running. And at that moment, you were a little bit more sympathetic to Starmer, or at least you were playing devil's advocate with me and thought I'd been a bit over the top in saying Burnham needed to run. Have you shifted on that a bit?
- [44:17]
Alastair Campbell
No, it's not a shift. I was sympathetic because I sort of felt, particularly at that time, it was like saying to a football manager, look, you've lost a few games, therefore we're going to keep you there as a dead man walking. But that guy there, we're going to bring him in as your number two and his job is going to be to take you out. I think it'd be very odd to do that, but I think this may be the something that has to give that is given. Because the other thing that is being talked of is people saying, well, look, you know, Keir Starmer's done an amazing job. He transformed the Labour Party post Corbyn. He won a general election landslide, therefore he should be allowed to sort of map out his own exit in a different sort of way. There's all that kind of talk going on as well. And actually the tragedy, in a way, of this is he did a few interviews in recent days where, I don't know if you saw or heard any of them, but I sort of felt there's a bit of message there, there's a bit of fight there. The thing is, if people only see that when somebody's back feels like it's against the wall, it's got to be there all the time. Day after day, night after night.
- [45:18]
Rory Stewart
I think Starmer is rapidly becoming Britain's Joe Biden. We're rapidly getting into this world where all the loyalists are saying, he's a good guy, he's had a great record of service, he needs to be able to time his own dignified exit. And the rest of us are saying he's not going to be able to win the next election. He just cannot take labor into the next election. And we have to work backwards from that. If you're working backwards from that, the Biden lesson is you've got to get rid of him as soon as possible. You've got to give whichever Labour leader is leading into the next election a chance to really turn the country around in the next two and a half, three years. And there's no room for saying, he's a lovely man, he's done great record of service, let's be gentle, let's give him time. Not least because like Joe Biden, he has no intention of going anywhere. He and his wife are going to be sitting there like Joe and Jill, thinking, I'm going to make it through to the next election. No one's to going moving me. I'm wonderful. Because that's the way they get out of bed in the morning.
- [46:12]
Alastair Campbell
Okay, let's say you do your working back theory. What's your working back theory insofar you've applied it to the Joe Biden? What about the Pierre Polievre Mark Carney lesson? The lesson from that, Rory, is you wait and you get the right guy at the right time.
- [46:31]
Rory Stewart
And the Carney strategy, I suppose, works like this. You leave your useless Bijel, Biden or Trudeau in or Starmer until the very last moment, and then you run a charismatic outside candidate who basically suggests they're running against the legacy of their predecessor. I mean, that's what Kamala Harris was unable to do. She was unable to say how she was different from Biden. Rishi Sunak wasn't good at describing how he was different from Boris or Truss. But then in the British system, I don't quite get how that happens. I mean, Carney was a major international figure with huge credibility. He'd run the bank of England, essentially parachuted in on an anti Trudeau ticket, and he got this amazing boost from Trump going against poly effort. It doesn't seem to be replicable in the British context. I think more likely is that it's going to feel like Kamala Harris coming in in a hurry after Biden.
- [47:28]
Alastair Campbell
I guess the one who speaks to what you're saying about Mark Carney. There's, I guess it's Andy Burnham, of all the names that are out there, because he's the one who comes say, I am change. It's quite hard for Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner to say we are change when they've been part of this. This whole thing. So. But anyway. So I guess I don't know what's going to happen. And it varies from conversation to conversation that I have, and you even have the same people. I was at a conversation with somebody yesterday who said all these extraordinary, contradictory things. Well said. Well, we're not happy with Kier and, you know, it's perfectly obvious that, you know, there's got to be a change for the election. This is what he said. Right, okay. But nobody's really buying into the idea that Wes or Angela can do it. People say they've got the numbers, but they're not convinced that actually they have got the numbers. Because once the people who said, yeah, I'd vote for you actually say, I've got to put that down on paper and commit publicly. And what happens if Keir Starmer doesn't go? And there's all that. So they say that and then they say. And so what you might get is a situation where Keir Starmer just keeps going, and he has people thinking that he might go near the end to let Addi bird of in. But actually, by then the world has changed and he's started to sort of pick up again and play to this idea of being resilient, what have you. So I wouldn't know how to predict this. I really wouldn't. I'm normally quite good at predicting, and I've spoken to a lot of the key people, and I don't think they really know where it's going to end. I think there are so many different gradations of what people think should happen, and none of them can see they're getting spooked by the risk. These are all negative. I'm not saying this is a great place to be in, but the fact of people thinking not sure about the alternatives. World a very dangerous place, lots of bad stuff going on, and Keir doesn't look like he wants to go. Are all sort of coalescing to go against the conventional wisdom right now? If I sound confused, Rory, it's because I am.
- [49:26]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. To add to my confusion, one thing I sometimes hear from Labour MPs, and I don't know whether it's true or not, is they say, yeah, West Streeting may be popular with MPs but Angela Rayner is actually the one who's really popular with the party as a whole. And that traditionally in Labour, candidates like Wes, who are seen more as the right of the party, are not really likely to make it. And if you trigger the election, just the mathematics, the way the Labour Party wins means that Angela's much more likely to make it through.
- [49:59]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. This is a point Merz made in the interview I mentioned on German TV last night. High profile politicians tend not to be very popular. So people talk about the popularity of Nigel Farage or Zach Polanski. They are popular with a certain up to about 20 odd percent. They're loathed by a lot of other people. And if you're the highest profile politician in the country, which is the Prime Minister, I fear that in modern politics it just goes with the territory. You're going to get loathed.
- [50:25]
Rory Stewart
It's not universal. I mean, Carney's not completely loathed, is he? I mean it's not everybody's loathed.
- [50:30]
Alastair Campbell
No, sorry, I was talking about Britain. And by the way, just on Carney there is a little bit of a Gorbachev thing creeping in. You're starting to see Canadian media saying, oh well, yeah, must be amazing to be feted abroad like Jacinda Ardern was, you know, look what happened to her kind of thing. So I talk to some MPs who say, are we really going to make Angela Rayner Prime Minister? You serious? Then you talk to other MPs say, well, Wes treating, he talks a good game but he's not that good. You know, you hear a lot of negativity about all of them. That's the problem because Andrew Rayner, okay, she's outside in that she's not in the Cabinet. West Streeting's in the Cabinet. Neither of them are realistic. Been able to project any sense of a different vision because they're part of what's happened. And Andy Burnham's is very much focused on Manchester. He's got a national profile but his success as a politician very much focused on Manchester. I, for example, would, would love it if there was a contender who came out very loudly said line One of my leadership manifesto is we're going back in the European Union, we're going to change the electoral system. There's not really been a sense of big ideas out there.
- [51:36]
Rory Stewart
A couple of things that really resonate with me just as my experience as an mp. The first is this point that you made about local councillors. One of the things that was so definitional from local elections is Labour could be on track to lose over a thousand councillors. And as you say, those are the backbone of the local constituency. The Tories, for example, have almost entirely lost a mass party they don't have, as my mother did when she was Young, you know, 2 million members of the Conservative Party, essentially, you are campaigning on the streets as an MP with a dozen councillors and you're relying on the councillors to do most of your leafletting for you, organize all your local events when they're angry, when they feel the party's gone wrong and they're losing their seats. The rage that you encounter very intimately, because this is every week you're in your constituency agencies sitting with these people and then you take that back to Westminster. So then suddenly I began to feel in Westminster a lot of my Tory colleagues carrying this rage back from their constituencies, driven by the loss of council seats, which was one of the things that led to the undoing of David Cameron, led to the undoing of Theresa May. All of this feeds through. The second thing is I really resonated with what she was saying about leadership elections and the sense that every single time we found ourselves looking at getting rid of someone, you would have exactly the same conversation. I mean, as you can imagine, when you're getting rid of David Cameron, you'll get one people saying, well, Theresa May really. I mean, you know, she's fine as Home Secretary, but isn't she going to be a bit wooden as Prime Minister? And you know, Sajid Javid, well, he's quite new. And has he really got what it takes?
- [53:18]
Alastair Campbell
Rory Stewart.
- [53:20]
Rory Stewart
You have Rory Stewart, exactly right. And that Boris Johnson, seriously. And then other people saying, no, no, no, this guy's really charismatic. And my saying, no, he's a terrible human being, he's terrible moral, he's going to be terrible Prime Minister. Or Michael Goad's quite clever, but is he really going to be? So you can see all the second guessing and most of it's right, of course. Probably what all the Labour MPs are saying about Angela Rayner and Wes treating and Andy Burnham is correct. What I do think I learned, though, is that we are in an age that requires very, very good, bold, clear communication skills. And I think that needs to be tied to ideas. We have just been talking to Yanis Varoufakis and like to encourage people to listen to that leading interview.
- [54:04]
Alastair Campbell
He tweeted out this morning and he said a surprisingly Agreeable and wholesome discussion with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart on their Rest is Politics podcast. I wish there were more opportunities for political adversaries to engage in discussions such as this one. So, Yanis, thank you for that. I mean, I think both of us went into it thinking you from a sort of being a Tory who thinks his economics are mad perspective. Me from thinking that he's part of that sort of Corbinista clan that thinks people like me aren't really Labor. We went into thinking, oh, I'm not really going to like this guy. But actually, it was a very, very, very interesting and enjoyable discussion. So I hope on the back of that, perhaps Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage might read that tweet and think, well, maybe we should go and have a. What did he call it? Agreeable and wholesome. Refreshing. Excellent. Carry on.
- [54:52]
Rory Stewart
It's good. We should steal that. No, just to finish ideas and communication. So the next Labour leader needs to have a big picture. We talked about what Metz's picture might be, but that's why I really am with you. Europe front and center. Geopolitics, Ukraine, Trump connected back to cost of living, getting the British economy going, deregulating, doing the stuff that Peter Kyle actually has been talking about quite powerfully. And let's not forget figures like Al Khan's who we're going to interview soon. I don't know why Labour is so entranced with these three figures. You know, I've mentioned Peter Kyle, I've mentioned Al Kahns. There may be other people out there who might also be worth looking at.
- [55:29]
Alastair Campbell
By the way, just on Peter Kyle point of rebuttal, I said last week that the AI debate inside government had gone a bit quiet. And to be fair, Liz Kendall's spad, I do love a bit of rebuttal from a spad. She sent me a whole succession of actually really quite good speeches that Liz Kendall had made. So. And making the point that maybe it's just that the media don't cover proper speeches anymore. So I want to say that. But my final point, Roy, is to go. If I can go back to the other Trumpian element, I just want to close off on this Farage 5 million donation, because as you can see, I'm very exercised by it. And yesterday, here's one for you, Roy. It's local elections week. Nigel Farage, you normally will, you know, get a cab to any BBC studio in the land, was meant to be on the BBC breakfast show and he pulled out at the last minute. Okay. Said he had other things to do. In other words, he didn't want to get quizzed about this donation. But the other Trumpian element of this is you basically just make up excuses. So back in October, reform, if you remember, they made a big fuss because they said that Nigel Farage's publicly funded security detail had been cut by 75% this week. In claiming that this £5 million is all for his security, he said he'd never had publicly funded security and all of it has always been provided by donors. Well, which is it? They both can't be true. And 5 million buys you a lot of security. And let me say something else. Yes, he's got security interests. Anybody with a public profile has security concerns. Okay. But I think there's also something about seeing the security people who surround Nigel Farage. I don't want to be unkind, but I wonder if part of it is actually just say, let's try and make him look like a Prime Minister. If you're surrounded by security, you look really important. If you have big men with earpieces wandering around behind you, you look like you might be a big deal. So if it's true that this is £5 million for security, if he's learnt the lessons of declaration and being open and transparent, why don't we just see which of the security firms that have been paid a share of this 5 million? Or maybe could I suggest, Nigel, if you came on the podcast, we could ask you about it. Maybe it's not wholly true. How's about that?
- [57:47]
Rory Stewart
How's about that? Well, Alistair, thank you very much. Looking forward very much to getting into some great subjects on Question Time. But today, I guess we did deep everything from Germany through Trump to local elections. And I guess what we're talking about is, firstly, the struggles of Metz and Starmer in a modern age. I mean, these catastrophically unpopular ratings from figures who aren't really Vlad the Impaler, as you've pointed out, which suggests something about the media landscape. We're talking about fragmentation of the rise of the right. So we must do more on the AFD in Germany and what's happening there. It is astonishing how, you know, talk about the rise and rise of reform. They are in a very powerful position now and there's big questions whether the Germans should be using the Constitutional Court to shut down people who are genuinely neo fascists and the rise of reform in Britain and what that means. You know, it's going to be very interesting as we get close to the election and we should probably Cami Badenoch's very kindly agreed to come on the show and we need to look at what the Tory strategy is. Are they just going to become mini reforms or are they going to try to move back and occupy the kind of centre ground that I would hope they could see opportunities in and finally devolved administration. So, so much to see. Watch the results on Thursday and particularly watch, I think, what happens in Wales and Scotland.
- [59:06]
Alastair Campbell
In question number we're going to talk about anti Semitism, we're going to talk about King Charles, his very successful trip to the United States and two splendid speeches that he made. And we are going to talk about Mali. See you then.
- [59:19]
Rory Stewart
See you then. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3
- [59:54]
Alastair Campbell
month plan, equivalent to $15 per month
- [59:56]
Rory Stewart
required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com hello, it's Norman Peston
- [60:05]
Norman Smith
from the Rest Is Money. I've just had the most gripping conversation with an economist, Nick Bloom from Stanford, who's published a very influential paper on the costs of leaving the European Union. He and his colleagues calculated that leaving the EU has cost us 8% of our national income, our GDP, that's 240 billion more than we spend on the NHS every single year. What's really striking is that his numbers are now the numbers being used by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, when she talks about the advantages of getting closer to the eu. So if you want to know how damaging Brexit has been and whether that 8% number is robust, whether it's real, join me for the latest episode of the Rest Is Money.