You have probably already heard of The Rest is Politics, which consistently tops the podcast charts. You have certainly already heard of its two hosts, and have a flavour of their temperaments as well as their political views. Alastair Campbell may once have been lost in the shadow of Malcolm Tucker, but every week on the podcast his real self fights its way through. He finds his perfect foil (so we are told) in his co-host, the awkward nerd Rory Stewart.
The Rest is Politics is a strange name. What does it mean? It isn’t a phrase. The pieces begin to fall together once you realise that the company behind it, Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger Podcasts, had already struck gold with the wonderful The Rest is History. The Rest is Politics, whose third ever episode was subtitled ‘The Rest is History’, has largely succeeded in leaching off The Rest is History’s success.
Like all cash-grab spinoffs, The Rest is Politics tries to copy The Rest is History’s formula without fully understanding what made the original work. Roughly speaking, Campbell steps into Dominic Sandbrook’s shoes, and Stewart fills in for Tom Holland. All British politics podcasts, as the writer Ben Sixsmith pointed out in a hilarious parody, must have the ‘blokeish, sporty one’ and ‘the intellectual who sits at home and reads books’.
Unlike The Rest is History, however, which lightly plays off the contrast between its hosts without ever being about it, the very premise of The Rest is Politics is the apparent contrast between Campbell and Stewart. Its entire marketing strategy, down to its red-blue logo, is based on the notion that Campbell and Stewart ‘join forces from across the political divide’, and ‘revive the lost art of disagreeing agreeably’.
There is the occasional glimmer of greatness
Avid listeners of the podcast may still be waiting with bated breath to discover what Campbell and Stewart agreeably disagree about. Perhaps their disagreements are so agreeable as to barely be perceptible. It so happens that each made a name for himself in different parties – though Campbell was expelled from Labour in 2019, and a few months later Stewart had the Tory whip suspended. In another world – perhaps one where Change UK or Gina Miller’s new venture were less of a flop – they may have ended up in the same one.
Both backed Remain. Both think foreign aid is good and the Rwanda plan is bad. Both are committed Unionists, but feel some admiration (now poorly aged) towards Nicola Sturgeon. Both are in favour of Proportional Representation (though Campbell admits to harbouring some doubts about this, if only because Nigel Farage supports it too).
They think politics is too polarised, and that it should be more sensible and grown-up. They think Britain should be more open. I don’t especially disagree with them – but it’s not exactly Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo. Perhaps my favourite moment from the podcast comes when Stewart expresses his support for ID cards. ‘My God!’ Campbell exclaims: ‘Yet again, you’re on the same agenda as Tony Blair!’. You can almost hear the penny drop.
What ‘disagreements’ they do have are more about style than substance. Campbell finds Suella Braverman’s rhetoric on asylum seekers ‘horrible’ and ‘extremist’; Stewart, Spock-like, urges the Home Secretary to adopt a more ‘thoughtful’ and ‘rational’ system.
Sometimes, they can’t disagree, because neither one actually says what he thinks. In their episode on the SNP’s Ahabian pursuit of gender reform, each refuses to say whether he actually supports self-ID. Given his experience as prisons minister, I would have been interested to hear Stewart’s perspective. Instead one finds only incessant umming-and-ahhing: the matter is ‘so complicated’; it ‘arouses real passions on both sides’; it’s ‘so difficult to have a nuanced, balanced debate on trans issues’. At the end of their tepid, shallow discussion, they admit defeat. ‘We both felt a bit uncomfortable with that debate [sic]. Shall we go to a break?’
And yet, there is the occasional glimmer of greatness. The Rest is Politics is at its best when most personal. Both Campbell and Stewart are fascinating men who’ve lived fascinating lives. Their first episode, recorded only a couple of weeks after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, is brimming with insight: Campbell speaks of his own experiences meeting Putin in his first years as Russian president; and Stewart speaks, perhaps with more depth and authority than he is allowed to let on, about Western intelligence in the run-up to the war. Both are, in their better moments, compelling and media-savvy: Stewart, for all his poshness, has a down-to-earth charm about him, and Campbell was good fun as GQ’s political interviewer. But like all bad relationships, they bring out the worst in each other.
Love it or loathe it, The Rest is Politics remains one of Britain’s most popular political podcasts. For all their protestations, it seems the Centrist Dads want their own Fox News. People can say what they like about craving ‘agreeable disagreement’. In the end, it seems, they long for the comfort of the echo-chamber.
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