← The Rest Is Politics
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- [00:00]
Alastair 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 that's therestispolitics.com this is classic Trump. I've got a ceasefire. I'm going to send J.D. vance and it's all going to be done. And they give up because Iran didn't fold on day one.
- [00:23]
Rory Stewart
What's beginning to happen here is an America which doesn't even pay lip service to global norms, in fact celebrates outrageously chaotic also clearly defying them the worry
- [00:34]
Alastair Campbell
that the lesson that Tehran has drawn is not that restraint on nukes brings security, but that if you're vulnerable, you invite an attack. This episode is brought to you by
- [00:47]
Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alastair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [01:50]
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- [03:24]
Alastair Campbell
This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
- [03:27]
Rory Stewart
Well, we've both been on the move a lot recently. I'm in fact speaking to you having just plane in the US and when you're traveling frequently, convenience takes over. There I was, my airport wi fi. Now I'm on a hotel network looking for quick connection between meetings. It all feels routine. And that, of course, is when I'm most exposed online.
- [03:44]
Alastair Campbell
And cyber criminals, they're not stupid. They move quickly to exploit all these opportunities.
- [03:49]
Rory Stewart
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- [03:56]
Alastair Campbell
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- [04:07]
Rory Stewart
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- [04:16]
Alastair Campbell
To get the best discount on your NORDVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com restispolitics you'll get four extra months free on the two year plan, plus a 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the episode Description. Welcome to the Restless Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me Rory Stewart, back from his holiday.
- [04:44]
Rory Stewart
There's been some requests from listeners for whether Alistair ever takes holidays, but that's maybe more of a question for question time than the main episode, where we're going to be focusing on what's happening with the blockade that President Trump has announced of the Straits of Hormuz, the next stage in this conflict with Iran. And then we're going to get on Ukraine and in particular your recent interview with President Zelensky. Extraordinary scoop to get an interview with Zelenskyy. And the issues we're going to be looking at are, number one, what on earth is going on in Trump's head late at night, in the morning, is it possible to predict his next moves? Secondly, what does this mean for the global economy? We haven't begun to get into the consequences for the Middle East, Asia and Europe. And thirdly, I'd like to get into this question of is the US literally becoming a rogue state now? And how does the world respond if the United States becomes a rogue state? Quick explainer on Iran. So since the last episode, Trump having threatened the end of civilization and the obliteration of Iran, there was then a ceasefire, a collective sigh of relief, as everybody thought, well, actually, maybe this whole thing has come to an end. J.D. vance, the Vice President, flew to Pakistan in order to negotiate with the Iranian team, came out after a 21 hour negotiation saying they hadn't got anywhere. And Trump then followed up saying that the US was going to block the Straits of Hormuz, put a naval blockade in place, later clarified as a blockade, on any vessels touching Iranian ports. And that's where we currently are. Global oil prices are now rising. Global economies are really feeling the shock because in effect, what this means is that vessels that were not favoured by Iran previously were very reluctant to go through the straits, but vessels with an Iranian stamp could go through, most of them were going through freely. The US has now stopped that second category of vessels, which effectively means that nobody's going through because the people the Iranians don't like aren't going through anyway. The people the US don't like in the future wouldn't go through. And there are some exceptions, there's some questions about what's actually happening in the straits. But if you're Saudi Arabia or if you're Qatar, or if in fact you're the European oration economies, you're very panicked at the moment because effectively the straits are now blockaded and we have no idea when this blockade will be lifted over to you.
- [07:01]
Alastair Campbell
I mean, if we just step back, so what are we in the seventh week now, seven weeks into this war? And of course it was meant to be resolved. In Islamabad, you said the talks went on for 21 hours and Vance talked of this being a marathon. It's just worth remembering Bill Clinton and his team spent nine months before Arafat and Rabin finally shook hands before Oslo. Richard Holbrooke spent five months before they got anywhere close to the Dayton Accords. I've been trying to work out when George Mitchell first came on the scene ahead of the Good Friday agreement. I think it was 22 months. And this is classic Trump. I've got a ceasefire. The Pakistanis have helped us. I'm going to send J.D. vance, and it's all going to be done. And they give up because Iran didn't fold on day one. And meanwhile, just to underline how utterly unserious they are, Trump and Rubio, who seems to me these days just to be kind of glorified bag carrier, they're a UFC fight. It's not even a fight. It's a video. It's a stadium full of people watching videos of old martial arts fights. And Trump is really weirdly flirting with the male fighters. He's hanging out with the ridiculous Infantino. Rubio is doing silly poses. And it's just not serious. And our newsletter, people apparently really like it, Roy. And we recommend Reads of the Week. My read of the week, as so often is in Foreign affairs magazine, and I don't know if you saw it, Federica Mogherini, she led the negotiations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, and she's written a piece with Saeed Shah, who was one of the people who was involved in the architecture around what became known as the jcpoa.
- [08:48]
Rory Stewart
Just to clarify, again, to remind people, JCPOA being this amazing deal which we discussed on the podcast when we interviewed Rob Malley on leading, was of course, the US counterpart in the jcpoa, which was this amazing deal put together to slow Iranian nuclear enrichment in return for sanctions relief. Back over to you.
- [09:05]
Alastair Campbell
And so what this article sets out, first of all, the worry that the lesson that Tehran has drawn from recent weeks is not that restraint on nukes bring security, but that if you're vulnerable, you invite an attack. They argue the argument for retaining the nuclear option is probably stronger now than it was. They then go on to say that that means that just as it was when they did that agreement, which I think going on for 10 years, involving several countries, you had China, US, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and the European Union. It went on for more than a decade, and it was the only time that Iran did start to identifiably pull back on parts of their nuclear program. They're basically saying that diplomacy is the only viable way to get this thing back on track.
- [10:02]
Rory Stewart
One of the big questions I think that most of us have is what actually are the sticking points in this negotiation? It's very, very difficult to get a grip on that. You have an Iranian view, you have a US view and you have some statements coming out of Pakistan itself. And a very odd thing which just as a sort of sidebar, I was listening to the Today program this morning and they have a style of leading with JD Vance says that the Iranian position is completely unacceptable. They're conducting economic warfare, therefore we're going to block the straits. And it's a very interesting style because I see it a lot. And I think it's one of the things that confuses people trying to analyze the situation, which is this traditional, not of journalists trying to produce a full objective view on what the deal was and what the different sides are saying, but just to say in this case, J.D. vance says this or it was then followed by we'll get into this maybe tomorrow with Question Time. George Robertson says the labor defense thing is in a mess. Rather than trying to weigh up whether or not they're right. My sense of it, and I'd love you to come back on this, is that the Iranian ten point plan involved, amongst other sticking points, a demand that Israel stop its attacks on Lebanon, which the US was reluctant to put into the package, that Iran also wanted compensation for the damage that has been done to them. So they've suffered hundreds of billions of pounds worth of damage through these strikes. And their proposal was rather than asking for reparations, they would charge 2 million on each vessel, 1 million of which would go to Oman, that has the other side of the straits, one million to them. And they would use that money to repay themselves over time for the damage that's been done to them. Effectively the subsidy would then come actually not from the U.S. really, it would come from the Gulf countries in Asia that are mostly reliant on these vessels. And that they had offered, or at least this is the story, the Iranians are putting forward a moratorium on uranium enrichment of five years. So the basic stuff that runs their nuclear bombs. And the US was asking for a moratorium of 20 years. And the Pakistani team definitely seemed to think, as did the Saudis and others, that they were within touching of some sort of settlement. And what would that settlement be? Well, the settlement roughly would be we stopped the fighting, there's some compromise on the nuclear stuff. I mean, after all, their uranium is currently buried under rubble and they're years off being able to build A nuclear bomb. Anyways, so it's not a huge concession. The straits reopen and we go to business, instead of which what's happened is the US has effectively blocked the straits to the horror of countries like Saudi Arabia, because, of course, Iran still has a big escalation option, which is to shut the other major route, which is the Red Sea, through their Houthi proxies.
- [12:52]
Alastair Campbell
Over to you, if you just think about some of those negotiations that I mentioned, and if you in particular, if I just underline the point that the deal that was done, which Trump unilaterally just decided to tear up in his first term, takes over a decade. Now, the point that these guys make in their peace in foreign affairs is that the process of negotiation did positively influence the behavior of Iran. Okay, what you have here, I think, is a complete clash of the nature of what good negotiations. So Trump, famously the master of the art of the deal in his own mind, okay, so his idea is you just go in there, you bulldoze them. And this is what Vance kind of said. He said, you know, we told them they got to scrap their nukes, and they said, no, right, Deal's over. We shut down the straits. They probably went in with a fairly traditional negotiating mindset. We put out a few points there, some of which are absolute red lines, and some of which we're expecting then to have negotiation on. And what I was expecting, mistakenly, just for an hour, thinking this was a normal presidency, I was expecting that Vance would come out and say, look, you know, we've made some progress. There are certain really big sticking points. We've got to address them. I've got to go back to Washington. But here's the team that is going to now sit down in detail with the Pakistanis in the chair to try to take this forward. In other words, you have a process. And what they've done is they started a process, they decided it's not gone exactly according to plan on day one. Therefore, we blow up the process.
- [14:22]
Rory Stewart
I mean, maybe an analogy which I'd love from you, slightly putting you on the spot, but if you think back to your Northern Ireland experience, are there some examples you can think of of things which might have seemed like red lines in the early 90s? You know, things that the Republican side would never have conceded or the Unionist side would never have conceded, but which gradually, over time, shifted through patience?
- [14:46]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, absolutely. The very first big move that we made was Tony Blair doing this speech in a very unionist area at a very unionist event. So the mood music was Very kind of on the unionist side, but within it, the announcement, as it were, was that we were going to resume talks with Sinn Fein without them making any further concessions in relation to the activities of the ira.
- [15:13]
Rory Stewart
I'm going to interrupt there because I just wanted to develop this a bit more because I think this is a brilliant way into trying to think about what's going wrong in these negotiations. So there is a very, very clear red line which, if you were a politician, you could defend with the public, which is, we're not going to discuss anything with Sinn Fein, and unless they condemn the terrorism of the ira. And yet the instinct of negotiations has to be, we're aiming for peace here. We're going to have to give and we're going to do things which sound very, very difficult. Back over to you.
- [15:46]
Alastair Campbell
I think I'm right that not. I think it was that visit that later in the day, Tony did a visit to a shopping center, and there were all these old ladies out with rubber gloves. I know this is a different one. It was a different one, but it makes the same point. They're out waving rubber gloves at Tony Blair, and Tony said to him, why they all got rubber gloves? And it's because he shook hands with Gerry Adams. And so even shaking hands with Gerry Adams at one point. Now, how much would it have cost? JD Vance, for example, this is the highest level meeting between Iranian and American officials since the revolution four decades ago. Okay, how much would it have cost for there to have been a picture of a handshake or a picture that showed they were kind of human beings trying to work something out? And we're back to the point that we talked about a few weeks ago. This. This sort of belief in their omnipotence. They've worked out what's going to happen. They go in there, they say what they want to happen, it doesn't happen, and they throw their toys out the pram. I was talking to a kind of American former diplomat yesterday who was saying that he could work out how you could solve most of these problems. It would involve going back to some of the stuff that Federica is talking about in her Peace in Foreign Affairs. But he says right now he finds it very hard to work out how this Straits of Hormuz thing gets worked out at all. Unless Trump backs down. And Trump, as we know, doesn't like backing down.
- [17:18]
Rory Stewart
One thing that I did because I was away in the Galapagos Islands for a week is I deliberately starved myself of any newspapers or media, and I was interested in the question of a what would happen if I came back and then started catching up on a week's news, having missed it all. So I started reading the New York Times in order from the day that I'd stopped reading it through over a week. And I was trying to work out how much you could predict about what was going on with Trump. My conclusion, just to ruin the story, is that actually it's an endless exercise in humility because you really can't predict it. So I could have given you a story on Sunday Morning, which was, in the end, we've got to the best possible scenario, which is Trump has decided to stop this war, to declare victory and say, we're not going to do this anymore. And actually, in your discussion with Dominic Sambrook, Dominic seemed to think that that was a possibility and it looked kind of plausible. The story I would have told you if he'd done that. He didn't do that. But if he'd done that is the amazing thing about Trump is because he just talks nonsense all the time and puts out five different justifications for the war, and there's no real strategy. He's not as trapped as Obama or Bush were in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they had developed these very complicated stories about what they were doing, which made it difficult for them to stop. Trump can, if he wants, just say, I've won and move on. And the story would have been that he really cares about the markets, and in the end, he just passes it off to victory. He doesn't really like forever wars. And he stops. Of course he doesn't. What actually happens is that Vance comes out of an unsuccessful negotiation. You and I and most of the world assume that's just one stage in many, many negotiations over many months, and he immediately announces that he's going to do something which is incredibly radical. There hasn't been a formal US Naval blockade of this sort really, since the Second World War, since people were blockading Germany. Even what they did in Cuba was very different to what they're doing now. So suddenly, this question that I was following through a week, which is, is Trump going to escalate, wipe out a civilization? Is he going to just be trapped into more of the same, or is he going to declare victory and stop? I honestly think that anybody doing geopolitical analysis or advising a company should be pretty honest about the fact that nobody can see into this guy's brain. And after he makes the decision, of course you can, with hindsight, provide a story. I mean, you're absolutely right. Presumably, in this case, he doesn't like losing. It's his vanity, so he's just doubling down. But anyway, it's this point about prediction. Over to you.
- [20:01]
Alastair Campbell
But so much of this is about what goes on inside his brain and this is what makes it so, so difficult. Let's just take one night. Okay, so this is a guy who it seems doesn't has a real problem sleeping with. Gratitude to a gentleman on social media by the name of Harry Sisson. He did a timeline of all the social media activity of Trump over the course of a night. Not a daytime, over the night. Okay, here we go. First of all, 9:49pm he posts the famous picture of him as Jesus, which he now says is him as a doctor. Okay. Because the Catholics, the church is unsurprising, were very upset about him saying he was Jesus.
- [20:42]
Rory Stewart
Just to explain the image for people who haven't seen it. I mean, he is fully clothed as Jesus with a golden light magically burning in its hand, laying his hands on a sick man with angelic creatures flying into the sky behind him up to heaven. Okay, yeah, back over to you.
- [20:58]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, so that's a 9 49. And he later deleted it because there was a bit of an outcry.950, so that's a minute after Jesus, he posts a picture of the Arc de Trump, as it's now known. This is this 700 foot thing that's going to be a sort of Washington version of the Arc de Triomphe. He posts a picture of it on the moon. Okay, There you go. 10:10pm he posts a meme. 10:32, a news clip. 10:53, a news clip. 12:43am Most Americans are asleep now. He announces the blockade of Hormuz. Okay. 2:35am he's maybe just had a little doze or he's had a hamburger or something. 2:35am he posts an article about Joe Biden. 236, that's a minute later he posts an article about the blockade. The thing that he's just announced. Oh, somebody's written about it. Post that. 237 he points an article on Swalwell, this guy in California who's pulling out of the race for allegations of sexual offences. Same minute. 237 he reposts again the article about Biden. The same article. 2:38, he posts an article on his ballroom. 4:10, he posts an article about Iran. Honestly, Harry Sisson, he said this himself, he is not sleeping. He is pretending to be Jesus. He is posting all night. He is not well. And actually Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, others are out there on the back of his recent behaviour saying this guy is seriously not well. So when you say how do we get inside his head? I'd argue it's impossible. And the thing is, one of the things we talked to Dominic about, it strikes me he has nobody in his immediate circle who is able to say, who's able to say to him. You mentioned the Northern Ireland thing. If Tony Blair had, heaven forbid, ever had a night of social media activity like that, I guarantee I, Jonathan Powell, Angie Hunter, Sally Morgan, Peter Hyman, Tim Allen, any one of us would have gone in, there is more and said what the fuck are you doing? Have you completely lost your senses? They don't do that. They basically, what's his face? Vance yesterday was on Fox News defending the Jesus thing. This is the great Catholic defending the Jesus thing as a joke. And then he took it down because some people didn't get the joke.
- [23:22]
Rory Stewart
I think the other thing that I've taken from this and it was partly listening to you and Dominic is, and I'm obviously a little bit more on your side on this than Dominic, but I might even put in a third way. Right, so you were having a debate about whether he's a fascist or not. And of course his point about you is that whatever Trump is, he's not a classic 1930s fascist. A lot of that seemed to be Dominic saying he's not a sort of pseudo intellectual in the way that Mussolini and Hitler were. But where I differ from Dominic is the idea that somehow this is normal. You know, he was trying to situate it in a long American tradition of isolationism going back to the late 19th century. I don't think that's the right way to read him. I think the two words that occurred to me were permanent emergency and theatre of cruelty. Those are my two pretentious phrases. I think there was a temptation when he came in at the beginning of his term to think, okay, we know what's happened. We've gone from democracy to populism, we've gone from global free trade to protectionism. We've gone from a rules based international order to America first. So that sort of story would be the kind of Dominic story that we're kind of returning back to the isolationist world of I don't know, Andrew Jackson or even the pre Second World War. But it doesn't feel like that anymore. It now feels like actually, and this is something you pointed out in the debate with Dominic, he during the election campaign had said, this isn't a guy interested in aggressive war. Well, you've pointed out that actually warfare is very, very central to the way that he approaches things. Everything is turned into an aggressive emergency. And if you put together the pattern, using tariffs against Europe to try to steal Greenland, abducting Maduro, assassinating a head of state with Khomeini, posting himself as Jesus, putting in a naval blockade, which we need to get into in more depth, is a very, very startling thing to do in terms of international law and warfare. Yeah. What's beginning to happen here is an America which doesn't even pay lip service to global norms, in fact celebrates, flouting, celebrates outrageously, chaotically defying them. In fact, what I would say is that the United States is increasingly behaving like Israel. But Israel's reason for doing it was always that it was a small country facing existential threat. That was the justification Israel came for rejecting the un, declaring the Secretary General UN Persona non grata, rejecting international legal arguments, attacking Lebanon, attacking Gaza, et cetera. The US doing it is something completely different. The US is demanding, like Israel, the right to just pursue its sovereign interest and ignore completely what this means for global norms, law, precedent setting. But the US Isn't Israel. It's not a small state with no peer competitors in the Middle East. It is the architect of the entire global order, and it faces, with China, a peer competitor. So the repercussions and ripples if America becomes a rogue state is much more profound.
- [26:27]
Alastair Campbell
The other. Rory, my son has just sent me the. Hadn't you seen this, Rory? President Xi Jinping's four propositions on safeguarding and promoting Peace and stability in the Middle east, which he's put out today. One, stay committed to the principle of peaceful coexistence. Two, stay committed to the principle of national sovereignty. Three, stay committed to the principle of international rule of law. Four, stay committed to a balanced approach to development and security. Now, that is one that is pretty sophisticated trolling, but also it's underlining to the rest of the world that at a time when America appears to be so unreliable and unpredictable, China is operating according to what he's setting out as a group of principles that they stick to. And I was reading if I might have been. Was it in the New York Times? I don't know. I haven't read them all as you have this week, Roy, but I was reading. No, it might have been in the Middle east paper, but it was the Arab Barometer that measures public opinion in the Arab world. I mean, since October 7th and the Israeli and American reaction to it, the reputation of both those countries has gone to a very, very bad place. Now, Trump may not care about that, but I think any previous president would have done so. Essentially, what it's showing is that on the whole, they now regard China, Russia and Iran more favorably than the United States. Now, not all of them. There are some countries that, you know that is not the case. And so Trump's foreign policies, if you look at the favorability, 24% of Iraqis, 21% of Lebanese, 14% in Tunisia, 12% in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, and then you look at the support for Xi Jinping's policy towards the Middle east, it's 26 points up in Tunisia, 25 points up in Jordan and Palestine, 19 points in Morocco, 5 points in Iraq. Now, in the end, these are just polls, but they reflect something quite profound that's going on in the global assessment of the USA and China.
- [28:38]
Rory Stewart
If it's right that what the US Is becoming, that the architect of the global system is itself becoming a rogue state, I think there are three broad paths that we could be going on over the next five years. One of them is what the US Is gambling on, which is that we all suck it up and acquiesce. Britain, Europe cut side deals, Canada folds. We don't have any options. We can't really go anywhere else. We have to accept it. Second option is that actually we collapse into global chaos, that a lot of other countries begin to think, well, screw it, US does this. Well, we can do our own naval blockades, we can blockade the Black Sea, we can blockade the South China Sea, we can bomb people, we can assassinate people. And why? Well, because if another state were to do this now, what exactly was the US Supposed to say? I mean, you say, we don't like it, but they can't say anymore, you violated global norms or you've done something. The third possibility, though, is the one that you're pointing to, which is the emergence of a new global order. China would have an interest in that, and a lot of that would be China in the developing world and Africa. But the big question, I suppose, is Europe, and in particular Germany, is Germany really prepared to put itself behind thinking about how Europe could become more non aligned? This is Ukraine. We'll get onto your conversation with Zelenskyy in a second. Canada thinking about how Europe genuinely can become a sovereign, independent actor with its own values. And then I think bolt on the Gulf, because one of the things that we keep forgetting is the impact on everyone else in the world. I mean, the sad thing about these US papers, I mean, they're great, but obviously a lot of it is focused on the impact on the US Economy. And the impact on the US Economy is relatively muted.
- [30:31]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. Compared to the rest of the world.
- [30:32]
Rory Stewart
Well, I was looking at a recent model and these are difficult things to predict, and it's maybe an exaggeration, but Capital Economics, which is a reputable think tank, predicts that Qatar's economy will contract by 13% this year. That UAEs may contract by 8%. To put that in context, under normal growth conditions, that would be seven years. It would need to get back the growth. South Korea is spending billions on trying to underpin its welfare state, Malaysia. South Korea is struggling to get the helium to build their semiconductor chips. All the inputs into the Chinese economy are being choked, particularly around polyethylene. The European economies, Germany's growth rate. I was saying we're relying on Germany. Germany's growth rate now being massively downgraded. Hence this sense that we keep coming back to of an American presidency that behaves like the bankers during the 2008 financial crisis. They take the risk and the rest of us suffer the consequences.
- [31:32]
Alastair Campbell
I'll give you a few other more figures from the Gulf. So stock exchanges in the Gulf. Dubai, 15% drop since this all started. Qatar, 10%. Abu Dhabi, 5%. Travel and tourism industry is reckoned to be losing $600 million a day. The projected loss of economic output due to contracted growth, reduced exports and general disruption of the oil sector, 200 billion. So that's the Gulf. But then, and you're right, the Americans, in part because they become much bigger producer of oil and gas, they're not feeling as much. But here's a really interesting thing. The University of Michigan has been measuring consumer sentiment since 1952. Okay. And we'll put the graph in the, in the newsletter. But it is since in the last six weeks it's fallen to the lowest point at any time in history, including previous wars and pandemics. Inflation is. They're going to get hit by it. They're not going to get the interest rate cut that he's been going on about. Now. The oil price has actually dipped just below $100 a barrel this morning, I think. But we're still talking about it going from $60 at the start of March to $70 fairly recently. So it's a 70% increase whichever way you look at it. And Ursa von der Leyen, president of European Commission, she's outlined that the European Union's bill for fossil fuel imports since the war began has risen by more than 22 billion. So it's economically catastrophic, it's environmentally catastrophic, and it's all caused by this one guy and his decision with Netanyahu to do what they've done.
- [33:16]
Rory Stewart
And just to underpin the whole point about this is it is entirely unnecessary. I mean, we just have to keep underscoring this somehow. We forget in the coverage that Iran did not pose an immediate threat. Right. Its nuclear weapon program was years of completion. Its uranium was buried under rubble. They were in the middle of negotiations with Oman in Geneva. There was no reason to trigger this. And everything that he's done since is him trying to respond to the chaos that he himself has unleashed. And Iran still has escalation ladders. There's still stuff that Iran could do to make the world suffer much more. Shutting down the Red Sea again. The Houthi may be weaker in Yemen, but as we keep saying, they don't have to hit every vessel going through the Red Sea. They don't even have to hit one out of 100.
- [34:07]
Alastair Campbell
Just do one.
- [34:08]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. They may even just have to threaten that they might hit 1 out of 100 for the insurance price to go up. People not be prepared to sail through. So it's a situation in which unnecessarily, for no reason that remotely fits US national security, US Interests, he has launched a war which is crippling the global economy. But this is my final point before. And then back to you before we go to a break, but the other thing I slightly disagreed with in your conversation with Dominic is this idea that the midterms is going to change everything. I agree he's going to almost certainly lose the midterms, almost certainly lose the House of Representatives and the Senate. But I'm not so sure that Dominic's analysis that he's going to be a lame duck applies. It would have been true with previous presidents, but this is a guy that doesn't want to run again. Rules by executive order largely ignores most of the norms in institutions anyway. So I think, and you can see this in his statements, he's now openly saying, yeah, oil price remain up, cost of remain up, probably remain up through the midterms, may even go a bit higher. No normal person would say that. And it's beginning to suggest to me he doesn't care too much about what happens in the midterms.
- [35:16]
Alastair Campbell
Well, I must admit, I. I'm closer to you on that than to dominate, because in the end Regardless of the midterms, which hopefully will be terrible for him, regardless of that, he will still be the president of the United States and he's established a certain style of governing that I suspect he'll continue. Now, hopefully Congress will finally get its act together and start to sort of put some proper accountability on this lot and what have you. But I don't think it can be remotely guaranteed. Let me just say on the economic stuff, you were quoting one of these companies that sort of analyzes this stuff. I was reading the report from another one which said that Europe and Japan is going to be here far harder than the United States. So Europe's got some really big choices. You mentioned Merz, Interestingly, Merz yesterday I watched a thing he did. They've got a little of a sort of political problem going on with this row between one of his ministers and other members of the coalition. But he was pretty hard over in criticizing Trump on some of this. The other thing I've found, Maloney has been criticizing him in particular in relation to his attack on the Pope. I mean, this underlines the narcissism that we're dealing with here. The Pope's job is actually sometimes to speak truth to power and to say wars generally aren't very good. Okay. And that's kind of what he's saying. At which point Trump comes out and basically says he's pro Iranian and he's soft on crime. I mean, the guy's nuts. I think we've got to stop pretending this is a normal president. Your point about the Today program? I don't listen to the Today program every day, but I was speaking to somebody last week who does, who's a member of the cabinet, who said that last week, or was it the week before? 5 out of the 7 days of the week on the BBC main bulletin at 7 o' clock began with the words Donald Trump or a variation thereof. What he says is deemed to be newsworthy even when it's completely insane and actually needs a bit of. A bit of context maybe. My final point for the break, Rory, is I've said to you before that one of the worst periods of my time with Tony Blair were the fuel protests 20 odd years ago. Now these fuel protests that are kicking off in Ireland are looking really bad and I suspect they're not going to be the only country I'm in. In France at the moment, there's quite a lot of garages saying no diesel the cost. I was speaking to somebody who says that their bill for their heating fuel has doubled since this thing started. So this is going to eat into every country's politics and economics everywhere. And all because, as you say, this guy decided I'm going to take out Iran, even though everybody has told me he's thought about this before. This is a crazy, crazy thing to do.
- [38:01]
Rory Stewart
Well, quick break and then back to talk about this extraordinary interview that you did with Zelensky.
- [38:07]
Alastair Campbell
See you soon.
- [38:09]
Rory Stewart
This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list, not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com Enter your license plate or VIN and get a real offer down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises. Just a experience you can trust, like your offer, accept it, schedule pickup and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Pick up. Fees may apply. Welcome back to the Restless Politics with
- [38:47]
Alastair Campbell
me, Rory Stewart and me, Ast Campbell. So, Rory, how much did you, how much do you wish you'd been with me talking to Zelenskyy?
- [38:54]
Rory Stewart
A lot.
- [38:54]
Alastair Campbell
A lot.
- [38:55]
Rory Stewart
That was, that was very, very sad. It's the great interview. It's the one that we've been aiming for now for, for four years and you finally pulled it off. And there was I looking at blue footed boobies and seals. I was tempted to try to join from my boat. But I can assure you, you would have been really, really angry with the Internet speed of a boat in the Galapagos.
- [39:16]
Alastair Campbell
Probably. Probably just. Just so that our listeners and viewers understand, I did postpone it once.
- [39:22]
Rory Stewart
You did. Because I was on a plane.
- [39:24]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, but I thought, no, I can't turn down.
- [39:27]
Rory Stewart
No, no, you can't. No, no, you're completely right. Listen, the guy's a busy man. If he offers you an interview, you gotta take it. I mean, I thought it was a great interview, but there were a lot of things that were surprising and strange. I mean, but can I just start with what struck you about how he would compare to interviewing a American politician? So let's maybe take the governor of California Newsom as an example. Or how he would compare to interviewing a British politician. I don't know. Let's take Keir Starmer to take a couple of people we've interviewed.
- [39:58]
Alastair Campbell
Okay. I was talking to Luke Harding who covers Ukraine for the Guardian, and he was saying the great thing about Zelenskyy is if you ask him a question, he tends to answer it. And I did get that feeling he knew Roughly what we were going to talk about. I thought at one point I worried he might get a bit fed up with all he's got to deal with, you know, do I really have to talk about my childhood and being a comedian and all that stuff? But actually, he really seemed to enjoy talking about his past and about his mum, and he has to phone her every day and all that stuff. So I think he was very open. He was very, very warm and kind of relaxed because at the start, Lisa from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, who was brilliant in helping us to get this thing set up, but she said, look, you need to understand, sometimes when he's very, very tired, he prefers to speak in Ukrainian. Okay? So they had an interpreter on standby. So I was chatting up the interpreter, explaining why it was always best if we kept the interpreter quiet or what have you. Anyway, Zelenskyy came on and Zelenskyy had the inter. All my questions were being translated to him, which is why there's sometimes a little pause at the end. But then he spoke in English and only very occasionally said to the interpreter, how do I say such and such? But he was very relaxed, incredibly energetic. He just, literally just got back from Syria. And, you know, I think I said, when we did the trip to Ukraine for the fourth anniversary, that every time he goes. Even he, as president, every time he goes in and out, he has to do 12 hours on the sleeper train. But he didn't look tired. And I think he was just. I found it very open, refreshingly kind of open. And I didn't find him theatrical.
- [41:28]
Rory Stewart
I mean, one thing that surprised me is that given that he was. He's an incredibly funny man and he's a professional comedian. But I sensed that the Ukrainian style of leadership is quite serious. It really inhabits the role of a wartime president. And compared to someone like Gavin Newsom, there isn't that much kind of lightness of touch, maybe, I think culturally, because he wouldn't consider that appropriate. I mean, it's. And often when you asked him a personal question, he would broaden it out to a sort of. He'd say, yep, of course, you know, we have these issues, but. And then he'd. He'd come back to the main thing.
- [42:15]
Alastair Campbell
I saw that more as he. I don't think he liked making it all about himself. So, for example, he would talk about his son becoming an adult before his time, or he talked about his mum, maybe feeling it more than he did. I didn't get the feeling that he wanted to make it all about himself, whereas a lot of politicians love to make it all about themselves. And I thought the other answer I thought was really interesting, which sort of relates to what you just said, was when I asked him when he was running for office, it was post Crimea, Putin had already started his operation. Was there not a part of him that thought he might have to end up as a war leader? And he basically said no, he didn't ever think that was going to happen. So I think he was an accidental politician in some ways, and I think he became an accidental war leader. But I think he's brilliant at both.
- [43:04]
Rory Stewart
It's also, though, a reminder of how we can get our models wrong, or at least I get my models wrong, because he was basically an inclusive populist when he ran. I mean, he ran a campaign where he refused really to engage with the conventional media at all. He ran off the back of being this enormous comedy TV star who'd acted as the president and was running to be president. And actually his supporters registered a party named after this. Fictional.
- [43:34]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:35]
Rory Stewart
So there was this sort of. Everybody kept coming up with all these political scientists said it's this populist, hyper reality, valence populism. But I mean, attempts to try to describe this. And people drew analogies with Pepe Grio, who'd been a comedian who ran, or they even draw analogies with a coordinate Trump, who'd been a reality TV star. So that would make one think, if one didn't understand Ukrainian culture, that he might be a bit more like Beppe Grillo or Trump. In other words, much more outrageous and free rolling and provocative in his speaking style. But actually he isn't like that at all. Or maybe he hasn't been like that since the invasion. He's a deeply serious man, isn't he?
- [44:17]
Alastair Campbell
Yeah. Or maybe it's harder in what is ultimately his third language because English is so he's a Russian speaker, perfected his Ukrainian fairly late in life and English is his third language. I got a sense of a very good humored guy, though. I mean, I talked to somebody when I was out there who said, don't underestimate how lonely he is. He's got very, very few people he can absolutely trust 100%. He's got this amazing collection of world leaders that he has to kind of keep on board and, you know, can he trust any of them 100%? Not really. Can any world leader really trust somebody who's running another country? Very frustrated and very suspicious about Trump, but can't really say that. And so I think actually his wife and they, as he said in the interview, they met when he was. She was a comedy scriptwriter. He was an actor and a writer. And, you know, and he said that, you know, they have to sometimes just have a laugh and try find things funny, because if you don't have a sense of humor, you kind of finished, you know, your world sort of literally collapses. So I think it'd be conscious of not wanting to be flippant about anything, but I got. I always got the feeling of somebody who actually does have a lightness of touch, but it's harder in a third language, I think. I'll tell you the bit I absolutely love, though, Rory. The bit I going to. Guess what I'm going to say.
- [45:36]
Rory Stewart
No, the bit where he. The bit where. Where you basically say, is Trump on Putin's side and he doesn't challenge you.
- [45:42]
Alastair Campbell
No, no, no. Similar. It is something that I want people. People to believe it.
- [45:47]
Rory Stewart
Now.
- [45:47]
Alastair Campbell
It's. When I suggested that the UK should join the European Union on the same day as Ukraine.
- [45:52]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, I missed that. No, you're completely right. And I think that was a really interesting argument because again, we were talking just before the break about how if America becomes effectively a rogue state, there is an opportunity not for the world to descend into chaos, but instead to reorganize itself. And Germany being the heart of that. But his story, which I thought was very interesting, is that what could happen is Europe could transform its security architecture if it took in the uk, Norway, Ukraine and Turkey effectively. What he's saying is, if you actually want Europe to guarantee that it can defend itself against Russia, those are the countries you need to bolt on. So it's not just a statement about values, not just a statement about European extension. It's a solution to America withdrawing.
- [46:41]
Alastair Campbell
It's so interesting. So we should say to people also on YouTube, the film that I made in Ukraine, including the interview with Marta Kost, the enlargement commissioner. Now, I think she'd love to do something, be able to do something as kind of big and dramatic as that, but it's very, very hard because there are processes, there are rules, etc. But he's basically saying Europe has to become a bigger political project. And when he said it in those terms, just think about it. Uk I mean, okay, you mentioned George Robertson and George Robertson saying that we're not remotely in the state that we should be, but we're still one of the bigger European powers. You take uk, Norway, Turkey and Ukraine. You're adding an awful lot of heft to any military alliance at a time when the Americans do appear to be leaving us to it now, we're still going to be it will take a long time to fill any gap that Ukraine might be left by the United States. And that's why he's pretty careful about how he speaks about them.
- [47:37]
Rory Stewart
But it was fascinating, wasn't it? And it again isn't something we hear much in the British press. So of course, I guess listeners will understand why Ukraine joining the European alliance would transform it. Because this is a country that single handedly is holding back Russia on its own and has completely innovated and created whole new forms of drone war warfare and is probably the most advanced, innovative military nation on earth at the moment. Norway and the UK is interesting because he's making the point that we actually give the other flank against Russia. That's the Arctic flank, as he pointed out. But it's Turkey, maybe that we don't talk about enough just how many soldiers Turkey has, how many weapons Turkey has the heft that Turkey has in the region. And Turkey, of course, is a NATO member. So what you've got there is basically NATO plus Ukraine without the United States as being the absolute bedrock of containing Russia. And there's a logic to it, and logic is very powerful too.
- [48:35]
Alastair Campbell
And this morning, Zelensky, there's a post that we read Zelenskyy for the first time in the war, an enemy position was captured entirely by ground robotic systems and drones without any infantry. A robot entered the most dangerous zones in stalwart of a soldier and took the positions which you think, wow. And David Petraeus, who we interviewed, the former CIA chief and senior military figure in the U.S. he said that Ukraine is becoming one of the really major military forces in the world. I thought that bit of the interview was interesting. The other thing I found really interesting was his analysis of Putin and his disbelief really that Wyckoff and Kushner in particular, but Trump as well, feel they have to believe him, they have to trust him because they don't want to think that he might lie to them. This is a guy who lies to everybody.
- [49:32]
Rory Stewart
Well, there were a couple of other things, weren't there? Which really struck me from your interview. One is him saying very flatly that Wyckoff had basically refused to meet him. I mean, I hadn't actually fully got this into my head that Steve Wyckoff's Trump's negotiators flying out to meet Putin in Moscow again and again and again and won't meet Zelenskyy those are really odd. The second thing is he was explaining something that's quite difficult to explain and will have been very difficult to explain, particularly the U.S. which is why just putting a ceasefire in place, which must be very tempting for people, is not actually a smart idea, that if you were just to say, okay, let's just announce a ceasefire tomorrow. What actually happens is Russia uses that to consolidate its position, lick its wounds, remobilize its army, retrain its officer corps, retrain its NCO cadre, and find itself ready to project itself into another part of Europe. Now, that's a difficult message, but it's a, that's the central message, isn't it, that what he's saying is you can't just say, let's all pause.
- [50:36]
Alastair Campbell
I also thought it was interesting, the phrase that he used. You can't just have a week of celebration. And I'll tell you what that put me in mind of was Gaza. So Trump claims he's brought peace to Gaza. Well, there is a ceasefire of stores. We're still stuck. Nobody talks about it anymore. We're still stuck in phase one. And what's going in Gaza? There was a brilliant. Another read of the week for you newsletter people. New York Times, Khada Abdul Fattah. I don't know if you saw this piece in your week of reading, Rory. Rubble doesn't just destroy the past, it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today. This is a writer who's living in Gaza who wrote this unbelievably moving piece about just how awful their life is there right now. So Zelenskyy is basically saying that is, you know, yes, you can have a ceasefire, but do please don't trust Putin to deliver on the promises that he made attached to the ceasefire.
- [51:34]
Rory Stewart
We don't find it easy to really get our heads around the permanent economic and total social damage done by war. Iran has probably in the last five weeks suffered £200 billion worth of damage. Gaza, hundreds of billions. Ukraine, hundreds of billions. I mean, I really felt this when I was in Aleppo a few weeks ago. Just looking at a city destroyed and the impossibility of imagining that a relatively poor country with a limited budget can ever rebuild these buildings and get things back together. And of course, in Gaza, you've got the fact that, I don't know, One estimate is 72,000 people were killed in Gaza, that 749 have been killed since the ceasefire.
- [52:21]
Alastair Campbell
Exactly.
- [52:22]
Rory Stewart
And that a lot of the medical conditions that people were suffering, were put on hold during the crisis. And now people are trying to go to hospitals which are barely functioning. There are about 20,000 people with acute and critical conditions who are not able to leave Gaza, despite that being part of the deal. And things actually paradoxically get worse in the aftermath because it's a bit like what happened after the end of COVID which is that everybody having been kept out of the hospitals, all the cancer treatment having been delayed, all the chronic conditions delayed, they're now trying to flood facilities which simply aren't functioning at all. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, we have 1 million people displaced. And as you said, I think in the first half, this very odd spectacle of so called peace deals with just a Lebanese ambassador talking to an Israeli ambassador with Marco Rubio in Washington. It's the cumulation over the four years that we've done this podcast of just the amount of damage, the hundreds of, of billions of pounds worth of permanent damage as well as death done by these wars. We've had 1.2 million casualties in the Russia, Ukraine conflict. I mean, it's almost unimaginable for people who grew up in a world that seemed to be getting every year more peaceful, more prosperous, more stable, Just the
- [53:45]
Alastair Campbell
cost of these wars, I suppose. The piece of good news for Ukraine was something that we're going to talk about in question time, which was the election in Hungary. Again, Zelenskyy was being qu. Diplomatic in the interview. He just said, look, I'm not on the side of the guy in Hungary. He didn't want to say who he was, but he, and he, and he did make the very sensible observation that he wasn't sure it was a very good idea for Orban that J.D. vance turned up to help him in his campaign. Before we go, anybody who hasn't seen the Zelenskyy interview, just go to the rest. Is Politics leading? You can also find it on YouTube. Rory, there's a book here you've really got to learn German, because some of the best books are books at the moment are coming out in German. This one. Do you know Florence Gaub?
- [54:29]
Rory Stewart
No.
- [54:29]
Alastair Campbell
Well, she works for NATO at the research place in Rome.
- [54:33]
Rory Stewart
Right.
- [54:33]
Alastair Campbell
And she's written, she's written this book called Scenario Die Zukunfte auf dem Spiel, which basically means future is at stake. Okay. And it's absolutely extraordinary. A lot of it is about the arc, the battle for the Arctic that we talked about on the miniseries we did with Ken Rosen. But essentially she, she writes these chapters and at the end of the chapter you as you the reader or you a diplomat, or you the military, or you, you we who read it. She sets out a set of options that you can maybe take forward, partly to reveal just how complicated the world is right now, but also just to sort of get your mind thinking. And what I'm only halfway through, but what it. The basic message coming through. And she's somebody who's European, German, working in NATO and what have you, but what's coming through is that China and Russia are doing a much better job of carving up the world in the future as they see it.
- [55:28]
Rory Stewart
A little plug on that for another talking multilingual. I've talked about him in the past, but Odjana Vestad, who's a Norwegian and who you made this point with, Dominic, being a Norwegian, of course, he speaks fluent English, fluent German, fluent French, but also being Arnievested, he also speaks fluent Mandarin and fluent Russian. So he's right in the archives of China, Russia and his book the Coming Storm, which draws parallels from the lead up to the First World War and tries to chart why he feels this is a moment like the lead up to the First World War, I think is something that we might pair with this book, which hopefully you're getting translated into English.
- [56:08]
Alastair Campbell
Well, publishers need to do this because these German books, it is honestly, it's the. Yet another book I've read, thinking, God, I wish I'd written that book. It's really clever. And I love the way she sort of brings you in and says at the end of every chapter, she doesn't just say. And then what happens is this. She basically says, you can now decide you want to go to this bit of the future or that bit of the future. But the Arctic, the Arctic is so big in this. And George Robertson, you mentioned George Robertson, former Defense Secretary, former. Former General Secretary of NATO, one of the three people who did the Defence Review. And he clearly really believes that we, the uk, are not well set up for this developing, changing world.
- [56:49]
Rory Stewart
Can I just finish with a bit of a plug to follow up? The Zelenskyy interview is really beautiful, but there's a lot of other great interviews on leading. So if people are doing a long car journey or going to the gym, catch up on the back catalogue. Naz Shah, a kind of blistering, bewildering interview about her experience. She said, British Member of Parliament, of her early childhood in Britain and Pakistan and her family and incredible family trauma. One of my favorites that we haven't talked about enough. Sarah McBride, who is again, will challenge some listeners, but is a transgender congresswoman talking in the most open, lovely way about what it is being trans? So I would encourage people who find this debate uncomfortable and the many listeners who dislike the way that Alistair and I approach it to listen to Sarah McBride and maybe come back to us and again, have another go at us about that. But so many other wonderful things. I mean, if we're talking about the global order, Pedro Sanchez, the one leader defying Trump, President Stubb, Gavin Newsom, Olive Schultz, all in the last few weeks. So please, please, just have a look at the back catalog. And actually, if you go back further, we've got some great interviews with Iran specialists, military specialists, intelligence chiefs and the rest.
- [58:10]
Alastair Campbell
And coming up on Monday, Anas Sarwa. But meanwhile, do check out Zelenskyy.
- [58:16]
Rory Stewart
Congratulations again on Zelenskyy. And I thought startling and really, really matters. And the only thing that I would add as my final thought is he's in trouble in some ways because of what Trump's doing in Iran, because, in effect, Russia is now making much more money from its oil revenue. It's probably won a year or 18 months, which it wouldn't otherwise have had when it was in real trouble on the front line. It's now economically stronger. And he will be worried, as he said, that they're firing a lot of the Patriot interceptor missiles that he needs for Ukraine in Iran. I mean, it's another sign that Trump is not just heedless of consequence, but by doing this completely unnecessary, chaotic world economy destroying madness in Iran, he's actually totally undermining the West's position against Russia and against China by distracting and blowing all the credibility, legitimacy, missiles and money on this unnecessary conflict rather than saving them for things that matter most.
- [59:18]
Alastair Campbell
Although that's the reason why it is good news that Orban has gone and Magyar has indicated that he will no longer act as a block on the European money that is meant to be going there. I forgot, by the way, today we're recording this on Tuesday, one of the several prime ministers who sent me a message saying really enjoyed your interview with Zelensky was Jonas Garsdor in Norway. And Zelenskyy is in Norway today. So hopefully they're discussing this great plan. And Rory, I'm going to leave you with, I'm going to leave you with a little conundrum. If you had an acronym for a military alliance comprising of the UK Ukraine, Norway and Turkey, what would you call it? There we are. Work that one out and I'll see you at Question Time where we'll talk about Hungary. We'll also talk a bit closer to home about the upcoming Scottish, Welsh and local elections and lots more. See you then.
- [60:09]
Rory Stewart
See you then.
- [60:10]
Alastair Campbell
That.
- [60:10]
Rory Stewart
Bye.
- [60:10]
Alastair Campbell
Bye.