159. Question Time: Sweden's Quran-burning crisis, Farage vs. the banks, and what is 'the establishment'?

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1:26Gatorade is it in you?

1:35So welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. And Alistair, you are seeing me now sitting here in the remains of my house and amine. I've got boxes all around me. This is the last time you'll be seeing me at this desk and we're putting the whole family on a plane first thing tomorrow morning with a loss of stress from the children about whether I have somehow not packed the right toys. My attempts to secretly hide half their plastic crap is being exposed all the time. So this is a major life move. You're leaving the Middle East. Leaving the Middle East returning back to Blytty, where you and I could do more more in person, I guess.

2:17I'm sure we can do more in person, but is this also possibly about trying to follow Nick Timothy, who's just been selected as a Conservative party candidate in Matt Hancock's seat? No, I can categorically say that I am not running as a conservative candidate, either to be Mayor of London or as a Member of Parliament. I am currently not a member of the Conservative Party. Are you planning to run in any other shape or form for political office within the United Kingdom? Well, I think part of the problem is is it really compatible with a podcast? I mean, if I'm suddenly sitting in Parliament, who's going to trust and believe that I'm remotely objective on our podcast?

2:51Well, I can be the judge of that and I can pull you into shape whenever I feel you're straight. So that wasn't a no, that was not a no. Why, I don't know, it just represents my anxiety about our podcast. Okay, okay. So you're not going to be a politician again, is that what you're telling me? Well, I don't think not not for this election. Maybe next time. And meanwhile, I suppose the other reason you're coming back to London is because politics on the edge will be published in September. Thank you very much for reminding people of that. And if anybody felt like pre -ordering politics on the edge, I would be hugely grateful.

3:23We were going to talk about Sweden and the Quran on the main podcast, but we ran out of time because we talked a lot about Niger. But we did, yeah, it's lots of questions. Here's one from somebody who sounds moderately Swedish. I think Marietta Bierome, how do you two feel about the public burning of the Crown in Sweden, which is causing an outrage in much of the Muslim world? Sweden holds on to the freedom of speech and opinion. In Finland, it would, oh, maybe she's a Finn. In Finland, it would not be legal, although Finland is also a solid democracy. What should Sweden do? Been fascinating this because of course, it's a classic conflict, doesn't it, between absolute core belief in freedom of speech and the natural desire, particularly for what's seen as a very tolerant country in the main, not to be seen as a very intolerant country, provoking massive protests.

4:15We talked in the main podcast about the French Embassy coming under attack in Niger. Well, the Swedish Embassy has come under attack in Baghdad. It was an Iraqi Christian exile who applied to the police for permission to hold a protest, held the protest in which he set the Quran on fire. And this has started a wave of protest, including economic protests now with countries calling for a boycott of Swedish goods. And Sweden is a big, big, big exporter to that part of the world. So let's say you were back in the foreign office, you were the foreign minister, but you're not the foreign minister now of the United Kingdom, but it's Sweden and Denmark, which has also had the same problem.

4:57What would you do? Well, I think, let me take one step back before I get to that one. I think it's a good question, but one step back, speaking here from Jordan, whatever the rights or wrongs for it, it is massive news here. People in Jordan are very, very, very angry. And they're angry in Malaysia, they're angry in Turkey, they're angry in Egypt. I don't know how much has been covered in the UK, but it is huge front page news here. The Swedish Ambassador, who's a friend of mine here in Amman, a very good Swedish Ambassador has been called in and almost threatened with being expelled from the country.

5:28I think the Swedish Ambassador in Baghdad has been expelled. Right. And then, you know, I've been talking to senior people in the Middle East who are due to address major conferences on Sweden, who are boycotting Sweden, because they don't want to be seen to be endorsing this. So I think it's important to understand that whatever the argument around Sweden was speech from the points of view of many Muslims, this is incomprehensibly offensive. The Quran is not treated exactly in the same way the Bible is. You know, if you handle a Quran in someone's house, it's often wrapped very carefully, placed in a special box.

6:04In many cultures, it's held high above your head when you take it. And because the Bible is inspired by God, but the Quran is the direct word of God in the view of a Muslim dictated to the Prophet Muhammad. So it's very, very difficult for many, many Muslims to see this as anything other than a deliberate assault on Islam. And it's not made need to hear by the fact that of course, the people are from stirring this up in Denmark and Sweden are, of course, from the far right. It's not accidental that they're burning the Quran as opposed to burning the Torah or the Bible. They're doing it to appeal to anti -Muslim supporters.

6:41So, back to the point about where you in office, because what the Prime Ministers of the two countries have had to wrestle with of Sweden and Denmark is whether they essentially sacrifice that sense of total commitment to freedom of speech by saying, I guess what they could say, because at the moment it is the police who decide whether or not people can hold protests, whether they actually say, no, the government is going to decide this and we have decided we're not going to allow protesters to burn the Quran. Yeah, I mean, I may be influenced by the fact that I grew up and spent a lot of my life in Muslim countries, but I definitely am more sympathetic to the British approach.

7:22So you remember in Gateshead, some Quran were burned and stamped on back in 2010 and the police took immediate action on the grounds of hate crime. And I think that is perfectly legitimate. I cannot see this accept in terms of a deliberate hate crime designed to try to antagonize an alienate and I don't want to push this too far, but you can think of many other profoundly offensive things that could be done by far right groups, you know, dressing up in Ku Klux Klan uniforms and the like, which we would very easily see as hate crime. I think it's partly because the progressive left in some countries are uncomfortable with religion that they're unsure how to react.

8:02This particular incident in Sweden though wasn't somebody from the far right or the far right to be exploited in a sense. It was an Iraqi Christian exile. Yeah, who may or may not be far right. I don't know, but it wasn't as we would say traditional Swedish far right. There is a far right in Sweden and they did far better. The Sweden Democrats, they're one of the most misnamed parties I would suggest, but they did very, very well. 62 seats, second largest party in parliament and basically a murderer biologically racist party that actually believes that anyone adopted in Sweden, the back of the 1980s, anyone adopted in Sweden who wasn't white should be sent out of Sweden.

8:41So there's a huge background to this, which is very worrying. And you mentioned, just to make it more complicated for the Swedish government, is that they, you mentioned Turkey and of course, Erdogan was somewhat reluctantly dragged to a position of supporting Sweden's membership of NATO, which is one of the big events post the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But is now, of course, starting to stir in relation to this and suggesting that, well, perhaps Sweden isn't a reliable country because they've allowed this situation to get out of hand. So it's a horribly complicated situation. My hunch is that both Sweden and Denmark will move to a position closer to our own where you can actually say no, you are not allowed to burn the crown.

9:33Now, here's a very good question for you. Peter Dirk Decker, as a regular listener to your podcast from the Netherlands, I was somewhat surprised to see the political decline of one of Europe's longest serving Prime Minister's Mark Lutter go wholly unnoticed and you're otherwise very international podcast. What is your perception of the Dutch political crisis in the upcoming November elections? Well, it's true that we didn't do a sort of big special on the Netherlands and we did, I think, mention Mark Lutter when he decided to step down. That was when a few weeks ago now. And in the main episode this week, we did talk briefly about the Netherlands and I think I made the point that they were giving a very good sense of becoming somewhat ungovernable.

10:18I mean, look, you've all of the main players within the current coalition essentially have said that they're stepping down. And there was quite a moving statement by the deputy prime minister who said that she was leaving politics in part because it had become so horrible. And apparently her daughters went on television to say that they were urging her to stop because of all the threats that were being made against her. Some guy in jail for turning up at a house waving her torch in her face. So I don't know, I think as to what happens in the election, we talked yesterday about this farmer's party that's doing very well.

10:53The far right is, the builders is back sort of making lots of noise and it's very, very hard to read how this election, which is not going to be for another few months yet, is going to play out. We will definitely talk about it nearer the time when it becomes a little clearer as to what's going to happen. One thing that's chared me up a little bit, we often talk about how unpleasant politics has become, which is one of the reasons why I'm a little bit reluctant to dive back into this election. But I had the privilege here in Jordan of hosting for lunch a group of prospective parliamentary candidates for the UK elections from the Labour and the Conservative parties.

11:32It was extraordinary. It was brought together by a coalition for Global Prosperity, which is campaigns around international development. And they had brought this group of mostly young people, diverse, bright, interesting, pretty difficult for me to be honest to tell going around the table who was Conservative and who was Labour. And I was so impressed that notwithstanding how horrified British politics has become, here were a dozen really bright, motivated, interesting people from interesting backgrounds who seem to be on track to become members of parliament, interested in international development, interested in visiting a refugee camp in Jordan.

12:14Maybe they've been reading, but what can I do? Well, that's very heartening to hear. Look, I do think the next generation's got to be better than this. I agree with Chris Bryant's assessment in his book Code of Conduct that this has been the worst parliament in probably, certainly in our lifetime, it possibly ever. Just very briefly, the other thing that's maybe worth saying on Holland, I talked about the times early this week about the Dutch equivalent of MI5 who are warning that what they call anti -institutional extremist movement targeting democratic authorities. And these are basically people who think that there's an evil elite running the country, that it controls the government, the big companies, the judges, science, newspapers, the TV channels.

13:05I think we often think of New Netherlands as sort of, you know, say insensible and so forth, but there's a real kind of underbelly there at the moment that the authorities are clearly very, very worried about. And the statement made by Secret Carth, when she stepped down, was pretty sad. Well, here we are for a question that's really going to irritate you and one that you've been trying to avoid and you can tell us why you've been trying to avoid it. So, David Kroesier, the Farage Fiasco, just remind listeners, Farage Fiasco, is David Kroesier referring to the fact that Nigel Farage had his bank account closed by Kuttsbank, which is a subsidiary of NAP West.

13:42He protested it. Number of statements were made by NAP West and the chairman of NAP West has now resigned. So, the Farage Fiasco, is this a real story, or a prime example of a populist playing the victim to advance his polarizing agenda? And I suspect people disagree on the Salister, which is always good on this podcast over to you first. Well, I think it's both. It is a real story. However, something happens to our media, particularly when it's about figures who are very, very well known on the right. I've actually written my new European column about this. It's not that I don't want to talk about Nigel Farage.

14:16I just think this story has been talked about far too much. But the point I've made in my column is that we don't have a serious government at the moment. We don't have a serious media. And the combination means that we just go from one spasm to the next. So, we had the Gary Linica spasm a few months ago when all that the media could cover was Gary Linica's tweet about refugees. We then had the Hugh Edwards spasm. And that came and that lasted for days and days and days. And then it just went. And now we've had the Farage Coot spasm. And the other thing that I don't believe that Nigel Farage should be allowed in front of a microphone anywhere without being grilled rigorously, robustly, on Brexit because he was such a major player in it.

15:00And what I think the media is allowing him to do now is sort of reinvent himself as a consumer champion just because he couldn't get an account with Coots bloody bank for God's sake. So I'm not saying they didn't make mistakes. But honestly, it's not that big a deal. Well, let me sort of slightly agree with you but slightly disagree. I think what happened was pretty outrageous. So Coots took away his account. He questioned it. They then leaked to the BBC that the reason that his account had been suspended is he didn't have enough money. This turned out to be completely untrue. It turned out when they managed to get hold of a more than 40 page document that they actually accepted and document that he did have enough money to have his account at Coots.

15:47And the head of Nuts West had briefed the BBC, she leaked stuff that broke clients confidentiality but more importantly, she lied. So the CEO of this big bank had told a direct lie to the BBC. And so I think it's absolutely right that she went. I thought it was a bit odd in fact that Nuts West originally tried to keep her and drop her bonus, which was the worst of all worlds. I mean the board must have gone mad. And I think the hero of this story is our friend John Soaple who produced a tweet saying, dear Nigel, always believed when I get things wrong, I own up to it. I got it wrong. Sorry. That will teach me to trust reporting of my old employer, Smileyface the BBC.

16:28If your political views were even part of the reason why the account was suspended from Coots, that is totally reprehensible. John, so well done John Soaple. Yeah fair enough, fair enough, but I still think there's a wonderful clip of Matt Fry, Channel 4, chasing Nigel Farage down the street. Trying to find out where Nigel Farage gets all his money from, which is a legitimate question. And I think if there was a little bit more focus on that and a little bit less focus on where he can bank his bloody money, we might know more. Nigel Farage is a very, very effective communicator, he's a very effective campaigner, but his role in our national life as one of the creators of a project which has gone horribly wrong.

17:11You know, Barry talks about it anymore. He moves on to his next populist cause and I don't believe we should help him to do that. Very good. Right, let's just stick with Farage for a moment, Rory. Stu Balma, dear Roryn Alistair, could you please explain to me, Farage and that law always go on about the establishment. Who are the establishment? I always thought they were, they were the establishment coming from very expensive private education as they have the power. Stu, that is a very good question and it relates to something we've talked about before. They are the establishment. People like Farage and the right wing newspapers that yet again are doing his bidding.

17:45They are the establishment, but what they do is they persuade people that they're there for the little people and that is why I make the link to Brexit. That Brexit was a victory for people who represent a big part of what I define as the establishment and their political and economic forces on the right and they only won by persuading people that actually they're with them against this mythical elite. I think we've got to be careful here because I think that there's a risk of saying the elite is mythical but the establishment is real. I think these are all different ways of struggling with where power lies and there are different types of power and economic power.

18:25There is cultural power, there's governmental power and I think there's a perfectly good case to be Britain like any diverse modern society has a lot of competing establishments. There's definitely a type of an establishment that you and I part of, there's part of an establishment that Farage is part of. Even Nigel Raj's best pals cannot say that he doesn't represent a form of elite establishment power. He does. That's the tragedy of course for all these populists movements that they all involve just new forms of elite trying to present themselves as anti -alete. I agree. All right, let's take a quick break there.

19:01Royal will be back in a minute.

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21:15Welcome back to the rest of politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. Rory Stewart. Okay, Senkai Sia. Senkai Sia is a British student who's in California. What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of Tony Blair's central government machinery units like the delivery and strategy units that were abolished by Cameron? Does Alistair think their work improved policy implementation? Was Rory suspicious of them centralizing power and micro -managing whitehall? Are these units a good model to apply to other countries as advocated by the Tony Blair Institute? There we are, over to you. Well, I think they're also advocated by those countries which have adopted them.

21:54I think it was a mistake of David Cameron to get rid of them. Look, strategies kind of, you know, Australia, whether you have a strategy unit in the way it's set out in the question, and I think it's pretty less important than a delivery unit. The strategy has to come from the people at the top who define a strategy, execute the strategy and the rate, the strategy, take that forward. But I think delivery is so difficult in public services, it's become more difficult, and you can only do it if you're constantly on top of keeping track of it. I know the delivery unit model that we brought in, headed by Michael Barber, who was terrific.

22:30Sir Michael Barber. Sir Michael Barber, yes, but as you know, Rory, I don't always feel I have to give people their title, but Sir Michael Barber, a very fine man, and look, it's true that I visit lots of different governments in different parts of the world. It isn't just how many of them have his book on their bookshelves, because I think they realize that what the public want from their governments these days is delivery. How do you track delivery? Well, you do, it's not micromanaging, but you have to have somewhere within government where you're tracking it, and I think the centre is the place to have that.

23:04And also, it means that you can track thematically across the government. If you have a strategy for public service modernisation, that's not just about one public service, it's about a general approach. So I'm a big fan of delivery units. Well, I'm quite a fan too, and I'm actually quite a fan of Michael Barber. I got him in to talk to my Yale class, and in fact, he very kind of came to see me when I was running to be prime minister. He's written a great book, people haven't looked at it, called How to Run a Government, so that citizens benefit and taxpayers don't go crazy. He's tried like you, along with your perseverance, he's invented his own word, which is Deliverology, which I'm not quite sure how far Deliverology is going to go.

23:43I think Perseveralions wins. What do you think, Rory? I don't like Deliverology. I've always been a bit suspicious of sort of overly tentacratic approaches to politics, because I think it was one of the problems, the 90s, that we didn't think enough about emotion, identity, values. It's not all about sort of tentacratic approach to delivery, but a lot of it is, and I think Michael Barber was very good at it. I think it's also, unfortunately, although I'm tempted as a conservative to mount a very nostalgic defense, the civil service, and say we don't need any of these special advisors, we don't need delivery units, it can all be done by the civil service.

24:17I think the truth of matter is the world has got more more complicated. The civil service faces so many legal challenges, it's very, very helpful, and I felt in 2010, and a lot of politics on the edges actually about what happened when those units were got rid of. I really felt that Cameron struggled in those first five years because he didn't have those kind of units to help drive through policy. Philip Evans, Rory mentioned party discipline a few weeks ago. Please can you explain what's the point of having MPs if the expectation is they vote with their party? I appreciate the two can rebel, but that's sort of cost, and leader MPs choosing their votes against wisely.