464. Labour’s Tax Timebomb, Climate Backsliding, and Sudan’s Forgotten War

Summary

The Rest Is Politics – Episode 464

Labour’s Tax Timebomb, Climate Backsliding, and Sudan’s Forgotten War
Date: November 5, 2025
Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart

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Episode Overview

In this incisive episode, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart dissect three urgent and interlinked topics shaping British and global politics:

• The Labour government’s looming decision to potentially break tax-related manifesto commitments amid dire economic realities.
• The worrying decline in global and UK commitment to decisive climate action, despite worsening impacts.
• The catastrophic and underreported civil war in Sudan, exploring the web of external actors and the dwindling will of Western powers to intervene meaningfully.

The episode’s tone oscillates between forensic political analysis, passionate stakeholder advocacy, and candid frustration at media and public short-termism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Labour’s Looming Tax Dilemma

[02:55–08:49]

• Rachel Reeves’ Pre-Budget Speech:
  • Reeves has signaled possible tax hikes, preparing the public for “breaking a manifesto commitment.” However, ambiguity remains about which taxes would rise.
  • Rory Stewart: Highlights that the big, broad-based taxes (VAT, National Insurance, corporation and income tax)—those most stable, fair, and effective—are ones Labour pledged not to raise. The contradiction is unsustainable:
    • “What’s the point of making the speech if you’re not answering the fundamental question?” [04:46]
  • Alastair Campbell: Defines “pitch rolling” (preparing the public/political context for difficult decisions) and frames Reeves’ speech as managing expectation:
    • “She was essentially giving the framing for the budget...” [05:25]
• Political Risks:
  • Both agree the real issue is public trust, and that breaking a manifesto promise (if Labour goes ahead) will dog them to the next election, necessitating a compelling justification.
  • Stewart: Points out Keir Starmer’s poor popularity and the harsh electoral choice:
    • “His only hope...is to get the economy growing. People will forgive a broken manifesto commitment if the government’s performing well.” [07:38]

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2. Political Paralysis on Climate Policy

[08:56–24:44]

• Backsliding on Commitments:
  • Stewart: Critiques Labour (and specifically Ed Miliband) for rigid targets on net zero/electric vehicles, noting public skepticism: only 18% believe net zero-by-2030 goals are realistic. [08:56]
  • Campbell: Shares data from the Lancet Countdown, painting a dire picture:
    • 23% increase in heat-related deaths since the 1990s
    • 2.5 million deaths annually from fossil fuel burning air pollution
    • “15 out of 87 major emitting countries spent more on fossil fuel subsidies than on their health budgets.” [10:51]
• The Global Picture:
  • Despite hype over COP summits, the global energy mix remains unchanged: “20 years ago, 80% of world energy was from fossil fuels; still about 80% today.” [12:39]
  • Stewart: “We’re going to miss the 1.5°C target by a country mile...probably miss 2°C too.” [13:01]
  • Both agree adaptation is now as vital as mitigation, with climate impacts already unavoidable.
• Public Attitudes & Argument Framing:
  • Rising climate skepticism in the UK, but reform party voters still support taxing polluting firms.
    • Stewart: “A really good leader could shift this debate, but the argument is moving from idealism to questions about energy security, cost of living, and jobs.” [15:49]
• The Business Case & Policy Hesitation:
  • Campbell: Cites analysis showing wind investment generated a £100bn benefit for UK consumers [16:36], countered by Stewart’s skepticism about true costs “because of the grid, intermittency, and transmission.”
  • Business uncertainty prevails as investors sense government may be rowing back from commitments and possibly reshuffling Ed Miliband.
    • “Nobody believes that Ed Miliband is going to hold to these targets.” [21:04]
  • Political Consequences:
    • Labour risks ceding green leadership to the Greens (Zack Polanski).
    • Right-wing narrative focuses on lowering electricity prices, not net zero.
  • On international aid failings: UK’s initial £2.5m contribution to Jamaica after climate-induced disaster is “unbelievable” when contrasted with footballer Mbappé’s £20m personal donation. [24:49]

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3. The Media, Social Media, and Populist Narrative Warfare

[26:34–35:38]

• Both decry the media’s declining attention to overseas disasters and the compounding effect of social media-driven disinformation and fear-mongering.
  • Campbell: Details Elon Musk’s viral, xenophobic commentary and the lack of robust pushback from mainstream politicians:
    • “Where are the mainstream politicians calling out Musk?” [29:05]
  • Social media responding to violent incidents with instant conspiracies, “speaking to existing biases,” even when real crime rates are down. [34:13]
• The “virtualisation” of politics is feeding populism and making it harder to rebut lies with facts.
  • Memorable quote, Stewart: “The whole of politics has become virtual…these kind of facts are entirely irrelevant.” [34:55]

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4. Sudan: A Forgotten Catastrophe

[37:01–52:00]

• The Human Cost:
  • 150,000 killed, 2 million at risk of or in famine, 30 million needing aid, 90% of children out of school.
    • “This is pretty much the worst thing that’s happening anywhere in the world right now.” [37:36]
• Complex Conflict Dynamics:
  • Intricate explanation of two warring factions:
    • RSF (Rapid Support Forces, led by Hermeti, formerly Janjaweed militia) vs SAF (Sudan Armed Forces, led by Burhan).
  • External sponsors:
    • SAF: backed by Egypt, Turkey, Saudis
    • RSF: backed by UAE (denied, but proven via weapons and satellite imagery) [41:47]
  • Rising weapon sophistication, with modern drones, precision artillery, etc., mostly supplied via Gulf states.
• The UAE as a Middle Power:
  • Now Africa’s largest growth investor, overtaking China.
  • Resource scramble (oil, gold, food security), port acquisitions, anti-Islamist alignments all play into UAE’s interests. [43:20]
  • The illicit gold trade and mercenary use highlight a “return to Empire” rather than respect for sovereignty.
    • Rory Stewart: “Many of these states no longer have real sovereignty—being divided in two, like Sudan, pillaged, and manipulated by external actors. ... It feels much more like the age of empire.” [45:48]
• Collapse of Western Influence:
  • U.S. and UK have little leverage left: “America has basically lost its influence entirely over places like Sudan.” [48:06]
• Hope and Realpolitik:
  • Stewart floats (dubiously) the idea that a U.S. “deal” could deliver ceasefire/humanitarian corridors—if focused on getting UAE to stop propping up RSF. [51:20]
  • Campbell: “The UK could do a bit of that as well, but we’ve lost a lot of leverage, haven’t we?” [51:27]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“His only hope of actually winning the next election is to get the economy growing. People will forgive a broken manifesto commitment if the government’s performing well.”
— Rory Stewart, [07:38]

“Twenty years ago, 80% of world energy was from fossil fuels; still about 80% today…we’re missing the 1.5°C target by a country mile.”
— Rory Stewart, [12:39]

“Fifteen out of 87 countries responsible for 93% of global CO₂ emissions spent more on net fossil fuel subsidies than their national health budgets.”
— Alastair Campbell, [11:53]

“The whole of politics has become virtual…these kind of facts are entirely irrelevant.”
— Rory Stewart, [34:55]

“Back in the days when you were in power, £2.5 million to Jamaica, which has just seen this catastrophe…there would have been an absolute outcry.”
— Alastair Campbell, [27:06]

“This is pretty much the worst thing that’s happening anywhere in the world right now [in Sudan].”
— Alastair Campbell, [37:36]

“Many of these states no longer have real sovereignty… It feels much more like the age of empire.”
— Rory Stewart, [45:48]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Labour & Tax Promises: [02:55–08:49]
• Climate Crisis & COP Politics: [08:56–24:44]
• Media, Social Media & Populism: [26:34–35:38]
• Sudan’s Crisis & Global Implications: [37:01–52:00]

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Tone & Further Notes

The hosts’ interplay maintains “disagreeing agreeably,” balancing mutual respect with challenging each other's takes. The episode is brisk, urgent, and unvarnished in its assessment of political leadership—and the implications of national and international short-termism.

For listeners, it’s both a masterclass in connecting domestic politics to the global context and a call to reject indifference—to tax honesty, to climate urgency, and to humanitarian crises far from home.

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For more episodes and bonus content, visit therestispolitics.com.

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Transcript

[Alastair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

She'S signaled before the budget that she's thinking of putting up taxes.

[Alastair Campbell]

They are preparing to break a manifesto commitment, so they really are going to have to win a big argument about why they had to do it.

[Rory Stewart]

They're screwed at the moment anyway. Kiyo Sama's net popularity ratings almost couldn't be worse.

[Alastair Campbell]

If Labour were to slide away from being a global leader on climate change, I think that politically would be the politicization and the weaponization of it by the right Farage, Trump, etc. It's got some traction within the political debate. Look at what happened in Jamaica last week. Yeah, uninsurable. They're talking about somewhere between 8 and 20 billion pounds worth of damage.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely.

[Alastair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

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[Alastair Campbell]

And me, Alistair Campbell. And we're going to talk very briefly about Rachel Reeves speech which she just made in Downing Street. But beyond, we're going to look at two huge issues, the climate crisis and the war in Sudan. But also I think time to ask the question whether the world cares as much as it did nine years ago today. The Paris agreement on climate change came into effect November 4, 2016. And then I would argue the climate debate looked like it was all moving in one direction. And fast forward today and we've got this COP summit in Brazil and people even asking whether it should happen. So we'll talk about that. And then Sudan, both of us want to talk about Sudan. And Again, just over 20 years ago, Mass killings in Darfur. And it led to marches around the world. George Bush as American president saying it was a priority for his government, and another George, George Clooney leading protest. What's going on there now is, I would argue, a lot worse and yet it seems barely to be on the political and media radar. So we'll come to that. But let's briefly talk about Rachel Reeves and the upcoming budget.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, well, let me start with a question on that. So it seems to me that what she's done is she's signaled before the budget that she's thinking of putting up taxes, but she isn't answering the big question for someone like me, which is is she going to put up vat, national insurance corporation tax, income tax, the kind of big taxes which they ruled out their manifesto and which for I think someone like me or Dan Needle or even kind of Paul Johnson would say if you were sensible about the economy and you weren't tied into a manifesto, those are the taxes you should put up. They're the broadest base taxes. They're the ones that generate 70% of the revenue of the government. They're probably the fairest, most stable way of raising revenue without scaring investors. But she's not actually answering that fundamental question. So what's the point of making the.

[Alastair Campbell]

Speech, I guess what we call pitch rolling.

[Rory Stewart]

What is pitch rolling when you're not really telling us what the pitch is?

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, because pitch rolling is. I think it comes from cricket. So you've got. You've got the Ashes coming up, Rory. And the test matches will be played on different pitches around Australia. And they roll the pitch pretty.

[Rory Stewart]

Patel, who was my boss, kept talking about this all the time. Every meeting she'd say, we've got to roll the pitch. And literally neither I nor any of the civil servants ever had any idea what she was talking about.

[Alastair Campbell]

What she meant was to prepare the public for what's coming.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay.

[Alastair Campbell]

Or to prepare the political landscape. But what I think is going on is that. So they've come in on manifesto promises that we've talked about before, the tax ones. Single market, customs union boxing themselves in slightly.

[Rory Stewart]

And sorry, just. Just to explain that, remind people that's ruling out the single market, ruling out the customs union, ruling out the tax rises. Y I thought was a bit of mistake. You thought might have been necessary to get to win the election. That was that.

[Alastair Campbell]

I don't know. I think they could have done. But anyway, they did. So then in they come for the first budget. They've rolled the pitch there by talking about the black hole mess left by the Tories worse than we expected. They've raised taxes to fill it. And they've been very, very clear that's it. Not coming back for more. What I think today, this morning's event was about was saying, I'm afraid we may have to come back for more. She talked about productivity being worse than they expected it to be. And she also talked about her absolute determination to get on top of debt. One in ten pounds of public money is going on servicing huge levels of debt. Proud that they're bringing waiting list down, but they have to keep going and so on and so on and so forth. So she was essentially giving the framing for the budget. I didn't watch the whole of the press conference, but every question that I saw was about, hold on a minute, so you can no longer say you're absolutely committed to keeping those taxes down, therefore you are preparing to break a manifesto commitment. And she just used it really to repeat the framing message. So I suspect the papers in the morning and the media today will be full of. She is preparing to break one of, if not more, the manifesto commitments.

[Rory Stewart]

Two quick questions. Number one, do you think they've already made their mind up or one of the things you do when you roll the pictures, you're actually floating it and you're spending the next week working out whether you're going to break your manifesto commitment, depending on the Press reaction.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, there is definitely a debate going on, but I suspect the debate has been settled. Interesting. When we talked about this last week, if you remember last, we talk mainly about domestic stuff, which is why today we're gonna talk mainly international. But last week I got a message from Harriet Harmon, who had also been talking about this, and she said she was really shocked by how relaxed you and I seemed to be about saying they're gonna break one of their manifesto promises. I was simply saying what I think they're going to do, where I think she's got a point, is that if you think about the big thing in politics right now, trust. We don't trust our politicians. They are, if they do put up one of the big three taxes that they said they wouldn't, they are then going to have that right up to general. So they really are going to have to win a big argument about why they had to do it, if that's happening.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, we don't have Harriet in the studio, but if I was going to disagree agreeably with Harriet, I would say that they're screwed at the moment anyway. Keir Starmer's net popularity ratings, -52, almost couldn't be worse. His only hope of actually winning the next election is to get the economy growing. And if you have to make this very difficult choice between being criticized at the next election for breaking your manifesto promise but with a growing economy, or keeping a manifesto promise but going into the next election with more and more wealthy people having left the country, investment down, economy not performing, but you're saying, well, I kept my manifesto promise, but I kept it by going increasingly over taxing the top 1, top 0.1% and not putting in broad based taxes. So raising a few billion by putting more and more pressure on the wealthiest people and driving them out of the country, I think that would be the bad move. I think the working backwards, the big picture question for him is can he demonstrate by the next lecture above all that cost of living is coming down, but also ideally, productivity's going up, growth's coming up, and people will forgive a broken manifesto commitment if the government's performing well and they won't be at all impressed by poor performance and them saying, but we kept our manifesto.

[Alastair Campbell]

Okay, well, listen, we're going to come. The budget's on November 26, and, you know, it will become without doubt one of the seminal events of this Parliament.

[Rory Stewart]

And I think one of the interesting questions that we'll get to now, because we're about to get on to energy and Climate is the way in which very rigid promises and targets become something which work maybe in an election and then become very problematic for you afterwards. So I was heartbroken that they decided to rule out Customs Union, for example, going into the election, European Union, Customs Union. I thought it was very, very sad that they ruled out those tax rises when it seemed to me pretty clear that they were much too over optimistic on growth and that they weren't going to be able to cut the welfare bill on the way that they wanted because the Labour Party wouldn't let them do that. And they should have had the political sense to see that. They should have known their party well enough to see that. And now we're getting on to the story of Ed Miliband, where again, doubling down on net zero by 2030 targets on getting rid of petrol and diesel vehicles, which in the current polling, I think only 18% of the public actually even believe these targets are going to be met. And of the professional community, I think it's even smaller numbers.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I've been looking at loads of polling on this, but first of all, I still think there is a substantial proportion of the population that understands climate change is a real threat. The climate crisis is real. The politicization and the weaponization of it by the right, Farage, Trump, et cetera, it's got some traction within the political debate, but I still think the public are broadly behind all this stuff. Let me just tell you though, I read last week this thing called, it's called the Lancet Countdown, tracking progress on health and climate change. And this was established at the same time as the Paris Agreement. Sort of keep track on the health implications of climate change. And it's pretty terrifying. It's pretty terrifying. Heat related Deaths are up 23% since the 90s, 446,000 a year between 2012 and 21. 2.5 million deaths every year attributable to the air pollution that comes from continued burning of fossil fuels. Air pollution from wildfire smoke linked to 154,000 deaths. These are all new records within this sphere, productivity we talked about in relation to this heat exposure. I don't know how they work these things out, but this is a serious piece of lancet work, right? 639 billion potential hours of lost labor productivity. There's a really interesting section on sleep, how much sleep we are losing because of going through an extraordinary number of hot weather days where it becomes really, really difficult to sleep. And meanwhile then they go through the whole thing of food and diet and all that Stuff, the one that really leapt out me worryingly, 15 out of 87 countries which are responsible for 93% of global CO2 emissions spent more on net fossil fuel subsidies than their national health budgets. So it's not just that the politics are going in a really odd place, but also that the reality of whether we are weaning ourselves off fossil fuel, that stat suggests we're not going nearly as fast as we should.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, so maybe I think that's the really big important point to land before we get on to what UK is doing about it, which is that we're failing despite all the razzmatazz about cops. And as you say, there's a COP about to happen, which barely anyone's paying any attention to. This is an issue obviously you and I care passionately about. And I'd encourage listeners to get into what we're doing on leading on this. We did a great interview, you remember, with Cristiano Figueras, the great Costa Rican who set up the COP process. We did that great interview with probably, I think, Britain's smartest energy economist, Dieter Helm. Done an interview also with Emmett Pinchbeck from the Climate Change Committee.

[Alastair Campbell]

And we had that two parter with Ed Miliband. So yeah, no, I think we've got to keep talking about this because it is slightly going down the agenda.

[Rory Stewart]

Fundamentally. The world was getting about 80% of its energy from fossil fuels 20 years ago and it's getting about 80% of its energy from fossil fuels today. Now that sounds weird to people because we all know that there's been a massive explosion in renewables. But the fact is, just as the massive explosion of renewables happens, massive explosion of fossil fuels. So it's a.

[Alastair Campbell]

Because the demand is greater.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alastair Campbell]

Because data centers driving it even further.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. And the big driver, unfortunately is GDP growth. As people become wealthier, they consume more and more energy. Second thing is we're going to miss this 1.5 degree target by country mile. We're well on course to miss the 2 degree global warming target by country mile.

[Alastair Campbell]

With catastrophic consequences.

[Rory Stewart]

With catastrophic consequences, it's likely to be 2.53%. So there are two things have to happen at the same time. One of them is reducing carbon emissions to try to make sure it's held at 2, 2 and a half percent, not 3, 3.5%. But the second thing is a massive amount of energy now has to go into adaptation because we've lost the 1.5%. So we just have to assume, and I was talking to Claire Perry who was the conservative energy secretary. And she, I thought, made an interesting point, which is that water is the cutting edge of the climate crisis. Both lack of water and too much water. Too much water, flooding, lack of water, obviously drought.

[Alastair Campbell]

But also these data centers use masses of water.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. And mass amounts of electricity. And then that's another paradox he just raised with data centers, which is one of the problems that Ed Miliband faces, and in fact all countries face around the world, is that in order to go cleaner, we are pushing for more and more electrification. Say, for example, drive an electric vehicle instead of driving a, a fossil fuel vehicle, but also more and more electricity for data centers. And that means therefore that your renewable net zero electricity is not a static thing. Your electricity demand is soaring through the roof and therefore you need to generate more and more renewable energy just to keep up with that electricity demand, which is one of the problems that people are facing all over the world.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah. Just on this question about whether we care, do you think we do care less than we did?

[Rory Stewart]

I think that you can see two different types of polling. You can see global polling, often put out by environmental NGOs saying 85, 90% of the world population still think it's a big problem. And then you can see YouGov polling drilling into a specific country like Britain, which will show that the number of people who think that we're overreacting to climate change has doubled in the last 10 years. Come from about 15%, 25, 30%. And the real killer is that the polling shows that only something like 16% of people would be prepared to pay higher bills to pay for such short recessions.

[Alastair Campbell]

What's interesting, that in the poorer countries that are going to be more affected by climate change, they're willing to pay more than they are in the wealthier countries, which to some to a large extent have caused it. Just one thing in the polling though. So, for example, 71% of reform leaning voters think that the big polluters like oil and gas firms should be taxed more to fund climate action. And 67% of reform supporters say they're worried about increasing damages caused by climate change. So I still think this is an argument there to be won.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, let me get to you on that, because I think that's right, but I think we've got to think about how you win it. So I think immigration is an argument where has almost been lost. It's very, very difficult now in the British political context to have an argument about higher migration. I think there's 70% probably the public now are in favor of more control, lower migration, climate. I think there's much more movement. I mean, those figures you've shown show that a really good politician, good leader could shift that. But I think the argument probably is changing from an idealistic argument about saving the world because I think voters are aware that Britain is only 1% of global emissions towards cost of energy, jobs, the economy and energy, sovereignty and security.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, but the other report that came out from one of the London ucl University College London was a really interesting report, essentially saying that investment in wind energy, for example, has produced a net financial benefit of over £100 billion for consumers over the last 15 years.

[Rory Stewart]

Part of this promise, you know, you and I are studying this stuff all the time, but what we're facing, I would say certainly for me and probably for you, is completely conflicting reports.

[Alastair Campbell]

But a lot of it's misinformation. This is the point about some of.

[Rory Stewart]

It'S misinformation, Some of it is the way that you count these things. So, sure, the question with UCL is how are they calculating that hundred billion? Are they taking into account the cost of the grid? Are they taking into account the fact that because renewable energy is intermittent, you need to continue to have gas power stations behind? Why is it, if that were true, why is the latest auction on wind paying three times the current electricity cost in the auction? Why are our bills going up if it's actually true that the stuff. And normally the answer would be people at UCL are not looking at the total cost of the renewables. They're not looking, for example, at the fact that renewables are generated, let's say in northern Scotland, the demand is in southern England. And for that to work, you need to build an entire grid infrastructure to try to get that electricity down. And they often don't count that. What they're often counting is per hour. How much does your wind turbine cost to generate compared to a gas station? Not what's the total cost of the system?

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I'm afraid in relation to the grid, I think we're back to our old friend austerity and the underinvestment in the grid. The grid is virtually falling to bits. But I suspect UCL will come back and say that they have calculated all that. But the reason why we're so exposed is because of the price of gas which has gone up. The war in Ukraine has been a huge factor in our energy costs. So another guy that I really respect on this guy called Nick Stern, who you remember was he Was, I love Nick, sir. Well, he's great. And he's written yet another book on the climate.

[Rory Stewart]

And we're very happy to interview Nick Stern, if you'd like to do that.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, we can't keep Rory. We've got such a backlog of interviewees. Let's have these interviewee discussions between ourselves. Not on air. Not on air, Yeah. I think we keep throwing them out.

[Rory Stewart]

We would say to Nick Stern, we both like him and we admire him.

[Alastair Campbell]

And I think at this stage we'll plug his book, which is about the economics and opportunity of climate action. Now, he led. When we were in power, he led the Treasury Review on climate and economics.

[Rory Stewart]

And then he chaired the Climate Change committee and we interviewed his success at a rate.

[Alastair Campbell]

Correct?

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

And what he now says is that when he did this work almost two decades ago now, he says he underestimated the risks of climate change and was way too pessimistic about the potential benefit of clear energy alternatives. And he's saying that what this loss of the political consensus, Trump, drill, baby, drill. Richard Tyson, Nigel Farage, net stupid, zero, et cetera, et cetera. And the Tory is now playing the same game, that the loss of the political consensus is undermining business confidence. And those businesses that are investing in renewables are getting a really good return on their investment. And it's interesting that some of the business events I've done recently, and this takes me back to when Trump won his first term. I think I've told you before, I was, just coincidentally was at this same event with Al Gore, one of the big climate campaigners, and I said, how are you going to deal with Trump in the White House? And he said, we're going to have to work around him. We're seeing, I think, a version of that now, because the business investment. There's an argument to be made that the business case for renewables is very, very, very strong. And I think the reason why it's important we don't get into this habit of saying, well, the UK is only 1%. What can the UK do on its own? Is that one of the things Ed Miliband, I think, is trying to do is stake out a sense of global leadership. That's why I think this cop is important. And because Trump takes out so much oxygen from the political debate. I heard a thing on the BBC, you know, does it really matter if Trump's not there? Well, yes, it does matter if Trump's. It's better if Trump were there. It's better if Trump hadn't vetoed the thing we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the shipping changes to the shipping fuel regime. But it's still important that countries like ours, I think, make the case consistently for why we have to go down this track will face consequences that are just off the scale. Look at what happened in Jamaica last week. Uninsurable. They're talking about somewhere between 8 and 20 billion pounds worth of damage.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely.

[Alastair Campbell]

And that is climate crisis.

[Rory Stewart]

Basically, though, the reason why businesses are losing confidence and our friend Nick Stern is right, is nobody believes that Edmund is going to hold to these targets. Nobody believes it. I go to all these energy conferences and they basically think that number 10 is already signaling that they're uncomfortable with what Edmillaband is doing. He set targets which are too rigid. He hasn't got the market signals right. The sighting isn't being properly priced. In other words, the cost of generating in the north as opposed to the South. So businesses are sensing that number 10 thinks that Ed Miliband is too rigid. And actually, number 10 has been telling a lot of these businesses that they wanted to reshuffle him.

[Alastair Campbell]

Have they been telling the businesses? Come on, I'm going to challenge you. Number 10 has been telling businesses. What you mean is the businesses have been reading the papers.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay. Business has been reading the papers. Correct.

[Alastair Campbell]

Okay.

[Rory Stewart]

And I think. No, but I think what businesses expect, and we'll see whether they're right or wrong, is that come the next election, either Ed Miliband will have been gone or he will continue what seems to be the case of him rapidly rowing back from many, many of the commitments they made before the election, and in particular around timelines on electric vehicles, Net zero, et cetera.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I think politically that's a big mistake. I think that the argument can be won. I think actually Ed Miliband is doing a better job of winning the argument than other arguments that are being fought within government. And added to which, don't forget that one of the political challenges Labour are facing is the rise of the Greens under Zach Polanski.

[Rory Stewart]

Now, of course, he's not talking much about climate.

[Alastair Campbell]

He may not be. There's a clue in the word green.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

I think if Labour were to sort of slide away from being a global leader on climate change, I think that politically would be a mistake.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, you can see. So Claire Coutinho, who was the Tory Energy Secretary and is now the Shadow Energy secretary, is beginning to set out the case, I think, which will be made by the right in the election. And their case will be we need cheaper electricity for industry, for AI, for data centers, and it's going to come.

[Alastair Campbell]

Through solar and wind and the data.

[Rory Stewart]

Centers are going to Texas and Spain at the moment. Because the truth is, unfortunately, the cost of electricity in Britain is higher than it is in the US or European. And that isn't just because of gas prices. I mean, they also have to pay gas prices. It's the way that our electricity prices are tied to gas in a different way to the way that they are in the European Union and in the us. And it's also to do with our pricing, our levies, our subsidies, and also as we decarbonize. And we're going to have to get more and more people onto electricity, we're going to have to find alternative sources, which is why Claircatina sounds surprisingly like your friend Tony Blair, who of course also came out saying phasing out fossil fuels is doomed to failure. We need to focus more on AI. We're getting other voices, you know Claire Perry now regretting she didn't do more on carbon capture.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, No, I wasn't terribly happy with my Tony's contribution debate any more than I was very happy. I wasn't quite sure what Bill Gates was saying last year, last week.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. Well, he's come to the same thing. So his basic view, I think, which is increasingly common amongst the tech Bros, is that technology is going to be your best hope of fixing this, AI is going to be your best hope of fixing this. And that they're hoping that by going all out their data centers, blowing a lot of electricity demand, these brilliant brains within the computer are somehow going to fix the problem.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, well, let's see, let's see just briefly on Jamaica, because the other thing, when we talked about the manifesto commitment, and of course I think we accept, obviously people do not like it when governments blatantly break manifesto commitments. But don't forget, they've already broken one, which was the commitment on overseas aid. And I was really quite shocked that the UK government initial pledge of support for emergency work in Jamaica was 2.5 million.

[Rory Stewart]

That's unbelievable. 2.5 million. I mean, if I've just been up in Cumbria, that is considerably less than we're going to spend on rebuilding the Ulswater Community Centre. Yeah, I mean, for the whole of Jamaica, it's just been widely pressed, under.

[Alastair Campbell]

A little bit of pressure, they added another five. But if you think that Kylian Mbappe, who is a footballer for Real Madrid and France, he has put in 20 million.

[Rory Stewart]

So I was quite rightly pulled up by the Foreign Office because I actually got my maths wrong and underestimated the amount of overall spend. So to get my maths right, it was about $20 billion when I was the Secretary of State for international development at DFID. Yeah. And it's gone from 0.7% to. It's heading to 0.3.

[Alastair Campbell]

So much of which is being more than half.

[Rory Stewart]

Exactly. And bits are also going into refugees and bits are committed to the World Bank. It still leaves a few billion. But the reality on the ground is exactly what you've seen when I was running GiveDirectly, which was this direct cash transfer NGO, I remember turning up in African countries and finding that our budget as an NGO was now three times the budget of the British government. So British ambassadors in some of the poorest countries in the world had bilateral budgets at that stage of 5, 6 million pounds, when we alone, as an NGO, was spending 25, 30. And you've just made that point with Jamaica. And if you think when I was doing the job, the standard thing that you got from civil servants for almost any climate crisis or emergency response to any Worlds was usually 100 million. It's usually 100 million for Yemen, 100 million for Sudan, 100 million for South Sudan, 100 million for Somalia, 100 million for Syria, going up in cases like Pakistan, 400 million. So if you look at 2.5 is not a lot.

[Alastair Campbell]

But the other thing, this, I think, goes back to the point about maybe this is where we should talk a little bit about the way the media landscape has changed, because this goes to the heart of thing about whether we care more or less. I think the debate has moved, I'm afraid, and I think a lot of them, because I think if that had been back in the days when you were in power. 2.5 million.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

To Jamaica, which has just seen this.

[Rory Stewart]

Catastrophic and which has this huge historical relationship with Britain in every single way. We couldn't be more closely connected to Jamaica.

[Alastair Campbell]

I think there would have been an absolute outcry.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. From both sides, from. From the progressive left saying, here are people suffering, and from the Tory right saying, Commonwealth historical.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, there hasn't been. And I think one of the reasons there hasn't been is because this argument, why are we helping people abroad when we've got enough of our problems at home? And playing into this whole thing about immigration and so forth. And I thought this week, you know, you. I know, saw the same thing. Elon Musk, I mean, he did this thing Yesterday, it was circulated very widely on social media, talking about how Britain, in Britain now, in Ireland, Scotland and England, there are Villages of 500 People who are sitting there like hobbits, living a nice, peaceful, quiet life, and men are arriving in their thousands to rape their women and children. It was utterly nuts. And it was getting millions of views on social media alongside. We had this terrible stabbing on a train at the weekend. And literally within minutes, you had including quite serious, significant politicians out, essentially spotting something that they felt they could exploit. You know, we need to know the identity of this man with the knife immediately. Well, of course we do. And that's the police's job to go and try and find them. And they did actually an amazing job, you know, in dealing with this crisis as it. With this disaster as it unfolded. But I think this is where I think social media has changed a lot of these debates. Musk has driven it. And we now have a body of politicians right and left who basically think that it's there as something to exploit rather than something to challenge for the damage it's doing to our government and to REM.

[Rory Stewart]

Back in 2015, 16, our least favorite or second least favorite politician in the world, Boris Johnson. When Donald Trump said there were no go areas in London, Boris Johnson said Donald Trump is out of his mind and is displaying a stupefying ignorance. Fast forward 11 years, where are the mainstream politicians calling out Musk?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think, and I had an argument with Peter Karl about this sometime about when he was doing the tech job and said, well, look, you know, like it or not, this guy's an important political magical figure because he was so close to Trump. He's an important economic figure because of his wealth and all that stuff. But I think this guy's doing real damage, using his platform to do real damage to the country that we live in and doing it deliberately.

[Rory Stewart]

And those are absolutely bugger all. Right, so he's bugger all. So what preceded this? I mean, it's completely obsessed with Lord of the Rings. Like a lot of these tech bros are.

[Alastair Campbell]

Palantir.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, exactly, Exactly, Arendelle, exactly. All this stuff is Lord of the Rings. And he said that Tommy Robinson is like the Rangers of Rohan, the men of Gondor, brought out to protect the hobbits against the bad men. Now, the truth is, if anything, Tommy Robinson's one of the Orcs, and he dear old Elon Musk is the evil wizard Saruman who's releasing.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, you're talking about a book I haven't read as closely as you have, but I can see the young people in our production team nodding. Nodding knowledgeably. I was in Dublin when the riots were going on. So they've got asylum hotels, same as we have. And the dinner I was speaking at, I was sitting opposite the police, the chief of police, the guarded commissioner, a guy called Justin Kelly, very nice guy. And he'd been through the mill with this thing. But what he was explained to me was that this terrible, terrible, terrible incident happened where a 10 year old girl who I think is in care, was out in the middle of the night and she was raped by somebody who was in one of these hotels.

[Rory Stewart]

And this is in Ireland?

[Alastair Campbell]

This is in Dublin.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

And the minute the story got out, Stephen Yaxley, Lennon, Tommy Robinson, so called, was in Israel.

[Rory Stewart]

Yep.

[Alastair Campbell]

Where he'd been parading in his Maccabi Tel Aviv shirt.

[Rory Stewart]

Yep. And was invited as a guest by one of the most Israeli governments.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah. And he was tweeting about this hotel in Dublin. He said that a Canadian, similar figure was not only tweeting about it, he was filming himself getting on a plane in Canada to come over to join the Irish patriots outside this hotel. And he said within a matter of hours they had two and a half thousand people outside this hotel. And they had people charging them with carts, horse and cart. They had people with pitchforks, they had a laser that was trying to disrupt the activity of the helicopter that was above. Now actually, they did an amazing job to bring it under control as quickly as they did. But what it shows is this is musk, is part of the internationalization of the production of as much mayhem as they can in our country and in Ireland.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. And of course, what he's doing on X is he's saying, I predict civil war, civil war now. But of course, my sense is he wants civil war. He's trying to create civil war. He's not going to get it, but he's fantasizing about it. He wants it. He wants to create it. It's not really a prediction. Most of his predictions go wrong. He predicted the AfD were going to win the German elections. He was wrong. None of his supporters remember this. Right. But they really want to believe that civil war is coming because that feeds the sort of desire for violence.

[Alastair Campbell]

But what is this thing about? So, like, you know, the other big thing that's happening today, these elections in the US and including Mamdani in New York, one of the big attack lines they've been running against Mamdani is that he's going to Be like Sadiq Khan in London. Because they've ceded this idea that London is like this hellhole where you can't walk down the street.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, if I was putting up with Boris Johnson, they've been saying for 11.

[Alastair Campbell]

Years, the American ambassador was in Ireland, was at this thing. And I had a chat with him. Guy called Ed Walsh. And I said to him, after, he says, look, you know, can you please keep this guy Musk out of our politics? He knows absolutely f all about what goes on here. He misrepresents it the whole time. And I was telling him some of the stuff that Musk had been saying and tweeting and he didn't know about it. And he said, sounds pretty bad. Yeah, it's really bad. Just. Just on this. I mean, there was a really. I was actually trying to send Fraser Nelson, X of the Spectator, the predecessor to Michael Gove, current leading episode, top of the charts, which.

[Rory Stewart]

Which it was an extraordinary episode.

[Alastair Campbell]

Anyway, I was trying to send Fraser Nelson a direct message to congratulate him on a piece he'd written. But I was very surprised to discover he's blocked me on social media. I must have said something to upset him sometime in the past. But he pointed out, he said social media, he was talking about the train stabbings and he was saying that literally within minutes these theories were going around and politicians were piling in and, you know, speaking to their sort of their existing biases and prejudices. And he said, for those interested, here are the facts about recent trends in violent crime. First of all, yes, the immigrant population has doubled over the last two decades. But crime, as measured by the Gold Standard Crime survey for England and Wales, has halved. This crime is halved in spite of all these children born to immigrants. Now it's about a third of all births, or half in London. And London, the most immigrant, heavy, racially diverse city in the uk, releases monthly figures for murders, perhaps the hardest of all crime metrics. They are at a multi year, possibly even multi century low. So there are facts.

[Rory Stewart]

And the response from Nigel Farage when challenged with exactly this is, look at your phone. So the whole of politics has become virtual, holopolitics become TikTok. These kind of facts are entirely irrelevant. So when I challenged Musk's thing on Twitter, I got two and a half thousand replies and everything was, you're out of touch, Rory. Why don't you visit Britain? Why don't you come to my thing? It's mayhem, it's civil war already, it's madness already. And you Turn around and you say, look at the figures. Fraser Nelson also has looked at hospital admissions, which is pretty black and white. How many people are admitted to hospital for stab wounds down over the last five years. But that is not what people believe on social media.

[Alastair Campbell]

If we go with what people feel and what people believe, that is what feeds populism. And that's why there has to be far better job done. I mean, you wait a long time if you get the media to sort of do the job properly. But I think politicians have got to do a lot better job than they are currently doing at rebutting the lies and the nonsense. And you've got to be careful because you don't want to spend your whole time doing this stuff. Stuff. But I think something with somebody with as big a following of as Musk and it wasn't just about Britain, the stuff. He was. He had three hours of Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan. Pathetic. And no rebuttal, no sort of challenging or whatever. But I. I just think this stuff is way, way, way more dangerous than we think. And they create a narrative which is very, very hard to push back on. And if you let it go, if you let it go, it becomes a fact.

[Rory Stewart]

And that's become the world, hasn't it? That's really what's driving world. Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

Anyway, shall we. Should we take a break?

[Rory Stewart]

Let's take a break and come back. And after the break, let's. Let's get into Sudan, which is. Is probably the most interesting international ICU in the world at the moment.

[Alastair Campbell]

Welcome back to the Recipe Politics. Me, Alastair Campbell.

[Rory Stewart]

And with me, Rory Stewart. Very much looking forward to seeing people in our forthcoming tour. To remind people that's Bournemouth, Glasgow, Manchester, London. Come to the live tours. Love to see you. I think we're 96% sold out, but there is few tickets left and we'd love to see.

[Alastair Campbell]

It starts this weekend, Rory.

[Rory Stewart]

It does. I hope you're feeling fit and well.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I'm not really focused yet. I will focus. I'll be there. I'll be there, I'll be there. But it's got. We've got West Ham Burnley on Saturday and Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell at Bournemouth on. On Sunday. And then also if you're in, we get a lot of people in Belfast and in Dublin saying, why do you never come here? I go there all the time, but not necessarily with the rest of politics. But I'll be going there March 5th and 6th with not Rory Stewart but Anthony Scaramucci. So just the Mooch. So just go to thereestispolitics.com to get the few remaining tickets for the current. Also to sign up for Belfast and Dublin tickets go on sale on Friday, November 7th.

[Rory Stewart]

And of course, if you'd like to sign up for early access this amazing Alastair Mooch double show, please join as a member, which also helps us support the podcast and gives you access to some of our miniseries and much more.

[Alastair Campbell]

Okay, let's talk about Sudan. 150,000 killed so far. Thousands currently trapped in El Fasha. That's the reason we're talking about this now is because the extraordinary battle that has been in il fashion a siege followed by the one side taking over this crucial strategic city, 2 million at risk of or already in famine 30 million in need of aid, 40 million displaced, 90% of children not in school. And our friend David Miliband and his IRC rescue organization, they're saying this is pretty much the worst thing that's happening anywhere in the world right now.

[Rory Stewart]

I think so many interesting things to be said. One is that 150,000, to put it in context, is about 50% more than the number of people we estimate to have been killed in Gaza. Although of course it's worth bearing in mind there are some very, very big differences when people try to draw equivalences. One of them is that as a percentage of the population, that's far lower than Gaza. The population of Sudan is about 50 million. Population in Gaza is about 2,3 million. So as a percentage of the population, far more were killed in Gaza, in Sudan, but it's still a horrifying number of people, 150,000. Another difference, of course, is that Israel is a a Western ally supplied by the West. It's a liberal democratic state, as Sudan is a civil war. Nevertheless, it is absolutely true, as many people have said, that most of the focus has been on Israel, Gaza and on Ukraine and not on Sudan. And although we've done quite a lot of episodes on Sudan, I think we can see we haven't done anything like as many. And my goodness, it's both horrifying and interesting. Quick reminder explainer. Essentially there are are two different military groups operating. There is a group called the RSF led by this man called Hermeti, who was essentially a camel rustler, camel trader from the Chad border. Arab nomad and his group used to be called the Janjaweed, devils on horses. And people remember them because they were the big perpetrators of the genocides in Darfur going back 20 years ago. His uncle was a famous Cromwell. He himself has been indicted by the International Criminal Court 20 years ago. And on the other side you have the Sudan Armed Forces, the SAF under Burhan, who is the general commanding them.

[Alastair Campbell]

And back then they were allies on the same side, fighting the same war.

[Rory Stewart]

And this is part of the whole complication because effectively when the dictator of Sudan was trying to attack the people in Darfur, he used the Janjaweed militia, he used Hameti to do that. And then when that war began to come to an uneasy fragile peace, he tried to merge the janjui militia, the RSF with the army. And then those two forces then brought down the dictator 2019 and then 2021 did a coup d' etat against the new inverted commas democratic government. And then in 2023 started fighting each other, which has led to this horror. And Al Fasha is basically the last major fortress of the Sudan armed forces west of the Nile which has just been taken. And people who are able to get out of the city now fleeing to a refugee camp. 600,000 people in that refugee camp. And we're not going to play, but the atrocity videos are, I mean, I've been sent many of them and they are just so shocking. What's happening on the ground?

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, there's this, there's this guy who's become a bit of a sort of social media Abu Lulu who is literally posting videos of himself killing people who are begging to stay alive and defenseless, not armed. So I think we're talking quite a lot of war crime being committed. But of course the other thing that's, that's, that's happened is, is the extent to which other countries are engaged and involved. So the saf, Sudanese armed forces are backed by Egypt, backed by Turkey, backed by the Saudis, and then the rsf, although the UAE deny it, are very heavily backed by the uae. And there's been a little bit of a kind of diplomatic media flurry in Britain this week because of course there's been the suggestion that weapons that we have sold to the UAE have found their way into this battle in Sudan. So if you go back to 20 odd years ago when there were these global protests and concerts and all the sort of usual panoply of support for a place in real trouble, the pictures were of these guys kind of riding around on horseback and camels. They've now got the modern war, they've got drones, they've got howitzers, they've got really good transport equipment and so forth. And I think what they're looking for is, I guess, for the Americans and others to step in and go beyond the pretty pathetic statements that have been, that have been forthcoming the last few days.

[Rory Stewart]

Uae, Great reporting from Declan Walsh, who's a veteran journalist in the region and great reporting by the New York Times in general. We talked about podcast, how they managed to use satellite imagery to expose that UAE had effectively a fake hospital on the Chad, Sudan border, which they were using to push in supplies. Lots of weapons, many of them seem to be American weapons supplied to the UAE or Chinese weapons supplied to the UAE have been found on the ground. And there's no doubt at all that the RSF Hermeti's group, this ex jantary group, just couldn't operate without the money and supplies coming directly from the United Arab Emirates. So one of the questions is why is the UAE doing this? And why indeed. You've just mentioned Turkey, Saudi, Egypt and others. Why do they care? Well, there are basically three things that people seem to be caring about. One of them is resources. So gold, oil, and increasingly food. So many of these Gulf monarchies are trying to think about food for the future. And that's particularly true because we're in a world now where people don't trust US security guarantees in the same way they're trying to hedge, they're trying to get other resources. UAE is now this year the biggest growing investor in Africa, ahead of China. The second thing is ports. So people really got their eyes on Port Sudan and they're really thinking about the Horn of Africa. And that's true. In place all the way down Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, many of these countries competing to try to control ports all the way down to Yemen.

[Alastair Campbell]

Just say that again. They've got more. What was the thing with UAE and China?

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, more investment coming in from the UAE and more growth and investment than any country in the world. Ahead of China this year into Africa. So the story over the last 10 years has basically been that China, France, Britain, which when I was the Africa Minister In 2016, we were ahead of China, know we've been dwarfed by China over the last 10 years, but now the UAE has become the biggest investor.

[Alastair Campbell]

Because back, back in, back in George Bush's time, when I remember George Bush saying, this is a priority, we've got to sort this is real problem. One of the issues was that China was investing very, very heavily in Sudanese oil. But that's fascinating. The UAE all over all of it.

[Rory Stewart]

UAE is all over all of it. They also seem to have, they've got an incredibly close relationship with Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia, which we should also watch when we talk about global conflict, because Ethiopia is now pushing to take Eritrea. And we need to talk to you about that too, because you know about Eritrea. You went on an amazing trip to Eritrea where there's a famous picture of you with the current leader of Eritrea.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, this was a long, long, long time ago when he was a really good guy. He was a freedom fighter.

[Rory Stewart]

He was the great.

[Alastair Campbell]

And we were supporting hero of the left. Yeah, it was extraordinary. And he's since become one of the worst dictators on the planet.

[Rory Stewart]

Anyway, we should talk about that another day because it's another big global conflict brewing as the world falls apart. They're also very close to Debbie and Chad, very close to Iftar in Libya. They've been playing in South Sudan. They've been playing in Yemen. So what's your way up to? Resources, ports. The third thing is that they are emphasizing that the Sudan armed forces are relying on Islamist militia groups. And one of the ways in which they retook Khartoum is with these Islamists. And Mohammed bin Zayed, the leader of uae, has a very, very strong anti Islamist view. He's very against the Muslim Brotherhood all over the world. That's been some of the splits traditionally with Syria, some of the splits with. With Qatar, and I think also a really strong sense of loyalty because this was the mercenary force. It's the Sudanese, it's the Janjeet militia, the rsf, it's Hermeti that Mohammed bin Zayed used in Yemen. He took these Sudanese militia groups and deployed them to Yemen to fight in Yemen. So along with other things, such as the extraordinary amount of gold going into uae, far more than any of these African countries are registering as exported, is coming into uae, like sort of four times more than the registered export.

[Alastair Campbell]

What are you saying?

[Rory Stewart]

It's illegal smuggling. And quite a lot of this will be coming from Hometi. Although it's probably also true that gold is coming in from Sudan armed forces who are also far from saints in this whole picture.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, there aren't really any good guys in this story, are there?

[Rory Stewart]

There are not any good guys in the story. And this is where I think the question is whether Trump can pull something off. So this land about number 20 on the US list of priorities. It's a classic problem. I was talking to an amazing guy called Alex de Wall who's studied the horn of Africa for 20 years, and Alex was saying that it feels to him a little bit like the way the East India Company, the British East India Company used to behave in India in the 18th century. We can listen to the kind of the Empire podcast, our sister podcast, the Gohanger Group on this. But basically it's about sovereignty collapsing. Many of these states no longer have real sovereignty. They're being divided in two, like Sudan. De facto their resources are being pillaged and lots of external actors are using generals, political leaders for their own devices. And the world system, which used to be, or we thought was in the 70s, 80s and 90s about sovereignty is collapsing into something that feels much more like the age of empire.

[Alastair Campbell]

But on this one, you mentioned Trump there and of course he keeps this interview with CBS this week. He produced a list of all the wars that he, he's sold, most of which he hasn't. But this one is where you don't really feel an American engagement. I think he does have a special envoy, but I couldn't even tell you his, his name. And you said, probably rightly that we won't show the some of the worst videos, but there was a very, I think there's something we should maybe put into the newsletter or put online. And that was a guy called Nathaniel Raymond who's the head of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and he did a really interesting analysis of this and he said he's been investigating war crimes for 26 years and this is as bad as he's seen it. And these pictures where you see from the air, these body shaped blood stains on the ground and, and what's happening, of course these people are so they've been, they've been trapped inside Al Fasher. There's been infected in a siege. No food, no medicine going in. Lots of reports of people eating animal feed to stay alive. And as people try to leave, quite a lot are being killed as they go. And so the IRC who are based in Tooele, they've actually, although as you say, I think they've got tens of thousands that have got there, they have been expecting more. And I think the worry is that quite a lot of people have just simply not made it because they've been picked off as they go.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, there's been such extraordinary work done by different humanitarian organizations. So Jerome Tubiana and Eddie Thomas with MET Saint Sans Frontiere, who we talk about a lot. MSF are people who have sort of 20 years of Sudan expertise. I think Jerome Tubiana's parents were anthropologists working in Sudan. They speak local languages fluently. Eddie Thomas is part Armenian, part Lebanese, part Goan, part Irish and these incredible characters, along with some very, very brave Sudanese, incredibly brave Sudanese, are trying to keep the support together. But it's also a story, if we want to link it to the bigger story of the collapse of American power. Because what I think we're seeing with Trump is a president who is able to exercise a lot of power and leverage over America's erstwhile allies. Developed countries like Canada, Japan, Switzerland, European Union, very vulnerable to Trump and American power because we're so integrated in terms of our economies. But America has basically lost its influence entirely over places like Sudan. And this began probably five years ago. I know very, very well Molly Fee, who was the American Assistant Secretary for Africa, because she and I lived together for six months, shared a shipping container together in Iraq, and she found herself taking over a situation where Jeff Feldman, who was the envoy of Sudan, had literally sat down with Hermeti and Burhan, who had promised him that they were working together to resolve things, got on a plane. When he landed, I think he landed in Doha, he discovered they'd just thrown a coup d' etat and thrown the whole country apart. And the sense for america Then in 2021, of this total betrayal, that people could lie to you to your face at least two hours before they do a military coup was really the moment where everyone was like, okay, what on earth has happened? And of course, what had happened is rise of China, France kicked out of Africa, but also the rise of these middle powers. Suddenly, all of Africa, particularly the Horn of Africa, dominated particularly by, as you say, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi, uae, which turned out to matter much more than the United States.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, there we are. Biggest humanitarian crisis in the world right.

[Rory Stewart]

Now, and a possible U.S. solution. So this is my pitch. My pitch is this, actually. Trump could do a repeat of Gaza, which is not a peace deal, but he could pull off ceasefire and humanitarian access. And the way that he'd do it is put pressure on UAE and Mohammed Bin Said. That's the key to the whole thing. And there you've got to work out, what does Mohammed Bin Said and UAE want? Do they want access to ports? Do they want gold? But if you put that pressure on, the RSF cannot operate without international support, because, as you say, they're so reliant on all these fancy drones, command and control equipment, electronic jamming. This is not a sort of Taliban style war of the sort you had in Afghanistan with people just wandering around with Klashikovs. And that is something you can imagine Trump playing through the theatrics of peace Might be able to do. So let's tempt him towards that for his next Nobel Prize move.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah. One thing I have noticed, he has.

[Rory Stewart]

No.

[Alastair Campbell]

Not talked about this one very much at all.

[Rory Stewart]

So you're not. You're not that confident.

[Alastair Campbell]

But I think you're right. The key is to actually put pressure on the uae, but the UK could do a bit of that as well.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, we've lost a lot of leverage, haven't we? I mean, we lost our relationship. I mean, that's been a really interesting one. You know, we often talk a show about how we bring foreign leaders when they're young to Sandhurst so that they develop a love of Britain. I think Mohammed bin Zayed had such a bad experience at Sandhurst that he's hated Britain ever since. And to add to that, we were very critical of their internal human rights rights abuses, stopped a lot of our intelligence work with them, and I think we lost a lot of leverage there. So I don't think Britain has much influence now in uae.

[Alastair Campbell]

There we go. So last week I've been pretty much all domestic and a bit of international. This week was the other way around. Quite depressing, both climate and Sudan. And I think this is a thing we should come back to another point about why we seem to be focusing so much less on crises and disasters and situations that. That deserve more attention than they're currently getting. Okay, Rory, back tomorrow with Question Time. Whether you like it or not, we're gonna talk about your friends in the Royal family, the former Prince Andrew, apparently. What's your middle name, by the way?

[Rory Stewart]

Nugent.

[Alastair Campbell]

Nugent. We're gonna have to call you Rory Nugent Stewart. And I have to be Alastair John Campbell, because apparently we now have to call the former Prince Andrew Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

[Rory Stewart]

Right.

[Alastair Campbell]

What's this sort of middle naming thing, or is it?

[Rory Stewart]

And remember, they were originally called Battenburg. They only changed their name to Mount during the First World War because they didn't like the German sound of it.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, I look forward to your history lesson tomorrow, along with your explanation for the interview you did on Newslight, which we're still getting lots of feedback on. We'll also talk about the Dutch elections. Rob Yetten, a young gay leader.

[Rory Stewart]

Amazing result because interesting in terms of populism. And of course, the other huge issue, which is what Trump is up to with his sea and trade talks and nuclear testing and all that kind of big stuff around the world.

[Alastair Campbell]

See you then.

[Rory Stewart]

See you then.

[David Ulisogga and Sarah Churchwell]

Hello, I'm David Ulisogga and I'm Sarah Churchwell. This week on Journey Through Time, we are exploring the story of the gunpowder plot of 1605, the story of how a small group of Catholics engaged in what would have been the most devastating terrorist attack in all of British history.

[Rory Stewart]

The plan was ruthless. Blow up Parliament, King James I and most of his family, all in a single blow.

[David Ulisogga and Sarah Churchwell]

The series will tell the story of treason and traitors of a group of men led by the charismatic Robert Catesby, who believed that the only option left to them to win their rights as Catholics was the violent destruction of the Stuart state.

[Rory Stewart]

We look at the story of Guy Fawkes, the nation's most famous traitor, from his recruitment to becoming the plot's fall guy, and all ultimately being tortured and killed.

[David Ulisogga and Sarah Churchwell]

Finally, we find out why this plot is still remembered now, 400 years later. Listen to Journey Through Time. Wherever you get your podcasts.