99. Team of Rivals: Blair, Brown and the secrets of New Labour (Douglas Alexander)

25:44Now, it's for them to decide their account of history, but I basically agree with you. I think you put Gordon Brown and Tony Blair together, they're like two giant rocks in a stream that just forced kind of nonsense to the very margins of the Labour Party. They were literally an unbeatable combination, Lennon and McCartney. They were extraordinary figures. Well, I think on Lennon and McCartney, we should take a quick break.

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26:41Douglas, welcome back to The Rest is Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Tell us a little bit about what you learned about the world when you left politics. You were out for a hell of a long time. I mean, Alistair's saying we went on different paths, but he left politics five years before me. So to be on the same path as him, be me coming back in four years' time. It's a long time out. And as you say, I remember, unless I'm being misremembering, I think there were definitely times when I spoke to you when I didn't think you did think you were coming back. That's absolutely true.

27:13So tell us a little bit about what the world looked like outside and what you learned from stepping outside and what you realized about Parliament that people who never left Parliament might not realize. So listen, there are lots of different ways that you can learn and make a contribution, But one of my observations is the chance to travel, the chance to work far from politics, the chance just to learn has been extraordinarily beneficial for me. I tried very hard not to lose my seat, but I've learned a whole lot more because I did. Not just about myself. I think you learn more from defeat than you do from victory, but also the opportunities that that gave me.

27:49So literally every time I know that you're at Yale. Now, every time I stepped onto the Harvard campus, it was like a software upgrade. And that was from the students, never mind from the faculty. So you can learn a lot in terms of the people that you work with and the conversations that you have. I then kind of moved in different worlds in investment, in law, in consulting. Just I've learned so much about how business works, frankly, because I hadn't spent time in the private sector. I'd been a lawyer before I was elected to parliament. but how do these major investment companies allocate capital?

28:21How do they judge whether a country is investable or not? What premium do they place on political stability or economic stability? Just if you've sat in investment review committees, you know a whole lot more than if you read about it in the Financial Times. So in that sense, I've been extraordinarily fortunate in terms of those opportunities. But I think I've now worked in more than 70 countries in politics and out of politics. And distance, I think, can lend perspective. One of the things that actually ultimately reignited that fire and said, I really do want to come back, was how consistently I would meet people abroad who looked at me with a mix of kind of pity and derision about what had happened to the UK.

29:04They would say, we thought you were a serious country. Like, what's happened? And actually, I just think if you feel that you can make a contribution to try and show that the UK is coming back. That's a very compelling contribution. What do you see as the differences between the politics of that era when you lost and where we are now? Probably a couple of things. Firstly, I mean, I was elected, as you say, in November 1997. The UK economy was bigger than the Chinese economy in 1997. So in terms of the global economy. And we were still ruling a major Asian country in terms of the city in terms of Hong Kong.

29:44So it was a very different world. And if you think of the world that we're in now in terms of Russia's return, China's rise, it's just fundamentally different. Secondly, I've spent a lot of time in the States in the last eight or nine years. Like 2007, the Eurozone and US economy were the same size. We're now in a position today where the Eurozone is half the size of the American economy. You know, when Biden says don't bet against the United States, the United States is an extraordinary innovation, investment, productivity, profitability machine. And so the chance to spend time in California and Silicon Valley and elsewhere has been a huge education for me in terms of, if you like, how the world has changed.

30:25And it's not all been good news for the UK. So we talked on the podcast recently about whether the scale of challenge that the country faces are met by the policy solutions that are currently being debated. And what you're essentially saying is we're weaker, we're smaller, we're less rich than we were. And yet the political debate feels very, very similar. I just wonder if you can reflect on that. I think you're right. I think one of the central conceits of the Brexiteers was that after Brexit, we would walk taller in Washington or in Beijing or in Moscow. It's just not true. You know, the fact is, we are looking at a world that's very different from the world that was promised to us in 2016.

31:03If you look at trade policy that I'm now working on, we're in a world of the big three. It's the US, it's China, it's the European Union, and the kind of free market, buccaneering vision of Brexit is very, very far away. So what do we do to fix it? We get ourselves elected and get down to work. That's what we do. What do we as a country do to fix that decline? First of all, we changed the government. I'm very grateful to the people of the United Kingdom that on July the 4th we did that. It's not insignificant that we have, I say this as a a majority in Scotland, in Wales and in England now. So it means, for example, the risk premium that's been attached to, is there going to be another independence referendum in Scotland, has just vanished.

31:42Secondly, I think it's arguable that we're now going to be the most politically stable G7 economy for the next five years. You talk at length in terms of the challenges that France is facing, or indeed what we're going to face in November in the United States. Political stability doesn't guarantee economic stability, but it sure helps. So in that sense, point one, political stability. On that, you need to build economic stability to be judged investable. There is a wall of international capital that frankly just thought, what the hell's happened to the UK in recent years and priced the risk associated with British politics in a way that would traditionally be associated with the emerging markets rather than a stable OECD economy.

32:22So in that sense, how do we do it? I think we start the hard yards of improving our trading relationship with Europe. You look at what Keir's already done in terms of the EPC meeting in Blenheim and being in Berlin and being in Paris. Is that just touching the margins? It's a start and we've got to start somewhere. And I know, because I listened to your podcast, you're going to say, why haven't we done more on Brexit immediately? I think honestly, I see that from a slightly different position in Scotland, where not only did we lose in 2015, but we lost in 2017 and we lost in 2019. And my sense is people like Deborah Matheson and Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney made a very important strategic judgment, which was to change the conversation when he became leader of the Labour Party in 2019.

33:04And that was because, as we've seen in Scotland, these referenda burn like battery acid through old affinities and identities, being Labour voters, where 45 % suddenly voted for independence in Scotland. I think what informed that choice in 2019 was if we don't get these red wall seats back in one cycle, we've lost them for a generation. And how are we most likely to get them back? Is it by talking a lot about Europe? In which case, that is, if you like, a trigger and a reminder to leave voters that their primary political identity is leave, which worked very well for Boris Johnson in 2019. or frankly do we shamelessly change the subject to talk about other issues about the state of public services the state of the economy in the hope that people see their primary affinity as prospective Labour voters and the effect of that has been triumphantly successful in not only vanquishing the Conservative Party but giving us a political platform on which to build.

33:59Triumfully successful in vanquishing the Conservative Party but potentially not brilliant at giving you a political platform on which to build. Because in order to win that election, and it might be smart short-term politics, but by ruling out customs union single market, by ruling out raising income tax, VAT and corporation tax, you've basically come in with your hands tied behind your back on the most fundamental levers of government. Okay. So first of all, if you're wanting me to implicitly suggest Brexit is a small deal, I'm going to disappoint you because I accept as you've been arguing on this podcast for years, Brexit's a very big deal and as someone whose politics was shaped and tempered by the experience of the referendum in Scotland in 2014 where we were on the same side Rory if you like, as much as 2014 and the defeat of nationalism in Scotland was for me an affirmation of a politics of cooperation, internationalism solidarity, 2016 was a defeat for that politics.

35:00It was a profound and significant shift in how the UK accounts for itself in the world and shows up. What is our responsibility, though? Our responsibility then is not to do the kind of performative diplomacy that we've seen, certainly in the department I'm now in, in recent years, Liz Truss having her photograph taken in Australia or New Zealand. It's doing the hard, detailed, painful work of saying, how do we try and improve trading relationships at the border? how do we try and make sure as part of the broader political reset that we not only have a defence and security treaty, but we have confidence building measures, frankly.

35:38I mean, because we often forget in this debate that there's politics on both sides of the channel. You know, we have to re-earn the trust of the European Union if we're going to improve the trading relationships between them. But frankly, I think it's a bit early to blame the firefighters when we've just got rid of the arsonists. But there is stuff. I mean, Europe reached out generously to offer what seemed to us, at least the two of us, a pretty attractive deal of young Europeans being able to come over here on short term visas and vice versa. And you rejected it out of hand, right? It didn't seem to me particularly wise, respectfully, of the European Commission to drop that proposal in the middle of a general election campaign if you were wanting for it to be received well by a government in waiting or a government that was seeking to come to power.

36:22I genuinely think if I was in the European Commission, I would have said, if you want a youth mobility scheme, let's wait and see what happens on July the 4th. But if you like, it was almost guaranteed in the white heat of a general election that if the Commission drops a proposal for a youth mobility scheme, of course, the opposition is going to say, we have our red lines, which we do. One last chip at my hypothesis, and then I'm going to get back to what I said. I guess my big anxiety is you won the election well, but you won the election by tying your hands behind your backs. You were so keen to reassure voters that you weren't going to get close to Europe, so keen to reassure them you weren't going to raise taxes, that you now have a real problem.

37:01I mean, you've got public services in terrible position. There's a desperate need to raise government revenue and spend more on public services. You can't really do it because of all these things you said to win an election. Listen, again, I absolutely agree with you as to the disastrous inheritance that we're facing, and I'll save you the talking points about how much that is and everything else. But I take a longer view. I'd say a couple of things. Firstly, in what you say, Rory, I hear an echo of the conversation we were having two months into a Labour government in 1997, in the sense that you've accepted conservative spending plans of Ken Clarke, who incidentally was a very effective Chancellor before 1997.

37:39You've basically guaranteed that you're going to be cutting the benefit of loan payments. We are at a very early stage of a different chapter of politics. And one of my lessons, I have to say, from observing the last Labour government is that the character of the leader matters at least as much as the detail of the manifesto. If you look at Tony Blair, he didn't anticipate that Iraq was going to define foreign policy for his prime ministership. In the same way, I don't think Gordon Brown anticipated the global financial crisis would be so definitional to his. So actually having people of common sense, decency, goodwill back in office is not a small deal for me.

38:14It's a really, really big deal. That would be one point that I would make. And the second thing I would say, and honestly, I loved your book. I genuinely did. But if I had a concern about it, it's that despair is not a strategy that i've if you like i'm taking a bet in trying to come back into public life and say that despite a broken machine despite civil servants that were not always what you would have hoped for or colleagues who were not always what you hope for all of which i recognize and understand that it's still worth changing your life putting you know putting your heart and soul and shoulder to the wheel and in that sense i can't give you any guarantees that it's going to work either for my small contribution or the bigger contribution of the government but when I faced a choice as to is this a meaningful and important contribution that you want to make I was so dispirited by the state of the country in recent years I was so down about how Britain which had been such a powerful voice in the world had allowed itself to be shrunk and and just embarrassed by the leadership that we'd had that I thought listen and it's worth having a go.

39:21And I might be wrong and have me back in a few years' time and you may be able to say, listen, you know, you made the wrong calculation. But for me, it's an act of hope to say we can try and make this difference. But with your big three, America, China, European Union. Yep. We're down here somewhere. Do we have the, and we're never going to compete necessarily with those, but do we have the policy levers necessary to get us to a place where we no longer have to have that sense of travelling around the world and people saying Britain is not what it was, which is kind of what it's... I think we've all experienced that in recent years.

39:54Can we really get back from where we are? David Lammy is in Kiev as we speak with Tony Blinken. The fact is we are still in the P5. I mean, there are ways that we can make ourselves a more substantial, effective middle power than we've been in recent years. I honestly think the country internationally lost its bearings in the last few years and there are practical, challenging ways. Larger because of Brexit, possibly. Of course, listen, Alistair, I campaigned to remain as you did. And I did. And if you want me to say, listen, the economic consequences of Brexit have been profound and negative, I'm willing to say that because they have been.

40:35But we've got to start from where we are. And in that sense, you know, the channel is 21 miles wide. I said in my first interview as trade minister, geography still matters in trade policy. The idea that doing trade deals on the other side of the world will compensate for us leaving the deepest and widest free trade agreement we've ever been part of, which is the European Union, is a post-imperial fiction of our opponents. And what we need is a trade policy based on data, not delusion. So I'm with you, but I am respectful of the people who won this election for the Labour Party, because it's not a small thing to win, and we tend to lose a lot more than we win.

41:13So I am humble in the face of the strategic judgments that the leadership of the party made. If you'd said to me most of the last three or four years that Keir Stammer could do what Neil Kinnock, what John Smith and Tony Blair did over, what was it, three, four parliaments in one parliament, I wouldn't have believed you. Corbynism was a catastrophe for the Labour Party and for the country. And the fact that within, quote, three years or four years of 2019 and Keir assuming the leadership, we're in a position where we've got a majority Labour government and a credible plan for the next five years, is extraordinary.

41:47What have you learned about, looking back on your first period in politics, what have you learned about your flaws as a politician? What were you less good at in that period from 97 to 2015 that you wished you'd been better at? Oh, so many things. I think, firstly, I was in a very unusual position where I got given a pass to the Treasury when I arrived as a backbencher, and indeed to Number 10. And I spent a lot of time in Number 10 and a number 11 over those years. And I think that meant I was pretty careless about my relationships with a lot of colleagues. I think I'm quite shy. That's maybe something that we share.

42:24And that could easily have been perceived as arrogance. And actually, I was just, I was working 19 hours a day. And in that sense, I didn't take as seriously as I should have being part of that intake. I also came in in a by-election, so I didn't have a whole number of peers to start with. But I think I was certainly not good at that. and second That was a Tony Gordon thing going on in that one wasn't it, the by-election? Yes, yes That's right Well basically I, again it's time and chance I was sitting in my law office in Edinburgh and Nick Brown who was then the chief whip phoned me saying I've just told Tony in the garden in Downing Street that Paisley South is now going to have a by-election and he wants you to be the candidate so in that sense yes that takes me back but in that sense one thing was I think I was careless in some of my relationships because I was just so busy.

43:14Secondly, I think I was so young when I was elected. At how old were you? I was the week of my 30th birthday. My wife was very good with me about this. She said, listen, it's a big deal when people meet their MP. I was so keen not to seem pushy, arrogant, kind of brash, that I kind of underplayed my interactions with constituents and others. And she said, you've got to show up and do that. So I think there was stuff about both personal interactions and kind of personal style. I think also it was dazzling and extraordinary to have the privilege of being in the room with people like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

43:50But when it came to probably the vote I most regret in my life, which was the vote on Iraq, I think I placed too much faith in the judgment of others and should have placed more faith in my own judgment. so in that sense I think like anybody you learn and you mature as you grow older and I certainly think I will be a changed politician having had effectively a decade outside. I hope honestly I'm a better politician not just because of what I've learned but because you learn more about yourself as well Maybe my last question, you mentioned earlier that you ran David Miliband's leadership campaign, lost to his brother Ed so that's another kind of chapter in your story through the various leaders of the Labour Party.

44:37I know it's impossible to sort of answer this with any accuracy, but what did you think was going on inside the Labour Party that David didn't win? And what were the consequences of that? Well, we really are raking over old calls. I think honestly, the Labour Party was just weary of the discipline and responsibility that power demands. It was just like, this is just too hard. and I was haunted during that campaign by the sense that if you were going back to your constituency Labour Party on a Friday evening it was just easier to say to the members I'm going to be voting for Ed Miliband than for David Miliband and with David great personal friend who I admire I think there was a sense of oh are we going to have to eat our greens all over again this is someone who's going to demand that we that we recognise those disciplines and those responsibilities of power.

45:26And ultimately, it came down to the willingness of quite a lot of MPs to be willing to have those conversations with their membership. It's a question that I want to ask you, but I don't think I'm going to get an honest answer out of you, but I'm going to ask anyway. I'm actually kind of leading with your chin. I'm leading with your chin on this. But you've been a section of state, and you're not a section of state now. And that must feel a bit weird, right? Honestly, it's not that weird. One of the things that I've been shocked by is how similar the civil services. I thought, I was last in government 14 years ago, that it would be radically different.

45:58It is unnervingly familiar. But you've come back as a junior minister, having been in the cabinet. Yeah, but Rui, you have to understand how fundamentally improbable it is that I'm without 100 ,000 miles of government. The truth is, there were 40 out of 41 of us wiped out in 2015. As you absolutely accurately say, for most of the last 9, 10 years, I've not given serious contemplation to coming back. If you'd said to me at any point in those eight or nine years, in 2024, you'll be sitting in a studio with me and Alistair, you will have not just a Labour seat in Scotland, but there will be 35 of you that you will have a majority in Scotland and Wales and in England.

46:38After the worst election defeat for Labour in decades in 2019, Keir Starmer will not just have a minority, but a majority Labour government. And on the day after he's formed the cabinet, he invites you to be the trade minister, I would have respectfully recommended Alistair Psychiatrist to you. It's so fundamentally improbable. To become the first Minister of State invited onto the country's number one podcast. That is true. He would never... That's true. I don't think we've ever had a Minister of State on. Well, I'm humbled and honoured. But the truth is, you know, in Jonathan Reynolds as Secretary of State, somebody I genuinely like and admire, Keir Starmer, I nominated and voted for him and was delighted when he became Leader of the Labour Party.

47:18if you're part of a team, which takes us back to our earlier conversation, that's what makes politics good. And in that sense, I am beyond thrilled to be part of the team in whatever role. Good. Well, thank you for coming in. See you soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

47:36So, Rory, our first serving Minister of State from the new Labour government. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think he's a very likable chap. I am interested in this weird phenomenon. I should have done more work on it, but I think there were a very surprising number of children of Scottish ministers in the House of Commons, of which Douglas Alexander was one. Maybe we could have got a little bit more into his sister, who of course was a really big leading politician in Scotland. I sort of love the vagaries of memories. So I've known Douglas Alexander, obviously not for as long as you, but a pretty long time.

48:10I remember pitching him when he was Secretary of State for DFID and I was running a charity and trying to get some support back in the day. So that's going back, I guess, 20 years more. I also have different memories of that funny conversation where I was getting advice from him on what to do when he stepped down. So he'd obviously inspired by our mutual friend, General Petraeus had reached out to me to give me consolation. I was actually complimenting him on the compassion and the sweetness of it. What he seemed to remember is that I clearly had got really big headed and convinced myself I was about to be the British ambassador to NATO.

48:38And he really thought I needed putting in my place. I've got to say, by the way, I think, Rory, having briefly worked at NATO during the Kosovo War, unless it's changed a lot, I don't think you would enjoy that job. Well, the thing I was saying to him about it, because I'd been briefly, they'd reached out to me to talk to me about whether I might be interested in the job, I think largely in order to try to bribe me to drop out from running as an independent as mayor of London and endorse the Conservative candidate. But the thing that put me off it was the thought that I'd have to be at the airport at four in the morning meeting Boris Johnson and then showing him around and standing behind him while he blumbled his way through every conceivable NATO meeting.

49:15Yeah, yeah, you would enjoy it. You would enjoy that. Tell us a little bit about Douglas though. He was quite sort of earnest and on message. Presumably he's not quite as much like that when he's not a minister. I thought he was on a lot. I mean, we didn't really talk that much about current government policy. And I think we agree that any minister who comes in at the moment, if you're on government policy, so for example, Brexit, but he didn't hide the fact that he clearly still thinks Brexit was an absolute disaster and a tragedy, but then he sort of sticks to the line. I'll tell you where I found him very interesting.

49:49You mentioned the son of the manse, and I always knew that he was a son of the man, Slyke Gordon. But I hadn't quite realised that his faith was such a big thing for him. Yeah, it obviously was. And I'd obviously got that wrong. Because I was assuming that he'd lost his faith and what that made him feel about his father, who believed so strongly. And of course, he was very keen to know that he was in church last Sunday, he'll be in church next Sunday. And it does very much inform his politics. And I also thought he was very frank, more than you claim that I am, even though I think I'm pretty frank about these things, on the whole sort of Tony Gordon thing.

50:26Because I think that if I could sort of track back through the various stages, Douglas was always very much seen as being part of Team Gordon, but he wasn't in that sort of Charlie Whelan bracket of, you know, Team Gordon at the expense of Tony, Team Gordon going around putting the boot in. Just to remind people, Charlie Whelan was the communications director, right for Gordon Brown? He was Gordon's press guy yeah and I think that he was for me there were far too many people around Gordon who basically thought that the way to promote Gordon was to sort of go around the place saying how much better he was than Tony and Can't have been very helpful for you if you were trying to run a press operation for the Prime Minister of the government.

51:06No it was draining and it was unnecessary and it was ridiculous and I've always felt that you know politics is a team game government is a team game and you have to kind of try to stay with the team. And Douglas always managed to navigate that really quite well. I think that's when I was aware that he had pretty serious heavyweight political skills, even though he was part of the much closer to Gordon in terms of his job, sometimes in terms of policy and so forth. He was always totally accepted by us, if you like, as part of the core team around Tony. And that became very, very helpful because the other thing about Douglas is he does have a very good strategic mind for campaigns.

51:48And that meant that he was somebody that we could bring in when talking about some of these broader campaign issues. So I think it's, and I think it's great that he's gone back. I really do. I mean, the reason I wanted him on the podcast is I think, and I enjoyed the conversation that you and he had about, you know, how you both dealt with leaving and the changes that you make in your life and the different challenges and how they open up. But I think it's great that he's gone back. And as we discussed in a recent episode of Question Time, you, of course, left as soon as the interview was done.

52:21But Douglas and I hung around a bit, chewed the fat. And, you know, he was sort of genuinely enjoying being back. And I don't think he is thinking, oh, I should have been a cabinet minister because I've been a cabinet minister before. And I think in politics, there's not enough of that. It's quite rare. I mean, I remember Leon Fox was, I think, offered a minister of state position by George Osborne and David Cameron and turned it down. Leon may challenge this, but I was with George Osborne at the time when the conversation was happening. And certainly the version I got, he turned it down because he said, this is ridiculous.

52:57You know, I had that job 15 years ago and I've basically been demoted. and I know it was tough for quite a lot of people that I knew I mean Damien Hines took a step down Matt Hancock took a step down this trust took a step down Rob Jenrick took a step down but often the politicians who are successful and survive are those who were prepared to take a step down I mean it's often rewarded by the party I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't find himself back in the cabinet at some point. People like seeing that, don't they? Well, the other one that's worth mentioning in this context, we had something during the really bad times when things were not good.

53:43We had this thing where Douglas and I were part of what was called a group of death. And the group of death were these meetings that we had between Tony Gordon, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls. I think Ed Miliband was there. Ed Balls was definitely there. Me, Philip Gould. and this is when we were trying to sort of, you know, really re-knit things back together and get people on the same page again. And so Ed Miliband, he's been the leader of the Labour Party and he's stepped out. He's now a member of the Cabinet. And I think, you know, in most walks of life, you know, people go up and they go down. And okay, people like a sort of never-ending, rising trajectory.

54:21But in business, that doesn't happen. In schools, that doesn't happen. You have people overtaking each other. So I think it's good. And also, Douglas has got a lot of experience now, which I think he hopefully will bring to bear in a way that helps other ministers as well. Well, the big example with us was a guy called Michael Fallon, who'd been in Parliament, I think, since the 1980s. David Cameron got elected. He'd been a minister under John Major. And David Cameron didn't even make him a minister. And you would have thought that would have just made him sort of go into permanent rebellion, instead of which he became, from 2010 to 2012, the most loyal backbencher attack job.

54:57for David Cameron going out on the news supporting him again, was rewarded by giving a junior ministerial position in 2012, and then eventually ending up in the cabinet as defense secretary. So I do think people like it, the sense that people can subjugate their egos, get back in at a more junior position, prove themselves, and they often get rewarded. Maybe in the first by-election in a Tory winnable seat, you should get in there and then say, I'd like to be parliamentary undersecretary, PPS to Kimi Baglock. Exactly, shadow PPS to Kimi Baglock, and I could be eventually rewarded and get better.

55:29The only thing I'd like to grumble with, finally, which showed Doug Salisand was very, very skillful, but I also thought was a bit naughty. I twice tried to pin him down on what I think is Labour's major mistake, which was that they had gone into an election saying they weren't going to raise taxes, and they now find themselves, having got elected, in trouble. And he kept saying, yeah, but that was essential to get elected. And I was trying to say, well, maybe you could have given up a bit of your majority to actually be able to get something done. And he managed to spin it in the most beautiful way.

55:58I remember he'd learned this from you. He said, Rory, I've been reading your book. And one of the things that I noticed in your otherwise excellent book was the sense of despair. And for me, despair is not an option. Desperate is not a strategy. Desperate is not a strategy. And I just thought, my goodness, that's quite a way of completely avoiding to answer my question twice over. Yeah, yeah. He was basically saying we're going to make change anyway. But no. And also, that's where you're right about this thing about serving politicians. You know that in some areas they sort of have to stick to the line.

56:33And any Labour politician at the moment who says we made a mistake by ruling out all those tax rises, they're not going to do that, are they? Yeah, but they don't necessarily have to get out of the question by suggesting that the man they're talking to is a sort of pathetic pessimist who's given up on life. There might be another elegant way of joking. No, Rory, Rory, Rory, you completely misunderstand what he was doing. He was basically thinking, if I plug Rory's book and say that I really enjoyed it, he's not going to press me a third time. And he was right. I see. Very good. Brilliant genius.

57:06I get it. as Kamala Harris said to Donald Trump, you know, flattery and favours will get you a long way, Vory. And that's what Douglas was doing to you. And I was pleased to see you fell for it. Definitely worked brilliantly. Yeah, fell for it beautifully. Well, thank you, Alistair. And thanks for getting him on. Bye-bye. See you soon.