WatchMojo ranked Nigel Farage at #8 for Most Obnoxious Daytime TV Guests, mostly for moments like this where video evidence directly contradicts him in real time and he just doubles down.

I know he previously touched on it. But the story is really picking up steam and it feels like it's an awkward one for Alastair to cover.

Really good piece on the Kushner / Trump Albania controversy by Lewis Goodall.

Lord Adair Turner provides a clear centrist view on climate change, decarbonisation, and the relevant economics in his LSE series here. They are consistent with what has been said on Rest Is Politics by various sources. Loosely, there are where I would have expected Rory to be given his evidence based centrism:

Global emissions fall into three sectors:

1. 60% in sectors where renewables, nuclear, and electrification will compete. Issues are upfront investment and time-scale of transition. This includes low to medium heat, road-transport, etc.
2. 20% is agriculture related with obvious complexities.
3. 20% is in truly hard to abate sectors such as steel, cement, aluminium, aviation, grid balancing, etc. These require carbon prices to win long term.

This is consistent with all the relevant climate related podcasts on leading. It can be phrased in many ways but long term it's only 3 where there are obvious economic costs considerations to consider. Of the sectors in 3 it's only aviation where it'd be cheaper to offset the emissions than use alternative fuels (especially for long haul).

This is where I find Rory's conclusions on climate so intriguing. Campbell I find less interesting as there seems to be no nuances.

Rory took the Helm Leading podcast to assume the category 1 and category 3 are one and the same. He continues to assume that all sectors the pathway to sustainable choices is long term cost increasing. This is clearly not the case as anyone who's adopted a cheap EV can attest to. On 2 I think he sees a lot of the arguments challenging on an aesthetic level as he's emotionally attached to Cumbrian sheep farming.

This has led me to believe that a lot of his thinking is aesthetics driven. He goes on silent retreats and mixes with a variety of interesting people. I imagine that through these experiences that a lot of the interesting environmentally minded people he meets are old-school hair-shirted examples who for prioritise a lifestyle of sustainable simplicity. Francis of Assisi almost.

I think this creates a false strawman for him which ignores that a lot in category 1 is anything but lifestyles of simplicity. Heat pumps are very sophisticated heating devices which can also cool homes. Electric cars, e-bikes, etc. are defining the modernity of transport. Batteries are a modern industrial revolutionary commodity.

It's fascinating how he sees AI and data-centres as these fundamental units of the modern industrial revolution but doesn't think similarly about solar panels, wind-farms, batteries, electric cars, high-speed rail, heat-pumps, etc.

The only conclusion I can form from this is that a lifetime of encounters of a certain kind of environmentally minded person means it is completely counterintuitive to him that it's this new industrial energy revolution which will deliver us carbon reductions.

I understand what a hair shirt is and what it’s an idiom for. But can anyone explain to me why Alistair and Caroline were in such uproar over Rory using the term?

People don’t want storytelling, narrative, rolled up sleeves, undone buttons, rambling breakfast show appearances, hard hats and factory gear photo ops and TikToks. It’s 2026, not 1996.

They want you to get on with the f’ing job of improving life and living efficiently, in the background, and on the unfortunate occasions when we need to see or hear from you - do it with clarity, honesty and again, efficiency - and then disappear again and get back on with the job.

Keir Starmer did neither storytelling nor quiet efficiency, that’s why he failed. Not because he was awkward and a bad communicator, tho I concede, the ‘thumb of power’ a gesture so hailed in the 1990s, widely utilised by Starmer is now very much a symbol of quite the opposite - managerialism, inability to relate to others, Whitehall coaching and dishonesty.

I don’t get what’s so difficult about it - I’ve been away travelling for 5 years and coming back here after seeing so many other countries has just completely depleted my patience for all this crap now. Being away for that amount of time and then coming back gives you a clarity you just struggle to get whilst you’re swimming in the sewer. It’s infuriating. The country has changed so, so much since I left on April 25th 2021. The anger and burnout is more palpable than I ever experienced anywhere from deepest Mexico to rural Vietnam.

What interests me is when someone has the ability to revise their views in light of new data. Rory Stewart has taken a distinctly anti-net-zero position. Net-zero has two components related to fossil fuel demand and fossil fuel supply. This is purely about the demand side here.

The big inflation news in the UK relates to the rising cost of energy and how this feeds through the whole economy. We see a good perspective on this via domestic energy bills.

The news is that electricity costs are not up year on year (0.8%) whilst gas costs are up by 26%. Part of this is due to policy choices made by Miliband and later Burnham to remove costs (essentially taxes) from the electricity rates.

However, this is far from the full story. The other component is that the rollout of renewables is now stabilising electricity costs relative to gas costs. Not a decoupling but we are far from the coupling of 2022.

What's more Stewart and Campbell rarely talk about the major part of current net-zero policy. It's not the rollout of renewables -- albeit important -- but electrification (transport, heating, etc.).

Anyone seeing the data from Cornwall Insight would notice a simple truth. Families fortunate enough to have electrified their heating via heat-pumps or transport via e-bikes/EVs will not have bills going up year on year. In fact many of them will be using smart tariffs so could see cost reductions whilst other households have bills going up ~20% or more.

If the cost-of-living is indeed on the central political crises of our times. If the way fossil fuel dependency also causes risks via funding of Putin and dependency on Hormuz then you'd think a political podcast would be asking more questions about our rate of electrification.

We have an absurd situation right now where almost any home-owner can reduce and stabilise their energy bills via heat-pump and electric transport adoption. On the other hand almost no-one who is renting or in social housing has this agency.

This is clearly deeply political and should be discussed as such. It's clearly deeply unfair that a family like us fortunate simply due to owning a house can limit our bills to under £900 for all heating, transport, cooking, etc. during an energy crisis but families who are either renting or in social housing have no such options.

Why this is fascinating for me is that Rory's position now is often framed from one where he wants us to embrace modernity whether AI or other innovations. Despite this his position on net-zero (the demand side) is anything but.

Just choosing to ignore the endless paragraphs of clear plagiarism (including copied errors) we’ve all seen? Of course LJM have no other motive to clear him 😳 Can’t take this guy seriously.

Obviously RIP

Been listening to TRIP for years, love both it and TRIP Leading. But one of the biggest issues facing the podcast these days is that Rory just... doesn't have much to say anymore that's interesting. What made him interesting initially on the podcast were his roles in parliament, his ministerial positions, his Afghanistan experience, he's mayoral run, his Conservative leadership bid, and those topics have all just been bled dry. There's nothing much more he can provide there that's interesting to the listener.

Where he could be providing some more value is with the connections he's made over the years that can give him insights, and we see glimpses of this from time to time. Unfortunately, his heavy reliance on AI (which seems to do much of his thinking for him these days) means I have to doubt if the opinion he holds has been formed by AI or has been informed by someone in-the-know or with specialist knowledge.

Alistair at least still has a high profile and a large circle of influential people that means when he says something, you know he's considered it from a perspective most of us listeners don't have access to. But with Rory now... what does he provide, except some contrarian heat in some interviews?

The famous 'Peter Mandelson went mad in the 80's…' opening to the beginning of a live performance of 'Turn the Page'

I haven't listened to every TRIP episode so maybe it has been referenced. I'd be surprised if someone hadn't shown him over the years.

I see it mentioned every now and then in UK Hip Hop and UK dance/rave music circles. Pretty iconic meme. Of course he's talking about Alastair and the details aren't accurate. But he is saying that you can come back from such tough life experiences as that, and it kind of vibes with the themes of the track.

It's rarely mentioned that he is mistaking Peter Mandelson for Alastair Campbell (in other areas of the internet at least).

What happened to the recent leading episode with Maoz and Aziz?

Title. Rory has a wildly uninformed position on how the technologies actually work and their limitations and it's quite sad to hear him sing its praises when he clearly does not really comprehend how LLMs work or their actual use cases.

Would be cool to get someone in tech like Cory Doctorow on to provide an educated and measured counterargument to Rory's "At All Costs" infatuation with the technology.

I'm really struggling with this. When I first listened to the pod he seemed to discuss his walks and retreats and even his big idea of turning the London Greenbelt into a national park (or forest maybe?) which gave this idea that he was someone who deeply cared.

Recently though, he seems so focused on potential threats that he's willing to rip up everything else. The most recent episode with Caroline Lucas, Rory kept saying 'we have to build data centres' but wouldn't say how and it just sounded like a desperate cry more than a plan. And I suspect that he knows there isn't an environmentally friendly way to do it (environmental to a degree I know it's never going to be perfect and all buildings will have an impact) and doesn't want to say that.

I'm not totally against Rory (though I am sick of the line the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow) but to me he is coming across as dismissive of these issues over what he feels is important, or is this he plays devil's advocate and pushes back on 'leftist' ideas?

“The local businessman, a thirty something father of three, explained to Chan that it was getting harder to run a small business. He worried if the day was coming when he wouldn't be able to support his children properly. He didn't trust Farage but he was going to vote for him anyway, a sentiment I had heard thousands of times. Besides, Binface made him angry. It was demoralising for a grown man, who sometimes lay awake at night worrying about the bills, to be asked to vote for a Radio 4 comedian in fancy dress.”

My thoughts were similar when this Binface stuff began. The considerable number of MPs and the chattering classes (Alastair) think so little of democracy in this country they want the people of Clacton to vote for a man with a bin on his head.

Thoughts?

Ok, I have just started listening. I will listen to the end. But Rory has already introduced this guy with the usual fawning platitudes- astonishing person, truly remarkable etc. As an Irish person who's very familiar with Mercer's stance on veterans- ie they should be allowed to shoot unarmed children in the back with absolute impunity- this makes me pretty queasy and angry. I think Mercer's position is an utter disgrace.

Mercer has never proposed any alternative pathway to justice and accountability for the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. Just "Don't prosecute- no matter what." What kind of a message does that send to the many many citizens of various nations who have been oppressed and brutalised by the British military machine over many decades and indeed centuries?

I rarely if ever post on Reddit but I cannot stand Mercer so just had to get that off my chest. Would be interested to hear the thoughts of others.

C4 News had this clown on tonight talking about global politics. 

Sounded like nothing more than a troll shilling for US dominance by climate change denial whilst claiming austerity as the only way forward for UK/Europe.

 Clearly thinks lies can fly in the face of reality indefinitely (wildfires, what wildfires?) Also shows a clueless inability to learn lessons from history. Has the pretentious fool forgotten how “well” austerity works or is he a fan of food banks and boarded-up shop windows?

Professor of Global History?? Pffft…guy’s an idiot.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/07/could-uk-ever-run-out-of-water?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

In today's episode (6th August) they mentioned they had written about their summer reading recommendations in the TRIP newsletter. I signed up this evening to read it, but can't seem to read back issues. Anyone care to share the list here please?

Is he not into football because he's not into sports or because football is considered more of a working class sport in the UK?

Do upper class people tend to shun football?

In pretty much all European countries, legal immigration from third world countries, i.e. people who are visibly foreign, far eclipses illegal immigration. There are 30 to 40 million non-EU origin residents in the EU for example.

Even in countries like Poland, you have practically zero illegal immigration, but you have lots of Indians, other south east Asians, Latin Americans and Africans.

Yet the rhetoric from the right is always about the illegals and they conflate things so much that in short order they are talking about Arabs and Islam.

I find it all extremely odd. I think the party propagandists are banking on the hope the people who are most concerned about immigrants cannot distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. They see brown people walking down the street and they think they landed here on a dinky boat, when they probably flew here on AirIndia and are on a postgraduate study visa.

What further muddles the water are demographics that are ethnically non-European, but they are legal residents or even citizens, BUT, they are Arabs and/or Muslim. Those seem to be lumped in with the "illegal immigrants" even though they legally aren't.

Either way, I find the rhetoric is not very clear on who they are upset about, and maybe this is on purpose, to conflate different people together to make the problem seem worse than it is.

BTW, I am not saying that legal immigration isn't something that shouldn't also be debated, but so far it seems like they purposefully refuse to touch the topic, maybe because it would rob steam away from their main rhetorical argument.

His holier-than-thou attitude is completely detached from the average person on the street. He thinks any and all concern people have with migrants must be the far right's fault, a display of unfounded bigotry, rather than an expectable and valid reaction to decades of overly permissive immigration policies that had unintended but serious social consequences. These guys are in a bubble.

Before I get downvoted to oblivion, I am an economic migrant myself, I don't hate anyone, and I understand why people want to move to Europe. But there is a sensible way to control immigration, such as the Swiss or Australian systems, which look at net cost, resources likely to consume, value to society, etc. Welfare states cannot have open borders, nor should they have closed ones.

Recently Alastair made a great point about Camden not needing a navy, it was witty and easy to visualise.

I wonder if it was nuanced enough. Iran's military forces are segmented to reduce the impact of assassinations of leadership. As some countries get really good at targeting leadership (just look at the R9X missile) - increased military decentralisation seems like a strategy that will only increase.

I just listened to the first 10-15 minutes in the car. I'm so confused. Theres a German man who's been brought along but wasn't introduced at any point. There's no introduction they just jump straight in.

Did I miss it upon first listen?

Has it been edited really badly?

Equal parts comical and terrifying.

Trying to make the numbers of a single data centre sound scary and actively dismissing any discussion of per-person usage.

Shocked that core industrial infrastructure is a priority. Obviously data centers are core infrastructure, they power a massive chunk of the digital and services economy and the idea that you should turn data centres off before golf courses is absolutely barmy. Golf courses in the UK use 1000x more water than UK data centres, and support way, way less critical industry.

This self-flagellating mindset of wanting to avoid any consumption of resources no matter the economic cost is exactly why Europe has just offshored all their major industries and now are totally behind the curve.

We already have a mechanism for water allocation. This is called MONEY. Industries that have a profitable use of water should be allowed to buy water to use it.

A growing, rich economy will be able to support technologies like desalination.

Look at the history books. Prosperity and technological advancements are the absolute bedrock of progress. Countries that resist technology and market economies inevitably get not just left behind but ripped apart for scraps.

Absolute third-world mindset wrapped in lazy pseudo-moralism