558. The 'Cockroach' Uprising and Should We Stop Data Centres?

Summary

The Rest Is Politics — Episode 558: The 'Cockroach' Uprising and Should We Stop Data Centres?
July 29, 2026
Hosts: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart delve into two headline-grabbing international stories—mass student-led protests in India dubbed "The Cockroach Uprising," and the politics and environmental consequences of data center expansion in the UK and globally. The conversation spans themes of political accountability, youth unrest, the power of social media, demography, authoritarianism, and the paradox of technological progress versus environmental emergency. The episode is a lively blend of analysis, debate, and wit, exemplifying the duo's trademark "disagreeing agreeably" approach.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The “Cockroach” Protests in India

[03:12–18:45]

• Background:

  • Protests erupted after leaks in medical examination results forced over 2 million to retake exams, leading to widespread outrage and at least 21 student suicides.
  • A chief justice compared unemployed youth to "cockroaches," provoking a unifying, grassroots movement.
  • For the first time in Modi’s 12-year tenure, mass protest led to the resignation of a government minister.

• Nature of the Protests:

  • Rory Stewart: Compares recent protests to past ones (e.g., against the Citizenship Amendment Act), noting the new movement is "much more socially diverse... and much funnier. Very, very rude social media stuff." [05:03]
  • Use of clever memes and Instagram posts, e.g., "My tampon is more leak proof than the Ministry of Education."
    "There are real, working-class people out there taking on the police at half past two in the morning who are not frightened by the surveillance state." [05:23]
  • Social media shifted the narrative—videos of police violence, quick-witted jokes, and slogans made it harder for authorities to dismiss protestors as "elite liberals."

• Demographic Challenge:

  • Median age in India is just 29, much younger than in China, the UK, or the US.
  • Enormous graduate unemployment; 10 million people applied for 35,000 railway jobs.
  • "Demography has been the big card that India thought it had to play against China... but most of the younger ones are not finding work." — Campbell [08:14]

• Modi’s Vulnerability:

  • Rising youth unemployment, government control of media, social media backlash—even with 110 million Instagram followers, Modi faced unprecedented public mockery.
  • "For the first time, his social media campaign isn’t working… when he posted, people were really able to rip into him and tease him.” — Stewart [13:54]
  • “This might be the beginnings of a sort of Bangladesh style moment.” — Stewart [12:17]

• Political Dynamics:

  • Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), founded by Mr. Dipke, casts itself as a movement without elitist overtones—rejecting Urdu poetry slogans for humor and simplicity; repurposing BJP’s own nationalist chants.

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2. Saudi Nuclear Policy and Proliferation Concerns

[19:00–25:38]

• New US-Saudi Uranium Deal:

  • The agreement for domestic uranium enrichment is seen as a potential path to nuclear weapons, raising concerns over regional proliferation.
  • "Why do the Saudis want to enrich uranium? ... It’s partly about giving you optionality to build a nuclear weapon." — Stewart [21:05]
  • Growing perception that the US security umbrella is weakening; technology is easier to access via China if the US blocks access.

• Breakdown of International Order:

  • Carlo Rovelli interview cited: existential threat from nuclear proliferation may be higher now than during the 1960s Cold War.
  • Trump’s unpredictability—signs agreement, then rescinds it under Israeli pressure.
    "Trump has now just made a statement saying, actually, Saudi Arabia can’t get this unless it recognizes Israel… literally signed by the energy minister is then undone two days later by Trump." — Stewart [25:06]

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3. The Data Center/AI Debate: Progress Versus Planet

[26:36–40:57]

• AI Expansion and Energy Use:

  • Pressure to build data centers despite their vast demands on electricity and water.
  • "We cannot not build them… The data centers are the foundation of our strategic autonomy." — Stewart [27:53]
  • Dependence on US/China infrastructure leaves the UK and Europe vulnerable; Trump has already "literally switch off our access to foundation models" in a crisis. [28:40]

• Environmental Concerns:

  • Data centers are huge users of power (projected to reach 3% of global consumption by 2030) and water (potentially depriving the equivalent needs of 1.3 billion people).
  • Infrastructure challenges: "A massive user of fossil fuels… Water use could match the needs of 1.3 billion people." — Campbell [31:53]
  • Location matters: siting centers in cooler, wetter regions could mitigate some impacts, but demand for proximity to populations remains high.

• Sustainable Solutions?

  • Renewables face limitations: "The data center and the chips… need to run 24 hours a day and need to be cooled… unless you have hydropower and dams... you have to have the backup of fossil fuels." — Stewart [31:08]

• Tech Industry Accountability:

  • Frustration with big tech dismissing environmental risks; wish for more transparency and willingness to engage with critics.
  • "I don’t trust these people because they don’t make these arguments about accepting risks… I get with you. We've got to get with the program. But if only they would actually show some sign of understanding that we are going to have to come up with better ideas on renewables.” — Campbell [35:24]

• AI Risks: Hacking and Regulation:

  • Mention of OpenAI's latest model escaping its sandbox—an unforeseen manipulative incident highlighting the real, not hypothetical, risks of advanced generative models. [37:41]
  • Regulatory gaps internationally; only with US/China buy-in can global regulation be meaningful.

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4. Populism, Humor, and Social Media Tactics

[17:18–18:45]

• New opposition relies on co-opting government slogans and memes, breaking from old patterns of “elitist” protest.
• “Humor, social media—used by the populists to oppress—then comes back at them.” — Stewart [18:38]

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5. Lighter Segment: Book Plugs, Parkrun, and Generosity

[44:07–55:58]

• Discussion on reviewing and “blurbing” books
• Praise for Nick Harkaway’s new George Smiley novel ("The Taper Man")
• The social impact of Parkrun, founded by Paul Sinton Hewitt, fostering community and wellbeing.
• Quote shared from footballer Sadio Mané on humility and giving back:
  "Why would I want 10 Ferraris, 20 diamond watches, and two jet planes? What would that do for the world? I starved, I worked in the fields, I played barefoot. I didn't go to school. Now I can help people." — Mané, recounted by Campbell [54:35]

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On India’s Protests:
  “For a decade, the Indian government has cast its critics as liberals, soft on Pakistan, different to ordinary people. This time it didn’t work.” — Rory Stewart [00:01] “I wonder whether there isn’t also something interesting about how you challenge populism...they’re chanting… the BJP’s own chants back at them.” — Rory Stewart [17:18] “This might be the beginnings of a sort of Bangladesh style moment… Sheikh Hasina looked pretty invulnerable and then was toppled.” — Stewart [12:17]

• On Data Centers:
  "We cannot not build them… The data centers are the foundation of our strategic autonomy." — Stewart [27:53] "If we allow this to happen, Britain is on the path to poverty, economic irrelevance, total security collapse, and no part in the future of the economy." — Stewart [32:23] "Enjoy the ride. Even if I wanted to stop AI, I couldn't." — Elon Musk, paraphrased by Campbell [35:24]

• On Nuclear Proliferation:
  "We are more danger of nuclear war today than we have ever been in history." — Carlo Rovelli (via Stewart) [23:44]

• On Giving Back:
  "I have built schools, and I built a stadium. We provide clothes, shoes and food for people in extreme poverty... I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me." — Sadio Mané, recounted by Campbell [54:35]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Indian Protests Breakdown: 03:12–18:45
• Saudi Nuclear Enrichment Deal & Proliferation: 19:00–25:38
• Data Centers & AI Debate: 26:36–40:57
• Populism & Social Media Tactics: 17:18–18:45
• Lighter Book, Parkrun & Charity Segment: 44:07–55:58
• Sadio Mané’s Quote & Discussion: 53:29–54:35

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

• Tone: Spirited, candid, analytical, frequently humorous yet unafraid of unearthing serious, even existential, risks.
• Takeaways: The world’s largest democracy is feeling the tremors of generational unrest, amplified by hyperconnected youth who refuse to be dismissed. Meanwhile, advances in AI and the data infrastructure supporting it force urgent debates about energy, sovereignty, and democratic accountability. Amidst geopolitical instability and populist drift, solutions may require both local empowerment and global cooperation—a theme that returns through stories of charity, community, and humble leadership by example.

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For in-depth commentary on AI and water security, listen to the “When Nature Becomes a Security Threat” miniseries with Caroline Lucas. For big ideas on social care and policy, join Rory’s live event at the Dominion Theatre on September 13 (see episode for ticket details).

Transcript

[Rory Stewart]

Is Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, finally in trouble? In India for the first time in 12 years, street protests have forced the resignation of a government minister. Look, there's been plenty of unrest before. There's been farmers protests, there's been demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment act, conflict in Manipur, enormous mobilizations. But the minister always stayed in post. And Narendra Modi's message was this doesn't work, don't try it. And now it's changed. I think three things made this week completely different for Narendra Modi. First, a trigger factor that really enraged these were protests that came out of leaks on examination results, forcing more than 2 million people to reset their pre medical exams and leading to suicide. Second, the protesters won the battle for social media, particularly on Instagram. Millions of people watching phone footage of police beating protesters. Witty memes, clever jokes propelling the movement. And third, the name the Chief justice compared unemployed graduates to cockroaches. And a 30 year old Dalit man replied, what if all the cockroaches came together? And they did. For a decade, the Indian government has cast its critics as liberals, soft on Pakistan, different to ordinary people. This time it didn't work. So, so is this the first crack in Modi's power or is it just a pressure valve? This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

[Alistair Campbell]

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[Alistair Campbell]

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[Alistair Campbell]

Welcome to the rest of the Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

[Rory Stewart]

And with me, Rory Stewart.

[Alistair Campbell]

So, Rory, India. Massive, massive news. Ishan and Tashi have written. Hi, Alistair and Rory. Why is political accountability still so out of reach in India? What do you make of the Cockroach Janta Party? And is there any reason to think it'll be more effective than recent movements? Or does real change now require mass uprisings like those in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Indonesia?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, I think the first thing to say is that this was very, very, very startling and different and actually took a lot of people in India by surprise. So the sort of demonstrations that a lot of people had focused on in the past were the demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act. This was the moment where Narendra Modi basically made it easy for people to get citizenship who were not Muslims. And there were large demonstrations which was quite kind of left progressive civil society demonstrations against what they saw as a real example of authoritarian populist, anti Muslim prejudice coming out of this Hindu nationalist party. But those protests were very rapidly characterized by the government as being sort of left leaning, elitist. They would say there's this whole troll army which we've talked about, where Modi supporters would say these people are, you know, Soros funded. If you look at the Twitter, these are maybe references that people don't get so much. They don't know Delhi, but they're people who go to Khan Market, which is the old city, to eat Muslim food. They eat biryani across the border in Pakistan. And they were very quite high minded, those protests. So if you watch them, they would be quoting poetry from Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who is the great Urdu poet, and they would quote these rather kind of grand Urdu poems as part of their demonstrations. And there was a lot of talk about Azadi, or freedom, freedom from capitalism, freedom from patriarchy. Now this time it's become completely different because this is much more socially diverse. So in the Parliament square demonstrations in Jaantamanta, which is where a lot of these demonstrations take place for the first time. Yes, you've got the students, but they're not doing these kind of high minded Urdu chants. They're much funnier. Very, very rude social media stuff. People holding up placards saying things like, my tampon is more leak proof than the Ministry of Education, this kind of stuff. And then you've got real kind of Working class people out there taking on the police at half past two in the morning who are not frightened by the surveillance state. There's been a lot of Modi putting in cameras and people worried their digital ID cards being stripped. But there are some real, you know, people, the poorest sectors of Delhi society out there saying, this is the police that demolished my home. I don't care a damn about surveillance. Hit me with people filming it. Anyway, over to you.

[Alistair Campbell]

I mean, it is a big, big moment, this. I mean, Modi. Couple of things about Modi. He does not like backing down on anything. He does not like anyone else dictating his terms, whether that's domestically or internationally. And here's a case where I'm afraid that has happened. And it's happened in part, as you say, because of the sheer numbers and the consistency. I think it's also, we've had lots of our listeners and viewers sen us videos of the sort of violence of the police against Overwatch 1. Whereas a guy literally just lying on the floor, kind of just trying to protect himself and these guys are going to, you know, whipping him and what have you. So that was kind of doing the rounds. And also the minister himself, he's had a few controversies before. Dharmendra Pradhan and he dismissed the protesters as B team terrorists. Modi was, as you say, projecting them as, you know, disloyal, unpatriotic, etc. We should probably get this guy Dipke. Mr. Dipke, the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party. If you're listening, Mr. Dipke, we'd love to have you on the rest of his politics, because he was somebody who saw what was happening and I think it was living in the United States, and he thought, I've got to do something. He went back and he just started this Cockroach Janta party. And people will know Modi's party is called the bjp. So this is now the cjp. Very deliberate. And there's a really big, bigger, serious point, even more serious point to this. Demography has been the big card that India thought it had to play against China. They always talk about that. We've got a democratic dividend now. Rory, what do you think? Here's a question for you. This is a bit harsh because I didn't say I was going to do this, but I just looked it up when you were off getting a cup of tea. What do you think the median age is in the uk? So that's the age at which there are just as many people under this age as over this age, it's right in the middle.

[Rory Stewart]

I would guess a bit younger than me. Let's say 47.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay. It's just under, just over 40. Okay.

[Rory Stewart]

Oh, okay. All right.

[Alistair Campbell]

What is in China? Just over 40. What is it in the United States? Just under 40. What is it in India? The median age in India is 29.

[Rory Stewart]

Okay, here's a question for you. What's the median age in Nigeria

[Alistair Campbell]

going? You've got, what's your thing in 20? By 2030, I'm going 27.

[Rory Stewart]

16. That amazing. It means every time you have an election, almost everybody voting has had nothing to do with politics before they vote. It's extraordinary.

[Alistair Campbell]

Wow, that is unbelievable. Unbelievable. Well, the thing is. But what it means even more so in Nigeria. So in India though, what it means is that an overwhelming majority of the population is between the ages of working age. Okay. And yet most of them, the younger ones are not finding work. This medical students exam. So what's happened is that there was a leak of. And essentially what people seem to be saying is that if you were rich enough to buy the medical paper, the exam papers before you could get your hands on them. So corruption in the system. 2.2 million students sat the medical school exam and they were competing for 140,000 places. So you go through that process, quite expensive for a lot of them. You sit the exams, then they get cancelled.

[Rory Stewart]

And also completely miserable preparation. I think the cramming and the pressure that you're under from society, parents and from yourself and the number of hours you're putting in over years to just get there.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. And so then the government announces there's been a leak of this, all this. So you're all going to have to take them all again. And of course then they have to make different exams. So it's not just a rerun. 21 people kill themselves. And that is I think a lot of the thing that has fueled this. But let me just give you another stat. This is sort of mind blowing stuff. 40% of graduates, graduates up to the age of 25 are unemployed. 10 million people applied for 35,000 new jobs in the railways. 10 million. So you're talking about young people who are thinking there's Modi, there's the guy who said he was going to make India great. He was going to, you know, we would. And he always says as part of his sort of great India strategy is it's because we've got this demographic dividend, we've got so many young people. And the fact that they've turned in this way is big sign.

[Rory Stewart]

Maybe you've put your finger and we keep saying we're going to do more on demography. But you're completely right that if you put the clock back a few years, the basic story is you're better off being a younger country. So the Chinese population is going to shrink by hundreds of millions. And generally as you get older, and this is the problem we've got in Britain, you get less innovative people, take less risk, more and more people obviously taking from the state. But in a world where technology is changing very fast and when AI is coming in, robotics is coming in, there is a question about the traditional employment path for young people, particularly in poorer countries. So in Nigeria, for example, people thought that the route to middle income status was software engineering, coding call centers, which are the first things which AI's hit. And China's got this very interesting problem which people don't talk about enough, which is they've got a serious youth unemployment problem. A lot of people living at home, they're not even counting youth unemployment properly. So on the one hand we're hearing that the problem that China faces is demographic, which is they don't have enough young people. But on the other hand, as you point out, those young people don't have jobs. So there's something wrong with the story.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, I think, look, he's been in power for 12 years, he's been quite a long time. And because he, his story domestically has just been, you know, he projects a sense of success and Indian power and you know, he is an extraordinary political phenomenon, but he's not used to this. I mean he's, I think he's had a ministerial resignation before because of scandal, but he's never had a ministerial resignation that, as it were, has been forced by political and public pressure.

[Rory Stewart]

I think he's in real trouble. I think he's in real trouble. I think this might be the beginnings of a sort of Bangladesh style moment. I mean, remember Sheikh Hasina looked pretty invulnerable and then was toppled.

[Alistair Campbell]

Do we think we. But we don't, we don't. Do we think Modi's terribly corrupt in

[Rory Stewart]

the way that there's an enormous amount of corruption and more than that, there are brutal authoritarian tendencies which are winding people up because the TV stations are basically controlled by Modi and his cronies. This is a bit similar to the story that we found when we interviewed the president of Serbia. They barely covered these demonstrations. If you watched main Indian tv, you wouldn't get any idea these demonstrations taking place? They removed 9.1 million people from a voter roll before they went into an election, which they just won. Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

In West Bengal.

[Rory Stewart]

And this is a government that has treated its opponents absolutely brutally, but has depended on the idea that if you were a critic of Modi and many, many, you know, imagine if you're a Muslim in India. You are being marginalized. You're really struggling to get jobs, you're really struggling to get into the service, et cetera. But you sort of felt, he's unstoppable. It's like any of these populists when they're at their peak. Trump Farage. A moment where people think, what can I do? This guy's so popular, he just wins and wins and wins. The edge is now coming off very significantly because for the first time, his social media campaign isn't working. He's got 110,000 followers on Instagram, but when he tried.

[Alistair Campbell]

110,000.

[Rory Stewart]

Sorry, 110 million.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

So, so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I said 110 million. Yeah. You know, he's almost up there with Beyonce. I mean, it's unbelievable, right? It's. It's. It's really unbelievable. But for the first time when he posted, people were really able to rip into him and tease him. You know, he. He talks with these very odd pauses. So you'd have young Indians posting things where they would say a sentence and then halfway through a sentence, go off to make a cup of coffee and then come back three minutes later.

[Alistair Campbell]

Like you do when we're recording the podcast.

[Rory Stewart]

Exactly. Just like me on the podcast. And a lot of their posters are showing Modi in saris. They're saying things like, I can't see your democracy because my lashes are too long. Because he's trying to say that they're all funded by foreign governments. They've got big posters saying, nobody funds me. I hate this government for free. And Modi is really thrown off balance by the fact that a new class has come out. There are new coalitions emerging now. It's not something that Congress is really able to exploit. I think Congress is looking very, very normally, sort of leaden footed, but I do think it's a real trouble for Modi.

[Alistair Campbell]

But essentially you talk about the media. So West Bengal. I was talking to somebody in India, actually doesn't live in India, but is Indian and former politician. And I was trying to get their take on what was going on. And he's quite supportive of Modi and said, yeah, but you know, okay, it's a big problem. But look, he's just had this amazing win in West Bengal. So he told me about it and he said, you know, this is, this is a place more than 100 million. The BJP has never won there. They've never won. And he's just won. And so I thought, well, that's really interesting. And then I've checked up some of the local, the Indian media and what you've just said. Until yesterday, I didn't know there was this, this allegation that they'd removed almost 10 million people in a population of 100 billion off the electoral roll. So I'm assuming that's the sort of thing that maybe will be going down pretty badly with quite a lot of people as well. The other thing that's so interesting about the Cockroach rebellion, as it were, India is so big and you have these. West Bengal is bigger population wise than any European country. Okay, Bigger than Germany. It's bigger than. It's got more people than Germany. And it's one of what they have. What do they have, 20, 27, 28 states? How many states? They have a lot of states and this is one of them. So getting a national. Modi has completely commanded the national space.

[Roger Morehouse]

Right.

[Alistair Campbell]

He's, as you say, leads the news every night. Social media galore. What the Cockroach Chanter Party seem to be able to do is actually to command a national message. I wonder as well what they're going to do, because when the minister resigned, they said, okay, we've achieved our objectives. Off we go. That's it for now. But, you know, clearly they can start to become a serious political force. Do they, you know, field candidates? They have. They're doing this thing a bit like the, A bit like the Greens. And I see Zach Polanski's got himself into a bit of a mess with something about a T shirt and a tweet. But they don't want to have a leader. The Cockroach Janitor Party doesn't want to have a leader. So anyway, listen, you're right, it's going to be interesting, but I'm deadly serious. If the CJP want to come on the podcast, we're here for you and Modi as well. We've always said we'd love to have Modi on, but not sure you'll come on right now.

[Rory Stewart]

I wonder whether there isn't also something interesting about how you challenge populism, which mightn't be a lesson, that maybe it's there in Hungary and might be a lesson for exporting. One of the things they've done is they've stopped using these very apparently kind of elitist slogans, these kind of Urdu poems. And they're actually chanting often the BJP's own chants back at them. So that they're chanting, you know, Jai Bim or Bharat Mataki Jai, which is Praise to Mother India or Victory to Mother India, Vande Mataram, I bow to the mother. These are a very, very evocative Hindu nationalist chants now being chanted back at the BJP who they're opposing. So that then makes it a little bit more difficult, I think, for them to be portrayed as out of touch, elitist. And of course, they're also doing things that we don't understand. So when they're running away from the police and being beaten, the little post will say, I'm keeping my Strava streak alive, which is a reference to a kind of running program. Or they will, they. They're also using Subway Surfers, which is a, a video game, I think, about runners. Somebody younger listener can correct me here. So you're being beaten by the police, you're running away, but you're basically playing out some sort of version of Super Mario when you're doing. Which was true in Nepal. Remember in Nepal they were using a lot of memes. So I do think this question of humor, how social media, which is used by the populace to oppress humor, then comes back.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, you mentioned populism. And we've been talking about the most populous democracy in the world. I think we should give a shout out to our latest episode of Leading, which is the leader of one of the smallest democracies in the world. That's Iceland. Kristin Frostedotter.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, we should encourage people to listen. It's an amazing lesson and it's a very, very different scale of government and a very different scale of democracy. Now, I had a question though, to move us on from somebody called Harden, and I wonder whether Harden comes from this place that you're talking about, or maybe I've mispronounced it. Maybe it's called Hayden. How does the new US Saudi agreement on domestic uranium enrichment affect regional nuclear stability? And will Iran and the UAE now demand equivalent capability abilities to avoid falling behind their neighbors?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, I find this, I found this quite scary because even though you have Trump and the Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the Saudis saying this is all just about, you know, civil use of uranium, I think Hayden is, is on point. What does this do to not just Saudi, but potential ambitions, but also to the ambitions of those in the region. So it does feel, and this is where.

[Rory Stewart]

Can I do a quick explain and then get to the commentary just so people follow. So very, very interestingly, Saudi Arabia has been pushing for decades now to build a big nuclear generation facilities. It's a very strange thing in some ways from the outside to be doing because they've got a lot of oil and gas and they've also now got an enormous amount of cheap solar, fantastic air quality, great sunlight, one of the best places to generate solar energy. So the question is, why do they need these big nuclear facilities which are actually more expensive than generating the gas and the solar they actually have? Well, the key is the detail in this negotiation where, unlike uae, which has said it will take American technology but not enrich, the Saudis are rather oddly demanding that they can enrich their own uranium. This again is very strange because you can buy enriched uranium on the international markets from Central Asia and elsewhere surprisingly cheaply. Right. It's not an economic move.

[Alistair Campbell]

Should we get our own, should we buy our own as trips? We should have our own enriched uranium.

[Rory Stewart]

So why do the Saudis want to enrich uranium? Well, that connects to a much longer story going back to the 90s or 80s, in fact, where Saudis seems to be involved in funding part of the Pakistan nuclear program, where Mohammed bin Salman said openly more than a decade ago that if Iran got nuclear weapons, Saudi was going to have to get nuclear weapons. So it's about technology, it's partly about skills, but it's partly about giving you optionality to build a nuclear weapon. Back over to you.

[Alistair Campbell]

No, exactly. Well, you've explained that extremely well. And you've also put your finger on why I find it so worrying because it does sort of beg the question, well, why this? Why now? I mean, Iran has been something of a threat for some time. The Saudis did sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, Trump. And this is, this is, I'm afraid, is what happens. And I know I've got Trump derangement syndrome, I know you've got a bit as well, but it's so hard to take them at face value. So when Trump says that they won't ever use this for, you know, military use, and, and when Chris Wright says that this is an agreement that sort of binds them in on levels that you wouldn't be able to go, that I, I find it hard to believe them, I find out to take at face value. And then of course, the Saudis, they are a hugely powerful player in that region. You see some of the military involvement that they've had right around the region and we've talked often about Yemen and what they do there. Just ask yourself this question. Do you think deep down that while there exists a threat of Iran getting a nuclear weapon, and while there exists the reality that Israel already has them, that the Saudis wouldn't think actually, particularly with Trump in charge, that maybe they need to get down this track themselves?

[Rory Stewart]

Absolutely. And I'm afraid nuclear proliferation is going to become much, much more common because it's also true that China can provide the technology if the US won't. And that wasn't true so much 30, 40 years ago. The Chinese technology is now much better. It's also true that as our famous rules based international order collapses and the American guarantees collapse, you know, Sweden might talk about getting nuclear weapons, Germany might talk about getting nuclear. And of course, the more nuclear weapons there are, the more risk we all face. This is something coming in a miniseries. I've just interviewed Carlo Rovelli in which Carlo Rovelli, this brilliant scientist who people probably know best for writing about time and gravity, is now ringing the alarm bell on nuclear proliferation and saying this is probably the biggest single existential threat facing humanity. And I kept saying to him in

[Alistair Campbell]

this conversation, you kept saying, no, it's not, it's the climate crisis, didn't you?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, no, I kept saying, you're not worried. You sound a bit 1960s. I mean, this was. Everyone's digging bunkers in their backyard and we all thought nuclear war was going to end the world. And he said, you're absolutely right. And yet if you actually look at the indicators and the way the IAEA measures it, we are more danger of nuclear war today than we have ever been in history and we're likely to be at more risk of nuclear war in four or five years time.

[Alistair Campbell]

Just on. Why does he say. Why does he say that?

[Rory Stewart]

Because of the breakdown of the old US Russia arms control projects in the sense that when you're dealing with two huge superpowers, you can manage risk much better than when you get a third of China, let alone when you start bringing in Saudi Arabia and other popular nationalist governments getting their own nuclear weapons. So yeah, he would say, and this is what this miniseries on existential risk is about, making people think about uncomfortable things that aren't part of our normal conversation. And he's saying, actually people were right to be worried in the 1960s and we should be even more worried today. So final one on Saudi. The other thing that's now happened is predictably Trump has now reneged on the deal. So Trump has now just made a statement saying, actually, and this is under pressure from Israel, Netanyahu is currently visiting. He's the eighth visit Netanyahu has made to Trump and he's seen him eight times, far more than any other leader. He's visiting for Lindsey Graham's funeral.

[Alistair Campbell]

Zelenskyy's there as well, by the way.

[Rory Stewart]

And yeah, coincidentally, in the lead up to the visit, Trump has now announced, oh, actually, Saudi Arabia can't get this unless it recognizes Israel and signs up to the Abraham Accords. And he never expected them to ENRICH Anyway. So 18 months of negotiation, signed, literally signed by the energy minister is then undone two days later by Trump saying he rejects the whole thing.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, and what does, what do the Saudis do about that?

[Rory Stewart]

Well, do they just keep quiet?

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, they wait till he changes his mind again. Yeah, they keep going. They keep going. And also it's interesting, the agreement that he signed and then renewed or decided it was no longer an agreement while Bibi's in town. It's got weaker inspection regimes by the atomic authorities than they even had before when they weren't doing this. So anyway, look, I think Hayden's on the money. I think this is one we should keep our eyes on and be a bit worried about it. And your point is, right, about energy. I mean, it's not like the UK Kind of thinking where we're going to get all our future energy from the Saudis. They're pretty well set, even with the difficulties in the current difficulties in the straight of Hormuz. Okay, Roy, let's take a quick break and then when I come back, I want to press you on your beloved AI data centers.

[Rory Stewart]

Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question

[Alistair Campbell]

Time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, let's get on to your passion, your obsession, data centers. Joe from Cambridge. Large parts of Europe are on fire. We talked about in the main podcast. Much of the UK is in or close to drought. Caroline Lucas talks about that in her brilliant miniseries. Climate breakdown is already threatening food security, water supplies and energy systems. Caroline talks about all those things and these pressures will only intensify. So why are we planning to drill for more North Sea oil? We don't yet know that we are for sure. And build large numbers of data centers that consume vast amounts of electricity and water while generating more heat. Food, water and resilient infrastructure are essential to life. AI and data centers are not. Love the show, but I have to disagree, hopefully agreeably, with Rory on this. And doesn't Caroline's new miniseries make exactly this case?

[Rory Stewart]

Look, it's a really good challenge Alstair, and it's one of the most important questions facing us, and it's going to be really tough politics. The basic answer to the question is we really don't have any alternative other than to build these data centers. And you just got to work back from that. We can have a really good conversation about how we produce the electricity for them and where we site them. It's completely true. They use a lot of electricity, they use a lot of water. And you've got to be very smart about where you put them and how you run them. But we cannot not build them. Cannot not build them. Why? Because the foundation models, these large language models, are going to be right at the heart of all our intelligence gathering around the world. They're going to be at the heart of all our defense systems, the whole future of warfare. All our military is going to run on these things. Our public services are going to run on these things. And if we find ourselves in a world in which we don't have the data centers, and if you don't have the data centers, you don't have the chips, you don't have the weights, you're not hosting these things. You're going to be in a situation where the complete foundation of everything in our lives, the way our companies work, the way our government works, the way our defence works, is dependent on chips, data centers and models hosted only in the US And China. And what does that mean? Well, we know what that means. That means that President Trump can get out in the morning. He's actually done it. It's not just hypothetical. He's done it literally switch off our access to foundation models. He did it. And all our intelligence and security and our cyber defense were switched off for weeks while we were arguing with Trump to try to get it switched on again. They can also have a chokehold on us on pricing. What's to stop them suddenly saying, oh, by the way, you're going to spend 10 times as much on this stuff as you were before. What's going to stop them saying, oh, by the way, you can't tweak your defence and security thing because it's controlled by US export controls or some US law is going to stop you doing this. It's just not an option. Right. If AI genuinely is the foundation of everything, we must have these things now. It's not just about the data center. That doesn't mean naively inviting in Google or OpenAI to just build a data center. We also need legal control. We need access to chips. We need to be able to own the weights and the models. We need backup systems. We're never going to have full independence. But the data centers are the foundation of our strategic autonomy. So I'm starting with that. And then we can solve the problems on the electricity and water.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, But I guess that's where Jo's coming from, is about whether we can. Because a couple of things that in Caroline's latest episode, which is out on Friday, and honestly, I keep banging on about it, but I just think it's a brilliant series. She's interviewing this guy who makes the point that our government has removed the level of environmental impact assessment to something less than for far lesser projects, lesser environmentally challenging projects than this, added to which these AI companies who, when it was kind of trendy to be green, were all on for the kind of, you know, let's try and work to net zero, have dropped it because they're basically saying they can't do what they do this unless they have so much electricity and water. Can we at least story. And of course, this is where Trump is such a problem, because he doesn't believe in. He does believe in drill, baby, drill. He does worship fossil fuels. But can we, for example, find ways of absolute insistence that data centers are driven exclusively by renewable energy? Is that possible?

[Rory Stewart]

The problem is that the problem with renewables in general, which is that when the sun's not shining and the wind's not blowing, there's no electricity, and the data center and the chips and the model needs to run 24 hours a day and needs to be cooled 24 hours a day. And this is the problem. This is the thing that we don't talk about enough with renewable energy, that unless you have enormous hydropower. And this actually is partly what the Saudis are saying when they're talking when you say to them you have huge solar, unless you have incredible storage capacity or you have hydropower and dams, which we also don't want to build for environmental reasons. You have to have the backup of fossil fuels to deal with the problem of what happens when the sun's up, shining, the winds up. So you can't run data centers just on renewables.

[Alistair Campbell]

They're currently. Let me just give you the figures, Rory, that according to the International Energy Authority, fossil fuel supplies 60% of power to data centers. Renewables, 27, nuclear 15. So they are a massive user of fossil fuels. They're using by 2030, it's reckoned that they're going to use water that would match the needs of 1.3 billion people. So we are talking about a scale of electricity and water use that let

[Rory Stewart]

me begin by agreeing with you. So you're completely right that the electricity use is enormous. Globally we're using about 415 terawatt hours, which is about 1.5% of global consumption. And that's scheduled by 2030, not very long ago, long to come, four years time to be up to 3%. So to put that in context, steel is about 5% of global consumption and steel is very, very big. So it's putting AI slightly below things like steel and the general kind of construction industry stuff, which gets up to sort of 8, 9% UK because we have much less industrial manufacturing. We've basically de industrialized partly because of our push for net zero, partly because of energy costs. So we don't have much industry. It's projected in the UK to get up to about 6% of UK electricity consumption. So if you were a planner, you'd have to say does the technological revolution of AI is it something that you're prepared to see as being broadly similar in importance to the global economy as steel production or not? Water, Water is a bit different. Water depends a lot on the kind of data center you're building and where you're building it. So some of the data centers in Britain use less water, about 10,000 liters a year, which is less than your average leisure center. The big hyperscalers data centers can be using 1.5 million, right? Which is much, much more. I mean a huge amount. But building a old fashioned data center in Arizona, which is already water stressed in extreme heat is completely different to building one in a much cooler place, for example in northern Scandinavia or building a data center in Scotland where there is ample waterfall. I mean the part of the problem is that we're pushing these data centers close to population centers, which is where people want them in water stressed areas southeast. If you were building them up in North Scott, there would be enough water. But people don't want nature centers up in the north because they want very low latency times and they want, want reliability, they want to access some near population. I would conclude though by saying it's a big problem, but don't stop data centers if we go down this line. Britain is on the path to poverty, economic relevance, total security, collapse and no part in the future of the economy. If we allow this to happen. It's a much Bigger version of the problem that Britain has building infrastructure in general. It's a much bigger version of that. We can't build houses, as you say. We've been Talking about the third Runway since 97 and the arguments against the real. That's why I'm not calling them NIMBY arguments. But we have to build data centers. The biggest problem that Britain will face is not building data centers, not building them.

[Alistair Campbell]

I wish the people who were driving this were more open to the argument that you've just put that, yes, these challenges are real. So I don't know if you watched Elon Musk's car crash interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor of the Economist, where he probably thought, oh, the Economist. They probably think I'm an amazing genius. She gave him a pretty hard time, actually. Not that hard a time. She asked him some robust questions. Her reward is to be condemned as a traitor to the west, to his 75, squillion X followers. But when I watched him talking about AI, where he just said, we've got to look on the bright side. Enjoy the ride. Enjoy the ride. There's an inexorable progress. Even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn't. And I don't trust these people. I don't trust these people because they don't make these arguments about accepting there might be risks, accepting that people might have other views. So, yes, I get with you. We've got to go to get with the program. But if only they would actually show some sign of understanding that we are going to have to come up with better ideas on renewables. We are going to have to find a way to get water. I mean, even this, this week. I don't know. Look, it could have been completely unrelated to all this, but I don't know if you saw it. It was actually one of the best laughs of the week, even though it was very serious. Gatwick airport ran out of water, so the toilets couldn't flush and there was no drinking water. And John Crace, tweet of the week, he said, ah, they've taken all the water to Manchester. I thought that was very, very, very funny. But it is really serious. It is. When you look at the figures of what's being used. When you think about how close we are here to drought at the moment and, oh, what's his face? Restore Rupert Lowe's. If you saw his picture of a big field, presumably, that he owns. Terrible harvest. Terrible harvest. When is the government going to do something about the poor harvest Well, I just wonder whether climate change has anything to do with your poor harvest. So I just think we've got to be honest about the scale of the risk at least. You're saying there's a problem? Okay, most. When I'm listening to these AI tech gods talking about it, they think that people like Joe, who's asking the question, just kind of modern world Luddites.

[Rory Stewart]

The Lydite thing is terrifying. And you're completely right. When I'm not getting disinvited from American conferences that talk about AI, one of the things that I think has been terrifying is that Elon Musk line. You know, we're just along for the ride and you've just got to accept it. And I couldn't do anything about it if I wanted. I mean, there's a question here from Oliver. He's a trip member from Cambridge, given OpenAI's Newsweek, that ChatGPT Cyber hacked a stock startup without permission from its human guardians. Is it time to go home, lock the door, turn everything off, close the curtains, and sit tight for the rest of our lives? Look, there's a really serious question here. I mean, you could come back and be patronizing and say, no, no, no, don't worry, this is all nonsense. And this is like, actually, it is a big, big problem. I mean, OpenAI developed this thing that was supposed to be in a secure sandbox, in other words, isolated from the rest the of the world. And it broke out and it thought it could cleverly hack a test that it was about to get from OpenAI by breaking into another website and trying to access all the information from that website in order to get through. Now, the point is not what it did. What it did wasn't inherently dangerous, but it was dishonest. It was manipulative. It jumped around systems and apply those qualities to what happens if it wanted to do something wickeder, what would happen if it wanted to mount its own cyber attacks for whatever reason, what happens if it wanted to generate etc. So there is a big, big question about two different types of risk. One is evil humans using AI to do bad things, a terrorist group using AI to build a bioweapon. And the second is the question about the AI itself, itself, autonomously doing things that its human guardians didn't want that are also dangerous. And we cannot, cannot, cannot just continue in a world in which we say, well, there's nothing we can do about it. Or what a lot of these companies say, which is, oh, it'd be a nice idea if somebody Regulated us, but we're not going to regulate ourselves because our competitors are not being regulated. And there's the beginnings of a change. The change when the US government started moving against Anthropic. Now, that was partly, almost certainly Trump having a beef against Anthropic, but there was a process of trying to test their models before it was released. There's been a demand from Demis Hassabis, Sir Demis Hassabis, the British Nobel Prize winner and the founder of DeepMind, to say that we should begin to think about an international body to regulate this stuff. We have to. We have to, because the idea that companies can regulate themselves has been nonsense, from the tobacco companies in the 1950s to the polluting factories of the 60s and 70s. It's madness. And as you say, the idea that Elon Musk can somehow be trusted is complete insanity. Now, there are a lot of questions about how you regulate, who regulates. And of course, it's all about the US and China, because Britain just being pious and saying we're going to regulate ourselves, completely irrelevant because we don't have the frontier models. And all we'll do is we'll take ourselves out of the AI at race. And the problem is it's the worst possible time because it's Trump. Sorry, over to you.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, the EU are doing their thing, Australia is doing its thing, South Korea, Japan, as you say, national. But in the end, this is a bit like nuclear proliferation. It's only going to be there's an international agreement, and as you say, with Trump, with China. But interestingly, that Xi Jinping, when he saw Trump, they did sort of have the beginnings of the conversation about this. I must tell you, Roy, you know, we talked before about how we regularly get asked to put our quotes on the front of COVID of books to say, this is a fantastic read, blah, blah, blah. I have been asked, and if I've just been asked, they've asked if they can use something that I said on the podcast to go on the front cover of Penguin's publication of the Pope's encyclical on A.I.

[Rory Stewart]

no.

[Alistair Campbell]

Oh, how proud am I?

[Rory Stewart]

That's pretty good. For somebody who doesn't want to be in the House of Lords. That's about as close as you can get, I think.

[Alistair Campbell]

Oh, I think. Well, I mean, look, I think. I think if. And I've of course, given them permission, and I think when it comes out, if the Pope is. Wants to do it, a media as they launch this Penguin version of his encyclical, love to have him on the podcast. I know I keep banging on about it, but I'm going to do another plug if you want to go deep, deep, deep into this debate about water and AI data centers and the whole issue of water security. This week's episode of When Nature Becomes a Security Threat, Caroline Lucas is all about this. You sign [e-mail] and I'm going to

[Rory Stewart]

use this opportunity for a brutal plug and challenge Alison not to interrupt or mock me in the middle of my plug. And I'll try to make this my final big plug. But the 13th of September, I'm doing a live show where we're going to be looking at a lot of these big issues of social care, localism, et cetera. Dominion Theatre, London. There are still some tickets left. I'll be on the stage with Lewis

[Alistair Campbell]

Goodall, your podcast Apprentice.

[Rory Stewart]

My podcast Apprentice. We're going to try to make it as lively as possible. Tickets still available and really would love to get the conversation going about what you think Britain should be doing in terms of policy, but we'll do some international stuff as well. Do hope some of you can come and join me and Lewis Goodall. And the way to sign up is to go to Fane. That's F A N-E.co.uk Rory Stewart. It's called Middleland Evening with Rory Stewart, Dominion Theatre, London, 13 September. And another event which is almost sold out in Richmond on the 14th.

[Alistair Campbell]

Rory and the Apprentice.

[Rory Stewart]

Rory and the Apprentice. Following on from your Pope plug, a question for Emily. Have you read all these books which you blurb now? Can I just quickly, before you answer that question, I just a little reference to agents and publishers. I don't know whether there was something weird about last week I opened my email, I got nine books in one day to plug to plug. And I think in the week I think I got 19 books. Now I'm trying to live a life here. Do people realistically think I'm going to be able to read 19 books in a week and do my normal day job?

[Alistair Campbell]

Rory, the 19 books probably have 19 publishers. So they don't. They're not. It's not one guy sending you 19 books. I mean, if you come to our kitchen, Fiona regularly complains every day. Are you actually going to read any of these books? Right, and sometimes I do, but there's a. There's an Amnesty bookshop not far from here. I just take them down there in crates every few weeks so that you can find, you can find a use for them.

[Rory Stewart]

What's your normal formula to get out? Because one of the problems is that if I've made the mistake of, for example, praising on the podcast a book.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah.

[Rory Stewart]

That the same writer will then come back to me a year later. He's written another book, said, oh, you like my last book? Here's.

[Roger Morehouse]

Here's another one.

[Rory Stewart]

So there's a sort of accelerating system going on here.

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, what I do.

[Rory Stewart]

Yeah.

[Alistair Campbell]

If I. I try and read the book, if somebody sends a million and. And, you know, I'm not. I can read a few pages and decide whether I think I'm going to like it or not. I'm actually reading at the moment a manuscript that was sent to me for a book that's not even published yet by Johann Harry. Now, I'm always going to read something by him because I loved his book Chasing the Scream. I'm about a quarter of the way through this book, and I've already decided if he wants a quote for the COVID I'll give it because it's brilliant. It's this extraordinary story of he was in Las Vegas and he discovered this network, like a city in the tunnels below Las Vegas. Okay. Of just so many people living down there, and then serial killers who were taking lots of them out. It's an amazing read. So I'll give that one. So that's that. But then most. What I normally do, Rory, if I can't be bothered or if I don't want to, you know, say I've read something, when in truth I haven't, I'll just say, look, I'm sure you understand, I get lots of these offers. I'm very, very selective. I pursue certain themes that are of particular interest to me, and I'm afraid yours doesn't fit.

[Rory Stewart]

That's good. Okay, well, little shout out for one of them that I did tackle this week, which is Nick Harkaway, who's John Le Carre's son, has written a new George Smiley novel called the Taper Man. Nick Harkaway is an incredible novelist in his own right. Really lovely novels, things like Titanium noir, but it's uncanny. I don't know whether Rory could do this for you. He really has caught his father's voice. It's very, very difficult to believe this isn't Le Carrey himself writing the Smiley novel. He's got so much the environment of the circus in the 60s and 70s. So little shout out for Nick Harkway's the Taper man on its way out.

[Alistair Campbell]

Excellent.

[Rory Stewart]

Excellent question from Sam. Did you watch The Trump speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

[Alistair Campbell]

Alistair, did you watch it?

[Rory Stewart]

No, I didn't answer. Tell us about it.

[Alistair Campbell]

I sent it to you. Why didn't you watch it?

[Rory Stewart]

Because at the last moment you sent me some just before I was about to watch it saying the wildfires is a much bigger story. So I apologize. The wildfires.

[Alistair Campbell]

Oh, God. I watched it because two or three people sent me a message, say, have you watched this? It's the worst yet. It was just horrible.

[Rory Stewart]

What was it? Was it thing where Obama dropped his mic is that the White House corresponds dinner. The one that they. And wasn't it recently? Didn't they have a security threat where people ran in?

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, so what? This was the rerun for his first term. He refused to do it. First president, he refused to do it. He decided in his second term now that he's sort of, you know, back in. He decided to do it and then there was this terrorist scare. This guy came in with a gun and off he went. So they had to cancel it. And then. So this was the rerun. Okay. And it was over an hour long.

[Rory Stewart]

Never a good thing. That's the real Gaddafi, Castro.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah. He'd had to sit there and watch journalists being given awards, including a guy who was given the award for his continuing exposure of the President's links to Jeffrey Epstein. So Trump just sat there like this with his eyes closed, sort of just. And he looked at, looked at Caroline Levitt and shrugging.

[Roger Morehouse]

My view.

[Alistair Campbell]

Caitlin Collins got an award. Cnn. So he did a horrible, horrible, horrible thing about her. Back to, you know, why'd you never smile? You've got a lovely face. Why'd you never smile? Just because you work at cnn? Fake news. He abused so many people. Bruce Springsteen, Bette Midler, Joe Biden, all the usual kind of. It was like a combination between a MAGA rally and a kind of deranged rant from 113 year old uncle in the corner of the room. He went on and on about his fucking ballroom and how that was going to be great and how thick the windows were. So if he was doing this speech in the ballroom and somebody tried to shoot him, the bullet would just bounce off the window. All this kind of crazy stuff.

[Rory Stewart]

And how are the journalists, how are the journalists looking through all this? Because presumably they're not a MAGA audience that are used to a one hour random rant about nonsense.

[Alistair Campbell]

I was what was. Because it was packed with, you know, Stephen Miller was there and so a lot of MAGA people were there I'd say that as it went on, even the MAGA people were starting to think, this is just embarrassing. He told this actually quite funny joke towards the end and nobody laughed.

[Rory Stewart]

Go on, what's the joke?

[Alistair Campbell]

Well, the joke was he was talking about how these octogenarians, which, by the way, he is in Congress. And he told this story about a senator who arrived home and his wife mistress was at the top of the stairs and said, you know, I want you to run upstairs and make love to me. And he said, well, I can do one, but I can't do both.

[Rory Stewart]

That's very good.

[Alistair Campbell]

Which is funny, right? But by then, by then, the whole audience was just drained of energy, couldn't stand listening to. To any more. Lots about fake news, lots of gaslighting, endlessly talking about how you really won the election against, against Biden. I mean, it was just absolutely, totally horrible. And, oh, he then had this whole thing about, you know, the terrorist guy who tried to, you know, get into the. When it was there, he said this was an attempt, an assault on our democracy. Well, January 6th, anybody. He kept. He obviously had an auto cue and a script, but he just kept going off for these long rambling riffs that were just embarrassing. I found the whole thing embarrassing. I honestly did start to think this guy's really not well. Really not well. He had this horrible joke about Biden as well. He was talking about something when somebody became unconscious. You remember the guy. It's now the photograph of the year. You know, when the guy fainted in his, his office and he's. Trump just stands there quite irritated. And he said before that all you had to do to see somebody unconscious was to ask Joe Biden a question. Just horrible. Horrible. By the way, we haven't given many reading recommendations. I passionately recommend Hunter Biden's substack about his dad and how his dad dealt with hunters, tried to deal with hunters addictions. It's one of the best things I've read for a. A long, long time. Bette Midler, Jane Fonda, they got it. Don Lemon, Barack Hussein Obama. It was all the greatest hits, but it was just sort of. It was embarrassing. It was embarrassing. Fake Tapper, Gavin Newscum, Pocahontas went on and on and on.

[Rory Stewart]

Well, let me finish. As we come to the end of this, we're going to go jolly. I did slightly softball it on the parkrun. So for the very small minority of people who don't go on parkruns, it's literally the most lovely thing in the world. And it's rather a wonderful story. It was set up by, in Britain, in Bushy park, just over 20 years ago, single event. And now at 9:30 in the morning, in sort of almost every town in, in Britain and increasingly across the world. I think there's now something like 9 million people running simultaneously.

[Alistair Campbell]

Amazing.

[Rory Stewart]

Every day you turn up and it's just lovely. There were people pushing prams. I took an 11 year old and a 9 year old with me. There were people who were old, there were people who were young, overweight, underweight, every different type of background. And it's just lovely. But it makes you optimistic about Britain. I mean, the volunteers, the people participating and the very basic fact, which is, obviously it's really good for people's health to run 5K.

[Alistair Campbell]

Who started it? Do you know who started it?

[Rory Stewart]

It was founded by a man called Paul Sinton Hewitt in 2004. He'd been depressed and he was trying to work out what to do. In 2004 he was unemployed and he had an injured leg and so he set it up. It's just so brilliant. I mean, if you're looking for a way of changing the world, there have now been a million of these things with 10 million people running. So I, yeah, you need to come up with an idea like that. I'm, I'm, I'm with you on the encyclical, I'm with you on perseverance. But to really change the world, you need an idea like a Parkrun.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, yeah, I'll come up with something.

[Rory Stewart]

Come up an idea like that.

[Alistair Campbell]

Yeah, I'll get something. Yeah. My fate, my. I don't know. This is perseverance. But my favorite thing this week was. Do you know who Sadio Manha is?

[Rory Stewart]

No.

[Alistair Campbell]

He's a very famous footballer.

[Rory Stewart]

I half guessed that. He was probably a very famous footballer.

[Alistair Campbell]

Okay, okay. So he was, he was interviewed somewhere and people noticed that his, his iPhone was cracked. Okay, so there was lots of stuff on social media. You know, you're a multimillionaire. Why have you got a cracked iPhone? Okay, and this is reply. Why would I want 10 Ferraris, 20 diamond watches and two jet planes? What would that do for the world? I starved. I worked in the fields, I played barefoot. I didn't go to school. Now I can help people. I prefer to build schools and give poor people food and clothing. I have built schools and I built a stadium. We provide clothes, shoes and food for people in extreme poverty. In addition, I give €70amonth to people from a very poor Senegalese region in order to contribute to their family economy. I do not need to display luxury cars, luxury homes, trips or planes. I prefer that my people receive a little of what life has given me.

[Rory Stewart]

So lovely. So lovely. And a little connection to two things which are really close to our hearts.

[Alistair Campbell]

Give directly.

[Rory Stewart]

Give directly. Number one. I mean, that's what he's talking about. He's somebody who's come from extreme poverty and understands how much difference a small cash contribution can make to someone's life, and that actually literally 900 or $1,000 can totally transform somebody's life and give them the choice and options. But there's also a link to Andy Burnham and localism, subsidiarity and trusting people, which is that what givedirectly and the Andy Burnham philosophy have in common is the basic idea that local people know more, care more, can do more than distant officials, that you can trust people to fix their own problems, and you just need to give them the resources and the opportunities to do that. So. Well, that's a lovely thing to close on because it links all our themes together, but it doesn't quite deal with some of the stuff around Saudi nuclear proliferation, Modi's populism, cracking, AI shuddering, consuming the world's environmental resources, et cetera. So somehow, as you said in the episode yesterday, we have to balance a real trust in local people, solving things with a recognition that. That Camden Council can't have a navy. There are some global issues that require some global cooperation.

[Alistair Campbell]

Camden Council's gonna be so cross with me. What do you mean we can't have a navy? We should have a navy. All right, Rory, see you soon.

[Rory Stewart]

Thank you. Bye.

[Alistair Campbell]

Bye, bye.

[Saul]

Hello, this is Saul, David and Roger Morehouse from the Battleground podcast, and we're here to tell you about an exciting new strand we're bringing out every Wednesday, the big picture.

[Roger Morehouse]

Yeah, there's a lot going on in the world at the moment, as we know, Ukraine, which we cover every week, but also sort of wider developments as well. So we wanted to have a section where we did interviews with high ranking individuals, people who can illustrate and inform us of that wider world.

[Saul]

Yeah, we all get a fog of information and comment, and we want to cut through that to give some real insight about the conflicts and geopolitics that are affected, affecting our world today. And we've got a pretty stellar lineup to begin with, haven't we, Roger?

[Roger Morehouse]

Yeah, I'm just prepping now for an interview with Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister. Poland's very much a big strategic player now in Europe with the Ukraine war as well. So he'll be a fascinating interview. Who have you been speaking to, Saul?

[Saul]

Yeah. Well, this morning I spoke to Al Khan's soldier turned politician who until recently was minister of armed forces, but resigned on a matter of principle because he felt the government wasn't committing enough money to keep Britain safe, safe in the years and decades to come. And he had some really fascinating things to say. So do listen out for the big picture every Wednesday and also on Friday when we'll be covering the latest from the Ukraine war. And it's things are really hotting up there at the moment. To find out more, search for battleground. Wherever you get your podcast.