198. King Charles on the world stage, Argentina's Brexit, and the real Henry Kissinger

24:01You need billions of pounds of investment into infrastructure in Birmingham and Manchester. And you need to again focus them particularly on services. And they were saying, for example, in relation to France, which has got its own challenges, but on these metrics is doing better than us, that the gap in productivity and wages between Paris and Leon and Toulouse is way lower the gap than the gap between London, Birmingham and Manchester. And if we close that gap, we'd be helping the economy as a whole and we'd be helping those places because of that. And part of the economic argument here, which is one that actually George Osborne was always very sympathetic to, but I think never fully managed to make work, is that in the modern world, cities of I told because it's when you get a critical mass of people, a couple of million people well connected by infrastructure that you really get, the virtuous cycle of people meeting, innovating, setting up businesses together.

24:56And that, of course, we've got in London, the south -east. And that's why the connection between leads and Manchester could be so exciting because it could create a sort of super city Manchester leads. They also point out though that Birmingham Manchester are going to have to start building either outwards or upwards to try to create space. They are doing. We talked to both Andy Burnham and Andy Street, the respective mayors and for a fellow of my son, Calamers in Manchester the weekend and said, you really felt the building because he went to university then, you felt the sort of development of change.

25:28But they're saying it has to be on a scale that we haven't even thought about. But if you look, the one thing that really leapt out to me, so it real wages grew by an average of 33 % a decade from 1970 to 2007, fell back to below zero in the 2010s. In mid -2020s, wages back where they were during the financial crisis, 15 years of lost wage growth has cost the average worker 10 ,700 pounds a year. And almost 9 million younger brits have never worked in an economy that has sustained rising average wages. It is amazing. And there's a lot of really interesting stuff, also uncomfortable stuff. I mean, if for example, it makes the Brexit story more complicated.

26:07It points out that the impacts of Brexit, they say, hasn't been seen in a particular proportional drop of exports to the EU. All foreign direct investment. Instead, it's a general lowering of competitiveness and productivity. Because actually, we're performing badly on our exports to the US and elsewhere. A lot of push on saying future trade deals have to be focused on services and getting service deals with foreign currency and force. And there are also institutional suggestions, which were exciting. So they have the idea that you could set up a growth board. David Golketsch, he's got a similar idea, which is you could set up a thing like the Office of Budget Responsibility, an independent body to look at investment decisions and return on investment.

26:51Because you really need something, they point out that investment in the UK spikes up, goes down, spikes up, goes down, no predictability, they like almost a law pass to say 3 % of GDP should go into investment each year. And then have independent bodies that provide some kind of validation. Otherwise, industrial strategy goes wrong. The reason industrial strategy goes wrong is that it's always too tempting for politicians to put the investment where it happens to meet their short -term votes. Maybe put them in a constituency, which is an marginal that you want to win, or some businessmen manages to charm a minister at a table with a particular story about some fancy industry.

27:28The problem with industrial strategy is it's too vulnerable to politicians making fakey decisions, so creating an independent thing that could look at that more objectively. Because I guess the other thing that comes through it, which is an easy thing to say, but it's true, is that there has been no focus on the long term. And even when Sunat keeps talking about long -term decisions for a brighter future, he's not being long -term. It's we've seen this yesterday with the new immigration thing. It's clearly a direct response to something that happened last week. And it's already unraveling, because this thing about raising the salary you have to be on to come here to 38 ,000, one you're cutting out vast ways of the sectors that are really struggling for labor.

28:08And two, this is where I think it's going to unravel. You're basically saying you can't bring your family here, which is impossible for a lot of people on that level of income. But let me just read this section, which I think gets right to the heart of it. Some of the ingredients of a more comprehensive approach are visible from the UK government focus on closing economic gaps, which in places to the Labor Party's green investment plans or the Welsh government's prioritisation of social partnership. But the test for a broader economic strategy is that it combines goal orientation, being clear about the problem a strategy is trying to solve.

28:41We don't have that. Clarity about context, understanding the time thing. I think that this is so exciting, but just quickly on goal orientation. So one test there will be what are you trying to do? And they're saying what you should be trying to do is produce high quality, high paid jobs. Correct. And that you can get confused by saying what we're trying to do is, for example, transform the environment. You need to work out what your real key goal is and then tie the other things in. Or it could be growth. Yep. But then as you keep saying, labor keeps saying it's growth, but what are the elements of the strategy?

29:13And I think if you focus still on this way, this is the goal, but this is where I mean, look, we're very, very supportive of environmental policy. But I think what they would say is that if you say green growth, you're already confusing it. You've already got two different objectives. Yes. You've got to work out which you'll be driving at. Then they say, clarity about context, understanding the type of country we are. Well, that's not possible if you keep saying that we're the best country in the world. And the opportunities and constraints this bring without nostalgia, all wishful thinking about the future.

29:40Next, and we don't have this either because of the Brexit debate, realism about trade -offs, recognizing the tensions that always exist. Policies of sufficient scale to move the dials. Okay. So realism at trade -offs though. I mean, that's the one where I would wish that somebody will take this report and lay out the really blunt, brutal political implications of this. So there are bits of this that are implying higher taxes, certainly wealth taxes, certainly money being taken away from London the southeast put into Birmingham and Manchester. Very difficult decisions on bits of British manufacturing being prioritized against services, difficult decisions on environmental investment.

30:18So what I'd really like to see, I think this is brilliant, but Labour conservatives need to actually, politicians need to be faced with, okay, but if you want to do this, these are the seven unbelievably tough conversations you need to have with voters. And you also like the final point because you bang on bad all the time, staying power because change takes time and short -termism has been a key UK weakness. And I think I've joined your campaign to try to persuade Kierstarma at some point to say, if a minister's in, they're in, for some considerable time before I bother to move them on and they would take death or illness or scandal to move them on.

30:55I watched Jeremy Hunt yesterday and he performed perfectly well, but where I find he's very, very weak is when he tries to pretend that this constant churn of ministers and strategies has not had a detrimental effect on the, and I think it's had an effect on, well, you and I both talked in recent weeks to people who say that they view the idea of investing in the UK a little ascans at the moment because they don't know what the long term strategy is and they're essentially wasting for a change of government. This is just quickly a quote on Bermuda. So closing productivity gaps in London to those of Leon Tullies, but honestly, they keep going back to honestly, honestly about the scale of change required is essential.

31:32So for mentioned Birmingham, you would need to increase each city's business capital stock by 15 to 20 percent over 160 ,000 additional high skilled workers in each city. City's spenders expanding upper out and billions of central government investment to expand transport networks. So it's the honesty bit that's so exciting. Well, let's have it. This is the stuff that's been missing from our politics in a way. These big think tanks that come along and really think, and I still was good about yesterday, was the fact that I watched Jeremy Hunt on Sky and Kirstner I'm alive on the BBC being interviewed by the editor of the economist and they stuck with it the whole way through because I think they realized there's something substantial going on here and it wasn't just this trivia about who's up and who's down and all the nonsense that we get most of the time.

32:18And that's why I felt sort of rather depressed that by the end of the day, it'd been blown out by yet another Rwanda plan that probably won't work and that was just cost us more money and I just think we've got to get back to serious politics. So hats off to the Resolution Foundation. I thought it was an excellent report and it will help. I hope the pre -election debate. Very good. Let's take a break.

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33:54right from the start. She spends a little less inputs. Forging to save. Exceives the blood pressure low and credits go crazy.

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34:53Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alex Campbell. And we were going to start by talking a little bit about Argentina and Miele, which remains very, very interesting. And we can share I think in the notes some of the different views on this coming from different sides. If you want to see a really radical view and people who interest an American podcast, there's a guy called Ben Shapiro who I know a little bit, who's a very radical, generally right -wing commentator who's put out quite a punchy piece defending Miele and mocking the mainstream media for their depiction of him as a right -wing populist.

35:31There's also a podcast from the Kato Institute, which is another right -wing libertarian. American, this won't be the core to our listeners general podcast. If you want to hear the case for Miele, one of the things that Central Case they're making, though, is that whatever his hairstyle is and whatever his style of conversation, his economic policies are very non -Trump. He is really a throwback to the most extreme neoliberal economics. Trump is much more protectionist and some ways Trump's more kind of peronist. He's all about America first, make America great stuff. Miele actually wants to not just dollarize, he wants to open up his entire economy to international trade with no protection at all and no reciprocal agreements.

36:14He's basically saying you can come in customs territory into Argentina without any of that. There's no explain why he's saying that he might pull out of Merkisaur. He would have to, so Merkisaur, exactly as he says, there's very large thing dominated by Brazil and Argentina, which is a sort of customs union within Latin America. There's bigger than that, you can go and live there and work there. He's like the single might, he's close to the single might, but then the customer's. His Argentinia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, New York, it's not quite clear, but he's certainly threatening to pull out of it.

36:48And he wouldn't be able to do what he's saying while staying in Merkisaur. Because by definition, they have protectionist barriers around themselves and they try to do trade deals there in the middle that Chiafer. Complicated trade deal with the European Union, which looks like it's not going to go through. It was going to be very exciting. It was going to bring 700 million people into a massive trading block. But Lula has been pushing back hard against it. That's the left wing populist leader of Brazil has been pushing back hard against. Now, Macron has come out and says that he thinks that it's completely unfair to Europeans to have things imported on lower environmental standards from Latin America.

37:25Undercutting the European markets, Mimamile is saying he wants to go to absolutely radical free trade, which will mean that he can't be part of this at all. So, so he is rather than calling it populist, maybe anarcho -capitalist, there's a better way to look at it. Yeah, I mean, the dollarization thing is interesting. I mean, a number of Latin American countries, but none of the size of Argentina have dollarized them. Panama, there's no legal tender and, effectively, everybody uses the dollar anyway. There are huge advantages, of course, in a country where the currency is perpetually devaluing.

37:54But the fundamental thing, I think, if we're going to give a bit of credit to me, which is a controversial thing to say, given how bizarre he is. You know, we've talked about his views on the Pope, we've talked about his extraordinary antics. But to give him credit, there is no doubt that the Argentinian state is spending far, far too much money. It cannot afford its expenditure. And what it's doing to try to cover its expenditure is to borrow money if it can persuade any foreign credit to lend it money or devalue its currency. And it's been stuck in a cycle which many Latin American countries were stuck in, of overspending.

38:31And so something needs to be done to cut the expenditure of the Argentinian state. And the victory that he won was unbelievable. You know, he came in many percentage points ahead of his successor. He took all, but I think four states in Argentina, including almost taking Buenos Aires, which is the big sort of bastion of the left. But he faces big problems of course, which is familiar to people following US politics. But even more extreme in his case, which is he doesn't have the seats in Congress or the Senate. He's got very few seats in Senate or Congress. The courts are already coming out again.

39:04You can do quite a lot of time president by executive decree, I think. But whether you can do the things he wants to do, I don't know. Well, it's an also a lot will depend on whether he can keep this alliance. And one of the reasons he made it through in the second round, and probably quite useful for him to not win in the first round, first round, he was all alone. Second round, he had to make a sort of coalition with the Centre right, which is what carried him through. So if he can make that into more of a formal coalition, then he's got a much more working power base. Very interesting list of when you look at the trading partners.

39:32So Brazil is the biggest by a long way of the big international players, China 8 .64 % India 6 .1 United States 6 .6. We're very, very, very, very low. In fact, we're lower than the lower than Russia. We're on a par with Poland at 1 .16. So this doesn't suggest to me that Latin America is forming a big part of the global Britain strategy unless we've dropped the global Britain. No, no, no, no, it's very interesting, isn't it? Well, of course, traditionally, most of our trade with Argentina, we were very, very dominant late 1930s, 20th century, was about importing beef, yeah, optically. But that of course all stopped with European Union, where we don't import large agricultural products.

40:20The question of an Argentinian trade deal then, if we needed to make one, because it sounds like with this guy, you wouldn't even need to make one, you'd be able to export it. You do it. You do it. And you don't have to import his things in return. He is bringing in a guy called Luis Caputo, who is as his finance minister, who is, you know, the Lionel Messi of finance. He's this great Argentinian superstar in that. Just explain that one to me. Well, the idea is that he has been, well, yeah, you can do better at football and I'll see, but he is the most famous Argentinian in international finance and has had this sort of stellar career, particularly in places like New York, these big banks.

40:55So you're bringing in somebody who has a lot of admiration in international financial circles as your finance minister. There is a question always when you bring in a banker into that job, do they really understand the real economy? Or are they? So do they understand politics? And do they understand politics? So that's going to be a very exposed, brutal position. This things go right or wrong. Another rather more worrying and troubling appointment, I thought, or it also, Barra is the new attorney general. And on his CV, he was rather senior membership of a neo -Nazi group called the Tecguara Nationalist Movement.

41:28So he's the attorney general. That doesn't bow too well. Does it? Do you know the other thing that there was, I thought was interesting because when we said last week that Elon Musk had come out as a big defender of Millay and that I thought that was just well, there are a couple of anarcho -capitalists together. But it seems that a lot of this is about lithium because Argentina has 21 % of the world's lithium reserves and is producing just 6 % of supply. A lithium price is a frankly tanking. So Musk who needs a lot of lithium -free electrical batteries is trying to get closer and closer to Millay.

42:04We'll see more and more of this for me because this is critical with everybody producing cobalt lithium rare earth. So it matters for Argentina, it matters for Indonesia, it matters for Chile, it matters for the Democratic Republic of Congo. And you can see the US leaning into this. One of the challenges actually, I was talking to some of the big mining companies recently, and they're under a lot of pressure from the US to open new mines in Africa. But operating in eastern Congo, which is where the Chinese have a lot of their mines, is not something that most of the major Western companies want to do because they will be accused very, very quickly they feel of human rights abuses, of corruption, of poor environmental practices.

42:47So these are not markets, the eastern Congo over 200 insertioncies, very, very dangerous insecure poor central government. And it raises this question which a lot of companies in Africa keep raising, which is the West cannot both be saying we want to be making money in Africa, we want to be mining in Africa, we want to be extracting minerals from Africa, and also holding the companies to governance standards, which effectively means that they have no incentive whatsoever to operate there. Don't get me wrong, I think it is unbelievably important to insist that companies hold to proper standards in terms of human rights and labor.

43:26I also think there are many, many countries in Sub -Saharan Africa where you can run decent good businesses, but there are extreme places like eastern Congo where we have to be realistic that it is going to be very difficult to compete with China in those environments and hold the kind of standards that people are pushing for. My final point, I can't remember the last Argentine president who didn't at some point do a bit of jingoistic flag waving about less Malvinas, the Forkland Islands. And you've seen this again with Miele? Well, I wonder whether at some point, I mean it's always a good way to kind of get the Argentinian populist erogenous zones going.

44:03And whether at some point he might just look at the state of Britain's armed forces and think, is that worth a pop? Well, it's definitely true that if he were to try, it would be the understatement of the century to say Britain would have a very, very, very, very difficult time defending the Forkland Islands. Now, I mean, it was a stretch for us even in the early 1980s when our military was much larger, and I think would be very, very tough today. I mean, we are largely relying on an international woolspace order, which as we pointed out, Crime of Ukraine, elsewhere, is beginning to erode. Okay.

44:38So talking of world order and the like, shall we talk about, can we say your friend, Henry Kishinger? Will we say friend? We say my friend Henry Kishinger. I'm fascinated by your very first meeting with them because we had that wonderful interview with Simon Sybag Montefuri where given he came from Harrow, he got an interview with Margaret Thatcher in Dowdy Street as a child, and you, you went to an even superior school to that, you got an interview with Kishinger. Yeah, well, so it was very weird. So I was, I guess, 15, and Henry Kishinger came to speak, and he didn't know why on earth he would choose to come and speak at the school.

45:18I cannot, imagine that anyway, he did friends of friends and eyes a little 15 or 15 or I'd stuck my hand up and said, Mr Kishinger, I don't know what's my voice for broken on up hope so how can you justify the illegal bombing of Cambodia? Oh, this is your lefty face. Yeah, this is lovely and to my absolute astonishment, he sort of erupted and rage at me is really, really angry and he started in a shouting at me about the importance of the geostrategic. I can't even remember what he was saying, all I remember, because I actually, I was so nervous asking the question, I wasn't really listening to his answer.

45:53All I got was this extremely angry man, ranting at the stage. Was he expecting for you to sort of bow down and say, what is it like to be the most extraordinary diplomat? I don't know. I don't know. What's going through their head? Maybe in his head, you think, oh my goodness, why did I agree to do this? I'm pretty busy. I've dragged myself out to the school late at night, he was speaking at sort of nine at night, and then I have to put up this little shit attacking me from the next meeting. So then I saw him again, I think a number of times probably every five years, over 35 years, one thing I was very struck by in the 2000s was that I kept seeing him give funeral eulogies.

46:33He was incredibly good at funeral eulogies, because as you know, he had this sort of amazingly sort of voice, bavarian accent, and he was extraordinary in the compliments that he was capable of paying. So he would give eulogies. I went to very close succession. He would make everybody sound like a sort of a, so he was giving a eulogie for, what's the, there's a lovely one when Eric Bristo wins the, the, the Darts, and the commentator says Alexander the great wept, because he had no more worlds to conquer, and he was only 33, and Eric Bristo's only 27, and it was a bit like that. So were you watching the Darts?

47:10I can't imagine you were watching Eric Bristo. What was his nickname? Absolutely no idea what Eric Bristo said. He was the crafty cock me. So anyway, these huge comments, and then I saw him again, I suppose about a year and a half ago in his house in Kent, Connecticut, where he just died, and went with Shoshano, and we sat with Henry Kessinger, and I was very struck, I suppose firstly by the energy of that man, the fact that you know, he was the guy who was 99 years old. He was totally sharp. He really wanted to know the details of what was happening at Yale. He wanted to discuss China. He wanted to discuss Afghanistan.

47:42He wanted to hear from Shoshano, what the Taliban were up to. So that was really impressive. And he kept interrupting our talk, though every 10 minutes, to march up and down the passage. He could have been told by his doctor, he needed to lose weight, and march. So there's tiny sort of German man will then set off, and you'd see him sort of very slowly marching up and down the passageway, and then he comes sit down again. This very chint -sea room with more proper advice. More seriously though, I think, and I maybe can put in the newsletter. I wrote a piece which I'm quite proud of trying to engage with his foreign policy, and I think in the end he was a bloviator.

48:18He was a bluffer. His book, The Global Order, is an extraordinary string of sort of cliches, you know. The Middle East is, you know, faiths emerging from the desert, China is centuries of ancient civilization, America is Puritan, and there's no moral court wet. And he was, he basically encouraged Putin's takeover of Crimea in 2014, because he had no real principles to hold. He was very interesting to read some of the the obitories, and even though there's always a little bit of hypocrisy in these obitories, because people come out who've not normally said nice things, and they say slight nice things, but he was quite interesting how the scale of judgment sort of went from the world's best ever diplomat to how to now war criminal.

49:07And there was very little kind of in between, but bloviator, I only met him a couple of times, both times with Tony Blair. Tony liked him, but I think in part it was Tony Light picking brains that had got a lot of experience. I always felt about him as well, that he was more of a kind of brand and a business than he was sort of an active diplomat. And he's one of those people who managed to establish himself as a brand. I mean, you say Kissinger in the world and people know who and what you're talking about. I also worry, I'm very grateful. I can't believe you sent it to me because it's so reminiscent of an interview that you did recently.

49:41This wonderful interview with an Italian journalist called Oriana Falacci, who clearly did to him what Elizabeth Day did to you and fluttered the eyelashes. And before he did you, he was diving at all sorts of traps. So this is the early 1970s. It's in the middle of the Vietnam War. He's at a very sensitive situation and then he sits down through what happens, Alistair? Well, basically, he flatters him and sort of comes, starts comparing him to great chess grandmasters and then Henry Fonda, a man unarmed and ready to fight with his fists for honest ideals, alone, courageous and Kissinger interjects at this point.

50:18Not necessarily courageous. In fact, this cowboy doesn't have to be courageous. Ori needs us to be alone to show others that he rides into the town and does everything by himself. This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or if you like my technique. It goes on like this. Some people think I carefully plan what it's to be the consequences for the public of any of my initiative or efforts. They think this preoccupation is always on my mind and only on and I don't ask for popularity. I'm not looking for popularity. I get nothing about popularity.

50:54I'm afraid of losing the public. It goes on and on. Nixon was live it. Just help with some sense. So this is Kissinger by now 50 at the absolute height of his power and status. Apparently, he didn't give many interviews. He didn't give it. Apparently very, very experienced guy and then he gets into during which he actually refers to Vietnam war as a useless war. That's a pretty big thing on the central, the usual war in US foreign policy. How often do you find this that a good journalist can play on the vanity of politicians to get some astonishing story or scoop like this? Is Kissinger unusual?

51:31I think a good politician would spot when it was coming. But I think you do get probably suck it into saying more than you would if you think the person is being genuinely nice. But this led to perhaps his biggest ever rift with Nixon because for the Nixon Reddit and thought that the cowboy comparison was both insulting, stupid, offensive. And it's also in place that Kissinger's doing that on his own without a president. Presumably because my president is not really up to this. Nixon didn't speak to him for several weeks. Kissinger got a soul which is a big problem because he's the national security adviser.

52:09And Kissinger desperate feeling totally sort of on his own he drove up on his own to Nixon's residence. He was stopped by the secret service at the gates and they wouldn't let him in. So they told him you can't let him in. And Kissinger in a more sort of reflective period of his life said it was the single most disastrous conversation I've ever had. With the ever -an -examplecy you can think of from either the Labour or Conservative parties of careers being wrecked with an end fee. Well, we've talked about Alistair Darling at the start of the podcast. I think Gordon was not happy with Alistair when he did an interview at the start of the global financial crisis saying we're heading for the worst recession that any of us can imagine because he'd done an interview and it was a sort of magazine profile thing that had been going on for some time.

52:55I think they're the ones you've got to watch where you're giving access to people over a bit of time. Well, this is I always feel the same. I got a contact with my friend in New Yorker where they were following me around for three or four weeks and it was absolutely terrible at the end. Well, at the end. I thought, you know, this is we've got some wonderful friendship. We're spending three or four weeks together, interviewed all my friends, he came up to my constituents and in the end, it clearly all the time this guy in Parker had been thinking I was a real dick and had just been smiling and being charming and produced this extraordinary.

53:23I mean, one of the things that comes out of this is they produce these sort of 15 ,000 word profiles where they're contempt for you as so much that you wonder why they bothered writing the profile on the first place. Because of that. And you're stuck in your... How would you do with something where you have to spend 10, 15 hours with someone? How do you control the narrative in that situation? I think you've got to work out what you want the narrative to be. Which you just refused to actually let someone spend 10, 15 hours with you? No, I think you can't, I think because the thing about modern journalism is most of it is so sort of short -term trivial, get a quote.

53:57We saw this thing with Keir Starmer the weekend where he did an article, writes an article for the Sunday telegraph. In which he prays this message? Well, that was the headline. But if you read it, he basically is saying that if he becomes prime minister, he wants to make a big lasting radical change. But he likes that, like Blair, like me. Presumably, he knew exactly what he was doing. He got exactly what he wanted. He chose the Sunday telegraph. He chose to put in the word thatcher. He must have been... I think intending to do that. I think so, but then I think it probably went a bit too far.

54:27So I think if people have known, this was in relation to the Resolution Foundation report that we talked about. So he's putting this in the paper the Sunday before this thing comes out. And yeah, look, if you put the word thatcher in there, but by the way, this happened to Gordon Brown, Anthony Blair, Ed Miliband, they're all at some point said, whatever you think about it, after your knowledge of that, she was a great reforming prime minister, radical, et cetera. So I think it is probably just, I think it is who got slightly overcooked and then it played into this reaction against him. So I think on that though, you've got to be absolutely clear about what you want to come out of it.

55:02And the thing is you've got, you've just got to remember, I always say that when, because I've done a few of these kind of long form things where they dip in and out of your life and they always want more, you know, can we just spend a bit more time if you're in a good way? Maybe go and see the kids and dad and they're just looking for more and more and more. So keep control of what you want to keep control of and never assume that they're your friends. Well, I also would never do one again. I mean, I think really I can't see the point of these long things where they spend hours with you. The only thing about them is that I think they do last in the public mind a lot longer than most of the stuff that gets written about politicians.

55:39If it's a really good, so here we are, we're talking about an interview that was in 1970s. Okay, why? Because it was better than most of the interviews Kissinger ever did. Are people going to not better for Kissinger? No. So my advice for me to any, maybe find for the journalists, for anyone thinking of being interviewed because he made a very basic error. And I also think the longer that it's found, but if they're spending weeks, it's more and more difficult. I think in an hour or two hours, you can find focused on that. But I think you have to say at some point, and to be fair to you in the journalist's telecontext, you did this.

56:12You basically, for whatever reason, said, okay, Janice, I'm out of time. I'm off. And she took that a miss. But I think you've got to be very clear at the start. Everybody knows this is like a there's a trade going on here. You have access. But you've just got to keep control of what it is that you want to say and what you want to get out of it. Final thing, just to reflect on us, we finish. One of the things that I was sort of saddest in a way about Kissinger, I mean, there are many sad things I mean, you know, put on record clearly that he was involved to come back to where we began, this bombing of Cambodia, which led to well over 50 ,000 deaths and perpetrated a war in Cambodia, a lost in Vietnam, which brought nothing but horror.

56:53I mean, what succeeded that American intervention was brutal regimes from which those countries are only just recovering. But the other thing that I remember about him is him saying to David Patreas, the American general, what matters is remaining relevant. It's always be relevant. And he pushed himself through his 80s and 90s to always be relevant. Just wrote a book on AI with Eric Schmidt, went out of his way to make sure that he met Donald Trump, always meeting up with Joe Biden, every US president. And I began to feel a bit, I don't know, whether Pitchie's the word, but I certainly felt, is this actually a good life?

57:29Here you are, into 80s and 90s, and this obsession was remaining relevant. Yes, it may be prolonging his life, but it was a sort of, you could imagine a bit of got a more stillness in reflection coming in older age, which never really came that. I have a bit of a relevance thing. Are you still going to be getting at 99, I'm sure? I think I'll lift an even more chest carries on the way it is at the moment. It's a semantic biotech, especially steroids. Steroids are always better than antibiotics, I find. Very good. Well, on that advert for the steroid industry, we will conclude. For sure, Arnold Schwarzenegger would approve.

58:00Yeah, see you next week. Bye -bye.