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461. Question Time: China’s Spy Web, the Tel Aviv Fan Ban, and Japan’s New Thatcher
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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com 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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- [01:46]
Rory Stewart
Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time.
- [01:49]
Alistair Campbell
With me, Rory Stewart, and me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, we've had lots of questions on this over the recent weeks and we haven't really got into it. Dominic Trip, Glasgow Does Alastair agree with Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary? The answer is almost certainly no. That Jonathan Powell's job is hanging by a thread. Definitely the answer is no after the whole China spying day battle. And can we have a classic Rory explainer about the Chinese spying issue? So, Rory, I managed to answer my part of the question in one word. Over to you.
- [02:20]
Rory Stewart
Okay, so what happened here is that somebody called Chris Berry, who's a Brit, who was living in Hangzhou in China, became very close, it seems, to an officer from the Chinese Security Service and began briefing Tsai Chi, who's a very senior Politburo member, and writing reports from him, you know, almost 40 reports on what was happening in British politics.
- [02:43]
Alistair Campbell
Let me just jump in there. He's almost like the Jonathan Powell of the Chinese government setup. So we're not talking about, you know, Politburo member, we're talking somebody really serious.
- [02:53]
Rory Stewart
And heavyweight here, really senior and heavyweight, and therefore presumably very flattering to the ego of this British academic who's writing reports for him. The British academic then recruits his friend, who is called Cash, Christopher Cash, who is working as a Parliamentary assistant for Tom Tugenhart and Alicia Kearns, who are senior Tories. Tom Tugenhart, who's been chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, successor Tugenhart on his way to be the Security Minister. And they're very focused on China. Cash starts producing reporting back to Buri that then gets fed into the report to Tsai Chi. And it's pretty straightforward, classic espionage, because it's a case of somebody in the office of a senior member of Parliament passing information to the Chinese government for payment. The case really broke open because, landing at the airport, Berry's bag is opened and thousands of pounds of cash are found inside the bag. So a case is launched by the Crown Prosecution Service and then the Crown Prosecution Service, to the horror of people like Tom Tugenhart and others, decide not to proceed with the case. And their argument is that in their interpretation of the 1911 law, they would need to convince the jury that China was a really significant threat to UK national security. It wouldn't be enough just to say that this guy was spying for the Chinese government, giving them information, have to demonstrate that China was a serious threat to national security and so they don't proceed with the case. And the reason that your friend Jonathan Powell is in the mix is that Jonathan Powell held a meeting and a senior civil servant wrote a brief for the Crown Prosecution Service in which he pointed out, in a brief that was pretty clear about the spying that had taken place and what had happened, that under the New Labour government, they were trying to create better economic relations with China. Now, my view on the whole thing is that the Crown Prosecution Service made a big mistake and the government should have been clearer in explaining the law here. Essentially, the Crown Prosecution Service were worried that under the 1911 act, and actually, incidentally now you charge it under a Later Act, 2023 act, where spying for a foreign power, full stop, is a crime.
- [05:18]
Alistair Campbell
It basically fell between the cracks of this legislative change from an Official Secrets act that was long said to be out of date to a National Security act, which is, as you say, basically says, if you're taking bundles of cash for selling secrets to a foreign power, ally or enemy, then that is not all.
- [05:35]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And actually the Official Secrets act, certainly when I was in government, it didn't matter whether you were spying for the French, the CIA or the Russians.
- [05:43]
Alistair Campbell
Which did you do, Rory?
- [05:44]
Rory Stewart
Exactly.
- [05:45]
Alistair Campbell
When you say it didn' matter, what do you mean by that?
- [05:48]
Rory Stewart
What I mean is that you would be prosecuted. Right. You were betraying your country, you were a traitor, regardless of whether it was the Americans, the French, the Israelis or the Chinese who'd convinced you to pass over secrets. So I think the Crown Prosecution Service was unbelievably weird and risk averse. Presumably they were worried they would take the case and lose the case. I don't know why they didn't take that risk. It's very, very, very odd. And the government, I think, is innocent, completely innocent. I don't think the government's done anything improper in this, but as I said last week, they've been really bad at explaining it. They should have been straight out there saying, listen, and perfect for Keir Starmer. I used to be the head of the Crown Prosecution Service. I know more about this than any single person in Parliament and probably more than anyone in the entire United Kingdom. It's an independent decision. This isn't like Trump's America. We're not going around telling prosecutors who to prosecute. They make their own decision and they make a decision on whether they think they're going to win and they decided they couldn't win. Now then, the question is, does Starmer want to go further than that and comment and say, well, actually, in my personal view, it's a bit surprising. Maybe that's something that you leak. You get someone to say informally, off the record to a journalist, that number 10's a little bit surprised that they didn't proceed with this because actually, they would have had a very good case of winning, regardless of what was said about China as a national security threat.
- [07:11]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, look, it's. It's one of those. Fiona kept saying that as it was sort of churned out on the news again and again and again with very few new facts being added. Although then eventually the government published the evidence that had been given by their representative in the case, who is Jonathan Powell's deputy, the deputy National Security Advisor that she said. It's. This reminds me a bit of the whole Westland story back in the. Do you remember the Westland helicopter story? It was one of those things. It sort of churned on and on and on, and by the end of it, nobody really fully understood what the hell it was about. And to this day, I can't fully explain it. I'm sure Michael Heseltine could, but I couldn't. But, and I'm glad, by the way, that you think the government is, because I just don't. The question is Jonathan's job hanging by a thread? No, it's not and it certainly shouldn't be. And what the government published, it strikes me fits with the narrative that you've just put. But of course, we're in this very highly politicized world where Chris Philp and Kemi Badenoch are determined to prove that the government has somehow done something wrong. And then in the government's response to that, their line of attack has been, well, this was happening on your watch with your MPs when you were in power under legislation that you failed to change in a timely fashion. So it's just become a bit of a mess, Alistair.
- [08:28]
Rory Stewart
On the communications point, though, why couldn't they have done what I'm suggesting, which is Starmer, say, I was the head of the Crown Prosecution, I know more about this than anyone else.
- [08:35]
Alistair Campbell
He kind of did that. He kind of did that.
- [08:37]
Rory Stewart
And then where was the quick off the record brief to the journalists that would set out on the front page of the Times what the government's position was?
- [08:45]
Alistair Campbell
I'm not entirely convinced that you had to do that off the record. I think you could get a look, we're going to talk in a minute about the Maccabi Tel Aviv, the Prime Minister downward. They had no problem intervening in what is actually a process that is meant to be left to independent authorities. So I don't think there would have been any problem. Look, if this had been on our watch, I think you would absolutely have made sure everybody understood you thought this was the wrong decision. Now, Stephen Parkinson, the guy who apparently made the decision, who I know from our government days, he was actually part of the legal team. In fact, this is an element of the story. I'm surprised that our, actually, they don't have memories, our journalists these days. But he was a member of our legal team in the Hutton Inquiry. He was around then. And he's a very good, very good legal brain, a very good legal mind. But whether there's something within this that he just felt didn't take it to that place where he could be guaranteed or where they felt there was a really good chance of a. Of a conviction, I don't know. I don't know.
- [09:48]
Rory Stewart
One thing we haven't talked about much is that in the past, of course there was an attempt to prosecute a parliamentary aide with Russian links who worked for Mike Hancock, who was a, a Lib Dem MP that didn't manage to get through despite the CPS getting the evidence. And of course what China's doing here, which is exactly the same as every other major country including the United Kingdom and the United States and France is doing, is operating in this ambiguous territory of consultancy reports. And what they're doing is they're allowing people like Barian Cash to half know that they're spying because they're taking cash to provide reports for a senior Politburo member on what's happening in Parliament. And half convince themselves they're just providing, you know, open source reporting. And that ambiguous thing is part of the trick of modern spying. It's very tempting. Instead of classic thing which is you suborn a member of your enemy intelligence agency and actually get them carrying out classified documents, what's happening here is they're not quite getting classified documents. They're reporting sometimes gossip from Tom Tugenhart's office. Some of that's unreliable. He's not actually an employee of the government. So maybe that's also feeding into the CPS's calculation. And that of course helps intelligence agencies to use these ambiguities.
- [11:13]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, but if you look at, we've talked a lot about for example Russia and China and the way that they're operating in, in Africa. I mean, you know, when we talked about Prigozhin that you're sort of, it's almost like privatized national security and privatized diplomacy and privatized espionage. And of course that allows you to sort of just put it at arm's length and it not to be so clear cut. Now I don't know any, I don't know anything beyond what I've read in the, read in the newspapers and heard on the radio and TV about these two guys. But I've read enough to make me think that it would have been a very fascinating and from their perspective, very, very dangerous court case. And of course the other thing we shouldn't step away from, as you said, all countries do it, some do it bigger and better than others. And China are absolutely right out there. As I think I said to you before, that somebody told me that there are roughly over a million people working for Chinese, essentially for the Chinese security services. I mean that's a lot of people. So you said when we first discussed this, you know, why do they care what these Tory backed benchers are Thinking, well, because that's their job. They probably analyze our discussions, Roy, to see whether they think we've been talking to anybody who knows what's going on.
- [12:31]
Rory Stewart
This is your opportunity, Alistair, to come. You know, have you at any moment taken money from the Chinese or Russian government to promote their cause on this show? That's what we want to discuss, Roy.
- [12:39]
Alistair Campbell
I think that there are some things that we shouldn't discuss on this program, but the answer is no. Have I ever taken their hospitality in the way that lots of the Brexit people did in the run up to the Brexit referendum? No.
- [12:53]
Rory Stewart
Well, there was this famous thing called caviar diplomas when the Azerbaijanis were trying to get people to support them in the Council of Europe. There were these amazing scenes where people would travel back and forth with huge tins of caviar, including this man, Mike Hancock, who, as I said, almost got caught up with his aide working with the Russians, who couldn't tell anyone how many times he'd been, I think, to Russia because he dropped his passport conveniently in the sea.
- [13:20]
Alistair Campbell
Wow. I do think, though, Rory, that we shouldn't move away from the bigger picture on this. You know, we are. Whether we call them an enemy or not, they are seriously trying to disrupt our economics, our politics, our way of life. They are. There's no doubt about that. China is doing it, Russia is doing it, Iran is doing it. And, of course, this has now got into this really acute diplomatic issue, which we discussed with your very good friend Mike Pompeo, when you were sort of losing your temper with him on our excellent episode of Leading. But this is the subject of the embassy, when do you remember, he said, you know, you people really going to be so stupid as to give the Chinese this massive new super embassy where every single person in there is going to be working for Chinese intelligence. And so this has already been delayed once. It looks like it's been delayed again. So the Chinese, they've already paid a quarter of a billion for the premises. And now this sort of. Within this context, Keir Starmer has said that he's very open to the embassy being open there. Others are suggesting that even the application is unlawful. If any guarantees were given about not spying on the spies or whatever it might be.
- [14:34]
Rory Stewart
This is entirely insane. Every embassy in the world of every major power is a spy base. All of them. Doesn't matter where it's put, doesn't matter how big it is. They're all spy bases. We got to grow up. I mean, this is. It would Be true for, I'm afraid, everybody's embassies.
- [14:51]
Alistair Campbell
So you would say just go ahead with the plans, Just go ahead and build it.
- [14:54]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, absolutely. And the Security Service needs to make sure there isn't sensitive fiber optic infrastructure passing under the embassy and needs to work out how to run proper counterintelligence operations to protect us from operations run from that embassy. But it's absurd to suggest the Chinese shouldn't have an embassy because they might be spying from it. That's what the Chinese do and the Russians do. And I dare say quite a lot of our allies do, too.
- [15:16]
Alistair Campbell
And it's what we do, including on our. I mean, I don't think I'm giving any secrets away here, including on our allies. So there we are.
- [15:24]
Rory Stewart
Here's a question coming in from Charlie from Sheffield, the Maccabee, Tel Aviv Fiori is interesting. From a left versus right media perspective, the divided framing is as predictable as it is stark. Goodness, grace me, it's like a amazing postmodern analysis.
- [15:38]
Alistair Campbell
It's like one of your columns in the Westmoreland Gazette.
- [15:40]
Rory Stewart
Exactly, exactly. In one telling, it's about Jewish football fans, violent Brahmi Islamists and anti Semitic policing, banning the Jews. In the other, it's violently racist Israeli hooligans. And the government and media are betting them each relies on a whole different set of evidence or the same set of evidence interpreted in the opposite way. It's got me thinking that much of what we know of the world must be based on trust. And honestly, when you dive into such diametrically opposite stories about the same story, it does have me doubting whether I can trust those who I'm inclined to trust. And it's one occasion on which I'd like to listen to. The rest is politics.
- [16:14]
Alistair Campbell
That means that Charlie trusts us, I think.
- [16:16]
Rory Stewart
Well, and I'm trusting you because, I mean, famously, I'm a great expert on football. But try to talk us through this. Firstly, just for listeners who aren't familiar with this, give us the two sides of this story and then tell us roughly where you come down.
- [16:29]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, well, this is about a football match that is due to take place. Israel, despite not being in Europe, takes part in UEFA tournaments and they've been drawn to play against Aston Villa. Now, as it happens, Burnley played Aston Villa a few weeks ago, and I was talking to some of the people at Aston Villa who said they were really, really worried about this game. It was going to be very, very difficult to police. There were lots of questions around, and this was just. We were just Chatting, okay. And they were basically saying, God, I wish this wasn't happening. Also, we should not run away with the idea that Maccabi Tel Aviv are a bunch of angels. Their fans have got quite a reputation. I suspect that some of them were at that Tommy Robinson event that I talked about. They were also involved in some really serious violence when they played in Amsterdam in this same. Same tournament. And where Charlie is absolutely right is that that was framed within the Dutch context of Dutch pro Palestinians went out to attack the Israeli football fans. The Dutch were more inclined to say this was a bunch of hooligans who were singing songs about killing Arab children, burning Palestinian flags, beating up Muslim taxi drivers and so on and so forth. So you've got a football violence situation with a political dimension layered onto it. You then have this group that is the group that has the job, the public safety group, that has the job of deciding whether events are publicly safe. And this group made the decision that they felt that for this game to be publicly safe, no Maccabi Tel Aviv fans should be allowed to come to the game. Now, there's lots of people, including I think, Lisa and Andy yesterday in the comments saying that this is kind of unprecedented. There have been cases before of fans not being allowed to travel and not being allowed to go. Rangers in the Celtic have had periods where there have been no away fans. Actually, Aston Villa played against Leggia Warsaw, a Polish team, and they've got a real reputation. And because there'd been some trouble at a previous game that was called off, Rangers against Napoli was another one that I remember a few years ago where there were no fans allowed to travel. When Paris play Marseille, when Paris Saint Germain play Marseille, there is no away fans are allowed to travel. So it's not unique. But what is unique, of course, is the extra political context. The minute this announcement came out, all three of the major parties, Laboratory, Lib Dems, all three came out straight away and said, this is the wrong decision. Now, I have to say my reaction was, stay out of it, stay out of it. You're making it worse. Because now, as it happens, Muccabi have now come out and said that even if the decision is reversed, they are not going to accept any tickets. And they say it's because of the toxic atmosphere that has now been built around this game. They might also add that Tel Aviv were involved, Maccabi Tel Aviv were involved in a game in Israel at the weekend, which the police abandoned because of the violence in advance of the game. So I think we're probably going to end up in the Right place, but we've ended there in the wrong way, in my view.
- [19:52]
Rory Stewart
Can I just question you? I mean, is it really possible for the Prime Minister to stay out of this? Because if it becomes the big social media issue about antisemitism and the Tories are out and Lib Dems are out, saying this is the wrong decision and Keir Starmer's remaining PO faced and saying this is a decision for someone else, it's something to do with me. Is he not going to be portrayed by the Conservatives and Lib Dems as weak, out of touch?
- [20:16]
Alistair Campbell
But listen, this goes with the job. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. It's one of those. But I think that if we have these, you know, we taught on the, on earlier about this, this thing about, you know, judgments in court cases or let's get. Let's take another example. We're going to talk about Prince Andrew in a minute. Lisa Nandi was interviewed about Prince Andrew and said, you know, the government doesn't get involved in affairs related to the royal family. Well, point one, the government does from time to time and has to. But point two, what that is doing there is making the point the government is an actor, not a commentator. Okay. Now, I would say in relation to this, it would be perfectly feasible, not necessarily for the Prime Minister and as he asked about it, but for the Home Secretary to say, there are big concerns around this match. We have a process. That process has been played out. I want to satisfy myself that the right decision has been taken in the right way. But subject to that, I will trust the judgment of the people who have made this decision, because otherwise I think there is a risk that we just inflame this thing. Even worse, eventually, what's going to happen with this? This game's going to happen. We'll probably move on. I suspect if the fans had come, I think maybe for the wrong reasons, but Tel Aviv have probably made the right decision. If there had been a substantial turnout of Maccabi fans, I think there would have been a lot of trouble because lots of football hooligans. It was already on social media, football hooligans who are not really, as they would put it, we're not able to have as many fights as we used to have because these things are now pretty well policed. They'd all have turned up. Tommy Robinson would have worked his crowd up. He was already doing in Israel. He's walking around with a Tel Aviv, a Maccabi Tel Aviv shirt. You know, in in Israel. So I just think that we've ended up in the right place, but I think we made a few missteps on the way.
- [22:06]
Rory Stewart
Thank you for that, Alistair. Time for a break. And after the break, we'll be back to talk about Prince Andrew and the new Japanese Prime Minister. This episode is brought to you by Google now.
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- [25:33]
Rory Stewart
Now, welcome back to the Restless Politics question time. Now the next question is brought to you by Fuse Energy and Fuse.
- [25:45]
Alistair Campbell
We talk about them a lot. They've just reached a milestone. Their first ever self built solar farm, Netley Central. It is now live and that is proof that clean power does not need to cost the earth.
- [25:57]
Rory Stewart
And while Westminster argues about wind farms, solar has quietly been winning. Panels are going up on homes, schools, warehouses and actually on fields and entire neighbourhoods.
- [26:07]
Alistair Campbell
So we have a question from Elise Bentley. Are we really in the middle of a British solar boom and what does that mean for our energy future?
- [26:17]
Rory Stewart
Controversial issue. First thing of course is solar has been an incredible success story technologically. The price of solar came down. Some of it to do with technical innovation, a lot of it just to do with business practices. Incredible story of thousands of Chinese companies competing on the margins non production techniques, which took a lot of innovation done in Germany and now means that China dominates the manufacture of almost all solar panels in the world. Problem in Britain, of course, is the sun don't shine quite as much in Britain as it does in Texas. And the economics of it are a little bit different in Britain. I imagine many listeners be aware that China is installing huge amounts of renewable energy, but that second or third in the world in solar installation is the United States. And in places like Texas they're installing it because it just makes economic sense. It's not something that's fully reliant on subsidies and backups. They're just generating power because the sun is shining and it's really working. Over to you, Alistair, I agree with.
- [27:13]
Alistair Campbell
You that Texas, the sun shines a bit more, maybe in Walthamstow but I was in Walthamstow recently at their wonderful new theater, the Soho Theater. And in Walthamstow, there's this scheme there where people have got together and they've turned their rooftops into a shared solar network. They're finding it's cutting the bills, it's cutting carbon and it's also shaping that sense of, you know, we're in this together, which of course helps to build trust. And, you know, the. I don't know if you know this as well, Roy. UK's biggest solar farm was just approved in Lincolnshire and that was. That's going to power around 300,000 homes. And of course, Lincolnshire very much part of the kind of Brexit territory, in a way, reformy in some of its politics and reform very much against all this kind of renewable stuff. But I think the more that people see that it is there part of our life, part of pretty much every developed modern country now. And reducing bills and cutting carbon emissions is a good thing.
- [28:10]
Rory Stewart
Yes. Final point, though, we need to also think about land use because of course, the solar panels have to go somewhere and at big scale, they go often on agricultural fields, taking land out of production. People are pointing out, I think that currently, I think it's only about 1% of the British landmass is covered with solar panels. But as a former deference minister, I can assure you 1% is actually quite a lot, given the pressure on British land. How much of it is in the uplands, how much of it is under forestry, how much of it isn't actually accessible for food production? So, yeah, that and a lot of communities slightly horrified at what used to be natural landscape becoming fields of solar panels, which has created other questions which has been really interesting. We talked about this with Australia and Singapore, but there's also been a conversation between North Africa and Britain about whether you can have transmission lines taking it from, for example, the Sahara Desert right into Britain, or whether actually local generation makes much more sense because of problems with transmission.
- [29:09]
Alistair Campbell
Well, there was this, this was this project in Morocco to get their solar power, creating energy for Devon, but that's been paused, seen as too complicated, too costly. But listen, that sort of stuff is going to be happening and it's going to. And it's going to develop as we go. So that is what Fuse Energy's first solar farm, Netli Central, represents collaboration, efficiency and cleaner power built together.
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- [29:48]
Alistair Campbell
Now, Rory, we've got a question here from Stefan Cannon from Brighton. Having seen that, it's apparently news that Prince Andrew has quotes put his duty to his family and country first by giving up his royal titles. Without knowing much about royal life, please can you explain what this means in his actual life? Does it have any real life implications or are there real implications of this that a commoner might understand, I. E. Does it have any financial impact on his life? Come on, Roy, you're our royal expert.
- [30:16]
Rory Stewart
I love it. The royal commentator. Well, I think, firstly, absolutely, needless to say, I and you, Alastair, are completely horrified by Epstein, what he did, the suffering of underage girls who were in horrendous, manipulative relationships. Prince Andrew denies all wrongdoing, but the allegations in the book made by Virginia Giuffre, who of course is no longer alive, are that he raped her on separate occasions. And it's out of this that this question's coming. So to turn now to the question of titles, it's incredibly important to members of the Royal family, these things, which is quite difficult to understand, but it really matters within the family that you are His Royal Highness, that you're addressed as Prince. And being a Knight of the Garter, which he's also left, is a really big thing. I mean, Knight of the Garter, tiny number of people going all the way back to King Edward in the Middle Ages, founding this order of knights. So, look, I mean, you're particularly honest as someone who would never want, as you keep pointing out, to be a sir or a lord anyway. But if you're somebody who wants to be a Sarah Lord, being a prince and a Knight of the Garter is a pretty big deal. And of course, more than symbolically for Prince Andrew, it's a very profound personal disgrace, I'm afraid, because it means that he's no longer accepted as a prince when his brother's the King. And it's a really symbolic sign that he's stepped back from the royal family. And on the money side. Yeah, he no longer is receiving public money. And so he's going to be. His brother may. I don't know how he's going to be funded. He gets a small pension, he may get some support from friends and family, but the taxpayer is no longer going to be supporting him.
- [32:06]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, there's a few things I'd be. I mean, the political element of this, I guess where the rest is politics is this debate about whether you need a parliamentary bill passed in order to remove these titles formally. Because he can still call himself Prince Andrew, which sounds pretty absurd. You can't call yourself the Duke of this or the Duke of that. He's still allowed to call himself Prince Andrew as things stand.
- [32:31]
Rory Stewart
But he said he won't. Right, so the whole thing's a bit theoretical, isn't it?
- [32:35]
Alistair Campbell
No, he said he won't be HRH and he's given up the Duke of York and all that, but he can still be a prince. This is why I find the whole thing so absurd. I'll tell you something else that really struck me and I could be wrong about this. I mean, obviously when we talk about the victims, the victims are the people that were abused. They're the women who were trafficked for Epstein and by Ghislaine Maxwell. And it's clearly on a scale that is just revolting. And anybody who gets too close to it, you know, you kind of get what you deserve. And I would put Prince Andrew into that category because at various stages I have found his self defense deeply unconvincing. I think to pay somebody off with a massive multimillion pound payoff for somebody you claim you never met. I just found that whole thing very, very baffling. So he's probably ended up where he was always going to end up, provided the facts come through. But if you think about this, this goes to maybe the difference in culture between Britain and America, which maybe reflects better on the UK than it does on America. If you think about the people beyond the sexual victims who have, if you like, paid a price or a price in terms of their public standing and humiliation. Epstein, he's dead. He took his own life. But the three that I have in mind are Ghislaine Maxwell in jail, Peter Mandelson resigned as ambassador in Washington, and Prince Andrew now completely sort of eviscerated out of public life in the uk. They're all Brits, I can't think of. I mean, there may be other Americans involved in this that have been similarly punished, but when you see that list of all the people who were on the island, all the people who want his private jet, all the people who were sending the sort of, you know, smarmy emails and what have you, none of the Americans seem to have paid a price at all.
- [34:23]
Rory Stewart
No, it's extraordinary.
- [34:24]
Alistair Campbell
I'm not, by the way, defending anything that they did.
- [34:26]
Rory Stewart
No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I'm Also, of course, also sad, because what it's called meant is the King's doing an incredible journey this week. Just as we're speaking, he's flying to the Vatican and he's going to be the first English monarch to pray with the Pope since Henry viii. And of course, he's the head of the Church of England, so it's a really interesting, important spiritual moment where he's going to be made a confrater, which means he's have a position within the Catholic Church and the Pope will be given a similar position, potentially within the English Church. He was also yesterday in Manchester at the synagogue, visiting with the rabbis, showing his support for the Jewish community. So all this stuff that the King is doing and all the. I think the really good stuff he did to try to support the values we all care about during the Trump visit is getting pushed aside by the questions of Prince Andrew and the increasingly frenetic media reporting. I mean, essentially, the newspapers over the last couple of days, least up here in Scotland, are so dominated by this story and not looking at so many other important things in the world.
- [35:30]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. But I think maybe that's a consequence of first under the Queen and then subsequently under Charles of the Royal family, not having obeyed the first rule of crisis management. Get to the facts quickly. And I think what they've done, and this emerged most graphically, in a way, in this revelation, I think in this new book that's posthumously been written by Virginia Giuffre, the best known of the victims, if you like, of this sex trafficking of young girls. And this is the revelation that Prince Andrew asked his personal protection officer to, quote, dig dirt, and said in an email to the Queen's deputy press secretary, I hear she's got a criminal record. I've got her security number and date of birth. Can we sort of find out kind of thing? And I've felt at every stage of this, because you say this sort of, you know, lots of media reporting now, there have been plenty of previous moments, not least the interview that he did with Emily Maitlis, when he said he revealed he doesn't sweat. So there've been big moments in this story, but I think this, in a sense, has become a tipping point. Now, tipping points usually come at the end of a process which, if you'd gripped it properly in the first place, maybe wouldn't have had such a catastrophic impact.
- [36:57]
Rory Stewart
That's right. And it's something you've talked about a lot with strategic communications, because it's something that you found when Labour Ministers were in scandals. In fact, you've talked about a number of them. I think the Welsh Secretary, Peter Mandelson, Keith Vaz and various others. That moment where you have to say, what did you actually do? And try to work out whether the person's being honest with you or lying or concealing something. And of course, their tendency often will be to lie and try to conceal.
- [37:26]
Alistair Campbell
And the tendency of a family will be to take the side of the person within the family. And I see. What I thought was a very revealing moment recently was that I think it was at the funeral of the Duchess of Kent, where you could see Prince Andrew trying to talk to Prince William on the steps of the church. And William was absolutely having nothing to do with him. And that said to me, he. In his mind, he'd already got to the point where they've now got to. And I don't know what goes on in these circles, but from what I hear, it was as much Prince William as the King, who was basically saying, we've got to get this guy out of our lives, effectively, because they are a public family, that's their role. So. But, but, but I think it's gonna. This, this book, I've not read it, but the bits I've heard about being discussed, and, I mean, it really does feel that this is the end for.
- [38:22]
Rory Stewart
Him, and it's very disturbing. And, but your. Your point also is, if you look at Virginia Jeffrey's family being interviewed, yes, they're talking about Prince Andrew, but they really want people to focus on the other abusers. Yeah, they're trying to say, look, this is a way of casting light on the much, much bigger issue of all these other people involved in horrible things.
- [38:45]
Alistair Campbell
Just to cement that point in relation to the United States. So there's Trump. Trump was very, very, very close to Epstein. Trump is now talking, he's still sort of mumbling away about the possibility of pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell. So there is something strange that it's stuff that we consider to be completely unacceptable, they say they consider to be completely unacceptable, and yet they don't really seem to have paid a price for what we have seen as an utterly corrosive relationship.
- [39:17]
Rory Stewart
Right, final question. Alistair, what's your thoughts on Japan's new Prime Minister who's being referred to as the Iron Lady? Should this be seen as a warning or what's to come?
- [39:28]
Alistair Campbell
Well, she's been referred to as the Iron lady because she likes to call herself the Iron Lady. And yet again, when she was sworn in yesterday, she was wearing a blue suit, the same color as the blue suit she wore when she won the leadership election. Look, she's a very interesting person. When we talked about her briefly when she took over the party, this is the Liberal Democrats who have the LDP who've been in charge for pretty much non stop for 70 years. And we, we made this reference to her being, you know, somebody who tries to model herself to some extent on Margaret Thatcher. And I can't remember I forwarded to you, Rory. I got an email from somebody who is a politics lecturer in Tokyo who said I wouldn't fall for the Margaret Thatcher thing. She's much more Liz Truss. So I now, I don't, I don't know that much about her. She's been around for a long, long time. She's a devotee of Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister who was assassinated. Pretty right wing. She's said to be more to the right of him. She's quite a colorful character. She's a drummer by which I mean she plays the drums. She performed for a while in a rock band. She's got very, very conservative views in relation to family. One of her, she says that one of her first big challenges is going to be getting, getting on with Trump because coincidentally Trump is making a visit to Japan in the very, very near future. So like every leader, she's kind of having to work out how to handle that. But you know, look, Japan, the pictures of her you yesterday in the, in the Japanese parliament was a bit like it did remind me of Margaret Thatcher when she first came along. It was a woman in blue surrounded by men. And so it's quite a thing. It's a very, very male dominated politics in Japan and the LDP has always been very, very male dominated. So I think that is quite a historic thing.
- [41:33]
Rory Stewart
Yes, very much so. On the ultra conservative wing. I mean in some of the touchstone cultural issues in Japanese politics, for example, visiting the Yasakuni Shrine, which is a shrine which includes Japanese war criminals, very much one of the people that visits their shrine and was caught up in controversies with quite far right books, quite far right figures.
- [41:55]
Alistair Campbell
And she's very Japan first. I mean quite strong views on immigration, thinks there should be limits on tourism. And you know, she's right out on the, on the Japan first side of things.
- [42:07]
Rory Stewart
So we'll see. And as you say, it's a very male dominated society. So it's an amazing breakthrough. But of course not totally unknown because of course Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh coming out of a pretty male Dominated Muslim society, becoming a leader. And we've had other examples from Margaret Thatcher to Indira Gandhi. But now it's Japan stepping up. The one country yet to get there, of course, the United States of America.
- [42:32]
Alistair Campbell
Ah, indeed. Well, they were nearly there and if they had been, you'd have been a lot richer than you are now. Just on the male domination. She wrote a memoir a while back and within it she said that when she first came along, people started to realize that Abe was quite keen on her. He made her a minister. She was a rising star and she suddenly noticed that a lot of the meetings at which policy was being discussed, they were being conducted in saunas.
- [43:01]
Rory Stewart
Oh, for goodness sake.
- [43:02]
Alistair Campbell
The ministers would head off to saunas to which of course she couldn't attend because this were, these were men only. And then also there were lots of men only social clubs that suddenly matters of state were being discussed in. So she's, she's overcome a lot, there's no doubt about that. So we'll see how she gets on. And I think the first meeting with Trump will be very, very interesting to watch.
- [43:24]
Rory Stewart
Very good. Well, thank you, Alastair, and I think that's all we have time for today. Look forward to seeing you again next week.
- [43:30]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon. Take care. Bye bye, bye. Alistair Campbell here now. We've just released a series on one of the most controversial and consequential people of the past 50 years, Rupert Murdoch.
- [43:45]
Rupert Murdoch
I think you can argue that he is the most consequential figure of the second half of the 20th century. He holds power longer than anyone else in our time and it's meaningful power. It's phenomenal power.
- [44:00]
Alistair Campbell
Power without responsibility. The prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. This is where he becomes not just a newspaper owner, he becomes a major newsmaker.
- [44:09]
Rupert Murdoch
Fuck Dacre publish. There is always a premium on bringing his gossip.
- [44:16]
David (Rest is Classified)
I don't know what you mean by downmarket. And upmarket.
- [44:18]
Rupert Murdoch
That is so English.
- [44:20]
David (Rest is Classified)
Class ridden snobbery.
- [44:21]
Alistair Campbell
When you talk like that, how you.
- [44:23]
Rupert Murdoch
Get it doesn't make any difference. Actually, to be perfectly honest, whether it's true or not doesn't make much difference.
- [44:29]
Alistair Campbell
There is a massive, massive scandal brewing. This was industrial illegal activity. And that I think is what really cuts through to the public thinks you people are really, really bad. I would just like to say one sentence. This is the most humble day of my life.
- [44:47]
Rupert Murdoch
There is no Donald Trump without Fox News. His dream was always to elect a president of the United States. The bitter irony is that that turned out to be Donald Trump, a man he detests. He is conquering the world. There's nothing less than this methodical style, step by step progress to take over everything.
- [45:12]
Alistair Campbell
To hear more, Sign up@therestispolitics.com Alistair Campbell here. Now we've just released a series on one of the most controversial and consequential people of the past 50 years, Rupert Murdoch.
- [45:27]
Rupert Murdoch
I think you can argue that he is the most consequential figure of the second half of the 20s century. He holds power longer than anyone else in our time and it's meaningful power. It's phenomenal power.
- [45:42]
Alistair Campbell
Power without responsibility. The prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. This is where he becomes not just a newspaper owner, he becomes a major newsmaker.
- [45:51]
Rupert Murdoch
Fuck Dacre publish. There is always a premium on bringing him gossip.
- [45:58]
David (Rest is Classified)
I don't know what you mean by downmarket and upmarket. That is so English class ridden snobbery.
- [46:03]
Alistair Campbell
When you talk like that, how you.
- [46:04]
Rupert Murdoch
Get it doesn't make any difference. Actually to be perfectly honest, whether it's true or not doesn't make much difference.
- [46:10]
Alistair Campbell
There is a massive, massive scandal brewing. This was industrial illegal activity. And that I think is what really cuts through to the public thinks you people are really, really bad. I would just like to say one, two, this is the most humble day of my life.
- [46:28]
Rupert Murdoch
There is no Donald Trump without Fox News. His dream was always to elect a president of the United States. The bitter irony is that that turned out to be Donald Trump, a man he detests. He is conquering the world. There's nothing less than this methodical step by step progress to take over everything.
- [46:52]
Alistair Campbell
To hear more, sign up@the restispolitics.com hi.
- [46:57]
David (Rest is Classified)
It'S David from the Rest is Classified here with a very special message for listeners of the Rest is Politics. We just released a two part series on the pager attacks that were carried out by Israel's foreign intelligence service Assad against Hezbollah in the aftermath of October 7th. Now for a political and military organization organization like Hezbollah, command and control is absolutely everything. And the Israelis had tried to destroy the group and ultimately failed. But in the low level conflict the two sides were engaged in post October 7, Israel was facing the prospect of a two front war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to take critical action. As Hezbollah grew increasingly paranoid, they turned to the pager as a secure alternative. But what they bought instead was a lethal Mossad plot. Within days, Hezbollah's command was wiped out when the Israelis assassinated its leader Hassan Nasrallah to hear the full episode you can listen to. The rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts as we break down this incredible geopolitical gamble and all the spycraft behind the explosive attacks that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Middle East.