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The Rest Is Politics

138. Question Time: The Bullingdon Club, democracy vs. capitalism, and overcoming foot-and-mouth

The Rest Is Politics

Goalhanger

News, Politics, Government

4.511.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Should Rory and Alastair switch allegiance to the Liberal Democrats? Why is there no happy news? What was handling the foot and mouth disease crisis like? Listen to Rory and Alastair answer these questions, plus Rory explains how he was approached by the Bullingdon Club at Oxford, Alastair reveals his university party trick, and much more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: restispolitics@gmail.com Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thank you for listening to the RESTISPOLITICS for ad-free listening, early access to episodes, membership to our chat community.

0:07.0

Please sign up by the RESTISPOLITICS.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks.

0:23.0

So, welcome to the RESTISPOLITICS question time with me, Rory Stewart.

0:28.0

And me, Alistair Campbell. Where do you want to start?

0:31.0

Well, let's just start on this because it develops a theme that we explored in the podcast yesterday, but I think it makes it a bit sharper.

0:38.0

It's from Roger Wade, given Kier's Starmer's recent interview where he categorically rules out the return to the European Union or single market.

0:46.0

Do you believe the Brexit issue is bigger than the Labour party, and it is time to support the Liberal Democrats at the next election?

0:55.0

And would you and Rory consider switching allegiances?

0:58.0

Well, you haven't come out for the Labour Party.

1:01.0

I don't, but I get very angry with the Liberal Democrats as well.

1:04.0

I don't feel that they're sort of really making...

1:07.0

And by the way, even though I think leaving the European Union was a total catastrophe for our country, I'm not saying either of them should go into the next election, saying let's rejoin.

1:17.0

I am saying that I think that they should be calling out the damage that it's doing and making clear that a new government has to fix the damage.

1:26.0

But you can't be open about how you're going to fix the damage unless you're open and honest about the scale of the damage.

1:32.0

And when you read as I did the other day, in fact, Chris Patton, I don't even saw Chris Patton on question time, but there was a clip that went viral of him just going through why it had been such a disaster.

1:42.0

But one factoid that sort of leapt out of me is when he said the poorest 20% in Poland are now better off than the poorest 20% in the UK.

1:52.0

That's very interesting. And that's partly weirdly because, I mean, with all the horrors of what that party has been doing in Poland, they've introduced something called the Family 500 Plus, which has been giving much more generous benefits to the poor.

2:07.0

This is Marewietski, the prime minister, who's a very weird figure. I mean, a lot of these people in the law and justice party are people who are sort of university professors and talk in this very academic language.

2:19.0

Marewietski edited a book on European Union law.

2:23.0

So you have this very sinister thing, which is a bit reminiscent of, well, I guess it's a point isn't that often these regimes are facilitated by smooth talking intellectuals despite their very kind of sinister underpinnings.

2:34.0

Sinister underpinnings, but the one good thing I suppose they've done is they've had a they've set up much, much more generous welfare payments. And that's one of the reasons why they're so quite popular.

2:42.0

Yeah, now the producer having told us that the main podcast was quite heavy. Let's try and keep this one light. You went straight back to one of the heavier subjects in yesterday's podcast.

...

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