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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com coming.
- [00:14]
Rory Stewart
Up on the show today, all the cards again are on Putin's side. There's nothing Trump will ever actually really do to punish him.
- [00:22]
Alistair Campbell
What's perfect for Putin is this idea that he and Trump are coming together to decide what to tell Europe is going to happen to a major part of Europe.
- [00:33]
Rory Stewart
The central security question probably of our age is Russia's threat to Europe.
- [00:40]
Alistair Campbell
Even I at the moment I'm waking up feeling a little bit sick about what's going to happen. Just imagine what Zelenskyy's feeling like. The Rest is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy and Fuse are now offering £20 credit and free trip plus membership if you switch to a fixed tariff before the end of August.
- [01:01]
Rory Stewart
They've listened carefully to their customers and the number one request was gas tariffs. So now, at last, you can switch both your gas and electricity to Fuse. One supplier, one bill, one less quagmire to navigate.
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Alistair Campbell
It's also cheaper. Fuse gas and electricity customers typically save £150 versus the price cap.
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Rory Stewart
Today's political climate is full of talk about control and clarity. Well, Fuse have quietly exercised some, at least when it comes to your energy bill.
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Alistair Campbell
And they began with a mission, which was to make electricity cheaper, cleaner, simpler. And Fuse now supplies over 50,000 homes across the UK, all done quietly, efficiently and without a single campaign bus tour.
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Rory Stewart
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- [01:51]
Alistair Campbell
So go to fuseenergy.com forward/politics to switch your gas and electricity to Fuse and get your £20 credit and free trip membership.
- [02:02]
Rory Stewart
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- [02:39]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the Rest is Politics.
- [02:40]
Rory Stewart
I'm me, Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart.
- [02:43]
Alistair Campbell
So, Rory, big, big, big week on the international front. Ukraine and the Alaska Summit. Putin, Trump at This stage knows Zelensky and I doubt that there will be. And then I think the second half, we should look at various elements of what's been going on in Gaza and including Palestine action. These protests in London. Are we allowed to say Palestine action? I think we are.
- [03:04]
Rory Stewart
It's a good question, Alison. I think you should be careful, but you'd be on the younger demographic being arrested.
- [03:09]
Alistair Campbell
Less answer it in part two. So where do you want to start with this Trump summit? I mean, in a way, this is a perfect week for Donald Trump. Everybody's talking about him at the start of the week about an event that's going to happen at the end of the week and between now and then, as yesterday, he will do lots of his kind of weaves and rambles. The one that he did yesterday with Pete Hexseth and Pam Bondi and various former Fox presenters behind him at the White House was kind of all over the place, really was a ramble. But in the end, at the end of the week, I guess it is a very, very important meeting. But right now, as things stand, I feel Vladimir Putin's getting a lot more out of this than Trump or Zelensky. How do you see it?
- [03:52]
Rory Stewart
There's a really interesting theme, I think, which is true of everything that Trump's done so far, from Ukraine all the way through to tariffs, which is, and it's part of your story about reality tv, which is that on the surface, he changes his position a lot. So on Ukraine, we've gone from moments where he's been cutting off all the basic American support, including satellite support, to Ukraine, and then sometimes he's saying he's very angry with Putin and he's threatening him with sanctions and he's doing a 50 day threat. But actually beneath the surface of all this stuff, he remains remarkably consistent because my guess is that the kind of deal he's going to try to strike with Vladimir Putin this week is going to be very similar to the kind of thing we would have been talking about in January. In other words, a deal where he doesn't really put any pressure on Russia, where he pushes Ukraine to make territorial concessions and he claims he's ended the war. And I think it's. And the reason I've drawn the analogy is I think the same sort of true with tariffs, it sort of goes up and down with him, signaling that he's going to be nice to India and given impression everything's fine, and then suddenly he whacks them with it. One of the achievements of this wizardry is that a deal which five months ago would have seemed absolutely terrible, in other words, a deal where he has made it clear that the US Is not going to provide more money to Ukraine and where the best we can hope for is that Europe has to buy American weaponry to send it to Ukraine, I mean, was a pretty bad case scenario, is now seen as a diplomatic triumph, which Mark Rutter gets congratulated.
- [05:22]
Alistair Campbell
For watching some of his comments. And I think it's really important with Trump as say to kind of try to separate out from when he goes on these weird mad weaves and rambles and when actually he's saying something that seems to fit with the position that he's held. The position that he's held, reinforced by Vance, who seems to hold the position even more strongly, is that basically we're on Russia's side in this war and then lay in with that this absolute obsession with wanting a Nobel Peace Prize. And if you think about these two leaders. So they decided on a last. And of course, Alaska has its own amazing symbolism in this because Alaska used to be Russia. And then when Alexander II was in deep trouble financially, they sold it to America for just over $7 million in 1867. And then of course, the other kind of historical element you talked about wizardry, let's just pretend that Trump maybe did think these things through. Alaska, obvious resonance. The other word that keeps coming up in the massive build up to this meeting is Yalta, where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill got together and said, right, we're the big powers, we'll carve up the world. And of course, what's perfect for Putin is this idea that he and Trump are coming together to decide what to tell Europe is going to happen to a major part of Europe. Because the reason why Yalta is so resonant is because it's part of Crimea, which is also kind of on the table in terms of the, the bits of land. And of course, this quote really, first of all, something Trump said yesterday said, you know, I'm going to see Putin, I'm going to Russia on Friday. He's getting on a bit. We know that. Just imagine if Joe Biden said that I'm going to Russia. I mean, it's barely, barely landed. And the second thing he said, worry, try and unpick this one for me. We're going to get some back and we're going to get some switched. There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both. Who is we? We're going to get some back. Who is We.
- [07:39]
Rory Stewart
Well, it's really good. I like the who's we because of course, the big missing party in all of this is Ukraine. Ukraine, who have suffered at least 400,000 casualties, who've been fighting this horrifying war, who were invaded, who had their territory taken from them that continues to be occupied and who are not invited to the table, and of course, quite understandably, the Ukrainians. And when the Europeans occasionally develop a backbone, the Europeans, who sometimes make mild comments about this, are terrified that Trump doesn't do a big summit with Putin, particularly when the Russian president's been out in the cold for years now, no American president's met him. So as you say, for Nobel Peace Prize reasons, ego reasons, he's going to want to come out with a deal.
- [08:23]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [08:24]
Rory Stewart
So all the cards again are on Putin's side because Putin and the other figure, I guess, is Benjamin Netanyahu, who you get the sense there's nothing Trump will ever actually really do to punish him. He may criticize him or complain, but he's never going to impose tariffs on him. He's never going to do anything of that sort.
- [08:42]
Alistair Campbell
You said last week about, you know, he's always got this two weeks thing and he talked recently about, you know, in 10 to 12 days he's going to put these secondary sanctions on Putin. Well, of course they've, we've passed the 10 to 12 days. But now he's got a different chapter in the reality TV show, which is the big one, the big one in Alaska, who's going to talk to him about 10 to 12 days of the sanctions when he's got this massive event where Putin's flying in on a nine hour flight that way and he's coming up from Washington on a seven hour flight that way. We don't even know yet where they're actually going to meet, the whole thing. Just imagine I'm not Ukrainian and I'm not, I don't, I'm not remotely involved in these discussions. But even I, at the moment, I'm waking up feeling a little bit sick about what's going to happen. Just imagine what Zelenskyy's feeling like. He's got his country on the table where Putin is basically the main voice alongside Trump. And in this ramble yesterday, Trump, there was only one person in this equation that he criticized yesterday and that was Zelenskyy. He said, I get on fine with Zelenskyy, but I really disagree with him. This war should never have started. What does that even mean when he says that this War should never have started.
- [09:49]
Rory Stewart
It's really disturbing. And as you say, the lack of details are revealing. There's this lovely analogy that you found there with Alaska, and of course, you could extend it to Greenland, which is another territory which obviously he hopes that he can buy in the way that the United States bought Alaska, and another enormous territory, a bit like Alaska, full of minerals that he could add to his country. But the other detail thing, which I thought was quite revealing. It's a small moment, but you might have picked up that when Pete Hegseth was speaking recently about NATO, it turned out that he didn't know anything about Kaliningrad, didn't know where it was. Now, the reason why that matters, it sounds like a small thing, but actually, given that the central security question probably of our age is Russia's threat to Europe, Russia's threat to Ukraine, Russia's threat to the Baltics, and Kaliningrad, this tiny little bit of Russian territory deep into Europe, is going to be central to that. It was very interesting that Hegseth, apparently six months into the job, seven months of the job, hadn't been briefed on it, wasn't even remotely familiar with it. That would have been very unusual with previous American defence secretaries, who, for all their flaws, were always, I found, in my experience, unbelievably well briefed. I mean, talking to American defense secretaries or secretaries of state, boy, were they briefed. Boy, could they do, you know the talking points. You know, Kerry could always drop names of towns in Afghanistan and talk about Pashtun, Tajik divisions, because he sat through endless briefings.
- [11:24]
Alistair Campbell
Was this the Senate or the Congress hearing? Because I saw one where Hexith eventually said, what are we turning this into a quiz show? Which, of course, was almost. It was like leading with his chin, because of course, he is basically a Fox News presenter. But the point is, he didn't know the answer to any of these questions. And when we talked to Seth Moulton on leading, he made the point, and I'm sure this is right, that people at the top of the military, they're just. They see the guy as a joke. There was a very, very funny moment, Rory, yesterday when Trump was standing there at the podium, Hexith and Pam Bondi behind him, and he was asked about something that Putin had done or something about some general who'd made a mistake. And Trump basically said, I'm sure Vladimir, because he calls Zelensky Zelenskyy. But with Vladimir, you know, Vladimir's probably taken out the general and shot him kind of thing, Right. And Hexer did a very nervous smirk in the background. Those tanks got stuck in the mud. I don't know who is. But knowing Vladimir, he's probably not around any longer because all those tanks were stuck in the mud and they went along with the Javelins. I find this whole thing so depressing. And, of course, Europe's position, you're right, that there is a sort of sense of impotence. At least they're kind of trying to get their voice heard. Merz has actually been quite forceful on this. There's apparently some sort of conference call that they're having tomorrow, Wednesday, where the Europeans are going to be able to speak directly to Trump in terms of saying what their concerns are. But look, he's already talking about giving away pretty chunky sections of Ukraine. And added to which Putin will say, yes, thank you very much, I'll have that. And then you'll go away and Zelensky will tell you to get lost. And meanwhile, I'll just sit back and then I'll carry on. That's what's going to happen out of this meeting.
- [13:12]
Rory Stewart
Just a very, very quick reminder, I think, for listeners of what's been happening since January, because it is pretty bewildering, and I was trying to remind myself of it. But everyone will remember that Trump came into office saying that he was going to end this war in 24 hours, describing Putin as a genius. Then there was the amazing humiliation of Zelenskyy in the White House. Then in March, he cut weapons to Ukraine. Then in June, June 30, the Americans actually turned back the cargo planes, which had all the main stuff on it, had the Patriot missiles, had the Hellfires, had the Stingers. They literally stopped the planes from taking off. And there was a real panic because this was the point at which it was going to be almost impossible for Ukraine to deal with Russian planes in particular. And then suddenly the story changed, and we had one of these kind of cliffhanger moments where suddenly things seemed to be going back in Ukraine's direction. There were stories that Trump was saying openly he was disappointed with Putin. There was this meeting with NATO where Rutte sent these cringy texts and he was calling Trump dad. And then the cargo planes flew, and then there were tariffs being put on India because India was buying Russian oil by Trump. And so all of that seemed very, very positive. But meanwhile, while the deadline was ticking up to the sanctions, which, as you say, he missed, there were all these different techs going around. Three, at least there was a Negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, where the Ukrainians had a very optimistic vision, and their vision was fighting ceases on the current front lines, no recognition of the territory that Russia's taken, and Ukraine can't join NATO, but it can join the eu. So that was the deal that Ukraine was happy with. Kellogg, who's the general, who's been supposed to be his Ukraine point man, was doing some very detailed negotiations, looking at lots of nuances, the kind of stuff your French Artan Powell would be looking at, very micro questions around how we can calibrate sanctions against arms supplies, against territory. And meanwhile, Witkoff flies into the middle of all of this and blows it all up and essentially creates a complete mess because he's back in a world in which Putin is saying, recognize Donetsk, Luhansk, lift the sanctions and everything will be fine.
- [15:20]
Alistair Campbell
You've got to be very, very careful what you read on this, because there's so much misinformation flies around. But there was a German report yesterday that Wyckoff misunderstood what Putin was offering. And what Wyckoff reported back as Putin offering a concession was actually Putin saying, I can kind of live with the status quo in terms of the territory that we've taken. This German report said that Wyckoff thought he was saying, you can have some of that back, which is highly unlikely. So what you've got, I sense, I mean, I don't know, I can't pretend that I've talked to either Putin or Trump in recent days. But what you have is Putin going to Anchorage, assuming this is Anchorage, he's basically going to say, we keep what we've taken. Crimea, forget it. Eastern Ukraine is basically Russian. Donald nods away at that. Ukraine can never join NATO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he adds the European Union to that. NATO can never go near any of the former Soviet realms. We have to keep limits on the size of Ukraine, military and any government which follows. Zelensky, because he's toast. Donald, let's just agree that, you know, you and I both think he's toast, has got to be much more friendly towards me now. There's nothing in any of that stuff that is remotely different to what he's been saying from the very, very, very start.
- [16:37]
Rory Stewart
So it's vict. He's won.
- [16:39]
Alistair Campbell
Well, it's certainly. It's progress on his terms. And if you think about it, Roy, the deal, if you remember, for example, I guess the biggest reality TV show episode, possibly in Term one, was Trump's summit with Kim Jong Un. And if you think about all the talk that went into what it meant to have a one on one summit on a major foreign policy issue with the President of the United States, Trump has given it to him. And this at a time when the guy's an indicted war criminal. And what this also says, come to Alaska. Sorry I said it was Russia a minute ago, but actually it's the United States. Come to my country. That's also saying, by the way, Vlad, we don't buy any of this bullshit that you're a war criminal. The Americans are not going to be cooperating with the International Court at all. Don't have any worries about that. So if you're Zelenskyy, you're sitting there thinking, well, yes, I've got my friends in Europe trying to bang me on the door to get me into the meeting somehow. Trump sometimes says he might come, sometimes says he might talk to talk to the Europeans, but I find the whole thing really, really gut wrenching.
- [17:43]
Rory Stewart
One thing I think people haven't focused on enough is that Trump has lost a lot of the leverage that he had over Zelenskyy. He's certainly not using leverage over Putin, but there's no reason now for Zelenskyy to accept this stuff. Trump has basically taken away everything that the US Provided and supported in Ukraine. All that's left now is he's saying, I'm prepared to sell American kit to European governments who can then donate it to Ukraine. And he describes this as good business. I suppose he could stop doing that. But one sense is that the arms manufacturers, who are making tens of billions of dollars out of this and Trump's general instincts, which are to make money, will lead him to continue selling it. So for that reason, it's difficult to know exactly what leverage he has over Zelenskyy to force Zelenskyy to accept whatever deal comes forward. And my guess is we're then going to get into a very interesting world where Trump and Putin announce with great fanfare. Let's imagine if you're Putin, presumably part of this is gonna be business, part of it is gonna be, why don't we divide up the Arctic between us? Why don't we do some lovely mineral explorations together? You drop the sanctions, the Russian and American economy brackets, Greenland going in some funny direction, right? And that's then announced. And then presumably Zelenskyy says no, and Europe has to find a way to say no or redevelop some kind of backbone because it's existential for Europe. I think that's the other thing. That's sort of lost in all of this as we get dragged back into the reality TV show. The scenario that you laid out, which is a demilitarized Ukraine acknowledgement of everything that Putin has taken. No, Ukraine joining NATO is essentially the worst case scenario for Europe. That significantly increases the likelihood of Putin then continuing to push into the Baltic, for example.
- [19:34]
Alistair Campbell
You want to talk about the whole issue of drones in this war, because I was reading a thing the other day about the way the Ukrainians are now becoming global leaders in use of and manufacture of drones. But you've actually been talking to some of these people involved in this. Just tell us a bit about that.
- [19:51]
Rory Stewart
It's bizarre at the front line. Now, if you go to the front line, essentially the sky is filled with drones, a lot of them loitering. And they've created a world that has fixed the front lines, partly because unless you're in your bunker, if you step outside, you're hit by a drone. Some calculations suggest 70 or 80% of the casualties on the front line are currently created by these pretty basic cheap drones. And there are two sorts. There's a kind of analogue drone and there's a digital drone. And the digital drone has slightly better video capacity. But what you need to imagine with these small drones is something very similar to what you'd see if you go to a park in London. Many of them are those little quadrocopters that you can almost buy for your kid on Amazon, flying around with a very small payload. And then they get bigger and bigger. By the time you get to the really impressive big Russian stuff, which can fly out up 4,000 meters into the sky and then come down at 400 kilometers an hour, you're looking at something that's costing you about $200,000. But it's the cheap swarms of this stuff that is dominating a lot of the war. There are a lot of problems around them. And one of the biggest problems is a problem around jamming. So there's a lovely description by somebody who was a drone operator at the front line for five months talking about just the technicalities of these things. I mean, they get them. They don't say commercially available, cheap things. About 10% of them simply basically don't work. When you take them out of the packet, then you try to put them up into the air, and it turns out that your side is jamming the Russian drones, but the jamming of the Russian drones jams you too. Then it turns out, I don't know if you ever remember whether you Play with your kids with radio cards. But if you've got the two same radio cards from the same manufacturer, they're on the same frequency, so they can't actually race each other because they're controlled by the same radio controller. So often you're on the same frequency as the Russians and the whole thing's getting muddled up in the air. And they've tried to deal with this by flying them now with fiber optic cables trailing out of them. So the way to get around your radio signal being jammed is you basically fly something in the air with a large dog leash behind it so that you're flying it on a wire. The result is that if you go to the front line, all the trees in Ukraine are now festooned with fiber optic cables. And there are hundreds of thousands of these things ultimately will be deployed in this war. So there'll be bits of plastic and fiber optic cable everywhere. Meanwhile, the drone operator. I'll finish on this. That I was talking to, there are two views. I was talking to one drone operator who's like, this is the future of warfare. Here are our new drones. This is going to change everything. This is the drone war. And another view which is, no, no, no, the whole thing is massively over pumped. We're using them largely because we're getting them for free. And I'd much prefer an old fashioned mortar where you just drop the thing down the tube and fire it over the thing over to you.
- [22:44]
Alistair Campbell
No, it's interesting because of course it does mean that countries around the world are just looking at the way that warfare has changed and this war. I think we still in our head have a very traditional view of what a war looks and feels like. But as you say, this is completely different to anything we've had. Before we go to the break, let's just talk a little bit about our friend, the subject of our first miniseries. JD and by the way, thank you. We've well into the five figures of people who've signed up as members to listen to that. And if you want to listen to our series on J.D. vance, you go to the restispolities.com more to come.
- [23:18]
Rory Stewart
Alistair. Right, you're about to bring together a series on Murdoch, is that right?
- [23:21]
Alistair Campbell
We are. I'm going to sit down with our friend Michael Wolf, he who knows a lot about Trump and Murdoch and of course I know Murdoch from a slightly different perspective as a sort of political operative. We're going to do Murdoch. But the van stuff is fascinating and Van, you know, we talked a lot on that series about how much he seems to hate Europe and boy, he loves having holidays here. I mean, you know, he spent the weekend achievening with David Lammy. We should talk a little bit about that. What seems a very, very odd relationship. He's then going around and you know, the Cotswolds. I mean, why does he have to have this? It's like a status symbol. I was talking to somebody who saw the security operation around Valley. They said it was ridiculous to do a three point turn. The convoy needed about an hour, you know when it got stuck down one of these little country roads. And so he has an ambulance going after him and he's only the fucking Vice President of America. When the King, when your friend the King wanders off down to Highgrove, what does he have? A couple of cars?
- [24:28]
Rory Stewart
Exactly. Or when he's doing the Windsor Flower show he's going around shaking hand after hand after hand in the middle of a crowd in a way that, that American presidents or Vice Presidents never would. I suppose there's going to be real hope that Chevening, which is this fancy country house which was donated I think for Foreign Secretaries to use and which I think was donated in this clever way that the donor said that if the Foreign Secretary stopped using it it could revert to the family that gave it to stop the Foreign Office doing what it would normally do which was to flog it off to save money.
- [25:01]
Alistair Campbell
Which I think Gordon tried to do with quite a few of the graces and favour places as they're called.
- [25:08]
Rory Stewart
There were certainly by the time I came in a lot of them weren't being used because you know, there had been these sort of grumbles about John Prescott playing croquet at Dorneywood and stuff right next to me when I was the Secretary of State for International Development we lived in this incredible building which was the first purpose built government building I think almost in the world, certainly In Britain since 1703, the old Admiralty. And right next door was this really beautiful 18th century apartment which traditionally was used by Ministers during my years as a minister Nobody was in it.
- [25:43]
Alistair Campbell
I can assure you that John Prescott had access to that one as well. That's a very nice. That's a very nice dinners with John in that one.
- [25:50]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, well I could, I could occasionally ask the security guard to let me interpy at it but when I politely suggested that nobody was using it and you know, would it be okay for us to move in that was not the direction that Theresa May wanted to go in or indeed David Cameron Want to go. They want to limit the number of people getting into these things.
- [26:04]
Alistair Campbell
My memories achievement is it is, I mean it is ridiculous that we have this thing, you know, Checkers, Dorney Wood, Carlton Terrace, all these sort of places. And, and I guess they do belong to the sense of British grandeur of a different era. But I can imagine diplomatically and I'm sure I'm not the only as it were labor father whose family WhatsApp group was what the f pictures of Lammy and Vance fishing together, talking about praying together. I've got to say by family WhatsApp group was quite sort of quite agitated over the weekend. But I guess here's a question for you, Roy. If you had been Foreign secretary, you as an individual believing what you do and thinking about Trump and Vance, what you do, and Vance had come to the UK for a holiday and you saw the opportunity to have two or three days kind of, you know, doing a bit of work, but also the socializing and the trying to build a genuine bond. My guess is you'd have done it.
- [27:06]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, you're probably right. I mean I think couple of things. Is there a way of doing it which I think in the sense Angela Merkel and Theresa May did back in Trump, one which is to interact with these guys without totally humiliating yourself. And then there's the second darker question, which is that that if, as I sometimes fear, Trump does turn into a new kind of Mussolini, it's not going to look great in history to have endless photographs of people clutching his hands, slapping on his back and grinning. And part of the question there, and this is just maybe to wrap up and get back to your first point of his consistency that everybody thought with Mussolini, the English and French particularly, that they could charm him, change him, and they never actually in the end changed his mind. And I get that sense with Trump too, that we have to begin to acknowledge that he and Vance are genuinely dangerous people. And through all the soap opera, remember the basic consistent story. Number one, he is about to make Europe a much more dangerous and much poorer place by essentially taking away the American security guarantee against Russia. Number two, he's going to make the world much poorer through tariffs. And number three, he's making democracy in the United States and throughout the world totally undermined and the rules based international order completely undermined. And he himself is the guy that came up with this idea of essentially ethnically cleansing Gaza. So you're right. I'm sure if I was Foreign Secretary, I would be very tempted to do a lot of what David Lammy's doing. But I wonder whether history will judge this kindly or whether actually in 20 years time, people will be looking back and saying, what the hell did they think they were doing?
- [28:44]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. And the current episode on leading, that's out. Jeremy Hunt, we discussed this last week about his idea that Keir Starmer should take a few leaves out of the Trump book on communications. There's one thing that Trump did do which maybe leans into what you were saying. He basically does that thing of saying about Keir Starmer. I get on with him kind of, even though he's a liberal. And maybe what you're saying is that David Lammy could have found a way to say, look, I think Britain's relationship with the United States is incredibly important, regardless of who's in power. As it happens, I managed to make a connection with Vance because us, through our shared Christianity, our shared poor backgrounds, our shared belief that politics at its best is a force for good, but, you know, like a true friend, we have to call things out as we see them. So, for example, I'm very worried about the direction of travel on Ukraine. I really worry that we're going backwards on climate change, whatever. What I find at the moment difficult in the relationship is we very rarely hear any of the calling out. And the other thing that relates to this, I was talking this morning, there's this plastics convention going on in Geneva at the moment where they're trying to come to an agreement on plastics. And it's, you know, five, 10 years ago, this would have been massive on the news because plastic in the oceans and plastics generally, it's a massive issue. It's just completely fallen off the agenda and the chances are they're not going to reach an agreement. And I was talking to somebody who's involved in this who said, said we're in the era. He called it shock and yawn. And he said, we've had the dumbing down and now we've got the numbing down. And I thought that was a very interesting way to put it, is that it's almost like we're going to talk about Gaza in the second half, that so much bad stuff happens in the world that the world kind of goes, oh, well, yeah, that's bad, but I'm going to turn away from it. And plastics is a very good example of that, I would say. So I thought that was a very interesting observation. And the thing about Vance that I find, I do find him genuinely quite scary because I think he's much more intellectually rigorous than Trump, Trump was sort of dipping his toe in the waters of indicating the Vance is the likely successor. And I think you're right. I think we've all of us got to be very, very careful because let's just look at this week alone. You talk about some of the kind of authoritarian, proto fascist stuff, stuff. Yesterday, sending the National Guard in to take over Washington, police, talking about this crime wave at a time when crime is falling quite rapidly. And of course we see the same with Farage in the UK right now playing exactly the same game, going to, you know, talk up, ramp up crime at a time when most crimes are coming down.
- [31:23]
Rory Stewart
So, yeah, anyway, well, Alastair, thank you for all that and we're going to quick break and as we come back from the break week, we're going to touch on Palestine action, the arrests and its prescription as a terrorist group and give updates on what's been happening on the ground in Gaza.
- [31:41]
Alistair Campbell
Great, see you then. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
- [31:49]
Rory Stewart
In today's world, it's more and more difficult to remain private online. A very, very difficult to protect yourself from a whole series of people or trying to intrude, gather your data and commit fraud.
- [32:00]
Alistair Campbell
And also this is of course, peak season for public wi fi. Spend a lot of time in trains, airports, hotels, traveling around. Plenty of people still go online with very limited protection. No password, no encryption, no idea who's watching.
- [32:13]
Rory Stewart
And that's why I use NordVPN, because it encrypts your connection, it hides your IP and it blocks trackers, all while running quietly in the background.
- [32:21]
Alistair Campbell
And especially useful abroad. One click and you're back in the UK with all the usual news apps and streaming site services. It's as if you never left.
- [32:29]
Rory Stewart
And it also helps avoid dynamic pricing. Flights, hotels, subscriptions, all less likely to spike when your location's masked.
- [32:35]
Alistair Campbell
Simple and secure, keeping the noise out and your data in.
- [32:38]
Rory Stewart
To get the best discount off your NORDVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com restispolitics the link gives you four extra months on the two year plan. There's a 30 day money back guarantee. Links in the description. This is an ad from BetterHelp. At the moment we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alice's cold plunges, could be my attempts to meditate or the digital detox that I'm doing in Colombia. But of course, one of the things that we know is that it can be incredibly valuable to talk to another human being, somebody who's actually been trained as a therapist to work through these ideas calmly, objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise. They've got over 5,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than 5 million people globally. And you can join a session literally at the click of a button. Change therapists anytime. It's obviously not about fixing you, but it's about hearing yourself clearly, maybe for the first time. So talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month month@betterhelp.com RestPolitics that's betterhelp.com RestPolitics hello, I'm William Dalrymple.
- [34:03]
C
And I'm Anita Anand. And we're the hosts of another goal hanger show, Empire.
- [34:07]
Rory Stewart
And we are here to tell you about a recent series we've done on partition.
- [34:12]
C
On the 14th and 15th of August, 1947, Pakistan and India announced their independence from the British Empire. But as these nations gained their freedom, their rushed and violent division resulted in the deaths of well over a million people and the forced migration of over 14 million more.
- [34:30]
Rory Stewart
It's a piece of South Asian history that many people are familiar with, but in this series we want to explore it alongside four less well known partitions which continue to affect the region in monumental ways.
- [34:42]
C
Yeah, you're quite right. In one episode, we dissect how Dubai almost became part of modern India. And in another, we're going to unpack the history behind the headlines about the conflict in Kashmir.
- [34:52]
Rory Stewart
We also explore how the separation of Burma from India is linked to the origin of the Rohingya genocide and how east and West Pakistan separated in 1971 to create Bangladesh.
- [35:06]
C
So if you'd like to hear more about the five partitions that completely transformed modern Asia and how how the weight of the memory of partition has been passed down through the generations. We've left a clip of the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to.
- [35:27]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
- [35:31]
Alistair Campbell
And with me, Alistair Campbell. And Rory, I mentioned the current leading Jeremy Hunt, Part two. Also want to give a plug to a bonus episode that's coming out on Friday, which you were having your break, but I think you'll really, really enjoy President Irfan Ali of Guiana. He is quite a character.
- [35:52]
Rory Stewart
I was saying that having initially thought that some people wouldn't have been able to find Guiana necessarily on a map, including Me, I then talked to a friend who said that he's just the most interesting, charismatic, engaging guy, which I guess is what you found.
- [36:07]
Alistair Campbell
I did, I did. There's part of the interview that might be a little bit over your head. We have a long discussion about the decline of West Indian cricket. We must ensure that your friend the King has a listen because he is on the issue of biodiversity. Basically our King appears to be President Ali's hero. But that's going out as a bonus to all of our listeners on Friday. And then on Monday we have part one of Nicola Sturgeon. Part two will be a week later. Unless of course you're a member or want to be a member when you can get them both straight away by going to the restispolitics.com and becoming a member of Trip. Now, where do you want to start? What's happening in Gaza or Palestine Action and the protest that we had at the weekend with the biggest single day of arrests since 1961.
- [36:55]
Rory Stewart
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
- [36:56]
Alistair Campbell
And that was an anti nuclear protest.
- [36:58]
Rory Stewart
Just to remind people of the fundamental thing which is Palestine Action which is not a group that I was very familiar with and in fact I was talking to Chris Doyle who's very, very active and runs Kabu and has done amazing stuff on Palestine and explaining the Middle east to generations of British politicians and I realized that Palestine Action wasn't really part of the normal meetings that people held in Palestine because it's a direct action group. They are I suppose more like. Would I be right in saying Extinction Rebellion?
- [37:30]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, they call themselves a. They don't harm humans they say, but they're actively disrupting and in particular they're trying to disrupt the arms trade.
- [37:41]
Rory Stewart
Right. And so they will sometimes you'll find they've daubed graffiti over Labour headquarters. Most dramatically they got into an RAF base and managed to damage fighter jets. It turns out getting into the RAF base was not really something out of Mission Impossible. It seemed as though all they had to do was push over a wooden fence events and they were in which and I'm still not quite sure why all the blame for that ends up on Palestine Action rather than heads rolling in the military for what on earth's wrong with the security on our basis.
- [38:09]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, it does seem that this seem. But I mean look I. I mentioned the family WhatsApp group in relation to Laby advance in the first part and the Family whatsoever. It was also kicking off fairly lively way about these protests endlessly sending me pictures of as the Kids put it, you know, people of your age. People of my sort of carted off. And it was interesting, the age profile. The single highest decade. Age, decade decile was my age group, 60 to 70.
- [38:42]
Rory Stewart
It's amazing because one would imagine a direct action group would tend to be kind of cool young students out, very.
- [38:48]
Alistair Campbell
Small numbers of 16 to 25 year olds. No, but I looked into this a bit. What I hadn't realized, this process of prescription, of course the reason why people find it hard to get their heads around this, understand, understandably, is that when we think of terrorist organizations, we think of the ira, we think of hamas, we think of hts.
- [39:08]
Rory Stewart
And just on that for a second, people who, if they had got onto an RAF base in the same way that Palestine Action did by just pushing over a fence, could have done unbelievable damage given how bad our security is. They could have attached huge bombs to all those planes and have one of the most catastrophic terrorist attacks in the world. Which brings me back to the question, why am I not talking about. About military heads rolling for the lack of security?
- [39:30]
Alistair Campbell
Anyway, back to you maybe on that, because you, you raise it. I want to. I don't know if you saw this, this rather splendid letter in the Times yesterday by somebody called Wing Commander Andrew Brooks, retired sir. They still do, sir, in the Times. The Home Secretary proposed to ban Palestine action on the ground of unacceptable criminal damage. Afghan infiltrated RAF Prize Norton. He goes on. In the 1980s, when I was UK commander of RAF Greenham Commerce Cruise Missile Base, I had a 250,000 annual budget to repair damage done by peace protesters to the perimeter fence. We had a strong Ministry of Defence police presence to stop intruders, often in a rather Benny Hill fashion. The intruders were left in no doubt that if they tried to infiltrate the secured storage area with 96 nuclear warheads, they would be shot by U.S. air Force, military police, police, who were a mean crowd. There were thousands of such protesters threatening, in quotes, the base. But their freedom of speech was always respected. And I never heard anyone in Whitehall or the Pentagon suggest that they should be classed as terrorists. And that is a very, very powerful letter. The only thing that I would push back a little bit on that, I kept saying to myself, why are they doing this? Because it just feels like. And I read Der Spiegel yesterday. Their account of the report basically was saying people were being arrested for supporting Palestine. Okay, because if you don't have the context globally understood, that's what it looks like now. I then spoke to somebody who's involved in the prescribing process there is a pro, you'd be pleased to know, I'm sure, listener and viewer, there is a process. There was a plan to prescribe them. And this is not the Minister's government coming along saying, I want to subscribe these people, people, this happened before Bryce and Norton. These are people from MI5, MI6, counterterrorism police, who keep an eye on all these organizations and they wanted to do this. Now, I then repeated my point, but what is the big argument? They then said that they were very stymied at the moment because there are some court cases going on at the moment which are under severe reporting restrictions. And of course, it felt to me that therefore Yvette Cooper was a little bit in the position that we were in before the Iraq war of Tony Blair constantly saying, oh, if you knew what I knew about what the intelligence people are saying Saddam's up to and what's happened since Palestine action has been prescribed. I don't know if you're aware of this, Roy, but some of them have decided to form an organization which is going to do the same sorts of things, but they're going to call themselves Yvette Kupo, which is the response they want. So what you have is the Home Office saying, these people are much, much more serious.
- [42:26]
Rory Stewart
It's mad. It's mad. I'm afraid I don't believe the Home Office. I think they're got it completely out of proportion and I think they've got their knickers in a twist. And one of the reasons that this is completely absurd. I was talking to a Labour MP yesterday and I was saying, why on earth did they vote? And she said, none of us can work out. We're all regretting it. Almost nobody she knows, except for maybe 20, 30 very pro Israeli Labour MPs actually support prescribing this group.
- [42:51]
Alistair Campbell
But the majority was massive.
- [42:53]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, but what they did is stand.
- [42:54]
Alistair Campbell
In the House of Lords, they put them in with these other neo Nazi.
- [42:57]
Rory Stewart
Groups, they managed to do this packaging where they connected them to the Russian imperial movement and something called, get this, the Maniac's Murder Cult. And as the MP was saying, they felt kind of tricked by the government and manipulated by the government into sticking this group that she and most of the Labour MPs, at least that I know, see as relatively innocent into this group. Now, to add to this, it's really bad politics. I mean, there's no space in prison. What on earth are you going to do? We can't take another 500 people in prison. We need prisons for genuine murderers, burglars, robbers, not for people who are elderly people waving flags or graffiti ing planes. And furthermore, what's going to happen next week? They're going to arrest another 2,000 people and then another 5,000 people. I mean, if I was past that action, I would just keep, keep rolling out the pensioners. And the police, of course, has lost all discretion. Traditionally, the police are able to decide whether someone actually poses a threat or not. But by making them a terrorist group, suddenly you leave the police with no option other than to arrest them. I think it's really foolish and I don't know why Starmer thought he was doing it.
- [43:59]
Alistair Campbell
Well, as I say, their argument is that there is a process and these lot pass the threshold and more will become clear, etc. Etc. I agree with you. The politics are terrible. And of course we're going to talk in question time about Jeremy Corporation, Corbyn's new party. And of course this plays right into his kind of style of politics. And no, I think it's very difficult. They keep targeting a company called Elbit. This has been going on a long time. This is an Israeli company, very, very strong in the arms trade. There's an Italian company that they go after. They've also been going to universities, stealing busts of Chime Weizmann, the first President of Israel. They spray painted a picture of Balfour in Trinity College.
- [44:40]
Rory Stewart
No, they spray painted of statue of Balford Alison.
- [44:44]
Alistair Campbell
A painting. A painting.
- [44:46]
Rory Stewart
No wonder they're being prescribed as a terrorist.
- [44:47]
Alistair Campbell
Anyway, you're obviously not going to take it seriously. I did, see, I did, I did. I'll tell you somebody who I do listen to quite carefully in this. I, I read his speech in the House of Lords debate is Peter Hayne. Because Peter Hayne, of course, yeah. You know, famously anti apartheid campaigner, then became a politician, became a member of the cabinet in, in our time. Time. And I think a really kind of serious guy. And his speech definitely is worth listening for. For those of you, like you who think this is sort of, you know, all terrible, I, of course, as you know, friend of the secure Crats, or, you know, if, if Blaze and her team want to tell me why something's happening. Yeah, I see. Okay. I think the other, the other point, which I think is that we mentioned in the, in the first part, the, the thing about, you know, this ridiculous levels of security around Vance and Trump when he was in the States at a time when, even though I think Farage is just being his usual dishonest opportunist self in sort of making crime the big thing at the moment. The truth is the police are under pressure and to see the police having to do this. And to be fair to the police, they have to, if they're told that it is an offence, to hold up a poster that says, I'm against genocide, I support Palestine action brackets in saying those words. I'm reporting what I saw. That is my view, which is kind of ridiculous. The other point, my Home Office person said, is that you are allowed to criticize the government. You're allowed to say, thank goodness for that. You're allowed to say, Yvette Cooper is wrong to do this. But what you cannot do is recklessly or carelessly express support for an organization that's been prescribed. Rory, I can see I'm not going to get you to take this seriously. Hopefully you'll take immigration more seriously.
- [46:39]
Rory Stewart
I love MI5, gives you a little call and says, we can reassure you that you're allowed to say that Yvette Kuv is wrong. Before we close, I think there were obviously points that you wanted to make about Gaza itself.
- [46:51]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I think there's. Yeah, look, Gaza is just increasingly horrific. Incredible aerial footage this week of, you know, before and after. Just seeing the level of the extent of devastation and the death that is, of the many deaths that has really cut through this week, I think, has been this journalist, Anas Al Sharif. Now, we're in this world now where leaders like Trump can say, I'm sending in the National Guard because crime is out of control in Washington, D.C. when in fact crime is coming down, where the Israelis can say, this guy led a Hamas cell. You. And I don't know if that is true. We have to make a judgment about that. But you see a guy who, I mean, somebody sent me some. Some of the stuff he did recently where she was quite critical of Hamas on his social media. But the point is, let's just take them at face value. They have evidence that we can't see that says he was Hamas. Could they really not have taken him out without taking out five of his colleagues? Taking to, I think, the number of journalists killed in Gaza, and bear in mind, most journalists can't get in, but we're now almost up to 250. The reason they don't want international journalists in is because they don't particularly want people to see what's going on. And the reason why these Al Jazeera journalists have become so important is because they are amongst the few journalists have continued to get pictures and footage out. And it's hard then to think, well, yeah, from an Israeli perspective, you can see why they might, they might do that.
- [48:20]
Rory Stewart
I'm obviously tempted to say that's also why the British government needs to be itself very careful on who it categorizes as terrorists, because increasingly around the world, one of the ways in which civil society organizations are repressed and of course ultimately people are killed, is by accusing them of being terrorists. Which is why I think we should keep the bar very, very high. Well, Alastair, thank you for coming. That and I think we're going to try to bring this to an end because we don't want our episodes being too long, but that gives us a huge amount of material to be doing tomorrow in Question time. And that will give us an opportunity to move from my statement at the moment, which is that Yvette Cooper is wrong about Palestine action, towards my controversial statement that Yvette Cooper is right about migration. So that and much more in Question Time. And of course, if you remember, you get immediate early access to. To Question Times straight after this episode, just go to theresterpolitics.com Bye. Bye.
- [49:15]
Alistair Campbell
See you later.
- [49:24]
Rory Stewart
Hi, it's William Drimple here again from Empire, another Goal Hanger podcast. Here's the clip from our recent series on the five partitions that created modern Asian. And it was deeply emotional. Sparsh picked up some pebbles from the village which he made into jewellery family heirlooms for his family going down the generations, because he was always saying, my family doesn't have archives, etc. We lost everything in Partition and there's nothing that we have from Baelor to show where we came from. But. So he wanted to pick up something from Baelor and make it into heirlooms for the next generations. You know, three, four generations from now, they'll still have a piece of baela with them. Even if the relationship between India and Pakistan worsens again and even if his kids can never visit Baila, they'll always have a piece of Baila with them.
- [50:10]
C
This connection with Earth, dharti, they call it dharti in India and Zamin is the Urdu word for exactly the same thing. But it is much more than just the Earth. It is who you are, where you have grown from, where your forebears have grown from, and the number of people I know who have been lucky enough to travel across the border. And I count myself as one who find it impossible to leave without a scoop of Earth. And I have one too, you know, in Lahore, picked up a handful of Earth and brought it back with me because I thought, you know, this is. This. This is the stuff my grandfather used to walk on.
- [50:44]
Rory Stewart
To hear the full series, just search Empire, wherever you get your podcasts.