Is Badenoch Finally Stopping Farage and Why Are French Schools on Fire?

Alastair Campbell (0:00)

By any reckoning, Labour had a good conference last week in Liverpool, as the Burnham Bounce continued to lift the party in the polls. This week at the Tory conference in Birmingham, there is a much better mood than there was a year ago.

Both Andy Burnham and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch seem firmly in control of their parties. Pessimism these days is more likely to be found in Reform UK, which is being hit, continued by scandal and personality clashes, and the Greens, with Zach Polanski struggling to make a mark in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election taking place on Thursday. Both Polanski and Nigel Farage, it would seem, might well have peaked. But how confident can Labour afford to be with such a challenging economic scenario and a budget later this month in which some very tough choices are going to have to be made? And with the Tories still behind Reform in the polls, how confident can they be of ever regaining power without some kind of deal with the parties to the right of them? To help me answer all of this, I'm joined by someone to the right of Rory Stewart, otherwise engaged this week, and that is the former Tory Cabinet Minister, Michael Gove.

Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

Michael Gove (1:17)

And me, Michael Gove.

Alastair Campbell (1:19)

So, Michael, thank you for standing in for Rory Stewart, having yet another week off.

I've had none thus far in our four years together. And we are going to talk about your party and my party and their various conferences. We're going to talk about Kemi Badenoch's leadership style and how she's developed and grown and a very interesting document that she wrote on the eve of the conference. We're going to talk about France and Spain, where there are a lot of protests going on. In France, very violent, involving school kids. And in Spain, have led to the calling of a general election by Pedro Sánchez. We're going to talk about Brazil. And we're briefly going to talk about the election in Bosnia as well. So looking forward to that and looking forward to even more looking forward to question time, where I suspect you and I will disagree agreeably possibly on Brexit and Israel-Gaza, where I think we have very, very differing positions. So thank you for being here. Let's start with the Tories and Labour.

Michael Gove (2:17)

It's an absolute pleasure, Alastair. And I know that I can't live up to the standards set by Rory of reasonableness. And I know that we're going to disagree, but I will do my best to make sure that it's agreeable.

And the first thing that I would have to say is that I agree with your broad analysis. I think that the introduction that you set is absolutely correct, that both the principal parties have, over the last two years, faced pesky insurgents who've been energized and who've been successful in eating away at the votes, the core votes of both Labour and Tory. But for the reasons that you've outlined, the Greens are being in hock to a particular group within the party who've elevated Palestine over other issues, and with reform because of the scandals that have hit their leadership and the splits that that's exposed. Both of those parties have had difficult summers, and that's given the Conservatives in particular a sense that they're back in the game. But while the Conservatives, you're absolutely right, are united behind Kemi Badenoch. They still remain anchored at around 20 percent in the polls.

This week, there was a very sobering message from John Curtis, the polling guru, who said to the, not quite exuberant, but certainly more confident Tory grass roots, that their polling position was exactly the same as the 2024 election. And of course, that was the election that resulted in the most humiliating defeat that my party ever endured and one which saw my own seat fall to the Liberal Democrats and my Lib Dem successors secure a five and a half thousand majority.

Alastair Campbell (3:54)

Now, I want to come back to the Tories and in particular this very long essay that Kemi Badenoch has written, which I read yesterday, The Right Way, as it's called.

But I just want to first of all ask you about your impressions of Labour because you were at Liverpool. I just wanted to first of all how weird that is for you to be at the Labour Party Conference. What your impressions were and what you think the big change has been from Stammer to Burnham?

Michael Gove (4:16)

Well, the key thing about governing party conferences is that there's an eerie similarity to them. So I don't want to dishearten those people who are encouraged by Andy Burnham's arrival by saying that I felt quite at home.