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- [00:01]
Rory Stewart
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad Free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com are.
- [00:14]
Alistair Campbell
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- [00:59]
Guest Speaker
I'm ready for my life to change. ABC Sundays American Idol is all new.
- [01:04]
Rory Stewart
Give it your all. Good luck. Come out with a golden ticket. Let's hear it. This is immense world. I've never seen anything like it.
- [01:13]
Guest Speaker
And a new chapter begins. You're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol News Sundays 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu. Now. As you know, it's the Rest is Politics powered by Fuse Energy. There's been a new analysis by the Confederation British Industry, which has found that the net zero sector in the UK is growing three times faster than the UK economy at large. The net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024.
- [01:48]
Rory Stewart
Wow. Well, that is clearly, I think, very, very good news. I'd love to know how that's measured. What do we mean by the net zero economy as opposed to the UK economy at large? But let's take it at face value. It's also what popped into my head as you were saying that was constantly seeing Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and all that lot, basically saying that net zero is sort of what's responsible for our economic problems. But what that seems to be saying is that it's actually part of the solution to our economic problems. Anyway, we've got a question here from Ed. I'm assuming that's not Ed Miliband, who's the Secretary of State for all these issues. As a climate conscious reader listener, I was pretty horrified to read, says Ed that BP are planning to ramp up gas and oil production and cut renewable energy plans. Similarly, Equinor have pledged to halve their renewable energy investments in the next two years whilst ramping up fossil fuel activities. Shell are also backing down from proposed offshore wind investments. What can climate positive governments and companies do to combat this damaging behavior from legacy energy giants? Well, I guess we are, yeah.
- [03:03]
Guest Speaker
I mean, some of this I think is, is precedes Trump, but some of this is, is post Trump. I'll suggest just sort of footnote on that CBI report.
- [03:12]
Rory Stewart
Yes.
- [03:13]
Guest Speaker
I mean the UK is doing really well and it's. And on that, and it's, it's good also because actually a lot of that is, is quite productive and a lot of it is not just London and the Southeast. It's about green jobs up in other bits of the country, but it's 50% less than the growth in those sectors in Europe as a whole. And In China, nearly 10% of its GDP is now associated with clean energy.
- [03:35]
Rory Stewart
You see, I think the impact of Trump is enormous in so many ways. And one of his thing, drill, baby, drill. And that's why I do speak up Fred Miliband in the job that he's doing at the moment, because I think the question there, what can climate positive governments and companies do to combat this damage behavior? They've got to keep trying to challenge it and keep trying to signal stress to people why this net zero journey is so important. But you've just got to keep going with what you believe. I remember I've told you before about when Al Gore, I was with Al Gore not long after Trump got elected first time round and he said, we're just going to have to work around this guy. Now that's very, very difficult when you're talking about a very powerful, very driven United States president. But one day he'll be gone.
- [04:19]
Guest Speaker
It's not totally straightforward because of course the North Sea producers point out that we're not changing our consumption really. We're still importing an enormous amount of oil and gas. We're just importing it from other places and we're not getting any benefit from it. So one of the challenges for red middle band is how do you avoid kind of crippling British companies, British oil production and then British consumers just keep getting all the same stuff from elsewhere. So you have no impact at all. Final one, before we get off this Fuse energy inspired question. We both love watching foreign language television and if you haven't seen it, there's a great Norwegian series called Occupied. And its beginning is the Norwegian Prime Minister announces that he's going to stop all oil and gas production in Norway and all exports. And the result is that the European Union and Russia conspire and Russia invades and occupies Norway to get its oil and gas production going again.
- [05:16]
Rory Stewart
I'm all for bold leadership, but I think for a Norwegian Prime Minister. But normally, listen, Norway's a great example of where they are an energy giant, but they understand that renewables is the future and that's where they're putting an awful lot of their investment. Anyway, with all this in mind, this is a long winded way of saying switch to fuse, which invests 100% of its profits into renewable projects around the world.
- [05:43]
Guest Speaker
Yeah. One of the things that's interesting about Fuse is they're not just buying certificates to claim 100% green energy because the UK renewables can't always meet demand. Every hour, sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing. Many companies buy certificates to appear fully green, but their actual energy mix does include fossil fuels. At Fuse Energy, they reinvest all profits into building more renewable energy. So they're focusing really on the real world impact. It's not just a shell game where they're playing with certificates. They receive certificates, but they use the proceeds to fund more wind and solar projects, not to make unfounded claims.
- [06:21]
Rory Stewart
Rest is politics is powered by Fuse Energy and Fuse are giving away free trip membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups.
- [06:30]
Guest Speaker
And just to remind people, the great thing about being a trip member is you don't have to listen to adverts. When you listen, you get early access to Question Time episodes like this one. You get book discounts, you get pre sale tickets for live shows. And we're also increasingly going to be generating exclusive content for subscribers. So that could be little series, that could be niche interviews, which Alastair and I do, which are just for subscribers. So to sign up for terms and conditions and find out the benefits of being a subscriber, visit getfused.com politics welcome to the rest of this Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.
- [07:16]
Rory Stewart
And with me, Alistair Gamble. And Rory. We did lots of America and Europe in the main podcast, but I think we have to stick with it because we've got so many questions, I mean, thousands of questions, and so many of them are actually about the issues that we were talking about yesterday. So here's a couple of you to kick off with Rory, both from members. Stephen Flatley. Now, the United States is not a reliable NATO partner stated as a statement of fact by Stephen Flatley. And we, the UK and Europe, need to take more responsibility for our defense. How much actual operational, technical and political independence do we actually have over our nuclear arsenal? Good question, Jeff. Also, should the UK and European countries impose a war levy on VAT to raise immediate funds for defense? Most people would broadly support this and it would send a strong signal to Putin and maybe just throw this one in. We've got questions about aid and the fact that aid is being cut to pay for this increased defense spending. You've spoken a lot about the importance of aid. What do you think of aid spending being cut to support defence spending? So there you are. Roy, kick off with those.
- [08:21]
Guest Speaker
So this, this follows on from yesterday and the big story, which we're all working our way through because in four weeks we've had to rethink all our major strategic assumptions. And in some ways it's daft of us. We should have seen this coming with Trump won. So we've actually had eight years to really begin to wake up to the possibility that the US Is no longer going to be a predictable, reliable ally and that the entire rules based international order the US created is being abandoned by the US but it was such a big deal, such a difficult thing to get our heads around. And because of course, the US has been the largest economy in the world and the largest military in the world for 80 years and it basically created the UN, created NATO, created the world bank, that imagining a world without it. I'm still struggling for what exactly the metaphor is. It's more than a foundation stone. It's like, you know, 2/3, the entire building is being removed. We talked in the last podcast about vulnerabilities a little bit, but I guess Stephen Flatley's question gets to that. So let's just start with that and try to understand what the vulnerabilities are and why getting independent from the US Is much, much easier said than done. Well, firstly, it's because so much of our kit comes from the US so enormous amount of, you know, our F35s, for example, which is the attack aircraft we decided to buy, are basically built with some UK components, but basically built in the US and the Americans, when they sell these things around the world, often demand that they retain the data that these planes pick up. So these planes are full of extraordinary kind of data gathering stuff. But it's all considered top secret. The data is owned by the US I think at one point we had to negotiate just shortly after I left Government, I think we had to give $400 million to an American defense company to be able to have our own data from our own planes. Right. And as the Afghans discovered, if you buy American kit, you're totally dependent on American contractors to do software updates. And if they don't provide the software updates, the whole stuff is grounded. So the reason the entire Afghan air force and helicopter force collapsed and the Taliban took over the country is American removed all the contractors who were there doing the software upgrades, which have to happen after every mission. Then there's the problem that America retains the right to not deliver stuff. So Sweden had ordered a lot of Patriot missiles and the United States suddenly said, actually we can't really afford to give them to you because we want them ourselves for something else.
- [11:02]
Rory Stewart
Right.
- [11:02]
Guest Speaker
This whole world of US defence equipment was not just about the performance of the kit because sometimes American kit is over engineered, unbelievably expensive and has been proved in Ukraine. We're in a world where in fact the Ukrainians are showing that you can use thousand dollar drones and iPhones to do a lot of the stuff that 150 million dollar planes were doing. One of the reasons we buy the kit is because of security guarantees. So the most extreme example of all is Switzerland buys F35s. Now an F35 is the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world and it's there to do these incredible long range stealth missions. There is literally no reason for little Switzerland, this neutral mountainous country, to have these planes. The only reason they buy them is that implicit is you buy it and America has your back. Now America no longer has our back. I think very few people now believe that Trump is going to do anything to defend a European country if it's attacked by Putin. So we then have to think about how we replace all this stuff. Well, you can just about imagine that there could be British Italian designed planes or French German designed planes. And in fact the Typhoon and Rafael can come into that space. There is stuff we can do to replace American anti aircraft missiles. Rheinmetall is now producing more and more 155 millimeter munition.
- [12:36]
Rory Stewart
Your German pronunciation's coming on.
- [12:37]
Guest Speaker
Rory, thank you very much. Thank you. But we're still dealing with the fact that perhaps our biggest single vulnerability is in tech. Because the world of defense is increasingly a world dominated by companies like Palantir and Anduril SpaceX. And they would say we've got you over a barrel. So when I meet these people from these American companies, they're like Europe's finished. You're completely dependent on American tech. The future of the world is American tech, and you can't live without us. And wars are won on the basis of our tech platforms. And of course, the seven largest tech companies in the world, American. So what would it mean for Europe to actually become independent of Google, independent of the cloud services provided by Microsoft? We have something called SAP, which is incredibly important for running supply chains. But even that lives on cloud computing services provided by these enormous American companies. So there is a double strategy here. There's a strategy about making our own defense equipment and finding markets for our own defense equipment. And then there's an entire strategy about developing a technological infrastructure where, again, we don't really have the finance in place. I mean, famously, we innovate, but we don't produce commercial companies because it's much easier to get funding in the US there's not a big European market for investing in tech. We don't take risk in the same way that the US does. So tech companies are perpetually flipping over to the US There are potential companies. There are great German, Swedish, British companies could be building in, but we'd have to completely change our financial infrastructure as well as spending a lot more money over the years.
- [14:23]
Rory Stewart
It's partly what they were talking about at the conference in Kyiv hosted by Zelensky, and a lot of the European leaders were. I mentioned the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen. She was absolutely clear that Europe has to start to be able to compete on this, because these weren't the words she used. But the notion being that we've just fallen so far behind. And I think the other thing that maybe goes to Stephen's question is so much of our defence budget. So we talk about 2.5%. And I saw Tobias Elwood, former Tory MP, defense select committee, former soldier. And he was interviewed, he was in Kyiv yesterday. He was saying that the best thing Britain could do as a way of showing leadership to the rest of Europe was actually to say, eventually we're going to match America. But of course, to go to one of the other questions in that, those questions I threw at you to start, Rory, to spend more on defense means to either grow the economy substantially, which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon, or make cuts elsewhere. And a lot of people, you and I were both livid that the Americans have sort of basically got rid of USAID, the U.S. agency for International Development. But now the British government has gone after aid and development as the first thing to go when spending for more defence so the question there, how do we feel about that? Very, very bad.
- [15:49]
Guest Speaker
Yes. So, yes, India's question. Let's get into that for a second. So you've spoken a lot about the importance of aid. What do you think of aid spending being cut to support defence spending? Now, this is partly about if we're going to be serious about stepping up. It's not just serious about manufacturing, it is about becoming a serious country in terms of our skills and our soft power as well. So we would need to, if we're going to become properly independent, the US really invest in rebuilding the Foreign Office, rebuild our development infrastructure, really work out who we are in the world and how seriously we're doing it. Because a lot of what we've done for the last 60 years, I used to make jokes about this, but genuinely my first boss in the Foreign Office, when you asked him what to do, would say find out what the Americans are doing and doing a little bit less. And if you've got that culture, you don't really feel that you need to develop all the linguistic skills that you need, the scale of the embassies that you need, the scale of the development infrastructure, the number of intelligence stations we would have to open in places like Africa because we could no longer rely on the five eyes process. Alistair, a question for you. So you started on this in yesterday's pod and I thought it was really interesting and I want to develop this. So let's imagine that we really thought about Europe and maybe we thought about the European Union, plus a number of non member states of which the United Kingdom would be a very important example, which bolt on and integrate economically defence and security onto the European Union. And maybe to be radical about this, that could be the uk, it could be Ukraine and it could be Turkey and this could be a Norway, and it definitely could be a vision, for example, I think of customs union and single market without initially free movement of people, perhaps without ever free movement of people. Why? Because most European countries don't want free movement from Turkey. Many voters in Britain don't want free movement into Britain. And the European countries in a different situation they were in 10 years ago because they are facing labour shortages, so it's less of a priority for them.
- [18:07]
Rory Stewart
Well, that, interestingly enough, the other name that was half in jest thrown into that mix at the meeting in Kyiv by the Norwegian Prime Minister was Canada. Yes, the other thing, Rory, I didn't have time to send you because I just got this this morning, but I was sent a. I was sent a very Interesting paper on something called the Rearmament Bank. And at first I looked at it and thought this is just going to be one of those sort of, you know, winky wanky, I've got a great idea, I can save the world. And so you always look at who's actually sending this thing and who's involved in it. So the first name was Guy de Selier, who was involved in founding the ebrd, the European bank of Reconstruction and Development. The second name was General Sir Nick Carter, former Chief of the UK Defence Staff, who I happen to know of old has been very, very worried about the decline in UK defenses. And then finally Edward Lucas, Senior Advisor at the Centre for European Policy Analysis. And essentially what this is talking about is, relates to what you've just said. Talks about getting a core group of like minded European NATO members that has to be veto proof, that's the first thing, complementing the defence mandates that already exist, but basically saying you need 10 billion upfront state finance in order to borrow 90 billion. And essentially based on the process that was modeled by the ebrd. So I think these are new structures that are going to have to start coming up because the current structures right now don't look fit for purpose. Did you ever think you would see the day when the United nations, which we've always thought post war was this great institution where the world politics could play out, where we, the UK and France were on the wrong side of a vote? Where on the other side you had China, Russia and America?
- [20:03]
Guest Speaker
Well, we were on the right side of the vote, weren't we?
- [20:05]
Rory Stewart
We were on the wrong side in that we couldn't get them over. We were totally on the right side of history. Yeah, we were voted the right way, but we were, we were not with the Americans on that, that felt pretty threatening. And that does mean that these other sorts of institutions are going to have to develop and evolve. And I think this is what Mertz was talking about. I think he was talking about these like minded pro European, pro NATO countries. And it is interesting, we've talked a lot in recent weeks about the potential for Turkey's power in some of these issues and relationships. And this is a classic one. If this had the Turks backing it, you know, could get off the ground.
- [20:45]
Guest Speaker
Let's lean into the Turks for a second. So Turkey has a lot of soldiers, big military and more willingness to fight. They've been a big supplier of drones to Ukraine. They are strategic adversaries of Russia in the Black Sea and of course in Syria where they were on different sides. And Erdogan has now volunteered and said he's happy for the idea of Turkish troops to deploy to Ukraine and for Ukraine to join NATO. As we talk about who future European allies could be, I think Turkey is a very important part of that. Now, we might also think about. You talked about Canada, other democracies, Australia, South Korea, Japan. Now, these are enormous economies with huge amounts of resources if we wish to try to have some kind of rebalance and strategic independence. My friend Gerald Knauss from esi, who I adore, is very interested in Jean Monet and the great visions of the early 1950s. And of course, he would say that what we need is to envisage something which is more like the coal and steel community. In other words, something that's more than just an economic union, that has a sort of political security infrastructure, but isn't as bureaucratic, isn't all about the commission. Your point about Nick Carter and vetoes isn't about arguing about the Common Fisheries Policy, which would be the first thing that would get involved. But in order to get there, Alistair, I've now given you this task. Okay, You've got Keir Starmer, you've got Macron, you've got Merz and a Rook, you've got Tusk, you've got Erdogan, and you've got Zelenskyy. How do you actually get them to get beyond the rhetoric and really step up and let's say our objective is within a year to create a new outer circle of Europe, a new form of European defense and economic alliance. How are we going to get there as opposed to just waffle about it and miss the chance entirely?
- [22:43]
Rory Stewart
I think this is already beginning to form. I think we're seeing it in the statements now. There are massive issues that arise from it. You talked about one of them yesterday, which is actually the extent to which we, the UK in particular, are so linked into America. But I think you'd have to do this in a way that ultimately the Americans said, yeah, that's kind of what we want. Because what Trump keeps saying and what the American message is, we can, you and I focus a lot on them being no longer a reliable ally. But let's just understand that what they're essentially saying is you lot have taken us for granted for too long. Do more of your own stuff, look after your own backyard better than you've done. So I think you mentioned some of the names there and there would be others. You get them in a room, essentially, they have to agree. And this could happen quite quickly. As I understand it, Keir Starmer is going to come back from Washington. He and Macron have been talking pretty regularly in advance of these two visits that they're both making this week, and I think it's this weekend. They're then going to gather some of the other European leaders. It wouldn't take that long before you say, look, we have to accept now we have to have a reshaping of the European defence and security situation. And the fact that the Norwegian Prime Minister yesterday was talking about him the way that he was, the fact that the Danish Prime Minister was talking the way that she was, the fact that Macron spoke yesterday as he did, that Keir Starmer's going to be saying much the same thing on Thursday. I don't think it would be that difficult. And that's why I think this rearmament bank is really interesting. You would have to have the development of institutions that sat alongside and in some cases maybe eventually replaced existing institutions. And the ebrd, if I remember, that got together very, very quickly and started to deliver big budgets and big projects. I think it probably was within a year, but I think it was very, very quick.
- [24:36]
Guest Speaker
I mean, it'd be interesting to see whether Starme has the confidence to say, I am now appointing a lead envoy and this is my objective. We're going to negotiate with these partners to create this economic and military cooperation structure. Going to be a formal structure. This is how we're going to work and we're going to integrate these things. We're going to integrate finance across Europe, defense funding. We're going to identify all the gaps, we're going to work out how do we put nuclear weapons into Germany now?
- [25:04]
Rory Stewart
Manufacturing, manufacturing. This is what I said yesterday when I said that I thought that this is. You know, people have sort of all sorts of complaints that they've had about Keir Starmer, but this, in terms of UK and Keir Starmer leadership is actually a massive challenge and opportunity. And I think if he rose to it, it could actually be the making of it. I was very impressed yesterday. I saw James Heape, former Defense Minister, Ben Wallace, who I've been sort of keeping an eye because he's been saying some very interesting things. And also, Tobias Elwood, it was very interesting hearing them. I actually thought, you know, the point you keep making about these ministers are much better when they're out of office than in it. They were all three of them speaking with real insight and conviction, but also coming from a position of understanding what Keir Starmer does right now is unbelievably important for the future of Britain and for the future of Europe. If you see it in that context. I think the country is ready to come behind something really quite big on this and I think it will involve us getting through the crap that gets talked about Brexit and actually understanding there's something existential about this. It is a massive challenge and it involves us understanding we are a major European power when it comes to defence and security, but we've got to become even more major and we've got to get the others to develop in the same direction. This episode is brought to you by one of our favourite sponsors, long term partners of the rest is politics. That's NordVPN and we're guilty.
- [26:43]
Guest Speaker
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- [27:05]
Rory Stewart
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- [27:33]
Rory Stewart
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- [27:43]
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- [28:39]
Guest Speaker
Obviously a lot of the the questions that we're getting at the moment are focused on the US End of this as well. So fulp, who's a member on Discord now the members question and thank you for members who are sending in questions. Could you please explain what's going on with Elon Musk and Steve Bannon both making Nazi salutes to crowds recently? They know what it means, it's deliberate, and yet they deny it. What's their intention? How do they marry their apparent support for Nazi ideology with their apparent trenchant support for Israel? This is a really interesting thing and there's been some good journalistic coverage on this. Clearly Musk and Bannon are playing ambiguously on the line on this stuff. So they do these salutes and then they deny that that's what they intended to do. But Jordan Bardella, who is the young, more charismatic face of the French far right, who was at this conference in which Bannon did this salute, recognized it enough as a Nazi salute to say he wasn't going to speak at that conference.
- [29:42]
Rory Stewart
It didn't seem to bother Nigel Farage or Liz Truss in the same way.
- [29:45]
Guest Speaker
No, but it's interesting that the far right people like Bardella are conscious. They know what's going on. They can read the signs. And some of the journalistic coverage is pointing out that what you're going to see probably quite soon is MAGA crowds doing Nazi salutes themselves almost as a dare, and then it becoming more and more normalized. So let me take one aspect of fulp's question. You talked about America wanting Europe to become independent. Yes, but it's a little bit worse than that, isn't it? Because they're also a government in America that is deliberately trying to undermine the mainstream elected European governments by supporting their far right opponents, you know, by actually using Twitter and we can get on to what that means. But using a massive social media platform to deliberately undermine elected governments in the way that Russia has done for many, many years. The United States is now doing completely openly. And remember, these far right governments that they're supporting, as we keep pointing out, don't share any of the strategic vision that we're laying out. They don't want close European solidarity. They are unashamedly Pro Putin. And so there's a tension going on. On the one hand, there's a vision of creating NATO without the United States, which would still have, broadly speaking, the old security values of NATO. And another vision, which is the United States funding far right groups that want to give up on all the guiding principles of NATO.
- [31:21]
Rory Stewart
This is what's been interesting about what's going on in Germany. Historically, the AfD has broadly defined it as anti American, seeing, as always, like America, why we're allowing America to occupy Europe. But once Elon Musk comes along with promises of support and money, and as we said last week, three quarters of all stuff on X was basically coming from that sort of AFD perspective. Look, it's like there are some words that we know that you shouldn't use, okay? And sometimes they get used and people do it as you say, because they feel like they've been dared to do it. And this is the danger of this whole weaponization of the so called free speech argument. What they mean by free speech, a lot of these people on the right, is they want to be able to say things that society has deemed to be too offensive to be said. They want to go back to that. And likewise, I think with the Nazi thing, it's never gone away in terms of there being an attraction amongst some people, particularly men, an attraction to this notion that politics ultimately is about power. Power is about domination and you dominate other people. And it's been really interest. I was in Germany, if you talk to Germans, even people on the right in Germany, they can't really understand why the Americans can't see why this Nazi thing runs so deep, why somebody like Musk makes a speech to the AfD and says you've got to get over your guilt and all that stuff. A reasonable German doesn't understand why a reasonable American can't see that. So this is, I think, very, very deliberate. What Bannon did, I think was deliberate. What Musk did was deliberate. Why do they deny it? To go back to the question, this goes back to their thing about owning the libs. They want us to get upset about it. And that guy who's just been appointed as Patel's deputy at the FBI, this guy, Dan Bondingo, a kind of right wing conspiracy theorist podcaster, he is on record as saying he exists to own the libs. He wants us to get angry and agitated. So we had a question from Jess this week. Do you have any advice for when big events in politics and the news begin to strain your mental health? I think that is Happening. And by the way, my answer, Jess, is I think you just have to be very, very careful about not spending all your time following the news, looking at the news, reading about it and so forth, and almost try and step back from it, but it's very, very, very, very hard. But right now, we need to understand, Rory, you need to understand, I need to understand. I mean, just think about this. In the last couple of weeks, you have been attacked on social media in various forms by Elon Musk, J.D. vance and Dominic Cummings. What's that about?
- [34:10]
Guest Speaker
And Donald J. Trump Jr. And Donald J. Trump.
- [34:12]
Rory Stewart
What's that about? It's about owning the libs.
- [34:14]
Guest Speaker
And each one of these attacks gets 10 or 15 million views and thousands of associated threats coming in. I took Sunday off and didn't look at Twitter at all and felt much better. I genuinely don't know. I mean, just for a second, I genuinely don't know whether there's any point my being there. I mean, occasionally I think, okay, if I'm annoying JD Vance enough, and if I get a chance to challenge him on something as important as this, it's worth doing. But in other moods, I think, no, no, no. I'm just playing into their game. This is ridiculous. I'm not changing anyone's opinion. I'm just giving them an enormous desire to troll me. But I don't know what you do about it. I mean, if I don't go on, I then get all these messages from friends saying, are you okay? Because they're seeing that from the mild J.D. vance says I have a low IQ through to the slightly worse Elon Musk saying, I'm a corrupt grifter through to the Dominic Cummings, I should be killed. What do you do about the fact that there are tens of millions of people saying this stuff or sharing this stuff?
- [35:18]
Rory Stewart
I think you have to separate them from what you think that reasonable people think. It's like we had a question this week. You know, I really enjoyed Alistair calling Elon Musk a real twat. But does it really help debate? And the truth is, no, it doesn't. So we all, maybe, I think, get driven slightly to a place we don't necessarily, in the cold light of day, always want to be. For a lot of these people, they're making money out of being offensive. They're making money out of being extreme. My Fiona keeps saying to me, I don't know why you're on there. All you're doing is helping Elon Musk get even richer. There may be something in that, but I don't look at the replies in the way that you do. I don't know how many likes I get or they get or I just don't look at it. I use Twitter to express a view. Very occasionally I will engage with people, but in the main I just scroll through. I don't actually spend that much time in there, far less than you do.
- [36:12]
Guest Speaker
I mean, I just want to put this out here to continue how to really annoy the far right. So here we are. Dear Mr. Elon Musk, we should ban Twitter completely in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It is clearly now a mechanism being used to undermine our democratically elected governments and supporting far right parties.
- [36:33]
Rory Stewart
I would buy that. The only thing is, so then people will say, well, how do you square that with still being on it? Because this is something that anybody who was around when the BNP were taking hold and gaining, you can't vacate space to them. So I think there is always a reason to be there. I actually think that that would be a good move. Now we are going to be interviewing Peter Karl quite soon and he would probably say, listen AI, whether we like it or not is part of the economic and future success of this country. Are you seriously saying that we're going to upset all these massive players? And da, da, da. I suspect that would be what he'd say. We'll see.
- [37:11]
Guest Speaker
One of the interesting things is, of course, were we to do that, Elon Musk, who at the moment seems to own a great deal of Donald Trump will then deploy full American economic trade and other sanctions against the United Kingdom in the name of free speech in order to protect the 40 billion that has been invested in his company, Twitter. So as Europe tries to defend itself, I think the big existential threat in Europe is actually that we're going to be undermined from within.
- [37:41]
Rory Stewart
That's what Jayd Van said about Europe.
- [37:42]
Guest Speaker
Well, this is the last chance saloon for the coalition in Austria. This is the last chance saloon, I think, for the coalition in Germany to prove that they have an alternative.
- [37:52]
Rory Stewart
I agree with that. But Rory, just on Germany, I don't think that Musk added much to the support of the AfD and I think he may have helped the other, particularly the left wing party Delinka. I think he helped mobilize them and I think there was within decent people a sense of, I'm not being told who to vote by this guy. I think they were always going to get around 19, 20%. That's what the polls have been saying for months. So I'm not convinced. I think actually this was not a good result for Musk. I'm not even convinced it was a very good result for Putin because I don't think. I think we look at Hungary, you look at Slovakia, you look at some of these other elections, Romania that we talked about before, I think you could argue Russia really made an impact. I still think they made an impact in Brexit, by the way, and I will think that to my grave. But I don't think they did in Germany.
- [38:39]
Guest Speaker
They may just be learning, though, because now you've got essentially Russia and the American presidency working on the same side. I mean, they're all doing the same. They're all trying to support far right groups in Europe. Russia, because the far right groups are pro Russian. America, because they think that the values of Europe are not the values of the Trump presidency, and they want to bring in people who share the votes. I think we're underestimating how much social media has changed everything. We've talked in the past about how much the crisis we face is about fundamental economic conditions and why it is or isn't the 1930s. And the truth is that, yes, life is difficult in Europe, but my goodness, it's not the 1930s. But the thing that makes the far right take off is social media. I mean, I think it's no coincidence that 2012, which is the beginning of the age of populism, is also when Twitter and Facebook get off the ground. And I think if we don't shut these things down, I think our democracies are in real trouble.
- [39:39]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Okay. Well, listen, there you go. Elon, J.D. rory Stewart, you can have another go at him because he's basically said Twitter should be shut down. I think there will come a point where some country or other decides to do it. Have you noticed as well, Rory, how they never attack China or Russia over impinging on free speech, which is quite amazing. But we also had a question about Chelsea Football Club, which, bizarrely, does relate to this question, which came from Matthew, a member. Can you explain what has happened to the money that was meant to go to Ukraine from the sale of Chelsea Football Club? Do you remember this one?
- [40:15]
Guest Speaker
I do, because I work with a lot of nonprofits. This is an enormous fund that was supposed to be supporting people in conflict, not just Ukraine. It could be used for people in conflict in Sud, Afghanistan and elsewhere. And I knew some of the trustees, and this has been going on for many, many years now.
- [40:32]
Rory Stewart
Been going on since Abramovich was, you know, had to Sell Chelsea. So there's £2.3 billion sitting in a British bank account. It exists to fund humanitarian programs for victims of the war in Ukraine at no cost to the British taxpayer. It was created when Abramovich sold Chelsea. He proposed that the fund should be offered up as humanitarian money, I presume as a way of avoiding extra sanctions. It was agreed between our government and Abramovich that the sale, that the money would be used to fund humanitarian programs supporting victims of the war in Ukraine, wherever they were in the world. But it still hasn't gone. The money is sitting in a bank account. So as I understand it, I spoke to somebody that Save the Children about this. They actually lobbied David Lammy. So the official line, if you phone the government press office is to say, oh, this is sitting in the desk of David Lammy. But David Lammy said he wasn't aware of this. So listen, the rest is politics. On the third anniversary, backing Save the Children in calling for this money to be released and given to people with humanitarian needs in Ukraine. I mean, 2 billion, you can buy quite a lot of humanitarian aid with that. At a time when in other parts of the government arena we're cutting it.
- [41:58]
Guest Speaker
Final serious one for me and then I think maybe we can finish with some lighter hearted ones. So John is saying, should Europe now be looking to China as an alternative partner if we can't rely on the United States?
- [42:10]
Rory Stewart
Well, listen, let me throw one at you in the same arena, Rory. Michael od. If China decided to spin up a full replacement to usaid, would Rory agree to run it? How would he weigh the huge humanitarian benefits against being a pawn in an authoritarian soft power play? That's a great question. I think you would.
- [42:32]
Guest Speaker
No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't run a Chinese development organization worldwide. No, I think that would be too dubious.
- [42:39]
Rory Stewart
WOB is a deputy.
- [42:41]
Guest Speaker
As a deputy, I think your great friend David Cameron went off to do a few investments with China, didn't he?
- [42:48]
Rory Stewart
You can't go through a week without having a dig at David Cameron. I mean, I think we're going to have to ask David Cameron to come on the podcast, but just do it with me.
- [42:57]
Guest Speaker
It's very interesting. If you look at the China Daily yesterday and actually one of their foreign policy magazines too, and these are things which are basically written by the staff and the Chinese politburo. For the first time, there's no criticism of Europe. And for the first time you see them saying that Europe is a force for stability, China is a force for stability. Europe has complex security needs. And it needs to make more multilateral arrangements with other countries for which brackets read China. So there will be people now within Europe saying, well, you know, China's not democratic, but at least it's a bit more predictable than the United States. It has long 15, 20 year plans and it's not trying to steal Greenland from us. And you know, really, do we have any alternative if we've got to get off American tech, other than to look at Chinese tech? And after all, they produce a lot of stuff very cheaply. They can transform our electric vehicle fleet and of course, the other way too. I mean, Germany's entire car industry depends on selling to China. 50% of the profits of European luxury goods and automobile manufacturers are made in made in China. So I think there will be the beginnings of very strong movements in Europe, at least on things like trade, to start getting closer to China. And Europe probably isn't going to have any choice other than to do that. On the other hand, it should be very wary because China is not a long standing friend of Europe. China, boy, if you think Trump can be transactional. As I said, it appears that as soon as David Cameron met the Dalai Lama, China basically cut off 10 years of investment, investment into Britain. Its relationships with Russia are complicated, to say the least. Its economic power is so immense that it's very difficult for individually European countries to negotiate with it without being ripped off. But I definitely think that one of the unintended consequences of what Trump is doing is that instead of what Elbridge Colby, who's the policy chief now at Defence, is fantasizing about, you know, he's put out a statement saying Europe should spend 5% on defense and take over all support in Europe. And also Europe should be supporting the US against China. We should be deploying into Taiwan and this and the other. Forget it, right? I mean, if you can't have it both ways, if the US abandons Europe, they're not going to be supporting the US against China, and if anything, they will be undermining US attempts to isolate China.
- [45:25]
Rory Stewart
Here's my last serious one, Rory. Mrs. Premise, why has the head of the Commonwealth had nothing to say about repeated threats to Canada's sovereignty? More broadly, who can lead international solidarity against US aggression? Why does it seem anemic so far, and we've actually answered this before about we both agree that there should be more British and other Commonwealth voices speaking up for Canada against this dreadful sort of constant denigration of Canada as a sovereign state. But it's also an opportunity to tell you that on leading on Monday, we've got the two contenders to become the next Prime Minister of Canada because whoever replaces Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party will become Prime Minister until the next general election. So that's Christia Freeland who we've talked to for the first time in the podcast, and Mark Carney who we're talking to for the second time. So that's out on Monday.
- [46:16]
Guest Speaker
Oh, my goodness, they're good. I mean, in terms of mental health, I do think listening to Franz Timmermans and Chrystia Friedlander, people really cheer me up because these are really quite gnarly, experienced older politicians with a lot of worldly knowledge who are pretty frank about Trump, pretty sensible in their views and remarkably, I think, open about their failings, their thoughts. All these recent interviews have really kind of cheered me up.
- [46:45]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, I'm going to throw this one out there. Are you going to change your name to the rest is adverts. Now that first of all to say to people, if you don't want any adverts, become a subscriber. But secondly, I'm going to keep an eye ear out for that because I get very irritated on podcasts. If you get too many adverts.
- [47:01]
Guest Speaker
Yes. I mean, I think we should be honest with people about how this podcast runs. So all these wonderful people who film us and us and the whole team keep going either because of adverts or if people don't want adverts because they subscribe. But as you say, there's obviously people getting frustrated and irritated by that. Okay, Caf Queen, this is a good question for you. What, Alistair, is your all time favourite song and obviously I'm going to ask you to sing it.
- [47:31]
Rory Stewart
Oh, I can't sing it. I can't sing it.
- [47:33]
Guest Speaker
You can't sing it.
- [47:34]
Rory Stewart
I've got two, I've got. Well, can't. Un que l'amour a sofriromp partage. That's the start of it. It's Canton na que l'amour by Jack Brell and I vary between that and Nma kita pas. They're both by Jack Brell who is my favorite all time singer. But I was very sad about Roberta Flack dying. I was so sad about that. Such a beautiful voice. All right, you can tell me your all time favorite song. Oh, cool.
- [48:04]
Guest Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm afraid it's.
- [48:06]
Rory Stewart
And you have to sing it. You have to see it.
- [48:07]
Guest Speaker
No, and I definitely can't sing it. I, I tried to sing it once actually in a d Day celebration in Normandy, and it went horribly wrong. It's Laschopiana by Handel. And the mayor of this little French town, a woman who was the mayor of the French town, who'd welcomed me and my father because my father's regiment, the Black Watch, had liberated this town after D Day. Yeah, she asked me what my favorite song was. I mentioned this. And she, who was a much more serious musician than any of us, tried to get a singing handle in her kitchen. And my father, who used to be a great musician with a beautiful voice, had gone completely deaf and was totally off key. And this is a much too challenging piece of music for me to attempt at any situation, let alone on your podcast.
- [48:48]
Rory Stewart
Okay, well, let me give you one that you could answer my final question. Charlotte, do you have any book or TV recommendations this week? So I've been reading lots of Friedrich Mehrz books. In between reading Charlotte Lick's new novel called Dunklas Vassar and TV Roy, I have found, thanks to our friend David, who goes to the swimming in the same place as we do. I can't believe this. But he said, do you ever watch BBC Alba, the Gaelic tv? And I said, well, I do, actually. I watch a bit of football on there and I quite like just chugging in to see if I can understand it because my dad was a Gaelic speaker and he said the best thing I've seen on telly for ages is something called the Island.
- [49:27]
Guest Speaker
A Gallic detective. Shit, yeah.
- [49:29]
Rory Stewart
It's a Gaelic murder mystery. It's about a rich guy and his family and this young girl who was forced to leave the island when she was young and she goes back as a police officer investigating this murder. And it's great to think there are so many actors who are acting in Gaelic. And I guess part of me says, well, why shouldn't they?
- [49:50]
Guest Speaker
I've been trying a bit of. Bit of foreign language stuff. So I was looking at Squid Game, which is the South Korean thriller. Is that subtitled or subtitled? All these things are subtitles. You get original languages. A Dark, which is a German time traveling. But I was quite disturbed by Dark, that that was closer to a horror, horror, horror movie than I was ready for.
- [50:16]
Rory Stewart
Rory, if you see a program of it, it's called Dark, it's sort of going to like this novel. I mentioned Charlotte Link, right? And you know it's called Dunklas Vassar, that means Dark Water, right? That's not going to be a happy.
- [50:31]
Guest Speaker
No. Well, my book recommendation for the week, it also has Dark in its title. It's Mark Mazova's dark continent, Europe's 20th century, which is a really fascinating story about how nationalism and fascism emerged in Europe and how Britain and France fumbled it and missed it. And then if you want really cheesy watching. Last night I was watching Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix. Michael Connolly, one of my great heroes, American, writes the Harry Bosch series, which a great police procedural set in LA and this is a spin off from it done by Netflix. It's quite light hearted. You know, it's not the quality of the Wire, for example, or the French Bureau, but if you're on a plane or something and you just want something to, I don't know what was Cameron's great phrase for this? Was he chillax with.
- [51:30]
Rory Stewart
Another little, another little pop?
- [51:33]
Guest Speaker
Then you should watch Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix.
- [51:36]
Rory Stewart
Very good. Okay, well, good talking to you as ever.
- [51:39]
Guest Speaker
Speak soon.
- [51:39]
Rory Stewart
Bye.