199. Is Trump's Chaos Pushing Iceland Towards the EU? (Prime Minister of Iceland, Kristrún Frostadóttir)

24:17Do you not want to be in a customs union with your biggest market share when it comes to business? Do you not want the optionality when it comes to competition? Do you not want interest rates to get to a lower level where it's easier for the general consumer here to afford housing? Is there another side to that, which is that low interest rate? They can inflate equity prices. Yes. Do you not talk about that? No. I think people want to be talked to in an honest matter. They want confidence in their leader. I think overselling things can also be an issue. Does it alarm you that, one, that Donald Trump keeps banging on about Greenland, but also he occasionally confuses Greenland and Iceland as well?

24:56Yeah. Have you guys seen The Mighty Ducks? I always get that Mighty Ducks comment. Actually, I got it from someone, I'm not going to name any names, which was the first thing that they said to me. Remember that Mighty Ducks film where people were confusing Iceland with Greenland and Greenland with Iceland? And obviously, all of this Greenland matter concerns people, right? It's a huge problem. The fact that we have leaders in the free world talking like this is an issue. It's a massive issue. And I know Icelanders are very concerned about it. I don't think, I mean, it's seeping in, in some shape or form.

25:35But, I mean, Icelanders also have somewhat of a strange relationship when it comes to these mega countries or big powers around them because our history isn't war-torn, right? We don't have a history of being at war. We don't have an army. We don't have a military. I mean, we are a NATO country. We joined NATO with the United States of America, with a bilateral defense agreement with them. I mean, we don't have grandmothers or grandfathers or ancestors that have, you know, fought in this way for their lives. So people have sort of a different feeling towards these types of basically, I don't want to say border issues, right?

26:18But it is concerning. And you also got the Russians sort of, you're right in the GI UK. Yeah. You got the Russian subs kind of around the place. I mean, and it's a reason for why we are, you know, staunch supporters of Ukraine, even though they are far away. They're going through something that for a lot of Icelanders is not relatable at all. Icelanders understand that, you know, how Russia comes out of this war is going to affect the way, you know, Russia is going to deal with the rest of us, which in the Arctic and in our nearest region is just very relevant, because this is where they're building up their resources as well.

26:55So people are aware of it, even though it might not be in their DNA how to respond to it in a way.

27:02Rory Stewart:Can I bring you back to you as a person? You're a relatively recent politician and a relatively recent prime minister. And I'd love to get a sense with your fresh pair of eyes of what it's like. I mean, what surprised you about this job, how it's different from what you've done before, both suddenly being prime minister, but also the international stuff. and you've just turned up in NATO and become a kind of social media star in Turkey. What do you notice about this job? How would you explain it to your grandmother if she said, how's it different to what you were doing 10 years ago? The biggest culture shock for me when I went into politics was just going into parliament, to be honest, because I came from the private sector.

27:44I wasn't raised in the political setting. I mean, I am who I am because of my family and my parents, and they were leaning in certain political ways, right? But I wasn't sort of raised as a young professional in that setting. And I found it difficult how slowly everything happened, right? I felt people were wasting a lot of time, lots of very good people, smart people doing good things. I don't want to be inappropriate about things, but things took a lot of time. There was a lot of delaying. And I feel like once I became prime minister, you see it from a different setting, but at least you have more power to try to push things through, right?

28:25You have like the executive power to put things on the agenda. So my the frustration that that may have come or arose with shifting into this type of job, it was more associated with being a general parliamentarian than being a prime minister. I think what surprised me the most, I mean, obviously I knew this, but when you're in the setting yourself, it's different, is how relevant and known Iceland is in the international world. And sort of feeling that on your own skin, you have this country of around 400 ,000 people in what some people might say the middle of nowhere. And at least over the last decade, I know things have changed a lot with situational awareness, tourism, just how people are talking about the Arctic.

29:10But a lot of people know about us, about the country, about the culture, and they respect us. And I think that's also a positive message for the Icelandic public, that you can have a tremendous amount of impact, even though if you have a low population, because you have a seat at the table, because we are in NATO, because we were in the EEA. And that ties back to being part of the EU, having a seat at the table, that you can actually have a huge impact. And also people look up to us in certain ways. I mean, a big, because you were talking about NATO and social media. I mean, a big revelation for me in a way, even though I lived in the US, and I'm an economist, and I know it's not very, especially the economist, or the economics profession isn't very female dominant.

29:56it but just showing up to these meetings and meetings and it's like you and two other women or three other women and the rest of it's male how far we have come in a lot of ways and in the international setting but still in the in other settings like iceland is as far ahead when it comes to gender equality for example so your coalition is three women the opposition two of the parties led by women yes chief of police a woman your bishop it's a woman the president's a woman as well. And the president's woman. You had the first female president before you were born. Yes. And we had the first democratically elected president in 1980.

30:33And I mean, this is a woman, Vilti Svimpodote, that have impacted a lot of people in Iceland, a lot of young women. When I was growing up, she was president for ages. I just assumed a president was a woman. It impacted people's identity. It definitely did. And it had a lot of effect internationally. and everywhere I go, I meet women that remember her or know her. Obviously, it makes us extremely proud. I mentioned at the start about social democracy. So there was a point where I think when you were living in London and living through the Brexit, you were down to three MPs in the parliament. Yes.

31:08Before you entered politics, three MPs. So that's kind of almost existential. 2016, the party got 5.6%. Yeah. So how did the party get from there to where you are now? and the question I put at the top, how does social democracy deal with this crazy Trumpian right-wing populist world that we're in? I mean, obviously there's a longer story than just me in this regard. It would be easy to just say, well, I stepped in and things just happened, right? But I mean, the Social Democratic Alliance was founded in 2000. It was a group of center left and left parties that came together to try to form like basically a governable arm that would be an answer to the conservatives because the conservatives have always led here a lot of people don't know this because they associate us with scandinavia where the red block or or social democrats have always been very strong but the conservatives were always a strong power here then we went into government or the the party went into government post-financial crisis to clean up the mess of the conservatives of other parties it's a very difficult time cuts in welfare cuts in social costs.

32:16And it was very difficult for the party.

32:18Rory Stewart:Just for, again, for international listeners, can you remind people this amazing story of the financial crisis and the Icelandic banking system? And explain a little bit to people this incredible story about what proportion of GDP ended up in these banks and what it was you were having to emerge from. Yeah, we can live through this highly traumatic experience. I mean, this is like a huge trauma trigger for Icelanders talking about the financial crisis. But we had banks that were like tenfold Icelandic GDP, right? And so this is, I'm not saying things haven't gotten better since then, but in a way, this tells you a lot how the Icelandic system works, both because of our currency, our economy, our size.

32:58If you have a trend somewhere, it becomes a megatrend here, right? And so we just had a massive blow up and then basically build up and then crash of the financial crisis here. I mean, the government took over the banks. We had massive foreign debt here. We had the IMF come in post-crisis. And we went through also just a socially very difficult time because people lost their houses. People felt like they had been lied to. They had taken loans that were in foreign currency. They had a very emotional reaction to everything that went on. And then you had a social democratic and left green government who was trying to deal with all of this, right?

33:40Something that had built up prior to their time and sort of didn't have a full mandate to do what they needed on their own because we had an IMF program. And this is really, it affected sort of the Icelandic soul for a really long time. But we have done tremendously well since then for a lot of reasons. We've had, you know, good growth for about 10 years now. But the Social Democrats haven't really been in power then, or basically haven't been in power since then. we had the leader before me, Loya Enersson I mean, he is someone who started all this, I want to say I mean, I have tremendous respect for him he is a minister in my government today, minister of culture he basically took over the party in 2016 when it was at this low and it was at this very brittle point where things could have just gone way down but he was able to keep it together in a way but he always said himself that he was sort of a leader that didn't want to be a leader, right?

34:39He was sort of put there without, you know, maybe wanting to be there for the, you know, the longer time. But when I joined, I mean, I became a member of Parliament in 2021. And it was sort of the youth arm that brought me in. I had been an economist here, I was chief economist at one of the investment banks here. They'd seen me on TV talking about economics, and they approached me and said, Do you want to run? And at that point, I thought, listen, like, I want social Democrats to have a credible economic argument. I was sick and tired of center left parties being associated with just like pure activism, and asking for things that might not be pragmatic.

35:19I'm not saying that's a fair description of what it was. But when the social democratic alliance was at its worst place, it was trying to be more left green than the left greens, trying to be more party than the party. party. It was trying to be everything that they were not. And so we basically started this project of restructuring the party. And that is, for example, where your book came in, which I'm sure you're very happy to hear. Very. Yeah. And you learned a lot from New Labour. We did learn from New Labour. I mean, in our own words, right? I mean, it was very important for us to start running after every news story, to start, you know, being on the polarized argument of everything.

35:59Remember what core social democracy is. Focus on economy, understanding the budget, people can trust you as a safe pair of hands. But then also be like highly political on welfare matters, on housing, and don't get dragged into the trenches on every single matter that comes in. And then just be well prepared.

36:20Rory Stewart:Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Goalhangers, The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. What if your immune system could learn to recognize cancer cells? That's immunotherapy. One type is CAR T-cell therapy. T-cells are your body's watchman, and doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer. CAR T-cells, they've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia. Because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells, they float around separately, And that makes it easier for CAR T cells to seek them out and destroy them.

36:55Rory Stewart:And now Cancer Research UK funded scientists are designing CAR T cells that can tackle solid tumors too, making them tougher so they can survive a more crowded and hostile cancer environment. Now these approaches are experimental, but they do start to show where treatment might go next. And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK's pioneering work has helped to double cancer survival in the UK. I mean, this shows you how far research can take us. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash rest is science.

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38:35Rory Stewart:Size and how it feels to do politics in Iceland. So your population is almost exactly the population of Cumbria, where I was a member of parliament. And 500 ,000 is the number of people in Cumbria County Council. And of course, in Cumbria, what was very striking is everybody knew each other. Everybody had been to school together. Everybody knew everybody's auntie. There was almost nobody that wasn't part of her. Presumably in Iceland, that's true. So a lot of these great figures that you're talking about who formed your party or were present, they're also kind of neighbours and people that you've known all your lives, aren't you?

39:08Rory Stewart:It must feel like that or not. Am I exaggerating that? I mean, yes and no. A lot of people are familiar with each other here, I would say. It helped me. I mean, obviously, there's just going to be a personal preference for people. How people, it's good to have people with experience and ties and also good to have fresh pair of eyes, right? It helped me coming in that I wasn't deep in that, right? I wasn't raised in the party. I wasn't raised in the youth arm. I'd always been a social Democrat. My parents, I mean, they're not active in the party, but they met in Sweden. They were left-leaning. I mean, I'm just raised in that type of household.

39:45So it became or it was very natural to me. But I spent a lot of my formative years in the US. I lived abroad. I came back home. I wasn't necessarily tied into a clique. And it helped me come in because I didn't say yes to everything people said. And I asked critical questions. You know, I wanted Iceland to have a social democratic party like they had in the Nordics. And I didn't understand. And I, you know, I'm still of this opinion that this should be the largest party here, which it still is. And it's been the largest party since I took over the party, which is a huge achievement for us. I mean, this this was like a historical thing to bring social democracy to this place, because at core, there's a lot of people that here that have a social democratic nerve.

40:29But it did help me that I wasn't tied to everyone in the party. And so I didn't have to just feel bad for people when I said, this is a bad idea. Why are you doing things like they are? But being in a small place like this, it allows you to do things that are more difficult in larger countries, which is one of the tactics that we used, which is just before I took over as leader, I did these meetings around the country where I would I'd go to all these places, towns didn't matter the size. And I would host these open meetings and bakeries and and coffee shops and people just show up. And in some meetings, like two people would show up and I would just have an excellent conversation with two people that I had never met.

41:09And other places where the population was maybe 100 people, like a quarter of the town showed up. It was huge, right? And people, there would be these stories of me showing up at these random places and all types of weather. And you can do these types of things in a small community like this. And I really feel like it's your duty to do that. If you have this type of closeness, why would you just put a post on social media? Like, why would you just use social media when you have the closeness that you have in this setting? But people weren't doing it.

41:42Rory Stewart:Anastasia was very interested in this concept of social democracy and what it might mean in an age. How would you define social democracy? What does it mean economically? What does it mean politically? What is the vision of a social democratic country? I mean, social democracy, I'm sure, is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But for me, it's understanding that markets don't always work and that the government isn't in the way, but it's there to help people be free in their lives. I am a huge proponent in talking positively about the government. That does not mean you have to defend every system there is.

42:18And I've always said this to my people. We don't defend all the structures, right? You are not there to defend the system. You're there to work for the people. But I believe that there are aspects of our population, of our country, of our people that will never be able to get into the housing market in sort of the market system as it is. They're going to need some help in it. I also believe that I am where I am, not just because I'm a smart and good person and I did better than others and I just worked harder, but because there is a system that raised me, right? I was part of a schooling system that was publicly founded.

42:56I was part of a healthcare system that was publicly founded. That doesn't mean I don't believe in hard work, but I believe in society. Then there are variants to how much you should be spending and how much you should be putting in this and that. But I don't believe in every man for himself. And for me, that's the core of social democracy. and I believe in respecting people's situation in the sense that people are born with different types of freedom, if I'm honest about it. And I know this from my own family and my own surroundings, that you can have the same exact upbringing, but you're born with certain talents.

43:36And I think the government should be there to help you basically get the best out of people. Do you worry that, let's say you do win the referendum and you do end up eventually joining the European Union, I'm passionately anti-Brexit and still think that Britain's made a terrible mistake and one day we've got to fix it. But even I kind of worry, look, Le Pen or Bardella could be president in France, the AfD are on the march in Germany. You've even got, you know, the Sweden Democrats, you've got the true Finns, you know, even in Scandinavia, you've got a kind of populist right that feels like it's on the march.

44:08We've got Trump in America. Do you worry about the sort of Europe that might be being born, even as you here are winning with social democracy? Yeah, of course I do. I think it's concerning. I mean, we see these, even in Iceland where politics has usually been on like a very tight spectrum, if I'm being honest and fair. It hasn't been that far between conservatives and the left side. On certain areas, yes, for sure. The way people talk about things, yes, for sure. In actuality, no. Obviously, I worry about this. Do I have a solution to it for all of Europe? No, I don't. But I do think this means that also the European Union and the leaders within the European Union now, they need to understand that the European Union also needs to change the way it does its democracy, the way its policies work.

45:02because if not, you just get this more pushback, for example, from these anti-EU parties, right? Because I think there's a lot of what's going on in international politics today, or even, I mean, at the end of the day, these are domestic politics that are being pushed into the international arena. It's happening because domestic politicians didn't look or listen to the frustration of people. I mean, I truly believe as someone who that lived for a while in the United States during the Obama years, and I mean, yes, I have friends in Italy University, but I also have friends outside of that spectrum and having that being raised in that system.

45:37Like I, I feel like I have some understanding of it. I mean, I do think that people, for example, in the democratic party in the U S they didn't listen to people's concerns. That's one of, one of the biggest reasons why I drove politics in the social democratic alliance. Like I did respect people. Don't just write them off. Don't, don't just tell people like you're deplorable yes don't use that word about people like you are in politics for other people not for yourself not to tell people how smart you are not to just convey your best opinions and and you know because you like listening to yourself a lot of people that are upset in the u.s and france in iceland as well feel like the system hasn't worked for them a lot of them are old labor or social democratic or welfare oriented people that feel like the system isn't working so the same goes for these european leaders and for the eu as a whole that they have to to watch out that they don't become too basically detached from from ordinary people why do you have this american accent not a manchester accent that's a long story hey come here if i really bother is alistair i was talking about my mom yesterday and he was like, my mom.

46:53Rory Stewart:Immigration has clearly become, I guess, one of the very biggest drivers of the rise of the far right in Europe and indeed in the US. How do you think the EU in particular should be thinking about immigration, given that it's so central to the debate in places like Germany and France? Oh, it's a really big question. The EU as a whole. I mean I can tell you how I'm thinking about it in Iceland and then we can see if we can move that over to Europe I think because we because I was just saying that one of the issues I think with with politics is that you had parties on the center left that didn't want to listen to certain concerns that doesn't mean you run into the far right or that you just follow the far right policies but you have to understand that a lot of these frictions come up because people that are in low-income positions, they feel like they're being left behind, right?

47:45And they're just looking for someone to blame. We've had a huge change, for example, in immigration in Iceland over the past 10 years. And this could be tied to the EU vote or the Brexit vote, you know, the same way that you felt about it, because a lot of people, they associate immigration with this discussion of asylum seekers like they do in other parts of the world. But this is a very small proportion of foreign people that live here. We went from under 10 % in around 2016, 2015 of the foreign-born population to just under 20%. So a doubling in seven years. And the majority of that population increase, which was driven by basically people coming from abroad was EU immigration, because we were running our economy so hot based on service sectors that we were just getting people from abroad to work these jobs.

48:43And so in modern life, and I'm sure that's what was happening in the UK as well, but I'm not going to put too much weight into that. There's this friction between people wanting growth, they want easy access to all these things in modernity. They might not want those jobs themselves, but they want the services associated with them. You import labor to get these people in. A lot of the companies, even though there are good people working at them, they don't think about the social aspects. They just look at people like widgets. I want someone to do this job. And then they don't think they drive on my roads.

49:19They're using our healthcare system. They might have social issues or kids that might need extra help because they don't have the language. Yes, they're paying taxes. But for a small country that grows this fast, it complicates things, right? And so people out there, they feel like things have changed massively, but they don't have control over it. And that is a big driver of the immigration debate here, even though people associate it with asylum seekers. It's just that the economy is changing really fast. And I mean, in the EU, obviously, you've had intra-EU immigration. I mean, and people have gotten accustomed to that.

49:57But that's also led to issues within the EU as well. My opinion on what you should do with immigration outside of EU, I mean, it's a complicated matter, I will say. But there's friction between what type of life people want to live and who does the jobs that allows them to do that, if I'm being honest about it. I know you don't want to talk about the politics of another country. I get that. But what is the sense of Britain at the moment? We're meeting at the time that we're changing our prime minister again. Seven in a decade. It is insane. Seven in a decade.

50:30Rory Stewart:And Prime Minister, none of us can really remember what Keir Starmer did wrong. Excuse me, Rory. You criticised him a fair bit when he was there. But we've all forgotten now. We sort of drifted on. Now you just want him back. We can't even really remember. It's a very strange phenomenon. I mean, we're getting rid of these people, but we can't really put our finger on it. on exactly what it is that they did wrong. And we just sort of drift off to someone else. I mean, this is yours to answer, really. But Britain generally, I mean, we do come across at the moment as a bit of a basket, seven in 10 years.

51:01Yeah. Now, I think it's largely driven by Brexit, but not exclusively. But also, I just think it says something about how demanding the public are that somebody can win a landslide election two years ago and is now gone. I do. I definitely think we are all living in a different environment. I mean, I think about this occasionally. I mean, the other day, one of our former prime ministers passed away. And because he was a prime minister, we did like an official funeral. And so I was a bit invested in that. And it made me think because there are these pictures on the wall of the government office's house that show like there's a picture of him and all these previous prime ministers, and it shows how long they were in power.

51:42And he was in power for 13 years. And I remember looking at that photo just before or around the funeral, and I was like, 13 years. I've been in this job for 18 months. This seems impossible. Not because I think so little of myself, but just because the environment is really demanding. And I was having this conversation with one of the people that had been working in the government for a while. And he had told me the story about how he had never really met this prime minister. At one point, this person used to be a police officer. He had gone to his summer house to give him a message because he didn't have a phone at his summer house.

52:20And that was a point where it was like, this is why this guy was in power for 13 years, right? Because today, I mean, you're constantly connected. You're constantly being pushed into a fresh news cycle. I mean, even international politics at like a very high level is being driven by tweets and like, you know, you have to respond right away. And I do think that is a setting that is tiring. It's different to govern in. Can you fight back from that? I mean, I don't know, but at least my way of trying to do politics is trying to slow things down a bit, not to run my whole campaigns or the way I do business or govern through social media, but actually just going out and connecting with people, trying to have conversations with them.

53:04I do this still while in office because I do think it helps. What is happening specifically in the UK, I cannot say. But I mean, obviously, it's hard to see things moving forward if you have someone in the job for a year at a time. It takes probably about 12 months to just get affiliated with things. I mean, I am right now like in the process of closing or we've closed our deficit, the deficit of the previous government post-COVID deficit. And it was very difficult because in the last few months, we were just discovering things that we didn't know were there. So it just takes time.

53:41Rory Stewart:Are there any things that you think that people don't understand about being a head of government or head of state? I mean, something that you pick up when you go to NATO meetings and you're seeing prime ministers of Greece or Cyprus or Spain or presidents of France. What is it that strikes you as unusual about these jobs and these people? It's a very interesting question. To be honest, I don't think that much about it when I'm in this role. I mean, obviously, you think about, oh, I'm a prime minister and I'm meeting other prime ministers, but they're also just people, right? I mean, what you do realize is that people want to work together, but it's still also, you know, everyone is just working for their own country at the end of the day, right?

54:25They're trying to get the best deal for themselves. And I think it's important also for people out there, for Icelanders and other people in other countries to realize that, you know, it's people might be nice to each other, but they're still just thinking about their own interests. So like getting people to come together and find a solid solution is not always an easy situation to be in. I don't know. I don't really know how to answer this question, Rory. Honestly, to me, these are just people. I don't really think about them. Oh, this is like the prime minister of that. I mean, I am always just very proud when I go, not of myself, but of my country, that you go to these things and we have a seat at the table, to be honest.

55:04And it's not a given. It's not a given in today's world that we have a voice and that people listen to us in this situation. It's not a given that you are an independent country, even in today's world, right? And so I do think that is sort of an important message to bring to people. I mean, people are good friends, you know, they do okay together. But I mean, maybe also like a good, nice backstory to all of this is that a lot of the time, even people that are pretty aggressive towards each other publicly are quite nice in person, right? A lot of it's also just politics for their domestic crowd at the end of the day.

55:43We've got to understand why, I went swimming this morning with one of your best known journalists who's lived in Iceland, knows Iceland inside out, did not know that you'd been to school in Manchester. Oh. So I think having raised it, we have to know why did you end up? In Manchester. Yeah. My mom was a GP, a general practitioner. I mean, she just wanted to give us the language. She had already finished her studies. She wanted to take a break from working in Iceland. So she applied to work at a clinic in Manchester. And she moved all of us to Manchester for 18 months. You were nine? I was nine at the time.

56:22And it was... So you were there for the first election of New Labour and you were there for Brexit in our country. Yeah, I remember this very vividly. I wasn't necessarily following politics at the time. I can, you know, if I'm being honest. But I remember this very vividly because Princess Diana passed away that summer when I first moved there. And this was on the news everywhere. And it was such a traumatic event for everyone and for myself as well. I remember this very well. And obviously, these were the golden years. Yes, for New Labour, also for Manchester United at the time. I know you might not want me to tell you this, but this was a strong, well, it was my team at the time, at least.

57:03But it was one of the best things my parents did for me. And this is very descriptive of them, right? They did everything for us. They put all their money into a grammar school so we could go to a good school while we were there. And then we were sitting in these garden furniture for about a year because they were living in a shitty rental for 18 months so we could go to a good school. The state schools were very good as well. I'm sure they were great. But, you know, they didn't want to take any chances. They were taking us out of our comfort zone. You know, they did what they thought was best for us.

57:32But since then, I've been in a public school. I know. Well, listen, thanks for all your time. It's been great to be here. It's just so nice being in a cold, wet country in the middle of our heat wave. Yeah. Love of the weather. It's been drizzling quite a bit, but it's nice. Thank you, Rory, as well. It's great to see you.

57:46Rory Stewart:Lovely to see you. Thank you again. Bye-bye.

57:51Rory Stewart:Alison, tell us first what it's like being actually in Iceland. I mean, that's one bit we didn't really get out of this whole thing, is that you're there on the ground and you went for a swim this morning. I went for a swim. I mean, honestly, it was so nice getting off the plane, walking through the airport, and it was cold and drizzling. And it just felt like Britain in the good old days before climate change. And tell me, listen, I'm obviously obsessed with this fact that basically the country's got a population smaller than Cumbria. So I keep thinking leader of Cumbria County Council. But it's not quite that because, of course, she's a much more sort of sophisticated international player than my dear friend, the leader of Cumbria County Councilors.

58:28Rory Stewart:So it's interesting, isn't it? Very small countries, which are also sort of international players. It's not quite right to think of it in terms of a British county. No, definitely not. And also because it is strategically so important as well. It is, you know, the American, Russia. And I can't quite get my head around the fact that they don't have any military at all. They have a Coast Guard, but they don't have a military. And it was interesting. I was talking to somebody yesterday who said, look, we don't feel threatened. We've not had a history of this. You know, she was making the point that we don't have parents and grandparents who talk about living through a war.

59:07Now, I wonder whether that makes them a little bit complacent about some of the geostrategic stuff.

59:12Rory Stewart:I'd be terrified because I'm afraid, although nobody in the past has wanted to gobble up Iceland, it doesn't seem impossible that somebody in the future, whether a Trump administration or indeed Russia, might think that this is a really important strategic base. I mean, presumably in that, all that stuff you were doing around the Arctic and geostrategy, Iceland does matter just as Greenland does. Well, I was saying that, you know, Duke, the Greenland-Iceland-UK corridor, it's like, it's a big thing. And when we did the series on the polar war, you know, Iceland does figure in all that, but they're very, they seem very, very relaxed about it.

59:47But the reason why, by the way, they brought, they didn't really get into this because although she was, you know, it's pretty obvious what she does think about Trumpism and Trump, but the reason they brought forward the referendum was actually in large part, I think, because of the Trump-Greenland threat. and so but i think what's what's really interesting about being here you you feel the sense of it being an island very very quickly way more than you think you do with britain and that may be to do with the population because it's a big country it's not as if it's uh it's sort of tiny it's not like singapore she talked about it being sort of almost like a city state it's a huge country but with 400 000 people i the referendum thing is going to be interesting though because i think that the polling is very, very close.

1:00:33You know, she's the prime minister, she's leading a three-party coalition, all women. The second party is headed by the foreign minister. And that party basically exists to fight for European Union membership. They were the ones that were, you know, really pushing for this. And then the third party is a kind of left-wing populist party called the People's Party, which is led by this extraordinary woman who's, I think, registered blind and has came from a very, very poor background. So you've got these three women who are holding the government together whilst having this referendum campaign. But I think you sensed from the way she talked about the referendum campaign, it feels very different to Brexit.

1:01:12One, she's not evangelizing. She's basically saying, well, maybe, and there's a bit of this and there's a bit of that. And secondly, it's not to join. And I think their big worry is that the opposition, the no campaign do manage to sort of persuade people it's about joining and the the last poll i saw 14 per six 14.6 undecided that's quite high with

1:01:36Rory Stewart:well it's amazing i mean i i'd be fascinated to see what happens i'm afraid i got a slightly gloomy impression from that i mean if they don't win this referendum if they don't go forward to exploration i'm afraid i might be tempted to say that this style of very very reasonable moderate centrist on the one hand on the other hand campaigning may not actually be the thing i didn't really feel i mean i i you know i get she doesn't want to evangelize she doesn't want to preach but i'm a little worried the only thing i'll say about that is i think genuinely she did become leader and win the election sufficient to put together the coalition by that style and you know i i want this this sort of sense of just i think she's going to have a i think she's have like two days holiday and then spend the whole of august doing that and of course the thing is even though it's a big country 400 000 people you can get round you can get round she'll she's clearly going to do an awful lot of meetings through the month of august but no i think she's really impressive when i spent some time with her last night and and she's just she's very very i think sharp and i think actually the fact that she did have this fairly non-political not um not apolitical but not very political upbringing and then working in a kind of you know investment bank where i imagine most of the people were on the right and not social democrats at all but i think that she i think she came into politics with a with a really fresh eye and i think she's still using that fresh eye she's a little bit reminiscent it's maybe a bit unfair but of maya sandhu the president of moldova who we interviewed perhaps even the prime minister of Greece, all of whom spent quite a lot of time in the US, worked as economists from the financial industry, came in back to these relatively small countries with a big international hinterland.

1:03:24What was your overall impression?

1:03:26Rory Stewart:Well, I think she's wonderful. And I also wonder whether to reinforce our new Prime Minister's vision of the world, whether she isn't really a clue to why devolution works. that actually, interestingly, the theory in Britain is that unitary councils should be about the size of Iceland in population terms. We're aiming for kind of 450 ,000. And I can believe that. I mean, I absolutely, as a Cumbrian MP, can relate to going, you know, I try to get to every village in Hamilton, the constituency, and sit in the pub and meet a dozen people. And that's where I feel democracy probably can beat populism.

1:04:04Rory Stewart:I mean, that's your one big chance. She probably is right that she doesn't have to get totally caught up in social media campaigns if she can genuinely sit with people and be reasonable. Whether that suggests, I'm tempted to think it does suggest that maybe Andy Burnham's right, that actually the saving of British democracy is to break it down into those smaller chunks much more where people really can feel that they know their leader and relate to them. But of course, she's got this other advantage, which is she's a particularly international, high-quality, super smart, sophisticated leader, which we often don't end up having at a local level in Britain.

1:04:41Yeah. Your point as well about the, you know, so Iceland is a small population, but with all the infrastructure of a big government, the leader of the Renew Party that I mentioned, she's the foreign minister, so they have the foreign ministry. The Instagram thing you mentioned when she went to the the NATO summit in Ankara when she left here she had 19 ,000 Instagram followers and by the time she got back she had 275 ,000 so she has to have all these relations she was telling me last night about a panel that she did and the panel was about future of sort of social democracy centrist politics and the panel was her Keir Starmer Mark Carney and Albanese and I think she does want to be part of that debate about you know world social democracy not just Iceland, but right now in the middle of a referendum campaign, obviously she's got to get the focus on here.

1:05:29But no, I think she's super smart, really impressive. But I think the referendum will be tough. I think it'll be tough.

1:05:36Rory Stewart:Yeah. Well, let's watch this space. And thank you, Alistair. Thank you for going to Iceland. And well done on writing the book that inspired her to come on the podcast. Winners and how they succeed. I'll have to put her in a future edition, I fear. No, I don't fear it. I think it was a very good thing to do. Knock out some of the people who maybe reputations have fallen a little bit since I wrote it up. What great winners they were. Yeah, she's definitely a winner. See you soon, bye. Thanks again, bye.

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