137. Government taking itself to court, avoiding war with China, and Polish protests

26:25Whereas there was a huge piece in the FT at the weekend about Elon Musk and Jamie Diamond, the banker, who were both in Beijing last week, as I think this is the FT report that the Tesla and Twitter boss had more top -level Chinese meetings than most of the Biden administration officials have in recent months. Although Jay Sullivan recently met his opposite number. And again, it wasn't advertised. It sort of emerged after the event. So I guess it's these things that are going on at various levels. But what you are suggesting from Kevin Rudd's analysis is there's a danger you end up on a kind of automatic journey towards conflict.

27:04And I've just just come from engagements with people who are very close to the Biden administration and over the last three, four days. Did you get a bid in for leading with Joe? I just don't have to get a bid for Joe. Okay. Well, I'll keep plugging away on that one. Keep plugging away. You'll probably get it. Do that. But what was I think really, you know, I gently suggested that America's position in the world is more tricky than it was in the 1990s. And I cannot tell you what an incredibly visceral reaction I got from these senior Americans, how much they wanted to say that's bullshit. Everybody prefers American values.

27:42Look at our friends in Asia. They're with us. They're against China. And then very much got on to being brutal on Europe. Saying, you know, Macron's got to step up. Shorts has got to step up. The EU's better decide which side they're on. And they were getting into the details of what exactly Macron had said in his political and view where he'd seem to be pretty ambivalent about defending Taiwan. I mean, so I do feel that somewhere within Biden, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, and indeed the broader Washington world is a very, very, very strong sense that they now have to build a whole coalition against China.

28:18And it's a very difficult time to do it because in many ways, obviously, Europe is distracted deeply involved in the whole question of Ukraine. The other thing I noticed this week was a report on US China trade. And it is said that the China is going to account for less than half of America's low cost imports from Asia. This company is going to other places like Vietnam, Indonesia. And that's that's reduced from that's a different. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there's a there's a graph that shows Mexico on the rise and as a share of US goods imports and China, you know, quite a significant fall, which I guess is, I don't know, is related to the politics, I guess.

29:05And yeah, when he was at the G7 in Hiroshima, the one thing that Biden did say he said he was expecting an imminent fall in relations. Now whether that was just because he wanted to say that or whether he was hoping that the the the bill burns trip which by then had happened was going to lead somewhere. But I have to say if you read General Shang -Fu speech in Singapore, then there wasn't much sign of it. I didn't this much thought. I think two two final things. Within the EU, there seems to have been this move from talking about decoupling from the Chinese economy to realizing they can't do that because 50 % of the profits of European automobile and luxury goods manufacturers are made in China.

29:48Towards now talking about de -risking instead of decoupling that they're just too integrated into the Chinese economy to imagine decoupling. And then within Britain, we have this very weird thing happening within the conservative party, which is you've got Listras flying to Taiwan making these incredibly aggressive speeches saying even if we have to give up on Chinese cooperation on climate, we've got to accept that we have to confront China. In Duncan Smith, attacking Rishi Sunak for not being critical enough of China and the national security strategy. And I guess a real difficulty for any government in Britain, which is Britain's economy is not in great shape.

30:28Trade with China is going to be increasingly important. And working out how you position yourself China is going to be really important for Britain's economy. I wonder if Rishi Sunak tried to stop Listras making that. Look at Bill Burns' previous special missions on behalf of Biden. It's not the most encouraging track record. If we think that he's there, try to get better relations with Beijing because he was the guy, if you remember, who was sent to Moscow in conditions of secrecy to try to persuade them Russia officials against invading Ukraine. And then the other job he had was to try and persuade Nancy Pelosi not to go to Taiwan.

31:06So, so final thing just will be going to the break then. So I think my sort of summary of this is that the US as it tries to make allies is in a difficult position. I think a lot of Africa now is not going to come down on the US side against China. I think the much warmer relationship with China. Latin America, most of the more leftist governments in Latin America are likely to be more on the Chinese side. And then any case China owns $200 billion worth of Latin American debt at the moment. And with the rest of Asia, I think it's far from clear that people want to be forced to choose. So I think the US may find this a very, very difficult coalition to sustain.

31:52Okay, let's take a break.

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33:09Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And we, Anastakambo. And you've just found a brilliant interview on leading, which anybody can search typing Mary McLeese leading into, into your podcast. Tell us a bit about that interview. Well, she was, she was absolutely wonderful. And there's a lot of love for it and some of the responses we've had. I mean, I knew a bit about it, but I didn't quite know that her life story was so kind of dramatic. I mean, I knew that she was a Catholic growing up in a Protestant area in the Ardoin in Northern Ireland. I knew that she had personal experience of the troubles.

33:49But when she told the story of the attacks on her house and this terrible bombing that reduced her father literally to years of catatonic depression, which she didn't even speak. And then, and yet she's just got this humor and vivacity. And but to go from that to become Irish president, you know, from, from dirt poverty. I mean, the sound of her childhood was really quite extraordinary. Very funny stuff about her, her grandfather who refused to have electricity. He said, this electricity thing is never going to catch on. And her first, her first official opening was when she went down to, to have to switch on his only, his only light bulb that he finally agreed to have.

34:35But also, you know, to, maybe she bring it up to, to modern times, to today. I mean, honestly, she was, she talked about what John's, the Damage Johnson and Trust have done to Britain standing would also have Brexit. She describes Brexit as a flesh eating disease. Anyway, I strongly recommend people listen to it, really, really, and actually we might have a back and do it together at one point because I think she's just absolutely brilliant. And on the Brexit thing, let's just briefly talk about Labour and Keir Starmer had an article last week in the Daily Express. And listen, I've got no problem with writing in the Daily Express just as we had, you know, we got criticized for traveling around the world to see Murdoch, etc.

35:17But it was a piece about Brexit. And I just felt it was, it was almost on a par with the Brexit ears who say we've just got to believe in this more. He's still talking about making Brexit work. He's going through the things in the areas where Brexit is not working. But I do, I just don't understand the politics of this right now, I'm afraid. The mood on Brexit is moving to a very different place, I believe. And so he's obviously thinking, well, I've got to keep these people happy who voted for Brexit. I'm not going to tell them they're stupid. I'm going to tell them that we did they did the right thing and understand why they did it.

35:50But it's doing so much damage to the country at the moment. I don't understand why is in that position. Can we just sort of get into this because it is the sort of 60 ,000 dollar question, isn't it? You are increasingly convinced that if Labour came out clearly and said we're in favour of, I don't know, single market customs union Brexit, actually, they'd be fine. They'd still win the election. That wouldn't loosen the election. That'd be a good thing to do. I don't even think they need to go that far. I don't think they need to go that far because that does bring you back to free movement and all that sort of stuff.

36:18I just think saying in a very clear way is not working. It's going badly. We're not reversing it, but we have to revisit the arrangements. I think that's all he needs to say. And he sort of said that, but it was in a sort of hidden in all this kind of, you know, there's no question of this and there's no question of that. And I understand why you voted for it and all this sort of stuff. And I just think it's in the role of, is he not going to, presumably he's going to lose quite a lot of people who were passionate about the European Union and were hoping that he was going to change the Tory Brexit policy.

36:48Well, I think, look, I had people, including somebody that I persuaded to join the Labour Party, not long ago, who sent me a message saying, I've left. Because I can't see, I can't see, is it, and it's not even the fact of seeing Brexit wanting to see Brexit fixed, which I think is the line to rather make Brexit work. I think he should be saying we're going to fix this Brexit deal. I think it's also this sense of the positioning, all being about the kind of leaning into the right as opposed to what the Labour Party really really stands for. And I also have a little bit of a concern. I know you were interested in this situation up in the Northeast with the Dramey Driscoll, who's the mayor up in the Metro mayor up in the Northeast.

37:32And just to explain to us, as Jamie Driscoll, Metro mayor, but the local Labour Party has decided he cannot stand in the forthcoming bigger mayor elections. And this is something that's caused real ruckians, including Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester writing in and defence. And Steve Rodham Liverpool. Steve Rodham Liverpool. And also actually, one of Liz Trust's big allies, Simon Clark, saying he found him a really good mayor who had the interest to reach in at his heart, who wasn't particularly political or ideological. And he thought so he's got conservative defenders too. It's a very strange.

38:06He's been a popular bipartisan figure. Well, I think that what's going on here is that one of the things that the Labour Party under Keir Starmer has determined to show is that it's moved on from the Corbyn era, rooting out anti -Semitism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So far as I can work out, the sin that has been committed has been to share a platform with Ken Loach, the film director. Now Ken Loach has, you know, he's a brilliant filmmaker. He's including, he's made some brilliant film set up in the Northeast, which I think was one of the reasons why they did this event together. But he does have something of a track record on the whole, you know, zealously pro -corbin, anti -Semitism, et cetera, all that space.

38:50But I think it's the fact of sharing a platform with somebody. Unless Jamie Driscoll has himself said or done something. I think it's bizarre. I mean, it's one thing, sharing a platform with, you know, somebody who's themselves the terrorist, but sharing a platform with a film director who has, I mean, you know, you're then going to get in a very, very weird world. Ken Loach was a big endorser of my Iraq book. You will be not very astonished to hear. So he's all over my book. Well, I'm sure that I'm a big, big fan of Ken Loach as a result. I'm sure that Ken Loach would be, you know, would, would see me as being in the sort of war criminal category.

39:30But I see Ken Loach as somebody who is a brilliant filmmaker who has a lot to say about the state of the world, whose views of politics and a lot of what's gone on in the Labour Party in recent years, I profoundly disagree with, but I would happily share a platform with Ken Loach. Yeah, exactly. And I wouldn't be expect to be expelled from the Labour Party of which I'm not currently remembered. But what you were expelled. I would not be expect to be expelled just for, you know, if we would, let's say we were to get him here on leading, I mean, does that, I don't know, where do you draw the line on this sort of stuff?

40:05Well, no, we get Jerry Adams on leading. Well, and as you know, Rory, I admit Jerry Adams many dozens of times prior to that, including when there was a vague suspicion that he might have been involved in terrorism, you know, can they reverse this decision? Is it too late? I don't know what the processes are, but it does seem a bit odd. It's very interesting that he's had such a, because Andy Burnham's not from the Corbin left. And as I say, conservative MPs in the area also rate him, so it seems a very, very unfair thing. I don't know well, but I mean, I think he's definitely on the sort of Corbin Easter wing of the Labour Party.

40:42And I know there's sort of, you know, the kind of people like John McDonald have been out defending, which is fine. He's been going on picket lines. He thinks he may be in trouble because he appeared on a picket line. But again, that's a bit weird to start not allowing a Labour Mayor to appear on a picket lines. Yeah, and also if we're going, if we're serious about devolution, we're going to have different characters and different people. So, no, I think on, as you know, Rory, I'm not, I desperately want Keir Starma to win. I really want Labour to win the next election. But these, there's two things in a week that I was not terribly impressed by.

41:18Well, I'd like to pay tribute to you for being non -tribal and I like you on the Coventry. I like massive tribal defence of the government's position on the Covid inquiry. Now, should we go to another place that I'm deeply concerned about? In which I think we can see the two of us. You playing the role of Alexander Vukic and me playing the role of Albin Corti. So, here we are in Cosvo. And this is actually something we covered in quite a lot of detail. Actually, I think thanks to you, you made us do this a few months ago. Yeah. And we talked through the fact that we thought that we were very, very serious risks in Northern Cosvo.

41:56And indeed, they have been revealed in very dramatic form. And this goes to big, big questions of peace, of Serbia's continuing relationships with Russia, of whether or not these countries can join the European Union and whether by joining the European Union, you might be able to resolve some of these tensions. But the immediate tension at this moment is that the majority of the population in these particular districts in Northern Cosvo are ethnic Serbians rather than ethnic Albanians. They boycotted the local elections and people with a few hundred votes who were voted for only by the minority Albanians were then imposed as mayors.

42:36And this has then caused this violence and NATO's had to deploy troops. And the general sense, I think, which we talked about a few months ago is that Albin Corti... The Prime Minister. The Prime Minister of Cosvo is somebody who was welcomed because he was seen as less corrupt, more idealistic, cleaner than his predecessor. But has turned out, unfortunately, along with that idealism to be very, very unbending and quite absolutist. And this pushing to get these mayors installed seems to have been a very, very provocative, unwise dark. Well, that is a view that the Americans have expressed. It's a view that the European Union has expressed.

43:22And also my friend Eddie Rammer, I don't know if you saw he did a long interview on the saying actually that this is not as serious as it looks, provided that both Cosvo and Serbia get back to the deal that they did back in, I think it was March, where essentially... And this was quite a big breakthrough, I think, when Josep Borel, the European foreign policy chief, he spent 12 hours in talks between Vukic, the President, who looks nothing like me, by the way. And he was, however, he was, however, previously a minister of information. That's true. That's right. The taste, the taste, this comparison, yeah.

44:07But he's also very tall. He's one of the few world leaders who's significantly taller than I am. So he and Coverti, the Cosvo Prime Minister, were in these talks. And essentially, they came out and Kosovo had agreed to set up something which the Serb majority in these northern districts had been asking for, which is an association of Serb majority municipalities. And Serbia had said it would quote, not object, it wasn't exactly say it was support, it would not object to Cosvo's membership of an international organization. Of course, Cosvo's dream is to be properly recognized at the United Nations.

44:46They've currently on 99 countries, the round to the 193 that recognize them. That includes us, it includes the US, it includes 22 out of the European Union countries, Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain, other ones who continue not to recognize them. So that was where it was heading. And also, just to add to that, there was also this vote April, which brought Cosfer into the Council of Europe, which was another big bit of progress. So then with these elections, so the reason for the Serb boycott was they felt that there had been not enough progress made on promises already made about giving them some sort of, it's not devolved power, but some sort of authority that they could say we've been treated as a bit special.

45:36So they were protesting at that. And then when the elections happened, and as you say, the turn out was less than 4%. Because although if you look at Cosfer as a whole, 1 .8 million people, 92 % are Albanian, only 6 % are Serb, but a lot of that 6 % they do live up in this northern patch. So they didn't take part. And you then literally did have dozens of police officers who were escorting these four mayors, one of whom had literally, I think it was fewer than 100 votes. And that kicked off. There was end violence. Quarity is insistent that some of that violence is from criminal gangs. Some of it is being provoked by, endorsed and supported by Russia.

46:23And of course, the bigger picture here is about, this is why the Americans and the Europeans are so involved in this, the bigger picture is how to prevent Serbia from being too locked into the orbit. And on that, Vucic has been quite smart. I mean, people were very worried because he'd been associated with Milosevic in the past and was seen as a Serbian nationalist, that he would be drawn into Russia's orbit completely, but he's been quite canny on that. He has retained good relations with Russia. And I was talking to a Russian yesterday whose families moved to Serbia because it's one of the few places that they can go without visas.

47:00But he's also kept sufficient distance, not really to become a kind of Putin tool. And one of the things when he began making these agreements with the EU and Kosovo, he then faced protests from the far right of people wearing sort of propute t -shirts and symbols. So it's a sort of reminder with all these politicians that often, you know, when they try to take a moderate course, they end up with extremists on their own side. Yeah. But the Americans and the Americans have been pretty firm with this. They actually withdrew the right of Kosovo to take part in a military exercise that was being planned.

47:38And then of course, you have this Novak Djokovic, you know who Novak Djokovic is, Rory? Yeah, he dates a tennis player. He inserted himself rather unhelpfully at the Paris, the French Open in Paris. They have this thing of getting Mark Opens and they sign this thing, it's on a camera as they finish a match and he went on a scribbled Kosovo is the heart of Serbia, which of course, it was, you know, not the most helpful thing that he could have done. And just to go back to our previous discussion to remind people that one of the big things that was that triggers all this is the refusal of Serbs living in that area to use some of them, not all of them, to use a cost of a number plates.

48:20They have Serbs plates on their cars. But anyway, bottom line is, tents, difficult, terrible soldiers got, and police officers got injured, some of them very seriously, 700 more troops have had to be sent there, but there is still a deal to be done and we should focus on that by 17th and North Macedonia, both sides should go back to that. Which I think brings us on to the final thing, which is Poland. So big demonstrations in Poland and they're just remind people the law and justice party came in and has been ruling in a very, very unpleasant, populous nationalist style. Poland being obviously the sort of mirror image of Hungary, what Viktor Orbán is doing in Hungary.

49:04A government, people want to read more about it, there's a great book by Ann Applebaum called Twilight of Democracy, she's married to a Polish politician, but she talks about the domination of incredible conspiracy theories, the fact that the government's state -owned media, it's sort of BBC equivalent, whipped up so much mad hatred against the mayor of Gdansk that he was actually eventually stabbed to death on stage with no apologies to the government, deep fights with the European Union because they've been refusing to accept the judges, which are proposed by Parliament or by judicial commission stuffing their in people into judiciary as well as state media.

49:40So big tests, I guess, for rule of law in Europe, the standards of the European Union against Poland and now these pressures every year. Well half a million people is what the mayor of Warsaw was putting it at and of course and two of the big names who were there, one was Lake Valenza, of course was the leader of the Solidarity Movement in the 80s, became president and the other was Donald Tusk, who well known to us through the Brexit debate where he's role at the European Union, but he's now the leader of the main opposition party, the civic platform, and the tipping point that seems to have taken this into a different level really is this new law that they brought in, it's called the anti -Russia commission, which is going to have the power to ban people from public office who it is deemed have been too helpful to the Russians in the past, and it's been called lex, the law has been called lex -tusk law because essentially people think this is a sort of door, a prefronted doorway to stop him from competing to disqualify tests from running intellectuals.

50:47Yeah, they'll say basically he allowed Poland to become too dependent on the Russian. We see this more and more, don't we? Because of course this is the other one stuff, disqualifying popular candidates from running intellectuals, and I think it's something that we don't talk about enough when we talk about the laws around democracy, we often talk about free and fair elections, but I think really holding to the principle which I think we've got in which is that anyone can run for election, and that we don't get into the business of governments deciding who are not suitable candidates. I mean we do end up with some rogues, but yeah, we certainly do, we should maybe end on this because there's another situation, in fact we had a couple of questions about it, in Senegal where exactly this is happening right now, the social media messaging platforms have been blocked, there's been violence and unrest, and it's all because the opposition leader, Uzmane Sanko, has been sentenced for two years for immoral behavior, and people are essentially saying that this is simply a kind of fake thing to prevent him from contesting the election.

51:53Well, and famously in Malaysia, the most impressive Malaysian politician was put in jail for accused of sodomy. I mean it's very, very disturbing, and I think this whole theme that we're talking about with this new world order, and whether the American world order is going to be able to survive and whether the Chinese world order is challenging it, is partly about, doesn't matter whether we're talking about Malaysia or Senegal or Poland, those three continents, this erosion of democracy that we're seeing, and the erosion of a society, and the pattern of the way that they're learning from each other.

52:26So one of the things that's very striking in Afro -Bam's book is you can see American Republican think tanks turning up in Hungary and in Poland, and then the same think tanks who are putting Maloney on stage then end up involved in this national conservatism conference in London. And there's a sort of playbook which Steve Bannon used to be very, very explicit about, and which will become much, much worse with two things if Trump gets back in the States, and if Le Pen wins the French presidency. We're going to see a much, much worse version of this. Absolutely. And by the way, I have to thank your constant plugging of Al Jazeera.

53:04I didn't know about this Senegal situation until I was watching Al Jazeera, as of the last last night when I was watching it, 15 people have been killed in the violence. Can I speaking of plugging remind people that, but what can I do? It's currently out of selling. But take take take opportunity from that to plug the fact that I will be launching my book if anybody would like to come before you go on before you go on. Yes, called politics or the edge. That's beautiful. I love the way you do that. It's like it's beautiful. So second and third September in Manchester and London, if anybody would like to come along, and details on the website is something called Fain F A N E.

53:43Is it what is it? All traffic and memory? It's I wish all traffic and worry. It's called the Lowry and Manchester and the Barberkin That's pretty cool. The Lowry school. The Lowry school. The music venue. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alistair. Beautiful shot. Very envious of it. Thank you. And look forward to speaking soon.