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The Rest Is Politics
393. Question Time: America’s last ally, Japan in crisis, and Netanyahu on the brink?
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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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- [01:22]
Unknown
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- [01:58]
Rory Stewart
Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time.
- [02:01]
Alistair Campbell
With me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell and Rory. We did a fair bit on Israel, but we also, unsurprisingly, got lots and lots and lots of questions about Israel this week. So let's just start on a couple. Reza or Reza. It's already been established that attacks on medical facilities in Gaza account to war crimes, so why is there still so much protection of Israel? And here's one. Sarah in light of Kemi Badenoch attacking the two Labor MPs who refused entry to Israel, would Rory nonetheless expect her to condemn the Russians for refusing him entry into Russia. Did you see? Her response was very, very odd.
- [02:41]
Rory Stewart
It was odd. Let's just remind people of the story. So Yuenyu Yang, who is, I know actually a bit and actually advised a bit when she was running for Parliament, I mean, not in a grand way, she would have got advice from lots of other people, but she was the FT correspondent in China. She's a really smart British economist from a Chinese background and she is a real coup for the Labor Party. I mean, it's part of Kama. Bring in some very, very talented young people. Anyway, she and Abbotson and Muhammad went to Israel in order to do a visit and to the west bank, somewhat to their astonishment, they arrive at the airport in Tel Aviv From Luton at 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon and suddenly find they're denied entrance to Israel. And they try to say, well, but we're British Members of Parliament, we're coming on a visit and they're told that they are there to spread hate and disinformation and they're not allowed in. I mean, it is really interesting, this question of why the Israeli government thinks that's a smart thing. Can I just sort of start with that from the communications point of view? Because obviously I'd normally say to you, if you were Netanyahu, his prospects were, are you insane? Why do you need more trouble? You know, what possible trouble are these two female parliamentarians going to create for you? Surely it's much more comms trouble for you, denying them entry, getting 70 MPs, including Hamish Fulton and West Streeting, to be photographed in Westminster Hall. Make yourself look like an autocratic regime that has something to hide and doesn't let in members of Parliament. What's the counterargument if you were trying to make the argument for why actually denying them entry is no bad thing?
- [04:23]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I'd say there are only two. One, one you might admit and the other one you'd probably be less willing to admit. I mean, I actually think their basic case that the idea, I know that they're both very, very strongly pro Palestine, but actually, as you say, she was a journalist, Yang was a journalist for the Financial Times. There's some amazing stuff about human rights abuses in China. The idea that this is somehow she wants to pick on Israel I think is nonsense. But I think two things. One would be because they can, and just as Trump is testing the whole time, can I get away with stuff? I think partly it's that let's just do it because we can. And I think the second thing domestically is to try to generate this sense that we're on our own and the world is all against us. And so you create enemies and don't know how big a story it was there, but not as big as it was here, and frankly, not as big as I think it would have been if we weren't living through this era of impunity. And I'll say, you know, I've just. I was in. I was in Paris the other day. I want to see Notre Dame. Rory, you've got to go to see the restored Notre Dame. It's fantastic. Almost found God. I mean, it was all. It was that good. I mean, I always thought he was creeping up on me at one point, but I managed. I managed to get out just in time.
- [05:44]
Rory Stewart
Alistair, this is the thing. We're gonna. This could be the great. This could be great admission. Over the next two years, we can get. Fine. God, this could be amazing.
- [05:54]
Alistair Campbell
But I went into this bookshop near the Pontion, and I found this book of a guy you may know, Gerard Aro, who I know because he and I have done stuff together for Portland, and basically he was the ambassador to Israel for six years. And it's a really, really, really interesting book. Most ambassadors memoirs are, you know, they're a bit too diplomatic, but this is quite diplomatic in that he tries to be nice to both sides, but he's also very critical of both sides. But one of the points that he makes is that, you know, a bit like you. You. You've been accused by all sorts of rabbis of being anti Semitic. And he makes the point that they, you know, they will take any criticism very, very seriously, and they'll relate it to the existential threat that they fear and, if you like, gave rise to their existence. He's a very, very interesting book, I've got to tell you, by the way, one of the best bits you mentioned, Ben GVIR and Smotrich on the main podcast. He makes no bones in saying that we're talking about fascism, but he gives this extraordinary account of his first meetings with Jared Kushner when Trump was first appointed. Jared Kushner. He said he's intelligent, he's arrogant, and he's ignorant about the issues. He concocted a plan that was so pro Israeli, it was a caricature. And Gerard asked him whether he talked to the previous people who tried to bring peace to the Middle east and to Israel, Palestine. He said no, because they failed. And I'm an innovator. And he asked him what he'd done to prepare. Then he said oh, he'd read about 10 books and he seemed very, very, very proud of himself. Given. You read 10 books in a flight, Rory. I don't think that. Anyway, but the point related to the.
- [07:40]
Rory Stewart
Also, I think you and I would spend an enormous amount of time talking to people who'd done it before. I mean, I think there's so much to be learned. Can I just sort of quickly, just to develop this comms question, let's imagine Trump had denied access to two British members of Parliament who wanted to visit the United States. How would he spin it? And how do you think that would work with the MAGA base and Fox News and Tucker Carlson? Would it actually, you know, could he even argue that it might benefit him to deny access to visiting British parliamentarians?
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Alistair Campbell
Oh, well, there is form. He got the British ambassador expelled. Kim Darak said something in a private message about Trump, and Trump didn't like it because it became public and he got Boris Johnson to kick him out. I wonder. Let's just say I was meant to be doing a speech to an American bank. It would have been this week, I think, and I got a call, was it last week or the week before, saying, oh, the, the event organized. They have a sort of bit of a. They have your change of direction for the event. You won't be required. And I said, oh, this would be politics, would it? And no, no, no, no, no. It's just maybe a change of direction. And I've got to be honest, I was quite relieved because I thought, God, would I really want to go the whole way and then suddenly get dragged into immigration to be shown the podcast or everything I've said on social media, because that's kind of where it's heading. And so I think that's what they're saying with these two Labour MPs is basically think twice before you criticize us. So I think Trump would. Yeah, definitely. It's right out of his.
- [09:18]
Rory Stewart
Of his book, out of his playbook. So can I just tackle Razor's question, which is this question about humanitarian workers, because the way the news comes out, we get it in little packets and we don't put it all together. But if you look at what's happened over the last year and a half, there has been a very, very large number of attacks on NGOs and humanitarian workers by the Israeli military. So if you take MSF medicine, sans frontier Docs Without Borders, who are these very courageous doctors who travel around the world trying to provide emergency medical help in serious war zones, it's a dangerous job. They had to withdraw from Afghanistan after some of their doctors were killed. But generally speaking, when you go and work for an international NGO in a war zone, you wear high vis vests, you have huge signs around your vehicle, and generally speaking, you relatively safe. That is not true, unfortunately, in Gaza. So let's just take msf. Their convoys have been attacked and people have been killed. Their clinics have been attacked and people have been killed. Their guest houses have been attacked and people have been killed. A guest house is where the international staff sit, live, eat, and, you know, we've had a recent case, for example, where a Bulgarian health worker sitting in the UN office for project services has just been killed. More people have been killed in the last three months of last year in Gaza than three times more than an entire 12 months of normal killing of NGO workers in these kinds of environments. And of the 573 suspected cases in Gaza of illegal killings, only one Israeli soldier has been prosecuted, successfully prosecuted, out of 573. And you can see the pattern here. So what happened? You're driving up in ambulances, your lights are flashing, you're driving very, very slowly. You're driving up in an ambulance and paramedics, because your previous ambulance has been attacked, and you're trying to work out, can you get people in. It's not an exclusion zone. And suddenly people open fire on you. And then the official Israeli spokesman comes out and says, the lights were not on. They were a suspicious vehicle. There were Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They name a Hamas individual in the thing. And the evidence is hidden. I mean, it's not just pushed off the road. Instead of the bodies being returned to their families, they're put in shallow graves. The vehicles are covered over with dirt. And it takes almost a week before the UN is actually even able to access the site, dig out their colleagues. At which point the head of UNOTCIA then has to make a public statement in a video saying he's never seen anything like it. But it is astonishing how if you think back to Kosovo, you mentioned the attack on the refugees, or you think back to Iraq, Abu Ghraib. You know, that story came out of people in hoods being tortured. How these things completely undermined Abu Ghraib in particular. I remember I was on the ground, I was dealing with Iraqis then. It was the biggest news internationally imaginable. It completely discredited the American government. Huge investigations took place. All those people were prosecuted, and it was still not enough. It's like the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. These things burn into the consciousness. But somehow what's happening in Gaza doesn't feel like this. Stories which in the 1970s in Vietnam or in the early 2000s in Iraq would almost have brought down governments happen. Are denied cover ups happen, no prosecutions happen. And it doesn't seem to have any consequence.
- [13:09]
Alistair Campbell
That's why I said on the main podcast that I thought it was incredible. It wasn't even raised with Netanyahu in the White House. But one of the reasons he'd have been quite comfortable and confident that it wouldn't was because Trump was never going to raise it. I suspect if that had been Clinton, Obama, even Reagan going back, if you'd have been there and this was the big thing going on, one of the big sort of events happening in Israel at that time, I think that have raised it. And just go back to your stats story. One percent of UNRWA staff in Gaza have been killed.
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Rory Stewart
One out of every hundred.
- [13:45]
Alistair Campbell
One in every hundred.
- [13:46]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [13:46]
Alistair Campbell
One out of every hundred has been killed. And also the media can't get in there. So that's the other thing. We don't see it. That's why the Israelis were probably quite confident in saying it was only because one of the, one of the Red Crescent workers happened to film it and then another of them who was killed happened to have his phone still on. That's the only reason that we've actually got a semblance of the truth of what's, of what actually happened.
- [14:12]
Rory Stewart
Two other eyewitnesses. And then I think, I mean, it's been very impressive the way that sky and the New York Times and others have tried to cover this because they, as you say, they can't get in. I mean, the journalists get to Jerusalem, they get to the crossings. They're not allowed. The Israeli government won't allow them in. So what they're relying on is local Palestinians to tell them. But they're able to build it up from video footage, satellite footage lies about the timing of when the exclusion zone was put in place. And they've managed rather unusually in this case, as you say, to prove that the Israeli government was completely lying. But it raises the question, what happens in all these other incidents when we're ensured that these were actually Hamas people, they weren't following proper procedure. The Israeli army acted entirely in accordance. When we don't have the video footage, we don't have the satellite footage. We're not in any position to actually challenge it.
- [15:02]
Alistair Campbell
I'll tell you, I think it's worth maybe reflecting on this is the, the political of history of Israel as a whole. If you go back, so David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel and the leader of the Mapai Party, which essentially was a left wing party. It was the Workers part, the full name was the Workers Party of the Land of Israel. And they governed more or less till 1968, early 70s, and then they merged into the Labour Party. Then you had Golda Meir, you had Yitzhak Rabin. So that's the first 30 years of modern Israel was essentially left of center. But the last labor, and I'm not making a Labour conservative point here, I'm just making the point that the last labor, you had Netanyahu for his first term. The last Labour prime minister was Ehud Barak, who was out by 2001. Now you have had the centrist liberals, Ehud Olme, who we talked to, and Bennett was another right wing and lapid. But then Netanyahu back again. So you've had a. You've had decades of labor and then decades of essentially what will become known as the Netanyahu era. So they've moved to the right.
- [16:10]
Rory Stewart
And I think this is important, which is that Israel is often presented as though it's completely homogenous. Israel does this, Israel does that. The reality is it is a right wing government. Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben gvir, doing these things. They do not speak for all Israelis. And your point about the difference between labor and the right wing Likud is really interesting. I was looking at settlement maps and one of the differences is that yes, under labor, settlements happened, but under labor, the settlements tended to happen around the edge of the Green Line or in the Jordan Valley. But under Likud, starting with Ariel Sharon, the settlements were put right in the center and the heart of Palestinian territory. You can see settlements all the way around Nablus. And I think Sharon is famous saying, we're going to grab every hilltop. So I think getting into this and being able to explore the differences within Israeli opinion, not seeing it as a sort of single homogenous block and having some hope in the labor tradition, what remains of the Israeli left, different ways of doing things, is vital.
- [17:20]
Alistair Campbell
A couple of things I learned from Gerard Abo's book. One is I didn't realize that the word for settler in French is colon. C O L O N. So the settlers are called les colon. And the politics of settlement is the politics of colonization, colonization. And the point he makes is that it's illegal, it's against the Geneva Convention. There've been lots of United nations resolutions against it, but the European Union doesn't speak out against it. He actually makes the point. The European Union funds schools in the west bank, funds wells, funds infrastructure. The settlers then move in and bulldoze them and we sort of say nothing. Anyway, I know you claim your French is not very good, but I think you'd enjoy Gerard's book.
- [18:08]
Rory Stewart
Do my best. Get through. Okay, here's a question for you, Becky, and we're going to come to the UK because we've been doing a lot of international stuff. The Birmingham Bin strikes have become a symbol of. I don't know how this is going to sound to international. This is the Birmingham bin strikes.
- [18:26]
Alistair Campbell
Believe me, they know about it.
- [18:28]
Rory Stewart
Broken local government finance. But who's to blame? It's the result of reckless council mismanagement or is it a symptom of deeper structural problems with how local authorities are funded in the uk and what would either of you do to fix the system? Would you mind just doing a little explainer on the battle? Birmingham Bin strikes, please?
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Alistair Campbell
Well, first of all, Rory, I'm going to take you aside and say the world, I think does know about this story. And I was looking two days ago at my Der Spiegel and there was a headline I cover the exact words, but it basically said Birmingham, England. The stink is terrible. So they sent somebody to find out what is this all about? So this is a. A strike that's going on in Birmingham where Unite the union claim that Birmingham Council, which is under massive financial pressure, essentially bankrupt, has imposed what they call cuts, real cuts to their pay and they have gone on strike. They have been negotiating, those negotiations have gone nowhere. The question there about why doesn't the government get involved? I think the government is trying to get involved to get this resolved, but it is truly horrific. There are parts of Birmingham where they'll say, well, it's actually, we're not feeling it that badly, but you've got, you know, there's been infestations of rats and all sorts of stuff that really, really horrible, terrible for the image of Birmingham. And also they've now set up these sort of places where you can take your rubbish. But there was a piece on the BBC News last night of a mile long car traffic jam of people with their cars full of all their rubbish, trying to take it to these temporary refuge centers. I mean, it's bloody awful. Not good for the local election campaign, I have to say.
- [20:11]
Rory Stewart
No. So politically I guess there's echoes or sounds like there's a bit of echoes of the ways that the Conservatives were able to weaponize these strikes, the late 1970s, of things, the bins out and famously the dead going unburied and all this kind of stuff. I suppose that takes us to the question of labor itself. So Angela Rayner comes from a trade union background. Many of the Labour MPs come from trade union roots and backgrounds. UNITE was a big supporter, I guess. In fact, tell me a little bit about the history of unite's relationship to Labour Big funder and how did it break with the Corbyn Starmer division?
- [20:49]
Alistair Campbell
Historically, Unite has been a big supporter, but the current leadership is quite critical of the government and is playing into this idea that they're moving too far to the right on certain issues. And just on that, Rory, by the way, today there is a poll, YouGov poll, and labor in the lead just ahead of Reform. But the thing that I found most interesting is that they've done an analysis and this is something you and I have talked about before. But I think it really is worth bearing in mind because I think that because Trump is so dominant in the global debate, because Nigel Farage has always been one of these people, he's able to get frankly more media attention than the leader of a party with five. Now four MPs ought to. We assume that all the Labour's troubles are coming from Reform. The analysis of the labor vote from 2024 as to where it's going, according to this YouGov poll, 64% say they would still vote Labour, 14% Lib Dem, 8 Conservative, 7 Green and Reform 5%. And I think this is where I keep saying that this sort of sense that labor thinks it has to appeal to the right a lot of the time I just think strategically may be wrong.
- [22:04]
Rory Stewart
Let's develop this for a second. So UNITE traditionally gave, when I was in parliament, 5.7 million pounds a year to labor and it was the biggest single, I guess it's the biggest union in the country and it was the biggest single donor. And more recently what you've seen is Unite giving a lot of money to individual more left leaning Labor MPs. So ATMP's, if you look at their declarations, are getting money from unite, but central headquarters isn't, as I think you've reminded me in the past, UNITE emerged from tng, Transport and General Workers Union, which merged with something called amicus in 2007. So during your time it was TNG, which was at one point, I think, the largest trade union in the world, you know, reached 900,000 members. Tell us a little bit about that. Was it a good ally, a difficult ally? How do characters like John Prescott pray into this? Tell us a bit about the unions and labour politics.
- [23:02]
Alistair Campbell
I would say when you said, was it a good ally, was it a difficult ally? Yeah, it was both. It was both to some extent. There's no doubt that they knew that the whole of Tony's leadership, 94 to 2007, the Transport General Workers Union, which everybody called the TNG, that was one of, if not most of the time, the biggest union you had. People like Bill Morris was the General Secretary and actually, yeah, I'd say a good difficult ally is a very good way to put it. They didn't always have the same agenda. They did sometimes worry that Tony was moving too far too fast in modernizing the party. John Prescott's role often was to be a bridge.
- [23:47]
Rory Stewart
Remind us about Prescott's background. He'd been a big trade union leader, hadn't he?
- [23:51]
Alistair Campbell
John was not necessarily a leader in the trade union movement, but his background was in the trade unions and then became an mp. But, you know, and John was very close to Rodney Bickerstaff, who was one of the big union leaders and he was certainly somebo ensured that their voice was heard. But at the same time, I think sometimes the unions felt that John, once he'd made the move to support Tony, sometimes they felt he moved too far as well. But I think that the relationship was difficult at times, often on policy and often on strategy as well. But Tony was, I think the reason why Tony maybe had a better relationship with some of these trade union leaders than people realize because he was actually pretty straight with them. He would tell them when he thought that they were wrong about what they thought the Labour Party was for. And so our relationship with the trade union was never. I think I've said to you before, the only time he ever got standing ovation at the Trade Union Congress was when he made the speech on September 11, 2001, to say that he wasn't going to stay to make a speech because he was going back to London. That was the only standing evasion he ever got. So they were always a bit grumpy with him, but I think had a sort of grudging respect.
- [25:01]
Rory Stewart
Did you have any strike? I mean, did Tony Blair ever have bins uncollected on this, on this level? Anything like.
- [25:08]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, we, we. I don't remember something like this, but we definitely had strikes and, and when we did, we were always. We tried to, to broker, but without necessarily that Being seen as our role. It depended. Depend what the issue was. But Tony was not somebody who. I think on something like this, though, because this is, you know, we talk a lot about the image of the country and what have you. This is bad for Britain to have. You know, we may think that Birmingham is, you know, just. This is where a local, regional story. It's not. This is a. This is something that is projecting an image of Britain and I think that's why it's more important than just a sort of local dispute. It's got to get sorted out.
- [25:48]
Rory Stewart
And presumably, maybe I'm wrong about this. If you're on the left of the Labour Party in Parliament and you're already pretty unhappy with Keir Starmer, you're unhappy about what's happening with child benefit, you're unhappy what's happening in international aid, disability cuts. This contributes to the sense that Starmer's betraying you and contributes to trouble in the ranks or not.
- [26:08]
Alistair Campbell
Keogh did get directly involved, or I think it was a number 10 spokesperson. I saw a story saying unite attacked Starmer because Kier or somebody on his behalf had said that UNITE should accept this. Now, it seems to me this is a classic dispute, because it does seem to me that they have a point. You know, if you're asking people at a time of really difficult financial situation, circumstances to take what is. It amounts to a pay cut, that is bloody difficult. So. But then at the same time, there will be a counter argument which I haven't really seen. I can identify the people who are arguing this for unite. I've not really seen anybody from the council that is convincingly explained to me why this is being allowed to happen at those moments. I think sometimes government does have to step in and say, right, we're going to get people or quotes around the famous table and we're going to bang heads together. We're going to get this sorted.
- [27:01]
Rory Stewart
Last one for me, just on intel labels, a question from Joe, which is, what's happening to where MPs come from, what social backgrounds they come from? And one of the things that struck me is that in the early 1980s, there were well over 100 MPs who came from blue collar backgrounds, steel workers, aluminium workers, coal miners. The unions were feeding through these people. And it had been a hugely strong tradition. I mean, I guess the real hero of all this maybe is characters like Ernie Bevan, after the war, who come in, take over from the kind of central casting, super posh Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary and prove as A really effective trade union man, that he can be an unbelievably good foreign secretary. So there was this huge cadre of people who were charismatic, incredible communicators who'd grown up in the trade union movement and who were able to connect their social background to being really effective public figures. And that's massively died off. If you look at the figures now, more and more people are basically professional politicians. You feel it a little bit, I'm afraid. We interviewed Richard Reeves, we interviewed Bridget Phillipson, we interviewed West Streeting. In many of these cases, these are people who've been members of the Labour Party since they were quite young. They've often got parents who are councillors or who are involved in the Labour Party case of many Labour MPs, actually their parents are either counsellors or members of Parliament. So there's a sense in which. And this maybe is a good transition to Japan, because that's true in Japan. We're beginning to develop a sort of political class. Now. It's not always that they're the kids of MPs, they might be the children of councillors, they might be the children of senior party members, they might be the children of people working in social care. But there's a sense that more and more bits of society don't want to become members of Parliament. And the people who naturally think, when they're in their teens, wouldn't it be great to become a member of Parliament, because that's a way of helping people. I've seen my mum and dad helping people increasingly feel like either the children of clergymen, like the first Minister of Wales that we interviewed, or Theresa May or Gordon Brown, or the children of people who, broadly speaking, are from caring professions, or Labour local councillors or party members. Over to you.
- [29:25]
Alistair Campbell
I don't think that's right. I think, look, for example, we now have the first cabinet in history where nobody went to private school, not one single member. The current cabinet went to private school. I think that suggests that, actually. So if you mentioned. You mentioned Rachel Reeves, I remember she made the point when we interviewed. And actually her parents weren't into politics. Wes Streeting, his background is, I think you would describe as working class. I think it's what we think about what working class means that's changed. And I would. I don't. You know, I don't know all of the new MPs, far from it, but, you know, I know quite a lot of them and I think this professional politician thing, I'm not sure, it may be that they're going into politics younger and therefore we think that's all that they've ever done. And there's a reason why they go into politics younger is because the people who get into positions of leadership are younger. And you know, when we talked to Simon Hart, the Chief Whip, your former Chief Whip, who was on leading this week, I thought he made an interesting point. Maybe there aren't enough people who've, who decide towards the end of their professional careers they'd like to become MPs. But I think actually your bigger point is the one about more and more people thinking, God, politics is just not for me. I don't think it's a class thing.
- [30:37]
Rory Stewart
No, I don't think it's a class thing. And I think that's an interesting thing, which is that, as you say, the Labour Cabinet, the problem doesn't seem now, I think it was 20, 30 years ago that people from working class and poorer backgrounds didn't feel Parliament was for them and they felt excluded. I think that isn't true anymore.
- [30:55]
Alistair Campbell
Angela Rayner, Bridget Phillipson, Peter Kyle, who told us his past story.
- [30:59]
Rory Stewart
I don't think Keir Starmer's dad. So I don't think the problem anymore.
- [31:04]
Alistair Campbell
What did his dad do?
- [31:06]
Rory Stewart
He.
- [31:07]
Alistair Campbell
He did. He did. I noticed, by the way, in his speech, Jaguar Land Rover, he didn't use the T word. He said, my dad worked in a factory.
- [31:16]
Rory Stewart
Ah, toolmaker.
- [31:17]
Alistair Campbell
What's happened to toolmaker? Now, listen, we've droned on enough.
- [31:20]
Rory Stewart
Can I just sort of finish this? Finish this for something. But it's uncomfortable for you, which is why you want to get off it. So the point is they're becoming from. They're becoming from more working class backgrounds, but they're less and less big, charismatic figures. They're more and more people who've become interested in politics in their teens, become student politicians, and that's why it's feeling more and more like Japan.
- [31:47]
Alistair Campbell
No, I admire your attempt to make a particularly pathetic, tenuous link to Japan, but let me just close with this. You're becoming like one of those people who notices suddenly that policemen have got younger. This thing about the big characters, okay, when, as you know, I can't stand Boris Johnson, you can't stand Boris Johnson, but in 30, 40 years time, people will remember there was this big character in politics called Boris Johnson. They might even remember there was a big character called Liz Truss because she crashed the economy. Quasi KWA Tang, they might remember was a big character. You've mentioned John Prescott, big character. Tony Blair, big character. Gordon Brown, big character. You don't mention the MP for Chipping. Nobody's ever heard of it because you don't need that many big characters. So I think you're just getting old, Rory, whereas I'm getting ever younger. So, Rory, let's, as you age, as you become the person who notices policemen are getting younger, let's go to a quick break, make yourself a cup of tea, have a rest, and we'll come back and talk about Japan.
- [33:01]
Steph McGovern
Hello, it's Steph McGovern and Robert Peston from the Rest Is Money here now. It's absolute carnage at the minute on the stock markets across the world, all thanks to Donald Trump and his tariffs. So this week we've gone daily. We're going to bring you shorter episodes every lunchtime. Just trying to make sense of it all. Because, Robert, I mean, we've been in crises before, haven't we?
- [33:22]
Robert Peston
Yeah, I mean, I've been at the front line of reporting financial crises for decades, from Black Monday in 1987 through the global financial crisis through to the COVID crisis. I mean, you know, the list goes on. This is a unique crisis because it is driven by one man, Donald Trump, but it does share lots in common with those sagas we have lived through before. And as we know, although what people see is falling share prices, it is to an extent what goes on in debt markets, financial markets, which is more important to our prosperity. And we are seeing absolute turmoil in bond markets, for example. So this is going to affect every part of our lives.
- [34:02]
Steph McGovern
Yes. And so we'll be looking at things like, what do we think is going to happen next? How much pain is Trump willing to take? And what similarities are there with things like the credit crunch that you and I covered together? So to try and make sense of all the rest, join us on the Rest is Money, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:24]
Rory Stewart
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- [35:43]
Alistair Campbell
Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. So we said before you had your nap that we were going to do Japan. Joanna, could we see Japan stepping up as a diplomatic leader and mediator in much the same fashion as the uk Two countries have a lot in common. Both enjoy a fairly good relationship with Trump, relatively independent in their respective areas, while also having an interest in keeping a large power, Russia, China, away from vulnerable countries in their continent, AKA Ukraine, Taiwan. Will island nations once again become the pivots around which the world hangs in the balance? Poor that's a very interesting question. I think Japan, the Japanese prime minister's seeing Trump soon. I think. I've been looking into this. Japan's got a massive problem, and that is the demography. So last year, the number of babies that were born in Japan for the ninth successive year was a record low, 1.6 million deaths, 720,000 births. So two deaths for every new baby born. 30% of the country's population is already over the age of 65. And by 2070, that's going to be 40%. Now, these are numbers that really do impact upon your ability to be a strong country. Just take defense. One of America's demands of Japan is that it steps up on defense so that it can do less in relation to China, but they can't recruit at the scale that they need to. So I think this is a great question, but I think it's a real conundrum for the Japanese government.
- [37:20]
Rory Stewart
It's also a conundrum for the US So Japan, South Korea, to some extent Australia, these are shaping up to be America's last allies in the world. So if you're right and Jaska Fischer's right, that basically Europe is beginning to conclude that America is no longer an ally, that might even be a strategic threat. And as Waltz, the national security advisor, and others try to tilt towards China, you know, their justification from some of them, at least for getting out of Ukraine, Russia and abandoning Europe and abandoning NATO because they want to focus on China, they are going to have to rely more and more on this network of allies in Asia and they're really screwing it up. You know, one of their allies was supposed to be getting closer to Vietnam and exploiting divisions between China and Vietnam. And they've just hit Vietnam with huge amounts of tariffs, you know, 45% tariffs, almost as bad as China, which is completely mad because the assumption was that they were trying six months ago to convince people to move their investment away from China into these other countries. Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, all of which they've now hit with tariffs, meaning that those companies are thinking, what the hell am I supposed to do? I thought I was supposed to de risk, de lever, get out of China, invest in these other. And I'm being hit there. Which brings them back to Japan, South Korea, Australia, who incidentally, of course, they've hit all of them with tariffs as well, which leads them sort of bewildered and wondering what the hell the point of being the US ally is. But you've then raised another question, right, which is. And we'll get on to South Korea in a second. These are very, very odd allies to have, particularly Japan and South Korea as they age so much. I mean, what are they going to, who's going to war there? They're going to go to war in a bunch of wheelchairs and walkers. I mean, the South Korean demography is collapsing overnight.
- [39:04]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. And. Well, another one, which I saw, I saw the figures for the birth rate in Taiwan. Taiwan has got a fertility rate of 0.87. So that's 0.87 new births for every person that's, that's dying. And they've now, I mean, the Ministry of Defense in, in Tokyo, they've raised the maximum age of recruits. It's now up to 32. It was 26, it's now 32. But they've missed their recruitment goal by more than 50%. And so these figures are just, they're absolutely staggering. So over the last three decades, the number of 18 to 26 year old Japanese men, which is that, that's the population that they're trying to, they've been trying to recruit from, it's gone from 17.4 million in 1994 to 10.2 million last year. I mean, blimey. To meet their recruitment quota, if they don't extend the age of recruitment, they have to enlist more than 1% of the entire population.
- [40:09]
Rory Stewart
That's amazing. Just to sort of complete the story on Japanese politics. So we covered the election which was, it seems a long time ago and it was only October last year. And this was the moment where Fumio Kushida stepped down and Shigeru Ishiba decided to call a snap election. And a little bit like Macron, snap election, blew up in his face, lost his majority, ends up with a minority government. So one of the problems that we're facing, trying to answer Joanna's question, is that Japanese politics, South Korean politics, which we'll get on to a second French politics, are very, very weak. And of course German politics is still in this coalition agreement. So it's quite difficult for these big countries actually to organize themselves, get budgets passed, take radical new decisions because they're very fragile things.
- [40:59]
Alistair Campbell
Well, Kushida just on that, Rory Kushida tried to get defenses up to pay for defense, more defense, and he failed because of that.
- [41:11]
Rory Stewart
Let me sort of finish the point that was frustrating you before the break just to try to develop it. I mean, Japanese politics is very, very much a bunch of people who are a minority of people who want to be politicians. While most people don't get involved in politics, which is what I fear is happening to Britain. We've literally gone from something like 120 blue collar working class MPs in 1983, proper manual laborers steal aluminium to people who, whatever their family backgrounds, are increasingly spads, political advisors, professionals. And you made the analogy with policemen getting younger. It's also true, unfortunately, with the police, increasingly many, many police officers. The children of police officers often have two parents who are police officers. So you end up with politics becoming in Japan, Fumio Kishida's, you know, parents, grandparents, Shigeru Ishiba's father. These are all politicians, right. And my fear is that we're going to end up in a very, very strange world and, and it will become a little bit like Japanese politics because if you don't bring people in from the outside, you can end up with very well intentioned, but quite shy, technocratic people who've grown up in, since their students, sort of geekily interested in politics, but not really having much sense the outside world, not really having worked in developing countries, certainly not having worked in a steel factory. And I think that this is something to watch for and will happen more and more in Europe too, where I think many, many countries, if you're an Austrian, you simply doesn't occur to you to become a politician. And I think that's something to watch for in Britain. I mean, just as we're celebrating the departure of The Old Etonians is the group of people from which politicians Dr. Going to come narrower and narrower.
- [43:03]
Alistair Campbell
There's a B has arrived in your bonnet here. I'd like to. I'd like to put out an appeal to somebody who works for the Parliamentary Labour Party. I'd like a data analysis of the economic, social, political background of the current Parliamentary Labour Party. And if there's anybody listening from the Police Federation, I'd like. I'd like a similar job done. I think the idea that all coppers have got parents who call is nonsense.
- [43:25]
Rory Stewart
I didn't say all coppers, but I didn't say all copies.
- [43:27]
Alistair Campbell
No, you didn't, but you said.
- [43:28]
Rory Stewart
You said striking number. A striking number, I think is moving.
- [43:32]
Alistair Campbell
In the other direction. I know police officers, Rory, who say that they. Their kids are not going to the police because they've seen that it's not that great a life for them. So anyway, we need data on both of these questions, Rory, otherwise it's going to become anecdotal being bonnet.
- [43:48]
Rory Stewart
Let me put on the request on data. How many of the parents of existing Labor MPS were counselors, MPs, or very active members of their local Labour parties who were bringing their kids along to Labour Party meetings when they were in their early teens, and how many of them were student politicians?
- [44:06]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I think you'd be quite surprised by the answer, but we shall. We shall see. Or we could get the data done by somebody else, but. So I'm sure there are lots of. I know there are lots of Labour mps, listen, and lots of bit. If there's anything in the plp, if you've got that data, please send it. And if you're a member, we'll even give you a shout out. Now, Olivia, who is a member and comes from Perth in Australia, was Peter Dutton, that's the Liberal Party leader, the Tory. Was Peter Dutton right to backtrack on his working from home policy and apologize? And was he right to drop the candidate who said women soldiers should not be in combat roles? Good question. Was he weak or strong or panicked or principled?
- [44:46]
Rory Stewart
Let me just do a quick explainer and then come to you on the politics. This. So Peter Dutton, obviously the right wing candidate in the election and Albanese was doing badly. He was behind in the polls and people thought Dutton had a pretty good chance of winning. And Dutton presented himself as a slightly kind of radical right wing reformer and he thought, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to call out problems in our economy and I'm going to produce traditional market solutions. So he talked about how the supermarket seemed to be forming cartels and he needed to kind of break them up and create more competition. And as part of that he's also talked about Ministry for Government Efficiency and he's also talked about trying to solve the problem of people working from home. And it's a classic tempting thing for a politician to do because actually presumably many of the rallies and meetings with his party he goes to, he says, isn't it ridiculous that everybody works from home? And many of his core party supporters will say yeah, yeah. And many men will be like, yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous. Why are people not turning up to work? Then he launches it into the public and it suddenly turns out that it's unpopular, women in particular by a very large margin end up being really opposed to it. Meanwhile, his position in the polls is falling and he comes out and says, I screwed up, I'm dropping the policy, I'm not going ahead with it. Okay, how does the politics fall this work, Alistair So what it plays into.
- [46:12]
Alistair Campbell
Is the idea that the campaign hasn't really been thought through. Our friend James Copsey, who I mentioned is regularly sending his media reports of what's happening in Australia. The general conventional wisdom was that Albanese and by the way, Rory, we had dozens of responses to our how do you pronounce his name? And the overwhelming including from Albo himself is it's Albanese, okay, Albonese Albonezi kind of thing was that he won the first week and that Dutton had a few sort of mishaps, one of which, the biggest, which so far was this working from home policy. And I think you're right, I think the politics was, I think this is where Trump's shadow, I'm afraid and the whole kind of anti woke thing, I'm not saying it's not a thing, but I think if you make it a big part of your campaign in week one when you must have had, they must have done polling on this or they must have had some sort of feedback as to why he did it. So I think the politics are bad for him. Probably did the right thing to dump it straight away rather than have it drag on for another week. So dump it, apologize and move on. But then that's why this other thing about the candidate became a bigger issue than maybe it would have been. And this is an interesting one for you because you've been a candidate and lots of candidates get vetted and what have you. But this is a guy who, who had been in the military. An amazing name. He was called Benjamin Britain and he'd been in the military. And after he had been selected, these interviews were dug up where he'd been on podcasts and he'd basically questioned whether it was sensible to have a bit like Pete Hexseth, sort of his model of military women shouldn't really be in combat roles now. I don't know. I think there was a bit of panic. I think if he'd have come out and said, well, that's what I thought then, but now I don't, I think it had been fine, but Dutton panicked is my sense. So they've kicked him out, they've got a new candidate.
- [48:13]
Rory Stewart
It's Dutton panicking too much. So, as you say, could have apologised on that, kept the candidate, or the candidate could have found a way of reframing. I mean, Hesketh gets a lot of support in the US for saying his message is it's on merit. You need the same standards for everyone. I don't have any problem with women in the military, but they've got to be able to run the same discipline, citizens carry the same weight, otherwise they're not going to be in the U.S. marine Corps. It's very difficult to kind of disagree with that stuff. I guess the other question, which I never really understand in politics, which you got a much better instinct on, which is he's obviously calculated that it's better to just say I was wrong with the working from home policy and drop it. Facing the accusation that he's weak and flip flopping, as opposed to holding to the policy, which presumably he believed in and which appeals to some of his base and sort of battling it out. How do you calculate when you've actually got to go out there and say, I'm dropping the whole policy, I screwed up completely, we're not doing this instinct.
- [49:12]
Alistair Campbell
I don't think there's any kind of science to this. I think you have to have good instincts. And the great thing about political campaigns, election campaigns and Australian campaigns similar to ours in many ways, is that the reason why they're so testing is because your instincts and your values and your political field do get tested. And I think this is why people are starting to look at Dutton and think, God, he's had a bad first week. And then if he has another Albanese, Albanese will probably make mistakes as well because that's what happens when you get under pressure. But I think in the end it's instincts.
- [49:43]
Rory Stewart
Okay, Brian Trip plus member Considering Trump was Impeached twice, but ultimately acquitted. What does Yoon Suk Yul's impeachment tell us about South Korean democracy? It is a sign of resilience or deep political dysfunction. How might his removal shape up relations with the US and North Korea? So quick introduction on this. As you've pointed out, like in Japan, there's been a massive collapse in South Korea's fertility rate from six children per woman in the 1960s to 0.72 in 2023. So there's been a nine year decline. Life expectancy at 83, proportion of individuals aged 65 and over increasing rapidly. South Korea will be the have the world's highest percentage of elderly citizens within 20 years. And Jung Suk Yul from the right, anti North Korean, decided to do this extraordinary thing of declaring martial law, declared martial law. Claiming that his opponents have been taken over by North Korean agents. He tried to basically shut down the legislative assembly. And this is something that goes back to the old days of South Korea, which of course had military rule in the 60s and 70s, had martial law in the 80s, and he hoped the military would come with him and he hoped that his hard right base would be like, yeah, here we are asserting control. And actually the whole thing blew up in his face. His own party turned against him. There was complete bipartisan support for blocking him. The military did not come out on, on his side and he's now being impeached. So it showed two things. It showed firstly, South Korea does have, in a way that countries like Britain maybe don't, this history of military rule. You couldn't imagine somebody declaring martial law in Britain, I guess, but it also has quite strong democratic institutions. Because when he tried to do this thing which seemed like he was traveling back 40 years in time, the institutions responded, stopped him and now impeaching him.
- [51:36]
Alistair Campbell
Over to you, the question about what it shows, it shows that the democracy in a way has worked. He did something that people thought was profoundly anti democratic and really politically stupid. Still not clear why he did it. And he fought and fought and fought and fought. He had a lot of people fighting for him. But ultimately the process has led to the fact there will now be another. He's no longer president, he's been removed from office by a constitutional court and there'll be another election on June 3rd. And so I think this is actually, I mean it's been terrible for South Korea's standing and image in the world, but I think actually it's terms of its political and democratic process. I think they should, they should sort of give themselves a bit of a pat on the back. They certainly don't have a con, somebody who's been convicted felon sitting there sort of, you know, putting 25 tariffs on South Korea. Now, Rory, we, I think we've sort of run out of time. I'm, I'm looking at my laptop charge, which is one of my sort of, one of those things that triggers my sort of edginess in life. Do you want to have a last.
- [52:38]
Rory Stewart
Quick last question then for you, Northern Ireland, something you know a lot about with the anniversary of the signing, the Good Friday Agreement coming up on 10th of April. So we were there actually we were in Belfast for the last anniversary. How far does Alastair think that the agreement could be used as a template for contemporary conflicts around the world? So let me sort of frame that. You look at the Good Friday Agreement. What do you think made it work and is it a one off or how applicable it is? Do you, do you get inspired by people saying we can repeat Northern Ireland in Israel or Sudan or do you slightly shake your head and think this was pretty special and the application to other countries a bit limited?
- [53:18]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I don't think you'll ever necessarily repeat the same thing in a completely different context, but I think some of the principles are absolutely applicable, indeed. Jonathan Powell, Tony's Blair's former chief of staff who's now national security advisor to Keir Starmer. In between times he ran this amazing charity called Intermediate. And essentially what he was doing was going to different parts of the world in very different circumstances. I don't think he went around and said, look, we did Northern Ireland, here's how you do it. But definitely part of the learnings from, from that were applied and a lot of these were obvious. They're things like be clear about what you're trying to achieve, understand when and how to engage in real dialogue and when you just kind of just have to go through the motions because you're slowly moving to the next phase. I do think the strategic picture. So for us it was essentially there has to be political consent, there has to be a democratic process that people buy into. But there has to be an understanding that there is genuine inequality here. There has to be. Be addressed. They were the strategic pillars. And then everything else you worked around that. So I think that you know, and within the middle. The tragedy we talked in both the main podcast and today about, about the Middle East. I mean the absolute tragedy of that is really you've had leadership on both sides in recent years that hasn't really wanted to do the things that you need to do to get a proper peace process going. That's the tragedy of it, you know.
- [54:48]
Rory Stewart
You know, I don't believe in plugging and I'm definitely not going to mention the fact that, that the marches have available for a pound on Kindle at the moment. But I did want to point out this is. You have. This is Justina on our fellow Goal Hanger podcast, Empire. Go on, tell us a little bit about what you've been talking about there.
- [55:06]
Alistair Campbell
Oh, Empire. Well, no, actually people, Empire, which is Willie Dalrymple and Anita Anand and they, they've done a, a, I think it's a three part series miniseries on the Troubles. So I went on there to talk about, yeah, the Good Friday agreement and how it all came together and what have you. So if people want to know more about Northern Ireland and to my mind, you can never know too much. The episode comes out on Thursday 10th April, and if you want to listen to that, you just search Empire wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:37]
Rory Stewart
Great. Well, thank you very much indeed. See you soon. Bye. Bye.
- [55:41]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon.
- [55:42]
Rory Stewart
Bye.