440. Question Time: How To Start A Centrist Party

0:00Thanks for listening to the Restus Politics, sign up to the Restus Politics Plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestuspolitics .com. That's therestuspolitics .com. The Restus Politics is powered by Fuse Energy and Fuse are now offering £20 credit and free trick plus membership if you switch to a fixed tariff before the end of August. They've listened carefully to their customers and the number one request was gas tariffs. So now at last you can switch both your gas and electricity to fuse.

0:35One supplier, one bill, one less quokmire to navigate. So also cheaper. Fuse gas and electricity customers typically save £150 versus the price cap. Today's political climate is full of talk about control and clarity. Well, fuse have quietly exercised some, at least when it comes to your energy bill. And they began with a mission which was to make electricity cheaper, cleaner, simpler. And Fuse now supplies over 50 ,000 homes across the UK, all unquietly, efficiently, and without a single campaign bus tour. Fuse's support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with real people replying in under two minutes.

1:15So go to FuseEnergy .com, forward slash politics, to switch your gas and electricity to Fuse, and get your 20 pounds credit and free trip plus membership. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Got a car to sell, but no time to waste? Hop onto Carvana .com to get a real offer for your car in seconds. All you have to do is enter your license plate, answer a few quick questions, and if you accept the offer, Carvana will pay you as soon as you hand the keys over. They even offer same -day pickup in many cities. Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way. To... Carvana!

1:53Pick up time's very, these may apply. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Buying a car shouldn't eat up your week. That's why Carvana made it convenient. Carvying that fits around your life, not the other way around. You can get pre -qualified for an auto loan in just a couple of minutes and browse thousands of quality car options all within your terms, all online, all on your schedule. Turn Carvying into a few clicks and not a full week's endeavor. Buy your car at your convenience. On Carvana! Financing subject to credit approval, Additional terms and conditions may apply.

2:32Welcome to the rest of the spoiler This question time with me, Alastair Campbell, with Mirari Stewart. Arori, it's fair to say that our young friend Jacob Stokes, who sent us a voice note about which we taught last week, We had a massive response, not least from liberal Democrats. I'll give you a flavor of some of their questions. Alison McIntosh, Trip Plus member from Edinburgh. You played and discussed the voice note from a young man who said he was a centrist and was in despair. As you couldn't see who he could vote for. When discussing this, neither you nor he mentioned the liberal Democrats.

3:08Why? Now, Rory, this totally plays to your... Do you remember the contempt you had for the Liberal Democrats during the election campaign? Because poor old Ed Davis was doing bungee jumps and jumping out of helicopter and going swimming and all that sort of stunt stuff. But this is the problem they don't get enough coverage. So even you and I, I mean I've got a good excuse actually, Roy, because Jacob told me that he didn't think about the Lib Dems because they were kind of irrelevant where he grew up politically, okay. But what's your excuse? I mean you're completely right. And I actually, I've got an email which I share with you from a Lib Dem MP.

3:46Rory, I really enjoyed the piece about the voice note from a young man wanting the centre ground to step up. I can forgive him for not mentioning the Lib Dems, but not you and Alistair. Why the blind spot? He's got a point. This goes to the heart of what is a really big problem with the Lib Dems. So if you look at the proportion of coverage that Nigel Farage with his four or five whatever it is MPs, gets in the national debate. And then you look at the Lib Dems, who've got almost 100 ,000 members, they've got 72 seats, they're around about, you know, mid teens in the polls. And yet during the 24 election reform for Argy's mob got more press coverage than the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SMP implied combined.

4:35That's wrong. It's wrong, But it's also partly a deliberate choice made by Ed Davian his team and we talked about this during the election Because when we were really trying to say why are the Lib Dems not taking big national positions? I mean honestly in the election We didn't know really what their position was on Europe. They were barely talking about it We didn't really know what their position was on basic questions of tax and spend the answer from the team is we're gonna run local campaigns the way we're going to win is we're going to win constituency by constituency and they seem completely vindicated.

5:11So they will have come out of that saying, our two -prong strategy, which is put Ed Davie in a comical position to get a photograph and run really tight local campaigns have ended up with more seats than we've ever had. But the downside of it is that they're not part of the national debate and if I was going to be unfair, I'd start questioning you about the lived in national policy positions. Let me give you one. I think you are being unfair because Ed Davy has been very, very, very critical in Parliament and outside Parliament of Donald Trump and of the UK's positioning of these of the Donald Trump.

5:50Very critical. But he barely gets any coverage for it. On Europe, I mean, you know, I'm pretty obsessed about this. I follow it very, very closely. I think he has made stronger positioning statements on that, but he doesn't get the cut through. And maybe this is then paying a little bit of a price for the sort of politics that you object to during the campaign. That there's sort of the media's now minded only to be interested in it as a character. But I think the MP you could complain to you and the many listeners you did, I think they do have a point about this. is a blind spot because I guess the other thing is that there's a risk that we're playing into the sort of politics that we're complaining about.

6:32Farage is a big character. Corbin is a kind of interesting political phenomenon. And therefore we automatically have them in our mind space when we're talking about the future of the country. I think in a serious healthy media democracy, there would be more coverage than Lib Dems. Here I'm going to disagree agreeably. The Lib Dems proved with Nick Clegg during that 2010 campaign against Cameron and Brown, you remember the famous debates we all agree with Nick, that they really could, when they had a leader who was able to sound very serious, focused on national and international policy issues, they got enormous coverage and focus.

7:17Now, they damage themselves in many, many ways, situation fees, famously. But I think in Eddabby, they seem to have somebody who's a great communicator on his personal story, very, very moving about his own family and his own life. But I'm afraid, and don't disagree with me, but I just wouldn't rate him at being at Nick Clegg's quality in terms of communicating about national and international policy. We both read a lot. I can recommend both of their books. Wait, wait, you're avoiding the question here. No, I'm not. This is partly my way of illustrating the question. Nick Clegg has written a very interesting book.

7:54I'm not sure if it's out yet, but he's published a very kindly sent it to me about AI and I strongly recommend it. And Davey has written a book about care and the care system and not least through his own experience. If you watch Primeless's Questions, and I can't pretend that I watch it religiously, but I watch it if I'm around and have a spare half hour on a Wednesday afternoon. I think fairly regularly, Ed Davie asks questions and makes points that in a different media era, 20, 30 years ago, say when David Steele was leading the Liberal Democrat or David Holmes round as a big SDP figure, they would have been part of the national conversation.

8:39I think we have a real problem that, then I'm afraid the BBC, I think, is a big part of this. They're obsessed with Nigel Farage, the newspapers are obsessed with Nigel Farage, and the opposition is now so weak, the Tory opposition, that Farage is the kind of go -to other voice. And I actually think if you read, here's the challenge for me, maybe we should come back to this next week. I know that Ed Davies' team listened religious to this podcast because every time you slag them off, I don't know why, but they send me a message rather than you. Why don't I say to the Lib Dems send me two or three of Ed Davis recent speeches, say one about foreign policy to do with Trump, say one about Europe, say one about the economy.

9:27If they haven't done them and if he hasn't made those speeches, then that's a big mistake. But I know the last time I raise this, they said the problem is we can work away for days and days about a really important speech. We make it very hard to get them either interested. So I do talk them and I get a contradictory story. So I'd be very interested. Let's see what those speeches are. Let's see what those big speeches are. But often what I hear them saying is the reverse, which is there's no point really, because nobody's going to cover us anyway. You get a bit of that from Kenmy Badenopto. There's no point by saying anything nobody covers me.

10:00I think these people are being very, very defeated. I think there is a massive space in the centre ground for a charismatic communicator who's significantly articulate. I think Labour is actually in trouble. Kierstheim's net popularity rating is poor. They're pursuing a mini austerity policy which is massively unpopular with a lot of people. There is a huge space for somebody really who was charismatic and could communicate. to be more nimble -footed than Rachel Reeves to call out Starmer on international policy. It wouldn't be very difficult to point out some of the hypocrisy and problems around this U -Site Gaza.

10:40Certainly wouldn't be difficult to point out how completely and coherent Labour's position is on investment to child benefit. And I don't think they're doing it. And the reason I think they're not doing it is that actually the whole leadership team is still too wetted to this local stuff. Where is that? I mean, look, I'm a natural ally of this. I mean, maybe that's why I'm being so chippy about this. I'm a natural ally of this. But I didn't feel this is a team trying to bring into talent, trying to reach out to other people in the centre, laying out bold international policy positions. I think they're under playing with a huge card.

11:17I mean, they've got so many seats the House of Commons. They could dominate much more than they are. I don't think they should give up. They should definitely shouldn't give up. And it's interesting. I mean, I suspect the you and I and quite a lot of our listeners and viewers would be able to name all of those five reform and peace. I'd struggle to name most of the Lib Dems. Now, that is, I agree, where I agree with you, they have to address that. They can't just blame the media. But I do think they have point that our media in the main is right wing covers right wing voices and especially those right wing voices that being very critical of a government that they've decided is unpopular.

11:55Anyway, there's a challenge with the Lib Dems. To make them even more miserable, there I was with Fiona in Fryberg having lunch yesterday and I was sitting reading a German newspaper and I was reading the front page, which was all about the Trump stuff. And Fiona said, oh, have you seen the back page? The headlight was Corbyn's comeback. So, and there's this big, sort of half page. I can't remember the last time Ed Davey got a half page in the German newspaper, but there was this half page about Jeremy Corbyn and making a pretty serious fist of an analysing what the impact might be. And Rory, before I leave this, Harry, another trip plus member of the Southern London, I'm a centre -left photo in my late 20s.

12:45I was struck by your comments last week that you couldn't choose between Corbin and Frig. Well, we did choose. I said I'd photo from Corbin before. Rory's maybe a bit more circumspect. Frig is always represented divisive nasty -branded politics while Corbin's politics do seem rooted unfairness and social justice. So why do you see them? Or is equally bad? I accept that some of Corbin's policies may be in wishful thinking that he mishandles certain issues, but he still appears guided by the right intentions, surely not remotely comparable to Farage. Take that Stuart. Take that Stuart. Well, listen, I said I'd probably choose Corbin narrowly, but good.

13:23No, Jeremy Corbin is for all his good qualities is an extremely flawed person who would be a very, very deeply unfortunate prime minister. He is an indecisive, insecure, the way in which he handled the anti -Semitism crisis in labor was a classic example of that. I mean, whatever the rights and wrongs that were, he was unbelievably slow to get out, clarify, take action, credibly, prickly in defense to that every stage of it. His views on the world are basically those of the hard left of the 1980s. He is instinctively anti -Western. He had very odd views on Russia, very odd views on Syria. And the people that surround him are very, very troubling ideologues.

14:08And I'm very close to a lot of the new labor MPs who put their careers on the line to try to stop that man becoming prime ministers. So look, I've got a romantic, idealistic enthusiasm for people like Corbin and the same way as people might want to chant from the Gospel of Mary. But if you ask me, seriously, should this guy be running the country? Absolutely not. I mean, for all his qualities, and I like him very much as a person. Every time I see him, I warm to him, I sympathize with him. But I'm not sure that even he is certain that he would make a great minister or a prime minister. I think that's right.

14:42you know Roy the Neil Kinnick is a regular, regular listener. He sends him his judgment of our podcast every single week. I suspect he was nodding vigorously throughout much of that. So basically we both think that neither of them is really fit to be Prime Minister Farage or Corbyn. If the Liddems produced a leader who really seemed to have the ambition to be a national leader and to chart and address course As the Conservative Party collapses, and I think it is collapsing, and I think Generic will take them closer and closer to reform, there is a huge space for retaking the centre right there.

15:18I just like to see them have the ambition and the energy to do that. Now, Roy, you mentioned Generic there, and I have to tell you, another of our closest listeners is Ms. Fiona Miller, mother of my three children. She said, Roy seems very reluctant to say anything negative about Generic. Do you see what he's up to this week? Parading outside asylum hotels? It's a little bit akin to your silence around Jeremy Corbyn, where we haven't got the full on the full on Alice of you on Jeremy Corbyn. Listen, on generic, I'm very, very opposed to his rhetoric and the stance he's taking on, particularly on immigration, I think that it's not the conservative party that I recognize.

16:04it's not actually the Robert Jenric that I can recognize. I mean the Robert Jenric that I knew 10 years ago was a very thoughtful, apparently moderate pro -Cameroon figure who was doing interesting things around international cultural heritage and he has now become on so many issues from Gaza to immigration and asylum in Britain somebody who seems to be trying to outcompete the far right and my vision of the conservative party is firmly firmly in the centre and I'm very, very troubled by the direction he's going and it's very sad that he seems to be getting the entire centre of gravity that it feels like he's almost the inevitable successor to Kimmy Bay not partly because she has seems to have been so unable to communicate or capture media attention.

16:55I mean he shows because you can capture me your attention. The thing about the modern world that shows you can, Azoren Mamdani, the Countess, Mary New York shows you can do it and Corbin shows you can do it. I'm Harprican and I think there will be a massive rebuilding job of the center -eights of Generic. Texts that the Tories are off chasing reform. Okay, if you're in there, there you are, answers for you. Now here's a wonderful name, Gunter Van De Vila. Sounds like a sort of Dutch football. He's actually a trip plus member from Belgium. Dear Rory and Alistair, Thank you so much for doing the podcast.

17:26Am I being paranoid in thinking that taking over policing in Washington DC is the perfect preparation for countering the uprising that will happen. If the results of the midterm elections in the US are rejected by the White House, no gunter. I don't think you are. Quick explainer, famous C, DC is not a normal, a district Columbia where Washington is based, is not a normal state. And Congress has fútalled around for years and years, years failing to give it a proper federal status, which is why you can see all these bumper stickers saying no taxation without representation in DC itself. And the result is that unlike in other states, there isn't a proper control of the National Guard by Governor.

18:09And Trump was able to use emergency powers to effectively take over the police force all the way around the capital city as the president, something he couldn't really do. anywhere else in the country and his excuse for doing it is he claims that there is a crime wave, whereas in fact crime is coming down. But it's part of a pattern. You know, this returns to my current obsession, which is the idea that actually Trump is much more consistent than the people thinks. I think he's consistent on tariffs, on immigration, on Putin, and in his authoritarian tendencies in the US every year. And of course, the other big thing that's going on in this same area is the whole thing of redistricting where Texas is kind of Republican state is sort of redrawing the maps so that there will be five more seats in Congress.

18:53Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is responding by saying that if they do that, we're going to do the same thing, even though he agrees it's kind of in principle the wrong thing to do, but they will do it to get five more seats in California. By the way, Gavin Newsom, I mean, whoever is doing his social me, he really deserves a pay rise. He sort of tweets about Trump, but in the style of Trump, you know, thank you for your attention to this matter. And some of them are very, very, very funny. I also listened to Gavin Newsom talking about this on Pod Save America. And, you know, we've talked ever since the election about where the Democrats need to go.

19:32The one thing I think they've got to show is real passion and real fight. He's basically saying we are in a fight for the future of our democracy. This is where I think going to you are not being paranoid. And there was a moment, one of the things that Trump has always been very good at doing is making you laugh about really dangerous points that he makes that are actually very, very serious. So in the White House, when Zelensky was there, we talked about this lots of the main podcast, but one point we didn't talk about was where Zelensky said he couldn't have an election. It was asked by one of the studes.

20:06It was either the Fox stude or the MTG stude. He was asked whether he would hold an election. He said, yes, I'd hold an election, but our Constitution says we can't hold an election when we're at war. So Trump immediately jumps in saying, oh, oh. So if in America, if in three and a half years, America was at war. And of course, this tit, tit, tit, tit, it's around the room. But we have to look at the form book, mutual -bar consistency, this is a guy who motivated and inspired the January 6th insurrection. So why wouldn't he do things to try and overturn election that he loses? Final thing before the break just on the redistricting.

20:46So what happens with this redistricting is that it creates more and more safe Republican, more and more safe Democrat seats. And the result of that is that the general elections don't matter as much as the primaries. I mean, this was true even when I had a safe seat in Penrith and the border. If you've got a very safe seat, what matters is who's selected as the Republican or Democrat candidate. And so that is all about the primaries. And that, again, tends to favor extremists because the party members who vote in the primaries tend to be more extreme. So you then end up with more and more polarized Congress.

21:23At add to that the fact that we're going from a world in which many of these states that the norm was that Senate seats were often split from a state. State would send a Republican and Democrat, and that was quite good because it would mean that the state could get access to both sides. It would give them incentives to cooperate and work together. Over the last 30 years, more and more of the states in the US only send senators from one party. So there's all that incentive has gone out the window. So put those two things together. This redistricting encourages polarization to return to your Moses name stuff and also encourages the primaries replacing the general election.

22:04It's very, very bad for democracy, very bad for negotiation for parties, for all the processes and it's just accelerating in the US. And look, Trump is making it worse, but in this he's following a pattern that both parties have been grossly irresponsible about for decades. Yeah. And of course, the other thing that happened with Zelensky was he sat there while Trump went on one of his rants about mail -in voting. And as though it didn't already exist, and as though there's some kind of Democrat conspiracy to stop him when he listened Gunter, he is on the march. This is the point Kevin Newsom is making.

22:40This is a guy who is increasingly authoritarian and who cannot abide the notion that he might lose power because if you lose the midterms, you lose power. You don't lose all power, but you lose some power. So I think we should be very, very, very, very wary. A little short thing because I didn't tell you that I'd seen Gavin use some recently, Interacted with a bit over a couple of days. He's a very striking character. As you know, he's kind of big, good -looking. He's got almost got longer hair than me at the moment, which is something to be said. Better combed as well. Certainly better combed.

23:17But he didn't strike me. He's very, very different to the sort of earnest Obama or even Pete Buttigieg or Cory Booker type. My goodness, he's a sort of, he's almost at two glamorous, two good looking, two cool for school. I mean, I was really intrigued by him and we should try to get him on the podcast about, I'll try to follow up on that meeting. I think we've been talking to his office, I think it'd be great. Yeah, I, anyway, listen, I've been impressed by his, is recent. There's a big debate going on in the Democrats or whether Gavin's pushing it too far and whether some of this social media stuff is a bit childish and we'll have you built.

23:55You know, back to Trump's psychology, getting under Trump's skin is not a bad thing to do, but his big point, democracy is under threat, I think we should take seriously. Let's take a break and come back and talk about education in prisons. Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, National Security journalist, and I'm David McClarsky, former CA Okay, analyst, turn novelist. And together we're the co -hosts of another Gohanger show, The Rest Is Classified, where we bring you the best stories from the world of spies and secrets. We have just released an absolutely cracking new series on the infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, how the US spent decades fighting a war on drugs to bring his cocaine empire to justice.

24:37By 1989, Escobar was the seventh richest man in the world. World fear the entire state of Columbia, he was a husband, a father, and the most feared narco terrorist in the world. But to the poor in his hometown of Medellin, he was kind of a hero. He built roads, houses, soccer fields, came almost a Colombian ravenhood to a nation weary with a very unequal and violent political and legal system. Over the next few weeks will take you deep inside the murky world of the hunt -fair skabar. Using accounts from members of the secret military units deployed to find him, we'll reveal how Colombian and American forces work together to track down the man who controlled a global cocaine empire.

25:21If this sounds good, we'd love to clip for you at the end of this episode.

25:29Welcome back to the rest's politics question time with Mirois Judd. And me, I was to Kamlen, why do you read out the message you got from the head of education at prison? Dear Rory, I'm the head of education at a UK prison. I'm getting in touch in confidence with an urgent issue. Prison education across the country is seeing cuts of up to 40%. But our prison at 25 % cut in October means it in six months the provision has been cut by 36%. I see this as a sure fire route to ruin the lives of more people in prisons and increase rear fending rates at a time when prisons are never far from full capacity.