The Right’s War With Itself and Burnham’s Prisons Challenge

**Rory Stewart** (0:01)
We spend an enormous amount of time asking what's happening to Labour. But I wonder if the stranger story in British politics isn't what's happening to the right. Two years ago, the Conservative Party suffered their worst defeat in modern history.
And then things have just got worse. Reform overtook them, it stayed ahead, and at points the Conservatives had been projected to drop below 100 seats in a 650 seat Parliament, with reform getting significantly more seats. What do they do? Well, that's one of the questions in the episode today. Kemi Badenoch has decided that the answer is to move closer to reform, to become tougher on immigration, tougher on culture wars and try to get back those voters. But meanwhile, she's abandoned what I think would be the much more interesting constituency with a very large number of people in the centre, floating voters who are going to be increasingly alienated if Kemi Badenoch starts chasing reform. Or is there perhaps an even more tragic problem, which is the Conservatives may not be able to win back the reform voters, and they also may not be able to win back the centrists. In other words, they're in terminal decline, a story that we've seen again and again across Europe.
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**Alastair Campbell** (1:34)
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**Rory Stewart** (1:43)
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**Rory Stewart** (2:09)
That's quite a tribute, Alice, from you, who we often see as a bit of a tributact to the analog world.

**Alastair Campbell** (2:16)
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**Rory Stewart** (3:24)
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**Alastair Campbell** (3:27)
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**Rory Stewart** (3:36)
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**Rory Stewart** (3:54)
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**Rory Stewart** (4:20)
Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (4:34)
And me, Alastair Campbell. And Rory, today, we are going to be talking a lot about your former party, the Tories, but also the threat they're facing from other right-wing parties like Reform and Restore Britain.
We're going to talk about Andy Burnham's first real big challenge, which is prisoner release. We're going to talk about US politics after Abdul El-Sayed has become the nominee for the Democratic Party in Michigan. We're going to talk about catastrophe in the River Rhine. And you're going to tell me about a new gift that you found for me. We had a lot of questions about what's happening, not just to the Tory Party, but on the right of British politics more generally. And Sarah asks this, why is the British right seemingly tearing itself apart? At the very moment, Andy Burnham's ascendancy is giving Labour a boost.