The Rest Is Politics — Off the Record at Southbank Centre
Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart go off the record at the Southbank Centre — a candid live conversation about British and global politics without the constraints of the regular format.
Why we picked this
The 'Off the Record' format strips away the regular episode structure and lets Campbell and Stewart say what they actually think without the implicit constraint of a mass audience — which consistently produces the most interesting version of a conversation that is already unusually frank.
Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart come from opposite ends of British politics. Campbell was the architect of New Labour’s communications strategy under Tony Blair; Stewart was a Conservative minister with one of the most unexpected political careers of the last two decades, from district administrator in post-invasion Iraq to near-contender for Tory leader. Their podcast The Rest Is Politics works precisely because of that gap: two people who genuinely disagree on fundamentals trying to make sense of a political landscape neither fully recognizes anymore.
The “Off the Record” format takes that dynamic and removes the remaining guardrails — a live event designed for more candid conversation than a recorded episode typically permits, where the audience can push the discussion toward whatever is actually on people’s minds. Given the state of British politics heading into late 2026, the material will not be hard to find.
This takes place on the final day of the Southbank’s weekend of Rest Is Network live events — a closing session that, in previous years, has produced some of the most quotable moments of the entire weekend.