The Rest Is Politics - 562. The Right’s War With Itself and Burnham’s Prisons Challenge

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

With Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe trading blows, is the British right tearing itself apart, and will Kemi Badenoch destroy the Conservative Party by chasing Reform and Restore voters rather than the centre ground? With prisons at breaking point and reoffending rates soaring, why aren’t governments honest about the real causes of the crisis, or the solutions? As the Rhine falls to record lows and Germany's economy takes the hit, is this the clearest sign yet that the climate crisis is now an economic one? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Johnny Mercer by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Summer sale is HERE: get an annual membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor:  Lorcan Moullier, Bruno Di Castri Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We spend an enormous amount of time asking what's happening to Labor, but I wonder if the stranger story in British politics isn't what's happening to the right. Two years ago, the Conservative Party suffered their worst defeat in modern history, and then things have just got worse. Reform overtook them, it stayed ahead, and at points the Conservatives have been projected to drop below 100 seats in a 650-seat parliament, with reform getting significantly more seats. What do they do?

Well, that's one of the questions in the episode today. Kemi Badock has decided that the answer is to move closer to reform, to become tougher on immigration, tougher on culture wars, and try to get back those voters. But meanwhile, she's abandoned what I think would be the much more interesting constituency, a very large number of people in the centre, floating voters who are going to be increasingly alienated if Kemi Badenok starts chasing reform. Or is there perhaps an even more tragic problem, which is the Conservatives may not be able to win back the reform voters,

and they also may not be able to win back the centrist. In other words, they're in terminal decline, a story that we've seen again and again across Europe. This episode is brought you by NordVPN. There's a trade-off with modern technology, As it advances, our lives become more convenient, but they also become more exposed. And I don't know about you, I find it exhausting because you spend so much time worrying about spam calls, data tracking, you don't quite know it to trust. That's, I think, why Nord's VPN app isn't just about hiding your IP address. It's now a broader digital defence with built-in next-gen antivirus, anti-tracking, scam call filtering, and anti-mailware. And all quietly operating in the background, so we don't all, even if we want to, have to become

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slash politics. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. And Rory, today we are going to be talking a lot about your former party, the Tories, but also the threat they're facing from other right-wing parties like reform and restored Britain. We're going to talk about Andy Burnham's first real big challenge, which is prisoner release. We're going to talk about US politics after Abdul-El-Said has become the nominee for the Democratic Party in Michigan.

We're going to talk about catastrophe in the River Rhine. and you're going to tell me about a new gift that you've found for me. We had a lot of questions about what's happening, not just to the Tory party, but on the right of British politics more generally. And Sarah asked this, why is the British right seemingly tearing itself apart? At the very moment, Andy Burnham's ascendancy is giving Labour a boost. Will there be an electoral pact between the parties of the right, or have these various feuds become intractable?

Let's start with a big existential question. So the first question is what is the British right? And this really matters because normally if you are, for example, James Johnson from JLA partners, who's been one of the guys that has really been advising the conservatives to try to be more like reform, he would say that the way that you count right-wing voters is you add the reform voters, Nigel Farage, Restore, which is Rupert Lowe's smaller fringe party and the conservative voters, and those are the people to play for. I think they are forgetting a much more important. important fourth group of potential right-wing voters, which are the people in the old center, floating voters who could vote conservative if instead of chasing reform, they began getting themselves back to a more sensible pitch. But so long as they're stuck in this cage fight, fighting over those voters and the figures go up and down and reform is weaker than it was a few months ago, but it's still in most polls ahead of the Conservatives. You're generally looking at something like 22% for reform, maybe 20% for the Conservatives, and Rupert Lowe coming in, who knows,

5, 6%. That's a pretty substantial, exciting block in some ways, if you just put maths together, because you're looking at sort of 47% of the British public that you're fighting for. And the answer to why are they fighting like rats in a sack? Well, it's existential survival. I mean, the Conservative are now, and this was the European analogy, I said, and it's one that, you know, you can explain much better to listeners than I can. But what we saw in France, what we saw in Italy, what we saw in the Netherlands, and maybe to some extent what we may be about to see in Germany, is that their equivalence of these huge governing center-right machines, you know, the party tradition that in France produced everything from de Gaulle all the way through to Chirac and Sarkozy,

vanished, right? Or the Italian equivalent, which produced people like Andriotti that dominated Italian politics for decades, vanished. So the real question for the conservatives is, is this a temporary blip? Is it like what happened to them when you were in office, 97, 2001, which is they have very few seats, but they eventually rebuild and come back again in 2010, 2015, 2019, 2017 with victories, or is this actually something much more like what we're seeing across Europe, which is that the centre right is an impossible position that the populist right is never coming back and the centrist are never going to trust them again? Yeah.

Well, that's why it's, I guess, we might as well start by looking at leadership because when we talked to Johnny Mercer on leading this week, he was very clear that somebody from a military, non-political background, never voted in his life until he became an MP, was largely inspired to become a Tory and try to become an MP because he was really impressed by David Cameron and what he was trying to do with the Conservative Party. David Cameron was trying to signal going much closer to the sort of vision of the Tory party

that you've just set out. I have felt since she became leader that Kemi Badock has not been taking that decision that on the contrary, as you say, she's thinking, right, well, the votes on the right going to Nigel Farage, they're going some of them to Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain Party,

I've got to worry about getting them back. I don't think her strategy is doing that. I think the parts of her strategy that are working better are that she's tough, she's tough, she seems to know what she stands for. I think she's recently been much better in Parliament than she has been for a while.

I was interested that she went halfway towards meeting Andy Burnham in saying, okay, yeah, let's maybe talk about this, but you mustn't dare put up taxes and you mustn't dare increase borrowing. I wonder whether she's slightly starting to move as well on Net Zero. There'd been some straws in the wind on that. Two Daily Telegraph columnists now, and if there's one paper, as you know, the Tory party tends to read. It's the Daily Telegraph, maybe the Daily Mail and the Times as well. And so I think there are straws in the wind that she's maybe tacking.

Sorry, explain to me in this as what's happening with net zero, because the story was that a loyalty test being put in place that you could only run to be a Tory MP in the future if you're committed to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and you rejected net zero, which seemed to be a very strong loyalty test of driving out to people who were more on the centre, more left wing of the party. No, when I talked about straws in the way, I didn't mean that Kemi Bain was changing her position, but the politics inside the Tory party was changing. If you've got two pretty high-profile columnists in the Daily Telegraph and an editorial writer

essentially saying, this climate crisis is, is real, we've got to face up to the damage it's being done. I can see that position moving. But as things stand, you're right. If you analyze just the broad politics of it, she's pretty much staying in a very right wing, tacking reform and restore as she goes. Now, one of the reasons she might be doing that is, I mean, polls, they come and they go, but you've got to spot the trends. Reformers lost about six points in the last 12 months. Okay. It's favorability, that's those in favour, those against, doing a good job, doing a bad job, is now the worst of all the major parties. Okay?

So, and the Conservatives are on 30% favourable. That's their best since October 2021. By the way, I wouldn't necessarily look at Restore as fringe in that, yes, they're on about 4%, and that's pretty small. But if you look at what they had in the Makerfield by-election and the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, when it came to real votes, they did better than people expected and they did it in a way that damaged reform. And also was catastrophic for the Tories. I mean, let's just take that Manchester thing. They beat the Tories. Yeah, well, the Tories, I mean, maybe patting themselves on the back, but one of the strange things is that although Kemi Bader Knox net popularity has done well and people are admiring as the PMQs, it's a lot. having very, very little effect on how the Tories are polling nationally. It's barely moving the

dial. I mean, they're barely moving off 20%. These reform-restore voters are actually drifting, if anywhere, back to Labor. They're not drifting to the conservatives. And the Manchester, I mean, and this is one of the biggest cities in the United Kingdom. The Tories used to be in play for Manchester. One of the reasons why George Osborne, who was in Manchester MP, put so much money into Manchester, is that he saw it as part of his northern powerhouse dream. The Tories came fifth, fifth in the election, 7.7% of the vote. Yeah. 7.7.

So the latest data is this is a party which whatever, you know, the chattering class seems who got increasingly excited by the leader of the Conservative Party, but look at the raw numbers. This is a party in existential crisis. Listen, I think that's right. And by the other point I was going to make, I saw an interesting poll that was testing the reliability of all the parties. supporters who say that they're going to vote for party A or party B. And Restore had the highest. So if you

say your voting restore, your commitment to that is higher than it is even for Farage's voters voting reform. Now, what does that say? So the Serious question talks about these fractures feuds, and that's kind of what it feels like. And there is a nastiness about right-wing politics. you see that when it comes out in violence, as often it does on the sort of Tommy Robinson marches. But you see in the language all the time. I mean, Zia Yusuf seems to think he's a kind of modern-day Norman Tebitt. But Norman Tebitt had real politics and real political skills as well as being able to put the boot in very effectively. But I think there's something about the way they relate to each other.

John Sweeney's just written this book that I read last weekend. I mentioned the real, I think it's called the Real Nigel Farage. And a lot of it is about how he finds it really difficult to maintain relationships. So Rupert Lowe, he has become the leader of his own party, Restore Britain, because he fell out with Nigel Farras. He was elected as a Reform UK MP. I think even though Rupert Lowe is kind of pretending to sort of say, we must get together, he's doing so on conditions that make it virtually impossible for that to happen. There's an interesting question there strategically for Farras, which is I was talking to someone who's very close to Farrash,

was saying that the risk is, electorally, that Farage is getting too obsessed with Rupert Lowe, that Rupert Lowe's really got into his head, and that this has put him on tilt, because it means that Farage is increasingly worrying about shoring up his right wing, whereas probably strategically what he should be doing is reaching further into the more moderate conservative vote, if he wants to actually have the majority and end up as prime minister. He shouldn't be chasing Rupert, though. What he should actually be doing is reassuring some of Kemi Baderach's supporters and getting more of them back on. The problem for both Badernaq and Farage is that chasing restore voters, and Kemi Bidnock, I'm afraid, is doing more of this than people understand. She's spending a lot of

time online. And a lot of that time online is following and reading MAGA-influenced stuff, which, you know, people talking about suicidal empathy and a lot of the right-wing chat that Musk loves. There was a speech that's on her website, which she gave in December, which is really interesting because it shows you that the thing that really gets Cammy Bay, knock out of bed in the morning, isn't the economy. And this is why I think they're making a mistake.

I mean, Prosper UK, which is David Gork, Andy Street, the traditional conservatism, I believe, and is all about the economy, right? They would be saying that the real response to the problem that Britain's in is not culture wars, it would be trying to be pro-business and grow the economy. And that that's actually Labor's weakest point, that Andy Burnham hasn't made it clear that he really gets how to generate economic growth. I mean, we disagree about that.

But anyway, that would be the position, not cultural wars. She is not really very interested in that. Where she gets passionate is when she starts talking about left-wing ideologues, freedoms under threat, the radical left, undermining our culture, undermining our institution, liberalism has been hacked, radical green leftism. I'm quoting all this stuff from her own speech. And here's another question. What is Kemi Bade not doing? We talked about her knocking out Gavin Barwell. That just seems nasty. It doesn't seem to, you know, she might say that it's rebranding the Tory party and making it more acceptable to the voters.

I'm very fond of Gavin Barwell, but he's not a household name. It's not going to make a massive difference to the way that the public perceive it. Why is she not letting Grant Shapp's run? Is she letting Penny Morden back on the candidates list? Now, the reason I'm asked these questions is these people, she doesn't disagree with their policies. I think she's worried that they're actually threats to her, that she doesn't want big beasts re-entering her orbit.

And the final thing I'd say is that chasing the Rupon, put low populist votes isn't just about parties that are nasty at their center. It's about a very, very toxic voter group. You really do not want to redesign all your policies around that group. Firstly, you're not going to win them over. Or if you do, as Boris Johnson did in 2019, you can't keep them because they are so viriantly angry, anti-establishment, outraged with the government that you can't build a stable coalition on the back of those people. And the things they're they're demanding, are incredibly unpleasant and incredibly damaging for the British economy, right?

She's already, Chase, you know, she announced 230,000 foreigners were going to have to leave their council homes, and they were going to leave them in six months, at which point reform says, oh, no, it'll be three months, right? That's a classic example of the kind of traps you get yourself into once you start playing these games. And that happened in the middle of these protests going on in Thetford and Norfolk. where far-right thugs, I would call them, were literally going around the homes of people they said were asylum seekers

and trying to force them out of their homes. So she's got to be very careful, I think. I'm with you on this, not to get involved in that. You also mentioned Gavin Barwell, somebody less well-known, a guy called Joshua Bonehill Payne, who had been convicted for an anti-Semitic campaign that he'd been running against Luciano Berger.

And he stood down as a local candidate, but not before she had okayed that going on. And even though she then accepted he should stand out as a candidate, he's now advising her commission on culture and integrations. As you say, very odd signs that she's sending out. This point about nastiness, though, I saw a tweet this morning about Zia Yusuf. And somebody said,

it must be absolutely exhausting to be so angry and so nasty all the time. This is on the back of Zia Yusuf, calling Ben Wallace, your former colleague and a former Tory cabinet minister, calling him a moron because he disagreed with something that reform was saying. And the other thing that they do a lot is they call anybody who disagrees with them traitors. I had the traitor treatment a few months ago from Rupert Lowe. I can't remember what it was I'd done that was so traitorous. I get it from Dominic Cummings. Yeah, exactly. And Elon Musk is always calling people traitors. He was at it this week with a company with somebody in France that I saw he saying you're a traitor.

He might know he's always an Italian and Zanny Minton Beddow, is an editor of the economist. She was a traitor because she gave him a bit of a tough time in an interview. And I had another touch of the Rupert alone, Astiners this week. He did this, just jaw-droppingly bad interview with Nick Robinson of the BBC, during which this is how mad this stuff is. So Rory, let me ask you a straightforward question. your friend King Charles, is he a white Britain? Can you answer that question for me? Is he a white Britain?

Well, I suppose so, yeah. Yes, he's a white Britain. Rupert Lowe could not bring himself to answer that question. Why could he not answer that question? Because Matt Goodwin, aka Badloss, he wrote a report which Rupert Lowe was quoting to justify his prediction the date at which Britain would become a non-white majority country.

Okay? All part of the sort of great replacement theory that these people spew out all over the place. So Nick Robinson was aware that bad losses calculation required that you were not a white Britain if one or both of your parents were not born in the United Kingdom. Well, as you know, your friend King Charles's father was born in Greece. And I wasn't born in the United Kingdom. I was born in Hong Kong. So am I not a white Britain? And nor was Boris Johnson and nor were Nigel Farage's children's mother. So this is, this is why this thing is so mad, but Rupert Lowe could not bring himself to say Charles is a white Britain. He said, well, you can split hairs about that. No, you can't. He's a white Britain. Just admit it, okay? If Charles fills in the census, white Britain tick. Christian

tick. Okay. Yeah. Now, somebody then puts up, and of course, as I keep saying to you, you have pulled me into this disagree-agreeably thing. I've actually written my column in the new world about this how I lapse, I'd lapse when I go on social media. So somebody said, how would you describe Rupert Lowe in a word? And I just put, I'm sitting there idly and I was watching the cricket or something. I just put musk puppet. Ah, clever. I like it. I said it was okay. It wasn't that clever, but it was okay. Sock puppet, Musk puppet. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Must pop a year. And he's doing it. And also, it was later proven because his research. to me, which I shall tell you in a moment, hope your children aren't listening. And because

the Elon Musk platform says, we've got to get behind Rupert Lowe, he's the future in Britain, had tens of thousands of likes in no time at all. His reply to me was, and I think you're a despicable piece of shit. Now, he's entitled to think that. But that's taking a different level from Musk puppet, isn't it? It also reveals a thinness of the skin that is kind of off the scale. And then we saw Richard Tice, not the same party, he's one of Nigel Farage's puppets, he said, he's getting a few difficult questions over all this money stuff going and George Cottrell, the author of the money laundering book Post George and Farage's money and George's money and George's mum and all this nonsense, right? Richard Tice, the coverage of whom I barely noticed if I'm being absolutely frank

out here in sunny France, he does an interview where he says, I'm being treated by the mainstream media worse than murderers, rapists and paedophiles. And I thought, oh, what level of projections is this is crazy stuff. But what it says to me is this is politics from them. It's just being nasty to each other. Let me finish off this segment with a more positive vision. So I talked about Prosper UK and this work is being done by to try to rebuild the centreground of British politics. And there's been some amazing research. So Sam Friedman's written a substack article on it where he's done research into what he calls the center ground of British politics. And what he defines by the center ground is the group of people who would consider floating, consider changing their vote. And what he finds basically as British politics is divided into three thirds. There are people who are always going to vote left. There are people who are always going to vote right. And then, surprising, there's almost a third of people who are floating voters. and he also finds that the left and the right are much more similar than you'd think compared to the centre.

The left and the right tend to be whiter, older, in favour of retaining the triple lock, more exercised about immigration, generally more socially conservative. The centre ground turns out to be younger, more professional, more educated, often more prosperous, happy to let the triple lock pension guarantee go. Interestingly, less worried about business, less worried about AI, more positive about business, more positive about AI, less worried about immigration, positive about Europe, but also positive about Britain engaging globally, more international, less white, more ethically mixed. And this is the group, which is all to play for. This is the space that some party should be occupying. Not a space the Lib Dems can possibly occupy. They haven't really worked out the language to speak to them.

It's a space that Andy Burnham can reach into. And I think that, you know, one of the things that he's really good at is for the first time seeming normal, thoughtful, intelligent, relatable. It's a huge improvement. But I think he's going to struggle to actually come across as pro-business entrepreneurial for this group. And this is where I think the Conservative Party has gone completely wrong. They're never getting back those reforms. voters, well, at least 15% to the British public is going to remain out on the populace far right, and they're never coming back to the Tories. There is this whole group there where

if you could produce an Andy Burnham-like figure, so somebody who was relatable, intelligent, who people trusted, but who seemed a little bit more pro-business friendly, a little bit more serious about economic growth. There's a huge number of voters to hoover up, and that's the opportunity that's being missed. I did a little bit of scribbling with my kind of, you know, still trying to think like a strategist hat on. And I was trying to work out of these three parties of the right, how they should view each other. And I came up with this. I think what reform can with some justification say to the Tories is we have already replaced you and it's not even close. You were nowhere in the Welsh elections. You were nowhere in the Scottish elections.

We were ahead of you in both. And England is our base anyway. Okay. So that's quite a good line of attack. Well, the conservatives, I think, Baderloch's approach to them should be, you guys are unelectable, you could not run the country, we're becoming electable again. That's got to be her long-term strategy. And I think restore, if I were Rupert Lowe, rather than sort of sit there thinking how best to abuse, you know, random podcasters, I think he should be focusing on Farage becoming like a very standard politician. he then becomes the kind of, you know, the insurgent. Because if you look at this, this scandal stuff,

it's really interesting how they're handling it in exactly the same way as you and I have seen Labour and Tory politicians handle scandals. You know, it's not quite wait for Sue Gray, but it's an establishment stitch up. Everybody's out to get us. Let's wait for this. Let's wait for that. And so I think if Restore Britain were to say to reform,

you are now just another. You talk about the Uniparty. You're part of it. you're part of it. We're the real radical outsider. That's my free advice, Rupert. I may be a despicable piece of shit, but it doesn't mean that I can't think strategically about your positioning. And I think it would improve markedly if you maybe thought a little bit more deeply about the future of the country, not just your own. There's another free bit of advice. Alison, just before we go to the break, there was a really interesting question.

Elka, given the difficulties around the early release scheme, practically speaking, why haven't governments generally built a few new prisons? And Dominique from London about questions about women's prisons. But the key here, I guess, Alistras, I hand over to you, is that Sir David Gork did this report in which he argued for early release from prisons. And he made a number of arguments. One of them is actually about re-offending, and one of them, of course, is the fact that our prisons are absolutely chock-full, and unless we start releasing people from prisons, it's simply not going to be any room to accommodate any prisoners. And Andy Burnham stepped into this. He's tried to push back on it. We're actually speaking today when today program was announced

that he was going to ask for the killers of a police officer to be exempted from this scheme, and it's becoming a really live issue for reform and conservatives. Many issues, but over to you. So, Rory, you mentioned Dominique's question, which I thought was really interesting. She talks about this early release scheme scandal. She then says, I believe there are about a dozen dedicated women's prisons in the UK.

Could the more dangerous women be moved to occupy fewer of them so that the remaining empty prisons could potentially house male prisoners? Women are far less likely to commit violent or sexual crimes, children would benefit, etc, etc., etc. I think, you know, I hope that kind of thing is being thought of. Look, this is turning up to be, turning out to be Andy Burnham's really first big. He's had a pretty good honeymoon so far, but this is going to be very, very difficult, difficult politics, difficult reality in terms of security. But the truth is, the question why we haven't built prisons is because it's so bloody expensive and it takes so long. And the reason why, one of the reasons why prisons are so full is because, again, partly because of politics and populist campaigning, people are in jail for longer. We've got this very extraordinary thing where crime is falling, but the prison population is rising. It's doubled in the past 30 years. And that's largely down to getting longer sentences at Crown Courts. Now, Kirstama, and when we were talking about

the Tories earlier, Rory, I think one of the things Kimmy Bade not could do and should do is admit that some of this is absolutely on their watch. The way that Chris Philp is trying to project this, he's the shadow home affairs guy for the Tories, trying to project this as a sort of Andy Burnham created crisis. I think it makes it worse for the Tories. That's what then opens the space for Farage to come up with this nonsense about we're going to send them all to El Salvador or Albania, and all that stuff he came out with at his latest press conference that most of the media covered live in full, which they never do for most party leaders. brackets. So I just feel this is a real issue, but I think this is a place where Andy Burnham is going

to have to hold firm, yes, look for exemptions, yes, look to sort of the most obvious cases that people are going to get very offended by, but at the same time, there's a long-term practical solution that has to be put in place, which is about sentencing, it's about prison population, it's about probation service in crisis, and until those things are addressed over the long term, we're going to keep coming back to this. Kirstarmer used to talk about sticking plaster politics. If we're not careful, this becomes the definition of sticking plaster politics. Yeah.

And the problems that we're facing are pretty fundamental. I mean, I was the prisons minister, so I was right in the heart of this question of capacity building new prisons. I mean, the first thing is when people talk about prisons being overcrowded, they're already massively overcrowded. We're already keeping two prisoners in cells which the Victorians built for one. And these prisons, particularly a lot of the locals, are frequently in horrendous conditions. If you read the inspection reports, they are filthy, the windows are broken, which is the key to the drones thing that we were talking about in the last episode. I mean, the truth of matter is there is absolutely no reason for there to be any problem with drones and prisons.

I mean, there's a mad world in which everyone gets excited by drones, and are we going to laser drones? Liz Truss had dogs barking at drones. But the truth of the matter is the prison is a guarded compounds. Only two ways of getting stuff in it. It goes in through the gate or it goes over the wall. And the way in which most people were getting things off drones is sticking their hands out of the window. You shouldn't be able to stick your hands out of a window in a prison. These windows don't open, right?

And the only reason you stick your hands out of the window is you've broken the window. In other words, you've broken the window. nobody's inspected your window and nobody's fixed the window and nobody's punished you for breaking the window. So that goes back to one of the fundamentals when we're talking about prison places and drones and all this kind of thing. There's a real problem with the way in which we've actually built the culture and the systems in the prison service. Being a prison officer is really tough. It's like some combination of a police officer or a social worker or a teacher or a security guard all rolled into one. These should be well-paid, well-trained jobs with a proper training college, proper morale, proper monitoring, so that you actually know your prisoners. You're keeping these things clean, tidy, well-inspected, the windows fixed. That's where I'd begin, the culture of the prison officers. Now, the second question is this question about how many people were putting in prison. It's terrible, right? When David Gork was the Secretary of State of Justice and I was the prison's minister, we had everybody, Labor,

conservatives, every MP you can imagine, wandering in trying to get longer sentences, usually called after an individual, Mungo's law, Hamish's law, Angus's law, which usually meant some terrible tragedy had happened, an infant had been killed, they might have been run over by a speeding driver, or they might have been the victims of domestic abuse, and the demand was for longer sentences for that crime. And when David and I were in, we said no to all those requests, because it's the longest sentences which drive the system into crisis. As soon as we left, a more right-wing government under Boris Johnson came in, Dominic Rob, and they started extending these sentences.

Then Kiyosama started playing this game. You remember when he was campaigning against Rishi Sunak, he started putting out social media coverage saying Rishi Sunak believes that people who are guilty of sexual assault should not be sent to prison. I will change that. So he was signaling a few thousand people who judges have determined had not committed once you looked at the context of sexual assault, something that required them to go to prison. And he was committing to another 6,000 people going into prisons. That was somebody who was a lawyer coming from the left. So the cumulative change, and this is about populist politics from the left and from the right. Andy Burnham's playing into this too. In the end, Starmid decided to bring in David Gore can try to get a relatively technocratic solution to this. And of course, Burnham's senses this isn't popular. Well, there's two things you can do. You can either build many, many, many more prisons and where are you going to build them? Well, and also seven billion, seven billion quid a whack. Absolutely incredibly expensive, very

unpopular with the communities near which they're built. Or you can reduce sentence length. The reason why we have many more people in prison than in the Netherlands, where the Netherlands actually offering us prison places because they're not using, although they were, because they weren't using their prisons. But that's because the politicians have been prepared to have a row with the public. It's not that the Dutch voter wants people to have short sentences. It's that Dutch politicians have recognized that the only way of controlling this is shorter sentences. And then the final thing, which is much, much better community sentences and probation. And looking after people when they leave prison so that we don't have this mad situation where 70% of people on short sentences

reoffend and return to prison again. 50% of all. all prisoners reoffender return to prison. So a lot of these numbers are just about the fact that we're not remotely looking after people when they leave the prison. So it's an endless cycle effect where they're going back again, whereas places like Sweden have much, much lower reoffending rates. Yeah, we're agreeing agreeably and violently about this one, but we have done for some time. It's a long, long, long battle to win with political and public opinion. Let's take a break. And then when we come back, talk about what's going on with the River Rhine, what's going on in Michigan and the Democratic primary and also, Rory, I don't know if you've been following the story about Anthony Albanesey and a pair of giant melons.

That seems like you've gone all Benny Hill on me, but I look forward to hearing about that. Okay, back from the break. See you, sir. See you. Bye-bye. Welcome back to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. So, Alistair, listen, having covered the fight in Maine against Susan Collins, we're now looking at the Michigan Democratic Party.

primary. So what are your thoughts, this is Layla's question, on Abdul al-Said's win in the Michigan Democratic primary. How should sensible Democrats approach DSA encroachment in the party? So Michigan, this is Detroit. This is the great old industrial rust belt. This is somewhere that became a key question because this is where one of the great Democrat governors, Gretchen Wittner is located and it was a key battleground for Trump. And it isn't the candidate that Gretchen Wittner, wanted to win. It's not the conventional candidate one, but a man called Abdullah Saeed. Over to you.

Well, I can't quite work out why there seems to be such angst about this guy. Now, look, I can see that for some people he might come across as very abrasive. He gives a sense of always having to be the cleverest guy in the room, which is what you always say about my friend

Emmanuel Macron. But I think there's something very exciting about it. This is absolutely 50-50 state, so it's a very, very big choice. And I think the Democrats are making, the Democratic Party is making a mistake in the debate having happened, the victory having been secured, now having this soul-searching about whether it's the right move or not. Get behind the guy, for God's sake.

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

He's got an Egyptian academic father. What is it that he's supposed to have done that makes everybody so shocked? Why are they all treating him as though Jeremy Corbyn's suddenly been elected? Well, I'm guessing it is a lot of it is about Israel because he had tens of millions spent against him. He was outspent. See, I think this is an incredibly exciting thing. Part of his message was money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all. That's a really good democratic message if you ask me. And the money that was spent against him, a lot of it by APAC, and I guess that is frightening some people because these Israeli supporting groups are very, very important to democratic funding. But I think it's incredibly exciting that he will on that

ticket. And he won it. And by the way, we talk about strategic framing and messaging. He was going to big rallies and big events, and they were reciting his message back at him. That's when you know it's cutting through. And it speaks to the three big issues. choose. What do people keep saying they're concerned about? Affordability, money in your pocket. Corruption under Trump, money out of politics. Future of health. Medicare for all. It's a brilliant message, if you ask me. Now, so I'm afraid, look, I don't know, Rory. I'm not in America as much as you. I don't follow it maybe as close as you do. I can't help thinking a lot of this is just straightforward racism or fear of racism. Fear of racism. Fear that electing somebody called Abdul with a wife who wears a

headscarf and who is absolutely open about his belief that the American politics is on the wrong side of the argument on Gaza, I think it's that. It's a really interesting one, isn't it? Because he's not Graham Platner with his neo-Nazi appearing to two and his history of allegations of sexual abuse who had to resign out of the main race. This is a much more clean-cut, successful, professional figure. Maybe people are drawing analogies with Mamdani, who's also a highly educated, strong critic of Israel, who's seen as being on the far progressive left. Medicare for all is considered very, very controversial. In the UK context, that's the National Health Service. So we're less likely to think that's the most radical

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

Oh, go, go broke. What was it? Yeah, exactly. Woke, weak and broke. So is what they're mostly worried about, that the swing voters are going to think the Democratic Party's too radical, even if their views in European political? context seem pretty mainstream? Or is the fear that actually if you try to trim too much and head too much into the centre, don't speak for your members' real views on Gaza, don't speak for their

real views on inequality, medical care, etc? You're just not going to get the turnout and you're going to lose by default. Yeah, well, I guess that is the fear, but I think it displays a lack of confidence in their own values and their own beliefs. That's the argument that's going to be run against him. Trump is already out. Trump has said he's a communist loser who hates Jews and Israel. Okay. So that's how they're going to fight this. That's how the republic is going to fight this guy. This thing about communism. Now, you and I know that he's not a communist, okay? He is, you talked about Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, most left-wing American politicians are not as left-wing as most European left-wing politicians. I think what he has to do is authentically show that the nature of that campaign he fought to be

the nominee learns the lessons good and bad from how he won it. Now, to be fair, I think he's already doing that. He's already talked a little bit about he thinks he went over the top in some of his attacks on his opponent. He said at one point, she's the worst possible candidate you could imagine. He said he wishes he hadn't said that. But my sense of him, it's a bit like when we talk about Mamdani, and I know New York's different, But when you're trying to win a campaign like this, which is so important to the bigger picture,

this is why I don't understand. I saw one guy who's a sort of moderate Democrat. He was talking about the war that we face ahead. We've got a war ahead. This isn't a war. This is about this guy winning on a platform that most Democrats ought to be able to support in a seat that is unbelievably important. Why is this seat so important?

because Rogers, who is now his opponent, Trump won Michigan by one point from Kamala Harris, okay? Democrats last time around won the seat by 0.5%. Right? It's so close. I'm interrupting. And just to explain to the very basics, what the Democrats are trying to do is defend a Democrat held seat, not win a Republican because the Democrat senator is retiring after three terms. Correct. Yeah. That says to me, really, Regardless of what you actually think, I'm afraid, once this race is run and this guy is the candidate, it's about democratic candidate against Republican candidate. That's it. I mean, the post-mortem the Democrats should have had was after they lost to Donald Trump. Not because the more moderate candidate, so called, has lost to this guy Abdul Al-Sayyad, who, as you say, I think strikes a very, confident posture. I think if you could just iron out this thing about, I saw an interview, I was reading the transcript of an interview he did with the New York Times. Okay. Now, what he said was fine, but he's got certain little, I can see why he grates on some people.

There's a bit where he says, he makes a point that he said, I'm sorry about this, but I do read books. It was a way of saying Donald Trump and his crowd is stupid, right? But it sounded a bit patronizing to everybody, okay? Iron that out. Iron that out. Just be a guy who gets up there and he clearly can motivate people, like Mam Darnie did in New York, he had tens of thousands of people out knocking doors for him. So look, I just think this is such an important seat when it comes to the midterms and they've got to win Michigan. And so get behind the guy. Okay, now final serious question. And then you're going to tell us about your melons. So, Judy, how concerned should we be about the Rhine in Germany falling

to record low levels and severing parts of Germany as the heat wave and wildfires continue across Europe and hit the UK. Let me just sort of try to set up my understanding of this, and then you who are right in the depths of this kind of German debate and German newspapers can explain it to us. It seems from the outside an extraordinary story because it's very medieval, oddly. I mean, we talk a lot about just in time supply chains and we worry a lot about semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan or exactly how the Japanese process a particular oil petroleum product. But this literally is the big waterway that connects. the low countries into Germany, and it's water levels getting too low, that they can't move

barges up and down. And it turns out that barges are far more important to the German economy than everyone really thought about. And while we were worrying about all this kind of resilience and supply chains and the Strait of Hormuz, something that would have been kind of recognizable to a medieval king, which is that the water levels are too low on the ride to get your barges up and down is proving really catastrophic. Over to you. Yeah. Look, the question, and how concerns should we be, the answer I think is very, very, very, very, very. And while our listeners and viewers may think that I'm having a lovely holiday in France and you're having a lovely holiday in Scotland,

not only are we recording this today, but tomorrow we're going to be recording a special episode with Caroline Lucas about her brilliant mini-series on climate and national security. And I guess this is much more climate and the economy, because you're right about the scale of this. four out of five ships that are carrying goods and trade around Germany, four out of five use the Rhine. Okay. It's a massively important waterway. And what's happened is that the water has got lower and lower and lower. So I saw an interview in one German newspaper with a Dutch barge owner who has had to reduce the load of the barge by two thirds. because the water is not deep enough to take the bigger load.

Now, that is having an impact upon supply chains. And just to give you a sense of how shallow it has to be, this thing is, these waters, there's some shockingly terrifying pictures all across the German media of where you can see where the watermark normally is. You know, you see it's just sort of black on the, the wall because that's where the water has normally been. And some of these ships are going up and you can basically put your arm into the water and you're touching the bottom. So what's

happening is that they're losing trade. The Rhine normally carries 285 million tons of freight, 80% of inland waterway traffic. And one of the big loading places is in Duesburg and there down to a third of the normal. Okay. So then you think, okay, well, the one sort of specific policy response the German government has made is they're suspending the ban on lorries on Sundays and holidays. Okay. Now, the green person in me and the sort of, let's have a quiet life at the weekend person in me says that's terrible. But that's the scale of the damage that's being done. Am I right? It's some people calculate it the lowest level in 150 years and that there's talk,

even if the Rhine's splitting in two it's got so low. It's the lowest level since records began. One of the big drivers of it is the melting glaciers in Switzerland. So this is climate crisis, climate change, if not caused absolutely exacerbated by. And so the glaciers, once the glaciers melt, it means they can't do it year after year after year, which is what's happened before. So the water's gone lower and lower and lower. There's now talk about rebuilding the river so that you make it narrower. But all that does, yes, you have deeper water for a bit, but you don't have any more water.

You're not actually going to cure this unless we start getting more rain. I'm hoping to be in Switzerland more from January. And I'll try to show some images because around our flat, what's happened to the glaciers is staggering. I mean, I'll try to show you some pictures over the last 20, 30 years. It's really bizarre. I mean, people, if you see it and you live it, you're looking hundreds of feet of glacial have disappeared and have left this horrible kind of mess of rocks and rubble where there used to be ice coming all the way down. And we often focus on Greenland or we look at images up in the Arctic. But this Swiss story is terrifying. Yeah, yeah. And the Kiel Institute, which is one of the big German economic institutes, they've calculated that this thing going on now in the Rhine, the Elba and the Danube in particular. And the Danube, by the way, is so shallow that they've got pictures now of Second World War Plains and other debris down at the bottom of the river that we can now see, which used to be covered by water.

And the Kiel Institute has calculated, this is going to take up to 0.2%. of German GDP in this quarter, okay, because that's the impact on trade. Which, again, is not what we need, because European GDP is already really struggling because of productivity and aging. It's struggling because of competition with China, which has wiped out. We didn't talk about this enough, but you mentioned it. Hundreds of thousands of jobs been lost in Volkswagen. Real problems on energy prices. Add to that the fact that the Strait of Hormuz is putting a direct squeeze on European economy.

that the United States are pulling out of Ukraine is forcing us to spend tens of billions of dollars more in Ukraine and ultimately forcing Germany to spend up to $100 billion on defense and increasing defense expenditure. This is a real, I don't know, quintuple whammy hitting Germany. Yeah, totally, totally. And, you know, we think, I think we just think of rivers sometimes. We just take them for granted as they're beautiful to look at and they've got this extraordinary history. but this is a massive, massive trade waterway. And so the German government, I mean, the Meats didn't,

but several ministers broke into their holiday to have a crisis meeting with business organizations and so forth because they're really worried about it. And the BASF, you know, one of the big chemical, part of the big chemical cluster in the in the northwest, they've declared force majeure as a result of this. In other words, if they're not able to fulfill contracts, they're basically saying it's because of force majeure,

which is normally used for, you know, when you get caught up in a war that's unexpected. So we're going to have a lot to talk about when we talk to Caroline, because I think this is, I think it's terrifying. And where I'm in France now, we're seeing it everywhere.

The rivers are just dry. There's just not the water that they used to be. And Rory, before we go to the next question, I mentioned the chat we're having tomorrow with Caroline Lucas. She's done this brilliant series. I cannot recommend it. strongly enough, where she's been talking to real experts in different parts of the world about what the climate crisis is and the impact it's having in all sorts of different

ways. The conversation we have with her is going out to everybody on Friday, and if people want to catch up in the series, just go to the rest is politics.com. Very good. Well, final question from a very alert listener called Lucy, who's following the Australian debate, which tease into you. What's all this stuff about? Albinazi, presents, Japan and melons. Oh my lord. So, Rory, you've been a minister. I've worked with prime ministers.

You know and I know that diplomacy and gifts. It's a tricky world. I can remember the time that Lionel Jospinor presented us with a horse. And we thought, what the fuck do we do with this? And what did you do with it? What did you do with a horse? I honestly can't remember. Did you give it to the Queen?

No, I think it was taken care of by the embassy and it ended up having children ride it around the place. I honestly can't remember what we did. Leon Jospon is sadly not around to remind us. But no, I'll try and find out for next week what happened to the Jospin horse. But this story that Lucy is raising relates to Japan and Australia. So Anthony Albanese, who's been on the podcast, Sanae Takaichi, who was. love to have on the podcast. They meet and she presents Albanese with a melon. Very traditional Japanese gift. Very traditional. And it's a crown melon. This is like the piaz de of all Japanese melons.

She then gives him another one. Very auspicious. Very auspicious. So he then, a little while later, Albanesee is doing a podcast. Podcasts can be so dangerous, Rory. He's doing a podcast with a comedian by the name of Nikki Osborne. Okay. And Nikki Osborne at one point asks Albinazi whether he's ever had any strange gifts. In fact, no, what the question was, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on overseas jobs? Can I just pause for a second? Okay. So the gift of the melons. I do know a little bit about this because I've been given melons in Japan. It's a very, very old tradition. It goes back, I think, to at least the 1600s. And they grow these melons often on a single plant. So just one plant with a melon. And like so many other things

done in Japan, done with the most exquisite care. It'll be the most perfect melon. Correct. And it can cost up to $10,000 for a really, really good melon. So it's a really profound sense of respect gratitude. Okay, over you. We're not talking about the sort of thing that I sometimes buy on the road side when it says melon tomato, meal

a fruit, right? It's not that. Not that. So he's doing this interview with his comedian and she says, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on an overseas jaunt? He then says, I'm quoting accurately here, something I got recently here was pretty strange, but ended up being quite good. The Japanese prime minister brought me a melon. They

then banter, banter, and then he says, actually, it was a couple of melons. And the way he described the couple of melons was to hold his hands like that. I will now describe to those who are listening, rather than viewing, I am holding my hands like they're holding melons in front of my chest. Okay? Like you're holding breasts. Correct. So Osborne, the comedian, pipes up, So she just came in looking like Pamela Anderson. Right. Okay. Albaisei says she brought two and they're beautiful. Okay.

Okay. Now, exactly. You're shaking your head. But that's you as a Brit, Rory. Yeah, yeah. You know what the Japanese are like. They're very proper. Yeah.

Respect is incredibly important. Yeah. And what happened was quite a lot of Japanese journalists and then a former ambassador. Yeah. to Australia really, really put the boot in. Yang Yamagami, the former ambassador, he said, although Albanasia recall it as quite strange, there is nothing strange about this gesture.

A crown melon is the most prized fruit in Japan. It is treasured as something special. What dismayed some, and this is a very good point, was that Takaichi has recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and her gender. So the Japanese really seem to take an offence. Australian opposition has piled in and said, Elbow should make an apology.

He's saying, no, there's no need for that because no offense was intended and none was meant, and he's not aware of any being taken. So end off as far as he's concerned. But it just shows you'd be very, very careful about gifts. Yeah, and making jokes about gifts and accepting revolvers and things. We did just final thing to finish us.

Yeah, yeah, because final thing to finish him, we didn't tell people enough about the fact that when we went to interview the president of Serbia together, We went to see Vucic together in Belgrade. Oh, Serbia, yeah, the guns. Yeah. It has a sort of a massive cabinet after cabinet of gifts that the present of Serbia has received. And a staggering number of these gifts are firearms.

They are semi-automatic pistols, guns. And a lot of them from Putin, actually. The Russians seem to really specialize it, but not just the Russians. The Middle Eastern potentates give swords and guns. The Turks famously give revolvers with ammunition to Kirsta, and to Belgian and Dutch leaders when you go to NATO visits. Meanwhile, we tend to give slightly lame a cheaper gifts, don't we? Although the greatest one ever is that we managed to present President Trump

with a bell-end called Trump. That was your friendly king. I wonder if they've worked that one out here, Rory. King Charles presented a bell-end with the word Trump written on it. Rory, talking of gifts, Fiona and I were in a place called Montreille, up in the north recently, which is where the British headquarters were during the First World War. Fascinating place. We're sitting there having dinner, and this guy comes over and says, would you mind later, my son's about to arrive with his family?

He's a big fan of your podcast. He'd love to sit down and have a chat. I said, yeah, yeah, no problem. The guy came to talk to us, and he said at the end of it, I really want to give you and Rory a gift because you've given me so much with the podcast, et cetera, et cetera. I said, you really don't need to bother you. Honestly, it's fine. Anyway, this guy is the marketing guy for a French jam company.

Okay. So I gave him my address at home. Yep. And a couple of weeks later, this box of every single flavor of their jam. Now, you and I have been, we've not actually seen each other physically for a while. But I've given a few away already, not least to some of the team. But I've kept some of the best flavours back because they're for you and your family. Well, thank you. Well, a little shout out finally then on the gift thing to Kreef. So I'm having the most amazing few weeks in Kreef.

I mean, it's, look, if you want to see a vision of Britain working come to Kreef at the moment. I've ranted on about how amazing the park runs are. I've talked about the incredible work done and remake of refurbishing stuff and the work done by the former teacher at Morrison's on bicycles. But let me add to this peen of praise. I could add the incredible Macbeth performance in the McRosley Park with Stratharn Arts that we saw on Sunday. Or Rachel, our new priest, who's turned up, who's the most incredible woman, she's married to a GP. Two women have a lovely baby, three-year-old baby. But amongst all of this excitement was a lady arriving at church saying that there is a gift for you, Alastair. And it's back, I'm going to. I'm going to.

going to keep it secret. It was one of these great moments where she comes up and says, I'm a very, very great fan of Alistair Campbell. And I was expecting her to maybe add something, no, just Alistair Campbell. And the gift is coming. And it's a bagpipe themed gift, so I will be coming. Oh, excellent. Another lovely thing coming from Kreef. Excellent. Excellent. Well, look, I think we should also maybe say, Roy, this is possibly why you're giving such love to Kreef. You're looking, may I say, sharper and with a better backdrop than you normally have when you're in Creve. So where are you, Rory? Well, I'd like to, this is, this is another great thing about Creve. This is the Creep Leisure Centre,

which is also the Creve High School. And it's a really cool investment. Initially, I was a bit nimbly about it, because this and 400 houses has gone just on the edge of where my house is, on what used to be part of the agricultural land around the house. But I've got to say, it's really great. It's squash courts. It's a swimming pool. It's a great library. It's a great school. And actually, it was built over an archaeological site, which is beautifully presented. And I'm really feeling quite good about Kreef. I think we've got about 400 new houses built around my house, which again, you might be tempted to feel nimb about.

But actually, they're young families. They bring a lot of energy. The high street's looking much better. So come to Kreef. Rory, if you're going to be plugging Kreef as relentlessly as that, I have to give a proper shout out to the Jamman. The Montre-Jamman from Essex, his company is called, Saint d'Alphour. And he's got an awful lot of flavours. The thing about jam, Roy, you and I have talked about my mental health. Shout out for Johnny Mercer,

brilliantly talking about his mental health on our latest episode of Leading. Key to my mental health is a jam jar, which is why jam is important. It's an empty jam jar that I use as a tool. And that's La Bon Mamon. It's the red and white tablecloth on top. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know this one. Well, he sent me 30-odd different flavors. If you like to tell me what your favorite flavor of jam is. Strawberry. Strawberry. That's so boring. That's so boring. Strawberry, raspberry, apricot. Oh, boring, boring, boring, boring. But there's a reason they're the great favorites. It's just like the reason why the Labrador is the world's favorite dog. Cavalier King Charles, Roy. How can you say you're the friend of King Charles and you don't

acknowledge that Cavalier King Charles is the best dog in the world? I got a sometimes, sometimes the boring options. There's a reason for it. Reason why an all-day breakfast is the greatest meal in the world. The Labrador is the greatest dog and strawberry jam is the way to go. Well, I look forward to my bagpipe cup. Very good. Thank you, Alison. See you soon. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye-bye. Hello, everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you. We do indeed. As you all know, the rest is politics plus members get early access to question time. They get at free listing. They get exclusive series and a host of other benefits. And probably for me, the most

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