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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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- [00:13]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [01:14]
Alistair Campbell
Practical, painless, no committee required. Welcome to the Rest of the Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.
- [01:28]
Rory Stewart
And with me Rory Stewart.
- [01:29]
Alistair Campbell
And we've had quite a strange week, Rory, because Monday we did the live on the UK EU Summit main episode went out yesterday and we're now you promised you were going to talk about the Romanian election. So Monica wants to know whether we think that the defeat of the hard right candidate in Roman, the Romanian election is a vindication of those who stopped the election first time round or the pandering to people who don't believe in democracy.
- [02:01]
Rory Stewart
Let's give a quick explainer then, just to remind people. So, first time round, a man called Carlin Georgescu rang and it appeared that he was running off a staggering number. I mean, hundreds of thousands of accounts which appeared to be linked to Russia having won the first round and he'd come from nowhere, completely unknown figure, the election was stopped. This provoked real outrage, outrage including, I think, from people like Musk and J.D. vance and others who saw it as a real attack on freedom of speech and democracy. The elections were then rerun and representing the far right was a man called Georges Simeon, and running against him, Mr. Dan Nikos Dan, who's the mayor of Bucharest. And in the first round, Simeon got 40% of the vote, Dan got 20%. So it really did look as though the far right were doing very well in the second round, actually, Nicholas Dan got 53% and Georgi Simeon got 47%. So it is a welcome sign in a sense, because this liberal, apparently really good mayor of Bucharest, who people like has won. And it would have been a real blow if Romania, which is a big serious NATO contributor, had gone in the far right direction, because those candidates were talking about expelling NATO troops, teaming up with Putin effectively against Ukraine, et cetera. But it was skin of the teeth. I mean, it was real skin of the teeth. And as we've seen in some other countries, the two major mainstream parties have completely blown up. The traditional centre, left, center right parties have vanished from the scene, and these new parties emerge from nowhere. So it's also a sign of real instability.
- [03:39]
Alistair Campbell
What was really interesting was when the result came out and it was, you know, you say it was skin of the teeth, but actually given the background and given the. Although, as you say, the mayor of Bucharest is a popular figure within Bucharest and what have you, but actually it was a pretty convincing win considering where he was coming from. If you take the first election, the one that was annulled as a genuine indication of the politics of the country. And of course, what would have happened had he lost? You would then have had countries in Eastern Europe, which we often talk about Moldova. I noticed that Maya Sandu, the leader of Moldova, was the first out with congratulations because they would have been sitting there thinking, look, if Hungary is already kind of within the Putin sphere of influence, Romania in there as well. This is a guy who during the election was saying things like, you know, people need to elect me so that we can undo the policies of dictators like Macron and von der Leyen. I mean, this was a absolute full on against the European Union, despite all the help that Romania has had in developing itself. So I think it is a pretty. We shouldn't overstate it, but I certainly put it into the Albo Mark Carney category of elections that I welcome the.
- [04:53]
Rory Stewart
Result, really welcome result, but still very, very disturbing, because Romania, you know, Romania was a country which in the 20s and 30s was ravaged by military coups, fascist parties, then had the horrors of Ceausescu during the Communist era, then in the 1990s, pretty bad politics, where former communists like Iliescu were sending Coal miners in to beat up the opposition, massive corruption scandals, and really it's thanks to the Kosovo war, which you were very strongly involved in Romania coming in with the allies in that that they got the opportunity to join the European Union.
- [05:32]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [05:32]
Rory Stewart
And since they have, they've been a pretty remarkable success story in terms of the way in which their economy's gone. I mean, Bucharest, I first saw Bucharest in, I guess, 1990 and it was an unbelievably poor city and now it's a really prosperous place. But there's another story to Romania, I suppose, which is that there were very interesting statistics around expatriate Romanians because many, many Romanians now work abroad. A lot of the economies kept going with remittances. I remember going to a village in Romania, Transylvania, and noticing there were basically no men to be seen, all women working the fields and all the men were working in Germany from that village. And a surprising number of them in places like Spain and Germany, 68% were voting for the far right, whereas the Romanians in Moldova, as you said, are voting overwhelmingly for the more liberal pro EU centre. Anyway, really something to watch because it's part of this general story, which is that even if they didn't make it through this time, gosh, there's no room for complacency. And those two main parties in Romania did get too complacent and have been wiped out. Question for you, Sean. Given Labour's welfare cuts, winter fuel allowance, disability benefits and the most recent talk of immigration having done incalculable damage to the uk, economically and politically, how much more right do Labour need to go before we have to admit it's not a centre left party anymore? I was reminded of the fact that we didn't explain to people because it would confuse them. But in Portugal, the centre right party has actually called the Social Democrats.
- [07:10]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, we talked about the immigration incalculable damage, island of strangers stuff last week, and I didn't hide the fact then. I didn't like that. I think that what they're doing is, I guess they're trying to do this sort of economically, fairly left wing, socially, a bit more conservative. But the problem is that the stuff that is really connected with people is stuff that people have not expected from a left wing government. I was up in Scotland over the weekend and spoke to quite a few people, including quite a lot of local politicians, Labour and snp, and I was really quite surprised. They were saying, look, you know, people talk about reform in England, they talk about reform in Wales, reform has got next to no local kind of political profile at all. But they're doing pretty well in the polls in Scotland as well. I think this is a policy, the winter fuel allowance is a policy that I think Labour would be very, very wise to change. I thought at the start when they came in they had, you know, the explanation was this so called black economic black hole. Things are worse than, worse than we thought, etc. I'll tell you what one guy said to me, it was really interesting, a Labor guy, he said that when we keep talking about tough choices, people have started to notice that these are all tough choices made at the expense of the poor, not the rich. Now Labour can argue that they're doing this on health and they've done, you know, the private school stuff and all that. So there's stuff they can point to. But in the end a lot of politics is about what is connecting with the public. And I was not taken aback because I guess I always get a different feel of politics in Scotland. And this time the feeling I got was people really think this winter fuel thing is just not what a Labour government should be doing. And I think they just need to get to the place of saying that we did it for the reasons that we said at the time. We actually think we should reverse a lot of it, we should reform it so that people like me, I'm 67 now, I shouldn't get it because I'm pretty well off and you know, but maybe people in the middle you could think about take some sort of tapering system but poorer people should actually get more of it. And I think it's sometimes a U turn is what gets you back on the road. And I think this is one that I would make.
- [09:28]
Rory Stewart
Well, honestly, I mean, I think it's, it's really interesting because it was one of the ones which I thought that I supported. I mean for the same reason that you mentioned, which is I couldn't understand why my mother was getting wetter fuel allowance. And because it wasn't something that traditionally existed, it just been introduced by Gordon Brown and it was costing so much. I mean it was, you know, the costs would feel that sort of about twice the entire budget of the UK Foreign Office, for example. I thought it was one that we should get rid of. And the reason it wasn't happening was that when the Conservatives were in government was because people like George Osborne were quite wily and thought that it would be politically very unpopular even if it made economic sense. But those of us who were being more geeky and technocratic thought. There are other ways of doing welfare payments. We don't need to use winter fuel allowance to do that. We can target poverty more accurately in other ways. And what's my mother doing getting this check? So, I mean, the things that I'm more troubled by are things like them not dealing with the 2 child benefit cap, which is going to really lead to a lot. You talked about them being left wing economically. They don't feel very left wing economically. There's going to be a big rise in child poverty. I'm also very confused about why they cut international development quite so much when Trump was cutting it at the same time, because Britain and the US together were covering about 30, 40% of international development, particularly in things like health. And I'm also wondering, I mean, if they're economically, as the data is coming in now and of course it'll be disputed, but certainly seems in the short term as though it is true that we're losing a lot of billionaires and millionaires out of the country. Somebody who's actually quite close to the Labour Party said to me that they're a bit confused by that too, because Rachel Reeves is falling over backwards trying to attract investment and wealthy people to the United Kingdom. But actually an easier thing to do would be to keep them in the first place rather than driving them out, particularly with the changes around inheritance tax on non doms. So there's a lot of stuff that doesn't quite add up at the moment and I guess maybe you're saying would feel allowance, though, is the thing that you feel really strikes the soul of the party.
- [11:39]
Alistair Campbell
I don't think it's really about the party. This feels to me actually like something that the party has sort of thought it could wear. The media has kind of given up talking about it for quite a while, but it's, it's definitely out there as something that has had a real impact on some people, but it's had a really profound, I think, symbolic political impact on a lot of other people. And it then plays into all this other stuff. So that I wouldn't also, I wouldn't underestimate the impact of Keir Starmer and the British government's position on Gaza. The feeling that people just want to feel that their government really, really gets it and says things. And even though, you know, we had a question this week. What power does the UK government actually really have? Well, maybe not much, but, you know, it was, it was Beth Rigby at Sky asked the press asked Keir Starmer at The press conference the other day, when you say you've done everything you can do you think you can really say that? Well, the, all these sort of things build up and I think the point about left wing, right wing, I think that, you know, KE has this word that he uses all the time about pragmatic solutions, trying to resolve issues. And I think sometimes there does feel to be a clash between the kind of the overall big messaging. So even when I said that, when I said they want to be left wing economically immediately, quite a few things popped into my head that I thought maybe that's not quite right. And I'll tell you, I think generally on the strategy, on the overall strategy, I feel sometimes what's going on, that there's a lot of politics goes on, but I'm not sure that's always the same thing as political strategy. So I think, you know, you hear, I've heard too many people or I've read of too many people saying, oh well, you know, we've got to, we've got to sort of, you know, hit hard on immigration because that's the way to keep the reform people on side. And you know, I just think that there's too much sort of taking for granted on the left. But I guess what I'm saying about winter fuel lines, they need one big thing I think to basically say, you know, we don't always get everything right. This is something we did for the right reasons at the right, at the right time. But actually we've underestimated the impact that it's had. We're going to undo it, we're going to reform it, we're not going to go back to universal, everybody gets it, but we're going to reform it because we've, we've heard loud and clear what you've said now. Deutschland. If I can go back to Deutsche Deutschland. Jan. It could be Jan, or it could be Jan Merz, new Chancellor threatened to do this, but I don't think any of us in Germany. Oh, it's a German thought he would actually deny asylum at the border in conflict with the European Court of Justice's ruling. This is surely a very extreme method to curb immigration.
- [14:13]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, very strange. So this is something Metz trialed and famously when he tried to bring it to a non binding vote. This was before the election, only the AfD were prepared to come with him. His coalition partners from the left been very, very uncomfortable with this. And what he's basically done is he said it's an emergency and I'm no longer going to accept asylum at the border. Now, whether it's actually happening is a bit in dispute. The Poles and the Austrians are saying he stated it, but actually people are still going through the border. If he really does it, though, it's very dangerous because what will then happen is the European Court of Justice case will be taken to them and they will have to rule. Almost certainly there isn't an emergency and he is contravening European law. Now, remember, European law means laws that German politicians have signed up to. It's not here's Germany and there's Europe as a separate thing. And that's a real gift to the far right and the AfD, because that will then allow them to say, aha, you see, we always told you you're not going to be able to come up with a sensible way of controlling immigration because the European Union and the ECJ won't let you to do it. Which is why we, the AfD, think you should leave Schengen, etc. So very, very dangerous stuff Maoz is doing here. Which is why I want to return to the extraordinary proposals made by Gerald Knauss, which I still think are the smartest things that we've got on the table about how to think about safe third country returns, how to think about working out a solution that both stops boats crossing the Channel to Britain, also deals with Germany's problems, brings Turkey into this equation, talks to North Africa and really addresses this, rather than trying to break European law and address it together, not individual countries doing it.
- [15:58]
Alistair Campbell
The guy at the heart of this is a guy called Alexander Dobrent, who is the interior minister, and he's of the same political breed as Merz. And so you had a government spokesman. What this relates to, and it's something the Italians did, is you can declare an emergency, okay? If you declare an emergency, you can then invoke this special clause, it's called Article 72 TFEU. And you can, you can invoke this and that, then will allow you to take these sort of special measures in an emergency. Government spokesman comes out on the back of newspaper reports and this is, no, this is not happening. But then same day, Dobrint said he's not ruled it out. So that's what I think is leading people to think they're really testing the waters on this. And as you say, if they test the waters and really go for it, that is a very, very, very big, very big deal. Now, Roy is one. I love trees. I do my tree of the day. You love trees, Ryan Trip plus member from Chester. Over the past decade, activism and protest have raised significant awareness of climate change, environmental protection and the need for urgent action, even if some methods are controversial. But with anti climate populist deniers and doubt is gaining more attention, a growing appetite for chaos, could we also see a rise in activism against cl? While the motive behind the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree remains unclear, might similar acts targeting symbols of environmentalism emerge as protests against regulation? There was a brilliant piece in the observer at the weekend by a guy called Andrew Hankinson, who'd also, I think, written a book about that guy, Raoul Moat. But it was a really, really, really long read about the trial and the background to the Sycamore Gap tree felling.
- [17:53]
Rory Stewart
This is right in the heart of my constituency. So I had half Hadrian's Wall in my constituency and the Sycamore Gap for international listeners was the most iconic thing because it stars in the great Hollywood version of Robin Hood, because Kevin Costner's sitting on this tree. So the wall comes down and the tree is perfectly placed growing in the middle of it, and a couple of Cumbrians appear to have driven over and chopped it down for a laugh, causing real sadness and devastation because it is the great image. I mean, it's difficult to quite express how central that is to the way that we think about the wall and the way we think about nature. And I guess maybe the question is getting at something which is the sense that a lot of what's going on in politics at the moment has this kind of sort of destructive, iconoclastic edge that they may, at some subconscious level, it's difficult to understand what motivated them entirely, but at some subconscious level they clearly thought it would be really funny to take out something that was so precious to so many people.
- [19:00]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, what's interesting, and as I say, it's a really long read and we should maybe put it in the newsletter because what comes out of it is what reading it, there's a lot of it is just the transcript of these guys interviews with the police or their evidence and what have you, and it's not entirely clear what is. And then they definitely don't strike me as being, as it were, politically motivated. I don't think they've been sentenced yet, but I get the feeling they're going to get quite long sentences. They've been found guilty. And also, you underestimate what you said there. You underestimate just how big a deal this story was right around the world. I mean, it was literally people are aware of this tree and the symbolism. Not just because, you know, before. I think one of the reason the Robin Hood film was filmed there was, was because the tree was already so famous, rather than the tree became famous because of. Of. Of Kevin Costner. But anyway, it's a good read because it just sort of. I read it and thought, you know, all the coverage of I've seen, I didn't really get a sense of these two characters at all. You just make assumptions that they're sort of, you know, just sort of mindless thugs going to chop, chop this great tree down. But it, it sort of speaks to sort of something deeper going on.
- [20:05]
Rory Stewart
We're about to get into the sentencing review and that's going to be very interesting. On Thursday, David Gauke, my hero, is about to announce the sentencing review he's been doing with the government about how long you put people in jail for. And one of the interesting things that may be happening, and I just did an event speaking at number one court in the Old Bailey, which is where all these great death penalty cases used to happen. And somebody pointed out that there's a big shift, which is that in the past the people who were generally on the side of reducing sentences were the left. But the right is now quite interested in reducing sentences because they're beginning to get a bit perplexed by why people are getting long sentences for cutting down trees or posting stuff on Twitter. And the basic deal is that our prisons are massively overcrowded and really we should, as a rule of thumb, keep prison for people who are violent dangers to citizens. I mean, there are many, many offenses committed in our country all the time, but we simply don't have the spaces. And at the moment, our prisons are just places where we put often people who are mentally ill who have serious social problems and just make them worse. And so I think one of the other things that we're picking up with Keir Summer, interesting to see how this works out in sensing view, is he's created a psych culture which is about locking people up at exactly the time when we should be locking up fewer, not more. And I'm afraid these people, what they did was horrible. But in a totally overcrowded, insane prison system, which should really be kept for murderers and violent criminals. I'm not sure it's a good use of a prison place that costs more than Eaton to put people around for cutting down a tree.
- [21:38]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, okay. You'll have upset quite a lot of people with that. Rory, you who say you love, you're a Conservative because of your love of landscape.
- [21:47]
Rory Stewart
That's it. That's it. I'm here to upset people all the time. That's what my job is. I. I love trees. I'm second to know when I love trees. But one of the ways in which Britain is an outlier in Europe is only about 40% of the people in our prisons are in for violent crimes. In almost everywhere else in Europe, prisons are really reserved for people with violent crimes. And we really love locking people up. And this is just another example of it. This just happens to be a case that appeals to the left.
- [22:11]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I told you the other day. I was in Pentonville the other day and something like 8 out of 10 are prisoners on remand, which is even worse.
- [22:18]
Rory Stewart
Some disrespectful remand. Prisoners of people who haven't been convicted, which means they don't actually really get any services, they don't go into education. They could be there for months or a year and they're really getting nothing at all during that whole time. Just having horrible lives. Let's take a quick break and then after the break I want to ask you about your enormous friend Eddie Rama. And we'll maybe touch on Mexican judges, the sas, and that'll probably be about it.
- [22:42]
Alistair Campbell
Okay? This episode is sponsored by NordVPN.
- [22:50]
Rory Stewart
Now, most people wouldn't leave their doors wide open, although my colleague Oliver Lettman was accused of doing something similar. But every day, millions log on to public WI fi with no protection whatsoever.
- [23:00]
Alistair Campbell
Well, for years, guilty as charged. But I've finally joined the sensible Crowd, started using NordVPN, and it's made life online feel a lot less exposed. No drama, no faff, no fiddly settings.
- [23:13]
Rory Stewart
It encrypts your connection, hides your ip, blocks trackers, or quietly in the background, essentially, if you're working on the move, checking sensitive emails or just trying to stream in peace.
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Alistair Campbell
And if you're abroad, Nord can let you access all your usual services from back home. No buffering, no borders or very civilized.
- [23:28]
Rory Stewart
One account protects up to 10 devices, so you can secure everything from your phone to your laptop to whatever else Alastair uses to check polling data, conversations with the public.
- [23:38]
Alistair Campbell
Visit nordvpn.com restispologies to get started. It's risk free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. And if you're smart, you'll set it up before your next airport WI fi encounter. The link is in the episode description box.
- [23:53]
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- [24:28]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics. Question time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Ernest Campbell. Question from Jeff Spink. What was behind the starmerama miscommunication? Was the UK PM as blindsided as he appeared to be? Surely these positions were agreed in advance, not in front of the media. Eddie Rama and Keir Starmer, of course, two of our favourite people both interviewed on the podcast, so are leading if you want to hear our interviews with them. Eddie Rama, who also did an extraordinary kind of bow to Giorgio Meloni on a red carpet in Italy because he's exactly twice her size. But tell us about the starmarama issue.
- [25:03]
Alistair Campbell
The Albanians were very, very excited because David Cameron almost made a visit to Albania. He was basically en route, all the red carpets and the flags were laid out and then he got hauled back for one of those three line whip votes in the, I can't remember what one of the, something was going on that fell apart and he got, he got hauled back. So Keir Starmer, the first serving Tony Blair has been to Albania, but first serving prime Minister. And this was because of the in advance of the European Political Community meeting that Eddie Rama was, was hosting. So there's this press conference they do together where the, the media say Keir Starmer was sort of, you know, slapped down because he was talking about one of these kind of Rwanda style agreements to get asylum seekers processed in a third country. And Eddie Rama said, and by the way, this is something that was known and had been put into the media beforehand, said that, you know, they'd done this thing with Italy, Albania had done this deal with Italy, but that was it, there were going to be no more. So I'm afraid I'm going to speak up for Keir Starmer and Eddie Rahm here. I think this was a case of journalists refusing to believe because it made a better story for this to be a slapdown that actually they'd already been told this was not going to happen. So it didn't it wasn't great. I want to say something else about Albania, because you're right, Rory. I am very fond of Eddie Rama and of Albania. He's just won his fourth election victory in a row doing the New Labour playbook. But there is something going on in Albania at the moment that I think is a real problem, and that is the mayor of Tirana, a guy called Arion Veliage, who is actually a Labour politician very close to Edirama, and he's in jail on corruption charges. When I say corruption charges, the thing that I think is scandalous. He's in jail and has been for several months without actually being charged with anything. And one of the. There's this body that's been set up called spac. It's a special court against corruption and organized crime. And this is very much part. Eddie Rama has made it part of his thing to crack down on corruption. And SPAC has enormous powers and they've. They claim to have lots of evidence against Arion Veliage, but he's literally been in, in jail for months now without being told what he's being charged with. The reason I know this is because, you know, I know him very well and he sent me a, you know, pretty harrowing letter. So I think, listen, if they're gonna. You're gonna lock somebody up, you should either basically piss or get off the pot, as we say. And the strong thing, he's still the mayor while he's in prison, so he's still the mayor meant to be running the city of Tirana, the biggest, you know, half the population of Albania there.
- [27:48]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And he's in jail.
- [27:50]
Alistair Campbell
And he's in jail. Yeah. Yeah. So there we are. Sort that one out. And it does say, because I, I don't. I can't believe that Eddie Rama wants him to be. If I know he doesn't want him to be in jail. So it does at least underline that these, these, these new institutions are operating independent of government. But spac, I think you've. You've either got to sort of charge this or do something. I think it's, It's a bit much to expect somebody to be the mayor of one of the major cities in Europe, certainly the major city in Albania, if you're stuck inside a. A jail. Right. Talking of the law, Mexican judges, Emilia, I'm shocked that nobody seems to be talking about Claudia Schoenbaum's decision to elect all judges in Mexico on the 1st of June. Mexicans will vote in the first of two rounds of Elections to replace the judiciary, from local magistrates to those who sit on the Supreme Court and powerful electoral tribunals. How can this be fair and just. This is an overhang from amlo, isn't it?
- [28:49]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But it's something Claudia Sheinbaum's still behind. So AMLO Obrador, populist left wing leader. We often talk about populist right wing leaders, but there's some pretty significant populist left wing leaders, particularly in Latin America. And there was a lot of centralization of power on Obrador. He also made himself quite close to the military. He took over a lot of control of executive agencies. He put a lot of pressure on the media. And the final part of this was moving against the judiciary, moving to have the Mexican judiciary, which is independent, instead make them elected, which is basically a route to having them controlled by his political party. And it's been very disappointing that Claudia Sheinbaum, who many of us were tempted to sort of celebrate as a woman, first Jewish woman to be elected as a, a Mexican leader and from the left, has pushed ahead with this real attempt, I think, to suppress the proper separation of powers.
- [29:45]
Alistair Campbell
I wasn't aware that this was being taken forward. I knew that AMLO was, was up for it, but it, but clearly, I mean, thank you for the question because it is something we should probably look at again. The thing I did notice in Mexico this week, which was absolutely Horrific, was a 23 year old influencer, Valeria Marquez, was in the middle of a live stream in a chair at the hairdresser or a nail salon, some sort of beauty thing, and two guys literally just walked in and, and shot her, killed her. What is sparked is this debate about femicide in, in, in, in Mexico and other Latin American countries where, you know, it's sort of seen as part of a sort of fight back against women's emancipation, liberation, call it what you want. And so, and it's a really, really, really horrible, horrible story. And femicide is what, where basically somebody's murdered, where it's killed due to her gender. And that is how it's being seen. She was killed not necessarily because these people had anything against her, but because she was a woman. So, you know, it's a pretty horrible story. And we should maybe put something on that in the newsletter as well. Honduras has got the highest femicide rate in the world, followed by the Dominican Republic and then Brazil and then I think Mexico.
- [31:09]
Rory Stewart
We should keep returning to Mexico, as you say, because it's a really big important country and Its politics are quite different from the rest of Latin America. And of course, it's right in the heart of Trump's sights on the question of tariffs in China.
- [31:24]
Alistair Campbell
Right, question, question here from Sunny. You briefly mentioned the Turkish government deal with the pkk, but you jumped very quickly onto something else. Can you just explain what actually happened? Gornra, you're on my huge. Yeah, I think it's huge.
- [31:40]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah, it's huge news. So pkk, obviously, the Kurdish group in Turkey, which has been the major force in opposition politics, associated with a lot of terrorism, long standing, almost civil war in some bits of southeast Turkey, with the army with its leader locked up on a prison island, and it's now signed a peace deal. And it's an amazing move by Erdogan because on the one hand, Erdogan has gone very, very repressive politically and, you know, threatening to lock up Imanoglu, his main opposition opponent. On the other hand, there aren't elections for some time and he feels absolutely on top of the world because he feels his strategy won in Syria. His guy, Ahmad Al Shara, who he protected, took over and the Turkish foreign minister and the intelligence people were driving around with Al Shara on the first days in Damascus, and there are now millions of Syrians who speak Turkish. He's now set up a very smart deal, which is a go and see deal where if you're a Syrian living in Turkey, you can go back to Syria to have a look, but you keep your rights in Turkey. So he's making it as low pressure as possible, encourage people to go back. And this PKK thing, I think, is also a sign of how much things are moving in the region. So one of the reasons why peace had been difficult is that the Americans were strongly supporting Kurds in eastern Syria. Those Kurds in eastern Syria are now under pressure to combine behind Al Shara. And I think young Kurds are not motivated in the same way to continue what was a very felt like an increasingly bloody and impossible fight. So it is really interesting, and I think it would be interesting to see if I finish this sort of finely grander note. Europe have a real Turkey policy to have what they want and what they're going to give what they want, presumably, is to not lock up political prisoners. Think about the kind of political democratic journey of Turkey, what they're prepared to give, I think much stronger economic and security cooperation, which could be very helpful for both Turkey and Europe.
- [33:44]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, look, I should mention again the interview with Arabic Barghouti on leading whose dad is in an Israeli jail and is seen as a sort of future Palestinian leader. He's been in jail for 20 years. But a key player in this move was a guy who's been in. In jail for I don't know how long, a long time. And I think he's been in. This guy, Ocalan Abdullah Ochilan has been in solitary confinement most of a sentence since 1999. And he's. He's now in his mid-70s, 76, something like that. And he issued a call to the PKK, of which he's a sort of leading figure, to dis. Lay down their arms and. And disband. Now, heaven knows what sort of treatment he's had inside a Turkish prison since 1999. We've all seen Midnight Express, but I think that that does seem to be a. Have been an influential move, and I am fascinated. The reason I raised that is because we would, you know, let's be honest, we were interviewing Arab Barghouti, not because he is such an interesting guy himself, which he is, but because of his dad. And it's so interesting how many of these terrorist organizations, how much of the politics of what they do and how that politics develops, happens inside jails where they're smuggling out messages and in this case, issuing a public statement, which seems to have led to this change.
- [35:17]
Rory Stewart
Okay, final question for me.
- [35:19]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, it's been a bit heavy. This episode has been a bit heavy.
- [35:22]
Rory Stewart
Okay, I'm going to lighten that up. I lighten it up. Go on, man, I'll lighten it up. I won't ask you about SAS war crimes, which I know you don't want me to ask you about. I'm going to ask you about James, Trip plus Member from Highclere. Thank you, James, for being a Trip plus member. Hope you're enjoying at the moment. Ken Rogoff, our Trip special interview. And James says, are you aware that when Katie K. Is introduced frequently on Morning Joe, she's referred to as US BBC Special Correspondent and the host of the Rest Is Politics. No mention of us. This, says James, is how coup d' etats start.
- [35:56]
Alistair Campbell
No, it's not a coup d' etat, James. It's how the rest is politics has been constituted. You have to understand that Rory and I. How can we put it? Roy and I are the United States. And Catty and the Mooch, they should see themselves as like a State. The 1st or the 51st. We don't really care what number they are. They are technically, I guess, the first state, but we're really the first state so they can pick a number. So I'm, I'm very glad to Joe Scarborough and his wife of Morning Joe that they understand this. So they're, they're independent, they can, they can have their own policies on certain things. But, but yeah, know their place.
- [36:36]
Rory Stewart
I say I'd never normally say this as, but there is something a little sort of Trumpian about that response. There was sort of the tone of the Donald coming in to that whole explanation of your relationship. Anyway, on that I think we should end and we'll wait for response from Katie K, who is also a TRIP member, we hope.
- [36:56]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon.
- [36:57]
Rory Stewart
See you soon. Bye bye.
- [37:06]
Alistair Campbell
Right, well done everybody who's still listening because that means you've listened right to the end of the episode. Thank you. Very impressive. But can I ask you something? Did you hear an advert on today's episode and did you think, you know what, I'm sure the listeners would rather hear about my brand rather than all these other things they're promoting. Well, you could be right, but there's only one way to find out.
- [37:27]
Rory Stewart
That's right. You could be the next NORDVPN or betterhelp. Put your brand in front of millions of like minded listeners by advertising on the rest of politics and other shows across the Goal Hanger network. So who a Goal Hanger? Well, they're the company behind this very show and if you're in the market to increase the value of your brand, they want to hear from you. You can register your or your company's interest by going to goalhanger.com right now. That's goal H A N G E R.com see you there.