354. Nigel Farage, dad-dancing populists, and the worst politician of the year

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0:49Well, happy Christmas and welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart and me, still with a quirky voice, and you were the beautiful Christmas jumper, Alistair. Well, I think it's the same one as last year. It's my abba, part of my abba merch. And just like last year, we're going to go through our UK politics of the year, best and worst, the best and worst foreign speech of the year, biggest moment, most under -discussed issue. And then we're going to be back on Boxing Day, no less with similar kind of looking back. And then in the new year, we're going to start looking forward again.

1:24So, Rory, who is your UK politician of the year? Well, I mean, first, he just told me, Alistair, am I allowed to choose a villain in the way that Time Magazine chose Donald Trump as their politician? Yeah, I didn't think we're supposed to imagine that they loved Donald Trump. They just were saying that he had the most spectacular result. Yeah, I'm not going to be choosing a villain, but you're welcome to choose a villain. Very good. Okay. In which case, I would suggest I've been hovering between Nigel Farage and Ed Davy because they were the two interesting stories of that election. We kind of knew that Labour was well ahead in the polls and Rishi Suneak was going to lose and guess time was going to win.

2:05But it was an election in which Farage demonstrated he could get a lot of votes. And Ed Davy demonstrated he could get a lot of votes in the right place. And we've come out with Farage. A lot of votes were very few seats. Ed Davy with fewer votes, but many, many more seats. I mean, you know, like 15 times as many seats. And I guess the question then is who has handled it better since then? Who's made most of their ability to get that sort of critical over 10 % of the vote? And probably, unfortunately, the story is Nigel Farage has managed with only five members of parliament to create that momentum in a way that I suspect Ed Davy hasn't served Farage for me right.

2:43I mean, I was hovering with Nigel Farage as my worst politician of the year because of the damage he continues to do to the body politic. But I agree with you that as a political operator, and that is not the same thing as a sort of policy ideas operator, but as a political tactician and operator, he's had a pretty good 2024. I'm glad that you've come round to the fact that Ed Davy ran a good campaign, Rory, because you spent most of the election campaign, so how terrible it was. It was really depressing, but there's no doubt it was immensely successful. One tricky mystery is that maybe he should have become an Ed Davy hologram at Abavoyage wearing my Christmas jumper.

3:23That would have been a good stunt for Ed Davy, I think. Yeah. I'm going to go. I think, look, if we'd have been doing this back in the summer, I think you'd be hard pressed not to say that Keir Starmer was politician of the year because he had a pretty amazing election victory. But I think the event since then, I think people would find odd, if I said that he'd been the politician as it were of the year. I'm going to go for Kim Leadbita, who we interviewed on leading. I think she was a really good example of a politician picking upon a single issue. Yes, with luck, because she came top of the private member's ballot, but she picked on an issue that was very difficult, incredibly sensitive, quite tricky to handle in terms of how she projected the issue and herself to the public.

4:06And I think by the nature of the way that she conducted herself and the campaign and the issue that she was pursuing, I think she helped secure a pretty impressive victory in Parliament for the thing that she was going for. So I'm going for Kim Leadbita. Very good. Worst politician of the year, ori? Well, you could be really interesting to say, best politician of the year, Nigel Farage, Worst politician of the year, Nigel Farage. You could definitely do that with Trump on the international front. Who's your worst? I would have said, sadly, some of that group of Tory MPs who went down for various dubious scandals.

4:41I mean, I think there's a whole group of them, if you look over the last three, four years, where there seems to be a kind of horrible coming together of allegations of sexless assault, taking money from dubious people, behaving in an arrogant, bullying fashion in the House of Commons. And so I'm going to give the award to, it's actually about nine people, but I'm going to call it the sleazy Tory MP. I'm going to force you to pick one. Well, I liked him. I was fond of him, but my goodness, Mark, men's he blew himself up in pretty spectacular style. If you can remember, they had to make a phone call, an emergency phone call at half past three in the morning to his constituency party chairman, trying to get this elderly lady to bail him out with cash.

5:23What he'd been taking hostage. I'm going to leave. This is the thing that we forget. You and I follow this so closely, I had completely 100 % forgotten about that. I suspect I've forgotten about lots of other scandals. Yeah, there was some, some on your party side too, I must say, but anyway, yes. It won't surprise you to know I'm also going to go for a Tory politician and it's Robert Genric. I think Robert Genric has morphed into something really quite unpleasant. I think he's sort of want to be forage who doesn't have forage is political skills or charm or kind of whatever it is that forage has got.

6:01I think that I really can't abide. We talked about this on one of our podcasts earlier this month. I can't abide the way that they take issues. People like him take issues where they know that the facts that they're spouting are absolute bollocks and particularly in relation to the the UCHR, the European Court of Human Rights that we talked about. Also, his whole, the sort of way he projects himself, reminds me of Liz Truss once he was becoming a thing where she basically thought that it was all about pictures on Instagram and all that sort of stuff. And he did run the other day where he was out running and he had a new t -shirt.

6:34He was running this bizarre style which was obviously utterly posed and the thing was, you know, it was the campaign to sort of reverse the winter fuel allowance. Now, I just think for a right wing want to be farage Tory to be pretending that he's motivated in politics by something that he probably actually deep down believes in support. And also the fact that he couldn't be, can be bad enough in a leadership election. I mean, that's pretty grim. Well, okay. So you're now I'm afraid of warming up to feel that I need to, I mean, charmingly put the boot into my own colleagues. I'm going to be really mean and upset you by saying not in a moral level because I think about worse a moral level, but as a level of political performance in the spotlight, I'm afraid my worst politician is Rachel Reef's.

7:20She was handed a very difficult situation, but I felt that she was woefully under prepared. She made a massive mistake ruling out all those tax rises before the election which totally unnecessarily boxed her in. She then tried to deal with that by raising the worst possible tax, which was the employer's natural insurance. And the only reason she did it as far as I can understand is because she thought she could weasel out of her commitment on taxes so that she'd box herself in and try to get out of the box. She did something damaging to the economy. She said that her number one aim was growth, but most of her investment that she's announced seems to be going at the moment towards the public sector and a lot of it towards public sector salaries, rather than the kind of infrastructure investments you need for growth, her winter fuel allowance.

8:03I agree with, but was terribly badly timed. And although her budget on the day felt as it was quite skillful, we've now into the third consecutive month of the economy contracting. And if I were Kirsta and I'd be getting rid of her. Wow. Okay. By the way, I should say to our listeners of yours, we have not consulted at all about what our choices are. Neither of us know what the other is going to say. But I'm going to throw in another category here, or a leading interviewee who most irritated the interviewer. I think that that is where I think your sort of quasi -lock very healthy relationship with Rachel Reeve started.

8:44You really didn't like her in that interview, did you? That's true. That's true. Just to do a little plug on leading. Can we just do, I mean, maybe this isn't an unfair category. Can I throw in which interviews this year, really stuck with you, really warmed you, really interested you that we did on leading? I'm going to start with David Blunke, who I just thought was just incredible. People haven't listened to that. Most people listening will know that he was an extraordinary Labour Minister. They'll know also that he was blind, but they won't know much about his family background. I'd add into that some other amazing Labour stories, Alan Johnson, I think is one.

9:19Angela Reiner's another. These are people who have come through pretty horrifying childhoods with an extraordinary sense of perspective, humour, energy, hope, desire to turn things around. Anyway, every you on what some of your favourites this year were. Roy, just to remind you of how long we've been doing this stuff, I think you'll be able to see that. She was actually on my shortlist for politician of the year for all sorts of reasons, but Kim Lead -Beater beat her to that one. I've really enjoyed a lot of the leading interviews. I think the one that I was most surprised to really enjoy was Roppa Sapolsky.

9:59Oh good, oh, I'm so pleased. I was at St Paul's Cathedral for a charity carol service for Bloodcancer UK just before Christmas, and Sarah Montague of the world at one was one of the other readers, and she said that she absolutely loves leading, thinks there'd been some of the best interviews she's heard all year, and she said her favourite was Roppa Sapolsky, since when she's been really all these books and all that stuff. I think on the political side, I really enjoyed Angela Merkel. I knew that I would, because that's the first time I've ever had a really kind of proper conversation with her.

10:35So she really impressed me. I'm really pleased that Roppa Sapolsky for people who haven't heard it and want to go back into the leading archives is extraordinary. He's an American scientist, and I asked him a little bit skeptical about it because his claim to fame is that he's meant basically 30 years sitting under a tree looking at a troop of baboons. But on the basis of this, he has developed the most incredible understanding of human psychology, of stress, of Donald Trump as a big baboon, and the rest of it. And actually, it's, I should also pay tribute to you, because quite rightly, you keep pointing out that the rest of politics leading is a politics thing, but you do occasionally allow us to do people who are a little bit more off -been.

11:12So we'll try to keep the Alice to balance, which is, I guess, probably three quarters mainline political figures, but occasionally throwing in others. No, we've been very, very lucky this year that the range, the variety, and so forth. In fact, when we get onto our next category, best foreign politician is also somebody that we we got to know on leading. You remember I went to a book festival in Adelaide, and I met the premieres out of Australia. Oh, yes. So my best foreign politician is him. It's Peter Malanowskas, and I'll tell listeners why he's the premier of South Australia. The reason why we got interested him and got him on the podcast was because he was doing two things, which I thought were incredibly interesting.

11:50One, trying to ban all political advertising, and my god, wouldn't that be a good thing. And secondly, bringing in this ban on children having access to social media up to the age of 14, and then parental consent beyond that. And we said at the time that it was possibly one of those ideas that would start local and start to grow, and it is already, by the end of the year, gone through the entire Australian political system. Albanese are the prime minister of Australia, the Commonwealth of Australia picked it up. And so I think that's incredibly, that's another example, a bit like him, led me to one politician's doing something brave, difficult, challenging, and it's taken off.

12:27And he will come under so much attack from the Elon Musk's and the big tech giants and so forth, but I think he's doing something that will have really struck a call with a lot of parents around the world. It's great, isn't it? Because it's one of those things which, when you do it, is incredibly obvious. Your favorite school in the world, eaten, somebody taught me, and I know this is true, but one of the parents said that, so I imagine it is true, that why do we turn your parents not lie? Exactly. I imagine. Right, Johnson, did he ever somebody lie? I don't know, he has kids at the school. Anyway, the boys are allowed to use their phones until 10 o 'clock at night when they're taken away from them.

13:03And it makes absolutely no sense. They must have got into this like a sort of frog in boiling water and never really questioned. But if you step back for a second, if I think about my time at that school, I think I'm unimaginable that I would be spending the last three hours of every night just gazing at my phone and presumably doing everything from, I don't know, looking at unsuitable stuff on the phone to cyberbullying friends or whatever else nonsense you get up to as a teenager. So I think it's, but there must be so many other things in politics, which once they're done seem totally radical, but a completely obvious, I wonder whether it may not turn out, for example, that the Dutch government's decision that what they're going to try to do is plan their population growth over the next 20 years and set an idea of what kind of population size they want may not turn out to be something that will seem obvious to people in the future.

13:56I'm afraid I just need to realize the modern world and migration, I can't wait to have that very, very, very difficult, but you're right that when you said the thing about things that sound radical impossible, but they then happen, I mean, I often think of that in relation to seatbelts. In fact, I bumped into somebody recently who was the great niece of Barbara Castle, who was the transport secretary who brought in seatbelts and or smoking, the changes that have been made on smoking. And that was another example we talked about this before, that was the Irish government that led the world on that.

14:28And then it's now gone to dozens of countries around the world. And on the politics of what Peter Malauzkas has done in Australia. So when I was on question time with Nigel Farage recently, they do that warm -up question. Yeah. And the warm -up question was actually about this issue. The Australian government has banned social media for children. Do you think we should do the same? And I talked about Malauzkas and said why I thought great thing to do and really interesting and radical and challenging. And Nigel Farage sort of came in an absolutely totally opposed to freedom of speech. And you know, this is all about the elite and the establishment, all these usual bollocks.

15:03And so I asked him about this Elon Musk thing. Yeah. Well, you're going to say that because you're trying to get 100 million dollars out of Elon Musk. And he goes, it's a story, it's just a story, nothing's going on. And of course, next two weeks later, we see him in Mar -a -Lago with his newfound billionaire friend, Candy, and Neil on Musk. So you can see why this is going to become part of the sort of political battle because what these, what the kind of populists are doing are using tech very, very effectively to weaponize their arguments, it's why TikTok has become such a sort of big player within the political landscape.

15:37So for all sorts of reasons, what mainly to do with the mental health of children, I think what Peter Marlaskis has done is great. And I'm absolutely very pleased that he's my foreign politician of the year. So who's yours? My foreign politician of the year is Al Jalani, the Abel Mohammed Al Jalani, the Syrian leader. Now he has achieved something nobody thought was possible. And talk about resilience. He lost Aleppo when he was the emi era in charge. He was driven back into a tiny corner of his country. And he's just retaken the Hota Syria. And he's made a number of very, very radical, dangerous political decisions in his life.

16:16He broke off from the Islamic state and refused to take orders from them and instead connected to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, which could have gotten killed. He then broke off from Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and rebranded and brought people together. He's taken over the state and so far he is trying or claiming that he's going to not export his jihad, that he's going to work out how to deal in a much better way with minorities than I sister. Now there's a hell of a lot of F's there. That's a very dark history. When it all goes wrong, we'll be able to trace back those deep links to those prisons in Baghdad and his background in Al Qaeda.

16:55But as a political entrepreneur and a leader and a force, he's operating on a level, taking risks, doing things at a national scale that is much more reminiscent of people like Gandhi or Mandela than of any kind of contemporary European politician. Wow, controversial, Roy. Stuart Bax, terrorist, wannabe despot as politician of the year. Now I think that's pretty interesting and you're right. I mean, what he has achieved is on a scale that very few politicians ever have or ever will. Obviously, it depends on what now happens, but to get to the place that he's in. And by the way, I was serious when I said that I asked Tom Fletcher who met him.

17:36I was serious that, you know, if you do listen to the podcast, Mr. Al Jalal, we would love to have you on in the new year. Who's he worst, worst foreign politician of the year? And it's kind of obvious on one level that we might both say Trump, but I'm not going to say Trump. I'm going to say all, man. You're going to say all, man. Partly because I charmingly with my backpipes tried to persuade him to cover the podcast where I mentioned the football in Germany. And he was very grumpy and said no. But also, I think he's, I think the way that he takes all the benefits of being a member of the European Union, but doesn't awful lot to undermine the values of the European Union.

18:16I think makes him for me the worst politician of the year. And I think the role that he plays and the way he projects his role in relation to, for example, Putin, but also in relation to what he did by sort of, you know, backing George and Dream in Georgia and going there to sort of say, well done. You won an election which every in the world knows was sort of rigged. So yeah, he's my, he's my worst politician of the year. I'm going to go for people that we admire and like and sympathize with who underperformed. And my short list would be macro for calling a completely unnecessary crazy election, which has basically crippled France at a time when we desperately need France.

18:54Olive shorts for totally failing to establish himself in German politics or get a grip on the German economy. But the person I'm actually going for is Justin Trudeau, whose day has long passed in Canada. And he needs to see that whatever the charm and the appeal of him and those first couple of terms were, he needs to separate side and he needs to give room for someone else to come through because not often you'll hear this on the show, but Canada matters. And Trudeau is standing in the way.

19:24You really go for the he is a Canadian, the friend of ours, the guy is a Canadian and basically said Trudeau is an absolute dead duck. Polly Everett is going to be prime minister. And I think we both agreed that, you know, you and I have taught before and we talked to Mark Arnie on the podcast and I always thought if Mark Arnie made maybe had time to get in there, establish himself, then he could turn it around. But I think it's just too late. I think it's gone. So yeah, good choice that one. And you know, it's going to be just that we've said this before, the next G7, Keir Starmer is going to be the only left of center leader in the group, Biden gone replaced by Trump, Trudeau gone replaced by Polly Everett almost certainly, Shaltz gone replaced by by Mets, you know, it's and that just shows you that the kind of the state of the world world politics is changing.

20:13Okay, Rory, halfway through Christmas Day special episode, let's take a quick break.

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21:32This one, Rory, I found really hard speech of the year. Ooh, I didn't find it hard because there was so much competition. I found it hard because I found it hard to think of some great speeches. We saw great speeches at the DNC. We did. I would choose on your category. I'm still absolutely entranced by AOC Alexandra Acacia Cortez's speech, which I thought was astonishing, because it was short, but it was also startlingly loyal. From somebody who has very outspoken views, she subjugated herself to that mission of defeating Trump. She came in straight behind Kamala Harris. She did what she needed to do, and she did it with so much charm and verve.

22:11God, what's your speech there? Well, I had down two, and because you've said AOC, which was one of my two, I'm going to go for the other one. And that was Michelle Obama. Now, there's problem with both of our choices, as they end, you know, part of the significance of a big political speech is to set the agenda, make the political weather, and they lost. But I thought Michelle Obama. I thought her speech at the DNC was brilliant, but I actually thought the speech that she made in the campaign where she was directly appealing to men about the importance of women and the importance of women's rights.

22:44And I thought it was a brilliantly framed piece of rhetoric. I thought it was a brilliantly organized piece of politics. So that was my speech of the year with AOC, a very, very close second. And just to put in a slightly serious pompous point on that, I guess this was an election which was about men. There was this weird statistic that was picked up in the polls where in certain states that looked as though Trump was leading among men by 1516 points, and Kamala Harris was leading amongst women by 15 or 16 points. And we're seeing this very strong demographic split of for the first time ever, young women, much more progressive, young men, much more right wing.

23:25And I suppose my question to you is how should the progressive center be communicating to young men? Because I'm afraid Michelle Obama may not, for all the skill of that speech, be the messenger, and that may not quite be the message, or at least it didn't turn out to be no. As you know, I'm going to loads of schools. And I'm actually fine when I'm with boys that they get this better than I ever get the sense of them getting it when you look at the polls. I think it's partly about role modeling. I think it's also about exposing what's happening. I mean, I really do worry the extent to which when you go into schools, you find teachers talking about this guy and rotate, even with all that's happened to me.

24:03In fact, possibly including because of what's happened to me, you know, being jailed and locked up and investigative of this, that and the there's something kind of, you know, uber macho about it that a certain demographic of young males really, really likes. I don't know as the answer to the question, but the progressives are going to have to really, really think about this. Just to give you that challenge to think about next year, because I think, Alice, it's something you could be really good at. I know your tendency at the moment, as I tease you for getting ever more left wing as you get older, is to focus on the values that you really care about and issues, progressives, you sort of close to you.