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The Rest Is Politics
484. War in Europe, Trump's Destruction of Institutions, and Britain’s National Treasures (Question Time)
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Thank you so much for listening to the Rest Is Politics. Here's a thought for Christmas you can gift somebody membership to the Rest Is Politics plus ad free listening bonus episodes, early access to Q and A book discounts. So spread a little political peace and goodwill, head to therestispolitics.com and click Gifts. How far is Putin prepared to go?
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Russia could annex eastern Ukraine and have a go at the Baltic at the same time as China goes after Taiwan. Then think about what happens to the global economic system as everybody scrabbles to impose sanctions on China, cut off Russian.
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Happy New Year and welcome to the rest is Politics Question time with me.
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A
Rory Stewart and with me, Alistair Campbell. Also wishing you all a Happy New Year. So, Rory, let me ask the first question. This is asking us to look ahead with greater purse capacity, whatever that word is, than when you were predicting the outcome of the last US Presidential election. What will the world look like at the end of 2026? And more importantly, this is from Douglas, Trip member from South Australia. What didn't you see coming in 2025? And with that in mind, what will the world look like at the end of 2026?
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B
Well, this is a really good question. Very, very grateful for this one. So if you listen back to the episode we did exactly a year ago.
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A
Did you really do that?
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B
Yep, I did. I listened back to the episode we did exactly a year ago.
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A
Give us a few highlights.
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B
What we correctly predicted is we said Trump would come in and it would be a big, big shock to the world order. So we said there would be tariffs, we said that there would be a cut in international development spending. We said that he would move away from a rules based international order. And we talked about Stephen Miller coming in and more extreme views on things like immigration. Now, what we didn't predict is what that was actually going to look like. So let's just take them one by one. Tariffs. What turned out to be astonishing in 2025 is that it wasn't just small amount of tariffs going in targeted at, for example, China, the big US Adversary. What we ended up with was very heavy tariffs hitting Switzerland, 50%, tariffs against India, tariffs against Canada. Secondly, we didn't predict that what he would do is he'd put up the tariffs, he'd bring down the tariffs, he'd put up the tariffs, we'd bring down the tariffs. Thirdly, on tariffs, we imagined that there would be much clearer consequences. So the normal economic analysis would have been you put up the tariffs and you will find inflation in goods and then the US Markets will come down and you might even find yourself in stagflation, inflation going up, growth coming down in tariffs. And in the other things that I'm going to mention, a theme keeps coming through, which is Trump did much more radical, unpredictable things with less moral consequence and less pushback than you ever could have acknowledged. So let's take immigration for another one, right? We projected that he would be doing stuff on immigration and that that would have an effect on the US Economy. We did not begin to imagine just how horrendous ICE would be the way in which these masked agents would be storming into people's houses. We certainly weren't predicting the National Guard and the military being deployed into California, Washington, Portland. We weren't imagining, I think, the lack of pushback from the U.S. system. And let's take another one, Congress. I don't think we would have imagined that if he tried to do what he basically did, which is ignore all the congressional appropriations, literally the legally binding decisions made by the US Congress on the budgets going forward, that there would be no pushback for that, or that he would be able to abolish USAID almost on day one, sack all the stuff, stop all the funding immediately, and that the Congress and legal systems wouldn't be able to push back. And again, I don't think. We certainly didn't predict that the US would strike Iran. We didn't predict that Israel would strike Doha. But we also probably would have struggled to imagine that those things could happen with much less real world impact than you would have imagined. Doing those things would normally have a big risk of World War iii, Israel striking cattle, a catastrophically huge event. So what Trump did is he did much sharper things, but partly because of this up and down, up and down, up and down business, the reaction from markets, Congress, the courts, Europe and his allies was much more muted. Instead, what you had is endless people compromising, accommodating, being obsequious, and him creating a new normal of chaos with less consequence than you would imagine. Over to you.
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A
While you were talking, I've just sort of had a quick look through some of the highlights from the discussion that we had last year. You're right. I think we got a lot right. We've got a few things wrong. Well, is this wrong? We basically said Elon Musk would be more dangerous to the world than Donald Trump. I think we got that wrong. I still think Trump Musk is a major menace in the world, and X has become an utter, disgusting cesspit. And it's revolting that he sort of set so much store in becoming the world's first trillionaire. But I think we got that wrong. We predicted that the Democratic Party would go into a bit of a slump until it found some compelling leadership. We also said there'd be major geopolitical shocks, and we included in those Syria. Whereas actually, Syria has maybe turned out thus far better than was feared. Would that be fair?
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B
Absolutely. But I think thus far, I mean, I think the structural issues in Syria haven't gone away. I mean, it's still the case that the Kurds have de facto ignored the Syrian government in everything east of the Euphrates, that the Druze and Alawite populations are not really reconciling with the central government, that Israel is continuing to intervene and often strike Syria. And so the question of whether Trump lifting sanctions and embracing Mohammed Al Shara will be enough for him to deal with the fact that the Syrian economy is so fragile, the ethnic sectarian divisions remain so deep, I'm afraid, sadly, I'm praying Syria will be okay. But if it were to collapse in 2026, it wouldn't be very difficult to explain why.
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A
Yeah, here's one, Roy, that I think I will take some. No, I won't take any pleasure in repeating this, actually. But I think it's worth saying again, populism, I said, will keep gaining unless the establishment parties improve their storytelling. And I think if there's one thing to learn from Trump, it is you've got to keep storytelling. Now, in his case, that means making up stuff and bullying people and lying and intimidating, and I don't think we should go for that. But I think understanding that what the populace do better than the established parties is to kind of engage with people on a kind of emotional and a strategic level, I still don't think that the mainstream parties across Europe are doing that remotely, remotely well enough. I think the one who's getting closer to it, it's not in Europe, but he's very much an ally of Europe. That's Mark Carney in Canada. But I think an awful lot of them are not telling a story about who they are, what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how it relates to your life.
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B
Do you agree with me, though, that one of the things that's been strange is the sense that we would have predicted, I think, in 2024, that there would be more clear consequences for his actions. Maybe this is our own addiction to storytelling, let's say a narrative, I don't know, a film is about escalating drama and crisis, and then there's a reaction and there's a resolution. And so I guess if you were a traditional American official and you were giving advice to President Trump and he was saying, I'm gonna whack tariffs on India up to 50%. I'm gonna throw tariffs on Canada up like this, I'm gonna strike Iran. I'm gonna ignore the Congressional budget. I'm going to send anything, you would say, no, no, no, Mr. President, those things will have very dangerous consequences. What I think we're seeing is a world where you don't see the short term consequences. What you see is the medium term, hollowing, erosion, degradation of all our institutions. So you don't get the pushback. Congress doesn't really step up. The courts don't step up. Europe doesn't really step up. The international democracies don't stand up to him. The Middle Eastern states don't stand up to him. It turns out that what instead happens is you keep names, you keep the idea of a Western alliance, you keep the slogan of NATO. But inside, my analogy is here, I'm going to go rest this history on you. As the Roman Empire began to splinter, a lot of the institutions remained there, and nobody saw it happening. There was still a Senate, there were still consuls, there was still an emperor. And they didn't really acknowledge that, in effect, regional warlords were now running different parts of the thing because the story remains the same. And I feel that's maybe what happens, that we're addicted to clear stories and clear crises. Here's the moment. What we may instead be in. In a world where it's very difficult to see. Here's the moment. Because what Trump's doing is rotting the system from within.
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A
Well, let's go to the next question then, because it relates to this. Will Europe go to war with Russia in 2026? That is a question from Tony Mara says, might Europe give Putin an ultimatum to withdraw from Ukraine or they'll enter the war? Now, there are people in Europe. When we were in Poland talking to Radek Sikorsky, he said, so far as we're concerned, Russia is already at war with us. Now Poland is part of Europe. Poland is right at the right at the border there of this war that's taking place. And I think you could argue when you go back to Litvinenko being killed, was that. What was that? Could you say that was part of a hybrid war? Is all the sort of cyber security stuff and the attacks on our companies that Russia does, is that part of a war? The Skripals and the death of a British woman when they tried to wipe out what they define as a Russian traitor. So this has all been going on for a long time. The question we have to keep asking ourselves is, how far is Putin prepared to go? And the thing that Sikorsky said, that really has stuck with me since he said it. He said, if Ukraine falls, we are next. Well, we to him in that context, obviously means Poland. But Poland is, unlike Ukraine, part of the European Union. Poland is an important part of NATO, this becomes a whole different ball game. And I wonder, I just wonder whether one of the questions that we need to ask is whether within the NATO context, Article 5 means what it did so that if Europe does go to war with Russia, whether it's this year, next year, whatever, whether actually that is as Europe, European Union plus allies, with or without America. That is a very, very big question.
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B
Yeah. And the problem is that Trump and Vance have suddenly raised that question completely unnecessarily. I mean, the Article 5 guarantee, which is an attack on one, is an attack on all, which is America saying from the 1940s onwards that if Russia or then the Soviet Union were to attack a NATO country, America would effectively launch its nuclear weapons to defend it. All you need to do to hold that article is just say it clearly, unambiguously, that an attack on one is an attack on all. And of course, if Soviet Union or Russia were to attack a NATO country, we would defend them. What Trump has done is completely, unnecessarily destroyed all that confidence. He thinks it's about saving money and proving that Europe was ripping them off and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it doesn't cost America anything to say that. And it's about again, to return to your story about story. It's about communication. It's not actually, in the end that much about American defense spending. They have the nukes already. They can already fire them at Moscow. They don't actually have to change much in their defense posture just to keep underlying that line. And as you say, that's gone. Let's add to that. Where else could there be conflicts? Still perfectly possible that in 2026 there could be conflict. China, Taiwan. China could invade Taiwan. And as we keep reminding people, Taiwan produces 90% of the world's advanced semiconductors, 50% of the world's semiconductors in general. Ethiopia could go to war with Eritrea. There could be a confrontation in the South China Sea. Let's make it even worse. If we're talking about black swans, all those things could happen simultaneously. Russia could annex Eastern Ukraine and have a go at the Baltic at the same time as China goes after Taiwan. Then think about what happens to the global economic system as everybody scrabbles to impose sanctions on China, cut off Russian gas, rearm. You're then into a very, very odd world. And there the question is, is the US Going to be the stabilizing power acting to reinforce international laws, get people back on the straight and narrow, bail out the global financial system? Remember 2008 a lot of that was a story about the US treasury and the US central bank sitting down with European countries to try to put the American financial system behind stabilizing the global financial system. Do we think that's likely under Trump? No. And let's add to this, let's say 2020. I'm going to add 2026. Let's say there's a climate tipping point. We suddenly hit one of these extraordinary, horrible moments in global climate where it's not just a continuation of a few more floods, but actually we cross some threshold and much more chaotic and extreme things happen. Imagine if there is a real disaster with AI then things become much more unstable. And that's where Trump's irresponsibility, chaos and selfishness becomes much more important. It's not just a sort of reality TV show. It's that you've removed the central linchpin of the international system and its ability to be resilient in crisis.
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A
Yeah, well, you know, I mentioned when the Christmas episodes and we were doing our book of the year, and mine was this book, if Russia wins, it's a sort of. It's called a scenario. It's not quite a novel because it's partly based on real events, but it then predicts what might happen. And where the story goes is that Russia mounts a very small invasion on a very small part of Estonia and just sort of sends in the troops and takes this place over. And it gives all its logic, the reasons, and all the, all the sort of Russian TV hosts talk about why this is necessary. And then the debate that gets sparked in America is, are we really going to shed American blood for some village in Estonia that we've never, never heard of? And that is the end of that is the end of Article 5. And of course, this is all consistent. It's why I said that I thought the most consequential speech of the year was just, I still think was J.D. vance of the Munich Security Conference is all consistent with this message of saying, you lot aren't as serious as we think you should be, you're not as reliable as we think you should. You're kind of on your own. So then when back to Poland, when the drones did start coming into Polish airspace and Trump was asked about it and he said, oh, well, it's probably a mistake. Why does he say that? Because he always defaults to this sort of pro Putin position. And this goes back to what we talked about yesterday with Alexander Stubb. Trump wants this world of chaos, disorder, where strong men have their own spheres of influence. He gets the West, China gets the East, Russia gets what they want, and he's not taking into account the south and what Russia and China are doing there.
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B
So, Alistair, here's a question for you from Ted Chu. Will we see national service in the UK or other countries?
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A
Well, Macron in France recently announced a kind of voluntary national service. There's all sorts of developments of national service, I think. Is it in Finland where they already have it for men and now women are kind of demanding that they have equal rights to the national service, which sort of indicates the way the debate is going there. There are other countries where this debate is definitely happening. We've said many times on the podcast through 2025 that I'm really not convinced that the British mindset is fully cognizant of just how dangerous a world we're in right now and whether this debate may have to start taking shape within the uk. What do you think?
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B
Well, I think we should do it and I think we should make it a national citizen service where you can also opt to. To do other things. You could opt to work as a hospital porter, you could opt to volunteer for charities, you could opt to do community projects as well as the monetary thing. But I don't see what the downside is. I mean, there's a substantial fiscal cost to doing it, but in a world which is increasingly unequal and divided, it is a chance to build solidarity between people from different parts of the country, different classes, and bring them together, be a military element to that, be a civilian element.
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A
But Ted's question is very much about the. About the military element. I mean, yours sounds like kind of nice, touchy feely hybrid. Let's just stick on. Do you think we should, because our armed forces have been pared back pretty substantially. Do you think we should move towards a place where young men, I guess, are expected to do some kind of military service?
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B
I think the route into that is to my hybrid. I think you could, I believe, and I think there's reasonable data to support this, that a very large number of young men would choose to do military training rather than choose to do their voluntary social work. It'll be a question of personalities and you would end up with many, many more young people trained in the military. But it would be a way of selling it to the population, which is relevant and it's also balanced. Because what you're doing is you're saying there are many other things that this could do. I mean, one thing that actually the military was very good at when national service existed is providing educational and vocational training to people very, very strong on literacy programs, the Army Education Corps, very strong on giving people crafts and trades. So I think the way to get it into the public is to explain it as something which, even if we didn't go to war with Russia, would be a general social good. So the whole thing doesn't rest on going to war with Russia. But yes, I think you could rarely. This is one of those rare examples in politics where I think you can do both at the same time. And I think it would be wonderful to see the government step up for that and provide a progressive, exciting argument which is, yes, partly about discipline and military training, but also about vocational training, trades, support for social work. I mean, if we're taking less and less people from other countries in and we're facing a crisis in the care sector and the hospital sector at the lower skill level, why is this something that young people couldn't do? A lot of what's happening in care, some of it is very specialized, but some of it is helping somebody get change, providing company to them, talking to them. Some of the tasks performed in hospitals don't require very high levels of skills and could be a very good thing for somebody to do in a year of service.
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A
Okay. Okay. I should point out to our listeners and viewers that when we put out an appeal for questions for this New year episode, that question about whether Europe and Russia are likely to be at war came way ahead of anything else. So that suggests that where a lot of our listeners are minds are going as we go into 2026. Diana Ward, TRIP plus member from Poulton Lafail, asking this, why not move the G20 meeting scheduled for Florida in 2026, given the US did not show up for the last one and has already disinvited South Africa from G20 2026. Why reward in quotes such poor behavior? I'm with that. I'm with.
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B
I mean, I. Disinviting is completely outrageous. You can't disinvite a G20 country. I mean, it's not the G20 then.
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A
Especially as the reason is founded on this kind of myth that is all part of his sort of white supremacist approach to immigration and race and these issues that he keeps banging on about. I actually thought the G20 summit went pretty well without the United States.
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B
It's sort of beyond imagining. I mean, look at who is in the G20. There could be some pretty strong reasons not to have the Russians there, given that what they're actually doing is killing hundreds of thousands of people on the European borders and invading another country. There could even be reasons, if you wanted to be controversial, not have China there, given what they do in Tibet, what they do in Xinjiang, what they do in internal human rights. You could even have reasons not to have India there, given the fact that Indian intelligence officers now appear to be associated in court cases in the US and Canada with assassinating citizens in other people's countries. Of all the countries to disinvite from the G20, South Africa seems to me the most bizarre thing. And you know what is going on in their heads? Where are the standards? Where's the logic in any of this?
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A
And also I wonder whether the Johannesburg G20, whether any of the other 19, because America weren't there, said, listen, they're not here. We've got quite a lot done. It's meant to be in Florida. If we go to Florida next year, it's all going to be about America rather than about the G20. Why don't we just decide to have it somewhere else and invite him?
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B
But this goes back to our bigger point, which is we now are beginning to realize that basically the whole world since 1945, invited America into its body. Like a parasite. We put this huge virus inside our body politic called the United States. And the reason why he's able to do everything he does is that they are indispensable. They're wired into every element of our systems, our financial systems, our trade systems, our defense systems. So the reason he can do this is that it's almost impossible as Mark Carney is. Finding Mark Carney, when he confronts the us then has to face what that really means, which is it will literally wipe out growth in the Canadian economy. Almost impossible to divert and rebalance away their oil and gas exports functional. So getting ourselves resilient, independent of the US and able to say, thank you very much, we will proceed with the G20 without you is not possible at the moment because we've spent 80 years being lured into having bodies that are not really our own bodies, their bodies controlled by this alien parasite.
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A
Bloody hell, Roy. That's pretty strong stuff. Take a burner phone next time you go to America.
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B
Okay, Alastair, on that cheery note, let's take a quick break and then back for more questions.
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A
See you in a minute.
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E
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- [27:47]
A
Welcome back to the Rest of Politics. Question time with me, Alistair Campbell and.
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B
With me Rory Stewart. Question for you, Pedro krass. Is AI 2027 still in trajectory to happen?
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A
Well, it's happening, but Rory, I don't know. Well, that's a question for me. You are absolutely obsessed with AI and have been for some time and you're halfway through this miniseries that you've been doing about AI. So that is the definitely a question for you.
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B
This is a big year because 2627 is when a lot of the tech leaders predicted artificial general intelligence would emerge. And we don't know yet whether these enormous energy sucking large language models are going to hit natural barriers or whether they're going to break through and create this general purpose superintelligence in a way for the world's sake, it might be no bad thing if they don't break through. If we had a few more years to try to think this through and think about what the boundaries. Because if they do break through, to return to my theme from before the break, these large language models sit in the United States and we would be even more dependent on America for everything that runs our economy and public services. But also these things could be very, very dangerous if they became Superintelligent. And it's not clear to me that actually we have really thought about how to control them, regulate them or deal with them. The other big question, I suppose, is a geopolitical question that again, most of the discussion around AI and I'll come to you on this. One of the things that we've been thinking about in the miniseries is that the model in Britain over the last two years is to say what we need to do is make ourselves much closer to the US AI systems and distance ourselves as quickly as possible from the Chinese systems. And that obviously is the story led from Washington, California, that there's a binary black and white choice, US or China. And obviously what Europe needs to do is do everything it can to let the US system win, put the US system right at the heart of everything we do. Does that sound to you, if you were Prime Minister, as though that's the right decision?
- [30:00]
A
I think it's a very hard decision not to make in the current political context, but I wonder whether it is the right decision. One of the most interesting things of recent months, and it really has been recent months when you and I are out and about talking to different audiences. We did this when we were on tour. I've done it. A lot of business events we've done. And this is this question we ask people about whether America or China is the greater threat to global stability, to supply chains, and to all these other things that we talk about. And I did one in Dublin where the US Ambassador to Ireland was there, and I think he was really quite taken aback because in that audience and in virtually every other audience that we've done in recent months, people have looked at America, the United States as a bigger threat to some of these issues. So might there be a case actually for facing down the kind of right wing of the Conservative Party, the Ian Duncan Smiths, who are really kind of very much opposed to closer relations with China? I don't know, because unlike you, I don't really know enough about the way this technology is working. What I do know is that that is the choice that all countries in the world are having to face, because America and China are so far ahead of everybody else. And I think there was a point at which maybe we were trying to. I think we're probably in the second league order, and that's a good place to be. But I think that in making that choice, I think there are broader geopolitical questions that are very, very tough for a European leader to make right now.
- [31:31]
B
And this comes to threat assessment and this is why your friend Jonathan Powell is in such an interesting position as the National Security Adviser. So when you think about a threat, I guess you're thinking about how strong is this threat, what's the probability of it coming after us, and how vulnerable are we to it? Right, so a 300 pound gorilla behind bars in the London Zoo is very different to a 300 pound gorilla sitting in my join room. Right. Before you get into the question of what the 300 pound gorilla does or doesn't want to do, and one of the things that confuses us when we're dealing with China and the US Is Tony Blair has said to you recently, and I agree with him, that of course, China is, in its value systems and its outlook on the world, a much more dangerous entity in terms of our values than the U.S. despite all of Trump, in the end, China is where there are concentration camps in Xinjiang, no free speech, a complete Communist Party military machine that doesn't exist in the U.S. but there's a separate question to that. The U.S. might in general be a sort of friendlier, more liberal, progressive power than China. Of course it is. I mean, 100 times more. But what is our level of vulnerability towards these two things in the worst case scenario? And there you get to the question of how integrated they are into our systems. So all I'm saying about the US Is not, of course, that they're a worst place in China. They're much, much better than China in a hundred ways. But we've let them much more deeply into our system than we've let China. And in the unlikely event that you keep going with Trump exploiting our vulnerabilities more and more, it doesn't really matter that America is a place founded on liberal democracy and China is an authoritarian communist state. If Trump is weaponizing every vulnerability and China isn't, that distinction becomes less important.
- [33:38]
A
Okay, Rory, a question from Alex in New York. When you look at Africa and Southeast Asia, what are the major known unknowns that you think could significantly reshape global politics in the coming years?
- [33:51]
B
Well, firstly, climate. So these are places that are very, very vulnerable to climate. So we talked about the Sahel, the fact there have been seven coups stretching all the way from the west to the east coast of Africa through that belt that divides the Sahara from Central and Southern Africa. And that is a zone where climate change is its rawest and most extreme. But it's also a zone where in places like Chad, the fertility rate is every family having 7.2 children. This brings us to our statistics on Nigeria, 1 in 10 children being born in the world being born in Nigeria by 2050, that's only in 25 years time. So I think there's these big, big themes of demography, population, climate, which at Southeast Asia, we're recording this just after a series of catastrophic cyclones, monsoons and flooding events in Southeast Asia. And then the second thing I think is again this question that you keep getting into, which is how do they respond to the us, China, Russia, Europe, Axis and broadly, the Sahel story can also be told as a very, very sudden story from states which for 30 years since independence were very close to France, where French mining companies controlled the uranium mining, where French civil servants were right at the heart of the government, where French troops were deployed in Mali. Suddenly flipping to a world where following the Libya intervention, where the French are booted out, the Americans are booted out. The Wagner group, this strange group that we talked about, which was set up by the Putin's chef Prigozhin, suddenly is now the key military player in a lot of these states and in which not just China, but these Middle Eastern powers, UAE in particular, suddenly find themselves leaning harder and harder into Africa. And there again the question is, is there the appetite in the US and Europe to reach out again? Do they have any desire to try to create links or actually is Britain down? We've just seen a report from Chatham House saying that our international development spend is now back where it was in 1999. 1999. We've gone back to the second year of your government.
- [36:16]
A
We listen, we've talked a lot through the year about we both violently agree that the downscaling first under Johnson, then followed under this government of overseas aid and development has been a terrible thing. And does you know, this has long term reputation effects for the country around the world and for our power. I should give a shout out, Roy to the rest is classified when we talk about Africa. And you mentioned Putin's chef Prigozhin, they did a very good miniseries which included the line, we're about to find out whether Alistair actually listens to us because I don't know if you saw this, but they were going through Prigozhin's many, many disguises. And one of them, if you see.
- [36:59]
B
That, was his you and it does.
- [37:02]
A
Have the same glasses, the same nose, the same rather sort of curled lip. But anyway, this goes back to the point we've been making about the way that Trump prosecutes foreign policy. Trump as president has never been to Africa. Now he's Been to an awful lot of places. And even the thing about the G20 we talked about a minute ago, let's be honest, part of the reason why he's doing what he's doing to South Africa is because they're led by a black South African. And he's just. He's less interested in that because there's less money to make there. But I think he's making power wise. He's making a very, very big mistake. Right, Rory, should we get a bit lighter? We've been bloody heavy the last couple of episodes.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here we are. Here's a lighter one for you then. Heather Bland, but not a bland question. Alistair called himself a national treasure recently. Who do you actually consider to be one?
- [37:52]
A
Well, you mean I'm not.
- [37:54]
B
She does slightly imply that.
- [37:55]
A
I think she's got a point. She's got a point. No, it wasn't one of our live shows and it was designed to raise a laugh, which it did. I think the definition of a national treasure, loads of ways you can define it, but the way I think of it sometimes is when they die. Are there any people who hear the news and go, yes, right, because so now. So, for example, when the Queen died, I think even the most ardent anti monarchists would have think, oh, well, say what you like, but she was bloody good at what she did. Or something like that is another way.
- [38:35]
B
To say it, you know, who do you think should chair a commission on the Olympics? Or. I mean, because the names they normally produce, in the end it's always David Attenborough, isn't it? And so I was sort of trying to get my head around what is David Attenborough. And David Attenborough sometimes is the answer to questions, generally questions around presenting a BBC documentary. There are actors who are. Prunella Scales was the kind of national treasure, wasn't she?
- [39:03]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [39:03]
B
And some people say Sir Stephen Fry, your friend, is he meant to be a national treasure?
- [39:09]
A
Yeah, basically. Okay, maybe my definition is too harsh because nobody should really sort of celebrate anybody's death. But let me put it another way. When you get your breaking news, BBC, Prunella Scales has died. Is there anybody who doesn't go, oh, that's really sad? So when I got the Prunella Scales thing, I went, that's really sad. Okay, right. There are some people to whom, let's be frank, we're a bit indifferent. Okay. Because you get so many breaking news things anyway. I think David Amber is definitely in that category. I don't want to presage his death in any way. But I think if and when that happens, everybody will feel sad about that.
- [39:42]
B
But even they, of course, are quite vulnerable because we're in a world where it is remarkable how suddenly things will be revealed in letters or in emails from people's past, which suddenly brings them down. So you also get the sense that journalists are kind of looking at the national treasures, waiting for the moment to get them.
- [39:59]
A
Oh, oh, they're really going to write some terrible things about me, Rory. Now that is out there, I'm national treasure. I think Billy is in there.
- [40:08]
B
Do you think poor old Mick Jagger, sadly, is beginning to become a national treasure? And I think if you're a rock star, you probably don't want to be a national treasure. I mean, you don't really want, at 82, everybody to start treating you as you might treat David Attenborough.
- [40:21]
A
No, I think Paul McCartney's closer. I think Paul McCartney's closer to being a national treasure.
- [40:26]
B
But presumably you don't want to be a national treasurer. It's probably a sign that you're not being radical enough and you're not annoying people enough. I mean, I'm increasingly committed to the idea that if I'm not annoying people, I'm probably not doing my job.
- [40:38]
A
Yeah, I get that. I get that. And certainly if you're a rock star, you need that. You always going to have that bit of edge. But it's really interesting watching these guys. I mean, Paul McCartney, for example, who's just, you know, an absolute, total legend. But it's so interesting to me how he clearly is very, very interested in legacy. You know, the fact that I've done these new documentary series, new books, and he doesn't need to make. He's not. It's not about money, it's about legacy. And I think he's definitely one. When the phones around the world go ping, ping, Beetle, Paul McCartney has died, I can think of very, very few people around the world who are not going to go. That's really sad. That's really sad.
- [41:16]
B
And the international equivalent, presumably, for people like us, are people like Barack Obama.
- [41:22]
A
Is he a global. No, I think it's very hard for politicians. Mandela maybe was the closest we got to it. But I think it's hard for any politician to be a national treasure, because the whole point of politics is that you are taking on and beating enemies, people who are trying to defeat you. If Barack Obama died today, Donald Trump would think twice about even saying anything. And he's the current leader of America. So I Don't think you could put Obama in this league at all.
- [41:49]
B
Trump. One of the things that makes him interesting is he refuses in any way to do what's expected. So John McCain was a classic example, someone who some ways would have seemed a pretty uncontroversial national treasure in the US because he was a genuine war hero who said he wasn't going to be released from prison in Hanoi before other people were released and all this kind of stuff. And yet Trump couldn't quite resist. I mean, he had really enjoyed kicking him. And then if you look in the British ex Prime Ministers, I mean, it may be that John Major is on track to be a National treasurer. Maybe in 20, 30 years time, people will feel very fond of Rishi Sunak in a way that they might not of Tony Blair, but that might be simply that Blair is continuing trying to be controversial, do things take positions, whereas the others fade into more of a sort of face at the Cenotaph.
- [42:40]
A
I agree that John Major has. His reputation is in a much better place than it was when he was Prime Minister. I mean, to be fair, I don't think Rishi Sunak was consequential enough as a Prime Minister to go into that league. I actually think. Here's a New Year's resolution. Can we revise the system under which all former prime ministers attend the Cenotaph on November 11? Because it is absurd to see Johnson and Truss there. So let's get them out of the way. They will never be national treasures. I think it's very hard for any politician to be a national treasure because you're always going to have people who don't like you. Very hard for media figures. I think we're really talking about sport, culture, arts. I think David Hockney might be getting close.
- [43:24]
B
Yep. But again, I think if you're an artist or an actor or a musician or a political commentator, as soon as you're becoming a National Treasurer, you need to start worrying, do you think I.
- [43:36]
A
Made a mistake in outing myself as a national treasure or is that a bad thing to do?
- [43:40]
B
Well, I think you now need to really lean over the next four or five years into becoming edgier, more controversial, stranger. Because national treasure Dom is basically a way of saying aging.
- [43:54]
A
Right. God. So are there no young national treasures? Is Prince Louis, He's a bit of a national treasure. People, people like his kind of quirkiness and his oddness.
- [44:06]
B
But of course that's only achieved by becoming sort of ceremonial, largely invisible and not having any opinions about anything.
- [44:15]
A
Right. Okay.
- [44:16]
B
I think aiming to be a National Treasurer or trying to sustain the position of a national treasure is a sign that you stop striving. It's a sign of defeat.
- [44:26]
A
Okay, okay. Right, Rory, our final question of our first question time of 2026 is a really good one. Thank you. Beefy breaker. Which two Prime Ministers past and present would have been the best to watch opposite each other at primness's questions? I would love to have seen Harold Wilson take down Johnson.
- [44:50]
B
Interesting.
- [44:51]
A
I think it would have been funny, clever. I think Tony would have destroyed Johnson actually as well. But Wilson would have. Wilson had this amazing gift for delivering phenomenal one liners and making it look like they just popped into his head that second.
- [45:09]
B
How good was Johnson at PM Q? I mean, stepping aside from our massive allergy to Johnson, was he sometimes quite effective? Was he good at getting the whole house behind him?
- [45:18]
A
Well, it depends what you see as the purpose of Prime Minister's questions. Look, he was good at what we know he was good at. He was good at drama and theater and being funny and not taking him seeming not to take himself too seriously. But I think he was terrible because that was the place where he told a lot of the lies he told, where he set out a lot of the policies that took us in such a bad direction and where he did turn politics into a kind of glorified version of show business. So I can't give him credit for that at all.
- [45:50]
B
I'd like to see Pitt the Younger against Gladstone and then Gladstone against Gordon Brown. See who could out earnest each other like a grim liberal view of the world. I say the Scots, the Scots deployed Gladstone against Gordon Brown. We rather sit there as Gladstone delivers his three hour budget and Gordon Brown rigorously engages with it. I mean it's true that people might prefer Disraeli against Boris Johnson, but you know, I'm going with Gladstone against Gordon Brown.
- [46:19]
A
That is a very, very good one. Yeah, but I still think of all of them. I think most of the Labour leaders that we've had would have been. Would have found a way to do in Johnson. But I think Wilson's the one that I really would love to have seen. And of course it's so we talk about you, we talked earlier about history. It's so sad in a way that I mean, you know, I think I'm not. I think there's a case to be made that televising Parliament has not necessarily improved it, but it's impossible in modern age to think you wouldn't televise it. But it's sad in a way that for some of these great historical figures, we've only got audio. It would have been great. I'd love to have seen Attlee at the Dispatch Box.
- [46:59]
B
Well, Adley, of course, famously, was not a great orator and people couldn't quite understand what he was doing because his back, Ben, his cabinet, had these enormous figures I would have loved to see. I think the great one, though, the really great one would have been Lloyd George against Churchill. I mean, they were contemporaries, they were friends, they ended up as prime ministers of different parties in. By which stage, Lloyd George was too old. But that would have been extraordinary. Electric to watch.
- [47:26]
A
I agree. But you having just mentioned, I think Atlee against Truss would have been good. Right. That's Liz Truss's first mention of 2026 and might be the last. Who knows?
- [47:41]
B
Very good. Well, I. Happy New Year, Alistair. And we've been a bit grim on because I think, in a sense, predicting the future is partly about predicting what could go wrong. And obviously I'm still reeling from allowing my optimism and wish fulfillment to convince me that Kamala Harris was going to win. So I'm now leaning hard into reminding people that there are a lot of very bad scenarios that could happen and how bad we all are at predicting the future, because we just can't. There are many things we'll never be able to see that might hit us. However, let's also finish on hope. Let's finish on a general sense. I mean, you would say young people, and I would add to that incredible human capacity to pull miracles out, to find peace where conflict seems inevitable, to find solidarity when selfishness seems inevitable, to find improvements in nature when destruction seems inevitable, and the way in which we build the structures and the people for a better world.
- [48:42]
A
Well, I, as you know, always get hope from talking to young people. Not always, but in the main. But also when we were doing our tour, some of the audiences, we said to them, as we droned on about awful Trump was and how the government wasn't performing like we wanted and all these things, and as he got a bit moany and groany, and I would just say to people, hands up if you quite enjoy your life. And most people put their hand up and most people actually said, life's kind of okay. And I think we should hang on to that because the, you know, the news agenda. I saw an interview with Barack Obama recently and I assume he was telling the truth. He said he never watches the media, never watches the news, and he never scrolls on his phone now. He's a pretty well informed guy. Okay, so. And I. I get. I. I very rarely. And I watch the news. I don't read the papers like I used to. I try not to scroll too much. I think you keep a sense of positivity by actually constantly saying to yourself, there's a lot of good stuff out there, and let's maybe occasionally focus more on that than we do on the bad. And that maybe should be our New Year's resolution.
- [49:48]
B
Brilliant. Well, Alistair, thank you for all of that. Happy, happy New Year. Enjoy Scotland. And don't get too cold when you go swimming.
- [49:55]
A
See you soon.
- [49:56]
B
Bye. Bye.
- [49:57]
A
Bye.