Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

And me, Rory Stewart.

I love this question, and I don't quite know what I'm going to say in Ancetus,

I'm going to just bans it on you, Rowan Wilkinson.

The role of ego in political decision-making has recently been clear to see with the rise of populism,

politicians like Trump and Johnson.

One, did you have any personal checks or balances you would put on yourself to make sure you were

making decisions based on what was right for the greater good and not your own ego?

Two, were you always able to get out of the way of yourselves, or are there examples of when

in retrospect you didn't?

I think it's a really good question.

I think it's one of the things that makes politics so dangerous, that it's horrible.

I mean, it's very damaging, I think, particularly modern politics, that the politics

of 24-hour campaigning, the permanent campaign, social media, is very damaging for your mind,

your body, your soul, and it does very weird things to your ego, because you are in a weird situation

where, on the one hand, you're absolutely the center of attention.

One of the things that surprised me, I'll be becoming a politician, is just how much time

newspapers and television devoted to politics, given that many of my voters weren't very interested

in politics. I was rather surprised how much time newspapers and television did on it,

and you are in this very insecure situation where you oscillate between sometimes being treated

with incredible deference, put in a ministerial car, put in a sort of enormous office. My

ministerial offices were about 10 times the size of anyone's else's office, and people bring

...