Better late than never? Keir Starmer finally unveils plans to modernise the UK’s armed forces - The Monocle Daily

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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 30 June 2026 on Monocle
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Radio the UK to spend vastly more on defence. But is it enough? And soon enough? When are peace talks? Not really peace talks. And we wouldn't watch Auberglaine play football. Why would we drink Neymar's wine? 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 Alex von Tunzelman and Yossi Meckelburg will discuss today's big stories. And we'll hear from Ian Baruma about his new book recalling the struggles of ordinary Berliners to survive as Hitler's capital collapsed around them. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
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Foreign.
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This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Alex von Tunzelman, historian, author and screenwriter, and Yossi Meckelburg, senior consulting fellow at the Middle east and North Africa program at Chatham House. Hello to you both. Alex, first of all, you are recently back from Hamburg, a city I have never visited but have always thought I would quite like to one day. Is this ill advised of me?
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A
No, no, I think it's a very pleasant city, actually. I liked it very much.
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B
A very pleasant city, actually. I can see that on the post.
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A
I think they'd go for it. No, it's quite charming and very pleasant. I mean, the only thing is it was sort of unspeakably hot, but then so was most of Europe. Of course.
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B
I can reliably and smugly inform that Sweden was delightful last week.
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A
There we go. Well, you see, that's the answer, isn't it? Go north. But I mean, I don't think Hamburg's very used to being 37 degrees. But there we were absolutely sweltering actually there because my husband was supposed to run the Hamburg Half Marathon on Sunday, which had to cancel because I would think, hot.
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So what did you do instead of the Hamburg Half Marathon?
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We very nerdily, I'm afraid, went to some museums, explored those, but they were very good.
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Yossi, you have, however, in London been, as I understand it, attending a symposium of Middle Eastern ambassadors. Now that. That strikes me as a gathering that could go one of several ways. But did everybody basically behave themselves?
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It was actually a reception which gathered a lot of ambassadors. The Middle East Association Ambassador reception takes place once a year and you have Middle east ambassador based here, coming there, and many that deal with the Middle east in the Foreign Office, and some of them, they are based there. So you can imagine the kind of conversations.
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Well, I mean, what I'm actually imagining, Yossi, is a certain amount of chair hurling. But does everyone keep it fairly civil?
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It was extremely civil, you know, in the good tradition of British diplomacy.
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Why can't they all just get along then?
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Because it's here and not in the Middle East.
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Okay, well, that is a subject to which we will very shortly be returning. But we start in the uk, where outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is conducting an amount of post horse bolting, stable door slamming. One of the climactic dramas of his premiership was the resignation of both Defence Secretary John Healy and Armed Forces Minister Al Khans in protest what they saw as parsimonious spending on the UK's military. Today, along with the publication of a new defence investment plan, Starmer has announced an additional 15 billion pounds for defence as part of a bill towards an annual outlay of 80 billion quid by 2029. A chunk of this will be directed towards drones and autonomous weapons in recognition that Ukraine's resistance to Russia has drastically reordered ideas of how wars will henceforth be fought. Alex, first of all, it does little chaotic at this point for Starmer to be making grand, visionary announcements of anything as opposed to sort of being back at 10 Downing street, putting things in cardboard boxes. But does it strike you, though, that this is a concrete way forward for the United Kingdom?
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Well, I mean, I think obviously this has been in the works for a while and I assume when Starmer was putting it together, he didn't really think he would be announcing this and packing at the same time. He's gone ahead with it. I think partially that's, you know, inevitable because this is. He's trying to set his legacy and this kind of thing. But it's also, I imagine, an attempt to create some sort of continuity with Andy Burnham. He doesn't think Burnham's going to immediately go back on all of this, which indeed, I think would be quite unlikely to happen.
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There is a line attached to this Yossi from the Ministry of Defence, which is talking about, as they put it, a future of cheap systems destroying high value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years. That last bit in particular absolutely chimes with what people have told me about what is going on in Ukraine. I've spoken to drone experts who visit the front lines relatively regularly, and as one of them said to me, you know, the last trip he'd done. He asked about the equipment they showed him on his previous visit three months previously, and they'd said, oh yeah, we use some of that for spare parts now, but it's, it's, it's, it's redundant, it's useless. If, if things are moving that quickly, though, how far in advance can any nation plan? And, and this is one of the difficulties with defense is if you order a warship, you don't get it tomorrow. This is years, decades of forethought where we're casting for here.
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Absolutely. I think this is one of the most important points, because all this plan, talking about the next 10 years and if we cast our mind 10 years ago, yeah, we probably would not have envisaged the kind of wars that we have right now, the hybrid wars of all the. And a lot of it comes because out of necessity and of improvisation. We see it in Ukraine and by the way, we see it also in Iran and in Lebanon. And every time something different and lethal is coming out because you have to either to attack or as defense. So the question what do you do if you don't invest the money? You're definitely not prepared. You invest the money, you might invest in a war that will going to be very different. So it calls for agility. And this is one of the reasons not to go and invest on very expensive platforms that were completely out of date in 5, 10 years at the same time to invest in cheaper, but think that you can move fast, there are very little, and you can move also from place to place in almost no time. And that's probably the way forward. Now. The thing that will be introduced more and more is the AI and how this is going to affect. And you have more and more autonomous unit, which adds a completely new layer of complexity into this. If these systems are going actually to decide when they go to war and what targets they are targeting. But. And that's the next five, ten years.
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Alex, is it possible that a military like the United Kingdom's, with centuries and centuries of history behind it, is going to be at somewhat of a disadvantage here? Ukraine has had to basically build its military as it's gone along in the last four years, and that's why we have ended up in situations where they have won a significant naval victory, for example, despite not actually having a navy, but a military like the United Kingdom. It's not going to be easy to talk them out of things like capital warships and fighter planes and tanks and all that stuff that military types tend to actually really like. And I'm thinking again of an interview we did in Sweden last week and it's in the current episode of the Foreign Desk spoke to a Ukrainian army major just in from the front line who said that this is the future. He said you can't move infantry formations anymore, you can't move armoured formations anymore. No one is going to be able to do that ever again.
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Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it? And I do think, I mean, yes, of course, if you've got people sitting there going, we've got some lovely frigates, maybe some Spitfires, you know, we're not really at that stage anymore. But I think what they're trying to do, as far as I can see with the commitments they've talked about today, is to hedge a bit. I mean, obviously all this attention is going on the 5 billion for drones, but there is also 47 billion for new nuclear submarines. Now, you know, that's a much older military terms form of tech. 13 billion on a new nuclear warhead. So, you know, these are pretty big commitments to tech that again, is not new and may be quite hard to use in a practical sense. But I do think that Yossi's absolutely right that the thing is, warfare is evolving so fast that when you're looking at these kind of giant budgets and long term commitments is how on earth you try and apportion that money sensibly. Now Ukraine's had to because it's obviously responding to an emergency. Britain is more in a situation of while there is obviously an emergency in Ukraine, there are these things happening. The longer term view is okay, but what is this going to look like in 10 years? And will there be a reliable American partner, for instance, or will there not? What will NATO look like? Will it exist? Many of these questions that again, we wouldn't have even thought would come up, you know, five or 10 years ago are now actually very germane questions to how we might plan things. And I think it's extremely hard to know the answers to any of those. So it's a sort of, you've got a difficult situation where in a sense the military, the funding at least, and the planning needs to be much more nimble than it characteristically is, especially at these very, very high levels of spending.
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I think you've just made everybody here, and doubtless all our listeners, Alex, very glad that they are not presently the Secretary of Defense. But Yossi, just as a final thought on this, what have you made? Because one of the reasons we keep being told that Sir Keir Starmer is being directed towards the exit is that he is a awkward, let's call it that, communicator. This is not what he's especially good at, selling a vision to the people. What does the UK government need to do or say to try and engage people a bit more in the scale of the threat and the potential for genuine emergency? Because serious defence people, and this is not to be clear, these sort of trousers on fire, the sky is falling type serious people are saying the prospect of actual full blown open warfare on the European continent is very much not zero.
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But it's not zero, it's close to zero. And something very important that, you know, Annex said. But part of it goes to deterrence because all the nuclear part of it is not to be used, I mean unless it's a very extreme case. So the idea that you. Part of it is deterrence and part of it is preparation to any eventuality. But there is always a balance. You don't want to scare the population all the time and tell them, you know, the Russians are at the gate because this is unhealthy. You don't want to spread panic. On the other hand also to be aware the thing has changed and Russia, who knows China, there are other threats. You know, if it's coming from different, with different sources, from non state actors and all of that. But again, 9, 11, no one expects that a threat will come from airplanes will be flown into buildings. So this you need, when you sit there, you need to prepare for an eventuality and someone is going to surprise you anyway. But this is the kind of discussions that also the public should be aware there are threats. We need to be prepared. The party of the post Cold War is over. But at the same time there is another side about it, and we talked about it earlier, is that you know, if there is only investment in defense, but there is no education and no health and no other, there is not much to defend them. To defend them. So it's the balance.
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Well, to Doha now, where representatives of both the United States and Iran are apparently headed, though where upon arrival they will not be speaking to each other as such. Any communication will be mediated by the hosts. The US will be represented, as it often is on such occasions, by the President's son in law and one of his golf buddies. It is unclear who will be turning up for Iran or even if they plan on engaging with their American antagonists at all. The idea in general appears to be to try reviving a ceasefire which sputtered significantly late last week when Iran struck a Singapore Flagged cargo ship the Ever Lovely. And the US retaliated by hitting Iranian missile and drone facilities. If only we had someone here who has recently been conferring with Middle Eastern ambassadors. Yossi, did anybody have any ideas about how to sort this whole thing out?
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I think there is a lot of head scratching by gentlemen everywhere. And again, it's not just the golf partner but someone that seems to be busy in Albania picking fight with locals about developing.
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He's a multitasker is Jared.
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I mean, yes, because Gaza is already solved. That's fixed, that's fine. And Lebanon is fantastic. So everywhere is in Ukraine. So that's the kind of idea. I don't think any single human being can do all of this negotiating and
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he sure as hell can't.
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And especially when you really don't. I mean it's serious. He has no background and you can tell from the way they negotiate. And the Iranians are playing with them, you know, for the last six, seven weeks the Iranians are playing the mou. If you go step by step and you see nuclear is 13 out of 14, 15, 14 points and only if some others that, you know, there will be 300 billions and the United States won't blockade and all of this. So maybe one day we'll get to the also discuss nuclear. That's how the Iranian played because they're tough negotiators and, and because of the inexperience and also they sense the panic among among the ranks in the White House that, you know, gas prices went to four and a half dollars. We have midterm. We just need to close that straight and foremost. Now the Iranians might overplay their hand because we know with the mood swings of Trump he might decide tomorrow to start, you know, bombing more seriously than we see then. So it might be the case that the United States and Israel overplay their militarily and now the Iranians are overplaying the Strait of Hormuz and what they can negotiate. At a certain point they need to find kind of the point that they agree on something.
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And Alex, if along similar lines, if only we had someone at the table who's written an entire book about the difficulties of an impetuous Western power extricating itself from an ill advised attempt to seize a Middle Eastern waterway. If you'd like to mention the title of your excellent book on the Suez crisis, go right ahead.
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Blood and San, available from all good bookshops.
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Shop early for Christmas. What's stopping the United States at this point? Because it would be A very Donald Trump maneuver to just decide, I'm bored
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with this, let's go, and absolutely possible. I think, in terms of his psychology, the thing is, if he could do that, why hasn't he already done it would be the question. I mean, he has repeatedly militarily attacked Iran. And what we've seen is that from the beginning, the US And Israel, of course, have had quite different objectives, which has become.
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I think even Trump has figured that out by now.
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Yes, yes, belatedly. But it has now become quite apparent that those objectives are quite different. And I think that was the thing at the beginning when you were talking about, and it was quite hard to figure out really what exactly US Objectives were. But when they were talking about, oh, you know, regime change and, you know, maybe we're going to install somebody, and then Israel just sort of repeatedly kept bumping off everybody that might have been installed, you know, that it was sort of obvious that there were quite different things happening there. But I do think you had waves of quite intense bombing and quite serious military action which did not displace the Iranian regime. So the question is, what would Trump now do differently if he were to launch some sort of military attack that would genuinely make a difference at this point, rather than just repeating the thing that hadn't already worked? And why would the Iranians then back down? I absolutely agree with Yossi that there is a risk here for the Iranians of overplaying the hand they have. And it's not like the Americans can't do anything. But at the same time, the Iranians quite clearly do hold a lot of the cards, and this is their moment to go for it, anything they want. This is the moment that is their moment of greatest opportunity. So why shouldn't they push? Why wouldn't they push for a fairly maximal win as they do on this one, as indeed they are.
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I mean, Yossi, there was a glimmer of optimism last week around the fact that Israel and Lebanon did actually sign a deal or concluded an agreement of some sort. Their first for 40 odd. Hezbollah, of course, were not party to that. And that being the case, does that deal actually really mean anything?
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Yes and no.
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I thought you might say that I'm that predictable.
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I mean, it means in the sense that there is a commonality of interest between the own government president and Israel. And I mean, the principle of Israel eventually withdrawing to the international border, which even this is not very clear. Where is the international border? There and the laf, the Lebanese armed forces are taking over all the territory and The Hezbollah is disarmed. I think this principle, the agreement, it's important. And the Americans basically guarantee, you know, they are guarantor of this agreement. In this sense, it's positive. Here is the. No, they know because there is no implementation mechanism there. So it's very abstract how the Hezbollah is going to be disarmed. When you're talking about gradual withdrawal of Israel, is it six months, a year? Last time it took 18 years between 1982 and 2002 to withdraw. And then where are the international community that actually can support this? Where is France in all of this? Where is the region in all of this? Where is the peacekeeping operation in case that they actually, the lfa, managed to get all the way to the border? Where is Iran in all of this? So there is so many holes in this MoU. So the principles are there, but I doubt definitely not before the election in Israel. But this is just a matter of few months, how it's going to play in the longer term that we actually can get a point that those principles are implemented.
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Well, let's look at South Africa now. Several cities of which have today been hosting demonstrations of the local cohort of that sort of person who believes that everything wrong with their life is the fault of other people, specifically people from other countries. A coalition of anti immigration groups had issued a deadline of today for undocumented incomers to leave South Africa under barely veiled threat of violence. And many have, some with the assistance of their home neighbours, nations of Uganda, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria, which have acted to repatriate their citizens. South Africa's President, Cyril Ramaphosa has put extra police on the streets, appealed for calm and so forth. And Alex, as far as it is possible to tell from this distance, is this the, the South African iteration of a global phenomenon?
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Yes, I mean, it's specific and local to it, but I mean, obviously, as you say, there's a sort of theme that we see in a lot of places where what's, you know, I suppose what's really happening, and you know, we could obviously relate this to many places in Europe as well, is that you have a cost of living crisis in South Africa. You have poor distribution of wealth, you have very high unemployment rates in South Africa specifically, and wealth is obviously concentrated in the hands of a minority who still are largely kind of white or privileged in other ways. Rather than sort of looking to them, often those people are looking to migrants. And there is some real, I think also some myth making around it similar to, again, what we've sort of seen in Europe and indeed in the us. So foreign born migran, for instance, are estimated to be about 4% of South Africans, 62 million people. And yet you're seeing in the propaganda that the anti migrant parties are saying, oh, it's, you know, 20 million people. Well, I mean it's not. That would be huge, that would be like 30%. It would be absolutely massive. But these are the sort of numbers that are bandied around as a sort of scare figure and they can be believed. And I mean it has absolutely flared up seriously in the past. In 2008 there were anti migrant riots in South Africa, killed 62 people. So you know, it's been very, very serious in the past. So I do think the threat of this is real.
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B
If what's concerning, or one of the many things I think Yossi, that is concerning about this is that if this is the South African variant of this global phenomenon, there's, there is a difference to it, which is the, the vigilante aspect and the, the unofficial deadline, which does appear to have had results as the issuers of that deadline would see it in that thousands of people have left. Is there therefore a concern that nativist extremist groups elsewhere might see this and think, well, actually threatening violence works, it turns out.
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First of all, I'm not so sure it's comforting to know that South Africa and other countries have their Farage and Jean Marie Le Pen. It makes us feel any better about ourselves. But I think there is a danger in some countries when there is anyway lesser enforcement of law and order, it ends like this. But we know democracy is a very thin veneer of civility and enforcing law and order and it can break, and it happened in history, including in Europe, break down very quickly. So I think, yes, we probably should pay attention to this. But at what point, and we say that, oh, it's happened there, but look what happened in some of the hotels that asylum seekers were hosted.
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There's protests here you're talking about.
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Yeah, in the UK and they're vigilantes and they try to set on fire hotels. So when we think it happens only in faraway countries, it happened here too.
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I mean, does a government have good options here though? I mean, I assume if there were good options, Alex, it's one of those things, then those are the options governments would be pursuing. But it is actually quite hard to win an argument, especially with poor and unemployed people by saying, I mean, these tend not to be people who are easily swayable with facts.
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Well, and I think that's A problem that's getting significantly worse, quite honestly, because you do now have, you know, when you look at the Internet, you look at social media, the old saying that a lie could be halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on. I mean, that's, that doesn't even cover what we're talking about here. And especially now with AI coming into the picture as well. What you're seeing is, is those who want to stir this stuff up can generate absolutely colossal amounts of very, very effective propaganda and spread it very fast indeed. And it's incredibly hard to fact check that. So even if even in the quite rare situation where somebody who's been radicalized in this way can be reached, there's a complete asymmetry of this information and it's impossible to kind of check all of that. So I think that problem's getting worse and worse. South Africans, like everybody else in the world, love their mobile phones and love their online lives and their social media and this spreading everywhere. And it's a very big problem, I think, you know, in a sense. And you've got a lot of this being stirred up by right wing populism and the kind of left wing populism of it's all just about the billionaires, you know, which is perhaps gaining some traction also in this way, but is also kind of isn't necessarily proposing any kind of particular opposition to the idea that still there is a populist issue, that is, there is an elite that is somehow specially privileged that is taking all of this, all of the stuff that should be rightfully yours, like effectively nobody's challenging this idea.
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C
And what we are missing, actually a lot of this is the failure of governments, you know, when it comes to employment and housing. And it's at the end of the day, the projection, the way that we talked about defense, you need also to projection about, you know, employment, job creation, you know, whether you need more hospitals, you need more doctors, you need more teachers. And that's where they should point their anger or criticism, not against the migrants that come and actually do work, that someone actually want them to do this work, otherwise they would not have paid
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B
them well to something completely different. That is the intersection of viniculture and football. And the news that Brazilian striker Neymar, whose contributions to the ongoing World cup have consisted largely of warming the benches, has launched his own wine brand, Le Prince. Prince, it says here, will offer A range of 6 varieties of Planck at a range of prices from the relatively sensible to north of €8,500 for a limited numbered edition, each such bottle purporting to tell somehow the story of one of the many goals Neymar has scored during his career. An addition in which each bottle related an incident of Neymar hurling himself theatrically to the ground and thrashing about like a beached tuna in response to the slightest contact by an opponent would be consider expansive. Alex, are you tempted?
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Not at €8,500.
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Well, for one, from the sort of more bargain end of the range.
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Yes. The bargain end is sort of apparently more €10 to €60, which is perhaps a little more. Not outrageous, although, you know, still not cheap. I think what I'm sort of fascinated by, I'm not immediately rushing to buy it, I'm not a huge football fan, nor indeed of Neymar specifically, but is that I'd sort of assumed when I looked at this story that. That the man sort of got a hobby and bought a vineyard and was doing this. No, no. This is 300,000 bottles of wine that he's bought from various places around the world that he's kind of rebranding and repackaging. So, I mean, I suppose we could all do this. Yeah, I mean. I mean, although with my football career, I don't think I yet quite have a platform that has achieved this. So it's more of a sort of branding opportunity, really. And I. I suppose what will be interesting is whether he. He is the curator that Brazilians are looking to for their wine.
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B
I did look up Yossi. He's not the first athlete to have branched out into wine in some or other fashion. Others include Ricky Ponting, the great Australian cricketer. Scott Pendlebury, and Tom Jonas, who are both Australian Rules football players. Ian Botham, the English cricketer, but also Lionel Messi, no explanation necessary. Drew Bledsoe, the former New England Patriots quarterback, and Ernie Ells, who I believe to be a golfer stage of some sort. Do any of those tempt you? Would you? Would you? If you had to choose between two bottles of wine of relatively equal quality in price, One's got a picture on it of Ernie Ells, the other one doesn't.
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C
Does this.
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B
Does this make any difference in your decision?
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C
No. And to be honest, the same way that I don't want a sommelier to try to score a goal, you know, and in a penalty shootout, let's bring the biggest sommelier in the world to penalty shootout. I don't think anyone would be tempted by that.
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B
I think you've kind of hit on something there. If penalty shootouts were outsourced to Just members of the crowd drawn at random. I think that would be hugely entertaining.
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C
And in this case, probably not German footballers either. But, but that's. Let's park this aside. It's, it's, it's. It's all about marketing and branding. And those probably that admire him as a footballer, either out of curiosity or out of, you know, say, oh, I have a name, a bottle of wine and will buy it. Do you think it's sustainable and in 20 years you'll sit. Well, I don't know if you'll sit here in 20 years and we still see, oh, this is the finest wine in the world. Get a name for dinner.
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B
I mean, is there, Alex, any celebrity, any person you admire whose name or visage on a wine label would tempt you towards it? Are they. I mean, have any historians gone into winemaking? They must have.
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A
Oh, I mean, you know, they're great at losing money, so I'm sure they're well into it. I think, you know, there are. So apparently, I think Sam Neill, who is, you know, an actor living in New Zealand, is from New Zealand, except
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B
point of order there, he's one of those New Zealanders that my fellow Australians like to claim as Australian, partly out of genuine admiration, mostly because it just really annoys New Zealanders.
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A
Yes, well, I'm sure that works for you guys. Anyway, New Zealanders claim him also as ours, but he. He seems to, though, actually run his vineyard and be quite enthusiastic about the whole process. And I think that's something that one sort of perhaps has a bit more respect for, is you actually getting involved in all of that. I mean, obviously it's a bit of a, you know, a bit of a luxury hobby. I mean, I'm not sure that many people are starting this in the sort of window boxes of their council estates, and I think perhaps it is a sort of celebrity game in that way, but I think if somebody has a genuine care for it, there's no reason why it would be worse than anyone else who's going into this as a sort of hobbyist business. Personally. Yeah, I think perhaps I'm rather. I'm afraid with Yossi, that I'm not sure that I want the sommelier to save a goal or to act or to do anything else. And similarly, I think, you know, if a celebrity makes a good wine, that's marvellous, I'm sure I'd enjoy it, but I'm not sure that I would filter by celebrity for the wine.
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B
Just. Finally, then, I did want to put to each of you in turn, Yossi, you first. What would be your post retirement vanity project? Would you go and start a vineyard and try to get people to buy Yossi Cabernet Sauvignon?
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C
With my understanding in wine, probably no one will buy it. I won't mind to make the labels maybe, but not definitely not the wine. But I think we should mention that Gordon Ramsay actually managed to move from football to become.
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B
That is true. Being a chef, he may be the exception that proves the rule. So, Alex, any thoughts on your vanity project? A range of Alex von Tunzemann branded produce would be what? Well, salad dressing. That's a thing people have done.
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A
I do actually quite like making a good salad dressing. So there you go, that's what we'll do. Thanks, Andrew. Good tip. Nice to have a second career coming
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up and I think, if I may say so, so you have very much a surname that lends itself to a condiment.
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A
Nobody's said that before.
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B
I can see it. Von Tonzelman salad dressing.
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A
There we go.
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B
It's got a ring to it.
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A
Like Caesar.
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B
Well, exactly. Alex von Tonzelman and Yossi Meckelberg, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, a notional Berliner, born in 1900 and who stayed in their hometown thereafter could not have complained of an uneventful life.
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A
Life.
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B
The most tumultuous years of it, of course, would have been those between 1939 and 1945, a period which Berliners began by envisioning themselves as blessed citizens of a putative capital of the world and ended by sweeping up the rubble as the city was partitioned by Germany's conquerors. A new book by the journalist Ian baruma, Stay Berlin, 1939, 45, examines the choices, compromises and sacrifices made by Berliners as they strove to survive. I spoke to Ian at Madrid Story House earlier. I began by asking him about his father, Leo, a Dutchman who was a forced labourer in Berlin during this period, and whether he'd ever communicated much about his own experiences.
[32:39]
D
He didn't write very much, but he certainly talked about it and I was a curious child, so I was always asking him questions. He was absolutely not reticent and he wrote a lot of letters home at the time when he was in Berlin between 1940 and the end of the war. And of course you had to be careful of sensors and so on, so you have to read between the lines. I only read the letters after he died in 2019, which filled in a lot of gaps. But the story, roughly, I knew the
[33:08]
B
obvious overarching narrative is this story of a city stumbling into destruction. Some people, some of your characters certainly see that coming earlier than others. But I, I, I think there's a, a key line that leapt out when you write that the people in, as you put it, neither cynics nor bullies nor ideological fanatics, they simply conformed. Is that, and it's a bleak thought, kind of the human condition right there.
[33:35]
D
I'm afraid it is. I think heroes are relatively rare, and why people become heroes is also a fairly complicated question. Out and out villains are probably rare, and the majority of people try to keep their heads down. That's not, not brave, but it is understandable. And I think Germans were no different from any other people in that respect, even though you could say they had less of a history of democracy and so on in some other countries in Europe and there was a strong authoritarian streak in German education. But I do think that almost in all circumstances, whether people are Cambodian or German or British or whatever, most people,
[34:18]
B
or adapt, if there is a thing, obviously all the people you write about are different, and all the people in Berlin during this period were different. But the one thing that comes across in the book, if they have something in common, there is a certain trepidation. Everybody does seem to feel, apart from the, the obvious fanatics. People do feel somewhat uneasy about what's occurring or what they sense is changing around them, and yet they feel kind of powerless.
[34:45]
D
Yes, I think, well, I think that reflects the reality of the times. I mean, by 1939, the Nazis had been in power for six years, and so it was a dictatorship and you had to be very careful and you knew that bad things were going on. I mean, people knew about the concentration camps, they knew about the persecution of the Jews, even though the extermination had not yet occurred by the beginning of the war. But knowing and being totally conscious of it are two different things. And again, one aspect of keeping your head down and staying out of trouble is not wanting to know about certain things, looking the other way. And I think there was a lot of that.
[35:26]
B
What sense did you get, though, of what drove or what was different about the people who didn't do that? There's a recurrent character, Helmuth von Moltke, who's obviously a very famous, famous name in several other contexts throughout German history. But he's an intelligence officer, somewhat reluctant. One does what he can try to do, I think, to gum things up or slow them down from the inside. What was different about him, it would have Been very easy of someone for his background to just go, sure, sign me up.
[35:57]
D
Well, first of all, he had a British mother and he was an aristocrat, a very pious Christian aristocrat who. The kind of man that the Nazis would have distrusted because just like right wing populists in our own time, they didn't like the upper class. They felt the upper class was snooty and looked down its noses on people who were less educated and so on. So there was an antagonism between the upper class and the Nazis. Anyway. Some aristocrats joined the Nazis, but not all of them. And I think von Moltke was the kind of man, he was conservative, he was a patriot, but who felt that Nazis were vulgar rabble. And it was people like him, educated and so on, educated to lead, should have had the right to govern Germany. And it's as though Britain had fallen under a fascist regime of black shirts and sort of old Etonians would be pushed out and watch bunch of sort of vulgar Cockneys take over. And that's what it felt like to people like for Moltke, I think. But he was also a decent man and he tried what he could to stop the worst things from happening, which of course he failed to do, and then at the end was sympathetic to the fellow upper class people on the whole who tried to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
[37:17]
B
I mean, just finally, then there is an absolutely true chilling line that von Moltke writes in a letter to his wife that appears in your book, where he says, today I can endure the sufferings of others with an equanimity I would have found execrable a year ago. I guess the disquieting question that arises from reading this book, or I guess most narratives of that period is did you come away with a slightly bleak feeling that this could happen anywhere at any time? Or can we reassure ourselves that there was circumstances very peculiar to Germany in the 1930s?
[37:52]
D
Well, I think both are true. I mean, there were circumstances very peculiar to Germany which produced the Nazis and Hitler. On the other hand, the first part of your question is, I think is absolutely true. I think it could happen, or very bad things can happen anywhere to any people. And what for Moltke was saying, you know, you get used to terrible things that would have shocked you just a few months ago ago. We know that from our own time. I mean, without comparing anything that's going on in America now with the Third Reich necessarily, but the way people get used to outrages coming from a president and now people just shrug their shoulders over things that or tut tut a little bit. But things that a president says that a few years ago would have been completely unthinkable.
[38:41]
B
That was Ian Baruma speaking to me earlier. His new book, Stay Alive Berlin, 1939-45, is available now. That's all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Alex von Tonzelman and Yossi Meckelberg. Today's show was produced by Thomas Waterhouse and researched by Josefina Astrid Nagla Gomez. Our studio manager was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
[39:10]
D
It.

Summary6 min read

The Monocle Daily - Episode Summary

Episode Title: Better late than never? Keir Starmer finally unveils plans to modernise the UK’s armed forces
Air Date: July 1, 2026
Host: Andrew Muller
Guests:

Alex von Tunzelmann (historian, author, screenwriter)
Yossi Meckelberg (senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, Middle East and North Africa program)
Special Segment: Interview with Ian Buruma on his book about Berliners during WWII

Overview

This episode of The Monocle Daily centers on the UK’s sweeping new defense investment plans unveiled by outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the chaotic and rapidly evolving nature of modern warfare, and how established militaries can adapt. The program also covers the challenges of mediated US-Iran talks in Doha, anti-immigrant tensions in South Africa, and the phenomenon of celebrity wine ventures, closing with an in-depth interview on the everyday struggles of Berliners during WWII.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Keir Starmer’s Defense Spending Legacy

Segment Start: [03:04]

Announcement Details: Starmer announces an additional £15 billion for defense, aiming for an annual outlay of £80bn by 2029. Focus areas: drones, autonomous weapons, nuclear submarines, and warhead technology.
Context: His announcement comes amid packing up after leaving office, amidst recent resignations from senior defense ministers over military spending concerns.
Legacy Consideration: Starmer’s move seen as an attempt to secure continuity for his policies before a governmental changeover.

Quote (Alex von Tunzelmann, [04:15]):
"He's trying to set his legacy... it's also an attempt to create some sort of continuity with Andy Burnham. He doesn't think Burnham's going to immediately go back on all of this, which indeed, I think would be quite unlikely to happen."

Modern Warfare & Adaptation

Pace of Change: Emphasis on the need for agile, rapid innovation as seen in Ukraine—equipment becomes obsolete in months, not years.
Tension for Established Militaries: UK has deeply embedded traditions (capital warships, tanks) but must evolve; Ukraine’s military flexibility is cited as a model.

Quote (Yossi Meckelberg, [05:42]): "If things are moving that quickly... how far in advance can any nation plan? ...This calls for agility... to invest in cheaper, fast-moving, flexible systems—the way forward."

Strategic Uncertainty & Deterrence

Balancing Long-term Commitments: Significant sums allocated to both modern (drones) and established (nuclear) technologies.
Role of Nuclear Defense: Stress on deterrence over deployment.
Public Communication: The challenge is keeping public aware without inciting fear, as the possibility of large-scale war is "very much not zero."

Quote (Yossi Meckelberg, [10:52]): "You don't want to scare the population all the time... On the other hand, also be aware things have changed. Russia, who knows, China – there are other threats... You need to prepare for an eventuality and someone is going to surprise you anyway."

2. US-Iran Mediated "Peace Talks" in Doha

Segment Start: [12:21]

Backdrop: US and Iran hold indirect talks mediated by hosts in Doha. The US is represented by the President’s son-in-law, raising doubts over his experience and capacity.
Challenges: No direct communication, Iranian negotiators playing for maximal advantage amid White House pressures (notably, high gas prices in an election year).
Skepticism about Results: The negotiations are depicted as a stalling tactic by Iran, and the US appears to lack diplomatic leverage or clarity.

Quote (Yossi Meckelberg, [13:47]): "He [Jared Kushner] has no background, and you can tell from the way they negotiate. The Iranians are playing with them... negotiating step by step... maybe one day we'll get to also discuss nuclear."

3. Israel-Lebanon Agreement: Substance or Symbolic?

Segment Start: [17:16]

Content of the Deal: Recent agreement between the governments of Israel and Lebanon (Hezbollah not party), with US as guarantor.
Concerns: No clear implementation/enforcement mechanism; withdrawal timelines and processes are extremely vague; difficulty in disarming Hezbollah.
Conclusion: While the principles are positive, the practicalities remain unresolved.

Quote (Yossi Meckelberg, [17:44]): "The principles are there, but I doubt, definitely not before the election in Israel... how it's going to play in the longer term that we actually can get a point that those principles are implemented."

4. Anti-Immigrant Unrest in South Africa

Segment Start: [19:23]

Events: Protests by anti-immigration groups; undocumented migrants given a deadline to leave under threat of violence, with actual departures observed.
Contextualization: Parallels with global populism. Misinformation inflates migrant numbers; populist scapegoating is rife amidst high unemployment and poor wealth distribution.
Danger of Vigilante Violence: South African variant of a global trend—shows how violent threats "work," potentially inspiring extremists elsewhere.

Quote (Alex von Tunzelmann, [20:11]): "There's a theme we see in a lot of places... often those people are looking to migrants. There is some myth-making around it, similar to Europe and the US. Foreign-born migrants are about 4% of South Africans, yet propaganda talks about 20 million people."

Quote (Yossi Meckelberg, [22:00]): "Democracy is a very thin veneer of civility and enforcing law and order... it happened in history, including in Europe, breaking down very quickly."

Information War: The impact of social media and AI in spreading anti-migrant disinformation is worsening; difficult to counter.

Quote (Alex von Tunzelmann, [23:21]): "A lie could be halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on... now with AI that's even more true. Those who want to stir this up can generate colossal amounts of effective propaganda and spread it very fast indeed."

5. Celebrity Wines: Neymar Launches "Le Prince"

Segment Start: [25:27]

The Gimmick: Neymar launches a high-priced wine label, following in the footsteps of other athletes-cum-wine moguls; most are branding and repackaging, not genuine vintners.
Consumer Reaction: Skepticism from panelists—admiration for the athlete doesn’t translate to wine sales; it's more marketing than viniculture.

Quote (Yossi Meckelberg, [28:00]): "The same way I don't want a sommelier to try to score a goal... in a penalty shootout, let's bring the biggest sommelier in the world. I don't think anyone would be tempted by that."

Fun Reflection: Discussion on what post-retirement branding ventures the guests might pursue.

6. Interview: Ian Buruma on Berliners’ WWII Survival

Segment Start: [31:40]

Book: "Stay Alive Berlin, 1939-45"—examines ordinary Berliners’ choices, compromises, and endurance during the city’s collapse.
Human Nature Under Dictatorship: Most people try to keep their heads down—heroes and villains are rare, and the majority conform or look away rather than resist.
Psychological Acclimatization: How people become inured to atrocities around them; chilling anecdote from one character who finds himself able to endure others’ suffering that would have horrified him a year prior.

Quote (Ian Buruma, [33:35]): "Heroes are relatively rare, and why people become heroes is a complicated question. Out and out villains are probably rare... most people try to keep their heads down. Not brave, but understandable."

Quote (Ian Buruma, [37:52]): "Very bad things can happen anywhere to any people... you get used to terrible things that would have shocked you just a few months ago."

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On defense planning:
"Warfare is evolving so fast that the funding and planning needs to be much more nimble than it characteristically is, especially at these very high levels of spending."
(Alex von Tunzelmann, [09:33])
On anti-migrant agitation:
"What we're missing is the failure of governments when it comes to employment and housing. That's where they should point their anger, not against the migrants."
(Yossi Meckelberg, [24:52])

Key Timestamps

[03:04] - UK defense spending and modernization debate
[07:19] - Dilemma for legacy militaries vs. agile newcomers
[12:21] - US-Iran indirect negotiations, skepticism about diplomatic prospects
[19:23] - South Africa’s anti-immigration protests examined
[25:27] - Neymar's wine and the authenticity of celebrity branding
[31:40] - Ian Buruma on Berliners in WWII and human adaptability to atrocity

Tone & Language

Smart, incisive, slightly wry—typical Monocle style blending analysis with wit
Speakers balance seriousness (on defense, geopolitics, racism) with playful asides (celebrity wines, post-retirement antics)
Direct but nuanced, neither alarmist nor complacent in their assessments

Recommended For

Listeners seeking informed, global perspectives on current events in defense, diplomacy, migration, and culture, with a particular focus on the complexity behind headline news.

Loading summary

Transcript88 lines

[00:00]
A
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 30 June 2026 on Monocle
[00:05]
B
Radio the UK to spend vastly more on defence. But is it enough? And soon enough? When are peace talks? Not really peace talks. And we wouldn't watch Auberglaine play football. Why would we drink Neymar's wine? 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 Alex von Tunzelman and Yossi Meckelburg will discuss today's big stories. And we'll hear from Ian Baruma about his new book recalling the struggles of ordinary Berliners to survive as Hitler's capital collapsed around them. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
[00:58]
A
Foreign.
[01:05]
B
This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Alex von Tunzelman, historian, author and screenwriter, and Yossi Meckelburg, senior consulting fellow at the Middle east and North Africa program at Chatham House. Hello to you both. Alex, first of all, you are recently back from Hamburg, a city I have never visited but have always thought I would quite like to one day. Is this ill advised of me?
[01:29]
A
No, no, I think it's a very pleasant city, actually. I liked it very much.
[01:32]
B
A very pleasant city, actually. I can see that on the post.
[01:36]
A
I think they'd go for it. No, it's quite charming and very pleasant. I mean, the only thing is it was sort of unspeakably hot, but then so was most of Europe. Of course.
[01:44]
B
I can reliably and smugly inform that Sweden was delightful last week.
[01:49]
A
There we go. Well, you see, that's the answer, isn't it? Go north. But I mean, I don't think Hamburg's very used to being 37 degrees. But there we were absolutely sweltering actually there because my husband was supposed to run the Hamburg Half Marathon on Sunday, which had to cancel because I would think, hot.
[02:03]
B
So what did you do instead of the Hamburg Half Marathon?
[02:06]
A
We very nerdily, I'm afraid, went to some museums, explored those, but they were very good.
[02:13]
B
Yossi, you have, however, in London been, as I understand it, attending a symposium of Middle Eastern ambassadors. Now that. That strikes me as a gathering that could go one of several ways. But did everybody basically behave themselves?
[02:27]
C
It was actually a reception which gathered a lot of ambassadors. The Middle East Association Ambassador reception takes place once a year and you have Middle east ambassador based here, coming there, and many that deal with the Middle east in the Foreign Office, and some of them, they are based there. So you can imagine the kind of conversations.
[02:46]
B
Well, I mean, what I'm actually imagining, Yossi, is a certain amount of chair hurling. But does everyone keep it fairly civil?
[02:54]
C
It was extremely civil, you know, in the good tradition of British diplomacy.
[03:00]
B
Why can't they all just get along then?
[03:03]
C
Because it's here and not in the Middle East.
[03:05]
B
Okay, well, that is a subject to which we will very shortly be returning. But we start in the uk, where outgoing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is conducting an amount of post horse bolting, stable door slamming. One of the climactic dramas of his premiership was the resignation of both Defence Secretary John Healy and Armed Forces Minister Al Khans in protest what they saw as parsimonious spending on the UK's military. Today, along with the publication of a new defence investment plan, Starmer has announced an additional 15 billion pounds for defence as part of a bill towards an annual outlay of 80 billion quid by 2029. A chunk of this will be directed towards drones and autonomous weapons in recognition that Ukraine's resistance to Russia has drastically reordered ideas of how wars will henceforth be fought. Alex, first of all, it does little chaotic at this point for Starmer to be making grand, visionary announcements of anything as opposed to sort of being back at 10 Downing street, putting things in cardboard boxes. But does it strike you, though, that this is a concrete way forward for the United Kingdom?
[04:16]
A
Well, I mean, I think obviously this has been in the works for a while and I assume when Starmer was putting it together, he didn't really think he would be announcing this and packing at the same time. He's gone ahead with it. I think partially that's, you know, inevitable because this is. He's trying to set his legacy and this kind of thing. But it's also, I imagine, an attempt to create some sort of continuity with Andy Burnham. He doesn't think Burnham's going to immediately go back on all of this, which indeed, I think would be quite unlikely to happen.
[04:46]
B
There is a line attached to this Yossi from the Ministry of Defence, which is talking about, as they put it, a future of cheap systems destroying high value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years. That last bit in particular absolutely chimes with what people have told me about what is going on in Ukraine. I've spoken to drone experts who visit the front lines relatively regularly, and as one of them said to me, you know, the last trip he'd done. He asked about the equipment they showed him on his previous visit three months previously, and they'd said, oh yeah, we use some of that for spare parts now, but it's, it's, it's, it's redundant, it's useless. If, if things are moving that quickly, though, how far in advance can any nation plan? And, and this is one of the difficulties with defense is if you order a warship, you don't get it tomorrow. This is years, decades of forethought where we're casting for here.
[05:43]
C
Absolutely. I think this is one of the most important points, because all this plan, talking about the next 10 years and if we cast our mind 10 years ago, yeah, we probably would not have envisaged the kind of wars that we have right now, the hybrid wars of all the. And a lot of it comes because out of necessity and of improvisation. We see it in Ukraine and by the way, we see it also in Iran and in Lebanon. And every time something different and lethal is coming out because you have to either to attack or as defense. So the question what do you do if you don't invest the money? You're definitely not prepared. You invest the money, you might invest in a war that will going to be very different. So it calls for agility. And this is one of the reasons not to go and invest on very expensive platforms that were completely out of date in 5, 10 years at the same time to invest in cheaper, but think that you can move fast, there are very little, and you can move also from place to place in almost no time. And that's probably the way forward. Now. The thing that will be introduced more and more is the AI and how this is going to affect. And you have more and more autonomous unit, which adds a completely new layer of complexity into this. If these systems are going actually to decide when they go to war and what targets they are targeting. But. And that's the next five, ten years.
[07:20]
B
Alex, is it possible that a military like the United Kingdom's, with centuries and centuries of history behind it, is going to be at somewhat of a disadvantage here? Ukraine has had to basically build its military as it's gone along in the last four years, and that's why we have ended up in situations where they have won a significant naval victory, for example, despite not actually having a navy, but a military like the United Kingdom. It's not going to be easy to talk them out of things like capital warships and fighter planes and tanks and all that stuff that military types tend to actually really like. And I'm thinking again of an interview we did in Sweden last week and it's in the current episode of the Foreign Desk spoke to a Ukrainian army major just in from the front line who said that this is the future. He said you can't move infantry formations anymore, you can't move armoured formations anymore. No one is going to be able to do that ever again.
[08:16]
A
Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it? And I do think, I mean, yes, of course, if you've got people sitting there going, we've got some lovely frigates, maybe some Spitfires, you know, we're not really at that stage anymore. But I think what they're trying to do, as far as I can see with the commitments they've talked about today, is to hedge a bit. I mean, obviously all this attention is going on the 5 billion for drones, but there is also 47 billion for new nuclear submarines. Now, you know, that's a much older military terms form of tech. 13 billion on a new nuclear warhead. So, you know, these are pretty big commitments to tech that again, is not new and may be quite hard to use in a practical sense. But I do think that Yossi's absolutely right that the thing is, warfare is evolving so fast that when you're looking at these kind of giant budgets and long term commitments is how on earth you try and apportion that money sensibly. Now Ukraine's had to because it's obviously responding to an emergency. Britain is more in a situation of while there is obviously an emergency in Ukraine, there are these things happening. The longer term view is okay, but what is this going to look like in 10 years? And will there be a reliable American partner, for instance, or will there not? What will NATO look like? Will it exist? Many of these questions that again, we wouldn't have even thought would come up, you know, five or 10 years ago are now actually very germane questions to how we might plan things. And I think it's extremely hard to know the answers to any of those. So it's a sort of, you've got a difficult situation where in a sense the military, the funding at least, and the planning needs to be much more nimble than it characteristically is, especially at these very, very high levels of spending.
[09:56]
B
I think you've just made everybody here, and doubtless all our listeners, Alex, very glad that they are not presently the Secretary of Defense. But Yossi, just as a final thought on this, what have you made? Because one of the reasons we keep being told that Sir Keir Starmer is being directed towards the exit is that he is a awkward, let's call it that, communicator. This is not what he's especially good at, selling a vision to the people. What does the UK government need to do or say to try and engage people a bit more in the scale of the threat and the potential for genuine emergency? Because serious defence people, and this is not to be clear, these sort of trousers on fire, the sky is falling type serious people are saying the prospect of actual full blown open warfare on the European continent is very much not zero.
[10:52]
C
But it's not zero, it's close to zero. And something very important that, you know, Annex said. But part of it goes to deterrence because all the nuclear part of it is not to be used, I mean unless it's a very extreme case. So the idea that you. Part of it is deterrence and part of it is preparation to any eventuality. But there is always a balance. You don't want to scare the population all the time and tell them, you know, the Russians are at the gate because this is unhealthy. You don't want to spread panic. On the other hand also to be aware the thing has changed and Russia, who knows China, there are other threats. You know, if it's coming from different, with different sources, from non state actors and all of that. But again, 9, 11, no one expects that a threat will come from airplanes will be flown into buildings. So this you need, when you sit there, you need to prepare for an eventuality and someone is going to surprise you anyway. But this is the kind of discussions that also the public should be aware there are threats. We need to be prepared. The party of the post Cold War is over. But at the same time there is another side about it, and we talked about it earlier, is that you know, if there is only investment in defense, but there is no education and no health and no other, there is not much to defend them. To defend them. So it's the balance.
[12:22]
B
Well, to Doha now, where representatives of both the United States and Iran are apparently headed, though where upon arrival they will not be speaking to each other as such. Any communication will be mediated by the hosts. The US will be represented, as it often is on such occasions, by the President's son in law and one of his golf buddies. It is unclear who will be turning up for Iran or even if they plan on engaging with their American antagonists at all. The idea in general appears to be to try reviving a ceasefire which sputtered significantly late last week when Iran struck a Singapore Flagged cargo ship the Ever Lovely. And the US retaliated by hitting Iranian missile and drone facilities. If only we had someone here who has recently been conferring with Middle Eastern ambassadors. Yossi, did anybody have any ideas about how to sort this whole thing out?
[13:14]
C
I think there is a lot of head scratching by gentlemen everywhere. And again, it's not just the golf partner but someone that seems to be busy in Albania picking fight with locals about developing.
[13:30]
B
He's a multitasker is Jared.
[13:32]
C
I mean, yes, because Gaza is already solved. That's fixed, that's fine. And Lebanon is fantastic. So everywhere is in Ukraine. So that's the kind of idea. I don't think any single human being can do all of this negotiating and
[13:45]
B
he sure as hell can't.
[13:48]
C
And especially when you really don't. I mean it's serious. He has no background and you can tell from the way they negotiate. And the Iranians are playing with them, you know, for the last six, seven weeks the Iranians are playing the mou. If you go step by step and you see nuclear is 13 out of 14, 15, 14 points and only if some others that, you know, there will be 300 billions and the United States won't blockade and all of this. So maybe one day we'll get to the also discuss nuclear. That's how the Iranian played because they're tough negotiators and, and because of the inexperience and also they sense the panic among among the ranks in the White House that, you know, gas prices went to four and a half dollars. We have midterm. We just need to close that straight and foremost. Now the Iranians might overplay their hand because we know with the mood swings of Trump he might decide tomorrow to start, you know, bombing more seriously than we see then. So it might be the case that the United States and Israel overplay their militarily and now the Iranians are overplaying the Strait of Hormuz and what they can negotiate. At a certain point they need to find kind of the point that they agree on something.
[15:09]
B
And Alex, if along similar lines, if only we had someone at the table who's written an entire book about the difficulties of an impetuous Western power extricating itself from an ill advised attempt to seize a Middle Eastern waterway. If you'd like to mention the title of your excellent book on the Suez crisis, go right ahead.
[15:28]
A
Blood and San, available from all good bookshops.
[15:32]
B
Shop early for Christmas. What's stopping the United States at this point? Because it would be A very Donald Trump maneuver to just decide, I'm bored
[15:41]
A
with this, let's go, and absolutely possible. I think, in terms of his psychology, the thing is, if he could do that, why hasn't he already done it would be the question. I mean, he has repeatedly militarily attacked Iran. And what we've seen is that from the beginning, the US And Israel, of course, have had quite different objectives, which has become.
[16:01]
B
I think even Trump has figured that out by now.
[16:03]
A
Yes, yes, belatedly. But it has now become quite apparent that those objectives are quite different. And I think that was the thing at the beginning when you were talking about, and it was quite hard to figure out really what exactly US Objectives were. But when they were talking about, oh, you know, regime change and, you know, maybe we're going to install somebody, and then Israel just sort of repeatedly kept bumping off everybody that might have been installed, you know, that it was sort of obvious that there were quite different things happening there. But I do think you had waves of quite intense bombing and quite serious military action which did not displace the Iranian regime. So the question is, what would Trump now do differently if he were to launch some sort of military attack that would genuinely make a difference at this point, rather than just repeating the thing that hadn't already worked? And why would the Iranians then back down? I absolutely agree with Yossi that there is a risk here for the Iranians of overplaying the hand they have. And it's not like the Americans can't do anything. But at the same time, the Iranians quite clearly do hold a lot of the cards, and this is their moment to go for it, anything they want. This is the moment that is their moment of greatest opportunity. So why shouldn't they push? Why wouldn't they push for a fairly maximal win as they do on this one, as indeed they are.
[17:17]
B
I mean, Yossi, there was a glimmer of optimism last week around the fact that Israel and Lebanon did actually sign a deal or concluded an agreement of some sort. Their first for 40 odd. Hezbollah, of course, were not party to that. And that being the case, does that deal actually really mean anything?
[17:39]
C
Yes and no.
[17:40]
B
I thought you might say that I'm that predictable.
[17:45]
C
I mean, it means in the sense that there is a commonality of interest between the own government president and Israel. And I mean, the principle of Israel eventually withdrawing to the international border, which even this is not very clear. Where is the international border? There and the laf, the Lebanese armed forces are taking over all the territory and The Hezbollah is disarmed. I think this principle, the agreement, it's important. And the Americans basically guarantee, you know, they are guarantor of this agreement. In this sense, it's positive. Here is the. No, they know because there is no implementation mechanism there. So it's very abstract how the Hezbollah is going to be disarmed. When you're talking about gradual withdrawal of Israel, is it six months, a year? Last time it took 18 years between 1982 and 2002 to withdraw. And then where are the international community that actually can support this? Where is France in all of this? Where is the region in all of this? Where is the peacekeeping operation in case that they actually, the lfa, managed to get all the way to the border? Where is Iran in all of this? So there is so many holes in this MoU. So the principles are there, but I doubt definitely not before the election in Israel. But this is just a matter of few months, how it's going to play in the longer term that we actually can get a point that those principles are implemented.
[19:23]
B
Well, let's look at South Africa now. Several cities of which have today been hosting demonstrations of the local cohort of that sort of person who believes that everything wrong with their life is the fault of other people, specifically people from other countries. A coalition of anti immigration groups had issued a deadline of today for undocumented incomers to leave South Africa under barely veiled threat of violence. And many have, some with the assistance of their home neighbours, nations of Uganda, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria, which have acted to repatriate their citizens. South Africa's President, Cyril Ramaphosa has put extra police on the streets, appealed for calm and so forth. And Alex, as far as it is possible to tell from this distance, is this the, the South African iteration of a global phenomenon?
[20:11]
A
Yes, I mean, it's specific and local to it, but I mean, obviously, as you say, there's a sort of theme that we see in a lot of places where what's, you know, I suppose what's really happening, and you know, we could obviously relate this to many places in Europe as well, is that you have a cost of living crisis in South Africa. You have poor distribution of wealth, you have very high unemployment rates in South Africa specifically, and wealth is obviously concentrated in the hands of a minority who still are largely kind of white or privileged in other ways. Rather than sort of looking to them, often those people are looking to migrants. And there is some real, I think also some myth making around it similar to, again, what we've sort of seen in Europe and indeed in the us. So foreign born migran, for instance, are estimated to be about 4% of South Africans, 62 million people. And yet you're seeing in the propaganda that the anti migrant parties are saying, oh, it's, you know, 20 million people. Well, I mean it's not. That would be huge, that would be like 30%. It would be absolutely massive. But these are the sort of numbers that are bandied around as a sort of scare figure and they can be believed. And I mean it has absolutely flared up seriously in the past. In 2008 there were anti migrant riots in South Africa, killed 62 people. So you know, it's been very, very serious in the past. So I do think the threat of this is real.
[21:28]
B
If what's concerning, or one of the many things I think Yossi, that is concerning about this is that if this is the South African variant of this global phenomenon, there's, there is a difference to it, which is the, the vigilante aspect and the, the unofficial deadline, which does appear to have had results as the issuers of that deadline would see it in that thousands of people have left. Is there therefore a concern that nativist extremist groups elsewhere might see this and think, well, actually threatening violence works, it turns out.
[22:00]
C
First of all, I'm not so sure it's comforting to know that South Africa and other countries have their Farage and Jean Marie Le Pen. It makes us feel any better about ourselves. But I think there is a danger in some countries when there is anyway lesser enforcement of law and order, it ends like this. But we know democracy is a very thin veneer of civility and enforcing law and order and it can break, and it happened in history, including in Europe, break down very quickly. So I think, yes, we probably should pay attention to this. But at what point, and we say that, oh, it's happened there, but look what happened in some of the hotels that asylum seekers were hosted.
[22:50]
B
There's protests here you're talking about.
[22:51]
C
Yeah, in the UK and they're vigilantes and they try to set on fire hotels. So when we think it happens only in faraway countries, it happened here too.
[23:00]
B
I mean, does a government have good options here though? I mean, I assume if there were good options, Alex, it's one of those things, then those are the options governments would be pursuing. But it is actually quite hard to win an argument, especially with poor and unemployed people by saying, I mean, these tend not to be people who are easily swayable with facts.
[23:22]
A
Well, and I think that's A problem that's getting significantly worse, quite honestly, because you do now have, you know, when you look at the Internet, you look at social media, the old saying that a lie could be halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on. I mean, that's, that doesn't even cover what we're talking about here. And especially now with AI coming into the picture as well. What you're seeing is, is those who want to stir this stuff up can generate absolutely colossal amounts of very, very effective propaganda and spread it very fast indeed. And it's incredibly hard to fact check that. So even if even in the quite rare situation where somebody who's been radicalized in this way can be reached, there's a complete asymmetry of this information and it's impossible to kind of check all of that. So I think that problem's getting worse and worse. South Africans, like everybody else in the world, love their mobile phones and love their online lives and their social media and this spreading everywhere. And it's a very big problem, I think, you know, in a sense. And you've got a lot of this being stirred up by right wing populism and the kind of left wing populism of it's all just about the billionaires, you know, which is perhaps gaining some traction also in this way, but is also kind of isn't necessarily proposing any kind of particular opposition to the idea that still there is a populist issue, that is, there is an elite that is somehow specially privileged that is taking all of this, all of the stuff that should be rightfully yours, like effectively nobody's challenging this idea.
[24:53]
C
And what we are missing, actually a lot of this is the failure of governments, you know, when it comes to employment and housing. And it's at the end of the day, the projection, the way that we talked about defense, you need also to projection about, you know, employment, job creation, you know, whether you need more hospitals, you need more doctors, you need more teachers. And that's where they should point their anger or criticism, not against the migrants that come and actually do work, that someone actually want them to do this work, otherwise they would not have paid
[25:28]
B
them well to something completely different. That is the intersection of viniculture and football. And the news that Brazilian striker Neymar, whose contributions to the ongoing World cup have consisted largely of warming the benches, has launched his own wine brand, Le Prince. Prince, it says here, will offer A range of 6 varieties of Planck at a range of prices from the relatively sensible to north of €8,500 for a limited numbered edition, each such bottle purporting to tell somehow the story of one of the many goals Neymar has scored during his career. An addition in which each bottle related an incident of Neymar hurling himself theatrically to the ground and thrashing about like a beached tuna in response to the slightest contact by an opponent would be consider expansive. Alex, are you tempted?
[26:21]
A
Not at €8,500.
[26:24]
B
Well, for one, from the sort of more bargain end of the range.
[26:29]
A
Yes. The bargain end is sort of apparently more €10 to €60, which is perhaps a little more. Not outrageous, although, you know, still not cheap. I think what I'm sort of fascinated by, I'm not immediately rushing to buy it, I'm not a huge football fan, nor indeed of Neymar specifically, but is that I'd sort of assumed when I looked at this story that. That the man sort of got a hobby and bought a vineyard and was doing this. No, no. This is 300,000 bottles of wine that he's bought from various places around the world that he's kind of rebranding and repackaging. So, I mean, I suppose we could all do this. Yeah, I mean. I mean, although with my football career, I don't think I yet quite have a platform that has achieved this. So it's more of a sort of branding opportunity, really. And I. I suppose what will be interesting is whether he. He is the curator that Brazilians are looking to for their wine.
[27:19]
B
I did look up Yossi. He's not the first athlete to have branched out into wine in some or other fashion. Others include Ricky Ponting, the great Australian cricketer. Scott Pendlebury, and Tom Jonas, who are both Australian Rules football players. Ian Botham, the English cricketer, but also Lionel Messi, no explanation necessary. Drew Bledsoe, the former New England Patriots quarterback, and Ernie Ells, who I believe to be a golfer stage of some sort. Do any of those tempt you? Would you? Would you? If you had to choose between two bottles of wine of relatively equal quality in price, One's got a picture on it of Ernie Ells, the other one doesn't.
[27:56]
C
Does this.
[27:57]
B
Does this make any difference in your decision?
[28:01]
C
No. And to be honest, the same way that I don't want a sommelier to try to score a goal, you know, and in a penalty shootout, let's bring the biggest sommelier in the world to penalty shootout. I don't think anyone would be tempted by that.
[28:18]
B
I think you've kind of hit on something there. If penalty shootouts were outsourced to Just members of the crowd drawn at random. I think that would be hugely entertaining.
[28:25]
C
And in this case, probably not German footballers either. But, but that's. Let's park this aside. It's, it's, it's. It's all about marketing and branding. And those probably that admire him as a footballer, either out of curiosity or out of, you know, say, oh, I have a name, a bottle of wine and will buy it. Do you think it's sustainable and in 20 years you'll sit. Well, I don't know if you'll sit here in 20 years and we still see, oh, this is the finest wine in the world. Get a name for dinner.
[28:58]
B
I mean, is there, Alex, any celebrity, any person you admire whose name or visage on a wine label would tempt you towards it? Are they. I mean, have any historians gone into winemaking? They must have.
[29:10]
A
Oh, I mean, you know, they're great at losing money, so I'm sure they're well into it. I think, you know, there are. So apparently, I think Sam Neill, who is, you know, an actor living in New Zealand, is from New Zealand, except
[29:24]
B
point of order there, he's one of those New Zealanders that my fellow Australians like to claim as Australian, partly out of genuine admiration, mostly because it just really annoys New Zealanders.
[29:34]
A
Yes, well, I'm sure that works for you guys. Anyway, New Zealanders claim him also as ours, but he. He seems to, though, actually run his vineyard and be quite enthusiastic about the whole process. And I think that's something that one sort of perhaps has a bit more respect for, is you actually getting involved in all of that. I mean, obviously it's a bit of a, you know, a bit of a luxury hobby. I mean, I'm not sure that many people are starting this in the sort of window boxes of their council estates, and I think perhaps it is a sort of celebrity game in that way, but I think if somebody has a genuine care for it, there's no reason why it would be worse than anyone else who's going into this as a sort of hobbyist business. Personally. Yeah, I think perhaps I'm rather. I'm afraid with Yossi, that I'm not sure that I want the sommelier to save a goal or to act or to do anything else. And similarly, I think, you know, if a celebrity makes a good wine, that's marvellous, I'm sure I'd enjoy it, but I'm not sure that I would filter by celebrity for the wine.
[30:31]
B
Just. Finally, then, I did want to put to each of you in turn, Yossi, you first. What would be your post retirement vanity project? Would you go and start a vineyard and try to get people to buy Yossi Cabernet Sauvignon?
[30:47]
C
With my understanding in wine, probably no one will buy it. I won't mind to make the labels maybe, but not definitely not the wine. But I think we should mention that Gordon Ramsay actually managed to move from football to become.
[31:01]
B
That is true. Being a chef, he may be the exception that proves the rule. So, Alex, any thoughts on your vanity project? A range of Alex von Tunzemann branded produce would be what? Well, salad dressing. That's a thing people have done.
[31:20]
A
I do actually quite like making a good salad dressing. So there you go, that's what we'll do. Thanks, Andrew. Good tip. Nice to have a second career coming
[31:26]
B
up and I think, if I may say so, so you have very much a surname that lends itself to a condiment.
[31:34]
A
Nobody's said that before.
[31:36]
B
I can see it. Von Tonzelman salad dressing.
[31:39]
A
There we go.
[31:40]
B
It's got a ring to it.
[31:41]
A
Like Caesar.
[31:42]
B
Well, exactly. Alex von Tonzelman and Yossi Meckelberg, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, a notional Berliner, born in 1900 and who stayed in their hometown thereafter could not have complained of an uneventful life.
[31:55]
A
Life.
[31:56]
B
The most tumultuous years of it, of course, would have been those between 1939 and 1945, a period which Berliners began by envisioning themselves as blessed citizens of a putative capital of the world and ended by sweeping up the rubble as the city was partitioned by Germany's conquerors. A new book by the journalist Ian baruma, Stay Berlin, 1939, 45, examines the choices, compromises and sacrifices made by Berliners as they strove to survive. I spoke to Ian at Madrid Story House earlier. I began by asking him about his father, Leo, a Dutchman who was a forced labourer in Berlin during this period, and whether he'd ever communicated much about his own experiences.
[32:39]
D
He didn't write very much, but he certainly talked about it and I was a curious child, so I was always asking him questions. He was absolutely not reticent and he wrote a lot of letters home at the time when he was in Berlin between 1940 and the end of the war. And of course you had to be careful of sensors and so on, so you have to read between the lines. I only read the letters after he died in 2019, which filled in a lot of gaps. But the story, roughly, I knew the
[33:08]
B
obvious overarching narrative is this story of a city stumbling into destruction. Some people, some of your characters certainly see that coming earlier than others. But I, I, I think there's a, a key line that leapt out when you write that the people in, as you put it, neither cynics nor bullies nor ideological fanatics, they simply conformed. Is that, and it's a bleak thought, kind of the human condition right there.
[33:35]
D
I'm afraid it is. I think heroes are relatively rare, and why people become heroes is also a fairly complicated question. Out and out villains are probably rare, and the majority of people try to keep their heads down. That's not, not brave, but it is understandable. And I think Germans were no different from any other people in that respect, even though you could say they had less of a history of democracy and so on in some other countries in Europe and there was a strong authoritarian streak in German education. But I do think that almost in all circumstances, whether people are Cambodian or German or British or whatever, most people,
[34:18]
B
or adapt, if there is a thing, obviously all the people you write about are different, and all the people in Berlin during this period were different. But the one thing that comes across in the book, if they have something in common, there is a certain trepidation. Everybody does seem to feel, apart from the, the obvious fanatics. People do feel somewhat uneasy about what's occurring or what they sense is changing around them, and yet they feel kind of powerless.
[34:45]
D
Yes, I think, well, I think that reflects the reality of the times. I mean, by 1939, the Nazis had been in power for six years, and so it was a dictatorship and you had to be very careful and you knew that bad things were going on. I mean, people knew about the concentration camps, they knew about the persecution of the Jews, even though the extermination had not yet occurred by the beginning of the war. But knowing and being totally conscious of it are two different things. And again, one aspect of keeping your head down and staying out of trouble is not wanting to know about certain things, looking the other way. And I think there was a lot of that.
[35:26]
B
What sense did you get, though, of what drove or what was different about the people who didn't do that? There's a recurrent character, Helmuth von Moltke, who's obviously a very famous, famous name in several other contexts throughout German history. But he's an intelligence officer, somewhat reluctant. One does what he can try to do, I think, to gum things up or slow them down from the inside. What was different about him, it would have Been very easy of someone for his background to just go, sure, sign me up.
[35:57]
D
Well, first of all, he had a British mother and he was an aristocrat, a very pious Christian aristocrat who. The kind of man that the Nazis would have distrusted because just like right wing populists in our own time, they didn't like the upper class. They felt the upper class was snooty and looked down its noses on people who were less educated and so on. So there was an antagonism between the upper class and the Nazis. Anyway. Some aristocrats joined the Nazis, but not all of them. And I think von Moltke was the kind of man, he was conservative, he was a patriot, but who felt that Nazis were vulgar rabble. And it was people like him, educated and so on, educated to lead, should have had the right to govern Germany. And it's as though Britain had fallen under a fascist regime of black shirts and sort of old Etonians would be pushed out and watch bunch of sort of vulgar Cockneys take over. And that's what it felt like to people like for Moltke, I think. But he was also a decent man and he tried what he could to stop the worst things from happening, which of course he failed to do, and then at the end was sympathetic to the fellow upper class people on the whole who tried to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
[37:17]
B
I mean, just finally, then there is an absolutely true chilling line that von Moltke writes in a letter to his wife that appears in your book, where he says, today I can endure the sufferings of others with an equanimity I would have found execrable a year ago. I guess the disquieting question that arises from reading this book, or I guess most narratives of that period is did you come away with a slightly bleak feeling that this could happen anywhere at any time? Or can we reassure ourselves that there was circumstances very peculiar to Germany in the 1930s?
[37:52]
D
Well, I think both are true. I mean, there were circumstances very peculiar to Germany which produced the Nazis and Hitler. On the other hand, the first part of your question is, I think is absolutely true. I think it could happen, or very bad things can happen anywhere to any people. And what for Moltke was saying, you know, you get used to terrible things that would have shocked you just a few months ago ago. We know that from our own time. I mean, without comparing anything that's going on in America now with the Third Reich necessarily, but the way people get used to outrages coming from a president and now people just shrug their shoulders over things that or tut tut a little bit. But things that a president says that a few years ago would have been completely unthinkable.
[38:41]
B
That was Ian Baruma speaking to me earlier. His new book, Stay Alive Berlin, 1939-45, is available now. That's all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Alex von Tonzelman and Yossi Meckelberg. Today's show was produced by Thomas Waterhouse and researched by Josefina Astrid Nagla Gomez. Our studio manager was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
[39:10]
D
It.