172. Liz Truss returns, Putin's Western puppets, and Rory at the United Nations

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1:50Welcome to the rest of this politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Elis DeCumble. And a lot to cover this week. We are just a year since Liz Truss's shambolic mini budget. And she's been out making speeches justifying what she did to the British economy into politics a year ago. We get a chance to dig into that a bit. Secondly, it's UN General Assembly week. And I'm in New York where I've been saying President of Malawi and the First Minister of Scotland. And I'm about to go into another big session on finance and global development. And talk a little bit about what the UN means in the modern world.

2:24Why Rishi Sunak is not here. And thirdly, we're going to talk about something that you wanted us to look at more seriously, which is the way in which Vladimir Putin deliberately got Europe hooked on Russian energy. And use that as a way of trying to control European politics and its use at Russia, Ukraine. And finally, we were going to look at Libya after the terrible tragedy of the flooding. And look back at what's happened over the last 10 years in Libya. But first, Alistair, Liz Truss, well, I don't know if it'll laugh or cry, are watching it yesterday, watching the news channels presented at some major event.

3:04She and Boris Johnson survive for the title of Worst Prime Minister in history. A year ago, as a result of the policies that she was defending yesterday, mortgage rates went up by a third. Mortgage approvals fell by roughly the same amount. House prices went down. Now there are some people who would argue that there's a good thing, but they wouldn't. The Tories wouldn't. And the 10 -year guilt yields more than doubled, which raised the cost of public borrowing. So the truth is, we're still paying a price. And I think for her to come along, make a little joke about how this September is a lot less stressful than last September.

3:41But then do this thing that Trump does, that Johnson does, that actually we're seeing Russell Brand do at the moment, which is essentially just cast around for blame. They're all victims of a conspiracy. It's all somebody else's fault. She was back attacking the civil service. I was at the Football Burnley Game last night, but Fiona was watching a Loracunzburg's program on the state of chaos, I think it was called. And saying that it was just full of civil servants who'd been trying to make sense of the utter chaos that was being imposed upon them by the politicians. And also reaching the judgment that is even worse than we thought.

4:18So I just think from both Johnson and Trust, the less we hear of them in the future, the better. Interestingly, by the way, not a single Conservative MP was there. Faraj was there. The ludicrous David Frost was there. But, you know, she wrecked the economy. Her arrogance, her utter vain gloriousness was on full display yesterday. And you know better than I do. You've written the voucher in your book. I begin to worry about what goes on inside her head. Yeah, it's amazing. So the speech, which people who are really geeky, we can put into the newsletter, which she gave at the Institute of Government, is a kind of insight into a very strange world view on the right of the Conservative Party.

5:04And their world view is she thinks there's been 25 years of economic consensus, which has led to stagnation. So most of us think that actually the problem at the last 25, 30 years is that we pushed ahead with neo -threat trade economics, which were applied in a way that deepened inequalities between citizens, deepened inequalities, between regions, deepened inequalities, to countries led to stagnant incomes, led to the erasure of our manufacturing base. And in a way, the 2008 financial crisis was the chickens coming home to roost. And we need now to have the kind of economic policy that Biden's looking at the US, which is to have much more thoughtful industrial strategy.

5:45It's a good chance maybe to plug the fantastic interview, I think, that we were lucky enough to be able to do with Andy Burnham and Andy Street from Manchester and the West Midlands, where they really are making a powerful case for how they're going to be able to turn around industrial strategy by leading it locally. But she's gone in absolutely the opposite direction. She and Quasic were saying, are on the full Singapore on Thames, their story is not that economics was too right wing, or that austerity was too harsh. Her view is that we've all been living in the social democratic universe for the last 13 years of Tory government.

6:21And that what we need now is radical tax cutting, radical regulation, cutting, no industrial strategy. And she's holding up as her examples in that speech, Poland, the Baltic, Florida and Texas. And she was almost suggesting she was going to try to create a flat rate attack so that no longer be an income tax that took money from the wealthiest and redistributed to the poor. The Mara Karne, former governor of the Bank of England, he spoke at the conference that Keir Starmer was out with Trudeau in Canada. And we should also put Mara Karne speech in, if we're going to put Liz Truss in the show now, it's definitely put Karne, because it was actually an intelligent, thoughtful speech.

7:03And he said that Karne and Truss wanted to deliver Singapore on Thames, but they gave his Argentina on the channel. I think it was probably the line of the conference. But if you just go through the highlights of what she's suggesting, the first one which given that for 49 days in office, I think it was, she now has a six figure plus, not, she gets the pension anyway, she gets a massive final salary scheme on her pension. But she also gets an added allowance well into six figures. And yet the first thing she's talking about is reducing benefits. She's talking about raising the retirement age, fracking, going pro -facking, abolishing the windfall tax on the profits of the fossil fuels, proper as they call it.

7:48And of course for Arjan Frost sitting there purring away, proper divergence from the EU, she of course was a remain campaign about none of the Brexit people have actually explained how the Brexit they promised hasn't happened. Then of course the new sort of thing of the populist right, delaying net zero commitments abandoning the replacement of gas and oil boilers. And it's this sort of weird, fantastical, very bad ideas in their own merit I would say. But even if you accept that they weren't, even if you'd think that it's a good idea to kind of carry on living beyond our means with fossil fuels and so forth.

8:22It's the fact that she comes along and projects herself, proudly telling people the title of a book is 10 years to save the West. As John McTurner, my former colleague, who said, you know, given how much damage it didn't, 49 days, how much would you do in 10 years? It's utterly, I mean, I hate using the language of mental health in this, but it's absolutely completely starts there in math. It's very weird isn't it? And just to take people back a year to that moment, it was a fascinating political moment. One of the interesting things is that she had promised during the race when she was running against Rishu Soonak to do a lot of these things.

8:58So she'd promised to stop the rising corporation tax, to cutting come taxes, to reverse national insurance increases. So I guess that she and quasi -caughting felt that the markets would have already factored in the promises she'd made during the race. What she added to it was just cutting the top rate of tax from 45 to 40, which in physical terms, financial terms was a relatively small thing. But what seems to have happened is a sense of total lack of credibility. I mean, so much about the markets, I think this is going to be key when Kierstahlmer becomes prime minister is about projecting confidence.

9:38It's not about exactly how much you're borrowing or exactly how much you're reducing taxes or increasing them. It's about whether or not you're conveying a sense of predictability. I guess it was sacking senior civil servants, not getting the office of budget responsibility to assess what she'd done not informing the bank of England, a general sense that people just couldn't trust the institutions of British government. Yeah, and that's what's right at the heart of this whole thing is that they're the people that are blaming Dominique Cummings with these blob. Again, yesterday attacking civil servants that they were against it.

10:12And the idea, I can get how somebody like Russell Brandt, who even though he's got millions of followers, but you can see why because he's edgy and he's different and all that, you can see why he says to himself, oh, I'm the victim of some sort of conspiracy, even though it's complete nonsense. But to rise to become the prime minister of one of the five United Nations Security Council permanent representatives and say that you failed because of a conspiracy against it was actually a conspiracy that put her in there in the first place. I just think this is a really dangerous thing. It's why I do think it's worth just briefly reflecting on the Russell Brand thing because you know, the ability that people have now, Cold War Steve, I don't know if you follow Cold War Steve on social media.

10:53You said an amazing image that you picked together. It was basically Russell Brandt, we have to be careful here, but Russell Brandt is essentially wearing Jimmy Savils tracksuit in Kim Jong Un's car as he's surrounded by these dark suited bodyguards who include Elon Musk, Dan Wuton, and we know there's been a lot of stuff about sexual allegations regarding him, which of course are a terrible conspiracy against him by the deep state. This woman, Beverly Turner, who to be fair to Andrew Pearce, something I very rarely say, he absolutely took her apart for her deciding on the basis of having followed Russell Brandt on social media for years that he's a hero.

11:32And you know, I have a lot of criticisms of the newspapers and of the media more generally, but I can tell when an investigation is being properly rigorously done and properly rigorously legal. And that is one of them. Just on how many of these investigations take place? I mean, it must be incredibly expensive. How does the editor make a decision? Because I guess you need a lot of journalists not working on other stuff. You need a lot of time. Did you get involved in long form investigations when you were a great editor? Look, I think I'm not giving the Sunday Times a free pass here at all. I think they are part of a lot of that's gone wrong with our media.

12:14But I think what good journalism does need isn't it? Who will say, if you think this is a serious story and you think it's worth pursuing, you have time. My best friend on the daily mirror, Guy called John Merritt, some years he would only write three or four stories because he was working on them for months. And I think that has gone from our journalist. Tell us about Harry Evans. I just saw his wife Tina Brown last night here in New York. Tell us about him as an editor and what made him? Well, he was an author, and I started out one of the local regional papers in the Northeast, became Sunday Times editor, most famous for the Thurard and Mide investigation, but gave journalist time and also was obsessive about fact, which again, I think a lot of editors these days are perhaps less worried about fact than they should be.

12:56But the point about about brand is this ability and it's not just him. Trump has done exactly the same. You get accused of serious criminal offences and you turn it into a money making venture. And what I see in trust and her speech yesterday, what I see in brand in the way that he's responded to this, what you see with Trump and yes, another interview at the weekend, what you see with Johnson constantly going around saying he's done nothing wrong. It's not just shamelessness, it's branding themselves through their shamelessness, no pun intended. This trust literally projecting herself as a victim who had she been allowed to do what she wanted to do would have been a great success.

13:38And by the way, dropping hints that she's not finished yet. Meanwhile, I think that you talked about Keir Starmer there and how he's sort of projecting. I do think Keir Starmer has moved up a gear. I actually think that him being seen with Trudeau, today being seen with Macron the other day at Interpol, just being kind of serious about stuff, whereas for Sunack to tolerate that nonsense yesterday, because it drowned him out. Whatever he was trying to do yesterday, it drowned him out because Liz Trust was deemed to be more interesting. And she's not finished. I mean, it's perfectly obvious. She and Johnson are not finished with Sunack at all.

14:13Well, we're going to have a deep dive. I think next week into some very interesting polling that we've commissioned on views in the British electorate. But one thing I think that Keir Starmer needs huge credit for is that he's come up with a very clear policy now on migration. And what he said is something that we discussed in the podcast three, four weeks ago is that he's essentially talked about coming to a proper agreement with France to say that people claiming asylum in France, we will be able to take a proportion, but in an orderly way, based on need. And in return, we will return the votes back to France, which are very dangerous, which are often bringing a very random collection of people who aren't necessarily there on the basis of need, all of them, and who are risking their lives to make the crossing.

15:02And I think it's the first leader really in Europe that's come up with a clear way of balancing our moral obligations towards migrants, demonstrating that we care about, you know, women judges facing persecution from the Taliban or people who are at risk of their lives in Somalia, while at the same time addressing what is clearly an impossible situation with these boat crossings. I think I told you I was at the National Housing Federation the other day, and Rachel McLean, who is the 15th Housing Minister since 2010, by the way, 1515. And she was being interviewed by Lewis Goodall on stage, and he said, look, come on, be honest, if you're writing down the top five priorities in the country at the moment, why are the boats there and housing is not?

15:48And she sort of started and spluttered and didn't really answer the question, which is fair enough, it's quite a hard question to answer it when housing is not seen as well as the government's priorities, when frankly, it should be. But then you look at what's happening in Italy and the island of Lampedusa, where this week there have arrived more people fleeing from Africa, often on small boats than the entire population of the island. Now, you can see why for them that is a massive priority. But what's happened with with Rishi Sunak, he's made it into a massive priority in order to appease this politics that I believe he should be challenging.

16:26And I'm going to put you on the spot now because last week we were in Edinburgh and Bath, and one of my favorite questions in Bath was when somebody said he had an amazing name, sprawlet or something, and he said, if I was put in charge of the Conservative strategy, what would it be? And you were asked if you were to project why people should vote Labour, why people should bat Labour now? Now, I didn't do a very good job, so there's no point wasting time or why I said. Well, you're going to ask me to do the Labour defence, I'll ask you to do the Conservative defence otherwise it becomes a bit weird.

16:58Okay, well all I said was I think Rishi Sunak, what he should have done, and it may be too late, but I think it's where the strategy should be rooted, he should have when he took over said, I am going genuinely to be a departure from the Johnson Trust politics and era. And when I say professionalism and accountability integrity, that is what I mean and that's what I'm going to do. Instead of which, first thing, he just, you know, let's unpack the House of Laws of these mate with their mates, he doesn't really crack down on lots of different examples of lack of integrity, etc, etc. But I think he needed that clean break from the past and he hasn't done it, and that's why I think he's now a prisoner of the right.

17:34You on the other hand gave a very, very good rallying cry for Labour, so without caveat, Rory, because you know, you did it very, very well, and you got a, I think you got one of the loudest runs of applause of the evening for it, so give it another go. Oh, Blimey, okay, I'll try to remember what I said. So I think if I was a here stammer going to election, I would say firstly that 13 years for Conservative government has been a disgrace that they haven't learnt any lessons that wages a stagnant, that our tax rate is the highest, it's been since just after the Second World War, that our debt is out of control, and that there are no clear ideas for the future, but that as Labour, there will be a proper industrial strategy, which is going to prioritize areas outside London and the South East, that we're going to make investments not just on the basis of financial returns, but on the basis of the environment and social justice, that we are going to reach out into the world and not retreat into isolationism, that we're going to fulfil our moral obligations, but we're also going to look after British interests, and above all that Labour will be competent, it will be a government that knows what it's doing, puts grown ups and charge, sorts out public services, and gets on top of the cost of living crisis, something like that.

18:56If I was still in charge of the Labour Party Social Media campaign, I'd be clipping that right now and putting it out with the Eddie Conte or whatever, but I think you're right, and also I think that interestingly, the policy you mentioned, immigration, every day since then, and I imagine this is being absolutely swamped into the social media feeds of people that they're trying to attract, the conservatives have been absolutely bombarding the message that this is Kierstthama essentially opened or immigration policy, no recognition of the fact that we didn't have this problem pre -Brexit, no recognition of the fact that they made promises on numbers, which they felt to keep.

19:37So I think Kierstthama is taking a bit of a risk in doing what you've praised him for, and likewise, even today, I think any sensible person is going to say, if he does become primalist, redeveloping good relations with Macron as President of France, particularly after they were smashed by Johnson Lionton Macron, which Macron will never forgive, and then the sort of trust aberration, it's a sensible thing to do, but again, the Conservatives are out all over the airways today basically saying, this is Kierstthama ready to give Macron what he wants, and it's the unraveling of Brexit. So that again goes back to the point about, we're not insensible, grown up, serious politics anymore, and I do think you're right that if Labour would come along and say we're going to be serious and competent, grown up, that alone is a pretty powerful message.

20:20I also think that it's good for Kierstthama to do some things, which are very clear, even if they're a little bit unpopular, because I think it's very important at the stage to establish that he's somebody with clear beliefs, and I think he shouldn't be worrying too much about the detailed polling, what he needs to be worrying about is the impression he's giving of clarity and direction. Yeah, and also being serious, which is why actually being seen with these guys is no bad thing. Now talking about being seen with some of the world leaders, quite a few of them not there this way, you're the UNGA in the United Nations General Assembly.

20:53Sooner or later, it's not going. Is Macron going? I know he's not there today. Macron's not going either, no. Putin's obviously not going. Putin's not here. Yeah. And Xi Jinping? Xi Jinping, I think, is a bitinous. I mean, it's very, very sad because, you know, I'm in New York, and as you can imagine, traffic has ground to a halt outside. It's not just the UN General Assembly, but it's also the big meeting on the sustainable development goals and its UN climate week. So everybody's gathering. It's a big, big moment for the UN and for the idea of international cooperation. I saw the President of Malawi yesterday.

21:29I saw the First Minister of Scotland yesterday. I was with Irish Aid, which sent their best wishes to you. Did you get homes that I've been working away for the podcast? Did he say yes? He did. He seemed to be very keen in enthusiastic. So I think that's it. I think we're hopefully there. And actually, I was very struck by what Scotland and Ireland are doing in the ways in which they're showing leadership particularly, and we don't talk enough about climate, but particularly around the issue of loss and damage and reparations, because one of the challenges with climate money is balancing two very different things.

22:01One of them is the technological transition to cleaner forms of energy, which often means that the money is going into the polluting countries and the polluting countries tend to be slightly wealthier, middle income, upper middle income countries. So a lot of money will end up going to Indonesia, to China, to do the transition. But the people who are on the receiving end of climate change. So I saw the President of Malawi yesterday, and they have just had the most horrifying cyclone, probably the worst climate disaster event that they've had in Malawi's history. And of course, it's one of the poorest countries in the world.

22:33There's no resilience, there's no savings. So you know, when I leave you, I'm going into another big session where we're trying to talk about financing development. So all of this, I'm supposed to cut to the chase, all of this matters. I mean, there are 200 billion dollars a year of overseas development assistance, which are critical for poverty, critical for climate change. And if nothing else, Rishi Sunak should be here simply to meet people. I mean, it is the most efficient way. For me, I can meet African leaders, I can meet so many heads of international NGOs without having to fly around because they're all here at the same time.

23:10What are your memories of UN General Assembly in doing at Botany Blair and stuff? Well, that mainly, the far more important than what was going on inside the assembly, although we did put a lot of work into those speeches, but they're very difficult, those United Nations General Assembly speeches, because unless your, like if Zelensky turned up today and did a big number, I know he's going to see Biden, isn't he? But if the, you know, a man of the moment type person can get commandful attention if Mandela went there shortly after he came out of jail. But the truth is that most of the time, most of the leaders are not that interested in what most of the other leaders are saying because they're all over the place doing their own meetings.

23:50And what my memories of the UNGA are all about endlessly rushing around from one bilateral to another, usually in terrible, polky little offices. The British mission in the United Nations building is it's like sort of like a large cupboard. It's unbelievably, and you actually to get there. So it's very grand. You think you're going there. So I remember I went for a meeting with the President of South Sudan there. And you literally walk as though you're at the back of a theatre down these sort of fire escape panels and strange walls. And then you end up at this thing where you've got the British flag sort of propped up rather precariously next to the flag of the other country.

24:28And you sit and have your photographs taken. Yeah, it's bizarre. You know, I can remember there were times for example during the, when the Northern Ireland stuff was very, very difficult when, you know, you might, obviously the Americans are important the whole time. But there are other countries that you just want to bring in and to be aware and to have them express support and so forth. And you can get through an awful lot of work. That's what I agree with you. I think it's a mistake for the sooner not not to go there. I can't quite understand why I wouldn't unless he was, you know, I think was it was it last year that he went and there was very scant interest in his speech.

25:02Maybe the, maybe the back of his mind is just this worry that Britain is not seen as the, as the big cheese that it was. But I'm pleased with what you're saying about Scotland and Ireland because I think that what they understand, what often what smaller countries understand is the importance of soft power. And you can generate that at these gatherings on the sustainable development goals, by the way. If you haven't seen it already, do you know the famous Al Pacino halftime talk? He's, he's a coach in this fantastic film and it's called in any given Sunday and he's, he's doing this halftime team talk.

25:33And it honestly, you don't have to love sport to have the hair on your next stand, you up. And Richard Curtis, who's obviously, I'm assuming Richard Curtis involved in this film because it's a, it's a beautiful piece of film. So they're using Al Pacino's halftime team talk to do a halftime team talk about the sustainable development goals and how we're nowhere near where we need to be. And, and sort of calling on the world again. But, you know, you were making the point, there's not that much coverage about what's happening there. Just, it's very sad. And I think a bit guilty because I kind of slightly sort of bounced it in as a topic because I happen to be here.