279. The Day Britain Decides

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0:21Hello, welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And this is our last podcast before the election. We're recording it in the bowels of these sort of swanky channel for studios somewhere. Now, how must we thank something called the Queen Carolina State? And that's really interesting. So it's sort of guess I'm in 1950s looking tower blocks, named after either the wife of George II or the wife of George IV. Well, thank you for history. What's going on? The thing that I was going to be, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:49So we're hurt. We are going to be rehearsing. Why we have to, we don't rehearse the podcast, do people know? Anyway, we have to rehearse. We're going to be with the likes of Emily Maitler's Krishna Guramurthy and Hannah Fry. Not Queen Caroline. Not Queen Caroline. She's probably dead. If I should certainly dead. If you were looking forward to our trip, US episode this week with Katika and Auntie Karen Mucci, due to everything going on with our election in the UK, it's on a separate standalone US podcast feed this week. Just search the restus politics US wherever you get your podcast. They've got a new episode out now where the Mucci explains why he thinks Joe Biden will not be in the race by the end of July.

1:28So they'll be back on our feed next week as normal. So Roy, what are we going to talk about today? Well, I'm afraid we're going to have to begin with the awful subject of Boris Johnson. And something you hate, perhaps even more than you decide, Boris Johnson, the Daily Mayor. They run each other close. They do. There we are. And there's the front cover of the Daily Mail. And on it, it says Boris and Rishi unite to stop Starmageddon. And the quite interesting things there because they're not united. They barely spoke. For the first time, we see each other. In fact, it's extraordinary. The only reason that Boris has turned up is to stamp on Rishi Sunek at the last moment and get some work credit having not helped in the campaign.

2:08And then to stop Starmageddon, they're not going to stop Starmageddon. And they won't stop Starmageddon either. So there are two different views on this. You'll be astonished to hear the Daily Mail thinks he looks really healthy. Whereas the Guardian actually, so this is the front page of the Daily Mail and the telegraph and the times. They're all pictures of Boris Johnson comes to rally the Tory faith for the last moment and turn it all around. The Guardian, because usually you know the papers have roughly the same story somewhere. Yeah. I literally page one, nothing about him, page two, nothing about him, page three, nothing about him, four, nothing about him.

2:43Finally, you get a sketch about him. John Crace saying he looks and it's another example of this weird world that we live in two completely parallel universes. Quentin Letz is telling us at last this was the speech that we needed over the last six weeks that could have saved the election. And John Crace is like, is there literally anybody left in the country who doesn't think Boris Johnson's terrible? And he won't be put off by him or theory. We talked on the Q &A about, you know, we've sort of slightly fed up with polls, but if we do look at the polls that we've been doing, the JLP, rest his politics polls, Boris Johnson regularly is along with Trutler's Trust, the least popular position in the country.

3:22So why on earth does this really soon act allow that to happen? And also, can I just say, I don't want to touch, just hold it up from me again. Boris and Soonak unite, if sorry, unity means to me that you appear on stage together, you say the same message, he didn't even mention really soon. But it's profoundly revealing, right? There is James Clevverley, there's Steve Bartley behind him, they're all grinning. I mean, there's something about him that makes even people who understand his limitations. So spontaneously smile. And the speech, which I wouldn't particularly recommend anybody reads, but is an example of something that Rishi Soonak didn't do, which is very odd.

4:00And what's really odd about it is that he's meant to be a very smart guy, Rishi Soonak, he voted for Brexit. He could have been trying to make the arguments for Brexit. Now, Boris Johnson does so you and I would disagree with all of them, but at least he's trying to lean into the narrative, he's saying. Yeah, well, but most of the people who I've yet to meet anybody who believes a single word that he says about Brexit now, because of the lies he told about then, I think, I honestly think when you talk about these people behind him, you're all smiling and laughing while I view it, they're so trapped in a world where they were winning and they don't understand that one of the reasons why they're now losing is because of that, I actually think, when I heard they wheeled him out the day before the final day of campaigning, I thought Labour game yet again strategic mistake.

4:46Totally. I mean, if you're going to have an even this idea that he's a great campaigner, a great campaigner is somebody who shifts votes towards them because it's them. Now, he's had that, he's done that in the Brexit referendum and 2019. And in 2019, he won an extraordinary fact. Right, but if you look at the data that John, John Burn, Murdoch put out, I think it was yesterday, the extent to which actually it was Jeremy Corbyn driving Boris Johnson's vote should not be underestimated. If you talk about a great campaigner, campaigns have to be judged by their results. If the Labour party get the result that people say they're going to get, nobody's going to say, here's Thomas, a great campaigner because he doesn't do this charisma stuff that Johnson does, but I just think people are sick to death of it.

5:30Strategically, do you think that their calculation was that they didn't want the Tory Central Office or it was come up, coordinating this campaign, Isaac Levydo or whatever? Do you think they made a calculation that they, he wasn't going to help them by spending six weeks of campaigning, but that they needed eventually to let them appear and the time to make them appear was the argument. I don't know. But because it helps Boris, doesn't it? I mean, that's the awful thing about it is that he has the vanity of now appearing on the front page of every newspaper as having played no part in the campaign, no part in the government, having been thrown out of parliament, not being a member of parliament anymore.

6:09And there he is dominating all these newspapers as though he's single handedly and he's going to use that narrative, isn't he, when they lose to say, if only they deployed him earlier, he would have turned it around. But I just, look, I could be wrong, but I just think he's, I think he's toast. I think he's a, he's a historic figure in that he brought about Brexit. And where does the middle, the telegraph and the times want to still present the story? Here is this great savior waiting in the wings who came in at the last moment. I think they're a bit desperate. I just think they've run out of road and, I mean, the campaign has been pretty poor.

6:43He can make a speech to sort of tickle the private parts of people like James Clevverley. Great. Did you see the video James Clevverley on social media? No. Well, I mean, it was a lot of experience. James Clevverley is our Hemp Secretary. He's your home secretary. He's our home secretary, he's another 24 hours at least. And he was campaigning in his constituencies in brain tree and somebody was filmed shouty at him from the upstairs window. And then James Clevverley tried to engage in conversation with him. There was a lot of bleeping going on from both sides. No, just from the side of the member of the public.

7:13James Clevverley was trying to hold it together. Eventually he slightly lost it. But the guy was essentially saying, and I will warn listeners in advance that there will be one F word in this. He kept saying, do you not people understand? You have fucked the country. You have fucked this country. He kept saying it to him and then he did a C word and all that stuff. But this is the problem with them. Every time you wheel out Johnson or Truss, Soonack reminds people that Johnson and Truss are part of the problem and further reminds them, this is the problem with the United thing, that he didn't distance himself at the one time that he had the chance to do so.

7:48Looking at the many reasons Rishi and Alex gone wrong. So we've talked about not distancing himself from Johnson and Truss, which you think you should have done immediately. We've talked about this mad decision to call the election at almost the worst conceivable time. We've talked about in a D day and stuff. But there's another question I've got, which is just about his skills as a politician if we look back. The conservatives have a story which they're now beginning to produce on things that they've achieved. And the truth of matter is most of the public, I think, and we can see this in some of the polls we've done, literally cannot think of anything the conservatives have done in 14 years.

8:30And one of the reasons they're going to lose the election are people are going to be like, well, okay, you Brexit, but literally otherwise you've done nothing. They've got a story against that. So they've got a story that they have improved educational standards. Right? For example, let's just take that as an example. Let's say it were true, and maybe you want to disagree that they did or did not drive up the piece of sound. And that she phonics has been a great success and people really know. Why has he not spent two years just beating the education drum, preparing himself for this moment, rather than sort of pulling it out in the last sort of two weeks?

9:05I don't know. If that's something they genuinely could boast about, why didn't they really lean into that and just talk about it all the time to give themselves space to talk about it? Because I actually think I was in a school this morning, I think if you talk to teachers and headteachers, they are absolutely at the edge. The school I was in was actually my kids primary school. They've had to lay off teachers. They're talking about the demands now, special educational needs, being such that so the problem is that even if they've improved reading and writing a ability amongst British children compared to where it was and compared to the world, what would happen is that you would have this massive disconnect between them saying that and teachers just can't be out.

9:50I guess parents are going into their schools so they're meeting angry teachers all the time. How about formally more people than work, which is another thing they're very proud of? Could they have run big on employment and try to use that in the last minute? I think all of these things are only that an election campaign has got to be a mixture of what we've done, what we're going to do and what we think of our opponents. Their campaign essentially has been all about the opponents. It's been all labeled out of this. If I don't if you saw the tweet that Rishi Sue that did yesterday, Labour's going to attack absolutely everything and the best response was what?

10:28What, including your wife? I don't know. It's also been very unpleasant. I mean, it has been really up and up because obviously one of my roles on this podcast is to try to make the case for the Conservatives. But I thought their attack on Kierstama suggesting he was going to knock off at 6th and even just pathetic. It also helped Labour in a way because even though Kierstama I think has been pretty good at doing what he said he would do, tearing anti -Semitism out from his roots, the reason he explained he wanted to knock off on Friday at 6pm was because of his wife's Jewish faith. So the media reporting of it today is Jewish groups condemning the Conservatives.

11:14They're going to start in the Guardian. Condemning the Conservatives are trying to weaponize the fact that he said that. But this is a bigger thing isn't it? I mean, obviously it's also daft because if you were running against David Cameron or Boris Johnson, the narrative that they're knocking off at 6 o 'clock might play into a stereotype you might already have. They're no amazing. Kierstama doesn't work quite hard. He gives him impression rather than a serious hardworking guy so it seems a bit weird. But also the sort of the kind of pigmological nature of this, that this is what they're talking about 24 hours from the election.

11:49And the other one down in Torbe is the story is broken. The Tories are going around saying that the Liberal Democrat candidate who is blind is not really blind. So there's a guy with a guide dog going around the place and they're saying he's not really blind. I mean, what are these people on? And that happens. But can you imagine? And there was a picture. So yeah, and by the way, we'll cut back to Ed Davis picture. He did another one yesterday. What did he say? It was a sort of it was another water park, but it was good. It was a really good one. He looked like he was falling off the end of the earth.

12:22But there's a lovely picture in one of the papers today of him with the guy's guide dog, a library picture. But that just shows I think how they've there's no sense of leadership. There's no sense of what the final day message is meant to be. And then you have a situation today. I didn't hear it, but Mel's trying. Yeah. On doing the rounds again. Who I like. Right. Yeah. But he's doing the rounds again today. And he's he's not, you know, he was asked whether whether he would miss being a minister. Yeah. And he said, yes, I will. It's been a great privilege. He was talking in the first instance.

12:53And then in his words, but it's, you know, tomorrow we will have not, you know, there is the risk of we will have the biggest majorities ever been. And the question is, what do you want as an opposition? Now, unless they've that is throwing in the towel, I think to try and say to people that you don't need to vote. So I've been an email touched with somebody who was just at one of Richie Cinex recent events reaching out to Torridown is trying to get to reach deep into their pockets for the final mess. And in the same speech, she's spent the first half of the speech saying, I'm going to win the selection.

13:26And the second half of the speech saying, don't give labor a super majority. Yeah. Exactly. And the person just spontaneously sent me an email saying, you can't say both things in the same speech. You can't say we are winning, therefore, give us money. And we are losing, therefore, don't vote. Because that seems to me to be the sort of the trend strategy at work. And it just doesn't work. Did you see, by the way, I sent you something from the electoral reform society who'd done some polling showing that they reckon one in four people will are prepared to vote intent to vote tactically. Now, obviously, there's a, I guess, what the electoral reform society wants to do is say an electoral system where people feel they don't, they can't vote for the person they actually want to vote for because the electoral system takes it nowhere.

14:11But it was, I thought that was really interesting. Well, so one of the, so I think there are three things to watch out for tonight when the results come in. And I hope people can be watching with us on Channel 4. And the reason, and I'm disappointed in these papers, I'm disappointed they're not making these three points. They've basically given up on covering the election. They don't think it's interesting anymore. They're just writing profiles that care start on what it's going to be like in office. So, but actually, it's a really exciting election for three reasons. Number one, it's going to throw up incredibly weird things about our electoral system, quite possible that labor will come in with quite a small percentage of the vote.

14:4638. And a huge, you see, majority, quite possible. The Lib Dems get smaller, more than a percentage of the vote, but large number of seats reform will get a large proportion of the vote and almost no seats. Number two, this is going to decide whether Kierstarmatt is able to be a centrist or whether he's going to be dragged to the left. So, that's the thing to look for. Big labor majority is going to allow him to get on with his agenda. Small labor majority, it's all this stuff that actually the Guardian is talking about, which is the left of the Labor Party wants to pull him along. I reckon all his paper turnings fine for the video, but I reckon people who are listening will they're just going to irritate them.

15:22No, no, no, they're going to love it. They love it. It's like you and it's like you not liking people eating crisps. So, here's a list of stuff that the left of Labor would like to do, right? Challenge Starmer on Israel Garza, reverse his climate 28 billion pound cut, get rid of the two -charbed benefit cap, fight him on transgender, challenge him on migration and do stuff on race and push him on Brexit, because he's just come out saying he doesn't think we'll reach out in the customers you're in our lifetime. So, in his lifetime? In his lifetime. So, maybe your lifetime is okay. His lifetime covers my lifetime, but your lifetime.

15:57Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to keep healthy. So, I think if you're voting, believing that Kierstarmatt is serious about what he's saying, and I think that's your basic message, your viewers, you look at Kierstarm, you look at Rachel Reeves, when they say they're going to cut borrowing, they're not going to raise taxes, they're serious about it. This isn't just some bluff that they're going to rip off the mask, and then he needs a substantial majority. So, the second thing to look at, and the third thing to look at is this is going to totally determine whether we end up with a populist far -right conservative party or a party that remains the moderate center.

16:30So, this is one of the most high -stake elections we've ever seen. A fourth point is whether opinion is changing significantly in Scotland, leading back to Labour. The Labour, I don't know, will ever be as dominant as they were when we were in power, but whether that is moving back as well. No, I agree. There's a lot of interesting stuff added to which there'll be some really interesting individual battles going on, thank him, Debenair, culture secretary. So, here we saw out of Labour landslide, but she's up against the Cardidania for the Greens, and that's going to be really tricky. There's some very interesting tourism that are going to go.

17:04We're going to go for a break -roid, but during the break I want you to think about a quiz question. Can you name any of the four longest -held conservative seats or the three longest -held Labour seats? Thanks to my friend Darren Hughes from the Electro Reform Society, I have them here in front of me. Very good. Thank you. Take a break.

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18:40Welcome back to Respondites with me, Alice Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Have you got these seven seats? Okay, I haven't at all. And let me expose my ignorance. So obviously, my guess would be that the Tories would be strong and kind of sort of wheelchair summer setting area. That would be sort of heartland for them. And labor, I guess, there's got to be some places they managed to hold on to in the northeast despite the kind of red wall collapse, which would have been old labor heartland. But maybe the East End of London too. Maybe the Spitz -Neigh Sennell London that they've never lost.

19:14Well done. Poplar line house. The Tories. The Tories, they're a force. X with an X at the East has been held by the Conservatives since 1835. So it's 1835. Goole and X at the East are wonderful. Goole and Pockelington, 1837, older short held by the Conservatives is 1857, northeast Hampshire, also 1857. Top three longest held labor seats, all 1906. So that's just a few years after the foundation of the Labour Party. West Ham and Bechton. Very good. There you go. North Durham. Very good. And the third one is Makerfield, which is part of Wigan. So they're done. Near Leeson Andy. Indeed. Indeed. But not Leeson Andy seat.

19:57But that's great to have a seat that's been there. I mean, it's, it's a matter of me, Tories had a seat since 1832 because actually 1832 is basically 1835. 1835. That's the foundation of the modern Conservative Party. I mean, yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's just post the great reform act. If the urgency of any of these days, 104 Conservative seats have not changed hands since World War Two. Well, so my constituency, old constituency, Penra's in the border was like that. That'd been Willie White, Law, Seer and kind of stuff. Yeah. But it's very vulnerable now. Very annoying. Labour seats have not changed hands for 50 years.

20:28And if you think that the last time, so like Sejfield, I'm pretty sure that had been Labour pretty much for very little. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't. Yeah. So whether there'll be more that they've called was another one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So whether there's going to be more churn of that sort, it'd be very, very interesting. So listen, are you, is there any part of you that regrets that you won't be at account tomorrow with your name on the ballot paper? Well, it's an amazing experience. I mean, it's, I remember, and I went through three elections as a candidate, as a member of Parliament.

21:00It's, first of all, people underestimate how wonderful it is in some ways, particularly before you get really senior. When you're really senior, you're right at the top. You're doing the news round. You're traveling around the country. But my first two elections, I was just the member of Parliament for Penra's in the border and then a junior minister. I had nothing to do with the national campaign. So you get to leave Westminster. You spend six weeks in the beautiful Northern Lake Districts elections, always in the spring generally, certainly in my time. And so you'd have the gors bush flowering on the hillside.

21:37My first election I traveled around and I traded around the back of a tractor. It was actually really embarrassing. It was that kind of big thing. They'd rory the Tories and stuff and there was awful stuff. And then you get to sort of, you justify to your volunteers like walking half an hour up a farm track to knock on a door. To get to get to get to get to get to get to get to turn on. Oh, thanks. I mean, like, exactly. And then come back and go around the night. Did you get nervous even though you knew? Well, so my first time I ran, I remember contacting my friend Matthew Paris and saying to him, what do I do on the day of the election itself?

22:14Because basically, it's pretty late by now. And there's a bit of get out of it. You're trying to get people to cars. You're turning up at polling stations. But you're mostly turning up polling stations to thank your volunteers for taking people off of this. And he said it's okay to go for a solitary walk in the hills and say, he's about sacrilegious. May this cup be taken from me. That's why that's always got off. I did. I did go for a bit of solitary walk in the hills. And then you get to the count. And then in my case, my father, then in his late 80s and finding his early 90s, turned up in his tartan trues.

22:49How many years later, you're like about 15 people or so? Yeah, I'd bring in five or six. So he might, my mom, my dad, Shashana, for the last one, Little Sasha came in. Yeah. And you all that because because one people watching on the TV will see all these sort of people watching the count and watching people put the ballot papers in. So you've got all your pile. You've got all your exactly. If those 15, a lot of those are your key organizers. So in my case, isahenderson who'd been the chairperson of the Penra Thin Border Conservative Party. It was kind of real stalwart. Some of the key conservative counsellors, my friend Robert Craig, who's a dairy farmer, they position themselves up and down with the labor and lip dems, staring at the ballot boxes.

23:32And then usually there's some guy, in my case, he was usually a kind of large musty guy with the shaven head and a sort of parachute berry who represented whatever form had in those days who'd wander around and wouldn't really have any friends with him, but would sort of wander around saying democracy is broken. And generally my father would end up in a conversation with him and say the wrong things. And then I'd get a lot on social media from this guy over the following weeks and months saying even Rory's dad admits democracy is broken. I'm going to go on my screen. And then you're trying to what your people are doing is they're trying to see if there's any sign that the counters who are usually a county council employees and they've got a tough job because they're opening the ballot boxes that come in, they cut them open and then they're sorting into piles, the votes for different people.