The Rest Is Politics: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart are wildly well informed and personally invested

Let’s attempt to settle a question: Do the hosts of The Rest Is Politics, billed as coming from opposite sides of the political divide, agree too much? Because that’s what much of the criticism of this staggeringly popular political podcasting behemoth comes down to. Is it a balm in our wounded times to find a leftie and a rightie who can come together and find meeting points on matters of policy and perspective? Or is The Rest Is Politics a little too chummy, not probing enough to be considered a serious excavation of the different perspectives that dominate the political landscape?

The answer is, it’s kind of a balm, and pretty chummy, but it’s definitely serious. On the go since March 2022, it’s almost a latecomer to the genre. It was built on the back of the staggering success of its predecessor, The Rest Is History, previously reviewed in this space. That podcast’s production company, Goalhanger Podcasts, flush with success and seeing an opening, decided to replicate the successful two-chaps-weigh-in formula on political terrain. Which led, presumably, to a search for the political equivalent of plummy historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.

Enter the former Tony Blair spindoctor Alastair Campbell, a clear shoo-in as a Labour diehard who fell afoul of the party when he voted Lib Dem in 2019 and was subsequently expelled. Playing the Holland to his Sandbrook is Rory Stewart, the one-time Tory minister who resigned from the cabinet on Boris Johnson’s election and ultimately left that party too. So much for toeing the party line.

These are two astoundingly articulate, generally polite and largely reasonable gentlemen who pay a close attention that merits ours

So, yes, Boris Johnson is a point of blanket agreement and agreeable disdain – who knew Bojo could bring folks together like this? The Iraq war, though, is thornier territory, with Stewart calling out Campbell for his backing of Blair’s decision to go to war. But here’s the thing: what we’re listening to is a form of dissent less common on the airwaves of late, where the two disagreers let each other finish their sentences, and then counter with lines like “Can I question that for a second?” and “That’s all reasonable. However, I go back to my point.” Not exactly confrontainment, is it?

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But Stewart and Campbell, both steeped in politics and casually expert in the power structures of almost every push and pull playing out on the global stage today, are wildly well informed and personally invested in how these structures play out on issues from prison reform to public education. They vary the format – sometimes taking questions from listeners, sometimes diving straight into the topics at hand – but these are two astoundingly articulate, generally polite and largely reasonable gentlemen who pay a close attention that merits ours.

In short, it’s not very shouty and these two do find common ground unexpectedly often. Then again, few of us fit the political binaries of accepted punditry, and mostly shuffle back and forth along the line between left and right. Campbell and Stewart may have feet in different camps but The Rest Is Politics is proof that though things can fall apart, if we stay cordial and curious, the centre can hold after all.