215. Question Time: An election in May, combatting homelessness, and investigating think tanks

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1:36Welcome to TheRestless Politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. So Rory, sleep. Sleep. Others are very interesting question. Alex Smith, how did you both cope with such little sleep in government? With huge burdens of responsibility and complex problems solving a day of the requirement, how did you both cope with your workloads with shut -eye at such a premium? Okay, now this is a big one, because of course Mrs. Thatcher, famously missed the brightened bombing because she was up in the middle of the night, writing her speech, and then people said, although apparently it isn't totally true that she only did four, five hours sleep a night.

2:12I think it was a bit of the mythology. It became a thing that she only ever slept for. I'm not sure about that. Yeah. Only she and Dennis would really know, wouldn't they? Only she and deaths would really know. But it's definitely true that sleep suffers huge. She doesn't it. It suffers because partly because you're traveling a lot. You've got jet lag. It suffers a lot because you're up late voting. If you remember, a parliament, it suffers because you're stressed. It suffers in your case presumably because you were having to get out really early to make sure you were ahead of any of the morning additions.

2:40But tell us about sleep and you when you were in Downey Street. I wasn't very good at it. Well, they're funny enough. I feel more tired. Maybe this is just age, but I feel more tired. I get tired more often these days than I did when I was running hard the whole time. How old were you at a time when you came into Downey Street? I was late 30s. Yeah. But I had a very, very, very bad attitude to sleep most of my life. When I was a journalist, I, Jordy Greg, who went on to bed with the maelons now on the independent. And he worked for me on today newspaper. And this was a few weeks before I was went absolutely completely off my head literally.

3:22And I once called him and said, Jordy, sleep. It's a waste of your time and mine. LAUGHTER Now I think he ignored me. That's a great, great management technique. That's what, you know, that's often encouraged in business school. These days as a matter of time. I don't think I would have survived in the modern industrial relations. Nor should I. But that used to be my kind of attitude. If you're asleep, you can't work. If you're asleep, you can't think. And actually now, I love sleep. And I've learnt how important sleep is actually to how your mind works. I used to sleep whenever I could. And I would regularly, I didn't watch the news at night.

4:01So I would regularly, if I'm managing it to bed before 10, it would be just, you know, I'd hopefully get a few hours of sleep. I did get up very, very early. I still do get up quite early. I never used to say naps. I now do have the occasional nap. But I think it's a very, very serious question. I think exhaustion in government is a real problem. Well, it's indeed huge problem. And there's a great book by Matthew Walker called, Why We Sleep. And I'm now talking to you with this aura ring on my finger, which tells me exactly how I slept. So last night I can tell you, I got 6 ,025 minutes. And I got an hour and 10 minutes of deep and 57 minutes when you have all that data, what is it?

4:37Help, does it, can you do anything with it? Does it help you sleep better the next day? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, because what you notice, you get really competitive. You would get really competitive. Obviously, you are a very competitive person. So if you strap this to your wrist, you would want to get a better and better sleep score and what you would discover is patents. So you'd discover that if you ate late at night, you get a less good sleep score. Your heart rate remains elevated if you had a drink in the evening. So basically the problem is it makes you kind of slightly boring and puritanic, because it really works.

5:05I had to get a good night's sleep as to eat at about 5 .30 in the afternoon and don't touch the drop of alcohol then your sleep score goes through the roof. So eat early, no alcohol. Yeah, and then you get a really good sleep. But the great thing is you can then play around with it. You learn about temperature in your room, you learn about the type of bed you have, etc. I'll just back to politics for a second. I'm exactly like you. I'm now obsessed with getting a good night's sleep. And I'm kind of grumpy that I only got an 81 score instead of an 85 score last night. But when I was younger at university, I don't know whether it was like this.

5:38I was very proud of the fact that I never slept on the night before my essay was due. I would always stay up the whole night trying to keep myself going on shortbread biscuits. And shortbread biscuits? Shortbread biscuits, that's what I mean. You didn't take, I'm fetamines. My drug of choice to make it through. To make it through the night. Is this before or after your opium phase? Exactly, but this is before my opium phase. And I would then stagger in to see my poor tutor reading a completely nonsensical essay that I thought was really good because I'd been working at between four and 10 in the morning.

6:06Yeah, I couldn't do the whole night, late night thing anymore. I don't think I could, well, yeah, I have worked through the night fairly recently, but I don't enjoy it. You mentioned Margaret Thatcher doing the conference speech and on the day of the Brighton bomb. I didn't enjoy doing conference speeches because my sense of care is Stammer is that he likes to get his conference speeches kind of wrapped up a couple of days before the event. Tony Blair was somebody who he needed that sort of process of endless iteration and reiteration and rewrite to the last minute. We were actually a couple times where he was still rewriting a speech as he was carrying it up to the podium.

6:43But I just felt that it was, we would regularly go conference week from the Saturday to the Tuesday with maybe six hours sleep total. Yeah, there's a great, it's completely a powerful, but I think the story is that Lord Palmerston dreamt that he was making a speech in the House of Lords and then woke up to find that he was.

7:06Now here's one, Peter Bell. How do you assess the recent actions of the conservatives in attempting to reform the electoral commission, introducing new election laws such as increasing the spending limit to 35 million pounds, extending voting rights to expats, and introducing mandatory photo ID for voting, specifically what are the implications of these moves, the independence, the electoral commission, and the integrity of the democratic process? Interestingly, the electoral commission, which normally keeps a pretty low profile, but actually they've been giving pretty public interviews about this, including one in the FT, one in the Daily Mirror, essentially saying that they're not at all happy.

7:44They say this is telling the umpire how to enforce the rules of the game. Have you been following this one? Yeah, I have. And I huge respect for them. The guy think was the head librarian and the House of Commons libraries now running the electoral commission. Though sometimes, I got really wound up about this, very upset about what the government was doing with photo ID, but then when I read the small print, it turned out that 14 ,000 people, so 0 .25 % of those voting in the local elections would turn away because they didn't have the correct ID. And of those 4%, it was because they're photo ID, which means about 700 people in the whole country.

8:18So I'm slightly less worried than I was when I first read these stories. What about the funding, which, you know, didn't seem to get any debate in Parliament at all, that they suddenly double the limit, which I presume means that they think they've got loads of money coming in, which maybe the Labour Party won't have. Well, ID's think funding is the big, big thing. I mean, and Britain's great thing, which we've got to cling onto is these funding limits on how much you can spend a constituency election. And I think we talked about this before, the lovely thing, unlike the US, where I was talking to a congresswoman who was saying, I think she spent four, five hours a day, every day, seven days a week fundraising.

8:55When I was running in Penderwood in the border, the limit on our spend in the short campaign was £15 ,000. And you're not going to generally sell your soul for £15 ,000. You're going to be able to raise it from small donations. So that's the good bit. The bad bit is the way that businesses for the Conservatives and trade unions for the Labour can put in a huge, she disproportionate amounts. Quite unlike the US, and the US for all its problems in the key battlegrounds, 70 % of the money coming to a senator or a congressperson is coming from small donations of $5, $10, only 30 % from big donors.

9:28But if you look at the Labour and Conservative parties, it's the unions or business people writing million, two million pound checks that are carrying them through. And that gives far too much influence to those people because they're then sort of 10, 20 % of your entire funding for the campaign coming from one individual, one organisation. There also, I mean, I know there's always been a little bit of this, but I think I'm writing to saying that every single treasurer of the Conservative Party of recent years is now in the House of Lords. Many of their major donors are now in the House of Lords.

9:55I mean, our system is absolutely rotten. We've got to change it. Yeah, and there's another bit which I think you've mentioned in the past, but is absolutely critical, which is this whole dodgy business about the fact that you've got a UK registered company. Even if it's not making any money in the UK, it can give money through to these parties. So, I mean, the US of course was destroyed by the Supreme Court ruling, which said that it's a constitutional right to be able to pump money into these superpacks. So all the campaign finance legislation becomes irrelevant because these superpacks with hundreds of millions of dollars behind them are determining these elections.

10:31There's a related question from Laura Shields. Now, another 2 million UK citizens living overseas can register to vote. Do we need a national discussion on what UK citizenship really involves? I mean, imagine they're doing that because they assume that UK citizens who live abroad are likely to be a bit older and a bit wealthier, therefore more likely to vote Tory. Is that a fair assumption? Yeah, I think that's a fair. I think these parties are all desperately trying to get as many advantages as they can. It's kind of a bit Jerry Mandarish, isn't it? The whole thing. Well, the most dramatic example was what David Cameron tried to do with the Lib Dems in 2011 -2012, which is abolish to House Lords and exchange for the Lib Dems voting to reduce the number of constituencies and redraw the boundaries in a way that was supposed to guarantee the Conservatives were going to get majority in the next election.

11:16You were very cross about that. I was very miffed about that situation. Now we've had these boundary commissions, but they haven't reduced the number of MPs who were sticking at 650. We're not coming down to 600. Yeah. To all of David Cameron, I wonder if he is the answer to this. Tim Harris, this is a question for Rory. I really enjoyed your book. Since his publication has anyone who features in it approached you to dispute your account or apologise for their behaviour. Oh, that's very kind. I've actually had two colleagues who very kindly come up and said they wish they'd voted for me and they regretted not voting for me, which I thought was.

11:50Kind of another colleague who said, I'm not sure it's true, but he said that if I had made it through to the last two against Boris, he still thinks I might have had a chance with the membership. There are other people, I think, probably including David Cameron, who, if they've read the book at all, I guess he probably remains saying by not reading that kind of thing, would probably be a bit cross. But you haven't had anybody dispute? No. No. Oddly Quentin Letz, who's a correspondent for the Daily Mail, wrote a very negative review of the book and contacted a colleague who I had accused, trying to punch me on the nose behind the speakers chair and not only did the colleague not deny that he'd done it, but basically gave the impression of Quentin Letz.

12:27He rather wished he'd carried through all his threat. The only one I remember from the time when I published my diaries was David Trimble took exception. What didn't he like? Do you remember? He didn't think that I accurately reflected his position on some of the issues that we were discussing. And if I ended up making a long speech about why he disputed, I can't remember the specifics, but he was quite a cross. I didn't write here piece somewhere saying that if I got it wrong, I got it wrong, apologize. But it wasn't a factual thing. It was more than he felt I wasn't sufficiently understanding the position he was trying to project.

13:02Very good. Okay. Croydon, Rosie Beacon, Alistair, you promised to the event you didn't Croydon last week that you would mention Croydon on the podcast this week. So it's a reminder of that promise. I would like you to say three good things about Croydon. Can you please start by reminding international listeners where Croydon is and what Croydon is? Croydon is to the south of London. Many of our overseas listeners, if they know anything about Croydon, it will probably be Crystal Palace Football Club. I should say by the way, that is a very good question because it is impossible for me not to want to have that question asked because I did make that promise at the meeting.

13:37It was a Q &A and somebody literally just said, will you mention Croydon on the podcast? And it's funny how they did feel, I think, slightly sort of put upon that people didn't think Croydon was, it's not London, but it's got its own identity, it's greater London, et cetera. So three good things about Croydon. I like a tram. Do you like a tram, Rory? I love a tram. I love a tram. Well, Croydon's got trams. Croydon Women's Football Club. Very good. Got a very good reputation. And also, I'm going to give a shout out for the event I was speaking at, how can I put this without sort of making people alarmed?

14:06It got a bit tasty in that there were protesters outside, protesting mainly about Gaza, but once they heard that I was there, so let's turn it into a sort of big bonfire about Iraq. And the police had to come out and sort of help me get out alive. So I'm going to say that Croydon has got two very, very, very nice police women who managed to get me out unscathed. Well, Croydon's very remarkable, isn't it? Because it's got a lot of high -rise buildings, very unusually for somewhere which is sort of basically a bit of London. Got some amazing thing called Safran Square, which is that it's huge red and purple, things sticking in the air.

14:44It's got very good green spaces though, I noticed that, some nice trees. Very good. One more thing about Croydon that I like about Croydon is my friend Gavin Barwell was the MP for Croydon. He was indeed. That's right. He's a very sensible, sane voice in the current debate about the future of the Conservative party, I would say. He is absolutely. He's a tribute to Croydon. Here's one definitely for you, Rory. Got it. Jordan Coombs. 68 is too old for prison officers to retire. Your thoughts on this, please. Currently prison offers pension ages linked to state pension age. 67 year olds are expected to restrain 21 year olds.

15:19The pension contributions are less than the police, so is the wage. Come on forward, prison minister. Well, look, it's clearly a 67 year old. It's not going to be able to restrain an active 21 year old. Well, it depends on who the 67 year old is, Rory, may I say. And who the 21 year old is. I mean, you, obviously, would be very different, right? I think if we're going to have prison officers work that long, it's necessary to have different kinds of roles for them. So I think firstly, being a prison officer is an amazing role, but it's incredibly challenging because it's a combination of being sometimes like a policeman, sometimes like a teacher, sometimes like a counselor, it's totally absorbing.

15:55There's an amazing program called the Unlocked Graduates program, which is trying to bring very talented young graduates into becoming prison officers. I encourage anyone listening, but clearly, as you get older, you would have to design a system where you got into the less physical bits of the job, otherwise it's simply dangerous. Yeah. Nick Simpson, with all of the speculation on the election date, how far out from the date does a prime minister need to make a decision? Is it not more likely that Soonack has a number of campaigns and stunts lined up through 2024 and will call the election if one gets sufficient traction?

16:25Oh, do you think that's how it works? You can make it the decision quite close to the event. I mean, we've had this sort of recent situation where David Cameron brought in the fixed term Parliament act. So that was a way of saying we know when the election is going to be. John Johnson got rid of that. So now it's back in the hands of the prime minister alone, the prime minister can decide when the election will be. Certainly from experience, when we were in power of the first time, the decision about the election date is pretty tightly held. And also, I would say Tony Blair didn't finally make his mind up until very, very close to the time when it had to be announced.

17:04You'd like to keep your options open. Yeah, presumably, if you're actually Soonack, you're not going to want to run anytime soon because you're going to be praying against all the odds that something's going to turn around. I mean, at the moment, he's at a catastrophic situation. He's, you know, as Stan was well ahead of him in terms of net popularity, labors ahead of the conservatives on the economy, that kind of 20 points ahead. I mean, I can't understand people who think he's going to call a male election. Well, it's interesting to say that. That's a graphic that we talked about on the main podcast showing the narrowing of polls in the latter days of a campaign.

17:35Morgan's McSweeney, who is head of Labour Party strategy, who, you know, I think shows that to as many people as he can. But he also is sort of saying internally that he still thinks there is a not insignificant chance that Soonack will go for May, pointing to the bringing forward of the budget to early March, pointing to some of the kind of policy decisions that are being made. So I think it's probably part of the making sure Labour, you know, stay on their toes and don't get complacent. But I think the other factor which I think is relevant to this is that there's a lot of negatives for Soonack at the moment.

18:12What is the one thing he's got left? He does have the element of surprise. And so I think that that is for me. I don't know what you're saying. No, I mean, that's right. I'm sure that's the first thing that's left. But if you're just like surprise and then you're still unpopular and they're kind of reason why the reason why that survey that we put round is so important is because if you look at the polls now and you say the choice of finish, they're a dead duck, okay. But if you then ally them with those, that presentation which shows how much in this very volatile environment we're in, how much things can change.

18:49Imagine a campaign where an issue that Labour doesn't want to talk about becomes the defining issue of the campaign and it happens to be something that the Tories do want to campaign about. So, for example, if I look at the first graphic in that presentation was Australia back when Scott Morrison won, how did Scott Morrison win? What was the issue that turned it? It was the votes. He managed to make the whole election about the votes. Now, I don't think that's going to happen here, but imagine that if he did and imagine that similar narrowing game. So there might, you look, I think it's probably not going to be me.

19:23I think it's going to be October. But I don't think it's a done deal that he's ruled it out. And I suspect that soon act will not be telling that many people internally what he's thinking is on this at the moment. OK. Now, here's a question for you and it's definitely not for me. Mary Page. Jürgen Klopp, Serena Vigman, Gareth Sattisgate, what can our present and future political leaders learn from these inspiring managers that the country might believe in itself? I think you could answer that. You know who they are. Well, Klopp's great thing is that he's he's be quitting when he's ahead, which seems very unusual for a politician.

20:00Well, he's unusual, but actually do you think there's something in that? Yeah. That's an impressive stuff. You know, let's, what is something that you've said or virtually every podcast since the last in the last few weeks is that wouldn't it be great if Joe Biden stepped down? So no, I think what could you learn? Let me give you one thing from each of them. Jürgen Klopp, the importance of allying your passion to your personality. I think politicians could do with it. I think that we don't have any passion in our politics at the moment. Serena Vigman, I think she has an extraordinary calm, which is really, really important.

20:35And Gareth Sattisgate is one of those team leaders who doesn't make it all about him. He makes it about the team. So I think they are three qualities, passion and personality calm and make it about the team. There are three qualities there that good leaders all have. Here's one more thing I'd add, which I think isn't quite coming across in our leaders at the moment. It's about the combination of seeming serious and also giving the impression you're going to get things done. So it's their combination of seeming as though they're a serious person, but also that they've got a clear plan that they can communicate to people.

21:09People have got a confidence. They know what they're going to do. It's a good central leadership, isn't it? I mean, I think for all her many flaws, I remember somebody saying that when they were working for Margaret Sattisgate, everybody knew what she wanted. If you were one of her ministers, you could ask yourself, Quay, is that what would Mrs. Sattisgate want in this situation? And the answer would come immediately. And I think with both Rishi Suneck and Keir Starmer, I don't think they've got that clarity. Now, I have been trying to get Yogan Klopp onto the podcast for some time. I've written all sorts of psychophantic letters in his native language to Liverpool Football Club.

21:45If any of his friends, if any of his family, if any of his players, if any of his associates are listening, I would like him to know that my current top two people that I would love to get on leading are both German, Angela Merkel and Yogan Klopp. Very good. And of course, Pecker Havista, the finished presidential candidate, indeed, along with Alexander Stubb, his big rival. Very good. OK, Roy, let's have a quick break and then we'll come back with some very exciting questions from a very exciting person, Jon Snow, asking about homelessness. We're also going to be talking about whether think tanks should be regulated.

22:24And despite you trying to stop me, I am insisting that we talk about the election in two -valued brilliant looking forward to it. See you in a minute.