132. Former Head of MI6: Russia, China, and Trump (Sir Alex Younger)

30:10Over the last 60, 70 years, Britain hasn't necessarily needed to have a very strong independent foreign policy. In Africa, for example, I felt as African minister that when I was trying to have grand ideas about what we were doing in Africa, there wasn't much support from the British government front because understandably they thought, well, we're a medium-sized power and whatever Rory's notions of how he's going to do this stuff doesn't make much sense because the US is doing it. If the US retreats from the world, powers like Britain, Germany, and France are going to have to step up. They're going to have to have views about part of the world.

30:44And part of that is going to involve rebuilding intelligence infrastructure in some of these places that we've completely lost. I mean, can you reflect a bit on that? Yeah, look, I mean, I sort of don't miss being a spy because I did it for 30 years. It was pretty exhausting. My successors are doing a brilliant job, etc. But this is one aspect that I really wish I was present for. I think I'm not so much talking about intelligence, but more broadly, the security relationship with America and Europe between America and Europe. We have been infantilized. And it hasn't been healthy. And we should be extraordinarily grateful to America for its generosity and its provision of its security.

31:22guarantee. But we should recognise a bit, you know, a bit like a child that gets a trust fund. It's meant that we haven't had, through necessity, to develop a set of really important life skills, the most important of which I would describe as the creation and exercise of hard power. And that is now the problem that Europe's got. It's going to be awful. It's going to be difficult. We're going to have to make really difficult spending decisions. It's culturally alien, etc etc but my view is it's overdue and in fact i think we will be quite surprised by the way in which it which it changes us because we won't be passive spectators as and i recognize exactly what you say rory by the way it will feel different i don't want to be hubristic about this it will be tough the other point is that i actually think it will improve our relationship with the americans it's not healthy to be in this completely asymmetric dependent relationship.

32:16We're bringing stuff to the party ourselves. It will get much, much easier to deal with our most important allies. And I've seen that, by the way. So the thing about SIS is it does have some very powerful capabilities that the United States really value and need. And that creates a different dynamic. In some ways, I think that's an example of what we need to do more broadly. Okay, Alex, Rory, let's have a quick break and then back for more. It's 4.07 a.m. Birds are starting to chirp. And while most people are still counting sheep, you count stock gains, inflation ticks, and quarterly earnings.

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33:17Alex, on the hard power side, we tend to focus on things like Russia, Ukraine. I'm trying to work out, though, if you were a national security advisor and trying to think about Britain more broadly in the world, where the limits of our power is. I mean, I felt when I was the African minister, real tensions coming back from civil servants, including people in your department, saying, frankly, Minister, we don't have the resources or the time to provide what you want on that country. It's not a priority for Britain. We don't really care about that. How do you begin to think about, in a new world where the US isn't doing all this, what Britain can do, what Britain ought to do, which regions we ought to focus on, and what's beyond our capacity?

34:01Well, of course, this is hugely topical because the Strategic Defence Review is taking place and it's yet to publish. And in fact, it's been delayed a lot. But it's trying to answer exactly this question. And I think my suspicion, I don't know, is that Putin will be seen to have provided the answer, which is that it's going to be a NATO first, Europe first approach. I can completely understand that. But we may come on to this. I by China's mastery of key technologies is just as important to us. I think that when it comes to the generation of hard power, it is, of course, about military capability.

34:45It's about military industrial capability. It's about organization and culture in countries that need to organize the total defense. But to my mind, the thing that really is going to arbitrate whether my kids have the choices that I've enjoyed is actually whether we're at the front of the development of key emerging technologies. And I think that's the thing that's really kept Britain safe ever since the Industrial Revolution. So if you're talking about making hard power, focus on military stuff, of course, we've got to. But if we as Europe cannot regain our place at the frontier of emerging technology, and which we've voluntarily relinquished, I think that our security prospects will be pretty dim.

35:31Alex, Rory asked you to imagine one worst-case scenario. Let me ask another one, which a few months ago would have seemed unimaginable, but now I think is not wholly unrealistic. If the United States frankly decided just to walk away from what's happening in Ukraine, can Europe handle that situation? So first of all, I don't think that's a remote possibility at all. I think that Putin has shown absolutely no sign that he's actually in practice willing to retreat from his maximalist aims, which are the subjugation of Ukraine, or at least condemning it to eternal instability. He's playing games at the moment.

36:13The game is to see how little he needs to do to keep Trump on side. He's emboldened by the fact that Donald Trump, to a large extent, shares his worldview that big countries get additional rights over small countries and can have a sphere of influence, and that security is about deals between those spheres of influence. So I think he feels pretty emboldened. At the same time, whilst Zelensky has been put under a lot of pressure to concede, there's only so far he can go before it becomes untenable for him politically. And therefore, I think, notwithstanding the cheerful headlines that are coming out in some outlets today, I think the gap between Ukraine and Russia is still as wide as it ever was.

36:56And I think there's very little chance of any sustainable peace coming out of this. What does Donald Trump do in those circumstances? I think it's quite possible that he forces the guns to stop firing for long enough to claim victory and to leave. I think that is, if not the most likely case, it should be our planning assumption. And I think in those circumstances, you've got to ask two questions. One, can Ukraine hang on? And two, what does Europe do? The reality for Ukraine is that it is a totally different country to that which it was when it was invaded. And in terms of its technological capability and its ability to produce cutting edge drones and other pieces of military technology, it's the most powerful in Europe.

37:39This is a completely different thing that Putin is dealing with. Putin's army, while brutal and moving forward, knows that it can't take Ukraine. But equally, Ukraine can't push Putin out. You are in a position where Putin isn't going to achieve his aims, where Ukraine, I think, can hold on. I think where Putin is hoping that Trump will do quite a lot of his work for him. And where for all of the confusion at the end of this, it's obvious that Europe's going to own the problem. And then it gets to whether Europe has got what it takes to respond to this signal. And personally, I think that it has.

38:18Alex, let me push on the worst case. So let's say in the very worst case scenario, Trump pulls everything. It's not just a sort of continuation of a stalemate. It's suddenly Ukraine has lost its satellites, it's lost a lot of its intelligence, it's lost its patriot missiles, it's lost its ability to deal with aircraft, it's lost its long-range artillery, it's lost a lot of its electronic warfare. And these are capabilities that Europe doesn't have today. So, you know, if I really had you in the cabinet room and you were trying not to sound optimistic and cheerful and boosting technology in Ukraine, and you were trying to be honest, just imagine Alice as the Prime Minister about what the worst case could be there.

39:03Talk us through what that could look like in a nasty scenario. Well, I think when Putin invaded, his army was ready to go, completely fresh. They had lots of ammunition and tanks and stuff. And it became rapidly obvious that they couldn't subjugate Ukraine. At the point where it was clear that Ukraine wasn't going to play along and just fold, it was obvious that they didn't actually have the military capacity to subjugate a country the size of France. I think that's still true. And maybe the Russian army is bigger now, but its quality has fallen precipitately. So I do think if America removes its capabilities, the consequences for Ukraine and the rest of us will be dire.

39:40And certainly I can't see the front line holding. But equally, the idea that they're going to cut through and put tanks into Warsaw is overdone. I think what will happen is that you'll be into some sort of chronic insurgency where Russia makes very significant gains but can't consolidate them and where Ukraine holds on and where Europe has a choice about whether it continues to support Ukraine or not. Because in truth, Donald Trump pulling the plug isn't the worst case. The worst case is that Europe, he pulls the plug and Europe doesn't stand up. At that event in Norway, you said something on the lines of, in Russia's mind, in Putin's mind, Russia is at war with us.

40:22And in our minds, we're not at war with them. Can you just sort of elaborate on that a bit? Again, I want to be sober about this, but the reality is that the point where I knew Putin was going to invade wasn't so much where this exquisite intelligence was produced that predicted exactly his plans. it was the essay he wrote on the on the destiny of ukraine and russia and that was about um not just ukraine and the fact that an independent sovereign ukraine was anatomical to a rising and great russia but also about the unacceptability of eastern european states formerly members of the warsaw pact the russian sphere of influence having an independent foreign policy of their own and a demand that they put limits on their own choice, including by not being in NATO.

41:12He's been super clear about that. And when he talks about the root causes of the war, that's what he's talking about. So we shouldn't be under any illusion. For our part in the West, I don't think we've thought about that stuff for 10 minutes. We thought that this was a settled thing, that the Soviet Union had collapsed, that Eastern European countries were now the same as Western European countries and had sovereign choices. I don't think we've ever thought of that being in contention, but that's not how it looks to Russia. Subsequently, of course, in addition, Putin has actually optimized for war.

41:46You know, he's changed the structure of his economy. You can argue about how sustainable that is. Indeed, I don't think many people think he can keep on going for more than about 18 months before retrenching. But, of course, there's nothing like that's happened here. And that's why I think it's so interesting. And I think when you look at Germany, it's particularly interesting. Have we smelt the coffee? Are we going to change the structure, including of our economies? We don't have to go onto a war footing. If we all spent 3 % at PPP, we'd match Russia. But we do have to do something. Alex, just to kind of extend this a bit more, J.D.

42:22Vance often seems to be suggesting, or at least people around Trump seem to be suggesting, that it's okay. Maybe Putin gets Ukraine, but that's the end of it. And he's always wanted Ukraine. It's really a bit of part of Russia. On the other hand, there would be people in Europe saying, no, no, no, no, wait a sec. This is like Hitler going to Czechoslovakia. We have to worry about Moldova. We have to worry about the Baltics. And in this mindset, we're going to have to fight Putin somewhere and it'd be better to fight him in Ukraine than elsewhere. Where do you sit on this? I sort of characteristically, I suppose, land about halfway between the two of those.

42:59I think that if Putin seemed to be vindicated in Ukraine, he will have been emboldened. But he's visited a terrible price on his people, and he's going to have to make sure that it appears justified. I've already said, in any case, that he seeks more broadly to overturn what he sees as Western bad faith and an unjust order in Europe. He won't have the capability to do that. I think the Russian army will take at least five years to grow to the possibility where it has any expeditionary capability. I think it's much more likely that we just see really significant challenge in the hybrid space. So, you know, in the way that we've seen before, I think Moldova and Georgia are rapidly in trouble.

43:43And I think you get probing in the Russian speaking communities in the Baltic states. You get all the sorts of stuff that we're seeing already, the disruption and the sabotage and the misinformation, but more so. and what he will be doing is probing for weakness. I think he's got a really overstated reputation as a strategist. He isn't one but what he's very good at doing is just insistently probing for weakness and then reinforcing success. So our task again, you know, we can't let the best be the enemy of the good. We're not going to build up Russian scale military in that period of time. We've just got to make sure that we can rise to what will be a set of provocations or probes recognizing that the reason he invaded Ukraine in the first place is he got the wrong idea about our willingness to respond to his aggression and surely we don't want to make that mistake again.

44:32What's the the nature of China's hostility to us? Is it the same? Is it do they are they up to the same sorts of stuff in this hybrid space that you talk about and sabotage and disinformation? Is there a danger that with Russia taking up so much of our attention because of Ukraine that we're missing a bigger picture? Or are you more sanguine about the Chinese? No, I'm not. And indeed, I think it's actually the bigger issue. It would be overstating it, though, to say that they were engaged in the intensity of hybrid conflict with us as Russia. That's absolutely not the case, even if, as US revelations have shown, their cyber intrusion into all of our networks and our capabilities is quite extraordinary.

45:15and we've seen a readiness for them to use traditional espionage techniques to get into the fabric of our societies and all of that are they very good at it um well the cyber stuff i think we've all been surprised by the quality absolutely um and and i think what the u.s government was basically saying is that for a while they could go onto any phone they wanted in in the united states which is pretty extraordinary so this needs to be taken seriously. But at that point, I think the comparison with Putin does break down. He regards himself as being at war with the West. I don't think it's reached that stage with China.

45:52But longer term, it is going to be the pacing threat for us. They are defining the technology that I think represents the benchmark. Can you explain something to me, Alex? So there's these Chinese recruiting agents in Britain and trying to gather intelligence in Britain. There's something I don't quite understand. I mean, my colleagues in parliament respond like sort of shocked Victorian old maids and think, you know, this is the most terrifying thing in the world. But presumably, the Chinese might say, well, wait a second, presumably you're trying to do the same thing to us. You also would be trying to recruit agents in China, gather intelligence in China.

46:30So why are we so astonishingly shocked when they do it to us and behave as though this is the end of the world? And presumably we're trying to do it to them. Well, you can try and decide how shocked I was. OK, you weren't shocked at that, but how shocked were you? OK, how shocked were you that the U.S. Secretary of State for Defense and the National Security Advisor were involved in this signal group to which a journalist was accidentally added? I mean, when you heard that, what was your professional reaction? Well, I mean, they're new. They've never had any experience in the business. You know, maybe this is going to happen.

47:10But the thing that really stunned me was that the US had put out an advisory only two months before to the effect, as I've already said, that the Chinese can be on any phone in the country. So it did look like a slightly surprising decision, if I'm to be honest. It's absolutely amazing. Presumably, if the Chinese had managed to capture that chat, you could have gone as an ambitious young Chinese intelligence officer in to see Xi Jinping and say, look at this, look how clever we are. We've got this lovely chat between all the top people about that Yemen strike. I risk my case. Alex, can I just sort of develop the China bit then?

47:46One of the results of what Donald Trump is doing is that Europe is suddenly for the first time questioning whether you were the US is a long-term reliable ally in a way that it hasn't for 70 or 80 years. And Xi Jinping spots that. So you get positive statements towards Europe and the China Daily. You get him for the first time going around Southeast Asia, saying to Southeast Asian nations, you know, we're the reliable ally. And as tariffs go up, there's more and more economic pressure on people to look at closer free trade arrangements with China rather than with the US. What's the other side of the story?

48:27And what would you be saying to European leaders who think, okay, you know, the answer to our problems now is to bring in Chinese electric vehicles, create a closer relationship with China and balance the US with China? I'd be saying, well, I'm a polite person, but I'd be thinking that's facile. I think that for all of our frustrations with Donald Trump, and he is a very frustrating character, can we not draw a moral equivalence between the United States and the Communist Party of China? And I think to your point, Rory, that's absolutely what's happening in some political quarters in Europe. And I've heard in continental Europe often this idea that Europe must carve a third way and not take a position on all of this.

49:12Really? In the end, you know, who's really going to want to send their child to university in Beijing to be indoctrinated, as opposed to going to Georgetown? Now, I'm not saying, I'm not belittling the seriousness of what's happening in the United States, but this is nowhere near, in my mind, creating equivalence between the two. Secondly, I think that it is Xi Jinping's golden foreign policy objective to see a split between the United States and Europe. And to your point, you can absolutely expect a ton of love from China, who are also, by the way, trying to sustain their export machine in the face of tariffs.

49:53So I think that tells you we should probably be careful about falling into that trap. And that gets you to some quite interesting decisions around electric vehicles and stuff. Thirdly, I think the regional stuff is on the money. And it's why I think the tariff effort from the White House is destined to fail. I actually think it's a reasonable enough ambition to deal with China in the way that China has historically dealt with us through a mercantilist set of trade policies. China, in this respect, is the worst offender of all. And I think it's been fundamentally destabilizing for the world economy.

50:28And to that extent, I think the US is justified in seeking to respond. But at the end of all of this, the most powerful weapon that the United States has always had is its allies. The most earnest wish on Xi's part is that he can build a regional sphere of influence, which China can dominate. And this policy is just handing that to Xi on a plate. He's alienating his allies and making it easy for Xi to build up. I mean, what would you do if you were vietnamese or cambodian at this point but that's what's so difficult about the current moment because as you say that there's putin who has a strategic goal of taking ukraine and then who knows what next and and basically undermining europe and and disrupting the relationship with united states china the same in terms of europe's relationship with united states and there's the president of the united states who as you say is giving those objectives on a plate it's hard in those circumstances, you think, right, well, we've still got to hang in, really throw in our lot with the United States, is it not?

51:31I think that there is an issue here. I mean, I've spoken publicly about this a lot, and it's a rather overdone analogy. But I think that we are moving from the Helsinki world, where states have rights, regardless of their size, to the Yalta world, where big countries get to call the shots, and spheres of influence and strongmen making deals. Now, we have to accept, I think, that that is what is happening. And there is a consequent slide from a world governed by institutions and rules to a world governed by strongmen and deals. And to answer your question, I was, do we do ourselves no service by pretending this isn't going on?

52:06But do we have to accommodate it? No, I don't think so at all. We should recognize, as I've already said, that in this world, hard power counts for a great deal. And if you haven't got any, you're not going to count for much. But as Europe, we're capable, along with all of the other bits of the collective West that aren't America, we're capable of generating this hard power. We're strong economically. We've got a set of other attributes. The global South remains up for grabs. This is a very, very dynamic situation. But we do need to recognize, I mean, I think, honestly, Europe fell prey to hubris.

52:41We thought history had ended, democracy had triumphed, etc. We thought we'd won the philosophical argument. But in fact, we were just in a bubble created by the quality of the US security guarantee. It was like the Truman Show. So we're just getting a bit of reality therapy and we need to respond. And I've already said, I think I could actually be quite healthy. Alex, I just struck by your idea, which seems likely that the national security focus is going to be on Europe. And I keep coming back to Africa and you've tempted me there because you just mentioned the global south. A really ambitious grand strategy for the UK and Europe would say that actually you challenge the threat from these strongmen in China and Russia, not just by fighting them on their borders, but by investing in the global south in positive ways, with all the benefits that that could bring in terms of economy, security, relationships, allies.

53:39Why are we hearing so little about that? Is it that we just think it's beyond us and we can't have any impact on the global sound? I think it's just because we are terribly binary people. So, you know, it was when you were in government and I was in this ice row, it was all about soft power. And now it's all about hard power. And these are sort of false distinctions. A thing that Britain could do rapidly to enhance its position is to be much better at integrating those two things. with all deference to the development community. I never shared the idea that our development goals should be constitutionally divorced from our board of foreign policy goals.

54:15I think this all needs to come together. And I actually think at that point, it produces the sort of conclusion that you're pushing for. A more strategic approach, recognizing, for instance, the inroads China's making into Africa is based as much on a positive economic offer as coercion and question, what are we going to do about that? you know we're we're closer we've got we've got a great deal to bring to the party africa's demographics mean that it's increasingly going to be unignorable i mean all these i think are no-brainers and it's feel free to tell me you don't want to talk about this but can i ask you about about the son that you lost yeah anytime i've met you i've felt i've seen somebody who's even in this sort of turmoil optimistic funny always trying to find the the kind of good things in life.

55:02And I just wondered what that did to you as a human being to lose your son when he was, what, 22? And whether you kind of ever really come to terms with that? I don't think you ever can come to terms with it. It's a terrible thing. So terrible that you can't articulate it, and I won't even try. A lesson I learned there is that you find dehumanity in the oddest of places. And I've spoken about my job and its intensity and the ferocity of the rivalry in all of that. In the aftermath of that, there was a curious time where we all developed some humanity, and even some of our most applicable inverseries wanted to reach out to me.

55:50And did in a strange way, that gave me some hope. Thank you for that. Thank you. I suppose as we come to the end, and thank you for everything, what is it looking forward 20, 30 years that you see in the world? Let's imagine somebody starting off on your career in 30 years' time. What would somebody in, I don't know, 2050, who shared some of your love of adventure, the equivalent of joining the Scots Guards and joining SIS, what sort of world would they come into? What sort of Britain would they come into? Do you have any thoughts about that? Look, I would never have predicted when I joined as a fresh-faced young officer that it would be like it is now.

56:38And certainly, if you told me I was going to be the chief, I would have just laughed you out of the room. So we need to approach this with a large dose of humility. If you look at the premise on which intelligence and MI6 is based, which is about dispelling complexity and ambiguity and trying to give strategic shape to really complex issues, I don't think that's going away. if you look at the premium on human relationships i don't think that's going away if you look at this sort of ideological contest that animates all of that i don't think that's going away i think just about everything else i have got no idea i mean we haven't talked about artificial intelligence yet but what does that you know in what respect does that disrupt all of this and what does the likes of elon musk and zuckerberg say about the relative power of of states and non-state actors, let alone all the other ones we've been dealing with.

57:33It's almost impossible to predict that stuff. What do you say about that, Alex? Do you see those guys as being as powerful as nation states? Well, I think the budget of some of those companies is bigger than many nation states in Europe. And I think that they are not accountable. And I think that's a problem because they're in charge of what my children think. So yes, I think it is a problem. And Alex, you've tempted me to come back in, but Musk's worldview, he's got lots of weird bits of a worldview, but one bit is that we've become a bit inert, that our bureaucracies have become a little bit inefficient, a bit hidebound, a bit process-driven, a bit overly legalistic.

58:16And of course, you and I were in government when we championed those sort of things, and we're very proud about those things. And we've interviewed John Soares, who's a great, great advocate for all those things. But do you think he might have a small point, I mean, not in any way exonerating the mad excesses of Doge? Yeah, I mean, it's mad, he's unaccountable, it's a big problem. But I absolutely, to answer your question too, and when I look at what Malay is doing in Argentina as well, I do. I think that government over time becomes slerotic, and I think that bits of it inevitably have been created in a way that people have actually forgotten the initial purpose of what they did.

58:53I still honestly would find it hard to draw a line from some of the decisions we took in the NSC through the cabinet office to stuff happening. I actually don't have a problem with the idea of a sort of external and pretty dramatic look at how all of this operates. But I think that the approach that Doge has taken has been nihilistic. I mean, it's just been to switch the whole thing off and switch it on again. And that has been a somewhat arrogant approach it is much more subtle than that but the but the central idea of the government um has inertia and is too slow to adopt new technology and and doesn't necessarily adapt as quickly as it could to change your circumstances is uncontestable and and in that sense we shouldn't be complacent well listen thank you for so much your time and um hopefully we should we should maybe have you back because you i i think our listeners will absolutely love you the sort of the scope of your analysis and the, and the clarity with which you, um, with you set it out.

59:52So I think, I think your stated goal of becoming a sort of one of the most famous, what was it? Cantankerous intellectuals. I think that's a, that's a great goal. As I said, I'm halfway there. Thanks so much, Alex. Thank you so much to see you both. Have a great day. Thank you again. Take care.

1:00:15So Rory, very very impressive guy i think he's wonderful i i mean i have a really soft spot for him and um he's rather wonderful i mean i mean obviously for someone like me who's a romantic british person he is like a kind of john buckham hero and i i love his his sort of self-deprecation you love scots with english accents don't you be honest that's that's part of it that's that's why i love you alistair oh yeah yeah yeah no i i've i've always really liked him and i knew him a little about when he was doing his job in different roles. I saw him, I suppose, in four different roles in that organization.

1:00:50And there was a sort of wonderful kind of, well, you get it in the recording, that sort of self-deprecating modesty, a certain kind of irony. But in the end, I think the moral values, I mean, if I was going to be pompous for a second, I think that he was quite refreshing, partly in his old-fashionedness, the best bit of old-fashionedness, which is that he did very much believe in that thing that he said, a very difficult thing, which is that every person in the organization carries moral responsibility for what they do. You can't just say, I'm following orders. And that means that you also need to ask yourself, do I think that the information, the intelligence I'm providing is true?

1:01:31Have I actually pushed my agent too hard? Am I trying to impress my boss with something that I think I can get away with, or do I really think it's true? And then that goes all the way up to really difficult ethical decisions he had to make, drone strikes, which are killing people and might be killing also civilians who aren't part of that. And I think it was really good to see the way that he navigates that without jargon, without too much kind of bureaucratic stuff. Anyway, what did you think? I think he's definitely got a kind of heart and a moral compass. One of the things we didn't have time to raise, I don't know if you remember when there was that time when he objected to an editorial in The Economist that had been talking about the way that spies operate.

1:02:20And he had this line, we break the rules, certainly, we do not break the law. And I thought, for example, you can see why he's so good at getting on with people. It's possible to take what he said when I asked him about, you know, the role of the dossier in the build up to the war in Iraq. And he was clearly of that view that, you know, that shouldn't have happened. And he didn't like the outcome of it and the product that we put forward to Parliament. And as I said to you when we discussed Iraq, we never had that complaint from the people that we were dealing with because we were dealing with mainly, not exclusively, but mainly from the people at the top of the organization.

1:03:01But he said it in a way that I didn't feel offended or pushed back. I know exactly what he was saying, but he did it in a very subtle way. Well, I hesitate to quote the National Security Advisor, but when we infuse Jonathan Powell, remember when I was being obstreperous with him, he said, it's all right, Rory, I'm used to dealing with terrorists. And that's absolutely true for Alex. What you're seeing there is a really, really good intelligence officer. And they have to both have the moral compass, but also be surprisingly tolerant and humane of human weaknesses. So you're absolutely right. He almost certainly would question what went on with you and Richard Dearlove.

1:03:46and he definitely thought in Iraq and Afghanistan that I was a bit wild and occasionally a bit over the top but he's got a lovely way of sort of encompassing that and sort of forgiving people while also keeping going forward and I think that's the core of what makes him good at his job. The other thing I thought was interesting is he was you know he clearly has views about Trump he didn't particularly want to talk about what he actually thought of Trump having had dealings with him directly. But very, very clearly, I thought, particularly when we're talking about China, saying, look, for heaven's sake, can we stop this nonsense of a moral equivalence between the democratic United States of America and the Chinese Communist Party?

1:04:30And I thought that was interesting, because it's true. You and I get regularly into a sense of, you know, just rage at America because of Trump and some of the people around him. But I think because he's got a sort of worldview and he's got certain pillars that he holds on to that have dictated how he has conducted himself in the various positions he's had that he was kind of not moving away from those points of principle i hope people will enjoy listening to that i'm sure they will thank you anister and i enjoyed it certainly very much and learned a lot thank you good see you soon bye

1:05:12Thank you.