The political odd couple taking the podcast world by storm

When Rory Stewart, former Conservative government cabinet minister, diplomat, writer and academic, agreed in early 2022 to take part in a new podcast to be called The Rest is Politics, he little realised the show would become an online juggernaut commanding 2.5 million listeners weekly.

“I didn’t think of it as very serious,” says Stewart, who also stood against Boris Johnson for the Tory leadership in 2019. “I thought we’d just do a jolly thing for a few weeks, and it would be over. We’ve now recorded over 300 episodes. It’s very strange, not least because it keeps growing. I keep expecting it to peak and die off, but in fact, it’s growing.”

The Stewart-Campbell double act has powered The Rest Is Politics to become one of Britain’s most-listened podcasts.Credit: Facebook

Much of the extraordinary success of The Rest is Politics (TRiP to fans) is down to the odd-couple pairing between Stewart and Alastair Campbell, the West Yorkshire-born former Labour heavyweight best known as Tony Blair’s former communications director. Leaving aside the age gap (Stewart is 51, to Campbell’s 67), the cultural chasm between old Etonian Stewart, who is also famously a confidant of King Charles, and bluff, grammar-school educated bagpipe-playing Campbell would seem unbridgeable, yet the pair has developed a striking on-air rapport of genuine warmth.

This is due not least to their commitment to “disagree agreeably” (although, as many listeners have pointed out, these days, they often meet in furious agreement on the political centre ground).

“I think the odd couple thing is central to the whole thing,” says Stewart. “Each of us on our own would be pretty unbearable. I would be too earnest, and he’d probably be too direct. The fact we’re different generations, come from different social backgrounds and see the world in a very different way keeps it going, even when we’re agreeing. The spirit of the podcast is kept alive by the fact that we’re such different people.

“We also have a very disproportionately young listenership, which is very encouraging for us because we have some pretty wonky conversations about the details of Bangladeshi politics or what’s going on in Slovakia.”

TRiP has also undoubtedly benefited from the breakneck pace of contemporary world politics, in particular in the UK and the United States.

“Things really are accelerating,” says Stewart. “If you look at the period between 1989 and, I guess, 2004, it feels much, much more stable than the last decade. That was a period where the number of democracies around the world was doubling; every year, the world was getting more peaceful, economies were growing, and things were pretty stable.

“It is astonishing what’s happening now. In just the last two weeks, we’ve seen Bangladesh topple a ruler who’s dominated that country for 15 years and more. We’re seeing incredible backsliding in Thailand. We’ve seen lurches in India, France and Germany. In the United Kingdom, we went from the Conservatives winning one of their largest-ever majorities in 2019 to them going to their largest-ever defeat in 2024. These are just isolated examples of a general situation in which the world is becoming more polarised, more dangerous, and more unpredictable all the time.”

Like many commentators, Stewart lays at least some of the blame for all the volatility at the feet of social media and the way algorithms behind platforms like Facebook and Twitter reinforce prejudice and encourage polarisation.

Rory Stewart in 2019 when he threw his hat in the ring for the top job against Boris Johnson.Credit: Getty Images

But Stewart also believes the rise of far-right authoritarianism in particular can in part be blamed on a problem with democracy itself.

“For 200 years we have believed the way to guarantee prosperity was with democracies. And sadly, in many countries, particularly in Europe, economies have started to falter. People’s living standards haven’t improved. Wages have remained stagnant, and many parts of the country have been left behind. And people look at China and they think, ‘Here’s this country that’s lifted all these people out of poverty, and they’ve done it with strong leadership’. They look at India, where authoritarian leadership seems to be delivering results. We live in an age which is very open to strong men with easy solutions and a lot of bluster.

“Democracy is incredibly precious because it holds this fundamental idea that citizens are equal, that they’re dignified, that they shouldn’t be patronised by an elite telling them what to do and that you have an opportunity to boot these people out and that your rights are protected. These things are very, very special. But to make the moral case for it, you’ve also got to make it perform. You’ve got to make people think that it’s not only something that says something important about human dignity but that it’s actually able to fix potholes and create jobs and make the trains run on time.”

This is classic articulate Stewart, delivered in the calm, modulated tones familiar to TRiP listeners. Also familiar is his frequent bemoaning the lack of “seriousness” in politics, a central theme of his recent best-selling book, Politics On The Edge.

On the surface, it’s a political memoir detailing his decade in Westminster, including his time as secretary of state for international development, but it also delivers a devastating broadside at the state of British politics and the failings of a political class mostly interested only in power for power’s sake. In addition, it is a very candid admission from Stewart at how unsuited he was for political office.

“I found it very depressing,” he says. “I found it so sad that people generally spent so little time thinking about what the right thing to do was and that their obsession was with how to promote themselves or stick it to the Opposition or sell policies, rather than really trying to think about thoughtful, serious, difficult things to do. It was so superficial.”

The candour with which he criticised his then colleagues has also done little to endear him to many members of the Conservative Party – from which he resigned – in particular, former prime ministers David Cameron and Liz Truss. It has all come at a personal cost.

“They do not like me,” he says, with a hint of regret. “They don’t speak [to me]. The truth is, these were colleagues who I saw almost daily for 10 years, and it’s tough to make the decision that you’re going to say, I don’t think these people are fit for public office and that they’re not serious. And there are times when I feel a bit guilty about doing it, but I also think it’s important to do.”

“It’s tough to make the decision that you’re going to say, I don’t think these people are fit for public office.”

Rory Stewart

Beginning in October, Stewart will visit Australia for a five-city speaking tour. He is, he says, looking forward to getting a deeper understanding of our politics and is particularly interested in the “teal” independent movement.

“I’m very interested in whether Australia is the exception to this general rule of mature democracies collapsing, and polarisation and extremism, and whether you might offer a ray of hope for the direction Britain might go in,” he says, before going on to list other rays of hope around the world.

He points to Kamala Harris’ elevation and the fact that “Trump may be beatable”, that France has pulled back from handing power to the far right, and that cracks have appeared in Narendra Modi’s power base in India.

However, he says: “It’s touch and go. We are on a narrow tightrope. These are partial victories, and I’m afraid the general tendency of the world is going in a pretty grim direction.”

Rory Stewart’s Australian tour: October 21, Melbourne Arts Centre; October 29, Sydney Opera House; November 2, Brisbane Concert Hall; Sunday 3, Canberra Llewellyn Hall; November 4, Perth Concert Hall.

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