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The Rest Is Politics
409. Question Time: Trump's Golden Dome, Gaza's Global Outcry and Starmer's Prison Gamble
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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
App and use the code politics smart tariff swift installation. No white papers, green papers or red tape required. Hello, welcome to the Restless Politics Question time with me, Alistair Campbell.
- [01:22]
Rory Stewart
And with me, Rory Stewart.
- [01:23]
Alistair Campbell
And before we start today's episode, we want to say a big thank you to all, all of you who bought tickets for our November live tour. Fortunately for those of you who haven't got round to buying yours yet, there.
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Rory Stewart
Are some left and I'm very excited that we're going to be on the road again. Back on the tour bus. Amazing tour bus travelling to London, Glasgow, Manchester, Bournemouth. You excited to play Bournemouth for the first time, Alistair? Bring back memories of the Labour Party Conference 1999.
- [01:48]
Alistair Campbell
1999? No, my big memory of Bournemouth is Neil Kinnick's speech when he took on the militant tendency. That was, that was one of those genuinely historic moments. So yeah, I think, look, party conferences do tend to sort of meld into one. But yeah, I've had some good times in Bournemouth and I suspect that it won't be the last time that we see big political dramas in Bournemouth. But hopefully ours will be nice, calm, agreeable disagreement from time to time. Lots of people, lots of interaction with questions. To get your tickets, just go to aegp as aegp.uktrip25. Okay, Roy, let's get going with questions. Ruby Blanche, what would be your best advice for how global leaders deal with Trump and how do you rate King Charles attempt? Well, listen, I discussed this with Anthony Scaramucci at hay and he said that he thought the best thus far dealer with Trump was Mark Carney. And he made the point that Mark Carney, when he won, he was absolutely clear about Trump during the election that this is a threat to Canada and he's going to fight it. When he won, he did not pick up the phone to Trump. He left Trump to sort of hang around thinking, why isn't Carney phoning me? And eventually there were sort of talks between officials and the talk was fixed up. But Mark Carney was clear. If you do all that 51 first state stuff or you don't show me the respect that Canada deserves, then this call's not going to happen. Now, easier said than done, I would argue. I suspect that for lots of leaders, Trump would actually say, well, you know, unless you deal with me the way I want to deal with you, then no play. But fair play to Carney. He did that. And now King Charles, of course, is there doing the speech for the throne from the throne. That's like the Queen's Speech, King's speech in our Parliament. The Queen did it in 1957, which is the year I was born. That's 68 years ago and also I think 1977. So it's the first time in a long time. And it's very, very clear King Charles is helping the Canadian and the Canadian government to push back on this American stuff at the same time as trying to keep good US UK Relations.
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Rory Stewart
Well, I think the key thing is that Canada obviously went fully independent from the UK a very long time ago, 1860s. But King Charles remains the head of state in Canada, as he is in Australia and New Zealand. And what he's reminding Donald Trump, Donald Trump is very, very fond of the British monarchy. It's a sort of I was talking to someone who knew Trump well and said that one of the stories that he loved to share is the moment that he and the Melania walked down the steps of Buckingham palace and said to Melania, I can't believe I'm here. So I think King Charles is reminding Donald Trump that he's the head of state of Canada and that when he starts Talking about the 51st state, he's also directly challenging this monarchy that he claims to respect.
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Alistair Campbell
I suspect Belladio also said, I can't believe I'm here either alongside you, but you know, we've got a good deal, so let's just smile and pretend. I watched King Charles and Camilla's arrival in Ottawa last night. It was quite amazing to see. I mean, Mark Carney, who we've interviewed twice on the podcast, and both of us know, well, it was quite amazing to sort of see him there. Just he's incred story of the Bhattkadi story. And he's gone from being this sort of, you know, seen as his dry bank governor. And there he was sort of alongside the King play, you know, shaking hands with the crowds, standing and listening to the indigenous music as they were being welcomed. But this is a big deal. This is a big deal for King Charles to do this. And when they announced he was doing it, if you remember, I said that one of the things it will do, it will mean that this visit, the King's speech, the speech from the throne of the Canadian legislative program, it will get so much more attention. And he knows that's what he's doing. And fair play to him.
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Rory Stewart
And a lovely thing just to finish, I think, with both the King and Mark Carney are examples of people who've really stepped into their roles, seem to have really grown into those roles with people maybe, you know, being skeptical beforehand whether they were supertable for them. I think it's. I've obviously extremely biased because I'm an unapologetic monarchist, but I think King Charles had, to put it mildly, a pretty difficult act to follow with the Queen. And I think he's done it pretty amazingly well. I think it has given, you know, continued life to the monarchy. And I think it's lovely to see him and Mark Carney because they were very close because they did an enormous amount on climate and trying to get the private sector involved in addressing climate change together through his Sustainable Markets initiative. So that, that's a lovely partnership that's gone on for a long time.
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Alistair Campbell
Well, Rory, speaking as a non monarchist, I also think he has stepped into the role extraordinarily well. So there you go. Right, Matthew, if Trump's golden Dom does happen and the golden dome is a defense shield, it's not a new sort of lottery that Trump is launching. If it does happen and if it works, what does this mean for the concept of mutually assured destruction, if it is no longer mutual? Also, if everyone gets one, what does it mean for the future of nuclear weapons? Do they become obsolete? Do you think this will actually happen, this thing? I have my doubts.
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Rory Stewart
Well, I mean, the first thing is it's incredibly expensive and incredibly complicated. Trump's talking about 175 billion, 175,000 billion, the Congressional Budget Office talking about 570 billion. And this is about intercepting missiles before they hit. And of course, it's called the Golden Dome because it builds on the idea of the Iron Dome in Israel. But the difference is that Israel's about the size of New Jersey and it largely has to deal with this pretty slow moving stuff coming from over Iran, which come not quite flapping slowly over the border, but quite different to the kind of stuff that the US Would have to deal with from Russia, which are hypersonic missiles traveling at five times the speed of sound. So if you can imagine what you'd have to do to make this thing, which is weave together hundreds of different interceptor systems, some on the ground, some in space, incredibly complicated command and control done by the US Military. This is of course what Reagan tried to do when he began this, his missile defense shield, and it had to be abandoned because it got too expensive and too complicated.
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Alistair Campbell
This is the so called Star wars program, the Strategic Defence Initiative, very, very similar. In fact, Reagan called it a suicide pact, which I don't think was very good marketing. Presumably now the technology has developed to such an extent that this will bear little relation to it. But it's a very, very similar principle.
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Rory Stewart
Yeah. And one of the problems is that if you are dealing, as Israel is, with ballistic missiles fired from Iran and drones from Iran, at the moment, Iran has not yet developed a nuclear program. So some of those missiles get through, very few of them. But if one or two get through, what you end up with is a huge crater next to Mossad headquarters, which was the attack a few months ago. But of course, a nuclear missile getting through to the United States, one or two getting through is a very, very different proposition.
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Alistair Campbell
Okay, let's stay with Israel, Palestine then. Jasmine, what do you think the implications will be of the response of Netanyahu to blame Western leaders for the horrific murders of two diplomats in the US Feels like Netanyahu is deliberately seeking to connect a line between criticism of government with anti Semitism, which I find very worrying. Harry, who's a Trip plus member from London, Why have the uk, France and Canada chosen now to speak out against Israel? The hunger and aid crisis has been going on for months. What's triggered them finally to take a stronger position? What more should they be doing? And also Monday, Chancellor Mertz in Germany, he also joined in the chorus of criticism of Netanyahu, said what they're doing in Gaza can no longer be justified.
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Rory Stewart
There's been a very significant shift, hasn't there? Which, as you say, has really only just been over the last couple of weeks. And somehow I think something changed. So I think the peace deal and then the imposition of the food blockade and the fact that it's now a long time since October 7, well over a year and a half, has got to a stage where mainstream European leaders are now much clearer in saying that this cannot be justified, that it's gone beyond what they thought was. The initial narrative was very clear. Israel has a right to defend itself. This is the response to October 7th. Since the beginning of the year, I think that's faded away. And in particular since the food blockade has really faded away. It's interesting though, that at the same time as that happened, there was this really disturbing, horrifying murder of two Israeli diplomats. And obviously, you know, as a former diplomat, I feel very strongly that diplomats are civilians, they're not military personnel. A young couple killed just on the way to an event in Washington, D.C. and Netanyahu very, very strongly focusing on this as a way of almost implying that the comments of Macron Starmer encouraged this. And Jonathan Freeland, I think, has written a really good piece in the Guardian on this where he says Netanyahu's got to stop this at some point. He's got to recognize, it's true, that anger against his government is not driven by what foreign leaders say, it's driven by what he's doing. That the objective facts of that blockade and that killing in Gaza is fundamentally driving this and that he cannot keep saying that this is just an invented narrative from Israel's enemies.
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Alistair Campbell
I think a narrative from Israeli's enemies that has really taken hold is the idea that Netanyahu is doing a lot of what he's doing to hang on to his own political survival. Because he worries that if he falls and if these hard right figures, Ben GVIR and Smotrich, pull the plug, that he's going to end his days in prison. And I think that's a narrative that holds some water. I think the answer to the question, why have they chosen now to speak out against Israel? Is because they've been trying for a long time to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. But I think they've realized that saying Israel has the right to defend itself does not mean Israel has the right to do whatever the hell it wants. And I mentioned in the main podcast this interview with this young girl who'd lost several brothers and sisters and a Parent, probably her other parent was dead as well. They hadn't found him. And she was being looked after by her uncle. And it was just the most moving thing because, I mean, she was only five or six, but speaking and describing what had happened and how her feet were burning as she walked out of the fire and how she wanted her mother and she. And that you could literally see rivers of tears coming down her face as she spoke. And I think that allied to these pictures of people fighting to get a bowl of soup, the food spilling as it goes into there, just absolute desperation. There was a very moving interview last night with a British doctor, Victoria Rose, who was just sort of giving the facts of what it's like to be a doctor looking after these people when supplies are running out. So I think it's that that has turned. I also think that the way that the Israelis communicate over time has done them damage. And the other thing yesterday, it was Jerusalem Day, so there was coverage of this event where lots of kind of, you know, Ben gvir, Smotrich supporters kind of going around the place literally chanting, death to the Arabs. Now, when you think about what the opprobrium that was extended to people, you know, singing that chant from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free. And yet I think there's just such a double standard that is being seen again and again and again. And I know I'll get criticized for that. We'll get the usual onslaught from the Israeli supporters, the government supporters, and from the government itself. But honestly, that is the answer to the question. Leaders like Starmer, Macron, Carney, Mertz are looking at this night after night and saying, sorry, you have got to slow down here. And I actually think the pressure will grow on these governments to do more and get into the area of arms sales and so forth, because what's happening is. It's intolerable. It cannot be justified. And by the way, Roy, they keep saying every time they do one of these attacks and children die and mothers die and fathers die, and they say they were taking out a Hamas command center, when are we going to see the names of the Hamas people that they've killed in these attacks? If they're so sure that that's what they've done, why are we not able to see who it is that they've killed? Who was, in their eyes, a Hamas commander?
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Rory Stewart
We saw this, didn't we, with the attack on the ambulance where they claimed individuals driving those ambulances were connected to Hamas. And the question of, who is Hamas, who isn't what type of Hamas you are is right at the heart of this whole controversy. But from the point of view of Smotrich and Ben gvir, it seems that everyone in Gaza is either Hamas, a Hamas supporter, or family member of a Hamas activist. We'll keep coming back to this.
- [15:19]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, Rory, quick break and then back for more questions.
- [15:22]
Rory Stewart
What is daddication? The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariana. We call him Dae Dae for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job. That's dedication. Find out more@fatherhood.gov brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. The Restless politics is, as ever, efficiently powered by our friends at Fuse Energy. And on the subject of energy, a question from Kate Sawyer, who asks, why isn't the government fighting back more strongly against Reform UK turning Net zero into a dirty word? What have they got to lose? So that that links, I guess, Alastair, to the Ed Miliband double part we've just done. What have they got to lose by pushing back more strongly against reform on Net zero?
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Alistair Campbell
Well, if you listen to Ed, and I strongly recommend that people do listen to, especially part two of the interview, because a lot of it is about this very subject. We asked him whether he felt that they were on the back foot in relation to net zero, and he said absolutely not. And I think if you listen to him talking the way he does, real sort of passion and vigor about the financial benefits of Net zero, about the obvious economic, environmental benefits, then I think you have a sense of somebody who really feels that he's on the. He's got the right arguments. He knows how to play them. I guess where Kate's question is coming from is that, and I think this relates a lot to our media about the way that they project this debate, that she's probably hearing more about the anti Net zero arguments than she is about the arguments that Ed Miliband was putting. And of course, you know, we talked about housing on the main podcast the other day. I think that this is, you know, this is another area that is unbelievably complicated. But there was a wonderful thing recently with Anoushka Astana on the Peston show on ITV where she played a graphic. She described A graphic to Kemi Badenot, which just explained, look, the Net Zero stuff is not adding that much to your bill. Here's where the real bill's coming from.
- [17:34]
Rory Stewart
And a lot of it's coming from gas prices, isn't it? Wholesale gas prices. The small thing, final thing for me on this question is this question of where you follow the polls and where you change them. And I felt one of the problems with Boris Johnson was very much that he was a follow the polls man. My sense, and I'd love to see what you thought of this. In British politics, there are probably two issues where it's very difficult to change people's minds and where I think you have to respond to public opinion. One of those is around public ownership, the nhs, which I don't think is up for grabs. And the second is around immigration. I don't think there's any doubt that the majority of people in Britain want illegal migration brought down and they want a number of legal migrants reduced. But in almost every other issue, I think you can lead the national conversation. And one of the problems I think in there aren't enough people in government saying, okay, this may not be a priority for the public, may not even be very popular with the public, but we're going to persuade people, we're going to change their minds. And I guess Net zero is a classic example of that.
- [18:36]
Alistair Campbell
I would even argue that NHS and immigration, I agree with you that the debates are real and the kind of love for the NHS is enduring, but it doesn't mean you can't have a debate about the future of the National Health Service. And likewise in immigration, I think there should be more debate about the benefits of immigration as well as all the sort of the negative stuff. I think in relation to Net zero, though, I really do strongly recommend people listen to Ed because I think what's happened is the right wing and the fossil fuel industries have done a very, very, very, very good job of weaponizing Net Zero. And if your opponents weaponize something this way, you have to fight back against it. So I think the question is a sensible one because she's picking up on the fact that the debate has moved to a different place is in the end it is up to political leadership to to shift the dial on that. So there we are. Fuse are giving new customers a free trip plus membership for the whole of 2025. That means ad free listening, early access to episodes. Just download the Fuse app, sign up with the code Politics for all the details and full terms. Head to getfuse.com politics.
- [19:40]
Rory Stewart
We got a lot of questions this week on young women, and particularly Catherine Dunn. Are young women being politically taken for granted? I wonder whether you thought why we're getting so many questions on this and what your answer that would be.
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Alistair Campbell
I suspect we're getting a lot of questions because there is so much focus in the political debate on young men. We keep talking about, you know, disengagement of young men, angry young men who feel that they don't know what their role in life is. And I think young women maybe feel that it's becoming a given that because young women and women more generally are supposed now to have greater equality, more power, et cetera, that this is being done at the expense of young men. In fact, one of the other events I did in Leeds last week, there was an event at the Civic Chambers organized by a wonderful school teacher called Zara Dixon. And it was a mix of adults and school kids. And there was a question, actually I remember from a 16 year old from Harrogate who'd come to the event. And she was coming at this from the perspective of, you know, do young men understand what the experience of a young woman is these days? She was talking about, you know, sexual assault, about domestic violence, about, particularly online, about, you know, I know I talked to my daughter Grace about this. She said, you know, young women pretty much on a consistent, persistent basis are getting kind of harassed and so forth. So whether it's partly that, that their issues are not listened to, I think.
- [21:09]
Rory Stewart
Also an opportunity here which is that if you focus, and I'm partly to blame this, I keep telling you to focus on why young men disproportionately vote for far right parties. But actually there's a huge opportunity in the fact that young women are much more progressive, much more in favor, for example, welfare state, much more interested in climate. A quarter of women aged 18 to 24 voted Green, which is twice the number percentage wise of young men who voted for reform. So you could really imagine a progressive politics that addressed young women and focused on getting young women out to vote, which was actually a big problem in the US election where young men who traditionally didn't vote came out to vote and young women didn't play the role that people were hoping anyway. So that's an opportunity. Back over to you.
- [21:54]
Alistair Campbell
Well, that speaks exactly to what I've been saying about my worries about labor strategy being very, very focused in a certain direction. One of the events I did at hay and people go on about young kids not being interested in politics. So you Know, the big stage. Hey, I did an event on my kids book, 1700 state schools, kids from Wales who'd been, you know, brought in for the day. It was. It used to be funded by the Welsh government and now that's been cut so that they got sponsors to bring these kids in. And it was absolutely brilliant. And I had them up on stage debating issues like devolution, whether to ban social media, whether, well, should be taught in schools. And. And at one point I just said, right, is there anybody who actually just wants to come up and make a speech about something they care about? And it was like the one I picked in the end was because all around her, all her school friends were going, brooke, Brooke, Brooke. Get Brooke. She's amazing, right? So this girl came up and she just made a speech about inequality and it was absolutely brilliant. She slightly lost me when she said that the bourgeoisie are to blame and the proletariat need to unite and rise up against them and so forth. But it was honestly that I had several kids came up and made really, really good speeches. And the thing is, when I talked, I talked in my speech about, about Gina Martin, the woman who got the law changed on upskirting, that she drove the upskirting bill. And you, you know, when you're talking to kids and there were 50, 50 boys and girls, so when I was talking about it and there wasn't a single snigger when I tell that story to adults, you often get a snigger when they're talking about young guys going around, they were taking pictures up women's skirts, et cetera. And. And this audience, honestly, I actually said at the end of it, Rory, never mind lowering the voting age to 16, we should do it to 14, because these kids were switched on, they were passionate, they were boisterous and they believed stuff. So that doesn't really answer the question I'd love. Maybe we should ask some young women because we do have a lot of young listeners. Maybe they can tell us and write to us about whether they think young women are being ignored, why and what more we should be doing. Little shout out to Mr. Anthony Albanese, the new prime, well, the re elected Prime Minister of Australia, first time in history, there are now going to be more women than men in his cabinet and there are now going to be more women in the House and in the Senate. You know, people going about Australia being a sexist country. That is quite a pretty positive, good story to tell. Should you write your hero, your hero, you have many heroes, they tend to Change week by week, but one consistent hero. Katrina, I regularly listen to your podcast and wondered if you had a view on David Gauke's proposal to chemically castrate those accused of sexual offense offenses. Is this vengeance, not justice? Should the state be given this irreversible power over the bodies of its citizens? What if a mistake is made, etc. Are we abandoning our principles, our belief in justice for populist quick fixes? We should also point out that the other big thing in David Gort's review was really, it's something you and he tried to do in government, cutting down on shorter sentences and giving people greater opportunity to get out early, subject to the way they conduct themselves in prison.
- [25:08]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, it's interesting the focus has been on that. I mean, Oliver, who's a TRIP member from Leicester, asked more generally about censing review and I think dealing with the fact that Britain locks up many more people for nonviolent crimes than any of their European equivalents. I mean, it's a staggering number of people, almost half, sometimes more of people in prison are in for nonviolent crimes, which wouldn't be true in Europe, where prison is largely reserved for people who are in there for violent crimes. One of the things that is right at the heart of this, as you say, as short sentences. I talked to you about the fact that I'd met someone in Bedford Prison who'd been in nine times in a year. There are people who've been in prison dozens of times. They're in for few weeks. It massively disrupts their lives because they lose their housing, they lose their job, they have a very high suicide risk. They massively destabilize the prison estate. Now, the problem then is if they're not sent to prison. So this might be people who do regular shoplifting. They could be drug addicts, for example, who are shoplifting in order to feed their habit. Are the good community sentences as an alternative. And one of the great things about Gough's proposals is the idea that hundreds of millions of pounds more will go into probation and really sorting out community sentences. That is where all the evidence points. Going to prison, in fact, increases your chance of reoffending more than having a community sentence because of all the ways that disrupt your life. So the public is safer if you don't go to prison, paradoxically. But we really need to make that investment. What do you think about the chemical castration stuff?
- [26:42]
Alistair Campbell
Well, there's an experiment going on with it now. I love the way that I asked you the question, Rory, and Your way of dealing with it was to ask me the question. I suspect that's because we were both slightly avoiding it. I. I think it makes me feel slightly queasy and I go to the point there about what if there's a mistake? And, you know, the. So I, I think where people are saying, I am incorrigible, I cannot help myself, etc, and this is the only way that can happen, then I can see why that might be my. Might be the way forward. But I can't pretend not to be a little bit queasy about it. On the Big stuff, despite all the sort of screaming headlines of, you know, prisoners, murders and murderers and rapists to be let out early. And I, I hope that they do, actually, because, you know, you and I both know from our work in prisons that the. The prisons are an absolute disgrace in this country. And I think David's come up with some. On the big picture, some pretty sensible stuff.
- [27:35]
Rory Stewart
Alistair, Hillary Greenwood, what do you think of Alan Yentaub being described in his obituary as the BBC, perhaps in both his success and controversies, there's some truth in this.
- [27:46]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I. Look, I think Alan Yentaub, he was a friend of mine and a great guy. And yeah, he was. He. There was something very, very BBC about him. He genuinely, genuinely, genuinely believed in public service and broadcasting as public service. He was a brilliant filmmaker. He became an executive, you know, director of BBC One and BBC Two at different points, but I think actually was at his best when he was doing his own films, Arts and culture, and some of them have been kind of seminal. You know, his. His documentary on David Bowie was seen as one of the greatest sort of documentaries ever made. I got to know him especially well through. We had a mutual friend, Ed Victor, who was my literary agent. And Ed had leukemia and survived. He's dead now, sadly. And we got Alan to. We basically raided Alan's contacts book and we did an annual event. The first one was with one of Alan's closest friends, who was Mel Brooks. And Alan was just such a giving guy. And he got a lot of grief over one of the charities he was involved in, which was completely unfair. It was a classy sort of British media hounding. So, no, I think he was a very, very, very exceptional broadcaster and an exceptional human being.
- [28:57]
Rory Stewart
Very good sycamore gap. This is more of an information than a question, but it's a jolly information. Mr. Campbell, I listened to your trip episode discussing the felling of the sycamore gap from one tree lover to another. It'll hearten you to know the National Trust have grown saplings from the seeds of the original felt tree and are distributing the saplings this year to various charities and institutions throughout the uk. In the UK mod, we are receiving one as part of our marking of the 25th anniversary of the ban being lifted on LGBTQ personnel serving in the military. The Sycamore Gap tree was a symbol of British strength cut down in its prime. Much like the British men and women dismissed in the midst of their careers while serving their country. The 49 Trees of Hope are a beautiful symbol of new beginnings from a census act. I hope this brings you some tree based joy. Kind regards, G. Thompson. And just to remind people who don't focus on this sycamore, my goodness, it grows. I've got a couple of saplings that I planted outside. They are now pushing 17ft tall within three years, even here in my pretty cold part of Scotland.
- [29:57]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I'm imagining. And by the way, yes, thank you very much, G. Thompson from the mod, that does bring me some tree based joy. And I think I'm right that the reason why it's there are 49 is because the Sycamore Gap was 49ft tall. So that's brilliant. And actually we should put in the. In the show notes the link to the National Trust story about this, which is explains where these 49 saplings are going and you'll then be able to follow their growth. So I have a great belief, always try and get good out of bad. It was horrible what happened to that tree and it caused a real sort of uproar around the world and we're now going to have 49 versions of it growing up in different parts of Britain. Final one for you, Rory from Pippa Mel. Have either of you been following the story of the genetically modified dire wolves? Could you give an explainer on the scientific success and the controversy? And Rory, this is going to have to be you because I haven't been following this story, I'm afraid. No, but Rory said, can you please ask me about the direwolf's DNA? So there I am, I'm asking you.
- [31:06]
Rory Stewart
The direwolf was people know about from Game of Thrones, because these puppies of these enormous wolves are found by the heroic family who command the northern reaches of the kingdom and are given to the kits. But they are also an ice age giant wolf and this company called Colossal announced that it had recreated the dire wolf. So there's been a lot of debate about what's been going on, but what they actually did was they edited 14 key genes in gray wolf cells to express 20 traits associated with direwolves. And they're raising these pups in a secure undisclosed location of 2000 acres. Purists would say these aren't actually dire wolves. What they are is gray wolves which have been edited to become like dire wolves. But it's a big growing thing this. I mean Viscount Ridley, who is the, was the head of Northern Rock and is a prominent conservative peer and scientist, has also been really interested in the question of bringing back the great orc bit like the dodo, and a lot of interest both in what you can do to manipulate the DNA and also take DNA that you can find in lost specimens. And actually there's a really fun novel by Sebastian Faulks called the Seventh sun where essentially a kind of tech bro billionaire gets into gene editing and recreates a Neanderthal human. And this unfortunate individual is born into the modern world and then finds that his perception of the world, his way in interacting with it, is quite different from that of, of other humans. And that, that, that, that is an increasingly possible story. If you can gene edit Grey Wolf, you can gene edit a lot of things.
- [33:03]
Alistair Campbell
Very good. Well, thank you for following that story and thank you. Thank you for explaining and I'll see you very soon.
- [33:09]
Rory Stewart
See you very soon. Hopefully not with a dire wolf. Have a great day.
- [33:12]
Alistair Campbell
Bye bye, Bye bye. 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.
- [33:43]
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 Restless Politics and other shows across the Goal hanger network. So who are Gohanger? 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 go H A N G E R COM. See you there.