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Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics - Episode 75: The Greek Prime Minister vs Rishi Sunak: The Elgin Marbles, Immigration, and the EU
Episode Overview In this episode of "The Rest Is Politics," hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart interview Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister of Greece. The conversation covers a range of topics including the Elgin Marbles, Greece's immigration policies, and the impact of populism in Europe, especially in the context of upcoming elections.
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Key Themes and Discussions
- Historical Context of Greece
- Independence Movement: Greece was the first province of the Ottoman Empire to declare independence in 1821, largely due to the efforts of figures like Eleftherios Venizelos.
- Family Legacy: Mitsotakis discusses his family's political history, which includes several generations in politics, providing context to his own political journey.
- Mitsotakis's Political Journey
- Influence of Family: Growing up in a political family shaped his perceptions of politics, both drawing him in and pushing him away at different times.
- Education and Career: Mitsotakis studied political science and had a career in finance before entering politics, highlighting a blend of experience in both sectors.
- Views on Leadership and Governance
- Populism vs. Traditional Politics: Mitsotakis offers a definition of populism, emphasizing the dangers of oversimplifying complex issues and the importance of truth in political discourse.
- Challenges in the Current Political Climate: He reflects on the polarization in politics today compared to past eras, advocating for civility and respect among political opponents.
- Greece's Immigration Policy
- Management of Borders: Mitsotakis discusses Greece's approach to immigration, contrasting the previous open-door policy with his government's stricter border controls.
- Comparison with Other Nations: He points to the need for comprehensive immigration management, addressing both legal pathways and border security.
- Political Dynamics in Europe
- Impact of Populism: Mitsotakis reflects on the rise of populism across Europe, particularly in the context of economic crises and societal divisions caused by globalization.
- European Elections: He anticipates a rise in far-right populism in the upcoming elections but notes Greece's success in mitigating these trends domestically.
- Cultural Heritage: The Elgin Marbles
- Return of Artifacts: The conversation touches on Greece's ongoing efforts to reunite the Parthenon sculptures, emphasizing the cultural importance of having these artifacts in their original context.
- Future of Greek Politics and EU Relations
- European Identity and Expansion: Mitsotakis discusses the role of Greece in the broader European context, especially regarding the Western Balkans' integration into the EU.
- UK-Greece Relations Post-Brexit: He expresses a hopeful outlook on future relations between the UK and Greece, despite the complexities introduced by Brexit.
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Key Takeaways
- Experience Shapes Leadership: Mitsotakis's multifaceted background in politics and finance informs his approach to governance, emphasizing the importance of experience and knowledge.
- Populism as a Challenge: Both Mitsotakis and Stewart address the dangers of populism, advocating for a politics grounded in truth, respect, and effective governance.
- Immigration Management: The episode discusses Greece's proactive strategies in managing immigration, presenting a model that other countries, like the UK, might consider.
- Cultural Heritage Matters: The ongoing debate over the Elgin Marbles highlights the intersection of politics, culture, and national identity, revealing the deep connections between historical artifacts and contemporary governance.
- Looking Forward: Mitsotakis expresses optimism for Greece’s future as it navigates economic recovery, migration challenges, and political stability within the EU framework.
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Conclusion This episode provides a nuanced view of Greek politics through the lens of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, focusing on historical context, current challenges, and future aspirations. It illustrates the delicate balance between leadership and populism in today's political climate, making it a relevant discussion for listeners interested in contemporary world affairs.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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1:38Welcome to The Rest is Policy Leading with me, Anastair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And we're in the office of the Greek Prime Minister in Athens, Mr. Kyriakos. Pronounce it for me. Mitsotakis. Mitsotakis. Yeah. Very nice name. and if ever there was a man who was going to be end up as a politician it was likely to be to be you sir father prime minister grandfather mp great grandfather mp siblings who've been mayors so a very very very very political family and taken on a country that is i guess has a big up and down reputation through the entirety of history but also through through modern times but now is presenting a more modern version of Greece, which seems to be politically thus far successful.
2:30So welcome and thank you for having us here. Well, thank you. Thank you for flying down to Athens for this interview. I was thinking about extraordinary way in which your own family's history is connected with the creation of Greece. And we think, of course, of Greece a lot in Britain in terms of the great independence movement in the early 19th century, breaking free of Ottoman Turkey. But I guess your great-granduncle was incredibly important in almost doubling the size of Greece in the period before and immediately after the First World War. Can you just to sort of bring in international listeners, give us a little bit of a sense of that evolution and that incredible transformation of a modern country?
3:14Well, Greece was the first province of the Ottoman Empire to fight for and eventually gain its independence. Our war of independence started in 1821 against all odds, and we succeeded, you know, with some help from our allies, including Britain, and we gained our independence in 1830. And of course, it has been a very, very interesting journey ever since from a backward prowess of the Ottoman Empire into a modern European country with lots of ups and downs. The country grew a lot, as you pointed out, during the beginning of the 20th century. Eleferios Venizelos, who was my great grand uncle, actually came from Crete.
3:56At the time, Crete was still under Ottoman occupation, a very visionary politician. And he, just to interrupt for a second, but he's such an extraordinary figure because he sort of bridges a very ancient era and a very modern era. He was a revolutionary who became, you know, a politician, a leader, a profound realist, a visionary reformer. He was the one who placed, took the decision to put Greece, you know, with the winners of the First World War. He was the one who fought before that. He fought, you know, the two Balkan wars. He increased the size of Greece. And historically, I mean, there is a historical irony that he was also the one who in 1920 lost the elections and then in 1923 was brought back to negotiate what was essentially a treaty of a defeated country, the Lausanne Treaty, which essentially created the context of the modern relationship between Greece and Turkey.
4:54So a remarkable figure. Some great biography has been written by Michael Llewellyn Smith, who was an ambassador of the United Kingdom to Greece. He has written the first volume, and I'm eagerly expecting the second one. And what about your dad? In power, then out of power, in exile. You spent some of your early years living in Paris, is that right? Because your father had had to leave Greece. So just tell us his story. Yeah, my father was also a product of the generation of the Second World War. He fought during the resistance in Crete. He was a young lawyer. He was twice convicted to death. The first time, his life was spared as a result of a prisoner exchange.
5:36The second time, the war just ended, and he was set free. He was a politician for his entire life. And yeah, when the junta sort of took over in 1967, I mean, all mainstream politicians were put to jail. You know, my family was put under house arrest. And you were born a year after? I was born a year after that. And then my father actually fleed the country in August of 1968. He crossed the Aegean on a very small boat in very difficult conditions. And he ended up in Paris. And then at some point we were able to join him. So my first six years were spent in Paris until democracy was restored. 1974, we're actually celebrating 50 years, as is Portugal, for that matter.
6:22So your father was, I guess, about 50 when you were born? My father was exactly 50, yeah. I was the last child. I have three older sisters. According to my parents, I was not part of the family planning, but these things tend to happen. And what was he like as a father? Were you able to spend a lot of time with him in those first six years in Paris, or was he very busy? Obviously, I don't have. I have vague memories of my father in Paris. And these are memories of a family that at the time was, you know, united and my parents could spend a lot of time with me. That was not the case afterwards because my father returned to Greek politics.
6:57As a teenager, I remember, you know, the epic struggles between my father and Andreas Papandreou. Then he became prime minister. So I didn't have much time to spend when I was growing up in Greece. But we were able to form an extraordinary bond. And interestingly enough, as, you know, as he became older, we spent more time together. And, you know, he passed away at the age of 99. And I feel very lucky to have had him in my life, although we had, you know, 50 years of age difference. So you went off then to, you were educated partly in America, and then you were a banker and a financier. Was there any part of you that felt that being the child of somebody who's had this political career and been prime minister, so you'd seen what it was like, was there any part of that that put you off politics?
7:44Or did you, do you think that actually drew you into politics? Well, probably both happened. I think you're right to point out that when you have a strong sort of family history, people expect you to enter politics and sort of, for some people, inevitable. But that was not the case with me. I did study, you know, political science and international relations at university. I was always fascinated by politics, but I would say intellectually so. But then I lived through what my father went through as prime minister. And when he lost his elections in 1993, I told myself, I don't want to do this. I felt rather bitter.
8:18I was also young at the time. And I said, look, I'm going to have a career in the private sector. I went to business school. Was he happy with that? I think he was quite happy with that. He never pushed me to do politics. He always told me, be happy with what you do. And I think at the time, politics was very, very far from my mind. And I spent a decade in the private sector. At some point, I realized I was commenting a lot about Greek politics. And I told myself, look, it's easy for you to enter politics. You have a lot of name recognition. So if you really think that you can make a difference, you might as well give it a go.
8:53And I became a candidate for parliament 20 years ago in 204. Just before we move on, the personality of your father and the type of politician he was, what did you learn from watching him about politics? And do you sometimes reflect that he was a different type of a politician team? Well, he was, and he had to be a retail politician at the time. I mean, he was elected in Crete, which means you need to know everyone on a first name basis. There was a lot of, you know, clientelistic politics at the time. I'm not putting a value judgment on this, but this is the way politics was done. At the same time, he was also a visionary reformer who came to power in 1990, very much inspired at the time by the sort of free market, the sort of liberal ideology of the 80s.
9:40I think he tried to implement significant reforms. He did not fully succeed because he ended up serving only for one term. But he made tremendous comebacks during his career. And he was someone who passionately believed that you need to tell the truth to people. He was an anti-populist. And I think he certainly inspired me in that respect. So there's an echo, isn't there? Because you also are somebody, and we'll get onto this, who came in and decided to implement some pretty dramatic economic reforms, much in the way that he did. But unlike your father, you managed to stay in office, win a second election.
10:18Is there anything looking back at what your father did that taught you lessons about what you need to do as a politician if you're going to try to bring in those kind of radical reforms without being defeated? Certainly, looking back at his time in office, he had the majority of one. It does not help if you don't have a strong parliamentary majority. It does make your life much more difficult. And I think at the time he tried to implement very bold reforms without making sure that these reforms were properly explained. And of course, when you implement reforms, you may end up with a couple of years where things are very difficult.
10:54I mean, look at what happened, for example, with the reforms in the early 80s in the UK. And there was just no time for the economy to bounce back. And of course, he also had against him a politician who was very, very, very capable. And I think one mistake he made at the time was that there was actually a decision to take Andres Papandreou to court. And that really polarized the politics and made maybe Papandreou come back stronger. Tell us a little bit about the Papandreou family and this legacy and what type of politician Andres Papandreou was as you look back in time. Well, I never really met him personally, but these were very divisive times in Greece.
11:30but Papandreou was a very charismatic personality. He was a proto-populist. We talk a lot about populism, but Papandreou was a populist. He promised the moon and ended up doing the exact opposite, but he was also an intellectual and certainly a very, very skilled politician. But even when I look at how polarizing the politics are now, even during those difficult years, there were big divisions and we thought that they were at each other's throats, but there was a certain level of respect and politicians still played by the rules of the game. I think things are much worse now in terms of, you know, the gloves coming off completely and we sometimes forget sort of any rules of basic civility in the political discourse.
12:11That was not the case. They were clearly opponents and nasty things happened, but I think things are much worse now. What's your definition of populism? My definition of populism is, first of all, promising solutions, easy solutions to complicated problems. So not being honest with people, drawing a fake distinction between the people and the elites, not fundamentally believing in the institutions of representative democracy and in the checks of balances that our democracies put in place and placing a lot of emphasis on being sort of a visionary leader who has this sort of connection with the people and who by himself or by herself can magically solve our problems.
12:59And would you say that Greece, as in recent years, had populists of the left and of the right? And what similarities are between them and what differences are there between them? Absolutely. We were the first to experiment with populism. We actually brought the populists into power in 2015. And if you look at the history of Greece over the past decade, We had a profound economic crisis, which started in 2009, but the crisis was unnecessarily prolonged because we elected a populist government in 2015, led by sort of the radical left by Alexis Tsipras, who in my mind is a definition of a populist politician.
13:36But interestingly enough, they formed a coalition with a party that's actually to the right of my party, New Democracy. So you had the populist left and the populist right governing together. And when you look at the playbook of the populace when they come into power, it's usually the same. They undermine, they sort of challenge justice. They try to go after their political opponents. They go after independent institutions. So the question of the rule of law is usually undermined by these types of government. And when you were speaking there, I suspect, like I was, many of our listeners may have had Donald Trump pop into their head.
14:09Because it seemed to me you were defining Donald Trump's approach to politics. Well, taking into account the differences of political systems, I mean, there are various examples of politicians that can be classified as populists. But what is important is… What I was trying to do there was test your political and diplomatic skills. You passed the test. I didn't say anything. Well, you know, we have an election in the US and I'm not going to comment on the outcome. But I think the point, which is maybe of greater interest to your listeners, is what happens if the populists win for a second time?
14:45Then the erosion of the institutions becomes much more significant. Look at, for example, what happened in Poland and the difficulties that the current government has in addressing these challenges. Hungary? Well, Hungary probably is past the point where you can easily envision a democratic sort of transfer of power. So in our case, we did manage to defeat the populace at our first goal. So they only had four years in power. So you've been in politics actually quite a long time now. I mean, you elected to parliament some time ago. So you've seen this pretty dramatic transformation during your own political career.
15:23Why is it that, you know, 2014 we see Modi elected, 2015 Poland, 2015 Greece, 2016 Donald Trump, 2018 Bolsonaro and Brazil? What is it you noticed happening during the 2000s that created the conditions for this in 2014? Well, let me make two points. First of all, the Greek situation was pretty unique. People tend to forget the dramatic impact that the economic crisis had on Greek society. We lost more than 25 % of our GDP. This is the biggest contraction in economic history of any OECD country after the Second World War. And I think it's a, I wouldn't say it's a miracle, but it pays tribute to the resilience of the country and the Greek people that we've been able to recover from this crisis.
16:08So in Greece, the conditions were there. People were desperate. They became much poorer. There was a significant backlash against, you know, the elite or the establishment parties. So to a certain extent, I understand why they tried to experiment. with something different. But coming back to your broader question, I think there was, you know, globalization created a profound divide between those who benefited from it and those who felt that they were left behind. And those who were left behind in terms of jobs, in terms of identity politics, expressed their need for someone to actually represent their voices.
16:43So the grievances upon which populists actually feed are very real. But populism is not the answer. But we need to understand that people vote for sort of populist leaders for a certain reason. I mean, they're not, people are irrational. So I understand why you didn't want to get into the Biden-Trump argument, but you did say there that you felt that Hungary had gone beyond. That was a big statement to me. You're talking about a European Union country there that seems to me has been provoking the European Union and the institutions on which it depends. And yet, he's still there and it's still provoking.
17:17Yeah. Well, we've had our issues with Hungary. It's no secret. I was instrumental in pushing the European People's Party, our European political family, to sort of expel Fidesz, Viktor Orbán's party, from our group. And the truth is that there are serious issues concerning the rule of law in Hungary. I'm not saying something that the commission also does not acknowledge. And we need to use all our levers to ensure that the rule of law is respected. And this is what the European institutions are trying to do. Of course, as you You know, decisions at the council require unanimity. And that makes these negotiations sometimes rather complex.
17:56I sometimes feel that we may be facing a much bigger global problem here, that in the mind of Viktor Orban, his dream is a world in which strong men, even strong women, begin to dominate. Men. I think he means men. Usually men. Usually men. And so maybe he has a fantasy world that he would hope that within a couple of years' time, Putin would be strong, Xi Jinping would be strong, he would be strong, maybe a populist right-wing leader would be elected as the president of France. And then suddenly the whole world begins to tip more in authoritarian direction. I think you're right to observe that maybe some leaders believe that this is the case.
18:35I would actually argue, returning to the Greek paradigm, that this is not a one-way street. We've demonstrated that you can actually govern from the center, that you can create a broad coalition that includes people who define themselves as right-wing sort of patriotic voters who can coexist with other people who define themselves as centrists to focus more on our results-oriented policies that actually deliver for the people. Because behind any sort of authoritarian vision is always the argument that we can actually do better for you, for the average people, than these other types of elite-led governments.
19:12And there's ways to actually prove them wrong. And the only way to prove them wrong is by demonstrating that these types of governments, which are vilified by the populace, can actually succeed at governing countries pretty effectively. And this is what we've done in Greece. Where would you sit on a British political spectrum for our British listeners? Where would you, if you imagine that, you know, the right wing of the Conservative Party is over there and Jeremy Corbyn's here, where are you? I would probably be, I mean, I could be governing from the center means, for your listeners to understand, I lead the main center-right party in Greece.
19:48So that would be the equivalent of the conservative party. But I've pushed the party very much to the center. And I have people within my party who would actually belong to the Labour Party or they belong to PASOK, which was the equivalent of the Labour Party. So I've been able to bring these people together without offending traditional voters. One of the things that you've done, which seems very, very unusual, is you are somebody who seems to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. And this was the sort of story in Britain around George Osborne, David Cameron in 2010. Like them, you've pushed, for example, for gay marriage, but you've also been quite fiscally conservative in terms of controlling spending and borrowing.
20:32and the story in Britain in the United States and a lot of the world from many polling experts is that's no longer possible they draw these sort of pretty quadrants on a board and they say that the whole of politics has changed and that there aren't votes anymore in being socially liberal and economic conservative and this is something that the US is obsessed with and President Biden is being shown in his polling and President Trump's being shown in his polling and in Britain it was you know, all about Boris Johnson's 2019 campaign was trying to find more socially conservative right-wing voters who also wanted more government spending.
21:07So do you agree that you're slightly bucking an international trend? And if so, what's the explanation for it? I would argue that we've been able to implement sort of a new type of triangulation. I would argue that we are fiscally prudent, but certainly pro-growth. We are not fans of austerity. And my big challenge was to stimulate the growth of the Greek economy, to bring in investment, to make sure that we deregulate in a reasonable manner, improve the productivity of the state. And that's why Greece is growing significantly faster than the average of the Eurozone. But at the same time, we're always aware of the fact that we have a heavy debt burden, that the country went bankrupt, and that in order to restore our credibility on the international markets, we have to meet our fiscal targets.
21:50So this is sort of different from the austerity policies that were put in place in the UK during the past decade. But we're also very responsible patriots. By responsible patriots, I mean that we manage migration, probably much better than many other European countries. We invested in defense. We managed our issues with Turkey. And we're also socially liberal when it comes to issues, for example, such as gay marriage, which was a difficult issue in Greece. It made some people within my party upset, And I fully understand that. And that's why I never use the whip. And I let my MPs make up their own mind.
22:28That wasn't a whip vote at all? There wasn't a whip. Two thirds of my MPs voted for the legislation. A third did not. I fully respected. And how important was the role of the church in that debate? It was important. The church was against it, of course. But I recognized the leadership of the church. They made their point, but we explained that this is a civil arrangement. After all, we're not interfering the religious affairs of the church. There is no separation of church and state in Greece. We need to point that out. This is in our constitution, and I don't believe that this will change in the foreseeable future.
23:03So this is something which we did. I think it was important for a minority of Greeks. and we are now moving forward with the rest of our reforms. But I do, I would challenge you on the fact that I think that there is room to do this sort of new triangulation. And essentially, what is it that brought us to 41 %? It's the ability to unite voters who were traditional right-wing voters, who care a lot about sort of the more patriotic issues, with more progressive centrist voters. But the glue that brought all these voters together was a well-performing economy at the end of the day. If the economy doesn't do well, if the economy is not growing, if we don't bring down unemployment, if we don't bring up wages, then at the end of the day, it's very difficult to create the environment for this political alliance to hold.
23:47You mentioned immigration there. How have you managed to, because you have brought the numbers right down. As far as I'm aware, you don't have a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. No, that's not what we have in mind. So what, if the British government wanted to sort of find a country that seems to have got the numbers in control and seems to have control of their borders, what advice would you give them? What could they see that you've done that maybe they could have thought of too? But it doesn't help to leave the European Union. I know you're very sensitive about this issue, but jokes aside, the European Union did agree on asylum and migration pact, a very important reform.
24:27But you're in a particular place. Before that, we're a border state, and we were faced with a situation where we essentially, the previous government had an open door policy. Anyone who wanted to come into Greece came into Greece. No questions asked, whether it was our land border or our sea borders. We just became a sort of welcoming committee. And we said, no, this is not going to happen. We need to protect our border. We'll do it in a responsible way. I need to remind your listeners that in March 2020, Greece was faced with the first wave of instrumentalization of migrants when Turkey tried to push tens of thousands of desperate people across our land border.
25:01We defended our border. We're building a fence. And we have been effective in breaking the smugglers model. We've made it very clear. If you want to come to Greece, there are legal pathways, but it's just not the smugglers who are going to decide who will arrive on a Greek island. It's us through our - So you need the legal pathways and you need the process. You need two things. You need a big fence and you also need a big door. By big fence, I mean you protect your borders. I'm unapologetic about this. At the same time, my Coast Guard has saved thousands of people at sea, but we will make it difficult for people to enter Greece.
25:35I've been very, very clear with that. We've worked with Turkey reasonably well over the past months, but at the same time, we also need legal pathways to migration because we're doing, for example, a deal with Egypt now. We need workers in our agricultural sector. Our employment is coming down very fast, which means we're faced with labor shortages, but we need to set the rules and we need to know who's coming into the country. and we are offering legal pathways and we make it very difficult for smugglers to continue bringing people, desperate people illegally into the country. I mean, this is obviously one of the most touchy, difficult issues.
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26:11And listeners will be aware that what was so terrible, terrible tragedy with hundreds of people dying and allegations against the Greek coast guard. But I don't want to get pulled into that because I know you have a very strong position on that and argue that wasn't the Greek coast guard's fault. But the bigger issue, I guess, in Europe is the fact that we are going to go into European elections in June, where in about a third of the countries of Europe, it looks like far-right populist parties are going to get the most votes. And they will get it off the back of concerns about immigration. if you're the afd in germany or any number of these other far-right parties their big point will be that the centrists do not have a grip on immigration and that's probably the thing that's undermining these centrist governments most in europe yeah i think you're right to point out that immigration is a big concern in many european countries interestingly enough it's it's a non-issue in greece because we've managed a problem is that is that not a popular statement no you can ask people on this i mean people in greece non-issue it's an it's a non-issue today.
27:15It was an issue back in 2019. If you go to the islands of the Eastern regime now, they are thrilled for two reasons. The first reason is that the numbers have significantly decreased. By the way, we have proper processes. We have proper asylum reception centers. People are treated in a humane manner. Those who actually make it, their asylum applications are processed very quickly. This is the bit the British government should be listening to. But they're also thrilled because we did a deal with Turkey and we allow visa-free travel, the only exception to the Schengen rules, for Turkish visitors to come to our islands for a week.
27:50Not exactly visa-free, it's visa facilitation. They get their visa on the spot. So that's why it's a non-issue. But it is an issue in Europe. And why? I'll tell you why. Because I think there's been, Europe was late to make the shift, which has actually taken place, to recognize that you cannot manage the migration issue without placing emphasis on your external borders. They thought it was a secondary problem. But if you don't control the absolute number of people who come into the European Union, then it will become a problem not just for the front line states. It will eventually become a problem for Germany, for Scandinavia, for those countries which are much richer and whose social welfare infrastructure acts as a magnet for those people.
28:30And the premise that you will get people saying, but you can't control the borders. They will say with climate change, there are going to be hundreds of millions of people moving. And then there will be people even in UNHCR arguing that borders are inhumane. I mean, how do you respond? Well, I can tell you that if you look at what UNHCR is telling us now, they're pretty happy with what we've done because the previous conditions were horrible. At the time when we had open borders, we had 20 ,000 people in one camp, Moria, you may remember, on the island of Lesros, in horrible conditions, children being raped.
29:00I mean, it was unmanageable, completely unmanageable. So I think you need to set the rules. But at the same time, you need very bold agreements to offer the people who want to come and work in the European Union legal pathways. You cannot just do the one without the other. And to push again, to the vision that over the next 20, 30 years, there are going to be hundreds of millions of people moving around the world because of climate change and other poverty. You actually think it is possible to control borders? I'm saying that maybe there are situations where it is, who knows what can happen and what sort of crisis may emerge.
29:39So there's also the third part is what do we do about, and you're a big expert on this, obviously, but what do we do about making sure that people in Africa have more opportunities in Africa? And the truth is we've not done enough, but Africa is a booming continent. You have the biggest population explosion in Africa. And how do we offer the young Africans more opportunities to stay where they live? this is a, I mean, they don't move and travel because they want to. They do so because they're desperate. Okay, Prime Minister, Roy, let's take a quick break.
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31:12Can I just ask you about Europe and the whole issue of those countries that want to join and that probably do see you as a bit of a blocker? I mean, I felt very, very sorry for the Macedonians having to change their name, go through all sorts of loopholes, and then they're still not any further forward. You may know, do some work with Eddie Rama in Albania. And I think they sometimes feel that, you know, you're very, very pro-European up to the border. So what's your vision for a broader Europe with some of these countries? I'll challenge you on this because we've been big proponents and big supporters of the Western Balkans joining the European Union.
31:49It is in our interest after all. This is our immediate neighborhood. We're the biggest, sort of the first country to join the European Union. relatively wealthy compared to the Western Balkans, members of NATO, members of the Eurozone, members of Schengen. So we actually want the Western European countries. They feel they're going backwards, don't they? Yeah, but I don't think that's Greece's problem. And you referred to North Macedonia and the name change. This was, again, I had some issues with the press press, had some real issues with the press press agreement, which was agreed by the previous government, but I respected it.
32:22and we've been trying to work with North Macedonia to help them in their European journey. But getting closer to Europe means respecting the European Ike and means making progress on issues regarding the rule of law. I mean, one of the things, of course, in the center of the Western Balkans that people are very, very concerned about is relationships between Serbia and Northern Kosovo, Serbia and Republika Srpska, real anxieties that we may be teetering on the edge of, replay of bits of the Bosnia-Kosovo wars. And I feel that if we had been more generous and more active and more rapid about bringing those countries into the European Union, it would have been much better for European security.
33:05The Thessaloniki declaration of 2003, that was 21 years ago, for the first time mentioned the need to bring the Western Balkans closer to Europe, and we've not made enough progress. There's a new momentum now, also as a result of Ukraine, and we need to seize it. And that's why we need to reward the countries that actually make real progress. And you mentioned Serbia. Serbia is fundamental for the stability of the Western Balkans. And I cannot imagine the Western Balkans being anchored to Europe without Serbia being part of Europe. They're the largest country, the largest economy. And of course, they've been sitting on the fence.
33:40So we need a proper set of incentives and disincentives to push Serbia in its European direction. But it requires Europe to take risk. It requires Germany and France to be bold. One of the problems is you can always hide behind the key and say they haven't ticked this box, they haven't ticked that box. First of all, one of the things that we will eventually do in the next European cycle is to rethink the enlargement process and what does it mean to actually become a member and what are those maybe intermediary milestones that we can set for those countries in order for them to understand that as they make progress there will also be benefits.
34:14Because right now, we have to be honest, people in the Western Balkans don't believe that they will be part of the European family. This is a big problem. I think they did a few years ago. Probably less so now. But look at, I mean, there are some countries, Montenegro, for example, is making progress. We need to reward them. It's not just a stick where we go with a big checklist and tell them what they don't do well. And we should also remember, let's look at our own stories. Greece joined the European Union back in 1981. Would we take all the boxes now? I mean, it was a political decision that was taken.
34:44At the time, with the great support of, you know, Giscard d 'Estaing, Germany was hesitant. The country was coming out of, you know, of a junta. And they said, I mean, we need to... It took a risk. It was more of a geopolitical decision and less of a technocratic decision. But at some point, some progress needs to be made. But I hear you when you say that, you know, some bold political decisions will have to be taken at some point. Can you foresee a day when the United Kingdom is back inside the European Union? Well, all of us, I mean, some of us, again, I was, my first European Council was the last council in which a British Prime Minister was president.
35:21That was only for a very brief period of time. So, but I personally think that it was a mistake for everyone. I mean, obviously for the United Kingdom to leave, to leave Europe. We made it very clear that we respect the decision, but that doesn't mean that we actually think that it was good either for the UK or for Europe. I don't know whether in decades this could happen again, but I think... But it would be decades plural. I think, well, it's going to take, well, first of all, it would have to be your decision. I mean, the decision of the UK government and the UK people, but there are certainly things we can do with the UK government that is that's interested in engaging with us in a further rapprochement that would, of course, respect the European rules, you cannot have your cake and eat it.
36:08I think people who voted for Brexit, and sorry if I'm a little blunt here, must have realized that because they were promised that they could actually leave the European family, but have all the benefits of continuing to trade with Europe as if nothing had happened. So that was populism? Of course it was. Would you be encouraging and supportive if the new incoming Labour government in Britain began moving, for example, towards rejoining the European Customs Union. Yes, I would certainly, and I think quite a few of us at the European Council would look forward to sort of resetting our relationship with the UK, taking into consideration that Brexit has happened.
36:45I was in a cafe this morning talking to somebody who lives here and said that I was going to be seeing you, what should I say? And she said, ask him whether there's actually any populism in his politics. And interestingly, we yesterday, we spoke to Kwasi Kwarteng, who was the famously, was very briefly the UK chancellor under Liz Truss. And he was saying that he thinks politics today is impossible without a bit of populism. So I just wonder if there's anything that you feel you do or say that is populist. For me, being an anti-populist is try to be brutally honest with people. I think we've delivered on our electoral promises when I look back at 2019.
37:27I think that's the primary reason why we were re-elected. We did what we told people we would do. We acknowledged our mistakes. So that's a big part of populism. You never admit that you were wrong. Yeah, you never admit. So when you say you admitted your mistakes, such as? Well, there were issues, and I was very, very frank. You know, issues, for example, when it came to, you know, we had a war-tapping scandal. I was very honest that something went wrong. This is when you found that, was it a journalist at the start? Yeah. And I made changes. I said, you know, something went wrong here. There was a systemic failure.
37:58We had a horrible train accident where we had human errors which were compounded by systemic failures in our railway. And I said, I cannot bring those people back, but I can do my best to ensure that our railways are going to become safer. And is that taking them down a privatization route? Well, the railways were already, interestingly enough, the railways were already privatized by the leftist government. Oh, I didn't know that. That happened back in 2018. So it was, yes, another failure of privatization. Well, you know, but the network itself is still state-controlled. So it's a hybrid model.
38:39And we are the ones actually investing in the network. When I make a mistake, I have no difficulty acknowledging it. And I think a mistake only becomes a real mistake if you repeat it. So try to learn from our mistakes. I don't think I've promised things which I consciously knew I could not deliver. And sometimes even difficult things. For example, right now we've passed legislation regarding self-employed Greeks, which are a core constituency of us. But at some point, we noticed that many self-employed Greeks were actually declaring income, annual income under the minimum wage. And we said, well, this can't really happen.
39:18So we set a threshold. I told people I would do this before, you know, before the election. I said, I will go after tax evasion. So it's so much easier, you know, when you don't have to look back at what you told people during the campaign and realize, oh, my God, I have to do the exact opposite now. And I sort of knew that I would have to do the exact opposite. Let me say very quickly, another strong criticism from people is sometimes around the issue of press freedom. What's happening with press freedom? Why are people anxious about press freedom? There I feel very strongly. Anyone can write or publish or say anything they want in Greece.
39:53And if anything, probably we have relatively weak, you know, libel legislation. And I get all the sort of the slap sort of arguments. And I've never, ever used the courts if I felt that I was offended because I'm a politician and the threshold needs to be higher in terms of criticism. But for Christ's sake, I mean, we have so many newspapers in Greece. We have so many TV stations. Every TV station you will see, you'll always have the opposition being present. I think this was sort of this is an argument that simply is not true. and the things that are published in Greece, I mean some of the newspapers, they would never, they could never be published.
40:31I mean slander, I mean you know I've been accused of being a pedophile. I mean these are things which are actually printed in Greece. So no there is no press freedom issue in Greece full stop and I'm adamant about that. The other thing that this these people are saying today, the brain drain. Do you still have a brain drain problem and is the privatization of the universities, is that an attempt to stop the brain drain or does it accelerate it? Well, we've had around 500 ,000 Greeks who left Greece during the financial crisis, primarily young people, talented people, risk takers. It's not easy to leave the country in search of a better job.
41:11Those are also the years of very high taxation on anyone who made a decent wage. This is being reversed. A lot of people are coming back. They're coming back because there are more opportunities or better paying jobs. Taxation is lower. But I think they're also coming back because many of them, not all of them, of course, believe that the country has turned the corner for good. It's not easy. I was working in the UK back in 1997 at some point. Great year. Yeah, I know. You remember that very fondly. And you do all this. But for some strange reason, it was actually the moment Labour was elected that I decided to leave.
41:46Okay. Yeah, so I returned to Greece. And I remember you return not only for the job, you return because you believe that there is a good long term potential in terms of how the country will do. So the brain drain is being reversed. There will always be people who leave. And it's only natural. I mean, this is a global world, but we give, offer more people opportunities. is when I talk to the big, I mean, the big companies that invest in Greece, now foreign companies, for example, Pfizer has set up a big data center in Thessaloniki, they've hired more than 1000 people, you know, a significant number of the resumes that they receive are actually from Greeks who want to return.
42:22So if you get a good job in Greece, everyone wants to, I mean, there's, I mean, people want to come back, this is a great place to live. But of course, we need to address issues regarding the quality of our healthcare, the quality of our education, these are, you know, real issues, social services are improving, but not as fast as we would like. And like everybody else, one of the big anxieties is around productivity. And certainly the experience in most European countries is we spend all our time saying we need to sort out our productivity and all the smartest economists in the world come up with ideas and productivity doesn't improve as quickly as people would like.
42:57What's the issue? And why is product? I mean, I know this particular criticism of Greece and it's catastrophic in the United Kingdom, but what is it about these economies that makes it very difficult to turn productivity around? Well, first of all, I'd say in Greece, there were a lot of low-hanging fruit when it came to productivity. For example, phase one of digitizing our state, simplifying the interaction between citizens and businesses. We did that, and it was a huge success. It does improve your productivity if you're a small business and you don't have to stand it for hours in a line trying to interact with the state.
43:29So there are basic things that needed to happen, and they've happened. And it has been a true, this has been a true revolution. I mean, people across the board, regardless of whether they vote for us, give us credit for this digital transformation. But now we need to look at the future. Is AI going to be a huge booster? Can it be a huge booster of government productivity? How do you run a government more efficiently? What does it mean for the productivity of your civil servants? How do you implement proper personnel assessment and renumeration schemes? All these things were relatively new for Greece.
44:03So I think there is a lot of catching up to do when it comes to productivity, and we're moving down that path. And then, of course, those countries that will embrace AI as a true tool for public policy also manage the risks. We can talk about the risks. There are numerous risks. But when I look at AI, I see, from a government perspective, I see lots of significant opportunities. For example, you know, AI in wildfire protection and prediction of what a wildfire will do. I mean, we're entering our wildfire season now. We use AI, for example, now to go for our targeted, you know, go after, you know, systemic tax evaders.
44:41I mean, we can talk for hours about what AI can do to improve the productivity. And because we're passionate about, you know, about data-driven public policy, of course we have to use AI when we implement the policies we think are right. Can I go back to something that predates AI by many, many, many, many centuries? Was it the last time you were in the UK when you did what I thought was a rather fairly standard line to take on what you call the Parthenon sculptures and we call the Elgin marbles, as a result of which our prime minister decided not to see you the next day? I just wondered what you thought of that.
45:20I think you're right to point out that I did repeat what is our start and argument in favor of the reunification and I don't use the term return I think it is important for people to realize that we're talking about bringing one monument together in its unity and I use the Mona Lisa example which I think is relevant you can't cut the Mona Lisa and half and half half of it of the Louvre half of the British Museum but this is exactly what happened with the Parthenon sculptures and you just need to take a look at the Acropolis Museum to understand why it is important to see them united and in situ.
45:49So I basically said what I always do, but I guess this caused some sort of reaction and my meeting was cancelled at the last moment. But, you know, these things happen and it's certainly not going to affect the bilateral relations between the UK and Greece. We say these things happen, but I thought that was pretty extraordinary. Well, the truth is it had never happened to me before, but in that sense, maybe they don't happen very frequently. And it's very strange, isn't it? Because in some ways on the surface, some people would have thought that Rishi Sunak might be somebody with whom you'd have something in common.
46:20He's very bright. He had a background in finance. He's quite technocratic. He's quite interested in AI and data. You would have thought that you'd have quite a lot in common. Well, to be very honest with you, I was looking forward to sitting down and having a discussion, and we made it very clear that the bilateral meeting would not be about the sculpture. So, I'm sure there would have been a lot to talk about. So, I don't know whether I'll have an opportunity to sort of, maybe I'll meet him at some point and we can catch up. You say that it doesn't affect bilateral relations, but they are partly about personal relations.
46:50That was him, I think, having a sort of petulant, childish response, which you'd be a very, very forgiving person if you didn't hold that against him for some time, in my view. We have such a great relationship between our two people and our two countries that this is what I have to do, frankly. I mean, not to hold it, not to take it personally. And I think one of the things you learn in politics is, you know, I mean, sometimes you need to leave, you know, your personal, you know, preferences or your personal opinions, you know, outside the room. But this is about the relations between countries which have been, you know, great friends for forever, essentially.
47:27So I focus a lot on this relationship. I leave that behind. Let's develop just as we come towards the end, this other side of your personality that is emerging as a politician and the way that you're, I see you very strongly resist the idea of being populist, but equally as a politician, you have to be popular. And so you've been on a journey, I suspect from being seen as a relatively, people might have perceived you as relatively dry, serious person coming from the world of finance to becoming more of a retail politician. And one of the things you've done is you've embraced TikTok. And I'd love you to think a little bit about what you've learned about this, about how even if you're a centrist, even if you're anti-populist, you still have to communicate, you have to have emotion, you have to have a sense of humor.
48:14It can't all be about sharing think tank papers from Sweden. I was accused of being sometimes too sort of intellectual and maybe not someone who can easily communicate with people. I always thought that this was wrong, but it took me a lot of time and effort to bridge that gap and change that perception. One way of doing it is to really spend a lot of time on the road. I love what we call retail politics. I do. I like campaigning. I like going out. It's not a burden for me. I learn. I try to engage. I'm trying to become better at engaging with people. I always realize that what could be a handshake, you do hundreds of handshakes every time.
48:56And this may be a 10-second interaction with someone. And you do many of those. But for that one person, it's maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet the prime minister. So you'd better be there and be in the present. And it can be pretty draining to do that properly. At the same time, TikTok was a revelation in the sense that it allowed me to show the side of my personality, that everyone who knows me well knew existed. I think I have a decent sense of humor. I don't take myself always very seriously. I can talk about other things and not just politics. I'm sort of a, I consider myself to be sort of a pretty normal person in terms of my interests.
49:30I have a life outside politics. I will have a life after politics. And TikTok gave me that opportunity to show that side of my personality. And interestingly enough, it sort of worked for me. Other people have tried it. It was a complete failure because maybe it didn't suit, you know, sort of the style, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. TikTok was maybe the social media tool of the day. Maybe tomorrow is going to be something else. But is there a side of us that people actually want to get to know? Yes, for the first time I sensed that people understood who I really am, not just the politician, but also the person.
50:09And I think it is important for people to understand that, you know, all the sort of the the pomp and uh the glamour uh i mean we're we're people we have our issues we might have our problems we have bad days we have good days and uh at some point we try to do we try to do our best in what many people think is sometimes what they may consider an almost impossible job do you worry that somebody who's getting to know you through tiktok that that is their only interaction with politics and that therefore it sort of fuels this sense of political disengagement from what you and I know politics really is about, which isn't just short videos.
50:50I think that's a great point. But if my TikToks were only about humor, you'd be right. But what is your trick? The trick is you get people engaged, but then you also communicate serious messages. You can communicate, you know, a serious initiative in a one minute video. And if someone has to spend, I have to respect the fact that maybe the attention span is one minute rather than one hour. Like we, maybe not everyone is going to sit through this very interesting. You'd be amazed how many people are right there. Well, I'm happy that they may do that. But even if they have a minute, I can use that minute to tell them something that is important to them.
51:26So it's not just the backstage, or this is sort of maybe the trick, sort of, to get people engaged. But it is also an opportunity for people to understand who we really are. So my final question is, you do represent a very appealing type of politics to me. And I come from the center right. I admire your policies. I admire your social liberal policies. I admire your economic policies, growth policies. I even enjoy what you do on social media. But there is a sense that sometimes this kind of centrist politics can look like a bit of an endangered species. So I'd be interested in seeing what is your manifesto for saying, how do we prevent in the United States and Europe, ever more polarized, ever more populist policies, driven by some pretty deep structural factors, which give an advantage to populism over centrists.
52:14It may be arrogant or presumptuous for me to sort of try to draw lessons that could be universally applied from the Greek experience. For example, in Greece, we have an electoral law because electoral laws are absolutely critical and not recognized in terms of producing or not producing political stability. We have a majority in parliament, which means we can move quickly. Sometimes I look at my partners and they have like four, five, six coalition partners And I tell myself, oh, my God, how do they make decisions? And this also makes running a government much more complicated. And for geeky people, the electoral law is that if you get the most votes, you are able to get another 50 seats.
52:51Is that right? You actually get a bonus. You need to be above a certain threshold. And then you also get a percentage, a small percentage of the seats are not allocated proportionally. They basically go to the first party. So we were at 40%, which is still a very high threshold. Not many parties are at 40%. And in the UK, that gets you a decent majority. Yeah, but with 40%, we're able to get a reasonable majority. If we were at 35%, we would not be able to do that. So I think it's a good system. It has served Greece well. But I think that when I look at the European People's Party, because we have European elections, yes, I think there are lessons that we can learn from Greece.
53:25And this sort of triangulation I spoke about, I think, is something I share with other leaders who are trying to win elections. We have many more sort of members of the EPP, so the center-right family, at the council now. We may get up to 13. We were fewer five years ago. So I think if the EPP, the center right does well within the European context, and if nothing can happen at the European Parliament without the center, the reasonable center right sort of agreeing to it, I think this will be important for Europe going into our next cycle. So I'm not pessimistic about the future of reasonable sort of data-driven results-oriented policies.
54:04If anything, maybe people can look at the Greek example and be sort of at least feel a little bit more optimistic about their chances in fighting the populace. So my final question, I can see behind you some pictures of you and your family. Are your children likely to go into politics? I don't know. My daughter is 27, my son is 26, and my younger daughter is 21. They're all, I think they're active and engaged citizens. I would give them the same advice that I gave, that my parents gave me. You do whatever makes you happy, but realize that at some point, first of all, politics is not just about elected politics.
54:45The biggest problem we're faced today in politics is the fact that the younger generation, the bright people, don't want to go into politics. It's a fact. Politics is not attractive. And it has a lot to do with the toxicity of the public debate. People are just not willing to go through the sort of social media crucification of your public life, your personal life, your private life. And these, I mean, this is my family. These are the true heroes. Because they don't get the sort of, they have to, their careers, my wife's career or my children's careers may be restricted by the fact that I do what I do because they're politically exposed personnel.
55:20Now, so this, at the end of the day, is a family decision. You cannot do politics unless you have your family behind you. And I'm very grateful to my family, to my wife and my kids for the support they've given them. But this brings the broader question. We will have the opposite. We are already having the opposite problem. You know, the best and brightest, unlike what happened, for example, after the Second World War, are not interested in politics. And we need to make politics, again, relevant and attractive for those who really feel that they can make a change. Maybe not everyone feels that they can change the world, but sometimes small changes, many small changes can make a big change, and things can change in politics.
55:58This has been sort of my experience, and this is what gives me the energy to wake up every morning and to come to the office because, yeah, sometimes, I mean, there are days when things may appear very desperate, but there are many days where you feel you can actually make small changes that impact people's lives towards the better. Okay, I'm going to cheat by asking a final, final question. when you are touring the world and meeting other world leaders or going to european summits or nato summits when you walk into the room with other leaders do you feel that in general you are meeting anti-populists or populists in positions of power i'd say that speaking of the european union because we have a very strong interaction at the level of the council we get to know each other very well we remind people that we're in the european council by ourselves There are no advisors.
56:4427 of us. We have to make the decisions. I'd say my colleagues are overwhelmingly reasonable and competent leaders trying to do their best for their people. Okay, there may be exceptions, but this is sort of my experience. I've participated in many, many council meetings now. I'm getting to be one of the more experienced council members, but certainly this is how I feel. These people, I mean, they care about what they do. They care about their people. They also care about Europe, because you have to be able to do both in order to reach European decisions. Well, thank you for giving us so much of your time.
57:18Well, thank you. Thank you. And enjoy the rest of your day in Athens. And maybe you'll convince some of your listeners to come to Greece to spend their summer holidays. The country is offering, you know, great opportunities for nice holidays. That was always the case, but it's even more so now. However, they won't be able to stay here. They won't be able to work, travel and live freely as they used to be. Well, they may have to go through immigration checks, but I guess it's a price to pay for decisions that were made. But I'm over it. Thank you again for this very interesting discussion. Thank you so much, Prime Minister.
57:55Thank you.
57:59Well, I'm very, very pleased to be here, is the first thing. I think we wouldn't really give the backstory because I don't want to tease the Prime Minister too much, but I'm completely shattered. What about the immigration cues? I flew in first thing in the morning and spent nearly an hour and a half in the immigration key, thought I was going to miss the interview. Had you been a citizen of the European Union, you'd have been in the faster queue, I think. They made that very clear. There was nobody in the European Union queue. But there were also some very angry Indians and Chinese, in my line, who kept saying, where's the digital revolution?
58:26You should come to Delhi if you want to see an airport. Did you see the... I found that there's a map of Europe. but you see it with a flag on all the countries and the only flag without a country was the united kingdom it's so depressing it is it is pretty pretty depressing um i i really like him i i've spoken to him only once before he he read my book and got in touch and had some very kind of serious comments about the book which is obviously it flatters my vanity but i do think he's on to something presumably when you meet him there must be part of you that thinks wait a second Because it's not slightly more the kind of Blair Clinton generation of politician.
59:03Because I thought the late 90s, early 2000s was actually sort of slightly this sort of style, which has gone a bit out of fashion, hasn't it? Well, I was interested what you said when, where you fit on the spectrum. And he basically said, bang in the middle. I do, I mean, who knows, but I suspect, would he vote? I think it would have been a Blairite. Or at least very sympathetic with the general kind of idea. I mean, it's the general concept is quite technocratic, quite socially liberal. Yeah. What I like about him is this message about populism, understanding the damage that populism is doing to politics right around the world and understand that it has to be challenged.
59:38Now, as I said, I met somebody today who said, actually, I think he's a bit of a populist himself and anti-populism has become the new populism kind of thing. But it was interesting to me how when he got really fired up, I thought, was when he was talking, he kept saying, you know, data driven policy development. He got very fired up about the opportunities of AI. So there is something very technocratic there. And he admittedly, I like the way as well that he talked about his own political development. Not sure when he was growing up whether he wanted to be a politician. Then when he did realize that he had to learn quite a lot, wasn't quite the retail politician he needed to be, had to develop that.
1:00:10There's parts of him which look like a more successful version of Rishi Sunak. So what do you think he's got that someone like Rishi Sunak lacks? Because Rishi Sunak's obviously got quite a lot of the backstory of the kind of finance and the technocracy in detail. What do you think Sunak has failed to do? What's stopped him from being a good prime minister over two years? I mean, I get the politics too, but just in terms of the skills, the political communication skills. I do wonder whether growing up in such a political family does give you a head start. I can see in some circumstances it might be an advantage.
1:00:43but I thought it was interesting for example that he was not pulling his punches on Brexit he was doing it very politely but he was basically saying you guys have made a terrible mistake when I mentioned Rwanda he made no effort to conceal the fact that he thought this was a really really really silly idea and I suspect we met some of his team today my sense is that when he's making decisions I suspect he is making decisions I always feel with Rishi Sunak that he's been wound up and told to say something. I'm never quite sure that it's what he believes. It's also interesting that sometimes he's doing quite tough traditional right-wing things like being very tough on immigration, but he's not doing what the Tories have been tempted to do over the last two, three years, which has really kind of played up.
1:01:32Yeah, look at us, aren't we cruel. The right-wing media. Well, I quite liked his line about you need a big fence, but you need a big door. He didn't mean a literal fence, although there are literal fences. And actually, his critics would say that he's actually been pretty tough on immigration. The fence is much bigger than the door. But it's interesting that the way he articulates it is to sell quite a tough policy, quite straightforwardly, but not in a kind of... But he's not trying to do it for this sort of populist whip up the Daily Mail or Sun. I'd love to, you know, if we'd had a bit more time to be here, I'd love to find out if that's...
1:02:02If it's right when he says immigration is a non-issue, that's a huge statement to make about a European country. I think we'll find in the June elections in Europe, Greece will be one of the few big countries in Europe where there won't be a big move to far-right populism. I think he has sort of neutered that and killed that in a way that isn't true. Yeah, and the left is also in disarray. No, I thought he was very, very interesting, much more interesting than I thought he was going to be. And I say that because everybody said to me, oh, he's just a technocrat. But actually, I felt there was much more nuance.
1:02:33My taxi driver, he was speeding his way towards this. So I said, look, is there an anxiety about the fact that in Britain, you know, really you would say this is a dynasty? I mean, he's great grandfather, grandfather, father, father primacy. And the text writer said, yeah, fair enough. That's true. And probably we do see him as quite privileged and come from a political family. But he said, there's some advantages to that. And then he said, look, the advantage, although it's quite an unfashionable thing to say, is that the guy has learned from a very, very young age how to communicate. He's seen his father operate.
1:03:10He is highly educated. He is very articulate. He's been to all these top schools. And there was a sense, at least from my cabra only, a representative, that it was actually quite a relief for them after the kind of more populous governments to have someone who actually seems like a kind of serious professional. I mean, I think it would be a good, interesting shtick, this anti-populist thing, to take it on head on like he's done, make it your thing. I think it's a very, very interesting way of challenging it. And I guess if he keeps going and keeps winning, he could become a very substantial European leader.
1:03:40You know, this could open up much bigger international roles if he went on. Because there's not many big European leaders out there, Macron maybe, but you struggle around the rest of Europe to really find big figures at the moment. so I think as time goes on he he could well end up as quite an important figure. It's amazing that I met Papandrea. I met Papandrea when I was a journalist. Did you? Yeah. Well so because what we didn't really get into there is Papandrea also is from this enormous political dynasty you know father son grandson all right there at the top of politics. It's it's really remarkable.
1:04:13Anyway I really like him and when we're not volunteering for um for Mark Carney for Canada I'm happy to come over and do some volunteering for the Greek Prime Minister. Very good. I'm sure you will welcome this.
From the publisher
Why did Rishi Sunak snub the Prime Minister of Greece? How have Greece solved their immigration issue? How will populist ideology fare in the upcoming European elections?
The Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, joins Alastair and Rory to discuss all these topics and more in today's Leading.
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