Addiction, Breakdown and Finding Persevilience: Rory Interviews Alastair

Welcome to the rest is politics with me, Alistair Campbell, and me Rory Stewart. And this is part one of a mini series. And this one is about my new word, persevilience, described as follows in the book, the ability of an individual group or organization to turn any situation setback or meaningful experience into a positive opportunity to grow to advance and secure their core interests and beliefs. So why have I invented that word? I've invented that word because I think the world doesn't need that sort of word because it's about trying to turn I guess everything negative into something a bit more positive in our own lives and in the world. I wonder if that's what spin is. Part one is coming up and part one is going to be rather weird event where Rory Stewart, you may have heard of him, he presents the rest is politics with me, Alistair Campbell is going to interview me about whatever he chooses to. We've then got a series of interviews with people who are in the book and who to me represent different aspects of what I see as perseverance. One, for example, I think is fairly obvious. David Blunkett, former senior cabinet minister, very good friend of mine and who has been blind all his life. Also talked to a former footballer, Clark Carlisle, who was a very good player, played in the Premier League, not least with me, but as several times tried to take his own life, sometimes in really brutal circumstances, but is now in good shape and is the chair of the UK's one of the leading mental health charities mind. And then also, and this will be our first interview in the series goes out with Kim Leadbeater, who Rory and I have both interviewed on leading, but who became an MP, not least because her own sister was murdered during the Brexit referendum. But we've paired her up with a very, very close friend of mine called Lindsay Nicholson, who was, I count in the book, has had more pain, grief, loss, suffering than most human beings could bear. And her account of how she was born, it is an important part of the book. So I shall now shut up and let Rory take over. This episode is powered by fuse energy. Most energy companies are counting on you doing absolutely nothing, not questioning what you're paying, not switching, just letting your tariff roll on, which is costing you hundreds of pounds every year. But the apathy goes deeper than our bills. We've almost given up on energy itself. We seem to all be accepting energy is expensive, the system's outdated, but that complacency is costing us. Fuse energy does not accept that because the energy transition is not something that just happens somewhere else. Fuse is building an energy company which is designed to bring down the cost of energy. And right now its tariffs are up to £100 below the off gem price cap. So switching isn't just about paying less. It's about expecting more from your energy company. And it only takes you three minutes. Switch to fuse at fuse energy dot com slash politics. Use the code politics and you'll get a free trip plus subscription, allowing you to hear all the extraordinary members content that Alistair and I are now producing for you. Visit fuse energy dot com for full terms and conditions. You've written books on different things I think that interest you and people. I mean, obviously they've been your diaries, but there's obviously been a real interest in leadership, vision, management, strategy, communication. And then somewhere you've begun to centre around this word Perseverance. When did you first have this word? When did it first occur to you? When I was writing a book about depression. And there are some themes that if people have read my book on depression, I've written two now, The Happy Depressive. I guess that's a Perseverance thought, isn't it? The Happy Depressive. Because that basically is me saying I get depression, but I'm mainly quite happy with my life. And then when I wrote the bigger book about depression, Living Better, I was just trying to wrestle with the idea of what I was saying and whether there was a better way of summing it up. So that's the first time I used the word. It feels to me not like perseverance, not like resilience, not like persistence, but it feels Perseverance is more positive. And then it was actually a publisher who said, look, I love your word. And you keep banging on about how you'd like to see it in a dictionary. Write a book about what it is and what it means. And just before we sort of get deeper into your personal life, tell us what you think this word is saying and its component parts. I would say the obvious component parts are perseverance, resilience, persistence, and patience. That's where the words are coming from. But they feel, all of them, I'm afraid, including patience, because as you know, Rory, I don't think patience is a virtue. I think if something needs doing, you need to sort it out. Try and sort it out. And if you can't, move on to something that you can sort out. I think resilience to me is about banging your head against a brick wall. I say in the book, for example, that I think one of the reasons that Keir Starmer lasted two years and Tony Blair lasted 10 years is that Keir Starmer saw his resilience as a great strength. It is a great strength, but not on its own. It has to have all the positive things that take you through the things that are forcing you to be resilient. So I see the word for an individual as being whatever problems being thrown at you, your responsibility to yourself and your family and everybody else is to genuinely try to think through how you can address them, not to wallow in them, not to moan about them, but genuinely how do you try to address them? And then for a government and for a country or for a cause and a campaign, it's how do you take everything that happens to you and turn it into an opportunity to move in the opposite direction, to move forward, not backwards. Now, when I began the book, I thought maybe that the point about perseverance is it was a sort of morally positive form of persistence or resilience. It was persistence and resilience in a good cause. Yeah. But there's a rather interesting bit in the book where you speculate on whether in a sense, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, you obviously don't like and whose values you don't share might not also have a form of perseverance. They do. They do. And I, it's interesting when I was talking to Fiona whilst in the process of writing the book and I said, and so I thought of all these people who are in the book that I mentioned who I see as sort of shining lights of perseverance. You know, some of them we're going to be interviewing for the series, but also lots of others, some famous, some that you've never heard of. And Fiona said, yeah, but you've got to say Donald Trump's perseverance if that's your definition. And that's why I think you're right to picked up on the fact for me, he has all the attributes you need for perseverance apart from the most important, which is that there has to be, there have to be values and integrity at the heart of it. Um, so I would argue that why, why do I say that Trump is on one level per civilian, just the very fact of losing an election, which virtually everybody in the world knows he lost and accepts he lost, but it is quite perciviliant to say, I'm just never going to admit that I've lost. I'm going to pretend I've won. And eventually I'm going to persuade enough people to reelect me. And it's incredible. And it's, it's something that you get to in Frosch as well. And I, I sort of sensed in people like Liz Trust too, there's a sort of relentlessness in these politicians that they never accept that they're beaten. It doesn't matter what the headline is. It doesn't matter how many times they've lost. I think you point out the Frosch failed to be elected eight times. They just keep going. They keep going. And now I think with Trump, it's almost an illness that because I think he believes he didn't lose the election. I think with Faraj, he kind of knows that he's a bit of a con man and a bit of a showman, but he has secured thus far an awful lot of what he's tried to achieve. Now, the reason why I also write about Putin and I have, I talk about how Putin sees himself in this sort of, you know, Peter, the great Catherine, the great Vladimir, the great, that's how he sees himself. I don't believe he will ever be seen like that. Although he has shown a lot of the qualities that in other people I highlight in terms of just keeping going, turn everything that goes wrong to your advantage in some way. So they're the, they're the kind of basic qualities, but then you need, I think it's important to have these, these values on top. One thing I think that most listeners won't really understand is how people keep going. So, so let, let, let's take Nigel Farage, who, you know, reasonably well, you've seen quite a lot of most of us would feel, oh my goodness, you know, if people were writing that about me in the newspapers, if I'd lost eight times, if I'd screwed up as badly, if I was in scandal after scandal, I just want to go and hide my head. Do you think he feels often very distressed, very battered, that it's actually difficult for him to get out of bed in the morning, that, that the sunny face that we see is conceding the fact that even for him must be pretty painful often? I mean, thankfully I've never had to be in a bed while he's waking up to face today to see what he's like in the morning. But I think less than Trump, actually, I think Trump at some deeper level must have a very, very big hole inside him. I think to be cited as, seen as the most powerful man in the world, but constantly have to say so and constantly have to advertise his own greatness. I think with Farage, it's something different. I think Farage is a genuinely, I don't think he'll see those. I don't think he'll be too affected by all the bad headlines. And I think he sees the positives everywhere. So, I mean, I say in the book, in the book, you know, he had, he had that plane crash, came out smiling. He had that car crash, came out smiling, all those defeats. I'll show you. And I think you need that relentlessness. Funny enough, I've just seen, we've just, Fiona and I just been to see the De Gaulle films, which I really do recommend to everybody. They're absolutely superb. But the second one, a lot of the focus is on this guy, General Leclerc, and one of De Gaulle's generals, Free French. And he's got it. He just, I don't care. It's a film, but it's romanticized or what have you, but he's literally trying to get from A to B in this battered old truck with bombs flying around him, tanks firing at him, but he's just sort of, nothing will stop him. And he has, he actually says at one point, to achieve anything in life, you have to be obsessed. Now that may or may not be true, but I do think an element of, you use the word relentlessness. I think that is a form of obsession. I think the other thing I'm trying to do in the book is to turn what I know other people define as negatives in me into positives. So a lot of people think being obsessive is a bad thing. A lot of people think being addicted to things is a bad thing and it is. Okay. So how do you turn those into positives? And maybe are you partly saying that you suspect that many people that people admire are a bit obsessive and addictive and unbalanced? In other words, there's you with people saying you're an obsessive workaholic, you've got a bad temper, et cetera, et cetera. And you must feel, yeah, but I got quite a lot done. And maybe, I don't know, are you suggesting that our idea that the best kinds of people get things done are always balanced work-life balance, well-rounded individuals, or do you have a suspicion that sometimes a lot of the world runs on people who aren't like that? You need all sorts, but I think that a lot of people assume that the problems in their life are insurmountable, that there is no way out of the social or economic situation that there might be. And for some of them, that may be true. Let me interrupt there for a second because maybe I didn't frame it right. What I suppose I'm getting to is that do you sometimes think that what people perceive as your negative qualities were actually the secret of your positive qualities? Oh, I see. That if you'd been a more laid-back, balanced work-life balance, rounded person, you might not have actually got as much done. Yeah, 100%. I mean, this morning, I didn't sleep very well last night, okay? And the world does affect my sleep. There's lots of bad stuff going in the world, but whenever I say to Fiona in the morning, oh, really bad night, she'll say, well, you're doing too much. She'll always just say, you're doing too much. And it's true. I might be doing too much. One of the things that stops you sleeping well is that you've just packed too much in two days. Your mind is worrying. Yeah, there's too much going in or there's too much to come. To me, it's less about what's gone. It's what's to come. But then, so then we sat down and had a cup of coffee in the morning. I said, yeah, but okay, all right. To have less in my head, I'm going to have to do less. I've got to go out this morning because I'm going to be talking about the book. Should I have not written the book? And she said, we didn't need to write the book. It's true. I said, no, I didn't need to write the book. I've read 22 books. I didn't need to write any of them. But I think, yeah, the obsessiveness is definitely, I think what drives me. And I like, I quite like the periods when I don't have it so much. I wonder whether this isn't one of the things that we struggle with, which is probably historically, people were more comfortable with the fact that a loss of men, they were predominantly men who got things done, were not entirely balanced and normal, right? And that you didn't really expect Gladstone to have a great work-life balance. And that maybe part of what makes Alexander the Great is he is a bit megalomaniac and paranoid. Otherwise, he wouldn't have done what he did. And we're struggling with this because we also have another set of values, which is about your personal, not your public life. And maybe we're struggling to work out how to talk about the fact that often people who achieve genuinely impressive things may not be in their private lives, models of balance. I think that's right. And I mean, I think, you know, you've been in frontline politics. I've spent a decade working alongside somebody who, you know, I always say with Tony Blair, he worked bloody hard, but those of us who were working for him usually had an hour on either end of his day because we're preparing for it and then picking up pieces from it to keep going. So people like myself and Jonathan and Angie Hunter and all the sort of team around him, we work. I'm not saying we had as much responsibility as he did, but we probably in some ways worked harder. And I think, and my children were young at the time, and you kid yourselves that you can give them everything that a good parent should be giving. You do your best, but it's never good enough. And I think it's taken me a long time. It's really interesting. I, for example, I've ended up when I structured the book at the start, I had no plans to write it in the way that I've written it ending with this chapter, which is, it's a sort of, it's a love letter to Fiona, but I guess in, in some ways it's also a bit of an apology because I don't think you can. Now she would, Fiona would probably, if she was here, Fiona probably, well, I haven't really changed much. I still will, you know, say as we're on holiday in Italy, though we can't go yet because Santa Marin hasn't arrived or I'll still be very focused on work related things. But I think most, if you look at most, um, David Owen, you know, former labor, foreign secretary, founder of the SDP, et cetera, he's, he's got a whole thesis about politics and madness and that, you know, most people who strive and succeed in, in politics have got something a bit long. It's something I feel because as, as you know, to your fury, I spend far too much time hanging out with CEOs of big American tech companies and they are deeply weird people of which the one that everyone knows about is Elon Musk, but I can assure you the other 20 of them are all really weird. And when I go on holiday with them, they're literally on their laptops all the time. And they are working 120 hours a week and they would say, you cannot be a very successful entrepreneur unless you, unless you live like that. I suspect they probably are because the only experience I've had in my life, which was like that was running Turquoise Mountain. And that was probably the thing I was most proud of. And I did it with no wife, no kids. And I just thought about nothing else, did nothing else, worked every weekend. And it really worked. I mean, there's something incredibly productive about being completely absorbed every waking minute in a project as opposed to balancing it with something else. The result is of course, that, um, we struggle with the question of role models. So I'm going to come to you on this role model point, right? Because on the one hand, of course, these people that we're talking about ranging from you to, you know, I don't know, the CEOs of a big company are role models in the sense they've achieved a lot, but in other senses, we're kind of saying to our kids, well, well, well, well, well, well, you don't want to be like that because they don't seem completely rounded. What's your sense of how we deal with this question of role models? I mean, occasionally we find exceptions that we like Nelson Mandela. We can all agree on. It's lovely because he's achieved a lot and he's also a nice guy, but it's not that common that we come across somebody like Mandela. I mean, as you know, I call Mandela the patron saint of perseverance purely because of that surviving 27 years in jail, coming out with a smile and then completely transforming his country. It's one of the greatest stories of humanity. But I was talking recently to, um, one of our Fiona's oldest friends is the daughter of Joe Slovo, who was one of Mandela's key people in the, in the ANC. And, you know, if you talk to Adler, I've never met Mandela's children to talk to them, but I wonder how much they think because one of them died when he was in prison. I wonder how much they think, well, my dad was never here for me. He was in jail fighting a bigger fight. I know, I know children of people who are involved in the anti-apartheid movement who, whose strongest sense is, yeah, well, yeah, we've got democracy in South Africa, but you know, my life's pretty fucked up. So I think it's very, that the role model thing is, is fascinating because you get, I mean, I write about Neil and Glenys Kinnock in the book as a per civilian relationship. Okay. And their kids are both great. Steve is now in the cabinet and Rachel is one of my favorite people on the planet. And Rachel has once said to me that, you know, we look to you and Fiona as role models of parenting. What? What? And I'm slightly panicking about it because, but then when she explained it, I kind of understood it. She said, well, I get the feeling that you've got good relationships with them all. And they're based on the fact that they sort of know that you're busy, but when you're not, you're always there for them, et cetera. Now, I don't know if that's what they say or not. You get this as well. You get people on the back of the podcast saying, you know, the way you talk about politics, we've got loads of students saying, you know, you're my role model. I want to follow what you've done or whatever. So I don't know. I, but I think that I do think that this, what I define as this perseverance, the ability to, to have a sense of who you are, what you want to achieve in life and just to keep going, there's going to be a thread to it all. Let's start with the mental health stuff. I mean, that's been so central to you for a very, very, very long time. But if we go back to when it first happened, so this first breakdown is when you're sort of 29, presumably at that point, it wasn't something that you talked about openly or shared openly. It's something that you began to share openly after that, is that right? It kind of was something that I shared openly, not openly. I didn't sort of go around advertising it, but I was quite high profile with the newspapers. I wasn't known by the public, but I was quite high profile with the newspapers. All of you knew that something had happened, that something that I'd gone mad, I'd been arrested and I'd ended up in a psychiatry. Can I interrupt something? Because one of the things I think the audience often doesn't quite know is exactly what happened. Is that something you're not comfortable talking about? No, I'm totally comfortable. So what, what, what was actually the thing? Was it, was it post alcohol? Was it alcohol? Was it a psychotic episode? I mean, well, it was a psychotic episode, which depending on who you talk to, but the psychiatrist to diagnose me when I was, I was arrested because I was behaving strangely up in Scotland. And what were you doing? I was sort of, um, what was I doing? I mean, it definitely been building up for a while. It's funny how the same people come in and out of your life. I was going to Scotland with Neil Kinnock because even though I was the news editor of a paper, the new paper that was about to start because it was the today newspaper, which was a bit anti-union, which had probably the reason why I should never have gone in the first place. It was politically troubling me. Nobody in the labor party would have it in much through the paper. So I persuaded Neil to let me go with him, do a big profile, et cetera. I'd been working flat out. Fiona and I had fallen out. I'd moved into a hotel. I was drinking very heavily. I was, you know, the night before I'd virtually emptied a minibar. We fly to Scotland. I get to Scotland. I hire a car. When I knew I was completely off the rails is when I was going round and round this roundabout near the Rothseith Naval Dockyard, where I was about to go and see Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock. So you were supposed to be reporting on them, but you were just driving around and around. They will go off to the Scottish Labor Party conference via this visit to Rothseith to see Gordon and his constituency, then a young MP. And I just got stuck on this roundabout, round and round and round and round. I then dumped the car, gave the keys to a guy at the Naval Dockyard, which is sort of what we're dealing with here. I said, phone this guy called Jeremy Deeds at this number. Tell him I've left my car. I can't drive. I then find a cab. I get a cab to Perth. Who was Jeremy Deeds? Jeremy Deeds was the managing editor of the paper. And so I get to Perth and by now I'm becoming conscious of losing control of my own mind. And what does that feel like? It's really hard to describe. It feels like anything you look at you think is speaking to you. So there's a camera. It says Sonny. Why is it spelled wrong? S-O-N-Y. S-O-N, you're a son. Is this to do with your parents? Why? You then look over there and you see Charles Dickens. Did you not read Charles Dickens enough at school? Is that why you're being punished? You think you're being punished. Your mind is just on this constant loop. I remember when I got arrested and I was driving in the back of this car. In the back of a police car. And these buses were overtaking me and I was trying to do these anagrams of the name of the coach company. So your mind's just losing control. And by then I'm hearing things as well and I'm seeing things. And when you hear and see things, is it that you're half conscious that it's not real or you totally believe it's real? It's hard to explain. You think it's real but you are constantly testing everything that it's communicating to you. So as you know, I had brotherhood schizophrenia. This was in Scotland. Neil Kennett was the leader of the Labour Party. He was a big figure. There was a piper to pipe him into this dinner that he was going to. So a piper walks past me. I stopped this guy. He's wearing a kilt. He's carrying his bagpipes. I say, is this because of Donald? I said to him, I see. Okay. But of course he didn't know who Donald was. He didn't know a clue. Donald being your dead brother who was a piper. Yeah. So he says, what are we talking about? And he, because he can sense immediately, I'm not something wrong here. He wasn't unpleasant, but it was like, yeah, he just looked like this is really weird. So I'm thinking, why won't he talk to me about Donald having schizophrenia? Because you're convinced that he knows Donald and he knows that. I'm convinced there must be a reason why he has passed me right at this time, carrying a set of bagpipes while I'm starting to hear voices, which is what Donald. So I'm not thinking I've got schizophrenia. So when you're hearing the voices, you're, you're also half conscious. You shouldn't be hearing the voices that one of the disturbing things about. So you can hear, I can hear his voice, but I can also hear Elvis Presley singing is Elvis Presley singing or isn't he singing? He's not. I'm hearing it. Okay. Um, I've had a massive rouse in the office. Well, I know the office is not there. So why am I hearing these massive rouse in the office? Okay. And then these two policemen arrested me and they arrest you because you did what I think they just realized they were actually special branch. Okay. And they, because the other complication, it was the, it was the day that all off Palmer, the Swedish prime minister was assassinated. Okay. So security around Neil was quite tight. Okay. So I think they just thought, Oh, this guy's spending a day with Neil. We better keep an eye on it. Okay. I think so. There's some weird guy who's trying to get to you. Yeah. And I was in specific of what I was doing. I was emptying my pockets and my bag on the floor and I think I was starting to take my clothes off. Right. Okay. So they came over, they were very nice. Actually. Yeah. They were very, very nice. But they would have picked up pretty quickly that you're not with it. I was really not well. And they were actually really nice. And funny enough, when they said to me, are you okay? And I said, no, that was the, I felt such a relief because I'd been probably not okay for quite a few weeks. And every time Fiona said, listen, you're right. I'd be saying, why did you keep talking to me? Whether I'm all right, you know, you know, then you do that and you've got the problem, not me. I'd been doing that for weeks whilst drinking every morning and also hearing the voices. The voices only started on that day. Yeah. And the point about perseverance, I say in the book that both Fiona and my sister, yep. Who's the only one left of the four of us. Yep. They both think I hang onto this too much. Yep. But I think the reason I do is because I think the way I dealt with it thereafter is what made me feel I have this kind of perseverance. Yeah. I mean, it is an incredible moment because here you are age 29 and you have got this amazing career because you've just got this fancy job in a new newspaper. And then you've just blown up in the most humiliating way possible outside a Labour Party conference. And you're thinking, particularly with what, so you write about this in the book, what's been going on the previous few weeks. Fiona's not going to stick with me. And am I going to be able to keep my job? Presumably also, have I gone completely mad? So I'm not going to be able to work for the rest of my life. So it's an unbelievable moment because it's a moment where you might've felt, well, this is the end. I did. I did. I felt that on several levels. Actually on the day, I know this is an insane thought, but I thought I was going to be killed. I thought it was being tested. I was failing the test and the punishment of death. I thought that is strange. People, is it that you had an idea of who was going to kill you or how? No, no, no. And then, and on the professional front, I just thought, you know, I was probably a bit cocky and arrogant anyway. So a lot of people were loving the fact that I'd blown up in smoke, but actually when I went back to the mirror, yeah, I left, I left them today and I went back to the mirror and they were absolutely brilliant. And the reason this started with you asking if I was open with them, I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I just decided when they asked me what happened, I'm just going to tell them. I'm not going to say, oh, I was a bit stressed. I was just going to, I'll tell them. And within a few weeks, no, a few months, I was able to laugh about it. Um, and who was the editor who took you back? Richard Stott. Richard Stott. So presumably that, that is the big thing. Oh, huge, huge acts of confidence in you. Totally. Yeah. Because he's the guy who told me not to leave the paper in the first place. And then he, he was the first person who phoned me up who was in the office. He said, listen, come on, let's stick on him for a second. Cause we, you don't talk much about Richard Stott. Um, and he obviously sounds like an incredible man because he was prepared to take the risk of taking it back again. And he believed that you would still be a great journalist and that it would work out. And it did work out. Um, I just wanted though, to, to touch on the, this question of disgrace and what that means in someone's life. I'm sort of haunted by this because actually I do know quite a lot of people, professionals of different sorts, obviously a lot of politicians, but actually quite a lot of public figures and senior figures and hospitals and schools and who at a moment in their career, when it really seemed like they were almost at the peak, something happens. Often the media get after them. I, and I haven't talked to you enough about that. I mean, what's your experience, people going through that and, and who comes through it better and who comes through it worse. And you know, when is the moment at which people are just like, screw it, I'm going to bury myself and never appear again. And how do you come back? It's interesting how many people in politics don't do that. Um, funnily enough, when I was going through the mill in terms of later in government and suddenly when you're at the center of the media storm and people are going for you and people, the opposition, they're calling you to resign and the press are digging into every aspect of your life and all that. Funnily enough, when that was happening, I was hanging onto my breakdown and I was saying very, very consciously, this is not as bad as that. I was saying that I would get up every morning and say that this is not as bad as then you can get through this day. If you can get through this day, you can get through tomorrow. Uh, I was suicidal at points and partly that was the depression, but it was also the, just the sort of hell of the circumstances. And essentially I've just read that book. Um, profiles of cowardice by Jacob Weisberg, okay. And he's picked on these eight people who he says as examples of people who've enabled Trump, even though they knew him to be a complete monster and knew what was like to happen. And he sort of goes through the reasons why he's written the book. And one of them is that, you know, there has to be at some level, a sense within all of them, a sense of shame. Yeah. Now I suspect with Trump, there isn't despite, I think the dark hole might be an incapacity to feel things like that. But I think with most people there is. And I think some of the, some of those people that you, we may have seen survive scandal after scandal, after scandal, I think shamelessness probably helps them in a way. Um, but I found it really difficult. And I find, I find what I find, I mean, partly it's cause I didn't quotes, think I'd done anything wrong, but I could see my rational mind could see why I'd become such a target and therefore, but I did require a lot of inner strength during that period. And especially because this is the black period. So 1997 to 2003, where you were literally right in the center of everything. And of course you're dealing with all the fallout of the Iraq war, which of course begins in 2003. That was without doubt the worst period of the law. And of course the reason why I talk about perseverance relationships, that was also the time at which largely for political reasons, my relationship with Fiona had become so strained because she was supposed to Iraq war. You were supposed to Iraq war. She was, she, she couldn't understand why I was literally sort of working myself, you know, 18 hours a day to, to sort of support and project something that she felt deep down because we're so close. She couldn't quite believe that I would believe in this. Yeah. And she knows that I can only really work if I believe in something. Um, and so it was really, really hard, but I think that it's a combination. It's interesting. It's so interesting talking to Kim Leadbeater and Lindsay about how they get through sort of, you know, grief on an unimaginable scale. And part of it, I think, is we all dig into those parts of our, our character and our history that suddenly become relevant to it. So I found, for example, on the, on the day that David Kelly body was found, it was really interesting. The sorts of people I felt I had to speak to and the sorts of people who got in touch. Um, suddenly these parts of your life tap in, in a way that says, Oh, well, okay. Maybe I, maybe I shouldn't be thinking like that. Maybe I should get through this. Maybe I should keep going. I mean, what, what we're seeing here is that you're somebody who can be very thick skinned. I mean, you, you often have an attitude towards media stories of how can ignore them, but you're clearly not entirely thick skin. I mean, there's things that you feel unbelievably deeply. And I wonder whether the psychotic moment or the way that you felt in 2005 reflect that you actually also can take things very, very hard. It's not as simple as you just have a rhinoceros skin and nothing gets through. It's, it's certain kinds. So what do you think are the things that get through? And what are the things that don't in this, in what is it that really causes the, the pain and the psychic trauma? And what are the things that you feel you can just brush off? And I think most media things I can brush off. Um, I guess what that was speaking to was just the sense of my whole, um, I kind of knew I was coming to the end of a really important period in my life. I'd sort of felt that for some time, partly because the truth is that if Fiona ever had said, I'm going to leave you, if you don't give up the job, if she'd ever said it in those terms, I probably would have left the job. And it's interesting. I mean, I talk a lot in the book about my psychiatrist, do another death that I took really badly because he was such an important figure to me because he was only somebody that I started to see long after I'd left down the street. I got through down the street without seeing anybody. And he had this analogy that Shannon was like a fifth limb. So I guess that's that fear of loss I think is important in me. Um, but I think the other thing is I have to have, I have to have purpose and I have to have, I think I probably do have a bit of a relevance issue. I have to be relevant in some way, um, relevant to what or to whom I don't really know. Well, I remember, um, David Petraeus, uh, saying, I think to us that he talked to Kissinger, which is like an amazing string of name drops. And Kissinger had said the one thing he feared most was no longer being relevant. And Petraeus really felt this. I mean, he took that from Kissinger and is totally determined to remain relevant. In Kissinger's case, he tried to remain relevant. He was almost a hundred years old. Yeah. Um, what do you think is going on there? What, what do you think this relevance thing is? Because of course it was quite dramatic. You'd been right at the heart of everything from 97, 2005 and then suddenly you weren't relevant. No. And it could have been coincidence and it could have just been the art of decompression after a very pressurized period. But the, the depression which followed leave it down the street was, if I had to write my top three depression episodes, that was one of the top three. Um, and I think it was this sense of, well, what's my purpose? I've had a, now my sister, who's a believer Christian, she would argue that's the hole. Okay. That needs to be filled by God. Yeah. And I've never, even though, as you know, I'm very interested in God, I've never been able to make that, make that leap. Um, and so now I think it's, uh, the honest answer is, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I, but I, I've come to terms with it just as I've come to terms with my depression in different ways. I think I've come to terms with it. I, because ultimately we all, I think everybody has a need to be relevant. So I could, I could easily at some point in my life decide that relevance could be defined by family, by parenting, by a charity job, by whatever. I could find ways of thinking that, but I guess what it is, I think there came a point where I thought if I go through the various stages of my life, education, journalism, politics, I think the skills I've developed over the course of those three different parts of my life, I've kind of got a merit that I think I have a, this sounds a bit pompous, but I sort of have a duty to try to use them. I think if you just sat quietly and thought, so if you, you've seen me with people, if somebody asked me to try to help them sort something, my instinct is to try to do it. Yeah. But also the, for those eight years, it all came together and there you were at the top of your game, bringing all those skills together. And then suddenly quite young, you're sort of almost being put into a sort of retirement where you can't use all those skills. Yeah. And then, and then, and I've never been that motivated by money. I don't mind making money, but it's never been my main thing. And I think funnily enough, the books, I mean, as I said, there are 22 books. And as you say, a lot of the diaries and novels, I think the books are a form of, this book really is about, when I say it sounds again, it sounds pompous, the word the world needs now. And okay, that's a bit of marketing, but I actually think when I talk to, when I go into schools and talk to kids, I sort of think, you know, cool guys, you need a bit more, need a bit of perseverance here. You need to work out how you're going to work out. Okay. Yeah. You're worried about this, you're worried about that. What are you going to do about it? I mean, as you know, I think young people get a very bad rep. I think they've got a lot of challenges that we didn't have to deal with. Uh, I think the world is pretty messy place in a complicated, difficult place. And so that's why partly why I love going and talking to them. I always get a kind of sense of energy off them and I don't buy into the snowflake generation thing, but I still think that they, sometimes I think they can be given the message that don't always think that the problem that's in front of you has to be solved by others. Have your network reach out to them, but ultimately there's so much you can do if you think deep in yourself. Um, and so that, you know, and that, what I find with young people is that message lands. It's been really interesting. You know, when we did the competition for people to guess the name of the book, it's quite interesting that six of them got it right. And I haven't mentioned it that much on the podcast. That's why I think it's the word the world needs now. But the paradox, which I think is, um, the kid might think listening to you is, and I guess this is probably true of all of us in different methods, is that you're both a kind of tough guy and you're somebody who takes things unbelievably hard. So it is this sort of odd combination where sometimes you're presented with an Alistair, who's a very tough guy who doesn't matter what anyone does to him, it has no effect on him. And then on the other hand, you talk very, very honestly about episodes where you are completely thrown off balance more so than other people. Yeah. And they're, they're both, they're both real. Yeah. Yeah. They're both real. I mean, you know, you, you've seen me in situations where, where somebody has a go. Yeah. As long as I don't feel they're going to take out a gun and shoot me, it just doesn't bother me. Yeah. I'm happy to argue with them. I'm happy to walk away. I don't care. Yeah. I, I once, and I think family is so important is I remember once saying, I can't remember where I said this, but as I said it, you know, sometimes you've somebody throws you a question and you formulate an answer in your head and it comes out. And after you said anything, yeah, that was good. I like that. And there was once where somebody asked me, how do you cope? This was when I was, I was war criminal. I was this, that was that. I mean, younger listeners won't really appreciate just how much the mail, the telegraph, the spectator, this lodged every day, it's stuff coming at me. And, you know, and people say, how do you, including people in politics, remember Tessa Jones said to me, how do you cope with this? And I remember saying to her, look, if I thought my mom and dad, who then were alive, if I thought they thought I was a terrible son, if I thought my kids thought I was a terrible father, not that I'm not there a lot, but I was a terrible father. And Fiona thought on balance, I wish I'd never met him as opposed to on balance. I'm glad I did. Yeah. I couldn't cope with that. Yeah. So work at that. And then don't worry overly about this. And even when it affects, I always used to say, if it doesn't affect how I do the job, and that would only have happened, I think this is where Tony Blair is quite a good boss, because I think he understood what was going on. He understood they were getting at me as a way of trying to get at him. And I understood that and he understood that. Now, eventually he may have decided, look, you know, it probably is right that he goes, but he tried to persuade me to stay, but I knew at the end it was time to go. And, and I think that the crash that followed that was in some ways a creator of the more perciviliant approach that I took to this thereafter. And that, and so then what is relevant? So, I mean, I, I remember saying to John Prescott of all people, and there was a point where Gordon was trying to get me to go back and get a seat and do this and do that. I remember saying to John Prescott, do you know what? I never ever want to have a boss again. I never want to have a boss. And it's not that Tony wasn't a good boss. I just want to be my own boss. I want to shape my own life on my own terms. Now, some people might've said, that means I want to play golf three times a week. I want to, you know, go on 15 holidays a year. But my shape of my own life was, I want to do a bit of this and a bit of that and I want to somehow knit it all together and give it purpose. How does the depression and the episodes that you write about in the book, very well in the book, relate to doing the podcast? Listeners see you coming in week in, week out, three, four times a week. You've not missed a podcast in four years. And yet, presumably in the background, there are four day periods where you're depressed. There are days when you're more elated, I guess. What's going on there? How's that all managed? And do you think that listeners know? Do you think the team knows? Or is it just something you keep to yourself and you notice after the event? I mean, what's going on? Well, why do you answer? Do you know? Do you notice anything? Well, I noticed that you can be sometimes very grumpy and sometimes very cheery. I noticed that sometimes you will say, I think it was sort of beginning of last year, you said, well, you've probably noticed I've been pretty depressed for the last few weeks. And we didn't quite notice in that way. I mean, we noticed maybe that you were much more short tempered, but not that you've been depressed. You gave a very bad image of my profile. So I guess the question is, how does the outside world know? And how do you deal with that when you're working with a team week in, week out? Well, do you remember once, I think I was in Edinburgh and you were in Jordan, I think a few years ago now. And it was fairly early on. So within probably the first year, maybe the second year of the podcast. And you started off literally by saying, you know, how are you? And you asked the question and I just said, well, to be absolutely frank, I don't even remember this. I said, I'm really not, not very good. And we ended up having quite a long conversation. I actually found that very helpful. Um, I think when you say, how do you deal with it? I am, I don't want to come in. I mean, both Fiona and Tony Blair have often said to me that you've got no idea how you emanate a mood. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm not conscious of that, but I'm conscious of the fact that people say that to me. Right. So I don't particularly want to come in and have everybody thinking that I'm in a foul mood. Right. So I'd rather say I'm in a foul mood because right. Okay. Yeah. And I wouldn't advertise to everybody that look, I'm really going through a bad phase, but I would, if I felt it was going to be relevant. And a bad phase might mean you've, although you've come into the podcast and you literally haven't missed a single week, but you might've actually struggled to get up bed in the morning, shave, open the curtains, and yet you're still turning up and doing the business. Yeah. I think it's more likely that I'll be feeling this is a struggle and this feels like a chore. So you would notice it more if you were with me afterwards. Okay. Cause I would suddenly have an absolute energy slump. Okay. Because the effort when you were depressed to keep going in that way is really quite takes a lot out of you. The people who really, really, really know me. Yeah. Get it in the voice and the eyes. Right. Yeah. Uh, so, and how are you at the moment? I'm fine, Rory. I am. I'm fired. I am fired. Uh, I'm not sleeping well, right. But I think that's to do with, and does that worry you? I mean, it's part of the problem of this condition that you can sometimes think, well, I'm not sleeping well. I'm not sleeping. Well, it's bad. Yeah. Yeah. It is more likely a precursor rather than, so, so when I'm not sleeping well, it's a warning sign. It's a warning sign. And it basically means just dial back a bit. Um, so that, and, and, and added to it, I mean, it's true. Like, you know, I know, remember, I don't think I say this in the book. I think I do where David by psychiatrist, we used to talk a lot about my dreams. Yeah. And he mentions that you have amazing name dropping dreams. He said that this is the first time. What happened when he died? His wife very kindly sent me a folder of all his notes. Yeah. And in one of them, it just said, first type ever Thatcher, Blair, Venka, and Mandela all in the same dream. But I do have these strange, I mean, I do dream about Donald Trump and Liz truss and I just do. It's like, so I think, I think politics can get me down and affect my sleep. Um, so, you know, but it's interesting when you say about the, because I honestly, I'm pretty good at the moment and I've had quite a long period. I actually think the podcast has been good for me for that because I think, I think forcing yourself to think in a structured way about a lot of madness going around is actually quite a helpful therapy. I don't know if you found that, but I certainly find that. Um, and I also think the fact that, you know, and you've, it's weird talking to us because you, you've seen so much of this. You know how I always feel that when you and I are out and about and people come up and say, Oh, I love your podcast. And I can always say, I think in different ways, we both find it a bit difficult. Don't really enjoy it because to me doing a podcast alone does not fill the relevance gap. Yeah. It's, it's, it's part of a picture that if I do all the other things I can say, yeah, you've still got a bit relevance. Yeah. One of the things that you've also begun to become very honest about is, is not just yourself, but children and being a parent. So you've written very openly about Callum's struggles with alcoholism and you've talked about, uh, him going into Alcoholics Anonymous and what that meant. You've also talked about moments where he'd been dishonest to you, stolen from you. What does it mean to be perciviliant, not just an individual, but as a parent? That was when Callum was sort of descending into alcoholism. And by the way, I wouldn't talk or write about this if he wasn't happy with me. So to do. And I think the reason he is quite happy for me to do it, he's not somebody who seeks the limelight at all, but he has just recovered or is, you know, he would say he's a recovering alcoholic. Um, and you know, I also write in the book about, you can have institutional perseverance and Alcoholics Anonymous is just the most amazing organization. And it's, it's, you know, I think you could say it's been a lifesaver for him and he now gives an awful lot back. He gets and he gives. Um, and how did we get through that as parents? It was really, really hard. I think the, I think, I don't know what you're like as a parent in terms of fixing, but I think both Fiona and I like to think we can fix any problem. And I think the key, a key moment really was when we sense that Callum was beginning to understand that he had to fix the problem, but that he, there came a moment at this rehab place he was in up in Scotland where we sense that his mindset on it was changing. That was the key. The key was not us trying to fix it. Um, but it was, it was, I don't know how we got through it to be honest. It was absolutely hellish. Um, neither of us were sleeping then. And you were just convinced we were both convinced at a certain point we're going to get a knock on the door. There's going to be a knock on the door. Something's happened. He's fallen in the canal. He's done this. He's done that. Um, but he's amazing. And, and, and that, you know, seeing him now, he's just sort of, you just think he's got perseverance, you know, to have been as low as he was, as addicted as he was behaving the way that he did. And now sort of doing all the stuff he does. It's a, but it's, I can't, I don't know is the answer to the question. You just have to dig really, really deep into your own reserves. Interestingly, one of the inspirations for the book, you mentioned the archbishop, he's got a right hand guy used to be at Lambert called Chris Russell, who's also a man of the collar and faith. Um, but he actually, he said to me, uh, ages and ages, you know, you should write a book about you and Fiona and how you've dealt with each other. And, and so that's mainly, that's partly why there's so much about the family through this. Cause I think, I think relationships, perseverance is if anything, the most important part of this. Um, but I'm not pretending it was easy or that I've even really still pass if I haven't fully come to terms with, I think, but, um, it's anybody who's ever watched that. And, and weirdly people always used to say, well, you had trouble with alcohol and you got through that. So that must have been able, must've been a help. It wasn't, it wasn't because I think I'm thinking I could fix this or you could fix this. If only you did what I'm saying you should do. And it's just the worst thing you can do in somebody like that. Well, okay. I mean, this is a slightly awkward segue, but I, I guess it's something that you have talked a lot about and you're very interested in. I mean, in that chapter on our colleagues anonymous, you talk about another institution, which you see as personally, which is, which is the monarchy. And I think the chapter 10 he says, what do alcoholics anonymous and the monarchy have in common? Um, and I write about that in a way from cause I'm trying to weave politics in and out of the book. And I think I've said to you before that my first memory of a political row was with my mother when I refused to watch the queen's Christmas message. Sometimes I think your mother sounds a little bit, it's a terrible thing to say to you, but she does sound sometimes a little bit like Trump's mother. I mean, she's who, who again, famously was the Scottish lady from, from the Western Isles. Your father's from the West. Yeah. My mother, absolutely. My mother was born in the same week as the queen, right? And she was called Elizabeth, right? And she loved the queen. Very good. Absolutely. The queen, but she loved, she loved Charles as well. So it's your father's family. That's more like Mary Trump's family. My father's family. I've got nothing in common with anybody who has the name Trump. Uh, but no, but my, my, the, the thing about the monarchy is that some, as that was my first kind of sense of a political impulse, you know, why do I have to watch this woman who wears a crown and talks to this weird voice when I could be outside playing football. And how old were you then, this rebellion? Six or seven. It was definitely before 11 because we moved house then. And I can remember the house we were living in. And, um, but I think the reason why I speak to your friend, King Charles and the institutions, Perseverance, is because I say in the book, look, there are only so many fights you can fight and get rid of the monarchy. Give up. I love the moment where you did acknowledge that there are moments where you sometimes wonder whether a politician or a celebrity, it was necessarily what you want doing that role either. Yeah. Well, and yeah, I imagine your Republican thing is partly that you actually slightly resent the idea that there's any unelected person doing that role. It wouldn't necessarily be much better if it was Frank Bruno or no. I think the thing with, with the King and the monarchy is, is the sort of class thing and it's the top three and all that. But then the other thing I love, how many times have you said this on the podcast? I love good speeches and I love people who can make good speeches. And I have to say his speech in Congress, I think that was the moment where the doubts that a lot of people had that he could do the job after the queen evaporated. And since then you've seen his own perseverance in relation to his health. So yeah, I'm basically just saying, cause it's interesting. One of the people who read the book at the publisher said, you know, do you think it's part of perseverance to know when to give up? Now, instinctively I will say never give up. Yeah. Right. But I think there is a point where you think, listen, you thought that you maybe campaign for that bit. You've written about it, but now you've lost. Yeah. It's not going to happen. Yeah. They're going to be here at least well past your sell by date. So go find about climate change or something else. Your mother would be very happy. She would. She'd be, she would be really happy. And I think that's the other thing about grief and death. I think, I don't know if you think you talk about your father who's dead. I mean, I think this thing about people who are dead still being with you when you're thinking through good things and bad things is you talk to them a lot, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You stuff chats with them and say, what would you think if I'm struggling when I'm writing something? I talked to Richard stock. Hey, what'd you say here? Oh man, he's called it every day. Come on old man. Give me a bit of help. My friend, John Merritt, who was married to Lindsay before he died. I talked to him. I talked to Victor, my old agent. Uh, you know, when I get, when I get an offer on the book, is that enough? Edward, do you think? So imagine we'd say, and he has got the best name drop I've ever had. I said the book, Alistair, can I call you back? I'm just getting on Bono's playing with sure. Or was it shares playing with Bono? I can't remember. One of the two. Well, let's, let's, let's get back to, as we come to the end. Um, as I said, one of the things that you write about a lot in the book is death. And it's quite a cheery book though, isn't it? It is a church book. It's a good, it's a good book. And it's, it's a, it's a really thoughtful book. And I thought your passages on your friends and on Fiona were the best bits of the book are really powerful, but there's been a lot of death. I mean, you're not that old, but two of your brothers have died a lot of friends and a lot of friends. And we, and we come back to them. We come back to eulogies. We come back to memories of people you care about who died. And there's a, a question about relevance and Fiona and aging that worries me, which is that, um, one of the problems with getting older, particularly if you get older and unlike you're different, you'll kind of lose your wife. You would enter a stage where you necessarily are less relevant because you're just getting older and, uh, where you're alone. And that's something you do write about it. And tell us a little bit about your thinking on that. Cause you, you mentioned it in passing in the book. Rupert Spira No, this goes back to David Sturgeon and the fifth limb. I, I don't think I could, but I know that practically I couldn't cope with that Fiona. And I'm not sure I could cope emotionally either. Now the truth is I've been amazed. I mentioned Neil, I mentioned Stan Turnin, who's a friend of mine. He's the manager. They both lost their wives. And look, Neil is still grief stricken. Okay. But you've seen him a couple of times recently. He's lively. He's thoughtful. He's energetic. Um, Stan has become a great cook. Uh, it's like sort of, I just don't think I fear and it's a fear. It's a real fear. So now as it happens, Fiona is amazingly fit and keeps herself amazingly fit. Um, so yeah, that's a real fear I have that I would, that she would die before me is that it actually makes me feel more comfortable about my own death. Now then some, so what about her? But the thing is, I don't have any worries about Fiona being able to cope. Uh, I think she'll be okay. I think she'd cope quite well. Oh, quite a life. Uh, how about old age and relevance? I, I sometimes feel when I see people in their eighties and early nineties, particularly people like you who've had very, very big public careers that it can be a bit tough. I had a Bishop say to me recently that he realizes now he's 90 that his whole life he'd prided himself on how quick his mind was on how smart he was. And now he's slowing down and it, it hits him at the core of his identity. No, look, I think if both my parents are dead, neither of them, uh, had Alzheimer's dementia. Um, I've seen quite a lot of people who do have Alzheimer's and do have dementia. I think if I went down that route, I found it very, very difficult. Um, I think there is something about knowing when to stop. Now I say in the bio, I will never retire. And that is a mindset I have now that could change. Um, but I think, and it's not about being relevant. The truth is that you mentioned Mandela. Mandela's relevant for the rest of time. Yeah. Um, I think that might be, I'm not putting myself remotely anywhere near. Let's just put that on record. You're not an I'm not, I never would. But I think that the reason why I sometimes think that books are more important say than the spoken word, this may change as this, you know, the technological revolution goes on, but I think books are an important part of enduring relevance. Your kids are an important part of enduring relevance. And, and I think sometimes your views can be, there are people who are hugely relevant in our politics that most of our listeners and viewers have never ever heard of because we talk about their ideas, but they're just their ideas that happened to become part of people's lives. So I don't think it's, and I, I also think that I think part of what my struggle has been has been when you're defines as a journalist, you define you are the particular of the daily mirror. That's your job. You're defined by that. You are the prime minister's press secretary and director of communication. That's a definition. I think it's taken me a long time not to care too much about what the definition is other than to me. So I don't care how I'm defined anymore. I care, I care about happiness that I hope I am building in the course of the rest of my life. Final one for the reader of the book, for Perseverance, what do you think is the one message in that book, which you wouldn't have been able to get to 30 years ago? Writing it today, what do you think the message is that reflects the Alistair of today, not the Alistair of 30 years ago? I think that the me of 30 years ago was relying almost entirely on instinct as opposed to deep thought and being trying to be rational about yourself. I also think that the reason why I miss David Sturgeon so much is that I felt that having somebody, I know you've done this as well, but having somebody that you could literally unburden yourself to and then spend a few days thinking about that and writing about that is what's made me, I hope, more reflective, more reasonable. I've still got a temper. I can still fly off, but I think I'm a lot more reasonable than I used to be. I think I'm also, in terms of the positivity, look, there are still people who are, as you know, we talk about a lot in the public, there are people I despise. But in the main, I found that the me of today way more than the me of 30 years ago can see the potential positivity and perseverance in virtually everybody that I meet. I think once you start to think that there may be more to this person or more to this view than you initially thought, you can find that way. So I think it's made more positive. And so the message is that perseverance is in everybody. In that sense, it's an optimistic book. It's a book encouraging people to find their own perseverance. So Colin Ray, what does perseverance mean to you and who's a perseverant person in your life, either your family or a famous person or a politician or a historical figure, anybody? You can't say Alexander the Great. I can't say Alexander the Great or Theresa May. So I'll go with my dad. So my father, I just, actually, you know what, I'm going to go with my mother. I think I spend far too much time praising my father. My mother is about to turn 91. And I don't know what it's like about to turn 91. She gives the impression that she is 70. I mean, there's just no change that you can see. And I imagine it must be often bloody awful being 91. And yet she gets out of bed every morning. She's got a huge smile on her face. The whole thing seems effortless. She can fly out to Jordan to babysit. She can come out to down to London when show and I are traveling. She's supporting local charities, supporting the local church. She's editing books. And she never gives the hint that there could be something wrong. But I'm pretty sure that there's quite a lot going on beneath the surface. And that's real perseverance. Very good. Very good. Who would I choose? There's obviously tons and tons of people who are in the book. If I was going down the family road, I'd go with Fiona's mom, who is 101. Now, I can't pretend she has a smile on her face all the time. But she's bloody amazing. And she still plays the piano. And she still follows the news and has views and so forth. So I think that there is a positive to aging, which maybe I'm starting to think about more than I used to. I think you have to look at all the people that I've kind of looked at in the book. I mean, the reason I've dedicated the book to Fiona and Lindsay, Fiona, because she's put up with me, but I think Lindsay's perseverance. And she's one of the people I've interviewed with, along with Kim Ledbetter. I don't know if she's had lost her husband, then lost her daughter, breast cancer, car accident, then lost the job. Second marriage went wrong in really horrible circumstances. And yet if you bumped into her on a train and just chatted to her, you'd think, oh, she's really nice. She's really positive about life. So yeah, I think I'd go with Lindsay. Very good. You know, it's interesting. One of the people involved in the process said it's kind of, it's not, it is a memoir, but it's not a memoir. It is about politics, but it's not really about politics. It's partly about politics, but actually ended about saying, I tell you, I get the guy yesterday who's read the manuscript as part of the publication process, who said, so I just let you know, I've just done my first half marathon and I was inspired to do it because I read about how you tackled your first marathon. So there's a bit of kind of, it's not, I don't want to see it on self-help section. I don't care where, but it's like, it's a mix of all those things. And then of course there is a very, very powerful political message as well. I actually say, I actually say I wrote this as it was at the printer. I had this postscript thought, you probably haven't seen this because I think I wrote this after the proofs went to you. And it basically says, you'll have heard us talk a lot about the three Ps on the podcast, populism, polarization, and post-truth. I've got my three Ps now can defeat those three Ps. It's perseverance, people with principles. The new three Ps. Very good. The positive. Well, let's finish with that. Perseverance, people, principles, particularly three Ps. Particularly perseverance. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now I would like you all to join me on Sunday night for a special virtual gathering 6.30 PM UK time to receive the invitation, sign up to our newsletter at the rest is politics.com forward slash newsletter. And we'll send you the link on Sunday to join us. I'll be talking to Izzy Stanley, our journalist on trip about why I came up with the word perseverant, why I've written a book about it, how it shaped my life and who has it. I'll also be taking your questions. Hope to see you there.