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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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- [00:21]
Rory Stewart
You switch to Fuse you will now receive Trip plus membership free of charge.
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Alistair Campbell
That's where you can take advantage of things like at re listening early, access to Question Time episodes, pre sale, live show tickets, and more. All you've got to do is go to getfuse.com politics use the referral code politics when signing up.
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Rory Stewart
We will be providing many more offers for members which I think can be great, including interviews for members only and questions for members only, which I hope you'll enjoy. But the other advantage of signing up, of course, is that you can protect your energy bills by fixing your electricity rates for the next year with Fuse, which is going to be very relevant. With a price cap rising by 6.4%, Fuse's new fixed tariffs undercut the April price cap by over £100, with almost £150 of savings for a typical customer on the 18 month tariff. By fixing your electricity rate, you can lock in your price today and protect yourself from any rises over the next year.
- [01:16]
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. Welcome to the Rest of Politics with.
- [01:36]
Rory Stewart
Me, Alistair Campbell, and with me, Rory Stewart.
- [01:39]
Alistair Campbell
Looking a bit tired, Rory. Have you just got out of bed?
- [01:41]
Rory Stewart
Well, I'm here in the United States of America. I made it safely into the United States of America. I've been with my students with Theresa May yesterday.
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Alistair Campbell
Oh great.
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Rory Stewart
I was interviewing her on stage.
- [01:51]
Alistair Campbell
Excellent.
- [01:52]
Rory Stewart
And really interesting things obviously going on in US Universities too. But tell us what you'd like us to focus on today.
- [01:59]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, well, I think we should talk about Marine Le Pen. Pretty dramatic events in Paris yesterday, Monday, I'm sure, about Greenland. Even though Vance's visit is a few days in the rearview mirror. The Danish Prime Minister, another leading interviewee, Mette Fredriksen. She's off to Greenland tomorrow. Greenland is going to become a big, big talking point for some time to come. I think we should talk about the Australian election. Anthony Albanese has finally called the election. It's going to be on May 3rd, and also with all the sort of do and gloom, I'm quite keen to give a bit of fresh air to a poll of young people that's been done by the John Smith center, which suggests they're more hopeful about the future than maybe we older people might sometimes think.
- [02:40]
Rory Stewart
One of the interesting things that we're doing this week is that we're not looking directly at the United States this week. We're looking at major countries, France, Australia, Denmark, and the European Union, Britain. But all of these things oddly echo some of the American themes. So we'll talk about the far right in France and the way in which that does or doesn't echo what Donald Trump is doing. We'll talk obviously about Greenland and Denmark, which is very directly affected by JD Vance's visit. We'll be talking about Australia, where the Australian election is partly shaped by people's perception that one party or another is or isn't closer to Trump. And finally, I guess in Britain, we'll be looking at what young people think about this new politics. But should we start on France? Over to you with Le Pen.
- [03:23]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. So Le Pen, I was actually at the week was with a member of the French government who was saying, you know, who knew this judgment was coming up? And the conventional wisdom was that she was guilty of a crime and she would be found guilty of that crime, but that the punishment was likely to stop short of making it impossible for her to run. But the judge and this very interesting what you just said there about the reflection of this on America, because, of course, we've had in America a convicted felon who then was nonetheless allowed to run for president and is now president. And the Supreme Court has basically said that because he's president, he can't possibly be guilty of any crimes. She and many of her colleagues have been found guilty of a crime. The crime was embezzlement. Basic issue was European Commission funds that were paid for the purposes of supporting the work of National Front, Le Pen's party, now Rassemblement Nationale, supporting their work in the European Parliament, but which were in fact diverted for use of basically fictitious jobs, were created to channel this money to people who were working in the party nationally.
- [04:32]
Rory Stewart
The reason this really matters is that Marine Le Pen has been for some time now one of the really big frontrunners in the French election. In fact, many people thought that she was in a very good position to become the next president of France. She's been in the last two. It's very difficult to work out who the successor to Macron will be. President Macron can't run again. And she seemed to be in this Very unpredictable French presidential system. Unpredictable because there are two rounds of voting. Unpredictable because President Macron himself came out of nowhere. So with all those caveats, she seemed to be in a pretty strong position. And had she become president of France, had her party won, it would really matter, because the presidency of France, as we've often said, unlike, for example, being prime minister of Italy, has real constitutional power. It's sort of almost a monarchical system. And also because France has real power within the European Union and Le Pen's history. And she's obviously really tried to moderate, but her father was a fascist anti Semite who founded the party. There have been strong ties to Russia and indeed Russian funding for the party and pro Putin statements in the past. Very, very strong anti immigration rhetoric. And so people were very, very focused on the pen. And the last thing anyone was really expecting, I guess, was that she would suddenly not be allowed to run. And of course, from the point of view of this, adds to their general sense of conspiracy, general sense that the whole world is rigged against them and that this is an attempt to try to stop them exercising their democratic right, trying to stop democracy, which is what obviously Musk and others are really pushing.
- [06:06]
Alistair Campbell
She's going to appeal. She's been banned. The court banned her from standing for office for five years. She's going to appeal. It's not really clear the grounds on which she's going to appeal other than you're denying the rights of people to vote for somebody that they want in, in their millions. She's got about 10 million votes last time around that they want to vote for. But then you, you straight into the argument about whether we believe in the rule of law or not. So Trump playbook. The minute even before she was in court, even before the judgment was announced, once she knew that she was going to be found guilty, she very loudly muttered and then basically stormed out. And so the judge laid down the, the penalty. She was no longer in the building. I suspect that was part of a thought through strategy essentially to say we don't accept the legitimacy of this. There's one very important historical point that I think is worth mentioning because France has got a bit of a track record of politicians who end up sort of, you know, going through the courts. Right now, former President Nicholas Sarkozy, I don't know whether he wears it on his ankle or his wrist, but he is currently, he's wearing a tag because of the cor stuff that he was involved in. But when there have been previous cases of politicians getting in trouble with the law, we should try and dig it up. But one of the most passionate speeches ever made about this issue was by none other than Marine Le Pen, that if you're found guilty of a crime, you should be illegitimate, illegitime. But what's really interesting about this rule, and this, again, is very, very Trumpian. Here we are just over 24 hours after this judgment was handed down. Last night, I was sort of flicking between different French channels and different American chann, and this was a really big story around the world. It is amazing how quickly the facts of the case just get lost. There was next to no coverage explaining what this crime was. It was straight into the politics of the whole thing. And that's where we are now.
- [08:07]
Rory Stewart
You're completely right. We need to distinguish the law from the politics. And politically, it is a big issue. And we'll get onto the politics in a second. But just look at it in pure legal terms. As you say, this is a decision made by the French courts. It's not a decision made by other political parties. It's an independent judiciary. And this is in accordance with French law. And, you know, you can agree or disagree about the way that French law works, but the judges were doing their job within the boundaries of French law, and they do it a lot. And often, actually, the cases against politicians going back over 20, 30 years have been cases about fake jobs. So one of the big things the judges in France keep focusing on is that politicians obviously have budgets for staff, and the budgets for staff are supposed to be to support them in their formal duties. But politicians are often very tempted to use those staff for political party purposes or to use the money they're given for staff political purposes. So not just true in France. Step back for a minute. As a Member of Parliament, I saw this all the time in the House of Commons. So you would see the whips advising you that just before an election, you could get Parliament to pay for you to send a letter out to your constituents, asking them some sort of opinion poll. And really what you're doing there is you're campaigning. You're using parliamentary letter paper, parliamentary stamps to get a letter to all your constituents, but you're pretending you're doing so as the Member of Parliament, not as the Labour or Conservative candidate. Again, your staff, who are your parliamentary assistants, your speechwriters, your aides who are paid to go through constituency correspondence. In my experience, almost every Member of Parliament, those staff would often turn up distributing leaflets for you during an election. Now, often, they had to formally take leave in order to do it and not be paid during the electoral process. But it's very, very. It's an ambiguous world. And this is what has been going on in France. So Jacques Chirac was convicted by the French courts for fake jobs. I think in that case in the mayoralty, Francois Filon, the Prime Minister, was also convicted for almost entirely the same thing that Marine Le Pen seems to be accused of now, yet again, you know how you use the budget that you've been given for your parliamentary assistance. Alan Juppet was convicted and of course you talked about Sarkozy. So I suppose this has started many years ago. It's been done in many, many other cases. And one of the major arguments to make is this needn't necessarily be seen as a mad political attack on Le Pen. It's completely different from that German constitutional courts, where they could actually have a process which would allow them to say a far right fascist party isn't allowed to run. And there have been cases made against the FD saying these people are a threat to the constitution, they're doing things that are going to destroy the German constitution and therefore they're not allowed to run. This was purely around the question of how you use, in that case, I think European money designed to pay for stuff.
- [11:06]
Alistair Campbell
I think we're talking about 2.9 million euros. It's two and a half million quid. And Le Pen herself, although not to her own benefit in any financial sense, it didn't go into her bank account, but she was personally accused of embezzling €474,000 of that total. Now, you could argue, well, that's a few jobs, but the truth is they are fictitious jobs. That is the point.
- [11:27]
Rory Stewart
Do we know, Alistair, quite what fictitious means? I mean, does it mean that they're saying that somebody was employed? But the problem is they were employed purely on party activities when they should have been employed to provide staff support for. As a member of the European Parliament.
- [11:40]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. One of them, for example, was paid to be a bodyguard. Also former partner, who I think is a mayor in Perpignan. He had some sort of job that alongside his real job, as it were. So. And you could argue compared to some of the sort of massive corruption that's, you know, to quote the Mooch, the golden era of corruption in the United States, we're talking very, very small sums on one level, but I think there is a different way to look at this. They will be looking at this as saying, well, all those other people, they didn't get sentenced to four years in Prison, which is what she's got now. Now, just on that, by the way, you see the headline, four years in prison. Two of them will be wearing a tag and the other suspended. So the, the likelihood of going to prison, unlikely. But they are saying this is just a straightforward political means that they have used, they, the establishment used to stop her running. One of the problems with that is one of the, amongst the, the first just to go through some of the reactions. Nigel Farage straight out saying, oh, this is terrible. And every. They were, this is the thing about the European Parliament. Everybody was corrupt, everybody was doing it, blah, blah, blah. Orban, Je suis Marine. He goes onto social media. Je suis Marine. Elon Musk. Needless to say, fresh from sort of trying to bribe the voters of Wisconsin and the Kremlin. My old opposite number, Dmitry Peskov, saying this shows yet again that the norms of European democracy are being shattered. So you can see whose, as it were, on her side. But that being said, the current Prime Minister, Francois Beru, he let it be known through one of those sort of, you know, ways that words and opinions get out without you doing an interview. He let it be known that he was quite worried about this and I think, worry. I suspect he wanted people to think he was worried because of course, Le Pen still has the capacity to bring down the French government because of the very, very fragile state of the current National Assembly. Interestingly, she was chased by media all over the place, as was Jordan Bardella. Jordan Bardella is this rather handsome, essentially the president of the party. He actually wasn't even born when Marine Le Pen first started going for the presidency. She's had two goes at the final two, but she's actually had three runs at the presidency itself. He is not even 30 yet. And it is basically an accepted conventional wisdom that if she accepts this ruling and she doesn't run for the presidency, he will be the candidate against whomsoever runs against him. Just my final point before you come back in, Roy. The media keeps saying that she's been the front runner, the leader, etc. You've got to remember, because Macron can't run any polls on the presidency are absurd because we know that she would be a candidate if she could be. But all the other names, we don't know that Attal will be a candidate. We don't know that Edouard Philippe will be a candidate. So the fact that she's at 30, 35, sometimes 40%, doesn't really mean that she is the favorite. But that's part of the narrative now that the right will try to push.
- [14:37]
Rory Stewart
I think this is going to keep coming back as a theme as we look at democracies around the world, which is how the courts act against politicians. And this is obviously a big theme in Latin America, where courts very, very rapidly go after people who are toppled from office, often on big corruption charges. We've seen this in Argentina, Bolsonaro in Brazil. And of course, our views of this, people like you and me, who are on the more liberal democratic side, we tend to be more sympathetic to the court cases when they're going against Bolsonaro, less sympathetic when they're going against people like Lula. In Turkey, since the beginnings of democracy in 1950s, 60 parties have been banned from running by the courts. And of course, we talked last week about the fact the leading opposition leader has now been put in jail. And I guess politically, if we move off the kind of rights and wrongs of this and maybe move beyond, I think quite an interesting question that we may have to come back to in Germany, which is, are there conditions in which a party is so clearly a threat to the constitution that you actually want to ban it from running? I mean, in the extreme case, I think most people would agree that Hitler and the Nazi party should not have been allowed to run, that there are cases of parties so far out there, so clearly committed to the destruction of the constitution, they shouldn't be allowed to run. But I think you and I would both agree that Marine Le Pen should definitely have been allowed to run in the normal situation. In other words, by all means she prosecuted for corruption. But we don't believe that she shouldn't have been allowed to run in a French election because her party isn't that kind of fundamental threat to the French constitution.
- [16:14]
Alistair Campbell
But once she's been convicted of breaking a law and the judge is, under the French system, the person who decides what the punishment should be, rather than any other politicians, then I think that that is the rule of law working, that is justice and democracy working. What they're now trying to do is to turn that, with massive help from the right wing media ecosystem around the world, turn that into a scandal in which she becomes the victim. Him I was glad to see. I was looking at all the French front pages this morning. Liberation. You will not be surprised to know the more left leaning paper just has the headline coupable Guilty right across the front page. Whereas the rest, it's all about the political effect.
- [16:54]
Rory Stewart
And what is the political effect?
- [16:56]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I think that the political effect as it was being assessed in most of the places where I was watching the debate about this last night was that this would give a boost to, to the Rassemble National. I'm not sure about that. I think that's because we're looking at everything through this Trumpian lens. We see Trump become convicted, we see Trump use that very effectively to his own benefit and against the Democrats. I still have enough confidence in the French people, albeit that, you know, a lot of them are very pissed off with Macron. A lot of them are very attracted by, by the hard right. I still think there'll be enough French people say, no, hold on a minute. We've got to look at this thing on its merits. We mustn't allow this victimization narrative to take hold. And I think the other thing that we'll do, if that narrative does take hold, people will then start to look, particularly if Bardella is the candidate, because he is ultimately just a young guy, pretty inexperienced. I think people then will take a much harder look at what they're actually saying on the policy agenda about which Le Pen has been very, very quiet. Le Pen's entire strategy has been just to sit back and let Macron implode. We don't really know that much about what she stands for, other that she doesn't like immigrants, she's quite fond of Russia, but she doesn't want you to know that too much. And the other thing that's interesting, the reason why I think Trump maybe didn't come out in the way that some might have expected him to, and to say this is terrible, he basically said, well, she's a French version of me, because he always has to make it about himself. But actually, she's very anti American, Le Pen. I mean, her basic foreign policy posture is France first. And that means I don't really like anything outside that. You're right that we're going to come back to this. It's going to play out legally and constitutionally. In the first place, the judgment that Bardella and the, the RN people have to be making is do they want their build up to the presidential election in 2027 to be all about Le Pen if she's not going to be the candidate, rather than take two years to try to build him up. So I think you're going to see tensions on that front as well.
- [18:51]
Rory Stewart
A lot of the assumptions that we're operating on in Europe as Trump comes in is that it will be possible for Europe to come together with the UK big countries, Britain, France, Germany, begin to create a Unified front defence and security policy, Ukraine, economic integration. But for that to happen, the politics has to align. So we've talked about France and we've talked about the fragility of Macron's government, which makes it difficult for him to get budgets through, difficult for him to follow through on his very kind of bold international rhetoric. And this Le Pen thing will have an impact on that. We'll talk at the end of the program about British politics and what's happening to young voters around Starmer's base. And maybe in Question Time we can touch briefly on Germany, where again, the coalition is in an absolute standoff around questions of immigration and where the AfD did okay in the election, did very well in the election, 20%, but is growing strongly, its polling is going up, and if it continues at this rate, may end up becoming the leading party in Germany, which will change a huge number of these calculations. So what might seem like sort of micro details, you know, what happens in France with Le Pen, what happens in Germany, what happens in Britain, actually completely defines the question of whether it's possible to create a new world or border on which. Over to you in Greenland.
- [20:08]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. So Greenland. So the Danish Prime Minister Fredrickson is there tomorrow. J.D. vance was there last week. Look, Vance's visit on one level was utterly absurd. First of all, his wife announced the, the second Lady Slotus, as they're called, the second lady of the United States announced that she was going to watch the dog sled race, the annual dog sled race, which was actually very exciting. I saw it on cnn. I mean, I think, think Sky Sports should take a look at the dog sleds. It was really quite exciting. But anyway, she in the end didn't do that because they sent out American officials to go and try and find Greenlanders, Greenland businesses, Greenland people who would meet her. Nobody wanted to be seen with her. Vance then did this truly absurd sort of social media post saying that, I don't want Asha to have all the fun on herself. I'm going to go with her. And he spent three hours at the last remaining US Military base on Greenland and basically carried on talking this utter nonsense that he's been talking about why Denmark has failed. Greenland, Greenland needs America, Greenland people want America, and so forth. And look, but what, what is clear is if, think if we sort of, no pun intended, drill down a bit on this 43 of the 50 key minerals that are needed for the big technological advances that are going to be at the heart of economic competition in the next last decade or so exist underground in Greenland. Added to which, the other really big irony of this whole story is that Trump and Vance when he was there talking about the way that the sea routes are opening up. The reason for that, of course is climate change, which his lot have basically been denying. So meanwhile, Russia has been investing heavily, for example, in icebreakers. The United States has two icebreakers. Where they could have had a partnership on icebreakers was with Finland, who've got a few, Denmark have got a few, and of course Canada. But what they've done since the election is turn all of these people into their enemies. So a lot of the things that he was criticizing Denmark for actually were a consequence of American policy decisions.
- [22:13]
Rory Stewart
Little explainer on Greenland. It's the most remarkable place, 2 million square kilometres. And Donald Trump said obviously in the run up the election that he wanted to make Greenland part of the United States. And initially people thought it was a bit of a joke. But what's happened now is that he's now said it repeatedly and said it more and more seriously just on that.
- [22:32]
Alistair Campbell
Though he didn't actually say it during the campaign. This is the point. He said it in his first term, he didn't say it during the campaign. This is something that really has emerged since he was elected. And that I think is another reason why people think it's profoundly dangerous and anti democratic.
- [22:46]
Rory Stewart
Okay, very good, I'll take that. And I think that's important. I think what I'd add to that though is that what I was really focusing on is the fact he keeps repeating it and he keeps repeating it in more and more detail that what might begin as a bit of something that somebody thinks is a wild tweet becomes more serious when he says it again and again becomes even more serious when Denmark agreed. That's part of Denmark says they don't want the US Vice President to visit and he visits anyway with Waltz, the national security adviser, and then gives a speech attacking Denmark on Danish soil and begins to lay out basically the arguments for annexation. So I watched quite carefully this sort of hour and 20 minutes of Vance speaking in the TH air base with Waltz and others stepping up. And what he keeps saying is that Denmark has failed to protect the security of Greenland and that Russia and China are threats and implicitly, therefore the United States needs to step in. And you feel that this is sort of Goebbels propaganda, that he's laying the ground now for what the eventual argument could be if they decide to annex it. They're beginning to roll the pitch, prepare the argument of course, the irony of the whole thing is that he's saying that the sovereignty of Greenland is threatened, the people of Greenland are threatened, the land of Greenland is threatened. But in reality, the threat is not coming from Russ, China, it's coming from the United States itself. It's coming from Vance and Trump. I've then been reading some wonderful, wonderful books on Greenland, and this will become relevant if, as seems increasingly likely, the US Is going to keep pressing its claims on Greenland, they're going to start saying, well, it's not really Danish, so just look a little bit at the history of it. And the history, of course, is that like many, many other bits of the world, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, South Africa, Israel, Great Britain itself, the question of who actually owns this, who's indigenous and who isn't, is a very, very difficult question. Greenland has been occupied by a series of people who basically disappeared and died out over time, largely because it is the most brutal climate on earth. You know, more than 80% of it is covered in ice and it's very difficult to live there. So there were some people who were there in prehistoric period. There was an amazing group of people called the Dorset culture that didn't have bows and arrows and did seal hunting, and they seem to have died out at some period in the early parts of the Christian era.
- [25:11]
Alistair Campbell
Dorset like the English county or Dorset with a W?
- [25:13]
Rory Stewart
No, Dorset like the English county.
- [25:15]
Alistair Campbell
Was there any relation to the English county?
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Rory Stewart
No relation to English. Just happened that these people were first discovered on a bit of land which the English called Dorset. So they're sort of archaeological remains of a now vanished people whose DNA and genetics people can't really identify. But they're not the Inuit, right? They're not the people that people now would call the Eskimo. Then in the 10th century, into what appears to have been an empty land because these previous people had died out. Norwegian, Icelandic. For the sake of argument, Vikings turn up. In particular, a guy called Leif Eriksson turns up and they make two little settlements. And it's from there that the Vikings discover, as it were, America. Of course, they don't discover America because they're Native Americans already in America, but they get there before Columbus and they get there from Greenland and they sit in Greenland and they trace a little Norse culture in Greenland and they end up with their own little Bishop of Greenland and they're merrily trading back and forth and living for a few hundred years of sort of Norwegian, Icelandic life in Greenland and then after them. So sort of 300 years after them, the Inuit arrived, the people that some people refer to as the Eskimos. And then the Norse Vikings disappear, and nobody quite knows when. The last time they were spotted was on a boat and about 14 Tesla. But there are some clothes that have been found from about 1430, and there's some pollen samples from about 1490. And then they seem to vanish. And there are three theories on when they vanish. One of them is the climate got too bad and they buggered off. The other is that English slavers turned up and we, the English, basically massacred them and took them all into slave markets in York. And the third theory is that the Inuit, the Eskimo, killed them themselves. And there are Inuit legends that they came in and killed the Norse. Now, nobody knew whether they disappeared or not. And in fact, people continued believe that maybe they still lived on Greenland until actually the whole thing had been explored in the 19th century. So then there's a period where the Inuit, the Eskimos, sit there on their own. And then in the early 18th century, the Danes come back. At that point, Norway and Denmark's a single kingdom. They set up a little missionary base, and that begins to feel a bit like colonization.
- [27:18]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [27:18]
Rory Stewart
But of course, they're making indigenous claims that they were there before. Right. And, you know, there are echoes here of people in the Middle east saying, you know, we were there before, this is our land, etc. Yeah. And the Americans then start getting interested in buying it.
- [27:31]
Alistair Campbell
There's a long track record of them trying to buy Greenland.
- [27:34]
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. Because the Americans have bought a lot of stuff. They bought Alaska, the whole of Alaska. They bought from the Russian czar for $9 million.
- [27:41]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [27:41]
Rory Stewart
They bought the U.S. virgin Islands from the Dutch in 1917. They were interested in buying the late 19th century, decided it wasn't really worth it. But then there was an extraordinary moment which is a bit reminiscent of Trump, which is Denmark obviously was occupied by Germany. A very, very small number of Germans ended up sitting in Greenland running a little weather station. The Americans then set up a base to resupply Europe and to get planes to stop over on the way. And at the end of the war, the Danes said, thank you very much for being here. Farewell. And the Americans, who were a little bit Trumpian even then, had helped themselves some cryolite mines as part of the deal for turning up in Greenland during Second World War, made it very clear to the Danes that they had no intention of leaving. They were just going to sit there. And the Danes got a little bit embarrassed, couldn't understand what was going on. Went off to the United states and the US government had managed to put together $150 million to buy Greenland. And the Danes said, no, thank you very much, we don't want your money and could you please leave? This was all fudged because actually the Americans wouldn't leave and it was fudged through NATO. So the faith saving measure was to say, oh, well, we're all NATO members. Doesn't matter if the US keeps basically there. US at one point had 15,000 soldiers there.
- [28:52]
Alistair Campbell
There are 12 bases.
- [28:53]
Rory Stewart
They also signed a secret deal with the Danish Prime Minister. The Danish people didn't know about, about keeping nuclear bombers there. And they managed to crash one of their bombers and drop a nuclear bomb into the sea and all this kind of stuff. Fast forward. They dropped their base down to 200 people. Very, very few people left. And now America is looking at doing something quite different from the acquisition of Laski, which is the way they acquired Hawaii, this American state that they got in the 1890s, they basically forcibly acquired with a bunch of dodgy American businessmen who got involved in the internal politics of the Hawaiian court, toppled a Hawaiian queen and annexed it as a further state.
- [29:27]
Alistair Campbell
Was the Hawaii story in the same book as the Greenland story?
- [29:30]
Rory Stewart
No Hawaii stories, a different story.
- [29:33]
Alistair Campbell
But you, you, you, you. I don't know. I'm sure you saw if I know you saw it because you retweeted it. But the rest is football. Put out one of the most pathetic April Fools today that you've probably seen of the many April Fools where they said that we were doing a swap that Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer and Michael Richards were going to do. The rest is politics. We were going to do. The rest is. Got to say, Roy, you're making a very good pitch for a swap to the Rest Is History, because this is absolutely fascinating and I knew a bit of this story, but not much. And while we're on the subject, by the way, you couldn't be there because you were on your way to the States, but I went to see the rest of his assassinations at the weekend with Dominic Sambrook from the Rest Is History and our friend the Mooch, where I was very upset because I tried to ask a question at halftime because Dominic Sambrook, who projects himself because he accurately predicted that Trump would win the election as this sort of font of all knowledge, he got the name of Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State wrong. Can you believe that, Roy?
- [30:30]
Rory Stewart
Well, there we are.
- [30:31]
Alistair Campbell
He called him steward instead of seaworld And I think that's because you were. He knows that you're after his job. You want to do. The rest is history. Anyway, finish with Hawaii. Let's bring it forward to 2025.
- [30:46]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 2025. So final thing, I think, is to say that we have to be serious about this threat now, because I think from Trump's point of view, this is an opportunity to acquire 2 million square kilometers of territory. This would be larger than any state in the United States. This is three times the size of Texas. This is a place which is, you know, the size of Indonesia, size of Mexico.
- [31:10]
Alistair Campbell
It's an enormous territory with a population less than 60,000. I mean, there are not many parts of it that you can live in.
- [31:17]
Rory Stewart
Not many parts of the commission. But you can absolutely imagine Trump loving the idea of going down in history as the president who added this huge chunk to the United States.
- [31:26]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, bigger America.
- [31:27]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, bigger America. And the problem with it is that if he actually follows through, and I don't know how you put a percentage on what goes on in Trump's head, right? How you predict, is it a 30% chance, is it a 20% chance that he decides to do it? But militarily, it would be very easy for him, Right? You know, he could basically move a few thousand troops in, announce that they'd taken Greenland, and nobody could do very much about it.
- [31:54]
Alistair Campbell
Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah, you say that. I mean, right, Militarily, in terms of who has real force and real power. But Denmark is a member of NATO. And Article 5, which has only ever been brought into bearing once, which was after 9, 11, when, you know, the, the article 5 basically means an attack on one member is an attack on all. That would include, I would argue, even if the attack came from a NATO member. So if America suddenly decided to try to annex militarily Greenland, which as you say, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, that poses very, very big questions for every. For us, the UK for, for Canada, for Turkey, for every. For Germany, for France. So I don't think it is that easy. That is a step of epic world war making proportions. What was interesting you said this about when we talked about the signal gate stuff last week, where all the people who were on that call, Waltz and Vance and Rubio and Hegseth, they know what Trump wants and they're trying to give it to him, okay? So at the moment, they know that Trump wants Greenland to be part of the United States of America. America. But what Vance's presence in the play said to me is it was just part of that kind of show. I mean, are you seriously saying that where this ends up is with the Americans taking over militarily? Are they going to do that by and by the way, they could easily build up the American military there now because as you say, they had thousands of troops there, they had a dozen bases. There's nothing that they couldn't get from the gains on this right now through normal diplomatic negotiation. It's the fact that he has said I want it to be part of America that is what's driving this much more aggressive approach.
- [33:43]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. So how do we put a chance on it? I don't know. But I would say it's a non trivial chance because I think he loves this idea of going down in history as the guy that acquires this. I think that as I say militarily, in the short term, pure military Denmark is not going to be able to go to war with the United States. Partly because the whole of NATO is completely dependent on America for almost all the kit we use, all the interoperability we use, all the satellites we use. We simply don't have the sovereign capacity to fight them even if we wanted to. And of course there's precedent for this. I mean, during the Second World War, Denmark did not fight against Germany. When Germany occupied them, they decided they didn't have a hope, they couldn't do it. There will be a debate. I mean there will be different if it happens. Let's say there's a 30% chance if it happens, happening militarily, there's the option of just accepting it. There's the option of symbolically fighting, which means some of your soldiers die for the principle of it, to make a symbolic statement. And that can be very, very powerful. Many people in Ukraine really regret the fact that in 2014 in Crimea, the Ukrainian soldiers surrendered. They surrendered because they thought it was completely hopeless. They were totally surrounded it. But some people now think that if they'd actually fought and died, that would have brought international attention to it and made it much easier later down the line to fight. But as you say, the point is not the short term military stuff, it's the political stuff. So as you've said, it would completely destroy NATO. Overnight, NATO would be finished. It also completely destroys international law because the two principles of international law are firstly, Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland, which has been tested in international courts in the 1930s. Absolutely tested international judges. This is Danish territory. And the second thing is the right of self determination, which is the people of Greenland who do not want to be part of the United States. And you can see Putin really enjoying this. He's just made a speech in Murmansk saying, great, you know, you can have Greenland, I'll have Ukraine. He's just said this quite openly.
- [35:46]
Alistair Campbell
Trump was asked if he, because Trump did one of his sort of weekend interviews coming back from playing golf, and he said, I think there's a good possibility we can do it without military force. Force, okay. That was a very deliberate way of putting into the ether the idea that maybe it would be done with military force. This is world peace, this is international security. I don't take anything off the table. He was then asked, well, if that were the case, you did use military force, what messages does that send to Putin about Ukraine? And his three word answer was, I don't care. So I think the, the chances are less than 30%, but I think you're right that it is a not untrivial point to talk about. That final point for me, Rory, about, about the, the other thing that Vance did, of course, was basically this is what he does about the whole of Europe, to project a case of Europe as a complete basket case. So essentially saying to those poor American soldiers who had to sit and listen to him for an hour, why would anybody want to be Danish rather than, rather than America? Several reasons for that. One is that Denmark is regularly in the top one, two or three of the happiest countries in the world. America is 24th on the freedom House rankings. Denmark is well ahead of America. Their healthcare system is better, they live longer lives. I would argue that they frankly feel pretty happy to be Danish. Now the point about Greenland, however, this is the other thing that they're exploiting. But I think this is going to boomerang against them. And this is the reason why the Danish Prime Minister is going there this week, is that there's been this growing movement towards independence. But I suspect that the idea of the Greenlanders, even the most absolute, absolute, really passionate believers in, in Greenlandic independence, will be saying to themselves, okay, Denmark may not be a huge military power, but it is part of the European Union. Do we really want, as a country of 55, 000 without much of a military, without much of a diplomatic service, do we really want to be on our own at the time when America says we want to have you? So I think that, I think the independence debate will be parked for a while while, until this gets resolved one way or the other.
- [37:49]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And if you are from the Inuit community, And there's a beautiful book by Cloutier Shilla Watt Cloutier called the Right to Be Cold, which is a kind of wonderful account of the Inuit community across Alaska, Canada, Greenland into Siberia. You're going to ask yourself, are indigenous people better off in the United States? And would you like to be one of the Lakota community in South Dakota? Do you feel the Inuit are well treated in Alaska? And I think the answer is, if you're looking for people who take indigenous communities and write seriously, who take the environment of Greenland, cirrus him. It's the most precious, extraordinary environmental landscape on earth. This beautiful book by a guy called Barry Lopez called Arctic Dreams, which just sort of brings to light this astonishing ecology, this sense of a world where. Where the sun doesn't move through the sky and at some points the sun doesn't set, at other points the sun doesn't rise. These strange collection of mammals and insects and birds that eke out in existence. You'd probably rather have Denmark, if you're concerned about indigenous communities, indigenous rights and the environment than you would have Mr. Drill, Baby Drill. Final little plug, which I can't resist, which is you very sweetly praised me for sort of weird statements about medieval history, which leads me to say that my book, the Marches is on a £1 deal on Kindle for this month, which is looking at the history of Cumbria and the border.
- [39:17]
Alistair Campbell
Rory, I'm sorry, you're letting yourself down. You're letting yourself down. What you should have done is to have said to me before recorded, by the way, I've got this deal with Kindle. Can you, Alastair, please plug my book? And I would happily have done that, but honestly, Rory, even I wouldn't have been that brazen.
- [39:34]
Rory Stewart
I screwed it all up.
- [39:35]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, let's take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. Long term partners of the rest is politics.
- [39:49]
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.
- [39:59]
Alistair Campbell
Just like politics. You have to protect yourself, 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.
- [40:11]
Rory Stewart
And that's where NORDVPN comes in. It secures your connection, it encrypts your data, helps keep your online activity private, wherever you are. It's quick to set up, easy to use and works away quietly in the.
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Alistair Campbell
Background and our listeners can get an Exclusive deal@nordvpn.com RestisPolitics One subscription covers up to 10 devices, so it's perfect for work, home, travel and indeed the whole family.
- [40:34]
Rory Stewart
That's NordVPN.com Restispolitics completely risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee. The link's in the episode Description hello, I'm William Dalrymple.
- [40:45]
Alistair Campbell
And I'm Anita Arnand and we are the hosts of Empire, also from Goal Hanger.
- [40:50]
Rory Stewart
And we're here to tell you about our recent miniseries that we've just done on the Troubles.
- [40:55]
Alistair Campbell
In it, we try to get to the very heart of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the 1960s all the way up to 1990. It's something that we both lived through and remember from our childhoods, but younger.
- [41:09]
Rory Stewart
Listeners may not know anything about it. And it's the time when there was division along religious and political lines, neighbours turned against each other, residential city streets.
- [41:19]
Alistair Campbell
Became battlegrounds, thousands were killed and the IRA bombed London. It seemed as if an end was out of reach. But in 1998, a peace process finally brought those 30 years of violence to an end.
- [41:34]
Rory Stewart
But the memory of the Troubles is still present, not only within Northern Irish communities who experienced it, but in international relations and political approaches to peace. And new audiences are starting to understand this national trauma through films like Belfast and Kneecap and TV shows like Derry Girls.
- [41:52]
Alistair Campbell
In fact, our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden Keefe. Now he's the author of the non fiction book that inspired the hit TV drama say Nothing. It's one of my favourite books. It's I think the kind of Inko.
- [42:06]
Rory Stewart
Blood for Our generation, extraordinary work of nonfiction.
- [42:09]
Alistair Campbell
And if you'd like to hear more.
- [42:11]
Rory Stewart
About this very recent conflict that put.
- [42:13]
Alistair Campbell
Northern Ireland on the global stage and hear from Patrick Radden Keefe. We've left a clip of the miniseries at the end of this episode. To hear the full series, just search Empire wherever you get your podcast casts.
- [42:30]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Restless Politics with me, the incredible plugger of my dodgy.
- [42:35]
Alistair Campbell
Book, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell, who's never been known to plug a book, any of my 21 books ever in my entire life, ever on this show or indeed anywhere else. Before we go on to Australia and the calling of the election, little plug Doug on your behalf. I'm doing this because you asked me to. For the interview we've got on Leading at the moment with Moises Naim Moises Naim, the guy who actually inspired me to write one of my books. But what can I do with his three Ps? Populism, polarization, post truth. But my God, I was swimming this morning and my friend Jim said, God, I listened to your guy Moises. I could have listened to him all day. Now, Australia, we've finally got an election date. It is May 3rd and I think this is going to be a very, very interesting election. I think a year or so ago I was on record on here as saying that I had a horrible feeling that this very bullet headed, right wing, rough former cop bruiser Peter Dutton was going to win. I'm not sure anymore. I think it's going to be very, very, very tight. You've got Albanese, the Prime Minister for Labour, Labor, Dutton, the Liberal, which is their Conservative Party. And there has been a movement back towards labor in the polls. It's not overwhelming. And Roy, the thing is, I hadn't realized until we've got this very good somebody I introduced you to when you were in Australia, James Copsey from who's an analyst at kpmg, who's becoming a wonderful media monitor for us both of Australian media on the election. I hadn't realized until the PC sent me last week that it's very, very, very rare that Australian prime ministers don't get two terms. The last time was a guy called scullion in 19, late 20s, early 30s was the last time that you had a single term Australian Prime Minister.
- [44:25]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. So you have a huge incumbency advantage.
- [44:28]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I guess also it's because of this through the three year term, people think, well, was three years long enough to do the things you need to do? What happens? Have you. So go on. You're famously a great predictor of election outcomes. What's your prediction of this film?
- [44:41]
Rory Stewart
Famously, famously, famously, as Dominic Sambrook would point out. Well, I think the interesting thing is that we probably would have thought that many liberal democracies were going right wing if you'd asked us a few months ago. So you could have told a story where, where it seemed pretty certain that Pierre Polyareff would win in Canada, that Albanese would lose in Australia and Dutton would win, that Le Pen could win in France. And actually what we've seen in the last two months is the sort of counter Trump effect and the sense in which particularly Carney in Canada has really managed to leverage people's horror at Trump to give a new energy to a sort of more left wing patriotic approach. And you can see that Albanese is trying to do the same again in Australia and it's very, very poor timing for Dutton because Dutton has tried to do what he thought were the sort of sensible Trump things. So this is the right wing candidate, talked about stopping work from home, talked about getting rid of 41,000 extra civil servants, talked about getting a Minister of Government efficiency sort of Doge thing.
- [45:56]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, Mojo.
- [45:58]
Rory Stewart
There's been quite a lot of talk about getting away from the green stuff, getting away from renewables, towards gas, which sounds a bit drill, baby, drill. And of course, Albanese can use all that against him because of people's horror at Trump in a way that wasn't possible a few months ago. And Australian public opinion is not happy with Trump any more than Canadian or European opinion, in fact, us its reputation, some of this has been shared by many of the people that we've interviewed on this show. But Ian Bremmer, for example, has done a lot on this astonishing. The collapse of the popularity of the United States across the world in just the last three months. Just how much negativity is being generated, do you think? I mean, am I overdoing that? How important is Trump in this campaign? Or do you think it's actually mostly domestic?
- [46:49]
Alistair Campbell
I don't think it's not the same as Canada. Trump has defined that campaign, campaign because of the extent to which he's attacked him, he's attacked Canada and Mark Carney has used that extraordinarily well, both to become the leader of the Liberal Party in the Prime Minister and now in the campaign. And although I think I see the Canadian campaign settling down to some extent into a much. Although tariffs may change this, the Trump, when he does his tariffs. But I see it settling down. But what's been interesting, but it's definitely a fact matter in the Australian election, I should say, by the way, Roy, having been told by Mexicans that we have to call her Shane Baum, I would like somebody definitively to tell me, I think I've influenced you in saying Albanese, because I've always called him Albanese, but I think it's Albanese. Albanese or Albanese. So I'd like it. A few of Australian friends just tell us, how do we. How do we. Because if this guy is going to be the Prime Minister for another three years, we need to get his, his name absolutely right.
- [47:47]
Rory Stewart
He's, he's never going to come on the show if we can't even pronounce his name.
- [47:50]
Alistair Campbell
Exactly. But he's, he's quite, he's quite a Man of the people, let's just call him Albo because that's what everybody, everybody calls him there. But he, what I think is interesting about this is that you, you mentioned this Minister of Government efficiency and they're now calling Dutton sort of Trump light. And this is about, it's making him more worried about focusing on that part of his campaign because you can so easily identify, well, that's what you know, who's your Elon Musk going to, who's going to come and throw people out of work, who's going to come and sort of ruin communities and so forth. I think that what's been interesting about in the run up, if you remember, he was going to call the election earlier and he didn't because they had this sort of mini cyclone that delayed it for a while and that meant they had to have a budget which they'd been trying to avoid. But actually they turned that quite to their advantage because they took a lot of people by surprise by using the budget to announce an income tax cut cut next year. And Dutton, I'm not sure quite why he did this, but he came straight out and opposed it and instead said he would cut petrol excise duty. And so that's the first thing is being framed. So when you say, is this domestic, that has become a very, very important part of the debate. Which tax cut would you rather have? Who do you think you'll be better off with? But I think more even than the Canadian election, I think this battle of the personalities is going to become a big thing because the thing about Dutton, he look, he can't help how he looks, he looks like a real bruiser. He really does look quite, you know, you wouldn't want to mess with him. And he's been a police officer and he also gives the sense of a bit like Pollyva is now regretting, I think talking Canada down so much. So a word cloud that was associated with Dutton and one of the big words in it wasn't the central word, but one of the big words was bleak. And it was like, so he's, he's got to gives a very negative sense of Australia and of Australians. And I think that is what Trump does because Trump fuels this sense of we're actually better than America, we're stronger than America, we're better people than America. And the YOUGOV poll that came out, they did a big MRP poll and it actually had for the first time in a while, labor within touch, touching distance of a, a majority. I still think it's Going to be very, very, very close. Probably some form of coalition, maybe with your friends, the teals. And I think it's nigh. I'm sure Australian viewers will love the fact that you painted your wall teal in advance of the Australian election. It's a lovely color behind you, drawing.
- [50:20]
Rory Stewart
Just finally, I guess, why Australia matters. I mean, I think Australia matters because it is this very robust liberal democracy. It's a liberal democracy which has got this very interesting balance in its economy between very important mineral base, minerals that are really crucial for the future of the world along with its services. It's got this great democratic electoral system which has largely avoided the kind of extremes of populism that we've had. But it also is in a very interesting position in relation to the United States and Europe. Europe, on the one hand, Albo's government's quite liberal internationalist. So, you know, if you look at the differences between him and Dutton, Dutton seems to be more likely to want to invite Netanyahu to Australia and Albo more likely to implement the International Criminal Court arrest warrant. Alba more renewable energy. Dutton more drill, baby, drill. Dutton pushing for higher defence spending. 2.5% on Ukraine. Dutton is pretty isolationist, whereas Albanese is quite pro Ukraine. So all these kind of splits.
- [51:27]
Alistair Campbell
Although to be fair to Dutton, Dutton has been critical of Trump's position on Ukraine.
- [51:31]
Rory Stewart
Right. Although I think his instincts. Instincts? You don't think his instincts. More isolation. It's more sense that Australia's a bit overstretched. It's got other priorities elsewhere. Needs to concentrate more on the Pacific.
- [51:41]
Alistair Campbell
I have heard him talk about Ukraine. Not that distant from the Labour government. Government. And of course the other thing that's important to Australia, you've got Orcas, Australia, uk, us, big deal. And you've also got the. Australia's part of the quad and the quad is America, Australia, Japan and India. Now India often concentrates on the kind of non military side of stuff in relation to that, but that's a very, very important relationship. So I think that Trump, in terms of overall foreign policy, I don't think either of them will want to be too distant from the United States. But I think in terms of the politics and the style of politics, Labour will want to try to pin the Trump negatives on Duncan.
- [52:23]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, there are two choices I think, that could face Australia in the sort of 5, 10 year future. One is that if they go down the route which Albanese wants of becoming more about green hydrogen, green mineral production, that allows them to integrate more into the European markets. And think more about, you know, Europe's now looking at these carbon border adjustment mechanisms where you begin charging people on how much carbon they emit. If on the other hand, you go down the Dutton route and you start doing more gas, you're integrating more into a kind of northern, Asian American model of how you produce stuff. The second thing I think is that if we relate back to the beginning of our show, were America to do something particularly aggressive and crazy in the world, and Greenland could be one example of that, that Australia would then have a real challenge, a real challenge around keeping public support for Aukus, keeping public support for this very, very close defense relationship they've got with the United States. A lot of which is of course predicated on China, because China is now sending around yet another ship. We talked about a ship a couple of weeks ago. Yet another ship's going around that's being accused of being a spy ship. And Albanese is trying to say, no, don't worry, we've got it under control. Until intelligence people have got it under control. Anyway, let's watch Australia. Are you making a prediction on this, though?
- [53:40]
Alistair Campbell
I. I think I'll. I think Albo will be Prime Minister again. I could be wrong. I think it'll be a. A very, very close election. I think the momentum is slightly with him and I think the places where Dutton has to win, he's looking less strong than he was. And I'm going to say, Roy, the Teals. You and I both met some of the Teals when we were Australia and the Teals are lovely, nice people and what have you. One of the things that has set the election debate racing was this guy who was caught on film, who was the husband of a Teal MP who was going around ripping down the posters of his wife's opponents and being filmed doing it and then not wanting to admit that he was the wife of the mp. It was. It sort of felt very unteal like behavior, I have to say.
- [54:32]
Rory Stewart
It is. I mean, well, this is the husband of Monique Ryan, who I think we both met, I certainly met. Who is this amazing. You know, she was director of neurology at the Melbourne Royal Children's Hospital. You know, many of these Teals are incredibly impressive professionals in their own right.
- [54:47]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [54:48]
Rory Stewart
But yes, that's the kind of thing you don't want happening.
- [54:51]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I think maybe you do actually, Roy. It's like now that we're the presenters of football, it's when they have these fist fights in football matches and the commentator, Gary Linen will say well, that's the last thing you want to see on a football field. Nonsense. We like Australian politics should be like Aussie rules football. No prisoners taken, no holes barred. Really go for it. It's one of the reasons I love Australia. Now, listen, we were going to talk about this poll that I'd mentioned from the John Smith center, but we get so many questions about young people and their attitudes to politics. So let's do that in, in Q and A. We've gone on for a long time. Time. We've gone for a longer. We talked about France, we talked about Denmark and Greenland, the US and now Australia. So we'll have maybe a bit more domestic stuff in Q and A.
- [55:37]
Rory Stewart
Absolutely, Alistair. And yes, the next episode, our Question Time episode, we've got some great questions and we're going to do deep dives on Myanmar and the fallout of the earthquake. We're going to look at the big question of where India goes in the world. In a world where us, China and Russia are emerging as powers, how does India, one of the largest economies in the world, position itself? And, and yes, we'll follow up on your point about young people and their views about democracy.
- [56:02]
Alistair Campbell
See you then.
- [56:02]
Rory Stewart
See you then. Bye bye.
- [56:08]
Alistair Campbell
So here's a clip from our series on the Troubles. This is the strangest thing about this story is that Northern Ireland is so small. And listen, there are other, I mean, you could tell a similar story about Sarajevo or any number of other types of places where there's been a conflict, Rwanda, and then the conflict ends and everybody still kind of lives in the same community. And you see these people. But, you know, there's an instance, even as adults, where Helen McConville is with her own family in McDonald's and sees one of the people who abducted her mother. There's a moment that I describe in the book where Michael McConville actually gets into the back of a black taxi in Belfast as an adult. And he sees in the mirror, mirror in the front of the taxi, he realizes that the man driving him is one of the people who decades earlier abducted his mother. And the strangest, most eerie aspect of this is he doesn't say anything and he doesn't even know if that guy recognizes him. And they drive in silence. And then he just pays the guy's money and leaves. To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts.