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- [00:01]
Alastair 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 this episode is powered by Fuse Energy.
- [00:15]
Rory Stewart
Fuse are currently one of the fastest growing energy suppliers in the UK and this September they're raising the stakes.
- [00:21]
Alastair Campbell
Anyone who's on the fixed tariff on the 5th of October will be eligible for a chance to win £20,000 in cash.
- [00:27]
Rory Stewart
The average household could save around £200 by switching to fuse today. Only takes 3 minutes. 3 minutes to cut your bills, fix your rate and maybe end the month with £20,000 in cash.
- [00:38]
Alastair Campbell
That's less time than it takes for a referee to give a dodgy penalty for Liverpool against Burnley and with a far better outcome.
- [00:44]
Rory Stewart
So add it to the back to school list. Do it before the heating goes on, before the Christmas bills arrive. And unlike most deadlines in politics, this one won't move.
- [00:52]
Alastair Campbell
Go to fuseenergy.com politics to switch to a fuse fixed tariff by October 5th and be in with a chance to.
- [00:59]
Rory Stewart
Win £20,000 TNC supply. Please find on the landing page. Welcome to the Rest Politics Question Time.
- [01:14]
Alastair Campbell
With me, Rory Stewart and me Alistair Campbell and Rory. We have some exciting news for our members. Tell them what it is.
- [01:20]
Rory Stewart
Well, we have done a deep dive on immigration for the Members channel and we've got some very different voices. We've got Zoe Gardner, who is, I guess we would say, on the liberal side of immigration probably. Actually she contributed a video which she sent in. She's a listener and I think she had a lot of popular support from a lot of our members and listeners who broadly sympathize with her much more open liberal attitude. And then we had, I think, this really interesting, challenging voice, Gerald Knaus of who over to you.
- [01:50]
Alastair Campbell
Well, Gerald, who's written a book about immigration and who regular listeners will have heard on Friday talking about the rise of the AfD. But he's somebody who is absolutely devoted the last couple of decades of his life to studying immigration and immigration policy. They've got a different take. They're both really passionate, really interesting, both got different sorts of insights. And I think this is, you said in the podcast last week, this is one of the debates of our time.
- [02:14]
Rory Stewart
And really relevant for the whole world. I mean, we'll get on in this question Time to talking a little bit about Moldova, Czech Republic, Netherlands, where immigration are huge issues. But of course, one of the things that's interesting about the debate is that Gerald and Zoe very much root it in Britain. What should Kia Sama be doing? What is Farage proposing? How do we think about these issues? How do we deal with it?
- [02:35]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. So that's how on Friday for members Deep Dive with Gerald Knauss and Zoe Gardner drops the members of the rest of his politics. Plus this Friday, here's a taster. How worried are you that the values have been eroded, that actually people are saying just let them drown?
- [02:51]
Rory Stewart
We've had 30,000 people now in 10 years die in the Mediterranean. The deadliest border in the world is the border around the eu.
- [02:58]
Narrator/Actor (Sherlock and Co)
We can't have a welfare state without immigration in this country, full stop. The fact of the matter is we.
- [03:03]
Rory Stewart
Depend on immigration, but that's not necessarily a reason not to have a cat.
- [03:06]
Narrator/Actor (Sherlock and Co)
If people have a safe pathway to reach the uk, they don't get on the boat.
- [03:10]
Rory Stewart
You need a way of controlling borders that does not end up going down the Orban route, the Trump route or the Gaza route. If you can't stop the the smugglers earning money and people drowning in the channel, the argument globally will be won by the Trump people. So don't miss it. Just go to theresters politics.com to claim your free trial for the rest is politics. Plus you'll also enjoy complete ad free listening early access to Question Time episodes Members Only miniseries like the one we did on JD Vance deep dives much more. Just head to the restlesspolitics.com.
- [03:45]
Alastair Campbell
Right. Rory, we had a lot of questions on the back of our discussion last week about Moldova, and here's one from Tilly Abrahams wants to know our predictions for the Czech election, which is at the end of this week. As with Moldova, says Tilly, this feels like another significant event to test if the people will continue to resist Putin. What are your thoughts? Well, I was very, very happy about the result of Moldova.
- [04:08]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. So often, actually, I think we want to remember to update people on these issues that we raise. So. So what we did last week is to talk about the fact that the Moldovan election was very tight. There was huge evidence of Russian interference, and indeed, a lot of the things that we predicted might happen did happen. There were indeed bomb scares at polling stations around Europe, even one in the United States, because Moldovans living outside Moldova are really important in the vote. We've talked in the podcast before about Moldova's very unique positions right there on the between Romania and Ukraine. And there's this territory called Transnistria, which is a Russian satellite, which has broken away. And Maya Sandhu, who was a World bank official who came back to become the Prime Minister, and she's a really interesting figure, maybe a little bit reminiscent of the Georgian president that we interviewed a little bit. You know, when you hear World bank official coming back, does it feel a bit sort of 90s technocrats or a bit like Mario Monti taking over Italy? But she's been a miracle. She won an absolute majority, set up her own party, won with that party, has now won a referendum for joining the eu, won a majority again, and it's really good news for Europe.
- [05:24]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. And I've done some stuff with her before and I find her very impressive. I think it's really terrifying to be the leader of a country like Moldova right Now, population around 2 million on the border of Ukraine. Absolutely. On the list of countries that Putin would like to have within his sphere of orbit. And what we talked about last week, we said that the poll suggested it was going to be very, very, very, very close. She got over 50% of the vote, and the block of three parties that was second got just over half of that.
- [05:55]
Rory Stewart
About 25 cents.
- [05:56]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. Turnout, though, they were celebrating the fact the turnout was higher than before, but it's still only 52%, which is low, very low.
- [06:05]
Rory Stewart
And there was a lot of problem accessing these polling stations. Of course, the pro Russian side was saying that they were prevented from accessing the polling stations. And of course, the pro European side was saying, well, one of the reasons why you had to get from the Transnistrian border and then travel 20km to get to a polling station, as they were worried about disruption on the other side, just as we transition to the Czech Republic, it's something that maybe in Britain, because we're a little bit further away from the front line, we forget how in Moldova, and as we're about to discover when we discuss the Czech election, how for countries in central Eastern Europe, Ukraine defines so much. In this case, of course, it's all about Ukraine. Her economy is barely moving. She's been hit by these terrible energy price spikes because Russia controls her energy, and yet she's won. So the normal story would be, well, technocrat, World bank, cost of living, bad, energy, bad. She's going to be booted out by the populace. And that, as we transition to the Czech Republic, is broadly the soaring of the Czech Republic. So all my friends who are kind of educated university professors and journalists in the Czech Republic, will say basically about the last Four years of Czech government. The sort of things that one might be tempted to say if one was defending Keir Starmer, which is really good on foreign policy. Serious people, but unfortunately have a real problem communicating in a. And they've had a tough time with costs of living and energy prices in the Ukraine war.
- [07:27]
Alastair Campbell
So this is Peter Fiala, the Keir Starmer figure that you're talking about. And he's up against Bavas, who's a. Has been prime minister before. I wonder whether the Moldova election will have a bit of an impact on this, because I get the sense, and this may be wishful thinking, but I get the sense that the sense of Russia being related to these populist parties of right and left, I think, is. Is out there. Maybe not yet in the UK as out there as it should be, but it's getting there. And so we'll see what happens in the Czech Republic, because the reason why Europe is watching this so closely is because if the pro Russian, the more pro Russian candidate gets in, then you have this little. This little grouping of FICO in Slovakia, Orban, who, for leader of a country of 5 million. We talk about an awful lot this podcast for very good reason, by the way. And then Babis, and you've got a little kind of Eastern bloc that is frankly tending to act as a break on what the European Union is trying to do. So yet again, this is essentially with all the domestic stuff going on. There is also this battle between Europe and Russia, and this is a kind of bit of a proxy vote.
- [08:44]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. The Czech tradition, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, has been two totally separate traditions. The one that listeners will be very familiar with is the tradition of Vaclav Havel, who was president for 13 years, extraordinary writer, dissident, and who really was a visionary in international affairs, helped to bring the Baltic countries into the European Union. Czech Republic very much performing at a much bigger scale, you know, extraordinary for quite a small country, that it was really shifting the world. And then there was an alternative nativist tradition represented by a guy called Vaslav Klaus, who I think you would have dealt with when you were in government. And we have this kind of playing out again, you know, yet again. We've got a president who's a sort of rather respectable senior figure who gives speeches at Harvard. We've got a prime minister who's been there for four years, who was ahead of a big university and wears a very formal suit all the time and gets huge respect for what he did standing up to Russia, because the Czech Republic was very, very quick to sign up to the Ukraine war to production of drones. A lot of his party's policy is about investing in defense, clear funding for the Czech army and then against him. Again, an oligarch, basically, or maybe an oligarch is a strange way of putting it. A multi billionaire. It's a man worth approximately $4 billion that will put him in probably the top thousand wealthiest men in the entire world. Right? That's putting him into the level of the big, big American guys. I mean, slightly below the level of Elon Musk's, but, you know, well up.
- [10:19]
Alastair Campbell
And below Trump since his second term.
- [10:21]
Rory Stewart
Below Trump's second term.
- [10:23]
Alastair Campbell
And Trump's granddaughter, who's now advertising her wares in the White House.
- [10:26]
Rory Stewart
Colossal, unimaginable amount of money. He's a guy who has now started appearing at conferences with Orban, as you say, people like Anne Applebaum, who we interviewed on the podcast when we spoke to her, picked him out as somebody who's very much a fellow traveler now of Russia. And I suppose, final thing as I come back to you is this story that Fiona Hill, who we interviewed on Leading, has now really been pushing, which say we are basically now at war with Russia. And we've seen that with drones going into Denmark, we've seen that with incursions into Poland, we've seen this with incursions into the Baltic. And we've seen it with this electional interference which has gone Moldova, Romania, et cetera. Any final thoughts on that one?
- [11:06]
Alastair Campbell
Well, just on that. I mean, the disinformation and misinformation in this elation is off the scale. Conspiracy theories abounding. Real attempt, not necessarily just to undermine the other candidates, but also to basically to try to undermine the institutions. And there was one report that said that fake news, fake news outlets controlled by Russia were producing more content within the Czech current debate than the entirety of the Czech conventional mainstream media. Now, it doesn't seem to have worked in Moldova, so we'll just, we'll see whether it, whether it works here. I'm actually reading this amazing book at the moment. I've nearly finished it. Quite short. It's called Ven Rusland Gevint what if Russia Wins? And it's written by this. It's actually a lecture in international politics at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. And it's half geopolitics and half novel. Essentially what happens is Ukraine is forced to make peace to this peace conference in Geneva. Not implausible, not at all implausible. And it's forced to make peace because a lot of the European countries and America basically think we can't just keep doing this. Zelenskyy has to go. Zelenskyy goes, not implausible. Again, not implausible. And then this is possibly implausible based on what is projected in Russia as this massive triumph. Putin steps down and he makes way for this financial figure. 47 year old guy comes along, then what happens? You have all these different plot lines going, one of which this relates to our discussion with Gerald Knauss where the Russians in Africa, Wagner group type people are basically putting lots of Africans onto boats and flooding them into Europe as refugees.
- [12:50]
Rory Stewart
And of course, the example of that is we did see this through the Belarusian border where the Russians and Belarusians were pushing migrants up against the Polish border.
- [12:58]
Alastair Campbell
Correct. And Geroll said that Putin wanted to get 10 million Ukrainians into Russia. He ended up getting four and a half.
- [13:04]
Rory Stewart
And just on this, I mean, in the Czech election, one thing that we haven't talked about is that although there isn't a traditional migrant issue in the Czech election, they have accepted 350,000 Ukrainians. That's about 3% of the Czech population. That would be like about 2 1/2 million Ukrainians coming to Britain.
- [13:23]
Alastair Campbell
So then what happens is that the West, a bit like we did with Putin, we think there's a thaw and we think this new modern guy from the financial sector is going to be okay. Turns out Russia is rearming. Three years later they take a small town and an island in Estonia and then he then provokes this Article 5 debate where the American president, who's never named but one assumes it's Trump and the new president of France, who is Rasson Blument, national, sort of Le Pen figure. Le Pen figure?
- [13:55]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [13:55]
Alastair Campbell
They basically do not think that a small town in Estonia is worth protecting through Article 5 cut. A long story short, the end of the book. The new president comes forward with Putin now this aging sort of hero in Russia, and Lukashenko from Belarus to announce that Russia and Belarus are uniting as one country for the next stage of the Russian program within Europe. It's an amazing book.
- [14:22]
Rory Stewart
Now, next question. Lucas van den Heuvel. Does the Netherlands still have the political stability to be a serious player in Europe or is its fractured system now the biggest threat to its influence?
- [14:34]
Alastair Campbell
Well, I'm guessing that Lukas van der Heujville is probably better place to answer than us because he sounds very Dutch.
- [14:42]
Rory Stewart
And we have a lot of Dutchesses.
- [14:44]
Alastair Campbell
We do.
- [14:44]
Rory Stewart
I've just come Back from Rotterdam?
- [14:45]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah.
- [14:46]
Rory Stewart
Extraordinary. Have you been to Rotterdam?
- [14:47]
Alastair Campbell
Many times?
- [14:48]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. It's very striking city, secondary.
- [14:51]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah.
- [14:51]
Rory Stewart
You like it?
- [14:52]
Alastair Campbell
This is going to get me in hot water. I prefer Rotterdam to Amsterdam.
- [14:55]
Rory Stewart
Oh my goodness. Yeah, because it's quite, people who know, it's quite a gritty port city.
- [14:59]
Alastair Campbell
It's a real. Yeah, I mean Amsterdam's lovely, don't get me wrong. Amsterdam, the canals, all that stuff. But I found Rotterdam. I once played the bagpipes at a football match in Rotterdam when I was a student. I was drunk.
- [15:10]
Rory Stewart
Anyway, so yes, I just come back from Rotterdam talking at Erasmus University with something called the Nexus Institute. 450 mostly young people there, a lot of them listeners to the podcast. I think we did an hour and 45 minutes of really interesting conversation about populism, elections, European politics. But of course the big story in the Netherlands is Hert Wilders of course got most votes in the last election. His position in the polls hasn't really gone down very much. Gone down a bit, but probably still as they go into the next election he will come out with the most votes. So he's a far right anti Islamist populist and actually in some ways I hadn't quite got my head around this, but the Netherlands is quite lucky because the right is actually, the far right is split because a guy called Joost Edemann has taken some of her Wilders vote. And then there's a guy called Thierry Bode who's well out there, you know, he's a self style conspiracy theorist but loves the British American philosopher Roger Scruton. Talks a lot of the J.D. vance language. Very, very interesting sort of theories of conservatism put all those votes together. In fact, the right wing votes in the Netherlands might well be well up above 30%.
- [16:19]
Alastair Campbell
They might well be, they might well be. But then none of the other parties, they're all now committed to saying they would not serve with Wilders. So the last election it took them seven months to form a government and it came together of four parties in the coalition. But part of the deal was that Wilders could not be prime minister. So Dick Schoof, this former intelligence chief, he was the prime minister. The coalition has achieved next to nothing without being too rude about it and it's disintegrated in stages. But the fact that they're all saying they won't serve with Wilder's party means that it's likely you're right, that he'll probably come first in the poll. But it's likely that whoever Comes second is likely then to be asked to form government. And that might be the guy we had on leading, which is Franz Timmerman, who put together this coalition of this alliance of Labour and the Greens. There's this new guy on the block called Henry Bonnental who's a kind of conservative leader, Christian Democrat, but the big.
- [17:16]
Rory Stewart
Loser, more sort of centrist.
- [17:18]
Alastair Campbell
Centrist, yeah, yeah.
- [17:19]
Rory Stewart
And he was a guy that I got a. It seemed to be certainly within my sort of tiny student audience poll of that seemed to be getting a wonderful sort of Nick Clegg effect. I agree with Nick.
- [17:30]
Alastair Campbell
As they go into the election, that's exactly what's happen. That's exactly what's happening. So he actually might end up as being the one that kind of emerges as the leader of a possible government. And he's come out of nowhere, looks.
- [17:42]
Rory Stewart
Like on track maybe for 20, 24 seats. I don't know why. Yeah.
- [17:45]
Alastair Campbell
But the big loser since the election is your friend Mark Rutter. Trump daddy. His party, the vvd, have really suffered for having gone into coalition with Wilders.
- [17:57]
Rory Stewart
Well, it's. I mean this is a story we have to keep coming back to because it's a sort of parallel to what seems to be happening to the Conservative Party in Britain relation to reform. It's certainly an absolute parallel with what's happened in France where the traditional right wing party that dominated government for many years vanished in the face of the right. What do you think about how Franz Timmermans, who we've been interviewing on leading, how he's been doing?
- [18:18]
Alastair Campbell
Well, listen, I like him and I enjoyed the interview that we did with him and he's showing guts because they had these pretty bad riots. Worse than the kind of Tommy Robinson stuff here.
- [18:30]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. It was just. I arrived just the day after those riots.
- [18:32]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. And they were bad. A lot of it was football hooligans coming together. Some of them were doing Nazi salutes, some of them were carrying the flag, the pre tricolor flag, which is the old kind of, you know, we support the Nazis flag. A lot of violence and then other.
- [18:48]
Rory Stewart
Sorts of flags which are quite complicated because a bit like in Britain where there's controversies now about very straightforward things like carrying the Union Jack or the flag of St. George. One very popular flag they were carrying was. Was traditionally just one of the flags. The House of Orange has suddenly become politicized.
- [19:04]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. And when on the. In the aftermath of these riots, the right wing parties did not want to say that this was far right violence. They wanted to kind of somebody called it. They were trying to whitewash it under the banner of football hooligans. And Timmermans stood up in really, really strongly and just called it out for what it is. And I think we'll. I think we'll get credit for that because the two, the more centrist parties were sort of basically a bit worried about offending these people who'd been out sort of beating up policemen.
- [19:35]
Rory Stewart
Final thing, just the culture war thing. I was talking to people who were really cross with Franz Timans, because I think it was Amsterdam had published a series of leaflets on religious festivals in Amsterdam. And they had every religious festival imaginable, from every religion imaginable, except they decided not to mention Christmas and Easter. And they were talking about how Timmermans seemed to find it sort of impossible to take a pretty obvious line, which is to say, why don't we include the Christians as well? But maybe that was unfair to him. Anyway, you can see the culture war stuff going there. Netherlands is such an extraordinary country. The average person in the Netherlands works, I think, an hour less a week than the average person in Britain and is 20% wealthier. Lovely book, actually, by a former conservative spad called Ben Coates about the Netherlands, which I share with people.
- [20:22]
Alastair Campbell
The lowest debt in Europe, lowest debt.
- [20:24]
Rory Stewart
In Europe has these sort of extraordinary stories. I mean, 100% of the key printing for the chips which are right at the core of the. The AI revolution, are produced in the Netherlands. So in a sense they have a stranglehold over the American economy. Or is it the other way around? Shell people know about. And then other bits are sort of quite complicated. This Catholic Protestant split, you know, what's going on down in the south, where the. The famous Phillips electronic factory used to be, now fallen on slightly hard times. But the thing that struck me most is that there is still a bit of an undercurrent of who are we? What do we stand for? You know, people, older people grumbling that in order to study Dutch now in the Netherlands, you have to study it in English. Basically everybody's now studying English and, and that they are worried they've become a little bit too sort of bland and global.
- [21:17]
Alastair Campbell
Would you mean a Dutch university? If you're doing a degree in Dutch, Dutch literature, you have to do it in English.
- [21:22]
Rory Stewart
Well, somebody, somebody can feed back in to explain what this story is and whether it's fake news. But all the older people around the.
- [21:28]
Alastair Campbell
Table, you can't just spray fake news like this.
- [21:30]
Rory Stewart
Listen, these were professors around the table. All of them nodded at this statement that basically you can't really study Dutch and everything's now in English and they were blaming Mark Rutter for it. I don't know whether he's basically pushed more and more education away from Dutch and into English.
- [21:43]
Alastair Campbell
I've seen when I was a busker nearly 50 years ago now, the Netherlands was my favorite country because the guilder was just the perfect busking currency.
- [21:53]
Rory Stewart
Why?
- [21:53]
Alastair Campbell
Because it was worse. You know, everybody gave you a guilder and it was just worth more than the franc. I mean certainly the lira. Busking in Italy was a nightmare. Throwing you sort of bucket loads of paper.
- [22:03]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [22:04]
Alastair Campbell
I've always liked the Netherlands. I actually wonder if Wilders cannot make the election about Islam, which is his big thing, and about migration. I wonder if he will do as well as last time. We both thought that if he won the last election, which he did, but didn't get into power himself, that that would then fuel this sense of grievance which he would exploit. I think he struggled to do it this time because the framing of political debate has been so much more about international stuff. Ukraine and Gaza. Gaza has become a massive issue within this election. I mean I saw a poll something like 40 odd percent saying that the different parties stance on Gaza will impact the way that they vote. Now I think that says to me that probably means they're leaning more towards the left than towards the right.
- [22:49]
Rory Stewart
Final point is the odd parallels with Nigel Farage which is that again it's a one man party headfielders. It's in fact not really a party at all. It's just him and he seems to find it very difficult to get on with other people. Which was always traditionally the story about Farage and the question is, will Farage be able to overcome that in a way that Wilders has not?
- [23:06]
Alastair Campbell
Well, we shall see. The other thing, Roy, you love this. In fact you should put this in the updated version of Politics on the Edge. One of the big moments in the campaign will be on the 10th of October, something called the Central Plan Bureau which sounds like a sort of OBR for campaigns. They independently present the results of all the different party programs and they say how much they think they will cost and whether the claims about how they will fund them are credible, not brilliant.
- [23:33]
Rory Stewart
That's quite good in the world of fake news, isn't it?
- [23:35]
Alastair Campbell
Absolutely, yeah.
- [23:36]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [23:36]
Alastair Campbell
But they've got 27 parties.
- [23:37]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, it's a lot. 25 parties running the Czech collection. Anyway, time for a break. This episode is brought to you by Google. We won't fully realize the potential gains of AI unless we make it accessible and useful for everybody across the whole UK workforce. That's why Google, for example, are working closely with trade unions.
- [23:57]
Alastair Campbell
AI and trade unions may not sound like the most natural of partners, but the union movement has got a proud history of supporting members from across the economy and and preparing them for the ever changing world of work.
- [24:09]
Rory Stewart
That's why Google partnered, for example with the community union in the UK on a People's first skills pilot called AI Works and it's designed to see how AI could help workers and ultimately create productivity benefits across the whole wider economy.
- [24:24]
Alastair Campbell
Just a few hours of training could save members almost a month a year on routine tasks, time free for the work where their expertise really counts.
- [24:32]
Rory Stewart
One community member, for example, working in a supported living home, said Gemini helped streamline paperwork so she could spend more time with residents.
- [24:40]
Alastair Campbell
That's a very powerful story and it shows the positive impact AI can have on people's lives, making a real difference in the day to day.
- [24:47]
Rory Stewart
Find out how Google's AI is helping fuel the UK's growth and transformation at Goo Gleaiworks.
- [25:03]
Alastair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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- [26:01]
Rory Stewart
Link also gives you four extra months on the two year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the episode description box.
- [26:16]
Alastair Campbell
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question time with me, Alastair Campbell and.
- [26:19]
Rory Stewart
With me Rory Stewart.
- [26:20]
Alastair Campbell
Now Rory calls dear to your heart. Question from Julian soon we're going to be celebrating the 70th anniversary of the first National Parks one of the many great achievements of the post war Labour government today, they're needed more than ever, but they're under huge pressure. And now there is shocking talk, says Julian, that the government wants to water down planning protections that only came into law a couple of years ago. What's your advice, Rory, on getting this government to see the importance of national landscapes and parks and back the cause in the way that Clement Attlee did all those years ago?
- [26:52]
Rory Stewart
Well, listen, it's an interesting story this, which maybe hasn't got quite enough coverage. So the government's considering now putting in an amendment into their bill to water down. How much. Yeah, how much attention the planners need to pay to the fact that something's a protected landscape, a national park or an aomb. And it's slightly technical language, you know, whether you have to take into account or have regard for. But the basic drive of this is the treasury and others are saying it gets in the way of growth, having to worry about a protected landscape. Now, I think that's daft because my question to the treasury would be this, what are you trying to do, right? Are you trying to build 10,000 houses or some big AI data center, in which case, sure, as eggs is eggs, you should not be putting it in the middle of a national park, right? Or are you talking about some small thing like some car park, which is what the current controversy is about, in which case it's not really that vital to your growth agenda and you might as well keep the protection national parks in place.
- [27:52]
Alastair Campbell
Is there any suggestion that they want to do the former?
- [27:55]
Rory Stewart
They're talking about growth, so I'd like to know from them which bits of their growth agenda are currently impeded by the national park and what exactly are they trying to build there? The principle that these things that Clement Atlee set up are amazing. We're going to have to build a lot of houses. Our landscape is under a lot of pressure. The government is committed to biodiversity targets, to nature, to climate, and that they're also talking about nudging into the green belt so they better look after the national parks and the protected landscapes, because it's going to be precious, not just for us, but 50 hundred, 200 years time. People will regret it if those things.
- [28:31]
Alastair Campbell
That's the first I've heard of any suggestion that they might want to build on the national parks.
- [28:35]
Rory Stewart
Well, they certainly want to be able to have more freedom in planning. They don't like the fact that the current law seems to restrict and make planners be very careful about what they build.
- [28:46]
Alastair Campbell
And meanwhile they have announced that they're building the first three new towns they hope before the election.
- [28:50]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, I would suggest this is not a fight the government should be having. I think they should probably drop bringing that amendment in.
- [28:56]
Alastair Campbell
Okay, listen, Rory, let's cheer ourselves up. A few months ago, you will remember we, we mentioned a policy competition for young people by Politica and this was called Policy Ideas for Positive Change. And the challenge that we threw out along with Politica was for young people to write a 1000 word policy proposal and they could choose from the online world. Social inequality, AI, healthcare, climate, crime, education. And we said we would discuss the policy that was chosen as the winner. The winner is Rosie holsall. She is 18, she is from Yorkshire and the Humber. And her proposal is that there should be annual provision of free sports bras and fittings for all secondary school girls.
- [29:47]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And the argument basically is that women participate in sport less than men and there are lots of issues that come from that. Osteoarthritis and actually there was some interesting coverage newspaper last week that people who participate in sport are much more likely to be confident and successful in later life. I guess it's stuff that you'd really buy into. Totally 100% massive sport fan. I just met Rosie by accident in the street walking up here. She was walking with her friends past the Embankment tubes. That was lovely.
- [30:14]
Alastair Campbell
What are the chances she's from Yorkshire?
- [30:15]
Rory Stewart
In counterbalance. She must have been.
- [30:17]
Alastair Campbell
What are the chances?
- [30:18]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [30:18]
Alastair Campbell
On the day that we're going to talk about her proposal of you bumping into her.
- [30:23]
Rory Stewart
Spooky, isn't it?
- [30:24]
Alastair Campbell
It is.
- [30:24]
Rory Stewart
Really makes you wonder whether there isn't a pattern to the universe. Anyways, huge congratulations to Rosie and people may also like to look at the paper, which we'll share in the links. Some of the stats are quite interesting. One in two women suffer from osteoporosis risk compared to one in five men. Women lose up to 10% of bone density in the first five years after menopause. This condition costs the NHS 1.8 billion pounds annually. Only 36% of girls wear a sports bra for PE, although 80% believe it's essential, 72% feel self conscious exercising without one and 69% say they can't run or jump freely without one, which I guess is completely essential for sport. I imagine a sports bra is only part of the general story on women's sport. Many, many other things. But I'm really pleased that Rosie's drawing attention to how incredibly important sport is for development. And how sad it is that according to these statistics, at least women are currently participating less in sport than men at all.
- [31:19]
Alastair Campbell
And I think as we're talking about sport, Rory, we should just acknowledge the women's rugby team winning the World Cup.
- [31:26]
Rory Stewart
Did you watch that match?
- [31:27]
Alastair Campbell
I did against Canada in front of Mark Carney, who looked very glum by the end. And we should also, even though there were no sports bras involved, we should welcome the fact that the Europeans, I was going to say thrash. They thrashed for the first two days and then just held on in the Ryder cup against the United States. And I loved, even though it was a bit childish, I loved watching the entire squad celebrating by singing, are you watching Donald Trump?
- [31:58]
Rory Stewart
Final thing. Just to wrap up, it's been sadly a time of deaths. Quick thoughts about a number of people who sadly died this week. I went to the memorial service of John Sandwich, the elder Sandwich, a crossbencher peer who did really wonderful things quite quietly for international development, worked with Save the Children, other major charities through the 70s and 80s, including some pretty tough solo trips through the Sahel. And when he, as a hereditary entered the House of Lords after 97, became a real quite. I mean, he's a real sort of old fashioned voice. He was very tall, very quiet, spoken very modest, listened very well, but very, very, very steely in standing up for things like Afghanistan. But we've also seen this week the death of Charles Guthrie, Ming Campbell, both of whom you knew well.
- [32:52]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. Charles Guthrie was Chief of Defence Staff in our early time in government. He was an amazing guy. He really was. I absolutely adored Charles Guthrie. I mean, he wore a pinky ring, Rory.
- [33:03]
Rory Stewart
He did. I knew him since I was a kid. I knew he was my neighbour in South Kent when I was growing up.
- [33:08]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah.
- [33:08]
Rory Stewart
When I was. I knew him when I was one.
- [33:09]
Alastair Campbell
Or two years old because he was into his 80s, wasn't he? And his wife died.
- [33:12]
Rory Stewart
So he was a young colonel when I first met him. And my dad, who liked this kind of guy, they were great friends. And Guthrie was a kind of all out, you know, Guards Parachute Regiment, Special Forces star.
- [33:23]
Alastair Campbell
He was the. He was the first Special forces guy to head the armed forces.
- [33:27]
Rory Stewart
That's right, yeah. And went into operations quite late and I injured himself, I think, falling off a horse and tripping the color quite late on.
- [33:33]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. He was, as you know, I don't like pink.
- [33:35]
Rory Stewart
You don't like looking at my ring?
- [33:37]
Alastair Campbell
I liked his, yeah. And I think I've told you before, one of my proudest moments was when he asked me to go and address a load of military top press and he said aleister Campbell is the essay of spin. So that was a great trivia. Ming Campbell. I really like Ming Campbell.
- [33:57]
Rory Stewart
Remind us who he was.
- [33:58]
Alastair Campbell
Well, he was a. He was a Liberal Democrat mp. He was the leader of the lib demons between Charles Kennedy and Nick Kleck. Never quite rose to it. I think even though he was only 65 at the time, there was quite a lot of ageism. Tony was still around young, David Cameron was around young, Charles had been young. So he kind of made way for.
- [34:17]
Rory Stewart
Nick Kleck and his younger life.
- [34:19]
Alastair Campbell
He was a great sprinter but I.
- [34:21]
Rory Stewart
Mean like seriously like Olympics.
- [34:24]
Alastair Campbell
He ran in the Olympics in Tokyo. He was the captain of the Scottish team in the Commonwealth Games in 66. He was once described in the media, regularly described as the fastest white man on earth. Famously beat O.J. simpson, remember him? He beat him in a race once. And a lovely guy. The other person who died this week that was really, really sad to anybody who's involved in the Good Friday agreement was a guy called Martin Mansur who was one of the Irish key people in the Good Friday agreement. So it's been a sad week all round.
- [34:52]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, Ming was on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee with me, so I saw a lot of him. We traveled to Afghanistan together. The lovely thing about the parliamentary committees who travel around the world together and he was a. I mean he was a real kind of classic elder statesman, a very, very distinguished, quiet, distinguished Scot. And I wonder whether there isn't a sort of group of these rather interesting people. Maybe George Robertson is part of a younger group, maybe David Steele is part of another generation, but they were quite an interesting.
- [35:21]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, the other thing about Ming, because he became a quite a sort of high up lawyer and he was very kind of even, you know, when he was kind of getting on a bit, he was very kind of straight backed and so you always had a sense of him being from being quite a posh background. He actually came from a very humble Glaswegian background. He also had this wonderful wife called Elspeth who. She was absolutely brilliant and he proposed to her. She was married to a baronet and he, they got divorced and he got to know her, I think during the divorce through the friend of his lawyer and he proposed to her after two weeks and they were absolutely this sort of amazing, rock solid couple. She died a couple of years ago and. But she was always very funny because she was called Campbell, as am I. And she always say, I know how much you hate the honor system. You. I insist that you call me Lady. Lady. Lady Campbell. She was entitled Three Times to call herself a lady. And he would. He would sort of sing Three Times a Lady to her.
- [36:20]
Rory Stewart
She was the daughter of a sort of classic, almost sort of Charles Guthrie type figure who's portrayed, I think, in. In. Is it Bridge Too Far or Bridge.
- [36:27]
Alastair Campbell
Over Bridge Too Far. Yeah, By Sean Connery.
- [36:31]
Rory Stewart
There we are. Very good. Yeah, yeah. That was her dad.
- [36:33]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, her dad was played by Sean Connery. There we are. They don't make characters like that anymore, Rory.
- [36:39]
Rory Stewart
No, no, no. Except for you and you. Yeah, right. Anyway, we did have a question last week and sometimes it's nice to come back to questions from last week. And a really good listener in this case, Victoria Moore, who was wine editor, Daily Telegraph, really got into this question of the wines that were served at the Trump dinner. So she says it was Whiston Estate 2016, really excellent sparkling wine made on the Goring family estate in West Sussex. So this is how she explains what was served. The wines were carefully chosen to cover off the host country, which was the western wine, the visitors, which was ridge Vineyards, Montebello 2000 US. Even the big ticket, Burgundy, paid subtle respect to the visitors because the domain was bought in 2017 by Stanley Croker, the American billionaire and Arsenal FC owner who donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund in 2016.
- [37:28]
Alastair Campbell
How lovely, how generous.
- [37:30]
Rory Stewart
And a rare Scotch originally bottle for the late Queen's golden jubilee. And a 1912 cognac from the birth year of Trump's Scottish born mother. And Waugh's 1945 vintage port in honour of Trump having been the 45th US President. So they really thought through that list. If anyone's interested, the list was Winston Estate Cube 2016 England Domain, Bonneau de Matre, Corson Charlemagne Grand Cru 2018 France Ridge Vineyards Montevello 2000 US Pol Roger Extra Cubate Reserve 1998.
- [37:56]
Alastair Campbell
Do you think they made a big deal with it because Trump is teetotal, he doesn't drink at all.
- [38:02]
Rory Stewart
That's unfortunate. Never dreams how I just told you that.
- [38:04]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, but do you think they explained, do you think they told him all that stuff? And would he have been interested, do.
- [38:08]
Rory Stewart
You think, do you think is your sense of his personality, that he'd be flattered by all that stuff, that it was the birth year of his mother.
- [38:14]
Alastair Campbell
If he thought that they went to these extra extraordinary lengths.
- [38:17]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [38:18]
Alastair Campbell
To celebrate his presence in our country, even though he didn't drink. I guess he drinks. Did he drink water?
- [38:23]
Rory Stewart
I bet he probably took the wine list back home and I guess, yeah.
- [38:26]
Alastair Campbell
And also those things they always. I remember I've got quite a few at home of those sort of wine lists and menus where everybody at the table signs them. He wouldn't have got all those signatures, but I guess he does like that sort of stuff. And then we'll probably see it pop up on ebay in a few years, sold by one of his granddaughters. I mean, Rory, what do you make of that? His granddaughter flogging hoodies and T shirts from the White House.
- [38:49]
Rory Stewart
It's unbelievable. I was just talking to David Olasuga, who does the Journey Through Time podcast, which is one of our Goal Hanger family of podcasts. And we were talking about the way in which he used the word overton window. In other words, the window of what's acceptable has shifted so far under Trump to. I mean, I notice people say, oh, well, Trump's not so bad because he's not Hitler. He's more like Mussolini. And then people will then say, and Farage is not so bad because he's not quite Trump. And on and on. And I guess the granddaughter comes somewhere into this. Something would be kind of unimaginable. And barely mention, barely gets 10 seconds at the end of Question Time.
- [39:28]
Alastair Campbell
Indeed. See you soon.
- [39:29]
Rory Stewart
Bye bye. Foreign.
- [39:38]
Anthony Scaramucci
Hey, it's Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about my podcast Open Book, which just joined the Goal Hanger network, which we're all very proud of. In my latest episode, I interviewed Goal Hanger's very own James Holland. We spoke about World War II and what World War II teaches us about today. Here's a clip. Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
- [40:00]
James Holland
Well, I think he was a great man. I think he was a man of vision. He was a man of enormous geopolitical understanding and he was a man who offered possibilities. When you're in a life and death struggle, you need people that can persuade you. You need people that can bind you. You need men of vision, of charisma. That's the problem with the moment, is we haven't got those guys. I mean, he's flawed, of course, all the great men are. But thank goodness for the developed world and the democratic world that he was political leader of Great Britain in 1940 and throughout the of level two.
- [40:32]
Anthony Scaramucci
He literally in, in so many different ways, man of the century. I think, because Roosevelt was a charmer. Roosevelt was a great strategist. He pulled the Americans through the depression and helped to manage the war. But without Churchill holding ground in May and June of 1940, it would have been a much darker, much worse world. There would have been not a lot that the Americans could have done without Churchill's steadfastness and his inspiration to his fellow citizens. If you want to hear the full episode, just search open book wherever you get your podcast.
- [41:05]
Alastair Campbell
You are not luminous, Watson, but you are a conductor of light. Here they are. Dr. Mortimer, I presume? Yes. Hi, John. Dr. John Watson. Who is your client?
- [41:23]
Rory Stewart
He was my client, Sir Charles Baskerville. Keep reading.
- [41:32]
Alastair Campbell
A local shepherd. Noted. I saw first that of the maid. Hugo Baskerville passed me thence on his black mare, and there behind him, running mute upon his track, such a hound of hell that God forbid, should ever be at my heels. I wish I felt better in my mind about it. It's an ugly business once, an ugly, dangerous business. And the more I see of it, the less I like it. I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker street last night. Hello.
- [42:12]
Narrator/Actor (Sherlock and Co)
Thor Hanger presents your not Sherlock Holmes.
- [42:15]
Rory Stewart
I'm Henry Baskerville from one of the.
- [42:17]
Narrator/Actor (Sherlock and Co)
Biggest audio dramas of all time.
- [42:19]
Alastair Campbell
Is it bother you? Like in a creepy kind of way? Like in there's an evil giant hound that likes the taste of Baskervilles.
- [42:26]
Narrator/Actor (Sherlock and Co)
Coming away, the seminal gothic novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.
- [42:31]
Alastair Campbell
They're watching.
- [42:32]
Rory Stewart
Who? Who?
- [42:32]
Alastair Campbell
We're watching.
- [42:33]
Rory Stewart
It's not safe.
- [42:36]
Alastair Campbell
I could just make out its pitch black form. Welcome to deepest everything, a hellish void darkest for this piercing yellow glow of eyes. Dartmouth. What do you want? Of giant fangs?
- [42:53]
Narrator/Actor (Sherlock and Co)
No, Sherlock and Co, the hound of the Baskervilles. Listen now. Five stars, says the Eye Paper. Hugely popular, says the Guardian. A successful reinvention of Holmes for a younger generation, says the Times. Search Sherlock and Co wherever you get your podcasts.