219. Question Time: Vladimir Putin’s strategy, Labour’s selection headache, and VAT on private schools

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0:51Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Anastagamble. Lovely to see you. Just want to do a little quick shout out for where I am. Where are you? I am in Switzerland and I'd like to encourage people what I'm doing at moment, which is it's a real treat if you're able to do it, is something called ski tour, where you put skins on the bottom of your skis. You don't need to use a lift. It's more environmentally friendly, much better exercise. You get to climb up to the top of mountains, skins on your skis, and then ski off the top of mountains. That sounded like an advert to me.

1:19Yeah, that's it's bit of an advert. I'd advert actually also for Cumbria and Scotland. When the snow's there, you can actually do it in your own backyard. So ski touring, like to promote it. Very good. Right, let's bring the session crashing down to earth with a question from Teresa Seba. What are your views on the accusation from Azar Ali that Israel allowed the October 7th attack, so it could go into Gaza and annihilate the Palestinian people? So this is Rochdale, where Tony Lloyd died and there's now a bi -election. It was a bi -election where the candidates for labor, labor seat included poor war, who's a journalist, who many people in Westminster know, and who's written very interesting about his experience at the standing.

1:57But it was one eventually by Azar Ali who's a veteran labor counsellor and who I think stood for Pendle. He's also a Bernie family, I know him quite well. Goodness gracious me. All right, well then tell us a little about Azar Ali and tell us what on earth he's been saying and why he's been saying it and what it all means. Well, he was secretly recorded, I think, at a meeting where he essentially didn't make as Teresa's question said. He sort of bought into this conspiracy theory that Israeli knew it was going to happen, or October 7th, did nothing about it so as they could then go into Gaza. Now, by the time this emerged, nominations for the bi -election had closed.

2:33So the initial reaction of the labor party was we have to keep him as the candidate, otherwise we have no candidate. But then I think not least following discussions within the party, also within the Jewish community, in the region and so forth, they've now announced that they won't be supporting him, which is absolute chaos. You've now got reform who are being represented by somebody who used to be a labor MP, but got kicked out. You've got George Galloway, who is really nasty piece of work, I've had many experiences of George Galloway in my time. And George Galloway also a former labor MP, also a former labor MP.

3:11And then you've got people to talk about this being a safe labor seat, but of course, and I don't know whether the boundaries of change they may have done, but back in the day, of course, was the seat of Cyril Smith, a liberal MP who got caught up in all sorts of awful sort of child sex stuff. And then I guess you've got the Tories, I don't know, doing what? So it's just a complete and total mess. I keep saying that you never quite know what is going to blow up during a campaign. Imagine if you had a series of situations like this in a general election campaign, for example, I can't remember the last time where I just don't know if there is a precedent, I can't remember a situation where the party dumped its candidate as it were after the election was so far down the track that you couldn't get another one.

3:55So this is a complete bloody disaster as far as I was at. It's amazing, isn't it? And I mean, I think the first thing is that obviously horrendous comments, which will really inflame community tensions and is a reminder of something that I think we're going to cover more, which is just how much Israel Gasser is spilling over into Britain and British politics with profound fear from Jewish communities who really feel anti -Semitism and conspiracy theories are on the rise and real anger from Muslim communities at a solidarity with Gaza. And the way this is defining, because I guess George Galaway as a candidate, I mean, he stood against the Iraq War, he's a candidate who's often tried to appeal to, I guess, sometimes Islamist voters.

4:35And then we've got this guy Simon Danchuk, who I remember, because he entered parliament with me as a Labour MP. So this is the reform candidate? Yeah, now standing for reform, which I guess is the ex -Brexit you can't. Yeah, I think it's about a 30 -somewhere near 30 percent Muslim vote. And you talk about, you know, I mean, what Galaway does is he thrives on, he's won by elections before he thrives on trying to sort of create division and all the rest of it. You know, when Joe Cox's sister was standing to replace her, some absolutely horrible stuff around her being attacked in the street. And so it's going to be, you know, it's a very, very, very bad scene this.

5:11But the fact of the Labour candidate, you know, we've got two violations this week where if Labour win one or both, that'll be doing pretty well, they should probably win both given the recent violation results. And then you've got this one coming up at the end of the month, February 29th, I think it is. And frankly, here we are sort of day after Ali has had to pull out or has been dropped by the party. Heaven knows what's going to happen. Presumably, what they should have done is they should have moved immediately against him five days ago and said what they did, which is getting to five days of media fury.

5:41You know, you had Labour, shadow minister, saying his comments were unacceptable, but the Labour Party was still supporting him. And that just dragged out the story, didn't it? But I don't know whether by then it was already, you know, I guess the question was when nominations close, whether you could actually replace him and what's clear is that as things stand, you can't replace him. So he's going to run as the Labour Party candidate, but without the support of the Labour Party. If people want to vote for him, they can, he's on the ballot paper. With the Labour Party logo. Correct. Which presumably means that if he were to win, there's a calender of us to whether he takes the Labour Whip or doesn't.

6:14I mean, honestly, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. More than a bit of a mess because presumably at one level, Labour need the seat. They need to win a election, but they also don't want him to win. Well, they certainly don't want Galawai or Reform to win either, and they don't want the Tories to win, which is, that would be, that's a miracle if that was happen. It just shows you. All sorts of stuff happens in campaigns. And the other thing that this will do will encourage the newspapers that they want Labour to win, the Tories that they don't want Labour to win, to sort of, you know, maybe start on some big digging exercises on candidates now.

6:45And then they'll keep things back and try and create a few hand grenades like this during the election campaign itself. Let's think with Labour and elections. Allard James, who will win the Welsh Labour Leadership Election and become next first minister? All of them is a very interesting point. I find it strange that so little notice is being paid to this nationally, compared to the Scottish leadership race last year, considering this is the only nation in the UK governed by Labour. Very, very good point. So the Welsh Labour Leadership Election is between Jeremy Miles, who's the Education Minister and Vaughan Getting, who's in charge of economy.

7:19And this is happening because Mark Dreyford has stepped down. And it's very interesting that there is a very good point, by all. And if you remember how much we talked about the Scottish Leadership Election about the national media did, this is happening pretty low profile outside Wales. Partly, I guess, because they're being quite polite to each other, but it's very, it's very interesting how Jeremy Miles essentially is putting the economy at the heart of his campaign, suggesting that there hasn't been enough sustainable economic growth. Well, that might be done to do with the economy minister, Vaughan Getting.

7:51I mean, while Vaughan Getting says that his big thing is to raise standards in education. And of course, Jeremy Miles is the Education Minister. So there's a bit of a sort of polite way of tearing lumps out of each other. It's very much not like Liz Truss and that campaign went on. I know that Vaughan Getting was certainly the favourite at the start. There's been a big sort of rower going on about some of the sort of union stitchups that have been going on. But I think it's going to be pretty close. I think it'd be pretty tight. And voting starts this week. Question from Andrew Elliott to jump into national for a moment.

8:26Then we can maybe scoot back to the UK. What do the new malaria vaccines mean for Sub -Saharan Africa? So this is a really, really interesting development. A new vaccine has been developed. Now, malaria just gives people background. I think something like half a million people a year still died from malaria and well over 90 % of them are in Africa. And it disproportionately affects the young and the poor. Partly because treatment from malaria is pretty expensive. There are many, many things that have been done to massively improve this. So Bill Gates, who we interviewed on leading, has put a lot of energy into trying to deal with different types of tropical disease, which malaria is one.

9:03Huge evidence around the fact that bed nets alone make a huge difference, simply putting up a bed net and reducing the amount that your bed net is pretty cheap. But the real, holey grail has been finding a vaccine, something that actually makes you immune against malaria. And there is a new vaccine, which has been being tested, I think, for nearly 10 years, but is now finally being rolled out, which seems to have an efficacy rate of 75 % over 12 months. And it's now being rolled out. So could be very, very exciting news. And along with all the gloomy messages we have, malaria is one of the greatest killers in the world.

9:38And if we're finally getting on top of that, could make a huge difference. Jason Palmer, Tucker versus Putin, objective thoughts on the Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin. Unlike the Laura Trotten interview, this interview did get a lot of coverage. Yeah, I mean, absolutely extraordinary partly because Tucker seemed to sort of initially suggest he was the only person who'd ever thought of interviewing Putin, whereupon every journalist in the world was like, where to say I was trying to interview him. We're going to interview Steve Rosenberg, and really looking forward to that, who's the BBC correspondent in Russia, who has occasionally managed to land questions with Putin and got an amazing interview with the authoritarian leader of Belarus.

10:13Lukashenko, yeah. But anyway, what was your sense on how Tucker Carlson managed in viewing this bizarre guy? Well, I think it was, I think from Carlson's perspective, it was a bit of a disaster. He was used as a bit of a useful idiot. His arrival at the airport, he was sort of faded like a kind of global superstar by the Russian media. And then the interview itself was essentially Putin giving him a very, very, very, very long, tendentious history lesson. Carlson looking a bit like, he reminded me of Rishi Sunat when he was with Elon Musk. It was like, oh, tell me something else really interesting.

10:57I thought the whole thing was awful. And of course, he talked about, you know, he was asking the questions that nobody else wanted to ask. He was getting the interview that nobody else was interested in getting. There's not a journalist in the world who wouldn't sit down with Vladimir Putin. One, he'll only talk to people that he's absolutely under percent and not going to give him a hard time. Two, quite a lot of journalists who would like to interview Vladimir Putin are in jail, put thereby Vladimir Putin because they say and do things he doesn't agree with. And three, Tucker Carlson could have done a kind of traditional journalistic job of trying to sort of answer some of the questions that the public in America might like to hear the answer to instead of which it was just a sort of succession of slowball full tosses.

11:39So I thought very embarrassing of him. He won't care because he kind of got the publicity, which is what he wants. But basically, he essentially, I think Putin would see Tucker Carlson as a bit of Russian asset, which is probably why he was there. A good shout out here possibly to Tom Holland from the rest of his history, who did a really, really good three and a half minutes social media clip on Putin's approach to history and the oddness of it. I mean, the oddness was sort of locating your political agenda in the early Middle Ages and how bizarre that would be. I mean, you imagine, you know, in Europe that you're sort of talking about Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire and his borders as a way of trying to envisage what relationship between France and Germany would be or the time when Britain was Welsh.

12:20But of course, part of the issue is that Putin is not unusual in doing that. I mean, he's a sort of 19th century nationalist and there are an enormous amount of them around and you can see it in the Middle East. You can see it in the way that in the Rendromodi talks about Barat, traditional India, you can see it in Myanmar. You can of course see it in the rhetoric of Xi Jinping. So nationalism remains incredibly strong and appealing. Now, here's one way that will allow us to disagree agreeably. Den Dundbar Brunton. I'd like to hear each of your opinions on the adding of VAT on fee -paying education and how this token policy can be implemented in practice to positive effect without a far more radical approach to education overall.

12:58Now, actually, one of the speeches I made last whatever day it was when you were telling me I was doing too much was to the independent schools bursers association. Oh my goodness, you've really go to the most glamorous places, don't you? Well, it was, I was very keen to go into something of the lion's den. So these were the bursers and finance directors of 300 private schools. And as you know, I'm not a big fan of private education. I actually do support labor's plans to change the tax regime in order to raise money to put into I think it's about one and a half billion to put into specific things in state schools.

13:35By the way, Den, if you want to see my opinions, I put the speech that I made on my website and it's all there explaining why I don't think the private schools should see this as the end of the world. And why I think it's a good limited thing for labor to do. But what was interesting, Rory, was how many of them, particularly speaking, maybe privately, accepted my broad view that maybe we do need to focus more on education for the many not the few as it were when only 7 % used private schools. Well, that's astonishing. I mean, presumably the bursers, some of the bursers listening to this be like, what the hell am I colleagues talking about?

14:08Because the VAP at 20 % is a big, I'm not to the ethns as well, that has money and wealthy parents, but makes a huge difference to a lot of private schools around the country, which are struggling to fill their places and which have families on lower income to struggling to pay the school fees that those schools were just shot, weren't they? Well, I don't know that many will show up. There's a very, very good analysis by the Institute of Physical Studies, which talked about somewhere between 20 ,000, 40 ,000 school pupils, perhaps, not leaving the sector. They talked about how many wouldn't necessarily go in because of the VAT.

14:39But bear in mind, Roy, there are falling school roles within the state sector. There are state schools that are closing at the moment. So this idea that we should sort of, you know, all be kind of shedding tears because one or two private schools might close down. There are schools closing in the state sector. There are vacancies for kids in many of the state schools. And your point is that that 20 to 40 ,000 extra students that would have been in the private sector going to the state sector are not going to cost the state as much as the amount they'll make from the VAT. Correct. We should maybe it is a very long report, but the IFS report is pretty compelling on this.

15:12And me clearly is going to make life more difficult for some parents and for some schools. Most of the persons that were there, Roy, they do say the whole time, listen, we're not eaten, and I get that point. But my point was actually that we haven't, as a country, we haven't really ever tried truly comprehensive education. And those countries which have, like Finland and Canada, tend to do better in their overall education systems than we do. I'm sure lots of them didn't agree with me at all. I mean, if I know that lots of them didn't agree with me at all. But I was rather touched that some of them did.

15:43Correct. So it's something to watch because it's one of the big flagship labour policies. And it's something that will have, I think, an impact on parents who are not on high income sending their kids to private schools. And around me, in Scotland, around grief, there are many private schools that are not in a very good financial situation. So they're very, concerned about what's all mean to them. At the same time, I saw your old friend, the headmaster Eaton, who would want me to tell you about the work that Eaton is doing and other schools are doing to support academy trusts and the investment they're putting into supporting the state sector and fulfilling their charitable objectives.

16:23But I guess that probably you would say won't be enough to save these schools from their VIT. No, I hope not. But I'd love to know of all these bursaries that are given because what they the other thing they say is we won't be able to give bursaries. But how many of these schools really do give bursaries to children on free school meals or pupil premium. And they tend to be a way of just sort of cutting fees for middle class parents. And just to give you a sensory, so Rishi Sunak says that this labour policy is class war, it's class NV, it's a hit on aspiration. But my argument that what I said to the to the bursars and finance directors was the real class attitude is actually revealed in him basically saying that if you don't want to pay the extra to buy the smaller class sizes, somehow you're hitting aspiration.

17:10But actually surely at the aspiration of a prime minister ought to be that you raise standards for everybody. So he's paying £48 ,000 per pupil for his daughter. The average in a state school is somewhere between six and eight. The average in a private school is between 12 and 20. So if we're really serious about leveling up, surely we have to look at closing that gap, which is continuing to widen. One of the things I never asked you, is do you have the same view on private health insurance? Do you also think that it'd be much better if there was no private health insurance than everybody used the NHS?

17:41I do historically, but I think it's becoming virtually impossible. Look at the argument that's going on at the moment about dentistry. We had an NHS dentist for years and he now does mainly private work. And I fear I do think that more and more people are being, as you were pushed into the private sector, pushed into private healthcare. I mean, when I had my my breakdown in the 1980s, Rory, I was the only person on today newspaper who would refuse to accept the private healthcare cover as part of the salary package. And of course, I was the first person who was committed to a private hospital.

18:14I don't know whether the bills ever be paid. But I think in a way that ship has sailed for lots and lots of people because it's just become so difficult to get care in the health sector. And I think that's part of a deliberate strategy. And presumably there again, even more than this argument around schools, if you banned private health insurance at the moment, it would put unbelievable extra pressures on the NHS. Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely impossible. And don't forget as well, the other difference, I suppose, I guess, with education is teachers have to be essentially, maybe they can, they can do a bit of tutoring outside, but essentially teachers have to be state school teachers or private school teachers, whereas what you have in the health service are doctors in particular who spend a bit of time in the health service and a bit of time in the private sector.

18:56And am I right off and actually by doing so, making up their incomes. So one of the ways in which underpaid doctors get more money is by working in the private sector as well. Absolutely. The other thing, Rory, is I hadn't realised until I did the research for this speech is that there's a real thing about the birth rate in some parts of the country. London, for example, has been a big decline. And so local authorities in London, they are predicting a 7 .3 % fall in reception pupil numbers between now and 2020. Which is very weird because then at the same time, we've got 1 .2 million gross migrants coming to the UK this year.

19:30The net figure, lower than that, but so hundreds of thousands of people. So presumably, we're then going to end up with an enormous bulge in the opposite direction. So one of the problems with the government is they have to deal with pupil numbers collapsing and then a few years later, pupils numbers exploding again. Yeah, but in our area, we've had three primary schools, close recently. Two of them, one of the big factors has been the fact that there were very large number of Polish kids and post -Brexit a lot of them are gone home. Right. So you put together a falling birth rate, migration to the private sector.

20:00London's got by far the biggest number of numbers using the private sector and Brexit. So you've got falling roles. And I think that's why this argument, this is why the IFS report's worth reading. I think this argument that somehow this change by labour is going to lead to the sort of collapse of the private sector. I just, I don't see it. Very good. So here I've got another question which I quite like, which is from Marcus Castel and his question is, we're going to grief for the weekend in May, which Monro would Rory suggest for five relatively fit 60 something. So promote my hometown of grief.

20:31Incredible place just on the edge of the Highlands, which do walking. And I would recommend probably the most famous would be Shehalian, which is relatively easier. Ben Honsi, absolutely lovely router above Glentara, this beautiful reservoir at the bottom of it. So either of those markers, are you a Monro collector? Because there's a big thing isn't it? People collecting all the Monro's and going up all of them. Yeah, I'm not a big collector, but I do love, love, love, walking climbing. Scott and I go up and down those hills a lot. I tend to repeat rather than going on to new ones. Okay. Okay.

21:00Right. Harry F, after watching the excruciating interview, Evan Davis did with Laura Trott. Did you see it Rory? I missed that. No, tell us about it. I'll tell you in a minute. I couldn't help but compare the response or lack of with Diane Abbott a few years ago when she got her numbers wrong and was all over the tabloids social media as a result. So Laura Trott is the chief secretary to the treasury, as you know, Rory. She did an interview with Evan Davis at the BBC, who is also probably no, knows quite a bit about the economy. And it was absolutely mild blowing because poor everd was making a point about debt as a share of GDP rising.

21:40And Laura Trott insisted that it was falling. And poor Evan is sitting there scratching his head because he's looking at the figures. Yeah, it's not rising. And so I watched this and I thought it was as a sort of, you know, former government communications person, I was almost sort of curling up like a ball cringy. It was truly cringeworthy. And yet, as Harry rightly says, you don't know about it because it's really had very, very, very little coverage. Whereas Diane Abbott, who got a bit financially muddled when she was not even a treasury minister, she was not even in government, she was the shadow home secretary.

22:15She got her numbers wrong in an interview and it produced the million memes and people still will talk about Diane Abbott and her maths. So I'm afraid it was just a very good example, Harry, of how beneficial it is to the Conservative party to have a press that basically tends to avoid covering their many, many gaps. It's actually amazing that stuff. And I'm I'm always very struck by this is that the economy, obviously, is probably the most important thing in the end to most of our lives and most of our democracies. You know, are we going to be able to be better off? We're going to be able to pay our bills.

22:49And yet, the most basic things about the economy, public obviously, often is struggling to understand. I remember when I was running in Cumbria, I initially was trying to talk to people about the difference between the debt and the deficit till some political veteran took me aside and said, Rory, do shut up about the difference in debt and deficit, nobody gives them monkeys better. But also as you say, politicians, I mean, you know, often politicians getting this stuff wrong and yet nothing could be more important. Lord Trotter, I think, studied economics at Oxford, so it's particularly kind of bizarre.