162. Small boats, Zimbabwe since Mugabe, and Trump's anti-mafia indictment

27:13And the reason we haven't mentioned it is because neither of us are really aware of what it was, but I've since had a look at your friend Al Jazeera's some of their work and they have done a pretty amazing, very long investigation into these gold smuggling gangs in southern Africa with a particular focus on Zambia Bui and the involvement of very senior officials in smuggling and money laundering, which of course helps them to get around the, you know, get around sanctions. Anyway, I won't go into all the detail now, but we should maybe just put some of the, some of it in the news letter. It's a very, very interesting story about how modern money and modern politics works.

27:52Little shout out, I've often mentioned my friend Josh Wernot who does his Africa brief and he's drawn my attention to an amazing African professor who died recently called Professor Tendika who taught in London. And Tendika has a very, very interesting way of analyzing African economies. He says there are basically three forms of African economies. There are the southern African economies where the minerals are deep in the ground. There are the west coast economies like Ghana, which are cash crops economies. And then there are the economies in the center of Africa like Congo where the minerals are much easier to get.

28:28And what he says is that for economies like Zimbabwe and South Africa and Zambia where the minerals are deep in the ground, you have this combination of coercive states because they have to force labor to work in these very difficult conditions, large numbers to be working on the ground. And also being captured by these mining businesses. And I think that's part of the story of you're talking about with Gold, but also with Lithium and everything else they're doing. Yeah, yeah. One of the real sort of mouth opening scenes in these films from our zero is when one of Zimbabwe's leading ambassadors moves there.

29:04He's being given a special role to attract investment from different powers of the world and he's being set up by these undercover reporters and he offers us to use his diplomatic privileges to carry more than a billion dollars of dirty cash into the country. And there's another word where somebody is offering an introduction to the president who he calls the king, but you'll have to pay $200 ,000 for that. There's a pretty murky scene. Anyway, and that's another you keep going on about Joe Biden being told to old. When in Gagway is 80, I think his opponent is a good several decades younger than that.

29:42But shall we take a break? Very good.

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30:59Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Maurice Jutt. And me, Alex Campbell. And we've had this is a real thing for somebody who's a central political communications analyst. So we've had the conservative party leading on an NHS week. Now, this really surprised me and I'd like you to explain this to me because if you look at the polls at the moment, Labour is really leading very, very strongly on NHS waiting list. So between Rishi Sunak and Kierstama, who respondents trust the most to achieve each of the following? Cutting NHS waiting list, 37 % for Kierstama, 18 % for Rishi Sunak. Growing the economy, 34 % Kierstama, 29 % Rishi Sunak.

31:43So they're close actually on things like inflation, economy, national debt. But Stammer has got twice the figures of Rishi Sunak when it comes to cutting NHS waiting list. People have much more trust in him on the NHS. The only thing that Rishi Sunak is leading Kierstama is in the question of stopping small birds crossing the English Channel. In other words, on these five pledges that he's made, there's only one of them that he's currently ahead of Labour on. And on the NHS, he's well behind. So why would they announce an NHS week? Rory, you're asking me who worked for a competent, efficient, professional government to analyse the thinking of a government that frankly is none of those things.

32:26So I find it very, very difficult to do. God, give it your best shot. Give it your best shot. I'll give it a best shot. Well, let me, there was a wonderful question this week from somebody called Joel, Joel Rawlings, who said, after small boats week and now NHS week, should Sunak have a be a fit and proper government rather than just spouting divisive non -sales to get the right wing pressed, riled up week. And I think that's what we're dealing with here. And, okay, I'll give you an example. Let's just take it back for a second. Because I get the small boat week stuff. And obviously that's, he's leading in the polls on that.

33:01And that's appealing to his, to a particular base. And you and I are very concerned about that because that's the anti -immigrant base. But it's a real base. There's a real chunk of voters out there who are very upset about immigration, upset about small boats. But they're now, Rory, they're now a little bit upset because they have small boats week. And every single day, something went wrong on it. So let's just go through the small boats week and then we'll come back to an NHS week. And I will, I will try. Okay. Thank you. So during small boats week, on one of those days of the week, August the 10th, they had a record for this year of people crossing on small boats, 756.

33:39That took them in that three -day period, the 10th to the 12th, they're 1600, which took them over the 100 ,000 miles since 2010. Current asylum backlog 173 ,000. So the small boats week, seems to have highlighted that it wasn't working very well. So they say, oh, well, Rwanda, but that's not going well. Oh, well, we've got the barge. What happened on the barge? Was that suddenly they discovered that it had legionella bacteria in the water. So the very, very small number of people who've been put onto it, like 15 when it should have been 500, then had to be taken off. And so, and then of course, at the end of it, we had the most nauseating tweet of the week award to Swela Bravaman, my thoughts and prayers, where the people who just died trying to cross the channel.

34:27So that didn't go well. Let's fast forward now to. And then we've put pause for a second before we go to our chairs. I mean, I think, I mean, it's such a difficult to see this, but there is no doubt. And I think we both agree on this. And I think you would, or maybe I'm being a bit cheeky here, but I suspect if you were in government, you would also feel that it is not sustainable or sensible to have a lot of people crossing the channel in small boats in this way. It's dangerous for them. It's no, it's not even the beginnings of a sensible form of asylum policy and any sensible government. And I think, Kirstalma is also accepted this needs to find a way of stopping this.

35:05It's not, I mean, I understand. You're a rule. You have to have a proper plan. You can't just spray it. Look at the other thing that happened during small boats week. They basically say, well, if plan A, Rwanda doesn't work, we've got Plan B, which is a central island. And then we had a story saying that the RAF wouldn't fly them there. They don't have a plan. They're making this up day by day is costing a lot of money. If they actually invested the money they were putting into the barge in Rwanda and to get in the backlog down, then they might make some progress. I mean, I think actually it's very interesting plan being put forward by something called ESI, which is a think tank called the European Stability Initiative run by an amazing Austrian called Geralt Canal, who suggests that really the key to this obviously is getting the French to cooperate and properly police those beaches.

35:51And obviously the 200 million euro or whatever, which you see now could be agreed to give the French government hasn't actually resulted in the kind of policing the beaches. But what Geralt Canal and ESI suggest is that France is a safe country and that Britain should not be prioritising taking asylum seekers from France. If people have made it to France, they're safe. Instead, Britain should be prioritising taking asylum seekers from countries where people are genuinely at risk. And the way to do it is to say to the French, we will take asylum seekers applying for asylum in France, who come from countries where they are genuinely at risk.

36:29And in return, we will return to France. Anyone who crosses on a small boat. There are six people who died from Afghanistan. How do we know? They're safe in France. They're safe in France. OK, but they might have... No, there's this really important, House. I mean, this is important. I think you're being far too fair. You keep talking about a sensible government. We don't... This isn't a plan. I'm not defending the government. I'm not defending the government. You are not defending the government. I'm defending a report from ESI and Geralt Canal, which has a sensible solution to this problem. Nobody in the British debate is having any sensible conversation about this.

37:05Labour isn't you aren't. All that's happening at the moment is we're rubbishing the government. I agree. The government isn't doing it, right? Rwanda's d 'Aff, the central island's d 'Aff, barges the d 'Aff. That's their policy. I agree, but can we move on to talk about what a sensible solution might be? That's fine. But the guy who's writing your report for the think tank, he's not going to be running the British government. He's going... The British government has this vice chairman, somebody who says that if they don't like on the barge, they should fuck off back to France. Rishi Sunak defends that.

37:34So, Ella Bravenman defends that. So, I think you are defending the government unless you actually are willing to say that this is classic populism. It is not designed to address the problem. It's designed to exploit the problem. Rwanda is there, as you said earlier, to get the base fired up. The barge is there, so as the people can watch the telly and say, yeah, they should fuck off back to France. That is what we now have. We don't have a policy. We have a government exploiting a problem. So, I don't think you can say it's all down to everybody's, Labour's fall, is my fall, is your fall. We have a government, Robert Generic, effectively said this the other day, that if they brought the backlog down too much, it wouldn't be a deterrent.

38:13So, they want a high backlog. And they're not to do it. They're not doing anything to bring that backlog down. 100 % agree with you about Rwanda, Ascension Islands, barges, Robert Generic's comments, I think all of that is horrible. The government is getting this wrong. 100%, I am not defending the government. However, I do think that it is important to recognise France is a safe country, and it is mad to have a policy in place that is encouraging people to make dangerous crossings from France. It would be much more sensible for Britain to be taking asylum seekers from countries where they're genuinely at risk not countries like France.

38:51And if they agreed to take asylum seekers applying for asylum in France to Britain, in exchange for returning anyone who crossed on a boat back to France, I think that would be the core of a good policy. Okay, and I'm not going to disagree with that. I'm simply saying that with the government that we have, I think that's an honest answer. And I'd like to see Labour produce a good policy. Okay, I agree with you on that. I agree with you. This government's rubbish, but I'd like to see a vet Cooper take this plan seriously and try to tell us why she doesn't think that's a good plan. No, the Labour Party, I agree, has to have detailed proposals that they say how they're going to address problems where they're attacking the government.

39:30But I think on this, and we can talk about the National Health Service as well, the idea that the Labour opposition right now should be the ones who are expected to solve problems which are fundamentally being both created and then exploited by this government, I think is a bit rich. So let's go on to the the National Health Service. Now, why they have a National Health Service week is I suspect because they're thinking right, we're not in great shape on this, let's show that we've got a plan. Now, that's the only logical explanation I can give. So what actually happened, and this goes back to my point, we've got this really weird thing in our politics at the moment.

40:13We've effectively got a government that's behaving like an opposition and an opposition that's trying to behave like a government. And both actually I think will be better off if they try to do the jobs they've got. Labour being far more aggressive in opposition and also far more proactive about bringing forward its own agenda for the future. And the government, as that question has said, stopping behaving like a sort of 24 hour juvenile campaign team and actually start governing. So I think they've come out. And you know, the first thing that happened in NHS week, they're basically getting rid of the cancer, the two week waiting time to see a cancer specialist.

40:48Right. So that's a bad start. And then what was it actually about? And I think that, you know, sometimes it's an advantage if you're following in politics to see the extent to which the Tory party has got so many papers in its pocket. There was a piece in either the Times or the Sunday Times, I can't remember what it was. And it went through week by week how the Tory party were going to be campaigning. They're going to have a week showing that only the Tories have a plan to deal with small boats. And then they're going to have NHS week. And the purpose of NHS week is to show that the health services worse in Wales and Scotland.

41:22No mention of Northern Ireland by the way, because they don't care about it, and that was nobody can vote for the Tories there. So we've now had for the last couple of days this rower going on about Wales against England, dividing rather than bringing people together, completely overlooking the fact they have totally different reporting systems. To be first, the Welsh Government, they've come out, they've admitted they have challenges. Nobody making the point that how much money the whole services get in the rest of the UK is dependent on the economic forms of the UK as a whole. And then likewise up in Scotland to go at the SMP, it's all about politics, Rory.

41:53It's got nothing to do with governing the country. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you on that. It just seems slightly weird bit of politics when this is their weak spot. When Labour's double digit ahead of you on something, I wouldn't have thought it's the thing that you want to emphasize. Yeah, you've got to fight back, haven't you? Because when you get to election, and also it's one of his five priorities. So if he's going to stick to these five priorities, and to be fair to him, he is doing that. If it's sort of a bit lame, and he was out today in a hospital, I mean, the guy is in permanent campaign mode, even on holidays in campaign mode.

42:27Can't wait to go to Disneyland, none of the people, all that stuff, briefing out stuff, you know, there was one of them said, you know, Starmas, Sunex, he's fired up after eating lots of sushi and working out to tailor swift spin classes, and he's going to come back to kick sand in Starmas' face. We don't have serious politics anymore, Rory. No, no, I agree with you on that. Now, let's move on to the even grimmer story of the far right and the populism in Europe. And you've been listening to some interviews and speeches by politicians from FD, the alternative for Germany. Just before we get onto that, just a little bit of a recap for listeners on populism in Europe.

43:12So most major countries in Europe, in fact almost every country in Europe, with the possible exception of Portugal, and I'd like to talk a little bit about Portugal, why it's the exception, but pretty much every other country in Europe has a strong populist, an often far right thing going on. In two countries, actually sorry, three now, Hungary most notably, and Poland, you have these populist governments in place, strongly authoritarian populist governments, right? In Italy, Georgian Maloney, who inherited a party with neo -fascist roots as the Prime Minister, and her deputy Prime Minister is this man Matteo Salvini, who's a pretty brutal strong man, who was a great apostle of Vladimir Putin, and who's been against same sex marriage, all this kind of stuff.

44:01But I guess the places which we've been focusing on a lot recently are Sweden, where we talked about the Swedish Democrats, which become the second largest party, it's another party with neo -Nazi roots. The Netherlands, where the second largest party is this thing called the Party of Freedom, with only one member who's this man gear to vote of those. I have what I pronounce his name. The Vildros. Very good, thank you. Who compares the Koran to mine camp, and this is all set up on the anti -grouchist stuff. France, we've talked about a bit, where the RN, which used to be the national front, took a nine million euro loan from a Russian bank, which was part of a 40 million euro loan, was run by the Penn's father, who was a Holocaust denier.

44:51And now we're on to the AFD in Germany, which again, having done very, very well in 2017, where they were the third largest party in the country, seemed to collapse a bit in 2021, but now a well back again in the polls, polling second. So tell us a bit about the AFD in Germany. Yeah, just a brief, I think you missed out one of the big ones though, which is the right wing populist party in Finland, which is now part of government as well. So there's true fins. The true fins, yeah. So there's no doubt that in most countries in Europe now, there is a fairly substantial minority that is very right wing, populist right wing, in some cases, ultra nationalist.

45:30And the AFD, as I said to you earlier, I got a message from, including from a journalist that I know and respect, who said, listen, you're being a bit soft on them. And he sent me a whole load of clips from recent interviews and speeches. And some of them were utterly horrific. There's a guy called you mentioned mine camp there. One of the TV stations did a thing where they went up to delegates at the AFD conference in Magdeburg recently. And they read them a succession of statements. And they said at the end of each statement, who said that? Was that Björn Hucka? Who's the this leading AFD figure in Turingon?

46:14Or was it from mine camp by Adolf Hitler? And of course, none of the good answer, either they dismiss, he says, you're just causing trouble. All they said, oh, I think that by be Hitler, maybe not. And I then thought, you know, and part of me worries about even talking about people like this, because, and there's a real breast beating guy on the German media at the moment, because this guy Hucka, he was one of the summer interviews, one of the German traditions of this summer interview that they do on some of the big TV stations. And a regional station, MDR did this interview with Björn Hucka.

46:46And one of the things he said was that he was, thought obviously, mixed marriages with people from different religions was a terrible thing. Immigrants were weak in schools, etc. But he went big against inclusion. And he said at one point that including people with disabilities in schools was an ideological project, IE of the left, from which we need to be freed. Now, Germany is a signature to the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Disabled, which includes inclusion. Now, of course, it's set off a huge, great sort of thing. He got attacked for it, probably welcomed being attacked. So it sort of, you sort of think, how have we got to a place where this guy, he's now on 30 % in the polls in Turingon.

47:28The FD nationally is on 20 % and this guy in Turingon is on 30%. And he's combined polling at the moment is ahead of the three parties that make up the governing coalition. So this is a real thing. There's a lot of similarities between these parties across Europe. Absolutely. The Russia thing is part of, I mean, they're all, you know, there's another guy, the guy, they had the conference I mentioned, which I was watching a bit of, and then they had another conference, I felt one conference was enough for me. They then had another one where they were selecting their candidates for the European elections.

48:01And the guy who's number one in the list is this guy called Maximilian Klaar. And I'm going to do this in German, Rory, and then I'll tell you what it says, because I think it just looked scarier in German. He said, he said, this is our platform. Kind, Klima, Zondon, Volstein, kind, Gender, Zondon, Familiar, kind of Einwanderung, Zondon, Falk, kind, Krieg, Zondon, Frieden. No climate. In other words, an automobile climate, but prosperity. Not gender, but family, not immigration, but Falk, us, the people, the real people. And then finally, not war but peace. And they had a big thing. No weapons to Ukraine.

48:43Stop criticizing Putin. So these trends, I mean, a lot of these parties, I mean, it's interesting how there's a sort of right wing populist playbook emerging so clearly. Many of these parties, now, as you say, 15, 20 % of the polls, many of these, many of the countries I've mentioned, they're the second largest party. We haven't talked about the Frieden party in Austria, your Khaida's party. Absolutely enormous. They got up to 26 % in 2017, collapsed again. I mean, many of them get caught up in corruption scandals in Austria, something called the Abyssa, Abyssa affair, where again, somebody posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch managed to persuade senior government ministers to give them concessions, business concessions in return for positive media coverage.

49:34So I think there's a collection of things. There's climate, AFD are more, are genuine climate deniers, but many of the others downplay climate as much as they can. Immigration obviously, absolutely central to everything that these people say. A lot of stuff about families often are positioned to same sex marriages, which you get from people like Salvini, Islamophobia, very central to a lot of what they're doing. And often, as you say, historically pro -Russian, although some of them have changed, interesting Selvini and Maloney having been very pro -Putin were critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

50:14So the invasion drain actually lost Russia's some support amongst these groups, which will have surprised them, because they really took them for granted and thought they were their natural allies. And of course, the polls have been very strongly anti -Russian. Well, they're, you know, they're worried that they'll be next. The other place we didn't mention is Bulgaria. And the Star guest speaker at the AFD conference was a Bulgarian politician called Kostodyn Kostodynov. Now, as you're a massive football fan, Roy, you will know there was a Bulgarian international of that name as well. So not to be confused.

50:48Not to be confused. The man who played 48 times for Bulgaria. But this guy, he got a huge round of applause, so basically saying, Germany's got to take its place again as the great power, Uber -Oil -Hopper. Goodness. Yeah. And on the list, on the list of the European candidates, one of them was going on about drain the swamp. That's Brussels and they're other than Washington. One of them was going on about Dexit. That's not their official position, but it's obviously part of it. And they also talk about the great replacement. Yes. I mean, interesting. Many of them have moderated Dexit. Many of them started as strong Euro -Skeptic anti -Euro parties, anti -Shengan parties, but many of them, including Mary and the Pen and France and AFD, have mutered that down.

51:30I do think, though, apart from being a pool and horrified by them, when you get to 20, 30 % of the vote, it becomes increasingly difficult to simply ignore, exclude these parties. Oh, great. I agree. Taking seriously the fact that there are very, very large chunks of populations in Europe who are now increasingly unhappy about the scale of immigration and some of the economic sacrifices they feel they're having to make on climate change is going to be definitional. And I think, since it seems very likely that the Labour Party is going to come in in Britain, but I think other moderate progressive parties around Europe, we can expect them probably to be responding to some of this by tightening up their own immigration policies and beginning to tighten up some of the climate taxes they're imposing on people because you can't continue to ignore 20, 30 % of your population indefinitely.

52:29No, I agree. But also the policy, there's no doubt that some of the same mistakes that people like me would have made in relation to sort of, you know, the writers it was rising up and eventually end it with Brexit. There's a lot of that will be going on now and that I think we shouldn't repeat those mistakes. But I honestly, this is back to our government. I really don't believe the answer is in meeting populism with populism. And I think that there's time and this is where I do think Labour should be, to be honest with people that these are real challenges, really difficult and what's more, they're going to get worse because of climate and they're going to get worse because of the growing inequality there is between them within regions and they are the big challenges that have to be addressed and they're not going to be addressed by this week, that week, the next week, turning everything into a sort of 24 -7 campaign if you're in government.

53:22I guess what you need to do is don't become a populist, stick to policies that are ethical and progressive but at the same time acknowledge voters' feelings and explain that you have a plan and how that plan is going to address the things that they're deeply concerned about. So you've got to find the balance between saying it's tough, it's difficult, it's going to get worse. But here is a very, very clear plan on how we're going to get on top of those six. Good, good bad, good bad, yeah, speak soon, speak soon, bye bye.