482. A Trumpian Year, the Politics of Hope and Highlights of 2025

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2:13Welcome to a Christmas Day Restless Politics special with me, Alistair Campbell.

2:17Rory Stewart:Lovely to see you. And are you eating, Alistair? That's a real sign of Christmas. Quality Street. Usually you're telling me that was Saddam Hussein's favorite suite, wasn't it? Quality Street, was it? Yeah, he loved Quality Street. Every time George Galloway went to see him, he'd bring him a box of Quality Street. Oh, it was also a line in Kemi Baden-Ock's budget speech. Yeah, Quality Street. Yeah. Good. Anyway. Yeah. Let's get on with it. Okay. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas to you. I love your Christmas. Let's get on with it. What surprised you, Alastair, the most? Even though I knew that it was going to be awful, is just how awful the first year of the Trump presidency has been on so many levels.

2:52far better organized than the first time far more extreme far more truly terrible things going on that you almost can't keep up with them undermining the rule of law the horror of some of the behavior of his and the budget for ice the tariffs that we talked about on christmas eve the hokey-cokey on ukraine the way that putin plays him the awfulness of some of these people around I knew I could go on and on and on and on.

3:20Rory Stewart:Yeah. I mean, it's surprising. Trump is surprising. I mean, in a horrible way. But, you know, if you were Narendra Modi in India, the one thing you were confident of is that India was going to get a good deal out of a Trump presidency. They'd invited Jared Kushner to a fancy wedding. They'd done all the right things. They were filling stadiums together. India was the counterbalance to China. America was going to be focusing on China, so they were going to be nice. No. The one thing you were confident about if you were Israel is that Trump was not going to recognize Syria and lift the sanctions on Syria.

3:55Rory Stewart:The one thing you were confident on if you were Israel is that Trump was not going to sell F-35 to the Saudi Arabians. Is this a gibbon? Yeah. A mating gibbon? A mating gibbon is good. Is that a mating gibbon? No, no, no. What is it? It's the red buzzer that we had in our live shows a year ago. Just to remind people of our live shows. We can keep going on, but I mean, one of the most amazing things is occasionally I'm fortunate enough to sit next to some of these great titans of American finance, these kind of famous people who run the big hedge funds and banks. They are consistently wrong in their predictions about Trump.

4:26Rory Stewart:You know, they really think they know him well. And every four weeks he does something which they absolutely assure me that he won't do. It's that phrase that we, when we did the miniseries of Michael Wolff about Murdoch, this thing about people ache to believe that Murdoch is going to be a good guy. I think with Trump, you ache to believe that it's going to sort of be some sort of normality in this presidency. I still think you've got onto the great analytical tool here, which is the reality TV show. That's the only way of explaining why having done an entire campaign saying Mamdani was a communist anti-Semite who would destroy the world.

5:02Rory Stewart:When he invites Mamdani into the Oval Office, he does a kind of love him. It can only be that, that he's running the equivalent of a reality TV show where he just has to go, I hate him, I love him, I hate him, I love him, in order to keep the narrative going. So what's your big surprise? Were you on the same thing? Yeah, I'm totally on the same thing. What's your personal highlight of the year? Personal highlight of the year, there are two. One was in Sarajevo being told by the organiser of the youth sport games that next year I will be captain of the team in the Pro-Am match and Luka Modric, your lookalike, will be on my team.

5:39No. Yeah. You're going to be captaining Luka Modric? Yeah. Yeah.

5:43Rory Stewart:Wow. Sounds good. And are you playing enough football, Alistair, to be able to play with Luka Modric? I know he's considered to be getting... Well, I have played with Maradona 20 years ago. I mean, I know people think Modric is getting a bit old. He's now 40, but you're a little bit older than Luka Modric, aren't you? 28 years older. 40's great for a footballer in the modern age. That's amazing. I actually watched him play in the Milan Derby the other day. He's still got it. He's still got it. He's not as fast as he was, but, you know, nor am I. can you tell us what it means for your actual style of play now are you moving a little bit less for the ball a little bit more stationary when i one game i played i told i told sean dych the ex-burnley now nottingham forest manager i was going to be playing this charity match he said he said do the dick turpin style stand and deliver that's very good very good so no but my actual my actual personal highlight was being taken by the woodland trust to play my bagpipes to my favorite tree which then appeared in the exhibition launched by your friend the king ahead of cop oh it was called living legends and the legends of the trees not you people not you and the bagpipes me theresa may nile rogers a few other people fiona bruce and we were pictured with our favorite trees and it was just the most beautiful day the tree is called the skipinish oak because it was a friend of mine who is in this band called skipinish who they discovered this this extraordinary tree it's just one of the most impressive trees on the planet and and the day the day that we went to it was just one of those days in the scottish highlands when it was beautiful weather blue skies and it's just wonderful.

7:29We should treat our listeners and viewers to me playing my pipes to this tree. It was a wonderful moment. To the oak. Yeah.

7:55Rory Stewart:so you don't talk to trees you you play music to them yeah that's why i always talk to them give them a hug hug is good yeah it's good but it's massive it's massive and i love standing there and looking at this thing and think, this thing has been here for hundreds and hundreds of years. And now you can understand Le Chien when it began. Le Chien. Le Chien. Let's not screw up our French grammar. Le Chien. And what you learned from that is that this thing will have started as a tiny acorn probably in a massed year with tens of thousands of other acorns scattered across the ground. And by some miracle, maybe in a thorn bush or whatever, it survived.

8:31Rory Stewart:And then at the right moment the thorns were cut away and it sprung up into the air god did that didn't he well i don't know i don't know connecting that's a nice christmas message yeah oak trees of course well of course some people say pagan festivals around mistletoe and oaks you know quite connected to this particular day idea of rebirth anyway my my highlight um so my highlight of the year is i've discovered a little trick in the morning which is i go into the kids bedroom and i take him out for a little expedition to get a croissant, a coffee for the family. So I have a lovely sort of, I suppose I have a five minute walk there, three minutes queuing for the croissant, five minute walk back.

9:14Rory Stewart:But a really lovely time, just seven in the morning with the kids. Sometimes just one, sometimes both of them. It's just very precious. Good. Excellent. Excellent. Book of the year. Book of the year. Yeah. And what's your book of the year? I think if I'm only allowed one, I've mentioned this before, it would be If Russia Wins by Carlo Masala, written in German, it's been translated into English. And it's a sort of novelette. It's actually called a scenario. So it's obviously with real people, real events. It's about what's happening in Ukraine now, but it's what happens if Russia wins. And it just sets out this amazing story.

9:51And it really is. It's gripping and it feels very, very, very realistic. And then you had another book by a friend of yours who's writing about AI. oh that's that actually would be my not my novel of the year we both have lots of people who say i've written a book can you read it for me maybe do da da da da so this friend of mine i was university with who went he was a medic he went on become a war doctor called robin coupland he's now retired he sends me this book and he says i've written this novel love to know what you think it's absolutely brilliant um i'm actually now trying to get him what i might call a proper publisher because it's self-published.

10:26He published it himself. It's about an AI companion that a family gives to an old man who's lost his wife. And this AI companion just becomes ever more important in his life. The guy eventually dies. Then the AI companion goes on to this vicar. And then bit by bit, you get to the AI companion adapts to - Well, don't tell us too much. Well, just the political bit gets to when the AI companion links up with other AI systems and somehow finds a way into North Korea's nuclear weapons program, which the CIA have been trying to do for decades. Any publisher listening to this, please pay attention. And then my third one, Rory, which I mentioned many times on our tour, Bagpipes, A Cultural History by Richard McLoughlin.

11:09It's a great book.

11:11Rory Stewart:That's a lovely, lovely pitch. Now, in tribute to you and my long years for apprenticeship at the feet of Alistair Campbell, I must plug my book Middleland, which is out, and it's a lovely set of 100 very short essays. You read it in the loo, read it in the bath, read it on the tube, with positive optimistic stories of the British countryside. As if we haven't plugged it enough. I gave it a better plug than that when it came out. I feel I'm, you did, you did, and I feel I'm learning. Now, here's three books, though, not written by me. I've become increasingly entranced by a novelist called Nick Harkaway, who's John le Carre's son.

11:51Rory Stewart:He's written a great follow-on Le Carre book called Carla's Choice, but he's also written under his own name a whole series of extraordinary sci-fi dystopian novels of which the Titanium Noir series I thought was most interesting, partly because it's about tech stories. And it's also about his understanding, which we've touched on, but maybe haven't done enough on, the sense in which time sort of freezes. The sense that the 1940s feel much more different to 1980 than 1980 does to today. that there's a sort of odd sense that you get back into the 40s or even the 70s and you really think you're looking at a very alien culture get back into the 90s which is now quite a long time away things haven't changed as much as you'd think and and you get that sort of sense in a lot of things fashion music food culture and british productivity um uh anyway um so that nick harkway um uh second one i talked about ai if people are interested in the amazing story of the businesses the egos the personalities around a karen howe's empire of ai i think is really lovely and for people more on the kind of spiritual side because we're at christmas almost any podcast or interview done by either rowan williams or father zacharias worth listening to is that a book that's not a book?

13:16Rory Stewart:Father Zacharias is no, Romans has written books, but I think he's particularly good in his short sermons on audio. Maybe we should have a podcast of yours, not ours. We should do that next year. We should have put it. Father Zacharias is a monk in Essex, talks wonderfully about faith, but my book, Mathieu Ricard, Notebook of a Wandering Monk. Mathieu Ricard, astonishing. I mean, like a sort of central casting French meritocratic success story. His father, one of the most famous left-wing editors in France, went to the fanciest schools in France, graduated, and really, you know, in some ways might have been a kind of miniature Macron or Juppé or something, decided to go and become a Tibetan monk.

13:59Rory Stewart:And this is really his diary. And it's astonishing. There are seven-year retreats. There are his encounters with his father. He actually wrote a book called The Monk and the Philosopher about arguing with his left-wing atheist dad about being a Tibetan monk. There are incredible portraits of Bhutan in the 90s when it was completely locked away from the world where he goes, essentially every village is an incredible shrine dedicated to Buddhism, traveling with his lamas, these great gurus that he follows. Question for you, film of the year. Do you know I struggle with this almost as much as I struggle with UK politician of the year, but I'm going in the end for the Ballad of Wallace Island.

14:41Rory Stewart:Oh, my Lord. That sounds quite serious. When it's called the Ballad of it, it usually means grim, doesn't it? No. Well, it's very funny. Is it darkly humorous with drunken Scots in it? There are no drunken Scots. It's got a very small cast. Right. It was written by a guy called Tom Basden and Tim Key. Tom Basden also writes music and there's some fabulous music in it. And no drunken Irish people? No. Not one. Not one. Okay. Maybe I've got this wrong. Drunken Scandinavians? No, no. I got wrong the whole theme of this. You totally got the wrong. Why don't you listen and I'll tell you. Go on, tell us that.

15:18God's sake. It's got Carey Mulligan in it, which is always a good thing. She and Tom Baslin were an item and they were a band together. They were musicians together. And this guy who has become very, very, very wealthy, not really through having any special talents, He lives on this very, very small island. Hardly anybody else lives there. And he sort of lures them into coming onto the island because he wants them to get back together and he wants them to do a sort of comeback concert. But he is the audience. It's very funny. It's rich. It's got beautiful music, beautiful scenery, and I loved it.

15:58Rory Stewart:My film will be Nuremberg with this extraordinary performance by Russell Crowe as Goering in the Nuremberg Trials. Oh. This is now the 40th anniversary of John and Anne Schuess's book on the Nuremberg trials. John went to see it and he just thought, they have got this absolutely right. They've got the courtroom right. They've got the star right. And if you really want to understand evil and charisma, Russell Crowe as Herman Goering. Excellent. Excellent. Well, neither of us watch a lot of TV, TV show of the year. I think we're going to go for the same one here. Well, I hope we're not going to go for celebrity traitors.

16:32We're not going for that because neither of us watched a single second of it. I'm going for Slow Horses, Runner Up, Blue Lights, which is a story about the police service of Northern Ireland. And it's very well made. And it is a kind of just a sort of a police thriller type thing. But it's got so many different levels going on that are really interesting if you're interested in Northern Ireland.

16:54Rory Stewart:The most recent season, I know I chose The Diplomat last year, but the most recent season The Diplomat completely blows you away. Is this just an admission that you've only ever watched one TV program? Pretty much, yeah. And this is, again, about the relationship between America and Britain and Europe and its vulnerability to America. So very prescient. I don't know when they wrote it, but boy, as a way of imagining the current moment. Okay, Rory, quick break. Then we'll come back with best new place visited, Homer Abroad, cultural event and campaigner of the year. Okay, very good. Now at the Home Depot, receive 12 months special financing and free basic installation on carpet projects with LifeProof, LifeProof with PetProof Technology, Home Decorators Collection, and Traffic Master Carpets.

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18:01Rory Stewart:Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Christmas special with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Ernest Campbell. Best new place visited, home or abroad? Blimey, where did you go? My best place visited, home or abroad, I'm going to go for the bathing pools at La Vallette on Guernsey. Oh, Guernsey. most of my best places i think last year was a swimming place i judge a lot of things by whether you have a really good cold water swim and the bathing pools on guernsey it's like they have this australian model of where a pool is built into the sea and they also have i'm not a big fan of saunas but i was a really big fan of this sauna one because it was bloody cold and secondly because we just have these amazing views out from the sauna from the sauna it's like A glass wall on the sauna?

18:53It was windows. The pool itself was absolutely beautiful. And I've been to Jersey a few times, but I'm trying to think. I don't think I'd ever been to Guernsey before.

19:02Rory Stewart:Brilliant. Okay, that's lovely. My push is for Colombia, which we talked about a bit on the podcast, and particularly the Rainbow River. Again, us swimming in waterfalls, but above this extraordinary coloured river, which my eight-year-old discovered through a teacher. it's actually a type of fern and the water goes from green to red and the gravel is yellow and then the light hitting it is blue so literally the river is this kind of insane rainbow color it's right in the center of columbia very few people go there it's not like going to cartagena which sadly a bit like venice has now been completely overrun by tourists you can't move central columbia unexplored magical columbia excellent cultural event of the year.

19:50Rory Stewart:You're not allowed to say the Restless Politics Tour. The Restless Politics Tour. Yeah, the live tour. Well, I have seen a remarkable number of people. I was just doing a Christmas signing at Hatch Arts and a very large number of people gave us that had seen us in the live tour. And some of them were talking about how you had inspired them through, well, often through disagreeing agreeably. They seem to like that as a Christmas message. They do like that. I've got two. One of them, I mentioned Notre Dame last year, but I can't have been by then. I think that was just watching it on TV, but we went to Notre Dame.

20:22The new Notre Dame, the refurbished Notre Dame, despite your loathing of mon ami Emmanuel Macron, is an amazing transformation. But the other thing that we went to in Paris was the Hockney exhibition, which was extraordinary. One of the best art exhibitions I've ever been to. Finally, the National Theatre do these terrific, where they film plays at the National Theatre, and you can then go and see them in the cinema which a relatively new thing and fiona and i with callum we went to see the fifth step starring jack loudon a brilliant scottish actor and martin freeman and it was just absolutely amazing because you know when you go to the theater but i do like going to the theater but for a start you're often surrounded by people eating and shuffling and piddling about what have you it's beautifully filmed so it's just two guys the whole story is two people there's only two people in this in this in this play it's about the fifth step is one of the steps in alcoholics anonymous it's about is the play is about the relationship between an alcoholic and a sponsor who's trying to help the alcoholic through they're both brilliant actors but the filming of it is just absolutely beautiful um and because the thing is when you go to the theater you don't if you're sitting third of the way half the way towards the back of the theater you can't actually see the actors faces you can't actually get a lot of what they do so When you see it in the cinema, big screen.

21:49It's absolutely brilliant.

21:50Rory Stewart:So my culture events of the year, first one, Marie Antoinette at the Victorian Albert Museum. It begins with an extraordinary story about fashion and clothing and jewelry and celebrity. In some ways, she's one of those great first celebrities, a kind of global figure for her face and her clothes. But it's the other side of celebrity, too. and the way in which we turn against famous people or people who are perceived to get power. And in this case, chopped her head off. I mean, literally executed her and executed her because of what she represented. And the guillotine's there, her death mask is there, the clothes she wore at the moment for execution.

22:31Rory Stewart:It's a heart-wrenching experience. And it makes you think of actually so many celebrities who are kind of built up and then smashed down by public opinion in a most deadly way. On a happier note, with another unashamed plug, my wife Shoshana with Turquoise Mountain has begun doing exhibitions in London around the crafts of the West Bank and Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria. There was one in Sotheby's in Bond Street this year, and there's going to be another one in the Garrison Chapel in central London in February. And these are craftspeople from conflict zones. These are women from Afghanistan weaving incredible carpets.

23:14Rory Stewart:Currently, Turquoise Mountain is supporting, I think, 7 ,000 women weaving carpets. It's Syrian refugee artisans returning home and producing masterpieces in mother of pearl and wood carving. its people in the West Bank, Palestinians in unbelievable difficult situations, creating glorious glassware, jewellery, cups. And it's a sign of economic development, working conflict zones, but also just beauty, pride production. Great. Okay. Last category, this Christmas Day 2025, Campaign of the Year. Ooh. I think we're going to agree. Okay, go. Try. I'm going Zora Mamdani. political campaigner, unbelievable.