183. Israel-Gaza: What Happens Next

28:04People were starting to think there about cost of rebuilding infrastructure and so forth. Well, you've now got two parts of the world where you're having very, very similar problems. Ultimately, the big powers in the world are going to have to come together and have a plan for them. And the costs are unbelievable. You will have seen some of the estimates out of Ukraine, which were well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The estimates on rebuilding Afghanistan were very high. But this is much more extreme because the amount of heavy explosive that's being dropped, cost of rebuilding is going to get well beyond any conceivable international development budget to put it in context.

28:43The whole world overseas development assistance a year is about 200 billion a year. And that's covering all the extreme poor in sub -Saharan Africa, in parts of Asia. That's all the health programs, education programs. Almost certainly we will end up with comparable amounts of damage done in Gaza and Ukraine and where that money's coming from. I have no idea. I thought that one of the most impressive parts of the interview that you've all know Harari was when we talked about Ukraine and President Zelensky. You've all had been very, very pretty damning about quite a lot of the prominent leaders in the world, notably Netanyahu, but also Trump and others.

29:25But the way that he spoke about Zelensky and the leadership he'd shown in Ukraine and now the leadership that he was trying to show in support of Israel. But as a Jew, but I also think that part of that with Zelensky must be that he and the Ukrainians will be worrying that the international eye is taken off his struggle. And you can see that almost a sense of fatigue around the Ukraine situation in a way that there isn't currently with the Middle East because the Middle East feels less normalized. It's more of a shock. And there is this fear that it's going to develop into something even worse, even bigger and quite quickly.

30:15But I think that does put Zelensky in a very, very vulnerable place. And this is why I think people do worry that we're getting into a situation that we haven't seen for 70 or 80 years. I haven't really seen since the end of the Second World War because of course, this is now the moment where nobody is going to be paying attention to the fact we've had seven military coups in Sub -Saharan Africa. There's going to be very little appetite to respond to the famines that are inevitably coming. Martin Griffiths, who's the UN Assistant Secretary General, who we're going to be interviewing on leading quite soon is in the region now, moving between Egypt and Israel.

30:52He's been very, very strong in his statements. Yeah, but he will be very worried that he's also the guy who's responsible for trying to mobilize billions to try to deal with the forgotten conflicts with what's happening in Congo, what's happening in Yemen. And as things spiral out of control, you get to a place unfortunately where if China were to invade Taiwan, people simply don't have the bandwidths all the time to think about how to respond. So anyway, a lot, a lot to keep discussing. Let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about happy and using Poland from the progressive's point of view.

31:28Thank you.

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33:42Welcome back to the rest of the policies for me, Mr. Campbell and me, Rory Stewart. Now, Paul and Rory, I'm going to give a shout out to my book publicist, Isabel Ralphs, whose parents are Polish and who was so mistrustful of the PIS government that she traveled to Poland to vote. Because there was all these stories doing the rounds that the Polish government were going to make it difficult for the diaspora to vote. So the results are, the PIS remain. They are the right wing law and justice party. They've been very right wing. They've done all sorts of stuff on abortion, on judicial reform. They've got an incredible grip on the media, including the state broadcaster whose coverage during the election, according to Isabel, has been so biased as to be absurd.

34:36And although they were the biggest party, they did not get the sufficient votes. Then plus the confederation, the very hard right party that we've talked about before. So it looks like Donald Tusk, who was one of the key figures at the European Union, during the Brexit negotiations, it looks like he's going to be able to form a government, his party came second, and with two of the other smaller parties, it looks like he's going to be able to form a government and get rid of this right wing Polish government, which has caused an awful lot of celebration in most of the capitals of the European Union.

35:13Unbelievable. Because anybody wants to read about this in detail, there's some wonderful work by Ann Applebaum, who's a popularist in Poland. But essentially the PIS got in in 2015. So right at the beginning of the age of populism, just after Narendra Modi in 2014 had been elected in India and before Donald Trump got in the US. And it very much was part of the central populist playbook. It was all about the people against the elite. And then as soon as it was in power, it started trying to make sure it would never ever be removed from power by changing the constitutional rules. So it basically, as you said, turned the whole state television, their equivalent to the BBC into a government propaganda machine.

35:56It used state owned companies to fund its political campaigns. It totally tried to politicize the civil service. It did horrifying stuff on the judiciary. So obviously normally in a country, the judges supposed to be independent. But in the case of Poland, they managed to use commissions in other ways to make sure that they had judges who were favorable towards them. They then tried to change electoral laws, leaptops, secret military documents in order to try to win the selection. So it felt from the opposition's point of view as though it was impossible, as though this was almost as in Barboui's situation where the thing was so rigged against the opposition, they'd never be able to win.

36:33But they did it. And it's really encouraging. And of course, it makes many polls. Remember 1989, where the Communist Party tried to rig the elections and were defeated. One of the best things about this election was, and it shows that when people realize that elections really have something important on the line, they turn out. And for the first time ever, the youth vote was larger than the, in terms of a share of the population, was higher than that of older people. And it's the same in Poland as historically it is. It is in most democracies that you are the more likely you are to vote. And in fact, the younger voters were above 70 % turnout and older voters below that.

37:20And yet one of the other things that they did, Drony, I think we talked about this briefly before, the government added these four referendums to hold on the same day as the election. And they weren't really necessary from a constitutional point of view, but it was a way of getting more money into the party machine. And it was also a way of sort of, there were almost like leading questions in the political debate. And so people went out to vote in the general election at 73%. Armed with all these other ballot papers, which most of them then just ignored. So I think the turnout for that was around 40%.

37:57Which meant that even if they'd won, they would have had no standing because it's below the threshold for it to be valid. So I think this, I think there's a lesson in this for all politicians around the world. The elections, people have to feel that there's something really important at stake. And I think that maybe there's a lesson in there as well for Labour at the moment in the UK context that people want to know the differences as well as the similarities. And it's on the differences ultimately that you will be able to motivate people to get out and vote. Now they will, by the way, they will try, I think, to hang around.

38:35There's now quite a long process to see what happens. We'll wait and see whether the PIS will just sort of go gracefully or whether they'll try to delay things and form their own coalition. But I think, you know, we have talked about so many votes and so many elections are fraught.

38:57We're wanted in the Antipodes. But this I think is a very, very significant moment. And it is a real, it is a to be fair to Donald Tusk, that is quite a thing to have fought in that environment and to have kept his head up and kept going. And it would seem now coming back as Prime Minister, that is quite a clue. And actually he did it in a rather wonderful way too. I mean, one of the strikingly, so just to remind me a little bit who Donald Tusk was, Donald Tusk is somebody who represents the, I guess the liberal center right. He's the kind of hero for people like me and David Gork. And he ran the European People's Party, which is the right wing faction, the European parliament.

39:40And he then became president in Europe. And in that context, he was very central. People remember him during the Brexit negotiations, because he was there from 2015 onwards. And he ran a campaign, which was rather wonderful. He made a lot of use of some very incredibly talented, a women candidates at a time when the right wing populists were trying to weaponize the abortion issue, because of course, Poland is a Catholic country with quite a lot conservative views. He didn't get down to polarizing politics. He had a pretty impressive, kind of unifying, moderate message. And as you said, he mobilized a lot of young people.

40:24So it was quite an idealistic campaign in some ways. And it's rather sort of wonderful that it wasn't a sort of cynical, brutal, bear -knuckle fight. It was a campaign of peenings, people's better nature. And really matters, because of course, Poland is the giant population terms, economic terms, visa in Europe, will be very central to the future of the European Union. And was being locked out of a lot of European Union funding because of its attacks on the rule of law and judiciary. And of course, what Vladimir Putin was hoping, having all -bound in Hungary, we just had the election in Slovakia, which went to another populist.

41:05And then if you get Poland in there as well, that locked in, as you say, into a third term and then possibly a fourth term where they think Zimbabwe might be overstating it, but certainly that they become almost like, sort of, one party state. That has been halted for now. There's no doubt they'll come back. And it will be, the other thing we should say about Donald Tusk it will be difficult to govern, because the PIS remain the biggest party, they will be the biggest party in the parliament. So he's going to have to use all the political skills that he's developed. But I agree with you, it was a, it was an example of Michel Obama's famous, you know, when they go low we go high.

41:46But happily this time it seems to have worked. Well, really, really exciting. And the other thing, of course, he'll be dealing with, and we talked about this a little bit on some of the interviews this week, that one of the things that populism is associated with is corruption, because when you start taking out the independent judiciary, silencing the media, you inevitably end up with corruption. And that's definitely been true in Poland. And one of the things that's driven voters out is the sense of just how corrupt this government is. Yeah. Now, less happily, Australia. Just remind people, and then you've been following it much more closely, but just remind people, the voice referendum was a referendum to give Indigenous Aboriginal Australians a voice in national events.

42:27And it was a relatively moderate proposal, which was there would be a body set up. It's not entirely defined, but the idea was that these people who were the original inhabitants of Australia, who from the late 1700s onwards, when essentially the British Empire took over Australia, found themselves more and more marginalized, and have found themselves in much more difficult poverty statistics, health statistics, marginalized and what was originally their own country, should have more of a voice and the way things are run, in a way that actually marries to much more New Zealand. Anyway, over to you on the result.

43:01Well, I think one of the reasons why I think a lot of Australians are feeling very, very down about this now is because New Zealand, Canada, other countries do appear to have been able to handle much better their relations with Indigenous populations. This is the 45th referendum in Australia's history, and only eight have been successful. And when they have been successful, it has always been because there has been unity between the government and the opposition. Now, when Antony Alba -Lazy was campaigning to be prime minister, he was very clear that this referendum was going to be part of his programme.

43:45And at the time, it seemed that he had the opposition broadly on side. And I think in the reckoning and the sort of soul searching that's going now, obviously the opposition has the benefit of being able to say Alba -Lazy called his referendum and he lost, and it was divisive, it tore the country apart, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. On the other hand, I think the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, is playing quite a dangerous game, not just for the country, but I think for his own political strategy as well. There's an element of Trump and Brexit to what he's been doing. And part of the soul searching has also been about the way that the media debate developed in this referendum.

44:31So to give you one thing that Dutton at one point, for example, he put out this statement that the referendum was being rigged because they were going to accept ticks as well as crosses inside the ballot box. Now it sounds sort of relative, well, so what? The so -what around that that I think is important is that it wasn't true and yet it became, it just got fed into this whole thing about the confusion about what was going on. And the media didn't really challenge him over it, they sort of covered it as a big row. And a little bit like we had in Brexit where, you know, lies were told, and the lies then become part of the narrative.

45:16And the media is no longer part of that self -writing process within politics. And this I'm afraid has been one of the consequences of Trump, Johnson, Burlescone, etc. Presumably, you are now really reeling from from referendum. I mean, you were obviously heartbroken by Brexit. You were thrown off balance very much by the referendum in Columbia, which was supposed to confirm the peace deal, which was then lost. Now the voice referendum, Australia, I mean, you come to the view that you are not a great fan of referendum. Well, I never was, but I think you have to have them for major, major, major constitutional change, but I think they're becoming impossible because what happened with this one?

45:56If you look at the polling graph on the voice, it started, when the debate started, there was an overwhelming majority in favour, and it's just gone steadily down and down and down and down as it's been taken over by other issues and then by social media and then by lies and then by social media which ventilate the lies. So what do you do about it? I mean, if you were called in for a referendum in the future, I don't know, some other country asked for advice, how would they do it better? How do you win these things? How would you have won the voice referendum? They could have done it differently, and in fact, there was a very, very strong possibility at one point that they might have done it just as a legislative change.

46:38We are campaigning on this and if we get elected, we are going to legislate to have a voice for the indigenous people in our parliament. The reason why Anthony Albanese didn't want to do that was because of his worry that a future government would get rid of it, which they could. So that's why he felt he had to have a referendum. But the other thing, I don't know whether they could do this, this would also require a referendum, I guess. But the rules of referendum in Australia, you have to have this double majority, you have to have a majority of the votes and you have to have a majority of the six states, which means you have to win four, two.

47:11Well, on this one, they lost six nil. So the reason they've got those rules, of course, is to stop things like the Brexit referendum of a 52 -48 victory changing something dramatically. Exactly. So it's setting a higher bar for what you need for a referendum. It's also very relevant to us in Britain because you and I think I'm certainly passionately in favor of changing to something more like a New Zealand electoral system. But when the Lib Dems tried under the coalition, Niclag tried to do it when he was deputy prime minister, of course, it went to a referendum and it lost. The only way that we'll really be able to get that change through is to get parties campaigning in a manifesto to say if we're a lexit, we'll change the electoral system and then taking it to a legislation.

47:54I agree. I don't think you could do it with a referendum. I really don't, I think it would be, I think it would look what happened with AV is that once it got into a referendum, when you had the conservatives in the coalition who didn't really support it, so they weren't putting much energy into it. It was a big thing for the Lib Dems, but the, you know, so the Labour Party didn't particularly want to help the Lib Dems out too much. And the media sense that it wasn't sort of cutting through with the public and, you know, it just didn't become a big thing. I always say when people say to me, you know, why can't we change the electoral system?

48:25I say, well, did you bother to vote in the AV referendum? Most people say no. But I did the other thing, this is just the nature of what our politics is. Maybe our politics has always been like this, but I think it's been exacerbated. What you've seen with the way the Australian opposition has approached this, this guy Peter Dutton, it has been, you know, he's been working out how this is going to help him build a bigger base as he goes into a general relation. There is a massive lesson in that of those eight referendums that have been successful. They've always required the government and the opposition to be in the same place, getting the government and the opposition in the same place on any major issue at the moment in pretty much any democracy in the world is very, very hard.

49:05Well, to then go on to, I guess, a story that's disappointing for you, but I think actually it's quite a good sign for New Zealand democracy, which is the New Zealand election. And one of the good things about the New Zealand electoral system, which I'm a great fan of, as a friend of yours pointed out in an email that she shared, is it's led to a much more even balance between the parties. Five all. That's right. Ten elections, five all. So this time, the national party, which the equivalent to conservative party, has won, been a big swing. A listeners will have, many of people will have listened on leading to our infu with Chris Hipkins, who was the New Zealand Prime Minister going into this election.

49:41Do you remember where I pointed out to him that there were five prime ministers, I named them, who had taken office in the middle of the term, at every single one of them lost at the next election. And he said, well, I intend to reverse that trend. And I'm afraid he hasn't. I mean, I thought he was very, very likable guy. But boy, did he get a seat? And his party, Chris Hipkins party had a collapse from 50 % of the vote to 31 % of the vote from 62 seats to 34 seats. So it now looks like Chris Luchston, who we have a promise. I mean, I hope to be able to deliver him as the next New Zealand Prime Minister to be interviewed on the not quite as impressive as the conservative that I've delivered this week, Rory.

50:37Tell our listeners who I've managed to persuade to come on the path. We haven't even discussed this. I can't believe if you don't want to. I'm not sure about that. We need to discuss that. Okay. Anyway, we'll talk about talk about that. Talk about another occasion. Anyway, come back. So Chris Luchston, who's the New Prime Minister in New Zealand, who hopefully will get on leading soon. Very interesting guy, because like many of the politicians we've been talking about, he's very, very recent to politics. He's the absolute opposite of Chris Hipkins. Chris Hipkins, been in politics since he was a student, they're all the way through much more like sort of David Cameron or George Osborne or Ed Melliband, kind of professional politician.

51:15Chris Luchston worked at Unilever with the CEO of Unilever Canada and then the CEO of Air New Zealand. Then he only entered politics in 2019 and he's already managed to become Prime Minister. And yeah, he's seen on politics as fascinating. There are two parties that will matter. One of them is the New Zealand First Party, run by a man called Winston Peasers, who is a very, very, I think the word is colourful, veteran New Zealand politician, who's been in New Zealand politics since the 1970s, Father Maori, who was initially very associated with the Maori cause and swept Maori constituencies in his early political career.

51:53But has since become, as New Zealand First implies, associated with anti -immigration movements, challenging the language attacking woeckness, despite the fact he's a Maori heritage. And then on the other side, Act, which is the Association of Consumers and Tax Pairs, which is a sort of Liz Trusts -like party, which is all about tax cuts, cuts to offer, but is also confusing because it's New Zealand, because it was actually largely inspired by somebody from the Labour Party, Roger Douglas, who was a Labour MP, brought in a lot of the economic reforms, the early 90s, right overbacked you. Chris Hipkins, you say that it's sort of like a Liz Trust party, I mean, they're sort of arch -libertarians really.

52:32And it won't be that easy to manage them. There are two views about them. One is that they sort of reflect the modern world and post -clobalisation approach to the economy and so forth. The other is that a bit like, I think most people in Britain now see Liz Trusts, they're kind of a bit unhinged and dangerous. But also that, what the PR system has done, and you're a massive fan of the New Zealand PR system, but what Jacendrider earned it, the last election was remarkable by New Zealand standards. She, you know, the Labour Party got an overall majority. That is why the scale of this defeat is so big because they've gone from that, as you say, to virtually halving the number of seats in the parliament.

53:14Yeah, even with that, the opposition have not been able to get to a majority without the coalition deals that the Luxons are now going to have to have to do. The mutual friend of myself and Chris Hipkins, who set up our interview with him, Darren Hughes, who's a he -wee who's based in Britain. And he made quite an interesting observation about, we talked about Poland, and he wondered whether actually what's happening here is that incumbents are in real trouble everywhere, in part because of what they had made the countries do during lockdown. Jacendrider earned, got loads of praise globally for handling of COVID, including here, including from us, but clearly in New Zealand, it didn't go down as well as we perhaps thought.

54:00And the other issue he pointed to is that we talked about the voice in Australia, but in relation to the Maori population in New Zealand, there is a view on the right that Labour do too much for the Marries, and there is a view on, in most of the Marries, that they don't do enough for them. And they sort of got hit on that as well. Darren also understandably coming from progressive side underplayed the significance of law and order and crime in the selection, but it was very significant, at least in terms of the right -wing parties in the way that they campaigned. Because the Labour Party, the previous governing party, Chris Hipkins' party, had committed to reduce the prison population by 30%, which is something that you and I, broadly favour, in fact, I think in question time, tomorrow we'll go on and discuss a little bit, moves to reduce the prison population, Britain.

54:51But this has coincided with a very dramatic increase in certain times of crime. There's been 533 % increase in ram rating, for example, 42 % increase in violent crime, and well over 70 % in New Zealanders, including over 70 % of Labour voters, one harsher sentences for young people, one more offenders in jail. And it's uncomfortable for progressives because elections where people talk about being tough on law and order, or being tough on immigration are extremely uncomfortable. But there's no doubt at all that these are, I think, issues that do matter to a lot of voters around the world. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, Rory, must the approach?

55:34Well, there we are, Chris Hipkins, no longer Prime Minister, a debate now, I guess, as to whether he stays on, or whether he does a David Cameron and just moves off into the sunset, I suspect he'll stay on. It's always a difficult call after you lose the election, but it was a very, very big defeat. I think it's one of those strange things, or he's a very popular politician in New Zealand, but that doesn't always equate to people wanting to vote for you in your party. No, and I think the scale of this defeat is pretty dramatic, to have the national score from 25 to 45. It's the sort of scale of defeat that Rishi Sunak currently looks like is on course to face, and it'd be difficult to imagine in the British context Rishi Sunak staying on after that kind of defeat.

56:16So I wonder what the Chris Hipkins will survive. Well, on the happy note of Rishi Sunak suffering as bigger defeat as the New Zealand Labour Party just did. Let's say goodbye for now. Thank you very much. Speak soon. Bye.