213. Question Time: Standing up to Netanyahu, why Starmer would work with Trump, and the differences between Sunni and Shia

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0:49Hello and welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Anastak Campbell, and the quick announcement before we get going, Rory, about a special event that you and I've got coming up. We are going to be at the Paul Econ UK Conference for A -level Politics Students on March 11th this year. We'll be talking and taking questions from an audience of about 2 ,000 A -level students. There will be major politicians and political commentators, including West Streeting and Jess Phillips and the popular conservative, or Popcorn is in our calls himself Jacob Lee Smog and more.

1:26And you can book now, but please note, this is a strictly educational event. Only teachers can book on behalf of their students. So teachers, get on with it and students, tell your teachers about it. Tickets are available at www .pol .com .com. Econ as an economics. UK .org. That's polycon .uk .org forward slash. TRIP. And I think book pretty quickly. Hopefully, see lots and lots of you there. And our first question this week is on something we briefly touched upon in the main podcast that's India. Gabe Suckliffe, what do you think about Modi building a Hindu temple on the site of a demolished mosque in India?

2:07Well, let's just sort of quickly give the background on this. So there was a very, very famous mosque called the Babri Moustid, which was built by the Emperor Babur, who was the first Mughal Emperor of India. So it's the late 15th century, late 1400s, early 1500s. He took over in India. And it was believed by a particular group of Hindu nationalists to have been built on the site of the birthplace of Rama, the hero of the Ramayana. And in the early 90s, it was torn down. This mosque was torn down by a Hindu nationalist mob. And then a huge amount of money has been plowed in some of it coming from Narendra Modi's government into building a vast Hindu temple on the site.

2:57And Narendra Modi has spent much of the last 40 days fasting, sleeping on the floor of a temple, being involved in religious purification rights, and has presided over an extraordinary star studded re -opening of this temple in Iodia with Bollywood stars and business people there as a very, very aggressive attack, basically on was some identity in the Muslim community in India. Well, that's, I suspect a lot of them will take it. I watched the coverage yesterday. It was enormous, the coverage as well as the temple. And just to wind back on the 1992 situation when the mosque was raised to the ground, that led to riots in which around 2000 people, even more than 2000 people, I think, were killed.

3:46And then a decade or so later, riots in Gujarat, where the regional prime minister Narendra Modi was felt to be very, very biased towards one side, unfurred to the Muslim community. I think there was a point where he couldn't travel to many parts of the world because he was essentially seen as being quite extreme. He's now heading for another election. India is one in this great election year. India is one of the elections. It'll be in a few months time. He gets to choose the date. And this is a country that is supposedly secular, state and politics and religion, I meant to be separate. And yet that was as powerful a political event as I think I've seen in a very, very long time.

4:32He is shaping a new India, and he's making no bones about that. He's shaping a new India up to and including possibly changing the name at some point. And the whole event really was a way of signaling, I'm your man, I'm for the Hindus. And that of course is 80 % of the population. You talk about them in the Bollywood stars were there, Sachin Tendolk is one of the greatest cricketers of all time. He was there, the built a new airport to go along with the town, the built a new railway station. It's a sort of, he's bringing together religion, massive investment in infrastructure and him as this kind of man of the people, which is an act which the Indians seem to like.

5:12And to take it back to the real fundamentals, India under the British had a huge mixed Hindu Muslim population along with Cassie with Pasif, but his Christians and others, but predominantly Hindu and with a very large Muslim minority. And the partition that split India apart after independence 1947, was essentially about the creation of a Muslim state in Pakistan and India resisted that. India in its constitution and under Niro remained defiantly secular. We're very, very proud of the fact that when Pakistan decided to create a state around Muslim identity, India was not doing that. And under Congress and Indira Gandhi, who was the daughter of the Aryan, they kept this secular vision alive.

6:00And in fact, were frequently very, very firm against Hindu nationalists and others who tried to stir up Hindu Muslim hatred. But the Barry must you and then the rights that followed and then the Goodrite rights made Muslims feel in India really as though they were becoming a marginalized, persecuted minority. The Goodrite produced footage of pregnant women being attacked and rape happening and a lot of images in fact, which are very, very reminiscent of the images that came out of the October 7th Hamas attack on Gaza and had the same impact, I think, on the Muslim community or many people Muslim community in India that the attacks on the other side had on many Israelis Jews, which is that it led to a strong sense that Islamophobia in India was now state backed.

6:52And Modi famously, when asked whether he regrets it, what happened when he was Chief Minister, all this happening under his nose, said his only regret was he hadn't managed the media better. So it's terrifying. There's a book by KS Comrade called Malevolent Republic, which really makes the case against Modi's Hindu nationalism very, very strongly. I mean, it's a bit of a plemic. So, but if you want to hear the case, the worst case made against what's happening now in India, Comrade's book is incredibly readable and he's pretty brutal etchy on Congress and on Gandhi's as well. Yeah, it's, he's a formidable politician.

7:32There's no doubt about that. And the way he is demeanor, he comes across as being so calm and quite gentle character, but he's a very, very, very tough politician. I think he said it before, I really dodged a bullet not long after he was elected because I was asked if I would go and write his biography. Oh my goodness. Oh, I do remember you saying this, you were going to be his biographer. Yeah, I was quite tempted. I can't remember what else I was doing at the time, but I was reasonably tempted. I thought, because I'd written about him in the book, I wrote winners. I think this is what drew their attention to miss possibility.

8:09I'd written some length about his campaign. You know how I'd love the abba voyage. Yes, the abba task. But Modi was ahead of the game. Modi was doing rallies all around the country where he would be live in a say, Delhi. And then around the country on the, what was just the back of a lorry, the fake Modi would come out and he was, so he's gathering huge crowds. He's a great showman. But I think this is, you know, if you're, if you're and 20 % of the population, roughly 20 % Muslim, that's a lot of people who are currently feeling a bit scared. And there was a guy, I don't know if you ever watched some of the Indian television, but I was sort of channel hopping through a couple of them yesterday and they get very, very angry, very, very excited.

8:52And there was one guy who was on the news saying, you know, now we've got to take this to every town and every city and tear down the mosques. And then he was sort of waving a flag and saying, including the Taj Mahal, the Taj Mahal must go. And he's thinking, this is quite scary stuff. And it's an election year. I think there's no doubting the time of this. And as we discussed in the podcast yesterday, it's easy to be complacent about this stuff because the Indian economy is going very well. And business people like Modi and he's cleared up corruption and he's sorted out the currency. And of course, India is very popular at the moment with the West because it's seen as the counterbalance to China.

9:28And of course, Modi is very, very popular with diaspora community. And people are reluctant to criticize him. So people will say, oh, yeah, he's talking that stuff. And yes, he was involved in this Hindu extremist militia group and his youth. But really, this is just chat. And it's difficult to predict the future. But what we do know from Russia, particularly at the moment, that you can go down a pretty fast slippery slope from starting to get all this ethno nationalist or in this case religious nationalist language going can lead to some very, very sinister results pretty, pretty quickly. And it gets out of control of the leaders.

10:04I mean, you get the sense with Putin that it's as you were talking about with that book by J. Paglin, it's not just Putin. It's the whole lot surrounding him. And again, it's true with Modi. Modi, of course, himself now has his own even more ultra -nash does Hindu rights thing. He's not going far enough. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Cameron Stocker, tactical voting, considering Labour's massive poll lead, do you think tactical voting campaigns such as GetVoting .org will still be important in the upcoming general election in marginal seats? Could the UK's broken first pass the post -electro system allow the choice to cling on?

10:39On that same sort of theme, Rory, I want to give a shout out to something called South Devon primary. All I've done is sort of see it on social media and had a look at the odd website and stuff. But basically, they seem to be saying that so there in an area, South Devon that is traditionally fairly Tory, they say there's a clear majority that want the Tories out. And so what they're doing is going through this sort of primary process where they're having hustings with all the different opposition candidates and hoping eventually to end up with one. And this is spreading to a few other seats as well.

11:10So I don't know whether that will that will catch on, whether that will work, whether some people will feel no. I have to vote for the party. I won't even if I think they're going to lose. But I think tactical voting will, I think there will be a lot of tactical voting. And it's now enabled by technology much more, isn't it? That's what this website GetVoting .org does, isn't it? It helps you understand how you should be voting tactically. Yeah, and where? Just on this similar theme, what did you make? We had a couple of questions on this as well. But what did you make of Humza Yusuf, who will be interviewing quite soon on leading?

11:42What did you make of him coming out to the weekend? And the message he seemed to be trying to put across was, Keir Starmer is definitely going to be the next prime minister. Therefore, I'd quite like to talk to him for that happens. And we can sort of, you know, work out whether we can work together. Well, is that not, I mean, presumably he's, his main objective is to make sure he wins as many seats as possible in the next election. So is it possible that he thinks that if people think that Keir Starmer's a shoe in and the way that they thought Theresa May was a shoe in 2017, maybe people will vote S &P because they'll think they don't need the Labour votes in Scotland.

12:15Is that his head? Yeah, but I think it probably is, but I just found it quite confusing because at various points, they've had all these different lines of approach as to why you should vote S &P. At one point, it was to say it's because there's going to be a Tory government, the choice is going to win unless you vote S &P, then it was going to be there's a hung parliament, then they run this line that there's no difference between Tory Labour, then they ran the line that the election is going to be referendum independence again. And so I'm just a bit, I was just a little bit confused. I'm guessing you're right.

12:47Maybe the Tories and the S &P both have a vested interest in people thinking that the elections are foregone conclusion because that is then in Scotland. Yeah, but in England as well, you might have this sort of there's no point we're going to lose. There's no point voting just, you know, vote for us, but don't bother, but we're going to lose anyway. I mean, it's sort of, I think it used to be called the Queensland strategy where you basically, and the reason for that was because a party ran that as a strategy saying that, you know, we're going to lose this no point really getting involved. Of course, you know, to quote your predecessor, Willie Whitelor in your old seat, they went around the country stirring up apathy in the world.

13:26So I think that's what he's up to, but we'll be able to ask him when we see him. Very good. So, um, question from James Mool. Gosh, muscles. Which three current world leaders would you most want Britain's next prime minister to look to for inspiration? Which three current world leaders? Well, I'm not going with Narendra Mady not for standing your book winners. No, definitely not. I wrote about him as a winning campaign, I'm not a winning prime minister. Oh my god, that's a hard question. I think my friends, I think my friend Eddie Ram was good, heading up for a fourth term and this country moving in the right direction.

14:05And that's quite a thing to look at the prime minister albenia as the answer. I did, I did, I did preface it with my friend. I did the prime minister of Singapore, who's in his last year. I think he's a very, very impressive guy, but of course, Singaporean politics is very different to ours. Now, normally, normally you and I be talking about Macron when we, we'd be talking about Macron. Why are we not talking about Macron? Yeah, Macron, I think Macron has been good. But you know, he's also think we have to say he's very, very unpopular in France at the moment. But I think Macron, yeah, Macron is a sort of leader who's definitely kind of got a sense of vision and good at building teams and they might break up teams as well, but he builds them again.

14:45Incidentally, the New Zealand prime minister wants to come on. We interviewed the last years in the country, so we've got to remember to do that. Let's see whether we think he could be a model for anyone. Yeah, but you know, it is, it is one of those periods in history where, oh, yeah, there aren't that many other, I asked this question actually of one of the Congress people that we saw recently. I said, which other world leaders do you admire them? She said, Millay in Argentina. So Donald Tusk, I think I shout out for Donald Tusk, because we've got some questions on Poland. I think we should revisit Poland in some debt because he's come in and it's proving very, very hard to unpick and undo a lot of the damages being done by the the PIS in recent years.

15:25But I would definitely say Donald Tusk. For Catholicists, there are still parts of the law and justice party, including the President sitting there with their hands on important bits of power, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Another one I would point to I think has shown incredible courage is the President of Moldova, Maya Sandu. I think she's a very small country, very, very, very dangerously placed right now with Russia breathing down their necks. And I think she's a very, very impressive woman. So there's somebody else maybe who should look to. Very good. Why isn't rejoining the EU front and center of Labour's campaign, what can say?

16:02Well, given as to Shad and Freud on Brexit, why does he think Labour will not put rejoining the EU and their manifesto for the next election? Because they don't want to revisit the whole Brexit debate at this time when they're trying to win the election on other issues. I might not welcome that or even think that it's the right thing to do. But I think that's the answer to the question. Lewis Nae, how the Lib Dems going to do in the election? They never seem to be discussed. Well, they are in a pretty sad situation. I mean, the Conservatives are terrible situations. The latest polls put Labour pushing towards 50 % of the Tories and the low 20s.

16:35But at the moment, the Lib Dems are neck with the ex sort of Brexit UKIP party. And I don't think we've been discussing, Ed Davie, he's not cutting through. I know you like him when we interviewed him on leading. And I know we've got a lot of Lib Dem listeners, but boy, oh boy, I think with people's struggle to work out what an earth his platform is. He's been the leader of that party for a surprisingly long time. And I am not seeing energy there. And the obvious thing they should be doing, related to last question, is coming out for customs union or coming out for the single market, putting the EU at the same time.

17:11That at least will make them distinctive. Can you give anything they're saying that Labour's not saying the Tories are saying? What he would say, I imagine, is that they have a very, targeted strategy aimed at a number of constituencies that they are going for, most of which are currently held by the Tories. But I agree that they're not really cutting through. In fact, I think that the way that he got placed at the centre of the post office scandal, for a lot of people would have been their first sense of him as a national figure politician. And it is always harder for the third party, but it's even harder for him at the moment because he doesn't get the automatic platform in Parliament because he's not the third party anymore.

17:53Yeah, you remember, I thought he'd been in that position for a long time. And when I asked him on leading, go and tell us what you're about. I thought you were surprisingly slow to come up with a line. And I said, if you remember, I said, I bet they'll go away from that now and they'll really work it out and we'll start to see it. But I agree with you. We haven't really seen it. By the way, I should, as you know, if we get our facts wrong, we always apologise, unlike most of our newspapers, I said last week in the Q &A that the Ed Davie interview where he was asked the same question 10 times was with Dan Hewitt.

18:26It was with Paul Brand. Oh, Paul must have been pretty cross -bothered. I don't think he was very cross, but he was actually some of his colleagues told me I'd messed it up. So I sent him a message to apologise. He said he wasn't that bother and he said he loves the podcast. So it's all fine. So, a question from Catherine, which plays, which films have we been seeing in a joiner? We've been seeing films TV recently. We went to see Priscilla the other night. Very good. And that's not Priscilla Queen of the Desert, I understand. It's your friend, Elfiss again. Is Priscilla wife of Elvis? As a sort of massive Elvis fan, which I am, is slightly troubling.

18:59Oh, he wasn't very nice to her. It's the revelation. It's a times he wasn't nice, but he was very, very nice to her when they first met, but at the time she was only 14. And then he got to sort of flown out to his to Graceland. But it's a very kind of nice portrait of her. It's the relationship from her perspective. We also watched Killers of the Flower Moon. Now, we cheated a bit because we didn't watch in the cinema because I couldn't quite face three and a half hours sitting near people who were eating popcorn and doing other things that should be banned in cinemas. So we watched in two goes on television.

19:33And my God. You'd like to. You'd recommend it? I mean, do you know what? Because Leonardo DiCaprio is sort of seen as this kind of, you know, bit of a sex symbol and all that stuff, he's an incredible actor. Right. Yeah. I think as a slice of a very interesting and much misunderstood period of American history, I thought it was pretty impressive. Good. So my thing is I've just been to see Cabaret at the KitKat Club, which is Playhouse Theatre, next to Embangment and London, just incredible. I really huge you recommend it to you. So I mean, I think it totally reverses the all -complay about popcorn, which is that it really embraces the idea that the whole audience is turned into a Cabaret audience with tables and drinks on them and nibbles on them.

20:18I'm Rebecca Lucitela, who plays Sally Bowles, is just extraordinary. And the singing, I mean, I know you love music, the singing is phenomenal. But they set the mood right from the moment you enter. It's worth turning up. If you go to see it, worth turning up 15 minutes, half an hour in advance, to just catch the ambiance because they've created the sense of a 1930s German bar from the beginning. And of course, as people know the story, it's both incredible music, but also a very, very interesting lesson about the way in which you can feel like a frog and boiling water and convince yourself nothing's going to go wrong.

20:56The central character, or one of the central characters, who's Jewish, says when the American says, look, shouldn't you be getting out of Germany? He says, no, no, no. I understand the Germans. I am German. Don't worry about it. There's nothing to worry about here. Very good. Very good. Well, that was what we call a massive plug. Well done. Massive plug, massive plug. Now, here's one for both of us really. Sam Dyson, how should Kierstamer handle a potential Trump presidency? Does he take the May Johnson approach, knowing it will hurt him domestically? Or does he give Donald the cold shoulder, which could damage the special relationship, but would be very popular here in the UK?

21:34Oh, what should he do? Should he be polite to him or should he make it clear that he despises him? I think the former. I think it has to be the former. I mean, it's not impossible that these elections are going to happen at the same time. Look, the temptation, this is the whole love actually thing when that's seen in the love actually when Hugh Grant was Prime Minister sort of does the amazing stands up to the Americans. And of course, he's great cinema, but I think it would be very, very dangerous politics. But it is tricky. I think basically, or both the main parties in a sense have to have to stay out of the politics.

22:07I could, it's so tricky. So in my, my sort of catastrophic attempt to be leader of the Conservative Party in that debate against Boris Johnson, I was asked what, what I thought about the latest defensive comment by Donald Trump. And I sort of said, well, I think, you know, British Prime Minister's have to be quite careful getting involved and slagging off other world leaders. And we can do things to prevent not public. There were headlines afterwards saying, what is the point of Rory Stewart if he isn't even prepared to come out and attack Donald Trump? So I feel for Kier Samahit and, you know, one of the, to add to my list of fury at Boris Johnson, he's just written a daily mail article suggesting that his least headline seemed to suggest that Trump wouldn't be too bad a thing.

22:48And Jacob Rees Smolkes now come out saying, my sense of Trump. And Andrea Jenkins said, we need to get Boris and Trump back. That's why the other reason Rory, why I feel that Johnson's commitment to Ukraine was all about him and not about Ukraine. Anybody who really cares about the future with Ukraine does not want Donald Trump back in the White House. So Boris Johnson can go stuff himself with that one. I think, look, I think his style will just play very, very down the line and very, very proper. I actually thought his, I, before we started recording, I, I caught his response to, to Rishi Soonak.

23:21And I think he actually is emerging with a bit of a foreign policy defense position, which I, I would like to see more of, I'd like to see more of for it. Because I think the, the connecting of foreign policy to domestic policy, and if you think about what we've talked about on the main podcast stand on the Q &A this week, so much of what the British people are talking about actually relates to things that are happening outside this country. Yeah. Well, I mean, Brendan Mays got a question on this, which I guess applies to Rishi Soonak and Keir Samar. Why should Western governments continue to prop up Netanyahu when he's confirmed on record that he will reject the only possible path to peace in his region, namely an independent sovereign Palestinian state, and one that doesn't require forced migration of millions.

24:02It's a very good, very good question. And I am astonished that Keir Samar hasn't come out yet, unambiguous, seeing completely for a ceasefire. I mean, I, I think the time for holding off on that has passed so long ago now. Well, he's, I think he has, when he did in that comments in the comments that I mentioned, he, I think he used the same languages David Cameron does, the sustainable ceasefire. Yeah, but the sustainable ceasefire, the sustainable bit when you look into the small print basically means, you know, it's sustainable when Hamas has disappeared and the hostage is all been returned and they sent the other, so essentially it's language that works for the Israeli government.

24:36It's not really stopping the bombing of Gaza. I certainly think that the Netanyahu is, this is something we suggested might happen, but I think it's happened to a degree that is worse than either was expated. Netanyahu is basically pocketing the support that he gets wherever it comes from, but then in terms of his own approach to this war, he is not budging an inch. I don't think from the strategy, he fixed upon right to the start. That, I mentioned in the main podcast, this dispute that's going on between him and Benny Gantz and other and some of the observers at the war cabinet. And the guy who, who gave this rather tricky interview for Netanyahu, Eisenkot, he was asked whether he thought that Netanyahu might just be trying to make this war sort of last as long as he can to stay in power.