135. Spanish politics explained and a deep dive into AI

25:36Tell us about your quarter parents. Well, I don't quite know where it's going, but I did get the feeling just from dipping in and out of it. And I've been followed because I knew I was going to be giving evidence, I've been following it a little bit. I get the feeling that Harry Prince Harry is absolutely determined to go the whole way. What the what the newspapers are now trying to say. And what's he going the whole way on? I'm sorry, what's his case about? What's he trying to do? Essentially, just about the levels of intrusion and the breaches of privacy and the and the criminal activity that he believes have been waged against him and others.

26:07And there are other people involved in this case, Ian Wright, the former footballer, there are, you know, there are several people on this case. And then in the background, you've got lots of other people. I'm among them who have also been shown evidence of criminal activity against them who are all making up their own mind as to whether to take it further or not. Is this different from from hacked off and all the stuff that was happening there? Well, let's just wind back. So the phone hacking and particularly eventually the phone hacking milled -dowler murder victim was what led to levy's inquiry.

26:42The levy's inquiry came up with also as a recommendation for press regulation, which have not been implemented. In fact, the second part of the inquiry is not even taken place. So what I think a lot of people saw as an opportunity to get our press, you know, operating according to some sort of acceptable agreed standards as fallen by the wayside. And were you in favour of levy's? Did you think it was the right thing or did you think that was like many journalists that that was too much for suppression of press freedom? I mean, the newspapers didn't like it obviously for obvious reasons. Well, of course it didn't.

27:11I agreed with David Cameron when he said that as long as the ideas aren't bonkers, we should implement them. And they weren't bonkers. They were perfectly sensible. And I'm afraid that what's happened is that the government has become as it so often does scared of the media going for them and has bought all the sort of lines and says this is about for a press freedom. So Cameron and others just got scared, but they basically should have implemented levy's. I think it was your friend and hero interies of me who finally pulled the plug on it on the second part, which was all about the criminal activities involving police and newspapers.

27:44And so what's happened is the news that so the news of the world got closed down. The news group, the Murdoch Empire, were the ones that the rest of the media said that it was a dream of their line was it was one rogue reporter. It turns out it was the whole culture inside the place. And now it turns out that the lots of other newspapers involved as well. And if I remember correctly, Hugh Grant was a very active leader in a gathering of group of people together. That was the Hattoff campaign. Hugh Grant is now also he's been given the go ahead to take a make a case against the sun because what the newspapers are now arguing is that a lot of these cases that are being brought forward are so long ago that they should be out of time.

28:26But the reason I think that the lawyers were interested in my case is because mine was one which actually didn't lead to anything being published at all. My mortgage details and my bank account details weren't actually published. But it doesn't mean that those same private detectives who were getting paid and their invoices were for inquiries relevant to Campbell and Fiona Miller, we don't know what other stories might have been coming that way. So the point is the point of principle about whether newspapers which have denied being involved in any criminal activity, when that criminal activity is clearly exposed what should happen to them.

28:58So this is a civil case, Harry and others. Meanwhile, these newspaper groups have been paying out lots and lots and lots of money to different groups of people and individuals to just set loud to court. And what Prince Harry is making clear, he is not remotely interested in that. He is going to, he wants his day in court, he's going to get his day in court quite soon, and he's going to set out what he says, he sees as a widespread criminal activity against him and his family, which he explains he would probably argue, this isn't a matter of the court, but I think probably he would think explains why they have become quite so vile about him and about Megan.

29:35And I think he's got a point. I think he's got a point. And I think if he wins, it will be a big, big moment in the history of our media culture. And so this court case moves beyond the newspapers doing a case by case out of court settlements with individuals that happen to spot it and will force them to come clean on everyone that they did it to and do a massive settlement to everybody. It's very hard to know, it's very hard to know because they will be terrified about the cost. But they paid out seven well into seven figures already. I got a payout from the from the news of the world. Others have had far far bigger payouts.

30:16The mirror had been paying out to quite a lot of people. And this one literally just sort of this is quite relatively recently. This year that I got informed about this one. And it was interesting giving evidence because obviously the mirror lawyers have to defend the mirror, but I didn't feel I was given a very particularly hard time. I think it's quite when you've got invoices alongside. And the irony here is that you worked for the mirror, right? Well, it's one of the reasons why I was a bit, you know, low to take action, but I think having taken action against the Murdoch group, I think you do have to operate on a basis principle.

30:54And you know, they've denied it so many times that they were indulging in the mirror. Right. To put turns out the mirror was involved as well. Absolutely. And the other thing that he merges is that, you know, Piers Morgan who is the editor at the time and his diaries are full of accounts of conversations with us. Now, I think he's admitted that his diaries were very much sort of, you know, written after the event as it were. But there's such a discrepancy between the facts as they would now appear to be. And the facts as they were being set out to us at the time. And also in his subsequently published diary, and Sly Bailey, who was one of the, I think she was chief executive, she was giving evidence the day before me.

31:36And so I sort of kept an eye on that just to see if anything relevant came up. And I mean, it was a sort of combination of, I didn't know anything and nobody told me. And then the finance director was pretty much the same thing. I got the feeling that there was a lot of kind of, you know, look over there. It wasn't me going on. I want you to know all of them. And I don't, I believe I don't think Piers Morgan is, I think he's decided not to give evidence. Wow. Well, well, well. Okay. Well, time for break. And then we should come back on Spain. Great.

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34:46So welcome back to the rest's politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alex Campbell. And Rory, how are you feeling about your rare loss of temper? Yeah, rare loss of temper, Jonathan Powell. Well, anyone who wants to see the rare loss of temper, and actually some very interesting reflections on many aspects of government and peace keeping. Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair's chief of staff, good friend of Alex, very much part of with Alex, the founding band of sisters and brothers that were the core of the Blair project is out on the rest of his politics, leading so search leading Jonathan Powell, wherever you get your podcasts, if you'd like to hear.

35:24Jonathan Powell, who then went on from the black government, having done an extraordinary job, non -lonal peace process, and we're actually, we interviewed him in Ireland to do a loss on peace process as worldwide. And another of our recent interviews, Rory George Osborne, I see has been called to the COVID inquiry. I think we should send them are exchanged in austerity, but it seems that the inquiry wants to quiz him about whether his austerity policy had anything to do with the lack of preparedness for a pandemic. Very interesting. We'll see see how that comes out.

35:59Now, it's quite rare that we get overtaken by events. We normally quite pressient on the button, but because Rory was in Japan, we actually recorded the podcast on Saturday. And we're going on now to have a pretty interesting discussion about politics in Spain. Very pressiently, one of us, I think it might have been me, indicated that the regional elections taking place. What is now last weekend, but for the purpose of our discussion on Saturday was this weekend, have led to the man we've been talking about, Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister of Spain, or the President, as they called it, calling a slap election, because the elections that we talked about turned out to be really, really bad for him.

36:42So they're going to the polls on July 23rd, and it's an interesting thing, which I think we should probably come back and talk about next week, because basically, normally you would think, well, we'll have to keep going and try and sort of dig ourselves out of this hole, but he's basically said, no, we're going to have to go to the country now, so that Spain can decide the direction it wants to go into. Now we can go back to Saturday and there's me and Rory talking about Spain back then. Now, you wanted to do a bit of a deep dive into Spain, and I think your idea was that we don't talk much about Spain.

37:14We hardly ever talk about Spain, and it's quite interesting what you think about it. It's a pretty major country within the European Union. It's not France or Germany, but it's in that sort of second order, nearly 50 million people. Exactly. It's a big country. It's a reasonably prosperous country, and we've also got these, major connections, not least the fact that obviously Brexit has played, have it with this, but almost a million people living in each other's countries. It's almost half a million in each. So there's all that connection. I think most of our listeners would without doubt be able to name the French president and the German Chancellor.

37:55Would they all know that Pedro Sanchez was the, and they call him the president? That's the other thing. They have a king just as we do. But nor I think will most of our listeners have heard of the great kind of dominant figure who created modern stains. So the guy that from 1982 to 1996 dominated Spanish politics, which is Philippe Gonzales. Yeah, but they would be able to name Shirak, Juska Distan, Heluk Kohl, Ardenau, Branchmit. So just to give people a sort of sense of what's happening in Spanish parties, and we're recording this at the weekend where the Spaniards are going to polls in regional elections.

38:35And it's have very, it's become much, much more complicated than it was. Do you know how many parties there are in the Spanish Parliament? No, what is it? Five, 18, 18. 18. Sanchez, the prime minister, he became prime minister on 24 % of the vote, which gave him 34 % of the seats. So he now has this rather strange coalition. So he's a kind of fairly pragmatic labor leader. We were kind of new, new, new, new, labor -y type. Well, probably less new labor than he was because he's had to go into coalition. He said before the election, he would never be able to sleep in his bed if we went into coalition with Pademos, but he's gone into coalition with Pademos and Pademos and Pademos to the far, far populist left.

39:19Yeah. And then there's another one even further to the left of them called Sumar, but his vice president, Deputy Prime Minister, is actually probably the most left -wing person in European government. Anyway, she's a communist. And so he's got this British, and it's a minority coalition, by the way, he doesn't have a majority. The Tory party, the PP, they don't really recognize Sanchez in the way that they don't really see him as legitimate partly because he came to power by losing his own position as labor leader. He then did this rather effective campaign around the country, building his own profile up, and storming around in his battedol perjo.

40:00And then he came back and he forced a vote of no confidence against Rahoi, who was that rather sort of intellectual -looking bearded chap who was the Spanish Prime Minister for a while. And he won the vote of confidence, including with the help of parties who were, you know, it was a bit like, if you imagine Sinn Fein taking their seats to bring down a Tory government, it was that kind of thing where these basque and Catalan parties were coming in on his side. So they got rid of the government, they got rid of the PP, Rahoi of PP, Sanchez becomes Prime Minister. And the PP just explained a sort of conservative party, right?

40:38Correct. But they have been under massive pressure because of Vox, which is a very right -wing party, populist right -wing party. Okay, I'm going to do my boring thing for this again, but my understanding situation, correct me if I'm wrong, because you know much more about this idea, is that Spanish politics initially, so Franco goes mid -1970s. And everybody's heard of democracy comes in, but Spain has Franco right the way through to the 70s. Democracy comes in, King comes back, 82 Felipe Gonzales, who's from the left wing sort of Labour party, gets elected, dominates to 96. And then conservative party basically comes in in 96, man, called Jose Maria Aznar, who I guess is the guy that you were mostly dealing with when you were in government.

41:29Yeah, absolutely. And we then have what seems to be a sort of two -party system. So in British terms, the kind of Labour party and a conservative party. But from 2004 onwards, it begins to splinter and you end up effectively with five main parties. You have a sort of far left party, you have a Labour party, you have a centrist party, you have a Conservative party, and then you have a far right party. Roughly right? Correct. And then and somehow what seems to have happened, unlike France, where these big parties, the traditional socialist party and the traditional Conservative party have kind of collapsed and disappeared, leaving only the sort of centrist and the far right and the far left, in Spain, the opposite seems to have happened.

42:11The more traditional left and right parties are a bit stronger than they were, and these far left centrist parties are less strong than they were. All right. I think it's more complicated now. I think it's become much more atomised. And I think that we underestimate, because every country in the world was focusing on its own circumstances, out of the global financial crisis, I think we underestimate the extent to which Spain was amongst the most damaged in the world. They had, they led to a chronic housing crisis. You see these half -built houses all over the place now, banking crisis. And I think that's what allowed the kind of populist virus to come in there pretty strongly and Vox has now become a very normalised part of the political landscape.

42:53It's not impossible to imagine Vox being the main party sometime down the track, depending obviously on what happens now. But it's a pretty shaky coalition that they've got at the moment. These elections happen now. Vox is again very interesting, because Vox is obviously the right -wing parties, so people would normally compare it to Le Pen, for example, in France. But again, it's got a different Spanish inflection, because the Catholic country, it's got a bit of sort of conservative Catholic sentiment. There are some elements in it, which are just sort of a bit sort of Vox, sort of pro -Franco.

43:31But what it doesn't seem to have is the strong anti -immigrant feeling that you have in many other European countries. In part, because a lot of the immigration to Spain is still less an American immigration. And I guess, religiously culturally, that's been less threatening or disruptive to Spain. I think that's changing. I think that's changing, when I do. I would say that the Franco thing is not quite as sottofotches, it was either. I think they're becoming much more emboldened. And they've got this very charismatic and rather sinister leader, Santiago Abascal, who, like a lot of these parties have, like Faraj here or Vilna's in Holland, they do seem populism attracts these kind of characters, because their people who are prepared to pretty much say whatever needs to be said in the moment, to exploit the divisions that are there.

44:23But the divisions are now really real. And of course, the other big complicating factor in Spanish politics is, I mean, okay, we have Scotland in the context of UK, but they have the Basques and the Catalonians. And they have their twos. If you take, for example, the within the National Parliament, you have the Catlands, who are either far left separatists or centrist nationalists, what you don't have is anybody really sort of fighting for Spain, as it were. And then likewise with the Basques, for some of the very interesting going on in this particular election with the Basques thing, there's this particle, Bildu, which is, I guess, again, they will see themselves as a bit like Shinfane with the political wing of the IRA.

45:07This is the political wing of Eta, which was the terrorist organization, the Basques territory. They've disbanded, but 17 of their convicted terrorists announced their candidature in the regional elections. And this has created such an outcry that they've actually stood down, but their names are still on the ballot paper, including with some of them, their nicknames that were used as terrorists. And of course, the right wing, the PPP party, they are basically, even though they supported the peace process that led to the disbandment of Eta, they are now saying that this is all about Sanchez being in -hopped to terrorists and so forth.

45:46So it's becoming a very quite fee -brile and populist debate. And where it goes in the next few years is, frankly, anybody's guess. Meanwhile, there's this question on Spain and immigration is very interesting. So, I mean, and actually it's a reason why we should be cautious about demographic predictions. I mean, demography really matters. I'm speaking to you from Japan, which is facing a total existential crisis with its collapsing population. You know, couples are barely averaging one child at the moment in Japan. And there's no immigration in Japan, and growth has been stagnant now for over 30 years.

46:24And I'm talking into the tour guide that's shown me around her house was worth $2 million in 1989. It's a suburban house outside Tokyo, and is today worth less than $400 ,000. But Spain, in 2000, the population was projected to massively decrease drop by 10 million over the next 50 years. And that suddenly began to be turned around since 2015, when they started setting it, bringing more and more migration. So in 2019 alone, they brought in 453 ,000 people. That's similar to the 500 ,000 people being brought into Britain with a smaller population. So it's one of these classic countries where it's getting older, where the percentage of the working age population is set to decline from kind of 65 % sort of 50 % and where they're very, very heavily dependent on migration to try to keep growth going and keep people looked after.

47:21There's another very big issue at the moment that is troubling people there and that relates to the judiciary, because they're a bit like their system of judicial appointments is much closer to the American than ours. There is a political process. And it means that when you have long periods of socialist party government, you tend to get more socialist judges and vice versa. It was happening in the moment because of the makeup of the parliament, the P .P. are effectively blocking the judges that the socialist want to appoint to the court. And it means that there are all these vacancies, which means that there's this huge, we're being getting better AI here, there's this huge backlog of cases within the criminal justice system, which is creating all sorts of problems.

48:04And it feels a bit like America where the writers will not do anything to help the left. Yes, but also where the left seems to have been doing some pretty peculiar things on judicial appointments, which has led to Spain being downgraded in some of the lists, some whether it's a full functioning democracy. And this judicial judicial appointment stuff also is obviously connected to some of the debates in Israel, right? Yeah, I think that's about the fact that they can't run an effective system because they haven't the point enough judges because the political deadlock is not allowing the appointment of the judges they want to put onto the court.

48:37There's one other issue, Rory. And that is, we've got through the whole episode, I think, without mentioning the dreaded B word, Brexit. Yes, we've got to get that now. Do you remember which was the first area to declare in the Brexit referendum? First, no, I don't. What was the first? It was Gibraltar. Gibraltar. With 95 .9 % in favour of remain. Yeah. And again, for for listeners, and I know you're going to tell me they all know this, but just to remind people, Gibraltar is not as many British people think an island. It is a peninsula. It's part of Spain, which was a very, very important British naval base in the 19th century helped dominate the Mediterranean for the British for important and the wars against France, which has remained attached to Britain, but is completely dependent on Spain for almost all its basic services, suppliers, and where if Spain wants to play around on the border between Gibraltar and Spain, they can cause complete chaos for Gibraltar.

49:43And occasionally they do. But here's one for you, Rory. So there's the Gibraltarians. They all vote massively in favour of remain. For that reason. Now, guess which part of all the areas that were involved in voting for in the referendum? Guess which part has not been signed off under the trade and cooperation agreements? I guess the answer is Gibraltar. They're now going into the 14th round of negotiations on how to resolve this. And the problem it seems is that it's as ever a question of sovereignty. So the Spanish sort of recognised the sovereignty on the rock. But where the airport is, they're not quite as sure.

50:24And it looks like what the where these negotiations are heading as we is we had through the 14th round into the 50th round is actually about where the actual security is placed in the airport. So they get have to move a lot of fences and buildings. It's very problematic. And it's crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. I should say by the way, I mentioned it and Rafael Bair, your friend Rafael Bair will bear me out on this. As you know, every audience I do, I ask for a show of hands for anybody who thinks Brexit's going well. And in the last few weeks, I've seen several thousand people. And hey, we finally had a hand raised for going well.

51:04Was it Boris Johnson? He wasn't there. He was in America talking to Donald Trump about Ukraine because he's a series of global states. But you probably know that. Yeah, the two of them together. It was been a very serious moment. Hey, by the way, you followed that Elon Musk has now come in behind, tried to do an interview with Rhonda Santas on Twitter. The technology, the technology worked as well as ours as well today. Exactly. The technology sort of collapsed. That's right. All over the place. Anyway, let's move on just finally just to touch before we close on inflation. But the final thing for I do it is, as I said, population is very difficult to predict.

51:40You know, you can predict in 2000, the country's population's collapsing. And then in 2015, it's taking off again. But a UN report that's just been released is suggesting that Spain is one of the countries along with Italy and Japan that we'll see its population half over the next 80 years. Wow. By which time one in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria. Hmm. Now just before we leave you are very, very brief film. I think we should mention Greece because the election there, this just shows you how electoral systems can do crazy things. Prime Minister Mitsitakis, the new democracy party, he gets over 40 % of the vote.

52:13He's 20 % of ahead of his nearest rival. And he's not able to form a majority. So they're going to a second vote on June the 25th because none of the smaller parties are willing to form a coalition with each other. And the other relation we should keep our eyes out for our eyes on is Slovakia. Because what's happening there, you're looking at a pro -putin leader currently leading in Slovakia. Very good. Well, I hope we've done, I hope we've at least done some justice to Spain. We've had quite a few Spanish senators. You never talk about our country. So we have and doubtless we'll come back to it.

52:51Now, shall we talk about the, we've talked about George Osborne's problems with the COVID inquiry. What about Jeremy Hunt's rather more pressing problems? Well, the fundamental problem in Britain is inflation, which of course is the heart of cost -to -living cost -to -living is basically inflation combined with stagnant wages. And he's saying he's signaling that he would support the Bank of England raising interest rates, even if it completely might even drive the country into recession to try to get inflation under control. Now, here's one for you, Rory. We talk a lot about how to handle difficult questions and manage the media.

53:25He was in Washington, I think. Do you think he was just tired? I mean, I think he maybe gave that situation more legs than he intended to. So you guess a great question. So you prepared to support them putting up interest rates further, even if it means driving his into recession. How would you answer that? How would you answer that? Well, I think now that I've been trained by Alistair and the Comstra, I'd say, we are very, very clear in the government that we are committed to growth and to reducing inflation. And stopping the boats? Yeah, absolutely. You wanted to say that would you? But you know what, I mentioned the financial times, which is the only paper I've written in the last couple of days, and they track what they call core inflation, which is inflation, which excludes energy and food prices.

54:06And they track it in 33 different countries in the world. And we are now that right down at the top, we're at the top of the inflationally alongside Argentine and South Sudan in terms of the increases that we're suffering. We can't quite be at the total top. Presumably, I'm hoping that there is, well, sorry, this is unfair to countries like Zimbabwe, but their inflation rates, I think, I don't know, I don't know. I think we're going to increase this. And so, and the other thing that I think people should take a look at in the financial times is the piece by Helen Barnard from the Trustle Trust, which is a charity that supports food banks.

54:44And in fact, as we speak, Rory, Fiona is down at a food banking cabinet that seems to get bigger every single time we go down there. And this piece quotes research by the Joseph Rantry Foundation that between 2017 and 2019 destitution in the UK rose by 54%. And NHS bosses have now written to the Chancellor, warning the cost of living crisis about to become a health service crisis because of the impact of poverty on people's health. And the point she's making is that this has been rising steadily over several years now. And it does feel that there is a level of poverty now that she's saying the charity simply cannot deal with.

55:24That's a big, cute, huge issue. Well, on that slightly depressing note, I think, Alas, we've done our time and we're coming towards the end. I'm coming home, I've done my time. You're coming home, yeah. All that's really, I must say, I just just a quick sort of finish because I'm in Japan. This is the most extraordinary country. As I say, it's facing this unbelievable challenge of having no young people and 30 years of stagnant economy, but it is still completely astonishing. And it's astonishing in terms of how wealthy it still seems despite not having grown in 30 years. And also how incredibly, I mean, I consider myself a conservative interest in tradition, but I've spent the last two, three days going to sweet shops, meeting potters, meeting people, making bamboo whisks, meeting people, doing tea ceremonies.

56:12And in almost every case, people are saying to me, my family business has run for 400 years. I am the 16th or 17th generation of my family to be making these pots. And it is really extraordinary because I very, very few countries, I don't think any country is well where you can imagine this. Most of us, I guess, would feel that by the time we the 17th generation of the family, we might go off and do something else rather than continue to make sweets or make pots or whatever everyone had been doing for the previous 16th generations. So anyone interested in travel, I really could not recommend Japan highly enough.

56:46Well, the CZR is two weeks in a row you've mentioned potting. I think you're going to be a potter when you grow. You're right. I love you. Honestly, you're absolutely right. It's the one thing I really, really want to do. And if I ever had time, I'd like to learn how to be a potter. Okay, well thank you for time. Take care. Bye -bye.