Right, welcome to another episode of The Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

And me, Rory Stewart.

And Rory, there's a great question from John Devine for you.

What killer question would you have asked the Tory leadership candidate who've been talking about the need for greater honesty and integrity in politics?

So I would say, John, that the key thing is what hard truth are you prepared to say to the conservative party?

So I would want them to say, look, we are making a complete mess in Northern Ireland.

This fantasy that we can have total free trade deals with the world and no border in the Irish Sea is nonsense.

I'd want them to point out that we cannot be selling that's right tax cutting measures at a moment when our debt and deficit is twice as high as it was when Margaret Thatcher was running things.

And I'm not seeing them demonstrating their honesty and integrity by saying uncomfortable things.

And also, they're sort of trying to distance themselves from Boris Johnson was at the same time not really calling out just how bad things have been.

And the other thing I think the public find a bit nauseating.

They will tell each other how marvellous they are all the time.

They talk about what a great set of colleagues and this is the conservative party at its best.

If this is the conservative party at its best, Rory, I'd be quite confident if I was Keir Starmer right now.

But it's also very interesting, isn't it? If you think about it, the two candidates on that stage who would be more traditional, far in section, Chancellor.

But it's very interesting that the party has changed so much that three of the other candidates are not cabinet ministers.

Whereas in the debate in 2019, everybody was a cabinet minister.

Yeah.

So it's something's changing in the way that politics works.

I mean, we've been very interested in this question of Kimmy Badenock and her coming through.

And I think she does have, I mean, she holds herself well on stage.

She clearly is very self-confident.

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