177. Question Time: A new centrist party, mafia politics in New Jersey, and was Jesus a socialist?

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0:49Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Anastak Campbell. Anastak Campbell wants to start you off with. Because you often talk about Sweden, Nicholas Lemmon. Please can you discuss the situation in Sweden right now? The military is being deployed to help the police with a stark increase in gang violence. This is incredible, isn't it? We think of Sweden as a really stable and attractive country where everything kind of works. That image probably will survive this, but it's very, very difficult. I mean, the Prime Minister, Ulf Christensen, he did a TV address to the nation where he said that no country in Europe has ever seen anything like this.

1:27And the situation is they've had 11 gangland murders in the month of September. They've already had a record number of shootings. They've got small bomb attacks going on. And so he's basically said they've had a crisis meeting with with all the police chiefs and the military and they're saying they may need to bring in the military for this. It's pretty terrifying, I think. Because I mean, this was something that Slav Oizizek, who we were talking to, is an interview for Leading, which will come out in a as a young man. He remembers that famous you never locked your door in any of these towns because it was so peaceful.

2:00And he very much says that this is being read, certainly in Sweden. And he reads it as part of the struggle with immigration that many of these gangs are Albanian gangs, the Syrian Turkish gangs. There are some African gangs. And it's experienced, obviously, by the right wing in Sweden as being about immigration policy. And that's going to really fuel populism in Sweden and elsewhere. And of course, the other side of this is not about immigration at all. But I think that's really important for the framing of this to understand that's the way certainly that a certain voter in Sweden and a lot of the right wing press in Sweden is going to play this is about too much immigration.

2:39Well, the prime minister said this has been about sort of naivety and carelessness in the handling of immigration. But just on the the Albanians, I know, always get roped into this. But the specific these 11 murders, these 11 killings in September, appear to be linked to a particular gang situation. It's two gangs that used to be one, call the Fox Drop gang. And one is led by a Swedish Turkish dual national who's now lives in Turkey. And the other is led by his his former right hand man. And it's a huge struggle over access to drugs and weapons. So far this year, there've been 261 shootings, 36 deaths, 73 injuries related to this as of mid -September, 124 explosions.

3:21And the highest ever was 2019, which was just 133. So we're talking about a pretty serious level of violence. And of course, Christus and the prime minister is a fairly right wing leader whose coalition is propped up by the Sweden Democrats that we've talked about before who are hard right. So they've come in on a message to sort immigration. And this is becoming the biggest issue that they're facing. This leader you're talking about, a man called Rawa Majid known as the Kurdish Fox. But as you say, he's been in Sweden since he was a month old, his parents are Iraqi Kurds. He was born in Iran, fleeing from the Iran -Rak war in the 80s.

3:54But it's become a huge international issue because you say he's returned to Turkey and the Swedish government's been threatening the Turkish government with sanctions unless he's returned and all this kind of stuff. Now, another pretty grim political situation you want to talk about, this is corruption in America, Bobby Sifaretto. Have you been keeping up the story of the Democrat Bob Menendez in New Jersey? My relative there was telling me about the gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars found at his home. Some stitched into the lining of his jacket. Is this the case of life imitating art just up the road from Tony Sipranos and New York ganglans?

4:27So what do you know about this? This is a subject I'm totally fascinated by it. And sadly, it is a story about corruption in the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party. New Jersey is a big democratic sort of bastion. The two senators there are this man, Bob Menendez. And actually, Cory Booker, who's this rather wonderful African American senator, anybody who'd like to learn more about the politics in New Jersey, there is a just mesmerizing documentary called Street Fight, which is about Cory Booker's run to be mayor of New York against another figure from the African American Democratic community called Sharp James.

5:02And boy, do you see American corruption and intimidation? It's like you're looking at 1920s. I mean, Sharp James manages to go in and send in the health inspectors into every restaurant that dares to show a Cory Booker poster in his window. It's only a fight within the Democratic Party because no Republican can win this town. To have it sent down, he mobilizes the police. And then, you know, I then got into this stuff and thought, can it really be true that American politics is that corrupt? And I start talking to American friends, they just sort of take it for granted. They don't sort of think it's weird or funny.

5:31So Bob Menendez was basically indicted. This is the other senator from New Jersey. Was first indicted in 2015 for this stuff. And now, as you say, he's found else full of gold bars cash sewn into everything. It's extraordinary. What's going on to him? Nothing. Well, he was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's not a small thing, right? It's a very, very senior senior US senator. I mean, this is a scale of stuff that we never see in Britain. I find it mesmerizing and I try to teach it at Yale. And Americans can't quite understand why I'm so interested in it. They sort of take it for granted that senior senators are just sort of magnificently corrupt.

6:08But they can't all be corrupt. There must be some non -corrupt American politicians. No, no, I don't think Cory Booker's corrupt. I don't think I'd have Barack Obama was corrupt. I don't think John Kerry or Al Gore were. But there is a really corrupt, horrible former street politics famous. You know, Chicago used to be famous for this Boston was famous Rhode Island. There was an amazing guy called Buddy Cianci in Rhode Island who get this was not just imprisoned for corruption. But when he was released, ran again. I managed to get re -elected. I think come out from these corruption charges. He used to, again, he was the Democrat.

6:43His mum, who was an old Italian lady, would sit there at a table and anyone coming would just pile cash on the table. And he let educational property, which was owned by the Rhode Island government to his friend who I'm going to get his name wrong, but had an amazing Italian mafia name who ran car workshop for stolen cars to be refitted inside this thing. So it is an answer to Bobby Ciferoto's question. It is Tony Soprano's New York ganglamps. It is. And some of these investigations particularly some of the ones in the 70s and 80s before the FBI were stopped from doing these full investigation because they were accused of leading senators on.

7:19I mean, exposed incredible things. I mean, they sent in fake shakes who got senators from Florida to agree based on one of the senators from Florida said to an FBI agent something like, you don't need a bribe me. I am as crooked as they come. Oh my lord. Well, listen, talking of corrupt people who come back, Matthew Slovakia election. Can you please talk about the result in the Slovakia election? And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. This is this guy, yes another populist, Robert is spelled FICO, but I think we pronounce it visco. And I was rather encouraged on saturday night because the exit polls looked like he was going to lose, but it turns out no.

8:01The exit polls were wrong. He's come out on top and he's waiting to be called by the president to try to form a government. You know, this is another guy proputing not a supporter of the Ukrainians and a member of NATO. This is the first NATO member that now I think we can say is broadly sympathetic to to put it and that that's the problem. Sort of models himself on Trump has been prime minister before but got sort of, you know, got ousted because of corruption. The area is back. No, it's very, very worrying. And there's also been some very worrying recent data on opinions amongst the French police and security services who seem to be very, very right wing.

8:38And of course, I have a reputation for kind of violence and brutality, which is going to tie into a possible marine, the pen run against macro. I mean, I do think we're going to have to keep coming back to this. There was a moment with Biden's victory in the midterms and the T -Land opponents in Australia and the Slovenian victory. Shults. Shults and macro against the pen, where we all felt maybe this populist tide was receding, but it doesn't feel really like that now. Does that? No. And this is a guy, if this guy who's sort of, you know, he's echoed the whole thing about Ukrainians. Ukraine has been run by a bunch of Nazis, ethnic Russians in the East, need protection, mildly overlooking the fact that Zelensky is Jewish and lost relatives in the holocaust.

9:19And the other thing that they, you know, like a lot of these far -right populists, LGBTs, stuck -cue stuff, absolutely, you know, no interest and so forth. So it's one to watch. It's a very, very small country, but it's a member of the European Union, so definitely want to keep our eyes on. Well, okay. Now here's another, before we get on to other questions, here's a kind of serious one from Roger Wade, he's a quite a successful British businessman. He says, people are increasingly frustrated with the populist politics of both the conservatives and labor. There's a need for a political party that prioritizes the country over the party.

9:52Is the importance of issues like Brexit and rejoining the single market more pivotal in elections and supporting the labor of the conservative party? If so, is the establishment for New Centrist Party to counter the prevailing political establishment necessary? If it's not necessary, what are the underlying reasons? And if it is, would both you and Anastas consider joining such a party? So, there we are. So Roger Wade clearly feels passionately that Brexit was a mistake that we should be rejoining the single market and wants a centrist party to do it. So before we get on to whether you don't join that party, do you think he's right and would it have legs?

10:26I think he's right to feel incredibly frustrated at the stance of both the main parties and the Liberal Democrats on Brexit. I share that frustration. I don't think that Labour is populist in their approach to politics as the conservatives. I think they're a long way apart on that. But I do really wish that they would at least call out the damage that Brexit has been done because, you know, as you keep saying in relation to your assessment of politics being broken, unless you are honest about the scale of the problem, it's very, very, very hard to fix it. My worry is about a new centrist party is that, you know, we talked about this on the main podcast about people left the Labour Party for the SDP.

11:08I want the Labour Party to be the main centrist party and I think it can be. And my worry is that if you set up a third party, a new centrist party now, that all you do is split the progressive vote and that plays into the hands of the conservatives. And I know that's not a great argument, but that's the argument that makes me worry about it. I thought about it a lot during Corbyn's leadership, but ultimately when that new party started with Chuck or Amanda and Chris Leslie and Luke Gianna Berger and all those guys, I in the end, I thought, no, I can't support it because what it's going to do is help the Jories.

11:40Abigail Newman. I'm a 13 year old who's an elected member of the youth parliament for Nottinghamshire. And in November, so congratulations Abigail, obviously. November, I'll be going to the youth parliament, annual sitting in the House of Commons. So this is rather a nice thing that happens in November, which the youth parliament actually meets in the House of Commons. I think it was introduced by Speaker Berkert, I think some will correct if I'm wrong. Theresa May's great friend. I think Theresa May is correct to complain about John Berkert's pretty shocking. My God does she complain. I must say, I'm going to, you know, to be serious for a moment, the actual reports into his bullying are sort of mind numbing.

12:15Her complain was much more about his handling of breaks. Anyway, let's get on, let's get back to the children. Okay, now to Alice, what suggestions did you give Tony Blair when he stood up at the dispatch box so she's leading a debate? And to Rory, how did you overcome your nerves the first time you spoke in the House of Commons? Over to you, first. What suggestions to Tony Blair when he stood up at the dispatch box? Just on the subject, by the way, of young people and politics, I was in leads yesterday at a conference of head teachers, and I met a woman called Hannah, who works for the council in leads.

12:45And she was telling me about this thing called leads children's mayor. If you Google leads children's mayor, it's absolutely fantastic. So kids in leads elect their own children's mayor. And I was reading some of the manifestos on the train home. And honestly, if I was, if I were the parties, there's a bloody good idea there. So Tony Blair is a very, very good speaker, but he did get very, very nervous. He wore the same shoes every single prime minister's questions that he ever did. He traveled everywhere when we were traveling the world with a red ribbon in his pocket. It was given to him by Leiden McCluskey at a funeral.

13:21And that's like a sort of lucky rabbit foot. It's just a kind of, it's a way of dealing with nerves. I mean, I have loads of things like that for speaking. I don't get nervous, but sometimes I do get nervous. And when I do, I have this thing that I'm doing now where I rub my forefinger and my thumbs together. And it just sort of calms me down. I have another thing where I always, always, always, time my shoelaces right shoe first, then the left shoe before I go to a speech. I mean, it's just, these are crazy things, but they just calm you down there. I think I guess the answer is you find the things that help you to calm down.

13:53Yeah, here's a couple of things I did. And one of them is I speak with generally without a written speech. So I'm usually speaking without notes. And I would arrange the points from his speech around the wooden molding that you'll see Abigail when you stand at a scratch box across from you. You'll see some wooden molding. There's this sort of little wooden boxes. And I'd put one point in each box. And as I spoke, I'd move my eye from one box to another to follow the different stages of my argument to make sure I'd made it through all of them. How do you write down the points that you would do?

14:27I've written down the points in the library before I came in. And then I'd memorize them. And then some I'd have to have my pocket and I'd look at them. And then I'd sort of attach them mentally to these boxes so I could stand up and make sure I hit all the points I wanted. One of the things I'd be able to be very careful of though, which always threw me off balance, is the speaker will suddenly spontaneously change the amount of time you've been allocated. So you start with unlimited time. I don't know whether this will happen in your debate. And I prepare a big speech on Syria or Afghanistan.

14:55I'd been till the beginning of the start to get actually fell. I knew quite a lot about Syria. So I'd had a lot to say, or Afghanistan, which I've been working on for about 10 years. And then just as you're hoping to stand up, you're bobbing up and down, hoping to be chosen. And suddenly it will say, speech is limited to eight minutes. So you think, Oh, no, I've got to reduce my speech. Eight minutes. Then it'll say six minutes. And then I'll finally say, you know, speech is limited four minutes. So by the time I get to my feet, I'm having to condense 10 years of stuff in Afghanistan into four minutes.

15:22So having a speech that's flexible enough to compress and above all the mistake I always made, which is don't try to say all the things that you were going to say in your eight minutes speech in four minutes. The other thing I began, if you were at the front bench, and this is something it took us a while to work out. And I don't know whether the youth parliament, I'm sure it doesn't get as noisy and as rude as the comms when they're debating really sort of intense stuff or when it's primed as such questions. But if it gets very, very noisy, then just understand that you will be heard through that microphone.

15:52I think you can be confident that even if the noise is there, if you at the front bench is lean into the microphone, and they will hear you. And in terms of anybody watching outside, that's more important than all the noise. And you look sort of serious and sensible and grown up because you're talking to the microphone while all these kind of Yahoo's are just, you know, belly shouting. If they're ready Yahoo, and you can just simply stop speaking. And if that doesn't work, just sit down and the speaker will bring him to order. You can get up again. All right, more questions to come. Let's have a quick break.

16:21Very good.

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18:21Okay, from Gerald or Gerhard, I don't know whether he's Austrian or British, what do you think of UEFA allowing Russian use teams back into competitions? Is that a slippery slope to the senior team coming in from the cold? What do you think about that, eh? Well, I don't think a lot of it to be quite frank. And I do think it's a bit of a slippery slope. I know quite a lot of people in football and there's a big debate that well, there's been a very big debate going inside UEFA about whether this should have been done. So just to explain to people, the under 17 Russian team is coming back into UEFA competition.

18:53Now FIFA, as I understand it, is still holding out. Now FIFA is normally the bad guy in football. And you're not talking, you know, when they announced it, they talked about letting children back. They made it sound like it's a realised thing, letting children, we're talking about under 17s. And when you talk about under 17s at that level, you're talking about elite athletes, basically. So I do think it is a bit of a slippery slope and I think it's a mistake. And also, UEFA didn't really cover themselves in glory with the handling of the Louie's Rubiali's guy, the Spanish kisser. Because he was a big figure within UEFA and you got the sense that UEFA didn't really want to push down in the way that he has been.

19:31Dan Han, will the cancellation of HS2 alienate voters? So I've been looking a little bit at HS2. It is the most interesting story. I mean, you've pointed out a step before that it's something that was under consideration when you went, when was HS2 first race with you? Was it 2009 that it first sort of was caked into life? Gordon Brown signed off in it and initially said 20 billion in 2009. But were they talking about it? Do you remember them talking about it 10 years earlier? I don't know how long before, but certainly been around, you know, and of course, when Andrew Donis was transport secretary, he was absolute devotee of high speed railway.

20:04Let's say it's 2009, Gordon Brown, 20 billion. That's certainly when the go ahead was given. So initially scheduled to open in 2026, right? Which is obviously 17 years after that, then being delayed to between 2029 and 2033. Oh, we did. And the Birmingham Old and Old, although common stuff, the Houston stuff, talk about it being delayed until at least the 2040s. So I mean, that's nearly 30 years. That's quite quite a long time. And the costs went from 20 billion under Gordon Brown to 32 .7 billion under Justin Greening. Then by 2015, up to 52 billion, where the government was claiming benefits of 100 billion.

20:44By February 2020, it had hit 106 billion. So it was willing to exceed the benefits of the government had been claiming back in 2015. One of the things that I thought about with it is it was an interesting example of partly, you know, turnover, which we complain about, and ministers, but also an inability to manage the costs in a really rigorous way. One of the reasons the costs went up is in order to get it through because the train line ran through beautiful areas, the chill tons and cotswolds, where wrecked landscapes for no benefit, the people living there, because the train didn't stop in those areas.

21:18A lot of those were safe Tory seats. They spent more and more money on trying to dig tunnels and do new changes to accommodate those constituencies. They should have said, I think, listen, this only makes sense if we can build it for whatever Gordon Brown saw 20 billion pounds. So either we do it or we don't do it, but it's complete nonsense to make so many concessions in every single direction that the cost stands out being more than what the initial anticipated benefits were. Well, there must be, I mean, it looked, if you go about to 2009, if anyone had said, by the way, this HS2 thing, it's only going to go from Birmingham to Old Oak Common, nobody would have built it.

21:58And actually, there's quite a good review that I've been reading, which was written in 2020, which we can share, which basically says HS2 only works if the full scheme is built. Yeah, there's sums of money involved. You talked earlier about, you know, people taking corruption for granted in America, you can't have these sums of money without the thing being delivered. So where the hell is all the money? Where is it going? Who has benefited from this? Which are the companies that have not done the job that they were supposed to do for the price they were supposed to do for? There's got to be some sort of public inquiry into this.