← The Rest Is Politics
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- [00:01]
Rory Stewart
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 Never underestimate charisma. The future is in our hands.
- [00:19]
Alistair Campbell
New Yorkers expect the mayor to be the CEO of the city, delivering.
- [00:23]
Rory Stewart
You know, we campaign in poetry and we govern in prose. Mamdani is campaigning poetry. Our time is now. Thank you very much. The pros is going to be tough because the promises he's made, they're going to be very difficult to bring about because of the power structures this episode is powered by Fuse Energy, and there's.
- [00:41]
Alistair Campbell
A slight tendency to governments to talk about the future of energy as though it's some distant concept awaiting its next committee report. But in reality, of course, it's already being built fuel by field, turbine by turbine by companies like Fuse Energy.
- [00:55]
Rory Stewart
And Fuse is now the fastest growing renewable energy supplier in the uk, putting sustainability at the heart of everything they do. Their new solar and wind farm projects are helping to build a cleaner, more resilient national grid, proving that renewable energy can be both affordable and scalable.
- [01:11]
Alistair Campbell
Every home that they power brings that future close to the present, whether it's panels catching light or turbines turning across the country. And this is progress, which isn't measured just in targets and slogans, but in sunlight, in wind, in electricity, and a bit of British persistence.
- [01:28]
Rory Stewart
And progress is not always about shouting the loudest. It's about keeping the lights on intelligently and making clean energy something that everyone can afford.
- [01:37]
Alistair Campbell
The energy transition isn't tomorrow's problem, it's today. And Fuse Energy is actually doing something to address it.
- [01:45]
Rory Stewart
So switch to Fuse Energy today, using the code politics to save on your energy bills and help power a cleaner, more sustainable future.
- [01:54]
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- [02:24]
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- [02:50]
Alistair Campbell
Carvana pick up.
- [02:52]
Carvana Advertiser
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- [03:01]
Rory Stewart
Welcome to the Rest of Politics with.
- [03:03]
Alistair Campbell
Me, Alistair Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart.
- [03:06]
Rory Stewart
So, Rory, we're going to talk about Zoran Mandani. The whole world, it seems to me, has been talking about Zoran Mandani. We haven't talked about him much. We're going to cover the aftermath of the Czech Republic elections because they're very, very interesting to what's happening over in that part of Europe alongside Slovakia and Hungary. And we're going to talk about, I don't think we can say our friend, but now that he's Donald Trump's friend, we're going to talk about Al Shara, the president of Syria, meeting Trump in the White House. But very briefly, we should tell listeners in case and viewers if they missed it, we did a live yesterday on the BBC turmoil. The only really big development since we did it is the fact that, hey presto, what a surprise. Donald Trump has decided he's going to sue the BBC for, for $1 billion. What do you make of that?
- [03:57]
Alistair Campbell
It is pretty amazing and it's pretty shocking. Obviously, Trump normalizes everything so that we just get accustomed to it. But there's never been an American president trying to sue the BBC for a billion dollars. It's kind of unimaginable. It is true. Of course, it's not unheard of for politicians to sue news organizations in the UK Famously, we had conservative politicians saying they were taking on what was the sword of justice and the shield of truth as Jonathan Aitken went out to try to unsuc sue a newspaper. But this feels a really horrible combination of trying to intimidate what, as we pointed out in our live show and if people I thought it was quite an interesting 45 minutes. We've done a deep dive in the BBC. So do look at that in the feed. But is the most trusted media organization in the US as you pointed out after the Weather Channel and worldwide, the most trusted organization so important in the modern world. And there he is trying to go after it for a billion dollars, which is part of a pattern of his extortion of money from media organizations all the way across the United States. And really interesting that he is now so determined to make sure he's not just intimidating the American media, but he's intimidating media worldwide, as you say, people.
- [05:10]
Rory Stewart
Can listen to that. And I think we had a fair bit to say.
- [05:13]
Alistair Campbell
And is there anything you wish you'd said looking back on it, anything that you felt we didn't, we were unfair on or didn't quite get right on the BBC?
- [05:21]
Rory Stewart
Fair enough. I got Dan, one of my fellow swimmers at the, at the Lido this morning said you are way too soft on the BBC. And it started this big debate going on inside the change you room. And it was really interesting actually because you had people there who were absolutely adamant the BBC is pro Israel and then you had another group of people absolutely adamant the BBC is anti Israel and it's left wing and it's right wing. And you know, it was a sort of interesting microcosm of the point you made yesterday. It's just a kind of political football. I thought that one of the best things I heard yesterday was Chris Patton who we interviewed on leading a while back, former chairman of the BBC Trust, formatory cabinet minister. And he was, he just made the point, you know, let's just cut to the chase. Who do you believe more, the BBC or Donald Trump? What sort of media do you want, the BBC or Fox News? Now some people do want Fox News. The only thing maybe I would have said, but I was trying not to be too harsh to too many people. I think they do have a very weak chairman. I think this guy Samir Shah is very weak partly.
- [06:22]
Alistair Campbell
He should have been out there much more rapidly, should have been up there much more clearly. And I still think we haven't quite got it and the BBC hasn't got it. But really the new DG needs to define what it means to be objective and impartial and why that doesn't mean that you have to have a sort of 5050 balance of every view. What in a kind of post truth social media age it means to try to tell the truth, what fact checking means, what impartiality means and put that right at the core of news. I mean I'd almost use this Panorama incident as the pivot, say I'm profoundly ashamed of it. We should never have spliced it like that. That's not the kind of organization we are. This is the kind of organization we're going to be and just make them the absolute global gold standard on showing how you do news.
- [07:12]
Rory Stewart
It's going to be hard though because I've been getting calls this morning from media in Australia, in Canada, in UK Europe. This is a big story around the world because the BBC has a global reputation and the journalist I was talking to in Australia was saying the Murdoch papers absolutely gunning for the BBC there as well now and also any other kind of independent media. So I think, and I also think the point I made yesterday, maybe I would have made it a bit stronger. I think the Labour government has got to be on the side of BBC values and BBC centrality to national life, otherwise they're making a big mistake.
- [07:48]
Alistair Campbell
Be interesting to see whether they couldn't actually put a bit more investment back into the BBC World Service. Reconfirm that. Actually part of the point of the license fee. Yes, it's great the entertainment stuff they do. It's fantastic how successful they are with Strictly and Match the Day. But that actually, it's very sad. What happened to Hard Talk, what happened to Newsnight that people are not standing up for the news now. Let's get to the news then, rather than us talking round the news. Zoran Mamdani, who managed to get over a million votes, 50.4% of the vote. Nearest runner, Andrew Cuomo, who people thought a few months ago was the obvious candidate in the shoe in the former governor of New York, only got 41.6% of the vote. First Muslim mayor of New York City, first person of South Asian descent to lead the city. First mayor. Born in Africa, he's born in Uganda. Youngest mayor in over a century. He's only 34. And he's gonna take over on the 1st of January, 2026. Over to you.
- [08:42]
Rory Stewart
Okay. New York is a very important city in the world, but so is London, so is Berlin, so is Istanbul. There's something about America that attracts more attention. There's something about Trump's America that attracts even more. But I think the reason people have got so excited about this guy on both sides, you know, the progressive left thinking, you know, alas, somebody who gives us hope, the right saying, this guy's a really dangerous, lunatic communist. That's a sort of Trump script. The. But I think there are a few points I'd make. The first is never underestimate charisma. The guy has got a smile to die for. He really does. But I'll tell you what, I read this piece by a guy called Walid Shahid, who is a. He's an organizer for the Democrats. And Mamdani had over 100,000 volunteers. 100,000. That's real motivation. But let me just read you this that this guy wrote. And maybe if there are any Labour politicians listening, just listen to this. Where others narrate Decline. Mamdani sees a place worth fixing. That is what Democrats too often miss. Politics built around fear or opposition cannot inspire. It can only react and manage. What's needed is a politics that treats people not as victims of crisis, but as co authors of what can be repaired and rebuilt.
- [10:08]
Alistair Campbell
Well, just very quickly on that. I mean, I think this is the theme we keep coming back to, which is maybe the big theme of the age, the sense that we're victims, that we're powerless, that things are done to us. And it's not an accident that that awful Brexit slogan was take back control. The whole fight of the last 10 years has been about what you could pompously call agency. How do we show agency? How do we show we're not ignored? That's one of the reasons why I got obsessed in my latest book about the idea of local democracy. How do you actually get people? Involves citizens, assemblies, local democracies, steering their own things. But give people a sense as citizens that they're not having things done to them, but they're doing them. Sorry, back to you.
- [10:53]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, well, I'll just read the end of this thing. It says, for Mamdani, conflict isn't a distraction from governing. It's the entry point for persuasion. The goal is not to perform anger, but to focus it, to remind people that politics can still change the price of the things that govern their days. And so I think if you look at the way that he campaigned and okay, it's easy to say he's good looking, he's young and all that stuff, but he had a lot of stuff thrown at him. I mean, when you've got the President of America coming at you day after day, this guy's a lunatic, this guy's a communist. And the other thing, we talk a lot about communication. His communication skills are truly off the scale. He always pivots to a central point that he wants to make, whether it's affordability, whether it's, I'm on the side of the people, whatever. The point is whatever comes at him. So I was watching this interviewee did on Fox News, enemy territory. And the questioner was coming at him in a very sort of sneery way. You know, you're a bit young, you haven't done much with your life. You know, Donald Trump says this. The minute he mentioned Trump, the minute the interviewer mentioned Trump, Mamdani just. He'd obviously planned it. He turned to the camera. He looked directly in the camera. You mentioned Donald Trump. I guess he's watching because he watches Fox News, and I'm going to talk directly to him now. And he just went straight and he said, Mr. Trump, President Trump, I'm not like Eric Adams. You're not going to be. You're not going to be able to sort of, you know, discuss how corrupt I'm. Because I'm not corrupt. I'm not Cuomo. You're not. I'm not going to phone you and say, can you help with this? Can you help with that? I'm going to represent the people in New York. Okay? And then he went, he pivoted back, he said, sorry, what were you saying? And so he's very, very skilled at that. I watched a video he did this morning on the way, just walking down the street and somebody stopped him and they just had a chat, and he's just got this charm or what have you. Now, all that being said, Cuomo's dad, probably the most thing he's most known for is this wonderful cliche. It's true. You know, we campaign in poetry and we govern in prose. So Mamdani has campaigned in poetry. The prose is going to be tough because the promises he's made, which Trump calls communist, which I think I would call Social Democratic, but they're going to be very difficult to bring about because of the power structures.
- [13:07]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah. Well, so I think this prose stuff, I was talking to somebody from New York City politics who'd been right in the centre of these mayor offices yesterday, and he was reminding me that the budget of New York City under the control of the mayor, is $90 billion. He's responsible for something like 40,000 policemen, hundreds of thousands of city employees, all the schools, obviously, the transport system. I mean, it's very, very different to being mayor of London.
- [13:39]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, but just on that, he clearly wants to put taxes up on political and wealthy people. He doesn't have the power to do tax increases without the approval of the state legislature. And there's an interesting thing going on there, of course, because there's another election coming down the track on that. So he's got to use the sort of soft power and his politics and what have you, and just on transport, free buses are a big part of his campaign. He can't do that alone either, because ultimately, the body in charge, the mta, the Metropolitan Transport Authority, they control prices and they've been a bit iffy about this. So, again, he's going to have to build consensus, keep people behind him, and try to make the changes that he wants.
- [14:22]
Alistair Campbell
One thing there then, is, is he going to be able to do a Macron, which is to be elected as an individual, and then build a sort of party to take over the state legislature to get that through. Secondly, it's a position which certainly under Mike Bloomberg became a sort of definitional CEO position, not a sort of representative position. I mean, I felt very much when I was trying to run to be mayor of London and I'd go to New York, I was just astonished by the difference in scale and just how much direct power New Yorkers, with all that you've said, I agree there's many things in the way, but New Yorkers expect the mayor to be the CEO of the city, delivering. I remember campaigning in London, a big audience, and I said to people, how many people think transport isn't working, police isn't working? Lots of hands go up. And then I'd say, how many people think that's Sadiq Khan's fault? Very few hands go up because basically the view was he's not really. Doesn't really have much power over these things. That's not the view in New York. They really do see this as a position that should be running things. And there, I guess the critique would be this guy's, whatever. He is 34 years old, he's somebody from this very distinguished kind of academic media family. His mother made Salaam Bombay monsoon wedding. His father's this very famous post colonial academic. And the Democrat business community in New York is very worried. And they're worried, of course, because they think, and I'd love you to sort of, maybe we can transition to this. They think Mamdani is on his way to be the second most famous person in the world because he is going to be the absolute center now of the fight with Trump. Trump wants the fight, Mamdani wants the fight. It's ideal for both of them. They've got these two sort of supervillains and it's very possible that New York will be the front line on this. The most dramatic thing you've ever seen. You'll have the NYPD up against the deployment of federal forces in New York, you'll have communists against fascists. And if you're a central, if you're a Democrat who's trying to build a progressive, centrist message, you're really worried because you're really worried that it's like Corbyn has taken over the Labour Party and that it's going to be very difficult to rebuild the narrative of a sort of liberal, progressive, centrist Democrats. If your champion is Mamdani.
- [16:41]
Rory Stewart
Well, the one thing that all of us should agree about Trump is that he's got pretty unique political instincts and there is a sense that he sort of wanted Mamdani to win, win, although he was sort of saying, I'd rather have a. What was he said about Cuomo? I'd rather have a bad Democrat than a communist. And Mamdani is so far from being a communist, it's absurd. But of course, that's the politics that we're in. But I think there is something in that. And the question of how both of them play it at the moment, I think Mamdani's playing it better, but that's maybe because he's the new kid on the block. I don't know that it'll get to that because Trump, Trump has got so many other fires that he's setting off and so many fights that he's fighting. But it's an interesting thought just on your point, by the way, about the power. So he can mumdani as the mayor, he can appoint and remove the commissioners of more than 40 city agencies, the police being the most obvious, but also the Department of Finance, Cultural Affairs, Small Business Services. He appoints judges to criminal court, family court, and sometimes the civil court. He oversees more than 200 boards. He's automatically a member of organizations, is very the board of American Museum of Natural History, the 911 Memorial Organization, NY Public Library, et cetera. So, yeah, I think it's more powerful, it's bigger than the Mayor of London. But I think that I guess it's worth just speculating as to why he has excited so much. And I think the, if there's one thing that I think it's about at a time when, and this, you know, this relates to partly to what we're saying about the BBC and it relates to the strategy that the Labour government has been pursuing here is there is a sense that if you're going to sort of play the populist game, the grievances are all over there on the right. Okay. And what Mamdani has said with a big smile is actually a lot of the grievances are over here, and they're the people I'm going to care for. And so I think that's what's maybe excited progressive politics around the world so much about it.
- [18:49]
Alistair Campbell
Stepping back, though, if we look at the, the time we've been doing this show, we've been through the most unbelievable change in the world because Mamdani, who you and I are very sympathetic to and are tempted to celebrate would have been an almost inconceivable figure in the past. I mean, it's the idea, just to start with, that Eric Adams couldn't win a second term is sort of inconceivable. I mean, somebody was joking to me yesterday that Bill de Blasio, basically the story was that he'd basically wake up in the morning, smoke a joint, get in his car, go to the gym, do some gentle stretching, come back, snooze in the office, start a bit of work in the afternoon, and he won a second term. Right. It's impossible basically not to win a second term as an incumbent in New York. And yet Eric Adams did it. And again, if you were to say to people, any expert on American politics four or five years ago that a completely unknown 34 year old from the far left of the Democratic Party would be able to defeat Andrew Cuomo with all the money that Cuomo had behind him. I mean, so it's part of your bigger story of a world of politics, a world of social media, a world of TikTok, a world of Trump infused politics, which is changing all the basic assumptions and therefore means that if we look at European politics or British politics and try to imagine what might happen at the next election, there's a good chance we're well off the mark. There's a good chance that we're not seeing our own versions of the Mamdanis emerging on the left as well as on the right.
- [20:25]
Rory Stewart
Well, I guess the most obvious person that you'd suggest it might be would be Zach Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, who, you know, largely through social media, largely through communicating in a very similar way is, yeah, he's making, he's, he's getting traction, there's no doubt about that.
- [20:45]
Alistair Campbell
And traction that would have been unimaginable before. I mean, we've never had a Green Party at this sort of level in the polls. We've never had a sort of five party system emerging like this in Britain. I mean, things are changing very fast.
- [20:55]
Rory Stewart
And I'll tell you, I'll tell you the other thing. I think that sort of links the two of them. I mean, I saw Zach Polanski wrote a very interesting piece about how they're all attacking his teeth at the moment. Whereas nobody's going to attack Mamdani's teeth. He's got perfect, he's got very good American teeth. But what they both do is they communicate very clear messages and they keep coming back to them, but they do it in a way that sort of feels more authentic than people who are standing up saying, this is my message and here it is, I'm delivering it to you. And, you know, and I think we're going to. I know we're going to talk in question time about 16, 17 year olds and this report that Peter Hyman and his colleague have written about teenagers and what teenagers think, but the fact is that, you know, young. We're giving the vote now to 16 and 17 year olds. And the way that they consume media and politics is so far removed from the way that politics is being presented to them, other than by Farage on one side and Polanski on the other. The mainstream parties have got to catch up with that.
- [22:04]
Alistair Campbell
So there's a little counter narrative in the us maybe as my final point, which is people will also follow that. At the same time, we've had governor elections in Virginia and in New Jersey, and in both cases significant victories for the Democratic Party. Not from Mandani figures, but from women with law enforcement, CIA backgrounds who very much are running purple, very much kind of old fashioned centrists. In Virginia, they flipped a Republican governor to a Democrat. And in New Jersey, where Trump performed pretty well, it's a decisive Democratic victory. So that's something that is giving a bit of confidence back to that side of the Democratic Party. But it's also been shaken because we are recording just after the news has come that the Senate, the Democrats in the Senate have broken. Eight of them defected to the Republican side. Schumer lost control of his Senate caucus and eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to basically stop the government shutdown. Government's been shut down for 44 days. Civil servants been furloughed, food programmes were about to freeze, and eight senators who are either stepping down or not up for reelection went over to the Republican side. And that's really troubling because Schumer was trying to hold the Democratic Party together. They had a very clear message, which is, we're not going to vote for this unless Trump gives us a concession. And that concession has got to be on healthcare. He's got to show some flexibility in healthcare. He didn't give it. And it was from Trump's point of view. I'm afraid the Democrats that blinked first, that's the way the New York Times is presenting its huge recriminations within the Democratic Party. So it's a strange week, a week where there are three different messages. Message of an ex CIA governor, an ex CIA officer taking Virginia back to the Democrats as a governor, a populist who's slightly scaring the business community and needs to do a lot of work to reassure them. Winning in New York was Zoram Dani. And then this splitting apart of the old governing senators in the Democratic Party.
- [24:07]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, but it just underlines that one, that America is this vast and very varied country. It's hard to imagine Mamdani fighting the same fight in some of the kind of, you know, the.
- [24:20]
Alistair Campbell
In Virginia.
- [24:20]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, exactly. But one thing about him, this thing about inspiring and motivating. At one point in the campaign, back in March, he had to put a freeze on donations because they'd already reached the legal limit for the time period they were on. So he was. And these were largely in, you know, pretty small donations. Just sense that people want to be part of. Part of something different and part of the change that it feels that he represents. And your point about the business community? I'll just tell our listeners of viewers you were there, but you and I did an event for the Mooch and one of his big speakers, he organizes these big conferences for his crypto friends, and you and I spoke.
- [25:03]
Alistair Campbell
Let me set it up for you. So it was all going very well. Everyone was absolutely loving me and Alistair. And finally I made my final comments, and Alistair was gonna finish the whole thing. And traditionally we finish with a rousing thing that gets an absolute round of applause.
- [25:15]
Rory Stewart
And so there was a woman at the front who'd been sitting eating out of our hands and loving and nodding and what have you. And then so at the end, I said, okay, I'll tell you what gives me hope, and I hope that this doesn't upset you. What gives me hope that a young guy, 34, with a beautiful smile, can come along and he could shake up American politics. He can frighten Donald Trump, and he can make rich people say, you know what? They should pay their taxes. And this woman suddenly went, oh, my God.
- [25:48]
Alistair Campbell
And we left.
- [25:49]
Rory Stewart
We left to almost thunderous applause. Thunderous applause.
- [25:52]
Alistair Campbell
Desultory? Disappointed? Confused?
- [25:55]
Rory Stewart
No, no, no, they were fine. The Mooch was happy. He said that we got them fired up. Anyway, I suspect you're right. We'll be talking about Trump a lot in the future, that's for sure. But I think we'll be talking about Mandani.
- [26:06]
Alistair Campbell
My thing that I'm going to be interested in is whether he tries to play some of the games that he's played in Portland and elsewhere on crime and security. Because nypd, the New York Police Department, is unlike any other police department in the United States. It is basically its own paranormal organization. I was talking to someone in NYPD yesterday and he was explaining that it's the only police force in the US which when the Secret Service turns up, they ask NYPD before they arrive. Generally the Secret Service turns up the present. They just, if you're lucky, they tell you probably 10 minutes before he arrives, may not tell you at all, just push you out. The way NYPD they coordinate unbelievably carefully. They're very, very deferential towards them. So it's going to be really interesting if Trump tries to pick a fight with nypd.
- [26:52]
Rory Stewart
Right, let's take a break and then come back and talk about Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine and Al Shara.
- [26:59]
Alistair Campbell
That is about populism, that's about Syria, that's about a former Al Qaeda terrorist taking over. And there's a lot here that actually strangely connects to Mamdani. This is an ad by BetterHelp. November can feel quite tough. The light fading earlier, the day's closing in, and it's easy, almost natural, to retreat into ourselves. But at this time of year, as at any time of year, it's not solitude but connection that helps. Reaching out doesn't have to mean grand gestures. It can be a thank you message to someone you've not spoken to in months, or a walk with a friend who's been on your mind. And often after you do it, you wonder why you waited so long to give or receive gratitude. BetterHelp has spent more than a decade helping people spend start those conversations, connecting more than 5 million people to 30,000 qualified professionals and refining an industry leading system for finding the right match. You can switch easily if the first fit isn't quite right. Don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com RestPolitics that's better. H-E-L-P.com.
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- [31:03]
Rory Stewart
Me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. So let's go to Central Eastern Europe. I think they see it as Central Europe. We maybe look at it as a bit east, but there's a lot going on. Our leading interview this week is with Radek Sikorski, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland. Really interesting on Trump, on Putin, on Ukraine, but also you have a real sense of just how vulnerable they feel to to Russia. And then we want to talk about we're going to talk about Czech Republic in particular, but also Slovakia and Hungary. And just to just to Position them. If you look at a map of Europe, you've got, you've got Germany and Poland that sort of sit there almost like mirrors of each other. And then you come down a bit and you've got the Czech Republic there, Slovakia and then Hungary. And of course Hungary famously led by Viktor Orban, who was given a few concessions by Trump this week at another meeting in the, after a meeting in the Oval Office. And Slovakia with, with fico, the new leader. They're both leaning towards Russia and that's why there's been a lot of interest in the fallout from the Czech Republic election. And this billionaire businessman, Andre Babis, who has won the election, but insufficiently to carry it on his own. He's had to make a coalition deal with some, I would argue pretty unpleasant people. Two smaller parties. One of them has these, I don't know of any other party that calls itself this. They're called motorists for themselves and it's completely absurd.
- [32:35]
Alistair Campbell
They're basically an anti bicycle party.
- [32:37]
Rory Stewart
Well, they're also anti UEU and anti NATO.
- [32:39]
Alistair Campbell
But it's part of our sort of broader story, isn't it, about how much politics is changing, how extraordinary kind of single issue parties. I mean, this new form of populism, this new form of campaigning is really, really interesting.
- [32:52]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, that is true. But both they and the second party in the coalition, Freedom and Direct Democracy or spd, they both actually performed badly in the election despite having these very anti Europe, anti NATO. And as you say, I've seen them as pro car rather than anti bicycle, but very anti anything to do with the climate. So the bad news for people like us is they're now part of the government. I guess the good news is they didn't do very well and they are much, much weaker within the coalition. So whether they'll be that powerful. But the one thing I want to draw particular attention to because I thought this was really quite alarming, but interesting, the reaction that to it. You mentioned this guy, Tomio Okamura. Tomio Okamura, right. So he is second generation immigrant, but he's become the big leader of the campaign against immigrants.
- [33:45]
Alistair Campbell
He's half Japanese. Got a Japanese.
- [33:46]
Rory Stewart
He's half Japanese, yeah. And he's also very, very opposed to Ukraine and to any support for Ukraine. He's been made the speaker of the assembly rather than a minister. The first thing he did on taking the job was to hold a ladder for somebody to climb up the ladder and take down the Ukrainian flag which has been flying there since the invasion of Russia. Now Bad. Okay. However, the response has been for lots of parliamentarians who share the building to be putting their own Ukrainian flags out of the windows.
- [34:22]
Alistair Campbell
So, you know, but these countries that you've mentioned, and as you said, they make a very interesting shape on a map, are called the Visograd 4. So Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. And as you say, broadly speaking, Hungary full on populist Slovakia going in a populist direction. Czechia has gone to the right again. I mean, it's basically gone from Pieter Fiala, who was a sort of, without being unfair, a little bit of a Keir Starmer character. He was somebody who was seen as being strong on foreign affairs.
- [34:52]
Rory Stewart
I think he was more. I think he was David Gork. I think he was wet tor. I think he was wet Tory, Rory.
- [34:57]
Alistair Campbell
Stewart type, criticized for being out of the country a little bit too much. Much. But very strong on NATO, strong on confronting Russia, strong on drones, managed a very difficult moment. I mean, his time in office. We talked about this, I think a few weeks ago, they took in 380,000 Ukrainians. That's 3% of the population of Czechia.
- [35:16]
Rory Stewart
I checked this, Rory. I spoke to somebody who's out there. It's now 500,000 in a population of ten and a half million.
- [35:21]
Alistair Campbell
So it would be like Britain taking in three million Ukrainians.
- [35:26]
Rory Stewart
It's gone well. It's gone well.
- [35:27]
Alistair Campbell
It's gone well. And many people think, particularly if you are from Prague and you're a liberal intellectual, you're totally astonished that this man, who was very well spoken, very thoughtful, pursuing sensible policies, has been hooped out by Babish. He and Tomio Okamura both facing criminal charges. I mean, this is part of the sort of general. And under Czech law, if you get elected the House of Representatives. This is something that's also true, of course, famously, in Israel, you can avoid criminal prosecution. Right. So he is somebody who's basically benefited from the privatizations after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. He's somebody who feeds off subsidies and we're gambling a great deal. That actually, in the end, what really matters to him is being the richest man in Czechia, and that that trumps any kind of ideology for him because he will lurch from far right statements to far left statements. But generally the assumption is that European Union subsidies are so beneficial for his businesses that he probably won't go in the other direction. Then we have Tomio Okamura. So Okamura was the host briefly, of their equivalent of Dragon's Den. So it's a bit like running the Apprentice. Right. It's a bit of this kind of Trumpian stuff. He's also somebody, and this is echoes of Germany, where the court found that it was perfectly legitimate to call him a fascist who ran a campaign with pictures of Africans wielding knives, which is what the criminal charges are being put against him. For somebody who's very pro Israel, very pro Russian, he's a great one for this Judeo Christian stuff, very radically anti Islam. So it's a bit of the kind of Tommy Robinson, Judeo Christian, anti Islam going on there. And then if you get it to a broader picture, of course, as we found in our interview with Sikorski, the Polish picture is less straightforward because of course, they didn't manage to win the presidency. So the story that there was a decisive victory for Tusk and the populace who'd run Poland since 2015 had been consigned to history. Isn't quite true. Poland remains very much, almost 50, 50 geographically split with this big kind of right wing base.
- [37:34]
Rory Stewart
Interestingly on that, of course, in Czech Republic, there's a sort of inverse of that because the president, Pavel, he's like, he is seen as right, but he's sensible, mainstream, former general, big on NATO, very pro Ukraine. So there's a sort of bit of a mirror thing going on there.
- [37:54]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah. But I think it's just again and again two themes. One is it's all to play for and you're certainly not counting the populace out. The AfD is still well over 30%. Okamura is in a full form of alliance with the resemble Nacional in France. He's very much part of this whole ecosystem. And I think that's the first thing. And the second thing is the weirdness of this new politics of these sort of characters who pop up and how difficult it is to deal with them in this weird new world, which is about people facing criminal charges, oligarchs, corruption, hosts of Dragon's Den.
- [38:36]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And most of Babish's money is pointing westward to sort of France, Germany, rest of Western Europe as opposed to East. So that's why I think it's not simple to say he's definitely not in this sort of Orban FICO camp in terms of let's love Putin. And interestingly, I hadn't realized this until I spoke to somebody this morning that when the Salisbury attacks happened here, when Theresa May was Prime Minister and the Skripals and leading to the death of a British citizen, Babish was Prime minister and he expelled quite A lot of Russian diplomats, AKA spies. So he's not in the same camp. But I think what's. I hadn't really thought about your point. Essentially he's going to be continuing to be a billionaire business person whilst he's also running the government with this rather odd pairing in the coalition.
- [39:34]
Alistair Campbell
And basically he wants to be rich, famous and powerful. If we return to your Michael Wolff triad of Trump.
- [39:39]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [39:39]
Alistair Campbell
And that sort of trumps his ideological commitments. Maybe this is a good time then to transition to the other big story of the week, which is Syria. So we interviewed Afendar Shara and were massively criticized by the MAGA crowd. And you can still see on our social media feed, whenever we say anything, if I say something mild about how I'm very proud of my new book on Middleland on Cumbrian farmers, there'll be a picture of you and me with Alsharra saying, how's your terrorist friend? And the so on. Anyway. But of course, it's now not just us that are getting our pitch with Alshara, the CENTCOM commander. I know the commander of the American forces in the Middle East.
- [40:18]
Rory Stewart
Basketball.
- [40:19]
Alistair Campbell
That's right. With him and with our friend or our friend, Our acquaintance. The Foreign Minister. Yeah. And Alshara.
- [40:27]
Rory Stewart
Do you think those pictures. I don't want to revisit Panorama splicing. Do you think those pictures were revealed because all three of them were absolutely brilliant at chucking a board into a hoop? No, no, I think.
- [40:39]
Alistair Campbell
I think they, I think they are all really good at it, I think. Well, I mean, to start with, Alshara is very tall and I think played basketball in his youth. No, I think this is genuine. Anyway, this has now led to the fact that Alshara has just been in Washington. He's the first Syrian president, I think, to meet the U.S. president since the 1940s.
- [40:55]
Rory Stewart
Yes, 1946.
- [40:56]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, 1946. So he's had this meeting in which Trump has basically said, okay, we'll make sure the sanctions are off Syria.
- [41:04]
Rory Stewart
Again, not all of them.
- [41:06]
Alistair Campbell
Not all of them. And some of them he can't control because they're actually out of Congress.
- [41:09]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [41:10]
Alistair Campbell
And the Foreign Minister is about to visit London where he's gonna be reopening the Syrian Embassy in London. Business advice has been put out by the Foreign Office. He's gonna be giving a speech in Chatham House and if he's listening, anyone's listening. We would like to go back to Syria to interview the President again. So please, we're looking forward to a one year update on what's going on because the problem remains very, very complicated. He still is dealing with a country where he's got to deal with his own former terrorist colleagues. He's fighting ISIS now increasingly with American troops. There's talks about him putting an American base in Syria, which will be totally offensive to his former Al Qaeda allies, who feel they were fighting for Syria and Islam against foreign occupation. But the Americans have been very pleased with the way that he's been going against ISIS and against the Iranian irgc. Israel is continuing to drive the narrative that he's an existential threat to the region. Laura Loomer.
- [42:06]
Rory Stewart
Oh, my God.
- [42:07]
Alistair Campbell
The American MAGA commentator is very, very anti Al Shara. So quite a lot of the abuse that we're getting is driven by MAGA loom of people who, interesting. Trump is sort of confronting and maybe because Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi de facto ruler, current prince, is turning up in Washington next week. Final point, Simon Collis, the former British ambassador to Damascus, points out there's something very interesting that Trump keeps referring to Erdogan, the Turkish leader. And for Erdogan, what matters is what happens to Kurdish population in northeast Syria, who, because they became American and British allies in the fight against isis, were armed and given huge freedom and basically expanded right the way to the Euphrates. Took a lot of Arab areas pushing for autonomy, which is the last thing that Turkey wants, because there's a big Kurdish population in Turkey. Very worried about that. And the signaling coming out of the White House is Turkey, Al Sharra are going to push back against the idea of Kurdish autonomy. Over to you.
- [43:07]
Rory Stewart
Interesting. I mean, as you know, I saw my old boss and our old former prime minister, Tony Blair the other day, who's still involved in this sort of Gaza plan and trying to take it forward. But he was really interesting about the way that Trump operates, and this is actually quite a good example of it. This isn't what we were discussing, but I just thought of that as you were speaking then he was making the point that state of the obvious, Trump is deeply unconventional. He said that in some cases, it's almost like the guy's driving a bulldozer into a problem, and as he bulldozes the problem, all sorts of debris flies off, and then everybody else has to sort of try and make sense of how to put it back together or try to shape something new. So I think if you were thinking about Al Shara, who's relatively new into this and coming from, as we know, a very violent background and with a $10 million bounty on his Head until quite recently.
- [44:05]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just to remind listeners, because he was the head of Al Qaeda Syria, and before that was in Al Qaeda Iraq, and was basically pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and then his successor and broke away from ISIS, but, you know, $10 million bounty on his head because he was one of the most famous terrorists in the world.
- [44:24]
Rory Stewart
Exactly. And actually because so many of them have been taken out by the Americans and by others, he's one of the last ones standing of that leadership and how Trump deals with that. So the point Tony was making, not in relation to this, we were talking about something else, but how I interpret that in relation to this, the bulldozer, if this had been right, this is happening in Syria, we're glad that Assad's out of the picture. Something new is happening here. This guy's come in, but he's basically a terrorist and he wants sanctions lifted. I'd think a pre Trump American system would have said, oh, hold on a minute.
- [44:59]
Alistair Campbell
It.
- [44:59]
Rory Stewart
Let's say Rubio, Rubio of old had been in charge of this, then. No, no, no, come on, let's wait. Let's just see how it goes. Let's plan it. And there they are. I'm just looking at a picture now of Trump behind his desk with Al Shara next to him, and Trump's quote about Al Shara, who he. And there is something a little bit homoerotic about the way that he talks about him, I have to say. But he says, he said, this guy's had a rough past, but we've all had a rough past. So he sort of always put himself on a par, like, you know, we've all had these, and here we are.
- [45:31]
Alistair Campbell
We'Re now leaders and it's a tough country. And look, to give Trump some credit here, to really go well out on the limb, it's actually all the odds have been against Al Shara being able to survive. The economy is smashed to pieces, the country is divided. The Druze have been up in arms, the Alawites have been up in arms. His own Damascus troops he's lost control of. There have been atrocities. The Kurds are basically having nothing of it. So if you were explaining why the whole thing would fail, it seems almost inevitable. It seems like an impossible job, particularly with the background he's got. The only real thing that's keeping him going is firstly, his own skill. So I think a huge tribute to Alshara. Whatever his past, he's defied the odds so far 11 months in. I mean, again, if it went Wrong. In four or five years time, nobody would be surprised. But my goodness, he's defied the odds so far. But secondly, the only way it could possibly work is the US giving this incredibly rapid confidence support. And as you say, Israel was completely against it. And it seemed as though Rubio's team was completely against getting behind him. UAE was very much sceptical of him. So Trump has possibly, with Al Shara, the most unlikely combination of two people have given Syria probably its best chance that we've seen for years. Doesn't mean it'll work, but it's best chance it's had for years.
- [46:57]
Rory Stewart
The point I was making, it is the sort of bulldozer approach, isn't it, the sanction. Just to think that he's. When we interviewed Al Shara, if you remember, and he was very tired, he'd just been off on a trip and it was a really long day and we did it late and I was very, very tired. But it was obvious to me that what he was trying to do was to shape for a Western audience his sense of, I'm not who I was, I am now a. You can see me as a conventional leader and I've got a really struggling country and unless we get sanctions lifted, it's going to become very, very hard. That was his basic message for the interview. Right. And we both said afterwards, that's going to be a really tough call because how are you going to do that with. And the answer is Trump has kind of done it.
- [47:40]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, but boys, I mean, I think I don't want to overdo this, but boys, was that a clause form his brothers in arms that he's been fighting with for a decade or more are very, very skeptical of the United States of Israel and all this kind of stuff. We interviewed him, we got quite quickly to Syria after he'd taken Damascus. That was his first foreign trip. And since then we saw him on the day of his very first foreign trip, which was to Saudi Arabia. Since then he's been abroad a lot, but he's also created quite an interest in government. So, for example, people talk a lot about it, but the Minister of Culture is a really astonishing person. So this is Hind Kabawat. She is a Syrian Christian. She worked for many organizations. She has done negotiating courses at Harvard. She was in Canada for many years. She worked for the US Institute for Peace. She was part of the Syrian Democratic Opposition. She's now agreed to join his cabinet and she's leading the cultural activities. She's reaching out to the Christian community. That's really strong, symbolically. That's a really interesting move that he's made.
- [48:48]
Rory Stewart
No, he's on the move, there's no doubt about it. My final point on this, Roy, is really interesting. I mean, we see so many of these Trump meetings in the White House. I'd love to. If there's anybody in the White House protocol team who can explain. He has different modes and different venues for different leaders. So with, with Al Shara, the picture that they. The main picture they had was of Trump behind the desk with Al Shara standing next to him. And much of the meeting itself took place with Trump behind his desk and Al Shara sitting in front of the desk next to J.D. vance. Okay. When he had Keir Starmer in there and when he had Mark Carney, when he had Zelensky, it was the. It was the more traditional. Here we are in the Oval Office on the sofas.
- [49:30]
Alistair Campbell
You mean on those chairs?
- [49:31]
Rory Stewart
On the sofas? Yeah, they're in the chairs and the sofas down there. That's where we always used to have meetings with Clinton and Bush, but then with Orban and with Alpinese, they were in the Cabinet Room with the press coming in behind the visitors, and then Orban right next to him. Tell you what was really interesting about Orban, he did something which I've not seen many other leaders do, and this shows a sign of how confident he is in that relationship with Trump. When Trump spoke. And as you know, Trump can go off in any different, any which way direction, and quite often he spoke about Orban's position. And on two or three occasions, Orban literally put his hand on Trump's arm and said. And then said to the question, just pointed. Can I just clarify one point there? And it was really interesting. And Trump just sort of shut up and nodded. So it was a very kind of interesting body language dynamic.
- [50:23]
Alistair Campbell
Well, listen, just to try to pull this all together. So we've done Zoram Mamdani, we've done Czechia, and we've done Syria. And the way I try to put it all together is it's a story of how politics today is very, very difficult to recognize that it's about Mamdani, who is a figure that's completely broken free of the Democratic establishment and come out of nowhere and broken every record in terms of ethnicity, age, and everything to take over in New York, a story in Czechia, which is a familiar story in the new Trump world of a billionaire out to make money facing criminal charges in with a man who is a kind of apprentice judge. And then in Syria, a world in which somebody who had a $10 million American bounty on his head is now becoming one of the central allies of the United States in the region, with America moving very, very fast on sanction relief, talking about U.S. bases, CENTCOM commanders playing basketball with somebody that they were trying to kill only a few months ago.
- [51:28]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Let's close with what, his quote of the week from Radek Sikorsky. We, the Poles, will eat grass rather than become a Russian colony. Again, I was quite strong.
- [51:39]
Alistair Campbell
That's very good. That's very good. You've never used that line. I've never heard you say, we will eat grass rather than put up with Boris Johnson coming back.
- [51:47]
Rory Stewart
I might use it at another day, but I'll wait until people have forgot that it was Radek Zikorsky. Right. See you later.
- [51:54]
Alistair Campbell
Q and A tomorrow, and I'm still in Question time. Maybe we can develop some of the ideas that we had today. I'm quite keen to get into Tanzania, which is an amazing story about what's happening to politics and democracy in Africa. An extraordinary case study of how all the optimism around liberal democracy is beginning to go in very, very strange directions as new forms of politics emerge. And then I think you also had some things that you really wanted to get onto.
- [52:19]
Rory Stewart
Well, I thought I should maybe offer a few reflections on Dick Cheney, former vice president who passed away last week. We should talk about, I think, about Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, who I haven't really seen much of this in the British media, but she's been big news there because of a man who groped her, which happens to a lot of Mexican women, and she's deciding she's taking legal action against this guy. And as I said earlier, we're going to talk a little bit about Peter Hyman's Teenagers Report as well.
- [52:46]
Alistair Campbell
Very good.
- [52:47]
Rory Stewart
See you then.
- [52:47]
Alistair Campbell
See you then.
- [52:48]
Rory Stewart
Bye.