535. The Ebola Outbreak and the British Far-Right’s Next Move

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics – "The Ebola Outbreak and the British Far-Right’s Next Move"

Episode 535 / Released: May 20, 2026 / Hosts: Alastair Campbell & Rory Stewart

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart dive into a turbulent week of global and domestic events: the high-profile Trump-Xi summit in China, the geopolitical manoeuvring around Putin’s visit to Beijing, the alarming resurgence of Ebola amid global health aid cuts, and the British far-right’s shift toward electoral politics. The hosts blend political insight with personal anecdotes and listener questions, offering sharp, at times impassioned discussion on the challenges facing democracy, public health, and social cohesion.

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Major Topics & Key Insights

1. The Trump-Xi Summit: Winners, Losers & Global Power Shifts

Timestamps: 02:13 – 13:33

• General Sentiment

  • Most listeners felt Xi Jinping "played" Trump, extracting political theatre and status without ceding ground (03:21, Campbell: “He was being played because he loves all that stuff. He loves all the children waving their flags…”).

• Significant Moments

  • Xi’s warning over Taiwan: “If we mishandle this issue, it will affect American-Chinese relations at every level.” (03:40, Campbell)
  • Xi’s statement: “Century long transformation is accelerating,” seen as a veiled declaration that China is overtaking the US (04:04, Campbell).

• Missed Opportunities

  • Despite high-stakes expectations, substantive outcomes on global issues like AI, climate, or public health didn’t materialize—a non-event highlighted by “what didn’t happen” (04:25, Stewart: “The coverage has been about what didn’t happen, but I think that’s very significant…”).

• Trump’s Style

  • Trump continued his idiosyncratic “friendship” pageantry, trying to flatter Xi and exaggerate successes, met with cold formality by the Chinese (09:32, Campbell: “Trump kept saying the whole time, he’s a great friend… Xi was having none of it.”).
  • Amusing quote: “He’s very, very tall, especially for this country, because they tend to be a little shorter,” (08:01, Trump, repeated by Campbell).

• Economic Underpinnings

  • Rory notes Trump’s substantial personal investments in Boeing, questioning the overlap of presidential advocacy and private gain (10:09, Stewart).

• Geopolitical Dynamics

  • Putin’s imminent arrival in Beijing is cast as a deliberate show that China, not the US, is now the global power hub (12:58, Campbell: “We had Trump last week, we’ve got Putin this week. We’ve had all those leaders I mentioned last week going. So I think they will have felt they got a lot more out of this than America.”).

Notable Quotes

• Campbell (03:40): “President Xi said something really tough about Taiwan… it will affect American Chinese relations at every level.”
• Stewart (04:25): “There’s this famous story… the dog that didn’t bark… the coverage has been about what didn’t happen…”
• Campbell (08:01): “He’s very, very tall, especially for this country… he’s trying to flatter him, but he’s basically just abusing the country.”

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2. Global Public Health: The Ebola Outbreak and Aid Cuts

Timestamps: 13:33 – 21:37

• Ebola Returns

  • The new Ebola outbreak is “very” serious, with a high mortality rate (15:21, Stewart: “Once you’ve contracted it, your mortality rate at the moment is about 50%, half a chance.”).
  • Campbell and Stewart stress that the dismantling of global health funding—especially recent US, UK, and German cuts—has weakened preparedness and response (13:58, Campbell).

• Firsthand Perspective

  • Rory recounts his role as UK Minister during the previous outbreak: “I sat with a nurse who very sadly contracted Ebola and was dying in front of me.” (14:28, Stewart).

• Global Consequences

  • Cuts to development and global health spending threaten not just Africa but the world, as unchecked outbreaks can quickly become global threats.

• Aid System Collapse

  • Campbell’s discussion with Carl Skau (World Food Programme) underscores the devastating ripple effects from US/UK aid cuts—Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and especially Gaza are highlighted as suffering gravely (17:08, Campbell).
  • Regional Gulf donors are unable to fill the gap due to economic hits from the ongoing Iran crisis (18:06, Stewart).

• Bigger Picture

  • It would take $13 billion annually to feed the world’s hungry—dwarfed by daily costs of regional wars, and dwarfed by billionaire net worth (20:23, Campbell: “Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions. I mean he could feed all the hungry people in the world…”).

Notable Quotes

• Stewart (15:33): “Global pandemics, along with AI, are probably the biggest threat for the next 20, 30 years…”
• Campbell (21:09): “We are taking from the hungry to feed only the starving.”

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3. The British Far-Right and Electoral Politics

Timestamps: 22:52 – 29:39

• Far-Right Evolution

  • Tommy Robinson openly urges followers to join right-wing parties ahead of 2029; the far right seeks legitimacy and influence in formal politics (22:52, listener question).

• Christian Nationalism

  • During recent marches, overt Christian symbols—crosses, Lord’s Prayer tweets—are used to frame anti-Muslim rhetoric (23:45–24:54, both hosts).
  • Campbell: “There is a sort of a streak of anti Islam in all of them. Well, more than a streak…”

• Farage, Reform UK, and Mainstream Politics

  • The lines between street activism and ballot-box politics are increasingly blurred, with some mainstream former Conservatives enticed to switch to Reform (27:41, Stewart: “Two thirds of Reform voters have a positive view of Rupert Lowe. 61%… like Tommy Robinson…”).

• Social Media Amplification

  • Elon Musk’s platform (X/Twitter) credited with turbocharging online hate and divisive narratives; allegations that social media is fueling division and radicalization (26:40, Campbell: “…the weaponization of hatred and division…”).

Notable Quotes

• Stewart (25:02): “All the leaders of the Church are expressing serious concern… horrified by this idea that you’re sort of using Christianity to chasers.”
• Campbell (26:40): “The whole platform that he’s turned into… is the weaponization of hatred and division.”

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4. On Community, History, and What Unites Britain

Timestamps: 29:39 – 36:01

• Listener Challenge: “What does community mean?”

  • Campbell calls for a community founded on respect, education, tolerance, and giving everyone “the possibility of making the most of every inch of every ounce of talent they’ve got.” (29:39)
  • Stewart: Expresses anger and shame at poverty, broken services, and retreat from global responsibility, calling for localism and “a positive sense of national pride.” (30:30)

• History and Identity

  • Discussion of positive, nuanced engagement with British history; rejecting the right’s claim of sole ownership over national heritage (32:18, Campbell: “One of the things I loathe about the right is the way that they think that they own all of that sense of, you know, the military and war and fighting and fighting for values.”).

• Social Division

  • Both hosts bemoan the rise in divisions, attributing much to social media-fueled polarization.

Notable Quotes

• Campbell (21:09): “We are taking from the hungry to feed only the starving.”
• Campbell (32:18): “One of the things I loathe about the right is the way that they think that they own all of that sense of… fighting for values.”
• Stewart (30:30): “We need to start with a sense of anger and shame at how bad things have got in Britain…”

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5. Demography, Division & the Social Media Experiment

Timestamps: 36:01 – 39:13

• Birth Rate Collapse

  • John Burn-Murdoch’s FT analysis ties rapid drops in birth rates worldwide to high-speed internet and smartphone adoption, not just economics or housing (36:01, Stewart).
  • Social media’s role in spiraling division and altering romantic/social interaction is highlighted (“As soon as people get on the Internet on their phone, they stop dating, stop going out, meeting anyone, stop having kids.” — Stewart, 36:57).

• Gender Divide

  • Young women skew more left-wing, young men more right-wing, with growing hostility between the two, amplified by online influencers.

• International Examples

  • The AfD in Germany blames “sexual deviation” for low birth rates (38:08, Campbell), a claim dismissed as unscientific by Stewart.
  • In China, one-third of young people now say they don’t want children, up from just 5% a decade earlier.

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Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “He’s very, very tall, especially for this country, because they tend to be a little shorter.” — Trump, quoted by Campbell (08:01)
• “We are taking from the hungry to feed only the starving.” — Carl Skau, quoted by Campbell (21:09)
• “The weaponization of hatred and division… this is where I kind of have to have a bit of difficulty with the Gary Stevenson point… You can’t not confront this.” — Campbell (26:40)
• “Once you’ve contracted [Ebola], your mortality rate at the moment is about 50%, half a chance.” — Stewart (15:21)
• “As soon as people get on the Internet on their phone, they stop dating, stop going out, meeting anyone, stop having kids.” — Stewart (36:57)

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Episode Structure & Timestamps

• 02:13 – US/China Summit: Winners, Losers, and Geopolitical Theatre
• 13:33 – The New Ebola Outbreak & The Impact of Health Aid Cuts
• 22:52 – The British Far-Right’s Strategic Entry into Electoral Politics
• 29:39 – Defining Community & Britain’s Dividing Lines
• 36:01 – Demography Crisis: Social Media, Dating, and the Birth Rate Freefall

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Tone & Style

The conversation is frank, sharp, and at times darkly humorous. Both hosts maintain a sense of urgency—at times, even exasperation—about the “state of the world,” but continually reference practical experience, firsthand stories, and data points. Their interplay features mutual challenge, gentle ribbing, and a shared belief in the necessity of open disagreement.

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For Further Reflection

This episode offers a panoramic, yet personal view of global frictions and local anxieties as Britain approaches critical elections and the world faces persistent instability. Listeners are left with pointed questions: Where should political energies be focused? Who is responsible for international (and domestic) collective good? And can the tide of social division—accelerated by technology—be turned?

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For more in-depth analysis and bonus content, the hosts encourage joining the podcast’s Plus offering.

Transcript

[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

[Rory Stewart]

how serious is the new Ebola outbreak?

[Alistair Campbell]

The answer is very and the cuts to US Global health funding are probably part of the reason why this is happening now.

[Rory Stewart]

Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions. I mean, he could feed all the hungry people in the world, especially as

[Alistair Campbell]

he was the one who cut USAID in the first place. One of my favorite quotes of the whole thing. He's trying to flatter him, but he's basically just abusing the country. Trump said he's very, very tall, especially for this country because they tend to be a little shorter. As we speak, Putin is on his way to Beijing. Yeah, his 40th meeting.

[Rory Stewart]

And that'll be very interesting. Very interesting watching that.

[Alistair Campbell]

This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

[Rory Stewart]

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[Alistair Campbell]

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[Rory Stewart]

Switch to Fuse Energy's tracker [e-mail] politics and use code politics to get a free trip plus subscription.

[Alistair Campbell]

Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions.

[Rory Stewart]

Foreign. Welcome to Rest Politics Question Time with

[Alistair Campbell]

me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, we managed to get through the whole of the main episode without mentioning DJ Trump. But we're not going to succeed this time.

[Rory Stewart]

No, we're not. So we're going to do. We're going to do us China to follow up on the episode we did, what actually happened in that summit, what came out of it? What does it mean about the new world? We're going to look at Ebola outbreak and what that means for the world. We're going to look at the question of the far right in Britain. And we've got a rather interesting question about communities. So a lot of things to get through. So, Alistair, starting on this, and it'd be interesting whether you think we got what we got right, what we got wrong. But Evie's asked, are Xi and Putin playing Trump and Roy not? Rory has said, has Trump's visit to China shown that China has trumped the USA and the USA is now subordinate to China on the world stage?

[Alistair Campbell]

It's interesting how those questions, I think, reflect most of the questions that came in about this, which suggests that most of our listeners and viewers do think that if there was a winner or loser, then Xi was the winner and Trump was the loser. Look, I thought it was fascinating to watch. I really did. And I've got to obviously try to park my Trump derangement syndrome.

[Rory Stewart]

And before the tds, give us a sense what it looked like and felt like in there.

[Alistair Campbell]

What stood out to me was to go to, to Evie's point, I did feel that he was being played because he loves all that stuff. He loves all the children waving their flags. As he came off the plane, the MAGA crowd was saying, this is a bigger reception than Obama got when he went there. I'll tell you what I found the most interesting thing was that right at the top, President Xi said something really tough about Taiwan. He basically said, if we get this right, that would be great for relations. If we mishandle this issue, it will affect American Chinese relations at every level. And then the other thing I thought was stunning was when he basically said it was this one phrase. I mean, in English on the translation, it came over in five words and it said, century long transformation is accelerating. And what that said to me, I'm not a China expert, but what it said to me was this was him to Donald Trump's face saying, we are overtaking you.

[Rory Stewart]

It's an amazing moment. I was struck by the fact that there's this famous story and detective stories. You remember the dog that didn't bark? So the coverage has been about what didn't happen, but I think that's very significant. So we go back the last 20 years has really been about America and China pumping up for a new Cold War started with Obama talking about pivot towards Asia. During Trump won, we had his Secretary of State, who we've interviewed, Mike Pompeo, lacerating China as a dictatorship.

[Alistair Campbell]

And then actually even Marco Rubio does the same. Did the same.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. And even Biden.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yep.

[Rory Stewart]

You'll remember when we were recording podcasts, some of the very Tense meetings that Jake Sullivan was holding with his Chinese counterpart and Biden not visiting China and skirting around the edge of each other at Bali and trying to read this. So you would have expected until this year one of two things. Either that narrative, which is the narrative that Rubio was pushing, Elbridge Colby was pushing who's the deputy secretary of defense. And he's written a whole book about this, which is how is this used to really put China back in its box? So their dream would be, number one, you reinforce deterrence on Taiwan. You really signal to China, we've got Taiwan's back, we've got the back of Japan and South Korea and all of the US Military is concentrating there, not in the Gulf, not in the Middle east, not in Europe. It's all there. Second thing, you'd probably lean very, very hard into unequal balance on trade. So let's say you really felt as many, many people do, and particularly Republican voters, China's hollowed out American industry, cost millions of American jobs because they've unw, unfairly manipulated their currency, subsidized their industries, stolen our intellectual property. This is a summit in which you really stick it to China on that or you do something else, which is you do the G2 model. The G2 model says the rest of the world doesn't really matter now. We're 50% of the world economy. China, which was smaller, smaller than the British economy in 2004, it's now seven times larger than us. So it is a G2 setup in this world. So you might say, okay, let's sort out the world's issues. We're going to sort out AI safety, we're going to come up with agreements on global development, global trade.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's all the stuff we said they might do.

[Rory Stewart]

Environment, climate, whatever you might do. None of that happened. But what's interesting for me is that it could have been worse, right? Trump, I mean, I don't know whether he gets a cookie for this, but he didn't really say very much about Taiwan, which was a, a turn up for the books because pretty much anything he said about Taiwan would have gone wrong. And the summit ended really with these two big superpowers circling around each other. A bit suspicious, but they haven't upped the ante either in trade wars or Cold war.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. Should tell listeners we've interviewed this week, Rahm Emanuel, who was Barack Obama's chief of staff, and he's now putting his toe pretty deep into the water to try and become the next American president. He's still very hard over on China. We've also had quite a lot of feedback that we weren't hard over enough. Very, very interesting how we sort of quite liked him, but our team really, really didn't. So I'd be fascinated what listeners and viewers think. They're two. When you said, what was it like to sort of watch them? They're two such different people, but actually they've got similarities. One of my favorite favorite quotes of the whole thing was Trump said this. He said, he's very, very tall, especially for this country. He's standing there, by the way. He's very, very tall, especially for this country, because they tend to be a little shorter, which is a kind of. He's trying to flatter him, but he's basically just abusing the country in his own sort of his own pre racist world.

[Rory Stewart]

Do you know that the height of Chinese teenagers has increased something like 5 inches? And a lot of this is to do. You know, I don't want to turn this even more into a health podcast, but it's almost entirely about protein. The same happened in Japan after the war. Incredible expansion height. I was born in Hong Kong and my parents lived in Hong Kong till 1997. And when my mother started teaching at Hong Kong University. My mother's very short, about 5 foot 2, 3, she was taller than a lot of her students. By the time she left, she was dwarfed by her students. Incredible what protein does.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, anyway, he's very, very tall. I was also struck by how absolutely exquisite President Xi's suits were.

[Rory Stewart]

Is that what he noticed?

[Alistair Campbell]

Oh, I mean, they cost a fortune. They were really, really smart. Trump's. Because their styles are so different. Trump goes in. If you remember the last summit when they first met, he said, I'd give the meeting 12 out of 10. We know he struggles with maths, right? But 12 out of 10 isn't a thing, really. This one. He went in saying the first thing that's gonna happen, he's gonna give me a big hug. Well, he didn't give him. It was pretty cold. And so you have this situation, particularly as after the summit ended, Trump gets on airlines.

[Rory Stewart]

You remember that famous fraternal embrace that Brezhnev used to give these German leaders where they'd kiss them on the lips and they said, there's nothing like that.

[Alistair Campbell]

There was nothing like that. But Trump kept saying the whole time, he's a great friend. He's become a great friend. I get a lot of trouble for saying he's a great friend. He said, all this stuff, he was really trying to lay it on and Xi was having none of it. And then when they got to the briefings after the whole thing, one of the Chinese Foreign Ministry guy was asked whether they were friends, as Trump kept saying, and his reply was the two sides exchanged views on major issues. So Trump gets on the plane and they were all saying, well that was all a bit disappointing, wasn't it Mr. President? He was amazing. The deals on this and Boeing, Boeing shares fell, by the way, because the expectations were not good.

[Rory Stewart]

Incidentally, just sort of footnote here. Trump has just disclosed his financial investments. Oh, I know he's a big investor in Boeing. You hear people in the newspapers speaking on behalf of Boeing saying, if you want to make President Trump happ buy Boeing, he's a big shareholder in Boeing. He goes around the world selling Boeing airplanes and he's a big shareholder in Boeing.

[Alistair Campbell]

He's also done more trades since becoming President than every president in history.

[Rory Stewart]

Anyway, so there it was. So he went off, bought lots of Boeing shares. I'm going to sell lots of Boeings and the Boeing share price will go up and I'll make lots of money.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, in fact it went down because he oversold how many he was going to sell and they didn't buy quite as many. He gets on the plane and says they've done all these amazing deals. So then Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister is asked about all these amazing deals and his answer is this. We're continuing to implement all the consensus reached in earlier consultations, agreeing to establish a Board of Trade and a Board of investment, addressing each other's concerns over market access and advancing the expansion of two way trade under a reciprocal tariff reduction framework.

[Rory Stewart]

Blimey. So in an age of kind of authenticity, populism and sound bites, basically every quote you're giving me from the Chinese government sounds like some 1990s policy paper.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. But they're both saying no bullshit. Yeah, they both say bullshit. And here's the other thing. Evie's question, are Xi and Putin playing Trump as we speak? Putin is on his way to Beijing. Yeah, his 40th meeting.

[Rory Stewart]

And that'll be very interesting. 40th meeting, very interesting.

[Alistair Campbell]

Watching that, I thought the other really interesting thing about, and it was so deliberate, he was doing it so deliberately was when he talked about all the differences between them. But he then said, you know, the key question is, can we, China and us, can we overcome the so called Thucydides trap? And this again I think was a way of saying we're overtaking you because the Thucydides trap, which was made famous by a book by a guy called Graham Allison. Graham Allison, whose book was called Destined for War. And his thesis is that whenever there has been a rising power approaching an established power, a hegemony that inevitably ends in war, and he studied 16 situations like that, 12 of them ended in war.

[Rory Stewart]

So Graham Allison actually was a colleague of mine at Harvard. I know him quite well. And he is pretty amazing because he defines these ideas. And one of the great tricks actually, in being somebody working on government is he came up with the phrase Thucydides trap. And now you can see Xi Jinping using it. And his great friend and colleague Joe Nye came up with the phrase soft power. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a great trick. And you've got to get there with perseverance.

[Alistair Campbell]

It's not getting there very quickly, is it? He's now three years old.

[Rory Stewart]

Xi Jinping hasn't done it yet.

[Alistair Campbell]

I mean, Xi Jinping, he is perseverant.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

I mean, he just. He's just. You keep going. So I think that was him saying, as he was saying with the transformation, by the way, which he said the first time he said that concept of the acceleration was in a meeting in Moscow two years ago with Putin. So I think what he's saying, and I actually think the timing of Putin's visit is deliberate. It's basically saying the state media today in China is saying, this shows that we are now the center of global power. We had Trump last week, we've got Putin this week. We've had all those leaders I mentioned last week going. So I think they will have felt they got a lot more out of this than America.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, well, look, we talked about the fact that they didn't talk about the big global issues, global development, Africa, climate, AI, safety. And one issue they didn't talk about was global public health. So we've had a question from Ezra Helen, and this relates exactly to this. How serious is the new Ebola outbreak? Should we be worried about it spreading beyond Africa, especially with the cuts to US Global health funding?

[Alistair Campbell]

Very good question. The answer is very. And yes. And the cuts to US Global health funding are probably part of the reason why this is happening now.

[Rory Stewart]

Big plug, as always, for leading and people who aren't listening to the back catalogue of leading, as Will Gawande has done some wonderful stuff on this recently. He was the USAID deputy administrator who led on global health. This is something means a lot to me because I was the Minister, during the last big ebola outbreak about 10 years ago.

[Alistair Campbell]

DFID. DFID, yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

And when that happened 10 years ago, I got together in Paris immediately with Mark Green, who was the head of usaid. We went for a walk over that bridge with all the padlocks on it in the margins of a. I think it was a G7 development analysis meeting. And we worked out funding, and I think we put in an extra 100 million. USAID put in an extra 100 million. Why does it matter? It matters because that allowed us to fund protective equipment, getting the nurses to the front line, doing the testing, developing the vaccination. I then went out to Eastern drc. I went into these Ebola centers. I sat with a nurse who very sadly contracted Ebola and was dying in front of me. I saw children whose parents were in the. The center dying. We were washing ourselves in this very, very intense way to try to make sure there was no fluids of any sort, because.

[Alistair Campbell]

Is it through fluid that you get it?

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah. And once you've contracted it, your mortality rate at the Moment is about 50%, half a chance. They're very different to Covid.

[Alistair Campbell]

So when you were with the nurse who had it, what was the.

[Rory Stewart]

There was a plastic sheet between me and him.

[Alistair Campbell]

Right.

[Rory Stewart]

We were talking through a plastic sheet. He was very, very courageous to see talking to me. And he probably had two days to live. So it's something where. And people will hear this, paradoxically, because it's so lethal, it doesn't spread quite as easily as things like Covid, because so many of the carriers are killed before they can pass it on. But the bigger issue is that global pandemics are, along with AI, probably the biggest threat for the next 20, 30 years that we need to worry about, and dismantling all the money in the global health architecture that stops not just this outbreak of Ebola, but other forms of pandemic coming out of poor developing countries, overwhelming their health systems, overwhelming their borders, and ultimately getting to Britain.

[Alistair Campbell]

But if you go back to our previous discussion about the summit, Trump and Xi, given that it's not that long ago since COVID and given Trump at the time was obsessed with the, you know, the China element of COVID you'd have thought that might have been part of the discussion. What have you learned? Have you studied it? What more can we say? But they're just. Because it's not serious.

[Rory Stewart]

It's so weird because even for Britain or Germany, if you're looking for a type of investment in international development where you can Prove that there's a national interest. You're not just inverted commas wasting money, giving to people in another country, but you're actually protecting yourself. Global health is the key example. You spend on the border between Uganda and eastern drc, and you are less likely to end up with a border in Britain. I don't understand why people are not making these arguments. I don't understand why we're cutting our global health funding.

[Alistair Campbell]

I had a meeting this morning with a guy, a Swedish guy, called Carl Skau, who is the COO of the World Food Program. And this doesn't relate specifically to Ebola, but he was explaining what he has already seen about the consequences of usaid, uk, dfid, German, other countries that have cut their defense spending. He literally got back to yesterday from Afghanistan. He was saying they've had an earthquake, they've had two floods, they've got 2.5 million refugees that have come back from Pakistan and Iran. USAID has cut all, every single penny of funding to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. Okay, he was talking about Gaza. He said, basically in Gaza, they are now managing World Food Program, is managing to get food in, but that is all that's going in.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, can I just interrupt then? Because just to make the problem worse, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Gaza, when USAID and DFID took its money out, the only people really who stepped up in significant amounts for that were the Gulf, Qatar, Saudi, uae, And their economies are now being crippled by the Iran blockade and this war that Trump and Israel have launched on Iran and Iran's response, which has been attacking them and closing their exports and destroying their economies. So the backup, the Plan B, which was to get wealthy Gulf countries to step up and handle these problems, that's foreign side, because those wealthy Gulf countries are now freezing their funding and are struggling to make their payments because they're not getting the income in.

[Alistair Campbell]

That's absolutely right. He said there are four key areas, themes that are directly related to making their life much more difficult as a result. Specifically, we'll come back to the cuts, but the Iran war. The first is they're having to step up their operations in Lebanon and to some extent Gaza as well. The second is the cost of operations have gone up 25% because of the rise in the oil price. There are currently 300 million acutely hungry in the world. And he said if the oil price stays above $100 for any considerable period of time, they've calculated another 45 million will be pushed into acute hunger. And his final point is fertilizer. All of Africa's fertilizer comes through the Straits of Hormuz. So that's going to put prices up and supply down, I think.

[Rory Stewart]

Huge credit to the people who are desperately trying to fill some of these gaps when these governments are falling aside and when this chaos is happening. Huge credit to governments like Qatar, which is still trying to support communities in these places. Huge credit also to the private philanthropists. I mean, I think it's wonderful that you do have private individuals being unbelievably generous, stepping in where governments are falling aside. But it can't carry it. You can't deal with Ebola on this basis. You can't deal with vaccinating people. You can't deal with malaria bed nets. You can't deal with a really big multi billion dollar things.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, hold on. Some of these guys, the guys you talk about in your AI series, they could. I mean this. Carl said it would take $13 billion to feed the hungry of the world today. And the war in Iran is costing 2 billion a day.

[Rory Stewart]

So stop the war in Iran. And Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions. I mean he could feed all the hungry people in the world and it would be a rounding era and it would be nice to see him do it. So Elon, if you're listening, especially as

[Alistair Campbell]

he was the one who cut USAID in the first place.

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. If you're listening, step up. I know you're very, very anxious about global population collapse. Fantastic opportunity to support some of the countries in the world that have the strongest population growth and maybe invite them to the United States where they can provide that labor that you're so worried about.

[Alistair Campbell]

I can see the sincerity with which you're putting that final word for me on Carl. He said this, this thing which really kind of hit home to me. He said we have been cut. And by the way, UK hasn't got a great story to tell here. The funding from the UK to the World Food Program has been cut from 600 million to 200 million. That's 2/3 gone. Yeah, and he said he put together all the big countries that have pulled back. We've been cut to the bone. And he said this. We are taking from the Hungary to feed only the starving.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, let's take a break. I'm back from the break. This episode is sponsored by Starling, the bank that helps you organize your money, build great habits and stay in control of your spending. Plenty of us have strong opinions on how to run the country. But knowing how to manage your own day to Day can be more of a challenge, especially when it comes to being good with money. That kind of self assured, self governance could start with just checking your balance daily. And yes, it can feel like opening the books at the treasury, but eventually you'll feel like the Chancellor of your own ideal Exchequer.

[Alistair Campbell]

Of course you'll want to examine the data around your balance. For that there are tools like Starling's Spending Intelligence. It's an AI powered search bar within Starling Current accounts where you can ask a question about your spending habits and get an instant answer in. App helps deepen your knowledge and make more informed money decisions.

[Rory Stewart]

A bit like having a select committee in your wallet.

[Alistair Campbell]

Search Starling bank to find out more good with money starts here. Welcome back to the Reciprocal Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

[Rory Stewart]

And with me Rory Stewart.

[Alistair Campbell]

Rory somebody here with a wonderful name, Josh Prose, as opposed to Josh Poetry. At the Unite the Kingdom rally over the weekend, Tommy Robinson, AKA Stephen Yaxley Lennon explicitly told his supporters to join right wing political parties ahead of the 2029 election. Given recent revelations about Nigel Farage's funding and Reform UK's growing profile, how concerned should mainstream politics be about far right street movements transitioning into the ballot box?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I think the first thing is that one should be disturbed and disturbed by the number of people that are supporting them. I mean, I was out, as many other people will have been in London, and I saw the edge of both marches and I saw a really impressive police deployment. That was not an easy thing. Right. You've got a Nakba march happening on one side, you've got Tommy Robinson's march happening on the other. That could have been really horrible.

[Alistair Campbell]

How close were they?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, one lot were mostly around when I saw them around the edge of Hyde Park. The other lot were around Trafalgar Square. So I suppose the police were keeping a distance between the two. But anyway, it was impressive, impressive policing, but it's pretty scary. I mean, yes, the numbers were down, but there was all this business, which I guess you wouldn't find. I'd actually, sorry, correct me if I'm wrong, one of the things that kept happening is people kept picking up wooden crosses and Tommy Robinson sent out a tweet with the Lord's Prayer in it. So this is all this kind of leaning into Christian nationalism. Would Le Pen's party or the AFD be going so strong on Christian symbolism?

[Alistair Campbell]

I've not seen it. I think I expect some of it will.

[Rory Stewart]

I mean, in France, this is laiste, right. So they wouldn't be Going to.

[Alistair Campbell]

You'd have thought not, but they might do it in terms. Because, I mean, there is a sort of a streak of anti Islam in all of them. Well, more than a streak of anti Islam. And so it was very, very deliberate. I mean, I didn't go to the march, but I was watching some of the coverage. There were these piles, you know, when you go to Stop the War march or something, the piles of black arts. There were piles of crosses.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

Now, I don't see Tommy Robinson as being a very Christian person in terms of the way he looks at other people and the way he conducts himself.

[Rory Stewart]

One of the things that's so interesting is, of course, all the leaders of the Church are expressing serious concern. I mean, we saw the Pope expressing concern, but you also, most of the Church of England clergymen are horrified by this idea that you're sort of using Christianity to. To chasers. I also again talked to people who had relatives on the march and again, the narrative was, oh, it's all very friendly, they're very normal people. Well, maybe, but the people who were speaking on the stage are far from normal. Some people were banned from coming in. But the kind of people he's trying to get speaking are people who claim that Islam is a supremacist religion trying to wipe us all out. There's a particular guy, in fact, wasn't on this much, but who they love retweeting, who's a great inspiration to Elon Musk, who claims that of the 2 billion Muslims in the world, hundreds of millions of them are engaged in a genocidal attempt to try to wipe out the rest of us. Many of them talking about expelling Muslims, many of them talking about banning non Christian places of worship. A lot of this story which we hear again and again on Twitter, Elon Musk's civil war in Britain is inevitable. And when he said that, it got literally millions of retweets and likes. And here's my final point. 26% of UK voters have a positive view of that march. And 50% of men aged 25 to 34 have a positive view of what's going on. I was very troubled. I do not like the vision of a bunch of people marching with crosses, swaggering around in the central London, going to hear speakers who want to expel all the Muslims.

[Alistair Campbell]

The reason why Elon Musk is so important is because his whole platform that he's turned into, what he's done with X is the weaponization of hatred and division. And you see a Lot of that. And of course you will get people saying, well, it's because I'm worried about this, I'm worried about that. This is where I kind of have to have a bit of difficulty with the Gary Stevenson point that we talked about on the main podcast is that you can't not confront this. You can't just pretend that it's part of a. Well, the country's not really working very well. This goes way beyond that. People like Yaxley, Lenin, they go way beyond that. And of course, the whole kind of infrastructure that's developing on the right of British politics is so interesting because he didn't just say get involved with Restore or Advance, Rupert Lowe and Ben Nabib's parties. He said, think about joining reform or the Conservative Party. So they're lumping it all in together on the right as you have to hate everybody else to the left of you.

[Rory Stewart]

And one of the very disturbing things for me, as somebody who comes from the Conservative Party and are now seeing a lot of Conservative voters becoming reform voters, I was talking to a former colleague of mine this morning on the phone who is a former mp, saying on no account am I to quote him, but he would be tempted to vote for reform if he thought it would keep Labour out. Two thirds of reform voters have a positive view of Rupert Lowe. 61% of Reform voters like Tommy Robinson, like Tommy Robinson. And 54% of them think non white British citizens born abroad should be forced to leave the uk. That's more than half of reform voters. So this story that we're getting out of moderate remain voting Tories, that this is just the Tory Party, it's all fine, there's no problem, they can just go across to reform. They're joining a party where more than half the members think Tommy Robinson's a good thing and think that non white British people should be made to leave the UK who are not born in the UK anyway. So huge thank you to Evan, who did a lot of research on it, but also hope not Hate, which has done quite an interesting report on the British far right from which quite a lot of these figures have been extracted. Now, final question maybe from me, or final serious question, which comes from Brendan Cox. Brendan Cox was married to Jo Cox, my colleague in Parliament, who was horribly murdered just in the lead up to the Brexit referendum and whose sister, Kim Ledbetter is now in Parliament, has been leading all the stuff and her sister dying. Brennan Cox is running an initiative with Oxford University where he's asking people to record 60 seconds on what they think about community, which is then going to be fed into a large AI model about which more later. And he's asked us to do it. So it's a bit unfair to you because you've had no prep, but gone. Give us 60 seconds on what you think about community. I've got my timer up. Ready.

[Alistair Campbell]

As you know, Rory, I am a. For an old man, 69 next week. I am a great believer in young people in this country. So I want to live in a country where we respect young people and where young people respect each other. And I think that starts by teaching values in schools, by teaching history in the context of how we have become the country that we are and being proud of that without feeling that we have to own every mistake in our past as well. So I want to live in a community where everybody is well educated, where everybody is taught values of tolerance and respect, and where everybody feels that there is a possibility of them making the most of every inch of every ounce of talent they've got.

[Rory Stewart]

So just on your minute, alistair. Here's my 58 seconds. So, firstly, I think we need to start with a sense of anger and shame at how bad things have got in Britain. We need to accept that we have levels of poverty which are completely unjustifiable in the country as wealthy as this, that the situation in our prisons with the homeless is solvable by any government that wanted to do it, that our retreat from international development assistance is a complete betrayal of the world. We need to deliver decent functioning services. And that also involves radicalism. That will mean cuts to welfare. That will mean, unfortunately, some civil servants having to lose their jobs. That will mean very radical reforms. It will mean localism driven by figures like Andy Burnin. And it's going to build towards a positive vision where we know each other, we share values, and we have a positive sense of national pride.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, okay. Was that bang on a minute?

[Rory Stewart]

That was bang on a minute, yeah. It got a bit rushed at the end.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, okay, so the history point I thought was interesting. I mean, one of the things that I think reform voters sense is they worry that, I don't know, labor elite living in London doesn't really resonate with the kind of history that they care about. And, I mean, it's striking. David Cameron asked what his favorite movie was, said it was Zulu. And clearly quite a lot of people who are watching, who are conservative reform voters, love watching Where Eagles Dare or the Battle of Britain and this kind of stuff.

[Alistair Campbell]

What was yours?

[Rory Stewart]

I love really cheesy Action films. I love things like Gladiator. I think it's really cool. Yeah, I think it's really cool. Gladiator. That's really cool. Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

Mine's Lady Sings the Blues.

[Rory Stewart]

Lady Sings the Blues? Yeah. I thought he was gonna say some weird Japanese black and white 1950s thing. Do you think there is a question around how you tell a positive sense of history, you know, what replaces. If you're Andy Burn, you're going to be like quietly patriotic, appealing to working class vote. What do you do with stories about the Second World War, which after all look pretty recent. You know, our parents, you know, our fathers were alive as adults during that time. Do you have to abandon that entirely? Can you talk about that now?

[Alistair Campbell]

Definitely not, no. One of the things I loathe about the right is the way that they've. They think that they own all of that sense of, you know, the military and war and fighting and fighting for values. What I don't like about the debate about history is this sense that, you know, we have to. The statues thing sort of brought this home. You know, we have to, we have to apologize. We shouldn't necessarily apologize, but nor should we pretend that everything's been perfect, that we've always been this perfect country. And this thing about make Britain great again is all about going back to something that we've allegedly lost. Why do I would I define myself as progressive rather than conservative? Because you want to progress, you want to improve from everything that's gone before. So, no, I think history is incredibly important. So I don't know really why. I mean, you threw the question at me. I had no idea it was coming. So I thought I did quite well for my 60 minutes. If I had a few minutes, Roy, I'd have made it much better.

[Rory Stewart]

You would have done better, yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

60 seconds. I thought you were a bit policy heavy.

[Rory Stewart]

It's a bit party.

[Alistair Campbell]

So what's happening? Sanjay Javid explained it really well this morning. He's involved in this with Brendan Cox, is that you record a 60 second voice note saying what you want your community to feel like to be, etc.

[Rory Stewart]

Hopefully with a bit more preparation than you and me.

[Alistair Campbell]

With more preparation, you can even write it and it then goes into some sort of amazing AI thing and out of that will come a kind of assessment of what people mean by community. And if you want to take part, which we encourage you all to do, then just go to the link in the episode description and it's really interesting.

[Rory Stewart]

Again, I keep plugging back, leading, but Audrey Tang who was the AI minister in Taiwan, used a lot of AI to do government and consultations, and it's been done at a local level at American towns by mez. I think we may find that actually it produces surprisingly interesting things, not boiled down, platitudes, but actually, I'm quite confident that these models will produce things which might be quite powerful for politicians.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, good. And by the way, we're coming up

[Rory Stewart]

to the 10th anniversary.

[Alistair Campbell]

10th anniversary. Because we're also coming up to the 10th anniversary of the referendum, which is why. Sorry to sort of keep poking Nigel Farage. I thought it was disgusting when he was arguing that his five million pounds was given for his security, when he said he's been. He's the most attacked politician in the uk. Right. Jo Cox was attacked to the point of death. David Amos was attacked to the point of death. So I'll just leave that there. But the. So. So what Jo Cox's politics is all about and what Kim is trying to do and what Brendan is trying to do is this sense that there's more that unites us than divides us. So I think, I guess that's the big point. Where do we find the things that unite us? So on the radio this morning, when I was heading into the studio, they were interviewing people somewhere about, you know, whether we can unite, whether we feel more divided. I can't believe that every single person they spoke to said yes to that question, but every single person that was on said yes to that.

[Rory Stewart]

So we're more united, we're more divided, we're more divided, we're more divided.

[Alistair Campbell]

There's more hate.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, it is, it's just. But part of it is social media, so we should lean into this a bit more. But. So question from Jenny, which I'm going to use for a massive tilt to link what you just said to what I want to talk about. About. She said, why don't you talk more about demography and birth rates? There was an amazing article by John Burns Murdoch in the FT who does this stuff on data, and he was looking at the collapse in birth rates. I was teasing Elon Musk about this before the break, but one of the big questions is, why are birth rates collapsing all over the world? Often in some countries, we're down to children having, on average, a quarter of a child. Whole populations are vanishing. South Korea, Japan's collapsing and there are big ideas. Is it affordability? People can't afford to set up a home. And of course, what he points out is that can't really explain it because it's happened so quickly. So here's the key data point. If you compare how quickly you get 4G and then 5G coverage and the Internet and connects it to falling birth rates, there is a direct correlation. As soon as people get on the Internet on their phone, they stop dating, stop going out, meeting anyone, stop having kids.

[Alistair Campbell]

I saw the whole thing about, I thought people were dating all the time by using that.

[Rory Stewart]

No, all the data suggests that actually what you're doing is you're sitting on your phone, scrolling around when you could be going out, socializing, going on dates, meeting new people and getting new friends. And it's really interesting because it's too sudden, the collapse in childbearing to have anything to do with long term socioeconomic causes. It's one of the other things for which this machine should be blamed. Yeah, and polarization, obviously, which is where you began, is the most dramatic example of talk because these are algorithms of division. They get us all going by winding us up. So we're all seeing images of people picking up crosses, marching on Trafalgar Square. And we're either picking it up because we love it or we hate it, but it's polarizing us. And the division between young women and young men which is exploding around the world. One other reason apparently why they're not dating is young women are increasingly left wing. Young men are increasingly right wing. And it's driven by what they see on their.

[Alistair Campbell]

A lot of these sort of, you know, masculine influences, so called. They are driving men to hate women. You know, misogyny is on the rise in part because that thing. You're absolutely right by the way. We're going to look back on this as one of the worst social experiments of all time. Yeah, just. I'll just explain to you the AFD in Germany, yeah. They say that the low birth rate has been caused by sexual deviation and non reproductive lifestyles. That is why they intend to ban gay pride flags. So there you go.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, yeah. Well, that tells you a lot about the AfD. There is incidentally no empirical data whatsoever to back that up in any way.

[Alistair Campbell]

China, China's birth rate is a real problem. Famously they had the one child policy and then they realized the birth rate was a problem. So they then said you can have more children, but it's not happening. And 32% of Chinese people aged 18 to 24, that's one in three say they have no desire to have children. In 2012 it was 5%.

[Rory Stewart]

So there we are. Okay, that's it.

[Alistair Campbell]

Right so when was the.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, exactly what's changed from 2012 to 2026? It's not. That's a very short period of time. Historically, yes, there are big six economic things, but a change that rapid has to be about social media and technology. Well, Alistair, listen, we've covered a lot today as usual. We've done China and sea. We didn't get on to Russia, Ukraine, which I think we should talk about next week, but we've done the China Xi Jinping Trump visit, we've done Ebola, World Health Organization funding, we've done community, we've done social media and demographic birth rates. Thank you very much indeed.

[Alistair Campbell]

Can I just read out though the question that I've only just noticed, but maybe we can come to next week when we talk about Russia and Ukraine. Matthew Trip plus member from Billingham. I recently watched a documentary that Alistair feature. It was a clip of Tony Blair and Alistair meeting Putin. And I saw that Alistair shook his hand, questioned both to Rory the Tory and to Alistair, who is the most evil person you've shook hands with. Both. Think about that.

[Rory Stewart]

We'll both think about that. Thanks. Well, thank you very much. See you soon.

[Alistair Campbell]

See you soon.

[Rory Stewart]

Bye bye. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].