What comes after a career in politics? In Britain: a podcast.

A week after Russia invaded Ukraine, in March 2022, a host of the British podcast presented “The rest is politicalexplained what it was like to be in a room with President Vladimir V. Putin.

Alastair Campbell, director of communications and strategy in Tony Blair’s Labor government, said that when he first met the Russian president in 1999 he was “almost timid, very slight, very small, quite quiet”. But Putin’s aggression increased over time, Campbell said on the podcast, and at a 2003 dinner the president had berated Blair. Putin didn’t say the British prime minister was George W. Bush’s poodle, “but he wasn’t far from it,” Campbell recalled.

This discussion, which opened the show’s first episode, revealed a key appeal of “The Rest Is Politics”: the hosts’ political resumes. Campbell and his co-host Rory Stewart, a former Conservative MP, use their time in government to explore the issues of the day under the unofficial banner of ‘disagreeing’.

The emphasis on civility and the show’s centrist tendencies have made ‘The Rest Is Politics’ one of the most popular podcasts in Britain over the past two years. In the glow of that success, other former politicians have followed suit, with podcasts joining forces from across the aisle at a time when many believe the country’s politics are overly polarized.

Jack Davenport, the director of Goalhanger, the production company behind “The Rest Is Politics,” said that “people are craving reasonable voices who have clearly thought deeply about these issues and have the space to express those thoughts in a measured way. This feels especially “refreshing for those of us used to doomscrolling on Twitter,” he added.

In early 2022, a Goalhanger executive suggested Campbell co-host a podcast with a conservative politician. “I don’t really like the Tories,” Campbell said, using a colloquial name for Conservatives, “and I’ve left politics behind.” But after coming up with the idea, he collected suggestions for co-hosts on Instagram Live; Stewart’s name kept coming up.

Stewart had lost a Conservative Party leadership race to Boris Johnson in 2019 and later dropped out of a contest to unseat the mayor of London, Labor politician Sadiq Khan. He is also a former diplomat, known for his critically acclaimed 2006 book, ‘The Places In Between’, in which he charts a journey through Afghanistan.

When it launched, the show’s audience grew rapidly. In its first year, “The Rest Is Politics” seemed “more of a movement than a podcast,” Davenport said.

According to Goalhanger, the podcast now averages 600,000 downloads per episode. And Campbell and Stewart host a spin-off interview podcast called “Leading”, where guests included Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates.

In October, the hosts will travel across Britain for a live tour that includes a date at the O2 Arena in London, usually hosting artists such as Olivia Rodrigo and the Jonas Brothers. According to Goalhanger, sixty percent of the 33,000 tickets for the tour were sold in three weeks.

It’s no wonder that similar podcasts are trying to replicate the magic. Peter Mandelson, a former Labor minister, presents “How to win an election” alongside a former Liberal Democrat policy advisor and a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

“Electoral dysfunction”, featuring Labor MP Jess Phillips, Ruth Davidson, a former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, and journalist Beth Rigby, launched earlier this month, bucking the trend of such podcasts being hosted by white men.

Then there is “Political currency”, presented by Ed Balls – a former Labor Cabinet minister – and George Osborne, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer under Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, and the current chairman of the British Museum.

For years, before Balls lost his seat in Parliament in 2015, so were Balls and Osborne contemporaries and rivals in parliament – at one point both led their parties’ economic policies. Co-hosting the podcast feels different than it did back then, Balls said — but “it’s not the same as being soulmates or ideological bedfellows.”

Some listeners might see these politicians-turned-podcast hosts as prime examples of the “centrist father”: a middle-aged British moderate who worries, perhaps smugly, about the brokenness of politics in the shadow of the Brexit referendum. . (Balls plays in a band called Centrist father.)

Other listeners may feel resentment towards the hosts. Osborne’s legacy is linked to the government budget cuts or austerity policies he implemented in the 2010s. Some commentators have seen his new hosting gig as an attempt to renew his reputation.

The same accusation has been made against Campbell, who worked with Blair in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before the podcast, his public image was influenced by Armando Iannucci’s BBC satire ‘The Thick of It’, in which the character from Malcolm Tucker, an aggressive government communications director, was partly inspired by Campbell.

“There are people who will say, I’m doing it to give myself a softer, cuddlier image, and that’s really not the case,” Campbell said. By being able to speak directly to an audience without media intervention, “you remove the filters that normally prevent people from seeing who and what you are,” he said.

That ability to speak directly to listeners is also what attracted Phillips, a sitting lawmaker, to host “Electoral Dysfunction,” she said. “For me, the podcast format is one that I think has the best chance of delivering political nuance,” she added.

With a general election looming this year, politicians who lose their seats or decide not to run for office again will be looking for their next professional act. In Britain, it seems podcasting is a low-investment, high-reward proposition. (If they’re interested in producing more partisan content, right-wing TV network GB News has employed politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage.)

But Balls has some guidelines for those considering getting behind the podcast microphone. “I wouldn’t recommend anyone to start doing it right away,” he said. “I think you need some distance,” he added. “Maybe you should write a good memoir or a bad memoir first.”