202. How Labour should fight the election, taking on the British press, and Orbán's future far-right axis

25:01So if a, I don't know, wealthy oligarch brought a vicious liable case against you, you would be protected if you belonged to the centipede regulator. If you didn't belong to the independent regulator, you wouldn't be protected. And actually, potentially, you might have to pay the costs even if it turned out that you had won. Correct. Section 40 is where the current political issue rests because labor have been pretty clear that they've supported this proposal. And also the, have been pretty clear that Ipso, which is the successor to the press complaints commission, and which is completely a body of the media, by the media, fewer than one percent of cases get up, held it takes six months to hear a complaint.

25:44It's an absolutely useless body, which is exactly what the press want. And labor's always been clear that that's not good enough. But in recent days, they've indicated that the government who have pledged to repeal section 40, the labor are not going to undo that. As it happens, I think it's a very, very badly drafted piece of legislation. But the point is, I will be very angry if labor simply go along with the authorities in dropping it as opposed to coming up with something that does incentivize newspapers to join up to a genuinely independent regulator. And of course, what they'll do is they will say, it's a threat to the freedom of the press, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, utter nonsense.

26:29This thing about cost, it's not about oligarchs, it's about the fact that for most people who suddenly get caught up in media intrusion, so -called, quote, ordinary people, the costs can be very, very, very high. So the thinking behind section 40 was that they wouldn't necessarily have to put themselves at risk. So if I was to reduce to buy the media, I could take a case without running the risk that I would bankrupt my family if I lost. Yeah, correct, correct. But if they'd signed up to the independent regulator, the papers signed up to the independent regulator, they wouldn't be bankrupt either.

27:02Presumably because the independent regulator would say, okay, we regulate this newspaper, we think it's fair enough, will provide some kind of insurance for both sides for these types. Exactly. And we'll be some sort of redress. And the reason I worry about this from Labour's perspective, if you, you know, you and I didn't event at the alcohol last week. And if you remember, one of the, I think, most positively received parts of the stuff that I was saying was when I ran out my idea for how Kierstarm could campaign about the restoration of standards in public life. And I think, and I really passionate believe that if Labour were to say the Tories of Damage the Body of Politics and we have the responsibilities to repair it, I think there'd be massive public support for them to say they'd do it and do it.

27:48Be a wonderful campaign, wouldn't it? And you're right. If you could connect, connect this to it. Well, and also I'm not saying to Labour, make the press a big part of the campaign. But I am saying, if they think that by going soft on the press now, by sort of quietly dropping this leverson stuff, they somehow think that if Labour get into government, the press is going to be go easy on them, forget it. On the contrary, what they will think is, ah, we've got them where we want them, we can do what they'll we want. And as soon as Labour's in power, they will turn. And what's more, they will turn.

28:21And unless Labour has something in a manifesto that says, leversons not been fully implemented, there have still been excesses, there's still been criminality, we have to find ways of addressing that. Then the press will think they won game certain match. And this all came to a height, didn't it? Because we then had a very strange thing that really troubled people, which is that the Labour Shadow Minister Stephanie Peacock made a series of statements that appeared to reverse the Labour position in Parliament and the committee stage, the media bill. Yeah. And she wasn't prepared to support a very modest amendment from the SMP to find an effective alternative incentive to section 40, which is the same, which we've just been been talking about.

29:02Correct. And I understand why sometimes you don't necessarily want to back in a member that's put forward by another party and the SMP, you know, we've seen that in lots of cases. But there has to be a replacement of this. I don't think in the end, anybody's going to die in a ditch for section 40 itself, because it's not very well drafted and so forth. But in terms of the principles at the heart of it, there has to be something that replaces it. And which the SMP to be fed of them, you know, there's nothing to first and only time I've ever praised the SMP on this. But I think that her amendment was about finding an effective alternative to section 40.

29:37Exactly. And I think George Eusters, who's a, you know, formerly David Cameron's press secretary, went on to be a cabinet minister. I think he's thinking he's trying to do something as well, but you know, I worry that this is labor. They sort of, you know, they've got this, let's shrink the target. Okay. So you can, the barnacles get the barnacles off the boat, don't get attacked, which is fine. I understand that. Explain your metaphor, shrink the target, get the barnacles off the boat. What does that mean? Practice, sorry. Well, shrinking the target means give your opponents less to attack you over opponents.

30:07In this case, being many of the newspapers. And in this case, don't put out too many policies, because if you've got too many policies in public, there's too now where I get that on one level. However, I sometimes feel that the people running labor's campaign, I know you think it's me, but this is proof that it's not. But the people running labor's campaign, I think sometimes they think they're doing a lot of the things that we did because we had a strategy to try and neutralize the press, not let Murdoch, you know, run riot, not let any of the papers kind of destroyers. But we also had alongside that major, major, major campaigns, which were being attacked by the press all the time, minimum wage, new deal, section 28 and gay rights, Scottish Parliament.

30:52These were being attacked. And once more, we were welcoming the attacks, because that allowed us to ventilate the difference between us and the Tories. What I worry about is strategy where you're saying, let's shrink the target, give them less to attack us on, is that essentially that's what's leading to this problem of people saying, I don't really know what labor stands for. And so I'm not saying, by the way, put a post -Levison media strategy at the centerpiece of their campaign, far from it, I am saying that I think one of Kierstheim's strengths is that he's honest, serious, he's Mr. Rule of Law.

31:23And that's why I think a campaign on standards would really, really suit him. I think it's really interesting that because you're absolutely right, by attacking you over the Scottish Parliament, by attacking you over gay rights, by attacking you over the minimum wage, it was actually drawing people's attention to stuff that you were proud of. And it is true that we continue to feel that Kierstheim is overwhelmingly likely to be the next Prime Minister, but just to remind people that on the net favorability rating, Kierstheim's net favorability is falling, and he's at minus 22%. Now that's much better than Rishi Sunek, he's at minus 49%.

31:58But to put that in context, Blair at this stage was plus 19%, and even Cameron before 2010 was at plus 17%. So there is something for Labour to think about, and if you're worrying, as I guess many Labour supporters are, that they're being too complacent, I'm really attracted by our idea that they should be putting out things and having a fight about some things. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're this far ahead in the polls, maybe you think you can sort of just, you know, it's going to happen anyway. But some of the things we talked about in the podcast in recent weeks, four out of 10, 18 to 24 -year -olds, not registered to vote, the fact that the newspapers are going to kick hell out of Labour in the run up to the campaign.

32:38And this, you know, we had a great example of the weekend of something which I think not Kierstheim, I'm not saying he should do this, but somebody from Labour should have been out on the front foot attacking the Tories and the Telegraph of the weekend. They run a story, front page story, saying that the Tories are prepared a dossier on Kierstheim about the cases that he did as a lawyer, where he defended terrorists and defended gangsters and defended this out in the other. Now, they did the same with Sheree Blair. There's a thing called the Cabranc principle where lawyers have to take on cases, right?

33:08So what they're going to try to do is basically a smear. They're going to try and say that because he wants defended a terrorist in this case or that case. Now, and once more, the Telegraph, why did they give it to Telegraph? Because then you get an easy hit with it. Instead of the Telegraph saying, as they should have done, this is utterly absurd and evidence of how desperate the Tories are, they put it on the front page and they've got a debate going about it. Somebody from Labour should have been out there, I think, saying this is utterly desperate. It's actually further undermines the rule of law and it shows that the Conservative Party are absolutely done, spent force, etc.

33:41Instead of which, I feel there's been, you know, when we go, this probably shows why we have to be a bit nicer to Telegraph. Now, I've got nothing against Kierstheim writing the Telegraph. Nothing against West Streeting writing the Telegraph and fine do all that. But do not for one minute think that if you go easy on these papers now in the post -Levison environment that somehow they're going to be your best mates because they're not. Alistair, thank you. Great first half. I think time for a break. Thank you.

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35:23Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alex Campbell. So Victor Orban. Victor Orban, well, we began with this extraordinary quote from Donald Trump, where he referred to him as one of the strongest leaders in the world, the leader of Turkey. But it is part of a much bigger general picture, which is that for Orban, the the Prime Minister of Hungary, it's absolutely red that what he's doing is waiting for a world in which Trump wins in the United States, in which Putin triumphs in Ukraine, and in which his general vision that he's had for decades now, that democracy is failing and that strong men are going to lead the world will triumph.

36:08And of course, there's lots of things that give him confidence in this analysis because what we can actually see if you look at the world from the perspective of Victor Orban, and just as a, if anybody wants a deeper understanding of Victor Orban, you cannot do better than read the extraordinary book by Ann Applebaum that really gets into the depths of the way in which he has undermined the media, the political parties, the judiciary in Hungary and created a sort of one party state in the middle of the European Union. But his story would be that the old liberal world order of the 90s has crumbled and that all the evidence really since 2014 is that we're now entering a much more anti -democratic age and age of strong men.

36:50Well, you said it within that that he's always had this this same worldview, but actually, if you think about his first term as Prime Minister, so people regularly, you regularly hear on the media Orban, who's been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, but he was actually Prime Minister from 1998 to 2002 as well, and he then had eight years in opposition. And this is a guy who became leader of his party, Fiddish age 30, Prime Minister of the first time age 35, and the big thing that he did in his first term was to take Hungary into NATO. So he's not always been this kind of puternesque figure.

37:27No, I mean, even where do I think, you know, one of the big things he does is he's got a massive conspiracy theory about George Soros, but I believe that in his younger life, he actually was the benefiturer for scholarship funded by Soros. He was. He got a scholarship to Pembroke College Oxford. He did law at a university in Hungary, and then George Soros funded him to go to or the foundation funded him to go to Pembroke to do political science. And in one of the five election campaigns that he's won, George Soros was the was the figure that he had all over the billboards and it was it was basically sort of playing into antisemitic tropes.

38:03He hasn't got a campaign on the moment, he hasn't questioned for you, or if you went to Hungary today, which political figure would you see on billboards around Hungary put there by Victor Orban as an enemy? Gosh, I don't know. What's the answer? The answer is Ursula von der Leyen. Ah, and here's another thing for you. When she comes up for will the will the European Union, will the council agree to her getting another term? Who should be sitting in the chair of the rotating presidency of Hungary, Victor Orban? And this is a country of 10 million people. And the reason why we're talking about him today is because in recent days, he first of all surprised some people because he left the room when the other leaders were discussing possible accession to the European Union for Ukraine, which he was strongly opposed.

38:57And he had an opportunity to be to do it. And there was a strong conversation about whether what was going to happen is he was going to try to get concessions on the EU budget in exchange for him not vetoing. Is that right? Not vetoing the accession of Ukraine to the EU. Instead of which, what happened was that he had breakfast with all of shorts, Chancellor Germany and President Macron are France. We don't have much to detail about what happened. But as a result, Orban left the room when the decision was taken. He nonetheless since then has pointed out there will be 70 situations, 70 moments in the process towards accession when any one of the 27 countries will be able to veto.

39:41So what happened then was in Kiev and around Ukraine, people were celebrating the European Union says we can start the process, etc, etc, etc. Then the next day, he did use a veto. And this was the stop financial support for Ukraine by the Europeans in January. Now I think it will still happen. They'll find a way around that. But it does underline just how much he operates within the European Union, almost like a lone figure because of course he's lost his mates from Poland, Donald Tusk having taken over there. But my god, he knows how to play the power game. And if you go through his elections, so you mentioned Ann Dappell Bowen's book about how he undermines the media, how he undermines the judiciary, and he completely changed the electoral system.

40:25So in his second round, he ended up with almost more than two thirds of the seats in Parliament having got 44 % of the vote by changing the system. And that meant he could change the constitution. And he's been stopped at some points. He's also, some people think he's a bit of a kleptocrat, that there's a sort of quite a big oligarchical thing going on, very MTLGBT. And he poses, we talk to him, if you remember, means if you're Tom Holland that's coming out on Christmas Day, and we were talking about Christianity and politics, he projects his politics very much as the defense of Christianity against other forces.

41:04Yes, he sometimes calls himself the ideological center of the International Conservative Movement, which means that a lot of the things that we've been talking about, which are the sort of family of beliefs or views, which the right is propagating across Europe, of which of course, that the biggest and most central is immigration, which we must talk about in the UK context as well. But he's also links this to LGBTQ issues, so he's tried to drive through some very restrictive laws in LGBTQ and accuse the European Union for basically being a front for the promotion of LGBTQ rights. Also connected with this, of course, is concerns about measures on climate change, others, they tend to be climate skeptics, and they also increasingly are gesturing that they are not sympathetic towards continuing to fund Ukraine against Russia.

41:57But the hearts of this is very old fashion 19th century nationalism, so a couple of quotes from all of them, he says, this is 2018, we must state that we do not want to be diverse, we do not want to be mixed, we do not want our own colour traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others, we do not want this, we do not want that at all, we do not want to be a diverse country. And then he said, we Hungarians are not a mixed race, and we do not want to become a mixed race. And he's quite fond of promoting the so -called Great Replacement Theory. It just tells us what the Great Replacement Theory is.

42:34It's quite essentially that people like him, white Christians are going to be replaced by people of colour in terms of power and wealth and all the rest of it. Because of immigration. Yeah. Yeah. And birth rates. I'm trying to think if there was anything like him. Well, the person I think that we have been talking about, I think that we should keep an eye on who's watching this very carefully, is Vuchich in Serbia. And Vuchich, of course, is somebody that you know because you were dealing with Vuchich back in 1999, just give us a quick, quick reminder of Vuchich in your context with them before we get on to the wave Vuchich's echoing order ban.

43:08Well, I wasn't dealing with him. Other than the fact that we were opposite numbers, he was in charge of Milosovitch's media machine. And I was helping NATO run theirs during the cost of our war. And I've met him subsequently. I've met him through the work that I do in the Balkans. And this election, so we're speaking on Monday, the election in Serbia yesterday, they've had five general elections since 2012. They've had three in the last three years. And essentially he calls elections because he's also got great control of the media, because he's also become very, very powerful over all the institutions of the state.

43:48He calls elections because he can use them to kind of, you know, drive his message. And he's ended up so far, he's got 46 .6 % of the votes. And similar to to war band, that could give him an absolute majority, which now he'll probably do some sort of deal with some of the smaller parties. But you know, the last time I think we talked about Serbia was after they'd had those terrible killings. And it led to the formation of a new alliance called Serbia against violence on the center left. They've ended up with just 23%. They're going to get 63 seats. Where he might not get away with things as much as he wants is in the, they've also got local elections in Belgrade, municipal elections.

44:27And it looks like his party, the Serbian progressive party is winning there, but not by nearly as much. And by the worst reason he's about this election, he wasn't even a candidate. This was not a presidential election. This was a general election, which he was the main figure. So President Vuchich really worth looking at, because he is absolutely increasingly sympathetic towards the sort of all -band vision of the future of the world. There's a link to an interview that he gave. If you get a chance to watch it, he's sitting there in an amazing, what I can only describe is a lilac -tweed jacket sitting there sounding very, very calm and patient.

45:05But all the way through, even if you, obviously most of our listeners don't speak Serbia and my servant's very rusty, but he keeps saying, checkati, checkati, wait, wait. And what he's saying is that we need to learn, and all the Serbs need to learn from what happened in Nagorno -Karabakh. He's learned from Azerbaijan. He said Aliyev, present and his son in Azerbaijan, waited for 27 years for the special geopolitical crisis that allowed them to take back Nagorno -Karabakh. So listeners will remember a few months ago this thing which in the 1990s was resolved with a small Armenian settlement in the center of of Azerbaijan territory.

45:44Essentially there was an invasion beginning this year, and neither the US or Russia or the United Nations or anybody did anything to prevent eventually Azerbaijan over running it and kicking out the Armenian population. And this is relevant for him because he is thinking particularly about how northern Kosovo, the Serbian bit of northern Kosovo, is going to come back to Serbia. And how republican Serbske, republican Serbske is the Serbian part of Bosnia, Herzegovnia. So listeners will remember that during the conflicts in the mid 1990s, within Bosnia in particular, Kroats, Serbs and Bosniaks, the Bosniaks being the Muslim population were fighting.

46:22That war came to an end, 1994 -195, in a settlement in which the Serbs were left with the chunk of the territory called republican Serbske, where about 80 % of the population are Serbs. And that was in some ways one of the great triumphs in the 1990s. I mean it was the US and Britain and the European Union, ending a war where 37 ,000 people had been killed in Sarajevo. The war criminals were arrested, the checkpoints were removed, the crime rate was lower than Sweden. And now, in a decades later, we have Vuchich strongly signaling that he wants to get it back. And we're hearing this also from the leader of republican Serbske, who's also strongly hinting that reunification, we're having these strange phrases are now coming out of you here, they will also say, this is the one of the reasons we keep encouraging listeners to try to look at what's happening in the local press.

47:13They have these same strangers about we are the victims of a conspiracy of the American Democratic party because it was Bill Clinton that imposed this. So this is all part of sort of worrying sense of the world order slowly unraveling in the geopolitical complicitacies waiting for, in particular, our Trump winning and Putin tri -oping in Ukraine over to you. Well, it's interesting because the other thing that connects all ban and Vuchich at different times they've indicated, I mean the moment I think you're right in saying that they're both very much pointing towards the sort of populist right and on foreign policy, pretty sympathetic to Russia and China, wasn't always necessarily so.

47:50There have been moments where it looked like they weren't possibly thinking of pivoting the other way, but I don't know whether it's the same interview, but somebody sent me an account of an interview he did where he mocked all the other Western Balkan countries for aligning with the EU. He was very mocking of the West. He was almost laughing as he was saying, you know, and they tried to prevent this human catastrophe in Kosovo during the Milozovich regime. And he said that this is a quote translated, now everyone understands that they cannot defeat Russia militarily. This changes everything. And that was a pretty kind of straightforward, you know, as you say, the geopolitics of the world are changing and I'm kind of, I know which side I'm going to be on.

48:36And there's also an interesting character here to get a sense of the, you know, we've talked about this in relation to Israel that it's important to understand governments partly through some of the more extreme members. So we've talked in Israel about the importance of understanding Ben Gaveir and Smoktrich in understanding the way in which Israel is thinking about Palestinian rights. In the case of understanding Serbia, it's important to understand characters like Alexander Vulin, who was the Minister of Labor, then Defense, then the Minister of Interior, then the head of the Intelligence Agencies, who's just sent in his resignation letter, but in it you get the full -throated Serbian thing, you know, these people are trying to make us apologize to Croats to accept the Shrebinitsa massacre.

49:20They're trying to force us to sanction Russia and expel Chinese investments and reject our family values. And again, this is the Orban stuff. And he talks about our brotherhood with Russia and China that Serbia is the last free leader in Europe. Now, this then brings the big geopolitical question, which is, is it possible to re -energize the movement paradoxically? It sounds a bit contradictory to say it, but to actually get Serbia, Kosovo and the other Western Balkan countries into the European Union. Which for them is a stated policy objective, yet at the same time, for example, the Prime Minister, I don't know, I never know, I don't know because it's got three consonants at the start, BRNA, ABIC, Branabic.

50:06She recently said that Serbia will not comply with the parts of the agreement that were broken by the EU in relation to Kosovo, and they will never accept a day facto or day -during recognition of Kosovo. And the other thing we've talked about in the past, which is this whole issue of number plates, they've now reached the point, and this is the issue where there are around 50 ,000 Serbs, many of whom have cars where they're refused to have Kosovo number plates, they insist on Serb number plates. Kosovo is insisted the Serb number plates have got to go, they've given them time for the transition, and the time has now run out.

50:45So, technically in law now, the Kosovo police could arrest and fine and even confiscate the cars of Serbs. Now, that will kick off all sorts of stuff you will not care for. This sounds like a petty issue, but of course, it's essential to discussions about nationhood, because effectively from the point of view of the Kosovo government, these Serbs and Northern Kosovo are behaving as separatists, behaving as though they lived in Serbia. So, I suppose the equivalent in Northern Ireland would be, if back in the day when this was very raw, nationalists in Northern Ireland were insisting on going around with Republic of Ireland license plates on their cars.

51:22It feels like a tiniest you, but in fact, it's symbolically unbelievably important. And it's led to violence in the past. It's led to violence in the past. One maybe final point on this election is that, like Orban, he's been in power for quite a long time now, quite a few accusations of ballot ringing this time, busing of voters in from Bosnia, Herzegovina to vote in Belgrade, intimidation of monitors, falsifying of signatures. Now, these are accusations, all of which are pretty widely reported in much of the media. But of course, as far as he's concerned, he's got 46 .6 % of the vote. I've won, you've lost, suck it up, and we move.

52:01And it is quite amazing to be a winning prime minister who keeps holding elections. We're a country which has different prime ministers with elections. I think the big picture reminder here is that we became, I guess, during the Cold War, used to something quite unusual in Europe, which was from 1945 to the early 90s. These borders in Europe, which, of course, had moved a great deal, First World War, Second World War, huge movements, you know, that what is the border of Poland, what is the border of Hungary, what's the border of Romania? These were very contested things that particularly sparked the First World War.

52:41But we were used to those borders being controlled and frozen, and that was very, very important. I mean, that's basically what the United Nations existed to do, protect these sovereign borders. And states, for example, in South South Africa, this is hugely important to them because because these borders are often artificial straight lines on maps and groups across those borders, it's been unbelievably important to hold those borders. And that's why when there was a Biafran rebellion in Nigeria, it was extremely important to Nigeria to argue that they needed to keep the borders in Nigeria intact.

53:13Now, this we were complacent about, it broke in the Balkans in the 1990s. And it seemed as though we'd found a resolution for it. It was a time of huge US confidence. And under the John Major and Tony Blair government in Bosnia and Kosovo, the West intervened and settlements were found. And we assumed, I guess, moving on from 2000, that that was pretty permanent, that that problem was dealt with. We are now entering a world where, if you look at Putin taking Crimea, Putin having effectively annexed now eastern Ukraine. Nagorno -Karabakh now having been taken back without anyone really noticing.

53:49We're entering a world in which it's becoming much, much more likely that Serbia would attempt to retake northern Kosovo, would attempt even possibly to re -integrate Republican Serbskuh that Putin, if he really feels that he can act with impunity in eastern Ukraine, might have a go at the Baltic. And that's a much, much more dangerous world. You mentioned that lots of these populace right, we're leaders are waiting for Trump. And Putin, of course, number one waiting for Trump. If you're not, and I watched the crown last night. And we don't like that. Well, but it was, it was the, we're into the Blair era and we're into Kosovo.

54:26And the narrative basically, or is that the Queen's very jealous of Tony Blair's popularity, but she sees that Tony Blair seems able to get the American presidents do things that otherwise he wouldn't do. So the story is Kosovo and he's overdone, but I don't think Donald Trump America would go anywhere near or war in the Balkans. No, no. And the tragic thing is if you see the way that people reacted to Nagorno -Karabakh, or basically the way they reacted to Crimea in 2014, or didn't react. I wonder how much outcry, tragically, the really would be if Serbia tried to take northern Kosovo, unless we really put it on the agenda now.

55:02Yeah, yeah. Well, there we are. That's all for this week. I'll see you very soon. I should just say to our listeners, leading this week, you guessed it on there out now. Tim Peak, the astronaut, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Amazing insight into space travel. Please listen. Bye. Bye. Bye.