494. Carney’s Trump Fightback and the Starmer-Burnham Fallout

24:09Rory Stewart:There's a polite way of saying his early signups were places like Saudi, Azerbaijan, and then rather disappointingly, your friend, Eddie Rama signed up. Well, this is a very interesting point. I had an exchange with Eddie about that. And he said, we are not France or Canada, he said. So they're a small power. Okay, you've got big powers too, you've got the middle powers of which we're one and you've got the smaller powers. Albania is one of those. And he said, part of it was also, he has to stay close to some of those Gulf countries and the Muslim side of life, as it were. And I said to him, yeah, but you're also European.

24:42So he's got a very, very tricky balancing act. He in a way has been a victim of his own success. he's become a much bigger figure in the world than the leader of most countries of three and four million people. And therefore, that's why Trump invited him. Now, he's not becoming one of the billion pound permanent members. He just said he's going to support it. But the point I was going to make is that what the Canada, UK, Germany, France is, imagine if they developed a board of middle power prosperity. Imagine if they actually created a new grouping, which was explicit, this is what they're about and this happens all the time the g20 didn't exist until the crash and that gordon brown i think led the creation of that bricks brazil russia india china south africa that was a new formation which is now developing yeah so i think actually they should use this to say there are going to be we're going to have global summits about the environment and america and china won't be there we're going to have a global summit about the effect of ai and america and China won't be there.

25:43You make it specific. We are middle powers in this new hegemonic world that he described, and we are going to have structures that come together on a regular basis. And you can have people who don't necessarily share all your values. You would maybe have the Emiratis and the Saudis there, but you're discussing common challenges in a new forum. And I just think that's not a bad way to go.

26:07Rory Stewart:I think it's a very, very good idea. And maybe you're right that something which is a sort of this funny GX formula where you set up a new body from USU may often be more practical than trying to set up what the French tried to do in 2019, which was a multilateral alliance of 40 countries trying to replace the US, which never really worked because they could never work out whether they were actually inviting people who weren't from the West in and whether they were inviting non-democracies and whatnot. You could also, by the way, you could invite states. You could invite California to be part of the middle power.

26:40Rory Stewart:You're facing a very interesting question there. And one of the amazing things that is a story that hasn't been reported enough, I think, is that there is, I believe now, strong evidence that Trump's Board of Peace is going to completely fail, that it's gone wrong. So his idea was he was going to set this thing up. And just to remind people, it is a bizarre organisation. It is the head of it with an absolute veto and the chairman who decides everything is not the President of the United States. It is Donald Trump for life. So he tried to... mind that says if he's incapacitated, the board can vote him off.

27:11Rory Stewart:I don't know who snuck that with him. He clearly didn't read it himself. Anyway, the idea was going to be essentially it would replace the United Nations because he was going to not just have all the European countries involved. He was going to have Belarus, Russia, et cetera. And what's been really interesting is Greenland absolutely screwed it for him. Because now every major European country has said they won't join. Canada signaled it wouldn't join. So he's told Canada they're not welcome and they can't join anyway, even if they want to. So basically, the whole thing has turned out to be a joke, a very, very, very expensive joke.

27:45He doesn't give up though, does he?

27:47Rory Stewart:A bunch of very eccentric countries. I mean, this is not what he was hoping for. He was not hoping to be the head of an organization that consisted almost exclusively either of tiny European satellite states, Kosovo, Albania, Middle Eastern monarchies, or oil-rich autocracies. That was not the idea. So I think it's failed. The question is, is anything else going to work? So trying to set up a new alliance that doesn't have the US and China, how does that work? Because of course, and this is maybe where you're right, you go ad hoc, because anything else, you have to accept that France and Germany can barely agree within the EU.

28:26Rory Stewart:If you start getting the question of how India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Saudi, UAE, Britain start agreeing. I just think there'd be something very invigorating and exciting about a body that basically said, this is a body for the middle powers. So part of the challenge they're all dealing with all the time without being very open about it is how do you deal with the United States and the China in their current form have a discussion about that and i just think that khan is really onto something with this and we've got to grow up and stop because the truth is look america is incredibly powerful but i think the other thing that was that you sensed at davos was that if those other countries did actually sort of find a way of coming together america becomes a bit of a show as opposed to what Trump projected at, which is all powerful.

29:20It's not all powerful. There are limits to American power.

29:23Rory Stewart:We saw that. Well, to be really extreme about this, I mean, I don't want to hammer us home too much, but the idea that Europe can't survive without the US, or even that Britain can't survive without the US, is just technically not true. Shoshana and I work in Afghanistan. Afghanistan survives without the US. Afghanistan, actually, the Taliban spent 20 years fighting the most powerful military on Earth, the US spent$1.5 trillion. And the result is the US have left it. Now, you don't want to be Afghanistan, but they're surviving, to put it in the most extreme case. Now, Europe and the UK is not Afghanistan, right?

29:55Rory Stewart:We have some of the most advanced life science in the world. We have some of the most advanced tech in the world. We have some of the leading universities in the world. We have an enormous economy. We have 450 million people, right? The idea that we cannot survive and technically cannot survive without the US just simply isn't true. Paul Jay Frankly, or win a war against Russia, providing he doesn't unleash all the nukes. David Bessire Absolutely. What we then have to talk about, though, is that someone in the NSC needs to define what dependencies on the US are real and extreme, which we can get away from in five years, which we can get away from in 10 years, which are ones where it's almost technically inconceivable at the moment for us to advance, and where in some cases it's technically conceivable, but it's expensive.

30:43Rory Stewart:So in a nuclear, for example, there's an option doing more with the French. AI, we don't really know what that option is. And there's some very difficult bets. We could get to a stage, for example, on semiconductors, if Europe and the UK were serious about it, where we could have resilience for our critical infrastructure with semiconductors, but we would probably never have the type of advanced chips which NVIDIA are currently driving. And then you put a price tag on. So this is my final point. We have to be honest with the public now, and this is a problem because the country's bust, demography's going the wrong direction, our welfare bill's expanding, we're spending money, but this is going to cost some money.

31:18Rory Stewart:If we're going to develop with the French more independence on nuclear, it will cost 25 billion over 10 years. If we're going to develop RN satellite capacity and RN munition stockpiles, 25 billion over 10 years. If we're going to invest properly in rebuilding the UN system, climate, development, etc., similar amounts. So you're probably talking about the UK finding an additional 10 to 20 billion pounds a year in order to do this seriously. War bonds. War bonds. But you could totally do it, right? If I had you selling the stuff, explaining to people why they needed to do it, we've done it in the past.

31:56Rory Stewart:I mean, that's the problem. If you really work backwards from it's got to happen. And you sat down with the NSC say, how do we do this over five, 10 years? Of course you can do it. So listen, as I said earlier, Rory, we were talking on the day that Keir Starmer's heading off to China. First British Prime Minister to go in eight years. He actually made quite an interesting speech about China, which didn't get much attention at the time. His Lord Mayor's banquet speech, or Lady Mayor, as she now is. A lot of it was about China and essentially saying that we've sort of gone from this hot world where Cameron Osborne said China's where we sort of, you know, bank the future.

32:28And then we've had eight years since Theresa May was Prime Minister where literally nobody's gone to China. and whilst Macron's been there three or four times, Merz I think is going next month. I mean, it is pretty dumb not to engage with China. What do you make of our relationship with China and the extent to which that plays into this world that we're talking, we've just been talking about?

32:48Rory Stewart:Well, I think Stamerson a real problem, real, real problem because there is a bipartisan consensus in the United States, which includes the Democratic Party, that China is the number one adversary. Everything that the DOD is doing about reducing the American Department of Defense or Department of War now is doing and reducing its commitments to Ukraine is about challenging China. Hold on. Do you know the new defense strategy? They published the new defense strategy. It doesn't even mention Taiwan. China is just a sort of economic competitor as much as anything. You're quite right. There seems to be a tension because we don't even know what's going on in American head.

33:22Rory Stewart:But certainly, the deputy secretary is obsessed with China. Quite a lot of the Republicans are obsessed with China and a lot of the Democrats are obsessed with China. So, So I think the risk that Starmer's going to face is if he goes full carny. And as we pointed out last week, what is that? That's going to China and saying, we'll drop all your tariffs on your electric cars. We'll sell you a lot of our canola oil and we'll have a jolly rich, which the Chinese are really looking forward to. And they keep producing sort of fortune cookie proverbs about how you never need to do anything when your enemy's falling on its face or whatever.

33:51Rory Stewart:But very, very rapidly, you saw it around the debate around the Chinese embassy in London, this new Chinese where their press have been full of, we're selling out to the Chinese. Chinese spies are all over us. Hold on a minute. Let's just on that for a bit. Are they saying the Chinese shouldn't have an embassy here? Or it's just a question of scale? So on the one hand, we're saying that China is now this massive power on the par with America. And on the other hand, we're saying they shouldn't have an embassy. I don't quite get this debate. I don't get it either. Because listen, the fact is China currently has seven or eight facilities in the UK.

34:22Rory Stewart:Most of its spying is not actually being done at the moment out of its diplomats. It's being done from other people. Actually, it's going to be much easier to monitor them when the diplomats are mostly in one building. Yes, there's a fiber optic cable that runs past the building, correct. But given that we know that that stretch of fiber optic cable is only a few hundred meters long, it's right next to the Chinese embassy, there are things that we could do to try to make sure they don't get on the fiber optic cable. So I completely agree with the intelligence and security chiefs that this stuff, this fear mongering is not actually being driven by analysis in the NSC about the actual threat that this building poses.

34:58Rory Stewart:But the reason it's important is this is what's going to hit Starmer from the US. And this is driven from the US, all driven from the US's stuff. So the closer the UK gets to China, the more exposed it will become. And this is why Starmer has to decide what he's doing. Is he prepared to take cost and pain or not? And the big example of where he's still getting it wrong, is when Europe said, Greenland will not be taken, Denmark's sovereignty will not be taken, we are preparing anti-extortion tariffs. Yes, Starmer said, I agree with Europe on sovereignty, but he refused to get behind them on the tariffs.

35:36Rory Stewart:He's got to be able to act jointly with Canada and the EU. Joint statements, joint positions. If he allows himself, as I suspect he will be, to be stuck between Europe and the US and all these issues, he's not going to get the kind of deals that Carney got out of China. He'll end up in a muddle in the middle, being pushed around by everybody without much economic benefit and without getting any credit from his potential allies. I think you're a bit harsh on that. Listen, we're going to talk about Keir and Andy Burnham in the second half. But I actually think on the... So let's just say last week, you and I, and particularly I were absolutely spitting blood feathers the lot about what he said about NATO troops pulling back from the front line.

36:23Keir Starmer did eventually go out and called it out for what it was and may or may not pay a price for that. Likewise, I think he did stick with the Europeans on tariffs.

36:34Rory Stewart:No, his whole speech, I mean, we can debate. He may have said differently. The main speech was one where he kept saying, I don't think tariffs are the way to go. We don't want to into tariff war, are they too costly for the British economy, et cetera. And it's one way of looking at it. We just step back. Did anyone in the world notice Keir Starmer's comments last week? They're all talking about Mark Carney's speech, right? They're all talking about what Stubb from Finland is saying. Multi-lateralism against multi-polarity. The New York Times is covering the Belgians. People are talking about Macron.

37:01Rory Stewart:Well, that's likely - Starmer? No. Okay. Starmer? Where is he? Where is he? He's in China. Tell me where he is. The reason he's not in this conversation, I'm afraid, goes back to the beginning of our conversation, which is still sitting in national security meetings where the British are going, it's all too difficult, this is all too dangerous, this is not realistic, we can't get really Ben and Ben child, we can't imagine getting away from the US. The idea that we've even begun to do the planning the Canadians have done, the Canadians are already planning on fighting a counterinsurgency warfare against the Americans.

37:31Rory Stewart:That's developed by their military, their NSC, leaked to the global mail. The idea that anyone in the British National Security Council is actually fully beginning to do what we need to do. Five-year planning, 10-year planning, what are the dependencies, how much it will cost, where we're going to spend the money. If they were doing that, Starmer would be speaking in a different way. Yeah, okay, okay. Well, listen, we'll talk about Keir Starmer again after the break, and I suspect you'll be even less flattering. See you then. Look forward to you after the break. Bye-bye.

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40:14Welcome back to The Rest is Polities with me, Alistair Campbell.

40:17Rory Stewart:And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Alistair. Yes, Rory. This is a moment where I'm going to stop talking and start asking you questions because it's something you understand much more than me. My first question, obviously, is what the hell is going on with the fact that the Labour Party has decided not to allow Andy Burnham, the extremely well-known, extremely successful Mayor of Greater Manchester, who now wants to enter Parliament, he's incredibly amazing, high-profile Labour talent. They're not even allowing him to get on the long list to apply for a parliamentary seat. What's going on? Hold on, before we get into this, you're sort of describing Andy Burnham, though, as though we're talking about Nelson Mandela or Abraham Lincoln.

41:01Or Matt Hancock. Not that bad. So I imagine that a lot of our British listeners will know what's been going on with Starmer and Burnham. Some of our international listeners may not. Andy Burnham, former cabinet minister under the last Labour government, Manchester mayor pretty popular figure up there but has made no secret of his desire to get back into parliament so he put his name forward for the long list of candidates for a by-election that's just come up in Manchester and the national executive the ruling national executive had a committee hearing over the weekend and voted by eight to one for him not to be allowed to put his name forward.

41:43They say he should stay and deliver on his mandate for four years as Manchester mayor. This is a tricky one for me. I think they're both wrong. I think they've both been in the wrong.

41:55Rory Stewart:But both Burnham and Starman? Yeah. That's a popular position to take the Labour party. That's why you're alienating everybody. I'll tell you why. Because look, part of the job of political leadership is to have and make sure you have good relations with all the people who might become a threat and i'm not sure i look i i know andy burnham well and i talk to him from time to time i think he has felt that the number 10 operation has sort of been suspicious of him pushed him away kept him at a distance he's a labor politician okay and he's the mayor of Manchester. And he's been elected to serve several years as mayor of Manchester.

42:37And in a way, he signalled too overtly, in my view, that the reason he wants to get into Parliament is to mount a challenge against Keir Starmer. Now, if you're Keir Starmer, it's not your responsibility to lead the Labour Party to say, bring it on. I think Andy Burnham must have known, should have known that the national executive was likely to block him from doing this because that was the state. That was the purpose.

43:02Rory Stewart:It's such a weird thing, just quickly to try to understand this, because I don't think something similar would happen within the Tory party. If I suddenly decided that I want to run in a by-election, and I'm not a Tory at the moment, so maybe that would be a problem, but I think it would be very, very unlikely that the conservative machine would prevent it. So Boris Johnson is the classic analogy. Boris was mayor of London, quite clearly wanted to be prime minister, decided he was going to stand for election in 2015. It's inconceivable that David Cameron would have said, despite all that stuff, you're not entitled to run.

43:37Rory Stewart:I mean, we generally rest on the assumption that somebody in good standing who's been an MP and therefore has passed the candidate selection list and who isn't actually in jail should be able to go to a constituency and say, I would like to be your MP. And the constituency decides whether or not to take them. this added layer of saying we're going to veto people and and the grounds they gave i mean clearly the reason they did it is they don't want starmer challenging uh doesn't want burnham challenging sound to be promised but they just lied i mean this idea that the reason they're doing it is that it's too expensive because it's going to cost a million pounds to run a match thing it's not the real reason it's obviously not the real reason but hold on a minute i think there is something big i i was really surprised over the weekend when this was going on how many people including big supporters one in particular big supporter of andy burnham in manchester who said to me this he said he was sickened by it because he said andy burnham's been elected as mayor every recognizes he's doing a very good job and he's basically saying to manchester you were a bit of a kind of stepping stone because i think i should be prime minister well it'd be true for boris in london true for any mayor running i mean it was true it's a difficult thing and it's the same if you're a u.s senator or governor or mayor running running for the presidency i mean yes absolutely you're saying in the end running the united kingdom is more important than running manchester and that's that's that's offensive to manchester but it's true.

45:09Everybody's focusing on Keir Starmer's, and by the way, I think they're both to blame for the state of the mess that's being created, okay? Would you have blocked Burnham? If I'd have thought that he was doing this in order to get a seat, in order to mount a challenge against Keir Starmer, I think I probably would.

45:31Rory Stewart:Okay, in which case, would it not be more honest to just say the number one thing we need at the moment is stability we're not interested in changing a prime minister they're kind of saying that they are kind of saying that so much their argument yesterday was around the cost of running another election in manchester it's not just another election it's a it's the it's the mayoralty election which is like 20 odd by elections you're talking millions you are talking millions we're talking in a country which is currently spaffing hundreds of billions up okay so listen that don't you think in communications terms it would have been a little bit more honest to say fundamentally this guy has been incredibly disloyal document everything that he did to attack the prime minister during the last labor conference say transparently he's made it clear the reason he's coming in is to mount a leadership challenge against darma and we as the labor party do not want a leadership challenge against the prime it's the last thing the country needs or wants at the moment that's why we're not letting him that is certainly the truth right um and you know i think in politics it's usually it's wise to get as close as possible to the truth.

46:35But the reason why I say that I think there's been a fault on both sides here is that there should have been a relationship and a series of conversations that prevented this from happening. I think Andy Burnham knew that when he put his name forward, he was going to be blocked. Now, I actually think Andy's weakened himself because if you go around, if I was a voter in Manchester now, I'm sort of thinking, this guy doesn't actually want this job as much as he wanted another job and the other thing i think that's happened is that so you've got a this is happening because andrew gwynn labor mp stepping down for a scandal proper scandal scandal slash calls it health reasons yeah stepping down by elections happening in a seat that is pretty tricky for two reasons well for one reason this seat in manchester is going to be there's a there's a part of it that is very, very susceptible to the Greens, and there's a part of it that is very susceptible to reform.

47:34Now, where there is a case for Andy Burnham is that if you looked at the markets and what they were saying about this seat, if Andy Burnham was the candidate, Labour was something like 38, 30 odd percent, 36, 38 percent on to win, and reform and Greens were sort of 20s. That's been flipped.

47:53Rory Stewart:Okay, so let me come on that for a second. So if that's true, Let's assume that's true, that Burnham would be much more likely to win that seat. My guess is that if Labour now loses that seat, it will look even worse for Starmer and probably a bit better for Burnham. I agree, but my point is that Andy Burnham has partly created that. If Andy Burnham had really thought this through and had honest conversations about what was going on, I think he might have reached the conclusion that said, because in the end, yes, he's the mayor of Manchester, but he is also a Labour politician. and he's a Labour politician who was with mistakes on both sides has created a total mess he's actually made Labour's defeat more likely in a by-election where he knows that at the end of that Keir Starmer gets more of the blame it's so fast I mean Labour party's not my party so I'm just looking at this as an anthropologist but there's so many things going on here maybe we should get Robert Sapolsky yeah exactly exactly which resonates with me from the Tory party so basically he's in the position that Boris Johnson was in when he was mayor of London wanted to be prime minister and actually ran for parliament and actually under the conservative laws continued to be mayor of london even while he was an mp and like burnham he was an mp for something on the outskirts of london so he could argue that he was representing london a different way but the reason it's so difficult to analyze is there's the first big question which you keep talking about which is this question of loyalty this guy is a labour party member what on earth does he think he's doing endlessly undermining the prime minister and then the second problem that Burnham's got, which is that another group of people want to topple Keir Starmer so they don't have much loyalty towards him.

49:26Rory Stewart:For example, it is almost certainly the case that the big article in the Sunday Times saying Wes Streeting has 200 supporters in Parliament probably came from Wes Streeting's camp. And that article was framed as, we don't want Andy Burnham to come in because Wes doesn't particularly want a challenge from Andy Burnham. And you could develop this. Look, I personally, I think Wes Streeting would be a better prime minister than Keir Starmer and I'm lining up to see if I can offer my services to him or indeed to many other people that I really admire so is this because Keir Starmer hasn't given you a job absolutely it's it's everything and this is so you just another self-serving politician for your own ambition I represent that middle part I don't know whether we should get Ben Wallace or David Gort I don't know who would do on the podcast middle part of the Labour Party that feels really resentful they didn't get the job from Keir Starmer I'm there with all the rest to the backbench that's just sort of sitting there.

50:18Rory Stewart:There is a lot of that. There's always that important. So I'm thinking, okay, we're streeting, you know, obviously I like Peter Carr very much. I'm a great fan of Al Kahn's that we haven't spoken up and I've done incredible response to Trump. I mean, literally the Trump, if you compare his response to Trump to Keir Starmer's response. Well, when he did the video. Oh, extraordinary. So tracking some comments made that NATO troops stayed a little off the front lines in Afghanistan and that the US has never necessarily needed us. Well, it's a real shame to hear that. Many courageous and honourable service personnel from many nations fought on the front line.

50:52Many fought way beyond it. I'd served five tours in Afghanistan, many alongside my American colleagues. We shed blood, sweat and tears together and not everybody came home. These are bonds I think forged in fire, protecting US or shared interests but actually protecting democracy overall. There's only one worse thing than working with allies. That is working without them. And when you do, always remember, never above, never below, always side by side.

51:21Rory Stewart:To say casually, as he's saying, I served five tours in Afghanistan, right? And he's the one politician. Hold on a bit. Keir Starber can't say that because he hasn't. He certainly can't. But he's the one politician in British politics who any American general, any American politician looking at Al Kahn's cannot be. Did you see his video the next day? No. So he did the one to Trump basically saying, you know, I've served five tours in Afghanistan. Kindly, please don't insult our comrades who died serving in Afghanistan. The next day, he did a video where he basically said, I've just been for a two-hour run with a 15-kilogram backpack.

52:03He's a bit like you. And he looked just wasn't even out of breath. So, no, listen, he's impressed.

52:09Rory Stewart:This is where I will. But no, sorry, I just want to develop. I mean, just to get the point, I don't think people fully understand this. So many veterans in British politics, their military records are good, strong, but - Oh, his is a different level. This is a different level. I mean, the guy was - He's got a military cross. The guy was literally in a helicopter with a weapon on the front line with the American Special Forces again and again, literally looking out of the helicopter with a gun. So So that was a really good response to Trump. And then something about Starmer's response. Yes, I was delighted that in the end he stood up.

52:48Rory Stewart:But his voice, his delivery, I mean, this could have been his great moment to turn around. I will never forget their courage, their bravery, and the sacrifice that they made for their country. And so I consider President Trump's remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling. Where I'm going to side with you a bit, I'm going to give you a quote from Abraham Lincoln, who, as you know, is one of my sort of political heroes. You're always mentioning it. So is it Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela and Matt Hancock?

53:23There's three degrees. God, yeah. Abraham Lincoln famously brought in his opponents to build his team, so-called team of rivals. and he explained it as this we needed the strongest men of the party in the cabinet we needed to hold our own people together i had looked the party over and concluded these were the very strongest men i had no right to deprive the country of their services right brilliant and that's the case for for kia starmer saying whatever the threat to me andy burnham's pretty good he's done a good job in manchester i'll get him in and i would also argue. So Al Kahn's, for example, is a very good example of where Keir Starmer did reach out beyond the Labour tribe.

54:05But I think it's possible to make the case that he maybe should have thought, can I get David Miliband to come back? Can I get Alan Milburn to come back?

54:13Rory Stewart:Hypothetically speaking, my guess is very strong that if David Miliband had wanted to stand, he wouldn't have allowed him to stand either. You know, in other words, this control freakery is stopping talent, not just Andy Burnham, but David Miliband and many other people who wanted come in. What he wanted was young, pliable people. And there was something in that, and the control freakery is certainly sort of part of the kind of narrative against Keir Starmer. But I think on this one, I think it's much, much more complicated than the way that maybe it's been projected. And if you look at the polling, it says Andy Burnham should be allowed to stand.

54:43Well, fine. But then you also do have to at least weigh up in the judgment, the idea of, let's just say Nigel Farage fielded a really strong candidate for Manchester mayor, and let's just say they won okay that's a disaster for the Labour Party and for the country so that you've got to weigh all these things up so what they've decided I think is that the the considerable short-term hit that they've suffered and the sort of the sense of Andy Burnham now being an even bigger figure as a sort of antidote and an opponent of Keir Starmer they've decided that is better to live with than the prospect one of a guy coming in and you just have endless when's he going to make his move?

55:25When's he going to make his move? When's he going to make his move? Or a reform win in Manchester. They are considerable factors that I think they were right to weigh up.

55:34Rory Stewart:I'm just trying to get a sense of whether Starmer is actually going to be running as the Labour leader in the next election. And what's your sense within the Labour Party? I mean, are we now in a position which I fear was probably true for Theresa May after she lost the 2017 election, which is, my memories of it is that every Tory MP and every coffee room was basically plotting. And there were people, you know, these horrible comments about, you know, dead woman walking, you know, it's when, not if. And basically the sense that by the time I put my hat into the leadership race, so I am May 2019, it was clear that Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, had had campaigns running for about 12 months beforehand, had already raised the money, had already had their staff, had already had Grant Shapps running.

56:28Rory Stewart:Is the general sense now in Labour that the majority of MPs would be surprised if Stalin took them into the next election? Look, I think he's in a really, really tough place. And to have gone so quickly from a three-figure landslide majority to this sense of people are having those sorts of conversations so i think he's in a really tough place i think he knows that and the question then given that one of his big messages was country before party where does that lead to i think he's in a really difficult place so you're really difficult i'm i don't want to put you on the spot but what i'm hearing from this and i think the audience would hear is that the chances of him taking later into the next elections is 10 i don't know about a percentage but i'm shocked by two things one in the public because i don't think keir starman is a hateful person at all but a number of people say i hate that guy hate that guy i don't i really don't get that but i think what you're hearing amongst a lot of the mps is that you know this just isn't working we are not a functional government so there's the comms point that you've made often they're not communicating what are the other things they think are not working partly that they don't sort of feel that they're able to connect with the public on what on the on what they call the good things that they are doing, which I can list, and I think they are doing a lot of good stuff.

57:46I think here has been impressive, particularly on the foreign affairs field.

57:50Rory Stewart:And then there'll be doorstep stuff. There'll be my constituents are annoyed, the parties annoyed. They will have felt he took, he was too slow on Gaza. They won't be happy at all with what's happening with the budget. They won't be confident about the balance that's being struck on welfare. They will feel that a lot of the promises on immigration weren't delivered. The promises on growth weren't delivered. The big thing that ties that together is the fact that the slogan was change. And there are changes that you can point to. But do people feel that their lives are being transformed by a change of government?

58:23Certainly not yet. and then added to which this is the thing that kind of pains me the most is that the thing that made the last lot so dysfunctional was this sense you've seen this in the way it's operating now you just saw some sort of pretty second-rate people projecting themselves as though they were the center of the universe and i think what you the reason why i think kia starmer is likely to be feeling incredibly frustrated right now is there he is trying to sort of, you know, get a new government in place, get the government going. And we're already talking about who's next. Now, he either actually lays down, he says, you can do what you want, I'm not going.

59:05And then he's going to force the hand of people like Westreaking if they are sort of pushing to get him out, because Andy Burnham is not going to be there to do it for him now. But I think right now, I'm pretty down about the way the government has developed. And I'm pretty down about the way the public is seeing it. And that's got to be fixed because the Tories are not going to win the next election. The Tories are not going to win the next election. And therefore, the choice that the country is facing is do you want a Labour or a Labour-led government, or do you want Nigel Farage in Townie Street?

59:35Now, some people are still saying yes to the latter, but I think there is a real desire for that not to happen. And the only way it's going to be stopped is for Labour to get us out together.

59:45Rory Stewart:Very good. Okay, well, end of this episode. look forward to discussing this more in question time we're going to talk about minnesota we're going to talk about suella braverman and her defection to reform and we're going to talk about very exciting new development which is an attempt to build a center-right movement i know trying to trying to get there in the center exactly make the argument for the center exactly and also i've taken you up on your suggestion that we interview the people that we talked about last week and we've been campaigning against and exposing this horrible new thing but not new phenomenon, massive phenomenon of child sex abuse online.

1:00:16Rory Stewart:Okay. Well, talk then. Thank you again. Bye-bye.

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