426. Corbyn's Comeback, Musk's New Party and The Broken SEND System

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics.

Sign up to The Rest is Politics Plus to enjoy ad-free listening.

Receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room, and gain early access to live show tickets.

Just go to the restispolitics.com.

That's the restispolitics.com.

The Rest is Politics is officially powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

And something else we all know is that energy deals, they're about as stable, long-term, and reliable as a, I don't know, Donald Trump promise to a country.

But not this one.

Fuse Energy is offering cheap, fixed tariffs for up to 18 months.

No price hikes, no drama.

Just a rock-solid rate you can count on.

And with the July 1st price cap, now's the perfect time to lock in a better deal.

And the average home is going to save about £100 compared to the price cap.

And that's not spin, that is real money back in your pocket.

And here's the clincher.

When you sign up, you get da-da-trip for free.

And you know by now that means afree listening.

It means bonus content like our recent mini-series on JD Vance, early access to question time and pre-sale tickets for our sell-out live shows.

Powering your home and your brain at the same time.

Head to fuseenergy.com/slash politics.

Download the app and use the code Politics to get a free Truck Plus subscription.

Fixed tariffs, big savings, bonus content.

What's not to love?

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So, if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RVinsurance at progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, pet injuries, and additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

Hello, welcome to the Rest of Spoilers Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart.

And before we get going, Rory, just want to say a big thank you to all of our viewers and listeners who bought tickets for our live shows.

Very excited to be going out again.

We're going to London, Glasgow, Manchester, and Bournemouth.

And a little bit of music, I think, could be expected.

A little bit of music, yeah.

Especially in Glasgow, dropping a hint there.

Yeah, I'm actually going to

not that far, actually, it's quite away from Glasgow.

I'm going to Scotland next week to be photographed for the Woodland Trust with my favourite tree.

That's wonderful.

That's something I really wanted to do.

And I'm

going to do that.

I've ducked out of, so I'll try to do it next week.

I assume your favourite tree is in Cumbria or Scotland.

It's in Perthshire.

Yeah.

Right.

It's an Oak Up by Burnham Wood.

I'm really looking forward to Glasgow and these live shows.

Remind me what the theatres are in some of these places.

So we kick off November the 9th in Bournemouth at the BIC, which is where lots of party conferences get held.

It'll just be me and Rory.

Within 11th and 12th November at the Aventum Hammersmith Apollo in London, following the footsteps of my daughter, Grace.

Saturday the 15th, we're in Glasgow at the SEC Armadillo.

And then on Sunday the 16th, we finish up in Manchester at the O2 Apollo.

So to go to your tickets, just go to AEGP.uk slash trip25.

That's alpha echogolfpapa.uk slash trip25.

Can't wait to see you there.

Right, let's get going.

Lots of new party talk in the the air.

Finley, given the Green Party already provides a political home for many on the progressive left, doesn't Jeremy Corbyn's new party risk doing little more than split the left-wing vote inadvertently strengthen the electoral channels of the right?

That's a good, that's a good loyalist argument.

That's what they always said when I was trying to run as an independent.

That's what my Tory colleague said, oh, you're splitting the vote should be.

Well, it's not wrong.

It's not wrong.

And then we've also got questions about Musk.

Francesca Vills, what do you think about Musk's new America Party?

Could it disrupt the Republicans' 2026 election?

Splitting the vote against splitting the vote against what they were saying.

It sort of does.

Well, look, I think,

I'd love to bring you in on this, but let me just begin.

I think that our systems in Britain and America are really broken.

I mean, I can't get back to it enough.

I try to write this whole book about it.

I don't think I did it properly.

I don't think I explained how I think a lot of our problem in democracy is these systems.

You talk a lot about polarization, post-truth, populism.

And now this is superpowered, I think, by these first-past-the-post systems.

The Republican Party being dragged off by Trump.

The Democratic Party totally lost.

And I think there is so much room to try to rebuild a sensible, exciting, good-humoured, active, socially media-savvy centre-ground.

We need independent parties.

And do you think in the UK that would be somebody who has beautiful ears?

To refer back to your book.

Obviously, I'm trying to hold off saying that Jeremy Corbyn or Elon Musk is the answer to anything.

But I think the only point that Musk has got, because I think he's got no political judgment, I think this idea may be like Dominic Cummings' new party, something that spats out on social media and disappears the next minute.

Presumably, thousands of American political consultant mercenaries are writing little packs for him and slide presentations to try to convince him that they're the people who can do it.

I suspect not just American for him.

I think the thing with Musk.

Look, I don't think this is going to be.

You know, there's that old joke:

how do you make a small fortune in America?

You start with a huge fortune and you found a political party.

Right.

And a lot of people have done that.

Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, this is.

Ralph Nader, Ross Perot.

Actually, Teddy Roosevelt went off to a new party for a while.

Some time ago, over 100 years ago.

112 or something, I don't know, a long time ago.

But it's never worked.

And I think one of the reasons it never worked is the tribalism, the two-party system.

In America, it's never worked as well because of the money.

And of course, Musk has got the money.

What I don't think Musk does have is either the political judgment or the political appeal.

Or indeed the ideas.

I mean, what an earth are his ideas?

I mean, sorry, we know his central idea, which is government needs to be run more like one of his

Silicon Valley companies.

Run by him and his mates.

Yeah, run by him and his mates.

cackle the civil servants, become more productive, become more efficient.

But I don't think he's got an answer at all to the fundamental problems that affect America.

What is he really saying about people on low incomes?

What's he saying about welfare?

What's he saying about defense?

What's he saying about immigration?

We don't know the answer to any of that stuff, right?

He polls very badly.

And let's just be frank about this.

Look, he's obviously got something about him to become, quote, the richest man in the world, however that's defined.

He's very clever.

in lots of different ways, but he's hopeless at politics.

I think he was very good at throwing money at Trump.

Why?

Because Trump is actually quite good at politics, and Trump needed money, and he found a guy who would give him limitless quantities of money.

He's loathed by people on the progressive side because he helped Trump, and he's now loathed by the Trump people because he's gone against Trump.

So I don't think he's the vehicle at all.

So let's come closer to home.

So, Sarah Slutana, elected as Labour MP, suspended for defying a whip.

Over what Tichel Bennett said?

Title Benefit Cat.

Very, very strong

against Israel pro-Gaza.

And she shot the bolt to some extent by announcing that she and Jeremy Corbyn would be co-leading a party of the left.

Jeremy, then we were back.

Do you remember when every night in the news we had cameras outside Jeremy's house and he would trot out and not say anything?

I always admired him for that, the fact that he just got into the cab and went off.

But we had a bit of that and he came out and said, yeah, there is going to be something happening.

Of course, he's now not in the Labour Party because he's been expelled.

What they're saying is the polls would say they could take 10%.

My answer to that is, well, maybe.

I think this is all much more just symptomatic of this sense that we talked about last week of the left of politics not feeling at one with itself.

Part of the problem that Keir Stalma's dealing with, because of course that that 10%

is driven by people who feel that Starmer particularly has let down Labour voters on social justice.

So there's a report that just came out this morning as we're speaking about

explosions and child poverty, which is putting a huge emphasis on the fact that the cap that you can only get benefits up to two children, and you don't get it beyond that, is a real contributor to increase in

what the report describes almost Dickensian levels of poverty.

People living in houses today in Britain with no running water.

eating moldy, gone-off food, rats running around their apartments.

And so that, I think, is core.

But there's also a sense of moral outrage and where is the courage of the Labour Party around international law

and around Donald Trump.

And I think that nobody should underestimate Jeremy Corbyn's appeal.

I mean, in 2017,

he got far more votes than Ed Miliband had managed to do.

In fact, far more votes than any Labour leader had got for some time.

And more than Kiers Lama got in getting his landslide.

It's just the way the votes fell.

This takes to the next question, then.

And this is from Send Network.

They are right at the heart of this debate.

The recent news that education and healthcare plans for children and young people with SEN might be under threat without any clarification from Bridget Phillipson about what could replace these legally binding documents is causing great concern for families and educators alike.

Can Alistair and Rory please discuss?

I mean, it's very strange.

I mean, at the moment,

there's a legally binding commitment on schools to develop a personalized plan for a child.

And why?

Well,

imagine that you are,

like many, many people in Britain, maybe 20% of children in Britain, and you have dyslexia, and you could be very, very bright at verbal reasoning and equally have very significant memory problems on numbers or significant memory problems on certain types of words.

And you can deal with this.

A good school can deal with this and give somebody with dyslexia fantastic opportunities through simple things.

Could be making sure that they know what the work is going to be in the week ahead and give them the chance to prepare.

Could be a little bit of revision at the end of the week, maybe watching a little BBC film on history to embed the knowledge they've developed that week.

And teachers doing this well have completely transformed the opportunities.

of children who frequently are incredibly talented and creative, but who if you just put them in the conventional system, would be exhausting themselves, trying to work in a way that doesn't work for them and end up feeling stupid and excluded when they're not.

So

even the Conservative Party at its very worst was not trying to get rid of these personalised plans.

I cannot imagine what Bridget Philipson is talking about.

Well, I don't think she is talking about getting rid of them, but they are talking about reform.

And the reason why...

And by the way, Kimmy Badnock seems to be against them and thinks that we're over-medicalising mental mental health and all that sort of stuff.

So there's an argument coming on the Tory side on this as well.

But I know somebody called Sam Carlyle who campaigns on these issues a lot.

And their worry is that Labour are looking at everything through the prism of the cost.

Because why wouldn't they?

Because

money is so tight.

But the worry is that on this one, they look at it from the cost perspective as opposed to genuine analysis of the need.

And also potentially because of Rachel Reeves, which we'll get on to, and this moment where she broke down in the House of Commons and the pound collapsed temporarily and the bond price went up and the fact that they're now really trying to get behind her and prove that they're tough,

they're really pushing down us.

But the problem isn't cost, it's short-term cost against long-term benefit.

If you think about 20% of the children in Britain,

not getting the support they need now, you might save some money now, but the long-term consequence for the economy of producing children who are not as able, creative, skilled as they could be in 10 years' time, that is devastating for our productivity, our businesses, our industry, and indeed for their well-being and fulfillment.

Sorry to do the opposite of what I said they should do, but just let's look at the cost.

So, the number of young people with an education and healthcare plan, these ECHPs,

this used to be called a statement, and the last government changed it, is more than doubled.

Okay.

And you talk there about dyslexia.

The main area where the costs have gone up has been autism, then what's called BESD, behaviour, emotional, and social difficulties, and speech and communication.

Okay,

there have been some rise in physical disabilities and severe learning disabilities, but these are accounting for much less of the rise.

But the reason why this is such a massive problem for the government is because, as I say,

the numbers have doubled, the costs have trebled.

to 12 billion a year since 2015.

And

you talk to people in local authorities, I do.

They are so struggling for cash.

And they've been given this thing called statutory override.

They can actually, it's complicated this, but they can park the costs.

So it doesn't go on the spending that is set out in all the kind of, you know,

the red books and the green books and all the rest of it.

And that.

If they were actually to confront the real costs, you're talking about a lot of councils that frankly are bankrupt already.

Now,

then go on to the point about

why has this rise happened and where is the argument coming from?

One of the things that some of the people on the right say, oh, well, this is all because parents who, if their children aren't geniuses, they want to think that they're special and they need special support.

Right.

Most of the demand.

for these extra ECHPs is coming from the teachers and the schools because they're finding that so much, this is what I said about the head teacher I talked to last week.

So much of their resources and their time and their work is is going on children who clearly need to have extra support.

So I think what Bridget Phillipson is looking at is how do we continue to give proper support to children who need it and keep them in mainstream education and at the same time get a proper understanding of why these numbers are going so high.

I think a lot of it, we think a lot of it's to do with COVID, but we don't know that.

And then bring in some sort of reform that allows the system to work better.

But it is going politically, this is a nightmare.

It's absolutely complete nightmare.

And British Phillipson also, in a Sunday interview, strongly implied that Labour would not now have the money to revise the two-child benefit cap.

And all this is, I mean, let's take it back to the basics and sound more like a Tory for a second.

The country

basically has been stagnant since 2008.

GDP per capita grew 2.5% from 1989 to 2008.

It's grown by about 0.7% now.

We're about 33%

poorer than we would have been if we'd been on the previous trend rate.

And one of the interesting things that the government is struggling with, which nobody really talks about, is nobody really knows why.

It's really strange.

There's a very, very good article

written in the FT by Martin Wolf on this, where he says the problem is productivity, but actually nobody really knows how to sort it out.

And that there's a massive need for really rigorous, serious intellectual work, understanding what on earth is wrong with our economy.

And if we can't fix that, labor is in the most terrible situation, which is our public services get more and more expensive.

We have a more and richer and richer understanding of people's needs and their real needs, as you pointed out.

These children genuinely need support.

Their lives will be much better if they get support.

And the stuff that we can offer in the National Health Service is better than it was 30 years ago.

But we simply don't have the economic growth and the tax revenue to pay for it.

Meaning that there are basically two ideas out there, and Labour can't decide what it's doing.

One idea is the very old idea, which is austerity.

We can't afford this.

We're going to cut services.

We're going to cut quality and children will suffer and explore.

And the other one is to go Jeremy Corbyn on this, which is that we need to tax people more, we need to spend more, and we need to become more like a kind of classic 1980s social democratic Scandinavian country.

And there's a danger that's where they get driven, and it's better to get there by your own volition rather than constantly being driven there.

But I also think, I think, I do think Kemi Baynock and the Tories that are going for Labour on this have got a lot to answer.

This was definitely in that basket marked, let's leave it for the next lot to sort out.

I don't understand

Kem Venor, maybe we can get onto this in a second.

It strikes me that her most silly tactical error was actually she should have supported Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves on their welfare reforms last week and given Keir Starmer a very difficult choice, which is she could have said, I'm providing 120 MPs, I can get your bill through for you.

And that would have put Starmer in a very difficult position because then he would have had an option of passing his bill, but doing it with Tory support.

I can't understand why she didn't do that.

It was very difficult.

No, well, you would know better than I.

I'll tell you, there's a piece we should put in the newsletter.

Sam Friedman, who was a special advisor under Gove in Education.

And who writes really well.

He does, yeah, but he's written a very long piece about special educational needs and starts actually with this sense of Farage and Badenock basically coming at it from a we've got to cut the money we've got to get the money down without actually analysing

sorry I meant to keep interrupting you but it just made me think about another thing one of the things that we've learnt about Farage and reform voters is that they're disproportionately often people whose children have special educational needs who are benefiting from SEN they're disproportionately elderly they're disproportionately receiving welfare payments so one of the odd things is that Farage can't really go full musk because his voter base actually really depends on the welfare state.

Well he'll go wherever the wind takes him at a particular time, won't he?

That's what he does.

But anyway, I think it's a story we're going to have to come we'll come back to.

And the other big difference this time, I think you've got amongst the new cohort of Labour MPs, you've got quite a few who are either from teaching backgrounds or actually have kids with special educational needs as well.

Roy, before we go to a break, can I pin you on another educational matter?

Did you vote in the Oxford Chancellorship?

I was a supporter of William Hague.

Oh, so you didn't vote for my friend Peter Mandelson?

No, William Haig.

Okay, and tell me who.

There are lots of people going for the Cambridge one, and apparently I get a vote in that.

Who should I vote for between the ones that I know are Chris Smith, former cabinet minister under us, Gina Miller,

anti-Brexit campaigner, Sandy Toxvick,

John Brown, former chairman of BP, and my candidate, Mohamed El-Arian, who is the president of Queen's College, Cambridge.

And you would vote for him?

I'd vote for him, and of course, my candidate in Oxford, William Haig, won.

So I wonder whether this is going to help you.

And why would you vote for him?

So, firstly, I I think it's great that somebody who has

a real deep love of Britain, but also has an international background, is a really serious international player, loved running Queen's College, Cambridge.

He's somebody who was a great master of a college, has incredible affection.

for the university.

They've all got that, surely.

Well, I was really struck by Mohammed, because a lot of people, you will know people who run these colleges who often get a little bit thrown off balance by having to manage academics.

I've had to manage academics by it was all difficult to do, right?

They're extremely intelligent, independent people with tenure.

They don't want to be full of themselves.

We don't even get careful.

So I think he would be really good, and I think it would be very exciting to have Mohamed Al-Arayan as the chancellor campus.

Who are you going for?

I think John Brown.

John Brown?

I think so, because I think he's got...

Listen, I think these jobs are all about fundraising.

Actually, I don't know if you've spoken to William Haig, but I'm sure he loves all the sort of blah and the blah and the blah.

But ultimately, I think these are people who've got to get around the world with education in such a parlor state.

And why are you not

going to run?

Why are you not running?

Cambridge.

Cambridge, yeah.

Oh, you really hated it, didn't you?

I didn't like it.

Also,

do you know what?

I'm going to throw that one back at you.

Why do people want these jobs, these positions?

Well, I didn't run to be Chancellor of Oxford.

No, no.

But might you next time?

I don't know.

William Hager will be there for 10, 15 years.

Well, you'll still be a young man.

By that time, I'll be completely forgotten about.

I'll be on the dustbin of history.

I'll never be relevant to anyone.

You'd have written another 30 books.

But no, I think ultimately it is about fundraising.

I think that you need somebody who's properly networked, can do lots of leadership stuff, does genuinely think about education, which is, you know, I'll be getting lots of...

Chris Smith, I like.

I like lots of people.

Well, they're all your mates, aren't they?

Most of those people.

They're all my mates, but I'm quite friendly with a lot of them.

Yeah.

Which is why it's difficult.

Pretty difficult.

Were you going to go for Mandelson in Oxford if you'd had a vote?

I would have done, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And then would have, I loved to see whether you could have been ambassador and chancellor and had all those titles.

Okay, well, should we take a a break and then come back and talk about your old party in Israel?

We've got quite a few questions on that.

Very good.

See you after the break.

This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

Summer.

The season of sunburns, sand in your suitcase, and unsecured hotel Wi-Fi called something like Guest123.

So from Cornwell to Croatia, people connect to whatever network is nearest.

No password, no protection, just you, your inbox, and a stranger monitoring your keystrokes in flip-flops.

That's a very good reason to use NordVPN, which is what I use.

It encrypts your connection.

NordVPN masks your IP, it blocks unwanted trackers.

So it's not just safer, it's also smarter.

Whether you're booking last-minute flights or chasing end-of-season hotel deals, NordVPN keeps online prices honest.

It's the one bit of your setup that works exactly as it should, whether you're at home, abroad, or somewhere in between.

So to get the best discount off your your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/slash restispolitics.

Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan.

There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

The link is in the podcast episode description box.

This is an ad from BetterHelp.

All of us, I think, often do find guidance in very unlikely places, an accidental meeting, seeing someone that we haven't seen for a long time.

But there's something quite different that you can get from a therapist, from a trained professional who has actually had the discipline and the experience to engage.

And BetterHelp has been doing this, finding the right matches between people and their therapists for over 10 years.

They start with a short questionnaire, which helps you connect to an experienced therapist whose expertise aligns with your needs.

And if the match isn't right, you can change it anytime at no extra cost.

It's entirely online.

You can pause your subscription whenever you wish.

BetterHelp has already supported more than 5 million people worldwide.

And for many of them, a right match can guide them through not just the moment, but can make a real, real difference.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash restpolitics.

That's betterhelp.com/slash restpolitics.

Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

And me, Alistair Campbell.

And Rory, Ollie Glover wants to know: given there's been so much coverage and focus on Labour's position on Gaza and a lot of criticism, all well and good, but what are the Tories doing about it?

Well, I think the first thing is that the Conservatives and right-wing parties in general, for reasons that are a little bit mysterious, have always traditionally been very, very pro-Israel.

But part of the story, I think, in the case of the Conservative Party, in my experience when I came in in 2010 as an MP, is that Lynton Linton Crosby, the Australian strategist, had very much decided that one of the dividing lines they could provide with Labour is by trying to make Labour seem as though it was obsessed with Palestine, kind of Corbyn Easter, anti-Semitic, and that they could mobilise a right-wing vote that was basically anti-Muslim and use it to seem pro-Israeli and challenge Labour.

But the Conservatives' pro-Israel position goes way back beyond that.

Yeah, it goes all the way back to Balfour, doesn't it?

Yeah,

it's a very long-standing position.

There is a labor equivalent of it.

I mean, of course, Tony Blair was striking because he came in, and I remember this, because we sat down, didn't we, with David Menser, who's now the spokesman for Netanyahu, who was leading Labour Friends of Israel in those days.

So there's also very complicated questions about who the senior figures in the party are, where support's coming in from.

And that, again, becomes very sensitive because there's anti-Semitic tropes which are deeply disturbing and misleading around the question of funding of parties.

But there is obviously a question around funding and incentives.

Let me though say that the Conservative Party, quite interestingly, is beginning to change.

And one of the big figures in this change is somebody called Kip Malthus, who you might have heard of.

So Kip was Secretary of State for Education.

He was close to Boris Johnson.

He's somebody who pretty much you would have thought was on the right of the Conservative Party.

He'd been in charge of policing.

He'd done a big job in London, he'd been a big champion of challenging anti-Semitism, supporting Jewish community in North London, and now he's come out incredibly strongly on Gaza.

He raised in the House of Commons, for example, this Conservative MP, he challenged the Labour Minister and said, why is the Labour Home Office refusing to give visas to injured Gazan children?

This organisation called Project Pure Hope has raised all the money to pay for disfigured children from Gaza to come and be treated in Britain.

The government's given two visas.

Only allowed two in.

And Italy has taken well over 100.

In fact, Italy is taking people who are all lined up to come to Britain because the Home Office won't give visas.

And the Home Office won't explain.

So won't explain why they won't give visas for injured children.

You wouldn't have thought there was any controls about injured children, come, right?

So that's Kip Malthouse.

But he's got quite an interesting group of people coming behind him.

So some of them are the kind of old and bold Conservatives.

people you'll remember like Sir Edward Lee, people like Martin Vickers, who came into the House of Commons with me, but I think he was probably 60 when he came into the House of Commons.

Mark Pritchard, who made this big speech saying he changed his mind, Jeremy Wright has now proposed

recognition of Palestine.

He was quite a senior figure.

And then against them is a different bit of the Tory right.

Swella Bravman, Oliver Dowden, Nick Timothy.

Pridy Patel.

Yeah, Pretty Patel, though, quite interesting, having been challenged hard by Lamy, slightly softened down her position.

But Kemi Badenock is right out there on the Michael Gove,

spectator, Israel, always right, never criticise position.

I think just finally, just to think a little bit about this, I think Kemi Badenock is getting politics wrong every week at the moment.

She should have, as I said just before the break, come strongly out in support of Labour's welfare cuts last week.

that would have been consistent with Tory policy and put Keir Starmer in a difficult position because she would have been agreeing with Keir Starmer against his rebels.

And this week, I think she should have come out in favour of special educational needs because that's something that Gillian Keegan, who we interviewed, the former educational secretary, actually, as a Conservative, invested more in special educational needs in schools.

And if Kemi Badenock had done that, she would have again put Labour in a very uncomfortable position.

Instead of which, she took the wrong position on both and keeps giving Kierstarmer a free pass.

Interesting.

Question here, Alistair,

from Willow D.

Please discuss the devastation of the Texas floods, Trump's role in the disaster.

It's impossible to deny that his scaling back of climate regulations has essentially eliminated climate progress.

Do you share my fear that these floods will simply lead to further conspiracy Texas floods?

Well, Lolly, I mean, if this had been Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever that within 48 hours they would have been there.

A lot of people died, a lot of children died.

But I think Trump is so locked into this idea that the climate crisis is overblown, that it's not real, that it's not man-made, that he can't quite bring himself to show even the most basic empathy.

And what happened was unbelievable, wasn't it?

I think the water rose from something like three feet to 35 feet high in an hour and a half.

And essentially, as the climate warms, there's more and more saturation of water in the sky.

And the amount of rainfall and flooding in Texas is up, I think, by 10% this year.

So essentially, as the planet gets warmer, Texas will experience more and more of these kinds of events, more and more flooding.

There was an amazing shot on one of the channels I saw of the, it was an aerial shot from a drone of the sight of this water chasing people down a street.

And it was uphill as well.

It was going uphill and these people running away from it.

But he can't bring himself to say that this is climate change.

He was then asked whether he thought that the sacking by Doge, Elon Musk's outfit, outfit, they sacked lots of the weather forecasters, and whether that might have contributed to this.

And he said, no, I don't think so.

And we won't be rehiring them.

This is just a one in a, this is like a one in a million thing.

Nobody could do anything.

So not to be depressing, but in the United Kingdom, in Humber, Hull, there are nearly 100,000 people basically below sea level.

And a chance of, I don't know, maybe one in 30-year event of people being hit by water, when that last happened after the Second World War, thousands of people were killed.

And one of the things that we're going to have to do in Britain, it'll be another problem for the government, is put more and more money into flood defenses modelling as we deal with surface water flooding, sea flooding, river flooding from rainwater.

There was the non-profit Mercy Corps.

Do you know that?

Yes, very well.

They did a report this week.

saying that Kabul, which is now home to six million people, not least because lots of people have come in from all around Afghanistan, they're predicting they may become the first modern city to run out of water in the next five years.

Yeah, because climate governance.

So Shashana's in Kabul at the moment, as we're speaking, and one of the problems is that the main aquifer, I mean, Afghanistan is actually quite a dry country anyway, and the population of Kabul when I first saw it just after 9-11 was down at about 600,000.

And as you say, now it's pushing towards 8 million.

They've built all over the aquifer that's supplying the city.

And it's almost impossible to understand how you're going to continue to be able to supply people in Kabul with drinking water.

So that's why this water thing is going to lead to more migration.

Anyway, until we get a grip on the politics of the climate, I think this is going to get worse and worse and worse.

So yes, it will.

I do share your fear that these floods will simply lead to further conspiracy.

Roy, Rachel Reeves, Gordon Larcourt, wants to know if you ever cried in the Commons.

And if you did, do you think you'd have got the same reaction that Rachel Reeves did?

I didn't cry in the House of Commons.

I mean, I thought that was a very, I mean, that was a really, really, really disturbing, the way that people were so cruel and unpleasant on social media.

Sajid Javid came out very strongly in support of Rachel Reeves.

Stephen Flynn, the SMP guy did.

You talk about Kemi Badenot, by the way.

Well, that was again a that again, I mean, look, I think it was cruel, but it's also a massive political misjudgment.

To basically mock and bully Rachel Reeves in that situation was just such a stupid thing for Kemi Badenot to do.

She had an incredible opportunity to be gracious and she missed it.

It's tricky, isn't it?

Because the House of Commons, the whole thing is set up on the basis of conflict and debate and division and so forth.

So there's Rachel Reeves is sitting there.

Funnily enough, I was watching I don't normally watch PMQs, but I was watching it live.

And I actually took a picture of the television and I sent it to Fiona.

I said, is that Rachel?

Because it didn't even look like her.

These huge bags under her eyes, she slumped.

And the history, just quickly to explain to international listeners, is that what had happened is that the Chancellor, our finance minister, minister, had just been through a bruising incident the day before where Labour rebels had essentially destroyed her fiscal plan, almost certainly going to have to force her to raise taxes, frighten the markets, and she basically lost this battle of will because Starma gave in to not going ahead with his welfare reforms.

In the context of that, she came into the House of Commons, sat down next to him.

Starma was extremely sort of a bulliant, cheerful, optimistic, and appeared to be paying absolutely no attention to her.

There was no attempt to put an arm on her.

She chose to turn up rather than what I would have done in that situation, which is simply not turn up on the benches at all.

And so this whole thing was played through and the markets concluded that she'd been fired.

So there was this drop in the pound, there was a drop in the bond markets.

Starmer, again, very flat-footed, didn't manage to defend her when Badenock said, are you going to fire her?

He didn't say, no, I'm not.

He said it afterwards, which then restored faith in the markets.

But it was a very, very odd moment.

What's really interesting about that, though, if you think about it,

when the markets thought Liz Trust was going to stay, they crashed and they picked up again

where she went.

So it's actually bizarrely with the markets to strengthen Rachel Reed's position.

They didn't want her to go.

The point about...

So people talk about...

You said flat-footed and somebody said, you know, he lacks emotional intelligence.

What he said with the next day was that when you're in PMQs, you are absolutely focused and you have to be absolutely focused.

So he's getting up and down and sitting down.

So he wasn't aware of what was going on.

I think the thing that should have maybe triggered him to be aware was when Badenock did what she did, which was to say, look at the Chancellor, she's absolutely miserable.

Look at her, she's miserable, which was, as you say, I think a sort of a mistake.

But I think that what I really like about what's happened since then.

So they came out and said it was nothing to do with politics.

It was a personal matter.

right and we still don't know what that means so i i think that's quite good i like a bit of sort of you know hardball, you get the line, you don't move off the line and what have you.

But I think what we're,

we talked about send earlier, special educational needs.

You look at all the big challenges in the health service, in schools, in crime and policing and transport.

They are facing a level of challenge that is beyond a lot of governments.

I think at some point they're going to have to be much, much more upfront with just how bad this situation is.

And I know that people get sick to death of saying we inherited a mess, but I actually think Labour have underdone

the mess that they've inherited.

Because they're overall problems.

Part of the reason that Rachel Reeves is under enormous strain is that they set themselves up for failure.

I mean, we did an interview with her before the election when it was already incredibly obvious.

that they would be taking over without any money and that the promises they were making were completely undeliverable unless they raised taxes.

Totally obvious.

And I remember challenging Rachel Reeves about this.

How on earth are you going to pay for the NHS without raising taxes?

How on earth are you going to do any of the things you want to do without raising taxes, right?

You can't sign up to saying we're going to stay within the Tory spending plans, effectively keep austerity in place, and also suggest to your Labour voters that you're going to improve public services.

It's not possible, right?

She totally refused to acknowledge it, because somewhere in their heads was this naive idea that the only reason things weren't working is because the Tories weren't doing it right.

That's why you get Kier Starmer saying, fundamentally, the system's fine, Britain's not broken, all we need is a little bit better management.

No, the choice is this.

Do you go tight on public spending, keep taxes down, run down public services, or do you tax more and spend more?

And Rachel Rees has never got to grips with the one central question in her chancellorship.

She should have done it before the election.

She should have done it after the election.

She should have done it when Trump gave an opportunity.

They're just ducking the leadership in this country.

And we're a year on.

And I I think we're giving them too easy a ride.

Right, Melinda Gould, 30 years on from the Bosnian war.

Wow, 30 years.

The country is more divided, politically volatile than ever.

Not sure it's quite as politically volatile and divided as then, but okay.

What are the chances of it emerging as a functioning state eligible for EU membership?

They've certainly got big challenges right now.

Yeah, big challenges.

I'm going to make an optimistic case.

So there was a very gloomy article in the FT on Dodek, who is the leader of Republic of Srpska.

So just to remind people, the end of the Bosnian war, 30 years ago, Bosnia was effectively a double state.

There's Republic of Srpska, which was the Serb bit, and then there's the other bits of Bosnia that integrates the Bosnian and Croat populations.

Dodek has pushed things hard, but ultimately, if you look at the really big picture, over 100,000 people were killed, war criminals were on the loose, checkpoints everywhere.

The war criminals were arrested, the killings stopped, and despite all the problems in Bosnia, the institutions are still functioning.

Dodek agreed to go to the courts to answer charges.

There isn't any violence.

And if you go to central Bosnia, I had a friend who was in central Bosnia just last week.

You can go back to those areas where horrible fighting was happening and you can see mosques have been rebuilt, churches have been rebuilt, communities are living together again.

And actually, I think the European Union needs to make much more of the running and return to the idea of bringing them into the single market, offering other forms of membership for all those countries in the Western Balkans,

rather than panicking now.

Now, here's a question for you.

In George Eaton's article on Morgan McSweeney and last week's New Statesman, a number 10 source stated that Campbell wouldn't last two minutes in Morgan's job and was utterly clueless about the sentiment and state of the country.

Any response?

It lasted, isn't it?

And who is this source?

Do you think it's Morgan McSweeney himself, isn't it?

There is a lot of briefing goes on in there.

I mean, I was with, I had lunch yesterday with Godric Smith, who was my deputy in Downing Street.

And he said, God,

a lot of them seem to talk to the press quite a lot.

And he did say those words that I promised never to say.

Didn't happen in our day, did it?

There was always a pretty good thing.

Why are they so cross with you at the moment?

I don't think George Eaton doesn't make stuff up, does he?

I don't know him that well, but

he doesn't strike me as a sort of daily mail type person.

Daily Express,

Sun, you know, all those sort of, you know, in senior source.

I've always longed for somebody to say a junior source who doesn't have access to any real information said, because there's a lot of people just hang around pubs and talk to journalists.

I guess if any of them do have infamy, it might be because I don't see my role as being a cheerleader.

I actually get...

quite a lot of flack from people who think I'm too soft.

In fact, you just said you think we're a bit soft.

I'm a bit soft.

On labour.

On labour.

Yeah.

Fiona constantly says, I'm being too soft.

You're stuck between a rock and a half.

It's hard, yeah.

But then, and even, and Tom Baldwin, my mate Tom Baldwin, who's Kier's biographer, who regularly gets told, you know, you're just a propagandist, you're just a cheerleader.

They were briefing against him last week.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

But you don't accept with them that you wouldn't last two minutes in the job and you're utterly clueless about the sentiment and state of the country.

I don't think I'm clueless about the sentiment and state of the country.

And I did survive about a decade in, you know, circumstances that weren't necessarily quite as challenging economically.

But we had quite a lot of really difficult things and people to deal with.

But I would say, and by the way, I should just say for the record, Morgan Mussini did send me a message saying that was not his view.

So there we are.

But I think somebody probably did say that.

And I think it's probably because they think, and they're right to think this, that once you've been in those jobs and you're outside, it's easy to sort of castigate and say they're not doing well enough and what have you.

But I am determined not to be Roy Keen.

I'm never going to be that person who's

a lot better in our day.

We had quite an interesting example of this just as we come to the end, which is that the most senior former ambassadors in the Foreign Office wrote a letter.

saying that we should recognize, Britain should recognise Palestine.

And it was an interesting example.

It's Lord Hannay, it's Jeremy Greenstock, it's William Patey.

I mean, I don't, people

won't know all these names, but these were people right at the very, very top of the Foreign Office saying that we should recognize Palestine.

These are people who know the Middle East unbelievably well.

And I suppose one of the questions there is, what is it that happens when you leave that suddenly when you're a former ambassador, you can see things much more clearly than you can when you're listening to the money.

One of the things to say, you often make the point,

including about people that we've interviewed, that there's something that gives you a broader perspective when you're not in it at the centre 24 hours a day, having to defend the line, having to be bound by a collective responsibility, and you've just got more time to think.

Most of my family, I have to tell you,

say all of the time to me, I have got a unique position and I should be far more robust about calling them out on ABC.

Most of them say that to me all the time.

I think you've got to be careful with that.

I've never hidden the fact that I want this Labour government to succeed.

I want them to win again.

When we go back to the new party thing, I do think that's a bit of kind of left-wing self-indulgence that does help the other side.

But equally, I want to try to be helpful and constructive about what I think they could do better.

I think you're in a slightly different place with the Conservatives.

I think you basically think they're no longer your party.

Correct.

Right.

So that's different.

But at the same time, I don't want them to think that I'm sort of going around the place saying they're all shit.

And, you know, it was much better in our day.

Well, you're good at keeping you cool on this one.

Now, final one for me hey mish you often give out book and film recommendations but i'd love to know your anti-recommendations have you ever been lulled by hype into going to see something you wouldn't usually see give us an unpopular opinion oh that's more of a well sure i i have got absolutely made for this because it happened this weekend right so i i'm not a big fan of reviewers because i think in the end it's a bit like we'll just be talking about you know they're spectators pretending to be players right?

But I am often,

I think the FT review pages are really, really good, both on books and on film.

It's very rare that if I read the FT and they give a film four or five stars, it's not good.

And likewise, Matthew Dancona, who's my fellow editor-at-large at The New World,

he does a brilliant culture column and he regularly points me towards films that I wouldn't otherwise go to see.

So this weekend, Fiona and I, based upon a very good review in the FT, and Matthew Dancona saying, I don't like Formula One, but this film was amazing.

Fiona, I went to see F1, Brad Pitt.

I thought it was absolute shite.

And I'm sorry to say that.

And I have to say, Richard Curtis, one of the greatest British filmmakers, he was actually in the same cinema.

And I saw him afterwards and I said, what do you think of that?

He said, I thought it was really good.

Then I felt terrible because I thought, well, he knows about films.

So all these people who know about films think it's brilliant and you think it's rubbish.

Why do you think it's rubbish?

Because two things.

The story was ridiculous.

And a lot of the story was told through a race commentator giving a commentary that he would never give because he was talking endlessly about the two cars at the back rather than the cars at the front.

And the thing that drove me almost to leave the cinema early, I know Formula One's a big industry, and I know this film is part of the development of that industry.

The marketing, the product placement, the advertising within the film was hideous.

I'll tell you what, however much Heineken paid, however much Qataro Airways and Etihead, however much Rolex paid, DHL, Pirelli, however much you paid, you've got your money's worth.

You have got your money's worth.

I seem to be advertising the brands on the show to finish it.

Okay.

You're welcome to sponsor the response.

Let me finish with a positive one.

Drops of God, really fun.

It's about a young French woman and a young Japanese man who given a challenge for 160 million Euro to taste wine.

And it's a story about parents, and it's about taste buds, and it's about French culture.

And it's feel-good and funny.

It's intriguing.

It's in Japanese, French, and English with subtitles.

Right.

You hear all three languages.

I saw it on Apple TV.

But so you weren't, but sorry, Roy, the question was about whether you were lulled into hype.

I've not seen any hype for that film until now.

Well, I'm hyping up drops of God.

And if you want me to be anti-hype,

Blue-Eyed Samurai on Netflix.

You're very Japanese week.

Yeah, very Japanese week.

Blue-eyed Samurai on Netflix.

I was sold it as being a wonderful example of using comic book manga imagery to tell a moving story.

I find it horrifying.

Like a lot of stuff like that, there is extreme violence, spattering blood, soft porn, totally unnecessarily.

And I don't know why we inflict this stuff on ourselves.

And I slightly feel that with Game of Thrones as well.

Okay.

Right.

I've never seen Game of Thrones.

I wasn't lulled on anyone with that one.

I should just say for the record as well: I do think Brad Pitt is a good actor, and I think he's very, very good looking.

And I can understand why people do that.

If you'd like to come on the show, we'd be like, Yeah, bring a big baby back, that'd be great.

But no, that film really was not for me.

And

so,

there's your Formula One invitation gone out the window, isn't it?

Well, that's fine because I have been to a Formula One

race a few times, and that's just not for me.

All right, and

thank you all for listening or watching, and Friday, JD Vance, part four.

Much more exciting than Formula One.

Listen to our mini-series on JD Vance by going to therestlistpolitics.com and signing up to become a member.