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

We spend an enormous amount of time asking what's happening to Labour, but I wonder if the stranger story in British politics isn't what's happening to the right. Two years ago, the Conservative Party suffered their worst defeat in modern history, and then things have just got worse. Reform overtook them, it stayed ahead, and at points the Conservatives have been projected to drop below 100 seats in a 650-seat parliament, with Reform getting significantly more seats. What do they do? Well, that's one of the questions in the episode today. Kemi Badenock has decided that the answer is to move closer to Reform, to become tougher on immigration, tougher on culture wars, and try to get back those voters. But meanwhile, she's abandoned what I think would be the much more interesting constituency, a very large number of people in the centre, floating voters who are going to be increasingly alienated if Kemi Badenock starts chasing Reform. Or is there perhaps an even more tragic problem, which is the Conservatives may not be able to win back the Reform voters, and they also may not be able to win back the centrists. In other words, they're in terminal decline, a story that we've seen again and again across Europe. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. Now, changing your energy supplier should be fairly straightforward, yet many of us still put it off, even when we might be paying more than we need to. It becomes one of those jobs we know we should do, but never quite get around to. Switching energy suppliers always manages to somehow get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. And it's probably because we think the process is going to be really, really complicated. But with Fuse, switching takes you just three minutes, so roughly about three minutes. So roughly about as long as it takes you to make a cup of coffee. And with 24-7 support to guide you through the switch, it's easy to break away from your old supplier, leave that expensive tariff, get a first start. Right now, Fuse Energy's tariffs are up to £100 below the Ofgem price cap. So stop overpaying out of habit. Switch to Fuse Energy in just three minutes. Get Trip Plus for free with the code POLITICS at fuseenergy.com slash politics. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And Rory, today we are going to be talking a lot about your former party, the Tories, but also the threat they're facing from other right-wing parties like Reform and Restore Britain. We're going to talk about Andy Burnham's first real big challenge, which is prisoner release. We're going to talk about US politics after Abdul El-Sayed has become the nominee for the Democratic Party in Michigan. We're going to talk about catastrophe in the River Rhine. And you're going to tell me about a new gift that you found for me. We had a lot of questions about what's happening, not just the Tory party, but on the right of British politics more generally. And Sarah asked this, why is the British right seemingly tearing itself apart? At the very moment, Andy Burnham's ascendancy is giving Labour a boost. Will there be an electoral pact between the parties of the right or have these various feuds become intractable? Let's start with the big existential question. So the first question is, what is the British right? And this really matters because normally, if you are, for example, James Johnson from JLA Partners, who's been one of the guys that has advising the Conservatives to try to be more like reform, he would say that the way that you count right wing voters is you add the reform voters, Nigel Farage, Restore, which is Rupert Lowe's smaller fringe party, and the Conservative voters, and those are the people to play for. I think they are forgetting a much more important fourth group of potential right wing voters, which are the people in the old centre, floating voters who could vote Conservative if instead of chasing reform, they began getting themselves back to a more sensible pitch. But so long as they're stuck in this cage fight, fighting over those voters, and the figures go up and down, and reform is weaker than it was a few months ago, but it's still in most polls ahead of the Conservatives, you're generally looking at something like 22% for reform, maybe 20% for the Conservatives and Rupert Lowe coming in, who knows 5%, 6%. That's a pretty substantial, exciting block in some ways, if you just put maths together, because you're looking at sort of 47% of the British public that you're fighting for. And the answer to why are they fighting like rats in a sack? Well, it's existential survival. I mean, the Conservatives are now and this was the European analogy, as again, it's one that, you know, you can explain much better to listeners than I can. But what we saw in France, what we saw in Italy, what we saw in the Netherlands, and maybe to some extent, what we may be about to see in Germany, is that their equivalence of these huge governing centre-right machines, you know, the party tradition that in France produced everything from de Gaulle all the way through to Chirac and Sarkozy, vanished, right? Or the Italian equivalent, which produced people like Andreotti that dominated Italian politics for decades, vanished. So the real question for the Conservatives is, is this a temporary blip? Is it like what happened to them when you were in office in 97, 2001, which is they have very few seats, but they eventually rebuild and come back again in 2010, 2015, 2019, 2017 with victories? Or is this actually something much more like what we're seeing across Europe, which is that the centre-right is an impossible position, that the populist right is never coming back, and the centrists are never going to trust them again? Yeah, well, that's why I guess we might as well start by looking at leadership. Because when we talked to Johnny Mercer on Leading this week, he was very clear that somebody from a military, non-political background, never voted in his life until he became an MP, was largely inspired to become a Tory and try to become an MP, because he was really impressed by David Cameron, and what he was trying to do with the Conservative Party. David Cameron was trying to signal going much closer to the sort of vision of the Tory party that you've just set out. I have felt, since she became leader, that Kemi Bainock has not been taking that decision. On the contrary, as you say, she's thinking, right, well, the votes on the right are going to Nigel Farage, they're going, some of them to Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain party. I've got to worry about getting them back. I don't think her strategy is doing that. I think the parts of her strategy that are working better are that she's tough. She's tough. She seems to know what she stands for. I think she's recently been much better in Parliament than she has been for a while. I was interested that she went halfway towards meeting Andy Burnham and saying, okay, yeah, let's maybe talk about this. But you mustn't dare put up taxes and you mustn't dare increase borrowing. I wonder whether she's slightly starting to move as well on net zero. There have been some straws in the wind on that. Two Daily Telegraph columnists now, and there's one paper, as you know, that the Tory party tends to read. It's the Daily Telegraph, maybe the Daily Mail and the Times as well. And so I think there are straws in the wind that she's maybe tacking. Explain to me and listeners what's happened with net zero, because the story was that a loyalty test has been put in place that you could only run to be a Tory MP in the future if you committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and you rejected net zero, which seemed to be a very strong loyalty test of driving out people who were more on the centre, more left wing of the party. No, I wasn't. When I talk about straws in the wind, I didn't mean that Kemi Bainor was changing her position, but the politics inside the Tory party was changing. If you've got two pretty high profile columnists in the Daily Telegraph and an editorial writer essentially saying this climate crisis is real, we've got to face up to the damage that's being done, I can see that position moving. But as things stand, you're right, if you analyse just the broad politics of it, she's pretty much staying in a very right wing, tacking reform and restore as she goes. Now, one of the reasons she might be doing that is, I mean, polls, they come and they go, but you've got to spot the trends. Reformers lost about six points in the last 12 months, okay? It's favourability, that's those in favour, those against, doing a good job, doing a bad job, is now the worst of all the major parties, okay? So, and the Conservatives are on 30% favourable, that's their best since October 2021. By the way, I wouldn't necessarily look at restore as fringe, in that, yes, they're on about 4%, and that's pretty small. But if you look at what they had in the Makerfield by-election and the Greater Manchester Mayoral by-election, when it came to real votes, they did better than people expected, and they did it in a way that damaged reform. And also was catastrophic for the Tories. I mean, let's just take that Manchester thing. They beat the Tories. Yeah, well, the Tories, I mean, maybe patting themselves on the back, but one of the strange things is that although Kemi Badenoch's net popularity has done well, and people are admiring PMQs, it's having very, very little effect on how the Tories are polling nationally. It's barely moving the dial. I mean, they're barely moving off 20%. These reform, restore voters are actually drifting, if anywhere, back to Labour. They're not drifting to the Conservatives. And the Manchester, I mean, and this is one of the biggest cities in the United Kingdom. The Tories used to be in play for Manchester. One of the reasons why George Osborne, who was a Manchester MP, put so much money into Manchester is that he saw it as part of his northern powerhouse dream. The Tories came fifth, fifth in the election, 7.7% of the vote. So the latest data is this is a party which whatever, you know, the chattering class seems to have got increasingly excited by the leader of the Conservative Party. But look at the raw numbers. This is a party in existential crisis. Listen, I think that's right. And the other point I was going to make, I saw an interesting poll that was testing the reliability of all the party's supporters who say that they're going to vote for party A or party B. And restore had the highest. So if you say you're voting restore, your commitment to that is higher than it is even for Farage's voters voting reform. Now, what does that say? So the serious question talks about these fractures, feuds, and that's kind of what it feels like. And there is a nastiness about right wing politics. You see that when it comes out in violence, as often it does on the sort of Tommy Robinson marches. But you see in the language all the time, I mean, Zia Yusuf seems to think he's a kind of modern day Norman Tebbit. But Norman Tebbit had real politics and real political skills, as well as being able to put the boot in very effectively. But I think there's something there's something about the way they relate to each other. John Sweeney just written this book that I read last weekend, I mentioned the real things called the real Nigel Farage. And a lot of it is about how he finds it really difficult to maintain relationships. So Rupert Lowe, he has become the leader of his own party restore Britain, because he fell out with Nigel Farage, he was elected as a reform UK MP. I think even though Rupert Lowe is kind of pretending to sort of say we must get together, he's doing so on conditions that make it virtually impossible for that to happen. There's an interesting question there strategically for Farage, which is I was talking to someone who's very close to Farage, who was saying that the risk is electorally that Farage is getting too obsessed with Rupert Lowe. That Rupert Lowe has really gotten to his head. And that this has put him on tilt, because it means that Farage is increasingly worrying about shoring up his right wing. Whereas probably strategically, what he should be doing is reaching further into the more moderate conservative vote. If he wants to actually have the majority and end up as Prime Minister, he shouldn't be chasing Rupert Lowe, what he should actually be doing is reassuring some of Kemi Badenoch's supporters and getting more of them back on. The problem for both Badenoch and Farage is that chasing restore voters and Kemi Badenoch, I'm afraid is doing more of this than people understand. She spent a lot of time online. And a lot of that time online is following and reading MAGA influenced stuff, which, you know, people talking about suicidal empathy and a loss of the right wing chat that Musk loves. There's a speech that's on her website, which she gave in December, which is really interesting, because it shows you that the thing that really gets Kemi Badenoch out of bed in the morning isn't the economy. And this is why I think they're making a mistake. I mean, Prosper UK, which is David Gauke, Andy Street, the traditional conservatism, I believe in is all about the economy, right? They would be saying that the real response to the problem that Britain's in is not culture wars, it would be trying to be pro business and grow the economy. And that that's actually labor's weakest point that Andy Burnham hasn't made it clear that he really gets how to generate economic growth. And we disagree about that. But anyway, that would be the position, not culture wars. She is not really very interested in that. Where she gets passionate is when she starts talking about left wing ideologues, freedoms under threat, the radical left undermining our culture, undermining our institution, liberalism has been hacked, radical green leftism. I'm quoting all this stuff from her own speech. And here's another question. What is Kemi Badenoch doing? We talked about her knocking out Gavin Barwell. That just seems nasty. It doesn't seem to you know, she might say that it's rebranding the Tory party and making it more acceptable to the voters. I'm very fond of Gavin Barwell, but he's not a household name. It's not going to make a massive difference to the way that the public perceive it. Why is she not letting Grant Shapps run? Is she letting Penny Mordaunt back on the candidates list? Now, the reason I'm asking these questions is these people, she doesn't disagree with their policies. I think she's worried that they're actually threats to her, that she doesn't want big beasts reentering her orbit. And the final thing I'd say is that chasing the Rupert Lowe populist votes isn't just about parties that are nasty at their center. It's about a very, very toxic voter group. You really do not want to redesign all your policies around that group. Firstly, you're not going to win them over. Or if you do, as Boris Johnson did in 2019, you can't keep them because they are so virulently angry, anti-establishment, outraged with the government that you can't build a stable coalition on the back of those people. And the things they're demanding are incredibly unpleasant and incredibly damaging for the British economy, right? She's already chasing, you know, she announced 230,000 foreigners were going to have to leave their council homes, and they were going to leave them in six months, at which point reform says, oh, no, it'll be three months, right? That's a classic example of the kind of traps you get yourself into once you start playing these games. And that happened in the middle of these protests going on in Thetford and Norfolk, where far right thugs, I would call them, were literally going around the homes of people they said were asylum seekers and trying to force them out of their homes. So she's got to be very careful, I think, I'm with you on this, not to get involved in that. You also mentioned Gavin Barwell, somebody less well known, a guy called Joshua Bonehill Payne, who had been convicted for an anti-Semitic campaign that he'd been running against Luciana Berger. And he stood down as a local candidate, but not before she had okayed that going on. And even though she then accepted he should stand down as a candidate, he's now advising her commission on culture and integration. So as you say, very odd signs that she's sending out. This point about nastiness, though, I saw a tweet this morning about Zia Yusuf, and somebody said, it must be absolutely exhausting to be so angry and so nasty all the time. This is on the back of Zia Yusuf calling Ben Wallace, your former colleague and former Tory cabinet minister, calling him a moron because he disagreed with something that Reform was saying. And the other thing that they do a lot is they call anybody who disagrees with them traitors. I had the traitor treatment a few months ago from Rupert Lowe. I can't remember what it was I'd done that was so treacherous. I get it from Dominic Cummings. Yeah, exactly. And Elon Musk is always calling people traitors. He was at it this week with somebody in France that I saw, he's saying, you're a traitor. It reminds me, he's always an Italian. And Zannie Minton Beddoe is the editor of The Economist. She was a traitor because she gave him a bit of a tough time in an interview. And I had another touch of the Rupert Lowe nastiness this week. He did this jaw-droppingly bad interview with Nick Robinson of the BBC, during which this is how mad this stuff is. So Rory, let me ask you a straightforward question. Your friend King Charles, is he a white Briton? Can you answer that question for me? Is he a white Briton? Well, I suppose so, yeah. Yes, he's a white Briton. Rupert Lowe could not bring himself to answer that question. Why could he not answer that question? Because Matt Goodwin, aka Badloss, he wrote a report which Rupert Lowe was quoting to justify his prediction, the date at which Britain would become a non-white majority country, okay? All parts of the sort of great replacement theory that these people spew out all over the place. So Nick Robinson was aware that Badloss' calculation required that you were not a white Briton if one or both of your parents were not born in the United Kingdom. Well, as you know, your friend King Charles' father was born in Greece. And I wasn't born in the United Kingdom. I was born in Hong Kong. So am I not a white Briton? And nor was Boris Johnson, and nor were Nigel Farage's children's mother. So this is why this thing is so mad. But Rupert Lowe could not bring himself to say Charles is a white Briton. He said, well, you can split hairs about that. No, you can't. He's a white Briton. Just admit it, okay? If Charles fills in the census, white Britain, tick. Christian, tick. Okay. Now, somebody then puts up, and of course, as I keep saying to you, you have pulled me into this disagree agreeably thing. I've actually written my column in the New World about this, how I lapse. I lapse when I go on social media. So somebody said, how would you describe Rupert Lowe in a word? And I just put, I'm sitting there idly, and I was watching the cricket or something. I just put musk puppet. Ah, clever. I like it. I thought it was okay. It wasn't that clever, but it was okay. Sock puppet, musk puppet. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And also, it was later proven because his response to me, which I shall tell you in a moment, I hope your children aren't listening. And because the Elon Musk platform says we've got to get behind Rupert Lowe, he's the future in Britain, have tens of thousands of likes in no time at all. His reply to me was, and I think you are a despicable piece of shit. Now, he's entitled to think that. That's taken to a different level from musk puppet, isn't it? It also reveals a thinness of the skin that is kind of off the scale. And then we saw Richard Tice, not the same party, he's one of Nigel Farage's puppets. He said, he's getting a few difficult questions over all this money stuff going and George Cottrell, the author of the money laundering book, Post George and Farage's money and George's mum and all this nonsense, right? Richard Tice, the coverage of whom I've barely noticed if I'm being absolutely frank out here in sunny France, he does an interview where he says, I'm being treated by the mainstream media worse than murderers, rapists and pedophiles. And I thought, oh, what level of projection is this? This is crazy stuff. But what it says to me is this is politics, which is being nasty to each other. Let me finish off this segment with a more positive vision. So I talked about prosper UK and this work is being done by to try to rebuild the center ground of British politics. And there's been some amazing research. So Sam Friedman's written a sub stack article on it where he's done research into what he calls the center ground of British politics. And what he defines by the center 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 surprising, there's almost a third of people who are floating voters. 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, you know, more ethically mixed. 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. 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. And 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, Badenoch'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 their 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. He 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. I may be a despicable piece of shit. 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. 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, Alistair, as I hand over to you, is that Sir David Gauke 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. And Andy Burnham stepped into this. He's tried to push back on it. We're actually speaking today when the Today program was announced that he was going to ask for the killers of a police officer to be exempted from the 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? Women are far less likely to commit violent or sexual crimes. Children would benefit, etc., etc., etc. I hope that kind of thing is being thought of. Look, this is 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. We'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 Bainot 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. That'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. 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, it'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. 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. 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 prisoners are guarded compounds, only two ways of getting stuff in, 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. 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. These should be well-paid, well-trained jobs with a 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 we're putting in prison. It's terrible, right? When David Gauke was the Secretary of State for Justice, and I was the prison's minister, we had everybody, labor, conservatives, every MP you can imagine, wandering in trying to get longer sentences, usually called after an individual, Mungo's law, you know, 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. The demand was for longer sentences for that crime. When David and I were in, we said no to all those requests because it's the longer 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. 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 the 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 the 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? In the end, Starmer decided to bring in David Gore and try to get a relatively technocratic solution to this. 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 7 billion kudowak. 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, 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 recognized 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 reoffend and return to prison again. 50% of all prisoners reoffend 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. So it's an endless cycle effect. We're all going back again, whereas places like Sweden have much, much lower reoffending 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 and the Democratic primary. And also, Rory, I don't know if you've been following the story about Antony Albanese and a pair of giant melons. It sounds like you've got all Benny Hill on me, but I look forward to hearing about that. Okay, back from the break. See you soon. See you. Bye-bye. This episode is brought to you by Stayshore Travel Insurance. If you've lived through the last few decades of British politics, uncertainty is not exactly new territory. But when you're planning a holiday, the least your travel insurance can do is feel straightforward. That is where Stayshore comes in. Stayshore is the UK's favourite travel insurance provider, based on more five-star trust pilot reviews than any other provider. They offer cover for all ages and can cover people with pre-existing medical conditions. Stayshore has been trusted by over 12 million people since 2005, helping travellers feel more confident before they set off. So if British politics has given you enough drama for one lifetime, perhaps your holiday doesn't need to provide any more. Dream big and stay sure. With Stayshore, the UK's favourite travel insurance. And Stayshore are offering our listeners 20% off their next policy with code POD20, P-O-D-2-0. Offering excludes costs to cover medical conditions and add-ons, new policies only ends 30th of the 8th, 2026 TNC supply. Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart. And me Alastair Campbell. So Alastair, 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 Layla'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 Whitmer, is located and it was a key battleground for Trump. And it isn't the candidate that Gretchen Whitmer wanted to win. It's not the conventional candidate, but a man called Abdul El-Sayed. Over to you. Well, I can't quite work out why there seems to be such angst about this guy. Now, look, I can see that for some people you might come across as very abrasive. He 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 Democrats are making, 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 just to try to understand what 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 Oral 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. 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 on 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. What 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. I think it's that. It's a really interesting one, isn't it? Because he's not Graham Platner 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. 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 what was the third thing that was supposed to be? 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 that the fear that actually, if you try to trim too much and head too much to the center, 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. Yeah, 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. Okay? 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, you and I know that he's not a communist, okay? 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. Now, 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 is 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. This 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. Okay. Democrats last time round won the seat by 0.5%. Right. 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 postmortem 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. I 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 so 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 is stupid, right? But it sounded a bit patronizing 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. He had 10s of 1000s of people out knocking doors for him. So look, I just 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. Okay, now final serious question, then you're going to tell us about your melons. So Judy, how concerned should we be about the rain in Germany falling to record low levels in several parts of Germany as the heatwave and wildfires continue across Europe and 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. But this literally is the big waterway that connects the low countries into Germany, and its water levels getting too low that they can't move barges up and down. 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 in 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 ride to get your barges up and down is proving really catastrophic. Over to you. Yeah. The question of how concerned should we be? The answer, I think, is very, very, very, very, very. And 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 mini series 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, okay? It's a massively important waterway. And what's happened is that the water has got lower and lower and lower. So 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, okay? Now, that is having an impact upon supply chains. And just to give you a sense of how shallow it has to be, there's some shockingly terrifying pictures all across the German media of where you can see where the watermark normally is. 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. So 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, okay? So then you think, okay, 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, okay? Now, the green person in me and the sort of let's have a quiet life at the weekend person in me says that's terrible. But that's the scale of the damage that's been done. 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. You're not actually going to cure this unless we start getting more rain. 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 this Swiss story is terrifying. Yeah, yeah. And the Kiel Institute, which 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. And they've calculated, 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, which again, is not what we need because European GDP is already really struggling because of productivity and aging. It's struggling because the competition with China, which has wiped out, we didn't talk about this enough, but you mentioned it, hundreds of thousands of jobs being 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 $100 billion on defense and increasing defense expenditure. This is a real, I don't know, quintuple whammy hitting Germany. Yeah, 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 organizations 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, in the Northwest, they've declared force majeure as a result of this. In 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. The 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. 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 Leonel 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 we took it. I think it was taken care of by the embassy and it ended up having children ride it around the place. I 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, Sanai Takahichi, who we'd love to have on the podcast, they meet and she presents Albanese with a melon. Very traditional Japanese gift. Very traditional. And it's a crown melon. This is like the pièce de of all Japanese melons. 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, the question was, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on an overseas journey? Can I just pause for a second? 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 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. Yeah. So it's a really profound sense of respect and gratitude. Okay, over to you. We're not talking about the sort of thing that I sometimes buy on the roadside. Yeah. Where it says, melon, tomato, miel et fruit. Right? It's not that. No, not that. So he's doing this interview with this comedian. Yeah. And she says, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on overseas jaunt? Okay. 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. Okay. 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 and that's you as a Brit, Rory. Yeah. You know what the Japanese are like. They're very proper. Yeah. Respect is incredibly important. Yeah. And what happened was quite a lot of Japanese journalists and then a former ambassador to Australia really, really put the boot in. Young Yamagami, the former ambassador, he said, although Albanese recall it as quite strange, there is nothing strange about this gesture. A crown melon is the most prized fruit in Japan. It is treasured as something special. What dismayed some, and this is a very good point, was that Takahichi 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. Yeah. And making jokes about gifts and accepting revolvers and things. Just final thing. Revolvers? Yeah. Yeah. Because final thing, 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 this 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 specialise it, but not just the Russians. The Middle Eastern potentates give swords and guns. The Turks famously give revolvers with ammunition to Kirstahmer 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. That was your friendly king. I wonder if they've worked that one out yet, Rory, 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. I 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, et cetera, et cetera. 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 address at home 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, but I've given a few away already, not least to some of the team, but I've kept some of the best flavors back because they're for you and your family. Well, thank you. Well, a little shout out finally, then on the gift thing to Kreef. So I'm having the most amazing few weeks in Kreef. I mean, look, if you want to see a vision of Britain working, come to Kreef at the moment. 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 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 McCrosley 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 I'm going to keep it secret. 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. And the gift is coming. And it's a bagpipe themed gift. So I will be coming. 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 Kreef. This is the Kreef Leisure Centre, which is also the Kreef 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. 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 Kreef. I think we've got about 400 new houses built around my house, which again, you might be tempted to feel nimby about. But actually, they're young families that bring a lot of energy. The high streets looking much better. So come to Kreef. Rory, if you're going to be plugging Kreef as relentless as that, I have to give a proper shout out to the jam man, the Montre Jam Man from Essex. His company is called Saint Dalfour. And he's got an awful lot of flavours. The thing about jam, Rory, 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. The 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. That's Laban Mamon. It's the red and white tablecloth on top. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know those ones. Yeah. Well, he sent me 30 odd different flavours. If you'd like to tell me what your favourite flavour of jam is. Strawberry. Strawberry. Oh, that's so boring. That's 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. Cavalier King Charles, Rory. 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 a sometimes, sometimes the boring options. There's a reason for it. 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. Hello, everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you. We do indeed. As you all know, the Restless Polities Plus members get early access to question time, they get AFRI listing, 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. And right now we're holding a summer sale. So you can get an extra 20% off on an annual membership from now until the end of August. If that sounds good, head to therestlesspolities.com and use the code SUMMER26 when you purchase an annual plan. Make the most of this deal and join us for a busy summer ahead. We've got some brilliant new series coming your way. So new stuff coming, for example, on existential threats, and then there's all the stuff. 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