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Welcome to the rest of this politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alastair Campbell. And our guest today is somebody who for quite a long time now, several decades, has had a pretty good view on some of the most significant political and diplomatic events in the world.

I first met Tom Fletcher when he was a young diplomat during Tony Blair's time as Prime

Minister. He went on to become the main foreign policy advisor to both Gordon Brown and then David

Cameron, both of whom are on record about saying how much they valued his advice. And then still in his 30s, he became an ambassador to

Lebanon. He's an author of fiction and nonfiction. He's something of an innovator in ideas about

what diplomacy should be in the modern age. He's also run in Oxford College. But a few months ago,

he was kind of tapped up and pulled out of his

semi-retirement and urged to go back into diplomacy. So he's now the United Nations

under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. And he's

joining us today from Ukraine. So Tom, thank you very much indeed for being here.

Thank you, Alistair, and hi, Rory, too. It's great to be on. I'm an avid listener to the show,

and it's good to join you from Keev. So, Tom, you have had this extraordinary job in the United Nations

and charge of all humanitarian affairs for just six weeks. So it'd be amazing

to just give us a sense of how you approach the first six weeks in the job and what you've

done since you've taken over. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredibly daunting job. And I wanted to get

out in the field straight away. So spent much of the first period in Sudan. I was there for a week

or so, basically trying to blast through

the borders, checkpoints that are blocking out aid delivery and our life-saving work. So particularly

...