117. Is the UN fit for purpose? (Tom Fletcher)

24:59Then you get to Syria, you know, talking to one guy who'd gone back into Saibandar prison to try to find 14 relatives the day after the prison had been liberated. And you saw those pictures, you know, people were breaking down the walls to try to get to loved ones. He hadn't found them, but he showed me a noose. He'd taken a noose out of that prison where so many people had been tortured. And he handed it to me and said, this is my only connection, my physical connection to my brother. I don't know if he was hanged by this noose, but maybe he was. And if so, this is all I have left of him. These are tough stories to hear.

25:39And then yesterday, yeah, out there on the front line, wonderful old retired teacher, could have been one of my teachers, Tamara. And one day she went out for a walk, a shell hits her house, absolutely everything destroyed. And she's there in the reception center. We'd met her at the front line, got her in a van, driven her to a reception site, given her a blanket, it, put some warm food in her belly, started to help her recover documents, you know, so she could start to rebuild her life. But in all these situations, the conversations you have, they can be very mundane. Often people talk to you about the same things that we'd be talking to each other on a cold water swim, Anastasia.

26:18You know, people are talking about their daily lives. They're worried about their kids. They're thinking about staying in touch. I tell you one thing that's really difficult here in Ukraine, you know, I felt it the last few days, but I hear it from my team as well. It's living with this constant threat of shelling and the sirens going off the whole time. The anxiety, the psychosocial impact of that on a whole people is really tough. The other one I've really noticed here, and anyone, you know, when people start to come and talk to you who've been in Gaza the last few months, they'll tell you this as well.

26:50The drones. You know, every time a drone comes near our window or near one of the vehicles, you know, we don't know if it's a friendly drone. We don't know if it's an offensive drone. We don't know if that's the drone that's going to take us out. And people are living with that all the time. And it's a reflection of how warfare has changed, that these drones are everywhere now. And it's quite terrifying to think that there was someone there watching you. People here are telling me, my staff, the drones come in their windows, fly around, and then leave again. I mean, that is utterly, utterly terrifying.

27:19You know, I know you guys are critics of Elon Musk, but a few years ago, I was part of a letter that he and I wrote. 200 tech leaders wrote, saying we've got to have rules about the drones. these lethal autonomous weapon systems. We've got to find a way to regulate them. You know, and this is a measure of the challenge we have in the UN system. We wrote that to the UN and it took a year and a half to get a reply back because the UN couldn't decide whose job it was to answer the letter. But I believe we were right, you know, because the tech companies are saying, we are creating risks faster than you guys can manage them.

27:50And so that's a real challenge to us is to find ways to regulate and manage these new technological challenges to our security and our liberty. Tom, we're talking at a time where the Israel-Gaza situation feels quite fluid, but given you're in Ukraine, how do you see that situation resolving itself? Well, I've been working quite hard from here over the last few days and talking to the mediators and the parties on the ground. My part of it is that if there's a C-SPY deal, I've got to massively ramp up humanitarian assistance. I've got to get hundreds of trucks into Gaza, into a security environment, which is very, very difficult.

28:29I've mentioned that our convoys are being shot up. They're being looted. The other day, I had 80 trucks go in, and 79 trucks got looted by armed gangs. And then the community organizers who helped to escort those trucks were then taken out by an Israeli drone. It's virtually impossible to get aid through. And it won't suddenly get easier if there's a ceasefire, because there will be a lot of action between different armed groups, between Hamas and the other armed groups, the gangs within Gaza. But also, we don't know whether the Israelis will start to make life easier for us or will continue to make it very difficult for us to deliver aid.

29:04And that's before you start to rebuild the hospitals. There's no functioning health system in Gaza right now. We've got to get in there and do that. We've got to rebuild the infrastructure. Cash will be a big part of this, Rory, you'll be pleased to hear. And we're working with partners to see how we can get money in the pockets of Palestinian families. But the problem right now is there's nothing to buy with it. Obviously, if the ceasefire comes through, there's going to be a lot of talk about reconstructing Gaza. And there'll be talk about international partners coming in to provide security, to support new government, society, reconstruction.

29:42And there'll be echoes from that of the kind of conversations we had in Iraq and Afghanistan about nation building. But this presumably will feel very different because in this case, Israel will continue to have very, very strong views on security, will continue to have very strong views on the border. So whichever administration comes in is going to be in quite an uncomfortable position between Palestinian demands on the one hand and Israelis on the other and likely to be distrusted by both sides. Could you reflect a little bit on how you'd think that through? It's really hard. And it's something that my colleagues are doing and the mediators are doing.

30:19Ultimately, you've got to stand up a proper Palestinian administration with independent authority. Ultimately, you've got to have a state, as all of us would agree. But the prospects for that, as people say, there may be light at the end of the tunnel, but there's not much of a tunnel. It's very, very bleak. And remember that everyone who's been part of any kind of infrastructure, governing infrastructure, including doctors and teachers, has been a target in recent months. So there's a whole swathe of expertise there that's just been wiped out because of the ferocity of the killing. So it will take a long time to do.

30:54And all of us, I think, Rory, you've reflected a lot on this in your books. We're all thinking about what is the new model for state building and rebuilding after conflict. And probably the pendulum swings for us, I think, having worked on it. And many of us are scarred, as you and I are, by the experience in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And sometimes I think that means we swing too far the other way. We start saying, well, there's nothing to do with us anymore. We're no good at this, so let's not even try. Curiously, the person I had the best conversation with about post-conflict reconstruction was Ahmed al-Shara, the new leader of Syria.

31:29And he said, and we talked long into the night, he said, we're not going to be Libya. We've learned the lessons of Libya. We can't have power too decentralized. But then he also said, we've learned the lessons of Iraq. We can't send home the people who have to build the state, including the people with the weapons and the army. He said, we've learned the lessons of Afghanistan. This was particularly when I pressed him on the rights of women and girls. And he said, we've learned that we won't be the Taliban. And he also said, we've learned the lessons of Lebanon, that you can't just have an authority built on power sharing agreements between different religious or sectarian groups.

32:05So it was curious, he had a kind of governing model in his mind of how you try to rebuild a central administration. And curiously, and the three of us have all worked in the UK government, he was asking me questions about number 10. And Alistair, you're a guru on this, but the way in which different administrations functioned or didn't function. Okay, Tom, Alistair, quick break.

32:56you know, in a way that maybe impressed you or moved you or struck you as a kind of piece of statecraft that mattered. So my job title, I was the private secretary of foreign affairs, and it was once mistranslated on a visit to China as the intimate typist for the prime minister's affairs overseas. And now whenever I go to Beijing, I always get sat in a really important position because people thought that I wrote the prime minister's love letters, which was not something I ever did for any of those three. Not that you can tell us. I think it was a more recent prime minister who had someone right.

33:31Anyway, let's not get into that. You know, one thing you learn working in such close proximity with people like this, you know, these are extraordinary people and it's very easy to be really cynical about politicians. We love to hate politicians. But they all had extraordinary strengths. You know, I think great leaders can set the vision. they can bring people with them, but then they also put the structures in place, the delivery plans in place. I'm really trying to learn from that model in this job. And I suspect they would agree, and I think their books bear this out, that when it came to foreign policy, each of them was really good at two of those things, but then sometimes struggled on the third.

34:09So Tony Blair had a very clear sense of vision. He was very good at engaging people. He was a part, thanks to you, Alistair, a master communicator. We set the framework for how we try to communicate now on foreign policy, but used to get very frustrated about delivery. Gordon had such a clear vision of the world. If you sat with Gordon on a plane on the way back from a G8 summit, my goodness, he would just take it apart, put it back together again. And we saw that in the G20. He was also very good on delivery, seeing through the systems and the structures, the famous clunking fist, but struggled to engage people, struggled to get that message across or communicate it in a kind of 21st century media environment.

34:51And then working with David Cameron, I really enjoyed that year working with David. He was a great communicator on foreign policy. And you saw that when he came back as foreign secretary. He was great at doing the delivery, actually. Incredibly hardworking, always up before us in the morning, put the red box on the table to show us he'd done his homework. But I think in that period as prime minister, he struggled to really set out what he thought was his foreign policy vision. In fact, he very deliberately recoiled from that and used to say to me, look, I'm not like Blair and Brown. I don't have to have a sort of set foreign policy vision that's described as muscular internationalism or whatever it would be in, you know, whichever two words we picked.

35:28And I mean, I think he did have more of a vision when he came back as a very effective foreign secretary, by the way, but each of them had that struggle. Now, on the examples, I mean, it was only at the very end that I worked for Tony Blair. So I'll give you one for Gordon, one for David. I mean, Gordon Brown, it was the G20. He pulled the world together at that moment. No one else could have done that. And at the end of that G20 summit, Sarkozy did one of those classic Sarkozy rants. And he said, the problem is no one's got a plan. No one knows what to do. And Obama just leant forward and tapped the microphone and just said, Gordon's got a plan.

36:00And Gordon absolutely did have a plan. And actually at that moment, Sarkozy went off to go and give his press conference. And Gordon was finishing his speech with a big marker pen, and taking time over getting the words exactly right. And I was worried Sarkozy would make his press conference first. So I had to race around the back and literally unplug Sarkozy's press conference so that he didn't get to speak before my prime minister. That's the commitment of the British civil service. Then David Cameron, the moment to me when I felt that David Cameron, in front of my eyes, became my prime minister was the Savile inquiry.

36:31I was also the Northern Ireland advisor. And I took him in the draft speech in response to Bloody Sunday. and said, look, I don't think this goes far enough, but only you can decide what you want to say. But by the way, and this was an Irish colleague had come and told me this, when it's on Sky News, it'll be a split screen. On one side, you'll have you in Parliament. On the other side, you'll have people in Derry and their reaction. And we have to bear in mind how people on the ground will be reacting as well. And David Cameron took the documents. He went off on his own. He read the whole report, but he called me back in and he said, get someone in here.

37:08And he dictated the first page. And he said, I never thought I'd have to make a statement like this, but I'm sorry. It was a real moment that only actually he could have done. Maybe only a Tory prime minister could have done actually, where he stood there and he owned the mistakes of the past, including of the military in that way. By the way, just to kind of cap off that story, sorry, it's a long one. My great uncle, wonderful great uncle, was actually the chief of police on Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. And I'd had to go to David Cameron and say, look, if the report points the finger at Uncle G, then of course you're going to have to take me off the job.

37:42I can't possibly be part of writing your response if it does that. Happily for me, it didn't. I guess what you're saying about Gordon is that some of the characters and characteristics of modern politics and the show-busy side of modern politics, he really didn't get it and didn't like it. So when I was in number 10, I was really worried about being away from the boys for so long, and my oldest son at the time. So I collected this book of advice from world leaders. And every time I met a world leader, I'd get them to write a page of advice for Charlie. And, you know, Obama said, look, Charlie would be very rich or very clever, depending on whether he sells the book or reads it.

38:21at one point I was in the middle of the room and Berlusconi came across and wanted to sign this book and of course of all the world leaders he was the last person I wanted to sign Charlie's book because I'd had these two experiences with him one with Gordon and one with David Cameron so with Gordon we're in the Palazzo Chigi Berlusconi's residence and he said look I'm going to give you a tour Gordon of my private apartment and he took us into the bathroom and he said look look, this is the two-way mirror, and this is the bath where I have baths with the girls. And, you know, there's probably two types of leaders in the world.

38:54There are leaders who would understand what Berlusconi was talking about and maybe even jump in the bath too. And then there were leaders like Gordon Brown who had no comprehension and, you know, was really wanting to get the subject back to fiscal rules. And Berlusconi started going off on this rant about how there was a two-way mirror and how he could sit on the other side and look through the mirror and see what's going on in the bath. And to this day, whenever I see Gordon, he'll say, what was Burlesqueur talking about? I mean, he still to this day doesn't, he's completely perplexed by this horrific story from a world leader.

39:28And then after the election, you know, I was there through the transition, you know, I did the Obama call, farewell call with Gordon, and then the Obama welcome call to David Cameron, for example. I took David Cameron to his first G8 summit. And diplomacy is very theatrical. And so I said to David, look, you've got to do something to show you're the new guy. You're feral, you're strong, you're energetic. So we went for a swim in the lake, Lake Muskoka, I think it was, in Canada. And then I put the word around the other world leaders. Now, my guy, he swims in cold water. He's like an Alastair Campbell of world leadership.

40:03So when he got to the meeting, the other world leaders were feeling his muscles and saying, it's so good to have a vigorous, energetic guy on the block. It's a bit like when you guys came in in 97 Alistair and you had Blair on a bicycle on the vice yeah he won the race brilliant job done you know I was sitting back thinking I've really delivered for my new boss and then Berlusconi rocks up and he looks around the room and he sees them all sort of hanging on every word of this new energetic young leader and he's very jealous and so he went up went away and came back with eight photos, the G8 summit, eight photos of himself oiled up from head to toe in what I think we can describe in this podcast as a pair of very tight red budgie smugglers and handed these photos out to the leaders of the free world.

40:49So you had this moment in the room where, you know, Obama, Merkel, and the other utterly speechless that Silvio Berlusconi would do this. So Trump wasn't the first to have a slightly narcissistic tendency. Tom, in a lot of these stories, you come across as a very sort of quite wily and lighthearted and good-humoured, sort of surprisingly so for a more traditional diplomat. You've got a little sort of flair for kind of publicity and images and things. Have you ever at any time in your life been tempted to enter electoral politics? And if not, why not? Because I would have thought, unlike many diplomats, you have a lot of the skill set of a politician when you're telling us about budgie smugglers and cold water.

41:39I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult, but - He's got good hair as well, Roy. Good hair, yeah. He's got two hair. Very good hair. I don't think that works on a podcast. Look, I've always taken the job in front of me that looks most interesting at every time. And I've sometimes done zigs when I should have gone zag. And that's why, you know, I left government when the expectation was I'd stay in. And now I've come back in to the UN when the expectation was I'd stay out. I do an exercise with my students, where I get them all to write their CV, something every 18, every 21 year old can do.

42:12And then I get them to walk five times around the park, and then write their eulogy. You know, what is it that people say about you at the end of your life. And people don't read out your CV and they don't read out your Wikipedia page or the list of jobs you've done. They ask, were you kind? Were you curious? Were you brave? Were you a good dad, good mom, good friend? And so I'm quite happy doing the job that's in front of me. And I've always, people have asked the question before, and I've always worried that it's such a demand. I mean, it's crazy for me to say this, having taken the job I'm doing now.

42:47But when you hear politicians, and you guys know this better than I do, when politicians say my family is the most important thing to me, you know it's not because that job is so demanding. And not only are you away from your family, but you're in a situation where people hate you. Rory, you've written about this incredibly powerfully. And in some ways, Rory, your book would be, for me, a reason not to go into politics. And maybe Alistair's book is then a reason to go into politics. But I think I've always shied away from that sense of the demands of the world and then being far away from the people who mean most to me.

43:20But I say that, you know, sat in Kyiv when I'm about to take another night train out to the front line. Tom, you pointed to this amazing thing that Gordon Brown did in getting international cooperation in the face of the financial crisis. And then you talked about signing up with a letter with Musk to try to get international rules around the use of drones. We're talking at a moment where some of the really leading figures in AI, three or four of the biggest names in AI, are now saying that within three to four years, we're going to have full autonomous general intelligence, super intelligent, autonomous AI with incredible potential, yes, to do good, but also to do incredible destructive harm beyond anything we can imagine.

44:08And yet, it's difficult at the moment to quite imagine a British prime minister stepping up and saying, okay, we're facing this existential threat. We're going to get the US and China and everybody around a big table, and we're going to set the rules on what we are and aren't going to do. In fact, the tendency would be to say, there's nothing we can do. US and China are just going to push ahead, do whatever the hell they want to do, and Britain might as well put its foot on the acceleration in the hope that it doesn't get crushed. Am I right about that? Or are we just missing a bit of imagination and idealism?

44:37Is it possible to say, actually, we could have international cooperation on something as important as this? You're absolutely right that we need moral imagination here, as we do with the other peace processes of the future, and as we do with healing the wounds of history and dealing with the legacies of the past. But thinking about the wounds of the future, AI is absolutely going to drive conflict and crisis in the future. We're seeing it already. My problem is, and I did a report for the UN Secretary General in 2017 on the challenges and opportunities of AI, warning about the peril that we faced if we didn't keep up.

45:13My problem is that the people working for us who understand these issues, we're completely outgunned by the tech companies and government too. The tech companies are hoovering up the talent now that should be sat on the other side of the table working out how do we protect liberty and security and human dignity in an age of AI. So when the tech companies come to us and say, you need to give us guidelines, you need to give us rules, that's my pushback is you've got to help us with this. You've got to help us understand the tech. And you both know as well as I do that within government, there is enormous insecurity.

45:49There aren't many people who can really tell you what's going on, who've really sat there in Silicon Valley and understood what AI will do, the way it's rewiring our brains. I spent a lot of time in California working on a curriculum for the future to basically educate kids to live in an age of AI. What it comes down to there, by the way, is that we've got to not bring up second-class robots, but bring up first-class humans. And too many young people are being educated, learning the wrong things in the wrong ways. We've got to teach them emotional intelligence. We've got to teach them that understanding of other humans, that understanding of difference, that ability.

46:25I used to say to my students, the ability to take off your own Instagram filter on the world and recognize that everyone has a different Instagram filter. Ultimately, that's how we coexist with AI, is developing those human skills. But in the meantime, to your question, we've got to get some of the smartest people in a room and work out how to do this. Now, I despair at times over that, but we've managed to do it with every other form of horrifically dangerous technology that's come at us over time. And that's why I back humans to do it again. But the pace of change and the slowness of our own response is a real challenge.

47:01Tom, my final question is this. It's really about what you said there about the gap between the pace of change and the pace and quality of global political leadership right now. who has more power in the world, these tech bosses or the elected or sometimes dictatorial leaders of governments, the nation state? Are we seeing, and is this making your life more difficult, are we seeing the kind of death of the nation state at the hands of these tech giants? I'm not sure we are yet. The tech giants don't yet have armies. They don't yet have that popular legitimacy. I did a radio series recently on how we defend liberal democracy.

47:51And part of the answer has got to be that we've got to get better at delivering. We've got to rediscover our sense of wonder about the institutions we've created to hold the powerful to account, to make sure that the new emperors, whether it's Elon Musk or an autocrat, learn what the old emperors didn't learn, which is that empires fall. And I believe we can do that, but it's a very, very difficult time to be a diplomat. It's a difficult time to be working in diplomacy. Diplomacy is easier when you're a country on the rise and people take your call and when the systems work. It's much harder in a time of national introspection than when you don't have enemies that you can find on a map or that you can kind of characterize in a Bond film.

48:33But that's why we've got to evolve. And diplomacy, I've written this, is Darwinian. It's always evolved. When the fax came along, someone said you can replace the foreign office with a fax. And the foreign office is still there just about on the fax machine, not really anymore. When Parmesan first saw a telephone, he said, my God, it's the end of diplomacy because suddenly leaders will just talk direct. And we found ways to adapt. But it ultimately comes down to what I said earlier. Of course, I'd say this as a recovering ambassador, but it comes down to human connection and holding onto that human connection.

49:05There was an amazing scene. I don't know if you remember it, that series, The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski on human development, the evolution of humanity. At the end of it, Bronowski stands at Auschwitz in a swamp where his own ancestors' remains are decaying. And he says, I owe it to these people. I owe it to my ancestors and those who died in the Holocaust. And he wades then into the swamp. It's very striking footage. Find it on YouTube. And he reaches down and picks up the mud. And he just says, we need to reach out and connect. We need to reach out and connect. And that is the key to diplomacy.

49:41It's the key for me of education too. It's why I was in education. And ultimately, it's the key to being a good ancestor. And I think we all have to think about how we can be better ancestors. And it's got tough out there. It's a driverless world. It's absolutely brutal out there. As I say, I'm seeing the worst of it at the moment. But we've got to get stronger and better and more confident and get out there and try and resolve these crises. And that's what I'm trying to do. And I know it's what you're trying to do on the podcast. So Tom, I guess my final one is to come back to the structure of the way the world's set up.

50:18So when you were a young diplomat in Kenya and Nairobi, preparing for your boxing match, the UK economy was still bigger than the Chinese economy. Now the Chinese economy is seven times larger than our economy. When you were there, the US economy was about the same size as the European economy. Now the US economy is 50 % larger than the European economy. So we're really in a world in which it feels as though there is the US and there is China. And countries like the United Kingdom are no longer remotely touching that league. As I say, the Chinese economy is seven times our size now. So what is the role for France, Britain, Germany, Europe, or not to mention Sweden when you're on the way in this world?

51:09And how do we, if we're concerned about climate, if we're concerned about AI, if we're concerned about Gaza, how do we reach up to Trump's America or Xi Jinping's China to get anything done? Yeah. I mean, to start with, I mean, in terms of the America relationship, but I know it's something that Lord Mandelson will be thinking about as the next ambassador and Jonathan Powell as the NSA. You've got to establish load-bearing relationships and load-bearing issues. You've got to show that you are an exporter of solutions, not problems. And for much of the recent, the last decade or so, we've exported problems to the world, not solutions.

51:42So you've got to get stuck in, I think as well. And here, we've got to get our AAA rating. I say we, I'm no longer speaking for the UK, of course, but you, my former country. We've got to restore that reputation for competence. When you travel around the world, and you'll have experienced this, we had the legacy of that sense. We're quite good at banking and education and problem solving. But that really took a hammering in recent years. And it's not just a Brexit point, even on this podcast. It's about the fact that the world took a good look at us, and they've assumed that we're much cleverer than we actually turned out to be in the manner in which we handled ourselves in the last decade.

52:20So getting back that reputation for competence is really important. And then I think it's about standing up for freedom and liberty, that human desire to seek security, justice, opportunity. I think we can be in the front line of that argument. I think it's also about standing up, and it's a boring phrase, but the rules-based international order. One really encouraging thing I'm finding on my travels at the moment is, yes, people are worried that America is maybe backing away from that world it created after the Second World War, that scaffolding. But many other countries are coming forward now and saying, this really matters to us.

52:53We need these rules, actually. And if the Americans won't stand for them, then we'll have to work harder to protect that international system. So I think there was a role in all of that for the UK. And okay, we don't have the clout that we once did, but we've still got a fantastic scientific sector. We've got a fantastic education sector. I would say that after my last job. And we're still good at some things. We've got to stop going around saying the world's beating at everything and think about the things we do really well and not vandalise, by the way, the things that we do particularly well, like the BBC and like our aid work and like our diplomacy.

53:29I've got through the whole interview without mentioning Brexit, but I mean, you two in your last exchange have triggered me. I mean, you say it's not just Brexit, but it's a very, very, very big part of what you've just described, is it not? Tom Fletcher, yes, is the answer you're looking for. Yes, it is the answer I'm looking for. We don't have the clout that we did. We still have that Security Council membership. And even in a polarized Security Council, that's serious. We still have the strength of the armed forces. We've still got that soft power I'd describe. But we're not playing the role we were able to play back when you and I were in number 10 together, where each day you'd be that bridge between Europe and America.

54:12And okay, we probably overstated it. They probably didn't need us as much as we thought they needed us. And, you know, let's not get on to the special relationship and so on. But we were able to translate, to interpret between Europe and America. And that gave us a certain power. And that has gone. And we'll need to find different ways to influence in the world. But, you know, I'm still optimistic. I don't want to be one of those diplomats who comes on or former diplomats, recovering ambassadors, who comes on and just says it's all hopeless. I don't think it's all hopeless. Tom, this was really wonderful.

54:47We're so grateful and we could do this for hours. We need a promise from you that you're going to come back on the show in about a year's time and tell us how things are going. But we should let you get back to your very important work in Ukraine. And thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. Well, if I'm still going in a year's time, I will be thrilled to come back on. In the meantime, I'll carry on listening to you in the troubled spots around the world. See you soon. Bye-bye, Tom. Well, that was good. Liked it. You know, I think people will like Tom. I think they will. I think they will. I was interested and he slightly slipped my question about whether he's going to be an elected politician.

55:23There's clearly part of him that's a little bit tempted in that direction. Yeah, it wasn't a no. That wasn't a no. No. I think he's rather a wonderful appointment, despite obviously my immense green-eyed envy that he's got the job that I want because he's actually really, really good at sounding human and funny and outspoken rather than being so intimidated by this kind of big diplomatic job that he's become stiff. And it's actually better than many politicians that we've interviewed really, in terms of being able to be quite relaxed and funny. Well, I said in the introduction that I first met him when he was quite a young diplomat.

56:00And the reason was he was in Paris and we were in Paris and I went for a run with him. And just he's got a kind of energy and a vibrancy. And what's really interesting as well is, I mean, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, very different sorts of people. But he got on very well with both. And both would say that he was a very, very important part of their team. So I think he's got that sort of human touch as well. And I thought his analysis was interesting. I mean, I do worry about how that will affect him. and a very interesting sort of open first time in my life I feel I've got to go and get therapy because of all the stuff that he's that he's seeing I said about Guterres every time I see Guterres I just look at him and think god you are exhausted and you look a bit overwhelmed and it's hard not to be in that job well I mean I think the thing we didn't maybe push him on because we just get an answer that would make him uncomfortable and wouldn't really work for the audience is that I think both you and I think that the United Nations sadly is profoundly broken And that one of the things that will be really frustrating in that job is that it's a completely out of control bureaucracy.

57:12So he's called the coordinator. And he's dealing with these immense kind of independent feudal baronies, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Food Program, you know, billion dollar organizations with their own bosses, frequently duplicating what they're doing. So he talks about cash programming. They all have their own independent cash systems with their own independent tech. They have scarcely concealed contempt for each other. And he's trying to bring them all together in one system. And that's before you get into the other thing, which is, does Trump care about the UN? Not really. What does China and Russia really think about the UN?

57:56Well, insofar as he does, he cares about it from a negative perspective. How was that thing he said about, was it 100 trucks, 99 got mugged, hijacked? Yeah, absolutely unbelievable. And I think the other thing, again, maybe if we do talk to him again in a year's time, the risk of humanitarian work is, although you are doing incredible work saving lives, you are, of course, at the kind of sticking plaster end of things if you want it to be brutal, which is that the causes of what he's looking at in Sudan, the causes of what he's looking at in Somalia are political, are conflict, are climate. And he's having to deal with the starving babies and the death downstream in a system where we're not really good anymore at getting upstream and trying to address the root causes if we ever knew how to do that.

58:50Well, my final point, I hope there are some of our younger listeners who thought, oh, that sounds quite an interesting life, being a diplomat. He's had a very, very interesting career. And I think he's been brave. I think another thing that's interesting is that if he'd stayed in the Foreign Office, he would now be at least the Director General, if not on his way to being Permanent Secretary. He was doing very well. He was a real high flyer. He'd done all the right things. And then he suddenly chose randomly, very, very young, to leave and go into writing and teaching. And now he's come back in again.

59:24So he's a real example to people of taking risk. And I think he believes the future is like that. I mean, I think one of the things he was communicating through his book and with his students is that they're not going to be in the same job for 40 years and they need to learn how to roll, adapt, take opportunities. I'm very pleased. I think it's a wonderful appointment. And I think it's great that Gutierrez made that appointment. It's great that the Labour government got behind him. And I'm really pleased that he came on the show. Great. See you soon. See you soon. Bye bye.

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