In short
Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics - Episode 212: Why Trump's Return Wasn't Inevitable
Podcast Overview Hosts: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart Theme: Analysis of current UK and international political affairs with a focus on engaging discourse and expert insights.
Episode Highlights In this episode, the hosts delve into various pressing political issues, including:
- The ongoing situation in Ukraine and its significance amidst other global conflicts.
- The challenges faced by Ron DeSantis in the Republican primaries against Donald Trump.
- The rise of far-right politics in Germany and its implications.
Key Discussions
- Ukraine Conflict Insights
- Historical Context: Nearly two years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with ongoing ramifications in both Russian and global politics.
- Putin's Narrative: The blending of historical narratives and national pride as a tool for political mobilization in Russia, particularly regarding WWII.
- Current State: A perceived stalemate on the frontlines, with recent Russian territorial gains leading to a defensive posture by Ukraine. President Zelensky's stress regarding future US support amid upcoming elections was noted.
- U.S. Politics and Trump’s Dominance
- Republican Primaries: Trump’s seemingly inevitable lead against competitors like DeSantis and Haley. The hosts discuss the implications of a small voter turnout in early primaries and the narrative shaping these elections.
- DeSantis' Struggles: His campaign’s missteps, including a disastrous launch on Twitter and eventual endorsement of Trump after withdrawing from the race.
- Conservative Divides: The historical split in the Republican Party, which allowed Trump to dominate due to a lack of coherent opposition.
- The Far-Right Surge in Germany
- AFD's Rise: The Alternative for Germany (AFD) has gained significant traction, holding nearly equal standing with the ruling party. The episode discusses recent protests against their ideology and the need for mainstream parties to address the underlying issues that fuel such extremist sentiments.
- Protests Against Far-Right Policies: Demonstrations across Germany in response to a meeting among AFD leaders discussing "re-migration" plans, reflecting growing public dissent against far-right ideologies.
- Broader Implications of Populism
- Populism’s Impact: The episode concludes with reflections on the broader European trend of rising populism and its historical context. The need for leadership that challenges extremist narratives is highlighted.
Key Takeaways
- The hosts argue that political dynamics are shifting, particularly regarding populism and far-right ideologies in Europe and the U.S.
- Need for Leadership: Emphasis on the importance of mainstream political parties to address public concerns and myths perpetuated by extremist groups.
- Cultural and Historical Narratives: How political leaders use history and culture as tools for contemporary governance, influencing public sentiment and policy direction.
Conclusion The discussion encapsulates the critical interplay between historical narratives, current political landscapes, and the challenges faced by traditional political parties in responding to extremist ideologies. The episode serves as a call to action for informed public discourse and robust political leadership.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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1:34Welcome to TheRestlessPolitics with me, Alistair Campbell and me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, I think we're going to do a lot of abroad today. As we speak on Tuesday afternoon, Rushi Sunak is in standing up in the comments talking about the latest USUK strikes against the Ruthie Rebels. We want to talk in the main in the first part about Ukraine, which I think both with what's going on in the Red Sea and what's going on in Israel, Gaza, risks being pushed off the agenda. I think Ukraine should link us to what's happening in America. By the time the podcast comes out, we'll have a fair idea who's what in New Hampshire?
2:09Between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis having dropped out. I think we should take a little look at the domestic situation possibly through the lens of what the hell is going on now in Rwanda. Also, Rory, I hope you're part of this new pop -con popular conservatism, be launched by Liz Truss, Jacob Reesmar. Oh my Lord. It sounds like a very unpopular type of conservatism for my family. And then I also want to talk about what's going on in Germany. A pretty amazing weekend of protests and demonstrations against the hard right. So shall we start with Ukraine, which, as I say, I think does risk falling off the agenda a bit?
2:44Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the first thing just to bring people up to date is that we are now approaching the second anniversary. It's been almost two years since in February 2022. Putin announced the invasion of Ukraine. And it was obviously a shattering moment. He had been in COVID lockdown, basically, for almost two years barely seeing anybody. During which time it now seems that he had his head buried in history books. And this extraordinary narratives about Russian history, which people used to think were just part of a propaganda machine, increasingly feels as though he actually believes.
3:23And I think maybe one way into it for a British audience is that it would be as though, and I think there are people in the Brexit side who are like this as though an obsession with the Second World War and imperial history had completely dominated every part of Russian political life. And we both met, I think a couple of weeks ago, a woman called Jade McGlin who's written rather a good book called Memory Makers about the way that this all took off. But essentially she says that it's become a strange hotch -podge of celebrating Russia's victory in the Second World War against Hitler and Nazism, bits of imperial history, bits of history from a thousand years ago, the creation of Kiev and Rus all blended together with an idea that Russia is a unique and special nation with a spiritual destiny to save the world.
4:11And this, along with trying to shore up his political base, is one of the things that drove him to invade Ukraine over you. Well, yeah, it is a fascinating book that Jade McGlin's written. She's a Brit who's lived a long time in Russia. I think she's back in Britain now, but she lived in Russia. And it's quite academic in the way that it's presented. But I think the means by which she has managed to use history, and it's not just sort of the great patriotic war as they called it, the Second World War, which for them began in 1941 rather than 1939. It goes back to the Battle of Moscow, it goes back to Napoleon, and by the way, my eyes popped out when I got to the page where she does actually mention Mark François in the context that you've just said about, we do this to some extent within the Brexit debate, when François was saying that my dad stood up to the Germans, and I'm not going to get pushed around by the Germans, etc.
5:04What is remarkable is about how successful this has been as a political strategy as well as a communication strategy. Now, of course, it helps when you throw journalists in jail, when you control the media, and so forth. But as you said before, we shouldn't kid ourselves that Putin is not a popular figure with an awful lot of Russians. And what it seems to be happening in Ukraine at the moment, it's almost as if you've got this very bizarre situation where on the one hand, it's almost like the First World War, with two armies on the front line, they're dug in, they're sort of taking pop shots at each other.
5:38Meanwhile, you've got this high -tech war going on above them, and it seems a bit stuck in the stalemate, but the truth is that Russia feel that they're on the up at the moment, and that they think that they have been able to intensify attacks on the front line, they've made some territorial gains. And so Ukraine feels very, very defensive at the moment. I watched an interview that President Zelensky did on Channel 4 in Matt Fry, and it was a very good interview, and Zelensky is an incredibly impressive communicator and leader, but I felt for the first time that he was, I don't know, he just looked very, quite stressed, didn't see my knees, and there's no doubt that there's an elephant in the room there, which is the American elections.
6:17It is clearly, I would say, playing on his mind that Donald Trump comes in, and to use Trump's words, he sorts this war out in 24 hours. But the history, the way that Putin uses history and projects himself, is that, you know, Yeltsin and Gorbachev essentially have been written out of history. It's kind of peed to the great, Catherine the Great, and peed to the, you know, Vladimir the Great is how he intends to end up, and it demands that he carries on trying to take Ukraine. Yeah, so quick part of the history of what's been going on for the last couple years, militarily, February 2022, end of February, Russia invades very, very suddenly.
6:54It had done two fake massings on the border at the end of 21, which maybe made people a little complacent, including some of the Ukrainian leadership that sort it might be a Russian bluff again, and came in with armor, with air support, and with Russian tank troops with three days of rations, believing that they were going to be able to get the Kiev and three days in the whole thing would be over. An extraordinary defense by the Ukrainian people, and within a few months, it looked as though Putin had completely failed in all his objectives. Instead of taking Kiev, he failed to take Kiev. Instead of building Russian sympathy, he actually managed to solidify the Ukrainian nation against Russia.
7:35Instead of weakening NATO, he seemed to strengthen NATO, because people got behind it pretty quickly. It turned out that we were less dependent on gas supplies than maybe we thought. And so by, I guess the late spring of 2022, people really thought, actually this is an amazing research into the West and an incredible achievement by Ukraine. The autumn of that year, there were then this very surprising and impressive Ukrainian advances, which we discussed on the podcast where they made a lot of progress. There was the bloody fighting around back moot, which people remember who listed the podcast, because that's what progoation was involved in.
8:08And then as we came into the beginning of last year, 2023, the real push was for the counteroffensive, because in that initial push, Russia had managed to expand their territory. They'd taken Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. They'd taken the eastern bits of the Donbass, but they'd pushed ahead and they'd capture more territory. And the idea was Ukraine was going to drive back. And people will remember that a lot of last year was dominated by Zalensky traveling around the world, Presence Zalensky traveling around the world, asking for various sort of big weapons. And eventually in the main getting them, and eventually getting them exactly.
8:40So the pattern was he would say I want particular types of high Mars, which is a precision guided shell, and eventually he'd get it. He'd say I want tanks and eventually they'd turn up. And then it's been F -16s, and the U .S. has agreed that F -16s can be lent by other nations, and they'll provide training. Just jump in, you mentioned Crimea there. And I think there's something really interesting about the way that he's now operating within those parts of Ukraine that the Russians are occupying. So if you think of the four oblasts, as they're called, the four areas that we, you know, were constantly on people's lips, Donetsk, Nuhansk, Zaparizia, and Kershon in the south.
9:13And there was a time when we were talking about them the whole time. And they seem to have gone off a little bit in terms of the sort of global media and global politics off the map. And there's a military stuff going on. But the other reason why this book is an interesting read in the context of Ukraine is because lots of other stuff is going on, which is if you like, is at the cultural level, at the history level. You've had sham elections. You've now got Russian officials. You've got these army of technocrats and bureaucrats who are trying to align the laws and tax and banking systems with Russia.
9:42You've got a, what they're calling a transition period to what they now called the new regions. And the cultural and educational change is incredible. Teachers who are now having to teach that this was not in invasion. This was a special military operation. They're having to teach about the Nazis who have been so -called Nazis who've been in charge in Ukraine. And then the other thing they're doing, they're forcing lots of people of fled and they're being allowed to leave. They're people have been allowed to leave. But of those who've stayed in these areas, roughly about three million, nine out of ten of them, apparently now have Russian passports.
10:19And if you don't have the passport, you can't get a bank account. You can't get benefits. So effectively Putin is really making these things part of Russia. And I guess that relates a little bit to the story we were just talking about, which was the fact that the counteroffensive last year didn't work. And that relates, I guess, to what she was saying at the beginning about the fact that it feels like the First World War, but the First World War were the amazing bits of modern surveillance kit drones flying above incredible precision missiles. In order to break through, and I think we discussed this quite a lot last year, I was a bit gloomy.
10:52But the world people out there who were still optimistic, people who thought it was really going to work. But actually what the Ukrainians were being asked to do, which is this enormous combined arms operations across these minefields, against these heavily defended Russian positions with hundreds of thousands of troops without air cover, is something that the Americans and the British haven't really done since the First World War. I mean, a lot of our drives through after Normandy, is when we had control of the air. In addition to that, I think I was talking to a friend of mine who's a British retired general.
11:23He was reminding me that even the British army doesn't really train on these huge conventional warfare combined operations. We talked a little bit about this, that you would need to make it work that counteroffensive. You have to coordinate, most carefully of all, of course, that your artillery barrage has to land and then lift at exactly the moment that your soldiers go forward. But you've also got to move your logistics out. You've got to go your electronic warfare coordinated. So it's a huge amount of technical stuff happening at an army level. Britain hasn't really been doing that for decades because we've been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the US.
11:55So we've been focused much more on platoon -scale training. And of course, Ukraine is an army that really had never had the resources or the opportunity to train in this kind of warfare. And what turned out by the end of last year is they just couldn't do it. They'd roll their tanks forward into these minefields. And that would then give time for Russian surveillance. So it turns out that Russian electronic warfare and surveillance is very good to then bring artillery fire down. And the tanks would be stranded in the middle of the minefields and then taken out. So it now feels very, very unlikely that there's going to be any breakthrough this year.
12:28Now the story for 2024 is holding these defensive lines, the Ukrainians holding the lines. I mean, they're even talking about, you know, being defensive and holding the territory that they've got. But in the meantime, just briefly back on this whole sort of cultural front, even though in the kind of memory makers book, Lenin is not necessarily putin, it doesn't put him up there with the Peter the Greats and the cash from the Greats and the Vladimir Putin's. But there was a period when the many, many, many hundreds, possibly thousands of statues of Lenin that were in Ukraine were all knocked down in round about, you know, in the mid -2010s, 2015.
13:07And lots of them were going up in Mariapol. They're being put up again. Yeah. And in Mariapol, freedom of square apparently is now called Lenin square. Kids in the schools are having to sing the Russian national anthem. I mean, culturally, it must be absolutely mind -wapping to be there while this is going on. And of course, meantime, the other sorts of things that that Putin did bringing back the victory day parade, as you said earlier, showing to the Russian people that Russia is a very, very special country and using the history and these great events in history, many of them, you know, rewritten to suit the narrative, but using them as a present day tool.
13:46And I sent you a photograph of a page this morning that I thought particularly stood out to me. This is embedded. This culture and historical reframing is embedded in their military strategy, the information strategies part of their military strategy. And it's embedded in that. So I think this is something that we haven't necessarily caught on to in the way that we should have done. I actually felt, I know we're going to talk about Nurendra Modi and the Q &A because we've got some questions on that. But I felt a little bit of the same thing with Modi yesterday when he was opening this Hindu temple, which again, we'll talk about that in more detail in the Q &A.
14:20But this use of the past to shape a present and then signal a future. And it's not that far removed from the way that the right -wing populist tried to use history as well. Well, so Owen Matys, his written book called Overreach, which is probably the most accessible introduction to Ukraine in the conflict, asked this question. He says, how did this strange ethno -nationalist historical thing, which was on the fringe of Russian society, become so central that Putin and his inner circle seemed to completely believe it and that now drives these wars? And I think that is a warning because of course you can ask the same question around India.
14:56What is it that's made? What was a pretty fringe form of Hindu ethno -nationalism? Become so central. Of course, it runs against all the kind of ideas that we had in the 90s that the world was going to become more liberal, more secular, where we imagine that ethno -nationalism was the thing of the past that people were going to become more progressive. Little shout out to Shashank Joshi, who's the economist defense editor and who's been doing some very good stuff. And again, I was chatting to him yesterday. He's been really good on looking if people are interested in the details of the weapons and what's working and what isn't and the kind of weapons that they need.
15:33He's also pointed out I think two quick things for listeners. One is you mentioned Crimea. Crimea has become very much the center of the Ukrainian focus. That's where they've inflicted most damage recently. So they're able to take out a lot of Russian ships. They've driven Russian helicopters back. They've mounted big attacks, which have killed Russian generals. And the second thing connected that is Britain's support. So we don't often have much time to praise the conservative party for its foreign policy. But I think on Ukraine, they actually can hold their heads high and have a pretty good record.
16:07And unfortunately, this is also true of Boris Johnson, who I'm usually snagging off. But he is incredibly popular in Ukraine. Whatever you and I think of him. They name streets after him. He's sat already because he was seen as getting early on the ground when it was still pretty dangerous in Kiev before the missile defenses were there. And Rishi Sunak has been the first Western leader to visit this year. 2 .4 billion pounds committed, which is more than Britain committed last year. Focus particularly on things like naval operations and drones around Crimea. So I think it is example of one place where I think Britain is demonstrating some kind of foreign policy energy.
16:44And of course, it's vital it does it because it's that 50 billion, which is frozen in the US, which is terrifying everybody. I accept the broad premise of that. The only thing I'd say about what I thought of Boris Johnson during the period was I did feel there was a kind of correlation between whenever he was getting it felt he was getting into difficulties internally or over party gate. He'd sort of set off to Kiev. He could have left to go and see Zelensky. And the other thing I think is worth saying is that this is happening. So as I said earlier, Rishi Sunak's standing up in Parliament as we speak, he's making a statement about Britain supporting the American strikes on the Houthis and Kierstam are very supportive and so forth.
17:23But I think if you talk to anybody within the kind of defense establishment, I think there's a real worry about the state of UK defenses. I mean, I used to be recently you could say you could fit the entire army into Manchester United's ground, old Trafford, which is 72 ,000 I think. Within a couple of years, we're going to be down to Manchester City and how about Burnley? Well, I think then we're really going to be struggling, but we're about a third of that. But you know, and also, for example, there was the Royal Navy at the moment are really struggling to recruit. We've missed recruitment targets year after year after year.
18:02And there's another kind of private sector. I know you love these procurement stories. Capital is the outsourcing company which oversees the recruitment program. And they've been awarded contracts worth over a billion. And yet we've been missing recruitment targets year after year after year. So I think on the one hand, I agree with you, we have been very supportive in relation to Ukraine. But bear in mind just last week, Grant Chaps made his first sort of big foreign defense policy speech. And he was essentially warning us that, you know, before long, we could be involved in wars with, you know, China, Iran, North Korea.
18:33You know, he was essentially saying the world is becoming more dangerous, which I think we would accept that it is. But then I think you have to back that up with, you know, defense investment that really does meet the scale of that challenge, particularly, and maybe this is where we can flip to America, particularly given that Donald Trump will be so unpredictable in relation to the future of NATO should he become president? Well, it's fascinating. I mean, I was the chair of the Defense Committee when we got the commitment to spend 2 % of GDP on defense. And that was considered quite a big achievement.
19:06But we now spend 2 % on GDP and defense. We spend 45 billion pounds a year. And as you say, it's clearly not delivering the results. So now the government's commitments up to 2 .5 %, Russia calls spent only 40 % of its budget on defense. Forty -forty -four zero. No. It's basically a war economy. Yeah. Yeah, I believe it's four zero. But the thing that comes out of this, I think, is partly that nobody wants to join the military anymore. And one of the reasons why we've had to get rid of amphibious assault ships and the Marines is just to find the sailors to go on to our new frigates. Yeah. And the type 42s, and again, maintenance seems to be huge problem.
19:44We've got these incredibly fancy new type 42s, which I think only one is currently in the water, three of them are in maintenance. And it has to be resupplied by an American resupply ship. So one of the questions is, can we afford these navies? And that's before we get on to our aircraft carriers. And one of the things we're learning in Crimea is how vulnerable these things are. I mean, there's a reason why there isn't a UK aircraft carrier sitting in the back sea a number of reasons. But one of them is that as the Russians have discovered in a world of drone attacks, it's very, very difficult to defend these things.
20:14These are hugely expensive floating kits. Now, so if you were in the army, you might well argue that we should be putting more resources into our army. And no. Endlessly chasing this naval stuff where there's no end to it. You know, every bit of kits you buy, you need other bits of kit to support it. We, I think, like to consider ourselves to be a what's called a tier one military power. And I guess technically, given that we do have nuclear capability, we do have an army, an navy, an Air Force, we can take part in pretty serious complicated military action. But there was a report, I think it was in the Times the other day, which quoted, which said that an American general had said to Ben Wallace when he was the defense secretary that the moment UK was barely tier two.
20:57Now, doubtless, he was saying that as a way to, you know, get us properly engaged, whether that was in Ukraine, whether it was in the current action. But I think we've got to be very, very careful that we don't allow this gap to grow between how we talk about the threats that we face and the levels of readiness to meet. And at some point, we may have to make some very, very brutal choices. So we spend 3 .2 billion pounds at the moment every year on our nuclear deterrent. And that's a choice we're making right out of that 40 billion, 3 .2 billion, spend on nuclear deterrent. At some point, we need to work out what kind of military we want that the risk is that we are trying to be a military like the US without having the resources to do it.
21:35So we end up spread very, very thin with very few, very expensive objects, very few soldiers. And partly turning around recruitment has got to be increasing salaries. Now, let's talk about Iowa and New Hampshire and the likelihood that Donald Trump is, I mean, the way things are going, he could be kind of, you know, out on his own fairly soon. We're speaking before the vote in New Hampshire. But bearing in our Iowa, he lost back in the first time he ran. He didn't win an eye when he is getting over 50 % and pushing DeSantis into second place and then DeSantis deciding, you know, what the game's up.
22:12So hard to imagine how Trump's going to be stopped even with these dozens of court cases against him and even with all the scandals attached to him. It looks like he's going to run just quickly to remind people. So what's happening at the moment is that the primaries, which is the selection of the Republican candidate to run for president and Iowa goes first to the New Hampshire and then we're going to move on to South Carolina. But the thing that's interesting about them is that these are small states and they're determined by very small number of voters. So the turnout in Iowa, which is you say it was 51 % Trump, Rondasantist, 21 %, Nikki Haley 19 % was only 110 ,000 people.
22:50It's amazing. So the whole narrative of US politics is to find that New Hampshire, which will be going to the polls Tuesday night, the night we're recording and results will start coming out when people are listening to this. If they're lucky, they'll get about 300 ,000 people voting. The state's only got 900 ,000 faces. This isn't a country of 300 million people. I mean, it is, it is, we played a lot about our political system and how the electoral system hasn't kind of adapted. But I mean, this is a entire political system that is geared to a time when there wasn't telecommunication that there were plays and people had to travel vast distances between votes and so forth.
23:31I mean, you really, it is a weird system. And Iowa and New Hampshire, they have this disproportionate role within it. Somebody worked out the money that Rondasantist spent on Iowa where he travels, as he constantly told us, the all 99 counties. It worked out. He spent $6 ,000 per vote that he got. Absolutely. It's a pretty high margin for a low outcome. I think we take it for red today that Trump was inevitable, but it didn't feel like that. A year ago, just over a year ago, DeSantis was having polling numbers often on the head -to -head well ahead of Trump. We discussed it on the podcast. He was showing some polling numbers which put him in the same category as people like Obama or Reagan.
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24:16So he really looked very, very popular. And coming into the end of last year, he had a huge amount of momentum, particularly after the midterm. So one of the things that cheered people like us up who are very worried about Trump is that the midterms in November 2022 were really disappointing. And it looked like Trump had really screwed up and his candidates, his mega candidates hadn't performed. So that gave DeSantis a bit of wind. But by the spring, DeSantis delayed his announcement really to May and he made this extraordinary announcement where he tried to go on ex on Twitter with Elon Musk for his launch, which went catastrophically wrong.
24:53So 25 minutes of silence, any kind of blundering on. Yeah, well, his exit wasn't very elegant either, because his big moment in his speech saying he was pulling out was what he built as a Winston Churchill quote, success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. Two things about that. One, he wasn't continuing, and two, Winston Churchill never said it, but apart from that, it was absolutely brilliant. And to add to the humiliation, he then immediately bent the knee and endorsed Trump when Trump has just could have completely humiliated him. I mean, just sort of humiliated his footwear, humiliated his clothing.
25:29I mean, it's just pathetic. Yeah. Anyway, Budweiser will have sold a few cans on the back of the phone Churchill quote, because apparently it's for some of the more of their ads. That's what we like. So anyway, and I tell you what's interesting, and of course, he's still a governor and all that, but it's amazing how in these very, very high, globally high profile, political events, how quickly somebody like the Santas will probably just recede from the scene now for us. And like Marco Rubio, who you remember was one of the big candidates in 2016 that everyone saw. And for me, because I spent a lot of time in the States, I was at a big event with a lot of key Republicans in the summer of last year, where they were also, it's not, you know, not inevitable that Trump will come through and they were talking up Tim Scott and they were talking up to Santas.
26:15And they weren't particularly talking up actually Haley at that point. And their story, and I think it's a really important story, if we're looking before we go on to Germanian things, is that the way to defeat Trump needed to be to do what the Republicans failed to do in 2016. So their theory was that in 2016, the old conservative split between the kind of right wing for the British market, the kind of loose trust types, Ted Cruz, who was the kind of tax cutter. And then for the British market, the kind of one nation types, who were more sort of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, who were more kind of America's, the global policeman, free trade, relatively soft on immigration.
26:49And Trump came plowing through the middle. And the inability of these two sides, the kind of fiscally conservative side and the more liberal side of the Republicans to ally, allowed him to come crashing through with a message that was offensive to all of them, because of course Trump is protectionist, anti -free trade, anti -immigration, anti -America's role is so global, policeman, etc. Maybe before we go to the braiders, a quick word on the on the current president, Joe Biden, and what's going on in the middle east. I do think it's you don't get the sense that Biden is talking to Netanyahu very much when they had a phone call the other day.
27:21It sort of felt like that was quite a rare exchange. And what was interesting was that Netanyahu essentially pushed back on Biden. Biden was emphasizing there's got to be a two -state solution. Netanyahu was pretty dismissive of that. And meanwhile, so we're speaking on the morning after 21 Israeli soldiers have died. Netanyahu said it's been the terrible moment during the war. The figures of Garsens who've been killed is now according to the health ministry over 25 ,000 majority women and children. So the level, the horror is going on, not much sign of American influence being brought to bear that we can see.
28:01And meanwhile, a pretty big division opening up at the top of the Netanyahu government where he's got this strange war cabinet where he got three kind of full members as it were and then a couple of observers. And one of the observers is this guy, Eisenkart, who did, I only watched it with subtitles, but a pretty amazing interviewer. He basically essentially was saying he didn't trust Netanyahu. And he was also saying that the Israel's going to get to the polls pretty quickly as well. Now, the one person who is in the war cabinet as a full member and who might well fancy his chances of running it as Netanyahu, he's been against.
28:36But it's interesting that there's clearly a divide now there that is perhaps come out more into the open than it's been thus far. And I think at the heart, we'll be this feeling that there is, I still for the life of me, cannot see where the clarity of strategy is. I see what they're saying, but I don't then see how that is relating to the actions that they're taking. Well, I think we were sort of lying to ourselves. I mean, I remember as I think I've talked about this before, but as the different minister responsible for the Middle East and Asia, I was sent to Palestine and Israel to meet Israeli officials.
29:08I actually met the woman who's now the Israeli ambassador in Britain was then the deputy foreign minister. And I remember being completely shocked by the gap between the briefing I was receiving from officials, which implied that the Israeli government was completely on side with a two -state solution. And the reality of what I met and as becoming clear now, if you hear the Israeli ambassador in Britain, she is absolutely openly rejects the idea of a two -state solution. And of course, Netanyahu is also openly rejected it. It's very odd that we've sort of been pretending, or at least it felt to me as though the British government was kind of pretending to itself that it was all on side and was supporting Israel and close to the Kurd and everybody agreed on a two -state solution and holding that settlement when the evidence was absolutely blatantly in front of our eyes.
29:55That a lot of the Kurd didn't, and that's before you get on to people like Smotrich and Ben Gavir. And Ben Gavir. And of course, that's possibly why Netanyahu is even more hard -lying than these public statements than he was when he was maybe playing along with American and Western opinion that yeah, of course we believe in a two -state solution, but it's very odd when they're trying to kill you. I think the other thing that's happening there though is he's coming under, I think, increasing pressure from the families of hostages who don't necessarily see what the strategy to get them out is. But it's within the con, and again, it's another one where I mean just imagine what I don't even know what Trump does think about what's happening there, but whether you're in Israel, Gaza, whether you're in Ukraine, whether you're Iran, whether you're, and did you see him last night?
30:41Here we have a situation where North Korea, I think their foreign ministers just been in Russia, they're providing them with lots of kind of weaponry for Ukraine. And meanwhile, those Trump last night at one of these events talking about how he had this great love affair with Kim Jong -un and you know how they really got on and he sent me sweet letters and god, he just doesn't bear thinking about this. Well, some of the lessons I think are part of the things that he got in trouble with when the FBI raided his Mar -a -Lago mansion because he was keeping some of this sort of North Korean correspondence at home.
31:12Just quickly, quickly, I mean, I'd love you just for a second on this question of communications and whether there was a path to beat Trump for the Republicans. Because they had this paradox which is that the donors, most of the big money Republicans don't, is didn't want to give money to Trump. They didn't want Trump to come back. A lot of the traditional conservatives, as I say, because they believe in free trade and Trump doesn't, they believe in America's world and Trump doesn't, they believe in free markets and he doesn't really, we're against him. And they put a lot of effort since Biden won and since the midterms on trying to get an alternative Canada and they have been completely defeated.
31:48I mean, their last hope now is Nikki Haley. I'm Nikki Haley again for British listeners. She's very interesting. She's from a Punjabi Sikh background. Nikki is a Punjabi word for small. She was a sort of local politician South Carolina, a bit like a local counselor, I guess, almost a bit bigger than that, but she was in there assembly. You only paid $10 ,000 a year. She was a chairman of a women's business group. And then very rapidly became governor very young and was plucked by Trump to become his rep at the UN, resigned from that. Nobody quite knows why. And now presents herself as the sort of moderate voice.
32:28But of course, in a British term, she wouldn't be a moderate voice. British terms, she seems pretty indistinguishable from pretty paternal or swelter brotherman or some of the comments of people like Ian Duncan Smith. I mean, she's somebody who has been pretty tough on immigration, pretty tough on abortion. Now, I guess she probably thinks she needs to be those things in order to try to keep a Republican base and have a chance of coming through. Yeah, but I you asked whether there was a path through. I mean, obviously, particularly in the American system, it depends so much on people's personality, their ability to connect through television, social media and all that stuff.
33:06And you know, whatever people think of Trump, he's very, very good at kind of dominating the the media narrative. But I think Ron Nassantis's big mistake was to think that he had to be more like Trump than he actually was. I think all of them should have been far more challenging. Trying to sort of out Trump, Trump. Yeah, he was sort of and I don't think people, I think when people see Trump and they see the way he behaves and the positions he outlines, they think, well, it's coming from a kind of authentic place. It may be horrible. It may be narcissistic, but it's kind of Trump. Whereas I felt with the Sanders that he was trying to be something he wasn't.
33:42And look, you and I met quite a few Republican, Congress men and women quite recently. And you know, hard to say that they were fans of Trump. There was one who really was a fan of Trump. But in the main, it was like, we don't quite know how to deal with this guy, but I've got to wish he wasn't around. That was the sort of the vibe that they give. I mean, one of them said to me, it's very off the record. So not quitting who it was, but one of them said, listen, honestly, you know, 85 % of my voters support Trump. So I don't really have any choice. And then I think another one again said to you basically that they were against Trump, but they just couldn't say it publicly.
34:17Yeah, because they're worried about their base. But I just think that where they all missed the tricky my view was after the January 6 in direction, the way that the kind of Republican establishment sort of did the around for a bit and then thought, I will sort of say it's not quite as bad as it looks. That was the moment when I think they had to absolutely bury him politically. And I think they could have done but they didn't. And then that's just added to the polarization. And it's given him the narrative of saying this thing is just a sort of Democrat Biden witch hunt. So I think the only chance they had was to bury him that.
34:55So the political theory of dissentist was apparently he believed there were three groups. There were the Republicans who'd never vote for Trump. There were the people who'd always vote for Trump. And then there was the third group who liked Trump's policies, but might want a younger, more dynamic person who wasn't facing endless criminal charges to lead it. So their gamble was they could pick up that third group. And then in the runoff pick up the never Trump group and come through, I guess, in the inside. Well, listen, we're going to be talking soon to a guy I worked with once, a guy called Tucker Rescue, his work for several Republican leaders and he worked with me during the Iraq war.
35:32And we're going to get him on because he's a, he's in the killer, never Trump. Still a Republican very much in part of this sort of Christian movement. But I think it'd be very interesting to get his explanation as to what on earth has happened to the Republican Party. So we're having one soon. Great. Time for a break.
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38:03Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alex Campbell. And many congratulations Alex on getting Bill Gates on, which I thought was really interesting. And I think it's got a huge, huge response. What was your sense of it? Yeah. So he's our latest interview on leading. We spoke to him about his family, about his upbringing, the whole Microsoft story, particular leaders he respects, Tony Blair, and the future of AI and other challenges. Anyway, there's a little clip. And if you want to hear the whole episode, it's available wherever you listen to podcasts.
38:39How do you feel when you become part of this all kind of conspiracy theory stuff? Go. That was completely unexpected. You almost have to laugh that, you know, lady, why would I want to know where you are? I mean, really, is that how I spent my time is tracking you in my overall situation? I have nothing to complain about. Somebody coming up to me on the street, which is Apple sometimes, saying that I've chipped them and I'm following them around, you know, like saying that I profit from vaccines or that vaccines instead of saving millions of lives actually are bad for children. You know, that's a total reversal.
39:20So I have people who track it and we often think which of these things should you respond to? You know, if they get broad enough, then you want to respond. If they're just in the truly crazy niche, probably you don't want to amplify it.
39:41I thought ourselves a lovely question to get get them onto conspiracy theories. I mean, he's quite guarded, isn't he? I was we talked, I guess he's so focused on running this massive international development program that he has to be a little bit careful what he said, but I thought he really opened up there. By the way, also, I really encourage people listening, do look at leading, subscribe to it. I'm getting quite a lot of people saying, I didn't know you'd feel Gates and stuff. So remember, there are two separate podcast channels. There's the rest of politics and then there's leading, which gives you access to that and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
40:16A lot of British people as well, Rory. Anyway, I do recommend people listen to it. He's quite difficult to interview. He doesn't give him much in terms of, you know, he's not naturally warm, but when you kind of dissect the answers, there's an awful lot in there. He kind of says what he wants to say and then he doesn't, he didn't lie, you pushing him on, you know, my charity is better than your charity. No, and I can see from your expression, you didn't wish me to continue on that particular fight, but I definitely feel we were slightly gay dead. There was a risk of going down a bit of a dead edelain and slightly losing the warmth that was growing in the room.
40:56Yeah. Anyway, very good interview. I'm glad that we did it. Good. So listen, Rory, you're famed on this podcast for your explainers. What the hell is going on with Rwanda now? I mean, I just, every time it comes on the television now, I just, I'm lost as to what's actually happening. So there've been defeated in the House of Lords over something that isn't the Rwanda Bill, it's to do with the treaty, which I thought was already done deal. And then the Rwanda Bill's coming back into committee and it just feels like it's going nowhere. It is. And I'm afraid that, you know, in a way, this problem goes all the way back to the basics, which is that it was a policy initiated by Boris Johnson and continued by this trust.
41:36It's a classic example of a stupid policy that should have been abandoned immediately when Rishi Sina came in. We talked a bit about, you know, what the Republican strategy should have been to take on Trump. I think you've also been vindicated in what Rishi Sina's strategy should have been when he came in, which is to distance himself dramatically more from the fringes of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss and show that he was going to clean up politics and get rid of nonsense like this. It then became worse because he made stopping the boat, one of his pledges and he's then tied this Rwanda action to his boat pledges and it's turning out to be incredibly complicated, incredibly expensive and is very likely not ready to move anybody to Rwanda before he's out.
42:21But one of the problems that we've got is the number of judges that they're going to have to use to try to process things. Well, that felt like just, you know, literally making this up as you go along. Suddenly, when we have a criminal justice system that's in a state of collapse, when you have people waiting years for their cases to come to court, when you've had a barris -destruct because of the whole austerity stuff and everything else. And suddenly, he can magic up 150 judges to fast track the people who are coming over in the boats. Is it that he's the criminal justice priority right now?
42:55Yeah, and there's a really good article. I mean, I pay tribute to Dominic Lawson at Shema. He does produce some really thoughtful good stuff and he's produced a great article in the Sunday Times, we can link to you on this. But he pointed out that actually a lot of the problems here go back to the beginning of David Cameron's government, closing of 150 out of 530 courts in England and Wales. Real term spending on courts declined by 23 .4 percent between 2010 and 2017. I mean, I remember coming in to the Ministry of Justice because when I was prison, so when I was right in the middle of this, I wasn't responsible for courts, but it was my colleague was doing courts.
43:30And a lot of it was to do with ludicrous optimism about the way in which technology and digital settings would transform everything. I mean, you can imagine the kind of mindset that governments get in. Somebody thinks, oh, yeah, if only we can get everybody video linked and we won't have to move, we won't need all these courts and technology can fix it. And then that then gets combined with swinging cuts because of course, the justification to the Treasury is always, yeah, we'll invest in technology and then we'll cut things massively because all these savings we get, the savings never materialize.
44:03COVID adds to problems and you end up with this horrible, horrible backlog of cases, which just makes somehow training and appointing 150 new judges feels like it's just rubbing salt and the leaves. Also, there's Sukha, who's the new chief justice. She made the not so unreasonable point that as part of the separation of powers between government, parliament and the judiciary, how judges are appointed as a matter for the judiciary. So it should not be the government that says this is what judges have to do, but your friend Alex Chalky said the new judges will be appointed trained and start sitting from this summer.
44:36150. Where are they going to get them from? And also, lots of people I know who work in the law. I think you have, there's a sort of pattern, isn't there? The people workers, you know, as young lawyers and they move up, maybe become Queen's council, King's council, lots of them make reasonably good money and then they can afford to retire reasonably early and they sit as judges where the salary is, you know, a lot less than they were getting as top KZs. But are they really going to get 150 people who are going to be allowed themselves to be used in this way in as part of a political strategy related to a set of laws that essentially is saying we the government should be allowed to ignore the law when it suits us?
45:18Yeah, and I think looking back on it, it was profoundly unconservative what the Cameron government started to do, which I mean, I think conservatives could have made a really good argument. I should have done when I was there. I came in in 2010. We should have been saying the root of law in Britain is one of the few things that we're deeply, deeply proud of. And one of the reasons why a lot of people hear cases in Britain is that they trust our legal system. It's a complete foundation of our economy, our international reputation. The one thing that we as conservatives should have been getting behind is trying to defend our courts and our justice system.
45:52We should have been much, much slower, much more cautious with these reforms. These are kind of real kind of radical libertarian 25 % cuts reforms, which is foolish, but also unconservative. Well, I'm glad that you've come round to my view on austerity, Rory. Not going to talk about this whole thing. Well, that's what it was about. That's what it was about. But here's a question for you. What is the percentage of current Crown court cases that are delayed by at least a year, by more than a year? Oh, I think it must be staggering because some cases did delayed five years, now. Well, it's 28 % and 10 % delayed by more than two years.
46:30And partly as the cuts, as you say, but it's also the fact that we've had the strikes that has no doubt contributed to it. But meanwhile, I don't know if it was the same piece that you're talking about from Dominic Lawson. But the point was being made in the press at the weekend, the because of the slowness of our justice system. There have been people in the post office scandal who've died without knowing that they were going to be exonerated. You've had rape victims who are frankly dropping their case because of the long waits between the alleged defense and the possible trial that they are dreading anyway in terms of how to relive the whole thing.
47:13But then it's just this is sort of stretched out. So lots and lots of the 150 planned trials were right last year, were just abandoned. And I think this is also part of the problem when you get a creaking state that is struggling with its tax burden, that it's always things like the courts and prisons that get cut because they're just not enough of a central retail political interest politicians on all sides are not bringing them alive. I mean, you really would hope that Keir Starrmer will make this absolutely dear to his heart because this was his whole life. This was his, you know, he got his nighthood as director of public prosecutions.
47:46He understands the stuff really well. But I'm not I'm not hearing it quite yet. No, I was pleased though yesterday to see him make a speech and it's ridiculous that you have to step quotes, stand up for the national trust and stand up for the Royal National Life Boat's institution. I thought that speech about the importance of civic society. And he said, you know, he said that he thought that David Cameron's big society idea as an idea was actually a very good idea. It just didn't happen, not least because of all the cuts that we've seen and so forth. But I do think there's something very odd about the modern conservative party or pop con as a list trust now decides we have to call her.
48:24So popular conservatism. It's be launched by her Jacob Riesmog Simon Clark and somebody else who's named my forgotten. But they've said that they're going to be called pop con for short. Unbelievable. Can you imagine any more pop than Jacob Riesmog? Okay, but it'd be less popular than a list trust. I actually, that polling presentation that you and I saw from John Curtis, the one thing that really brought home to me is the more that list trust and Boris Johnson across the airwaves and the run up to the election, the better that is for labor. You know, for her to call herself pop con popular conservators who absolutely mind bending.
49:03They are of course fascinated by US politics and they're endlessly trying to work out how they can learn from Donald Trump, Ronda Santis, Nikki Haley, a lot of these tropes and things that they're pushing ahead with. Well, why they love, why they love GB news because it's, you know, they say it as a sort of sort of Fox News in the making. Yeah, that was the other thing Roy. That was the other thing worth sort of noting this week was, I mean, did you see Lucy Fraser's morning media around yesterday? Yeah, that was that was that was sad. Lucy Fraser, in fact, was in charge of courts when I was the presence minister.
49:34So I, but she was trying to suggest there was bias in the BBC and then they said, what's the evidence? And then she she sort of slightly struggled to produce one. Yeah. There's a perception. And then we had Hugh Merriman today who is evidence. He had to back her up because they're in the same government and cut the slug off a colleague. His evidence when he was in the car, I only listened to 10 minutes of the news quiz. And it was all very anti -tory in Cape early. Cape early on sky pointed out that the news quiz is not a news program. It's satire. Oh, I know. I think I think the BBC still for some of its faults still does an incredible job.
50:08Yeah. Yeah. And and I'd love to see a government come in, put more investment into the BBC, put more investment into the world service. I think it's an amazing institution. And also there's not a political party in the world that wouldn't take his hand off to have its respect and trust ratings. I think the conservative ideology, if I was going to rebuild the conservative party, is partly about institutions like the BBC. And actually like some of those charities that you mentioned that our vision of society needs to be not just about central government. It needs to be about universities, media, charities, communities.
50:44Trade unions. Trade unions. There we are. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's all part of our rich texture. So there we are. We're going to be first conservative advocating for trade unions. There you go. Should we close off with Germany? Yeah. Go on. Tell us about this. So can I just quickly tell you what my understanding is and then you can bring us up to that where you are. So AFDs created not very long ago. So I guess sort of 2015ish enters parliament 2017 for the first time. Looks like it's dropped a bit in the 2020 elections where it dropped down to 10%. Then found itself under surveillance for extremist activity in March 21.
51:24Performed well in the Thoreneia, which I think we discussed on the podcast and is now looking like it's at 25 % across Germany. My sense is because Germany is a fractured political landscape. That's pretty good. That puts it neck and neck with the ruling party. And it's on 30 % in the east, which means it's actually leading any other party in the east. Is that roughly right? I'm seeing something. Yeah. Well, they're actually well ahead of the ruling party. The social Democrats are really, really struggling. And I suspect that's one of the reasons why the AFD have risen as they have. What's happened in the last few days is that this research organization called Corrective.
52:02And they've actually translated them to lots of different languages now. So we'll put the English version in the newsletter. And they discovered a meeting that took place in a hotel near Potstam a few weeks ago. And it was a meeting between very wealthy right wing people. Some quite leading AFD figures, including an advisor to the current leader, Alice Vidal. Some kind of identitarian characters. So just starting various groupings and characters from the the sort of far right German ecosystem. Now, I don't quite know how the stories come about. There are the AFDs have accused the the journalists and researchers of operating with starsy like tactics to get this story.
52:48But they clearly have an absolutely, you know, bang on account of the whole thing. And the thing is to provoke these massive demonstrations all over Germany at the weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets. Is the fact that what they were discussing was this kind of master plan based on what they called re -meagration. And this is the forced depatriation of people of foreigners who are in Germany, including in certain categories, people who are already German citizens. And this is just provoked an absolute kind of, you know, outpouring of protest. I'd love to know what would have to happen in British politics for this kind of thing to happen.
53:27I don't know if you saw the pictures. I sent you some pictures of the the protests somebody filmed it from the parliament in Berlin. I mean, it was as far as the I could see people protesting. Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of persons, yeah. I can see there'd be a temptation for the mainstream parties to think this is great. This shows that the country is uniting against the threat of extremism. But then they have to ask themselves why why have the AFD risen in the way that they're having the first place. And why haven't they been better better challenged both at the political level and on the policy level.
53:58And I, you know, I think that Shalts has hard to say he's been seen as a success as Chancellor. And there's a lot of kind of doubt about whether the coalition can hold together. This gives them an opportunity to reset, I think. They need to ride this wave somehow. It is a, I mean, the story around populism is the kind of big story of this year, isn't it? And it's what we were talking about with Trump at the beginning of the program because basically Trump and the AFD and many others have found a gaping hole. They found a lot of people who feel that the old politics wasn't delivering for them. They don't really believe in open free markets.
54:37They don't believe in the liberal global order. In fact, they're very suspicious of those things. They're very worried about migration. They're skeptical about climate change. They're skeptical about getting involved in Ukraine. And they want policies that make more sense for what in America would be called the middle class. I guess in Britain kind of working class voters. And it's, I mean, it's really great in a way that Britain isn't still caught in the middle of that. And that Boris Johnson's attempts to try to create a sort of Trump coalition in the Red Wall, we're trying to get more things in voters, getting behind a kind of anti -immigration thing didn't really pan out.
55:16But it's a problem right right across Europe. And it's a problem that none of the mainstream parties are rising to meet. No. And rising to meet is the point. And I think it does have to be about more leadership. And it has to be about challenging some of these kind of myths that have taken hold, challenging some of the the lies that are told about the state of the world, challenging this hard right agenda. Because it is rooted in a populism that has never worked anywhere. Show me a government that's run on as populist to general and run a good country. And in Germany, of course, it is, I mean, deeply traumatic for people and particularly chilling.
55:51I mean, the fact that some of these leading AFD figures are saying, oh, I don't know why we have to spend all our time apologizing for the second World War, we shouldn't go around feeling ashamed of ourselves all the time. You know, I mean, it's really, really troubling. And it's really troubling that they're going to listen to these kind of alt -right figures who make no secret of the fact that they basically admire the Nazis. What this article also showed is that they understand just as the right -wing networks in America and Britain do, you need money and you need media backing. And a lot of the discussion was about that.
56:23I must give a shout out, Roy, to I'm sure you'll know straight away who this guy is. Christian Streich. I'm sure you know who he is. Negron, Christian Streich. Tell us about Christian Streich. He's the manager of Fryberg Football Club. And he did an absolutely brilliant. And even for people who don't speak German, I recommend they look up Christian Streich's press conference last week, where he basically said, it's time for this country to wake up and stand up and understand, you know, if you know your history, you don't have to work too hard to work where this is going. And it's about time we all stood up and stopped.
56:55And then another manager, the manager of LifeSeeker came out. So it was pleasing that he wasn't met by the message that Gary Lennick and Gary Neville and all those guys get every time they speak about politics was stick to football. He was actually hailed as sort of, you know, speaking rather more effectively than a lot of politicians have been doing. Very good. Well, thank you, I said that's been a really intense session, but I'm very pleased that we got on TFD and I think we look forward to talking tomorrow. See you soon. Bye.
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