In short
The Rest Is Politics - Episode 320 Summary
Episode Overview In this episode of *The Rest Is Politics*, hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart explore several pressing topics:
- The Labour Party's struggle to establish a clear identity and direction under Leader Keir Starmer.
- The escalating conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, raising concerns of a broader war in the Middle East.
- The ongoing societal challenges faced by individuals living with Long Covid.
Key Discussions
- Labour’s Identity Crisis
- Current Landscape: The episode opens with Rory and Alastair discussing the atmosphere at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, highlighting a mix of excitement and anxiety.
- Starmer's Leadership:
- Alastair notes a lack of strategic vision from Starmer, comparing current circumstances unfavorably with the early days of Tony Blair's leadership.
- Rory emphasizes that Starmer needs a compelling narrative to articulate what went wrong with the previous Conservative government and how Labour plans to address these issues.
- The hosts discuss the challenges associated with public perceptions of Labour's policies, particularly regarding austerity and fiscal responsibility.
- The Situation in the Middle East
- Current Conflict: The discussion shifts to the Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas.
- Hezbollah's Role: Alastair and Rory analyze Hezbollah's military capabilities and the implications for a potential wider war.
- Israeli Strategy: They speculate about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's motivations for escalating tensions, suggesting that domestic political pressures may be influencing government actions.
- Understanding Long Covid
- Healthcare Perspective: Rory recounts insights from Toby Hillman, a consultant at a Long Covid clinic, who reveals that millions are affected, often those who experienced mild COVID symptoms.
- Stigma and Awareness: Both hosts discuss the stigma surrounding Long Covid, emphasizing the need for greater understanding and recognition from medical professionals and society at large.
- Symptoms and Impacts: They explore the diverse symptoms of Long Covid which complicate diagnosis and treatment, alongside anecdotal experiences illustrating the profound impact on individuals' lives.
Key Takeaways
- Labour Party Challenges: There is a pressing need for the Labour Party to define its vision and communicate it effectively to counteract negative media narratives and public perception.
- Middle East Tensions: The hosts express concern about the potential for a wider conflict in the Middle East and the complex dynamics at play, particularly regarding Hezbollah and Israeli military tactics.
- Long Covid Advocacy: The conversation emphasizes the importance of acknowledging Long Covid not just as a post-viral syndrome but as a significant public health issue requiring dedicated resources and research.
Conclusion This episode captures the essence of ongoing political debates in the UK and around the world, including the challenges of leadership, the ramifications of international conflicts, and the importance of understanding emerging health issues like Long Covid. Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart continue to advocate for informed discussions, urging listeners to engage critically with these vital topics.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.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 done it 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. Put us in a box. Go ahead. That just gives us something to break out of. Because the next generation 2025 GMC terrain elevation is raising the standard of what comes standard. As far as expectations go, why meet them when you can shatter them? What we choose to challenge, we challenge completely. We are professional grade. Visit GMC .com to learn more.
1:25The music keeps the blood pressure low and credits go raises It's got to get right out of her life She tracks her guessful watersprensied at night Boring money moves make kind of lame songs But they sound pretty sweet dear wallet The NC Bank brilliantly boring since 1865
1:50Welcome to the rest of the politics with me, Alistair Campbell And with me, Rory Stewart and Europe Conference, Liverpool Conference, we love to hear a lot about where the new Labour government is in Britain. We're also recording in the middle of Israeli air strikes on Lebanon and we'll talk a lot about what's happening in the Middle East and we're also going to get on to the very serious subject of long COVID. But let's start first with you and Liverpool, how is it? Well the first thing to say is that they've not been blessed with the weather. It's pretty much, it's not raining right now, but it has been raining an awful lot.
2:27And a lot of my best memories of conferences are of that sort of, you know, warm summary, lots of people outside sort of chatting. There's very little of that going on. I'd also say that there's a really sort of strange mix of excitement for, as you say, first Labour Prime Minister for a long time, only the fourth, in a like a century, to go from opposition to government with a good majority. But that sort of excitement mixed with quite a lot of kind of anxiety, a lot of the business people that you see around the place complaining that it's all a bit flat, it doesn't really feel like kind of energized.
3:03And I think that's part of this thing of adapting from opposition to government. I think a lot of the kind of teething problems that we've seen or about that, both the government machine and the party sort of adapting to a very, very different way of doing things. And added to which, let's be frank about this, in the run -up to the conference, I don't think anybody who was planning this conference would have wanted in the week running up to be talking about Sue Gray's salary and all this stuff about clothes and what. I've been reading Alster Campbell's diary, volume number two, which takes this from your I believe the type of that one is from power to the people.
3:43I think it was power to the people. That's right. That takes you from being elected in the spring summer of 97 into the conference period. I thought it was quite an interesting comparison because there again, Labour government comes in after many, many years, the Conservative government. It's roughly the same period, but my goodness, it feels different. I just wanted to try to maybe tease that out a little bit. So first thing that you notice, well, first thing you notice is that you mentioned the Tony Blair steps onto the conference stage with the independent running a story that he's got a 93 % approval ratings of my goodness.
4:18That's a long way from where Keastan Ristaday, I mean, he's got approval ratings that have fallen off a cliff. I mean, they look like they're as bad as Rishi Sunex, not much better than this trussism moment. The other thing I notice is that although there are silly stories which are annoying you. You know, you're very caught up at the end of August with a story around a guy called Lord Simon, which I don't even really remember the details of, but anyway it seems to be some kind of allegations, corruption type things. So maybe an equivalent. He was a business guy from BP who came into work with Gordon Brown at the Treasury and the press just decided he was worth going after every single business deal he ever did and so forth.
4:57I don't very, very difficult. So yeah, I remember that one. Yeah. So, so maybe that's sort of an equivalent of some of the stuff that the Labour Ministers have been going through with their freebie scandal. But it's balanced by the fact that there is a lot going on on policy terms. So there are good morning Britain interviews going on which are very, very heavy in policy. There's a lot going on with Northern Ireland. There's devolution happening in Scotland and votes around devolution, this Gordon Brown getting into big arguments. And even when there's arguments, even when there are things that are making Tony Blair angry, they're often around policy.
5:38They're, are we getting the balance right with Gordon on how much was spending on health, what is Robin Cook doing on banning armed sales to Indonesia? It feels much more as though the conversation is around what the government is doing and even the controversies and the problems that you're facing are around what the government's doing. And that's what I suppose is one of the things that strikes me about the period from the election to now is that I'm not seeing the policy coming together. I'm not seeing a clear sense of the sort of things that you would as it were, sit on the Good Morning Britain couch and your comms director say, well, that was a great interview because we did a lot of meaty policy stuff, and then going and bringing up, say that's what it was.
6:23Yeah, I think the 90 % plus approval rating, is because that came in the wake of Princess Diana's death, where I think people thought that Tony had really kind of caught the mood. As you say, we were kind of very plugged into the Northern Island thing that was moving on. Gordon had done his bank having an independence. There was a lot, there was a lot of policy stuff happening. And you're right that one of the firms that I worked with Portland has done some polling, part of which has these findings. And this is on the back of some pretty relentlessly negative media in the last few days. I think this will shift back.
6:56But for example, a finding that, I can't remember the numbers, but when you look at which government is more honest, this one or last one, which government is more competent, this one or last one, it's not a great picture for either of them. And that has to change. I think that if you go back to when Keir Starmer was first elected, I think people sort of very quickly thought, oh yeah, he looks like he's the prime minister, he sounds like the prime minister, he talks like a prime minister, he sort of, he looks the part, sounds the part, I think Rachel Reeves has done pretty well on that front as well and so have some of the other ministers.
7:30King's speech, you know, setting out some pretty big changes, you know, housing, the renters bill, all sorts of the railways, big stuff that, you know, you could say, well that's what we promised a narrower about to legislate for it. Then along come the riots, I think that did, although I think they handled it well, I think it knocked them off course a little bit. I then think that the black hole stuff and this is where I think the difficulties started. I think there were very, very keen to show two things. One, there is a black hole, the inheritance is worse than we thought it would be. Two, to address that, we're going to do some very, very difficult things.
8:06Now, I think picking on winter fuel payments as the most high profile of those difficult things, I think that has created the first stage of problems. And then it's been exacerbated, where the freebie stuff thing, which is trivial by comparison with some of the stuff that Johnson got up to, for example. But it's sort of those two combined that have given this, the media, this feeling that they can really get into them now. Let's just touch on the wind fuel allowance. So as an outsider looking at it, it would seem to make sense that you should be integrating that into a much broader set of announcements.
8:39that just throwing out, we're going to take the Winterfuel Lance away from pensioners is much less powerful than saying, here's a problem, you know, we've got this big black hole, but here's the solution, this is the direction which we're going, we're going to make some tough decisions, here's an example, Winterfuel Lance, but we're also going to make some great investments, you know, here's new money going into, I don't know what it is, primary care centers, new roads, new energy projects. If you get it right, possibly the Winterfuel Lance then becomes comes one example of you taking a tough but necessary decision as part of a broader package, which includes some very, very confident, optimistic, exciting things.
9:18Is that right? Yeah, I think that's right. So you could have done it alongside further pension reform. You could have done it alongside, I mean, probably the ideal place to have done it would have been the budget, but they kind of obviously wanted to start doing this black whole argument long before the budget. But I think that's what's made quite a lot of MPs, quite jittery. interesting, he's talking to some of the MPs yesterday, some of them said they're getting next to no trouble in their constituencies over this, others are saying that it's really, really difficult, that this Winterfuel thing has really cut through.
9:46So I think it partly depends on the demographic of a constituency. Sometimes I think it depends on the ability of the MP to defend it properly locally. Because the other thing you could have done is come along and said, look, you know, the state pension, and that they've done the triple lot, except the state pension, universal pension. But you could have said some of the additional benefits to pensioners. It's unreasonable that people like Rory Stewart's mum, as you said, or people like Alice Campbell, who are pensioners, but doing quite well. It's unreasonable and ridiculous that they also get the winter fuel payment.
10:17You could have made that argument and then said, and we'll bring forward proposals on that. I think it was the fact that it sort of came out of a clear blue sky. This again may be unfair, but it strikes me that when Margaret Thatcher came in, when Tony Blair came in and when David Cameron came in, it was relatively easy for the public to be able to describe what the vibe was, what the critique was, and what the vision was. So Margaret's hat, I guess, the critique would be nationalized industries, trade unions, and regulation are crippling the economy. And so I'm going to come in with free market reforms.
10:54Tony Blair was going to be a vision above all of modernization. I mean, again, and again when we get that story from 97, it's about this is a modern country we're modernizing, we're getting one. David Cameron, it was compassionate conservatives and so on the one hand he was hugging huskies and talking about the environment. On the other hand, he was going to tighten up, there was going to be austerity and what did Labour done wrong and spent too much money. And that then means that people around their cabinet tables have a pretty clear idea of what they believe went wrong with a lot start and what they're going to do to sort it out.
11:27Now my problem with Kierstama is that there isn't such a good story that he's got between what went wrong and what he's going to do to sort it out. So if your David Cameron, Gordon Brown spent too much money, what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend less money. The risk with Kierstama is what are the Tories do wrong austerity and the logical conclusion from that is therefore we're going to reverse austerity, we're going to spend more money, we're going to borrow more, we're going to invest more. But that isn't really the narrative they're producing, they're saying we got in this hole because of austerity, But because we're in this hole, it feels like we can't really borrow more, we can't really tax more, we can't really spend more.
12:02And that also brings us to our second problem, which is, and our second critique is that the Tories were sort of wasteful, morally bankrupt, out of touch, elite people. And the natural conclusion from that is, therefore, we're going to be a very pure government of service, incredibly high moral standards, showing people what government is. but of course that is dangerous because that sets you up for the Tory press getting very cheerful about freebies. Yeah, I think just to go through those, I think Margaret Satcher, because she sort of became such a kind of mythical figure within our politics, I think people underestimate how difficult she found her early years.
12:41I think it was a while before what she was trying to do became clear. We had all that cabinet division for ages between the dries and the wets, and eventually she cleared out the wets and filled it full of dries. also her ratings fell quite substantially, not long after she won. Tony, I think you'll write that there was, it was absolute clear focus on modernization, but it's interesting as you mentioned the David Simon thing, there were loads of things like that, which ultimately do get forgotten, just as I hope this whole kind of freebie thing will be forgotten because they'll learn, you know, don't give your enemies chance to make hay with anything.
13:14And then Cameron in a bizarre sort of way was perhaps the clearest because he used the campaign to build this whole message about, you know, utterly unfairly in my view, Gordon Brown Crashly economy, therefore we're gonna have to do austerity and then he did it. I think the critique that Labour are trying to do, and they have to hold their nerve on this because people will get sick to death of hearing them say it. But the critique is that the inheritance is way worse than we expected because these were actually, they were people doing bad things, wrong values, incompetent, quality of corruption.
13:48I was pleased that Rachel revisited the whole COVID corruption thing yesterday. So that's the critique. The analysis, which I think is come through a little bit more from Rachel and from Kierstammer and their speeches, is actually, and this is picks up on something you've been saying that you picked up in Chicago, is actually being much, much more positive about the basic core strengths of the country and saying that the reforms that are going to come in are going to be rooted in those. Now, I'll give you one example before I did this today program on Tuesday. I was listening to the program beforehand just to see sort of get the vibe of what I have here.
14:26And there was a story in the news that we had the lowest planning application successes it were for. I think it was for, I can't remember the exact timeframe, but it was very, very, very bad. So that goes against the messaging. So you've now got to show how you're going to break through that, how you're going to change that. And I actually think they need to get the missions, I think, are important, but there's a lack of understanding of what they are. They've got to reshape and reimagine government. That's what they're trying to do. So what Kierstarma speech is trying to do is essentially say, this is who we are, this is where they went wrong.
15:01These are signals of the change that we're going to make. And there was, you know, whether it was veterans, whether it was the Hills' Reloure, about Kandar in public life, whether it was the stuff that they're doing about young people leaving care. There was kind of there was meat in there, but it's not where I agree with you It is not necessarily speaking to a strategic message that's being clear from the world Go one other thing that can be helpful in leadership and government is having a sense that the person at the top or the two or three people at the top Have a very clear idea of the kind of country they're talking about and the kind of way that it it's gonna work and that can be a little bit naive, it can even be a little bit embarrassing, but it is quite important.
15:45So in the case of David Cameron and George Osborne, in the years leading up, when they were in opposition for the four, five years before they came in, they had all these policy working groups going, delivering their vision on international development. They had Bob Geldoff working with Andrew Mitchell. They had Zach Goldsmith working on stuff on the environment. And in all of these things, it was broadly speaking this compassionate conservative vision, which was very deferential to Tony Blair. So everybody knew that Osborne and Cameron admired the way that Blair had done things. They kept talking about the master.
16:20But you also picked up from a lot of their think tanks and policy stuff that they were really interested in Scandinavia, but Petschy talking about the Finnish education system, the Swedish education system. So if you'd interviewed Michael Gove as he came into office, he would have had not just a very clear description of what he thought Labour had got wrong with education or a very clear description of how he was consulted out, but a source of idea of the kind of system he'd seen somewhere else in the world. He was trying to choose, there was all this stuff around Nudge, you remember, too, where they got very excited about what was happening in the Obama administration.
16:52They would reach out to these American consultants who'd come over and tell them about how Nudge theory was going to work. Now, the reason I'm raising that is I think you did have an equivalent of that with Blair, and I think even I'm sure you're right that Margaret Thatch had a good long time to get going, but definitely around Keith Joseph, the Chicago School, there was this real sense that they had an analysis. And your analysis, I suppose, people would say is modernization, third way, socially democratic, pragmatically regulated, free markets, et cetera. I'm not seeing that. I'm not seeing at the moment if you're sitting around that cabinet table.
17:26What is the sort of city on the hill to which they're aiming? Are they admiring Sweden? Have they all been running around looking at think tanks in Norway? Have they been admiring Biden? Do they have a... I mean, where's that stuff? In fact, the only person I can think of maybe doing about this is maybe Ed Miliband, who gives the impression that he's got some sort of complicated ideas around a climate environment policy. Ed Miliband's speech, actually. Rachel Reeves was the sort of main event on Monday. But Ed Miliband's speech went down very, very well up to say. Essentially, you say that, one of the things I thought you'd be gagging to talk about this week, and I don't know if it's true, but was a story in one of the papers of the weekend that for example, Keir Starmer's thinking about asking your hero David Gork to look at sentencing.
18:10The fact that Michael Barber, who we've talked about in the podcast quite a lot, he's back in helping getting the number 10 in the Cabin Office machine, how they focus on delivery. James Temptson, who's talked about in relation to the prison's ministers, I think they are looking out and they are bringing people in. But I guess what you're saying is that it feels a little bit disjointed. It's not clear what that driving message is. And I think this is the bit that I think has perhaps been missing. I always define strategy and strategic communication in the modern age because the media is so difficult, because it is biased against labor.
18:44You have to constantly be devising, executing, and narrating strategy all at the same time. And very occasionally, I can feel that and see that. So for example, I heard Kat McFadden on the radio, and I thought he did that. I think too often what's been happening in recent weeks, first of all is the departmentalitis, which is, you know, happens when you get into government, where you're so busy and you're so being bombarded by your civil servants and you're being briefed, this is what you're gonna get asked this is what you say. You've always got to be taking the public back to that big picture.
19:16What are we trying to do for the country as a whole? and they need more people doing that. And if they don't have that, what happens is the media creating all this stuff. When I thought it was absurd at the weekend, Angela Rainer on the BBC, Rachel Reeves on the BBC, literally half to two thirds of quite long interviews about their bloody clothes and about holidays. I'm not saying that stuff isn't newsworthy. It is newsworthy, but you have to keep perspective. And it's up to the politician to push back on that. It's not possible partly that one of the recent sets coming through is that there isn't enough policy in vision.
19:52That one of the reasons you managed to make it through some of those scandals when I'm reading through your diaries is there's so much substantial going on in Ireland, in devolution, in health, in foreign policy and blah, blah, blah, that there's other stuff that the journalists feel they have to talk about. But there isn't anything else to talk about. I still don't get what the vision is. I mean, I really am struggling to work out. I get the story about what was wrong. I still don't see what the solution is. As I say, the logical story is the problem is these guys cut everything too much. There's a black hole, there's not enough money.
20:27And the logical answer is, and therefore we're going to borrow more, we're going to spend more. And here's our vision. It could be Biden's investment, inflation reduction act. It could be Germany's greatest vocational training. So we're going to really lean into vocational training or it could be this is about the tech revolution and AI and here's the supercomputer we're investing in an Edinburgh and by the way we're going to build three more supercomputers. I get what you say but I think it is harsh. I think that if you go through what Keyastan was trying to do in his speech and he has this line about a Britain that belongs to you it's a classic kind of many not the few argument so like if you take something like Grenfell what went wrong in that was that actually the people in authority genuinely neither understand and you're not really caring about the lives of those people.
21:13If you take something like education, VAT on private schools, using that money to try to improve standards within the schools that are used by that many, not the few, that's the kind of vision thing is a fairer, more productive, more equitable Britain where people are respected and valued and make the most of their opportunity. I think that's what he's trying to say. I guess what I'm getting at is that fairer, more productive, more responsible Britain makes more sense to people. or if you can sort of point to a country or a place or a model. Somewhere in the world where somebody's doing that. I mean, what you wanna be able to say is you think that it's not possible to create a fair and more productive Britain.
21:52And I hear what the conservatives are saying with their cynicism, but how come it is that in, I don't know, Sweden where society is much more equal, they have more intellectual property patents than anyone else in that sort. So you can do that. Listen, I agree that the whole thing about intellectual curiosity is vital. So for example, we've recently interviewed it, it'll be out in the next few weeks, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And I thought it was really interesting that one of the points he made about whenever he's going into to do conflict resolution, whether it might be, is that the first thing he does is he reads dozens of books about the issue that he's trying to deal with.
22:26Now maybe if you're the Archbishop of Canterbury, you're not necessarily under quite the same level of microscopic pressure and intense scrutiny as the Prime Minister Chancellor of Foreign Secretary. But I do think, I remember when Tony Blair, he talked about Northern Ireland, he spent that summer reading books about Northern Ireland. And so I do wish there was much more of that kind of intellectual reference. I think the problem with doing it country by country, you mentioned Sweden. If I was a journalist and interviewing a politician who started telling me about Sweden, I'd say, okay, well that's very interesting, but let's be honest, Sweden's got massive problems of its own at the moment because of the rise of the far right.
23:01Then I'm in get part of the government. What are you doing about the rise of the far right here? People will often say Singapore, but they'll say, OK, is that the democratic model that you want to choose? So I think it's far better to root that kind of messaging in what the best of Britain, what Britain has to offer and how you're going to build on that. And yes, take in examples from around the world. Where I think you were absolutely right is that there has to be a sense of, I always felt with Jeremy Corby when he was a leader. I wanted to hear him talk about things that he read and things that he'd been witnessing, and we need more of that in our politics.
23:36So I think you are being harsh. One of the things that we are currently leading interview with Douglas Alexander is under. And one of the things he said that the character of the leader is often as important as any of the policy stuff that's going out there. And I think what Kirsten was trying to do is be diligent, hardworking, competent, show that there's a different way. And also, take politics out of people's lives a little bit, not have all the sort of screaming matches that we've been having. And that's a difficult thing to do when you have the media landscape that we have. And I think again they may have learnt a few lessons from that in the last few days.
Read the full transcript
24:09Well let's just finish with the thing which we've been sort of scurrying around, not talking about, which is the freebies. And here I can talk a little bit more directly as a member of parliament who had to do my own declarations. First thing, I've been very, very surprised by how chaotic the communications have been. So every single one of them seems to have had a different defense for their freebies. We had Jonathan Remmel's saying, you know, members of Parliament always need support on different stuff. And the Rainer's defense was everyone does it, all MPs do it. Bridget Phillips since defense was, I went to the Taylor Swift concert because my child wanted to do it.
24:47I went to Wimbledon in my capacity as education secretary and my birthday was funded because it was a work -related birthday, which journalists were invited to. And then you get other different accounts from Rachel Reeves, which is a friend wanted to help me out. And I was looking for a way to give an opportunity for a friend to help me. So I think, first thing is, presumably, it would be helpful if they had all decided what the strongest argument was to lead on. And I particularly was irritated by Anshir Rainier saying, everybody does it, because it's just not true. I mean, I remember Dennis Skinner, for example, famous C, refused to even allow a journalist to buy him a cup of coffee.
25:26And, you know, I'm not, you know, I think it's very dangerous and politics obviously and this is the problem they've got themselves in sounding as though you're getting on a high horse, but I didn't take huge amount of freebies. I'm very surprised by the number of sporting events they're going to, the number of concerts they're going to, the number of, I mean, partly not because I'm a sort of moral person just goes, well, look completely bizarre. On my declaration that I'm going to all this stuff, yeah. Yeah, I had a message from a friend of mine who works in Singaporean government Now admittedly Singaporean ministers are on a million dollars and the civil servants I mean, I think the I think the head of the the equivalent of Sue Gray earns about seven times more than Sue Gray does But at the same time he sent me a message It was a huge piece in the straits times pictures of Angela Rainer in a dress picture of Keir Starmer at football match It was you know, this story is kind of caught a bit too far out of the world and he just reminded me that one of their ministers was sued for corruption for accepting a bottle of wine.
26:22But I think that there's a couple of things to say here. First of all, I think it is reasonable to point out the double standards. I mean, some of the massive scandals under Johnson that barely got covered, you know, the free holiday in the steak, Bamford paying for his sort of stuff that he's wedding, the Lebedev parties, all the sort of stuff that Johnson did. We know all about it. And I think there is a double standard, I think it's fair to say that. But that being said, if you have rightly in my view made an issue of standards in public life and being clear that you're going to be much, much stronger and much, much stricter, you have to live by that, absolutely.
26:59And what's unfortunate, this is all these stories kind of came together. The thing about Kierstarma and Arstort, I completely get, and I think most reasonable people do. He's been going to see Arstort for most of his adult life. He's got a season ticket, he's paid for him, all of his adult life. He goes with these friends and I know this because I've seen it again before when they were playing Burnley. He goes with these friends that he went with from way back and their close friends and what have you. The police basically saying, I'm sorry but once you become Prime Minister, it's a different level of security operation around you.
27:31We can't put you in crowds like that. Ars will say, you can have this box. Now all he had to do in that is say, right, I'm going to carry on paying my season ticket, give it to somebody else and I'll go see the games here. Now, the thing with the, with Waheed Ali, who is, I think, a good guy, I don't think he's one of these games. I just come and quick on that because that's again very weird because Waheed Ali isn't so many of these stories. I mean, it's almost as though somebody is saying to this sort of top group of Rachel Reeves, Bridget Phillips and the Angela Reiner, Keir Starmer, says anything you want.
28:02You know, he's like a concierge. You know, Angela Reiner's going off to New York for New Year with her boyfriend. and oh well, Wahid Ali, you'll let you stay in his flat. And somebody else wants some clothes. Wahid Ali will get some clothes. Somebody wants a birthday party. Wahid Ali will pay for your birthday party. I mean, it's a bit weird, isn't it? This sort of father Christmas figure who it seems to be on speed dial whenever anyone wants a freebie. Well, he was part of the... You have to, as you know, and we both sort of don't like this, but fundraising is part of politics. He's a big fundraiser.
28:33He's brought in a lot of the money that run Labour's campaign. And I think all that's happened is that they've just got into a place where I think you're right, they just say, oh, we're he'd all sort that out. And I think that's just got to, we're he should carry on doing fundraising for the Labour Party, he should carry on supporting Labour Party campaigns. But I think they, I hope, and I think they have, that they understand that this this kind of, you know, I can get free tickets for this, I can get free tickets for that. I think they've just got to understand that the sort of the perception that creates amongst the public.
29:05And And don't forget, it's not that long ago that we had the expensive scandal. I don't think this is on the power with that, but just don't, I go back to the point I made earlier, don't give a media and political opponents any opportunity to take you off the court stuff that you were trying to do as a government. And I think, look, Kierstarmer, funny enough, yesterday it was funny when I arrived in Liverpool, I hope you won't mind me saying this, but the first person I bumped into when I got off the train was Vic Starmer, Keir Starmer's wife. And what was interesting about, we had a very nice chat about this and the other, but what was interesting looking around is nobody battered an eyelid that she was there because people didn't recognize her.
29:44And she'd be very happy about that because she doesn't want to be recognized. She wants to carry on working the NHS and so forth. But I thought that was interesting. She's been all over the front pages in all these sort of splendid clothes that she's been wearing. And yet here we are, Liverpool Lime Street, very, very busy railway station. And I was scanning the place. I don't think a single person there saw all those keyers, Starmer's wife. Now, my point on that is that that means that it's maybe not cut through to the public in the way that the media might think, but it will, if they keep going, so just don't give them the ammunition.
30:18And final one, to make an obvious point on media management, you're completely right that the press is more brutal to Kirsta and about this than they are to Boris Johnson. But it's important to understand that's partly because they think about right wing figures like Boris Johnson in a different way to the way they think about Kirstama. So it's not true that the right wing press is never brutal to right wing politicians. What their brutal twist about is if we were ever seen, you know, privately to have said something critical of Brexit, or if we were seen to be too, you know, friendly towards immigration, then you can imagine the Daily Mail really, you know, these guys are traitors, they're letting down the party, but the political narrative is set up that the left are supposed to be the more puritanical, better behaved, and that's why they have to, for whatever reason, behave in a different way, just as they're given more latitude on Brexit and immigration than Tories are.
31:11Before we go to the break, I'll give you a final example of this. One of the MPs I spoke to yesterday said that he'd been offered a ticket to a test match. Cricket. Why does nobody do any work? I don't want to be mean, but I literally didn't have the time to go to all this sporting match. And he said, he said, no, I don't think I should do that. So I think back to the did it. But that's what I did all the time. And most of us did all the time. I mean, that's why resent her being like all MPs do it. Didn't she say that MPs have always done it or MPs have all passed? No, she said she said all MPs do it.
31:45Okay, well that's just wrong. Her phrase was everyone does it, every MP does it. Yeah, well that's just wrong. Remember that Ed Miliband during expenses claimed basically nothing, presumably because he spotted a well -behaved but B spotted that the stuff was going to get in trouble But I just also did get where they got the time. I mean, I literally when I was an MP did not have the time to go to all these theaters Rory the one I'm talking about The one I've talking about didn't go to the test Final final final point just so, and I think we agreed on this, but so the Prime Minister is on a good salary, people get that.
32:21But actually, as I saw watching Tony alongside Tony Blair, there is also quite a cost to being Prime Minister financially. So for example, checkers, people look at checkers, they know that must be amazing, got this fantastic country residents, and you can go there for the weekend, and take your friends and have parties and all that stuff. Unless it is literally official government business, like you're inviting Zalensky there to have talks or Joe Biden or something. If he invited me, you and a collection of other people just to go down for the weekend, they got to pay for it. And so I think it's, and I think if your Kierstarma is probably the most working class Prime Minister of our lifetime, and I think maybe there is a part of him that thinks, what's the best way to do this?
33:01He has to get it into his head. He's now the Prime Minister and he should just not worry about any of that stuff because when he leaves office even Liss trusts is kind of you know doing quite well thank you very much out to being informed prime minister so just don't worry about it do the job don't get into difficulties that don't feed the media anything that they're going to use against you be open be transparent be diligent be honest be capable be but above all deliver the change that you've said you're going to deliver because ultimately that's what you're going to get judged off. Good time for a break.
33:40This isn't ad from BetterHelp. At the moment we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alice'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 the therapist to work through these ideas calmly, objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, better help can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise.
34:16They've got over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than 5 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 H -E -L -P .com slash rest politics. 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.
34:55From 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. Visit Blinds .com now for up to 40 % off -site -wide, plus a professional measure at no cost. rules and restrictions apply.
35:18Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell and Les Tours Levinan and Israel and Gaza, I guess since October 7th and the awful Hamas attack, that what most of the international community has been trying to do is to stop this thing escalating, stop it spreading, stopping going wider and wider. And it feels like in relation to Israel Lebanon that we're getting perilously close to the sort of all -out war that we had in 2006. That's right. So we've been talking about this over the last few months. The terrorist attack by Hamas last October was then followed by an Israeli invasion of Gaza.
36:04And the fighting has been happening there on that bit of territory bordering the Mediterranean and Egypt. And in the background has been an increasing push from certain factions in the Israeli government, some people in the Israeli military for moving the war up into Lebanon against Hisbalah. Hisbalah completely separate group from Hamas. Hisbalah being an Iranian -backed Shea militia group whereas Hamas has a more secular a sunny identity. One of the reasons for this is that because of hispular rocket strikes, tens of thousands of Israelis in northern Israel had to evacuate and move south, and there's been a real push from the Israeli government to get people back into northern Israel.
36:45But more than that, a sense that hispular is a much more formidable force than Hamas. He probably got 20 ,000 people under arms. It fought all the way through Syria. It's got huge arsenals of precision -guided weapons, I mean, ten times the numbers that Hamas could ever have dreamt of, and rocky tunnel systems which are far more impressive than anything that exists in the Sands of Gaza. So a sense that strategically, from some people in the Israeli administration, they needed to use this opportunity to go after his beloved before it's too late. And that, of course, reached its culmination this week.
37:22It reached it in three things, explosions of pages, explosions of walkie talkies, and now an Israeli air bombardment of Lebanon. The page's story, many, many people listening, will now be familiar with, but just to summarize, it was an incredibly elaborate Israeli intelligence operation. His baller stopped using mobile phones because they were too vulnerable to interception and their messages being listened to and went over to pages, this more primitive form of technology they felt being safer, less easy to intercept. Israel knew this and it managed to insert itself into hisbela buying its next package of pages.
38:03They were buying something called Gold Apollo pages from Taiwan. The AP924, which for some reason must be being manufactured in Hungary and somewhere between Taiwan and Hungary. Israeli intelligence inserted into these pages. a couple of ounces of explosive and a trigger switch, which gave them the capacity to trigger these pages, so they would beep, people would pick them up, at three o 'clock in the afternoon, pick them up to look at their page to see what message should come in, if you remember the page, you got the message. And then once you've had enough time to pick it up, often hold it up to your face, it's then triggered to detonate.
38:38So 12 people were killed immediately, about 2 ,800 injured, and then the following day, Wednesday, when his baller fell back on its backup system, which was a walkie -talkie system, Israeli intelligence had implanted even larger explosives than those walkie -talkies, and 25 were killed, and 450 were wounded as the walkie -talkies exploded, and that was then followed by the bombardments. Evidence? Mossad, I've got a pretty fearsome reputation, and I think this does cement it. And of course, just to elaborate on what you said, the thing went beat for four seconds. and that meant that, and they would know it takes it beeps for four seconds.
39:19So if someone would have it on their belt, someone would have it in their pockets and would have it lying around, the reason it seems why quite a lot of children were hit was because just as your kids are used to maybe hearing your phone ring, or daddy phone ring, here's your phone, it's quite a lot of kids pick them up and sort of walk around. And the reason for the four seconds was that that they're assuming that people are going to then look at the message. So a lot of people lost their eyes, a lot of people had their face ripped apart. So that's the damage done there. But of course, the psychological effect is enormous.
39:51This is his collar and the leaders of his collar saying, this has been a dreadful devastating blow. You then had evidence of people saying anything with electronics in it, throw it away. Even things like the zapper that you used to open your security gate, the fridge has electronics in it. He had all these conversations going, you know, where else have they implanted this kind of stuff? So a big, big, big psychological impact. The question then though, I guess, on the broader sort of conflict, and then you've had hundreds killed now in these Israeli bombardments. So I think just to sort of try and see it from the Israeli perspective, 60 ,000 Israelis who've had to leave the area.
40:32That's what the Israelis are saying is the legitimate war aim in this, is actually to be able to create the conditions for them to go back. Whether this does it or not, very, very moot point, but that's what they say. Politically, Netanyahu, who have said many, many times an extraordinary survivor in this really, really difficult coalition that he's got driven in large part by the far right who don't want any deal with Hamas at all, even though the security people saying there is a deal there to be done. What has Bollerah saying is they're going to carry on attacking Israel until there's a ceasefire in Gaza?
41:01The question then on whether we do get to of all out war with a kind of land invasion as there was in 2006, is whether Israel thinks that is in their interests and whether Iran wants his baller to go even further with the stripes that they can do into Israeli territory, which they can do. So it's possible to look at the news as we did last night and say this is absolutely horrific, but actually they both could be doing way more than they're doing. And then the question then for the international community is whether they actually can influence this and it's a problem because let's be honest We've got the American election coming up people know that Joe Biden is not going to be president after November the fifth Netanyahu a bit like Putin probably is waiting you know to see where the Trump comes in and we're much much much more supportive Even though many argue Biden has been about as supportive as anybody could be and so it feels like it's closer to that all out war but it's not there yet.
41:59I mean, obviously this was a secret operation. One thing, I think, is clear, is that this was not triggered at the ideal time from the point of view of the people who put that operation together. I'm talking about the black -splitting pages. So ideally, what they would have wanted is to have held that back for the moment at which Hizbala launched a really big attack in to Israel. So if you imagine, Hizbala launched his big attacks in to Israel, potentially even in the worst -case scenario, grounding cushions. And then on the morning of the Hisbalar Salt, you blow up the pages and you take out 1500 members of the top command of Hisbalar, blind them, maim them.
42:42The effect on morale, the uncertainty, would have an incredible impact if you triggered it at the moments of that attack. They didn't do that. They triggered it on what was in many ways an ordinary day in Lebanon. So the people who put this operation together will feel this was a very expensive, very complicated operation, probably the most expensive complicated operation they've ever done. And it's not clear what strategic benefit they got from doing it. So the question is why was it triggered early? And we don't know because this is a secret operation and there will be very, very few people in the Israeli government who are privy to that.
43:17The story that's being put out is that they triggered it early because his blood was onto it and they needed to trigger it before people found out these things. My view is you would say that wouldn't you? And actually I think it's also equally plausible that it was triggered because Nitenya who put a lot of pressure on Masad asking them to do something dramatic in Lebanon. Now why would he want to do something dramatic in Lebanon? He wants to do something dramatic in Lebanon. First see because he wants to shift attention away from the hostages and guards are up to Lebanon. And And secondly, because I think he's trying to provoke a Hisbalah assault.
43:51And he wants the fight now. He's very uncertain that he will get support from Kamal Harris for a fight against Levin. He's very unsupport certain he'd get support for Donald Trump for an attack. He thinks that this moment when Biden is in place is the moment where he's most likely to get tacit U .S. support. And in order to get that tacit U .S. support, I think he wants Hisbalah to be launching in precision munitions into Israel as his justification for hitting Lebanon very, very hard. So my suspicion is if you're a Mossad, there are some very, very angry people who felt they put together a very elaborate expensive operation which could have been used much more pathfully strategically and which has been triggered so that Netanyahu can increase the likelihood of a war with Lebanon.
44:34At a time when, if you go back to what the war aims were in relation to Gaza, it was to eliminate Hamas. And as many people said at the time, it's very, very, very hard to eliminate an ideology. And so the focus now moves to this northern front. Gaza remains an absolute catastrophe on so many levels. But I think it's, you know, because he's not been allowed, even though the Israeli security people are saying, we can do this deal on the sort of Gaza Egyptian that's the truth of land between them. We can do it. It's not a problem. but the smot rich and bengue verse are saying, you cannot do it, you're not doing it.
45:12So I think the politics, you've got within Beirut, you've got a government, you sort of caretaker government. And of course we should say to people, as a baller, there are a lot of people in Lebanon really, really, really don't like as a baller. They sort of feel they've been taken hostage as a country. But they like Israel a lot less. And so if it does escalate, and people by the argument that you just put that actually for certain political reasons as a strategic reason, Netanyahu wants this conflict to spread, then that's the point at which you get a much more united Lebanon behind the approach of Hezbollah and a much more united Israel behind Netanyahu.
45:52And again, you've done this very perfectly when we discuss Sudan, which is just to remind people of what this actually feels like in practice. So on the Israeli side, it feels like tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes, school starting in September with children in makeshift accommodation in Tel Aviv. On the Lebanon side of the border, it is columns of smoke exploding across the horizon around southern Lebanon. I mean, if you're out on the beaches of Tyrell, which you wouldn't want to be at the moment, there are literally, I think, 1500 of these massive columns of smoke going up.
46:24Everybody piling into their cars, so a short ride of about 30 miles out from southern Lebanon up towards Bayroot is taking sort of 15, 16 hours because panicked families are cramming into their cars. 500 people have been killed and of course inevitably a lot of women and children have killed with them. And this is a country which is being in the most extreme economic crisis, totally thrown off balance by the Syrian war, totally thrown off balance by this horrifying explosion of explosives in the Port of Bayroot, which talk half the city to pieces, struggling to get adequate electricity, its economy and collapse, its government and collapse, and now you're adding to it, columns are smoke on the horizon, and planes flying overhead, dropping high explosives.
47:09And so people are really terrified, and of course many, many people in Lebanon assume this is just the prelude, and Israel is just going to up the ante, and what you're getting is the Israeli government saying, they're absolutely delighted, You know, Hezbollah has never suffered so much ever and Hisbalah is saying in its statements that they believe that Israel is doing this to provoke them And they're clearly being restrained at the moment by Iran and their own leadership from Responding because they think it's a trap but equally they can't not respond forever because they're being blown to pieces And they will begin to feel that they're very weak Yeah, if they just take this kind of punishment without responding.
47:48So meanwhile in The United Nations General Assembly going on, we thought it was going to be Ukraine kind of really top of the American and British agenda, but this isn't going to be a massive part of it for sure. Let's just close off on, we said last week that we probably had more questions in recent weeks on long COVID than anything else. And I've really sort of tried to dig into this and I was really fortunate to have a chat with a guy called Toby Hillman, who's a respiratory and long COVID consultant. He runs this long COVID clinics. I didn't even know these existed, but it is at university, college, hospital.
48:24And he said some very, very interesting things. The first is that we're talking massive numbers now, and we'll come into what it is, but we're talking sort of somewhere between 1 .5 and 2 million people who are reporting symptoms of what has become defined as long COVID. The other thing I didn't know or is that long COVID is a term actually was not chosen by the medical profession. This came from patient groups who essentially wanted it defined as long COVID. They were giving all sorts of sort of more medical terms, but they've accepted it. It's now, it's called long COVID. They've got long COVID clinics.
48:59Two very interesting things he said. The first was that it disproportionately affects people who actually didn't have very severe COVID. We're not talking here about the people who were kind of in intensive care. There will be some in that in that category, but it's mainly people who who were not necessarily very very severely or with COVID. The second interesting thing is on the demographic. The people who were very badly affected tend to be disproportionately male, older and overrepresentation from ethnic minorities. The first groups which caught on with what came to kind of as long COVID, a lot of middle class white women.
49:35and also in terms of age, sort of late 40s, economic socially active, 80 ,000 have left the workforce with long COVID. But then the other thing he talks about is how there is still no treatment for long COVID as a condition because it's a collection of symptoms. It could be pain, it could be breathlessness, it could be fatigue with some people. There's all sorts of different ways that it's affecting people. And so he says that all they're able to do really used to treat those symptoms, but they haven't yet been able to do the research and get the work that actually identifies as something that can be treated in a different way.
50:12My friend, my friend Kate Weinberg, who we've talked about, who's had long COVID, who I was chatting to yesterday. And who's written a law? Based on the law. But was saying that one of the problems is that it's so difficult conveying to someone, just how extremitous. I think maybe you'd have an analogy of this, which is that if you say to someone who's never had depression that you've got depression. They would tend to sort of underestimate. They'd be like, oh, well, you know, I feel a bit sad sometimes. And Ditto, if she says, fatigue, we're all like, well, we don't get a bit tired sometimes.
50:44She's talking about five months in bed with excruciating pain. She gets out of bed to go down and get a cup of coffee, and she then can barely make it up the stairs. And when she makes it up, says she's lying on her back in a delirious sort of hallucinating state in a pool of sweat for the next couple of hours. And I think that's one thing. I think a second thing is, and maybe this was probably true with depression and other conditions 20, 30 years ago, because it's clearly quite difficult to measure, it's not something like a broken leg, because it's a collection of related things, and the diagnostics hasn't got to the stage that it has with depression where you can check boxes.
51:24And because of the unliked depression that isn't an obvious cure, there's no equivalent to an antidepressant that you can just give people. People are facing a lot of stigma. And so, you know, people feel that families underestimate what they've got. Some doctors have been very dismissive of it. And because they're clearly is also a mental component to it, I don't know how you say this, it's a very difficult thing to say without. Because that too will make a lot of people listening feel very, very angry because that feels like I'm downplaying it. The anxiety and depression are two of the parts of this that some people have, which they didn't have before, but is a consequence of the experience they went through with COVID and the condition they now have.
52:08The point you make about the medical profession is well made. In fact, Toby Hillman said that at the start, the partly because of the symptoms, if you think about the breathlessness, sudden pain, sudden fatigue, those are things that are often associated with panic, with panic attacks. And he said that quite a lot of medicalists at the start really were in the kind of pull yourself together mode. They'd been through the horror of dealing with the sort of COVID at its peak, with the hospital rammed and intensive care units rammed and all the rest of it. And then suddenly they're through that and they're seeing this sort of very large number of people coming on the symptoms.
52:43And he says, but they now is, even though the research on it has not been as effective as it might have been, he says that it is not fakeable. And he says there is significant pathology now, which says this is a real thing. There are different estimates on the number, but we're talking about millions of people in the UK and over 100 million people worldwide. I read 400 million worldwide, and it's costing one per se, taking 1 % of the world's GDP. And again, if I can't quote my friend up in Cumbria, I'd like to maybe just as we come to close to get you a little bit more on this. I mean, he was saying that he gets brain fog.
53:14And again, that can sound to somebody who hasn't got the illness as though that's quite a mild thing. But what he's actually talking about is that he's searching for a word and then the entire concept gets lost. I mean, he feels his brain is sort of crumbling like a digestive biscuit or as though he's got some sort of damp blanket tied around his head. So I suppose just on this, this question of stigma and how difficult we find it to deal with things which are a combination of the physical and mental as so many things are and the sense that people feel that their character's being called into question, and that then that somehow if you've got a broken leg, or maybe if you have cancer, people can sort of understand or relate to it more.
53:55Whereas if you're in bed with long COVID, or indeed with ME and many other things, you find this horrible suspicions, stigma, lack of understanding, which presumably there's some equipment out of in mental health too. Oh yeah, I think there's no doubt before, again, this is something we talked to the Archbishop about, where a few decades ago, I think, pulled yourself together, was the sort of basic approach, all of this stuff. Now, having just spent, you know, just a few hours this week looking into this, it's obvious that it shouldn't be underestimated, and those numbers are pretty horrific. Why I think the other thing that's happened is that, and I hope Toby Hylmer won't mind me saying this, but he has some of the symptoms of long COVID himself.
54:35He says he gets very breathless when he's walking upstairs if he's talking at the same time, but has just had to kind of, you know, manage that. And I saw a report on the, I think it was on the BBC about a doctor in leads called Becky Williams who says that she actually is sort of virtually bedridden and said that she feels like she's been left to rot. You know, the other thing that's happened, I think because for most of us, it was just such a sort of awful experience for the country and for the world. And I think there's an element of us that sort of thinks, well, that was so bad, let's not think about it too much anymore.
55:09One of the other complaints we've been getting in the Q &A about the media and about politics is the fact that the COVID inquiry, which was getting massive coverage when the sort of Johnson's and the Hancock's and the Williamson's and the Cummings were all going there, that it's sort of just, you know, it's just, is if it's not going on. And the current module that they're looking at is looking at issues like long COVID. And I think it's sort of exacerbating that sense that we're not being taken seriously on this, the fact that there's no there's next to no coverage at the moment of the COVID inquiry, which is going on and is going to go on for some time yet.
55:44Well, I think finally to finish a Mount Sinai hospital in the US, University College Hospital in the UK is doing more and more research on this. I think many people at least anecdotally feel that there's huge advantage in creating networks of other long COVID sufferers to talk to, be able to share experiences, is learn from the different combinations of treatments that have been successful with people. But my goodness, it's bleak. It's terrible. And it's got really economic and political significance by the time you're talking about over a million people effectively out of the workplace. If anybody from the Lancet is listening, they published a very, very long report about the psychiatric implications of long COVID.
56:26And I just think for really, really idiotic people like me, if they could do just to sort of summary at the top. It's like kind of just like a really clear press release. I'd find it very, very helpful. Now, Rory, very finally, finally, finally, finally. I thought I knew you quite well. Okay. After the many, many hours that we spent together doing this podcast. But last week, you and I sat down with my daughter for her podcast, Late to the Party, and I saw a side of you I've never seen. Yeah. And I just, when you said, I like nothing better than to go out clubbing. I just couldn't quite believe that.
57:04Ah, that's me. It's my angel arena site. It's true. It's true. I love dancing. I love clubbing. Anyone who was at university with me would complain about the fact that I spent my whole time out dancing late at night. I was shocked. I was shocked. Yeah, it's it's a side of me that I don't know how we reconcile, but you're right. It took grace to bring that out. That's why your daughter's a great interviewer. Yeah, well, I did warn you already that it would be a different sort of interview to those you've... to most of those you've done. I'm glad you enjoyed it, Ish. And it was great. Grace also brings out a different side of you.
57:34So I think she's encouraged people to listen to Grace Campbell and viewing the two of us. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with question time and hope the weather improves a bit in your grim Liverpool conference. See you soon. Bye. Bye.
From the publisher
Does Starmer’s government lack a strategic vision? Are we on the brink of a wider war in the Middle East? Why has society turned a blind eye to those living with Long Covid? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in today's episode of The Rest Is Politics.
TRIP TOUR:
To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com
The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win tickets to the TRIP O2 Arena show in October. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡
Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅
TRIP Plus:
Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes.
Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics.
Instagram:
@restispolitics
Twitter:
@RestIsPolitics
Email:
restispolitics@gmail.com
Assistant Producer: India Dunkley + Becki Hills
Video Editor: Josh Smith
Social Producer: Jess Kidson
Producer: Nicole Maslen + Fiona Douglas
Senior Producer: Dom Johnson
Head of Content: Tom Whiter
Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
