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So welcome to another episode of the Restless Polities with me, Alistair Campbell.

And just to give everybody a sense of where we are, I'm in Jordan in what, Alistair, what was your rude word about my shirt?

Well, I am quite complimented because your father was a vet, so I'm feeling quite cheered up about

Okay, Well, I'm not so insulted after all.

And as you said earlier, I'm wearing a sort of Tony Soprano special, very loose fitting flowery.

Loose fitting blue with a lot of white patterns on it.

I think if I was a conspiracy theorist, I might get into what that pattern is.

We may have to show an image of that for our devoted listeners.

Right, now, Alistair, what were the things you wanted to talk about today?

Well, I think we're going to have to talk about the Johnson situation.

We're recording this on Monday prior to the vote on the Privileges Committee report.

I'd like to get your advice to me for my appearance on the Question Time panel on Thursday with a leave voting only audience.

And maybe that's a chance just to reflect a little bit on what happened 7 years ago this week with the referendum.

And then I think we should, maybe the second half, we should focus on abroad as we often do.

I think it's just been announced that Blinken did indeed meet Xi Jinping in Beijing today so that's quite a big thing and then I'm also fascinated by this visit of a collection of African leaders to see Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky.

So maybe we should do that in the second half.

If you were still an MP, I am assuming you would vote to support the report?

I mean obviously I think that Boris Johnson is a disgrace and he's a disgrace because at the core of his threat to Britain is his lack of respect for the rule of law, his lack of respect for Parliament, his lack of respect for lying to Parliament, his lack of respect for parliamentary committees, all of which makes a real kind of disgusting mockery of his claim to care about the sovereignty of Parliament and all the things that he apparently fought Brexit about.

But I think the second reason I'd vote is it's a committee where there are people like Alberto Costa who I like on that committee.

They did a serious job, they came up with a serious conclusion and the conclusion is pretty unambiguous.

I am very surprised at Rishi Sunak, who did a quite pathetic interview this morning on Good Morning Britain.

He's got into this habit now of doing this thing where he literally just keeps saying the same thing again and again and again.

So the reporter was getting more and more frustrated.

I think she genuinely couldn't understand why he couldn't just bring himself to say he was voting or he wasn't voting, instead of which he kept saying, this is a matter for Parliament, not the government, and I don't want to influence other people.

I'm sorry, leadership is about influencing other people and taking them in the direction you think they should go in.

So I think he's making a complete mess of this Johnson thing.

He's carrying on with these absurd honors.

We now know that 1 of the people who's going to the House of Lords, Sean Bailey, it was his event that this new video that's emerged of clearly what was just a straightforward out-and-out party with dancing and drinking and laughter and frolics and fun.

Apparently, the invitation said mingle and jingle.

And that was that was the the Tory candidate to be Mayor of London, in fact the guy that I was running against, yeah.

Exactly, so he's going to the House of Lords even though we now know, well we knew it already that he'd had this party, we've now seen this this video and social media today Rory is just awash with people saying I couldn't bury my dad, I couldn't see my mum when she was dying.

I couldn't hold my brother's hand when he was dying, all this sort of stuff.

And there's another 1 who's wearing ridiculous Union Jack braces that's sort of in there going for an OBE or something.

So Sunak's letting that go through in the process I think embarrassing your friend the King and the second thing where I think he's letting himself down is in not using this report to signal that when he said he believed in professionalism, integrity and accountability, he meant it.

Instead of which, he looks like he's taking the coward's way out, which is to abstain and doubtless find some ridiculous reason not to be in parliament this afternoon.

I think the first thing is to understand what that suggests about the tensions and divisions within the Conservative Party.

He's not doing it because the Conservative Party is being torn apart with a strong but not overwhelming Boris Johnson faction that he has to deal with.

Remember, almost 100 MPs were still prepared to vote for Boris Johnson against him when Liz Truss stepped down.

And there are all these figures like Jacob Rees-Mogg out there briefing against him, campaigning against him, money being raised against him.

And then John Curtis saying that if Boris Johnson teamed up with Nigel Farage, he'd be able to set up a right-wing party which would destroy any hope that the Conservative Party had in the next election.

So I think somewhere in Rishi Sunak's calculation is trying to deal with the threat of Boris Johnson setting up some Farage-style party, trying to deal with the fact that Boris Johnson remains quite popular with some chunks of the Conservative Party, not all, but some chunks of the Conservative Party, and some form of internal party management going on.

So I agree, I mean it's really depressing, but it's a sign of how fractured the party is, and I think a sign of the fact that Rishi Sunak doesn't feel as strong towards the party as you'd like.

But the point is that you have to seize these moments when strength is offered to you.

The fact is that report is so damning of Johnson that it was the potential for an inflection point for Sunak's leadership I think, where you come out and say there is now no doubt about it, we were wrong about this guy and he could come out and say I'm sorry somebody whose reputation is now so solid by his peers producing this report, it is absurd to think he should have a resignation on his list.

While I'm leader of this party, he's finished.

And on the popularity point, Rory, the last survey I saw of the, I can't remember if it was conservative home, but 1 of the sort of, you know, the conservative sporting websites, 20% were assenting to the proposition that Johnson should return as conservative leader.

Now that's in the in the wake of all this focus that has been on him right now, that's pretty low.

And as for the public, you really enjoy this 1.

that's my friend JJ, we like talking about jail partners.

I'm gonna quote them doing something for the Tony Blair Institute to anyway, what do they say?

Well, they conducted a popularity poll over 2000 Britons.

However, it's better than Xi Jinping, who's at minus 40.

Boris Johnson is popular, his rating is lower than Philip Schofield and the president of China.

1 of the things that has been interesting, I think, is that Keir Starmer seems to have been listening to you and has said that he's not gonna do a resignation honours list.

You were very proud that Tony Blair didn't do 1, and it now seems as though Keir Starmer is not going to do 1.

Well I do think 1 thing this is this whole thing is thrown into sharp relief is the absurdity of our honour system and I thought that we had the honours at the weekend with Anna Winter, Companion of Honour and Ian Wright being upgraded from an NBO to an OBA and I sort of had in mind your point about you know there should be something special that I certainly feel that anybody who now feels that their award is on a par with 1 of these that Johnson's given out I think demeans it but Chris Bryant tweeted something very interesting this morning because he's just against my wishes.

And he says he did a tweet, it goes as follows.

The letter you received from the palace when you're offered an honor says recipients are expected to be role models and quotes should be aware that membership can be forfeited for a variety of reasons including criminal conviction and bring the honor system into disrepute.

Well every single honor that Johnson has ever given has brought the honor system into disrepute.

And just to return to my charge on my new theory, which is that prime ministerial honors should be completely separate from the normal system.

So someone like Ian Wright, who's had an amazing story, done an incredible amount, both in terms of his commentary and his social work, and a great footballer, gets an honor.

But it's the same honor being given to a slightly junior member of Boris Johnson's staff.

So let's separate them off because, and this is the point at which I'm going to get into a rant that will make you a little bit uncomfortable, The truth of the matter is it's a disgrace whoever's doing it.

Remember of course when you were in power the House of Lords Appointment Committee managed to rule against a lot of the appointments that Tony Blair was trying to make and there were 3 criminal investigations.

There was a man who was going to be Lord Patel, who gave £1.7 million worth of loans to the Labour Party in exchange for becoming a Lord.

Okay, this guy who coincidentally gave 1.7 million pounds of loans to the Labour Party was all set to become a peer until the House of Lords Appointment Committee questioned that as it did others.

Furthermore, 2006, you guys gave a knighthood to the big monster of all, Philip Green, not paying any UK tax, ripping off pension holders.

So basically none of these people should be doing and here I'm going non-party.

Boris Johnson's a disgrace, Labour Party was a disgrace, all these people get overruled by the House of Lords Appointment Committee because they're all trying to give money to their mates and people who contribute to their parties and we should stop it all.

Listen, and bear in mind Rory, at this point and have been at this point most of my life, I've said to you before part of my job was to, I had to go and announce the honours, I had to brief the press about how marvellous it was that we had X percent of black people and X percent of teachers and all this sort of stuff.

I hate the honour system with a passion but I don't think you can quite compare what Boris Johnson is trying to do now with any other Prime Minister.

And your point the other day about Tony putting in peers, that was because we had an elected big majority in the House of Commons, but found that in the House of Lords they could resist pretty much anything because we had such an inbuilt majority against us.

That was the only reason why we were putting all these people into the Lords and a lot of them to be fair to them are still there day in day out kind of working away but the Lords also has hundreds of people who either aren't there or only there for their allowance and by the way while we're still on Boris Johnson I still want to know I still want to know what on earth Charlotte Owen and Ross Kempsel have done.

These 2 children, 1 of my favorite lines in the interview with John Major

was when he said, leaders are getting younger, next Tory leader but 2 will be pre-puberty.

So what is going on with Charlotte Owen and Ross Kempsall?

Can you remember what was going on in February

with a man called Barry Townsley who was put up for a peerage, who was under investigation by the serious fraud office.

Yeah, March 2006, nominated, followed by property millionaire Sir David Garrard who withdrew his name, followed by Sir Ghulam Noon.

I mean, you tried to get quite a lot through that the House of Lords Appointment Committee were not that happy with.

No, in my defence, Rory, I left in 2003 and I was always against it.

And by the way, I could have been on that list myself, but I've always said no.

As you're getting on your high horse now, so would you tell me, would you accept a knighthood?

I think it depends what I was given it for and who was giving it to me.

So I hope I would never have accepted something from Boris Johnson.

I would never have accepted something if it was a bribe for shutting up or not doing something I believed in.

But I did accept an OBE when I was in Iraq for doing what I thought was a decent job in Iraq and I was proud to do that and I think that's what the honour system should be there to do.

So you're now on a par with Boris Johnson's hairdresser?

There was I being shot at in Iraq and it's just the same as cutting Boris Johnson's hair.

Actually, to be honest, probably she was about as successful in cutting Boris Johnson's hair as I was in Iraq.

So anyway, should we leave the whole sort of thing?

I mean, I do think, I think Sunak is mishandling this pretty badly.

On Keir Starmer, I think it's absolutely absurd.

I think he should go further and actually say there has to be a fundamental review of not just the Honours but the House of Lords as well.

If you remember, when I did the Radio 4 programme with Jacob Rees-Mogg, And also that guy from the CBI who's since had to leave the CBI, Tony Danker.

Yes, that guy who made nice comments about the Labour Party and then disappeared under a cloud.

But I remember you giving me some very, very good advice about how to deal with Jacob Rees-Mogg.

So similar situation Thursday possibly, question time in Clacton and the BBC in their wisdom, the audience is made up 100% of people who voted leave in 2016.

Now so far the panel is me, Anand Menon, who is a sort of professor type, who will be the man to go to for the facts and the economics and so forth.

It would seem that they're really struggling to find anybody who could defend Brexit

What does that tell us about the state of the politics of Brexit?

I think the only thing to beware of with Anand Menon who is unbelievably clever and unbelievably well informed is that he's got a very cunning way of playing a beautifully sort of objective, thoughtful, I'm slightly above all this, I'm going to give you the context thing and you're going to be stuck in there as the raging remainer.

I would say, I don't know how you feel about this, but I'd be tempted to try to find a way of reaching out to that audience and saying, listen, I understand a little bit about what you were voting for.

I understand why you felt really pissed off and you've been let down.

There were perfectly good reasons why you wanted to vote for Brexit and you've been totally, totally betrayed.

I do think it's interesting that they seem unable to find anybody to sort of defend Brexit.

I presume that it's quite a scary thought just to go and for me to be in a room full of people who voted leave.

And actually, interestingly, I'm visiting a school in Clacton on the way, which I think will be interesting.

So I really am keen to find out what young people in Clacton think as well.

Clacton was important in my parliamentary life because it was the seat of a guy called Douglas Carswell, who was 1 of my conservative colleagues, who went into full rebellion against David Cameron, defected to UKIP, triggered a by-election, and then managed to win the by-election for UKIP, which was a real kind of sort of shaking moment for David Cameron and I think in some ways accelerated Cameron giving this referendum.

So Clacton's right at the heart of the whole story.

I think that's why Clacton did become so central.

Also Nigel Farage targeted it, he went there a lot.

Carswell, by the way, now lives in Mississippi.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has moved his money to Ireland.

Michael Gove was on television yesterday apologizing for God knows what.

I mean it is quite interesting how there's bound to be some people who just say I voted Brexit I'm glad that I did because of whatever but I've honestly I've been doing a bit of research, I've been looking at all the facts and the economic stuff and I can't see a single thing that has improved in our country as a result of Brexit and I have a very, very, very long list of things that have got worse.

And it's a really interesting question in this because I guess part of the problem, which should have been obvious in advance, is that the complete mismatch between the extreme fantasies of the Brexiteers, which anyway were very different.

So some of them wanted Singapore on Thames, some of them like Dominic Cummings wanted sort of 1950s Eisenhower's America completely mismatched with the nature of British society and culture.

So it's theoretically true that if Jacob Rees-Mogg had got his way or Liz Truss had got her way, she was originally a Remain voter, but in her new version of a Brexiteer, you could imagine leaving the European Union, cutting taxes, cutting government spending, cutting regulation, creating a kind of real sort of American style Texan, screw the environment, pump the oil, send the children up the chimneys, not quite, but you know, basically, let's go for capitalism, red in tooth and claw.

But what happened is that they realized once they'd won is that the population was not up for that.

So the only way they could have really made Brexit do what they fantasized about, which was generating this crazy growth, is by living in Texas, not living in Britain.

And actually, we have a population that even if they voted Brexit was broadly speaking, comfortable with the welfare state, the NHS, wanted more security, not less.

They were not actually voting for a kind of radical free market Ayn Rand fantasy?

No because in all the promises that were made if you think about the central promise that was on the side of the bus it was nothing to do with sovereignty it was about the National Health Service.

I mean Cummings is very open about this is that they had to find a kind of conventional domestic rationale for taking a massive decision that was going to change virtually everything about the way that we were governed.

When they finally find a Brexiteer to sit on the panel, it would be hilarious if they had to cancel the

Anyway, they had to get the audience to sit on the paddle, baby.

You'll get my friend, Isabel Oak, shot guaranteed.

Oh, please, honestly, honestly, these people.

So but what if you were them and they said, tell me 1 good thing that Brexit has delivered, What would you say?

What they will say is it's too early to tell, which is, you know, the famous line which the great Chinese foreign minister said about the French revolution, too early to tell.

And they would say that it's all about sovereignty, that they knew that there was going to be negative economic consequences, but they don't care because they don't mind being poor, but free.

Roy, I will have to hand all the statements from all of them, where they say the opposite of that.

And then the 1 thing they do say, the 1 thing they do say is that they did the vaccine rollout but the woman who was in charge of the whole thing says that's complete nonsense.

And by the way, looking at this COVID inquiry, I see David Cameron's there getting quite a good grilling on austerity today.

But the 1 thing that I do think this COVID inquiry is going to is going to suggest our record is really quite poor on the whole thing.

So 1 thing I think that may be worth asking is why it is when on the surface, the polls show, you know, 47% rejoin 34% stay out 18% neither, that no major party is prepared to back rejoining.

And it turns out that the strength of the opinion of the rejoin audience seems to be weaker than you'd think.

I've just been looking at your favorite or our favorite JLA partners again who did something for the Tony Blair Institute and the figures are really interesting and worth looking at.

So if you break down the 43% odd that seem to be in favor of sort of remain, It actually breaks down to about 23% wanting the UK to be back inside the EU, 11% outside EU political institutions but within the single market, 17% outside the European single market but with a closer trade and security partnership than today.

So it's a funny mixture, but overwhelmingly, then 19% in a new kind of association with the EU, unlike anything we know today.

The 1 thing that's very clear from these polls, and we can share them with listeners, is an absolute dissatisfaction with the current Brexit deal.

And I think that's very, very rich vein for Keir Starmer or anyone to exploit to say, we could be doing so much better on this relationship with the European Union.

And I bet you'll get the majority of the crowd in Clacton applauding if you say that.

Well if I say what, I'm going to give me a clap, give me a clap line and I'll try it.

See listen, whatever you think about Brexit, there is no doubt that actually we could have a much smarter relationship with the EU than we have now.

It's just just trying to get pumped up for Clacton.

I'm usually quite good at generating clap lines at question time.

I've got a very good track record, but I think Clacton could be quite a tough gig.

There was a very, there was a very interesting piece, though, in the Sunday Times yesterday, Joss Clancy, 1 of the sort of feature writer, reporter types went to Clacton and spent a lot of time just talking to people.

And his sense was hardly anybody thinking it's going well.

A mixture of blame, government, labour, Ramonas, Europe, but a real sense of, as you said, right at the start, betrayal, let down, and the place just not getting better.

That's the point that people want to, you know, people want to feel their community's getting better.

I was just thinking a little bit about memories of Brexit and the way in which we were both on different sides on this.

So you were right in, I mean, very, very important leading role in the, basically the second referendum, People's Vote, Remain campaign.

And I was trying to argue very, very strongly for a soft Brexit compromise.

And I was looking at the figures, and there was an extraordinary moment that I'd forgotten about, which was on April Fool's Day, 2019, when I got together an amendment for a customs union.

And I don't really remember, Theresa May had taken her withdrawal agreements 3 times through the House of Commons, being defeated every time.

And I thought, okay, Her backstop is basically a customs union.

So why don't we re-describe it as a customs union, get the labor votes on side, get the conservatives who were in favor of a backstop, 200 of them had just voted for the backstop, and let's take through a customs union.

I got Ken Clark to sign it, put his name to it.

And I then began whipping for this thing.

And when I looked at the numbers, about 2 hours before the vote, I was just going to make it.

It's going to make it by a couple of votes.

And then things began getting really weird.

I'd lose 2 votes here, I'd gain 2 votes there.

Totally to my horror, there were 7 conservative Remainers who totally refused to vote for a customs union because they still believed that if they stopped every deal, they'd be able to stay in the EU.

Was that people like Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve?

But basically, in the end, there was this horrible situation where arch remainers were walking into the lobbies to vote against me with the extreme Brexiteers.

They both combined to try to kill the customs union and in the end it came down to 1 vote and I remember standing outside the lobby talking to 1 friend who had agreed, I thought, to vote for the customs union and begging, saying, get in there and vote for it.

This is our last chance to stop a hard Brexit.

And him saying to me, no, don't worry, Rory.

There'll be many more chances for a soft Brexit.

And then to my horror, he walked into the lobby and voted against me.

And the other person I was counting on, who was a minister, claimed to have fallen asleep in the library.

And in the end, I just lost by those 2 people.

The 1 person who voted against me, that friend and the guy that fell asleep in the library.

Who was the friend and who was the who was the sleepy?

And the man asleep in the library was George Freeman.

And if I had got those 2 votes, I would have got the customs union amendment through.

Now I don't know what Theresa May would have been able to do with that, whether we would have been able to use the parliamentary vote to drive it through or not, that would have been just the beginning of the campaign, but I would have been, we would have got for the first time a majority in Parliament for something which is what everybody hadn't been able to do.

My memories of that whole period, I do vaguely remember the April Fool's thing.

I kept being invited into Sky News to comment on all these votes as they were happening and I think on that occasion I was with that friend of Johnson and his wife, Henry Newman, and I can remember the psychology at that time in the sort of, and I was seeing a lot of people like Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve and what have you, I think the psychology was that because things felt like they were moving our way, certainly with the public and also parliamentary opinion was growing for the people's vote campaign, I think we did genuinely think that we could get the whole way and therefore that made us less interested in possible compromises and look I'll be honest, I mean if you could have got away with a softer Brexit and not ended with the total disaster that we've got now, we would, I agree, we'd all have been better off.

But in a way, I do think the next generation will undo this whole thing or try to find a way to undo this whole thing.

Okay, well, here we are, maybe time for a break.

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This week's episode of The Rest is Politics is sponsored by the New European, 1 of the few good things that came out of Brexit 7 years ago.

And it's what I like to call a real newspaper because it's full of brilliant original writing and some amazing photography.

And yet again, may I say, I had the front cover this week with a piece fantastically damning about Boris Johnson and his political obituary with the headline, never again and a big red cross through his face.

Now, it's not just politics, is it, Alistair?

I think 1 of the reasons that I quite nerdily like the New European is we've talked a bit about its cultural pages.

There's also a wonderful weekly philosophy column by a philosopher called Nigel Warburton.

So he's just written a great piece this week, for example, about the American philosopher Cornel West running for president, which connects analytical philosophy, critical theory and politics.

See all The Rest Is Politics transcripts on Applepodcasts

The world looks to Beijing, Putin vs. Africa, and Rory's sliding Brexit doors