502. How Nigel Farage Gets Away With It (Question Time)

15:49Alastair Campbell:The fact that it needs to be cleaner, there's no doubt about that. And, you know, Gordon Brown on the back of the Epstein stuff and Peter Mandelson came out and had all sorts of proposals. As I said at the time, I worried that that was sort of tarring them all with the same brush like, you know, Pippa Creera, I think, thinks I do sometimes with the media. But let me just give you another example of the sort of the double standard here. Let's imagine that I or Peter Mandelson or somebody who was associated with New Labour wrote a book called How to Launder Money. And let's imagine that Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Keir Starmer, David Lowey, Yvette Cooper, all turn up at the launch of our book, How to Launder Money.

16:33Alastair Campbell:So George Cottrell, who is this guy that Nigel Farage says is like a son to him, who's been to jail for laundering criminal proceeds, who spent several months in prison, he writes a book, How to Launder Money. And who turns up at the launch? Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Nick Candy, the billionaire property guy with the biggest house in bloody Regent's Park, Leila Cunningham, the candidate for London, James Orr, the intellectual guru of reform, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is part of the Trumpian thing. Instead of sort of getting on the defensive about being a money launderer, you write a book about it and you call it how to launder money and then when people like you and me say this is really terrible people like friday go oh it's just a bit of fun you like you're too serious you lefty bedwetters you know blah blah blah blah blah blah blah now what pos george as he's known as will say is that this is a book designed to help policymakers and politicians and the public understand money laundering but you can't deny it's quite a provocative title for somebody who's been banged up in the past for such things, how to launder money.

17:45Alastair Campbell:So Post George, good luck with your book. I suspect it won't get right to the top of the bestseller list, but you certainly had a good turnout for your launch. Right, before I stop my rant, Rory, and we'll go to the next question, a book on money laundering, which I've been reading. Oliver Bullough, we've talked about him before. This guy writes these amazing books about financial crime. And he's got a book out at the moment. I think he's out this week. And it's about money laundering and people should take it seriously and it's a proper piece of journalism so there are good journalists out there so alison thank you for your question you can see it had quite a triggering effect but i'm very very grateful and i hope that um some of our frank fearless free journos are listening and by the way i suspect this rant may be the end of our courting of nigel farage i sent him a message this week and i said look am i wasting my time trying to get you come onto the podcast.

18:35Alastair Campbell:Are you only going to do nice, soft, tame interviews? We'd be nice, we'd be respectful, we'd be polite, but we do need to ask you some difficult questions. Anyway, reply came there, none. Rant over. Rant over. Well, do we have any other questions? Last week, we promised to return to the issue of the Thailand election. So let me try and wrap a couple of questions together. Lucy is a TripPlus member from Yorkshire. Have voters in Thailand given up on the idea that Democrats can deliver change from the status quo. And then Tim in Brussels, does the election result in Bangladesh mark a genuine democratic reset?

19:08Alastair Campbell:Or does the exclusion of the Awami League, that's the party of Sheikh Hasina, currently in exile in India, and the rise of dynastic and Islamist forces risk replacing one form of dominance with another?

19:19Rory Stewart:Both cases, what you've got is the situation in which from 2012-2014, both Thailand and Bangladesh seemed to be moving away from democracy. So Bangladesh, for example, having been a sort of, actually a bit of a poster child for democracy, or it felt like it in the 90s, early 2000s, because there have been elections and the parties have been swapping back and forwards. Effectively, Sheikh Hasina, who was the ruler, took control in 2012 and took over the courts, took over the police, intimidated her opponents and set up an authoritarian regime. And in Thailand, in 2014, there was a military coup.

19:54Rory Stewart:And basically, the military and people around the royal family, the king's very strong in Thailand, ran a pretty authoritarian state. And then suddenly, rather oddly, given the general story that we see in our worlds, there was a bit of hope. So in 2023, in Thailand, this charismatic young leader of a progressive party did fantastically well in the polls. And in 2024, in August, in Bangladesh, there was an uprising and Sheikh Hasina was finally toppled. And Mohammed Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winning guy, the guy that set out microcredit, takes over. So in both stories, the story seemed to be actually rather oddly, given we're in the age of Trump, it was moving in a more progressive democratic direction.

20:37Rory Stewart:And now the elections have happened. And they are sadly a crushing disappointment. Because in Thailand, what's happened is the progressives have been beaten and there's been an incredible turnaround in the fortunes of this more conservative pro-military party that's gone from number three in parliament, so they had about 70 seats, to firing themselves up to top place at about 190. Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, yes, Sheikh Hasina's gone, but politics have just lurched back to the other great big machine party of Bangladeshi politics, the BMP. And of course, the person who's now one with the BMP is Tariq Rahman, who is the son of the former president and military ruler, General Zia Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981, as opposed to Sheikh Hasino, who was the daughter of the leader killed in an assassination in the 1970s, has now taken over again.

21:28Alastair Campbell:Hold on, Marie. He's not just the son of a former president. He's also the son on the maternal side of a former prime minister, Zia Khaleda, who I met with Tony Blair back in early 2000s, I think it was. No, you're right. And of course, on the one hand, Shea Kassina gone. They now have a warrant. They're in these discussions with India about whether they can get her back because they want to put her to death, frankly. And of course, her party was not allowed to stand. So the BNP, and of course, because of the UK context of BNP, it sounds a bit weird, say the BNP. This is the Bangladesh National Party, not the British National Party.

22:12Alastair Campbell:So they're a nationalist party. And they've got two thirds of the entire parliament. So there's a huge, huge win. Whereas in Thailand, although it was a big win and a very unexpected win against the polls, set against the polls in advance, they are still going to have to do pretty much a coalition with the party that came third. The progressives came second, having been way ahead in the polls. And one thing that was really interesting there was the rural-urban divide. And we see this in a lot of countries, but this is just massive. So in Bangkok, the capital, the most urbanized area, the progressives won every single seat, every single one.

22:51Alastair Campbell:And yet, get out a little bit, and they see that, and of course, it's a mixed system, it's a hybrid system, part first past the post, part proportional. But it was a very, very big shock and what it means is that the traditional powers of monarchy military and the appeal to national unity particularly at a time when they've been having this conflict with Cambodia it seems to have won the day however a lot of allegations of vote rigging vote buying and you know cameras turning off during the voting and so you know it's left a bit of a nasty taste

23:24Rory Stewart:but you know it's a big win it's um also part of a really interesting bigger story about what's happening in South Asia, Southeast Asia with democracies and economies. The normal story that we would have wanted to tell ourselves after the fall of the Berlin Wall is that the whole world was becoming more and more democratic and more and more liberal in terms of its economics. And we, I guess, because we're Europeans, we often have the model in our head of what happened in Eastern Europe, you know, Lithuania, Romania, and these countries on this amazing journey. The story in Southeast Asia and South Asia has been more complicated.

24:00Rory Stewart:There's been incredible economic performance for many of these countries, particularly in the 90s, early 2000s, where Bangladesh, you know, famously the basket case of international development, shot on its path to become a middle income country. Thailand actually diversified away from tourism, did amazing stuff in light manufacturing, beginning to grow very fast. But both those economies have basically run into trouble. They've run into trouble partly with tariffs with the United States. Partly simply endemic corruption, kleptocracy, poor institutions are really choking growth. Meanwhile, autocratic states like Vietnam, which is basically in many ways went through a smaller version of China.

24:45Rory Stewart:In other words, Communist Party remains in place. Big modernization drive from 1986 shot ahead and its economy continuing to grow probably 5-6 % this year, while Thailand's probably only growing 1.5%.

24:58Alastair Campbell:And also Indonesia becoming a giant

25:01Rory Stewart:in its own way. Indonesia becoming a giant,$1.4 trillion economy now in Indonesia. I guess if we step back from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and this is probably an area of the world we don't talk about enough, because this, you know, when we talk about middle powers, how do we balance the United States, China, Russia? A lot of the answer is going to be in these enormous economies. South Asia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, but also these enormous economies of Southeast Asia and East Asia. The question of whether Britain, Europe can ally with them, build economies around them, share values with them, is made very, very complicated by the fact that these countries are not on easy paths towards liberal democracy.

25:45Rory Stewart:And of course, as you've just pointed out with Nigel Farage, and with Hungary and Europe, there's some pretty serious problems now happening back at home too.

25:53Alastair Campbell:The other interesting thing about Bangladesh, they also had a referendum on the same day with a reasonably high turnout. And this was to make major constitutional reform, sort of stuff that you and I be saying, let's have some of this for the UK. So they brought in, I think it's 80 changes to the constitution. And the most important, I guess, two term limit for prime ministers, more power for judges, directly elected upper house. So this is, you know, there is at least kind of democratic change and renewal being attempted there. But I think this thing with India is really interesting, and Pakistan as well, and how these relations develop.

26:29Alastair Campbell:Because, of course, one of the reasons why Sheikh Hasina was able to go to India is because relations with India under her had been pretty strong. Since her departure, they've been very substantially weakened and become very, very hostile. The relations are so bad that in the T20 World Cup currently going on, Bangladesh refused to play unless their games were moved out of India. So that is why Scotland did out of the World Cup, because Bangladesh pulled out. So they've got this real tensions between them. And of course, now you have Modi, he gave a a message of congratulation to Tariq Rahman, the new guy, who actually I've met in London, I think, in the past, because he's lived in London in exile for the last 17 years or so.

27:20Alastair Campbell:So these tensions are still there. And Modi is going to have to be pretty careful about how he handles that. And likewise, relations with Pakistan and Bangladesh, you know, tensions there as well. So we should come back to this once the new guy has settled in. As you say, To some extent, it's a story of two great dynastic powers that have sort of, you know, moved in and out and in and out of jail and in and out of power and what have you. But we'll see whether this constitutional change ever comes.

27:50Rory Stewart:Alistair, when we come back from the break, we've got a good question actually to follow up on the Munich Security Conference for you. Excellent. See you soon.

28:00Alastair Campbell:Hello everybody and welcome to The Book Club, a new podcast from Goalhanger, hosted by me, Dominic Sandbrook.

28:07Rory Stewart:And me, Tabitha Syrod. As some of you may know, I've been Dominic's producer on The Rest is History and we even did a mini-series last year about all things books.

28:17Alastair Campbell:And since we enjoyed that so much, we have decided to roll it out as its own show.

28:22Rory Stewart:It'll be coming out every Tuesday. We'll be doing a different book each time and digging into all the stories behind them. And we are going to be talking about the historical contexts behind some of the greatest and most famous books of all time. We're going to be digging into the remarkable people behind them, the unexpected stories behind the stories, and also unravelling the plot of each book a bit and delving into the depths of the story.

28:46Alastair Campbell:Now you don't have to have read the books to listen to the show, but we hope that by the end of each episode you will be able to pretend to people

28:53Rory Stewart:that you've read them that is the key thing. And either way, whether you read them or not, we hope that you'll learn lots of fascinating facts, you'll do lots of great stories and maybe, Tabby, the odd laugh. We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women and then also some more modern stuff. So Game of Thrones, Normal People, The Hunger Games, Hamnet, all manner of exciting stories.

29:22Alastair Campbell:So please join us on our journey into all things books, wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for The Book Club every Tuesday and hopefully we will see you there.

29:52Rory Stewart:to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for the stay.

30:17Alastair Campbell:Welcome back to the Dress of the Polities

30:18Rory Stewart:Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So first question after the break from Alexandra in Hertfordshire. Who was the most impressive leader at the Munich Security Conference? And what else happened on the sidelines? And Ian, this is a question I'm fascinated by, but maybe we'll have to do this in more detail another time. Do you think J.D. Vance is being sidelined by Trump in favour of Rubio? But anyway, give us a sense, because I left the Munich Security Conference before you. What did you continue to see? Am I right that you managed to have a bit of time with Zelensky and things?

30:51Rory Stewart:Tell us a little bit about what you saw.

30:53Alastair Campbell:Well, I saw lots of things. And the thing that I was most impressed by, impressed as in struck, moved, was actually a panel on Arctic security, which was attended by the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Fredriksen, who we've been to before, Prime Minister of Greenland, Jens-Fredrik Nielsen, a Republican senator from alaska lisa makovsky foreign minister of canada anita anand had a really nice chat with her about how much she loves mark carney and also the german foreign minister boris pistorius and what was fascinating about it was it was do you remember there was the big room where the big stuff was going on ruby etc and then you had these smaller rooms and this one was in one of the smaller rooms probably held about two three hundred people and there were hundreds of people trying to get in.

31:43Alastair Campbell:And I spoke to this Norwegian guy who said, you know what, normally at the Arctic Security Panel, we can't fill the first row. And somebody else said, we should give Trump the Charlemagne Prize for uniting Europe in the way that he's done. But what was really fascinating was to see Fredriksson and Nielsen, the Greenland Prime Minister, they do not think this is over remotely. They are still very, very concerned about what's going on. It was also, I should give a plug to our miniseries on the Arctic, because several of the people there, including Alexander Stubb, when we interviewed him, the president of Finland, had listened to the first part of the miniseries we did with Ken Rosen on the Arctic.

32:22Alastair Campbell:So this has become like one of the biggest issues in the world. And it's because Trump has put it there. I thought the Greenland prime minister, I mean, imagine he's a young guy, he's in his 30s, population of 57 ,000, and he's suddenly thrust into this geopolitical nightmare. mayor. He looked very stressed. I had a chat with him afterwards, and he actually was pretty calm and very impressive. But oh my God, you could feel the weight on top of him.

32:52Rory Stewart:You and I, I think, were very much to the view that the people standing up to applaud Marco Rubio's speech weren't listening very hard. They were being influenced by the flattery and the tone, and they weren't picking up actually on the content of it. And Rubio then went on after community security camps do other stuff what was your reflection because basically there was a disagreement we took the views that actually you should be worried by rubio's speech a lot of other people were going around being relieved and applauding over to you well most notably

33:23Alastair Campbell:wolfgang ishinger who's the german diplomat who's the chair of the whole event and he he did a q a with rubio after rubio's speech and he said i hope you could feel the sigh of relief in the hall at your message of unity and reassurance. I mean, I had another German diplomat, perhaps a little more battle-hardened and less kind of lovey-lovey with the Americans than Ishinger. She said that a friend of hers, a very close friend of hers, had over years been the victim of domestic violence. And she felt that Rubio's speech was like coercive control. You know, I really love you. I really, really love you.

34:05Alastair Campbell:But all these bad things that I'm doing to you that you don't like, they really are for your own good. And that was the sort of the tone of his message was, you know, we're children of Europe. We'll never forget Europe. We love Shakespeare. We love the Beatles. We love Mozart, all that stuff. But the message to my mind was not a bit different to J.D. Vance a year ago. And I was appalled, frankly, that the Europeans, and so many of them fell for it so much. And I think the penny dropped later. The next 24 hours, most people I spoke to thought, yeah, it wasn't that great, was it? And then, of course, to see him go off to Slovakia to see Orban's mate, then to go and see Orban himself and intervene directly in the Hungarian election, basically by saying, Trump loves you.

34:49Alastair Campbell:If anything ever happens to Hungary with you in charge, America will always be there to help. It was a total direct interference in a European election. So I think you and I both got the right sense of what that speech was about. The other thing I saw after you left, Rory, I went to see Elridge Colby, who's the guy who is the kind of undersecretary of defense, very kind of MAGA. He was asked direct question. If Russia sought to annex the Russian speaking part of Estonia, Would that be seen as an act which required an Article 5 NATO response? And he gave a long lecture about NATO 1.0, NATO 2.0, NATO 3.0.

35:40Alastair Campbell:You guys, you've got this theological framing around Article 5. He went on and on and on and on. And then at the end, the questioner said, can I just remind you, it really was a very simple yes-no answer.

35:53Rory Stewart:It's terrifying. I mean, just to reinforce to people what this means. So NATO Article 5 is the core of all of NATO. An attack on one is an attack on all. And the answer to the question, what happens if Russia invades Estonia, a NATO member, is very simple. There is a complete response by the United States and everybody immediately. And the fact that the US Deputy Secretary of War, Elbridge Colby, is incapable of saying clearly, we, of course, would respond completely and dramatically to any invasion of Estonia. Your point about that German diplomat saying that the Trump administration is doing a form of gaslighting where they keep saying, you know, this is all for your own good.

36:42Rory Stewart:That Colby thing reveals so much about what's going on. The story that Colby's been selling the world is, yes, you know, it's very reasonable. Europe hasn't spent enough on defense. We need to concentrate more on China. Europe needs to step up and do a bit more and stand a bit more on his two feet. He said it so effectively that you often have heard until Greenland, European politicians just parroting that, beating themselves up. Well, it's true. We haven't spent enough on defense, etc. But the truth of the matter is that the biggest incentive to Russia intervening in Europe is not how much Europe does or doesn't spend on defense.

37:22Rory Stewart:It's whether or not they believe that the United States would respond immediately to any incursion. And for the US to keep the security of Europe isn't actually in the end about how many troops America keeps on the ground. It is about the crystal clear reiteration that an attack on one is an attack on the wall with the threats of the US nuclear arsenal behind. If America remained consistent on its statements, Europe would be in a much safer place.

37:50Alastair Campbell:The other intervention I saw that was worth looking at, the French Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, he did a very interesting thing. He said, look, this is all a bit pathetic that we listen to these American politicians and we're kind of looking for little words of love that tell us, yeah, yeah, we still love you. um and of course it struck me the end of rubio's speech it was valentine's day and i wonder whether that's why he did all that kind of you know lovey-dovey stuff but the policy has not changed and the point about estonia rory that is the thesis of that book that i mentioned my book of the year last year if russia wins it starts by russia taking over a bit of estonia and america

38:32Rory Stewart:deciding it's not important enough without blowing my trumpet anyway because i wasn't alone in this But when I was chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee in 2014, so 12 years ago, we used that Estonia case study as a way of trying to explain why we thought Europe was in real trouble. And in 2014, we were saying, what happens if Russia just parks a few little green men a few hundred yards into Estonia and just sits there? And will that trigger Article 5? And how will people respond? And so for more than 12 years, people have been trying to bring this to light. And for Elbridge Colby, who presents himself as this great defense intellectual, to be unable to answer the simplest question in geopolitics is catastrophic.

39:17Alastair Campbell:Yeah, I totally agree. At the event he was doing, I was sitting behind a few Canadians. And they were, oh, my God, they were not buying it one bit at all. I'll tell you, I was impressed by Anita Anand, the Canadian foreign minister. I thought she was really impressive. she i hadn't realized till i spoke to her afterwards she has she was planning to retire from politics and mark carney persuaded her to come back but also the senator from alaska really interesting and she's republican uh but my god she could not be more critical and condemn nature of what the way that trump has handled greenland and also making the point that ken rosen made in our miniseries americans who aren't in alaska they really don't understand what life is like in the arctic she was telling me for example that her phone if you're when it's cold where she lives when it's really cold you have to go out with your with your put your mobile phone under your armpit and keep it warm in something else otherwise the battery just dies in like an hour in the cold and so i i was fascinated by it's it's so interesting how book can kind of change the ken rosen's book polar war has completely changed the way that i think about the arctic and think that we should think about the arctic and its importance to all of this stuff that we talk about rory before we go to the next question i should tell you you'll be thrilled to hear this fiona listened to our discussion about kia starmer's speech and she said i agree with rory that's the first thing and i should tell you as well that i spoke to quite a lot of Carney's team, Macron's team, Merz's team.

41:01Alastair Campbell:I think the balance was with you, I'd say.

41:05Rory Stewart:In retrospect, why do you think you were seeing it as a slightly more positive speech?

41:10Alastair Campbell:I still do, because of what I sense is Keir Starmer preparing the ground for a significant shift on Britain and Europe, and also preparing the country for the fact that we may actually have to get to a place a bit like the Finns are when we talked to Alexander Stubb in terms of a sort of more we're actually at war remember the Polish foreign minister said to us as far as we're concerned we're already at war well we have that requires a change in mindset and it's interesting the day after you and I both said that this he's preparing the way to increase defense spending even further and even faster Kier Starmer announced that that's exactly what they're planning to do.

41:53Alastair Campbell:So that's the bit. And where I agreed with you, I thought I didn't see the point of the direct rebuttal of Mark Carney. Is it a rupture? Is it a transition? But anyway, the Canadians in particular, shall I say, were particularly on your side of the argument, Rory. Right. Tom from London. With all the criticism facing Keir Starmer at the moment, can you say something positive about him? Well, I've just done that. So why can't you do the same, Rory?

42:20Rory Stewart:Well, here we are. So I was at a reception for carers at Windsor Castle. This was last week, right in the middle of Starmer basically fighting, it felt, in the newspapers for his complete political survival. and what struck me is that he came out to Windsor and he was there with Stephen Kinnock he was there with Pat McFadden so senior members of his government and I watched him spend an hour and a half working his way around speaking to unpaid carers the people there were people who every one of them had a story of who they were caring for there was no sort of showmanship about it. I watched him very carefully.

43:02Rory Stewart:He was thoughtful. He listened really hard. And these were extraordinary stories. I saw him talking to somebody who has been looking after her mother since I think she was nine years old. Her mother's quadriplegic. He was talking to husbands looking after wives with severe dementia. He was talking to people working in hospices for children as well as for adults. It's quiet. It's unshowy. He could have just come in, just taken a photograph, been there for a few minutes and left again. I guess Windsor is not a very convenient place for him to get to back and forth. And presumably there would have been people in number 10 saying, come on, you know, the whole world's turning against you.

43:46Rory Stewart:And he was there doing the job and doing it really well. And, you know, I should put it on record. There are five point something million carers in the uk who are doing so much it's the toughest job imaginable can be very lonely often stuck at home looking after somebody who with very severe needs and of course by doing it they're saving uh the nhs and the whole system a huge amount of money and that they get very little carers allowance is very very low for doing that but i just thought it was a lovely indication of another side of care that people don't necessarily see and another side of these politicians in general that there was just kind of no swank there there was no sort of showing off it was just patiently working their way around that big room well it's interesting you

44:31Alastair Campbell:say because i actually got the next morning i got a message from pat mcfadden saying that he's seen you and he was saying nice things about you as well always it was obviously a very nice event

44:40Rory Stewart:all around well yes it was so can i just quickly also pay tribute obviously to the king and queen who brought it together. And again, you know, they also, I mean, sorry, I'd seen the king earlier in the morning, he came to open this exhibition at the Garrison Chapel. And there he too, like Keir Starmer, was spending, I guess, an hour and a half working his way slowly around the room, listening to everybody, talking to everybody when, you know, he's not had the best health recently. He's had, I can't imagine how many appointments that day. He may have, you know, also like Keir wanted to get back to bed, have some rest.

45:13Rory Stewart:And, And, you know, both of them together cheered me up.

45:16Alastair Campbell:Well, of course, what's interesting about that, to go back to the first part of our discussion about the way the media covers stuff, is that, of course, for King Charles, it's kind of his job. And actually, when he went to Shoshana's exhibition, that was on the news as sort of wallpaper for something else going on, probably to do with Prince Andrew, I don't know, rather than the thing. But so he does that all the time. Whereas let's imagine if the morning that Keir Starmer was doing that visit, Downing Street had briefed saying, well, if you want to get to the prime minister today, this is his only public engagement.

45:48Alastair Campbell:So we want you to cover carers. And here's a briefing about carers strategy and dah, dah, dah. They wouldn't even have taken a note. He would probably only have got on the news, assuming there was a, was there a pool camera there?

45:59Rory Stewart:Were there media there? I didn't see any, there may have been, but I, there was some photographs, but I didn't see much media at all. Yeah.

46:06Alastair Campbell:But let's imagine how he might have got in the news is if one of the carers had said to him you know why did you appoint peter manthelson as ambassador to washington and then it would have been keir starmer's attempt to put the spotlight on carers was overshadowed or upturned by a da da da da so he is in that mode at the moment i'll do another one in the special educational needs which is a massive massive massive problem okay georgia gould who is the minister in charge of this. And she's got a young family. She's got a white paper coming out. She has been to literally hundreds of meetings with parents.

46:48Alastair Campbell:And so she was on the radio the other day being challenged, why haven't you already produced a strategy? Answer, in part, I am absolutely determined to get this right. And I'm going to talk to people and talk to people and talk to people. So anyway, I think we should cut up your little peon of praise to Keir. and I'll send it to him.

47:05Rory Stewart:Well, I want to finish with a lovely question that we've received from Hannah Fry. But here's a question from Metta Hinton from Cambridge for you. What would a strong number 10 team look like?

47:19Alastair Campbell:Well, a strong number 10 team will be a strong number 10 team if there is a clear, compelling narrative coming out of number 10 all the time. That's the first thing. That comes from the top. That comes from the prime minister being really, really clear. And then I think you would have, I guess, you know, number 10 covers so much. It covers everything that's happening in government. So the structure, the first thing, the focus has to be on the word team. Are the people who are in there doing the key jobs, they don't have to be best friends. They don't have to go to each other's weddings and funerals and holidays and all that.

47:56Alastair Campbell:But what they have to have is a sense of what Jonathan Powell used to call complementarity. They've got skills that match each other. You definitely need, whether you call it chief of staff or director of operations, call it what you want. You need somebody who is kind of making the trains run on time, controlling the traffic that's going into the prime minister. Should they see that? Should they see that? I remember Barack Obama once said that, you know, most of the decisions that are sent to him don't even reach him. Because he had people that he trusted to say, this is what he would say about that.

48:26Alastair Campbell:This is what he would do about that. So that control goes in there. You then need somebody who's in charge of communications and strategy. And I think that the other thing that maybe is a bit confusing in this whole number 10 operation, maybe with all the change that's gone on since Morgan McSweeney left and the cabinet secretary, this can be addressed. But you're never quite sure where the policy direction is coming from. It's all felt a bit bits and pieces. And then the other thing a strong number 10 team looks like and has is really good relations with other departments. That's important as well.

49:02Alastair Campbell:So you did put me spot on there. I guess what all I've done is kind of describe our operation. And that's not a really sensible thing to do because, of course, we're in a completely different age. But I think you do need that. Well, the principles, I guess. I think the principles are the same. Right. Right. Final question, Rory, has actually come from Hannah Fry, who is a presenter of The Rest is Science. And because we're so modern and technological, here it is, video and sound.

49:31Rory Stewart:Hello, Alistair and Rory. Hannah Fry here from obviously your favourite of The Rest is Sister shows, The Rest is Science. I have a question for you, which is, I guess, about the overlap between science and politics. Science, I mean, we're continually warning about things that will happen on a 10 year timescale, a 20 year, 50 year and so on. But politicians seem structurally incentivised to only really care about these five year election cycles. So I am wondering and looking at the evidence of things that have gone in the last few years. is democratic politics just fundamentally incompatible with helping us to navigate through these long-term scientific crises?

50:15Rory Stewart:I'm not just thinking about climate change here, but pandemics, the ills of the internet, algorithmic harm, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and so on and so on. What do you think? I just want to quickly say how much I'm enjoying the rest of the science. If you're a little bit nerdy like me, it's the most wonderful thing. And honestly, let me try this one on you. So you play cards, right? Okay. One of the things they did recently on the rest of science is that they looked at how many combinations you can get from 52 cards. So imagine ace of spades, king of spades, queen of spades, and then you just move up the three of hearts to the top.

50:51Rory Stewart:That changes the combination of things. The number of combinations you can get from a pack of cards is 52 factorial. And they're trying to, you know, we keep talking about how you explain big numbers. Get this, their explanation. imagine that you set a timer for 52 factorial seconds going forward. Take one step every billion years. Continue to walk till you've walked all the way around the world. When you've got back to where you started, take one drop out of the Pacific Ocean and then set off walking around the world again with one step every billion years. When you've emptied the Pacific Ocean, lay down a sheet of paper, then pile sheets of paper all the way up to the sun.

51:37Rory Stewart:And each piece of paper represents an emptying of the Pacific Ocean. And you've got 52 factorial. How about that? Wow. It's beyond unbelievable. I still actually am struggling to believe them. But I did try to run the numbers yesterday, and I think they may be right. But what a lovely vision of how big numbers can get.

51:55Alastair Campbell:I got 100 % in my maths GCSE or O-level mock, and I didn't understand that at all.

52:02Rory Stewart:oh no i didn't explain it very well anyway the point is obviously if you're walking all the way around the world at a pace of one step every billion years and then emptying the pacific ocean one drop at a time that's a lot of time that's just a lot of time that's a lot of time and you're not beginning to get to and then going all the way up to the sun with sheets of paper you're not beginning to get to 52 factorial so yeah anyone who enjoys nerding out that's a lovely example of the rest of science trying to deal with a pack of cards on the more serious

52:29Alastair Campbell:No, I was going to say, where Hannah's absolutely right, though, I mean, science is about discovery and about testing and about challenging assessments and conventional wisdoms, and that's how you make change. There is something weird about politics, where you set out a policy, you then devise the policy, you then implement the policy, then you realise it's not going as you planned, therefore you try to change it. That's actually quite a rational process. but in politics it's seen as weakness and it shouldn't be in a way but no it's a very very very good point and of course she's making that point at a time when science is under threat from politics not least in relation to to climate i mean some of the stuff you heard from these MAGA people in in munich about the climate stuff i mean and thank god for gavin do you see gavin newsom he by the way i was really impressed by when we interviewed him but i see he came from munich went to London and yesterday did a big signing ceremony with Ed Miliband, a kind of green climate thing between California and the UK.

53:32Alastair Campbell:But no, Hannah's absolutely right. I always struggled with science at school, I have to be honest.

53:38Rory Stewart:But you didn't like it as much as your maths? You didn't enjoy it?

53:40Alastair Campbell:No, I got on with maths. I got on really well with maths, but biology, chemistry, physics, they were my three weakest subjects by some way. And my dad was a bit upset by that because he was a vet and he was hoping that one of his four kids might become a vet, but none of us did.

53:53Rory Stewart:Would you have been a large animal vet or a small animal vet?

53:56Alastair Campbell:Well, the only small animal I love is my own sky. I would definitely have been a large animal vet. My dad was horses and cows were his thing.

54:05Rory Stewart:Delivered calves and things.

54:06Alastair Campbell:Absolutely. A hundred percent. And also cured equine flu. I would have happily done that.

54:12Rory Stewart:Well, on that, Alistair, I think we'll finish that lovely vision of you delivering a calf. I have delivered a calf. I have done that. Have you? It's a hell of a thing, isn't it? It's a hell of a thing. And their legs are surprisingly unwieldy and long, getting it out of the womb.

54:28Alastair Campbell:No, because I worked a lot of my youth on my Uncle Jim's farm. And sometimes it gets really complicated. You have to sort of tie ropes around their ankles. That's right.

54:39Rory Stewart:To pull them out, don't you? Pull them out. If it's a rear breach exit instead of coming out by the head. So, yeah. And I've done all that. well you're a great loss to veterinary science but thank you for joining us on the podcasting world see you soon bye bye