208. History's warning to Labour, the Post Office scandal, and Bangladesh's battle for power

24:43Exactly. And then actually in the end to people's surprise, John Major won. Correct. The 1992 to 1997, we were 22 points ahead. Right. And we won by 13, which was still a wacky mass in New York, but at the same time, it shifted back 2010 to 2015. The conservatives were one point ahead, six months out, and the one by seven. And I remember that. So 2015 election, all of us inside the party, even two, three months out, thought this is going to be a hung parliament. This is going to be a coalition, another coalition with the Lib Dems. Yeah. And Cameron got a majority. Interesting. Hasn't put in the figures for 2001, 2005, 2005, these are the ones where the Tories are in power.

25:23Gotcha. But even with those, and with those from memory, I think maybe there's a government element to this. I don't think it's as dramatic as those, but the point he's making, this relates to the fact that we've now got a conservative government going into an election, a Labour opposition that's very, very far ahead. It's simply, I think if I were Labour, I'd look at this with a lot of interest, because I saw this very starkly with the coverage of Kierstarmer's New Year speech, which was getting a lot of play, and then upstep is really soon, and he sort of drops a hint, but my working assumptions, the election will be the second half of the year, which adds nothing to the total sum of human knowledge, zero, but suddenly that is all the media talking about.

26:06And then the next day, the coverage of Kierstarmer's speech in the sun, in the mail, in the express, in the times, was, you know, this was crap, he said nothing, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the press returning, that does have an impact. No doubt about that. You say the press returning now to be more vigorous, the pro -tory in the... Yeah, more than vigorous, it's very hard to be pro -tory at the moment, because frankly nothing works in the country, but there being very anti -labor. So that is cranky up. So the other thing I think was interesting in Peter's analysis, up to one in three people who voted conservative last time, now tell pollsters, they don't know, or won't vote.

26:44Now, if you think about all the things that have happened in the last few years, if you vote a Tory, you've been given a lot of reasons not to. So if you still don't know, my working assumption would be, if you are going to vote, the chances are you're looking reasons to go back, rather than looking reasons for different sort of vote. So I just think it's really important that the Labour Party understand. I think they do, but my other worry at the moment is that they keep saying no complacency, rightly, no complacency is a very good position to be in, but that shouldn't mean no risk, and it shouldn't mean don't do big bold things that get you noticed.

27:22Because you don't want everybody sitting on don't know, you want them to have a positive reason. You want people to march merrily to the poll. Yeah, which they did in 97, we keep coming back to that. Yeah, there was a real, I mean, I remember still, a real sense of excitement. Yeah, while Britishie Sui and I was on the BBC, Keir Starmer did an interview on Skyfe. I was rather, it was standing in the Trevor Philips' Wilfred Frost son of David. So it was quite good to see him following his dad's footsteps, but I watched the whole interview and I actually thought Keir Starmer came across much better.

27:54He's definitely getting better at these interviews. His speech actually was better, but there's a disconnect in that, really soon, I just have to say my working assumption is, it's leading the news. Keir Starmer can make a big speech about the future of the country. And it's not landing, but you have the same problem, right? That must have been true when you were in opposition. I don't know. I think at this stage, I would have been disappointed at this stage of the electoral cycle if we weren't leading the news a couple of times a week. And how did you achieve that? Because the problem for the opposition is everyone's like, well, you can say what you want, but you're not actually in government.

28:30Maybe my memory's not good on this, but I put it this way, we had a goal of making sure we were leading the news a couple of times a week. And what were big stories that you managed to do to do that? Well, Klaus Faw was a big thing because that broke through as a sense of, so then that meant that every time we came up with something that was related to that narrative of changing the party, there was an automatic interest in it. But I think we were probably attacking more. But maybe this is to his credit, the Keir Starmer I sense doesn't want to just sort of jump up and attack the government the whole time because he knows that people are going to then say, yeah, but what are you going to do?

29:06But how much you've responded to that when people said, yeah, but what are you going to do? You have an answer. Yeah, you have an answer. You do have an answer. You have an answer. And even if it's just that you're going to tweet this or set up this review or whatever it might be, you do have an answer. You have to have the answer. Yeah, it's not, you can't be the opposition leader. I'm not saying this is what Keir does by the way, but you can't be the opposition leader who is just popping up like a commentator saying what they do is really bad. And actually, although it's quite rightly up in a lot of Keir supporters will say it's very unfair that people keep saying what's Labour going to do.

29:34It's inevitable. And Labour needs an answer to that. Well, it's especially inevitable when you are 20 points ahead in the polls and people think you're going to be the next prime minister. Now, I know that they're obviously don't want to set out the entire policy program this far out. But I think the idea that come the day of the manifesto launch, the whole country is going to be sitting there thinking, right, now we're going to look at this and this. You've got to let people know well before that. It's interesting that there are lots of things that you could be doing which might get headlines in an unexpected way.

30:05I mean, I remember this one. I was a prison smelster that for five years, there hadn't really been any headlines around prisons. And my predecessor had said we could never get any stories around prisons. But then when David Gorken, I was really getting going and I was saying I'll resign unless violence comes down suddenly we were able to get front pages. And it probably could be true in many strange ways. He could do something really interesting on international development and get a headline. He certainly could do something really interesting on health and get a headline. I mean, so I would have thought that encouraging his team maybe delegating more, there is a sense of quite tight control there.

30:36If you really empowered the shadow cabinet to really come up with bold, exciting ideas, you'd probably get headlines because often the papers are kind of empty of stuff. Well, I think again, you're right that it's important by the person out within the shadow cabinet. So for example, I would say that West Streeting does get noticed more than the others because he has set a bigger strategic framework on health policy. He's also very active on social media, which is particularly important going into this election. But I think it's more that there's that caution that it was a racial silvestro to peace in the time saying, you know, if people actually look at what Gears Namra is saying, this is a big radical program of change.

31:23And I think that's where labor has to be coming from. As opposed to the feeling is, let's just let the choice carry on messing things up. And then as we get near to the election, we make more of a noise about what we do. But the richer silvestre thing is weird, isn't it? Because it is a bit weird to say about a politician. If you look very closely and read the speeches, very closely, it's a radical program of change, rather than what you'd expect, which is a communications people make it absolutely clear with clear one sentence, things, what the radical program of change is. It's not supposed to be like doing biblical criticism.

31:54But that comes back to it. So in the interview that I mentioned, Keir Starmer did say, well, you know, we're talking about building this many houses. We're talking about this much, this change in relation to the environmental agenda. We're talking about this one child care. There was a lot of big stuff in there. But sometimes it's very quickly that sometimes he does get it wrong. I mean, I was watching him being interviewed by Sky. And he said, when they said, well, you know, what are you going to do? What's different between you and the tourists? He said, well, the first big difference is we're going to have the fastest sustained growth of any country in the G7.

32:27And I thought, kind of answer is that. I mean, it doesn't sound very different to the tourists. I don't think anyone listening thinks the tourists don't want growth. And does anyone actually believe we're going to have faster growth in the US? So it struck me that there's a problem messaging there. That's a weird first answer to the question. I think that everybody who's a Labour candidate, because candidates have to know this, they're out knocking on doors and doing local radio and what have you, they have to have an answer to all those questions. If you're only allowed one sentence, what's he going to be?

32:56Now, they've obviously decided the one sentence is, we're going to grow the economy. If you're allowed two sentences, what are you going to say? Well, we're going to grow the economy and here's how. If you're allowed three or four or five sentences, we're going to go to the economy. That's number one, because we want to do this, this, this, this. They've all got to know what they meant to say. And that's not about sort of command and control central communication. It's about people now going into a campaign phase armed with all the answers to all the difficult questions they're going to get. Look, I think they're definitely getting there.

33:26They're definitely getting there. And I go back to the other big point. It's not that long ago in, you know, historical terms. It's just a few years ago, people who've seen the labes parties finished. And now the criticism is, you know, why can't they just wipe this partory party out forever? But I think, anyway, back to Peter Kellner's point, I think it's really important that with no complacency is real. They do understand the polls are going to narrow when they do they shouldn't wobble. He has a good, he has this other great line, polls wobble about watch for the signal ignore the noise. And that's really important because polls are going to come and suddenly there'll be a poll saying on the back of the budget, the polls of narrow, the polls are going to narrow anyway.

34:07The question then is how do you react and you only react not by following the sort of day to day noise. You follow your own strategy, but at this stage, it should be absolutely crystal clear to all those candidates what they're meant to be saying. Good. Well, maybe time for a break. Take a break.

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36:39Welcome back to the Rest Politics with me, RoardsJet and me, Alistakama. And you were excited by Giver Hofschert who we interviewed on leading. I thought it was good. I enjoyed it and we got a lot of good feedback. Form a belt and prime minister. Yeah, I think a very good question. I was going to raise this on the Q &A but I'll give it to you now, Roarry. Why were you so challenging and so hard on Belgian colonialism in the Congo when you do so little to speak up to apologize for Britain's colonial racism? It's a good water battery. Actually, it's interesting if you listen to the answer. The answer is because it's a massive issue in Belgian politics and the Belgian colonialism in the Congo was beyond horrifying.

37:19And this book, King Leopold's Ghost, which lays out the kind of hearted darkness in the Congo. And it's interesting that Giver Hofschert doesn't quite respond as clearly as you'd expect. He very quickly says, well, yes, I'm just like other nations. It doesn't acknowledge the scale. But it doesn't acknowledge the scale. Like other countries, like the French, like the British, we have an empire. It's interesting how sensitive these issues remain in almost every country in Europe. What did you think about what he said about European defence? You know, when he made that point that Europe between us, we spend as much as China on defence because we're duplicating because we don't actually come together.

38:01Did that make you think differently about defence? I think it's a question of whether you believe that you can move to a much more integrated federal Europe. I mean, Giver Hofschert is, I mean, one of the reasons he's fascinating to listen to is somebody who clearly believes in more and faster European integration. One of his examples of that is if they had a single European army of having a Spanish army, an Italian army, a French army, it would be much more theoretically efficient. It's also fascinating. We didn't get on to this, but is he, somebody who in a way is part of the reason for your escapism that he's pushed too hard too fast, well beyond where most European voters want to be?

38:40I mean, he really believes in a vision which isn't very fashionable anymore. Anyway, good listen. We've got some good leadings. Can we call them leadings? Yes, leadings. Now, we keep going on about how many elections there are and we've just had one in Bangladesh where I think we could have predicted the result and the scale of the victory. Yes. Because the opposition were boycotting it. Yes, although it's very, very, very sad because if we'd been having this conversation 15 years ago, we wouldn't have felt that we could predict it. I've just been reading a very earnest academic book on Bangladeshi elections, which was published a few years ago.

39:22In it, they believe that there was a set style of Bangladeshi politics and the set style was supposed to be one party gets in, does one term, the other party basically riots, boycotts, refuses to participate, and then a military or independent supervised election takes place. The next party gets in. This happened in succession between the and the Oami League and the Oami League and the assumption in this book was it was all going to swing back again and suddenly, suddenly Bangladesh, she politics changed and there was real hopes that in 2008, it would swing back again. Then they hope that this was going to happen again.

40:03And the next elections, then they hope it was going to happen again in 2019. But as you say, by the time you get to 2024, nobody's hoping it's swinging back. It's become a full one party state. And it's a one party state which involves total penetration of the judiciary, particularly at the lower levels, the use of judges to literally bring literally millions of cases against the opposition party. The total corruption and nepotism of local government, all of which is dominated by the Oami League, her refusal to address proper independent commissional corruption, which again, people were very enthusiastic about even as recently as sort of 2012.

40:46And she also abolished the great guaranteeor of Bangladesh democracy, which was this independent commission that used to come in for 90 days, which was there to try to ensure. When you think about when we talk about the kind of more autocratic leaders in the world, my fear has always sort of seen, why are they all of two women, Shaker Sina, who's this is her fourth successive win. So fifth in total, she's been effective the leader of the Oami League, her party since the early 1980s. She's now late 70s. And then the other woman, Caledda Zir, her son, I think is still based in London, effectively running their operations out of here because he's worried if he goes back, et cetera, he just joins the many thousands of being sort of taken out of the game.

41:40So you've got these two incredibly powerful women. Used to be partners, not partners, but they fought for the same constitutional changes. They're military, yeah, they're military. And it's just going backwards and forwards, but now it's not going backwards and forwards anymore. Yeah, yeah. And maybe a quick explainer on Bangladesh, because it's not one, that's something that's covered much, but it is one of the most popular countries in the world, 170 million people. So the eights, most popular country in the world. Yeah, huge, absolutely huge. And it's economy growing fast. It's becoming increasingly important, economic power, but we barely hear about it.

42:16So what is Bangladesh? Bangladesh is, I guess, the other end of the Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan. It's the other extreme, Afghanistan, dry mountainous, Bangladesh, low -lying, very, very wet, and essentially in terms of geography, the great rivers from the Himalayas, the Brahma Putra, the Ganges, and when we say great rivers, these are rivers which are nine kilometers or even 18 kilometers wide. I mean, they're almost like seas floating down. And a combination of those rivers, the rain and the sea makes this extraordinary fertile land, but also a land, of course, that when it's hit by cyclones, early 1940 ,000 people killed, and it began its modern iteration after the British left as part of this new state called Pakistan.

43:07So Pakistan was actually too completely geographically separated entities with over a thousand kilometers between them. Pakistan, obviously, on the west side of India, Bangladesh, on the east side, two Muslim countries within one country and continued to be part of Pakistan until the early 1970s. At which point, the current leader, Shaker Hasinah's father, led a movement initially for autonomy and eventually for independence, which involved the most unbelievably brutal response by the Pakistan military. How many people were killed in it? We still don't know. Bangladesh believes three million independent academics believe 1 .71 .9 million people.

43:50I mean, is it just beyond imagining? And the Pakistan military were initially very successful by may of that year. They had basically taken control of the country. There was insurgency happening, but they had crushed brutally this rebellion in Bangladesh, at which point the end of the year, the Indian army invaded. And again, in reminiscent of the Sixth day war, within a few weeks, Indian army swept across Bangladesh, the Pakistan military surrendered with drew and Bangladesh became an independent country, but became an independent country having lost 40 % of its GDP with millions killed, tens of millions traumatized, raped, huge displacements of populations, Hindu populations moving out.

44:36People connected to the Pakistan, West Pakistan moving out and then the attempt to create a new state. And then moving very quickly forward, Shaker Hasinah's father initially came in as a Democrat, pretty socialist Democrat, but he was then set up at one party state, basically and was assassinated. Then there were these military coups, which eventually ended up with a leader, Zia's husband taking over. He was a general and he began to make some moves towards democracy, but he too was then assassinated, at which point a military government took over. And as you say, the two women representing these two parties, BNP and a Wami League began moving against the military government.

45:17And the stories of the 1990s were very, very optimistic because then suddenly we had not just democracy, but the real tests that Samuel Huntington, the US political scientist, used to set for democracy. Can you have two peaceful transfers of power and sure enough they did. BNP came in, then a Wami League came in, then BNP came in, then a Wami League came in. And everything looked like you had a democratic system emerging and now it's all gone wrong. The thing about Shaker Hasinah as well, so her dad was assassinated and most of the family were assassinated. And the only reason that she wasn't, and I think her sister wasn't, her sister who is the mother of one of our local MPs, tulips of the, is because they were in, they happened to be in Germany at the time.

46:04So the chances are, if she'd been at home, we wouldn't even be talking about her and we probably wouldn't have much to say about her. So she lives, survives that experience. I think she took refuge in the in Germany for a while. She's also been in an out of prison. She was done for extortion at one point. Now whether these are political or not, who knows, she was, she was, there was a warrant for murder at one point. And yet, when you, if you, if people, we should put some pictures of her in the newsletter, because if you just bumped into her, you'd probably think retired doctor, retired head teacher.

46:42Like you, I like, like you, I met her. So as a minister, I went to Bangladesh. She very kindly received me in the, I guess, the sort of quantum to the presidential palace. And she was, as you say, very, very courteous middle aged Eddie. She talked a lot about tulips, the deconisse, who's a British MP and about her, anisse's children. And as you say, she seemed very, very amiable. And the polite phrase them. So this is, I guess is, is seven, eight years ago, was closing space for civil society, which was the way that American Britain were beginning to describe what she was doing to undermine the judiciary shutdown NGOs.

47:20But there was still a real hope there that the US, the European Union, and the donors, because Bangladesh receives a huge amount of international development money would be able to put enough pressure on her to clean up her acts and hold fair elections. And of course, it's turned out that she has completely ignored this pressure. As soon as she won the selection, she was immediately congratulated by China, Russia, and India. And the US I think all three billion building a bridge with their help. We're back to the whole thing about the, we're going to talk about Saudi and China, but the the, the centric China uses is economic clout in these poorer countries.

47:59Means that they probably weren't more worried about their reaction than the Americans, because even Joe Biden had been talking about putting pressure on to make this a free of fair election. I mean, we don't think much about Bangladesh, but as you say, it's one of the largest countries in the world. It's going to become economically more important. And it's probably just before we move off it, I guess, one way to think about it is the big symbol of the failure of the promise of that liberal world order and democracy. Because in the 90s, it really looked as though it was a kind of poster child of a country emerging from military dictatorship, swapping between different parties.

48:35Incredible development success story. I mean, it was known in the 70s, famously as the development basket case. One of the poorest countries in the world looked like it was going nowhere. And actually, its economy has performed fantastically. Well, it's garment industry really took off. And sadly, this is all coincided with more and more autocracy. She is now the world's longest serving female head of government and the longest serving Prime Minister in the history of Bangladesh. Maybe this should give Joe Biden hope. She'll be, she'll be serving into her 80s on the basis of, of this one. Now, Rory, we, so we've mentioned briefly Bhutan.

49:10We've mentioned now Bangladesh. If I gave you the clue of BBC, where is there another election in this election year taking place as we speak? Comaros, Comaros, go and tell us about Comaros. Well, the reason why it's interesting, well, what is Comaros for a start? Comaros is the sort of archipelago of islands. And historically, they've had these three islands. Where is this archipelago? This archipelago. God, you're really testy by knowledge, though. It's an archipelago in the Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, Indian, so there's three islands. And historically, they've sort of said, right, first that island gets the president, then that one, then that one.

49:51Okay. And that seems to work well. And then along comes our old friend, the change of constitution by Azali Asumane, who is standing for re -election.

50:04This would be a second round in February 25th. But guess what's happening? Opposition, essentially, saying it's a done deal and there's no point. And they're boycotting. I don't know if they're officially boycotting yet, but they're basically saying that this is just what it is. Another question, one of the signs of that is that although the government claims was the turn out of 40%, the same senior government figures had said actually the turn out of being something like 23 or 27%. So the electoral commission is completely controlled and they can inflate it. So there we are. And Azali, the reason why he's quite an important figure, Azali Asumane, he's also the current president of the African Union.

50:37So he's clearly a big dude. Right. A big dude. Well, very quickly, I wanted to just touch on something we haven't talked about much, which is connections between Middle East and China. So as the world changes, and we've talked a lot about the fact that the G7, which used to be 70 % of the world economy, is now roughly in purchasing power parity terms, the same size as the bricks, Brazil, Russia, India, China, the Middle East becomes a really important swing area. And I think there are two things going on about China Middle East. One of them is more and more Chinese investment going in. So Chinese investment into oil production, Chinese investment to Sudan, Chinese investment to Somalia, a lot of Chinese investment connected to its increasingly closed ties to Iran, and particular states connected to Iran, which is Iraq and Lebanon.

51:29So Iraq, very popular country, but my goodness, it's got a lot of oil. And the Chinese are now going in, and I think one of the big shell contracts has come to an end, and instead of shell renewing, China has gone in and taken a big oil field just 40 miles from Basra. But the other side of the Chinese story isn't just them going into more fragile countries and scooping up natural resources. It's them trying to create links with the Gulf, particularly UAE and Saudi. So we talked on the podcast about how China astonished the world by brokering a diplomatic relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia without the US being aware of it.

52:09There's been a lot of increasing moves by UAE to show that it's not just a US satellite. So Mohammed bin Zayed and Bezad, who's the leader of UAE, has done two visits to Russia last year, but he hasn't visited the United States for five years now. You've seen China being given a real red carpet treatment in Saudi. She was there just for Christmas. Absolutely. And a big, big contrast to the way that President Biden was received. President Biden was greeted by quite a junior person at the airport. What's going on here? I think the Saudis and the Emirates would probably say it's not about turning away from the US, but it's about hedging and balancing.

52:54Let last thing, maybe, before I hand back to you, the US is now trying to fight back. So there's Emirati company called G42, which is their big AI company, which is one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world, which is trying to get huge contracts in Europe. And the US basically has spent a year putting huge pressure on them to break their links with China and with the Chinese company Huawei, which they've been successful in doing. UAE then did joint air operations, the Chinese Air Force. It looked like the Chinese Navy was building a base in UAE, which the Emirati has denied. Again, the American centipede is very hard, and it looks like any of the satellite imagery of the construction space has stopped.

53:37So the US still seems to be able to have some kind of leverage being able to control the links. Did you see, but I'm so in the FDA that we can, the head of the sovereign wealth fund in the Saudi opened this Tom Kong stock market on a visit there before then going off to China. So this is working both ways. They're both looking to each other economically, and then that as having the political implications as well. But I think the at the moment, if you look at every single foreign policy situation that we've talked about in recent weeks, the pressure or the expectation that the Americans can somehow step in and do something.

54:15And we talked last week about the Red Sea and the Houthis and these attacks. China has not said a word. So from what I've worked for now. Well, it appears to be saying that it's okay from the Chinese point of view, if the Houthi attack US military vessels in the Red Sea. Well, by saying nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Was the same time there, their shipping continued to go through there, presumably. And I guess if you look at the geography of it, this is partly because China's direct routes into the Middle East are not Red Sea Israel, but coming instead through the Straits for more so Iran, or hitting the edge of Oman.

54:53There's a huge Chinese investment going into a port called Dukum in Oman, which is a big strategic move because it would allow China to avoid having to move ships either through the Red Sea Suez Canal or the Straits for Muse and instead be able to get goods directly into the Middle East from Oman. And it's interesting in a world where we talk a lot about tech, how much the world still depends on very old -fashioned things, container ships, movement of oil and gas, and Houthi things which would have been familiar really in the 19th century, you know, where are your ports, where do you get your fuel in, continue to be central to the way China thinks about the world.

55:32There may be to close. If you were to think about buying a new car, would you think about buying a Chinese car? In order to buy an electric car. So what's your straight? If you had a choice, right, I can have an American car or a European car or a Chinese car, what would you buy? I guess I'd normally go European American, but what are you going to tell me it's much cheaper to get a Chinese car? I'm going to tell you that very, very soon it will become much cheaper, even if the Americans put on the sort of tariffs that they might, it's going to become much cheaper to buy a Chinese car. So are you now going to buy a Chinese car?

56:09I mean, by are they ramping up production? And of course, this is something where China is in a very interesting position because they're dominating a lot of the industries around climate change, electric vehicles, solar, winter, etc. They're also dominating these countries where the minerals are produced for the batteries that they need. In other words, they're thinking 15 years, 15 years is the future in getting this. And why are they able to think 15 years into future? Why? Well, does it help that they're not really democracy? That probably helps. It's also not arguing against democracy by the way.

56:41I'm not arguing. I'm simply saying that is the advantage that it's employed. In two ways. And I think the other thing is that the Americans have been putting pressure on mining companies to go back, you know, American and European mining companies, free port, we are trying to go back into places like them, credit, Republic of Congo, where China's now dominating a lot of this stuff. But of course, they're very reluctant to do so because they will find shareholders and activists saying, what an earth are you doing? You're operating in this place where there's human rights abuses, there's corruption, there's massive environmental problems.

57:13So in a sense, the Chinese companies are able to benefit from the fact that they're not held to the same standards. And that's one of the reasons they're able to dominate mining in these fragile areas. So average price of a new current America this year, $48 ,000. Current tariff on the Chinese cars currently in production will put it up probably to about 25 ,000, 26 ,000. So even with the tariffs. Even with the tariffs. So I am suggesting that we should watch out for these two trade names, BYD and NIO. Very good. Well, on that, we should have. Thank you.