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- [00:00]
Dr. Marion Messmer
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first.
- [00:02]
Martina Mondadori
Broadcast on 10th February 2026 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:07]
Andrew Muller
Has the UK's Prime Minister survived his keer death experience? Should we be braced for a renewed nuclear arms race? And why the most difficult part of winning a Winter Olympic medal may be keeping it attached. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Marion Messmer and Phil Tinline will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll have another excerpt from Monocle in Monocle's pop up show in the Winter Olympic City. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Dr. Marion Mesmer, Director of the International Security Program at Chatham House, and by Phil Tinline, journalist, documentary maker and author, most recently of Ghosts of Iron Mountain. Hello to you both.
- [01:15]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Hello.
- [01:16]
Andrew Muller
Hello, Marion. You join us more or less directly from Beijing. What were you up to there?
- [01:22]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I was there for an expert dialogue on space security and strategic stability, which is quite relevant, you know, in the week where the last arms control agreement between Russia and the United States expired.
- [01:34]
Andrew Muller
Which we will be discussing later in the show. And having been recently to China, is also pertinent to one of our other stories, which I will foreshadow by asking you while you were there, were you spied on?
- [01:46]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I mean, not as evidently or obviously as I heard from some other colleagues who visited China, you know, 10, 15 years ago. But I was thinking that given the number of apps you need to log into and sign up to in order to do just about anything, there must be a pretty good level of digital surveillance. So I think you no longer really need the people following your. The government can just kind of trace.
- [02:10]
Andrew Muller
You digitally or you could infer a compliment that they had the good people following you around this time, so you didn't even notice. Phil, you have also been discussing, though not in China, another subject which we will be coming to quite shortly, which is the difficulty of actually governing anywhere at all anymore.
- [02:28]
Phil Tinline
Yes. I was launching a report that I've written with the encouraging and fun title of Power Failure. It's not about electricity, but it is kind of about how nothing works and how government has become incredibly difficult and why and what might be done to tackle it. So we did a panel in front of about 150 people Nesta on the north bank of the Thames. And yeah, it's led to some very interesting conversations.
- [02:50]
Andrew Muller
Where can this report be read?
- [02:52]
Phil Tinline
It can be read on the Internet, formerly the Influence.
- [02:55]
Andrew Muller
Can you narrow it down a little bit?
- [02:57]
Phil Tinline
Can I narrow it down? If you put tin line power failure in, you'll probably get something quite interesting and the report. But Future Governance Forum is the name of the think tank for which I wrote it. That is the other key to find it.
- [03:08]
Andrew Muller
Well, we will start here in the United Kingdom, the more excitable factions of whose political media are freely using, in reference to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the portentous adjectives embattled and beleaguered, though opinion divides on which is worse. And the atmosphere in Westminster has been solemnly described as febrile. Feel like we should have some reverb and a thunderclap on that. Maybe next time. Starmer was already struggling for public affection prior to revelations that he had knowingly sent to Washington D.C. as ambassador, a friend of the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. As of this broadcast, however, none of the Prime Minister's colleagues appear keen to take their shot. Phil, on domestic politics, we did see yesterday the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sawa rather grandly declaring that he thought Starmer should resign. Do you get the impression he was rather expecting more people to join in the chorus? I do.
- [04:06]
Phil Tinline
There was some slightly unkind comments this morning that there are one or two people of Scottish extraction, senior in the government, who might have dropped him. A quick text to let him know no one was coming in behind him. And it's very reminiscent, as people have been pointing out, of the resignation of James Purnell in 2009 from Gordon Brown.
- [04:23]
Andrew Muller
Who can forget?
- [04:24]
Phil Tinline
Well, indeed, yeah. Well, he was my. He was my boss's boss's boss, having left the Cabinet. But that was at the BBC. But no, when Purnell resigned in 2009, at least for those of us boring enough to spend all our time thinking about this stuff, Gordon Brown, for a moment, like he was teetering, but nobody went in behind him. And of course, one of the people who held that government together, as it continued from there on, was Swan Peter Mandelson.
- [04:46]
Andrew Muller
Well, indeed so, I mean, Marion, as far as it's possible to tell, and I do keep nervously checking the headlines, as of this broadcast, Starmer remains Prime Minister. Does he appear to have ridden this out? Because we did see the grand announcement from Sarwa yesterday and as Phil was confirming, a somewhat well, embarrassed silence subsequently.
- [05:10]
Dr. Marion Messmer
He seems very reluctant to go. And one of the challenges, I think is that there's also not an obvious person who would replace him. And so I can understand why others in the Labour Party are not keen to push him out, because I think there's the obvious question as for who would come next and what that would mean for the government and for the party. And so I think they're essentially looking at this huge challenge where they might not really have a better option. But also, things have not exactly gone great. I mean, as you mentioned, they're not very popular at the moment. So I'd be very interested to see what's next in terms of the big strategy for winning back voters, but also in terms of actually figuring out what the future of labor leadership is going to look like.
- [06:01]
Andrew Muller
I mean, Phil, is he possibly protected by the fact that people who want to lead the Labour Party, and there's never any shortage of those, maybe are thinking, I don't really want to lead it right now. There is local elections coming up, which are always carnage for the incumbent national government. There's one extremely tricky by election. There's a war in Europe. There is the United States having a nervous breakdown and an incredibly unhappy British public. I mean, if you were a potential contender, you might well be thinking, I will, at the risk of mixing metaphors, keep my powder dry, and then maybe think about bundling him down the stairs three years from now.
- [06:40]
Phil Tinline
Well, you might, but I think, you know, there's, if you want to be Prime Minister, attached to that implicitly is. And deal with things like all the things you've just listed. I mean, wanting to be Prime Minister in a fair wind in the middle of the 1990s or the 1950s, when the economy is growing happily and there's not much going on.
- [06:56]
Andrew Muller
It does sound like fun, in fact.
- [06:57]
Phil Tinline
Right. But it's not going to be on the table for a good while yet. So, I mean, somebody compared it the other day to being in the World Cup Final and having a chance to score a goal and thinking, this is not quite optimal. I'll wait for next time, you know, and actually, to go back to. Not to spend the entire program on the Labour Party in 2009, but the person who didn't run at that point, David Miliband, lost his chance.
- [07:16]
Andrew Muller
Well, indeed. So, Marion, speaking on behalf of the entire rest of the world, how is this perceived from outside? I mean, if you look at what's going on now from Europe, is Starmer actually reasonably highly regarded as an international player?
- [07:32]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I think he sort of is. I mean, he has done a lot that has resonated really well in the rest of Europe. His support for Ukraine, his careful navigation of the transatlantic relationship, you know, trying to position the UK as some sort of a bridge between the rest of Europe and the US, the UK's leadership in NATO, all of these kind of points, you know, the sort of improvement of the relationship with the eu, all of these points are seen as really positive in the rest of Europe. And I think he has pretty decent relationships with other major European leaders. So in that sense, I think especially because of the growth of reform and all the other challenges that the UK is facing, other European leaders are probably looking at this moment with some amount of nervousness and trepidation, just because it's not really in anyone's interest, the UK or the rest of Europe, to have a Britain that's seen as unstable or that has unstable leadership.
- [08:32]
Andrew Muller
Phil, the question that goes to, I guess that paper you were mentioning earlier about power failure. Is it actually possible anymore for any broadly moderate Prime Minister to govern effectively anywhere? And I cannot remember who spotted it. It was something I read this week, but I thought it was an interesting observation. Since the iPhone was introduced in 2007, the United Kingdom has had seven prime ministers. It had seven in the 42 years before that. Well, indeed.
- [09:00]
Phil Tinline
And I've actually just been writing another paper about social media and democracy, which I'll tell you if you invite me back on again about next time. But suffice to say the like button is created about three months after the financial crash and the retweet a year after. So, yeah, it's clearly been discombobulatory. But you know, you have to work in the world you're actually in. I mean, I think the trick to this is to learn from populists the things that you can do as a centre left or centre right politician that you can take as techniques and tactics and use those effectively against the people you've nicked them from. If you think about fdr, Franklin Roosevelt in the States, he is a very centrist politician, but you look at the speech he gives on Halloween 1936, three days before he wins the second biggest majority of any or the second biggest election result of any president in the 20th century. And he says, he lists his enemies and says, I welcome their hatred. You could not get more populist in rhetoric, but what he's actually doing is warding off the extremes. So I think you have to learn from that, to have a really confident approach based on principle and then identify, identify your enemies and fight them, but do it in a way that works for centre left, centre right politics. It's perfectly possible. I'm not sure Starmer's the man to death.
- [10:11]
Andrew Muller
Well, that's a partial answer to a quick follow up question which is do you need to be a particular kind of person to do that, even as a moderate? Because the whole pitch, implicit pitch of Keir Starmer after this decade or so of ludicrous chaos was that you can just sort of have him on in the background and you'll barely notice he's there.
- [10:32]
Phil Tinline
Yes, unfortunately that was the pitch and it hasn't quite worked. Partly actually, because they haven't done the things that they promised to do, like not u turning now. I think the irony here, which he missed is if you look at what he said when he came in at the beginning, he said he wasn't going to govern with dogma, he wasn't going to have Starmerism, he was going to govern stably. I think actually to have stability in this kind of absolute blizzard of a world, you have to have ideology to have stability. Because if you do that, the civil service knows what you're after and they can make decisions for you. You can get things done f business will come in behind you if they're confident they know where you're going. So actually ideology and stability are not opposites. They're the same thing.
- [11:11]
Andrew Muller
Well, moving along to the cheerful prospect of the resumption of nuclear testing by the world superpowers, as we discussed last week, February 5 saw the expiration of the New Start Treaty signed by the United States and Russia back in 2010, which restricted the nuclear arsenals of both countries to sufficient warheads to extinguish human civilization just seven or eight or so times over. Optimists suggested that both countries might agree to informally roll it over until a new treaty could be drafted. But these are inhospitable times for optimists. Other plausible reports suggest that the US wishes to deploy more nuclear weapons and perhaps for the first time since 1992. Let one off, Marion. Which of those seems more likely? That the US and Russia will just sort of informally agree not to deploy any more stuff, or that the US under Donald Trump of all people will charge full steam ahead?
- [12:06]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I mean, there are unfortunately both possibilities in the sense that the limits in the New START Treaty are for very specific systems. And one of the arguments that the Trump administration has put forward is that the New START Treaty was no longer relevant because those systems are not everything that's on the table. And so one of the items that they pointed to specifically is that Russia has been developing novel nuclear weapons in the meantime that wouldn't be governed by this treaty. And so one of the things that they might want to be doing is essentially develop new systems themselves. And I think this is also where testing comes in, in the sense that the United States has conducted the most nuclear weapons states, most nuclear weapon tests out of all the nuclear weapon states. And so on that basis has so far very confidently used synthetic modeling to essentially ensure that the warheads that they have developed since were seen as safe. But if they wanted to really double down on developing new capabilities, they might also think that they actually need to test. The big caveat there is that that would actually play into the hands of China and Russia much more, because both Russia and China have tested a lot less, and China being the sort of newest nuclear weapon state in that club of three, having tested the least number of nuclear weapons. So in other words, their testing data or their data set is actually much smaller and therefore probably less reliable than that of the other states.
- [13:42]
Andrew Muller
Phil, whether or not there is any scientific or strategic purpose to conducting another nuclear test, if you are the United States, we do have to adjust this for the Donald Trump factor. This would be a spectacle, a sensation, and a headline which you can imagine appealing richly to him up to the extent, possibly, of building some sort of grandstand and trying to sell tickets.
- [14:05]
Phil Tinline
Yes, absolutely. I mean, I'm strongly trying to resist any reference to phallic imagery, but given the way he conducts his government, it can be quite difficult. No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, there's something about Trump's personality and Trump's psychology which is just fundamentally antithetical to treaties. The whole idea, he thinks, in zero sum terms, any gain for me is a loss for you. And so on that basis, the sorts of things that they're saying, this imposes unilateral harms or restrictions on the United States, it feels like it comes from that. Now, there is some truth, as you were just saying, that there are newer weapons the Chinese and the Russians have developed to which this treaty doesn't apply. So it does feel like they're being restricted in a way that may be unfair, but it fits so well with his way of doing things that I don't think he's going to get much credit for that.
- [14:48]
Andrew Muller
Marion, Russia is talking about replacing Newstart, but it also wants to include the UK and France. Is there a particular reason for that, or is that Russia just willfully suggesting we must do this thing, which is obviously going to create so many insuperable obstacles that the thing can never actually be done.
- [15:06]
Dr. Marion Messmer
So I think this is actually a response to a demand that the Trump administration has been making ever since the first Trump term in office, which is that they have been saying that they would not want to engage in negotiations with just Russia, but they also wanted to include China. And so Russia's response to that has been, okay, well, if China is also included, then the UK And France should also be included because they are allies of the US and NATO. So essentially, counting all of the three nuclear arsenals together, the biggest problem here, I think, really, is that those five arsenals are so different that you can't really negotiate on those terms. I mean, the UK does not really have nuclear numbers that would allow for any further reductions. France has similar numbers. And China's argument, to be honest, fairly, reasonably, has been that even with their increases, they are still pretty far away from reaching parity with the US And Russia, and therefore they think that the US And Russia ought to actually reduce the numbers of their nuclear weapons further. So that's a pretty blocked picture that you might be able to find your way through if you focus on specific capabilities. The Trump administration has mentioned they're really interested in negotiating something around tactical nuclear weapons, which Russia has really been investing in, and the US doesn't have so many of. But unless you're able to find a specific capability where you can agree that actually this is something that you might be able to limit, you're not going to be able to get anywhere, because those five states have very different arsenals, very different priorities, and are not going to be able to figure out how to come up with a treaty that addresses all of their security needs?
- [16:50]
Andrew Muller
Phil, are any of these calculuses changed by the recent UK France nuclear agreement, which is ambiguously constructed as nuclear deterrence doctrines probably have to be. But the vague suggestion at least, is that if you mess with ice, either one of us, or indeed our allies, you mess with both of us.
- [17:10]
Phil Tinline
Well, I mean, given what Mariam was just saying about the kind of titchy size of the British and French deterrence, then I suspect that's rather minor consideration. What's more interesting about that deal really is it's another sign, obviously, as we're all watching, of Europe trying to process how to deal with the retreat of the US But I'm not sure it makes a huge difference to the calculus. But I'll defer to Mario on that.
- [17:33]
Andrew Muller
Well, to the realm of cloak and dagger and to escalating Warnings from various official sources across Europe that we should all be keeping a more diligent eye out for men in trench coats, in hotel lobbies, reading newspapers with eye holes cut out of them. Sources that start revolving when anybody speaks, that kind of thing. In recent weeks, Germany has pretended to be shocked, appalled, etc. That a Russian with diplomatic status turned out to be some sort of spook and slung them out and warned of the scheming of Iranians. France has felt the colum of two Chinese nationals who appeared to be trying to intercept satellite communications from an Airbnb in Gironde. They'll knock a star off their review for that. And the UK's domestic intelligence service MI5 has briefed the vice chancellors of 70 universities on Chinese efforts to co opt their curriculums. Phil, these are all dog bites man stories, aren't they? I mean, it would be more surprising if none of this was happening.
- [18:29]
Phil Tinline
Well, yes, obviously, but I, I mean the thing that strikes me most about it, I mean, perhaps this is me being parochial, but the talk of Chinese officials, agents, representatives, however you want to put it, phoning up people from British universities and trying to bully them over the phone, now that does seem relatively unusual. The idea that the military attache and the Russian embassy is a spy. I mean, yeah, absolutely, dog bites dog. But the idea that the Chinese state effectively thinks it's okay to start doing that, I think is extraordinary. I mean, my feeling about that is, in policy terms is that it points to just quite how dependent British universities have become on Chinese students. And it's yet another reason why our collapsing university sector needs absolutely urgent attention. We cannot be in a position where we are dependent, so dependent on Chinese money that we have university management telling academics they can't do research. I'm sorry, but that is a red line.
- [19:26]
Andrew Muller
But to follow that up, do we infer from this that the Chinese are not reading the Daily Telegraph, which would obviously tell them that British universities are already full of communists?
- [19:36]
Phil Tinline
Well, maybe they do read the Daily Telegraph and perhaps if they do, then that will muddy their intelligence sufficiently to help us.
- [19:42]
Andrew Muller
Do we assume, hope, Marion, that the same sort of thing is going on in the other direction that there are, I mean, I don't know, French spies trying to intercept Chinese satellites from an Airbnb in Guangzhou, or German spies committing various amounts of mayhem in Russia and Iran?
- [20:00]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I'm sure there is, you know, countere espionage going on. I mean, none of these activities ever really after the end of the Cold War anyway. But this intensification is also not that New I think, I mean every while every country engages in espionage in some way or another, everyone has a slightly different flavor of what they use. So whether they rely on human intelligence, whether they are more into using technology for espionage, but there will undoubtedly be similar efforts going on in the other direction.
- [20:34]
Andrew Muller
See Phil, in contrast to Marion's revelations that obviously she is followed around China by the, the absolute elite of their intelligence services, so discreet that she doesn't know they're there, the only times I've ever been followed around on foreign assignment have have been by the, you know, I think the pertinent bureau's resident Inspector Cluzo. They've been, they've been quite, I think I get sent the guy that everyone just wants to get out of the office for a few days. Are you aware of ever having been followed, approached, tapped up, inveigled by some or other sort of spook?
- [21:08]
Phil Tinline
No. I mean I've been to Russia once, in China twice, so they haven't had that many opportunities. Ethiopia once as well under a Marxist regime, but I'm not sure they had the staff. But I did notice a story the other day about a couple or a guy who as part of a couple was horrified to find when he was logging onto a particular porn site, footage of himself and his partner filmed in a Chinese hotel. This is apparently an industrial level activity. BBC News investigated it to the point of actually finding a camera and watching what happened to the reaction online as it was turned off. So I think the bottom line from this is don't do anything you wouldn't want to see on the Internet in a Chinese hotel room.
- [21:44]
Andrew Muller
I'm not even sure that was Chinese intelligence services that.
- [21:47]
Phil Tinline
No, no, no. That may have just been cameras in Chinese headphones.
- [21:51]
Andrew Muller
That just may have been private enterprise. I mean, what about you Marion? When you are appearing at some sort of conference, for example, on space technology in somewhere like Beijing of all places, you've got to wonder about some of the delegates. Sure, surely.
- [22:06]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I mean Chinese experts are known to be very close with the government in some way or another. Right. Like if not only because they work for essentially state affiliated think tanks, but I think you just have to take that into account. So you know that on certain topics you just won't be able to have frank discussion. But then on other topics, you know, it's similar to expert communities here in the sense that people disagree with each other and you can discuss things. So the discussions that I was a part of were essentially designed to be focusing on perhaps more technical aspects or at least less politically sensitive aspects so that you can actually get to a good conversation. But you're obviously not going to talk about, I don't know, like the future of Taiwan or something like that, because that's not going to lead to anything.
- [22:55]
Andrew Muller
Well, to Milan now and to the Winter Olympics where the shine is being rather taken off the triumphs of gold, silver and bronze winners thus far by the fact that the actual medals have proved to be somewhat rubbish. Specifically, there appears to be a thing with whatever you call the bit that connects the medals to their ribbons, leading to repeated incidences of detachment and raising the very real risk that a runaway medal rolling freely could precipitate an admittedly unlikely sequence of events culminating perhaps in the end of the world. You never know. Better safe than sorry. Organizers claim to have spotted the problem and are promising restitution. Phil, I have looked into this. It is apparently a safety feature which presents. Prevents rather people from choking should they get their medals caught in a fridge door or something. I don't know.
- [23:43]
Phil Tinline
So what I guess I need to do here is extrapolate from that a lesson about the excesses of health and safety culture as against the glory and the pre health and safety culture.
- [23:55]
Andrew Muller
I mean it would be, it would in fairness be embarrassing if an Olympic medalist did choke themselves to death after getting their medal caught in a fridge door or similar.
- [24:03]
Phil Tinline
That would undoubtedly be more embarrassing. It seems not over optimistic to think that we could get people through the Olympics both with their medals intact and still alive.
- [24:12]
Andrew Muller
Should they have tested these? I'm thinking at this point, admittedly hindsight, 2020 etc. Marion, by having people wear them and then jump up and down on a platform.
- [24:22]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Well, I don't know. I mean, given that I think this is the first time that this has happened, it can't be that difficult to make medals. So I'm more wondering what went on there.
- [24:32]
Andrew Muller
You say that, but there has, there's also been a thing with the medals distributed at the last Summer Olympics in Paris. They have had hundreds of requests for replacement med due to tarnishing and chipping. I'm just wondering, is there a case maybe for Olympics organisers to say look, look after it. It's your problem at this point.
- [24:52]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Well, it's also a bit sad, isn't it? I mean it's this huge achievement. You are literally the best in the world at your certain sport, in your discipline and then you get a gold medal for it, or silver or bronze, you know, all good medals and then it breaks. I don't know like that's. I would be really sad if that happened.
- [25:13]
Andrew Muller
I mean, Phil, if you won an Olympic medal, and to be honest, I don't know that you haven't, where would you keep it?
- [25:20]
Phil Tinline
Well, I wouldn't wear it and continually jump up and down until it broke, I suppose. But see, the thing is, I would keep it in the most prominent place in my house. I could justifiably pretend wasn't prominent.
- [25:29]
Andrew Muller
Yeah, I think I'd be up to.
- [25:31]
Phil Tinline
The big neon arrow next.
- [25:34]
Andrew Muller
I have asked two actual Olympic medalists this variety of questions, which, full disclosure.
- [25:39]
Phil Tinline
I am not amongst, I should say.
- [25:40]
Andrew Muller
Okay, well, one was Sir Steve Redgrave, who unfortunately turned out to be a man without. Without much sense of humor, who I did ask, if ever when you're just at home by yourself, do you ever just like put them all on at once and walk around the house? Because I'm pretty sure I would. In fact, I think I'd wear them to the shops. Also on the shows we did from Paris during those Summer Games, we did speak to the Australian swimmer Kate Campbell, who I think has eight medals of memory, sirs, four of them gold. She said she keeps them in a sock drawer, but each one in its own sock, which, because you kind of expect, don't you, Marion, that people would have them in, I don't know, a safe or somewhere special. But it's just a whole logistical thing that most of us will never have to think about.
- [26:23]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Yeah, I mean, I can't say that I've given it much thought before the show. A safe would make sense. Or displaying them. You know, I mean, if you have somewhere in your house where you display other things. I think it could go on a shelf with some family photos, something like that.
- [26:39]
Phil Tinline
So don't tell radio presenters where they are.
- [26:42]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Yeah, exactly.
- [26:42]
Andrew Muller
Don't announce in public where I have hidden this obviously quite valuable thing. I do want to ask you both in closing because we are just about to go to a bit from our Olympic adjacent pop up show in Milan. Ask you first, Phil, have you been gripped by the Winter Olympics? Are you a big fan? Have you suddenly got massively into, I don't know, the moguls or that weird thing where they, they ski for a bit and then shoot for a bit.
- [27:08]
Phil Tinline
I don't know what the moguls are in this context. I'm so sorry. I have paid absolutely no hills. I did not even go to the Olympics when it was in London. I am complete washout on this. I'm so sorry, I'm just at My desk.
- [27:22]
Andrew Muller
Marion, you do come from a country which has a proud Winter Olympic heritage, somewhat more upscale than, for example, Eddie the Eagle. Have you been tuning in?
- [27:31]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Not this year. I'm sure my dad is glued to the tv. The only bit that I've seen so far is the accident that the US bobsledding team had, which looked quite dramatic.
- [27:42]
Andrew Muller
And has been widely inferred as deeply metaphorical.
- [27:46]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Yeah.
- [27:46]
Andrew Muller
Marion Messner and Phil Tinline on that abject failure to build up to our excerpt from our Winter Olympic show. Monocle is in Milan for the next two weeks. And on the second edition of our Olympic show, Monocle in Milan, Ed Stocker spoke to Martina Mondadori, founder and editor in chief of Cabana magazine, a biannual and decorative arts publication. Ed began by asking Martina what had made her want to launch Cabinet.
- [28:12]
Martina Mondadori
Well, we go back 12 years now, which feels like a very long time and yet a short one, too. It's been a very exciting journey. I was living in London back in the day and sort of, you know, looking at Italy and Italian sort of heritage with completely different eyes, as one does when you get away from something you like and love and discovering, meanwhile, my new country, England. And it was there was so sort of some red dots that I started connecting, bridging the aesthetic of these two countries, the traditions of these two countries, and at the same time thinking that the minimal aesthetic and the functional one that we had been witnessing and that had been at the pinnacle for so long until then, was sort of running its course. And particularly, I thought the interiors, the lifestyle that Italy and England had together, but especially the Italian lifestyle, could feel a bit like comfort food in a time where we all need it and still need it even more to do.
- [29:19]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
Even more now.
- [29:19]
Andrew Muller
Right?
- [29:20]
Martina Mondadori
Even more now. And so, yes, Cabana is like a bit of a great warm croissant in the morning of a rainy day or a foggy day like today.
- [29:29]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
I like that. Next time I pick it up, I'll think of warm croissants.
- [29:32]
Dr. Marion Messmer
Yes.
- [29:33]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
I mean, you know, I feel like there's some crossover with Monocle magazine in the sense that, you know, you have these beautiful covers, you think about paper stock and things like that. How hard is it to do something like that in today's climate? Or do you think it's. If you have the passion, is it easy to keep doing something?
- [29:52]
Martina Mondadori
I think passion is one of the ingredients, obviously, maybe the most important when you start something like that, and you need a huge dose of courage. At the time when I started Cabana People would look at me saying, print today. Are you mad? Obviously, it was never only about a print, you know, print or a magazine, as Monaco did so well for us, it's building a brand. It's building a world, A world for an audience to reference itself in. And I think in today's world, especially the publishing world, you don't need to want to aspire to talk to everyone. You need to know who your audience is, build on that one, know what your DNA is and why print? Well, I think especially in a world like today where everything is digital, where we're bombarded with digital images all day long, the moment you print something a, you need to do it super well. So hence the great paper, the different stocks and it becomes a bit like. It becomes a collectible. Good. And that was our intention. And also it's signal belonging. Right. If you are the Monocle tribe and you love traveling and you love all that, then you'll have monocle on, you know, on your. On your coffee table at home. If you love interiors, you'll have cabana. And very often those two audience sort of, obviously, you know, cross pollinate each other. And it's great. But I do think it is about building, knowing who your audience are, is and who you are, you know, and building up on that.
- [31:28]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
You talked about building a brand. Tell us a little bit about how you do that. The sort of extension, if you like, beyond the magazine. There is of course, Casa Cabana, you know, which supports the other. Is it a reciprocal relationship? Is. Is, you know, is the magazine an extension of chicken?
- [31:47]
Martina Mondadori
Where's the egg?
- [31:48]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
There you go. I'm just interested to know about that relationship.
- [31:51]
Martina Mondadori
Yes. So as I said, for me it was building a world. And so the extent of. In business, in, you know, working with artisans to produce product that then is sold on our website, the magazine, the events, Casa Cabana as the one place where, you know, you step into cabana's world and breathe cabana, because that's the house, it's the apartment I grew up in. And it's the founding inspiration behind everything I do. Obviously it is one like one living, you know, organism. And it kind of, it all feels feeds each other. And you know, I think it's when you have a very strong DNA, a very strong identity, it's very clear when something fits your brand or not. And I think that's where a lot of brands today get lost. It's probably they try to speak to everyone or try to appeal to so many different audiences. And maybe that's where you start getting lost.
- [32:49]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
But yeah, so what the secret is just having a really strong identity and knowing who you are.
- [32:54]
Martina Mondadori
Yes, I think so. Like in life takes a while.
- [32:58]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
Coaching this week.
- [32:59]
Martina Mondadori
It takes a while, but I think that's the. Yeah, yeah.
- [33:03]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
How do you navigate as well? Obviously we talked about the beauty of the print product. How do you navigate online? Because obviously it's undeniable. It's there. It's how people consume.
- [33:13]
Martina Mondadori
It's our daily interaction with. With our readers, with our audience through social media. Instagram. Instagram is very strong, obviously, as a visual. As a visual brand like about. But I think again, it's, you know, we obviously have an online presence. We have a very strong E commerce. But then again, last year here in Milan, we're very eradicated here in Milan. We opened our first physical retail like Monaco has with its cafes. And so it is, you know, I think it's an hybrid between, you know, a. It's a business based on media and commerce. Not very differently, if you think about. If you think big, you know, even giants like Netflix nowadays started as media and go into commerce with merchandising and investing in some of their brands and shows. So it is, it is, it is always for us, obviously important. The print. The print comes out twice a year for now and. And the, you know, and then there's a constant daily input of online. And we launched our substack channel last year, so it's constantly evolving. Again, I think it's a matter of quality, of whatever we do, we have to do it well.
- [34:31]
Interviewer with Martina Mondadori
You mentioned the fact that you were living in London first and then you moved back to Milan. You moved at a time when Milan was going through lots of changes and it still is an evolving city. Lots of people are moving here, et cetera. Do you feel today that cabana couldn't.
- [34:48]
Martina Mondadori
Be anywhere else down Milan Cabana could be somewhere, you know, elsewhere. I think again, you know, you never know where life takes you. But to be honest, Milan is a great. Is a great place to be. It's a great base because, you know, again, we started here. A lot of. It's a very easy city still for now to live in the sense that it's small and it's still a metropolitan city, an international city. I always say the one thing that makes Milan is leaning. Nate.
- [35:16]
Dr. Marion Messmer
I agree.
- [35:16]
Martina Mondadori
Like a train station. And, you know, doing Lina to Heathrow is the easiest thing for me. But Milan has definitely changed, evolved. When I moved back six years ago, I couldn't recognize it and it was just right after the pandemic, which was a big deal, obviously here, and yet it felt vibrant. And not only we've had a huge influx of foreigners coming to choosing it as their residence and their city, but that brings also a lot of new people visiting each week, and that's what makes it exciting and dynamic.
- [35:49]
Andrew Muller
That was Ed Stocker speaking to Martina Mondadori, founder and editor in chief of Cabana magazine. Monocle in Milan is every weekday this week and next at 10:00am Milan time, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Marion, Me Esmer and Phil Tinline. Today's show was produced by Chris Chermack and researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.