562. The Right’s War With Itself and Burnham’s Prisons Challenge

23:04Rory Stewart:Let me finish off this segment with a more positive vision. So I talked about Prosper UK and this work is being done to try to rebuild the centre ground of British politics. And there's been some amazing research. So Sam Friedman's written a Substack article on it where he's done research into what he calls the centre ground of British politics. And what he defines by the centre ground is the group of people who would consider floating, consider changing their vote. And what he finds basically is British politics is divided into three thirds. There are people who are always going to vote left, there are people who are always going to vote right, and then, surprisingly, there's almost a third of people who are floating voters.

23:46Rory Stewart:And he also finds that the left and the right are much more similar than you'd think compared to the center. The left and the right tend to be whiter, older, in favor of retaining the triple lock, more exercised about immigration, generally more socially conservative. The center ground turns out to be younger, more professional, more educated, often more prosperous, happy to let the triple lock pension guarantee go. Interestingly, less worried about business, less worried about AI, more positive about business, more positive about AI, less worried about immigration, positive about Europe, but also positive about Britain engaging globally, more international, less white, more ethically mixed.

24:34Rory Stewart:And this is the group which is all to play for. This is the space that some parties should be occupying. Not a space the Lib Dems can possibly occupy. They haven't really worked out the language to speak to them. it's a space that Andy Burnham can reach into and I think that you know one of the things that he's really good at is for the first time seeming normal thoughtful intelligent relatable it's a huge improvement but I think he's going to struggle to actually come across as pro-business entrepreneurial for this group and this is where I think the conservative party has gone completely wrong.

25:10Rory Stewart:They're never getting back those reform voters. Well, at least 15 % of the British public is going to remain out on the populist far right, and they're never coming back to the Tories. There is this whole group there where if you could produce an Andy Burnham-like figure, so somebody who was relatable, intelligent, who people trusted, but who seemed a little bit more pro-business friendly, a little bit more serious about economic growth, there's a huge number of voters to hoover up. And that's the opportunity that's being missed. I did a little bit of scribbling with my kind of, you know, still trying to think like a strategist hat on.

25:47And I was trying to work out of these three parties of the right, how they should view each other. And I came up with this. I think what reform can with some justification say to the Tories is we have already replaced you and it's not even close. You were nowhere in the Welsh elections. You were nowhere in the Scottish elections. we were ahead of you in both and England is our base anyway okay so that's quite a good line of attack well the Conservatives I think Baden-Lock's approach to them should be you guys are unelectable you could not run the country we're becoming electable again that's got to be her long-term strategy and I think Restore if I were Rupert Lowe rather than sort of sit there thinking how best to abuse, you know, random podcasters, I think he should be focusing on Farage becoming like a very standard politician.

26:42He then becomes the kind of, you know, the insurgent. Because if you look at this, this scandal stuff, it's really interesting how they're handling it in exactly the same way as you and I have seen Labour and Tory politicians handle scandals. You know, it's not quite wait for Sue Gray, but it's an establishment stitch up. Everybody's out to get us. Let's wait for this. Let's wait for that. And so I think if Restore Britain were to say to reform, you are now just another, you talk about the uni party, you're part of it. You're part of it. We're the real radical outsider. That's my free advice, Rupert.

27:17I may be a despicable piece of shit, but it doesn't mean that I can't think strategically about your positioning. And I think it would improve markedly if you maybe thought a little bit more deeply about the future of the country, not just your own. There's another free bit of advice.

27:35Rory Stewart:Alistair, just before we go to the break, there was a really interesting question. Elka, given the difficulties around the early release scheme, practically speaking, why haven't governments generally built a few new prisons? And Dominique from London, about questions about women's prisons. But the key here, I guess, as I hand over to you, is that Sir David Gawke did this report in which he argued for early release from prisons. And he made a number of arguments. One of them is actually about reoffending. And one of them, of course, is the fact that our prisons are absolutely chock full. And unless we start releasing people from prison, there's simply not going to be any room to accommodate any prisoners.

28:17Rory Stewart:And Andy Burnham stepped into this. He's tried to push back on it. We're actually speaking today when Today Program was announced that he was going to ask for the killers of a police officer to be exempted from this scheme. And it's becoming a really live issue for reform and conservatives. Many issues, but over to you. So, Rory, you mentioned Dominique's question, which I thought was really interesting. She talks about this early release scheme scandal. She then says, I believe there are about a dozen dedicated women's prisons in the UK. Could the more dangerous women be moved to occupy fewer of them so that the remaining empty prisons could potentially house male prisoners?

28:55Women are far less likely to commit violent or sexual crimes. Children would benefit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think, you know, I hope that kind of thing is being thought of. Look, this is turning up to be, turning out to be Andy Burnham's really first big, he's had a pretty good honeymoon so far, but this is going to be very, very difficult. Difficult politics, difficult reality in terms of security. But the truth is, the question why we haven't built prisons is because it's so bloody expensive and it takes so long. And one of the reasons why prisons are so full is because, again, partly because of politics and populist campaigning, people are in jail for longer.

29:33We've got this very extraordinary thing where crime is falling, but the prison population is rising. It's doubled in the past 30 years. And that's largely down to getting longer sentences at Crown Courts. Now, Keir Starmer, and when we were talking about the Tories earlier, Rory, I think one of the things Kimmy Baden-Ock could do and should do is admit that some of this is absolutely on their watch. The way that Chris Philp is trying to project this, he's the shadow home affairs guy for the Tories, trying to project this as a sort of Andy Burnham created crisis. I think it makes it worse for the Tories.

30:14That's what then opens the space for Farage to come up with this nonsense about we're going to send them all to El Salvador or Albania and all that stuff he came out with at his latest press conference that most of the media covered live in full, which they never do for most party leaders. Brackets. So I just feel this is a real issue, but I think this is a place where Andy Burnham is going to have to hold firm, Yes, look for exemptions. Yes, look to sort of the most obvious cases that people are going to get very offended by. But at the same time, there's a long-term practical solution that has to be put in place, which is about sentencing.

30:50It's about prison population. It's about probation service in crisis. And until those things are addressed over the long term, we're going to keep coming back to this. Keir Starmer used to talk about sticking plaster politics. If we're not careful, this becomes the definition of sticking plaster politics.

31:07Rory Stewart:Yeah, and the problems that we're facing are pretty fundamental. I mean, I was the prisons minister, so I was right in the heart of this question of capacity building new prisons. I mean, the first thing is when people talk about prisons being overcrowded, they're already massively overcrowded. We're already keeping two prisoners in cells which the Victorians built for one. And these prisons, particularly a lot of the locals, are frequently in horrendous conditions. If you read the inspection reports, they are filthy, the windows are broken, which is the key to the drones thing that we were talking about in the last episode.

31:47Rory Stewart:I mean, the truth of the matter is there is absolutely no reason for there to be any problem with drones in prisons. I mean, there's a mad world in which everyone gets excited by drones and, you know, are we going to laser drones? Liz Truss had dogs barking at drones. But the truth of the matter is the prison is a guarded compound. There's only two ways of getting stuff in it, and it goes in through the gate or it goes over the wall. And the way in which most people were getting things off drones is sticking their hands out the window. Well, you shouldn't be able to stick your hands out of a window in a prison.

32:17Rory Stewart:These windows don't open, right? And the only reason you stick your hands out the window is you've broken the window. In other words, you've broken the window, nobody's inspected your window, and nobody's fixed the window, and nobody's punished you for breaking the window. So that goes back to one of the fundamentals when we're talking about prison places and drones and all this kind of thing, there's a real problem with the way in which we've actually built the culture and the systems in the prison service. Being a prison officer is really tough, right? It's like some combination of a police officer, a social worker, a teacher, a security guard, all rolled into one.

32:51Rory Stewart:These should be well-paid, well-trained jobs with the proper training college, proper morale, proper monitoring, so that you actually know your prisoners, you're keeping these things clean, tidy, well inspected, the windows fixed. That's where I'd begin, the culture of the prison officers. Now, the second question is this question about how many people were putting in prison. It's terrible, right? When David Gork was the Secretary of State of Justice, and I was the prisons minister, we had everybody, Labour, conservatives, every MP you can imagine, wandering in trying to get longer sentences, usually called after an individual.

33:28Rory Stewart:Mungo's Law, Hamish's Law, Angus's Law, which usually meant some terrible tragedy had happened. An infant had been killed. They might have been run over by a speeding driver, or they might have been the victims of domestic abuse. And the demand was for longer sentences for that crime. And when David and I were in, we said no to all those requests, because it's the longest sentences which drive the system into crisis. As soon as we left, a more right-wing government under Boris Johnson came in, Dominic Raab, and they started extending these sentences. Then Keir Starmer started playing this game.

34:04Rory Stewart:You remember when he was campaigning against Rishi Sunak, he started putting out social media coverage saying, Rishi Sunak believes that people who are guilty of sexual assault should not be sent to prison. I will change that. So he was signaling a few thousand people who judges have determined had not committed, once you looked at the context of that sexual assault, something that required them to go to prison. And he was committing to another 6 ,000 people going into prisons. That was somebody who was a lawyer coming from the left. So the cumulative change, and this is about populist politics from the left and from the right, Andy Burnham's playing into this too, right?

34:43Rory Stewart:In the end, Starmer decided to bring in David Gore and try to get a relatively technocratic solution to this. And of course, Burnham senses this isn't popular. Well, there's two things you can do. You can either build many, many, many more prisons and where are you going to build them? Well, and also seven billion, seven billion good-a-whack. Absolutely, incredibly expensive, very unpopular with the communities near which they're built. Or you can reduce sentence length. The reason why we have many more people in prison than in the Netherlands, where the Netherlands actually offering us prison places because they're not using, although they were because they weren't using their prisons.

35:17Rory Stewart:But that's because the politicians have been prepared to have a row with the public. It's not that the Dutch voter wants people to have short sentences. It's that Dutch politicians have recognised that the only way of controlling this is shorter sentences. And then the final thing, which is much, much better community sentences and probation and looking after people when they leave prison so that we don't have this mad situation where 70 % of people on short sentences re-offend and return to prison again. 50 % of all prisoners re-offend and return to prison. So a lot of these numbers are just about the fact that we're not remotely looking after people when they leave prison.

35:54Rory Stewart:So there's an endless cycle effect where they're all going back again, whereas places like Sweden have much, much lower re-offending rates. Yeah, we're agreeing agreeably and violently about this one, but we have done for some time. It's a long, long, long battle to win with political and public opinion. Let's take a break and then when we come back, talk about what's going on with the River Rhine, what's going on in Michigan in the Democratic primary and also Rory, I don't know if you've been following the story about Anthony Albanese and a pair of giant melons. That sounds like you've got all Benny Hill on me but I look forward to hearing about that.

36:27Rory Stewart:Okay, back from the break. See you soon. See you, bye bye.

36:40Rory Stewart:Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. So Alistair, listen, having covered the fight in Maine against Susan Collins, we're now looking at the Michigan Democratic primary. So what are your thoughts, this is Leila's question, on Abdul El-Sayed's win in the Michigan Democratic primary? How should sensible Democrats approach DSA encroachment in the party? So Michigan, this is Detroit, this is the great old industrial Rust Belt. This is somewhere that became a key question because this is where one of the great democrat governors gretchen wittner is located and it was a key battleground for trump and it isn't the candidate that gretchen wittner wanted to win it's not the conventional candidate one but a man called abdul al-sayed over to you well i can't quite work out why there seems to be such angst about this guy um now look i can see that for some people he might come across as very abrasive.

37:41He gives a sense of always having to be the cleverest guy in the room, which is what you always say about my friend Emmanuel Macron. But I think there's something very exciting about him. This is an absolutely 50-50 state, so it's a very, very big choice. And I think the Democratic Party is making a mistake in the debate having happened, the victory having been secured, now having this soul searching about whether it's the right move or not. Get behind the guy, for God's sake. And what's, what's, what's,

38:14Rory Stewart:sorry, just, just to try to understand what the, the issue here is. So on the surface, he seems like a real kind of amazing candidate. He was a high school sports star and wrestling champion. He got a fully funded scholarship to university, then got a Rhodes scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford. He returned, He became the youngest ever public health official at the age of 30, where he seemed to make huge progress on public health in Michigan. He's a charismatic, good-looking, sporty doctor. Is it more than the fact that he's been very critical of Israel? What is it that he's done? I mean, he's obviously of Egyptian ancestry.

38:53Rory Stewart:He's got an Egyptian academic father. What is it that he's supposed to have done that makes everybody so shocked? Why are they all treating him as though Jeremy Corbyn's suddenly been elected? Well, I'm guessing a lot of it is about Israel, because he had tens of millions spent against him. He was outspent. See, I think this is an incredibly exciting thing. Part of his message was money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. That's a really good democratic message, if you ask me. and the money that was spent against him a lot of it by AIPAC and I guess that is frightening some people because these Israeli supporting groups are very very important to democratic funding but I think it's incredibly exciting that he won that ticket and he won it and by the way we talk about strategic framing and messaging he was going to big rallies and big events and they were reciting his message back at him that's when you know it's cutting through and it speaks to the three big issues.

39:53What do people keep saying they're concerned about? Affordability, money in your pocket. Corruption under Trump, money out of politics. Future of health, Medicare for all. It's a brilliant message, if you ask me. Now, so I'm afraid, look, I don't know, Rory, I'm not in America as much as you. I don't follow it maybe as closely as you do. I can't help thinking a lot of this is just straightforward racism or fear of racism, fear that electing somebody called Abdul with a wife who wears a headscarf and who is absolutely open about his belief that the American politics is on the wrong side of the argument on Gaza.

40:31I think it's that.

40:32Rory Stewart:It's a really interesting one, isn't it? Because he's not Graham Plattner with his neo-Nazi appearing tattoo and his history of allegations of sexual abuse who had to resign out of the main race. This is a much more clean cut, successful, professional figure. Maybe people are drawing analogies with Mamdani, who's also a highly educated, strong critic of Israel, who's seen as being on the far progressive left. Medicare for all is considered very, very controversial. In the UK context, that's the National Health Service. So we're less likely to think that's the most radical proposal anyone's ever come up with.

41:10Rory Stewart:But it is, I suppose, if we're serious about it for a second, I don't know whether he's a good symbol of it, but the way in which people would conjure it and why they'd be interested in your view or surprised at the view you're taking is that when we interviewed on leading, for example, the Connecticut congressman who made a very powerful argument, indeed, the Massachusetts congressman who made a very powerful argument, both of them, for the importance of the Democratic Party returning to the center. The fight seems to be, does the Democratic Party energize itself by reaching for the Bernie Sanders left and pushing for the turnout and running the risk that moderate voters begin to see the Democratic Party as being, what was it, woke, weak, and I don't know, what was the third thing they were supposed to be?

42:01Rory Stewart:I can't remember. Woke, weak, out of work. I don't know what the thing was anyway. Oh, go woke, go broke. What was it? Yeah, exactly. Woke, weak, and broke. So is what they're mostly worried about that the swing voters are going to think the Democratic Party is too radical, even if their views in European political context seem pretty mainstream? Or is the fear that actually, if you try to trim too much and head too much into the centre, don't speak for your members' real views on Gaza, don't speak for their real views on inequality, medical care, etc. You're just not going to get the turnout and you're going to lose by default.

42:39Yeah, well, I guess that is the fear, but I think it displays a lack of confidence in their own values and their own beliefs. That's the argument that's going to be run against him. Trump is already out. Trump has said he's a communist loser who hates Jews and Israel. OK, so that's how they're going to fight this. That's how the Republicans are going to fight this guy. This thing about communism. Now, you and I know that he's not a communist. OK, he is. You talked about Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, most left-wing American politicians are not as left-wing as most European left-wing politicians. I think what he has to do is authentically show that the nature of that campaign he fought to be the nominee learns the lessons, good and bad, from how he won it.

43:30Now, to be fair, I think he's already doing that. He's already talked a little bit about he thinks he went over the top in some of his attacks on his opponent. He said at one point, she's the worst possible candidate you could imagine. He said he wishes he hadn't said that. But my sense of him, it's a bit like when we talk about Mamdani, and I know New York's different, but when you're trying to win a campaign like this, which is so important to the bigger picture, this is why I don't understand. I saw one guy who's a sort of moderate Democrat. He was talking about the war that we face ahead. We've got a war ahead.

44:00This isn't a war. This is about this guy winning on a platform that most Democrats ought to be able to support in a seat that is unbelievably important. Why is this seat so important? Because Rogers, who is now his opponent, Trump won Michigan by one point from Kamala Harris. Democrats last time around won the seat by 0.5%.

44:28Rory Stewart:It's so close. I'm interrupting. And just to explain to the very basics, what the Democrats are trying to do is defend a Democrat-held seat, not win a Republican, because the Democrat senator is retiring after three terms. Correct. That says to me, regardless of what you actually think, I'm afraid, once this race is run and this guy is the candidate, it's about Democratic candidate against Republican candidate. That's it. I mean, the post-mortem the Democrats should have had was after they lost to Donald Trump. Not because the more moderate candidate, so-called, has lost to this guy, Abdul El-Sayed, who, as you say, I think strikes a very confident posture.

45:15I think if you could just iron out this thing about... I saw an interview, I was reading the transcript of an interview with the New York Times, okay? Now, what he said was fine, but he's got certain little... I can see why he grates on some people. There's a bit where he says, he makes a point, that he said, I'm sorry about this, but I do read books. It was a way of saying Donald Trump and his crowd are stupid, right? But it sounded a bit patronising to everybody, okay? Iron that out, iron that out. Just be a guy who gets up there and he clearly can motivate people like Mamdani did in New York.

45:47He had tens of thousands of people out knocking doors for him. So look, I just think this is such an important seat when it comes to the midterms and they've got to win Michigan. And so get behind the guy.

46:01Rory Stewart:Okay, now final serious question, and then you're going to tell us about your melons. So Judy, how concerned should we be about the Rhine in Germany falling to record low levels in several parts of Germany as the heat wave and wildfires continue across Europe and hit the UK? Let me just sort of try to set up my understanding of this, and then you who are right in the depths of this kind of German debate in German newspapers can explain it to us. It seems from the outside an extraordinary story because it's very medieval, oddly. I mean, we talk a lot about just-in-time supply chains, and we worry a lot about semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan, or exactly how the Japanese process a particular oil petroleum product.

46:39Rory Stewart:But this literally is the big waterway that connects the low countries into Germany. And it's water levels getting too low that they can't move barges up and down. And And it turns out that barges are far more important to the German economy than everyone really thought about. And while we were worrying about all this kind of resilience and supply chains and the Strait of Hormuz, something that would have been kind of recognisable to a medieval king, which is that the water levels are too low on the Rhine to get your barges up and down, is proving really catastrophic. Over to you. Yeah. Look, the question of how concerned should we be, the answer, I think, is very, very, very, very, very.

47:17And while our listeners and viewers may think that I'm having a lovely holiday in France and you're having a lovely holiday in Scotland, not only are we recording this today, but tomorrow we're going to be recording a special episode with Caroline Lucas about her brilliant miniseries on climate and national security. And I guess this is much more climate and the economy, because you're right about the scale of this. Four out of five ships that are carrying goods and trade around Germany, four out of five use the Rhine. OK, it's a massively important waterway. And what's happened is that the water has got lower and lower and lower.

47:59So I saw an interview in one German newspaper with a Dutch barge owner who has had to reduce the load of the barge by two thirds because the water is not deep enough to take the bigger load. OK, now that is having an impact upon supply chains. And just to give you a sense of how shallow it has to be, this thing is these water. There's some shockingly terrifying pictures all across the German media of where you can see where the watermark normally is. You know, you see it's just sort of black on the wall because that's where the water has normally been. And some of these ships are going up and you can basically put your arm into the water and you're touching the bottom.

48:52So what's happening is that they're losing trade. The Rhine normally carries 285 million tons of freight, 80 % of inland waterway traffic. And one of the big loading places is in Duisburg and they're down to a third of the normal. OK, so then you think, OK, well, the one sort of specific policy response the German government has made is they're suspending the ban on lorries on Sundays and holidays. OK, now the green person in me and the sort of let's have a quiet life at the weekend person, he says that's terrible. But that's the scale of the damage that's been done.

49:35Rory Stewart:Am I right? It's some people calculate the lowest level in 150 years and that there's talk even of the Rhine splitting in two. it's got so low it's the lowest level since records began one of the big drivers of it is the melting glaciers in switzerland so this is climate crisis climate change if not caused absolutely exacerbated by and so the glaciers once the glaciers melt it means they can't do it year after year after year which is what's happened before so the water's gone lower and lower and lower. There's now talk about rebuilding the river so that you make it narrower. But all that does, yes, you have deeper water for a bit, but you don't have any more water.

50:19You're not actually going to cure this unless we start getting more rain.

50:25Rory Stewart:I'm hoping to be in Switzerland more from January. And I'll try to show some images because around our flat, what's happened to the glaciers is staggering. I mean, I'll try to show you some pictures over the last 20, 30 years. It's really bizarre. I mean, people, if you see it and you live it, you're looking hundreds of feet of glacier have disappeared and have left this horrible kind of mess of rocks and rubble where there used to be ice coming all the way down. And we often focus on Greenland or we look at images up in the Arctic, but the Swiss story is terrifying. Yeah, yeah. And the Kiel Institute, which is one of the big German economic institutes, they've calculated that this thing going on now in the Rhine, the Elbe and the Danube in particular, and the Danube, by the way, is so shallow that they've got pictures now of Second World War planes and other debris down at the bottom of the river that we can now see, which used to be covered by water.

51:29And the Kiel Institute has calculated this is going to take up to 0.2 % of German GDP in this quarter, okay, because that's the impact on trade.

51:38Rory Stewart:Which again, is not what we need, because European GDP is already really struggling because of productivity and aging. It's struggling because of competition with China, which has wiped out. We didn't talk about this enough, but you mentioned it. Hundreds of thousands of jobs been lost in Volkswagen. real problems on energy prices add to that the fact that the strait of hormuz is putting a direct squeeze on european economies that the united states pulling out of ukraine is forcing us to spend tens of billions of dollars more in ukraine and ultimately forcing germany to spend up to a hundred billion dollars on defense and increasing defense expenditure this is a real i don't know quintuple whammy hitting Germany.

52:21Yeah, totally, totally. And, you know, we think, I think we just think of rivers sometimes. We just take them for granted as they're beautiful to look at and they've got this extraordinary history. But this is a massive, massive trade waterway. And so the German government, I mean, the Merz didn't, but several ministers broke into their holiday to have a crisis meeting with business organisations and so forth, because they're really worried about it. And the BASF, you know, one of the big chemical, part of the big chemical cluster in the Northwest, they've declared force majeure as a result of this.

52:58In other words, if they're not able to fulfill contracts, they're basically saying it's because of force majeure, which is normally used for, you know, when you get caught up in a war that's unexpected. So we're going to have a lot to talk about when we talk to Caroline, because I think this is, I think it's terrifying. And where I'm in France now, we're seeing it everywhere. The rivers are just dry. There's just not the water that there used to be. And Rory, before we go to the next question, I mentioned the chat we're having tomorrow with Caroline Lucas. She's done this brilliant series. I cannot recommend it strongly enough, where she's been talking to real experts in different parts of the world about what the climate crisis is and the impact it's having in all sorts of different ways.

53:41The conversation we have with her is going out to everybody on Friday. And if people want to catch up in the series, just go to therestispolitics.com. Very good.

53:51Rory Stewart:Well, final question from a very alert listener called Lucy, who's following the Australian debate, which tees into you. What's all this stuff about Albanese presence, Japan and melons? Oh my Lord. So, Rory, you've been a minister. I've worked with prime ministers. You know and I know that diplomacy and gifts, it's a tricky world. I can remember the time that Lionel Jospin presented us with a horse and we thought, what the fuck do we do with this? And what did you do with it? What did you do with your horse? I honestly can't remember. Did you give it to the Queen? No, I think it was taken care of by the embassy and it ended up having children ride it around the place.

54:40I honestly can't remember what we did. Leon Jospin was sadly not around to remind us. But no, I'll try and find out for next week what happened to the Jospin horse. But this story that Lucy is raising relates to Japan and Australia. So Anthony Albanese, who's been on the podcast, Sanae Takaichi, who we'd love to have on the podcast, they meet and she presents Albanese with a melon.

55:09Rory Stewart:Very traditional Japanese gift. Very traditional. And it's a crown melon. Wonderful. This is like the pièce de of all Japanese melons. Yeah, yeah. She then gives him another one. Very auspicious. Very auspicious. Yeah. So he then, a little while later, Albanese is doing a podcast. Podcasts can be so dangerous, Rory. He's doing a podcast with a comedian by the name of Nicky Osborne. Okay. And Nicky Osborne, at one point, asks Albanese whether he's ever had any strange gifts. In fact, no, the question was, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on an overseas job? Can I just pause for a second?

55:55Rory Stewart:Okay, so the gift of the melon, I do know a little bit about this because I've been given melons in Japan. It's a very, very old tradition. It goes back, I think, to at least the 1600s. And they grow these melons often on a single plant. So just one plant with a melon. And like so many other things done in Japan, done with the most exquisite care. So it'll be the most perfect melon. Correct. And it can cost up to$10 ,000 for a really, really good melon. So it's a really profound sense of respect, gratitude. Okay, over to you. We're not talking about the sort of thing that I sometimes buy on the roadside, when it says melon, tomate, miel et fruits.

56:37Right, it's not that.

56:38Rory Stewart:No, not that. So he's doing this interview with his comedian, and she says, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on an overseas jaunt? OK, he then says, I'm quoting accurately here, something I got recently here was pretty strange, but ended up being quite good. The Japanese prime minister brought me a melon. They then banter, banter, banter. And then he says, actually, it was a couple of melons. And the way he described the couple of melons was to hold his hands like that. I will now describe to those who are listening rather than viewing. I am holding my hands like they're holding melons in front of my chest.

57:16Okay?

57:16Rory Stewart:Like you're holding breasts. Correct. So Osborne, the comedian, pipes up, so she just came in looking like Pamela Anderson. Right, okay. Albanese says she brought two and they're beautiful. Okay? Okay. Now, exactly. You're shaking your head. But that's you as a Brit, Rory. Yeah, yeah. You know what the Japanese are like. They're very proper. Yeah. Respect is incredibly important. And what happened was quite a lot of Japanese journalists and then a former ambassador to Australia really, really put the boot in. Yang Yamagami, the former ambassador, he said, although Albanese recalled it as quite strange, there is nothing strange about this gesture.

58:04A crown melon is the most prized fruit in Japan. It is treasured as something special. What dismays some, and this is a very good point, was that Takaichi has recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and her gender. So the Japanese really seem to take an offence. Australian opposition has piled in and said Albo should make an apology. He's saying, no, there's no need for that because no offence was intended and none was meant. And he's not aware of any being taken. So end off as far as he's concerned. But it just shows you be very, very careful about gifts.

58:38Rory Stewart:Yeah, and making jokes about gifts and accepting revolvers and things. We did just final thing. Revolvers? Yeah, yeah. Because final thing to finish. We didn't tell people enough about the fact that when we went to interview the president of Serbia together, we went to see Vucic together in Belgrade. Oh, Serbia. Yeah, the guns. Yeah. It has a sort of a massive cabinet after cabinet of gifts that the president of Serbia has received. And a staggering number of these gifts are firearms. They are semi-automatic pistols, guns, a lot of them from Putin, actually. The Russians seem to really specialize in it, but not just the Russians.

59:13Rory Stewart:The Middle Eastern potentates give swords and guns. The Turks, famously, give revolvers with ammunition to Keir Starmer and to Belgian and Dutch leaders when you go to NATO visits. Meanwhile, we tend to give slightly lamer, cheaper gifts, don't we? Although the greatest one ever is that we managed to present President Trump with a bellend called Trump.

59:40that was that was your friendly king i wonder if they've worked that one out here or either that king charles presented a bellend with the word trump written on it rory talking of gifts fiona and i were in a place called montreuil up in the north recently which is where the british headquarters were during the first world war fascinating place we're sitting there having dinner and this guy comes over and says would you mind later my son's about to arrive with his family he's a big fan of your podcast he'd love to sit down and have a chat said yeah yeah no problem the guy came to talk to us and he said at the end of it i really want to give you and rory a gift because you've given me so much with the podcast etc etc i said you really don't need to bother you honestly it's fine anyway this guy is the marketing guy for a french jam company okay so i gave him my i gave him my address at home yeah and a couple of weeks later this box of every single flavor of their jam now you and i have been we've not actually seen each other physically for a while yeah but i've i've given a few away already not least to some of the team but i i've kept some of the best flavors back because they're for you and your family well

1:00:57Rory Stewart:thank you well um little shout out finally then on the gift thing uh to grief so i'm having the most amazing few weeks in grief i mean it's look if you want to see uh a vision of britton working come to grief at the moment i i've i've ranted on about how amazing the park runs are i've talked about the incredible work done in remake of refurbishing stuff and the work done um by the former teacher at morrison's on bicycles but let me add to this peen of praise i could add the incredible macbeth performance in the macrosty park with strathairn arts that we saw on sunday or Rachel our new priest who's turned up who's the most incredible woman she's married to a GP two women have a lovely baby three-year-old baby but amongst all of this excitement was a lady arriving at church saying that there is a gift for you Alistair and it's back I'm going to keep it secret uh it was uh it was a it was one of these great moments where she comes up and says I'm a very very great fan of Alistair Campbell and I was expecting her to maybe add something No, just Alistair Campbell.

1:01:57Rory Stewart:And the gift is coming. And it's a bagpipe themed gift. So I will be coming. Oh, excellent. Another lovely thing coming from Kreef. Excellent. Excellent. Well, look, I think we should also maybe say, Roy, this is possibly why you're giving such love to Kreef. You're looking, may I say, sharper and with a better backdrop than you normally have when you're in Kreef. So where are you, Rory? Well, I'd like to, this is another great thing about Creef. This is the Creef Leisure Centre, which is also the Creef High School. And it's a really cool investment. Initially, I was a bit nimby about it because this and 400 houses has gone just on the edge of where my house is on what used to be part of the agricultural land around the house.

1:02:39Rory Stewart:But I've got to say, it's really great. It's squash courts, it's a swimming pool, it's a great library, it's a great school. And actually, it was built over an archaeological site, which is beautifully presented. And I'm really feeling quite good about Creep. I think we've got about 400 new houses built around my house, which again, you might be tempted to feel nimbly about. But actually, they're young families, they bring a lot of energy. The high street's looking much better. So come to Creep. Rory, if you're going to be plugging creepers, relentless as that, I have to give a proper shout out to the jam man, the Montreux jam man from Essex.

1:03:14His company is called Saint Dalfour and he's got an awful lot of flavours. The thing about jam, Roy, you and I have talked about my mental health. Shout out for Johnny Mercer, brilliantly talking about his mental health on our latest episode of Leading. Key to my mental health is a jam jar, which is why jam is important. It's an empty jam jar that I use as a tool. And that's La Bon Maman. It's the red and white tablecloth on top. Yeah, yeah.

1:03:40Rory Stewart:Yeah, I know this one. Yeah. Well, he sent me 30 odd different flavors. If you like to tell me what your favorite flavor of jam is. That's so boring. They're so boring. Strawberry, raspberry, apricot. Oh, boring, boring, boring. But there's a reason they're the great favourites. It's just like there's a reason why the Labrador is the world's favourite dog. No, Cavalier King Charles, Roy. How can you say you're the friend of King Charles and you don't acknowledge that Cavalier King Charles is the best dog in the world? I've got to say sometimes, sometimes the boring options. There's a reason for it.

1:04:13Rory Stewart:Reason why an all-day breakfast is the greatest meal in the world. A Labrador is the greatest dog and strawberry jam is the way to go. Well, I look forward to my bagpipe cup. Very good. Thank you, Alistair. See you soon. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye-bye.

1:04:32Hello, everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you. We do, indeed. As you all know, the Restless Politics Plus members get early access to Question Time. They get ad-free listening, they get exclusive series and a host of other benefits. And probably for me, the most exciting thing is these exclusive mini-series we're doing.

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