195. Question Time: Is Sunak's Rwanda plan doomed to fail?

0:00Thanks for listening to the Restus Politics, sign up to the Restus Politics Plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestuspolitics .com. That's therestuspolitics .com. At Blinds .com, it's not just about window treatments. It's about you. Your style, your space, your way. Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right. From free expert design help to our 100 % satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

0:32Because at Blinds .com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you. Visit Blinds .com now for up to 40 % off site -wide, plus a professional measure at no cost. Rules and restrictions apply.

0:49Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me asked Campbell and with me Rory Stewart. Now Rory, let's kick off with something that we're both quite fascinated by, but you're sort of mildly obsessed with, and that's OpenAI, SAM, Altman, redacted, good name for listener. Following OpenAI's tumultuous weekend is raised concerns about the stability and alignment of artificial general intelligence with human values. In light of this, what measures can governments take to ensure that the development and implementation of AGI not only aligns with, but also enhances human welfare and global interest?

1:28What the hell is going on? So that's the first thing. Nobody knows. It's really amazing. The New York Times has written five articles, has thrown every journalist they've got in their Sonny, their tech pages at it. And they've basically managed to find out nothing. Sam Altman won't comment. The chair won't comment. Just take it back for a bit for listeners. I think most people will understand, but OpenAI is the absolute center of the artificial intelligence revolution. That's the company that produced ChatGBT3 and ChatGBT4. And Sam Altman was the CEO of OpenAI. He created this thing and is therefore one of the most significant tech entrepreneurs businessmen in the world.

2:12And the end of last week, he was without any warning fired by his board, which didn't include the chairman of the board, who also walked out and protested. So the CEO is gone. Chairman of the board is gone. And they didn't bother it seems to tell Microsoft that had just invested $13 billion in OpenAI, which is less than $13 ,000 million, but didn't bother to inform them. So Microsoft has now hired him. So Microsoft has now satya Nadella, who's the head of Microsoft has now hired him in to run independent research institute for them. The phrase that keeps being repeated by OpenAI is that he's been fired for lack of transparency in interactions with the board, effectively undermining that decision.

2:57So the idea is that he was getting on with a gender as the CEO that the board didn't endorse, but it's an unbelievable decision. And the story that people seem to be circling around, whether it's true or not, is that Ilya Sutskeva, who is one of the other founders and he's on the board, is worried that he wasn't taking seriously enough the ethical risks around AI that Sam Altman was beginning to lean more and more heavily into the commercial opportunities. And this of course has been a criticism of Elon Musk, who we've talked about in the last podcast. Elon Musk helped to get OpenAI off the ground when it was a charity and has been in a boiling rage ever since now that it's gone partly commercial with the money coming in from Microsoft.

3:41And of course, it's also on the side of the fact that AI is a potential risk. So a lot of this is caught up. It seems, although we can't get to the bottom of it yet, in a frantic disagreement within the community about whether there are moral risks of it. Ilya Sutskeva has put out a short statement, I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI, I love everything we built together and we'll do everything I can to reunite the company. And obviously this guy, Altman, who I've never met, is clearly very, very popular. There was a sort of massive walk out.

4:17And this is something that we talked about with Mustafa Suleiman and Rita Hoffman. And essentially, there's this argument between people who think that the whole thing is going to be catastrophe and who really, really worried that what they're actually doing with the stuff that they're creating. And those who feel that they're more realist, which is that this is new technology, but it doesn't pose massive, extension threats. And that's where Altman was. But it does seem extraordinary that they can, despite them being massive, incredibly powerful, wealthy companies, still sort of really behaving like startups.

4:56They're behaving like startups. And there's also a sense of how tiny this world is. I mean, absolutely tiny this world is. I mean, a lot of the people we've been interviewing are on the boards of various of these companies, or the major investors and various these companies. These are all their friends. So it's got much more of a feeling of what I guess of what it felt like with you when you were coming into office to 97 of a very close group of people who've known each other for 15, 20 years, who basically many of them were at Stanford together. Sam Altman ran the big venture capital firm, the most famous sort of tech startup investing firm in California before he went on to launch open AI.

5:34Many of these people who talk about were at PayPal, so Elon Musk, Greed Hoffman, all these people, Peter T. O 'Lall, knew each other when they were setting up PayPal. So it's a tiny world. I think the other thing just quickly, I was having dinner with some very, very interesting international CEOs. So heads of big international companies, Americans, Swedish, Spanish, et cetera. And how quickly AI is changing the way they think they were saying that nothing in 40 years of business they ever seen is having an impact as quickly as AI is. It's changing the way they think about tools. It's changing the way they think about whole functions in their company.

6:14Do we even need to have a call center anymore? Do we even need software engineers? And it's also beginning to generate completely different ideas about what a business model can be. And in fact, I think if you were Labour coming in to run the British economy, the great hope would be that AI might actually lead to a real productivity revolution and that that might be the thing that would get growth off the ground again. I think this is something Tony Blair has been trying to say, isn't it? Absolutely. Well, that's why I think we were both quite pleased that Kierstauer gave Peter Kyle this job that is sort of technology and innovation, which is clearly right.

6:48This is right at the heart of it. So I think a government that really did have a strategy for that would, you know, it could be the future of growth. We don't know. Yeah, I think I mean, it could be amazing. I mean, the problem is, of course, people are very skeptical because there's this great cliche from an economist who said we see computers everywhere except in the economics statistics that technology was supposed to 30, 40 years ago bring these incredible productivity gains that it never quite seemed to bring. One of the jokes is that you get ever better versions of PowerPoint, but instead of improving your productivity, you just make ever fancier PowerPoint decks.

7:25So the question is, is AI finally going to produce what you want, which is getting more out of the same number of people? Yeah. Yeah. Now you're turn. All right, here's a question for you. Paragraph films, why didn't news reporters scream the most ridiculous and unprofessional comments and questions, politicians going in and out of buildings? And is there any strategy of answering these without becoming a story? Should the news be able to use these clips? It really grinds my gears. Can you give us an example of some of these questions that they share? What's going to make some noise? Are you going to resign home secretary?

8:02Right, exactly. And then at the more the home secretary, it avoids the question, the more the question comes, are you going to resign home secretary? Or sometimes the question is like, are you a liar?

8:18I know that there was a guy who sadly, sadly died recently, but his nickname was goby, and he was the BBC doorstep guy and he used to stand outside Downey Street and literally just shout those questions. But every now and again, somebody answers the truth, or they react in a way that kind of make they do something interesting. But what would be your advice to a cabinet minister walking out of Downey Street facing goby? Oh, oh, smart and move on. But if you think about it, that woman, the Johnson -Mayda Dame, Andrea Jenkins, I mean, the only thing that she's really known for is basically giving the middle finger to a bunch of photographers.

8:59I bet you that was in response to a shout -out to your question. Right. So it produced the great photograph. Yeah, exactly. So you might get a reaction. Most of the time, it's a completely way, a complete waste of time. I mean, the only time that I've really had intense sort of personal media scrutiny was in the build up to the Iraq inquiry. And we had them outside the house the whole time. And I just decided day one, I'm not going to say a single word at any point outside my house. And I'm not going to look at them, react at them nothing. And was it not a bit weird? Because presumably you knew them all.

9:34Some of these people would be doing a lot of friends standing out there shouting at you. Yeah. And how does it feel to suddenly find that your friends are now turned into a sort of being crowd of lunatics on your front door? The really friendly ones probably wouldn't be being, but they'd be there. But you just have to go into a mindset that says they're not here. It's funny. When I actually went to the Iraq inquiry itself, I think I might have told you this before. There were dozens and dozens of media and there were protesters. And the police said to me, the security people said to me, John, go in the back and I said, no, there's no way I'm going in the back.

10:07So I walked through and I was so in the zone that I wasn't even aware that things were being thrown at me. I was just, I just decided I'm going to walk from A to B, I'm going to get to that door. I'm going to go in. Nobody's getting a deal to say that I sort of sculpt in the back. And I got there and one of the people who was working for me, shoes and tears because she'd seen this and I was even aware of it because I just said to myself, I'm going to walk through this now and nothing matters. You've just got to get in the mindset that says they're not there. But you'd be amazed how often goby would get a response.

10:44Some kind of reaction with a draft question. Now, Dutch elections is ponting. The grace of anti -politics politicians shown in the Dutch new social contract currently top and polls, could you discuss the upcoming general election in the Netherlands? Johannes Dutch elections coming up, PM Mark Lutter, not up for reelection. How important is seniority in international relations, all in glass. Do you think a new party in the UK could ever have the same sudden and rapid growth in popularity that Peter Ompt zips NSC party in the Netherlands has had such that they could pose a challenge to two main UK political parties.

11:19Now, I say, after you brought this up, nobly last week and did a bit of Dutch, I like you got a few messages from friends and Holland, including a friend who was actually having dinner with Peter Ompzick at the time and send a photograph. And I think that might mean that if we wanted to interview him on the show, he might be up for it. But one of the things was they said that we hadn't properly covered how he came to prominence. And this was an amazing thing called the child care benefit scandal. So, to Slaan Aferra. Oh, very good. That was very impressive. It was a child benefit scandal. Yeah.

11:56So, a bit like, you can see this a bit with what Jeremy Hunt's doing at the moment where he's saying that he's going to get tough on benefits. So, basically the Dutch government seems to have gone very, very hard on parents claiming child benefits suggested that they were fraudulent, demanded that they paid back a lot of money, particularly targeted immigrants, ended up driving a lot of families into hardship. And if I'm right, Peter Ompzick was the first person to really come out clearly and call this out. And this brought down the government. No, I was, it was very interesting because we did our bit and we chatted away and I got lots of emails from people saying very nice to hear you talk about the Netherlands.

12:37I think that you sort of got it right, but you really, there was a big, big, big hole in what you were saying because they were saying as you say that this guy Ompzick, he's been around for a long time, basically a kind of, you know, you'd have said a kind of lifetime back bench really. And he on the right and sort of labour -ish MP, they basically exposed this scandal. And it led to, I hadn't, I didn't even know about this to my shame, but it led to lots of people killing themselves. It reminded me, when I read into it, it reminded a little bit of that post office scandal here where postmasters were being frankly persecuted over things that they hadn't done.

13:14So it was an absolute sort of, you know, let's get tough on benefit fraud. Let's go after them. They went after them. This supposed fraud hunt pursued 10, between 30 and 40 ,000 people. And of course, then what happened? And this is an email I got from a guy called Paul Barley. And he said that essentially the government tried to cover it up. They were aged in that by lots of what he calls the media oligarchy. And Ompzick gained huge support because he refused to let the government sweep it under the carpet. And he was essentially sacked. But he kept going as an independent MP. And it really gave him a prominence and a popularity.

13:57And so he's now set up this new party, the NSC, which just literally just a few weeks old. But interestingly, I then caught another very long email from somebody who said, you're absolutely right that he's gone to the top in no time at all. But it's really weird, because he says he doesn't want to be prime minister. He's given no clarity on who wants to form a coalition with. And the other thing that's happened is Vilders, the very right wing guy, has actually risen in the polls. So the latest polls show this guy, Ompzick, in the lead, Vilders not far behind. And and Franz Timmerman, who's leading the Labour Green Coalition, he's a little bit behind them.

14:38Now, question from Conor for you. What big policy are all the major parties missing out on? Where is a win being missed? Europe. It's the big one. It's no, I mean, I'd want to go for, I'd want to reopen at least the idea of customs union. And that's a huge gap in the market. Now, it's something presumably, could Kierstammer do it courageously after coming in if he didn't put it in the manifesto? Or would he be in trouble if he didn't put it in the manifesto? I think what you could put in the manifesto is that, you know, the Brexit deal was a disaster. Boris Johnson, who led it, has been exposed as a complete liar in a charlatan, is doing enormous damage to the country and will have to review our arranges for the European union.

15:19Very good. So I would do. But I just don't think they're in the, I don't think they're in the same place. But also, if you're serious about growth, then you're going to have to do something about our relations with our closest neighbour. I'll tell you last week, well, the guys that we were talking to in Ireland, I mean, how many of them were saying that, you know, it's just been a disaster for them as well as for us. But at least they've now got, they can still trade with the rest of the single market. So here's my big policy that I love and that everyone thinks I'm barking on. I think a huge citizens assembly, which could almost be a third branch of government advisory.

16:00So it wouldn't, wouldn't be able to pass laws. But I've got a very interesting, for instance, Australian academic, who suggested that what it might be able to do is if the citizens assembly, and it'd be like a jury, so it would be people around the United Kingdom demographically representative randomly selected sitting in the assembly for a period. If the government passed a law that the citizens assembly thought was really bad, they could push it back for a second vote and maybe even a second vote under a secret ballot. So, so let's imagine, I don't know, that Congress and the Senate had all the Republicans had voted, sort of not to impeach Trump.

16:40Maybe if you pushed it back under a secret ballot, maybe they'd vote differently. Maybe the same would have been true with getting a soft Brexit through that if you pushed it back and people could vote under a secret ballot, you might have been able to get a soft Brexit through it. And also, although there would be some cost to that, they wouldn't be huge because it's not a big spending thing. There's a question actually, sort of same theme, you know, quality of democracy. Unlock democracy wants to ask this question. One in the seven UK citizens are currently not registered to vote. That's eight million potential votes in the forthcoming election, who exists outside of the UK's democratic processes.

17:15Should all parties commit to bringing in automatic voter registration in their manifestos? Yes, I'd also like compulsory voting. I like compulsory voting. Where are you lowering the voting age? No, no, I'm against you on that. Pony, because I think it's a bit, I mean, I don't know, we don't want to get drawn down at that, but it's a bit weird because so many bits of our society are about increasing ages from 16 to 18. For example, about your ability to deploy to fight and things like that. Well, I go to loads of schools, you know, and I think most kids in most schools know a lot more about politics than an awful lot of 50, 60, 70 or something.

17:49It's definitely something I picked up when I was an MP is if you wanted to be popular in schools, you definitely said you want to track the voting age to 14 and everyone loves it. The other thing I would do, again, pretty cost neutral, I would take John Major's Nolan principles and I would make them somehow applicable with an outside judge to every single member of parliament. Oh, interesting. I've just got you'd have to set quite a high bar. You wouldn't want the judge interfering every second. No, exactly. But you know, but just the fact of doing it, I think, would improve. Yeah, be interesting, but you'd probably want to set it up with the hope that they would do it once or twice in a parliament, because I really agree to it, certainly.

18:29Okay, everybody, lots more questions to get through. Let's take a quick break.

18:39This isn't ad from BetterHelp. At the moment, we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alice's cold plunges, could be my attempts to meditate or the digital detox that I'm doing in Colombia. But of course, one of the things that we know is that it can be incredibly valuable to talk to another human being, somebody who's actually been trained as a therapist to work through these ideas, calmly objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise.

19:15They've got over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than five million people globally, and you can join in session literally at the click of a button. Change therapists anytime. So obviously not about fixing you, but it's about hearing yourself clearly, maybe for the first time. So talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp .com slash rest politics. That's better H -E -L -P .com slash rest politics.

20:09Deals Brands Wow! Stals and selections vary by location.

20:17Here's another one, Sam Dyson. And it relates to the behaviour in P's. Two questions in one. One, should MPs be allowed to have second jobs that earn more than the standard MPs salary? B, should MPs be allowed to work for companies with links to people under UK economic sanctions? And this is about Brandon Lewis, who is not longer going the cabinet, and now he's picking up a very large six -figure slab for his relationship with some company that's under sanctions. What do you think of that always do? Well, I think the key question always with this is conflict of interest. And I think that's what you really need to focus on above all.

20:50It's not the amount that you earn. It's whether the company you're working for conflicts with your public role. So that's why the most dangerous bit is the lobbying, getting involved in contracts that touch companies that you've been involved in all that cut. That's where the real corruption starts. He was part of a cabinet, which imposed sanctions post the invasion of Ukraine. Yeah, I mean that does seem a bit bizarre. I agree. That does seem a bit bizarre. Now, one of the big questions we haven't really done, there's a lot of questions about is Rwanda. So we've got three questions on Rwanda, and they come from Tootsie Flack, Andrew Watt, and Andrew Hosen.

21:29Tootsie Flack would someone discuss the actual cost benefit of the Rwanda plan. So, so from the legal moral injustice of it, I believe it's been incredibly expensive so far. 140 million. Now, yeah, Andrew Watt, if soon it goes ahead with the law which purports to assert definitively that Rwanda is a safe country, what are the implications credibility of the king and the monarchy who has formed to give Rwanda a scent to a nonsense IMO? And Andrew Hosen, Rishie Sino, it's been telling people he won't let a foreign court block flights through Rwanda. The Supreme Court is a UK court. How can the Prime Minister get away with lying to people?

22:00How does this align with his commitment to integrity, professionalism, and accountability? So there we are. So very quickly on Rwanda thing, and again, this is maybe for people who have not been following it very closely. The broad idea from the government was that people arriving on boats, and in fact they suggested at some point all asylum claimants in the UK would be shipped off to Rwanda, and their asylum claim would be processed in Rwanda, and the British government gave a significant sum of money to the Rwanda government, for the Rwanda government to agree to do this, and the Rwanda government built some quite upscale accommodation, certainly by Rwanda standards, and when I was in Rwanda, a lot of people were going to visit it, and I'm sure the Rwanda government was serious about trying to provide decent accommodation for people.

22:48The Supreme Court, though knocked down the governments of Peele to try to push a head on the ground as something called Rufu -mu, and Rufu -mu is, if you believe a country is likely to send the asylum seekers back to their home country, and they believed that Rwanda had a record of Rufu -mu. So this is important because Supreme Court was not saying that the idea shipping people somewhere is illegal, and that's important because this may be very, very relevant for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. There's a very interesting article by Matthew Sied in the Times, basically saying the asylum system is fundamentally broken because when it was designed, it was not anticipating hundreds of millions of people to have a legitimate claim to asylum.

23:35Somebody sent that to me. Is that the moment he says that he wants us to talk about Libya? Maybe he mentions Libya, isn't it? Listen, I just how crazy this debate has got. I read that Rishi Sunak doesn't like the word Rufu -mu, because it's a bit French. Does that have it French, isn't it? La Foul, it means the crowd. It's sort of re -crowding is what it means. This is why I think Sunak is in trouble because when he stood outside number 10 and said integrity, accountability, all that, professionalism, integrity, accountability, you've got to deliver on that. And what essentially this whole thing is saying is that we don't like the judgment, and therefore we're going to legislate to say that the judgment is wrong by signing a treaty with the country that they say isn't safe for them to say that they're safe, and then we'll say to Parliament that we're saying they're safe as well.