204. Scotland's pivotal role, the moment everything changed, and whether to serve under Starmer (Part 1)

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1:05Welcome to The REST is Politics with an end of year special. With me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart and hope everybody's recovering well from their Christmas festivities. So, Rory, we're gonna, as we did last year, we're through 2023, maybe also all the time thinking about looking forward to 2024, but by going through a few categories and giving out a few nominal honorary awards, very good. And can I firstly pay tribute, Alistair? I'm very, very flattered. You are wearing the Christmas present, I sent you. So that's the first bit of Christmas cheer. Shall I describe it? Yes, please, yeah.

1:45Those who came to the Albuhaw may have noticed that when I struck up Ode to joy on the backpipes Rory dug into a huge carrier bag Behind his chair and pulled out this stuart tartan Jacket or I think they call shackets or Jackets When they're sort of part jad I don't know if Jonas got word for them and I'd unbeknownst to me Fiona afterwards said to you oh god, Alice to love one of those and the next thing I know Rory It arrives in the post this morning. Well, very kind. Thank you very, very much. Very happy Christmas. Very happy Christmas to you and your family. Thank you. Let's start positive with the best and worst UK politician, best first.

2:29Well, it's a lovely question. So one of the two standout things I thought that we did this year, which I really enjoyed, was our two Andes leading interview, where we talk to Andy Burnham and Andy Street, who are the mayor's responsible for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, and I thought they were a really interesting example of a new type of British politics with a strong sense on what was particular and local about their own economies and industries. They weren't too tribal. They interacted well in the room, and I was really charmed and won over by them. So they are your UK politicians of the year jointly?

3:05Well, there's actually some other people. I mean, if I'm just going to make it just before I hand over you because I know you'll have a lot of thoughts. I'm going to make a little shout out to, because my worst UK politician in the air as a sort of spoiler is a conservative politician, but I want to try to pay some tribute to some of the conservative politicians who I think I had a better year. Ben Wallace, for example, who was the Secretary of State for Defence, who I think completed a really good tenure as the Defence Secretary probably will go down as one of our probably most memorable defense section in the last 20 -30 years and really showed how somebody who had been a veteran politician started as a member of the Scottish Parliament then a long -term member of Westminster Parliament wasn't a high flyer, basically overlooked by David Cameron.

3:53I didn't make it into the cabinet until pretty late in his career, turned out to be a really compelling thoughtful defense secretary with a real grip on the details. David Cameron of course who I often grumble about but has made quite a good start so far, at least the moment that we're recording as a foreign secretary where he's done some quite interesting stuff on challenging settlers, West Bank while also trying to play his part in finding his way towards a compromise on cease foreign Gaza. And finally my friend Alex Chalk, I know it's always a absolute death whenever I praise one of my friends, the cabinet, but he has made real progress.

4:33He's the Lord Chancellor of Secretary of State for Justice made real progress on trying to address something we talk about a lot, which is this IPP sentences, which are these sort of indefinite life sentences that people have received. He's the first Secretary of State to really try to make some real efforts on that for more than 10 years. And he's also made the first moves towards getting rid of short sentences, which should relieve some pressure on our present system. Over the end. It was also when I got back from Edinburgh, after Alice did Alice's funeral, I got back, turned on the TV, it was Channel 4 News, and there was your friend Alex Chork doing a park run inside the grounds of a prison.

5:14And there were interviews with him, and also some prisoners who were doing this park run inside the prison. He was talking very well about the importance of exercise as part of any prisoner's life. Hat's off to him for that. He is not, however, my UK politician of the year. I'm going to pin you down though. If you had to name one of those people who is your UK politician of the year, I'll allow you the two andies as one. Yeah, I'm going to demand a name. I will go for... Yeah, I'll go for the two andies. I think they're a very interesting, perky representation of a new politics in Britain. Okay, I hope I'm not being too tribal here already.

5:55I'm also going to go for a concert as my worst UK politician. I've got a horrible feeling we're going to choose the same person. But my UK politician of the year, I'm going for Anas Sarwa. Oh, tell us a little bit. So somebody we both had lunch with him in Edinburgh, not so long ago. Tell us a little bit about why you've been particularly excited by Anas Sarwa. Well, first of all, I think you'll find it was Glasgow. Very good. Thank you so much. So Glasgow is the way I get apologise. I'm still in Utah, it's very, very early in the morning. So I think Anasawa, who I've known for some time, but I think he's really, really risen to the the job of leader of the Scottish Labour Party.

6:36So he took over in 2021. Scottish Labour was in a complete mess. I can remember once being sounded out if I would go and do an event for Scottish Labour and they basically said it wasn't just that they were getting, they were struggling to get speakers, they were struggling to get anyone who could go to this fundraiser. And I talked when I was up at Alistair's funeral, Douglas Alexander, who was a member of the new Labour cabinet and is now going, he lost his seat but he's now standing for Parliament again next time round. It's a bit of an inspiration for me because he was section state for international development.

7:14Absolutely. He left Parliament for some time and it's now trying to come back in again. There's a back venture. So yeah, very interesting. The Slovenian. It just shows you how the importance of character and personality, whether we like it or not. He said that Anas' character and personality had really changed the mood inside the party. And that when they were campaigning in the Rodergel and Bioletion, which is one of the big successes for Labour in recent months, winning that back from the SMP, he said that The people like him, and you will know this, you get inundated with demands to go and help the cause, etc.

7:49He said people were loving rushing into Rubberglund to help. And it wasn't just that they felt that they might win. It was because the mood in the party was so good. My sense of him is two things. One is that he's an extraordinary sort of part of a political dynasty now. You know, his father was a labor MP and then went on to be, I think, the chief minister from the Punjab, so he then went to the Pakistani politics. But also he says his son is very interested in politics, young son. But he's also, I think the second thing, is along with really loving politics, really enjoying it. He's got a great kind of humor, hasn't he?

8:24He's a very sort of jolly cheerful person. He's very good at kind of ribbing Tories like me, very good at kind of keeping the conversation going, keeps it quite light, knows when to be serious. But I mean, I really enjoyed sitting next to him. I thought he was, I can see why people enjoy campaigning with him. I think he's got real empathy and he's got real confidence and he kind of fills a room. And that thing you were saying about Ravi Ravik Ravik and Tories, he also knows when not to rip Tories. So in the event, there was a marquee. In fact, the best line, there were some wonderful speeches at Alistair's funeral.

8:56But his son, Calum, I thought it was the best slide of the lot. He said, his dad would have been horrified at how much they'd paid to rent a marquee in the grounds of the cathedral for the due afterwards. But Anas and I were talking and a lady that I've met before but don't know what all well are conserved to peer I think she's called Baroness Mubarak and She came over and started talking to us and I started ribbing her about how awful the chore is where and she's lucky She doesn't have a vote was I mean who they'll could honestly who could vote for this lot blah blah blah blah And Anas was the one who kept stepping in and saying you know just ignore it is is far too tribal is this that the other He's very, very funny.

9:34He's very, very charming. He's very, very empathetic. He was also, he's managed to one of the problems that Labour leaders in Scotland have always had is how do you manage having a good close relationship with the Westminster leader of the Labour Party, the UK leader, whilst at the same time being able to project yourself as being your own man. And of course, he did call for a ceasefire in guards are before care, but he did it in a way that it wasn't sort of presented as a sort of massive split because I think he's established they have this close relationship. It's very clever that isn't it because that was always something when Ruth Davidson was running the Tory party in Scotland.

10:14There were always these moments and particularly it became very very clear when Boris Johnson came in because she was very much from my part of the party that sort of left centre of the Conservative Party. That rift became very extreme and when people went into the 2019 election, Scottish Conservatives were called to absolutely terrified because however popular Boris Johnson might have been in some parts of the country, he was not a tall popular in Scotland and that was the moment where we started all this talk about a conservative liberal unionist past. Slop. Sluts. Yeah, the other thing of course that why why this is as well as the fact that I like Annas and Raiteb but also the revival of Labour in Scotland is fundamental to the possibility of of there being a return of a Labour government in the UK.

10:54If Scotland don't recover from the SMP's dominance, so of course, he'd be the first to accept. This is a really important point, Alistair. And you know, somebody can ultimately check the precise stats, but roughly speaking, if Labour performs well in Scotland, and I heard this actually from Anna Sauer, Labour will only need a 5 % swing in the rest of the country to be able to form a decent majority. But if Labour performs badly in Scotland, Labour will need something closer to a 20 point swing in order to achieve the same results. So Scotland is absolutely critical for Labour's ability to win the next election with a comfort majority.

11:29But it's also, and this is something that both of us, I think, care about. It is absolutely critical for keeping the United Kingdom together because having big United Kingdom -wide parties healthy, Labour parties, Conservative parties, Lib Dem parties and Scotland are very, very important. if you end up in a world in which the SMP dominates endlessly. That increases pressure for independence, of course. Yeah, the other point I would make about Anas is that I think he would recognize that just as Kierstharmer has been helped by the Richard Johnson and by Trusses Kamikaze budget. So Anas has had the good fortune politically to be their leading Labour at a time when you've had the Samand problems, you've had the Sturgeon arrests and so forth.

12:18Yeah, again, again for listeners, just to remind people, all these references are not to fish. They're in fact references to the fact that the leader of the Scottish National Party two times to go, Alex Samand ended up in extraordinary court cases and fights with his own party, including allegations around harassment. And then Nicholas Sturgeon has ended up connected to police investigations, particularly targeted most clearly against a husband, which have include allegations of large amounts of funds going missing, of camper vans, and now allegations yet to be proven in court that electric jaguars were purchased off the money.

12:51And all of this has really hit very hard, somebody who was a central figure for the S &P. Yeah. And so I think, I guess, I will recognize that has been to Labour's political advantage. But in a way, you have to be the right man in the right place at the right time. And I think that's what... What back to this point about is warmth and empathy as a human being. I think it's a lot of the credit goes to him for that transformation of Labour in Scotland. The one black mark against him, or he just to show I'm not 100 % tribal, I wish he didn't use private schools, but there we are. He uses private schools very good.

13:27Okay, well listen, and good, interesting also that we both chose figures who are from devolved administrations, I mean, or working in Scottish politics or managed from Birmingham in the other cases. I don't think we need to waste much time on the worst UK politician because let's agree together. One, two, three, so well. Bravo. There we go. That's great. Who was your second choice? Because I had another Tory woman as my second choice. Go on then, who's your second? Well, if I had two, Liz Truss or the Dean Doris. And I felt bad that there were three women, but they have been pretty awful. It was pretty awful.

14:01There was the COVID inquiry. It gave me so much material for thinking about just what was going wrong, not just sadly with some of the elected politicians, but also sadly some of the senior civil servants in the room. Anyway, let's move on to foreign affairs. Give us your best foreign politician. Well, my best and worst are both called Donald. Oh, gone then. Donald Tusk. Yep. And Donald Trump. Tusk for winning the election in Poland for surviving a truly horrible campaign against him. Then, after he won the election for surviving all sorts of Trumpian attempts to stop him taking office, and hopefully, I hope being a sign of the possible reversal of the tide of populism.

14:49And I guess we're going to agree on the worst, aren't we? It's got to be Trump. We aren't going to agree on the worst. And I think we're talking at a very interesting moment where there's going to be an appeal up from this judgment in Colorado about whether Donald Trump can run. But having been quite lighthearted so far, I think next year is basically defined. We've said as the year of elections, but above all is the year of the election in which Donald Trump could be running and could become present elected United States. And that would change almost everything. The whole story of a disintegrating world order of the rise of a very nasty form of authoritarian and populism of lack of international cooperation on climate, on AI, of Putin, dominating in Ukraine, all of this, as well as the collapse of many of the most fundamental bits of the fabric of the democracy of the wealthiest country on earth, is going to come out of what would happen if this evil man won the election in the United States.

15:47So for the rest of politics, and I think we'll be going to the States together next year. That is probably the biggest issue dominating not just the US but the world. I just before I joined you, I had an meeting today with a guy called Tucker Eskieu who I worked with during the Iraq war. And you'll be pleased to know Roy that even though he worked for me in number 10, so bonded by George W. Bush, he's ended up a bit closer to your view of Iraq than mine. But the point, he's a lifelong Republican. He's a Republican to his bones. Worked very closely with Bush. He worked for Reagan. He worked for Sarah Palin.

16:35You meet the guy and you know he's a Republican. And he voted Democrat for the first time in his life. And he said he hoped it would be the last time he had to vote for a Democrat. But he voted to stop Trump. And he's genuinely worried. He's genuinely worried that Trump will stand, the Trump can win. He shares your view that he thinks that Biden has to step aside and he says that's a widespread view now in American politics. But it was interesting to talk to him about just how far removed the Trump republicanism feels from somebody like him, who as I say is absolutely as republican as they come.

17:14And like you, he shares your view that but it's a real and present danger to the very future of democracy. And of course, if it's a danger to the democracy in the United States, that has an impact right around the world. Yeah. Well, let's give a little, I'd like to give a shout out to an American politician from Democratic Party as my best politician, best foreign politician. And that is Rosa Deloro. So Rosa Deloro is a absolute veteran politician from Connecticut. a country represents, she's a congresswoman from New Haven. Some people who follow American politics closely will recognize her as, because she occasionally turns her hair bright pink or electric green.

17:56She was, generally, the Appropriations Committee in the first two years of Biden administration, she's a very, very serious job in Congress. And she has been the most astonishing. I mean, she's what we would call a really passionate local constituency CMP. I mean, she is absolutely into volunteering with the groups working with asylum seekers and Connecticut supporting outreach to and literacy programs to disadvantaged communities. She's just a real community champion, but she also introduced child tax credits for the first time in the United States, delivering $3 ,500 per child to low -income families in the United States.

18:36and transformed poverty, lifted millions of people in the United States out of poverty. At the end of a career that lasted many, many decades, you know, heartbreakingly for her, unfortunately those policies on child tax credits were then reversed and she's now fighting very hard to get it back on the Democratic Party manifesto for the next election, but shout out to Rose Loro as a sign of things that can still work in the United States. Well, that's good. That's excellent. Let's take a quick break and then back with more categories in a minute.

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21:05Why do you invite him? And we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off? Uncrustibles are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, crust.

21:21Welcome back to what I want to call our holiday special. What did you think about the fact that the rest of politics has apparently gone into what I believe is called merch. We managed to sell t -shirts with sort of slightly strange, I mean they looked, you know, more of a kind of music connoisseur, but looking at those black t -shirts with the images, what kind of band would you associate with those kind of t -shirts. I say I looked like 80s country. Right, lovely. And you looked like wannabe punk rock. wannabe punk rock. Good. Good. Not quite me here. Can I have Oxbridge punk? Doesn't quite go full Johnny Rotten.

21:58Yeah. In a tribute to Johnny Rotten, though, I mean, we've as our next category and proposing speech of the year and in tribute to the sex I want to of course to nominate the king for his speech at cop. How did I get you? How did I get you? So this has been I think a year which along with many many challenges has probably been a positive year I would say for King Charles. Very difficult transition from his incredibly much loved mother who had been in obviously for many many decades. And I think the end of the year, that speech at camp where he opened it really drew the world's attention to time when people were being very muddled and complacent to just how extremeless crisis is and the amounts of international respect that he got out of it and also sense that he was able to do that in a way that perhaps other world leaders were not able to do in quite the same way.

22:55he was given the space and the respect to put a British voice forward. And clearly, I think most of climate delegates respected it, and I think he really delivered a beautiful speech, which maybe wasn't reading. Anyway, over to you on the speech of the year. I think it wasn't an important speech, and especially given that a year ago, Rishi Sunak, who I think is becoming more and more petulant, the long we stays in office, but one of his early acts of petulance was to say that Charles couldn't go to cop. and yet I think you're right that his voice was heard. You saw that in the responses from some of the other, because the fact that he was there at the start meant that a lot of the kind of really big players in the world were there at that time.

23:34So they were all responding very, very positively to it. So one, I was not surprised that you chose that as your speech of the year, but two, I think it's a fair choice. I am, again, sorry if you please don't sound too tribal, but I am going to go for the speech that Harriet Harmon made in the debate on the Privileges Committee report in Toboros Johnson. Why? Because Harriet Harmon had been put in this position, Chris Bryant had recused himself. She was chairing the committee. She was subject to some pretty unpleasant attack by the loss of conservatives and by the right wing press. But I think it showed real political integrity and courage.

24:18But what I liked about her speech was that she didn't just talk about herself. She actually singled out the Conservative on that committee for the praise that she was doling around. She said they'd had to be resilient. They've had to withstand threats, intimidation and harassment designed to challenge the legitimacy of the inquiry to drive them off the committee. And thereby frustrate the attention of this House that the inquiry should be carried out. So, so, so, so, and as to you, you're talking about people like Albert Acosta, who I did did some very good questioning of Of Boris Johnson and then I think you will see Walker Charles Walker and Bernard Jenkins I think would you have been defined as a friend of Boris Johnson?

24:57I think he was sort of He was I think but Jenkins an interesting thing very interesting He's the son of a member of parliament like some other people like Andrew Mitchell He's somebody who has been on the right of the party very much in the Euroskeptic side But he's also somebody who has been very serious about standards and public life. So when I was in Parliament, as a backbencher, he was chairing the committee that spent a lot of time looking at the way in which the values and structures of government and the civil service worked and has done, I think, good work on that and serious work on that.

25:27Well, so well done to that committee and the right hon. and right Harriet Harman. But I also think she genuinely understood, and this is something that you and I talked about a lot. She said this, because he was Prime Minister, Johnson's dishonesty, if left unchecked, would have contaminated the whole of government, allowing misleading to become commonplace, and thus he rode the standards which are essential for the health of our democracy. Far from undermining ministers, this report does precisely the opposite. Can I come, can I come into the picture of it to run this? I mean, I think she's absolutely put her finger on it, and I think it's the sense of this were undermining or the kind of coarsening of democracy that is very difficult to trace.