115. Ben Wallace: Britain's mistake in Ukraine, Trump vs. NATO, and visiting Iran with Jeremy Corbyn

31:08But they all came out to see Boris. And that's not about he was providing a con to them. There was a sense of he's our guy. You have been giving us your guy for the last 20 years. He quotes our guy who used one of the most consequential issues in our politics to advance his own career, to become leader, then to become prime minister, without, to my mind, any real sense of what he wanted to do for the country. And I think we're seeing that now that he's out. He's just like, he's basically a 900-word newspaper columnist who became prime minister. It's the same as Trump. Just because Trump has a certain appeal to a certain demographic doesn't mean that they're the right people to leave the country.

31:54So Boris did believe in levelling up, right? He didn't do it. He spent a lot of money doing it. And you might say it wasn't successful in some areas. But also, and this goes back to the point about governance, right? which is when you realize, you know, you arrive in opposition, and I've already looked at some of the Labour's promises, and I go, that won't be there in four years, not because they're being dishonest, but whether we like it or not, delivering capital projects is hard and takes a long time because people have rights. People don't like you building railways over their land. People have, you know, Parliament is not straightforward.

32:30The Treasury hates anything that's longer than a year. I mean, it just cannot stand. And I think they, I remember the Treasury even resisted, I think, Gordon Brown's efforts to go to three-year spending reviews. Because when you're in a one-year review, all the powers of the Treasury. And so some of the, like the 40 hospitals, for example, you know, that will take 15 years to deliver, right? That's how it is, right? And HS2, all these things are very difficult. But he genuinely, you know, I remember he came back from Govan and he said, I met these people, the apprenticeships working on the yards.

33:05He says, I want you to be the shipbuilding because I want them to have a proper future. I want British shipbuilding to be turned around. And, you know, he never stood in the way of what I wanted to do. The Treasury stood in the way of every single thing, every single thing. This was something, I mean, that troubled me when I, so I was a minister in the Foreign Office when he was Foreign Secretary. and he would say to me things like, Rory, Libya. You know, Libya is a bite-sized British problem. I want you to sort out Libya. And I'd go away and I'd bring together a plan. But what he would never do is take the time to master the detail and make the case to the Treasury with me.

33:42Or with the Africa strategy, I'd write an Africa strategy and I'd think, okay, I'm going to present it to him. I'd walk him through it. He'd say, you know, 100%, 100%, you're my plenipotentiary in Africa. get on with it right and i would say are you absolutely sure foreign secretary it's this many more embassies it's this many more staff it's this absolutely right he then leaves the room i turn to the permanent secretary and say okay we got the green light let's go and the permanent secretary would say well i don't know because you know i could probably go and see the foreign secretary tomorrow and convince him to do the opposite right but but but is that boris's fault Or is that the rearguard action of the system?

34:24The deep state. I've been a member of the deep state for many years. Because all the prime ministers, and I served all five, I think that must be a record. We don't think we ever had so many prime ministers in one gig anyhow. But nevertheless, some are detailed people. Rishi and Gordon Brown were technocrats. I mean, they absolutely couldn't move without another paper being commissioned. and Gordon Brown and Co used to think if they stay at the problem long enough, suddenly a miraculous solution would appear. Then we have people that lead from the belly, like instinct, that's what I want to do, you sort out Africa.

34:59But then don't do the detail by sitting down and saying to the Foreign Secretary, do as you're bloody told, and to the PermSec and saying, do as you're told. I've rubber-stumped. I spent my life with rearguard actions to things that Boris had agreed to. But I really realised this, because I then went on to the Minister of Justice where I had David Gawker as a boss. And the difference there is he would give me, really get behind me on prisons. But then every week he'd call the civil service in and said, are you doing what Rory asked you to do? Yeah, I did that in defense. And I learned I had one boss who hardly even spoke to me and didn't even ask if I'd been on holiday or what did I do for the summer.

35:35And the civil service loved that because when they don't have a connection between the minister and the secretary of state, they can get in between, as you know. And the foreign office is incredibly hierarchical. I mean, it's the foreign secretary or no one. And junior ministers are told, oh, you can't go to this country yet because the foreign secretary hasn't been. And you go, but he's never going. And the foreign office is hierarchical. The Treasury is belligerent. And a successful prime minister will master the Treasury and has to be a master of the Treasury. And I wrote a column in The Telegraph about a year ago or whatever it was saying that I believe Rachel Reeves will be the Achilles heel of the Labour government, because I don't believe she's going to master the Treasury.

36:20Whereas, you know, and I don't think he is the type who's going to sit down and sort of knock heads together and say, well, I'm running the Treasury if you're not. Whereas, you know, there was always that. Just on that, why did you say that? What's your thinking? Because whatever we think of Gordon Brown, when he became the Chancellor at first, it was his Treasury. 100%. And he was running it, right? And you have to be the boss of the Treasury. Otherwise, the Treasury will lose you in process deliberately. They will appeal to your risk aversion of, oh, let's just one year Secretary of State, Chancellor.

36:57They will divide and rule all the different ministers. I mean, the number of Treasury ministers you and I would meet that had no power at all. I mean, just going around the houses. and you have to be the master of it, right? And, you know, Gordon came with power of labor, as in he was, in his eye, the Labor Party. I speak for the Labor Party, not that chap in number 10. I am the pedigree. And he mastered the treasury at first. I can disagree with lots of things he did. And you have to also be innovative, right? So, you know, the Bank of England, you know, I don't agree with it, but the growth of the PFI structures to get around his own rules, all of those sort of things.

37:37He was innovating. I don't believe he was remotely innovative. I think she'll just be a passenger. And I think Rory and I saw this. There are two types of ministers in government, or three. One is the passenger, which I have no respect for at all. And they do what they do. They get their submission. They just tick the box and they just carry it on. And they're not trying to shape anything or change anything. They're just trying to be a passenger in the hope that they get promoted for not causing any waves. Then you get the greasy pole people who they'll just do exactly as they're told by number 10 and not really care about the subject they're looking at because they want to be the next X and the next Y.

38:14And then I think you get people who I think, you know, Rory, you were one of these people, is you're bloody lucky to have power. And it might last a year and it might last 10 years. So while you have it, make a change, if that's what you want to do, and fight. And you do have to fight. I mean, one of the reasons I thought I don't want to be prime minister is there's only so much fight you can have in you. I mean, it is a daily, daily fight. Fight to be heard by your boss. Fight to overrule the very civil servants just being told by the prime minister, we want this for the Africa strategy. Fight to make sure you triangulate to get the treasury in the room.

38:49You know, here's a really good example that's frustrating to ministers of treasury tactics. They don't turn up to meetings. Or they send an official, not a minister. because if they send an official, they cannot be bound by collective ministerial making. So time and time again... But that's down to the minister. I always think that it's down to the minister. Yeah. Minister has to know who's going to meet meetings. Minister has to know the significance of meetings. Yeah, yeah, no, but I don't control the Treasury, right? And it's a very easy thing for the minister to say, all right, you know, because what the Treasury likes to do is push everything to one big grand bilateral between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.

39:26And you would have seen that in your own downing street, which is – so every small thing like, well, the Treasury won't let me have 50 million to do an Africa strategy. The Prime Minister isn't going to call in of any colour. The Prime Minister is not going to call in the chance to say give Aurestia 50 million. And the Treasury loves to wait till it's a big, well, Sir Prime Minister, this is the envelope you've set. And, you know, that's it.

39:56I'd love to bring you into foreign policy and defense. So talk us through Ukraine. That was an extraordinary, unique moment. You were the Defense Secretary. Talk us through your evolution. Talk us through what worked. Talk us through what's gone wrong. And give us a sense of that whole moment and your role in that. Well, it actually started beforehand. I'd been to Ukraine as security minister. I'd been the security minister in some pretty horrendous times, the terrible 2017 terrorist attacks, Manchester, Westminster, all of those attacks, London Bridge. But I'd also been the minister when the scruple poisoning happened.

40:35And it became abundantly clear that, you know, to use the GRU on our streets to deploy nerve agents. And again, for listeners, G.I.U. is the military intelligence, the Russian state. Of the Russian, who are mainly currently the in vogue intelligence service that have been assassinating people around Europe or trying to. And in fact, only in May this year, they were part of a plot to burn down a warehouse in London. So to deploy nerve agent on our streets to kill what they viewed as a traitor and then tragically took the life of Dawn Sturgeon is not something any government takes lightly. And it's not something that would have been decided by a junior rank of the GRU.

41:22It would have come absolutely from the Kremlin and from Putin himself. and I realized that this was a very very different Putin in Russia from the man who started the journey under Yeltsin and he didn't seem to care the risks he was putting people in the the Novichok bottle that was full of almost pure Novichok was thrown away and put under a bush well I think in a small park where poor old we think Dawn Surgis's boyfriend had found it if that had been delivered in aerosol it would kill 10 ,000 people I mean, this was not a sort of joke. And I knew then that we are in a very more dangerous place.

42:02And totalitarian states or messianic leaders, wherever they are, you need to read them. You need to read who they are and what they are and what they're thinking. So I went out to Ukraine, where we'd had a frozen line since 2014. And people forget, even before the invasion, Ukraine had lost 18 ,000 people. People were being killed every week on that line. So I went over there to understand the wider network of how Russia was functioning. and so the time we fast forwarded to the ukraine invasion and as you know in foreign policy where you have to also read human you have to read the people i mean going back to why you should be in politics if you can't politicians can't read the room shouldn't be politics i mean it's staggering how many very bright people can't read the room and and make judgments that you saw shoigu the defense minister yeah not long before the invasion what were you reading then Well, I wanted to get...

42:59Because they were sort of saying, this isn't going to happen. Why do you keep complaining? I mean, so it was pretty obvious from the April before. So Putin wrote an article, which he wrote most of it the year before, called the sort of historical links between Ukraine and Russia, which was read like a Mein Kampf novel. It evoked ethnic nationalism. NATO was only mentioned in one paragraph in 19 pages. So let's, you know, the talking points from the sort of MAGA crowd in the United States are all Kremlin talking points. It wasn't mentioned. It was all about his view of destiny and Crimea and all that.

43:35And that was him, right? So that's not a spin book to writing. That was him. So you realize that. And then they had this big exercise the April before. They left all their armored vehicles, you know, surprisingly nearby. And we did, you know, we could see signs that this was not just a normal exercise. And you add that to the rhetoric. And my judgment was he's going to do it. And, you know, I can't talk about intelligence, etc. But there were people within the establishment who didn't believe it. I remember a few weeks before, you know, very senior US and UK intelligence people saying he's not going to invade.

44:11Yeah. And I think I think one of the fallings out of the post Iraq war was in order to protect politicians using too much intelligence or being too reliable on a single report. which is one of the things that came out of Chilcot is SIS and others were too reliable on one report. We quite rightly do a proper assessment through the joint intelligence assessment, and it's all sort of matrixed and washed and very, very logical. And that's brilliant. But it is only, in my view, advice. And people are not always rational. I mean, I'm having a big row of somebody who said, oh, no, well, Putin's terribly rational.

44:48He's not going to do it. Oh, really? Really? I mean, you know, is it rational to use nerve agent in Britain? I mean, when did that become a rational response? Well, Jim, what I think was rational about that is that after it happened, and as you say, a British citizen, rather than the Russian quotes, traitor, close quotes, was killed, I think he sort of thought, I've got away with that. So the rational in him said, I can get away with a lot more. Yeah, and he'd murdered someone in Berlin, an attempted murder in Austria. and the other thing I'd seen as security minister is that daily Russia was attacking us in cyber, daily.

45:27And what was interesting is across Europe, different countries would deal with it differently. I won't say, but there was one major power in Europe who just didn't want anyone to know they were being constantly cyber attacked. We're not going to talk about that, as if it was some national embarrassment, you know. So I went to - But just on that, could we have done more after the Sripal attack? I think we could have done more in 2014. I think when he invaded Ukraine, so first of all, after the Scripple, that was the Foreign Office at its best. When they pulled together and we got 153 Russian spies from around the world expelled.

46:01And that was definitely the Foreign Office at its best, doing a really good job in our Italian service and everything else and getting that done. I think we could have all done more then. We could have realized enough's enough, put in financial sanctions a lot earlier, got rid of all these oligarchs in London. who, you know, I mean, I was also, I mean, the security job was as fascinating as a defence job because I was economic crime minister as well, organised crime. So I could see the dirty money flows. And, you know, every time... Why didn't we do more about that? Treasury. Treasury blocked every effort I ever did to try and make it.

46:34I remember discovering that you could register on Companies House, a company without even an identity check or a Google check to find out you're a sanction and i and of course the owner of the regulators of these bodies are either the treasury or the bays but the treasury wins every time i remember finding that almost no estate agents had ever reported under a suspicious activity report bags of cash or dodgy purchases of of of houses and i'd say we've got to really clamp down on these things and that and i spoke to ken clark about he said oh it was always the same when i was chancellor i never wanted to do anything the treasury that did that so i sound a bit like angry treasury uh just because the the money's they want the money flowing in they're just they're just they want wealthy people yeah they're terrified it sends the wrong message we're not open for business and i'm glad to say a lot of these things have now changed you know you cannot just open a business on company's eyes but there's still an awful lot of dirty money in london there's dirty money all over the world and but we are kind of up there no we've done quite a lot now we have really i brought in the first criminal finance act with the unexplained wealth orders.

47:40Again, people who didn't like it were people at the Treasury. They wouldn't give us liability coverage. So if the NCA put an unexplained wealth order on someone and that person sued for reputation, you should be able to cap that. So they got quite frightened that some oligarch would annihilate them with a law case. So, yeah, and you could then see the tentacles of Russia all over the corrupting methods of corrupting us both financially, politically. You know, I remember the Russians during the Black Lives Matter riots in America and when it got really bad, we discovered that the Russians were magnifying both extremes of the debate, both the sort of KKK and the hard militant Black Lives Matter deliberately to harvest division.

48:26And I think we can see a little bit of this in a sense that they're ramping up pro-Israeli and anti-Israeli sentiment. I mean, they're really enjoying that sense. I mean, I think it's a mindset, which is, and it's very different from Chinese mindset, which is I think Russia thinks, well, if I can make my rivals weaker, then by default, I become stronger. I mean, never mind actually looking after your own population and giving them heating and indoor toilets and making sure that they have a better standard. That doesn't really matter by the looks of things, you know, or broadband, whatever. As long as my enemy is weakened, I become stronger.

48:58Well, their whole media landscape is about, they don't talk about Russia, it's basically Europe's terrible, Middle East is terrible. All being done to us. Yeah. You know. But what about what they did on Brexit, for example? As you say, you were a big Remainer. Well, so I did read a lot of those reports were not true in the media about, you know. No, but you can't deny that the Russians sought to influence. They would have liked, well, they sought to influence Scottish independence. Yeah. Right. I mean, they would have liked, they liked division. There's no logic to it. They did one, they did try.

49:30It was pathetic, actually, in the Brexit debate at one stage. I remember there was some troll factory in St. Petersburg. And the problem was they couldn't quite get British humour right. You know how – because for these memes to take off, you do need to get the humour in the right place for someone to think – and it never quite worked. It never took off. It's like, no, that's not funny. So you have to – but genuinely, and I would say this as a Remainer, their efforts did not have an effect. And – Are we not slightly picking and choosing on that, though? No, I saw a lot. I mean, I would know whether they were any good at it.

50:06I mean, you know, I think we have a lot more to answer for our Remain campaign and how we dealt with it. I mean, our Remain campaign was, you know, pathetic. It was. Okay, so back to Ukraine. So we're now in the few weeks leading up to Putin suddenly in February 2021 deciding to, 2022 deciding to advance towards Kiev. Tell us about those last few weeks. So going back to all this thing, I had come to the conclusion in the summer before that they're going to do this. And we needed to put some weapons into Ukraine to allow the Ukrainians to defend themselves. And we're talking about those short-range anti-tank missiles.

50:47300 meters, right? They're not going to hit Moscow or anyone else. The institutions didn't want to do it. Senior members of these stuff, well, that's escalatory. I remember I was asked to go to the celebration of Ukraine independence on its 20-year or 30-year point. So which institution is you talking about? Foreign office said it would be escalatory to me to attend the celebration of Ukrainian independence. Spooks? Some of the spooks, some of the national security institution. And to be fair, this is where Boris was very good. I wrote to Boris and I said, look, Boris, we need to get some of this stuff in here.

51:20We're not talking about the high levels. We need to give them hope and deterrence. And he said, go to America, see if the Americans are okay. Went to the Americans, they were fine. Came back in September, and it got passed by the relevant national security committees. And then nothing happened. And it kept getting put back on the agenda by the system. So the weapons were not deployed? Not until January or December, I think, December or January. And it could have been three months earlier. so we got them in in january uh and then you know the drum beats the war and there were still people i mean i remember going to germany and i took with me pictures of the mobile crematoriums the russians deploy i mean you can imagine what what that is like i mean that's the type of attitude they have to their own forces because we know in 2014 they hid all the deaths they covered them up cremated them and buried them in fields and things so um i said look this they are going to do it and the germans were like it's not logical why would they do it and it isn't logical i mean who would sacrifice nearly 700 000 of your troops and most of your army but the people were not convinced i went to moscow um to be fair the scandinavians were convinced you know and i used to use sweden and finland as a as a proper marker to the eu i used to say to the rest of europe france and Germany especially, look, if Sweden is worried, you should listen.

52:48This is a historical neutral country. It knows its neighbor. It's a mainstream EU country. It's not a sort of traditional Eastern European type. I said, you should listen. And they really got it. The Scandinavians all understood there was a problem and it was going to happen. Something was going to happen or was going to happen. So I went to Moscow the week before or 10 days before, I think. It was all a bit, if you remember, Liz Truss had then gone. And I'd originally invited Shoigu to come. And so remarkably, I then got invited. So I went. I took my chief defense staff and a team. And it was, you know, quite respectful.

53:24We laid a wreath at the Kremlin for the unknown soldier. We had a parade there. And then we went. And, you know, it was a classic type of conference room in the ministry. And there was Shoigu Gerasimov, who was the, you know, undisputed at that stage leader of the Russian military. um obviously some of the gru people and and uh another another general and i brought my chief defense staff and my commander field army which is an unusual post to bring but i brought him because he's the guy who would have to deal with any you know it was like saying we're not we're not we have our own capabilities here and we had a meeting and and it was actually i mean there was a plus and a minus the meeting the plus was i realized then that their planning assumptions were entirely wrong.

54:10You know, Shoigu said to me, well, my mother's Ukrainian. They're going to welcome us. I thought, you haven't been to Ukraine recently. I have, you know, and they're going to, they're not going to fight. And Shoigu gave away, he said as I was leaving that basically his army was invincible. I mean, he'd said, you know, we used to be much further down the pecking order. Now we're like in the top. So there was hubris, misjunction. And those assumptions are what lead to failures in military plans. because if you make your plan, as we saw around, well, they'll welcome you in Kiev and all the girls will want to marry you and everything else, which is what they all thought, the conscripts basically.

54:45But also Putin's just been told he wants to hear the whole time. Yeah, yeah. And then they just lied to me. No, we're not going to do it. And I thought his lie was so straight. And there is a thing called Vrania in Russian, which is, it's like an abuse, which is, you know I'm lying. I know you know I'm lying. I'm still going to lie to you because I'm powerful. I mean, it's a bullying tactic. And, you know, I knew that somewhere else in that building was a room clearly making the plans for what was going to happen a few days later. And you could tell. Where do you think it goes now? How does this thing end?

55:24Well, the prescription of what we could do is all there. It's been laid out for two years. You know, Europe needs to stand up. It needs to put its money where its mouth is. You know, the one thing Obama and Trump has agreed on since 2014, I think it was, is 2%. So it's bizarre, but it is the one thing I think they actually agree on. And Europe has talked round and round in circles about it. Sorry, interrupting again. That's that other NATO countries should spend 2 % of their GDP on defense. Yeah, that's it. The American complaint that Europeans not spend it on their GDP. Which is probably low.

55:56It is low. And it is low now. Because of what's happening around the world. But it's – so the prescription is – you know, we've had two years, right? So we could have been ramping up our production, sending more equipment to Ukraine. There are issues in Ukraine. I've written before that one question I've always had for Zelensky is why didn't you mobilize your people? You know, in 1939, we mobilized men. And in 1941, the Women at War Act, we mobilized women. And if you are against an enemy that wants to annihilate you, as Adolf Hitler did, then why haven't we mobilized? And I think in the war, we spent something like 56, 60 % of GDP on our defense.

56:38I mean, and we didn't think, oh, yeah, but what's going to happen afterwards? We just had to survive. And I think there are some questions around that. Explain that again, Felicity. So he has not actually recruited as many young men as people have. He hasn't. Well, when we had the call up, everyone was called up. we all were trained and then we you know people we had we had conscription in the second war they don't quite have conscription and and zelensky took a view that he was wanting to preserve the sort of 18 to 28 year olds were younger and it's not a mass conscription now you know i would have said and i've written it what i think they should have done is mobilized asked europe to train them right because that's not a hard ask if you ask them to train people that's not difficult and by now and then they go back to their houses they put their helmets under the bed.

57:22They put their uniforms in the cupboard. They go back to work and you can then call them up. And that hasn't happened. Okay. Let's get into this then. So 2022, remarkable. Putin does make it through to Kiev. Beginning of 2023, people are really beginning to think about a counter-offensive, this very complicated idea that Ukraine is going to push Russia back. What goes wrong there? Why didn't that work? I think two things. First of all, we probably were all trying to impose how we do things on them um and and soviet armies didn't quite have the same type of combat engineer so we always have in our system combat engineers are the men and women that clear minefields and breach obstacles and the russians had been building this obstacle massive sort of uh like a obstacle sort of motorway really through through the territory they already held and you know to puncture through that landmines drones everything else um is a very big call and very hard and i don't think ukraine actually had um that capability at this at the right moment and also we'd all under underestimated the use of russian landmines i mean the russians have thousands millions of these things and they were just throwing them out the back of their carts you know literally so so the minefields were deep they weren't just shallow you know they were putting mines on top of mines so you you clear the first mine and the second one goes off um and at the same time cheap drones which is a new the real new phenomena of this battlefield is you can be found anywhere i mean these cheap drones flying everywhere whether they're whether they're dropping anything or just watching so in armored warfare you have to assemble.

59:11You have to concentrate your force to then punch through the barrier. And the problem is, if you're in your assembly point and somebody with a 200-pound drone has spotted you, suddenly the artillery comes in and you don't get to congregate or muster in the way you're supposed to. So if you can't concentrate your forces to punch through, it becomes harder. And then you get stuck in a minefield, and then the Russian artillery is vast. So it was a very difficult time there were some successes hershon if you remember we got to the north side of the of the straits looking opposite into crimea and indeed since then people have crossed over um there were some successes but uh obviously russia managed to repel that um but but the other thing is at great cost i mean no other maybe apart from president xi no other nation would survive losing 700 ,000 of its own citizens, dead or injured.

1:00:15How many do you reckon are dead? How many Russians do you think have died? The figure we talk about is dead, injured, or deserted. Right, but how many do you reckon are dead? A quarter of a million? I'd say a quarter of a million plus. I mean, they were losing 1 ,500 a day recently, a day, fighting over empty shell of a village. You know, he doesn't care, right? I mean, there's a reason he's had to now rely on North Koreans. I mean, he doesn't care. And this is the big test for the West is just as we see in the Middle East, it's about resolve. And now, the problem is what are we going to do in a world where the dictators have no regard for their own population at all?

1:00:56And they believe that's the way you win, you know, because… Well, he's sort of being proved right. Well, that's what we've got to be very careful about. We've got to be very strong on our resolve. But is there not an argument that we have been rhetorically saying to Ukraine, we will back you as long as it takes, come what may? But I know you made the comment about, you know, sometimes they treat us like a kind of Amazon store. Well, no, that was a misquote. I'd said, we're not Amazon, we're a partnership. Okay. Because I had offered training in Britain. And I need people to train. And if you don't give us people to train, you can keep buying all the stuff you like.

1:01:32Right, okay. But people will lose their lives. But there's been a sort of pattern where Ukraine kind of says what it wants from the military abazin. And then there's all the politics takes over here in America and Europe. And then we don't give them what they want when they're asking for it. And then eventually we do. But meanwhile, Putin's moved on to something else. Yeah. No, I found that terribly frustrating. And, you know, he's a bully. I mean, that's how I view it. Right. And for a bully to be successful, all he has to do is intimidate and people to fear him. And Putin is a bully and he needs to be stood up to.

1:02:11But what does standing up to him mean? Well, first of all, you don't have these ridiculous debates about storm shadow, not storm shadow. I mean, let's not forget over these last nearly three years, over these last years, we had rows about anti-aircraft missiles. We had rows about tanks. We had rows about not even storm shadows, planes. You know, every single time you go around in a circle. But is that because we're democracies and he's a dictatorship? No, it's because I think... Or is it because we're just not delivering on the words that we're promising? Because there are parts of our systems, as in in our government, who believe that escalation, you know, who believe his rhetoric on escalation and are...

1:02:55So they are intimidated by the new threat. Well, all threats. No, I mean, originally... But every time that we are deemed to be escalating, they sort of put out, don't forget the news. I mean, they've got that drunk media lurking around, game show hosts. I mean, look, Putin knows that like for like, NATO versus a unified NATO versus Russia in conventional methods is done, right? Russia loses in conventional. And in fact, it's definitely going to lose now because he has got no army left, really, right? So he is a vote. Definitely going to lose. On a conventional battle, Russia would lose. Against a unified nation.

1:03:37Against a unified nation. With the United States involved. With the United States, yeah. With the United States involved as part of the key. But absolutely. Remember how much he has lost in his modern arsenal. I mean, you know, when you're resorting to firing Iranian drones and sort of ballistic missiles and human wave attacks, that's not the battle they were configured for. um but yeah he evokes nuclear he's done it 30 40 times he evokes it and so what about trump how do we feel about nato trump future thereof well on one level trump has a legitimate cry to say you've been warned since 2014 by obama as well that you need to to pick up the pace you know people forget the americans are on the hook for 300 ,000 plus personnel to come to our aid.

1:04:29If I was a Secretary of State carrying that liability, I'd be a little bit, you know, thank you very much. And we have been, and, you know, go back to really 1991 onwards, we have been corporate raiding the defense budget to pay for our other, I wouldn't call them luxuries, but to pay for our social policies. And maybe that's a decision that people, all the governments, both Labour and Conservative government, and I, you know, I get It's quoted constantly by John Healy, who I have a lot of respect for, my successor, or one of my successors. But, you know, both Labour and Conservatives in their time have reached for the defence budget when it suited them.

1:05:04And that's, you know, I've been in a hollow armed forces under both Labour and Conservatives. I've been in those hollowed forces. So I think Trump is probably, I suspect, going to require more of a subscription to be a member of NATO. And what that is, 2.5 % or 3%, I don't know, and what time he'll put on it. When it comes to Ukraine, it's quite interesting. I've been reading some of the comments by his picks, first draft picks, his picks for government. Some of them are quite contradictory. I think it's a national security advisor who said Putin views a ceasefire as an opportunity to reload. And some of them have been quite harsh on Putin.

1:05:45William said he's a murderous thug and he doesn't know what's going to hit him. But then others, obviously, like the Hawaiian, whatever she's lady is the national. Tulsi. Yeah. And the basic trend, though, with most of them is to say China is the priority. Russia's a distraction. All these supplies. And even Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, who you're quoting, has said he's very reluctant to provide more patriot missiles because it involves stripping the patriots they could use against China. Everyone is worried about our own stocks. I mean, you know, we've spent stocks or gifted stocks to Ukraine.

1:06:24Everyone has. And that inevitably comes from your own stocks. So we don't quite know what Trump will do because reading his mind is quite difficult. But let's imagine the worst case scenario where he really feels that he's said America does not want to spend another$50 billion next year helping Ukraine against Russia. and that he's sort of hinted to his voter base that he's not about to spend a huge amount of money helping ukraine next year um would europe be able to step up without that 50 billion dollars to america and what would be involved what would be the the challenges let's say to cut something else i mean my my whole we'd have to mobilize our whole effort my whole effort was to change the culture of where defense sat in the public sector choice of spending ultimately we can argue about 2.5, 3%, whatever.

1:07:15But ultimately, both governments had got out of the habit of talking about defence as core. It'd been a stick-on discretionary spend. The Treasury would dollop some underspend from another department into you. But no one was really prepared to say, look, we're going to cut, we're going to spend less on roads this year because we're going to spend more on transport. We're going to spend less on the NHS, whatever you want to choose from. That was never going to happen. And even when I felt very pleased that I got Rishi over the line and put a date on 2.5. That was going to be funded out of cutting civil servants.

1:07:48If we really want to be honest about defense spending and how much heavy lifting we're going to have to do, someone's going to have to be brave, whether it's Keir Starmer or Kemi Badenot, and stand up and say, you know what? Next year, we're spending less on the roads budget or whatever budget you want to choose. And until that happens, the public don't buy the smoke and mirrors of, you know, we're going to cut bureaucracy, magic. and it's so that's the UK how about the rest of Europe can you see them really stepping up if the US cut 50 billion I mean is it likely I mean I agree I think some will unfortunately the smaller powers will Poland Poland is definitely I mean Poland is going to be Poland is going to replace Britain within the EU as its role it plays if you want I think it's the fifth biggest economy already it's a highly productive economy spending I think towards 4 % of GDP.

1:08:41It's going to become Europe's security voice, European Union security voice, not the continent of Europe, and one of its big power bases. And it's going to be very interesting to see how France and Germany accept that. So they will. The Scandinavians are already in a better position. Their forces are better at being ready. They're not massive, but they're good at it. I think the question will be, would France and Germany? That's going to be a big question. Would Italy? and would Spain. And if you really want to get going, remember, I think it's shocking. I think 78 % or maybe 82%, somewhere around that, of all of NATO spending is by countries outside the EU.

1:09:21Right? So, you know, I understand Macron's call for an EU army and all these. I don't agree with it. But it's all pie in the sky if your security is paid for by Canada, America, Britain, and Turkey. I mean, it's pie in the sky. and Putin knows it. On being out of the EU, sorry to sort of return to the obsession. I'm going to put you a little theory. So you were in the frame to be NATO General Secretary. You were ish, right? And George Robertson, who'd been one of your predecessors when we were in power, became General Secretary of NATO. I think Brexit did for you. Discuss. It's possible, possible.

1:10:06I mean, just on the SecGen, I can tell you that the background of this was Mark Rutter was what everyone had thought. And we were all happy with it. The Dutch Prime Minister. The Dutch Prime Minister. Biden personally asked him at least twice, and he said no. So when he said no, we saw a vacancy, and we thought, yes, we'll put me in. I hadn't gone into defense to be the Secretary General of NATO. um and yeah definitely elements of the french and german establishment did not want me to be the secretary later and they wanted an eu person i think within those systems that was quite interesting so within the french system i had supporters right because because i'm not uh you know i'm quite happy to stand up to united states and i have done in in my own time and i fundamentally believe that we cannot just go spend our life buying completely american equipment We need to invest in our own – I would say that coming from Lancashire.

1:11:03We need to invest in our own defense capabilities and things. And if we're entirely dependent on the United States for our defense, there'll be no industry. Thousands of people will not have their job, and we'll get what we're given. And by the way, that does mean back of the queue when it comes to defense. You have to wait until they build their ships. So I think there were some, yes. And I think Biden was always iconic. He didn't want to upset the French and Germans. That was a long-running theme in them. Look, to be fair, Olaf Scholz and I do not get on. I've been very publicly critical of him, not when I was serving, but I have since.

1:11:40But during my tenure, he blamed me for the tanks. I embarrassed him because I put Challenger tanks into Ukraine, and it made him have to do that in the end. So I didn't always get on with the SPD German defense team. um the the much-wanted pistorius that people keep he's good no he's okay he's okay but i had the previous one christian le brett before of course yeah but also it was olaf schultz it wasn't to be fair to boris i mean boris is is perfectly good at stories i mean he he could be in the running to be he might remain defense secretary in a grand coalition of the germans um but ultimately uh i used to feel that germany you know were were holding back we're trying to play a game that It was too clever by half on Putin.

1:12:26Israel, Palestine, other big conflict going on at the moment. Now that you're free of politics, what would you say about what Israel's been doing in Gaza and what it's been doing in Southern Lebanon? Well, I think, you know, everything we have, we have to be guided by international law. And you have a right to self-defense, but that self-defense has to be proportional. and i can see uh neti yahoo's point of view uh which is um you know i'm going to finish this well i was looking at some quotes from the israeli prime minister in 2001 when the when when uh i think it was islamic jihad kicked off and he said we're going to annihilate them well no one ever did you know i mean it's very hard to annihilate a terrorist belief doesn't you can damage the military and Hamas had been very badly damaged.

1:13:18But I think what worries me about the Israeli guards, I think, is where's the political solution? I don't hear any political solution. And you're only going to bring stability in the long term through a political solution. Now, I actually took the view you shouldn't have a ceasefire with Hamas. But what you should do is recognize Israel holds all the cards. It controls the air, sea and land. It's got time on its side. It could have taken out the initial people who prosecuted that. It could have done it over 10 years or one year. It didn't have to do this bulldozing of so much of that small strip of land.

1:13:55And in doing so, I think lost the moral high ground. And in doing so, we will see, because I had done this as a security minister, the radicalization of young men across the globe. um so look they are right to defend themselves but i want to see a political solution alongside it you know um i think uh if you ever want an advert for i should never have a partial representation it's a knesset right which which has always produced almost a governance of israel that is very very hard to make any progress on politics political solution so we are now held to ransom by tiny little parties in Knesset who don't want a two-state solution in any way at all.

1:14:37And I don't see them producing any solution. I had a friend who sat down with Netanyahu very recently. And Netanyahu was basically on monologue form and saying, we're dealing with an octopus and we're cutting off their legs one by one, but the head of the octopus is Iran. And all I need is give me the weapons and we're going after Iran. What's your view on this strategy? actually well you could slightly put it another way that if you were iran right now you your proxies have been smacked all over the place um you you know that your own military is a bit of a joke insofar as you've talked to yourself for years about how good it is but it isn't really very good uh and uh you fear that israel's coming for you one way or the other whether that's true or not is separate.

1:15:27I think you'll see an acceleration of the nuclear program in Iran, which they've had on and off. I think that's the truth of their program. It's been on and off. It's been on, it's been off, it's been on. So I think you're going to have definitely the direction of a nuclear-armed Iran, whether it's this year, next year, or the next three years, which Israel has always said is unacceptable, as have the other neighbors. I mean, you know, many Gulf Arab states do not want a nuclear-armed Iran because Iran will do what Russia does and start having spheres, influences under its umbrella. But is it possible, right?

1:16:01I mean, Iran, it doesn't matter what solution is going to happen in the Middle East and Israel. I don't think Iran is going to stop with its ambitions now. But the challenge for anybody is if you think the solution is to use military force to stop its nuclear program, you have to be 120 % sure you can. I mean, if you do it and it doesn't work, what do you do then? And it's going to be really interesting in Trump because in his mantra, there's no boots on the ground. But, you know, if Iran was what they wanted to do, that would not – Israel can't do it on his own. Now, listen, my final question, Ben, to bring us back to the UK, is the state of your party today.

1:16:50is kemi badenock going to be a leader at the next election and is she ever going to be prime minister

1:17:01uh kemi i worked with and i think i think you know this better than most is that in in the when you're in the political bubble the swirl of rumors and you know you're going to go round around the circles my experience with her kemi is she was instinctively strong on her economics she was uh direct and uh you know was was a competent secretary of state a good a good secretary of state that was my experience uh of her um she's she's done the right things at first she hasn't jumped in with a policy a day some of the other candidates were like announcing a policy a day and she knows that it's a four-year cycle five years she's already played the care should resign card alistair i'm not going to take that from the labor party it's been the life i mean i was watching louise hayes vizios of everyone should resign for wrongdoing well we'd have a day i think everyone i mean usually the lib dams are the first out of the trap for a resign that's true I don't think we ever, I don't think we ever call for Major to resign.

1:18:06I'm not sure we did. But I think, I think, look, I think she will get there actually. What, to number 10? I think, well, it's a long time in politics, right? I mean, I don't, you know, look. What are you hearing here, Rory? I'm not hearing a ringing endorsement. Well, no, no, look, I know it's a four-year journey, right? So it is all to play for. I think she could do it. I think she has the qualities to do it. She's the quality to be the prime minister. But I also know I've been in opposition. I remember being in Liz Truss's cabinet as the only member who'd been in opposition. It is a hard slog opposition and also weak as a long term policy.

1:18:47If there was an election tomorrow morning, I think she'd have a good chance, right? Because Keir Starmer and his team are very unpopular, right? And people are worried. But I'm also not naive enough to think that what happens this week is going to be solidified into people. I remember, here's a lesson from Ken Clarke. Very early on in the Cameron administration, we had this privatize the forests debates, right? Which was where, I can't remember what the policy was it was so sort of it was pretty minor which was going to be something like the national forestry whatever they call it the forestry commission we're going to sell off some of the public forest we're going to sell off some of the public forestry state but we were going to guarantee all the rights away people will still be able to and there was this big thing and david cameron did a u-turn and it was the first experience of new mps getting letters and you know campaigns against it and ken went this is just such rubbish he said he said to me if in four years time you've got to do your ken if in four years time mr james is still walking through here that forest with his dog he won't give a toss about that debate four years earlier and you have to put things in perspective in politics and you have to think visualize through the next four years so so kemi's challenge is can she visualize the four years uh keir starmer's challenge is to think about what's he actually going to do in year three and four never mind always doing now.

1:20:08And Rachel Reeves' challenge is, if you don't grow the economy in year three or four, or if the tax income is low and you have lost growth, you're done. That would be my view. And Keir should think about moving her in year three to bring someone in, because I think that is ultimately what we'll do for them and do for us. Final one from me, lessons in leadership. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. Or the one you admire the most, Tony Blair. Imagine I commissioned you to write a book on lessons in leadership. What are the do's and don'ts of being a British Prime Minister you've picked up?

1:20:48So the do's and don'ts are, first of all, it's an old army question, which the test of leadership is, be very clear on what your mission is and what everybody's role is in it. And there's an old test in the army, which is when you turn up and you go to the trenches and you said to the young guardsmen, what is your higher commander's plan and your role in it? If you can't answer it, the leaders failed, right? No one's asking the guy in the trench to storm the Bastille, but you're asking them, you know, what's the boss's boss's idea? Because then they can all contribute. And if you can't answer it, too many leaders in politics don't communicate that, either to their own troops or to the country.

1:21:25My plan is this, and your plan in it, your role in it is that. I think that's the most important thing for any leader, and it's also a very good test to find out. People have no idea what it is to be conservative or to be part of the new Labour movement. What's the point? I mean, they'll all just flake away. So that, I think, is the most important. The other one is that experience matters. It really matters. Don't fall in love with the media narrative. Oh, a high flyer, aren't they brilliant? No, no. I'm afraid sometimes the unglamorous, hardworking, the ministers of state carry governments. They are the hard workers.

1:21:57I mean, they know how to govern. They attend those boring committees. They try and triangulate and get their way. So learn how to govern, and if not, train people how to govern. There's nothing wrong with people learning their trade, right? And I think governance is a skill. And the way you govern in politics is people, process, and policy. and if you can't get a triangulation right then you ultimately won't deliver so liz truss could stand up and make a policy but she didn't really think about the people like in the obr and all those things and you didn't think about the process and you know i i will take it back um to the early the new labor sort of trilateral power of you know the man sitting opposite me alistair campbell did comms peter mandelson put the fix in john prescott knocked heads together of ministers those that three helped drive new labor deliver because you know ministers you know cabinet committees you know prime ministers don't really like attending them most of the time but you need somebody who says i don't really give a toss about transport but i'm telling you you come up to a decision and john prescott was good at that right and and you know i think you've got to have those three stools of governance and if you don't you just fall off a cliff and and you know i i think those are the three lessons so we'd agree that tony blair was probably the best prime of your political lifetime of your political lifetime i'm not that i'm not that young i think there were some great leaders in our time and uh you know i think i'm afraid to say the jury is out on both kia we'll see what chemi delivers um and uh i think let's just go back to being valuing experience in life whether you're an experienced broadcaster or an experienced we're too busy to throw people away and focus on the glamour instead of a bald, overweight man sitting here on the programme but I do think that's true Well, thank you very, very much for your time Thank you Thank you, Ben Right, Ben Wallace well, he was more interesting than I thought he was going to be Oh, thank you No, no I mean, look, he's a proper person I knew him before he became a politician I knew him when he was still in the army even before he was in Scottish Parliament because he's my neighbour in Scotland But one of the things I really appreciated about him is that instead of becoming massively bitter, and he had every reason to be bitter, he was stuck on the back benches for basically 10 years because Cameron didn't raise him.

1:24:24And actually, Ben was developing through all that time real expertise on Iran, very confident on defense, and turned out to be a brilliant defense secretary. And somehow Cameron couldn't see it, but he didn't become bitter. He remained incredibly funny. He clearly was not a fan of Cameron's and was pretty cheeky about him in the bar. The second thing is that he became really weirdly, despite being a Remainer, became Boris Johnson's wit for his leadership run. But he called me and he said, Rory, you know, I'm ringing you to tell you that you need to vote for Boris Johnson. But to be honest, you can completely ignore what I'm saying, because actually it's not going to make much difference to your career who you come out for.

1:25:05If I were you, I'd just keep your powder dry and not endorse any of these duggars. so he was what was he doing there was he confident he'd got the votes anyway looking after you i think he's confident that he got the making you feel oh maybe these guys aren't as confident he got confident he got the votes um being pretty straight as a friend and i was really appreciated it because actually even teresa may who i really liked her whips were cranking up the pressure and being like as a friend i would seriously advise you to vote for teresa may i'm afraid nobody who doesn't vote for is ever going to get a position and he was just like forget it do what yeah yeah do you yeah well he's please please advise about that i thought it's really interesting in ukraine um i thought i had a really kind of good sense of sense of why it's got to where it's got to now do you think he was as optimistic as he seemed no i don't think he is as optimistic i think it was a help when he was defense secretary though that he actually knows quite a lot of stuff about armaments and can talk with relative confidence i mean those years in the army at least gave gave him some background.

1:26:08Yeah, yeah. I also like his cross-party nature. He obviously admires John Healy, likes Jack Straw a great deal. He was reminding me before we recorded, he said, do you remember a conversation we had on the day that your old boss stepped down? And I said, no, I don't. He said, well, I was standing next to you. And I said, I don't know why you a lot have done this, because you've just got rid of your best ever prime minister. Yeah. The final thing, I think, is actually quite moving about him was this relationship with ken clark which was completely true nobody i ever knew made anything of this job of being a pps which is like an unpaid part-time parliamentary bag carrier where often you barely see your minister at all he had lunch with him almost every day went out to ronnie scott's with him and literally like learned like an apprentice with a man that says to me that underlines to me that ken clark was a very clever politician because one thing you should be doing if you've got anybody that you can be developing you should be doing that but secondly if you're a minister and you've got all the different sort of forces and pressures going on with the department use your allies and yeah no but those are prime ministerial pps's i think what was and they they were important even in our government you know david cameron teresa may's pps's were important you know gavin williamson famously made his career as a prime minister's PPS.

1:27:30But it was unusual for a secretary of state. And Ken, you know, is absolutely wonderful. But he was getting older. He was relatively slow. And I really, I like that part of Ben's character that he could really spend the time. And he also recognized that my brother was almost as good a piper as I am. Much better. Much, much better, Alistair. And on that, we will conclude. Good. See you soon. Thank you.