492. Should Europe Boycott the World Cup? (Question Time)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics – Episode 492: Should Europe Boycott the World Cup? (Question Time)
Hosts: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart
Date: January 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special “Question Time” edition, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, broadcasting from Davos, deliver a far-reaching and candid discussion on vital political issues in the UK and globally. The central topic is the ethical and political implications of attending or boycotting the upcoming World Cup in the United States, set against the backdrop of former President Trump’s increasingly authoritarian behavior and the crisis in Greenland. Additionally, the hosts provide on-the-ground insights from Davos, analyze Robert Jenrick’s high-profile defection from the Conservative Party, decode shifting alliances in Syria, and reflect on the enduring value of political oratory following a conversation with Neil Kinnock.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Boycott Debate: Should the UK (and Europe) Attend the World Cup?

• Listener Question - Margaret from North Carolina (03:00): Margaret commends Alastair for considering not attending the World Cup to avoid normalizing Trump’s actions. She asks at what point one should call out emerging autocracy in the US, and what it would take for England and others to boycott the World Cup.

• Alastair’s Decision (05:04):

  • Alastair confirms he and his son have decided not to attend:
    “We, you know, both my sons and I followed Scotland through thin and thin…”
  • Emphasizes he doesn’t judge others who go but, for him, “in part, making a statement that this is okay. And…Trump uses everything to political ends.”

• Listener Polls Results:

  • Instagram: 66% against attending
  • Spotify: 78% against attending
  • Emails: 91% against attending

• Impact on Americans (06:36):

  • Many American listeners express that international protest helps domestic opposition to Trump.
  • Rory stresses the importance of focusing not just on symbolic acts but the domestic realities in the US, citing “the horror of what’s happening in Minnesota and a sense of creeping authoritarianism.”

Notable Quote

“You are, in part, making a statement that this is okay. And…Trump uses everything to political ends, and, by God, he’s going to use this World Cup with his friend Infantino.”
— Alastair Campbell (05:27)

2. Would a European Boycott Make a Difference?

• Historical Analogies (07:00):

  • Rory compares the possible US boycott to boycotts of the USSR after Afghanistan, South Africa under apartheid, and Russia post-Ukraine, but highlights the US as a uniquely central power.

• Effectiveness & Consequences (07:46):

  • Trump would “weaponize” a boycott, framing it as victimization and fuelling his narrative.
  • Only a massive, global, multilateral boycott would make a difference.

Notable Quote

“He would present it as loser countries victimizing the US…and he would use it probably to boost his own poll ratings.”
— Rory Stewart (07:46)

Would British Public Support a Boycott? (08:17)

• Alastair doubts it: “There is massive interest in the World Cup…sports fans would be really, really hurt and confused.”
• Suggests only dramatic escalation—such as military conflict in Greenland—would tip public opinion.

Notable Quote

“If it develops into…American troops arriving on Greenland and fighting with Danes…that’s a different level of thing.”
— Alastair Campbell (08:46)

3. The FIFA Peace Prize Parody & Trump’s Political Showmanship

• Trump’s alleged pursuit of a Nobel Prize is mocked.
• Alastair derides the “pathetic” spectacle:
  “It's Trump with a green dummy in his mouth saying, we're about to see what happens when a baby doesn't get what it wants.” (09:27)

4. Davos Dispatch: The State of Global Leadership

• Both hosts deliver irreverent observations about the atmosphere at Davos (12:36–16:01).
• Rory: “It’s extraordinary…a rag-bag of peculiar, different types of people…”
• Alastair satirizes elite status games over badge color.

Notable Moment

“He paid $40,000 to have a less good badge than you.”
— Rory Stewart (14:30)

• On the upside: Davos as a vital networking platform for charities and NGOs, even as global inequality deepens.

5. Spotlight on Child Exploitation and Tech Responsibility

• Alastair’s meeting with International Justice Mission (16:05):

  • The scale of online child sex abuse, with the UK third globally for customers.
  • The urgent need for governments and tech firms to intervene.

• Rory links the issue to broader trends in social media/AI, especially Elon Musk:
  “Instead of being interested in monitoring this stuff, he’s going in the completely opposite direction…” (18:07)

6. The “Greenland Question” and Tech Billionaires’ Libertarian Fantasies

• Discusses the realpolitik behind American actions in Greenland and tech moguls’ interest in the territory as a “libertarian experiment.” (20:11)

7. Robert Jenrick, Tory Turmoil & the Farage Factor

• Question from Finn in Manchester (25:03):
  • Could Jenrick’s sacking shift the Tories back to the centre?
  • How credible is Reform under Farage, given defectors are mostly ex-Tories?

Key Points

• Rory: Reform is “a home for failed MPs” and key figures are “all basically failed right wing Conservatives.”
• Kemi Badenoch’s preemptive strike sacking Jenrick limited the media impact of his defection, but the strategic blow remains.

Notable Quotes

“She got there ahead, broke the whole story herself in a really good way. She said this guy’s a snake in the grass. He’s heading over to Reform.”
— Rory Stewart (27:39)

• Alastair: The Tories must stop believing that “moving right” will stem their losses to Farage.
• Rory sees a future for Badenoch if she finds a distinctive centre-right economic narrative and capitalizes on Labour’s struggles on key issues.

8. On the Syrian Ceasefire and Regional Complexity

• Question from Josh in Liverpool (33:15):

  • The fragile ceasefire, the Kurds, and the shifting landscape in Northeast Syria.

• Rory’s firsthand account:

  • Aleppo’s devastation lingers, with widespread ruin and an almost impossible task of reconstruction.
  • The current truce between the Kurds and the government is “very, very new and contradictory information is coming out all the time.”

• Broader context: The lack of a coordinated international rebuilding effort is stark compared to earlier conflicts like Bosnia, with Syria and Gaza now facing seemingly insurmountable rebuilding challenges (39:11).

Notable Moment

“You will just see the whole centers of cities abandoned and people beginning to create brownfield sites on the outside and people will be living amongst ruins.”
— Rory Stewart (35:24)

9. Oratory in Politics: Lessons from Neil Kinnock

• Question from Bethan in Swansea (42:43):
  • What could Keir Starmer learn from Kinnock’s emotional oratorical style?

Discussion:

• The era of grand, philosophical political speeches appears to have faded in the UK.
• Both hosts struggle to name a current politician with real oratorical prowess, though they note Farage has “real talent” and cite Kemi Badenoch’s recent effective budget speech.

Notable Quotes

“Any time in the last 300 years you asked that question, there would be obvious answers…Now, it’s very strange.”
— Rory Stewart (43:41)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Trump uses everything to political ends, and, by God, he’s going to use this World Cup with his friend Infantino.”
  — Alastair Campbell (05:27)

• “He would present it as loser countries victimizing the US…and he would use it probably to boost his own poll ratings.”
  — Rory Stewart (07:46)

• “It's Trump with a green dummy in his mouth saying, we're about to see what happens when a baby doesn't get what it wants.”
  — Alastair Campbell (09:27)

• “You are, in part, making a statement that this is okay.”
  — Alastair Campbell (05:27)

• “It’s extraordinary…a rag-bag of peculiar, different types of people…”
  — Rory Stewart (12:36)

• “He paid $40,000 to have a less good badge than you.”
  — Rory Stewart (14:30)

• “You will just see the whole centers of cities abandoned and people beginning to create brownfield sites…”
  — Rory Stewart (35:24)

• “Any time in the last 300 years you asked that question, there would be obvious answers…Now, it’s very strange.”
  — Rory Stewart (43:41)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intro and World Cup Boycott Introduction: 02:56
• Alastair’s Personal Decision Not to Attend: 05:04
• Wider Impact of European Boycott: 07:00–08:46
• The FIFA Peace Prize and Trump Satire: 09:06
• Davos – Reflections and Realities: 12:36
• Brief on Child Exploitation & Tech: 16:05
• Jenrick Defection, Tory/Right Realignment: 25:03
• Syria Update & Reconstruction Challenges: 33:15–39:11
• Oratory and Starmer vs. Kinnock: 42:43

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Episode Tone & Style

True to the show’s ethos, the conversation is sharp, humorous, frank, and filled with lived political experience. Both hosts frequently digress in lively anecdotes but always return to a central argument, balancing disagreement with mutual respect. There’s mockery of the absurdities of current events, but beneath that, a serious discussion about threats to democracy, shifting party identities, and global instability.

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This summary captures the episode’s major themes and discussions, providing both a detailed guide for listeners and a concise reference for deeper engagement with the issues at hand.

Transcript

[Alastair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

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[Alastair Campbell]

Welcome to the Rest of politics, Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

[Rory Stewart]

And with me, Rory Stewart. So here we are in Davos again. So we're going to talk about actually how Trump's actions in Greenland might result in boycotts around the World cup and in particular whether Alistair should be going to the World Cup. We're also, though, going to be talking about what we've seen in Davos, what we've learned about the world from Davos. We're going to be getting into Robert Jenrick's defection from the Conservative Party. So this was the heir apparent to the Conservative Party. He's now gone over to Nigel Farage's reform. And does that mean that reform is on track to replace the Conservative Party or the opposite? We're going to talk also finally about Syria, where there has been a confrontation between the Syrian government and the Kurds. Huge boiling issue that's been there for a year, which at the moment is being celebrated by Mark Rutter and others by another great achievement by Donald Trump. I'll try to explain a little bit, having been in Syria, what it's like on the ground. And then we'll finish talking a little bit about your friend Neil Kinnock. Could we just interfere on leading? Well, let me ask you that first question comes from Margaret, who's in North Carolina. I really respect Alastair for seriously considering not attending the World cup and for recognizing the danger of normalizing what's happening in the United States. At what point do we stop expressing surprise at Trump's actions and start calling this what it is, the emergence of autocracy in America. And what would it take for England and other European countries to boycott the World cup in protests. And just as a to remind listeners for people who are real sort of wrestlers, politics Question Time geeks, we actually asked listeners to respond on whether Alistair should go and watch the World Cup. And no secret, he absolutely loves football and Scotland has qualified. So it's one of the most exciting things that's happened to him in decades. We had 5,000 votes across Instagram. No. 66% yes, 34%, 1,000 votes on Spotify, no. 78% yes, 22%. 250 response on email. No, 91%. Yes, 90%. So on aggregate, 84% against attendance. What does that make you think about going to the United States?

[Alastair Campbell]

I've actually firmly decided anyway. That probably did help me push me in that direction. And my son Callum as well, who was. He was also intending to go, and he's decided now. No, he's not. And not because of me, just because he's made that decision independently. And we, we, you know, both my sons and I followed Scotland through thin and thin.

[Rory Stewart]

When was the last time they qualified for the World cup?

[Alastair Campbell]

In 1998. So I went to that. In fact, I, I persuaded Tony Blair to come out and see the team on the way. So it's sad and I really do feel bad about it. But. And by the way, I should say that does not mean, I think that everybody who goes is a terrible person. I think that. But I think if in my position, it would be the same for you, I think it is. You are, in part, making a statement that this is okay. And, you know, if I make the point, as I do, that Trump uses everything to political ends, and, by God, he's going to use this World cup with his friend Infantino. And I'm afraid I've told you before about this book I read, German book by Volker hesse called Berlin 1936. I sort of feel that that's what we're seeing. And what was really interesting, I went through a lot of the, the, the messages that came through with these votes. And by the way, I had hundreds and hundreds myself as well, both on social media and directly to email and DM and all that stuff. But a lot of Americans saying that they feel that outsiders objecting and protesting in whatever way they can to Trump.

[Rory Stewart]

Helps them emails in. I mean, we should get onto this because partly what many American writing and have been talking about is to bring the focus back on what's happening domestically. I mean, we're talking a lot about Greenland.

[Alastair Campbell]

Exactly.

[Rory Stewart]

But in fact, the horror of what's happening in Minnesota and the sense of creeping authoritarianism.

[Alastair Campbell]

But most people said that was the tipping point.

[Rory Stewart]

Let's move on to the next question. What would happen if we took the second half of her question if there was a mass boycott of the US World Cup? And the analogies here for people are, of course, that when the Soviet union invaded Afghanistan, 1980, there was a boycott of the Olympics, there was a big, sustained boycott of South African teams during apartheid, there were big sanctions against Russian sports. People still are still are following Putin's invasion. But to do it against the United States would be completely different. I mean, all the countries that it was done to before were, in a sense, more peripheral than the United States. The US was the central rule organizer. The US organized a lot of those moves. And Trump, of course, would weaponize it 100%. And of course, the US has so much control over the sponsorship, the deals, the companies. He would present it as loser countries victimizing the us and he would use it probably to boost his own poll ratings. So the only way I think you could pull it off is if you made it very much focus on a single Su Greenland, and if you had a huge multilateral coalition where Trump can't present it as just a marginal thing, but basically the entire world boycotts the World Cup.

[Alastair Campbell]

And it would be very interesting to see where public opinion went on it, because the truth is, we've got two of the four UK countries who qualified, England and Scotland. There is massive interest in the World Cup. We are both footballing nations and I'm not convinced that most people wouldn't necessarily support it.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, you think the British public wouldn't be in favour of not sending our teams?

[Alastair Campbell]

I don't. I think. I think.

[Rory Stewart]

You think it's such a huge thing that actually sports fans would be really, really hurt and confused.

[Alastair Campbell]

Look, if it. If it develops into. We actually see the sort of pictures that you described in the main episode of American troops arriving on Greenland and fighting with Danes.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

Then I think that's a different level of thing. But if we're just carrying on in this stage of Trump's bullying, Trump's intimidation, there certainly might, to my mind, be no pushback from within. FIFA.

[Rory Stewart]

He won a peace prize. A FIFA Peace Prize, or is a FIFA Peace Prize? He also got a second peace prize we didn't talk about enough, which is that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize handed over. It's really great. It would be like, I don't know, maybe I was lucky enough to get into a university and then I decided that I could just let my mate get into the university because I got.

[Alastair Campbell]

If Usain Bolt were here, you could put his gold medal around your neck and I'd be the fastest on the earth. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it's pathetic. It's truly pathetic. It's like, in fact, if I can plug the new World. I've just seen our front page this week. It's. It's Trump with a green dummy in his mouth saying, we're about to see what Happens when a baby doesn't get.

[Rory Stewart]

What it wants, which is extremely his. His thing. To the Norwegian, I mean, anybody who hasn't followed this amazing twee.

[Alastair Campbell]

It was a letter, though. It was a letter to Janis Kar.

[Rory Stewart]

Sora, who we've interviewed, in which he says, listen, you guys, the Norwegians didn't give me the Nobel Peace Prize. So to be honest, I'm not that interested in peace anymore. I mean, of course I'm still a bit of peace.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, but I'm not. You can't see me purely as the president for peace.

[Rory Stewart]

Anyway, I'm going to take what I want because you didn't give me the Peace Prize.

[Alastair Campbell]

But look, I don't know what happens if the. Because it would. It would be a huge thing for any of these countries to say to their formal associations, we don't want you to go to the World cup, given how much it means to them, given the financial, economic situation attached to it and so much else that goes on with it. So, yeah, we'll see. But look, I feel settled in my opinion, but I know I'm going to feel very, very sad when the World cup comes around.

[Rory Stewart]

I think there should be a boycott. Even though Trump will use it to his benefit, even though it won't change U.S. foreign policy. I think it will actually be very useful domestically in the United States for opponents to Trump to say, this is unbelievable. Every single European country and many other countries.

[Alastair Campbell]

It would have to be that if it was another divide and rule.

[Rory Stewart]

It's a very, very. I mean, I don't know who else is qualified. I mean, have any. Are there any other countries which might be amused to team up with us and refusing to tell.

[Alastair Campbell]

Oh, who are not in Europe?

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. Are there Asian countries that could come along?

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah, they could listen to the.

[Rory Stewart]

China qualified.

[Alastair Campbell]

No. Thanks to Infantino's money making expansion of the whole thing, there are more countries than ever at the World Cup. Look, it could become a thing. I don't think we're far from that. Here's one for you to think about, Rory. Should the King go to the 250th anniversary celebrations? Because that's the plan.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, definitely not if that anniversary involves making another claim on Canada, because he is the King of Canada. Canada's the sovereign nation.

[Alastair Campbell]

Greenland alone. This is still going on. Should Keir Starmer and the King sit down and say, you know what? Bad idea.

[Rory Stewart]

I think first thing is it's very unfair to the King, because of course, the King doesn't make these decisions on his own right. This is a decision for Keir Starmer. But I'm afraid this Greenland thing crosses the line beyond anything we've seen and that we have to respond so firmly, so clearly and above all, together. I keep coming back to this. Everything coordinated. Carney, Macron, stand together. Right, next question.

[Alastair Campbell]

Just before we go, I just want to give a little sense of the flavor of the issues that were raised, particularly by American listeners, about why they felt this is. They might have crossed the line. And these are the things that they've sort of put up with up to now. Politicization of law, delegitimization of courts, attack on a free press, normalization of rule breaking, reframing of minority security threats, personality cult, aggressive foreign policy, and of course, all the lying and everything else that we know about.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, Jackie, who's from Derby. Hi, guys. I caught wind that you're at Davos this week during what's a pretty significant week geopolitically. What's the most interesting thing you've heard? Well, first thing, before I get onto that, I mean, my goodness, there is a lot of nonsense. I mean, if you wanted to tease this amazing gathering of people, I mean, it's extraordinary. I mean, it's such a rag bag of peculiar, different types of people, people quite understandably running small charities, trying to raise money, hoping they're going to meet some Saudi trillionaire who's going to give them $50 million because they met him over a cup of coffee. People trying to reignite issues that seem to be dying. And other people who you can imagine sort of thing when you're having a conversation, will sort of stand up and say, the one thing I want to say is, treasure your parents. There's a lot of that stuff, right? A lot of kind of kooky self help stuff going on, which probably is a sign that we are in massive, massive decline, because actually the whole spirit of this thing is being sapped from within. This whole thing was set up on the basis of globalization, free trade rules based international order. And what can you really say when Trump is going to Greenland except be nice to your parents.

[Alastair Campbell]

Be nice to your parents. Give him a big hug. Look, as you have seen, Rory, I get very, very irritable at these events. I cannot stand the sort of status consciousness that goes on. You know, we're lucky enough, Rory, we've got white badges.

[Rory Stewart]

They're very good.

[Alastair Campbell]

We're very important. Well, you walk around with your white badge and then you meet other people. I met this other guy who only had a Green badge, would you believe? And he said, how much do you have to pay for that? And I said, don't upset him. And nothing. Oh my God. He paid $40,000 to be to have.

[Rory Stewart]

A less good badge than you. Yeah, yeah. That must be annoying.

[Alastair Campbell]

Must be really annoying. But the friend that he was with, however, said, you will not believe how much business I do here.

[Rory Stewart]

Right.

[Alastair Campbell]

He was in sort of tech world, but he said, I will do, I will have meetings, the follow on from meetings I've already had or that create new meetings I will have. But he reckons his, his business benefits to a factor of about a quarter by coming to Davos.

[Rory Stewart]

And the network thing, I mean, if we think about we were here last year and we were up in the main street, which you can only get into with a fancy type of badge, and that's where we saw the Syrian foreign Minister and that's where we fixed.

[Alastair Campbell]

Up the trip to Syria.

[Rory Stewart]

That's where we saw John Kerry, that's where we saw the former Swedish Prime Minister. I mean, so just standing in that street, Bill Gates was wandering around, I think.

[Alastair Campbell]

So that part of it is fine. But I'll tell you what, I absolutely does my head in in a way that I cannot even tell you. I'm thinking of getting a gigantic badge made on the U.S. do not ask me when I arrived in Davos. Do not ask me when I'm leaving. Do not ask me where I'm staying, do not ask me how I get from my hotel to the Congress center, because you don't really care. I can't stand all the small talk that goes on. Whereas there is this thing develops I breakfast this morning I overheard these six. I think they were from Mongolia and they were sitting there and they would. They talked for 25 minutes about the different ways that they had found to get to the Congress Center. Just do it, don't talk about it, do it.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay. Now you did however, have one conversation which you did think was quite interesting.

[Alastair Campbell]

I would say the most interesting comment because to me being interested is stuff that you learning things you didn't know. And I had a meeting yesterday with a group called the International Justice Mission where they educated me about an issue that I was vaguely aware of. But the scale of it is truly horrific and I should tell viewers and listeners to be prepared for some truly horrible things. So this is International Justice Mission. They basically exist to help try to prevent violence against the poor and in particular women and children. But it's all violence against the poor and slavery and all the Stuff that goes on. But they explained to me that the single biggest commercial child sex abuse situation that's going on is online child sex abuse, where you can sit at your laptop at home as a pervert and you can use the web and not the dark web. You can use the web to make contact with people in different countries around the world. And you can order bespoke scenes of child abuse, including siblings, animals. Just the most depraved stuff imaginable. And they were saying that they've got a team working in the Philippines. Apparently the Philippines is really big for this, and they reckon half a million children have been abused in this.

[Rory Stewart]

And I think one of the things that shocked me most is Britain is responsible for a lot of this. A lot of the customers are British.

[Alastair Campbell]

We are third in the list. USA is one and we're third. I can't remember who's number two, but this. And the point they were making, the reason they wanted to see me was because they say they've got to find a government that will take the lead on this and educate the public about it, ventilate the issue and persuade the tech companies to make changes that they say can easily be made to make this impossible.

[Rory Stewart]

And of course, the stuff they were.

[Alastair Campbell]

Describing was beyond horrible.

[Rory Stewart]

I think one of the things maybe to do is to get them on for a few minutes talk. But it's also, if we take it bigger, is such a sign of how things are going wrong, because, of course, we're in a world in which Elon Musk, instead of being interested in monitoring this stuff, is going in completely opposite direction. He's enabling his AI systems to generate nude images of celebrities and ordinary private people and spread them all over. And I think maybe this relates back to this question of what we're looking at in the United States, what we'd be boycotting if we were not going to the World cup, what Greenland represents. And I think part of it is this question of who they think they are. And in particular, the sense that Trump's vision, it's not quite. I mean, people say it's fascist. It's not completely fascist. The odd thing is that in Germany and Italy after the war, they were in a terrible situation. When Germany been defeated in the First World War, it had mass unemployment, fights in the streets. There was this deep resentment that was stabbed in the back, all this sort of stuff. Italy, when it was doing its fascist adventures, was a relatively marginal, impoverished country trying to establish itself. We've never seen before this, which is the global hegemon the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, the country that created these alliances and underpin them, that doesn't actually face any significant security threat from Greenland that they couldn't, as you pointed out, deal with perfectly well by putting their soldiers there if they wanted to. Right. Suddenly deciding to do this stuff and doing it in a way that is so vindictive, sadistic, public humiliating. It is a sense that they want to recreate some strange world. And you don't read this stuff, but I think it's. I don't almost encourage you to read this stuff. This sort of fantasy fiction, sci fi fiction, sort of worlds where technology has been created and then democracy's corrupts and some empire's taken over, run by mad dictators with crumbling computers.

[Alastair Campbell]

Maybe you're right. I should read. Because the other thing that we didn't cover in the main episode on Greenland is that there's also a division going on between the national security argument that says we need this for national security. And then you have people like Peter Thiel and Musk and these guys, they see Greenland as the place where they maybe carry out some of their libertarian experiments for the future. So you're absolutely right. But just bring it back to Jackie's question. The thing about Davos. So why would a charity like that be here? These people are fighting for this campaign partly because they need money. And I bumped into David Miliband, who runs this huge charity in New York. He's had to sack thousands of people.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

Since USAID did their cuts. So he. I bumped into him in the street and I said, where are you going? He said, I'm just off to try and talk another billionaire into giving us more money. So you've got these billionaires wandering around the place and of course, the inequality that they have created that they drive and they thrive on these charities, really good causes trying to do good things, but they're doing them because the governments have pulled the platform and.

[Rory Stewart]

Which means also that instead of there being an essential coordinated response.

[Alastair Campbell]

Very peace.

[Rory Stewart]

Incidentally, we need to. We'll go to the break now, but I would like you to return to our campaign to give the Nobel Peace Prize to USAID and work out how we can coordinate that. Anyone who wants to get behind that. We've looked at the rules on how you nominate.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

We need organizations to write in, so please get in touch if you'd like to help us nominate USAID for the Nobel Peace Prize.

[Alastair Campbell]

And don't forget the part of our plan originally was that whoever is American President at the time should be invited to accept it. But they should bring along those presidents who were in charge when us and.

[Rory Stewart]

Celebrate everything that America did on combating hilarious aids, international development, generosity to the world.

[Alastair Campbell]

All right, let's have a quick break and then we'll come back and we talk about Robert Jenrick and we talk about your trip to Syria. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

[Rory Stewart]

January is when we reset everything. Routines, inboxes, intentions. We're back online doing serious things in the least secure places from trains and cafes, wherever the WI fi happens to be.

[Alastair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

It also includes Threat Protection Pro, which helps block malicious links and scan downloads. Particularly useful in January when people are clicking through job applications, travel plans and inboxes full of messages marked urgent prices.

[Alastair Campbell]

And content can quietly change depending on where you're browsing from. NORDVPN lets you change your virtual location so you can check what you're actually being shown.

[Rory Stewart]

One account covers up to 10 devices or install it on your router. Cover the whole house.

[Alastair Campbell]

To get the best discount on your NordVPN plan, head to nordvpn.com restispolitics. You'll also get four extra months free on the two year plan, plus a 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the episode Description. This episode is brought to you by Whoop.

[Rory Stewart]

So I'm wearing a whoop. I've been wearing it through Christmas and over New Year and it's pretty amazing. So this thing connects to an app on your phone and it gives you a resilience score every morning and it sets basically a target for how much exercise you should be doing the day. And it pushes you quite hard.

[Alastair Campbell]

Based on what? Based on data. It already knows data it picks up.

[Rory Stewart]

From your heart, so it picks up what your heart rate is. It can pick up other stuff, actually there's other settings where you can get into blood pressure, you can get into heart rate variability. It's very good at picking up what activity you're doing. So I was doing cross country skiing. It could pick up from that for the movement, I think from my hands. And I think it's the beginning of this amazing revolution in wearables which would allow you, if you were interested, to know how far to push yourself. But if you really are interested in sports activity data, I've just bought one for Shoshana for Christmas. Because for somebody who's obsessed with fitness, I think you'd find it pretty useful.

[Alastair Campbell]

So if you want to join Rory and Shoshana in building healthier habits that actually last over time, go to join.whoop.com trip.

[Rory Stewart]

You can sign up for a free 30 day trial. Try Whoop Risk Free and start your year with a bit of momentum.

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[Rory Stewart]

Welcome back to the Rest Is Politics.

[Alastair Campbell]

Question time with me, Rory Stewart, and me, Alastair Campbell.

[Rory Stewart]

Question from Finn from Manchester. Could Robert Jenrick's sacking from the Conservative Party create an opportunity for Kemi Badenoch to pull the party back towards the centre ground? And when Jenrick defects to reform, how can Nigel Farage credibly present reform as the remedy for the Conservatives recent failures?

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, we preempted that second part of the question on the issue of Nadim Zahawi's defection. I think it's very, very hard for reform to say we're the big change makers when apart from Farage and maybe Tice a bit, maybe Zia Yousef a bit. You know, it is very much seen as a one man band. They're bringing in these, these new people, but they're all basically failed right wing Conservatives and a very odd group if.

[Rory Stewart]

You stand them all behind. I mean, it was true, actually, in some of the earlier incarnations of fragist parties he had people who'd been sacked for cash for question stuff coming out of the Tory party. But this time it's sort of Anne Whitakem, Nadine, Doris, Nadam Sahabi. I mean, I don't really remember John Redwood's leadership challenge against Major and the very peculiar people he had.

[Alastair Campbell]

Oh, Tony Marlowe in his bright jacket and all that stuff.

[Rory Stewart]

It's got a bit of that feeling that if they. And that's why Farage is now writing articles in the Telegraph saying, I'm setting a deadline for Conservative MPs defective. We can't just be a home for failed MPs.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, the latest failed MP who's come over is this guy, is it Andrew Rossen?

[Rory Stewart]

I'm very fond of Andrew. He's an eccentric fellow, but I'm very fond of him and I can tell you a little bit about him.

[Alastair Campbell]

But was he not big on Conservative friends in Russia?

[Rory Stewart]

Andrew? I mean also was accused and then I think exonerated under allegations abuse and was suspended from the House Commonsen writ. He was on the Foreign Affairs Committee with me. He is. Don't know quite how to describe him. He's a big Brexiteer. He was the chairman of the APPG on flags. He knows more about the flags of the world than anyone on earth. He's in a world of endless portraits of the Queen. He's. And quite a lot of Brexit movement was like that. There were the sort of sinister, dishonest people and then there were people who were sort of motivated by sort of strange kind of 1890s patriotism and strong leadership. Well, yes, Andrew. Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

As I've said many times, we have not got to the bottom of the Russia reform story. Sadly, most of our media have given up even thinking about it. Look, Kimmy Badenot is widely said, as they say in two ways on the BBC is widely said and widely reported to have handled Genrick's defection. Well preempted it put out a statement.

[Rory Stewart]

Just to remind people. It was quite interesting. So she got wind that he was about to defect reform, which would have been an enormous moment just to remind people. Roger Jenrick, Robert. Robert Jenrick.

[Alastair Campbell]

So well known that Roy Stewart forgot his name.

[Rory Stewart]

Robert Jenrick was the heir apparent in the Conservative Party. In fact, for the last 12 months the story's been can we bed Knox toast. There's only one person who can possibly replace who's Robert Jenrick. And he had huge support in the right wing from the Tory Party. He's the guy that was doing all these social media media videos challenging people going on the tubes. He disrupted her conference. You remember you were commenting when she had to go on the Today program. He'd been out there saying there are no white faces in the city anymore, etc. So the smart money was if he just sat there, eventually Kemi Vadenok would be toppled and he'd become the leader of the Conservative Party. Instead of which he was going to defect reform, which would have been huge opportunity for Farage to platform him and say the guy, the future leader, Conservative Party's chairs. Reform. She got there ahead, said broke the whole story herself in a really good way. She said this guy's a snake in the grass. He's heading over to reform.

[Alastair Campbell]

He's for too long. He's now not.

[Rory Stewart]

He's sacked.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

Which I think probably took 80% of the effect of the defection away.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah. I think in media terms, it took a lot away from it. I think in strategic terms, it's still pretty damaging for the Tory Party. But I think where Fin is absolutely right is there's an opportunity for Kimi Badenov. Because I've always felt that the really big challenge for the Conservatives is to stop pretending that by moving to the right, they can somehow keep hold of the people that have. That have flocking to Nigel, have been flocking to Nigel Farage. So I think she needs new ideas, new thinking, new people. So I think it is an opportunity and she has to show whether she conceives it. When she first came along, you can remember, I said, look, this woman is just not going to last. She's not going to make it. But I think she's become stronger. I think she's become stronger in Parliament. She's got amazing self confidence.

[Rory Stewart]

We talked about her budget speech, which was brutally effective. She got out ahead on the under 16 social media band, which she will have taken from people like us championing South Australia. And she got there ahead of Starmer. She came out clearly on the issue of Trump. So she's beginning to find her feet, which is in. It's a sort of reminder in politics that it's so easy for the conventional wisdom to be, yeah, this person's finished.

[Alastair Campbell]

And of course, this new conventional wisdom could equally turn out to be wrong. But I think she's showing something that I hadn't seen early on. I still think there's something about a manner that I think puts a lot of people off. But I think it is a real opportunity for her. And I've said a couple of weeks ago, and I got inundated with people saying, oh, it's wishful thinking. I think we have hit peak Farage and I think this Trump, Greenland stuff, handled properly, has the capacity to do to Farage what Carney did to Polievre. But it's a lot harder, obviously, if you're the party of government doing it. Carney at the time was, you know, coming in from the outside. He was replacing a Prime minister who was on his way.

[Rory Stewart]

So maybe my final thing, I think two things for Cammie. One is clear distinction from Farage. But the second thing is she needs to start now making the center right argument. She needs to present herself and this is, I think, the edge. She needs to say that the world has changed and therefore we need strategic autonomy, we need economic growth, we need different values in our economic system. And it's particularly on the economic growth story. There's enough time has now passed. Labor's struggling 18 months on. There is a sense that labor has been captured by left wing backbenchers who cannot contemplate cuts to welfare, cuts to disability payment. We need to spend more on defence, we need to get British industry going, we need to deregulate. We need to get all the stuff, actually, that Peter Kyle, I think, has been doing really good stuff on. I want to really support Peter Kyle. I think he's an extraordinary appointment and he could be a great, great, great business secretary. But unless Keir Starmer gets behind Peter Khan and lets him drive an agenda that's going to help entrepreneurs, business and investment, that'll be a huge opportunity for Kemi Badenoch.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah. Anyway, there we are. I don't know whether Kemi will welcome me saying that. I think she's improving hugely. Of course it does help. It sort of does help Labour. If the Tories and Reform stay sort of fighting each other on this ground and there is a possibility of the next election becomes, in terms of the way it's framed and the way and the outcome, a sense of who is going to lead either a progressive alliance or a right wing alliance. I think that is kind of maybe where we're, where we're heading, but I think we have peace past peak reform and I think that the other two main parties need to put more pressure.

[Rory Stewart]

On him, in which case Generic made a huge error.

[Alastair Campbell]

I think Generic has made a due gerro and the reason for that is that he's gone right across the spectrum and he doesn't look to me like somebody who really believes what he says. He just thinks it's all about how you say it.

[Rory Stewart]

Farage is. It's a one man band and the chance that Generic gets rewarded by being part of the reform brand seems extremely unlikely.

[Alastair Campbell]

But also you'd have pissed off. I imagine Farage has pissed off the sort of Richard Tices and Zia Youssef's who thought they were the main kind of second in command, as it were. He's brought in another one. So it's. Anyway, we'll see how it pans out. I want to ask you about Syria, Josh from Liverpool. With the Syrian government now taking near total control of the Northeast and the STF agreeing to integrate into state institutions. That's the Kurds who've been sort of resisting this. How realistic is it that this ceasefire will hold? You've just literally just got back from Aleppo, so tell us what you Saw. And tell us what you think of Josh's question.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, first thing is that the question of what's going to happen between the Syrian government and Kurds is very, very new and we're getting lots of contradictory information. Let me give you a sense of what it was like in Syria. We were there together a year ago. We took the same trip, actually, from. From Beirut.

[Alastair Campbell]

Did you have to do the same? Drive through the car wash?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. All that stuff.

[Alastair Campbell]

Change the car?

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, yeah. All that kind of. Yeah, yeah. And then, then we got to the border and actually I was delayed at the border for a very long time because they accused me of being a journalist. Thanks to having. Coming with the.

[Alastair Campbell]

You'd rather be called a lefty.

[Rory Stewart]

Anyway, we got in and I saw many of the ministers in the new government. I traveled a bit around the country. The first thing to say about Aleppo is the level of destruction is beyond imagining.

[Alastair Campbell]

And going back way back when, or.

[Rory Stewart]

So going back way back when. But we stood just outside the central souk, which has been restored a bit, and we were in the middle of rubble. It was like pictures of Gaza on a smaller scale. And when you look at the cost of rebuilding some of these stories, many of the buildings I was looking at, four or five story buildings, cost a couple of million each to rebuild. Right. So you're talking about costs running into the tens of billions to begin to reconstruct. And actually what's happening seven, eight years onwards, many businessmen just aren't bothering because the cost of clearing the rubble, which is full of bombs, mines, et cetera, and putting up the building is far more than any revenue you could ever generate from your building. Now the same will be true in Gaza. I came back on the plane with somebody who'd just come out of Gaza working in de mining. It's almost impossible, he says, to contemplate rebuilding. I mean, all the sewage systems have been destroyed, there's bombs and ordinance all the way through the stuff. They can't get basic equipment in so many of these places. I'm afraid you will visit in years to come and you will just see the whole centers of cities abandoned and people beginning to create brownfield sites on the outside and people would be living amongst ruins. So we're trying to work. This is Turquoise Mountains, Shoshana's ngo, with the Syrian government. On trying to think a little bit about some reconstruction of buildings, some support for the amazing Syrian traditions and handicrafts, textiles, jewelry, woodwork, try to get some jobs and income back, get some of those talented Syrian artisans back into the country. But the bigger politics has barely moved in a year.

[Alastair Campbell]

This is a big success for Al Shara. Isn't.

[Rory Stewart]

Could be okay.

[Alastair Campbell]

So the basis of it.

[Rory Stewart]

So I think, as we've explained to people before about Syria, there is a big Arab population that is Sunni, which is the base of Al Shara's support. And of course, Elshara came from a very extreme version of Sunni Islamist, effectively terrorist organizations and has now become a sort of champion of trying to create a more multi ethnic Syria.

[Alastair Campbell]

Is your sense that that is genuine?

[Rory Stewart]

I think yes. He genuinely wants to try to reunite Syria. And one of the ministers we saw is a Christian woman. You know, I saw Alawites, I saw the patriarch of one of the churches. He has to deal with the fact though, that the Alawites in particular were very, very close to the old regime. And so there have been huge fights out on the west. That seems to calm down a bit. But get out to those areas. And there's a sense that although it's calmed down, they're not reconciled to the government yet. The Druze in the south have effectively become a. It feels like a sort of Israeli mini state. Israel provides air support for them. They've effectively declared de facto independence from the Syrian government. And then there are the Kurds up in the northeast who basically controlled all the land beyond the Euphrates. Now, just as I was arriving in Syria, a fight broke out in Aleppo between the Kurds and central government. And when I talk about a fight, the minister I was on my way to visit was attacked by a drone with a wingspan, you know, about twice the width of my own arms, which hit the side of the building and exploded and almost killed her. A fight then started between the Syrian government and the Kurds and we could see troops rolling up and down the streets. 130,000 people were displaced in Aleppo in about 24 hours. The Kurds were driven back from there. And then the story was there's going to be a war, that the Syrian military high command wanted to take the fight to the Kurds, the Kurds wanted to take the fight back to them. And what we've seen over the last few days is that the Syrian army has now advanced across the Euphrates. Deir Ezzor and Raqqa seem to have fallen. The sdf, which are these Kurdish forces being pushed back, a lot of this must be with Turkish support because of course those same Kurds in Syria are associated with the Kurdish resistance to the Turks. And then I'm getting Emails, of course, from many people who were very close to the Kurds, saying there are atrocities. This is a terrible betrayal. The United States is divided. The US military are sentimentally very pro Kurd because the Kurds were their biggest allies in fighting isis, and they see this as a victory for extremists. But Tom Barak, and it appears Trump himself, is behind the push of the Syrian government. So very brutal, very messy. And the question is, can Al Shara continue to reunify his country, often with these violent attacks, but keep the violence sufficiently under control, keep human rights abuses sufficiently under control to be able to reunify by force a country as fractured as Syria? And can he get the economy going? Because if we compare it to Bosnia. My final point, when you and I went into the Balkans after those wars, there were massive donor conferences. The World bank, the eu, the uk, the US would be putting tens of billions into rebuilding Sarajevo. Nobody's stepping up to do that in Syria, so how is it supposed to be rebuilt? And indeed, nobody's actually, actually really stepping up to do it in Gaza either.

[Alastair Campbell]

The other thing we should say about Gaza, while we're all talking about this Board of Peace and the billion dollars from this and a billion dollars from that, and the fact that Gaza was barely mentioning the whole presentation of the thing, two and a half thousand buildings have been demolished since. We're up to nearly 500 in terms of Palestinians killed since. And I think three Israeli soldiers killed. And there was also this very interesting piece, I think it was on the BBC, who'd done some stuff showing how the yellow line has just been quietly moved.

[Rory Stewart]

Moved, yeah. And to remind people, the yellow line is a line within Gaza. So what's happened is that Israel has taken a stretch of what used to be Gazan territory to create a sort of buffer zone, and it's now moved the line of the edge of that further into Gazan territory.

[Alastair Campbell]

People who sort of thought their operation called the old yellow line have been moved in and sort of, you know, taken out. So we should just. Because Donald Trump says he's delivered peace in Gaza, it has not happened. And the cost of reconstruction is on a scale even beyond, dare I say, the Board of Peace.

[Rory Stewart]

So much going on the world. But final note, just to update, we did Yemen last week, and maybe one of the things that people didn't follow is that there was these southern separatists backed by the uae who attacked the Saudi connected official government and then were driven back by the Saudis. And there was this extraordinary moment where Saudi literally bombed A UAE vessel. First time these two very wealthy Gulf states literally throwing munitions at each other. UAE withdrew. Saudi invited the leaders of the southern separatists for peace talks in Saudi, and they appear at the moment to have vanished, totally vanished. So you turn up for a peace talk in Saudi and there's no sign that you're around anymore. The leader, however, of the southern separatists was flown out on a private jet by UAE to Somaliland. Israel and UAE are now very close through the Abraham courts. Israel has just recognized Somaliland. Somaliland now looks set to be a base for the Israeli military to fire missiles at the Houthis in Yemen. Saudi has responded by forcing the rest of the Somali government to break its ties with uae. Saudi is also confronting UAE in Sudan. So we're in a very, very interesting world where these two major Gulf countries are against each. Other. Now, let me develop the final thing. I saw some senior Afghans on Saturday, and they were saying, the thing that we don't understand when we talk about Greenland is how so many of the borders that we're looking at are recent colonial borders. Basically. We could talk about Africa, we could talk about the Middle east, but even Central Asia, they were saying, listen, don't underestimate how many push to in Pakistan basically consider themselves Afghan. Don't underestimate how many people in Azerbaijan think they should be part of Iran and how many people in Iran think they should be part of Azerbaijan. Don't underestimate that. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, these borders are very recent, very fluid, very, very artificial. Once you begin allowing the idea that that settlement, which basically said, I don't care what the history was of how this country was created and what its borders were. I don't care whether the boat landed 400 years ago, 700 years ago, thousand years ago. These are now the borders of the world. And since 1945, these are going to be the borders of the world. And you don't get to say, but there are a lot of Hungarians in Romania. And we'd like that back, please. And I'm about to talk this afternoon to Albin Kurti. Many Serbs saying Kosovo is part of Serbia, many Serbs saying Republic of Srpska should be part of Serbia. So this stuff in Greenland is an unraveling of something which may be much, much bigger.

[Alastair Campbell]

Thanks for that. Because I think the other thing I'd say is that just listening to that, you would talk about going to zero. It just underlines how important is to listen to people who go. Because I'd read a lot about it following this sort of ceasefire deal and seen the sort of headlines, but it's clearly still a lot more complicated than they reflect. Final question from Bethan in Swansea, who's a TRIP member listening to your leading interview with Neil Kinnock. His oratory, even at 83, is truly remarkable. What lessons could Starmer take from Kinnick's ability to inspire and move audiences? Does he need more of that emotional connection with voters? Or is his more restrained style better suited to today's chaotic political landscape? I mean, I don't think it's just Kier. I don't think it's just Kir. I think our politics generally. I mean, who would you say is in Britain the finest current political orator?

[Rory Stewart]

It's a terrible. Isn't it so strange that you have to ask that question? We can't answer it because British parliamentary tradition was all about oratory.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

I mean, any time in the last 300 years you asked that question, there would be obvious answers. You would have been like Pitt the Younger, you know, Churchill, you know, and RM Bevan was a great speaker. You would. You would. Michael Foot was a great speaker. You'd be able to generate these names very rapidly. You know, Enoch Powell, nutty though he was, was a great speaker in the House.

[Alastair Campbell]

I mean, Boris Johnson was. Yeah, yeah, Got skills. Who would you. Come on, I'm going to put you on the spot. Who today, if you were to say, I'm going to name a British person who's got really fine oratorical skills, who would you say? Bloody hard.

[Rory Stewart]

No, it's very strange, isn't it? It's as though they. Well, I had an interesting one, actually. I was in the car yesterday with somebody who was one of John Major's aides coming up to Davos, and he said that he had to approve all the speeches made by Cabinet ministers during Major's government on a Friday. It was his job. And they were all of them big picture pieces. These cabinet ministers were out every week making big philosophical arguments for conservatism and it's all completely disappeared.

[Alastair Campbell]

Do you know what's really interesting? I forgot about back in the days when a journalist. One of the things you used to guarantee on a Friday when it's usually quite quiet, is this plethora of speeches, right, Saying Douglas heard speaking to the Conservative Party Association. Exactly whether these speeches even ever took place. But they were arguments, grand big arguments. They were not.

[Rory Stewart]

We have invested an extra £2 million.

[Alastair Campbell]

Do you think we have to admit that maybe Farage is the only One who's quite a good public speaker.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, he's good. He's got real talent. Kemi Bednock's speech at the Budget was an extraordinary piece of Hillary Bennett.

[Alastair Campbell]

Need to see more of him.

[Rory Stewart]

I like. We. We like Hillary Bennett.

[Alastair Campbell]

He's good. He's a good.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, he knows how to get very.

[Alastair Campbell]

Good in the House of Commerce.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alastair Campbell]

Oh, my God, that's so depressing.

[Rory Stewart]

Anyway, I encourage people to listen to it because it was extremely moving. Very, very interesting, wonderful kind of glimpse on British parliamentary history, politics, the Labour movement, Thatcher and the character of this man who so nearly became Prime Minister.

[Alastair Campbell]

I know. And I actually do think the campaign against him was so vicious. I think it did have a real impact. And actually, what I saw, and what I've seen many times in Neil is I think he would have been good in that job. My Fiona said that she thought it was the best interview with done.

[Rory Stewart]

Very good.

[Alastair Campbell]

However, she's quite biased. Anyway, first part was last Monday. Second part is next Monday. But you can get early access to part two by becoming a member of trip.

[Rory Stewart]

Very good. Oh, you did that very well, Asta. Well, lovely to see you here at the World Economic Forum. And we'll be.

[Alastair Campbell]

You're enjoying it more than I am, aren't you?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes. I mean, I'm on my way to interview Alvin Korti.

[Alastair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

Who we interviewed together on Leading Kospe.

[Alastair Campbell]

I'm on my way to interview to chair a panel on mental health, which of course, all these billionaire globalists, they really care about their staff and their people. But. Well, Curtis had a great win.

[Rory Stewart]

Amazing, isn't it?

[Alastair Campbell]

Incredible win in the election.

[Rory Stewart]

Extraordinary. And rather sort of quite interesting. Maybe offline. We can talk about this bit more because it's sort of. In many ways, he's a sort of anti politician. You would have thought he did a lot of things wrong, but he's not corrupt. He says it how it is. And maybe a bit like the Moldovan, who I thought was another great leading interview. We encourage people to watch.

[Alastair Campbell]

And by the way, I asked him that question, if there was a referendum on regular occasion, how would you vote? And everybody said to her, she won't answer that. She answered it so directly. She said she would reunite with Romania.

[Rory Stewart]

And it's completely extraordinary. Right, so she is the leader of an independent country who said, if there was a referendum, I would join my country with Romania. Be like Albin Kourti saying, I would join my country with Albania. Right. It's. It's really astonishing because you would have thought all the ego and incentives of being the leader of a small country.

[Alastair Campbell]

Is independence and it created a huge outcry. But she seems to, you know, she seems to be one of these politicians. You asked a straight question, give a straight answer.

[Rory Stewart]

I was a bit worried about that. I sort of slightly thought that if she'd had an Alistair Campbell sitting in the background, he would have been like, you do not need to answer that question straight. That's going to create a media Ferrari for a week that you don't need.

[Alastair Campbell]

Well, they did it. Did. But maybe she thinks she does need it because it was an opportunity to highlight just how dangerous things are from Moldova right now because of Russia. I think that's what it was about. Anyway, there we are. We've been blathering for a long time now. We've just seen another massive entourage go by. I think that's a Mongolian deputy foreign minister and they've got lots of people around him with his feet clicking away. Anyway, yeah, I'm quite keen to get home, Roy.

[Rory Stewart]

Very good. Okay, well, thank you again. Bye bye.

[Alastair Campbell]

See you soon.

[Rory Stewart]

Bye.

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[Gordon Carrera or David McCloskey]

One of the darkest scandals of the modern era. A billionaire financier, powerful friends, hidden networks and questions that refuse to go away. Was Jeffrey Epstein a spy? I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey and we're the host of the Rest Is Classified, the intelligence and national security podcast from Goal Hanger. And we've just released a gripping new series investigating whether Epstein was linked to any spy agencies and asking what those agencies might have known about him. Listen or watch now on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.