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The Rest Is Politics
525. JD Vance vs. the Pope and the Far-Right Funding Machine (Question Time)
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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 that's therestispolitics.com
- [00:13]
Rory Stewart
the reality is that Vance and the administration are wrong. I mean, they're theologically illiterate. Yeah, they are consistently portraying a worldview which is, well, in a lot of their actions, almost seems to be completely unbound by any kind of ethical principles.
- [00:31]
Alistair Campbell
This is a deliberate thing of constantly wrapping up what they're doing in religious rhetoric. And if you are somebody like Pope Leo who clearly can't stand what these people are doing to America and to the world, then you can see why he would get very, very offended. This episode is brought to you by
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- [03:27]
Alistair Campbell
Question time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. And we're going to talk Trump v. The Pope again because he keeps rumbling on. We are going to have a bit of a deep dive into the well organized funding of right wing organizations against women's rights and other issues which will take us into Hungary, which plays a big part in that. And then we'll maybe try and lighten up a bit because it's been a pretty heavy week. But Rory, where shall we start?
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Rory Stewart
Okay, so why don't we start with the first question? Who's from Ellie, who's a trip member from Hong Kong. Hi Alister and Rory, I really enjoyed your articles in the newsletter about Trump's response to the Pope. My question is what does it say about the state of religion and politics when political figures feel comfortable lecturing religious leaders on their own theology? Is this just naked power politics or does it reflect a genuine belief among the MAGA movement that they represent true Christianity better than the Pope does? And before I hand over to you, there are two examples for this strongly from JD Vance, who of course is very, very proud of being a born again Catholic. He managed to get in an argument with the last Pope about what he called the Order of Love, in which he tried to argue that Christianity was essentially about looking after your own family and people first and other people later. And now he's managed to get an argument with the current Pope about Augustinian just war theory where he claims the Iran war is a just war overdue.
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Alistair Campbell
Well, I was thinking about this. So as you know, Roy, I love football, but I would not argue about football tactics with Pep Guardiola. I wouldn't argue with Margaret Atwood about how to construct a novel. And I would definitely not argue about theology with the Pope. And that is not because I believe in papal infallibility. I don't. But I know that to get where he is, he has had to devote his whole life to theology and to impressing a lot of people in the Catholic Church that he knows his stuff. J.D. vance got to where he is because Donald Trump put him there. And as you say, he's become a Catholic. He's apparently writing a book about this wonderful conversion. And he genuinely thinks he can argue with the Pope on theology. So does Mike Johnson, the speaker. So does Pete Hexith. And this is what happens, I think, with cults. You now have Sean Hannity, the kind of well known MAGA broadcaster, saying, I no longer consider myself a Catholic because of this brow going on between Trump and the Pope. In other words, if I have to choose the pop or Trump, I'm going to go with Trump. And what's incredible about all of these people is that they seem to have real trouble with the Pope being an expert on scripture, but no trouble with Trump posting pictures of himself as Jesus or frankly being a deeply unchristian human being. And the other thing, don't forget, Roy, this all started this particular chapter in this row, started when Hex's deputy in the Pentagon, Elbridge Colby, met the Vatican's U.S. envoy, a guy called Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and warned that the US Military had the power to do whatever it wants in the world and the Catholic Church better decide what side it's on. So it's just a form of the MAGA madness that we've seen. But there is a method to the madness. Now, you know, I've been, I think, twice now. I did it again with Dominic Sambrook when he stood in for you when you were away in the galapagos. And these 14 tenets, if you like, of fascism that are posted up in the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Number eight, Religion and government are intertwined. Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. And maybe that's where you can pick up on the just war, because that's what has taken this to the next stage of this route.
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Rory Stewart
Well, one of the things that strikes me here is there's a difference between the Catholics and the administration and the evangelicals. So as you pointed out, the Catholics in the administration, people like J.D. vance, are already committed very, very strongly to a religion which would defer to the Pope on questions of theology. I mean, it's absolutely baked into the whole structure of the thing. And the whole idea of Hannity saying he's stopping being a Catholic because he can't sit with the Pope on this, or Vance saying the Pope should stay out of these theological matters. And there's something he doesn't understand called just war theory is completely bizarre because it goes against the whole doctrine of the Catholic Church. The second thing, though, that has been really striking is you began by making the move, which I think many people feel, which is an appeal to the naked authority of the Pope. You know, the guys like Pep Guardiola in relation to football. What isn't happening so much is a real engagement with the substance. There's a lot of Vance said, Pope said, Pope's more important. Actually, the reality is that Vance and the administration are wrong. I mean, they're theologically illiterate. They are consistently portraying a worldview which is in a lot of their actions almost seems to be completely unbound by any kind of ethical principles. There's no sense of empathy, there's no sense of caring for the vulnerable. I mean, if Christ's message is about anything, I mean, I guess the repeated theme of the Gospels again and again is that this is someone who is perpetually reaching out to the most marginalized people in society. Maybe that's a 2pc way of putting it. But I mean, he's deliberately reaching out to lepers, to prostitutes, to rejected tax collectors, to Samaritans who are, you know, a real sort of minority group that are hated by the majority. And that's what the Pope has been doing in saying he's not going to go to the 250th anniversary. Instead he's going to greet refugees on the Greek islands. Yeah, he was bathing feet during Easter week, including the feet of Muslims. He's done a big publicized tour to the Muslim world. And this is really the Pope reminding us that Christianity, properly understood, it's about forgiveness, it's about sinners, and it's about grace. And actually what the Pope is communicating. And a lot of people in the Anglican Church here in Britain is much more thoughtful compassion and respect for Islam than we're getting out of this so called Christian Right who are increasingly creating this Judeo Christian stuff. Over to you.
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Alistair Campbell
Yeah. And also bear in mind that Pete Hexith has said, I think this is what must have provoked, in part provoked the Pope into feeling he had to speak out when he said this is a war for Jesus. And that goes back to what we talked about in a previous episode about George Bush, I think genuinely made a mistake when he said, you know, about the Crusade. This is a crusade. You have to be very, very careful with the language. And I think the MAGA people, the HIGDOS the Vancees, the Trumps, they are being careful with their language in that they're being very, very deliberate about this. And I do think it relates to basically saying there is only one power in this country and it is Donald Trump and it is those who follow Donald Trump. I don't think the Jesus thing was a mistake. I think it was when he posted the picture of himself as Jesus. It's all part of the same kind of crazy stuff. And on the just war, you said that they're just wrong. I looked it up and found this explanation in one of the old books of the Catholic Church. And it says a constant tenet of the thousand year tradition of just war theory is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword in self defense once all peace efforts have failed. That is to be a just war. It must be a defense against another who actively wages war. And that's why Pope Leo said he, God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war. Now I can see why that would rile up Trump is because that essentially is almost saying that Iran in the current set of circumstances has a greater justification to defend itself because it has come under attack. So that, I think goes to the heart of it. But you know where, you're absolutely right. Of course, this is interesting territory for you because I mean, when was it you got into a real row with J.D. vance, none other than J.D. vance, when you was that that was over Ordo Amoris, wasn't it?
- [12:27]
Rory Stewart
That was right at the beginning of his thing. So that, that was him effectively saying at the moment when the US was deciding to cut all its overseas aid.
- [12:36]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
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Rory Stewart
He tried to say, well, this makes perfect sense because as a Christian, I basically believe we should look after our, our own people first and bugger the rest of them. And what was so weird about that is that that insight is not a Christian insight. That Vance view is really the view of Genghis Khan. I mean, you don't really need Jesus to come along and say put your family first. Right. That's kind of mafia stuff. In fact, Christ's message in the parable of the Good Samaritan is exactly the reverse. It's exactly about not putting your own first, but reaching out to the people who are excluded. On your Augustine point, there's this big distinction which people talk about, which Augustine makes between the jus ad bellum, which is the justice of going to war, and the jus in bello, which is how you conduct yourself in the war. So one of them is about, are you Making the correct moral arguments for going to war in the first place. And the second thing is, are you doing your very best to protect civilians, etc. Follow the rules of war? And these things go right back to the early Middle Ages. And one of the things that we will get attacked by, obviously, is people will then jump up and down and say, how about the Iraq war? Of course, it's true that in the Iraq war and in many other things that people have done over the last hundreds of years, we have done things which may have been hypocritical, may have been poorly justified, may in many cases have been wrong. But there's all the difference in the world between a situation where governments tried to make arguments for going to war in good faith or bad faith, tried to go to the United nations, tried to explain what threat they thought they were facing, and the new world of Trump where you don't even have the pretense, you don't even have the hypocrisy. And people would say, well, okay, maybe getting rid of hypocrisy is a good thing. It isn't the hypocrisy, if that's what you want to call it. In other words, all our attempts in the past to try to make legal arguments for these wars is what allowed other people to challenge these wars on their own terms. If you move into a world in which you make no moral arguments at all. And that's what's so weird about what Vance is saying. I mean, of course, they're not making Augustinian, just war theory arguments. We don't even know why they went to war. One of the things we discussed, the main podcast, of course, how do you get a peace deal when you can't even define why you've gone to war in the first place? Right. That's right. The heart of the whole thing. And whether you're talking about Sudan or whether you're talking about Iran or whether you're talking about what's happening inside the United States, the fundamental thing that's going on with Trump is the complete lack of any kind of legal or moral principle which makes it impossible actually to resolve things or indeed argue against them, because they're not making arguments.
- [15:33]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, there's a couple other things that just underline this point, that it's all about him. So, for example, when he was quizzed by a journalist the other day and somebody mentioned the gospel, the Pope was explaining the gospel, and Trump's response was this. He made a note. I'm all about the gospel. His brother Is MAGA all the way. The Pope's brother. So I'm all about the Gospel. His brother is MAGA all the way. And then the next thing is that they cancelled an 11 million pound fund, which. Okay. And the overall budget of the administration is tiny, but it was for a charity that deal, the Catholic Church charity that deals with children of immigrants, helps children of immigrants. So. And then you have Hexuth saying, I don't know if you saw his latest rant at the media, says the press of the Pharisees, again, making you think that Trump is Jesus. Right. The Pharisees are the people who tried to always undermine Jesus. And you, the press, you're always trying to undermine Trump. And I think this is a kind of form of madness. And of course, they have wrapped themselves in this. I don't know what they really believe and I don't want to question their beliefs. Beliefs are a very, very personal thing. And, you know, Text talks constantly about going to church every day. The reason he read out of that fake Bible verse, because he claims that he heard something.
- [17:01]
Rory Stewart
The sermons remind us of the fake Bible verse. He took it from Reservoir Dogs or something.
- [17:06]
Alistair Campbell
No, Pulp Fiction. It was a speech by Samuel Jackson.
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Rory Stewart
Just explain to the audience, because they don't know about this.
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Alistair Campbell
This was at a briefing and he was basically read out this thing from the Bible. It was a room full of military. Somebody has had a brilliant splice of Samuel Jackson, who I think is playing a murderer, and he's sort of doing this incredibly sort of, you know, fire and brimstone reading of what sounds like the Bible, but it's not the Bible. But Pete Higson, somebody's put this in front of him, said this will fit the moment. But then he also said that this was the prayer that he says was used by the search and rescue team that saved the downed airman in Iran a few weeks ago. The same. And this was the same thing when he said, this is the guy who was downed on Friday and Rose on Sunday. So to go back to my point about the Holocaust Museum, point 8, this is a deliberate thing of constantly wrapping up what they're doing in religious rhetoric. And if you are somebody like Pope Leo, who clearly, clearly can't stand what these people are doing to America and to the world, then you can see why he would get very, very offended.
- [18:24]
Rory Stewart
One of the things that's so slippery about this and one of the reasons why it's so disturbing, is that the very same members of Christian right, and we're seeing this with the Far right across Europe who are creating these Judeo Christian coalitions against Islam. Their technique is basically to claim that every Muslim in the world, of whom there are 2 billion people, fifths of the world's population, quarter of the world's population, almost somehow are supposed to believe all the most extreme versus the Quran. I mean, if this were true, the world would be mayhem. Of course it's not true. Of course it's not true that billions of Muslims believe the most extreme verse of the Quran. And yet what you're seeing with Hegseth is he's quoting some of the most extreme lines from the Old Testament. And you can see the same with some of the religious Zionists in Israel quoting very, very extreme lines. So it's, it suits them. John Cleese just did this on Twitter saying, oh, all Muslims are a bunch of genocidal maniacs because here is a line from the Quran about killing non believers. And then they reserve the right to say, oh, when it suits them to quote these blood curdling lines from the Old Testament right at the heart of the Jewish Christian tradition. And then when it suits them to distance themselves from it and say, of course we don't really believe in that stuff anymore. Instead of realizing that all these religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, are about living people living difficult, spiritual, sinful, moral lives, struggling with ancient texts in different ways, interpreting them in very sophisticated ways that the Pope intuitively understands. That's why he's comfortable sitting with Muslim clerics or indeed sitting with Jewish scholars, and why we have to get away from this kind of social media fundamentalism.
- [20:21]
Alistair Campbell
I'm very grateful to one of our listeners called Stephen Rogers, who's down in Bristol, and after the episode with Dominic, he wrote to me and said that the poster you're quoting from the Washington Holocaust Museum was actually from an essay by a guy called Lawrence W. Britt called Fascism. Anyone? Okay, he said, even more interesting, Lawrence W. Britt wrote a novel in 1997 which was called June 2004. And he said, I think you'd find it very, very interesting. The trouble is it's out of print. If you've struggled to find one, I'll send you mine. It's out of print, couldn't find it anywhere. He sent it to me and honestly, somebody needs to bring it back into print. So it's published in 1998. It's called June 2004. I've now finished it. I won't give away the whole story, but essentially the story is this. On the back of an economic crash A very right wing, charismatic, celebrity politic politician takes over and suborns and transforms the Republican Party. He becomes president. He oversees the most chilling centralization of power. He reforms communications law so that his backers have control of TV networks. He politicizes the Department of Justice to go after his critics and his enemies. He gives the police more power. He uses the military to enforce domestic political decisions. And then eventually accelerates to the kind of crimes and covers cover up that become exposed. And you think these are now so bad he can't survive. And he does. It's his head. Really, really chilly. So it's June 2004, so it was just 20 years ahead of its time. But Stephen, thank you for sending that to me. I don't know if Lawrence W. Brett is still alive. I think he is, but he should update it for the modern age. It's absolutely brilliant.
- [22:13]
Rory Stewart
Thank you. Next question. Amanda, who's from Rye in Sussex, you've talked a lot about Project 2025 as an American phenomenon, but a recent report shows it's actually part of a transatlantic movement. Project 2025, just remind people, is that extraordinary document created by the Heritage foundation, which was very important in the election campaign for Trump, because the Democrats were saying, look at this. This is all the stuff, this very dangerous stuff that Trump's going to do. And Trump was absolutely denying it. I haven't really heard of this document. This isn't really my program. And since he's come into the office, a great deal of it implemented, it now becomes apparent that it's pretty close to his manifesto. Why aren't we talking? Amanda from Wright asks about this as a coordinated international authoritarian project. What can democracies actually do to counter it? So over to you on this report.
- [23:05]
Alistair Campbell
So one of the reasons that Viktor Orban, who we talked about a lot last week, is such a big global figure is because he was the first, I think, fully, to understand that if you were going to change minds on big cultural issues, then you had to internationalize campaigns. He understood the importance of propaganda. He understood the need for networks. He understood the need for money to fund it all. He was the key to Steve Bannon's operation in the States and around the world. He's the key to the rise of Nigel Farage. He's the key to far right parties and campaigns everywhere. And I've always felt that the right has always been better than the left at this, this international organization. So just take this one report written by this guy, Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on sexual and reproductive rights. So his report covers just four years, 2019, 2023. And it calculates at $1.18 billion, the money that has flowed into over 270 organizations, variously opposing gender equality, LGBTQ abortion, contraception and planning, children's rights, education about sexuality and health. A lot of the work comes out of America, but the funding very focused on Europe. 73% is across Europe. $869.5 million, 18% in Russia and 9% US organizations based in Europe, over 100 million. And of the five countries in Europe where most of this money is spent, number one is Hungary, number two is France, number three is the uk, then Poland, then Spain. And it's used for advocacy, for lobbying for their own media networks, for big grants for anti gender services, getting into political parties. A lot of it's about litigation, you know, when we had all that fuss not long ago about buffer zones around abortion clinics, changing hate speech laws. So it's all very, very strategic. And the questioner is absolutely right. This is a very well organized, very well funded international campaign.
- [25:18]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting report. One small bit of agreeable disagreement. I think a lot of different movements are being conflated here. So when you dig down in the report into what's happening in the uk, it's very, very different from what's happening in Russia, Hungary or Poland. So on the Russian side, the full Orthodox Church backing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the Polish side, you've got this thing pushing, it's called the Ordo Juris, pushing a very, very aggressive vision. You've got Hungarian state funded NGOs. And then on the UK side, you've got Care UK, which has got people in Parliament. Billy Graham Evangelical foundation. These are, are evangelical foundations, more on the conservative side, but they've counted all their funding into this. They haven't attempted to distinguish the amount of money that's being used to do other types of things and the fact that they have conservative views for marriage. And I think in a way that detracts a little bit from the power of this report, which should be focused on Russia, Hungary, Poland. And if there are actors in the UK and elsewhere that are really pushing extreme stuff, then we need to, to push onto how much money they're putting into it and what exactly they're doing. The overall story I think is very compelling, but I think it's probably that it's undermining its own case by lumping everything together and then taking the full funding of organizations like CARE UK and Billy Graham?
- [26:46]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, and it's like, for example, Patriots for Europe was an organization that I think Orban set up, and we know what Orban's politics are, but then it will go on to be involved in all sorts of other issues not necessarily related to this. You just get a question of the scale of organization in some of these campaigns, and we don't have time to go through all of it now. But I think what we should maybe do, the research team put together a very, very good note on the detail of the report, and I think we should maybe put it in the newsletter and let people just digest the scale and the nature of some of the campaigns that they're involved in. And then to bring it back to Mr. Orban, one of the first things that the new prime minister, Peter Magjar.
- [27:29]
Rory Stewart
I thought the emphasis was on the first syllable. But anyway, listen, I'm no better at this than you. I'm not a Hungarian, Okay?
- [27:34]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, okay. Anyway, the new Hungarian Prime Minister, one of the first things he announced after winning the election was, in a sense, he exposed what was already an open secret, and that was the use of state funding for what he identified, I think we would identify as straightforward propaganda operations. And he announced that the state was no longer going to finance institutions such as, I'll just give you the Matthias Corvinus Collegium, mcc, which is a private college, which sounds great, you know, Brasenose College, Oxford, Matthias Corvinus Collegium. But it is basically a propaganda organization that is putting out Orban's views on everything from gender to race, far right ideology, universities, think tanks, right wing figureheads. And interestingly, the Prime Minister has added that he thinks it's been a criminal offense for Orban to have funded MCC using the public purse, and which he said he intends to investigate along with the European Union, because of course, a lot of the money that came to Hungary came via the European Union. And the interesting prospect has been raised about whether those people, including many in Britain, including I believe, Mr. Matt Badlos, who have been on the receiving end of some of this money, actually might have to be investigated on the proceeds of crime legislation. I think that's probably a bit far fetched, but nonetheless interesting. And of course, what Orban was brilliant at was this sense building his own profile, becoming an international figure, using state funds then to help build networks which won, let's be frank, won a lot of the big arguments, or certainly felt like it was winning a lot of the big arguments that have made people like you and me feel very Much on the defensive on some of the big progressive causes that we believe in.
- [29:34]
Rory Stewart
Well, I guess one of the questions will be now that Orban's been kicked out of office, and so there won't be hundreds of millions of euros of Hungarian state money flowing into this stuff, whether this will actually weaken the far right movement. Because, curiously, it doesn't feel at the moment as though Trump and the US are major funders of these European movements. They're major endorsers. But we're not seeing the reports tracking US money in the same way.
- [30:03]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, you and I were, I think, a lot of people across Europe jubilant at Orban's fall and Magyar's win. But then we had the election of the weekend in Bulgaria, where Roumen Radev, who is sometimes described as Kremlin friendly, he has won the election and won it big. And I really do think we're reaching the time where the European Union has got to grasp, grasp this nettle that it struggled with for so long about how do you have a European Union that's so much bigger than it used to be? Now, 27 countries and so many of the decisions have to be made by unanimity, everybody agreeing with the same thing. One of the problems with Orban is that he became the chief disagreer, for example, in relation to Ukraine. Now, this guy Radef is not maybe as powerful within the firmament as Orban, but it just shows you that you can sometimes take one step forward and one step back in a very, very similar time frame.
- [31:01]
Rory Stewart
Very good. Well, yeah, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to do two quick questions. We'll look at the chimpanzee civil war and we'll look at the question of devolution and nationalism.
- [31:13]
Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
Yeah. The premise is simple. What if Russia had an asset right at the very top of the British government? I mean, I think it's a great story, isn't it?
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [32:17]
Alistair Campbell
Recommended both by Rory and yours truly,
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [32:57]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome back to the Racist Politics Question time with me, Alistair Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. Tom Evans on devolution and nationalism. As you say, in hindsight, was devolution always going to lead to nationalism?
- [33:09]
Rory Stewart
Oh, well, let me turn it around. I mean, so I guess the big debate, and it's a difficult one in a sense for you because you were right at the heart of the process that created it, is the question of whether the instincts that you guys had, which I think was the that devolution in a way would give more autonomy and freedom to Scotland and perhaps deal with the question of full independence because it would give people much more control over their everyday lives. Against the other view, which came from some conservative colleagues, which is it's a slippery slope. Once you grant devolution, you're on fast track to independence. Where do you sit on that now?
- [33:48]
Alistair Campbell
Well, where I sat then for sure. I was very much in that camp that believed that the status quo as was was completely untenable, that there was a real democratic illegitimacy point about a big part of the United Kingdom that kept essentially saying we do not want Conservative government here at all and wasn't electing Conservatives and yet was constantly felt like it was just being governed by distant, remote government based in Westminster. I felt that the Scottish Parliament, after, you know, a very, very long gap that is re establishment would settle that debate. I did think that and I've said to you before that, you know, this is something we talked about with Anna Sawa, who's our guest on Leading this week, the Scottish Labour leader. I can vividly remember the meeting. Remember Pat McFadden was there, Donald was there. I think Gordon Brown might have been there. I can't remember, but I can remember the debate being, you know, we are so power. This government has got such a big majority in the uk, we are so much the dominant power in Scotland. So this electoral system, remember, we all had to become experts on Dhont, one of the famous Belgians, whose legacy is that he has an electoral system named after him. And I can remember it was all about, how do you make sure that no one party can ever have lots of power? So what definitely we underestimated was the extent to which the devolution debate would politically benefit the snp to make it more about this as a sort of step towards nationalism. But also when Tom says, was devolution always going to lead to nationalism? It hasn't led to the breakup of the uk now, it still might one day. But I. And this could be. I don't know what your view on this. I sort of feel that even though John Swinney's trying to make this election in Scotland on May 7 a kind of, you know, a quasi referendum, to have another referendum, I don't really feel that that's got legs. I think it's a tactic for the election, not a strategy.
- [35:50]
Rory Stewart
It's an amazing lesson in how difficult it is to call these things. I mean, I remember many people who were right at the heart of Scottish politics in 2016 after the Brexit referendum saying, that's the end of the uk. This Brexit referendum is going to drive Scotland to vote for independence and Northern Ireland will ally with the Republic and you'll be left with England and possibly Wales. And when Boris Johnson refused to allow a referendum in 2019, 2020 again, I had a lot of people, including members of the Scottish Tory Party, who were fervent Unionists, saying, Boris is wrong. There's no alternative. He's got to offer a referendum because they're not going to put up with Boris. I very rarely say this about Boris Johnson, but he seems to have been vindicated that his gamble that he could say no, and I guess his argument was, we had a referendum quite recently, we're not going to have another one now. It's meant to be once the generation sort of worked, at least in the short term. I mean, if I had to put you on the spot, what do you think the chances are of Scotland going independent in the next 10 years? More than 50%? Less than 50%. I mean, obviously there's no certainty, but what's your instinct?
- [37:06]
Alistair Campbell
I think less than 50%, but I think we're in very, very, very volatile times. And don't forget, we've got these elections on May 7 and if the pol polls are right, we're going to end up with essentially we will have three parts of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, led in part and in some possible circumstances in whole by governments which want to break up the United Kingdom in different directions. So that could be quite a moment for this whole debate. We talked in the main podcast about Labour and Keir Starmer. I actually felt when they were blocking Andy Burnham that one of the things that maybe Keir Starmer might have done was to say let's get Andy Burnham in and let's put him in the cabinet and put him in charge of the next steps, the next stages of devolution. Because I do think there's something that a lot of people, not just in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but in England as well, that people feel that the current structures of government are not very effective.
- [38:14]
Rory Stewart
I think it's the most exciting potential really in British politics. We're clearly so much isn't working and a lot of it is to do with a very overly centralized state. We're still one of the most centralized countries on earth. I mean, I'm really struck just coming back from the U.S. but how much depends on the state government in Connecticut or Texas or Oregon or wherever. But even France, which is pretty centralized, has these very interesting structure of local mayors who you can see in the local supermarket and challenge and talk to. And we really felt, I think both of us, that when we interviewed Andy street and Andy Burnham, that it was really moving and interesting hearing them talk about what they were doing in Birmingham and Manchester and particularly on the economy and industrial policy in the sense that industrial policy needs to be local, that Manchester's industrial policy has to be different from Newcastle's or Edinburgh's. So yeah, I'm with you. I think that's the most exciting direction to go in. But oddly that a little bit like civil service reform, which is another thing that will be vital for the next 20 years, isn't sexy, is it? I mean, you were teasing me about what do we want? More adjectives? When do we want them? Now, if I was to go into a campaign and say what do I really want? I want more devolution and more civil service reform. Everyone would kind of yawn, give up and go back to Bangladesh.
- [39:38]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, what about if you said to. I don't know if you said to them, you all know that our politics is broken. You are the key to fixing it. We've got to bring power down to you more Local and the French mayor example is a good one. And the smaller the unit, the bigger a figure the mayor is. But because the institution of the mayor in France is so well established, they all want to know who it is, they want to have relationships with them and they have real power and they use that power, and if they use it badly, they get kicked out. No, it's just that a lot of
- [40:08]
Rory Stewart
it is about tax and budgets. I mean, the frustrating thing about being Mayor of London is that, yes, theoretically, you're in charge of transport, policing and housing, but every time you actually challenge Sadiq Khan and say, well, what's happening on transport, what's happening on housing, what's happening in policing, he actually relatively reasonably often says, well, I already have a budget on that, control on that. And to really draw the kind of Mamdanis and all the Bloombergs on the other side of the political spectrum into being Mayor of London, you'd really need to have a sense that it's not a ceremonial role. I mean, I remember when I was campaigning, saying to a group of students in London University, how many of you think transport, housing and policing in London is broken? They all thought it was. How many of you think that's Sadiq Khan's fault? No, of them, because they basically saw it as a kind of almost ceremonial role. Now, here's a question that really appeals to me because as really focused listeners will remember, I had this amazing experience being on a stage with Jane Goodall where she did an impression of a amazing chimpanzee.
- [41:16]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, go on, do it, do it.
- [41:17]
Rory Stewart
No, no, no, I can't. I can do my gibbon.
- [41:19]
Alistair Campbell
You did do it before. You can do it again. You did it.
- [41:22]
Rory Stewart
I do my gibbon. My gibbon goes, okay, do you give it.
- [41:24]
Alistair Campbell
Anyway.
- [41:28]
Rory Stewart
Anyway, that's my gibbon.
- [41:29]
Alistair Campbell
If you can do a gibbon, why can't you do a chimpanzee?
- [41:31]
Rory Stewart
She was so good at it. I mean, she is much missed. Anyway, she was the first person to record what seemed to be a chimpanzee civil war in the 1970s. And at the time, people thought these things occurred only once every 500 years. In fact, chimpanzees seem to live surprisingly well together, despite their quite aggressive natures. But at this particular case, we've suddenly seen in Uganda a closely related chimpanzee group. So these people are cousins. What seems to have happened is that the elders who held them together died, and then the western group took on the central group in the most horrendous way. Murdering, killing, Infants, adults, in a terrible kind of ferocious battle of extermination. Over to you.
- [42:18]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I mean, you know a lot more about this than I do, but are we looking here at a metaphor? Is that why this story has become something that so many people have talked about?
- [42:27]
Rory Stewart
That's right. We're all supposed to stroke our chins and think this is a insight into humanity and human warfare and tribalism. Well, traditionally, we've always imagined that civil wars are often the products of human culture. And by human culture we mean human imaginations and ideas. You know, the idea of a nation, the idea of a flag, the idea of us and them, these quite sort of strange, arbitrary mental structures that we create. The US against Iran. But the odd thing is the chimpanzees, who don't seem to have those kinds of mental models, certainly don't have flags, don't have JCPOAs, appear to be engaging in murderous internecine warfare, which I think is raising some questions around that.
- [43:16]
Alistair Campbell
For those who are really interested in animal life, do check out an interview we did a couple of years ago now with Robert Sapolsky, who goes and lives with them. I guess this has been observed by human being, presumably, who's been living in this community while this civil war is going on. Like kind of animal war correspondent.
- [43:35]
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly like Sapolsky. Yeah. Watching this thing. Because chimpanzees, as you know, are enormous. I mean, they're much stronger than we are. They rip your arm off. And there's these great comments that come out. So the chief scientist has observed that the Eastern group seems to basically side with the central group, but be sitting it out maybe a little bit like Russia and China with Iran.
- [43:57]
Alistair Campbell
Good. Well, listen, let's call it a day there and see you. Well, I'll see you in Belgrade very shortly.
- [44:04]
Rory Stewart
See you in Belgrade. It's a great line. See you there. Bye bye.
- [44:14]
Norman Smith
Hello, it's Norman Peston from the Rest Is Money. I've just had the most gripping conversation with an economist, Nick Bloom from Stanford, who's published a very influential paper on the costs of leaving the European Union. He and his colleagues calculated that leaving the EU has cost us 8% of our national income, our GDP, that's 240 billion more than we spend on the NHS every single year. What's really striking is that his numbers are now the numbers being used by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, when she talks about the advantages of getting closer to the eu. So if you want to know how damaging Brexit has been and whether that 8% number is robust. Whether it's real. Join me for the latest episode of the Rest is Money.