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388. Question Time: Adolescence, Mexico at a crossroads, and Carney’s Canadian momentum
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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [01:12]
Alistair Campbell
So download it now. Use the referral code politics after signing up, visit getfuse.com politics for the terms of conditions and to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Universal Pictures. From Universal Pictures and Blumhouse come a storm of terror. From the director of the Shallows the Woman in the Yard. Don't let her in. Where does she come from? What does she want? When will she leave? Today's the day. The Woman in the Yard only in theaters March 28th.
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Rory Stewart
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the Same premium wireless for 15amonth Plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3.
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Alistair Campbell
Month plan equivalent to $15 per month.
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Rory Stewart
Required intro rate first 3 months only.
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Alistair Campbell
Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com.
- [02:31]
Rory Stewart
Welcome to the Restless Politics Question time with me, Rory Stewart.
- [02:35]
Alistair Campbell
And me Alistair Campbell. So where should we start this one? Jonathan Dillahunty. Good name. There have been a number of times when you bemoaned the lack of a coherent message from the left in opposition and also the global trend in right wing populism. I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you think Claudia Sheinbaum and the Marina Party fit into this equation. By the way, I've been checking somebody picked me up on my pronunciation because I always say Scheinbaum because if you're reading German, that's what you would say. But of course she's not German. So I've been reliably informed by Mexicans, which you call her Shane Balm. Shane Balm, do you want to say that?
- [03:11]
Rory Stewart
Right, Very good. Well, I think Mexico's an amazing place to start because it echoes two things that we've been talking about a lot in the pot. Firstly, it's a really interesting counterbalance to Turkey because it's actually an economy very similar size to Turkey, GDP per capita, very similar size to Turkey. And like Turkey, it's sitting right on the edge of this massive development, developed economies. So Mexico obviously doing the manufacturing for the United States, Turkey doing manufacturing for Europe. And like Turkey, huge issues around migrants, very large number of Mexican migrants going to states, large number of Turkish migrants going into Europe. And in both cases, different forms of populism. But the second thing we're going to do later in the show, of course, is compare it to Canada, which has also been the receiving end of Donald Trump. Mexico's responded in a very different way. But anyway, over to you on your views on Sheinbaum or sorry, how are we pronouncing it again?
- [04:09]
Alistair Campbell
Shane Balm. Shane Balm.
- [04:11]
Rory Stewart
Shin. Shane Balm. Very good.
- [04:13]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, so she's a very interesting woman. She's a scientist by training and background. So that's similar to Merkel and Thatcher. She was head of government in Mexico City. She's a big environmentalist. She worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And the thing is that she was seen, including by us, I think, when we were talking about the Mexican elections before it happened, it was very much a question of how was she going to get out of the shadow of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Amlo, her predecessor as leader of Mexico. She won the general election in a landslide. Since then she has a little bit like, as you say, Canada has had its politics defined by Trump to a certain extent, so has Mexico. Since she took over, she has handled it very differently and she is currently enjoying. I checked the same level approval rating that Tony Blair was enjoying immediately after his handling of Princess Diana's death, when it was up in the 80s. So she's got one of the amongst the highest ratings of any leader in the world right now. And the obvious thing to say is, well, that must be because people think she's handled Trump quite well. She has twice managed to stave off tariffs with personal interventions. She praises him privately about his focus on immigration and drugs and so forth, but she's not done anything big and public in terms of attack. But the other thing is that she's actually turned out to be a lot tougher on security than Amlodipine. And I think this may be in part be driven by that. She's got a very, very tough message on crime and law and order. And then the other thing is that the social programs that she's doing, they do appear to be starting to bear fruit now. Lots of leaders get very, very high ratings early in their presidency or their premiership, and then maybe start to fade. But nobody can say she's not genuinely popular right now.
- [06:15]
Rory Stewart
Let's just look at Mexico for a second. So we did a long section on Turkey in the last POD epis, and we talked about how Turkey set off on its route towards populism and authoritarianism. Mexico is not as far along the route as Erdogan, but it's moved a long way. And although Claudia Schoenbaum is now moving into a different world, we've got to acknowledge that she was very much a product of Obrador, product of Obrador's party, and Obrador put her in this position. And Obrador has taken Mexico a long, long way away from its liberal democratic traditions. I know reasonably well a man called Ernesto Zedillo, who you may remember was the president of Mexico. And in fact, actually, one day we might want to interview him, if that was of interest. And he represented a moment where, if you go back to the 90s, early 2000s, Mexico looked like it was really on the journey to being the old Washington vision, not the Trump Washington vision, but the old Washington vision of a particular form of liberal democracy and open free trade and joining NAFTA and all this kind of stuff. Obrador took over and things began to change. Obrador is a kind of classic populist. He's somebody who has played some extraordinary games with reinventing himself as a Mexican nationalist speaking for the indigenous community. Although he himself is actually, as his name suggests, from Spanish roots. He clearly had big sympathies, at least rhetorically, for people like Castro and towards the end of his rule, just before Claudius Shoenbaum came in, big, big changes, one of them against the judiciary. Terrible. So he had been challenged by the judges, particularly the Supreme Court. So he and Schoenbaum lent into the idea that the judiciary in future will be elected. That basically puts the executive, his party, in control of the judiciary and even more worryingly, potentially some of the criminal gangs in Mexico in charge of the judiciary. He's also turned against the independent regulatory agencies. He's brought the army very much under his control. Obrador gave a lot of businesses to the army, set up a new national guard under the army he controls. Still, the party which Sheinbaum is now the president of, so it's Obrador's son, is the Secretary General of the party. Obrador selected and put in place all the governors. So Chamberlain very much seen as his creature being used by Obrador. And then I guess the question is, will she break free of him? And if she breaks free of him, is she going to reverse some of these trends towards authoritarian populism or not? How is she going to break free of Obrador? And then I guess the final thing is, which makes Mexico very, very different to Turkey is that although both of them have these huge informal economies, 40, 50% of their economies are completely informal. Means they're not registered, they're not paying tax. And Mexico's just got still a huge agricultural base, 10, 12% of people working in agriculture. But what makes Mexico very different is that over the last 10, 15 years, the Mexican cartels took over control of the cocaine distribution in the United States from the Colombian gangs. So the Mexican drug cartels became enormous. The homicide rate in Mexico is astonishing. There was a small reduction under Obrador, but not a big reduction. And extortion is through the roof. So we've had Mexican companies closing 200 stores because of extortion. We've had senior businessmen being killed. And it's even worse if we're a small and medium sized business. Small and medium sized business in Mexico basically cannot survive without paying off either the cartels in the informal sector or in the formal sector paying off the police, the tax authorities, the civil servants, the health and safety inspections, and the cartels.
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Alistair Campbell
I hadn't really thought of the extent to which the AMLO shadow was there because looking into the way that she's dealing with crime and drugs in particular, I got the sense that that was the means by which she was trying to escape. He became identified. I don't know whether he actually ever said this, but he became identified a bit like David Cameron's hug a hoodie with this phrase, hugs, not bullets. And she seems to become much, much tougher. And you're right that judicial reform was controversial, but there's. And the other thing that happened fairly earlier in her presidency, I think, which sort of galvanized this as well, was the discovery of this mass grave where they found bits of clothes, bits of bones, furnaces where bodies had clearly been piled in there. And this whole issue of the disappeared. 120,000 people reckoned to be missing, a lot of them dead, just taken away by the cartels and shot. So that maybe gave her the feeling that she had greater permission to. To take a far tougher line. By the end of her first hundred days in office, the government reported they'd arrested over almost 8,000 individuals, seized 66 tons of drugs, and dismantled more than 100amphetamine labs. So this is where she's trying to signal that she's taking a different approach. And I think the other thing is, just as Trump has transformed politics in Canada, so I think because she has been seen as being under attack and handled that attack quite well, that is probably the other factor that is making it feel like a very different sort of leadership. I think we should say, by the way, Rory, if any of her team are listening, we would love to have her on the podcast. She's clearly a very, very interesting modern leader.
- [12:15]
Rory Stewart
Final thought for me, firstly, huge shout out to my friend Michael Reed, who's written a great book called Forgotten Continent on Latin America and a book on Spain, who I spent a long time talking to yesterday. Secondly, just on your point there, around handling Trump, I think it would have been difficult to predict for any of us a few weeks ago how Mexico would respond, because there's a strong tradition in Latin American nationalism of being anti Yankee. Oh, yeah, you know, the Castro tradition, the Chavez tradition, and actually the tradition of the Mexican revolution. So you could have imagined that Mexican politicians would feel almost forced to be very defiant towards Trump, instead of which, as you say, the president's chosen to be very understated, not lose her temper and make all these concessions which feed into this stuff around crime, because the Republicans have been saying for a long time, and this is obviously at the back of a lot of what Trump's talking about, Republicans have spent years under Obrador saying that Mexico had gone soft on fentanyl, soft on cocaine. And that's why we had Republicans talking even a year ago about bombing facilities. So she's responded to that. But I still think it may remain a little bit fragile because depends how far Trump goes, if he really follows through on tariffs. And the big change, I guess between Trump and Biden is that Biden was very happy for businesses to move from China to Mexico. That was called near shoring. But Trump often sounds as though he actually wants the businesses in the United States kind of reshoring. He'll have a big fight with corporate America because Mexico is so central now to building cars and almost everything that happens in the US Economy. But if he for some reason decides to have that fight to corporate America, that will have a huge impact on the Mexican economy. And again, if he starts putting covert operations in on the ground, contractors in on the ground to chase drugs, which is another thing they've been talking about, I think Claudia Schoenbaum will feel that she's going to have to respond nationalistically to this. But fascinating thing, as you say, she is Jewish in a Catholic country. She's a woman in quite a macho country. She's quite a sort of intellectual in a strong populist tradition. She's somebody who in many ways sounds technocratic, but she's part of a government that hasn't only taken control of the judiciary, the regulatory agencies, the military, but a bit like Turkey has basically taken control of the media. 90% of the media now in Mexico is controlled by the government. And maybe we give populism in Mexico a bit more of a pass because it's left wing populism rather than right wing populism.
- [14:54]
Alistair Campbell
You might have a point there, Rory. Now here we are. We had a lot of questions this week for reasons which will become obvious about young men inspired by. And here's the question from Meg, what are your thoughts on the show? Adolescence. And it is one of those TV programs that really does seem to have cut through. It's on Netflix. Four part series about a family whose lives are ripped apart when a young boy is arrested for allegedly killing a girl in his class.
- [15:24]
Rory Stewart
And he's 13. I've watched the first three out of the four.
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Alistair Campbell
Right.
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Rory Stewart
I'd love to know what you thought. I mean, I watched it with Shoshana firstly. I just think artistically it was unbelievably good. The acting was incredible. Also the courage of the director. I mean, the third episode that I just watched is basically an entire episode where he's taken the confidence. Just putting you in a featureless room with two people talking to each other. And yet it's Done with such brilliant acting, such fantastic script writing that you, you just can't, can't leave it alone.
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Alistair Campbell
I think it's fabulous. I mean, I'm glad you said that actually, because I think that there's a danger sometimes with these things that you go straight to where you think the political debate has gone and overlook the fact that the reason why it's been able to have that impact is because it is a brilliant piece of art and culture. And I think with Jack Thorne, the writer, we've also been. Fiona and I have also been watching Toxic Town. Drathorne also also wrote that. So, you know, Stephen Graham, a great actor, the boy who plays the 13 year old, had never acted before. And as you say, the what's. Each episode follows one camera, just sort of, you know, and the way they do it, it's almost like watching, I guess it is a little bit like being in the theater, but it's even more. Technically, I think it's even more brilliant than that. And then I think on the themes, and of course, this comes at a time where we've just had Gareth Southgate, the former England manager, did the Dimbleby lecture. And it was really good, actually, very much on this theme as well, about the role of young men, how they see themselves, the extra pressures that they're under that maybe we didn't have growing up or even my kids didn't have growing up. And I think that one of the things that comes through adolescence is how parents and teachers, we like to think that we know what our kids are up to and the factors that are changing their lives. But do we really know the impact that social media has had on them and is continuing to have on them and what it's doing to them, to their self esteem, to their relationships and so forth? So I think it's brilliant. Television does pack a punch, does carry a point, but I think it's part of the debate rather than the whole debate, as it were.
- [17:41]
Rory Stewart
Well, a thought and a question. So I was watching it with Shoshana, who used to teach in very difficult schools in New York and Boston. And the thing that she noticed, particularly in the second episode, is a portrait of a school that had completely lost control. And she, you know, every time we went into a classroom, she was remembering what it was like teaching in Harlem or teaching in Boston. And just the sense of how all your energy as a teacher going into just trying to control the classroom, trying to stop people from shouting, whacking people, walking out, and therefore with all your energy on discipline Very, very difficult to get any teaching done because even if you can hold the class, even if you can stop people shouting out, that doesn't mean that you're actually managing to communicate any information to them. And the detective inspector whose son's in the school just says just how depressed he is. And you know, there's endless visions of teachers showing endless films to people and wandering off and not being in the customer. And again, for Shoshana, she really resonated with her. She absolutely recognized it. That's why she thinks it's going to be so popular in the us. It absolutely resonates with her experience of operating in the US public school system. But you obviously have a profound interest in state education in Britain. I mean, and what did Fiona think? Think about that? Because of course it's a pretty terrifying portrait of non functioning schools in Britain, right?
- [19:12]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. I mean, a similar impression about the sense of hopelessness of one of the teachers in particular, who seemed very, very nice but really didn't have much of a clue what was going on. Literally in direct orbit within the school. I think Fiona's sense of schools, not the fictional adolescent school as it were, but of the schools that she's involved in, is that they do an amazing job in unbelievably difficult circumstances. We bumped into the, the head teacher of one of our local schools who was, you know, who I think would say, and I've been to the school, is convincing when he says that he's giving the kids in there a pretty good education. But I think they'd all accept that some of these broader social problems now mean that the job of teacher has changed fundamentally. And I was always part of teaching, that was the pastoral, that was the social work and what have you. But it is now much more a fundamental part of their life.
- [20:16]
Rory Stewart
But what I'm hearing from you is that you think that not many schools are that bad. Because that portrait of a school, I don't think you really would think that you were giving people a decent education. I mean, there's a lot of lovely posters on the walls. I mean, every corridor you go down, there's lovely images of kind of the cycle of life and posters about showing respect and love and this, that and the other. But the classroom management has collapsed so much that kids are not getting basic education.
- [20:46]
Alistair Campbell
Well, there's two things to say to that. The first is it is a drama. And the second is this is a school in a drama on the day after one of the children has been murdered. So I think it's Not a documentary about the day in the life of an ordinary Northern England school. Because the other thing that came through that slightly went against that was. And maybe this is because they were, you know, in a sense they're just hundreds of kids thrown together to be actors for a day. And my God, some of those kids could act. And not just the 13 year old boy, the main character is unbelievable considering he'd never acted before. But all of the ones with the smaller parts as well, they were remarkable. But actually was how smart they were. You know, they actually looked pretty smart and they were smart mentally. There was a vibrancy about those kids and I think that, I guess what I was left with was the sense of hopelessness that actually a kid that by, you know, if you saw the child and then if you saw the way that he conducted himself vis a vis his parents and so forth, you thought that's a nice balanced child who's probably doing okay at school even though he gets picked on a bit. Whereas it turns out, no, he's actually been kind of radicalized in this whole sort of incel thing going on. One of the things I found really interesting was that they chose to act this part of somebody who felt that he turned against women because of this feeling that he thought they found him ugly when he so clearly wasn't ugly. But he'd been radicalized in a way that was. Yeah, literally had just played with his mind. And then the scene you're talking about with the, with the child psychologist. Although again, back to the drama point, I was the other person I saw it to, this woman who said they'd seen it, who'd worked in schools and worked with a lot of child psychologists and said that, you know, that she was too nicely dressed and she was, she was sort of, you know, showing too much of her own emotion. I think sometimes we've got to be careful with these dramas that we don't read so much into them that we start to treat them like documentaries. I think we should just appreciate it for a brilliant, brilliant piece of storytelling.
- [23:04]
Rory Stewart
Partly because it was so brilliant. I mean, I've never seen any police movie take you through the sort of detailed procedures, processes, paperwork of checking a child in, summoning the solicitor, getting the blood samples taken, the sort of. No, I thought that was all brilliant. Right now on that. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back on Canada.
- [23:27]
Alistair Campbell
Cool.
- [23:34]
Rory Stewart
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- [24:34]
Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
And I guess we could say the Internet's a bit like politics, isn't it? Sometimes on the surface, things seem to be moving smoothly, but underneath all strange and slightly troubling things are happening.
- [24:51]
Alistair Campbell
Just like politics. You have to protect yourself on the Internet because these days, hackers, trackers, data harvesters, they're all over the place, even when you're doing something as simple as logging onto public Wi Fi in a cafe.
- [25:02]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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- [25:26]
Rory Stewart
That's nordvpn.com restorpolitics completely risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee. The links in the episode Description this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. So Alistair, back from our break. Your favorite subject, Canada. Freya how will the US Trade, war and Trump's rhetoric shape the Canadian election? Morgana why is Mark Carney courting an election so soon? And just a little plug before we get the Alistair answer, We've done some really great interviews recently with senior Canadian politicians, including two separate interviews with Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister who's just called the election, and a special episode that you did with Caroline Fairbairn and with Bruce Anderson. So over to you.
- [26:38]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I don't think anybody's surprised that this is what he did. In fact, I think we said, we said a couple of weeks ago that we didn't expect him to hang around long. He had nine days between winning the leadership election, which made him Prime Minister. He managed to fit in a visit to Paris to see Macron, to the UK to see Keir Starmer and your friend the King, which I think hopefully settled Canadians down little bits to where British hearts are in relation to this existential threat, because I think that's how they feel. I was at an event last night and there was a Canadian guy there and the reason I knew he was Canadian was because he was wearing the maple leaf on his lapel. And I said, do you always wear that? He said, no, I've just worn it since Trump started threatening Canada. So the question how will the trade war and Trump's rhetoric shape the Canadian election? It already has. It is one of the prime reasons why the Liberal Party is back in the game, Having closed this 20 point plus gap in the polls with the Conservatives under Pierre Poitier, is one of the reasons, I think, why Mark Carney won the leadership election by such a big margin. Because people thought this guy's been around the block when it comes to the economy, his role in the bank of England, bank of Canada, in business, he seems like he's a pretty tough guy. And I think then in relation to why he's calling it now, because he's got momentum, it still would be a remarkable comeback for the Liberals to turn this around. I've been looking at a lot of Canadian newspapers in the last few days. I mean, some of them are very, very biased against him. Quali Evra has got quite a lot of media support. I watched his announcement to calling the election, framed it very much as looking after the economy, looking after Canadians. Canadian national pride, standing up to America has made no effort to have a conversation with Trump. Polievre has, I think, shifted his agenda a bit. But in the end, I think America and Trump will be a big part of the campaign. But it's interesting how in the last couple of days already you've seen a lot of the debate getting onto very conventional domestic election issues. This tax, that tax, this education policy, that education policy. So I think it's going to be a curious mix of a very traditional election campaign with this remarkable backdrop of Trump and tariffs.
- [29:05]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And Poliev, presumably his campaign will try to be as domestic as possible and will try to focus on Trudeau's record. And people being fed up with Trudeau and the Liberal Party, they're trying to.
- [29:16]
Alistair Campbell
Link Carney very much to the Trudeau story. A bit harder to do that than if it had been Christian freelance, because, of course, Christian Freedom was Trudeau's deputy and finance minister. So a lot harder. I think Mark Carney can be continuity where it's good and change where it's good. That's how. If I were him, I'd be playing it.
- [29:36]
Rory Stewart
I mean, he did a great social media clip. Lovely one, which maybe we can share on the link for our members with Mike Myers. With Mike Myers. And extraordinary. I mean, you know, incredible. Millions of views, more than 30,000 likes. Last time I looked where he had a pretty. Pretty terrific comic timing, including a good gag on what are the two seasons in Toronto. And Mike Myers says winter and construction. Anyway, so I think good luck to him. And unlike Macron, he's calling it at a time when he's in a reasonably good position in the polls and where he doesn't have that long to run anyway. There's not that much time to run. It's not like Macron who chose to run, to call an election when he was in very bad position, the polls and potentially had another two years to go.
- [30:21]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gaza. We had quite a lot of questions on Gaza this week, probably in part because of the interview that we did with Francesca Albanese, which is the interview that's up now on leading. Lena, can politicians say whether they believe Israel has broken international law? Yes or no? I imagine that's provoked by David Lammy at one point saying they had, and then the next day saying they were at risk of having done so, which looked like he'd been slightly brought into line by number 10. And then Fatima from Birmingham, why does the west talk about human rights but stay silent when Palestinians are killed? I don't think the west. This thing about, you know, we got so many comments on both sides of the argument on the back of doing that interview with Francesca Albanese. And I do think this is part of the problem. So Fatima's question, why does the west talk about human rights, which the west does, but stay silent? Now, there are people in the west who stay silent, but to say the west as a whole stays silent, I think overstates it. And likewise, I got some very, very aggressive Emails and texts and messages from people who would you would define as either Israeli or very pro Israel, including some British politicians as well, you know, really quite aggressive. You know, you wouldn't, if you did get Netanyahu, I bet you wouldn't give him as an easy ride as you gave to her and blah, blah, blah. Well, the answer is probably not because he's a serving Prime Minister, whereas this is somebody that, for most of our listeners, we were probably introducing her to them. Could we have questioned her more on some of the things that she'd said? Maybe, but I just think what it said to me, what the reaction said to me is that those people who are broadly pro Israel listened to the interview determined to say that she was an anti Semite, and those people who were broadly pro Palestine, anti Israel listened to the interview determined to say that she was a saint. And what we were trying to do, just as we've done with other interviews, for example, when we interviewed your friend Uzi Arad, ex head of Mossad, the intelligence agency, we had similarly people saying, why were you so nice to him? This is a guy who's done this. This is a guy who's done that. Well, answer because we're trying to have a conversation with him about who he is, what he does, what he thinks and why he thinks it. And I just think people should, particularly people who bang on about freedom of speech the whole time, should maybe understand that sometimes letting people speak in their own terms rather than constantly being pushed around by an agenda is not the best way to get a decent debate.
- [33:02]
Rory Stewart
It remains so, so raw. I mean, very senior individual has been writing that I'm anti Semitic. And it was a really interesting piece in which he moves from talking about 14th century anti Semitism in Eastern Europe and then smoothly goes from that to saying, and another example of this is Rory Stewart.
- [33:26]
Alistair Campbell
How have you responded to that?
- [33:28]
Rory Stewart
Look, firstly, I think I can empathize. I mean, he clearly feels very, very strongly what he's saying. I don't think he's being insincere. I think he feels that I'm anti Semitic. I think he genuinely cannot understand why someone would think that what Israel was doing in Gaza was unreasonable. But I also think that he doesn't understand that I don't support what we did in Dresden. I don't support what the United States did in many cases after 9, 11, that I believe that international law applies to everybody and that even when you're defending yourself, you have to act within international law and the rules of law. And that may mean something very difficult. And this is true for Britain or the United States as much as it is for Israel, which is that in showing restraint and not doing what Israel is doing in Gaza, you may be taking more risk. It's possible that occasionally some terrorists are getting away or some guilty people are being spared, but that is what international law is about. That's what we learned in wars, which is that you cannot simply say, I have 100% right to security and the lives of other people don't matter if I'm fulfilling my security. And that's true in domestic law, that's true in international law. And I cannot accept that it's anti Semitic to say that or it's anti Semitic to support the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, or to point out the reality of what's happening in Gaza.
- [35:09]
Alistair Campbell
What about this then? This is from Ian Austin, who's a Labor peer. Why did you allow her to use words like genocide or apartheid without any questioning at all? Why was she allowed to say that? Anyone in the human rights world who criticizes Israel is accused of anti Semitism when people do that all the time, and so on, so on and so forth. So how do you respond to that?
- [35:29]
Rory Stewart
On the latter point? I suppose the question is, are people like Ian Austin comfortably saying they have no problem at all with people criticizing Israel for the Israeli government for breaking human rights? Do they have no problem at all with my criticizing them on their human rights record? Is he really saying that? When you say that, he doesn't come back and suggests it's anti Semitic. And she is an international lawyer. She is talking about genocide, she's talking about apartheid. She's quite careful in what she means by that. And there is no doubt that maybe we can explain what she means by that. But what's at the core of that is something that I'm afraid I observe every time I go to that region, which is that Arab Israelis and Palestinians, particularly in the west bank and Gaza, are not treated in the same way as Israeli citizens. And Israeli settlers are favored in every single way in terms of government services, in terms of security, protection, in creating illegal settlements in Palestinian territory when Palestinians are not. And okay, fine, we can get into Ian on what exactly he means or doesn't mean by apartheid. But there is no doubt that they are treated, to put it politely, as second class citizens. They do not have all the same rights and support from the Israeli government that Israelis have.
- [36:55]
Alistair Campbell
Let's go domestic. Lynne Perry is the chief executive of Barnardo's. She says we support thousands of children across the UK who, five years on from the first lockdown, continue to feel the impact of the pandemic. School attendance declining, children's mental health in crisis, over 4 million children growing up in poverty. If this government is serious about wanting children born today to be the healthiest generation of children ever, and about reducing child poverty, there is serious work to be done. If measures like scrapping the two child limit on benefits or extending the entitlement to free school meals are too expensive or can't be done for other reasons, what steps can be taken to create a fairer future for children in the UK? 4 million children growing up in poverty.
- [37:38]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, well, let me come to you on that because I don't understand how the government is going to do things for child poverty with its current economic policies. I mean, the ways normally that you do things for child poverty are, as the question suggests, we know what the last Labour government would have done. You redistribute through a tax system, you redistribute through more generous welfare payments. Fundamentally, you make people less poor, partly through giving them more financial support. Now, you can talk about other things. You can claim, and I'm sure the government will, that it's going to invest in education, jobs, apprentices. But again, where's the money coming from? And I cannot see a route. If what the government is saying is we're going to not raise any taxes, we're not going to borrow anymore, we've got all these fiscal rules and we're going to cut government government spending, I don't see how that's going to lead to anything other than growing inequality in Britain and growing child poverty. I'm pretty confident on the current tracks that if we have this conversation in two, three years time, the situation will be worse under labor than it was under the Conservatives. Unless I'm missing something, I'm sure that.
- [38:50]
Alistair Campbell
Barnardo's, which is an organization that's dealing with some of the most challenged and children with difficult lives. I read their last report and, you know, in Britain in 2025, to see a passage that is about the rise in rickets. And we used to learn about rickets in school when I was growing up as an example of how diseases could be eradicated by proper medical and educational approach. When you think that one of the approaches that the government is taking is this thing about, you know, educating children in how to brush their teeth, because we've got real problems of tooth decay or some of the issues we have with child nutrition, you're talking about things that, honestly, in 2025, after the sort of prosperity that we have enjoyed as a country over several decades, it's pretty damning for the country as a whole. And I. Look, I agree with you when you think that, you know, these welfare cuts and, you know, the government gave their explanation, and I agree that, you know, the more that people can work, the better. But you and I know, and were you still an mp, you'd be having them come into your surgery. There will be people who are about to lose benefits, who have come to depend on those benefits and out of genuine need and at the same time trying to raise a family and what have you at a time when, you know, we're worried about the birth rate and we're worried about where the jobs of the future are going to come from. So I recommend people check out this last report from Bernardo's. It's pretty depressing reading. We can't finish on that, Roy. It's too depressing.
- [40:32]
Rory Stewart
Well, here's a sort of serious point, and maybe not super cheery, but serious point from Alex Bromwich, which maybe we can return to in future weeks, which is he's saying you're both consistent in your condemnation of populism, protectionism, especially when the two collide. With this in mind, what are your thoughts on Macron lobbying the European Commission to exclude British arms makers from the bloc's new defense fund on purported grounds, the UK's fishing relationship with France? So we talk about this a lot, which is there's an amazing opportunity with Trump removing the US effectively from NATO and the west, for the UK to get closer to Europe and to have a common, proper approach to defense and weaning ourselves off the American armaments and having our own suffering capacity. And then suddenly we hear that Macron is saying he's not going to include Britain in this conversation about European manufacturer because he's still worrying about fishing quotas. So I guess that's an example of where small politics gets in the way of big vision and maybe a bigger theme to explore in the future.
- [41:40]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I must admit I hadn't followed this one. I'm not sort of pretending to be Arsene Wenger, who never used to see violence on the pitch, but I wasn't aware of this from, from Macron. I normally call. I normally follow the work of my friend Emmanuel, as you call him, quite, quite closely. So were you aware of that?
- [41:57]
Rory Stewart
I was, but I was aware of it because. I was aware of it because of a tweet by someone you don't like. Andrew. Neil. Which will make you even more suspicious of this.
- [42:08]
Alistair Campbell
I don't dislike. I don't dislike, dislike him. I just think that he gets quite a lot wrong, but never, never admits it. Now, here's a lighter one, Rory, and I want to know whether this means anything to you at all. Luke, how did Tony Blair get to do that sketch with Catherine Tate? Now, do you know what I'm talking about?
- [42:25]
Rory Stewart
No. It means absolutely, literally nothing to me. So explain that and let's finish off on that jolly note with whoever Catherine Tate might be. My mother, Tony Blair is, you know.
- [42:35]
Alistair Campbell
Tony Blair was the Prime Minister. Catherine Tate a very, very, very famous comedian, and she got Tony Blair to do a sketch with. With her. This is. This is a Red Nose Day anniversary story. I'm guessing from memory it was Red Nose Day's idea. They have, you know, you and I were meant to be doing Red Nose. We were meant to be singing Always look on the Bright side of Life. But we. We sort of never got our act together to do it. We've promised we'll do something for them next year, assuming that we're here. I did. I once did the Apprentice for Red Nose Day. I nearly had a fight with Piers and Morgan on Red Nose Day. But no, that was their idea and Tony was always up for stuff like that and he. He delivered it like a pro. Am I bothered? I'm not bothered. Are you bothered?
- [43:20]
Rory Stewart
I'm not bothered. Lovely.
- [43:22]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Yeah. So you now know who Catherine Tate is.
- [43:24]
Rory Stewart
Roy, thank you with that. And let's. Let's finish on that.
- [43:27]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon.