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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. Now more and more drivers are moving to electric as the economic and environmental arguments get much harder to ignore.
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And the real benefit of an electric car comes when you can charge affordably at home. Saves time, saves money. Difference between a late night queue on the motorway and stepping outside in the morning to a car that's already full.
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And Fuse makes that shift very, very simple. It's already the fastest growing energy provider in the uk. They go further installing affordable smart EV chargers and linking them directly to their.
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Fuse is not just supplying power, they're setting you up properly. Charger installed, tariff aligned, everything in place.
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Switch to fuse today. Make driving electric cheaper. Find out more@fuseenergy.com politics welcome to the Restless Politics Question time with me, Rory.
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A
Stewart and me Alistair Campbell and Norrie. Let's start with George Layton in Leeds. Please. Could we have a little explainer on what's going on in Venezuela? Is the US gearing up to invade? There's very little in the news about it other than the targeting of drug boats from what I'm hearing, says George in Leeds, the Trump administration is framing Maduro as the leader of the cartels. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that. Just wanted to get your thoughts on what's going on and how this could affect the wider region.
- [01:49]
B
Well, let's start with Venezuela. If people want more detail on Venezuela. We actually did a podcast looking in depth at Venezuela. But of course, oil rich Latin American state are famously associated with Hugo Chavez, a general who led a populist revolution now run by President Maduro, who on all accounts stole the last election and has created an authoritarian state. Big focus for American administrations, partly because there are hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States. Partly in this case because Marco Rubio, the sexist state, has long been committed to the idea of getting rid of the Venezuelan government. Fast forward. The US hit a Venezuelan boat, blew it out, destroyed it and has now done it a number of other times. A number of these Boats have now been destroyed. As we said at the time, it is a sign of a Trump government that is no longer remotely interested in international legal guidance. The American government has been pushing the boundary on international law since it began using drone strikes against terrorists. But at least when it did that, it had congressional authorization to do it. And the congressional authorization was to protect the United States against terrorist attack, and that justified them using drones in Pakistan in this case. These are vessels carrying drugs. There's no clarity, in fact, where these vessels are going. It seemed from Rubio's statement that one of these vessels was actually going towards Venezuela. So they're killing foreign nationals in foreign territory, on the ground, they're carrying drugs. To push it to the extreme that literally nothing would prevent them sending a drone over Britain, blowing up a bunch of people in the British streets, and claiming they're drug runners, and they're taking them out, and they provide no evidence whatsoever of who these people are. There's no legal process at all. Along with that, the US military have now deployed eight warships, several Navy surveillance planes, MQ9 Reapers, which is a type of attack drone, and an attack submarine to the region. They've beefed up their F35 fighter fleet in Panama. There are thousands of US Marines now there. A $50 million bounty has been announced on Maduro's head. And people in Venezuela are absolutely convinced that this is a prelude to regime change. And Marco Rubio is often hinting at this. The idea would be either to do what they did in Iran, which is literally send in missiles, and just kill Maduro in his palace, or send in the Marines and abduct him in order to generate regime change. Why? Well, very strange thing to do, given that we know that Trump is very suspicious of regime change and these kinds of interventions. Why? One theory is that it's because he's trying to expel hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants from the states, and he's using an executive order, which is designed for getting rid of illegal aliens at a time of war. And therefore, in order to justify his expulsion, he needs to declare war on Venezuela to do it.
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A
And he's also thereby creating two of his favorite dividing lines. One of them is, again, essentially what he's saying is, look, are you for dealing with the war on drugs, or are you not? Because these are people who are bringing in narcotics into our country. They're part of the drugs trade, therefore we're entitled to take them out. Are you with us or are you against us? And that's basically where he likes to be. And then the second issue is this thing called tps, which is temporary protected status. So you've got over a quarter million Venezuelans in the states and they're not winning everything in the courts. And one of the most shocking things that happened this week, not directly related to this, but was the house of a judge who had stood in the way of one of Trump's decisions going up, literally going up in flames, terrifying the judge with her family still in the house, apparently, this house literally going up in flames. So this is about basically signaling another dividing line, because of course, a lot of these people came in during the Biden regime. So it allows him basically to say, we are dealing with problems that we've inherited. And he then adds the point, and I said I would. So he's sort of giving himself the COVID by saying, I said I'd do this when I was running for office. I'm now doing it. And basically the details of whether I need approval, whether it's leading or not, you're either with me or against me.
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B
I'm really beginning to sense how much people's giving up on basic ideas of law, the rule of law. Right. I had a friend who's a Harvard graduate from a liberal family, an American, came over to see me last week and she said to me, rory, why are you so upset with what he's doing? Because actually, there have been reports that there was some cocaine floating around in the water after they hit the boat, so they were guilty. And I'm thinking, what the hell has happened here? I mean, all of us were sort of supposed to be brought up from childhood to say, I can't go into the streets in Britain, shoot someone with no evidence, no arrest warrant, no legal process, and then say, well, anyway, some drugs were found on the thing. So it's all justified, the fact that a liberal, Harvard educated person is now beginning to buy into that narrative. It effectively means there is no limit at all on what they do abroad and at home. And I'd love to do this with you maybe in more detail next week or the week after, is to look at what's happening with ice. $160 billion has now been voted for immigration enforcement. The budget of this ICE body, this crazy immigration middle powered budget, yeah, it's higher than any annual, higher than any military, except the US and China annually, as the new calculation. These agents are masked, completely unaccountable. No civil cases can be brought against them, basically. No criminal cases can be brought against them, because that would require Trump's Department of Justice to go after them. Advertising with full on white nationalist mid 19th century stuff. One of their advertising posters represents the white American angel with a group of settlers chasing off Native Americans off their land with Protect the homeland, Protect the heritage.
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A
Wow. Yeah. And I mean, I'm trying to spend a lot less time on social media with some success, I have to say. But whenever I do go on there, you're seeing relentless videos of. I saw one the other day of literally two. And you've got to be careful because you never know what's fake and what's not. But it was two people, I think, in Portland, where he says they're at war. They're at war in Portland, which managed to run a very successful marathon the weekend with tens of thousands of people taking part in this war. But the two protesters standing there face to face with a couple of ICE people, one of whom suddenly just got out of pepper spray and sprayed them in the face. Lots of people just being dragged out of buildings. And I think we talked about Kemi Badenoch on the main podcast. I think she made a mistake in saying that this deportation plan that she's talking about is going to be modelled on ice. I don't feel that Britain is quite in the place to accept that this sort of stuff and the. And the other sort of Trumpian crossover to our politics was Kent County Council this week saying they're going to have to put up council tax because, hey, guess what? It turns out that all this wasted money that they said they were going to find, they've not been able to find it.
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B
That's quite a jump from. To. From ICE going, no, because what it is.
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A
And Farage saying, we're going to model our approach on what Trump has done. ICE and Doge.
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B
Right.
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A
Well, life is more.
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B
Oh, it's the Doge myth.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So just to reinforce why you're completely right on ice and why nobody should ever vote for any party in Britain that was modeling itself on ice. They are now on a recruitment drive. And to get people in, they are recruiting people who are excited by videos of ICE agents throwing people at the back of vans, going around with masks on. They are now arresting people who are turning up for their legal hearings. One of the easiest ways that they get people is that they're turning up for their asylum cases. They're targeting people on the base of their IRS records. In other words, if you are somebody who's come to the United States, who's doing what you should do, turning up to your court hearings and paying your Tax, you're now being particularly targeted by the ICE agents. And as you say, it's the theatre of cruelty. They're videoing everything that they're doing, putting it up.
- [10:26]
A
Yeah, I guess the other big thing happening in the states this week was the government shutdown. Melissa Bell wants to know what we think of the government shutdown and who do we blame? Melissa, why do we have to blame all the time? Why can't we just analyze this from a non blame perspective?
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B
Well, first thing, big plug for restless politics, us. So Kati K. And Anthony Scaramucci did a good show on the details of this lockdown and the way that a lot of this is about Democrats trying to protect Medicare and Trump weaponizing it and saying they've shut down the government in order to help illegals access the health system. And no rational conversation about what the costs are of stripping out Medicare and driving people into emergency rooms instead. And another shout out. A fantastic analysis on Russell Vogt done by the New York Times Daily.
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A
Oh, I read that.
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B
Yeah, the officer management budget guy. Extraordinary account. This kind of man who was part of Trump's first administration, tried to do a lot of the things first time around, didn't succeed, went into the wilderness, spent four years brooding and working with Project 2025 to develop his entire legal strategy so that he came in with Trump too, just firing on all cylinders with all the executive orders ready to go, all the legal moves ready to go. And Trump's been putting out videos of him as the grim reaper walking through Washington.
- [11:52]
A
Yeah, no, I mean, I think the blame game thing though, that the question highlights is it is a big part of what's wrong with American politics right now. And we've got something similar here, but I think there it's on a different level. We talked last week about Trump, had the meeting with the Democrat leaders from Congress and immediately put out this AI video of them ridiculing them basically so that, you know, they're blaming Trump and saying he doesn't want the government to carry on because it means it gives him an excuse to cut budgets. And he does, he talks about, you know, these are, I call them Democrat layoffs. They're Democrat layoffs. They're causing it. So it's absolutely, this is a consequence as well as a cause of polarization. The way that Trump talks about these. It's almost as if all government spending is bad unless it's something that's one of his little pet projects. And of course, there's the other thing you've got so Many times when he was on the record, when Biden was president of him basically saying if the government ever shuts down, you've got to blame the president, because now that it's him doing it, it's very, very different.
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B
Okay, Alice, a question here for you from Alice Palmer and I'd love to hear from you on this. What are Macron's options now? His Prime Minister has resigned after 26 days. Can you give us a brief explainer on what the hell is going on in French politics and try to keep people up to date. We did interview on leading, one of the longest serving one of Macron's prime ministers, Gabrielle et al. But now we seem. And then we also interviewed another one of his prime ministers, Michelle Barnier, Michel Barnier. But at the speed at which they're going, it's quite difficult for leading to interview every French Prime Minister at the moment.
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A
Well, this guy's called Sebastien Lecornu. He was the Defence Minister. He was appointed 20, 24, 25 days ago. And people thought he was making progress because he wasn't announcing a government.
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B
And so he was appointed after the resignation of the man who wanted to introduce the cuts. And he said, I can't get my 44 billion euros of cuts through, I'm resigning.
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A
Correct. But also the parliament wouldn't pass it, so he had to go. And so Lecornu is basically thrown in the towel before the vote because he's basically worked out he's not going to get it through. But he actually.
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B
Why can you see this in advance? I don't even get this. He must have taken the job knowing that this was the deal. I mean, Macron must be pretty annoyed with him. The guy took the job knowing the electoral mathematics, knowing what these parties were.
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A
He spent his 25, 24 days, whatever, going round talking to all the parties, trying to get them to sign up to something. And he obviously thought at certain points he could and other points that he couldn't. It seems that the kind of right wing, the more traditional right wing party, not the Le Pen Party, pull the plug on him fairly late on and he realised he wasn't going to get it through. But the point is it's actually, it will go down in history as the shortest serving government ever, because he didn't name a government during that period. He was obviously, I think, holding back the naming of a cabinet so that if and when he got to the point of thinking he might be able to make a deal, his cabinet would form part of that picture.
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B
He could use the Cabinet positions as a carrot to make le Republicans vote for the bill, give them a seat or whatever.
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A
What happened is this guy, Bruno Rotayo, he pulled out and that's when he realized that his jigsaw was falling apart. So he goes to Macron, he says, look, this isn't going to work. I'm really sorry. And the fundamental problem is that you've now got these three separate blocks in the Parliament. You've got the far left, you've got the centrist and you've got the far right, and they're not giving each other anything.
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B
And you can't make a majority because they're roughly a third each. So you need at least two of them or half of one of them joining them.
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A
You need to be able to get some support from the parties of which you're not a member. Now, Macron has clearly got. We said this when he appointed Beirut, I think I said, look, he maybe has to take the risk of appointing somebody from the left.
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B
He's tended to try to go on the right. He's all about fiscal responsibility and cutting spending and getting the deficit under control. Is that why?
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A
Partly that, but also I think he just hates the left side. He hates the sort of melanchon left so much. Added to which, he probably thinks he can never agree with them, but he's now really only got. He's running out of options, probably where this is going. He's basically said to Lecornau, by the time this question time goes out, Lecornau will be nearing the end of the 48 hours he's been given to try again. So Macron said to him, I get where you're coming from, but I'm not accepting resignation. Try again. I'll give you. Give you two days.
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B
And I don't understand. Why does Macron not take responsibility and try to form this government himself? Why is he delegating all this to his prime ministers?
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A
Because that's the job of the prime minister. The only option he's then got left after that is actually for him to throw in the towel and have presidential elections ahead of time.
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B
And you think he'll be pushed towards that if he keeps losing prime Minister at this rate?
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A
That's where the left and the right are trying to push him. I don't think he's going to go there.
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B
You don't think he will? Because I'm beginning to think that maybe it's going to become increasingly inevitable if he loses them again and again and literally can't do anything. The demand for him to hold the election will be almost irresistible.
- [17:08]
A
It may be. It may be. And that, that then is. But that absolutely is the kind of operation cataclysm for him. This does go back and fair play to you. You said it right at the start when he had the snap election, that you thought it was madness. Now, he obviously thought there was a chance that the country would face up to the warning that if you don't elect a decent, strong government, now we are in le bordel, absolutely in the mess. And he took that gamble. It didn't work. And every time since then, essentially it's become. When I did this fundraiser, the day on the back of the, the, the, the killings in Manchester, somebody asked the question, is Britain becoming ungovernable? To which my answer was very strongly, no, Britain is not ungovernable. But you get the feeling that France actually is right now. So it may, it may be, that is where we end up. And that, of course, is an absolute gift to the far right.
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B
One thing that some people say is that it's to do with the design of the Republic and the Constitution.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And that this whole constitutional model is mad of this sort of super powerful president who's completely detached from the realities of Parliament. But what would be actually involved in creating a sixth Republic?
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A
You'd have to say that the Constitution is broken and that we're going to get a new one.
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B
And is Macron tempted to do that? Or any of these parties tend to do that?
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A
I don't think Macron would be allowed to do that. I think he's. And the extraordinary thing, of course, is he's still going out there in the public and making big statements on foreign policy in particular. But no, this isn't. This is an absolute mess and it's quite hard to see how he gets out of it. I think just having another prime minister, unless he does something very, very bold and does say I go left, I go right, but he's not going to do it with it. He's not going to do it.
- [19:01]
B
And it's heartbreaking because it means that at exactly the time when Europe needs to be stepping up in the age of Trump and speaking up for the rule of law and sorting out its defense and security, we've got a very, very weak Macron who doesn't seem to have the right kind of relationship with the German Chancellor. And somehow, you know, Starmer's obviously made a lot of positive steps, but we simply do not have that sense of kind of unified momentum. Uk, eu, big grand vision. Of how they work in this world.
- [19:34]
A
This is a real mess. It's either going to be a new Prime Minister, new elections, which will probably produce a similar result, or nuclear option is. He basically says, hands up, time's up, gotta go. And then heaven knows what happens.
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B
He'd probably do the elections first, wouldn't he? Before he resets.
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A
Yes.
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B
Okay, final. Final one before the break. Jill Hart, TRIP member, Melbourne, Australia. Hi, Rory and Alastair. Massive fan of your work. Just finished watching the Hack and was pleasantly surprised to see Alastair's cameo. For an Aussie who was aware of the News of the World scandal, but not much else about the hacking, Could Alastair give us a rundown on what happened to him in relation to the hacking scandal? And then Phil Davies, trip member from North Wales, following on from Alastair's surprise cameo appearance in ITV's the Hack. Leveson2, yes or no? If not, why not? There we are, Alistair.
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A
I think the fact that Phil Davis is a Trip member and you just skipped over the name of the place that he comes from in North Wales. Why was that, Rory? Why did you skip over Penman Mawer?
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B
Can't imagine, Alistair. Can't imagine.
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A
Anyway, at least, at least, at least I tried there. Phil. Yeah, the Hack. Have you watched the Hack?
- [20:45]
B
No. Tell us about it.
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A
Yeah, it's quite good. It's. It's. So it's a dramatization of the phone hacking scandal and also the murder of Daniel Morgan, which was this very long running unsolved murder. So it's looking at sort of press, illegality, press and police corruption. And the main. The star, other than my very, very brief caviar, is myself. The star is David Tennant as Nick Davis, the Guardian journalist. And Toby Jones plays Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, which is really, it's really, really interesting. Shows you what a great actor can do because he doesn't look remotely like Alan Rusbridger. Alan Rusbridger is a taller guy. Toby Jones is very short and. And yet he captures him somehow really well. But I think I watched it in a. You know, it's quite a few hours, but I watched it with Fiona and I got. I got quite angry by the end. My role, funny enough, is this very, very one line in my diaries that the Jack Thorne, the writer, wanted me to. To. To deliver. Okay. And the line is when. It was when Stephen Byers was on the receiving end, our Transport Minister was on the receiving end of the kind of tabloid treatment over an affair. And I wrote this line in my diary, it's like when they, they set out to kill you and then when they've killed you, they get a bit bored and they're missing something so they try and kill the corpse. Okay, so that was my line. So David Tennant marches in as, as Nick Davis and then I deliver this line.
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B
So you're acting with David Tennant.
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A
I mean that's, you've made it my co star.
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B
You've made it to the very big, big stuff. Yeah, yeah.
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A
But funny if we had an example of this this weekend.
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B
What are you acting with a major.
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A
Of them being wanting to kill the corpse.
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B
Oh, right.
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A
Which was Angela Rayner. Angela Rayner has been, you know, driven out of office over the stuff to do with her stamp duty. And yet several of our newspapers led at the weekend on this complete total non story about the fact that her boyfriend was spotted in, in her car, her government car. But you know, that sort of hammered home the point that even though they've managed to sear off, they want to kind of knock a few nails in the, in the coffin. By the way, I think she'll be back. So yeah, what I found anger making was that it brought it back. And the question was, you know, what happened to me? I mean I was one of many, many, many, many people whose phone was hacked and got some money for it and what have you. And I've still got another case going on with the, another newspaper. But the scale of it and I think what made me angry by the end of it was so this is pretty high level crime. Okay. It's pretty serious crime that they were doing and they knew they were doing it and all.
- [23:33]
B
And the crime for international listeners is that they basically were often calling your voicemail, guessing what your pin code was, listening to your voicemail messages and using that to write stories attacking you, which could be very, very personal because obviously what's in your voicemail could be from almost anyone.
- [23:46]
A
Yeah. And they first really got onto it when they started, the royals started to realize that things that very few people knew. So. And the thing is, I got damages even though it was impossible to know whether there were stories from my voicemails or not. It was the fact of it. But the point is they knew it was going on, it was happening clearly on an industrial scale and yet they blamed it on one rogue reporter.
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B
Right.
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A
And the only person, I think I'm right of any seniority who got properly punished, as it were, was Andy Coulson.
- [24:21]
B
Right.
- [24:21]
A
Who went to jail. And he went to jail really he became a high profile case largely because he ended up working for David Cameron. But then at the end there's these, you know, ends with these graphics on the thing and it points out that Rebecca Brooks, for example, who was the.
- [24:38]
B
Is the world editor.
- [24:39]
A
He's the world editor at the time and also sort of, you know, senior executive in the organization. She resigned and got an 11 million pound payoff and then within a year was back in an even more senior job. And so you have the whole, the Murdoch's there and it leaves a very, very bad taste. But unlike Jack Thorne's adolescence, which kind of went whoosh and just sparked a massive national debate, I don't feel this one has. Why? Because the press don't want to be talking about it. So the question, Leveson2, is there any way back for it? There should be. This is about corrupt relations between the press and the police. But I suspect that, you know, Keir Starmassouge shows no indication he wants to.
- [25:20]
B
Do because he senses that the media are really against any form of regulation and will punish anyone who tries to push it out.
- [25:26]
A
Yeah. Although to be absolutely frank, they punish him pretty hard anyway. But listen, it's very, it's a, it's a very good watch and it will bring back a lot of memories for a lot of people and I think will anger a lot of people.
- [25:39]
B
And plug, as we go to the break, you've done a great series on Rupert Murdoch.
- [25:44]
A
Indeed.
- [25:44]
B
Miniseries for listeners. Subscribe to the Restless Politics plus become a member. And you can hear you discussing this extraordinary man, Rupert Murdoch, who I guess is now in his 90s.
- [25:54]
A
In his 90s, yeah. And you know, it's with Michael Wolfe. He's written a couple of books about Rupert Murdoch and it is, yeah, I think people enjoy it. We're, we're trying to, we both try to be dispassionate, but I think it's fair to say we've both got quite strong views about his influence on the world.
- [26:12]
B
I mean, I think he's mesmerizing. As I've often said on the show, I'm really struck by how even before I became a politician, he kind of found me in New York and drove me into his newsroom and sat me down with the editors. And he seemed like a real newspaper man. He seemed to really want to challenge his editors. Get to the story. What are a couple of things that have struck you fresh about him in making these series?
- [26:37]
A
Well, obviously I read a lot before we put it together and I mean a lot of Memories came back. To be absolutely frank, his Australian background is important. His father's a very important figure in his life. His father is. I mean, Murdoch is not a self made man. Yes, he made a huge thing of himself, but he was given a pretty good start in life. I mean, for example, when he first came to Europe, his dad thought it'd be really nice if they could pop in and see the Pope. Well, not many people get to do that. Likewise, I think his first visit to America, Rupert Murdoch met the then president. So, you know, he's operated in those levels a lot of his life, presumably.
- [27:20]
B
Given how old he is. He's met popes and presidents 70 years.
- [27:23]
A
Ago, going way back. Yeah. And I think Michael and I both came to the conclusion that if you sort of analyze power, I mean, power is a very subjective thing. Okay. So you can. We can have a debate about whether the Prime Minister of Denmark is more or less powerful than the Prime Minister of Sweden. We can have a debate about whether the British Prime Minister is more or less powerful than the Secretary of State of the United States. But so it's subjective. Okay. But I reckon if you go through the last 70 years and give a score to Rupert Murdoch's power in that year over the 70 years, I think he's kind of. He's up in a pretty high place in a global league table.
- [28:05]
B
But spoiler alert, presumably one of the really big moments, though, is when he thinks he has the power to stop Trump and it turns out he doesn't quite.
- [28:13]
A
Well, that is very. Of course, when we get onto Trump, which is, you know, towards the end of the series, we have lots about his relationships with Thatcher, his relationship obviously with my old boss Tony Blair, and how we kind of manage that. We go in some detail into the famous visit that we made to Australia to Tony to deliver a speech to all his editors, for which we got quite a lot of flack. We don't gloss over any of the criminal stuff and the phone hacking, what have you. And. But once we get on to kind of Michael's area of expertise, which is the relationship with Trump, you know, Michael, a bit like Trump, Michael speaks in very black and white terms and he basically thinks that Murdoc absolutely despises Donald Trump, but as the President, you've got to deal with him.
- [28:56]
B
And amazing, isn't it? Because that's the moment at which we think this is the man who makes or breaks presidents. This is the man who controls Fox News. And Murdoch must have felt if I think this guy's an idiot. I can stop him becoming president.
- [29:11]
A
What happens there is that actually Trump becomes a more powerful player inside Fox News than Murdoch and that is Murdoch kind of feeling the sense of losing control of what he's created. Anyways, I hope people enjoy it because, you know, I mentioned Murdoch to a couple of my daughter's friends recently and they didn't really know I was talking about.
- [29:31]
B
Well, the answer is this is the the next succession. Anyone who likes watching succession should be listening to your miniseries.
- [29:39]
A
Yeah, we do make quite a few references to Logan Roy, it has to be said.
- [29:42]
B
Very good.
- [29:43]
A
Anyway, people want to have a listen to that. Just go to the restispologies.com you have a free trial and if you like it, you sign up.
- [29:51]
B
Let's take 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.
- [30:08]
A
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 preparing them for the ever changing world of work.
- [30:20]
B
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.
- [30:35]
A
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.
- [30:42]
B
One community member, for example, working in a supported living home, said Gemini helped streamline paperwork so she could spend more time with residents.
- [30:51]
A
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.
- [30:58]
B
Find out how Google's AI is helping fuel the UK's growth and transformation at Goo Gle. AI works. This episode is brought to you by Revolut Business. The all in one account to manage your finances.
- [31:18]
A
Now, politics has its share of bad deals, trade summits, late night negotiations. Often somebody walks away with the short straw.
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A
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B
All the entrepreneurs and business owners out there. If you're ready to simplify your business finances and exchange like an expert, now's the time to open a Revolut business account. Plus you'll unlock a £200 welcome bonus or the equivalent in your local currency if you sign up and add money to your account by the end of 2025. Just use the link in the description. Fees and terms and conditions apply. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Advice like noise is abundant, but good counsel and clear guidance can be the difference between walking in circles and finally moving forward. 10th of October is World Mental Health Day and I guess a moment to reflect on the importance of mental health and a reminder that progress often begins not with political speeches or manifestos, but often with a quiet conversation. It's also worth pausing to thank those who make those conversations possible, therapists and the differences they make quietly every day. BetterHelp has over a decade of experience. It's got an industry leading match fulfillment rate. It's got over 30,000 accredited professionals and has served 5 million clients. Their model is built on matching, helping you find the right therapists and switch easily if the fit isn't right. Sometimes a single exchange doesn't just ease your mind, it sets a new direction. So if you're ready to try to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com RestPolitics that's better. H-E-L-P.com Rest Politics.
- [33:41]
A
Welcome back to the Rest of Politics Question time with me.
- [33:43]
B
Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart.
- [33:45]
A
Now this episode is brought to you.
- [33:46]
B
By Google and In particular Google's AI model which is Gemini 2.5 Pro, which has been used by the government's incubator for AI to build a new tool for the government which is called Extract. It's a system which is helping local councils process planning applications more quickly. Extract uses Gemini's advanced abilities to understand text, reason about images, use tools and more. Turn old planning documents, including blurry maps and handwritten notes, into clear digital data, speeding up decision making timelines for council staff. So Google have asked us if AI like that had been available during your time in politics, where and how could it have helped to make faster, more informed Decisions.
- [34:27]
A
I'm tempted to my old friend and colleague Peter Heim. He wrote a very funny substance last week about party conference speeches. He was reminding us of the use of fax machines. We used to do everything on fax, so I think it would have been incredibly useful. Let's just say you had three different people working on a speech. Now, you know more about this than I do. If I took three different drafts from three very different people who'd all been given the same brief, okay, would I be able to use this then to say, okay, what I want this speech to do is A, B, C. Can you merge these three speeches for me and cut it down to 4,000 words? Would they be able to do that?
- [35:09]
B
Yeah, they would. They would. They'd do it very slickly. Yeah, very, very slickly. I mean, there's some hallucination, so you need to think of it more as a kind of bright graduate assistant. I mean, you have to check the thing at the end, but, yeah, listen, a couple of examples I thought about from my own time in government. One of them is, is I was the Environment Minister doing flooding. And one of the things that AI can now do very, very powerfully is begin to predict flooding events with more accuracy. And that's really important because if you can get support to communities before a flood happens, it's far more cost efficient than trying to do the emergency stuff after the flood happens. So that's one thing. Second thing was I was the Prisons Minister, and in prisons, we had over 100 different databases which didn't speak to each other. Bringing together those hundred databases so that you can begin to have thoughtful conversations, straightforward as, you know, what would be involved in my saying we're going to provide financial support for prisoners to do a degree, I need to know how many people are graduates or not. Right? Taking all this massive pool of data that we have about prisoners that's never integrated can really help on managing reoffending, providing education, reducing violence.
- [36:22]
A
When I was up in Liverpool for the Labour Party conference, I was talking to somebody who works for one of the current cabinet who said that this current member of the Cabinet, he likes everything to be on the screen. And the Civil Service is finding it really hard to get out of the red box syndrome. You know, the system where you'll know this is a minister, you have the red box and the. All day long there is a process of sifting going on as to what the minister should see, what you need to see overnight, what they need signed.
- [36:54]
B
Off, and even the sequence in which it goes into your box is very important. I mean, this is a joke. And yes, Minister, you always have to kind of look at the bottom of the box first. Yeah.
- [37:01]
A
So Elizabeth Minister just doesn't. Doesn't want a red box. Wants everything online.
- [37:07]
B
Well, to be honest, I didn't really want a red box. I mean, they're these huge, unwieldy things.
- [37:11]
A
They're bloody heavy as well. Lined with lead.
- [37:14]
B
Yeah. Either to defend you from an Athenian bullet or so they can sink when you drop them into the Thames.
- [37:22]
A
Oh, it's such a marvellous country. We're so modern. But presumably AI would. This thing would help that office transition to the minister who wants it done in a different way.
- [37:32]
B
The point is that all these productivity benefits are not abstract. You can already see it extract. This Google platform is already there to help cut planning backlogs. And workers and businesses across the UK are already saving time with AI tools and training. It's already being tested with councils in Westminster, Hillingdon, Nuneaton and Exeter.
- [37:54]
A
So it's an example of public sector innovation, one of the many ways Google's AI is fueling the UK's growth and transformation.
- [37:59]
B
Find out more@goo.gle aiworks. Question from Jess L from London. Reform has five MPs, the Greens have four. And with the Green Party Conference this weekend, the Green Party leader, Zach Polanski, was the only party leader not interviewed on the BBC. Laura Kay and zero airtime about the Green Conference. How on earth can the BBC try and claim with any type of sincerity that it is impartial, blatant bias and not giving the Green leaders any opportunity at all? Added to that, Zak is the only party leader that is both Jewish and Mancunian. And so also, given recent events, wouldn't he have been an obvious person to speak to?
- [38:45]
A
The answer to the last part is definitely yes, although he has a very strong pro Palestinian line. I mean, they've got a point because the BBC and others in the media argument for why they give so much coverage to reform is that they're doing well in the polls. Well, the Greens are doing reasonably well in the polls. And particularly since he's taken over, I actually, I must give a shout out to. I'm allowed to mention the New Statesman, but they had some amazing data. I'll give it to you, Roy Somebody did an analysis of 1.5 million mentions of MPs in the media of parties and MPs in the media reform have had 70,732 mentions per MP.
- [39:26]
B
Okay.
- [39:26]
A
The Liberal Democrats have had 645 per MP, less than 1% of the mentions that Farage gets. Yeah, I think on the Greens there is this Sack Polanski. I hadn't noticed that he wasn't getting much coverage on conventional media, because he certainly gets a lot on social media and he's also quite savvy at media. He actually sent me a message last night saying, make sure you watch our party broadcast tonight. I think you'll like it.
- [39:55]
B
You see? Smart that. So this was party that used to poll 2%, now regularly polling about 10%, got about 900 councillors, four MPs, which was a big breakthrough in the election. We interviewed Caroline Lucas on the show, which I think people enjoyed, and we will, I hope, be interviewing Zach Polanski soon.
- [40:11]
A
In fact, we are. The reason I was in touch with him is why haven't we got you on the podcast yet? And he said, have you checked your diary of late? And I'd completely forgotten we'd already arranged it. So we are getting him on, I thought his question conference, I can't pretend I watched lots of it, but I sort of went and watched bits of it. There was a lot of energy, no doubt about that. When I was a journalist, honestly, I feel bad about this now, looking back, we used to cover the Greens as a complete joke. We used to literally have photographers going around just taking pictures of sandals and see how many of them were sandals and carried hessian bags and had sort of wacky haircuts. I know, not good.
- [40:46]
B
I like the classic.
- [40:47]
A
Whereas I think what's interesting about the Green is, and this isn't just in the uk, this happened in. This has happened in Germany and other parts of Europe. Their main message has moved away from the environment.
- [40:59]
B
And my challenge, I just sort of get to the bottom of this. Your friend Peter Hyman has talked very well about the way in which he thinks that a lot of the big issues on the American progressive left, some of the ways in which Black Lives Matter, Me too, Gaza demonstrations, etc. Went alienated a lot of mainstream American opinion. And I guess the challenge maybe for the Green Party is if they have become the party which has passed a motion designating the Israeli military as an international terrorist organization. If they're leaning hard into key issues, transgender issues around race, they may begin to feel to people a little bit like the problems that people had with the progressive American left, that it had gone too woke and that it didn't speak to mainstream opinion.
- [41:56]
A
Well, he is definitely to the left of the people he stood against those who are currently in Parliament. But I call me a victim of spin for heaven for Fend the thought. But as a result of his message, I did watch his party election broadcast last night, and I've got to say, it was a very effective piece of communication. He's a very good communicator and he didn't do that stuff. He was all about wealth and inequality.
- [42:21]
B
Got you. Because I would have thought the risk is that you can get a very strong loyal base, but you'd never get above about 10%. You'd be a party with about 10% of votes if you went too hard in that.
- [42:32]
A
Yeah. I mean, look, what's happened is that they have decided that labor is moved to the right and they're going to fill that gap. His whole message, actually, it was filmed in Manchester and it started off with saying, this is the area where I grew up. When I was growing up, I always felt there was hope. And I think what people are feeling right now, there's no hope. People are running out of hope, but we mustn't. And he was trying to be positive the whole time. I don't think he mentioned Keir Starmer or another leader once. He might have mentioned other parties at one point. And then it all worked through this idea. He had this very powerful piece of communication when it was dark. And he said, you know, up here you've got people sleeping and you've got people who can't sleep because they're worried about their kids and they're worried about they don't have a job and they're worried about whether they can keep their home, whether they can feed their kids, et cetera. And there are also people sleeping tonight who, by the time they've woken up, would have made more money on the wealth. They already have that. Everybody who lives in this street and everybody who lives in this area put together. And that was his argument for a wealth tax. And then he sort of summed it up with this very effective slogan, make hope normal again.
- [43:45]
B
That's very smart.
- [43:46]
A
The other thing that's interesting about leadership and all that, John Curtis, the polling guy from the BBC, we talk a lot about charisma and what it is and why it matters and what have you. The only two leaders currently who poll well in relation to charisma are Farage and Polanski. And he has got a very populist side to him. So he does project the wealth tax as being able to sort the health service will give everybody a bright future, education will be fixed, jobs will be plentiful, etc. So there is that sort of populist element to it. But I think what he's trying to do is deliberately say, and there's a risk to this, by the way, because some Greens are fighting Lib Dems and Tories in not least on the environment, which I don't think he even mentioned last night. I could be wrong, but I listen, I think he's, we are going to get him on the podcast. I think he's very, I think he's interesting and he's, but he's, I think he's aware of the trap that you've talked about, and I don't think he looks to me like he's going to jump into it. Okay, Rory, a couple of things before we go to the final question. First off is we talked about Czech elections last week. As we predicted, Babis, the guy who leads the it's so weird. His party means yes, but it's a N O. It's spelled a N O. He won, not with a convincing result. He's gonna have to put together a coalition, but that's going to be quite significant. And the other big political election, in quotes, was, of course, Syria, where our most listened to interviewee Ahmed Al Shara, has put together this sort of hybrid parliament. They've elected them in through council, but.
- [45:23]
B
It'S a positive step. I mean, remember when we were there interviewing him, there were many people who believed he'd never hold an election at all, that he was entirely anti democratic. This is hybrid, but it is about not just getting rid of the former regime loyalists, but also getting rid of the terrorists who were on his side and trying to create some of the indirect mechanisms for getting some representation going. So I think it's definitely a step in the right direction. And he still faces all those problems we talked about. Huge problems with Kurds, huge problems with the economy, et cetera, et cetera.
- [45:51]
A
Final question. We did a thing recently about the importance of maintaining hope, and I'm going to ask you, even though it's about her death, Jane Goodall. We've got a question here from Tim o', Callaghan, and it points back to the time when we talked last week about people who recently died. He wants to ask if we have any memories or insights into Jane Goodall.
- [46:13]
B
Well, look, she was extraordinary, so great expert on chimps. I mean, my big memory of her is I was given an honorary degree in the University of Paris and she got a degree at the same time. So this is like 15 years ago.
- [46:27]
A
So what had you done 15 years ago to deserve an honorary degree from not very much. Go to Eton?
- [46:32]
B
Not very much. Exactly. I got it. Exactly. I got it purely for that. She, on the other hand, got it for 50, 60 years of distinguished scientific research. So I get up on stage, I make my little speech, and I thought it went quite well. And then I sit down and she stands up and she does a probably a 75 second full imitation of a chimpanzee's mating call down the microphone and the entire room is rising to their feet, kind of standing ovation. And I realize I just was not remotely in her league and never will be.
- [47:04]
A
Her communication is amazing. We should put in the newsletter an interview that she's done for Netflix, and it's one of those interviews only to be put out after I've gone. But she actually addresses the theme that we talked about in relation to the United nations and the Sustainable Development Goals, which is hope. You have to keep hope and everybody has to have hope in their hearts and we can all make a difference. And she also talks about her desire that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping could be put in the first spaceship and never come back. So, no, she's an amazing woman and very, very sad that she's died, but, yeah, what a legacy.
- [47:44]
B
Brilliant. Well, thank you.
- [47:50]
C
Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Sambrook here from the Rest Is History podcast. And I have a special message to listeners of the Rest Is Politics. I know on the Rest is Politics you hear all the time about Naja Farage, about the threat of reform, the specter of Brexit, the anti immigration stuff that's so common. Do you want to know where all that comes from? Because we on the Rest Is History have done an episode exploring just this. It's an episode looking at Enoch Powell, perhaps the most controversial character in modern British history, and his Rivers of Blood speech. And we will be digging into his effect on the Tory Party, his role as a kind of intellectual godfather for reform, his importance in the wider story of race and immigration in Britain. So tune in to the Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts, and look for episode Enoch Powell, Rivers of Blood. Is this the man who broke British politics forever?