459. Question Time: Reform's Potential Upside, Why Bad News Sells & Reasons To Stay Hopeful

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2:08Politics.

2:16Welcome to the rest of the politics of Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, we're going to try to do something different, okay? so I was at this fundraiser I mentioned last week up in Nottinghamshire and a gentleman by the name of Jeff Chambers handed me a letter and he said he asked me to go back and listen to number 99 trip questions episode 25 minutes 22 seconds where you and I Rory both agreed with his suggestion that to help people's mental health we should occasionally do episodes where we try very hard to be positive. My mother keeps reminding me of this.

2:54Exactly. Telling me off that we haven't done this. On the day that he sent me this letter, he said he'd been looking at the front page of the BBC website. The first 18 stories were all negative. Corruption, wars, murders, cost of living. And as he puts it, bloody Donald Trump. No wonder so many people are fighting depression. He then obviously listens very carefully. Then reminded me later, a woman listener also said to us, could we try occasionally to be more positive and do more positive stuff? So we're going to try. Yes, we're going to try. Let me just, before we get into it, because we will, absolutely, this is going to be a podcast where we focus on the positive.

3:32But I just wanted to put the counter-argument. Why is it, I guess, listeners listening might ask themselves that journalists focus on the negative? And I've been trying to think about this a little bit. And the beginnings of my thinking, you understand this much better than I do. So I'd like your views on this, having been a professional journalist for decades. Number one, I think it's partly human psychology. Lots of studies show that humans tend to overemphasize the negative and downplay the positive. And maybe that's something to do with early human evolution and saber-toothed tigers and having to worry about threats.

4:06Number two, I think it's something that journalists often feel as part of their job in life, hold the government accountable, criticize, Watergate, find out the bad news, bring it to the public. Number three, it's simply something that's driven by the fact that humans read negative stories much more than they read positive stories, partly because of psychology, partly because of narrative structure. If you look at, it doesn't matter whether you're watching a comedy or a tragedy, you have a structure with crises in it, down points and up points, down points, and up points. We talked about a little bit with the Labour conference that it's inevitable that Starmer's falling, then Starmer's up with his speech, then Starmer's falling again, et cetera.

4:52Then that's reinforced by editors who look at how many clicks. So the fact that the public clicks on the negative stories more than the positive stories drives that, and then advertisers come in behind that. Eventually, you end up with a whole ecosystem that's basically arranged around negative stories driven by human psychology, theories of political accountability, editors, advertising revenue, and certain kinds of narrative structures. Back to you. That's an interesting PhD thesis somewhere in all that. I used to do a lot of speeches about this, and I hope I get this stat right. If I don't, I'll correct it next week.

5:32but I remember Scottish University did an analysis of the British media and the positive to negative within the British press in, I think it was the mid-70s, which was not a great time, was three positive to one negative. Oh, in the 70s. Yeah. And by 2000 and something, it was one positive to 18 negative. Oh, no, can I come in on this? I wonder whether one thing - I love the way you get excited about a wave of negativity on a positive podcast. I think one thing that may be going on in that story is the relationship between local newspapers and nationals. So, big plug, which I'm going to take the opportunity for, for this book that I'm just about to publish called Middleland, which is an attempt to gather positive essays that I wrote for the Cumberland and Westmoreland Herald and local Cumbria newspaper.

6:24and I'm writing about nature, I'm writing about society, I'm writing about culture. But my guess is that the Cumberland and Westland Herald probably would give someone like me much more space to write positive stories about what this village is doing in Cumbria, what Crosby Ravensworth's done on affordable housing, how we're doing stuff on renewable energy, how farmers are operating compared to the national press. In fact, I bet if you were look at the Cumberland Westworld Herald even today, and maybe this was true for your Tavistock newspaper, you'd find far more positive stories than negative.

6:59Probably, probably. I also think that this trend is likely to worsen if people feel that their own place, be that a country or a town or anywhere else, is in decline. And I think there is a sense. You see, I think it's a mindset. I think you can be positive. So the column I write for The New World, I try not to make every item negative. I think it's a mindset. You've got to say, you've got to kind of find something positive. Can you go back to the Tavistock days? You and Fiona, you did positive stories, right? You would have done positive stories. And what would they have been typically? Well, local boy, local girl makes good.

7:36Anniversaries, fairs. Weddings. Yep. And all that sort of stuff. But also, yeah, you're on the lookout for people who are doing nice things for their community. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And why does that work less well if you're editing the Daily Telegraph today? I'm not sure it does work less well. I think one of the reasons the newspapers themselves are in decline is because they're so relentlessly negative. You mentioned the Telegraph. I mean, the Telegraph used to be a serious paper. It's now become a sort of propagandist rag that anything that the Labour government does is terrible, terrible, terrible.

8:04They're all failures. They're all useless. They're all a waste of space. And it just, I think people turn off it. Anyway, should we get some questions? Yeah, yeah. Let me start with the first question to give you an opportunity to demonstrate your new approach to positivity. One question for you to start you off, is the route to growth through net zero and green energy and championing it after last week's fossil fuel news? This relates to the story we talked on briefly last week that renewables have now overtaken coal in terms of providing electricity. That is good news. And this is a global thing.

8:36And what's really interesting is the extent to which the race is being won by China, India, Pakistan. So countries maybe that you wouldn't be expecting to be doing this. And a lot of this is driven by your party's beloved market forces. So it's actually the cost of solar is now reduced by 99 % since 1975. It's amazing. My dad put a solar panel on our house when we were living in Malaysia, our shower was powered by solar. It was quite a thing. That's quite a fall, 99.9%. It's 97.5%. Incredible. I'll give you another percentage. Growth in solar and wind met 100%, that's all, extra electricity demand in the period that was covered by this survey that we're talking about.

9:26Really impressive. Really impressive. And I've got to say, Rory, I'm going to give a shout out to your close friend and the one person you hero worship even more than Theresa May, namely the king. Both of them were at this event I was involved in last week at the Natural History Museum. And I thought this was positive because I was a bit worried. I'm worried about COP. um but staying positive i actually think cop is now a massive opportunity because the truth is trump is driving the climate agenda backwards and here we have the ridiculous richard trice constantly talking about net stupid zero when it should be richard stupid tice and cop is the opportunity to start to reverse that and i was therefore very very pleased that at this event which was partly to launch this stuff about trees which i've talked to you about before or pick our favourite trees.

10:20And by the way, will you commit to doing it next year? Yes. Excellent. That's a yes. King Charles announced that he is not going to cop, but he is sending William on his behalf. And I would say that both of them have got, they're both passionate about this agenda. So I thought that was a very, very positive thing to do. Okay, right. One for you, Ed Cullinan. We saved the turtles. Please discuss. Well, this is genuinely a completely astonishing story that goes against everything we believe. So basically, green turtles were a threat in the 1970s. And the world began doing things that would have appeared quite small over 50 years.

11:00What did they begin doing? The US passed laws with shrimp nets for turtle exclusion on shrimp nets. People began investing in developing habitats, particularly seagrass. places like costa rica began protecting beaches uh where turtles nested australia began generating income from looking at turtles so it's all the classic conservation things ranging from international law to community incentives done over 50 years and blow me down it's worked green turtles are now absolutely flourishing and anyone who's interested there are the most beautiful moving documentaries you can see on the lives of green turtles, the incredible odds against them from crabs trying to get them on the beach as they make it to the water.

11:51But it really should show you up because it's actually a story when we tend to think the whole world's going to the handbasket. From the green turtles' point of view, compared to 50 years ago, the beaches are better, the nets are better, the habitat is better, the pollution is better. There you go. Let's hear it for the green turtles. And I did hear about the green turtles on the BBC, So that was covered somewhere. Yeah, question for you. Go on. Lydia Brown, this is really going to put you on your toes here. Which country and or political leader gives you most hope currently, Alison? Where are you getting hope from?

12:22Oh, Donald Trump, America. That's it. I thought that was going to be the answer. No, Mark Carney, Canada. I love the guy that we did on leading the president of Guyana, President Ali. I think he's amazing. Not least on the environment. I liked your friend, the prime minister of Norway. He was good. Yeah. Yeah. But I think I'm going to go to Australia. You and I last week online presented or were involved in the presentation of the Australian Politician of the Year Awards. Well, it's the McKinnon Leadership Awards, right? McKinnon Leadership. Yeah. And it's good. We talk about, you know, because I think a lot of the negativity that Jeff is complaining about comes from this fact that people and the media in particular find it so hard to be positive about any politician.

13:03And the McKinnon Institute, They literally have this thing for positive political leadership. And our friend and leading interviewee, Peter Malinowskis, the Premier of South Australia, he got an award. He was the state award winner. He, of course, is the guy who's done taking on social media and also taking on political funding. And the federal award went to, this is a really sort of on brand with the podcast as well. It went to two MPs, a Liberal, that's a Tory in their language, a Liberal who's called Julian Lisa, and a Labour MP called Josh Burns. And they got the award because ever since October the 7th, they have, across the aisle, fought a national campaign against anti-Semitism.

13:48And they've had considerable success, and they've become very close friends. and then and the final award went to a female mp who has been doing massive work on on tax reform and that has again got respect from both sides so i think australia does the australian politics does have a a lot going for it i i also think that i've taken a lot of hope from some of our leading interviews and not not all of them but president of georgia who we did i thought she He was amazing. Some of the American politicians, Richie Torres, who we interviewed, Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, I think inspiring, wonderful figures.

14:26Mike Pompeo. Mike Pompeo, no, he's not in my category. I tell you what, a lot of people enjoyed that interview. People loved it, but I also really loved our interview with David Blunkett, our interviews with Ben Wallace on the conservative side. In Jeff Chambers' letter, he said that, why don't you do more good news stories occasionally that may inspire involvement? By the way, I love your leading interviews that show a more human side of politicians. I never thought I would like Jeremy Hunt. There we are. There you go. There we are. So even Tories can come on here and be treated with respect and welcomed in our new positive mode.

15:09Right. This is a good question because we're going to stay positive, even though it means talking about reform. Mark from Henley on Thames, as a centre-left Labour member, I was struck by your recent question time discussion on the Greens, started wondering whether reforms rise could have a positive long-term impact. First past the post is outdated, disenfranchises much of the electorate. We often hear about the benefits of PR systems in Northern Europe. Could reforms growth lead to a period where no single party wins outright majorities, shifts public opinion towards PR, and fosters a more collaborative, compromise-driven politics that lowers the political temperature.

15:45I realise this would involve the rise of reform, brackets bad, and may take a generation, but could it ultimately be one constructive consequence of their emergence? Good question. Yes, but for this to happen, people like you and me need to pull our socks up and get on with really getting a constitutional convention together and getting all these parties around the table. I mean, the lesson I think of Scottish independence and the work you did on Scottish autonomy was that a few people in the early 80s began developing a lot of the ideas that you then picked up. So what needs to happen now if we're serious?

16:17I mean, you and I believe in, I don't know, let's say a New Zealand electoral system, Australian style compulsory voting, etc. We need to now start getting Lib Dems, some of the Labour MPs who are sympathetic towards that. Goodness A lot of them are. Maybe the Tories may begin to see this as their only hope to avoid total extinction, because the Tories will probably be able to scrape 15-20 % of the vote, but at current ways the maths works, they could end up with only 40 seats out of 650. Start putting them together and really get that cross-party coalition, develop those ideas, road test them, so that actually if this turns out to be the case, we're ready to go with a proposal rather than just talking about it.

17:03Yeah. It is a very interesting question because of course, because of the vagaries of our electoral system, reform and their predecessor parties have had a long history over a few decades now of having fairly sizable chunks of the national vote and very, very few seats. So at the moment, they have five MPs having got whatever percentage it was. or the Lib Dems who got similar amounts to reform in percentage but ended up with over 70 seats but now we're in this position where you know I think actually there's a there's entirely possible the reform have peaked and that they will come down a fair bit but they're at a place now where they could get you know less than a third of the vote and end up with the most seats in parliament so there comes a tipping point in our system where if you just get past a certain point you actually end up getting a lot more seats than your vote might in a PR system necessarily justify and that's certainly the case with Labour getting a massive majority with a relatively small share of the vote um is particularly if you take out all the the people who didn't vote so I think that this is where it's heading because we're now the whole of Europe at the moment is is is it has this sort of sense of nobody wanting or trusting big parties but wanting a system where somehow how people do kind of work together, cooperate together.

18:25Now, we've seen the downside of the concept of working together in the French system right now, and that isn't a straightforwardly PR system. Likewise, in Germany, there is a lot of angst about the fact that it's PR that is leading or helping the rise of the AFD. But I think Mark's got a point. I think this is the direction of travel. But it's only going to happen, as you say, if one or both of the two big parties, or certainly sizable people within them, decide we've got to move towards this and we've got to do it together. And of course, one of the problems in the modern world is we are very binary and we like things to be totally good or totally bad.

19:07And the truth is, of course, that there are advantages and disadvantages to first pass the place to NPR. So it's an argument where we have to say, broadly speaking, because we want to build a system that is more representative, that gives space to new parties to emerge, that encourages compromise, we'll go with PR. But we accept that there are some things that you'll lose along the way. Well, listen, let's take a break and then come back and talk about, I think we should talk about the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The real one, not the Trump. Excellent.

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23:30Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Question for you. Okay. Cameron Martin, do you agree that it's incredibly fitting that Maria Corina Mercado received the Nobel Peace Prize? And Andres, as a Venezuelan Brit, I'm incredibly proud and emotional. Tell us a little bit about the Nobel Laureate. There was so much sort of focus on would Donald Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize. And I think you and I both knew that was not going to happen. I actually think even if there is lasting peace in the Middle East, he's done so much other terrible stuff for the world and for its stability, not least undermining the United Nations, that it shouldn't happen.

24:10But there's obviously a big campaign for next year now. But I thought it was a pretty inspired choice because if you think about Venezuela, a country that we talk about a fair bit, Maduro, dictator, fraudulent elections, illegitimate rule, and she was able to inspire an opposition movement. She wasn't allowed to stand as a candidate. This other guy, Gonzalez, who's now living in exile. She stayed in Venezuela, incredible courage, and showed just what it takes to build a movement to defeat somebody in a democratic election and is keeping going even though it's been taken away from her and living in hiding.

24:53There's even talk about whether she'll actually be able, for security reasons, whether she'll be able to go to Oslo to accept the award. I hope she does. So yeah, I thought it was a pretty inspired choice. An interesting choice from Nobel Committee because she's a sort of hero, I guess, for what in Britain would be called the centrist dance. She's somebody who's very much not going down the kind of Bukele authoritarian route, but equally totally rejecting the sort of romance with Cuba and the left and kind of Venezuelan socialism. She's very much trying to stand for liberal values. She describes herself as a liberal.

25:28She's progressive socially. She's fiscally conservative. She's all those sort of things that the world used to be built around. Yeah. I also think giving it to a woman at a time when Trump was sort of, you know, trying to show that his style of leadership is the only leadership that works. And she also, I think, did something very, very canny and very, very clever, is that she dedicated it Venezuela, to the people of Venezuela, but also to Donald Trump for his support. You saw his extraordinary interview where he was like, she called me, it's very nice, she said I should have won it. I didn't say, well, why don't you give it to me?