205. How to combat populism, debating Bill Gates, and David Cameron on the world stage (Part 2)

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0:50Welcome to the second episode of the Rests This Politics Holiday Special and round up at the year with me, Maurice Stewart. And me, I was special about it, exactly. Well, what's special about it is that we're trying now to do the whole of 2023, and this is a two -parter. Hopefully people will have listened to us yesterday. And by doing the whole of 2023, I think we're going to begin to see some shapes and themes, which we often don't get in the day -to -day fight of the weekly politics. Now, I have a question for you for part two. Yeah, what was your surprise the year? What surprised you in 2023?

1:28Oh, David Cameron coming back that was that was the only thing that Nobody had a whiff of that did they for international listeners? Just remember our former premise the David Cameron suddenly came back as the foreign secretary having not been a member of parliament Very very unusual in our parliamentary system And so he went to the house of Lords as Lord Cameron of Chippie Norton They all forgot about all the green sills scandal and all the other stuff and he's now Now, globe trotting, and as you said yesterday, pretty busy trying to get Britain's foreign policy back in the map. It was interesting earlier this week, he met both Macron and Maloney.

2:03Now I don't think many foreign secretaries would meet heads of state and government like that. No. That's because he was a former prime minister. Exactly. I think he's one of those very, very rare. The only equivalents I can really think of are, of course, US Secretary of State, and particularly when they were people like John Carey and Hillary Clinton who'd been leaders. Your surprise of the year? My surprise of the year, I think probably two big things. The first thing is that cliche from detective stories, the dog that didn't bark. In this case, the fact that the horrors of October the 7th, the terrorist attack, the horrible terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas, and then the horrors of what we've seen in Gaza and these retaliatory strikes have not yet led to a regional conflict.

2:50And I think that's something that would have been very difficult to predict. People were absolutely assuming that his Bala would be drawn in much more quickly and ran through his Bala that other regional players and that this would almost be like the beginning of the First World War in which the Balkans was the tender box for explaining a regional conflict. So I think the dog that didn't bark is the way in which this thing is horrifying. It's become globalized, but it hasn't yet brought in regional military responses. And then on the other side, the very rapid collapse of democratically elected governments in Africa, 2023 was amongst other things, the year of coup d 'etats, seven coup d 'etats and just over a year.

3:29And not just now stretching right the way across the Sahel, so connecting coast to coast, you talked about Sudan, but stretching right the way across Marley, Chad, Niger, but also dropping down to Gabon and almost in Sierra Leone. And so that's my surprise of the year. I wondered that. I was interested to do it. Presumably you might also add in the Dutch elections. I'm not sure I was that surprised about that. No, I was. I was. I thought in the end that the builders wouldn't win. So yeah, that was a surprise. That genuinely was a surprise, yeah. And I think horrifying, horrifying for the Netherlands.

4:04I mean, I think we got a lot of feedback on our attempts to explain our way through the details of Dutch politics. But one of the reasons I think we got such taught and sometimes quite angry responses is it must feel to many people in the Netherlands as it does in the United States when Donald Trump was elected that they are just in absolute shock that how to wield those this this sort of almost comical right wing but not comicalness in a nasty way also. right wing figure who's been sort of marginalized since the late 1990s has now managed to get more votes than anybody else in the election without even really having a valid political party.

4:44Yeah, I mean the reason why I was surprised that he did as well as you did, but I think that we've been talking a lot this year about the rise of populism or the continuing hold of populism in certain countries, which is why I was so pleased we both were the Donald Tusk one in Poland. But we had an election near Dresden, a mayor election last week where the AFD won it. So this idea that the alternative for Deutschland are not a party of power, they now have an elected mayor. And you can see it's having an effect on other politicians. One of the big stories in Germany at the moment is the focus on Marcus Serder, who is the Minister of President, the Prime Minister, as it were, of Bavaria.

5:29But there is the sort of economic powerhouse of just a little bit. He's the lead of the CSU, which is the sister party of the CDU, but he's one of those rare Bavarians who's sometimes seen as a possible future chancellor. And he's been up to all sorts of stuff, which I think is a direct response. So for example, there he is in Bavaria. There was a story about a nursery in Hamburg, and the story was, it was kind of tab classic tabloid. Hamburg of course, North Germany, so other end of the country. The way Miles, hundreds of miles away from Bavaria, and the story was that this nursery had banned a Christmas tree.

6:09Okay? Now it turns out they've never had a Christmas tree. Of course they find in lots of these nurseries that small children, if you have a Christmas tree, they tend to crawl under it, pull it down, and it's a bit dangerous. So they have everything else to do with Christmas, but not a Christmas tree. Marcus Serda, the minister president of Bavaria, has made a huge thing about this, you know, Christmas is cancelled. All these nonsense, which you've seen as a populace right all around the world. And that I find quite alarming because on the one hand, it shows that the way to, he thinks to play the populace is to play their own game, I think he's wrong.

6:48But it also shows, I think, that the AFD are sort of setting the tone of debate. And we keep coming back to this, don't we? Because of course, the success of the populace isn't usually that they are geniuses. They're being successful all over the place, Swedish Democrats and Sweden, with genuine neo -Nazi roots, with actual senior members of their party being exposed and expelled for basically being Nazis, Finns, Maloney, et cetera. But it's not that these people are geniuses. it's that there is a huge vacant space which seems to make it easy for populists at the moment. And of course that is partly the failure of the moderate politicians.

7:28If you were to talk to these populists, they'd say, yeah, it's not that I've invented a whole new sort of charisma that I'm the most brilliant campaigner in the world. It's pretty easy at the moment in European politics to win votes by standing up and talking about immigration because people feel the main parties are not dealing with immigration the way they want. Talk about failing economies, frozen growth, get people very skeptical about climate, get people very skeptical about cultural change. That's why the Christmas stuff is coming in. And that then means that the mainstream politicians have two choices.

8:03They either, as you say, try to get into that zone. And that's where both you and I have been very uncomfortable with the direction the conservative of party in Britain sometimes takes to try to steal those lines on immigration and small boats. And it goes wrong for them, of course, because you can't out -compete the populist on the right. Because in the end, Rishi Suneak is always going to be more controlled by, you know, in our case, Victoria Prentice and Attorney General, who's trying to be moderate and thoughtful, trying to hold some bits of international law together. So you can always be outmaneuvered by the right.

8:32The alternative, though, which you're proposing is still quite difficult, which is how do you make a really attractive, exciting, charismatic message in the centre ground and take the oxygen away from these people? Well, I think on immigration. I saw John Nicholson, the SNP MP, who was a kind of member I saw him, but I saw him interview somewhere, where he was saying that the entire debate, for example, around immigration is focused as a negative. Nobody making the positive case for immigration in a modern economy. And we've ended up with the worst of all worlds where on the one hand you have a government that is saying we're going to we've taken back control of our borders, we're going to get a group of immigration, et cetera.

9:17And meanwhile, because of economic need and then this much smaller number that are coming through the boats, because of economy need, we're seeing that migration saw. Now, I actually think if we've had a politics which was honest about the need for immigration and which was educating people about the way that migration flows are going to get worse, not better, more complicated, not more simple, because of climate, because of war, because of inequality, etc. Then I think people can be the mainstream is much, much more reasonable. But if they've been bombarded with one set of arguments, then the debate gets completely skewed.

9:56And I worry that too many of the politicians have just allowed the debate to be skewed, and now they're scared of it. Well, can you imagine how very different the Brexit debate would have been if the pro -Brexit politicians had said, we're gonna take back control, and that's gonna mean that we will have 1 .2 million people coming into the United Kingdom. They just won't happen to be people from Poland, right? They'll happen to be people from Nigeria, in South Asia, etc. But we'll have, we'll be making those decisions. Now, they put little sort of footnotes in with the input, but they boy, did they never say to their voters, we're going to go from, you know, net figures of low hundreds of thousands and push up 400 ,000, 600 ,000 additional people a year after we leave the European Union.

10:46And if that had been clear at the beginning, that the trade off, given that so much the Brexit vote was about immigration, that people are being clear at the beginning, that the trade -off was between probably lower numbers coming from the European Union or higher numbers coming from other parts of the world, I think the vote would have been quite different. Okay, well listen, let's jump forward to our next category, which I'm going to jump forward a few bit, because I think it flows from this personal highlight of the year, okay? Now, I had a few go through this. Obviously, both of us very happy to get our books, the number one in the Sunday Times best settle list.

11:19That's a highlight. I was... And can I have a little show off here? Go on. I'm back at number one again. You're not. I'm back at... I am. I'm back at number one. Well done. I'll be in number one. I mean, I think that's very special. Thank you. And I think it's a bit of a shout out to Gohanger because I think the rest is entertainment Richard Osmond. There's top of the fiction hardback charts. The same time as I'm top of the nonfiction. So there we are. The best, the best restless politics gag of the year was from the comedian Michael Spicer, who said last week he was going to launch a podcast called The Rest is the Rest.

11:51And he was going to talk about otters, lawnmowers and lawns. And Tuesdays, I think. I choose days as well, yeah. So the other one for me though, this relates to our previous discussion, was how she allowed it question time in Clackton, in an audience that had 100 % voted leave. A lot of people, you gave me some very good advice. A young girl at the school I visited on the way to the studio to the recording game, some very good advice, which I've used many times since, persuade without judgment, she said. And I was very grateful for that. But why was the reason there was a personal highlight is because so many people said, you're mad doing it, they'll shout you down, but actually they didn't.

12:35And they listened very respectfully. They applauded very loudly when I said that the problem wasn't them, the problem was the people that are lied to them. And I think on some of these debates, there has to come a point where labor, Lib Dems, SMP stand up and say to the public, are you ever gonna get tired of believing these people's lies? And I think on Brexit, I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep banging on about it because eventually, I think whether it's going back into the European Union very unlikely in my lifetime, possibly in your lifetime, but certainly going back into some sort of sensible economic arrangement, I've got no doubt that is going to happen to some people.

13:12Yeah, and I think this is a really interesting moment because I think for you and I who would at least want to see us back into the European Union, Custon's Union, which would be much, much better for Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Republic Ireland, much better for our automobile manufacturers, much better for our farmers, et cetera, and keep us closest to our closest big markets. But it's also an interesting moment because there's a real crisis in the European Union at the moment about thinking about the accession of these countries in the Western Balkans. We're talking about the accession of Ukraine, we're talking about the accession of Moldova, we're talking about Serbia Kosovo.

13:47So it may be that there is a world in which the UK could begin to define as it were an outer circle of Europe, very close to Europe politically and economically, without necessarily being part of the inner political structures and provide actually an interesting space for some of those other countries as well. I guess the other personal highlight like Fras Roy's, the fact that the podcast is sort of chugged along so well and topped the charts most of the time. And leading, we've been very, very lucky with some of the interviews that we have on this theme. I hope people will listen in fairly soon to our interview with Defarge that because he has some very interesting things to say about the future of Europe.

14:22Can I just some personal highlights then if you've introduced this category? For me personal highlight, I think, has been, this has been the year of my transition back to Britain. I was away for nearly three years. I was teaching the United States and then we were living in Jordan as a family And the lovely thing for me has been we got back about two and a half months ago. It's how well my two boys who are just now nine and six have transitioned back into Britain and so my personal highlights is huge shout out to Miss Emma and Dr. Quinlan who are their two teachers who have been such incredible examples of dedicated teachers who really love teaching six -year -olds and nine -year -olds who've really brought out the best of them and really helped them transition back and made me very proud of Britain.

15:09So that way. Good, modern. Book of the year. Book of the year, Gornin. What's your book of the year? The one I chose in the European was the book I've mentioned a couple times on the podcast, Life in the Balance by Jim Down, who's an intensive care doctor. absolutely brilliant account of his life and the choices he has to make and the emotions he has to deal with. There has been an absolute plethora of books about the dire state of politics, yours, mine, but I don't think we can choose our own books as... I don't think that's really a bad name. Even I would post that. I might buy others to do it.

15:44Our own books, the books, the air, very good. But I think that although I see we've both been nominated for the Parliamentary Book of the Year, but thankfully in different categories, so that's good. That's the thank goodness for that. But I'm going to shout out for Ian Dunn's book, shout out for James O 'Brien's book, which have both been about how awful part she says. But the one I think that maybe gave most hope amid all the absolute awfulness that it chronicled, was Chris Bryant's book, Code of Conduct. It really did bring home just how awful this Parliament has been from a standards point of view, but he then set out some pretty interesting ideas as to how you can fix it pretty quickly.

16:22Very good. Okay. Well, I mean, I think one of the lovely things about coming back to Britain, but I don't want to encourage any more of this because, so please don't get the wrong end of the stick if anyone's listening to this. I have been sent some quite interesting proofs of books that are coming out next year. Please stop sending them to me because I'm afraid there's a limit to how many books I can read in a week. But there's a really interesting book coming that I think you'll enjoy by guy called Gary Stevenson called the Trading Game, which is just a shocking story of the only thing which I think is possibly more dysfunctional than politics, which is working in the trading floor of an investment bank blowing up the world economy in 2008.

17:01Oh, it's about the crash. It's about the crash. It's about him. He's a working class boy from a very, for deprived background in the East End of London, who is just a brilliant mathematician and gets hired by one of the most famous banks in the world and then proceeds to just go through the full horror and moral corruption of how those banks operate. But I'm reading one at the moment, which is out next year, by Zina Bedarwe, an African history of Africa. A great. Definitely enjoy it and I'm about a third of the way through. The two most interesting things I've learnt so far, one is that I didn't realise Tutankhamon became King when he was eight and the other is that I learnt that actually from my six -year -old from the great Miss Emma.

17:47In fact, we made a mask of Tutankhamon together. He also got married very, very young. My six -year -old was very interested in that. It's your mother -twenties, honey, died at 18. Exactly. Anyway, you will definitely enjoy that one. Just some books, Very, very quickly, because we're a little bit of politics stuff. I find Bill Gates a sort of impressive and infuriating individual every time I meet him. We seem to get into these weird, strange arguments where he's absolutely determined to pulverize me and prove me wrong about every single thing that I say when we try to have a polite conversation.

18:18But his book, How to Avoid Climate Disaster, if you're looking for a good summary, it's really good. He's surprisingly well written, thoughtful. And then my shout out for my book of the year Takes a little time to get going but it's a book by Josephine Quinn and it's called How the World Made the West You've got to push through the first couple of chapters, but it's an astonishing description for anyone like me who's interested in archaeology ancient history the ancient world of how much Western civilization as we know it Greek and Roman civilization was created by the Middle East by Egypt and particularly by the event that sort of the shoreline stretching from Gaza up into modern Lebanon and Syria.

19:03Our gods are writing, our numbers are pottery, our statuary, our very, very fundamental belief systems. And it's a story of the Bronze Age and it's a Josephine Quinn who's a British academic has managed to, I don't know how she keeps all this stuff in her head, but she has made archaeology of the Bronze Age, more exciting than anything that I've read for a long time. Should we take a quick break and then maybe bring you in with a film of the year? Yep.

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21:14Welcome back to the second half of the second part of our look back at 2023 and kind of look forward to 2024. Film of the year, Rory. Blimey. Well, we never talked about Barbie together. That definitely was not my film of the year. I was actually a bit distressed by Barbie.

21:36I've been struggling on films. I did see a couple of great plays. Can I just quickshout to the West End, which I think was putting itself together? So both at the Harold Pinter Theatre, most recently I saw a play called Lioness. It's a new play, which I thought was a very strange moving account of the breakdown of a marriage, of abuse of questions around gender. I mean, I'm making it sound too theoretical, but I thought it was beautifully enacted with a dominating performance by Christen Scott Thomas. But my real shout out in that theatre is to a play called Semmelvice written by a friend of mine called Stephen Brown, which had marked violence in the starring role as the doctor who discovered essentially the beginning to germ theory, he discovered that in the Vienna General Hospital in the late 19th century, mothers and babies were dying at an unbelievably alarming rate, much, much more in the wards looked after by doctors than in the wards looked after by nurses.

22:41And he tried to argue that what they needed to do was wash their hands. And for this suggestion, essentially his career was completely destroyed and he went mad and he was wrecked for trying to suggest that people wash their hands, and then vindicated later on this story beautifully brought to the stage in an incredible production by Tom Morris. Anyway, over to you on films. Excellent. Well, a couple of plays Dear England by James Graham about Garath's Southgate and penalties, absolutely brilliant. And honestly, you do not have to be a football fan to realise that it's a work of genius, which is what James Gramm is.

23:16My film of the year I think is anatomy of a fall. Sandra Huller, who's a German actress, is a French -made film which is mainly in English. And your play was about the breakdown of a marriage. This is about the breakdown of a marriage, but it's absolutely gripping. She is mesmerising. The story involves her husband falling off a balcony and the kind of the drama is the court case at which it has to be established, did he take his own life or did she kill him? But in the middle of it, part of the evidence is that he secretly taped conversations that he had with her and these are played in the court and then in the film they're acted out.

24:02So this is the rest is politics, right? When you see the way that these rouse develop from something quite small into something briefly, intensely horrible between two people who claim to love each other. You kind of, in the middle of the Israel Gaza thing, you kind of see how diplomacy has to sometimes be better than shouting at each other. It's a great title, isn't it? Anatomy is a fool. Well, the fall is literally the fall of the bathroom. Yeah, yeah. And it's got this beautiful, the other star is the young boy who's their child who's going blind. and he has this wonderful dog who's also a great character in the film.

24:42But honestly, you'd love it. And it's one of those films that the minute it finished, I always have this habit in the summer, I'm always the last to leave a cinema because I like to read the credits and I like to see how many people involved and see what they do. But actually, I got to the end of this one and I kind of just wanted to stay in the cinema and watch it again. It's one of those films that I will watch again and I think it'll be even better to take into my mind. Great. Okay. Well, did you have any novels that came through. I mean, I did enjoy Sebastian Falks' new novel, which called Seven Sun, which has got a very, you know, a really intriguing development.