190. Question Time: Should WhatsApp messages stay private?

0:00Thanks for listening to The Restless Politics. Sign up to The Restless Politics plus to enjoy Adfree Listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to TheRestlessPolities .com. That's TheRestlessPolities .com. Let's play Burlington's Guess That Price! Back to school means Back to Saving. We're bringing you kids jeans starting at a hold on a minute, just $11 .99. Burlington's Acing This Test. What about character backpacks? We've got them starting at $12 .99. Burlington's Dutted Again. How about sneakers for the kids? A plus brands and right on trend starting at $11 .99.

0:36Saving is now in session. Burlington deals, brands, wow! Stalls and Selection is very by location. Gatorade is the number one proven electrolyte blend designed to hydrate better than water. So you can lose more sweat and raise your game. Gatorade, is it in you? At Blinds .com, it's not just about window treatments. It's about you. Your style, your space, your way. Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right. From free expert design help to our 100 % satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows. Because at Blinds .com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

1:21Visit Blinds .com now for up to 40 % off and say why, plus a professional measure at no cost. Rules and restrictions apply.

1:36Welcome to the RESTAS Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. Very good. Where do you want to start us off? What about... I mean, we don't like talking about him because he's just so awful, but Mark Haynes wants to know, why did Boris Johnson and the former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison go to Israel? What could they possibly achieve there and is this their role? What did you make of it? Well, I think their visits will be welcomed by the Israeli government. I mean, I think the Israeli government made a great deal of their visits because they saw it as a sign of solidarity art.

2:08And they... There were a lot of photographs put out and not kind of newspapers you'd read, but the telegraph, for example, page three, had sort of half the page showing Boris Johnson walking through Jerusalem looking, you know, anxious with Israeli ministers with him. But I think it's something that Israel is looking for big public symbols of solidarity and sure enough, he came out and gave a very strong rose -ready statement. So I think it's largely symbolic. What did you make of what he's up to? I was slightly turned off it when I saw that he did a quote exclusive interview with GB News where...

2:39Which he's just got a job at, hasn't he? You employ him. Well, I noticed the telegraph, although it carried the photograph, I had very little about him because I imagine they're a bit irritated that this person who they used to pay 250 ,000 pounds a year to us now GB News and a column of the mail. Yeah. It is fine, Johnson and Morrison to a less of his temper. They both, to me, had just the symbols of the populism that we should be getting rid of and not giving them that much of a platform. So I don't know. I must tell you, by the way, I spoke at the mansion house the other night at a dinner and the catering was provided by the clink, you know, the clink charity.

3:10Yes, yes. You had wonderful charity. Fantastic. Starting in Brixton, so quick and right people about clink if you want to support it. So lovely idea. And the idea is to train prisoners up in different bits of catering. They run a prison, they run restaurant in Brixton prison called the clink where you can go and eat. But also when prisoners who've been through the program leave the prison, they're often met at the gate, they're helped into a job, they have catering companies who help employ them. Well, they do sit -in -gills while they're there. So the dinner that we had at the mansion house, the catering was done by guys on day release.

3:42Amazing. Anyway, what it meant was that I was able to start my speech by getting everybody to thank the caterers and say that by the time we get to our comfortable beds of the chef who's just cooked us that wonderful meal will be back in his cell in Brixton. And wouldn't it be marvellous if in a year's time the same function was before by Dominic Cabe's at Boris Johnson? Ah! How do you wear that very, very well? I got told off, actually. I gave us speech at St Martins in the fields and got slightly told off for referring to Boris Johnson and my speech. Somebody said to me, you'll speech me more powerful if you hinted that that's who you're referring to, but that you discredits yourself.

4:18So we have a, unless some of the dramatic happens to him in the next month, shall we not mention him released a month? Very good. Excellent. Excellent. It's a very interesting question from Russ McNaughton. What she make of the idea that Robert Malley was staring the US towards allowing Iran to be a more dominant power in the UK. So this is a real inside Washington baseball story I would have thought for 99 % of listeners. Rob Malley is somebody that I know a little. He was an American diplomat. He was the special envoy for Iran. He played a very important part in Obama's negotiations around the nuclear deterrent.

4:55He ran the International Crisis Group as the predecessor to Comfort Ero who we are about to interview on leading. Rob has been suspended and there's not much clarity around why he was suspended. It appears to be suggestions going around that he'd mishandle classified documents, but at the heart of it all seems to be a disagreement within the administration around the way that Rob and various people that Rob was working with were reaching out to Iran and dealing with the Iranian media and with Iranian expatriate groups. But fascinated that this is the story that Russ McNaughton's got his things around.

5:29It is interesting because Rob Malley was one of the most trusted central parts of the Biden team and it's very interesting that he's been suspended. Are you hinting there that he was possibly thought to be getting too close to the Iranians? Yeah, that seems to be the implication yet. Because one of the things I've been reading, I can't remember I was reading about this, but it was where Netanyahu in the Israeli context celebrating what he saw as the demise of the Arabists in the foreign office. The foreign office is just as simple as the Iranians. Sorry, I'm just broken your rule, but I do remember when I just become the minister of state in the foreign office.

6:03You're talking about the rule of the foreign office. Three minutes. No, but it relates to it because it's always struck with me. Boris Johnson advised me to breakfast in the travellers' club just around the corner from where he was living in Carlton Terrence, which is a foreign secretary's house. And he turned out late with his bodyguards and there was no real breakfast available. But what he did was rant at me about Arabists in the foreign office. And the implication was very strongly, you're an Arabist or you're part of this Arabist thing. And I'm going to make a speech. And he was essentially suggesting to be a breakfast that he was going to make a very punchy speech about Islam, Arabs, terrorism, calling out the Arabists, making the case for Israel.

6:43So this thing about the Arabists, which goes all the way back to Lawrence, Arabia, and was at the heart of the problems, the British Mandate Palestine, when Britain was trying to balance very, very unsuccessfully Jewish and Arab movements within Palestine during the 30s and 40s. But the accusation was always that the British Arabists were too much on the side of the Arabs and not sufficiently pros -ready. And it was interesting to hear Boris Johnson leaning into that quite as hard. Well, and I did this something in it. I can recall after one of the, during one of the kind of big crises in the Middle East when we were in power, I can't remember the guy's name, but there was somebody there from the foreign office that was, I mean, you couldn't get him to say anything really positive about Israel or indeed about the United States in relation to the handling of this issue.

7:33So there was maybe something in that, but it was interesting that Netanyahu saw that as a significant thing that the foreign offices he saw it was. Well, it's been incredibly traumatic because by the time, and this was partly under New Labor actually, that you broke the link between the language training, the area expertise and the ambassadorial jobs. So by 2010, 12 out of the 15 ambassadors in the Middle East couldn't speak Arabic, whereas a generation before, they had all been through Arabic language training often in a language school in Lebanon. And the foreign office really prided itself on people who spoke really beautiful Fusah, that the last time, legacy of this is someone who's spoken about Fuhu, who you appointed was Gerard Russell, who's the spokesman on Al -Azizir.

8:16Very excellent man, who does speak very beautiful Arabic, but there definitely was a period where that was broken. I think you can get through this one without mentioning Boris Johnson, because you've now, you've got one more to mention. We've got a month to go now. Katrina Radell, the COVID inquiry has raised massive issues about the roles of civil servants and special advisors, but what exactly is the difference between the two and who do and who should politicians actually listen to? The difference is that civil servants sit the civil service selection board, join and serve a full professional career, traditionally a 40 years, ending up with an index -linked pension, and they remain regardless of which government comes in and which government goes out and they work their way up, eventually become directors, directors, generals, permanent secretaries.

9:03And that's really 99 .9 % of the government are these professional civil servants, but sitting at the central government are these very small collection of people of whom the members of parliament who become ministers are one lot, and the other lot are these special advisors who are appointed by the ministers, by which a political party happens to be in power. There will be a number of them in number 10, and then each minister will have one, two, or three of these people, usually somebody fixing on press and somebody focusing on the more political side. And people who enjoy, yes, minister or yes, prime minister, there's already the beginnings of one of these figures who pops around the corner.

9:43And we give us your sense from the difference between the two and how you see the uses of the special advisor and how you think about them. I think the significance has grown probably. I was a special advisor in that I was appointed by Tony Blair and the big difference. And you came in from the outside. You had been a sort of servant all your life. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Jonathan Powell had been a civil servant. Most of the special advisors were from different sorts of backgrounds. We had a, I kind of remember how many we had in total, you know, it wasn't the hundreds. It was in double figures, but it wasn't hundreds.

10:09Gordon had quite a few in the treasury. I think we limited most members to Ed Bulls with one. Ed Bulls, Ed Millivan was often their roots to becoming MPs. Absolutely. George Osborne, David Cameron was specialized in that Hancock's as well. Well, if I go through some of ours, Andrew Donus went to the House of Lords, Pat McFadden, hopefully in the next cabinet, James Pennell, who went into the cabinet, David Miller Band. So a lot of them did go that route. But the big difference is that we in a sense were allowed to be political. Now, I wasn't allowed to represent the prime minister in a political capacity.

10:38I couldn't go into a number 10 briefing and start, you know, slaying off the opposition. But we were allowed to give political advice as well as it were policy advice. I think that's the big difference. And I think that the politicians, it depends on the politicians. I think they probably do listen more to special advisers. In that, the special adviser is probably in their ear more. The special adviser is probably likely to be at all the meetings, whereas a civil servant would dip in and out according to what it was that was being discussed. But there were some ministers who actually, if their relations with the civil service were very, very good, the special adviser might play a secondary role.

11:15But I think in most cases, I don't know what it was like when you were in government. But I think in most cases, the special adviser was probably the one that the minister listened to most. What I noticed is that it can be tricky because often the special advisers are very young, bright, but not often deep specialists in the particular area they're working on. And so I remember as a backbencher being pretty frustrated with the special advisers in defense, the foreign office, Diffit, talking about things like Afghanistan because they were bright people in their late 20s. And they probably been somewhere else five minutes earlier because the minister just moved in.

11:50And yet you're absolutely right. Often the minister listened to them very carefully and they really processed the papers of the minister and whispered and the minister's in. There's a tradition in the conservative party also that frustrated me, people like Prit Patel would do it of bringing in special advisers from things like the taxpayers alliance, which is a sort of tough and street setup. So when I was in Diffit, she brought in a special adviser who was very much there to make the radical case against aid sort of. So I think people can use their special advisers as sort of disruptors to challenge the sales.

12:22Now there's a question here from somebody called Matthew Taylor. I don't know if that is a Matthew Taylor who was a special adviser. I suspect it is not. What are your views on how to better support the mental health of politicians, given the significant abuse they often face? And how can we break down these barriers to encourage and support more young people to get involved in seeking elected office? I was very interested in the, you read one of the adverts recently for better help. And I was interested that you said that you'd been getting therapy for the first time. Do you think that's something you'd benefited from when you were actually an active politician?

12:55Yes, probably. I mean, I think I definitely benefit from it. What made you decide to do it? Oh, that I was feeling very unsettled. And partly trying to process my experiences of politician. I mean, I think my book Politics on the Edge, as he plugging it again, is largely about trying to describe why it is such a bizarre, horrifying, strange environment. Did you find the, is my motto, thinking ink? Did you find that writing the book itself helped? Yes, really helped. Really helped me clarify and really dig into why I found that such an odd profession. I mean, I was thinking about this last night.

13:29Somebody was trying to say to me what's wrong with it. The example I came up with was Liz Trust, that I remember arriving as the environment minister. I'd been in the job for a few hours and I thought, this is unbelievable. It's so wonderful. I'm now the environment minister. And this is my chance to really make a difference to plant another 300 million trees, to clean up our air, clean up our beaches and water, what a privilege. And this trust came to see me and said, Rory, I want you to produce a 10 point plan on the national park. And I thought, it's fantastic on the national parks minister.

14:00Okay. So I said, it's actually said, great. I'll get the chief executive's national parks and we'll spend a few weeks working on this. And I'll be able to come up with a vision for the next 20 years in national parks. You know, it came to you. Imagine how wonderful that is. And she said, no, no, I wanted by Thursday evening. It was Tuesday. And I said, well, we were talking about it. And she said, come on, Rory, how difficult can it be? I can tell you, you know, number one, get young people into nature. Number two, clean up the national parks. I don't know, maybe I get seven together. And sure enough, Deity Telegraph Friday morning, Lystrust is seven point part for the national parks.

14:27So that is probably a classic example of Lystrust thinking she needs something and is said to a special advisor. I'm having lunch with the Telegraph. I want to give them a story. What would it be? Classic. Yeah. And she then didn't think about national parks ever again. I didn't think she ever visited the national park. And I thought it's so odd. I mean, this is part of the sickness, the whole thing, that she wouldn't feel what an amazing opportunity to really think hard about national parks. And what about this question about supporting mental, that supporting mental health politicians? I had several MPs, not all Labour, but mainly Labour, but several MPs who contacted me before the last election, saying that they couldn't face the campaign.

15:05And they were thinking of Jackie in or what I feisted I have to get them through psychologically, et cetera. And I didn't realise having worked there for so many years. I didn't realise there actually is a psychological support network within Parliament. But so many of the MPs don't want to use it, because they're worried about the stigma attached to it. Yeah. I think the stigma's going down a bit. Oh, yeah. It's going down a lot. It's going down a lot. But it remains the most poisonous work environment. I mean, we'll see more about this, but there's some horrifying revelations about the Conservative Party now coming out, where it looks as though the party may have been paying victims who were raped by a serving MP, and that this is all being covered out.

15:42I mean, it's so horrible. The combination of lack of seriousness, genuine kind of bullying and brutality, running from the former speaker right the way through the back benches, the sexless sorts, and there's sexless sorts and allegations. I mean, it is the most bizarre. When you read, I don't know if you've read Chris Bryant's book, but when he lists all the kind of personal life scandals that they have been in this Parliament, and I think the chapter is called, is this the worst Parliament we've ever had? And he reaches the conclusion that it is. And some of these things now, it's almost like they just come and go in a day and people just move on to the next one.

16:17I didn't think there's any environment like it. And of course, one of the things that we should be thinking about is people talk about it and they never do anything about it. What would it mean to have some sort of induction process for MPs to try to share values with them, to try to set up standards, to try to provide in some kind of HR system in a light touch way to guide people? And the problem is everybody, every MP's a sole trader who thinks they're accountable into their constituents and they don't really have a boss, which allows them to behave in these completely horrifying kind of... Well, I was at the doorstep in Britain, what book festival, doing the Q &A, there was a question which has been sort of troubling me ever since.

16:55It was a woman who was talking about abuse in social media and so forth. And she, if I paraphrase her question, she said, you know, how have you managed to go from being a kind of national, an international hate figure to somebody that we all quite like? And I've thought about that a lot because I think I definitely said to myself, I have to develop a really thick skin and it has to be real. And developing a thick skin whilst remaining sensitive to things that do matter, sensitive to people, sensitive to opinions, sensitive to the needs of others, which I think you need in politics. I think it's very, very hard thing to do.

17:30I think a lot of MPs could do with actually thinking about how they do that. I definitely did it by saying to myself, I am not going to care what most people think about me. I'm going to care about what the people I care about think about me. That's it. And I find that's the only way to do that. That's the problem, isn't it, because the risk is you develop a thick skin and then you end up lacking empathy for everyone. But I think as long as you care for the people that you care about, you will hopefully be able to keep something alive. Have the empathy, yeah. Well, Alcet, I think we should take a break.

18:03This isn't ad from BetterHelp. At the moment, we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alicet's cold plunges. Could be my attempts to meditate or the digital detox that I'm doing in Colombia. But of course, one of the things that we know is that it can be incredibly valuable to talk to another human being, somebody who's actually been trained as a therapist to work through these ideas, calmly objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise.

18:39They've got over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than five million people globally. And you can join a session literally at the click of a button. Change therapists anytime. So obviously not about fixing you, but it's about hearing yourself clearly, maybe for the first time. So talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at betterhelp .com slash rest politics. That's better, help .com slash rest politics. The end. The end. The end. Question for you. Jim McGuin. If Labour win the next election, what are the top three things they must do on day one?

19:19Come, give us a stand. We'll give us two out of three. Well, day one, the first thing you have to do is point a cabinet at a point a government. That's the first thing. Day one is also when you drop to an independence event of England thing. No, if there was day two, day two, I think it was day two. Pretty quick. Pretty quick. You might even be, I can't, it was very, very soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you'd kept that up in sleep to do immediately? I suspect that, so let's say Keir Stalin becomes prime minister. He goes outside Downey Street, he makes a speech, setting out a sort of the big picture thing.

19:47I think, I think actually being clear about a strategy for growth, there's got to be the first thing. I'm probably indicating that this is a long -term plan. Am I right that the Bank of England thing you'd kept secret until that moment? And so it was a sort of surprise for people or not. Or maybe just surprise me, you don't remember it as being kept secret particularly. No, I think it was. Right. Yeah, it was. We talked a lot about the importance of economic stability. And we just interviewed Mark Arneon on leading. That's why I was very interested to ask him whether he felt that it was surprising that the country took so long to get an independent bank of England.

20:18And he basically said, yes. But no, that was very much Gordon Brown wanting to arrive with a really big moment. And my god, it worked politically. So be good to lay a bit of fine one of those things. Although they're not going to reveal it on the rest of politics because they need to keep it secret today too. Well, I think what I think it should be, Rory used to say, well, look, we've basically got the message from the public. The reason we've been relating is people realise that Brexit is a total dead duck. And we'll reach out. We'll go back. I would think Rev. Redlands is so divisive we won't bother having one.

20:50There we go. That would really wake people up. No, it's really wake up. And by the outsidely, I'm not very excited about that. Tom Wheatsinger does Rory ever get frustrated at Alessas informality towards guests' stroke distinguished colleagues. I Rory referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor versus Campbell's Arnie. Well, shall we, what was the person called to you last this question? Tom Wheatsinger. Tom Wheatsinger. Mr Wheatsinger, do you? Mr Wheatsinger, OBE. I'm going to throw it a lot for it. What you don't know, Tom, if I may, is that before we started recording, I said to Governor Schwarzenegger, what do we call you?

21:30Arnie, Arnold, whatever. And he said, you call me whatever you want to call me. But you don't think that actually asking that question, it's very difficult for someone to say, I want you to call me governor. No, but you could have said, well, most people call me governor, right? But I don't buy this thing about it. I think with American presidents, if I were to meet Donald Trump right now, I'm not comparing Schwarzenegger to Trump, there is no way in the world I am calling him Mr. President. But what do you think he'd reply if you said to him? Donald, what do you want me to call you? Trump. Yeah.

21:59God. You're Majesty. You're Highness. No, I probably am more informal than you. I never called Tony Blair Prime Minister. That's true. I did. I did. I did. No, but I mean in the job. I didn't go into him say, would you like a couple of tea Prime Minister? I actually, when I text Rishi Suneak, I've stopped saying Rishi, I now say Prime Minister. Do you need a little bit of time? Can you show me the last text you send? What did he reply? I think he replied, thanks. I think I congratulated him on something. Creep. You told me that you realized when he'd become an awful politician was when you started congratulating David Cameron.

22:34He's been saying, genuinely, he'd done what he impressed me. Now, the AI summit. I don't know. I'm not going to get that. Sorry, you can't just explain me to put my whole life out there. I've got a lot of ideas. Why did you call him Governor? Speaking of that, actually, we've got a question on this. Given what you've just done to me, Steve Henderson, given the Westminster and Scottish politicians get away with deleting WhatsApp messages, what's the point for public inquiry? Should the law be changed to make an offense for politician to delete messages? Or should I answer have a right to read my little text, to Rishi Sienaak?