224. Question Time: Liz Truss' 'deep state' comments, disability policy, and Shamima Begum

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, I asked Campbell. And I said you seem to be back in London, is that right? I am. I'm in London. I'm in my beautiful blue wall behind you. I thank you. Blue wall is supposed to be red wall. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Now, why don't we start with one in Perth and Kin Ross, Rory. Laurie Hughes. I manage a busy food bank in Perth and Kin Ross, close to home, Rory. It's the cost of living crisis and you're only a handful of elected officials of everyone engaged to ask what we're seeing and hearing. Why is there not more interest in poverty?

1:24And how should I call this out? I hear this a lot from people who are involved in that sort of thing that they yes, people are aware of the existence of food banks. But when you look at our politics and our media, you don't really see that much focus on what it is like to be so poor that you're having to regularly rely on handouts from food from other people and organisations. You're completely right. Obviously, Labour talks about it more than the Conservatives, but even Labour doesn't talk about it as much as you'd expect. I think it's something that I noticed when Ed Melliband was Labour leader because I think he was talking about the squeezed middle.

2:02It's partly about electoral politics, isn't it? That these parties are competing for the majority of voters. I think the challenge in British societies, the kind of let's say 7 -10 % are very poorest people in our country who are often in really horrible situations. Some of them are young, some of them are poor elderly. Obviously, the homeless and for me, people coming out of prison get very little focus partly because often those are communities that vote less than other people. Case prisoners, of course, are not allowed to vote. It's a real test of our society, whether we are properly looking after people.

2:43I'm very hopeful that Labour will increase support. A lot of it is actually cash support. I'm a real believer in cash, as you know. I don't think we should be giving out food. We should be giving cash to people so that they can buy their infid. But if you think about the number of people who are using food banks now, you're talking increasing universal credit and other benefits on a scale that at the moment, Labour are not losing at all. But we absolutely have to do it because it's very inefficient to be giving people food. Partly because I saw in them, I went to visit a food bank in the northeast and some people are selling the food which they've been given out of the bank.

3:24Now, I'm not saying this is the criticism in some ways they're forced to. These are people who are really shorter cash. But it's something that we see in the developing world too that if you only give people food and people have other needs, they'll try to turn that food into cash. It's much more efficient to give them cash in the first place. Similar theme. Sam Carlisle, Kirstaam was taught about his brother having learned difficulties. This is something that's in this new biography by Tom Baldwin. Why is the biggest minority in the UK disabled people not a bigger element of policy decisions and announcements?

3:55I guess that is another area, isn't it? Where we all know people who struggle with various forms of disability. Again, it's not really a big central part of the political debate. It's true. My sister has Down syndrome. I think about it a lot. I worry obviously about that her a lot. I have to say the Scottish government has been very generous and supportive and in the early days provided her with career mentoring and support to get into work. But it's still very, very tough. I was watching actually a wonderful, very weird documentary called This Is Not a Horror Film written and directed by somebody who has Down syndrome.

4:38It's a wonderfully funny, edgy, dangerous thing because Otto is clearly a very eccentric, often outrageous young man who loves dirty jokes and loves horror movies and who's put this film together. I'd really encourage people to watch it. He's called Otto Baxter and he's got Down syndrome. He's got serious learning difficulties and he's produced this documentary called Not A Fucking Horror Story. In which he absolutely engages in all the things that he loves. He also tells a really moving story about his own life the way that he was given up for adoption by his mother and how he comes terms with that.

5:21How he comes to terms with the way that people look at him in supermarkets. His own adopted mother who adopted four children with Down syndrome. It's wonderful that documentary makers are engaging with these kinds of topics. I also feel as a somebody with Down syndrome sister that I'm not doing enough to make sure that Fiona actually has a fully, that she's not lonely, that she has a full community around her and society around her. So I'd love to see a government leaning into this more. I also think with special educational needs that the issue gets looked at pretty much entirely through almost through a prism of cost as opposed to a prism of the opportunity of what talents can we bring out and what opportunities can we develop and give.

6:05I think it was Warwickshire Council recently that was some pretty unpleasant points being made about children with special educational needs. So I know I've just recognised the name Sam Carlo. I know she's a big campaigner on special educational needs. And maybe with Kierstammer if he does become prime minister having that person experience because what's important about I think about Tom Baldwin's book is actually it does sort of relate a lot of what's happened in Kierstammer's childhood and early life and his early adulthood into the kind of person and politician that he's become. So I don't think we should underestimate those kind of person experiences in people's lives.

6:43It's like the fact that you took that question immediately to a person experience of yours, your sister and what that makes you feel about what the Scottish government does, what more you could do, etc. I think that those person experience in politicians lives have more impact sometimes than we realise. Yeah, yeah. And I think that the book is interesting isn't it because it also talks about his strengths and his weaknesses and the way that he felt under a lot of pressure at home and that's probably created a more guarded personality. Yeah, absolutely. Well, here's one for me that Cassie Garbert is already getting grumpy on the hashtag leading and fearsome.

7:16It seems to coincide with his moving back to the UK from Jordan. Also, what's Rory's new US jobs? Thank you. So second question. First, I'm my new US job. I'm teaching at Yale University. I teach course called Grand Strata City. So last week we did the Afghan War, week four Vietnam, taught British Navy in the 18th century, teach ancient Greek wars. It's a way to look at the integration of political, economic military strategy through history and time as seminar for students. Am I getting more grumpy? I think I may be. By the way, this question, I spotted this question as well. This question came in before the interview with Jamie Rubin went out.

7:52So this grumpy analysis being picked up even before the one where you got quite grumpy. And meanwhile, you're becoming ever more kind of Zen and Car, aren't you? I don't know about that. Well, they're Jamie Rubin. I went for a cup of tea with him after our interview and he said, yeah, I was kind of a spater. You're usually the one that beats people up and I thought you'd be beaten me up. But in fact, you were really kind of calm and Zen, as you say, and Rory got quite spiky. But I don't think I'm that much more Zen than I've ever been, but I'm going to be, I thought it was a good interview. What I like about spiky exchanges, I don't think you were grumpy.

8:25I think you were quite challenging. And I think he got irritated because he thought you were being the classic cynical Brit about American power. And it's true. What you say, if you remember Rory in the interview, people should listen to this. He did actually say in answer to one of the early questions, America is not nearly as powerful as it used to be. He said that when you made that point, I think you're both ugly, so perfectly fine. Either you or him, I wouldn't get worried about him. But are you getting grumpy back in Britain? That's a good question. I think it's been quite a relief getting better.

8:59It says, I found coming back to Britain actually from Jordan has been tough. I found it very difficult kind of getting stopped on the street and people sort of saying you need to go back to politics and the kind of weird projections about that. But that's more psychological drama than maybe we need on question time. Right. Here's a question for you, Paul Dawson. What role could you envision for Britain on the global stage that is both ambitious and realistic? Contributes to make the world safer and better inspires widespread patriotic private in the UK and can be implemented at various scales irrespective of the next US present or political changes in European countries?

9:36Well, Alistair, that's quite a question. Well, first of all, we've just plugged a leading into you that's already gone out. Let me plug one that will be coming out in the coming weeks. Well, that is with Anthony Gormley, the great British sculptor, because I think one role that you could envision for Britain on the global stage that is ambitious and realistic does relate to this notion I have that we should put arts and culture at the centre of a bigger strategy of projecting Britain to the world. I do think we have to rebuild some of the relationships that we've damaged. I too also think that we have to think more seriously about our role as a defence power.

10:14I think we talk the talk on it at the moment without delivering it. And I think we could rebuild our reputation in the world of aid and development as well. But I think a combination of those things and to be absolutely frank, getting back to some clear sensible grown -up leadership would be good. I mean, it is it's a brilliant question. I love the way that Paul Dawson, whoever Paul Dawson has articulated that ambitious realistic, making the world safer and better, but also inspires widespread patriotic pride, implemented various scales irrespective of the next US President or political change in European countries.

10:45I mean, my rule of thumb on this is to think about Britain as a country like France or Germany. So a big power, but not a superpower. And I think we should be focusing internationally on places like Africa, because I think we can have much more positive influence there. I think our development budget can make much more difference. We have strong historical ties and Africa really matters. As I keep saying, one in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050. And I think that one of the mistakes Britain has made is to fantasize that it can be a major player in India or China. It can't really.

11:27But I was looking at what the British Embassy has been doing in Kenya recently. And it's really remarkable. I think, along with other people, and a lot of it is the Kenning government, they have played a big part in bringing green investment into the country, supporting the stock exchange, getting tech investment in in a way that I don't think could be possible in many other parts of the world. We've got a lot of questions this week about the talking my thing about the arts. From someone from Sarah G, what are your views on the cuts to culture budgets by local authorities, Suffolk, Knox and Birmingham, etc.

11:59How can we best argue if you're reinstatement? Rather, more provocatively, Lisa Olson, do you think the Birmingham City Council in totally decimating defunding all of the arts organizations and most of the libraries will reap any benefits from having a city totally devoid of cultural offerings? The short answer to that is, of course, no. I saw Andy Street, the West Midlands Metro Mayor had a piece in one of the papers of the weekend where essentially blaming the city council, if you remember, Rory, when we interviewed him with Andy Burnham, that was the day that this crisis was coming to a head.

12:34They've now had to make these terrible cuts. It has been related to past spending decisions, but I think it is a worrying signal that people think that arts and culture are the easy first place to go, and none of these places are easy for cuts, but they feel they can get away with it more. And I think that is relating to Sarah's question. That is because we don't, and this is why Anthony Gormley was so wonderful when we're talking to him. It's not enough to say the arts can be a source of funding, a source of tax revenue and so forth. It's actually about what benefit we can bring to ourselves and to our communities by understanding the broader importance of the arts per se.

13:16So I do see this as a very, very, very short -sighted approach. Yeah, and of course, it's challenging isn't it, because the City Council would say that they've been staffed of money by the sketchgun, but they are a Labour Council. So I guess it's, yeah. Now here's a question that's come in from Nicole. Should we be worried about Sir Paul Marshall who co -ends GB News, potentially purchasing the telegraph and spectator's? Is he sir? Is he got a knife? I didn't know he got us knife. I don't know. I don't know. I think Nicole may be giving him an honour. Oh my God, Sir Paul Rodrick Klukas Marshall.

13:52There he is. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, he's worth £630 million. Well, I think he's a very, very dangerous person. He's very weird because he was a lip big lip dam donor, gave them £200 ,000, stood unsuccessfully to be a lip dam MP. So it's a bit like the Liz Trust journey and then became a big Brexit supporter. If anybody goes to Central London and walks from Sloan square up to Sloan Street, you can see his office on left hand, it's got this enormous wooden elephant, I mean larger than a real elephant on the ground floor poking forward onto the street. Well, he has had a bizarre journey because there were many, many reasons why I wish Charles Kennedy was still alive, but one would be to find out what has happened to this guy since he was a, because he worked as a researcher for Charles back in the 80s.

14:38He stood for Parliament as a lip dam. Yeah. He co -edited the famous orange book, which was the sort of Nick Clegg, Ed David, David Laws approach to liberal democracy, gave money as you say, and then started giving money to, oh, he's at the centre of all these stories, Michael Gove. That's how I first came across him. So when I was running for the party leadership against Boris Johnson and against Michael Gove, I was invited by Paul Marshall to dinner at this office with this huge elephant. So Marshall is, as you say, he's this interesting history. He is also an evangelical Christian. He supports church called Holy Trinity Brompton.

15:21And I described that in my book what this dinner was like because it turned out to be a kind of Michael Gove endorsement dinner. And it was an odd combination of very conservative views, sort of pro -Brexit stuff, but also very unconcervative views. So very kind of lib Demi, I think they were basically skeptical about monarchy. We're all about taking land away from the juke's kept asking, you know, why is the British army less good than the Israeli army, why is British agriculture less good than Israeli agriculture was? And it was a Michael Gove fan club with Paul Marshall at the centre of it.

15:54But he also seems to like Jordan Peterson, who's this, yeah, kind of right -wing shock jock Canadian professor. And the things that he's been retweeting, I'm just to just to read a little bit of them. Siddiquan is taking the piss talking about diversity. There's no diversity in a Muslim ghetto or in a Muslim society. The Muslim block vote that keeps them in power will vote labor until they can vote Muslim. So he's clearly become very, very much part of the weird kind of idea that Islam is jihaddi and it's got to be taken on. He liked one that said, if we want European civilization to survive, we need not just close the borders but start mass expulsions immediately.

16:38We don't stand a chance unless we start that process very soon. So that's quite a thing to like a tweet that says, that's it doesn't generally, that's just four weeks ago. Yeah, when I pointed out some of this stuff on social media and Andy Wigmore, who is Aaron Banks is right hand man and one of the sort of self -style bad boys of Brexit, he said, well, I like some of your tweets, that doesn't make me as well raving lefty. What of your tweets does he like? Because my guess is that he's liking tweets of yours that he agrees with. Exactly.

17:09He's like in tweets he was, it arose because he was speaking on GB news paid for out of the money from GB news in which this guy invests millions of pounds and it's perfectly clear he is investing this this money in GB news. It's losing a lot of money. Clearly doesn't care because it's giving them a platform for the views that he wants to push. Now that is why I guess there is a little bit of a worry over this guy further extend himself into the right wing ecosystem by becoming the owner of the of the daily telegraph. So he's clearly one of those guys who's gone down the political route as a Lib Dem failed, didn't get elected in the places that he tried to and has now decided there's a better way to power.

17:55Well, you don't have to stand for parliament really that stuff. You get into this right wing media ecosystem and you become a big player within it and here you and I, here we are, we're talking about it. You're probably very happy about that. The Twitter sphere is interesting to I I retweeted Scaremucci who if people haven't listened to, they've got to listen to on leading but retweeted him talking about the fact that nobody who's been in Trump's cabinets endorses Trump. Nobody's worked with him closely in DOS Trump and the replies I got negative replies took me into this world very clearly. So if I go through the people that were attacking me the same people who are attacking me for attacking Trump are people saying a US coup should not be out of the question in Britain.

18:35People who are reposting lighting their cigarettes with a leaf for the Quran. Reposting a simple question, do you want Britain to be Muslim or Christian? Posting images of pedophile Pakistani pediatricians or posting images whenever young black men are committing a crime implicitly implying that all the crime is driven by black people. And it's really, I mean, you get a sense, I'm trying to work out which of these are bots, which are these are fake accounts. But there's a whole universe of stuff that's very, very uniform. Yeah, but that is why we shouldn't treat this stuff lightly. And I do tell me what, you know, what is off -com doing?

19:13How can you have an election year TV station that it calls itself GB and which off -com says is not a news channel, therefore not subject to the same rules as the other TV channels, which has now a succession of very right -wing voices, Jacob Riesmog, Leanderson, Boris Johnson, all these sort of people. The MPs amongst whom you'd think would have enough to do as MPs. But this guy is clearly decided. He's a very, very wealthy guy. He made his money through through hedge funds. He founded something called Marshall Waste, which is one of Europe's biggest hedge fund groups. He's got bags of money and he's using it to allow himself to have views represented, which, for enough, you can, you know, try to believe in those views, but let's not pretend that they are anything other than pretty extreme.

20:02The other worry I have about this guy is that, I don't if he still is, but he certainly was the chairman of Arc Schools, which is one of the big providers of academies. So, you know, I think the thing that we should have learned about the history of British media is that this capacity to be both player and spectator, but only be judged by the rules as though you were a spectator rather than the player, I think that has to change. Rupert Murdoch, to my mind, and, you know, we were as responsible as this for anybody, but was allowed to amass far too much power as an unaccountable individual within our political system.

20:41And Marshall is trying to do the same right now. Very good. Okay, Ruret loads more questions. Quick break.

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22:01Question from Richard James. I have to admit, but I still get confused between a customs union and the single market. Would it be possible to explain this? So, quick explanation. Customs union is what Turkey is in, and it's a free trade agreement with European Union. So, there are not tariffs and quotas if you send goods between Turkey and Europe. And the disadvantage of a customs union is that it means that you're tied into all of Europe's free trade deals around the world. Single market is what Norway is in, so these are ways of being close to Europe without being in Europe. And that means that you accept the four freedoms, including free movement of people.

22:38Correct. Very good explainer. Now, we discussed this one briefly in the context of the new Polish Foreign Minister speech in the UN. Stephylorenti. I mentioned this question, but I think it's worth going into more detail. Do you think we need a new way of doing diplomacy? I don't know what happens behind closed doors, but it all sounds too robotic. Although it should remain respectful, it would perhaps be more effective to see world leaders speak their minds, even expressing frustration if they have to. And it's true, this isn't it? When you see world leaders together, there's always an instinct to sort of want to focus on all the niceness and the togetherness.

23:13And on the one hand, you kind of, that's fine and you like that, but sometimes you do get a feeling you're not getting the full story. I used to have this recurring dream, because Tony Blair was absolutely brilliant at these sort of, you know, doing doorsteps, little stand -up press conferences with other leaders. And it always start by saying something very, very nice about the other person. And I used to have this dream about where Tony was doing one alongside Osama Bin Laden. And I was dreading that Tony was going to say something nice about Osama Bin Laden. And he did. And he started saying, you know, whatever people think about Osama, he's got this and he's got that and he likes his children and blah, blah, blah, blah.

23:50But I think there is something about diplomacy that is just sometimes a bit too diplomatic. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's a really difficult one because it's one that Kirsta was going to find himself in if Trump becomes the president of the United States, which is how on earth do you sound normal? Say the things that everybody knows that you believe while also keeping a diplomatic relations alive. And one of the other things that is striking is where do we drop diplomatic relations? Where don't we, you know, we've kept diplomatic relations with Russia, regardless of what they do. But we've suspended diplomatic relations with the Taliban.