459. Question Time: Reform's Potential Upside, Why Bad News Sells & Reasons To Stay Hopeful

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Politics.

Welcome to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Anister Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart.

Now, Rory, we're going to try to do something different.

Okay, so I was at this fundraiser I mentioned last week up in Nottinghamshire and a gentleman by the name of Jeff Chambers handed me a letter.

And he said, he asked me to go back and listen to number 99 trip questions episode, 25 minutes, 22 seconds, where you and I, Rory, both agreed with his suggestion that to help people's mental health, we should occasionally do episodes where we try very hard to be positive.

My mother keeps reminding me of this.

Exactly.

Keeps telling me of that we haven't done this.

On the day that he sent me this letter, he said he'd been looking at the front page of the BBC website.

The first 18 stories were all negative.

Corruption, wars, murders, cost of living, and as he puts it, bloody Donald Trump.

No wonder so many people are fighting depression.

He then reminded me, obviously he listens very carefully.

Then reminded me that later a woman listener also said to us, could we try occasionally to be more positive and do more positive stuff?

So we're going to try.

Yes,

we're going to try.

Let me just, before we get into it, because we will, absolutely, this is going to be be a podcast where we focus on the positive.

But I just wanted to put the counter-argument.

Why is it, I guess, listeners listening might ask themselves that journalists focus on the negative?

And I've been trying to think about this a little bit.

And the beginnings of my thinking, you understand this much better than I do, so I'd like your views on this, having been a professional journalist for decades.

Number one, I think it's partly human psychology.

Lots of studies show that humans tend to overemphasize the negative and downplay the positive.

And maybe that's something to do with early human evolution and saber-toothed tigers and having to worry about threats.

Number two, I think it's something that journalists often feel as part of their job in life, hold the government accountable, criticise, you know, watergate, find out the bad news, bring it to the public.

Number three, it's simply something that's driven by the fact that humans read negative stories much more than they read positive stories, partly because of psychology, partly also because of narrative structure.

We love, if you look at, you know, it doesn't matter if you're watching a comedy or a tragedy, you have a structure with crises in it, you know, down points and then up points, down points and up points.

We talked about a little bit with the Labour conference that it's inevitable that, you know,

Starma's falling, then Starmer's up with his speech, then Starmer's falling again, etc.

Then that's reinforced by

editors who look at how many clicks.

So the fact that the public clicks on the negative stories more than the positive stories drives that and then advertisers come in behind that.

And eventually you end up with a whole ecosystem that's basically arranged around negative stories driven by human psychology, theories of political accountability, editors, advertising revenue and certain kinds of narrative structures.

Back to you.

There's an interesting PhD thesis

somewhere in all that.

I used to

do a lot of speeches about this, and I hope I get this stat right.

If I don't, I'll correct it next week.

But I remember a Scottish University did an analysis of the British media, and the positive to negative within the British press, in I think it was the 19 mid-70s, which was not a great time, was three positive to one negative.

Ooh, in the 70s.

Yeah.

And by 2000 and something,

it was one positive to 18 negative.

Oh, no.

Can I come in on this?

I wonder whether one thing...

I love the way you get excited about a wave of negativity.

A lot of positive problems.

I think one thing that may be going on in that story is the relationship between local newspapers and national.

So big plug, which I'm going to take the opportunity for, for this book that I'm just about to publish called Middleland, which is an attempt to gather positive essays that I wrote for the Cumberland and Westmoreland Herald and local Cumbrian newspaper.

And I'm writing about nature, I'm writing about society, I'm writing about culture.

But my guess is that the Cumberland and Westmorel Herald probably would give someone like me much more space to write positive stories about what this village is doing in Cumbria, what Crosby Ravensworth's done on affordable housing, how we're doing stuff on renewable energy, how farmers are operating compared to the national press.

In fact, I bet if you were to look at the Cumberland and Westmoreland Herald even today, and maybe this was true for your Tavistock newspaper, you'd find far more positive stories than negative stories.

Probably, probably.

I also think that this trend is likely to worsen if people feel that their own place, be that a country or a town or anywhere else, is in decline.

And I think there is a sense.

You see, I think it's a mindset.

I think you can be positive.

So the column I write for the New World,

I try not to make every item negative.

I think it's a mindset.

You've got to say to yourself, you've got to kind of find...

Can I go back to the Tavistock days?

You and Fiona, did you, you did positive stories, right?

You would have done positive stories.

And what would they have been typically?

Well, local boy, local girlmates, good.

Yep.

Anniversaries, fairs, weddings, and all that sort of stuff.

But also, yeah, you're on the lookout for people who were doing nice things for their community.

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

And why does that work less well if you're editing the Daily Telegraph today?

I'm not sure it does work less well.

I think one of the reasons the newspapers themselves are in decline is because they're so relentlessly negative.

You mentioned the Telegraph.

I mean, The Telegraph used to be a serious paper.

It's now become a sort of propagandist rag that anything that the Labour government does is terrible, terrible, terrible.

They're all failures.

They're all useless.

They're all a waste of space.

And it just, I think people turn off it.

Anyway, shall we get some questions?

Yeah, yeah.

Let me start with the first question, to give you an opportunity to demonstrate

your new approach to positivity.

One question for you, to start you off.

Is the route to growth through net zero and green energy and championing it after last week's fossil fuel news?

This relates to

the story we talked on briefly last week that renewables have now overtaken coal in terms of providing electricity.

That is good news.

And this is a global thing.

And what's really interesting is the extent to which the race is being won by China, India, Pakistan.

So countries maybe that you wouldn't be expecting to be doing this.

And a lot of this is driven by...

uh your party's beloved market forces so it's actually the cost of solar has now reduced by 99 since 1975 It's amazing.

My dad put a solar panel on our house when we were living in Malaysia.

Our shower was powered by solar and it was quite a thing.

And that's quite a fall.

99.9% since 1975.

Incredible.

I'll give you another

percentage.

Growth in solar and wind met 100%, that's all, extra electricity demand in the period that was covered by this survey that we're talking about.

Really impressive.

Really impressive.

And I've got to say, Roy, I'm going to give a shout out to your close friend and the one person you hero worship even more than Theresa May,

namely the king.

Both of them were at this event I was involved in last week at the Natural History Museum.

And I thought this was positive because

I was a bit worried.

I'm worried about COP.

But staying positive, I actually think COP is now a massive opportunity because the truth is Trump is driving the climate agenda backwards.

And here we have the ridiculous Richard Trice constantly talking about net stupid zero when it should be Richard stupid Tice.

And COP is the opportunity to start to reverse that.

And I was therefore very, very pleased that at this event,

which was partly to launch this stuff about trees, which I've talked to before, we'll pick our favorite trees.

And by the way, will you commit to doing it next year?

Yes.

Excellent.

That's a yes.

King Charles announced that he is not going to COP, but he is sending William on his behalf.

And I would say that both of them have got,

they're both passionate about this agenda.

So I thought that was a very, very positive thing to do.

Okay, Roy, one for you.

Ed Cullinan, we saved the turtles.

Please discuss.

Well, this is genuinely a completely astonishing story that goes against everything we believe.

So basically, green turtles were a threat in the 1970s.

And the world began doing things that would have appeared quite small over 50 years.

What did they begin doing?

The US passed laws with shrimp nets for turtle exclusion on shrimp nets.

People began investing in developing habitats, particularly seagrass.

Places like Costa Rica began protecting beaches

where turtles nested.

Australia began generating income from looking at turtles.

So it's all the classic conservation things ranging from international law to community incentives done over 50 years and blow me down, it's worked.

Green turtles are now absolutely flourishing.

And anyone who's interested, there are the most beautiful moving documentaries you can see on the lives of green turtles, the incredible odds against them.

from crabs trying to get them on the beach as they make it to the water.

But it really should show you up because it's actually a story when we tend to think the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket.

From the green turtles point of view, compared to 50 years ago, the beaches are better, the nets are better, the habitat is better, the pollution is better.

There you go.

Let's hear it from the green turtle.

And I did hear about the green turtles on the BBC, so that was covered somewhere.

Yeah, question for you.

Go on.

Lydia Brown, this is really going to put you on your toes here.

Which country and or political leader gives you most hope currently, Alison?

Where are you getting hope from?

Oh, Donald Trump America.

That's it.

I thought that was going to be the answer.

No, Mark Carney, Canada.

I love the guy that we did on leading the president of guyana president ali i think he was amazing not not least on the environment i i liked your friend the prime minister of norway he was good yeah but i think i'm going to go to australia you and i last week online presented or were involved in the presentation of the australian politician of the year awards so this is the mckinnan leadership awards right the kinnon leadership yeah and it's and it's good we talk about you know because i think a lot of the negativity that jeff is complaining about comes from this fact that people and the media in particular find it so hard to be positive about any politician.

And the McKinnon Institute, they literally have this thing.

It's for positive political leadership.

And our friend and leading interviewee, Peter Malinowskis, the Premier of South Australia, he got an award.

He was the state award winner.

And he, of course, is the guy who's done taking on social media and also taking on political funding.

And the federal award went to, this is a really sort of on-brand with the podcast as well, it went to two MPs, a Liberal, that's a Tory in their language, a Liberal who's called Julian Lisa, and a Labour MP called Josh Burns.

And they got the award because ever since October the 7th, they have across the aisle fought a national campaign against anti-Semitism.

And they've had considerable success and they've become very close friends.

And then the final award went to a female MP who has been doing massive work on tax reform and that has, again, got respect from both sides.

So I think Australia does, the Australian politics does have a lot going for it.

I also think that I've taken a lot of hope from some of our leading interviews.

Not all of them, but President of Georgia, who we did, I thought she was amazing.

Some of the American politicians, Richie Torres, who we interviewed.

Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, I think inspiring, wonderful figures.

Mike Pompeo.

Mike Pompeo, no, he's not in my category.

But I tell you what, a lot of people enjoyed that interview.

People loved it, but I also really loved our interview with David Blunkett, our interviews with Ben Wallace on the Conservative side.

In

Jeff

Chambers' letter, he said that, why don't you do more good news stories occasionally that may inspire involvement?

By the way, I love your leading interviews that show more human side of politicians.

I never thought I would like Jeremy Hunt.

There we are.

There you go.

There we are.

even Tories can come on here

and be treated with respect and welcomed in our new positive mode.

Right, this is a good question because we're going to stay positive even though it means talking about reform.

Mark from Henley on Thames, as a centre-left Labour member, I was struck by your recent question time discussion on the Green, started wondering whether reforms rise could have a positive long-term impact.

First Past the Post is outdated, disenfranchises much of the electorate, We often hear about the benefits of PR systems in Northern Europe.

Could reform's growth lead to a period where no single party wins outright majorities, shifts public opinion towards PR, and fosters a more collaborative, compromise-driven politics that lowers the political temperature?

I realise this would involve the rise of reform.

Bracket's bad and may take a generation, but could it ultimately be one constructive consequence of their emergence?

Good question.

Yes.

But for this to happen, people like you and me need to pull our socks up and get get on with really getting a constitutional convention together and getting all these parties around the table.

I mean, the lesson, I think, of Scottish independence and the work you did on Scottish autonomy was that a few people in the early 80s began developing a lot of the ideas that you then picked up.

So what needs to happen now, if we're serious, I mean, like, you and I believe in, I don't know, let's say a New Zealand electoral system, Australian-style compulsory voting, etc., right?

We need to now start getting

Lib Dem, some of the Labour MPs who are sympathetic towards that.

Goodness knows,

maybe the Tories may begin to see this as their only hope to avoid total extinction, right?

Because the Tories will probably be able to scrape 15, 20% of the vote.

But at current ways the maths work, they could end up with only 40 seats out of 650.

So start putting together and really get that cross-party coalition, develop those ideas, road test them, so that actually, if this turns out to be the case, we're ready to go with a proposal rather than just talking about it yeah

um it is a very interesting question because of course the the because of the vagaries of our electoral system reform and their predecessor parties have had a long history over a few decades now of having you know fairly sizable chunks of the national vote and very very few seats so at the moment they have five mps having got whatever percentage it was or the lib dems who got similar amounts to reform in percentage, but ended up with over 70 seats post five.

But now we're in this position where, you know, I think actually

it's entirely possible that reform have peaked and that they will come down a fair bit.

But they're at a place now where they could get, you know, less than a third of the vote and end up with the most seats in parliament.

So there comes a tipping point in our system where if you just get past a certain point, you actually end up getting a lot more seats than your vote might in a PR system necessarily justify.

And that's certainly the case with Labour and getting a massive majority with a relatively small share of the vote,

particularly if you take out all the people who didn't vote.

So I think that this is where it's heading because we're now, the whole of Europe at the moment

has this sort of sense of nobody wanting or trusting big parties, but wanting a system where somehow people do kind of work together, cooperate together.

Now

we're seeing the downside of the concept of working together in the French system right now.

And that isn't a straightforwardly PR system.

Likewise in Germany, there is a lot of angst about the fact that it's PR that is leading or helping the rise of the AFD.

But I think Mark's got a point.

I think this is the direction of travel.

But it's only going to happen, as you say, if

one or both of the two big parties, or certainly sizable people within them, decide we've got to move towards this and we've got to do it together.

And of course, one of the the problems in the modern world is we are very binary and we like things to be totally good or totally bad.

And the truth is, of course, that there are advantages and disadvantages to first pass the poster and PR.

So it's an argument where we have to say,

broadly speaking,

because we want to build a system that is more representative, that gives space to new parties to emerge, that encourages compromise, we'll go with PR.

But we accept that there are some things that you'll lose lose along the way.

Well, listen, let's take a break and then come back and talk about, I think we should talk about the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The real one, not the Trump.

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Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Roy Stewart.

And me, Alistair Campbell.

Question for you.

Okay.

Cameron Martin.

Do you agree that it's incredibly fitting that Maria Corina Makado received the Nobel Peace Prize?

And Andres, as a Venezuelan Britain, I'm incredibly proud and emotional.

Tell us a little bit about the Nobel laureate.

There was so much sort of focus on would Donald Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize?

And I think you and I both knew that was not going going to happen.

I actually think even if there is lasting peace in the Middle East, he's done so much other terrible stuff for the world and for its stability, not least undermined the United Nations that it shouldn't happen.

But there's obviously a big campaign for next year now.

But I thought it was a pretty inspired choice because

if you think about Venezuela, a country that we talk about a fair bit, Maduro, dictator, fraudulent elections, illegitimate rule, and she was able to inspire an opposition movement.

She wasn't allowed to stand as a candidate.

This other guy, Gonzalez, who's now living in exile.

She stayed in Venezuela, incredible courage, and showed just what it takes to build a movement, to defeat somebody in a democratic election, and is keeping going, even though it's been taken away from her and living in hiding.

There's even talk about whether she'll actually be able, for security reasons, whether she'll be able to go to Oslo to accept the the award I hope she does um so yeah I thought it was a pretty inspired choice an interesting choice from Nobel Committee because she's a sort of hero I guess for what in Britain would be called the centrist ads she's somebody who's very much not going down the kind of bukele authoritarian route but equally totally rejecting the sort of

romance with Cuba and the left and kind of Venezuelan socialism.

She's very much trying to stand for liberal values.

She describes herself as a liberal.

She's progressive socially.

She's fiscally conservative.

She's all those sort of things that

the world used to be built around.

Yeah.

I also think giving it to a woman at a time when Trump was sort of, you know, trying to show that his style of leadership is the only leadership that works.

And she also, I think, did something very, very canny and very, very clever is that she dedicated it to Venezuela, to the people of Venezuela, but also to Donald Trump for his support.

You saw his extraordinary interview where he was like, She called me.

It's very nice.

She said I should have won it.

I didn't say, well, why didn't you give it to me?

Shout out also because Britain has been doing surprisingly well with Nobel Prizes in science.

So Sir Demis Sasavis,

the great AI researcher with Protein Folds.

This year, John Gurden, which is a nice story

because he still got his school report from 1944 where

Gurden's quite old now, where his schoolmaster said that his ambition to become a scientist was totally ridiculous.

It was kind of unimaginable that this man could ever make it as a scientist.

And he's just won the Nobel Prize.

And a real sign, I mean, what Gurdon proved, actually, which is a real inspiration to all of us, is that he wasn't somebody who as a schoolboy was kind of naturally brilliant and IQ was off the child.

He wasn't a kind of child prodigy.

He's somebody who's the sort of scientist.

And Darwin used to say this about himself, that Darwin said, you know, I'm not the cleverest person I know, but it's the patience, the resilience, the time, the curiosity that they've just put in to becoming great scientists.

And in a world which is increasingly kind of dominated by J.D.

Vance or Elon Musk trying to show off about their IQ and imagining the whole thing is about natural talent, Gerdin is a real testimony to

patience, resilience, grace, disproving teachers who assume that you can tell how well someone's going to do at 16.

I'm going to test your memory of fascinating things that I revealed on the podcast.

Which other prominent historical figure was born on exactly the same day as Charles Darwin?

I've definitely mentioned this on the podcast before.

Corp Blimey, born on the same day as Charles Darwin, prominent historical figure, Tony Burke.

How could he be born on the same day as Charles Darwin?

I mean literally the same day.

Oh, you don't just mean the birthday.

I don't mean the birthday.

I mean the same day.

Oh, oh, right, right, right, okay.

One of the most famous historical figures, two of the most famous historical figures, were born literally born on the same day.

Okay, let me try.

Abraham Lincoln.

Oh, you remembered.

No, I guessed.

Did you hear that?

Well done.

I got it.

This is Abraham Lincoln.

Yes.

We're staying positive.

That required some rapid historical calculation of what roughly went on.

So that showed that you do have quite a high IQ.

Well done.

Well done.

J.D.

Vance is wrong about your low IQ.

Okay, Tibalt Grand, Trip Class member London.

Everything in the media is so negative about politics in the UK.

What are some positive things we can be pleased about?

Well, the Labour Party did put a thing out this week analysing just how many of their manifesto commitments have already been fulfilled, and it was a lot more than the previous government.

I would accept, however, that maybe a lot of the public don't yet know about them, so that's a communication issue.

So, tell us some of these lovely.

No, because you're just being silly now, and you're not taking Jeff's idea seriously enough.

I prefer the next one in this section, which is MK.

What's the best experience you've had with the NHS?

It gets so much bad press, but does such good.

And I totally agree with that.

I've had two encounters with the National Health Service in recent weeks.

One involving a part of my body that you don't want or need to know about.

We don't need to know about that.

But the treatment was fantastic.

And the second, last week, I went to the dentist and I had an impacted wisdom tooth.

And the dentist did some x-rays and said, look, this, I'm afraid, is going to require a proper oral surgeon.

So I had to go to the UCH.

And as you know, Rory, because you've seen it, had experience of this before, I am a complete wimp in hospitals.

I don't like hospitals.

I don't like blood.

I don't like needles.

I don't like anything to do with it.

And I then get the warning that you, you know, when they say, we're warning you this, we're warning you that.

There is, I think it was one in a thousand risk of my jaw being paralyzed.

That would not have been good for the podcast.

What, my jaw not being able to move?

No, you just, Rory, you just have to get replacements.

You've got to think positively, Rory.

Get a replacement.

David Blunkett.

So I said to this guy, I said, why are you telling me this?

Just do the operation.

I'm not going to say no, just do it.

And he said, well, I think it was something to do with your legislation that your government brought in.

We have to tell people the risks.

But anyway, it was the opera.

And so then I got wheeled into the theatre.

It was a full operating theater with about 10 people in it.

I suddenly started to panic.

I thought, this is more serious than I thought.

Anyway, the main doctor dentist, you know, some people qualify as doctors and dentists.

And it was a woman called Deep Tee Sinha.

She was absolutely brilliant

she appointed a full-time hand holder because I think she

she said she had a complete wimp on her hands and even though I was anesthetized I was screaming and bawling and shouting and groaning and moaning and at one point during a break I said

this must be what it's like having a baby

I was kind of did that go down well with women well I was joking sort of but anyway as she finally extracted this awful tooth that had been giving me so much pain she said it's a boy

anyway they were wonderful they were absolutely wonderful and i totally agree with mk that the nhs does not get a positive enough press for the amazing stuff it does every day of the week there's an amazing article in the sunday times by uh jeremy clarkson who uh was beautifully uh eating humble pie having said the nhs is totally bust and a disaster and then of course he had to go in for some operation again on a part of his body he refused to disclose something and was like it was absolutely wonderful and uh i was just worried all the way through that they'd read the article and were gonna you know, spike me.

But in fact, they looked after me incredibly well.

It didn't stop him in a very non-positive way saying that he hates Kierstarma.

I don't really hate Kierstarma.

There's not much to hate about him.

But why?

You do hear it a lot, though.

You hear a lot of people say you really hate Kierstarma.

Yeah, do you not hear that?

No, I feel slightly underwhelmed, but I don't, my emotion is not one of hatred.

But Jeremy Clarkson, who was probably writing about the NHS without knowing much about it, felt

despite this new, wonderful experience with the health service,

he said he hated him.

Well, I'd like to make a little shout shout-out for what

definitely my book, The Middle Land, Dispatched and Borders.

So, anyone who wants good news stories about Cumbria and England can read my book.

But more than that,

a shout-out to education.

I've got an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, and the teachers.

I'm a particular teacher called Miss Abbott, who's in my kids' school, who is just so professional, wonderful, calm.

And I'm really struck by all the ways in which teachers still are able to show such goodwill, energy, so much so, and I suppose this is the biggest testament.

My 10-year-old, when asked what job he wants to do, he wants to be a teacher.

Oh, good, excellent.

Excellent.

That's good.

Well, I was in a school yesterday in Hackney called the Haggerston School, and I was there as part of something called Lunch for Democracy.

And it's two women who...

have set up this organization, Lunch for Democracy, where they just go into schools and at lunchtime they take in nice food and they sit down with kids and talk about democracy and politics.

And I went there, and honestly, one, it was a good school.

It was built in the 1960s, it was done up a bit under building schools for the future.

You know, when you go into school, and you just know whether it's well disciplined, it was well-disciplined, it was calm, and these kids were absolutely brilliant.

And one in particular, there was a guy, there was a young boy there.

And when these politics discussions started and he was asked to go along, he said, No, that's not for me.

Politics, I don't know anything about that.

And they said to him, Well, that's kind of the point.

And you go, and honestly, I was throwing out questions about the way the legislative process works.

He knew absolutely everything about her work.

Here's another good news thing.

I was talking to Joe Spence, who used to be the headmaster of Dulwich and is now running schools partnership.

Nigel Farage's old school.

That's right.

State sector with private sector.

And what he was saying, as somebody who'd been teaching in the private sector for 25 years, is how blown away he is with the quality of the head teachers and the chief executives in the state sector and he thinks in many many ways they're streets ahead of the private sector their combination and he talked about a lot and he talked about somebody called meg chandler poll for example but he's talking about people who

really

love education but also have a really good sense of resources management he really feels actually that there's so much positive going on in british education i know it's tough i mean we hear from teachers all the time how tough it is, but just a sense that in many ways it's a kind of sea change better than it was 30 years ago.

One of the teachers who was in charge of this event yesterday is called Charlotte Church, and she did a degree, thought she'd go into the city and make lots of money, etc., etc.

Went to all these interviews and just decided, this really isn't for me.

I just don't, I don't kind of like the vibe here.

And went off and...

trained again and became a teacher and said she absolutely loves it.

Final one for me, I was just sort of thinking about different personalities of teachers.

So my eight-year-old adores his teacher who's called Mr.

DeMell.

And Mr.

DeMell was a sort of semi-professional cricketer.

And he teaches maths and science, but he's also somebody who's able to conduct a 45-minute conversation with a 10-year-old about transformers.

You know what transformers are like?

Cars that turn into robots, robots turn to cars.

And you suddenly realize that the kind of genius of teachers being able to relate to children in ways that, you know, you or I might struggle to do it, you wouldn't be able to do a 45-minute conversation about transformers at all.

You probably would.

But would you

like to say that?

Imagine if you notice, Robo, I tend to be able to talk about absolutely anything.

You wouldn't I know very, very little about it.

Question from Jamie Mercado.

Good news stories internationally.

Here's my big good news story, which I'm really excited by.

A study on direct cash transfers, and you know, there's something we've talked about in the past, the idea of giving $1,000 unconditional cash to somebody in extreme poverty in Kenya, have now been demonstrated in a study of 10,000 people with proper academic randomized control, people who got cash, people didn't get cash,

to halve infant mortality in Kenya, halve infant mortality.

If you're looking for a way to make sure that double the number of infants make it to the age of one, the most effective thing you can do is give cash unconditionally to the mothers.

In Kenya, 35 out of 1,000 children still don't make it to the age of one.

It's terrifying, right?

And in this experiment, cash given by Give Directly, the charity I used to be involved in,

yes, it did many other things we've talked about, but the most staggering thing is what it's done on infant mortality, far better than any other intervention, far better than buying them bed nets, far better than vaccinating, far better than almost anything.

And in a world where there's so much less money for international development and people looking for ideas, this is something that is very, very efficient because you need very few people.

You don't need all the monitoring, you don't need all the warehousing, you can do it by transferring money to mobile phones.

That is an amazing discovery in progress.

Final question is from Kim Ledbeater.

So my question for Rory and Alistair is, I was drawn top in the private members' bill ballot last year and I put forward my private members' bill, which would give term royal adults choice at the end of life, or someone's the assistive dying bill.

And I'm really proud of that work.

If they were an MP and they were drawn top out of the ballot, what piece of legislation would they put before Parliament to put?

Did you ever get in the ballot?

No, I tried.

Very difficult to get in the ballot.

My friend Rebecca Harris tried to change the time.

She wanted to not get a situation where she thinks we, because of Scottish farmers, the clock's an hour off.

So she was going to move.

The only reason that Conservatives like me got a bit uncomfortable is I think we were no longer going to be on Greenwich Mean Time.

We like Greenwich Mean Time, don't we?

It sort of seemed like sort of a thing, at least, that we're on the other side of the class.

That's why we built the wonderful dome there.

Of course,

your amazing dome.

Where we always realised that was going to lead to us doing a podcast live.

That great O2 live performance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we're on tour again.

Did we mention that before?

I don't know.

We mentioned that before.

What would you do now, though?

Well, we talked about constitutional reform, which I think is essential.

Give me a piece of major constitutional reform that you think you could get through as a private member's bill.

Because you really got to get you've got to get a lot of support in the House.

Otherwise, because you know the Constitution, the Lords are going to mess around with it as much as they can.

Well, okay, let me try something then, which maybe isn't as ambitious as that.

Something to actually give votes of parliament power.

So I was so proud of the work that you guys got to get towards 0.7% expenditure on international development.

I was very proud that the governments I was in, the Cameron May governments, lent into putting in legislation

to put that 0.7% into law.

And it's in law.

Parliament's voted, right?

The government has to spend 0.7% on international development.

It has to.

Boris Johnson suspended it for emergency reasons during COVID.

Rishi Sunet kept the suspension saying, but of course, as soon as fiscal conditions allow, we will obey the law.

Labor came in saying, as soon as fiscal conditions allow, we will obey the law, and then proceeded to reduce international development spend from 0.7 to 0.3 and now effectively to 0.1 because it's being spent domestically.

So, I mean, obviously, I'd like to say, don't say you're spending it on international development when you're spending two-thirds of the money on a specialized development.

So,

you think there should have been a change of law.

If they wanted to cut it, they should have brought in primary legislation to change it.

Absolutely.

I think it's a sort of flagrant, I'm afraid, ignoring the settled will of Parliament and a vote that they all voted on.

Why are they not doing it?

Do you think they should go to jail?

No, I'm not going to say they should go to jail.

But if you're looking for something that members of parliament will vote for in a private member's bill, reinforcing the sanctions against governments flouting Parliament.

To win Labour on side, I'd remind them of the way that Boris Johnson managed to flout ministerial code in his statements in Parliament.

To get good old Lib Dems on side, I'd use the International Development Acts as an example.

To get Conservative on side, I'd get any number of examples of how they think Labour are not following through on their own legislation.

But broadly speaking, if we're going to talk about the rule of law, let's give more weight to parliamentary legislation.

So it'd be a law to force Parliament to obey the law, which they should be doing anyway.

Absolutely.

You've got it.

Yeah, yeah, go on.

What's your private member's bill?

I think I would just, because I think you've got to be realistic about what you can achieve.

So there's lots of things I'd like to do.

I'd love to sort of get to a place where we had 100% state education.

That would be my dream for this country.

Would you also go 100% state health care provision?

Why are you more relaxed about private health care?

Because people like West Streeting, of course, say, well, you know, thank you to the people who have private health insurance because they're taking some of the burden off the NHS.

But you don't say that about education, do you?

No, I don't say that.

No.

No.

I mean, I passionately believe in the National Health Service, but I just think it's

developed into a place where that is just already happening so much, way more than education, I'd say.

The The thing about education is, to me, when we talk about education, I mean going to school, okay?

And the concept of healthcare has developed as well.

So there's all sorts of things that we would consider to be health that you don't necessarily get in the private, in the public sector.

I think I would just take Peter Malinowskis'

legislation on social media and kids off the shelf from Australia.

and see if you can get that through.

And this is stopping access to social media for children under 16, which I think would be hugely popular in this country.

And I think it would be very popular with a lot of MPs because a lot of MPs have teenage kids and they can't understand why they want to be on their phone rather than talk to them in the half a day that they see them when they go back to their constituencies.

Might get some of the MPs off their phones in the chamber.

My final one then for our positive thing is to remind people of all the recent research that demonstrates that positive thinking actually has an incredible impact on your health.

There's been a study recently of 13,000 adults, 45 and over they've covered for 15 years.

People living with purpose are 28% less likely to be impaired by various dementia and cognitive decline issues.

So it has an incredible impact on your mind, impact on your body.

And one practice that many listeners will be aware of, but the science around it is very striking and it's very simple to do and it makes such a huge difference and it relates to everything we do on podcasts which is the benefits of gratitude the benefit of waking up in the morning or just before you go to bed at night noting down three things that you're grateful for and as shoshana would say to me doesn't need to be kind of ponderous and pompous and is that because she thinks you there's a risk that you might be yeah that i think both of us might be a little bit more like we like to be you know grateful for our children grateful for our family you are grateful

could be as much as you know, I'm grateful for the croissant I had this morning, or somebody smiled at me in the street.

And there's a lovely Christian thing, too, I was thinking about, which is, if you think about the grace for what we're about to receive, make the Lord make us truly thankful.

The idea that you can be grateful in advance, right?

That gratitude isn't just about what you've received, but what you might be under.

And if we all manage to be a little bit more grateful, a little bit more positive, it's remarkable what that actually mean for our lives.

We're already thanking you in anticipation of another podcast next week thank you well thank you thank you alistair in anticipation and also thank you to jeff for getting us to be a bit more positive in the q a than maybe we are most of the time i i must say i'm grateful for the question grateful for the podcast grateful in advance for next week thank you bye bye bye-bye

Alistair Campbell here.

Now we've just released a series on one of the most controversial and consequential people of the past 50 years, Rupert Murdoch.

I think you can argue that he is the most consequential figure of the second half of the 20th century.

He holds power longer than anyone else in our time.

And it's meaningful power.

It's phenomenal power.

Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

This is where he becomes not just a newspaper owner, he becomes a major newsmaker.

Fuck Dacre, publish.

There is always a premium on bringing him gossip.

I don't know what you mean by down market and up market.

That is so English, class-ridden, snobbery when you talk like that.

How you get it doesn't make any difference.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, whether it's true or not doesn't make much difference.

There is a massive, massive scandal brewing.

This was industrial, illegal activity, and that I think is what really cuts through to the public and thinks you people are really, really bad.

I would just like to say one sentence.

This is the most humble day of my life.

There is no Donald Trump without Fox News.

His dream was always to elect a President of the United States.

The bitter irony is that that turned out to be Donald Trump.

On the end, he detests.

He is conquering the world.

There is nothing less than this methodical, step-by-step progress to take over

everything.

To hear more, sign up at the restispolitics.com.

Hi, it's David from The Rest is Classified here with a very special message for listeners of The Rest is Politics.

We've just released a two-part series on the pager attacks that were carried out by Israel's foreign intelligence service, Basad, against Hezbollah in the aftermath of October 7th.

Now, for a political and military organization like Hezbollah, command and control is absolutely everything.

And the Israelis had tried to destroy the group and ultimately failed.

But in the low-level conflict that the two sides were engaged in post-October 7th, Israel was facing the prospect of a two-front war.

And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to take critical action.

As Hezbollah grew increasingly paranoid, they turned to the Pager as a secure alternative.

But what they bought instead was a lethal Mossad plot.

Within days, Hezbollah's command was wiped out when the Israelis assassinated its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

To hear the full episode, you can listen listen to the rest as classified wherever you get your podcast as we break down this incredible geopolitical gamble and all the spycraft behind the explosive attacks that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Middle East.