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- [00:00]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com.
- [00:09]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [01:15]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. Now, Rory Josh in Bradford would like to know how can the US Credibly negotiate with Iran from a position of military escalation?
- [01:29]
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- [01:58]
Alistair Campbell
Does the military build up serve as a necessary deterrence to strengthen America's negotiating hand? Or does it risk triggering the very conflict it's meant to prevent? Okay, well let's PhD in there somewhere.
- [02:11]
Rory Stewart
Incredible. Credible question. Well, let's just take it back one stage and remind us where we are. So Iranian regime been in since 1979, so hugely long time, 47 years. And people have been calling it out again and again and again, but it now seems to be very close to its death throes. Now admittedly people have been saying death throws a lot, but since the Masa Amini demonstrations, which were demonstrations after a young woman was killed for not wearing a headscarf, which is now a couple of years ago, and then the latest killings I mean, and killings beyond imagining. This was an uprising which we discussed in a podcast a couple of weeks ago, in which in Iran, for the first time, the middle class Bizaris, which are the sort of traders in Tehran and the working class and the more liberal, progressive, wealthier groups, have been out on the streets again and again, called to come out by the son of the old Shah of Iran, the old ruler of Iran, implicitly supported by Donald Trump, who said if the regime killed them, he would intervene. And partly just motivated by their rage at this government, which has put Iran into the position of a bankrupt international pariah engaged in foreign adventures, building nuclear bombs being hit. So they get into the streets and the regime has responded by killing and killing and killing in Tehran. Literally, I was talking to someone who was in Tehran. Machine guns in the streets, snipers on the roofs, thousands of people killed, hundreds of thousands of people injured. Estimates on how many, very difficult to get minimum of 3,4000 from the regime with estimates going all the way up. 16,000, 30,000 people killed. And somebody I was talking to yesterday said almost nobody in Iran now doesn't have a friend or a family member who's been killed, killed or injured.
- [04:17]
Alistair Campbell
And meanwhile, Donald Trump sends a big, beautiful armada, including the Abraham Lincoln, which is one of the biggest aircraft carriers, got about 7,000 people on it, fighter jets and destroyers, and a real proper armada, like he did with Venezuela. And I think that's what has made people think, well, you don't send that much kit and that many men without intending to do something. And the question then is, what will.
- [04:44]
Rory Stewart
He, Won't he, and why hasn't he yet?
- [04:47]
Alistair Campbell
And the reason he hasn't yet, I suspect, is there will be. Even though we all know that Donald Trump tends to listen only to himself, I suspect there will be quite a lot of people trying to hold him back on this, because whereas Venezuela was a straightforward decapitation, take the guy out in the top and then do some sort of deal with the people left behind. I don't think anybody. Matter of fact, Marco Rubio said when he was giving evidence to an inquiry last week that nobody can predict what would follow if they did inflict catastrophic attack on Iran, which led to regime change. Added to which, the Iranians seem very, very confident that it wouldn't lead to regime change, that they would be able to unite the country if the Americans did attack them. And they do have a pretty. They have the biggest military in the Middle East. I mean, it's very hard to get exact numbers, but you're talking about conventional armed forces, you're talking about the Revolutionary Guard, which is the kind of elite, and in both cases, you're talking about hundreds of thousands. And then you're talking about the ability to mobilize reserves that probably take their full complement not far off a million. So this is not even Iraq. This is definitely not Venezuela. This is something that has the capacity to provoke all sorts of problem within the region. And even though America's allies in the region have said we don't want our airspace used and we don't want this and we don't want that, that would not mean that if America did attack that the Iranians wouldn't think that those countries, that American bases become legitimate targets. Added to which, you've got Israel sitting there watching very, very carefully what happens. So it's pretty tense stuff. And his mate Steve Witkoff is off, I think, to Turkey to do some attempted negotiations with Iranians, but it's hard to know where they go. So this may be a bit like Greenland, that it's sort of a lot of noise and goes nowhere for now. On the other hand, it may not.
- [06:40]
Rory Stewart
And we're back to the question of how you predict Trump and the framework of where in the strange reality TV show, which is Trump's narrative doing something in Iran comes. And I'd like to get you on that. And if it's a reality TV show, what he's tempted to do in Iran, of the different options he has on the question of the risks of taking out Iran. I mean, one is this question of what Iran can actually now do to destabilize the region militarily. They've, of course, turned out to be much weaker than people would have thought they were a few years ago. Their nuclear program is basically on a very permanent hold. Right. It may not have been eliminated to the last moment, but boy, have they got problems with their nuclear program, at least for the next two, three years. Their proxies, which were these militia groups that they were running Hezbollah and Lebanon, well, that basically was blown apart by this Israeli action with these pagers and the walkie talkies that took out the 1200 top leaders of Hezbollah. Their great base, which was Syria, has collapsed. Ahmad Al Shara has come in and is explicitly anti Iranian, basically driven out all the Iranians, which leaves them really with some allied militia groups in Iraq and the Houthi in Yemen. And it's true that the Houthi have more capacity to strike than they did because couple of years ago, and they're manufacturing their own Weapons now, so they get some components from Iran. But the Yemenis themselves are now manufacturing things that seem to be able to fly all the way to Israel. But I don't think the big problem, probably, if you are Israel or Qatar or Saudi, is that you are particularly worried about the Iranian strike back in a way that you might have been three, four years ago. Think your bigger worry is about whether toppling this regime is going to create a better situation for you or a worse situation for you. So there will be some people, certainly in the Gulf, who think, okay, this regime is much weaker than it was. It's not a big threat to the region. Safer to leave it alone rather than start firing missiles around, because if it's toppled, who knows what follows? A more nationalistic military, Revolutionary Guard government that wants to really build up and take revenge, civil war, chaos, et cetera. And even in Israel, I think there is some concern, yes, about whether their dome is sufficient to defend against drones, missile strikes, but probably more than that. Again, this question of whether they wouldn't rather have a weak state than the different forms of alternative state that might follow.
- [09:25]
Alistair Campbell
I think there'll also be a generational battle. I think there's an older generation that'll lend itself more to supporting the supreme leader, and I think a younger generation that maybe will be more open. There does seem to be. You know, it's very hard to know exactly what's going on, but I spoke to somebody who's recently been in Iran who said that you really do get a sense that they want that public opinion, would like something to happen, would like some sort of change. What's really strange, though, about Trump, and you know, I've used this phrase before about strategic chaos. So on the one hand, if you go down the Wyckoff route, it looks like trying to get some sort of new agreement, maybe get a few sanctions lifted, and in exchange, you get them to agree to limitations on their weapons programs. You could go all out for regime change, or you could just try and keep them guessing. And what Trump seems to be doing is a kind of a mixture of all three. Now, what I don't know is whether that's deliberate, whether that genuinely is an approach of strategic chaos, whether he actually knows what he wants to do and how he wants to get there and how the American system is even working when they are so dependent upon what he says and does at any moment in time.
- [10:44]
Rory Stewart
I was talking to some hawks in the US and actually we're about to interview on leading Rob Malley, who's a Deep Iran expert who's part of Biden's administration. But the hawk line, in other words, the aggressive line against Iran is essentially saying nothing could be worse than this regime. They're saying that we've known this regime for 49 years. They are implacably hostile towards the west and towards Israel. And that's never going to change. Now there's some debate. There's a brilliant book by Vali Nasser on Iran's grand strategy and he points out that it's not quite clear whether all the fault lies with the Iranians. Because it is true that when Rafsanjani, who was the reformist president, tried to reach out to the west in the 80s and 90s, he was perpetually rebuffed by the Clinton administration and others. And so their conclusion that America has only ever wanted regime change in Iran is probably true. In other words, the paranoia of the Supreme Leader Khamenei is probably justified. But regardless of whether it's our fault or their fault, the fact is they are implacably hostile to the Shaitan E Bazorg, the Great Satan, which is the United States. That means for the hawks, they think, okay, anything that follows has got to be better now.
- [12:04]
Alistair Campbell
And they think now is the time because he's weakened, his nuclear program's weakened, sanctions have weakened them economically and there does appear to be genuine public opinion turning against them.
- [12:14]
Rory Stewart
Correct. However, of course the problem is that when you say anything's going to be better, I of course get the heebie jeebies because that's of course what we thought was Saddam Hussein, that it can't be worse than Saddam Hussein. This guy's so implacably hostile to us. And actually in many ways it's turned out in places like Iraq and in Libya with Gaddafi, that civil war and chaos. I mean, let's take Libya. We thought getting rid of Gaddafi is a no brainer. This guy's literally blowing up airliners over Lockerbie, so can't possibly be worse. But what actually happened is through the civil war that we created in Libya or helped to ferment by toppling Gaddafi. That is why the weapons have come flooding into the Sahel. These are all these Islamist groups that are growing, these are the military coups that are emerging from Chad through to Niger to Sudan. So there's a really strong story that a lot of the horror, instability, extremism and collapse of democracy all the way across North Africa came out of toppling this.
- [13:14]
Alistair Campbell
The other thing I think is worth reflecting on in this is what is Happening in Iran now says to other countries about the likelihood or the desire of them to acquire nuclear weapons. Because there is a chance that the conclusion others take out of this if Iran does get really badly hit by America is the only way you can actually look after yourself is genuinely to go for nuclear, your own nuclear weapons program. So the Saudis look at this and think, and the Saudis are getting very close to Pakistan in relation to defense and Pakistan are well down the nuclear track. Turkey, what does Turkey think about watching Iran get its nukes wiped out? And don't forget the so called New START Treaty runs out this week. This was the treaty where the Americans and the Russians agreed to a limit on their nuclear warheads. We're recording on Tuesday, it runs out Wednesday and we just don't know if anything replaces it. So basically that's sort of at least something that had a sense of control on nuclear power. Proliferation just goes, there is then no international agreement and no limit. And one of the interesting dogs that didn't bark on Keir Starmer's visit to China. I think China is developing nuclear warheads at a pretty alarming rate. So there are around something like 12,200 nuclear warheads and about almost 10,000 are in stockpiles capable of being used militarily. And America and Russia between them are in charge of 90% of those. So China, although it's developing at 100 nuclear warheads a year, is still a long, long way behind. So they want to grow. And as they grow, what do these other Mark Carney's famous middle powers, what do they do other than possibly think is that the only way that we actually guarantee our own security in this very dangerous world. So I think the whole nuclear proliferation debate is going to become part of this as well, particularly with nothing at the moment, nothing replacing this New START Treaty.
- [15:19]
Rory Stewart
And maybe in Europe too, because if you think about it, and people say the Russian economy is the size of Spanish economy, it's a third smaller than the British economy, so it can't be that strong. But of course it's inconceivable that somebody would invade Russia in the way that Russia invaded Ukraine because they have nuclear weapons, which is why a lot of the British budget is now going to go into more and more nuclear weapons. And which is why the big discussion if you're Germany or Sweden or whatever, is how does one set about having your own nuclear deterrent? And of course that's proliferation. I mean, this is going from a world in which nuclear weapons were kept at a Very, very small group with people like Israel or Pakistan bending the rules and getting secret programs, going to a world in which almost everybody who can afford it is incentivized to do it.
- [16:03]
Alistair Campbell
And the other thing that happens, or could happen, you mentioned. So if you think of the pro of the countries that had nuclear weapons programs and that stopped them, Ukraine. Okay, well, how did that end for them?
- [16:15]
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. Libya.
- [16:17]
Alistair Campbell
Libya, Yep. So the moment we've got what we've got, nine nuclear powers. Okay. And then the other thing that happened, particularly after those countries that were giving up their programs, you had. I can remember when we were in government, there was an obsession with this guy, A. Q. Khan.
- [16:35]
Rory Stewart
Sure.
- [16:36]
Alistair Campbell
Who became a kind of, I guess you'd call him a kind of nuclear arms program business, exporting expertise. And so there'll be more of that if you have an Iranian nuclear program that is suddenly brought to a halt through regime change. Heaven knows where all this stuff goes, the expertise, the materials, et cetera. So I think that Trump is being very, very Trumpian in saying, this armada's on its way. Hope we don't have to use it, but, you know, they better watch out. And I suspect there will be others saying, okay, this is not Venezuela, this is not even Iraq. This is something much, much more unpredictable.
- [17:10]
Rory Stewart
Well, one of the questions is what is it that they think they're doing? So again, I was talking to someone senior in the British government who said that their assessment was that the most likely scenario if Trump struck is that he would get rid of Khamenei and there'd be an internal coup and he would then be replaced by a strongman or a faction from within the existing regime or by a sort of nationalist military group, maybe non irgc, not Revolutionary Guard. And that is what we would probably discuss.
- [17:39]
Alistair Campbell
There's a lot of big ifs in.
- [17:40]
Rory Stewart
There, a lot of big ifs, but let's just flesh it out. That's called the Venezuela option, because to bring people up to date on what's happened in Venezuela over the last few weeks, Maduro was captured, taken to the U.S. his deputy, Delsey Rodriguez has taken over.
- [17:53]
Alistair Campbell
And.
- [17:54]
Rory Stewart
And everyone else that we mentioned in the podcast, all the senior figures, the Interior minister, the Defence minister, the speaker of the parliament, who's her brother, they're all still there, totally in place. The only thing that they're doing, they're still making anti American speeches, is that they're opening up the economy to American oil companies and now suggesting they may open up to mining. But most of the political prisoners are still locked up, the media's still suppressed. The entire administration of their militia groups, the military, the oppression, the supreme courts, the banks, all that are completely intact. Right. So is that what these people think they're going to do in Iran? Is Trump's idea that somehow he gets rid of Ayatollah Khamenei and then you have the entire evil regime structure still in place, but somebody who's more willing to do deals with America on oil? And how does that play out? Because then your friend who's just come back from Iran would say, I think f, that thousands, potentially tens of thousands of people have been killed in the streets. This is the most murderous, bloody regime on Earth. The 150,000 members of the Revolutionary Guard have blood on their hands. Hell, no. Are we putting up with the idea that we just get rid of how many and we continue to be ruled by this bunch of gangster thugs for the next 40 years? There must be justice, there must be reprise. We must get rid of these guys. Meanwhile, the former regime elements are going to be thinking, if we give an inch. And they keep talking about the shah being too weak because the shah only killed a few thousand people and was toppled. If we give an inch, we're going to be strung up from the lamppost because everybody knows we have blood on our hands.
- [19:24]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Trump is also. Don't forget Trump's. We're going to talk after the break about this election in Texas, where Trump's party had a bit of a blow, but going up to the midterms, the last thing he's going to want is a sort of spike in the oil price. And I think the other thing to remember about the Revolutionary Guard, we think of them as a kind of, you know, oversized special forces group. They're also a massive business. They run large chunks of the economy, they run the ports, they run construction. They've got trade monopolies in all sorts of way. So I don't think this is remotely like Venezuela, but there's a risk that he thinks that it is like Venezuela, because so far as he's concerned, Venezuela went perfectly by his perspective.
- [20:08]
Rory Stewart
And so then let me come to the final thing before we go to the break, which is trying to get into the head of this man. So we know, because we sat through the Davos speech, that he's very, very proud of what he calls his precision military operations, which he gets congratulated on, and he does them perfectly. So in terms of trying to guess, we can't predict him. I'm asking for a 40% probability. What are guesses of some of the things, if you are a president obsessed with ratings in a reality TV show, that you might want to do in Iran, which will capture the headlines of the world? Is it full revolution, liberal democracy? Is it chaos? Is it taking out a couple of top people and leaving the regime in place? Is it firing some of your beautiful missiles? Is it getting a piece of paper that you can wave around? What are the sort of things he might be tempted to do when he puts down his Big Mac and turns off Fox News?
- [21:00]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I mean, it is terrifying to think that that is possibly how he makes these judgments, but he might. I'm sort of tempted by. I mentioned those three possible strategies. I'm tempted by the third on which is that he kind of leaves the armada there for quite a while and he doesn't go all out for regime change.
- [21:20]
Rory Stewart
And the headlines that generates is that every week we're asking what's happening with the armada? And it keeps everybody guessing.
- [21:25]
Alistair Campbell
No, I think the headline moves on to something completely different. I think he gets a new target. He goes for Nigeria again. Because I think the other thing about here, don't forget for his MAGA brand. And you said in the main episode that the Epstein files are kind of causing fissures within the kind of MAGA brace. The other big thing that he said was that he wouldn't take America into forever wars. Now there's a Venezuela. He got away with it. Okay. Up to now, I think there is a real risk of something much, much worse than straight in and hit the guy in Iran. I think you're talking about, and I agree his military's been weakened, but you're talking about a country that has shown its capacity really to mobilize support and then to fight asymmetric warfare in all sorts of different ways. So I don't know.
- [22:18]
Rory Stewart
Okay, here's another possibility for you. He keeps the armada there, but what actually happens is that Netanyahu mobilizes against Iran and strikes Iran because he's been obsessed with Iran for 30 years. He will see this as his one big chance. There will never be an American administration that will be more. More willing to allow Israel to strike Iran. He's got an election coming up, and he's got to recover his position in the polls. He needs to show Netanyahu needs to show himself as a tough man and a hawk. And he can't do it in Gaza at the moment, or he doesn't want to do it in Gaza at the moment. So maybe it's an Israeli strike against Iran, with the US Providing coverage that we're more likely to see Possible.
- [22:58]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, entirely possible. But then I think if you look at what the reaction to that would be, the reaction whenever the Americans have got involved in recent times has been pretty limited. And they've signaled it as well. They've said, we're going to take out this base, we're going to attack this base. So they've actually managed to avoid casualties. I think if the Israelis did it directly like that, I think the reaction would be far stronger.
- [23:18]
Rory Stewart
Well, and I think there's another final thing, and maybe we should get a break here, which is that when people are wondering why Gulf countries seem to be encouraging Trump to hold off for the time being, I wonder whether it isn't that at some subconscious level, along with many, many other arguments, one small argument may be that they're actually worried about Israel's rising power, that Israel is now becoming a military superpower and a regional hegemon, and that they may think that a weak, anti Israeli Iran is nevertheless the lesser of the two evils as a counterbalance in the region. Final thing is just to bring the focus back to the 90 million Iranians. This is their country, it's their destiny, it's they that are being killed. I was talking to Christopher Lake, great writer on Iran, married to an Iranian. And what horrifies him is the sense that Iranians in so much this conversation, are being treated as pawns in somebody else's game. That there are all these different countries around the world thinking they're playing chess with Iran when they're probably playing Blind Man's buff. And the people who end up losing are the Iranians themselves, who are not getting the dignity, the autonomy, the justice that they're looking for, and instead just absolutely vulnerable to whatever fantasies or ambitions all these other regional powers have.
- [24:37]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, let's take a break. Then we'll come back and talk about another marvelous country led by a marvelous man in the form of Hungary.
- [24:42]
Rory Stewart
Very good. Looking forward to it.
- [24:48]
Alistair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
- [24:51]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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- [25:59]
Rory Stewart
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- [26:11]
Alistair Campbell
That's right. If you can't identify an agent, you can't govern it. And if you can't govern it, you can't safely rely on it. As these systems scale and take on.
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Rory Stewart
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- [27:02]
Rory Stewart
Me Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. Alastair, here is a question from Vivian who's actually in Budapest. When did it become okay for prime ministers and presidents to interfere in each other's elections? I've been stunned by how many world leaders took part in Orbans campaign video, as well as seeing Zelensky and von der Leyen being attacked by Orban on giant posters. This is not just a Hungarian election. This has become every other world leader weighing in.
- [27:30]
Alistair Campbell
Orban is a fascinating guy. Hungary is a country of about 10 million people. He's the longest serving European leader. He's probably he's been there 15 years. He's probably the closest to Trump. He's probably also the closest to Putin. And he's got an election coming up where he's been behind in the polls to a guy called Peter Magyar, who is also a conservative but not as hard right as Orban and who was in the same party but left to join this other party Tisha and I mean, the question is, right, the original video to launch the campaign, you had Netanyahu saying what a great guy Orban was. You had Marine Le Pen, you had Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD in.
- [28:15]
Rory Stewart
Germany, which is the far right party in Germany, your friend Herbert Kickel from Austria, who's the proper neo fascist from Austria.
- [28:21]
Alistair Campbell
Absolutely. You had Meloni in Italy and Milei from Argentina. And of course, I suspect they're holding back the big bazooka of Donald Trump, although they might be worried whether that will actually work in their favor. I don't know. But Orban is. He's been consistently behind in the polls, but. But it is narrowing. And it's narrowing in part because he's got 80% control of the media. They're running some pretty effective negative campaigning against Magyar and they've been giving some very, what we call pre election sweeteners in relation to public sector workers, mortgages, help with pensions.
- [29:01]
Rory Stewart
One there, which I've always been very struck by, is that because Hungary is facing a demographic crisis and is completely determined to have no immigration. This is a man who has been dominating Hungarian politics in many ways since the 1990s, a real kind of survivor, been in this time 15 years. But he was actually prime minister when he was 35, in the mid-90s too. So he's all about the Hungarian nation and nationhood. And it's an interesting thing, the Hungarian nation, he defines it as a Christian nation, although he doesn't go to church. Basically anti Muslim, but curacy, it's more complicated than being a white Christian nation because he also celebrates the fact that the Magyar were originally a Turkic tribe who came over a bit like the Mongols from Central Asia. So he's often to be found traveling in Central Asia and Turkey talking about the ethnic connections. So anyway, this vision of a Turkic but non Muslim identity. And he is offering, as you say, sweetness. But one of those sweetness is that if you're a mother who had three children, you were exempt from income tax for your whole life. He's now said any mother who has two children are exempt from income tax for life. I would imagine that's pretty powerful. I think quite a lot of people would be quite tempted. Although actually he's got a flat rate of tax we're used to, of only 16%. So it may be that he, he doesn't need to do it.
- [30:26]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, Hungary is a poor country by European standards. I think it's about 72% of the EU average in terms of standard of living. But the other card he has played, I don't know if you saw this, it got next to no coverage in the uk but he summoned the Ukraine ambassador and accused Ukraine of trying to interfere in the election, provided no evidence whatsoever. Now we all know that Russia spends a lot of money interfering in others elections. We saw that when we were in Moldova. The question about these posters of Zelenskyy and von der Leyen with Magyar is basically saying Magyar is a puppet of Ukraine and Brussels and if you put him in as prime minister, your children will get sent to the front line. This is a deliberate direct strategy. Again, no evidence of it. Magyar is actually trying to. Magyar is doing a slight version of the Ming Vase thing. He's trying not to get caught on lgbtq. He's trying not to be presented as a sort of Euro fanatic. He just says Hungary under him would become a more sensible, more responsible European partner. But Orban is going full out massive posters around Budapest basically saying this guy is von der Leyen and Zelenskyy's puppet.
- [31:38]
Rory Stewart
And as you say, at the core of the Ming, vast stress. She said these elections happening in April. But for Peter Magyar, who may be able to after 15 years to finally top law ban and my goodness, that matters because Hungary in Europe now is absolutely central to getting unanimous votes on sanctioning Russia, dealing with the issues of Ukraine, interactions with Trump, questions around immigration, questions around the European Court of Justice, questions around the rule of law. So Hungary may be small, but boy does it matter. This election Magyar is largely running on the economy and corruption because under the surface of all the far right nationalist rhetoric and there's definitely there you I think pointed out that when he saw him at the football, his supporters are waving flags of greater Hungary. This is strange stuff. This is going back to just after the first World War when the kingdom of Hungary included parts of what's now Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, et cetera, Ukraine. But underneath is corruption and it's a very odd form of corruption. It's not like Russian corruption where the oligarchs were essentially self made gangsters who as people can find in the Bill Browder leading interview, created a massive parallel gangster state which was then co opted by Putin. This is the other way around. These are people who have no independent power base. They're not actually big gangsters. They're not even successful business people. They've just been given government contracts. So the mayor guy who's I think a plumber, the mayor of the small town where Orban grew up, is now one of the wealthiest people in Hungary. He's been given government contracts. And the problem in unraveling all this is that it's been done because they're all lawyers. Orban himself is a lawyer in very tricky ways. So what they often do is that they nationalize private industries, buying them out and then they re privatize them back to their mates. They set up foundations which are protected. They then create links from the foundations, particularly universities or media organizations that support Orban. And he's also of course appointed the chief justice of the court, that's head of the central bank, the head of the competition markets authorities.
- [33:57]
Alistair Campbell
He very proudly calls it an illiberal democracy. He makes no bones about what he's done. He's done a kind of. And this is why Trump, the American Maga people find him so fascinating because he's done it kind of openly. I guess the other thing, if Magyar does win, and I wouldn't put my life on it, and also I think if it's narrow, we'll see the Orban equivalent of January 6th in terms, I don't know about the violence, but in terms of the protests and the calling for a recount and all that stuff. But if Magyar does win, his private life is going to become interesting because in a sense he became prominent by secretly recording phone calls that his wife was having, which led to the exposure of a cover up of child sex abuse. And his wife didn't know that she was being taped. She's also a politician?
- [34:47]
Rory Stewart
No, no, ex wife now.
- [34:49]
Alistair Campbell
Ex wife. And has since claimed that he indulged in domestic violence and, and so forth. So. And of course he says this is all part of a plot against him by Orban and blah, blah, blah. So it's a messy, nasty campaign and it's not. We're so used to kind of traditional left versus traditional right. This is. They're both conservatives, they're both on the right. And then there's a party, our Homeland, which is even further to the right. So they might be Peter Magyar's best friend in taking votes off Orban. I think it's one of the most consequential elections happening, well, certainly in Europe, but happening anywhere in the world.
- [35:22]
Rory Stewart
And final thing, I guess we touched on this a bit on the JD Valance miniseries, which if people haven't listened to, please listen to. But is this whole world network. You mentioned it in yesterday's podcast when you were talking about Steve Bannon boasting to Epstein that he had contacts with Orban and then he listed all those other groups and a lot of those groups, the people endorsing him in the campaign video. But it's about these national conservative and inverted commas, transnational networks that share ideas. And Orban's been right at the center of this from the beginning. So Rod Dreher, who's an intellectual influence on J.D. vance, lives in Hungary. He's an American living in Hungary. And they share ideas. One of them, the one you mentioned in the laboratory about the executive, whoever is the boss gets to impose the majority, will screw minority rights, screw constitutional protections. Second idea, civilizational defense, Christianity, white people. And tying it all together beautifully for all of them. Doesn't matter whether you're Miller or you're Orban, is immigration, because immigration gives you an argument about security and culture and the economy and identity and it justifies the exceptional powers and it gives you a kind of moral dimension. So they're all learning from each other.
- [36:38]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, absolutely. They are a group. And the progressive left is not remotely as well organized globally and frankly need to be. Now, array of good news for those of us who don't feel particular fondness for Donald Trump. Andrea is a Trip plus member from Southampton. Given the volatility and unpredictability of politics on both sides of the Atlantic, with a Democrat just winning a solidly Republican Texas district, how worried do you think Keir Starmer is feeling about the upcoming by election in Gordon and Denton?
- [37:11]
Rory Stewart
Well gone. I'm going to flip that round to you. I tell us what is going on in Gordon and Denton.
- [37:16]
Alistair Campbell
I think it's gonna be very, very tough.
- [37:18]
Rory Stewart
And just explain for international listeners this.
- [37:20]
Alistair Campbell
Well, this is a very safe Labour.
- [37:21]
Rory Stewart
Seat traditionally and a guy's resigned because of scandal. This was the seat that Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, was hoping to stand for as part of his bid to be Labour leader, but he's not been allowed to. I got again from one of my more right wing informants saying there's a very good looking reform candidate with a doctorate and Matt Goodwin.
- [37:41]
Alistair Campbell
Magnum's vile. He's vile. He's a sort of self styled academic who studied the far right and became far right. I think he's a very, very bad pick. I think it's a terrible mistake by Farage to put him in there.
- [37:53]
Rory Stewart
What would you. What sort of person might, I mean.
- [37:56]
Alistair Campbell
Well, somebody from the north for a start.
- [37:58]
Rory Stewart
So this is a parachute candidate.
- [38:00]
Alistair Campbell
Well, he's just another name who gets on question time a lot.
- [38:03]
Rory Stewart
Right.
- [38:04]
Alistair Campbell
Which of course is how these People judge whether they're any goodies, whether they can talk crap on the television.
- [38:08]
Rory Stewart
So you'd look for a strong local candidate. Maybe a Reform councillor from Manchester would have been a better bet.
- [38:13]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, the Greens have gone. They've gone for a plumber called Hadda, who's a councillor and well established locally. Labour have gone for a decent local candidate. The more I think about it, the more I think they were right to keep Andy Burnham out of the race. I think that would have become a complete circus and wouldn't necessarily have helped Labour.
- [38:35]
Rory Stewart
If Labour lose though, for sure they're.
- [38:38]
Alistair Campbell
Going to get a lot of. Lot of flak. And the thing is, I think the Lib Dems and the Tories are just going to sit this one out effectively. They know that they've got absolutely no chance. And it's a very interesting seat. I mean, I said last week, there's sort of. There's two parts to it. One that's vulnerable to Green, one that's vulnerable to reform. The other factor is that the Workers Party, George Galloway's lot, they did quite well at the last election and I think they're sitting it out. You've got a very large Muslim population and this guy Goodwin, I mean, he's absolutely right out on there. If unless you kind of look like Rory Stewart, you're not really British.
- [39:13]
Rory Stewart
Right.
- [39:14]
Alistair Campbell
So I think he's very, very vulnerable. I think he'll make mistakes. I think he's arrogant and I think arrogant candidates tend not to do well in by elections. There'll be a lot of, lot of interest, a lot of pressure. So I think it is going to be a three horse race and the battle between, I guess the battle between Labour and the Greens at some point becomes who can stop reform. And so you're seeing the market, the betting markets and the prediction markets, they're moving up and down between all three, sort of becoming a given that Labour won't win, which I think at this stage probably helps Labour a bit.
- [39:46]
Rory Stewart
And a victory for either Green or Reform will be used by those parties since. An extraordinary sort of validation boost, wouldn't it? Yeah, because it was a very safe Labour seat.
- [39:54]
Alistair Campbell
It's a very safe Labour seat. And I mean, in the olden days when I was a journalist, this was Gerald Kaufman's seat, Manchester, Gorton. He was the Shadow Foreign Secretary and I mean, he used away his majority. It was like sort of. So it would be a big, a big blow to Labour if they lost either way. I think what the people inside the Labour party will be looking at is if the Greens win, it will vindicate the view of people like me that labour has been playing far too much to people on the right as opposed to losing support on the left. And if reform win, then it will.
- [40:29]
Rory Stewart
Be vindicating Morgan McSweeney, everyone who thinks you need to sound like Farage.
- [40:33]
Alistair Campbell
That's one way of putting it, Rory.
- [40:35]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [40:36]
Alistair Campbell
And just briefly, on the American thing, it was a massive, massive swing. The other interesting factoid I dug out of this is that the Republicans in this, it's a state election, so a small election inside the state of Texas, and the Republicans outspent the Democrats 9 to 1, and the Democrats won with a. I don't know how you work out the maths, but a 31 point swing. It was 17 plus for the Republicans in the election and it was 14 plus on the day. And the thing about Trump, Trump of.
- [41:11]
Rory Stewart
You know, Trump said, well, of course I had nothing to do with this, nothing to do with me.
- [41:15]
Alistair Campbell
He posted three times on the day before saying, she's a great candidate. Get out in there. I've endorsed her. And there is a suggestion that people think the Trump endorsements actually did a lot of damage because of all the ICE stuff that was going on.
- [41:28]
Rory Stewart
Well, that's the big thing to watch, because that's the one hope is that Republican senators and congresspeople, instead of feeling that the only way they can keep their seats is to have Trump endorsement, if they begin to feel that the only way they can keep their seats is to distance from Trump. Trump's finished.
- [41:42]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [41:43]
Rory Stewart
This is a question from Noem, which I assume is not the Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, but is a TRIP member in New York. So, I don't know, Rory and Alastair, were either of you among the handful of people in the UK who managed to drag themselves out to catch the Melania documentary over the weekend? Now, I am going to be pious here and say I didn't see it and consequently have absolutely nothing to say, amusing or otherwise, about it.
- [42:07]
Alistair Campbell
You can't say nothing. I mean, you've heard about it.
- [42:10]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, go on, tell us about it. Go on, tell us about this documentary.
- [42:12]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I've not seen it and I have no intention of seeing it. Look, we're back to corruption. Jeff Bezos, $40 million. 28 million of it goes straight to Melania. No, 28 million she gets out of this.
- [42:26]
Rory Stewart
Just paid 28 million to be the executive producer of a documentary about herself.
- [42:30]
Alistair Campbell
About herself, which, I mean, there's something really Interesting going on because look, Trump is interesting and he's powerful. I find Melania unutterably boring.
- [42:43]
Rory Stewart
Right.
- [42:43]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, I cannot. Has she ever said anything interesting ever? I mean, she's got an interesting backstory. She's come from Slovenia, though my friends in Slovenia say they note that she never talks up. Slovenia.
- [42:54]
Rory Stewart
Right.
- [42:55]
Alistair Campbell
The reviews of the documentary I refer people to our rest is entertainment colleague Marina Hyde, who has absolutely lacerated the whole film. I've yet to seen a professional reviewer who says it's anything other than utter garbage. Propaganda terrible. Led by donkeys. Wonderful organization. They did a very funny video where they sent a load of poor people with cameras to the British cinemas where it was showing. And it's just endless shots of empty cinemas. It's done quite well in America, particularly in Republican states. Bezos has spent 75 million on this, 40 million for the film, 35 million to promote it. Did you get the Financial Times today?
- [43:32]
Rory Stewart
No.
- [43:33]
Alistair Campbell
It's got a full page effing advert.
- [43:35]
Rory Stewart
Well, I did see I was walking through Piccadilly Circus. And those big screens behind yours, well, they're not cheap.
- [43:41]
Alistair Campbell
I remember that from our day are.
- [43:43]
Rory Stewart
Just full of pictures of her endlessly getting out of private jets.
- [43:47]
Alistair Campbell
One of the reviewers said that the only way to enjoy this is to have a foot fetish because there are thousands of shots of her shoes.
- [43:54]
Rory Stewart
Shoes. Well, let me finish then with a little plug for a documentary coming out on Amazon on Friday that I think is worth watching, which is documentary about the King and his work on environment, biodiversity and his idea of harmony. And it's.
- [44:11]
Alistair Campbell
Is it in cinemas?
- [44:12]
Rory Stewart
It's not cinema, but released by Amazon.
- [44:15]
Alistair Campbell
Because I think the king against Melania, I would have got right behind that.
- [44:17]
Rory Stewart
No, it's released by Amazon but I think people might quite be quite interested in it as a window into the King. It's not sort of particularly trendy, fashionable, but what it is is a really good account of what he has tried to do with climate, with the environment, with your friend Irfan Ali. So there's quite a lot with Irfan Ali.
- [44:38]
Alistair Campbell
He was with him last week, wasn't he?
- [44:39]
Rory Stewart
Right. Who's interviewed on leading president. And this incredible stuff that's being done on the rainforest in Guyana, they're amazing. But also stuff about regeneration in India, a little bit about the work that Turquoise Mountain does in Afghanistan, stuff on what's been done in Dumfries house in Scotland, etc. So anyway, I'd put that out. And the other final recommendation, does he.
- [45:01]
Alistair Campbell
Talk about his brother at all.
- [45:02]
Rory Stewart
No, it's not that type of documentary. No. And I think Reno Hyde might be disappointed. There's maybe not quite enough of that stuff for the salacious critic. But the final one is an amazing exhibition coming up at the British Museum on samurai and it's got something for everybody. So it's both got the absolute classic medieval military armour, some of the most incredible swords, suits of armor, helmets and what. But it finishes with Darth Vader himself, the full original costume of Darth Vader. And there's video games and maga and samurai in the modern world. And in between the Second World War period and the way that the samurai ethos was used to justify Japanese imperial engagement. So it's got the kind of trendy critique at the end. And the main part of the exhibition is the most beautiful examples of this incredible literate culture. Not just samurai swords, but their poetry, their painting, their legends.
- [45:59]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I'm going to give a couple of cultural recommendations then. Amazing book called the Big Music by a woman called Kirsty Gunn. You heard about it. It's about somebody writing a pibroch, which, as you know, is kind of top level bagpipes. But honestly, this is a. This is a really, really impressive novel. I'm only about a third of the way through, but it's absolutely brilliant. And then a film I would recommend, Rory, which I went to see with Fiona and Grace, who, as you know, is a stand up comedian, is. Is this thing on, which is. It's inspired by the story of a Liverpudlian comedian, John Bishop, who got into stand up as a way of dealing with his divorce and his wife turned up at one of his shows not knowing that he did stand up and their love was rekindled.
- [46:46]
Rory Stewart
Oh. Oh, that's a good. That's. Oh, that's good.
- [46:49]
Alistair Campbell
So it's a very nice film directed by Bradley Cooper, who plays this amazing sort of very large cameo. And it's got Canadian. We love Canada. Will Arnott is the main character playing the Job Bishop character. Yeah. So there we go.
- [47:03]
Rory Stewart
Great. Well, that was a good cheerful end.
- [47:05]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, exactly.
- [47:06]
Rory Stewart
Thanks.
- [47:07]
Alistair Campbell
We've got to stay cheerful, Roy.
- [47:08]
Rory Stewart
Got to stay cheerful.
- [47:09]
Alistair Campbell
Burnley are looking quite precarious towards the bottom of the table right now, as you probably noticed.
- [47:14]
Rory Stewart
Right. But there's the films, there's the exhibitions, there's the books, so we can keep that going.
- [47:19]
Alistair Campbell
By the way. We should just encourage people to send in their questions. Also, I'd like to know what people think of our question time. I sometimes think we it's too much like the main episode.
- [47:28]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Except. Well, let's try to get. Get. I don't know whether this is going to be scientific, but I would be interested because I'm slightly on the other side of this. I'm more comfortable when we do, like a deep dive. This Question Time's a really good example.
- [47:38]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [47:38]
Rory Stewart
First half was deep dive on Iran. Second half was more jolly.
- [47:41]
Alistair Campbell
What about when we do the live shows and we do sometimes get totally unexpected questions that sort of provoke something unexpected.
- [47:49]
Rory Stewart
I think you may be enjoy more the spontaneous, quick, funny stuff. I really like doing the research.
- [47:56]
Alistair Campbell
I love doing the research, Roy. I do more research. I bet I do more research than you do.
- [47:59]
Rory Stewart
I bet I do. So I want to try to pitch the idea that first half of Question time should be a big dive. Big dive. Second half could be more jolly. How about that?
- [48:08]
Alistair Campbell
So, I mean, jolly. It's about being a bit more, you know, zippy and spontaneous.
- [48:12]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. You're a zippy or more spontaneous figure than me.
- [48:15]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Okay. Okay.
- [48:17]
Rory Stewart
Let's see what the listeners think.
- [48:18]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon. Bye.
- [48:19]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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- [49:13]
Alistair Campbell
Hi there, everybody.
- [49:13]
Dominic Sambrook
It's Dominic Sambrook here from the Rest.
- [49:15]
Gordon Carrera
Is History and Gordon Carrera from the Rest is Classified.
- [49:19]
Dominic Sambrook
Now, over the last month or so, the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran has been pushed to the edge, having seen the largest protest for a generation ripping across the country. Tens of thousands of people have been killed by the Ayatollah's forces since the uprising began. And a lot of people outside Iran are asking, is this the beginning of the next Iranian revolution?
- [49:41]
Gordon Carrera
And Goal Hanger is covering every element of this on the Rest Is Classified. David and I have looked at the role of intelligence agencies in this conflict. With the Internet blackouts and so much unknown, we've been looking at whether spies are best placed to judge whether the regime is truly at risk of falling.
- [49:57]
Dominic Sambrook
Now on the Rest Is History we have been looking at the origins of the Iranian regime at the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which saw the fall of the last shah and his replacement by the rule of the Ayatollahs. Now, given that the last shah's son is being touted abroad as the man who might, just might, save Iran, you can't understand what is happening now without understanding what happened back then at the end of the 1970s.
- [50:24]
Gordon Carrera
But it's not just our own two podcasts that are covering Iran. If you want to know whether Donald Trump's military build up in the region means it's it's likely he's going to wade in and force regime change. Here Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart cover the latest developments in the Rest Is Politics.
- [50:40]
Dominic Sambrook
And our dear friends at the Rest is Money have been looking at the economic collapse, the corruption and the impact of the sanctions that have been eating away its social cohesion in Iran over recent years and have pushed so many people onto the streets.
- [50:55]
Gordon Carrera
And on Empire, they've been looking at the similarities and differences between 1979 and today. How is it that a country that less than 50 years ago forced the Shah out of power is now seeing crowds chanting Long live the Shah?
- [51:09]
Dominic Sambrook
So whatever happens next to the people of Iran and to all those brave souls who've turned it on the streets to protest, stay tuned to Goal Hanger for all the context and the answers and the analysis that you need, find the rest is history. The rest is classified Empire. The rest is politics and the rest is money. Wherever you get your podcasts.