225. George Galloway returns, 'omnishambles' budgets, and the plight of Sudan

23:50I thought an interesting on the subject of what he calls anti -Muslim hatred, which I think is coming out just now, right? For listeners to listen to. Absolutely, yeah. No, and funnily enough, I was an event I spoke at last night. Somebody had an Australian person who listened to it, came out and said, you know, she said, I never really liked the cut. I liked Javit, guys, Jib. But you came over quite well. So you've got this theory that people, when they're in active front line cabinet service, they can't really be open and frank, and they can be a bit more open and a bit franker when they're out.

24:20And also, as you know, when we first sat down with Sajja Javit, we didn't think we were going to have to split it into two parts because we talked for so long about it so much, but that's what we've done. Part one Monday, part two Friday. Yeah, do you think the budget, so we're recording Monday, UK time, and I think it's Tuesday here. Do you think the budget, so this will go out, the budget will be very live, and some people will listen to this after the budget. So we won't waste our time predicting what's in the budget. But do you think that this is their last shot, and do you think that if they do go very heavily down this, let's get all the money from under the sofa and try and sort of give some sort of big tax cut?

24:56Do you think that actually is potentially a game changer in the right way for them, or could it actually make things worse? I think it could make things worse. So fundamental position, the economy is not in great state. Growth is flatlining or actually technically going into recession and because our population is growing, in fact GDP per capita, so the wealth per person has actually been declining. So yes, there are theoretically are a few billions that are there to, as it were, play with. But a few things to point out. One is that you need a bit of insurance room if the economy moves the wrong direction.

25:29You want one a bit of money. Secondly, public services are under a lot of pressure and you want some money to put into public services. And thirdly, there are things like fuel duty, which they're always trying to deal with, which costs them a few billion anyway. So last time round in the autumn statement, in fact Jeremy Hunt avoided the temptation to come up with big catchy tax cuts. Instead, he made a pretty technocratic decision on allowing businesses to lay off some of their investment in capital equipment against tax, which I think was a smart move. And I came out with some respect for Jeremy Hunt from that because I thought it's not a very popular move, but it's a good thing to do for the economy.

26:09So I'm going into this budget with my fingers and toes crossed and hoping that Jeremy Hunt holds his nerve and thinks about his legacy because I don't think he honestly can believe any more than you and I that the Conservatives are gonna win the next election. So let's see them at least play it cautiously and responsibly, rather than do something showy, which isn't gonna do the many good electorally anyway. I saw Paul there the day saying that he's quite vulnerable in his own seat and that if there was a lot of tactical voting, I think it would be in favor of the Liberal Democrats there that he'd been a lot of trouble.

26:44But I think we're back to the point that we've talked about a lot that this is all driven by these pressures within the Conservative Party as opposed to the genuine national economic interest. And of course, the other thing I think we've talked about before is that the costs of interest on borrowing have gone up so substantially since he was talking about having all this sort of unexpected headroom. So I think it'll be, it feels like it could be a bit desperate but I don't think he will hold out against it. I think he will try to go for some time. Well, part of the problem as we talked about in the first is there's a media management problem isn't there because they have raised expectations about tax cuts and that slightly traps them.

27:20I don't know whether they've managed to talk their way out of it. Is your sense going into it a day and a half out that they've sort of hinted that they're going to be tax cuts that's going to be huge disappointment when they're not or if they managed to avoid that? I think they're trying to wind it down a little bit. I'm just shocked at the way. I mean, Jeremy Hunt was doing lots of interviews over the weekend and when all the sort of traditional pre -budget rules seem to have completely broken down, I'd be very surprised if they don't find some way of having a couple of quite surprising tax cutting measures.

27:51But I fear that if they've really had to struggle to find out where the money is coming from, that there's the potential for unraveling very, very quickly. So you could end up with one of those classic situations where on the day itself, all the Tories are out there saying, and this is fantastic. The Tories paper is also saying this is fantastic. And then within 24 hours or so, people start to look at the detail and unravels. The people to watch out for, I think, on budget day are the OBR, the Office of Budget Responsibility, the ones that Liz Truss tried to cut out the equation, Paul Johnson from the Institute of Physical Studies and Torsten Bell at the Resolution Foundation.

28:24I think when I look for the judgment of outsiders on this, because I think they do go through the numbers very, very quickly and come up with something that sort of... It's... I went through this three times, in fact, of being in budget. So as an MP, you turn up very lowly for budget. You stand there, you hear your chancellor in this case, if you were a conservative MP, it'd be Jeremy Hunt speaking. And there's lots of little giveaways. So, you know, I would hear in my constituency there's a bit of money for the A66 road or our train station and there'd be nice talk about apprenticeships and you'd leave with a kind of warm, busy feeling.

28:57And then, as you say, within about six hours, somebody like Paul Johnson starts biting into the details the whole thing and the whole thing, then on three occasions, at least in the nearly 10 years, I was in, the budget kind collapsed around our ears. George Osborne actually famously had a budget that did that where it came unstuck. I mean, I think different ones came unstuck in different ones, but one of them famously came unstuck around a pasty tax. Oh, that was, that was, yeah, remember the pasty tax. There was, which was the Omni Shambles? There was an Omni Shambles budget. That's right, I think that's 2012, somebody.

29:27Okay. Here's my little, I mean, it's pointless predicting. I remember once at the Daily Mirror one, so I wrote a speculative piece about the budget and I didn't say this is going to happen, this might, I resolved this sort of couched and very kind of speculative language, but I'm enriched to stop the editor calling me and he said, if you've seen the budget, I said, no, of course I haven't. So why are you writing always crap then? But now, all we get is crap about, you know, what might be, what might not be. The other thing I've been a little bit surprised by, even with this lot, is the extent to which so much of the briefing around the budget is about laying traps for labor.

29:59I think they might do something on the non -dom thing. I think you might sort of play away with that, not necessarily get rid of the whole thing, but sort of, you know, make changes to it. So as you can say, we're actually taking money from the very wealthy as well, but also because laborer, you know, talking about funding, all sorts of things by scaling back the non -dom tax data. So that's my little completely ill -informed prediction of what might happen. Very good. Thank you very much. So let's see if we're right. Time for a break.

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32:11Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Anastakambulant, Rory, I've got breaking news. Oh, yes, go on then. Well, the first two venues of our tour, what we hope and think will be an election tour, to sell out our Glasgow and Brighten. Very good. Amazingly, the people who know about these things say that as they track the sales of O2 tickets that it's heading in the same direction. And I don't, I hope you were very, very excited the other day, Rory, when you joined me for a rest of politics Australia special. Australia, by the way, is now overtaken Ireland as the country with our most listeners after the UK.

32:51After Tuberley dropped off the list. Tuberley went off the list. And I don't know if you know the venue that we were where I was physically and you were beamed in that the Beatles played there in the 60s. So that, I mean, that was so exciting. Without Ringo Star, Jimmy Nichols living for Ringo Star. Given that you're a swifty, I've got someone working on seeing if we can persuade Taylor Swift to come on the show if you're up for that. Rory, Taylor Swift coming on the show would be, I'd be almost as excited as if we've got Angela Merkel. How about that? Taylor Swift, by the way, she's all the same time.

33:26She's all over the media here at the moment because the Australians are hosting the ASEAN nations we're going to talk about that. And the ASEAN leaders are all a bit pissed off with Singapore because Singapore has been paying very substantial sums of money to Taylor Swift to appear in Singapore. But the money seems to be in return for her not to go to all the other nations in the region. So she's doing all goodness. On her world tour, she's doing a whole load of performances in Singapore, but she's not going elsewhere. So thereby underlining, just as she's got a bit of political clout in America.

34:00So in this region as well. But yeah, Taylor Swift is absolutely... Taylor Swift, anyway. And that was just my O2 thought because we did have this boast that we sold out the alcohol quicker than Taylor Swift. But I think she showed it. No, it wasn't. It was the food fighters. It was the food fighters. The food fighters. The food fighters. So anyway, if people want those tickets that are left, you just go to therestispolitics .com. You see all the dates there and you can sign up. Well, can I, from our own correspondent, dump you in it and say you're in Australia and you love Australia, actually get a sense that it's one of those places along with Ireland that you have a huge affection for.

34:36So tell us a bit of a sense of what impression you're getting of Australian politics and of how Australian politics looks at the world. Well, I do like Australia. I've never not had a really good time here. I think it's got so much of the best of what people like about Britain. But I do think it's less stuffy. I think they have less of a kind of class structure. Look, I think there are really, there are some big problems. And I still think that, you know, I do think it was really sad that the voice referendum was defeated. I think there are still massive challenges related to the lives and the treatment of the indigenous population.

35:08But there's something incredibly vibrant about Australia and about Australian people. And I think on the politics, it's really interesting at the moment, because you've got, they have these ridiculous three -year terms. So even though Anthony Albanese is, you know, his election wasn't that long ago, but they're already into the kind of period of the next pre -election phase. Interesting, the last night, Rorya, I had a pretty big event. And we did the thing that you and I often do about, who's going to be the next Labour Prime Minister and it was a hundred percent Starmer. Who's going to be the next American President and it was two to one Trump?

35:39And when it came to who's going to be the next Australian Prime Minister after the next election, it was very, very, very strongly Albanese. So I think there was a sense they're doing pretty well. There was a by -election last weekend, which the Liberals, which is their Tory party, which they thought they were going to win and they didn't Albanese held on. I'll tell you what has been very interesting in here. As I say, they're hosting the Asian leaders, which are all the sort of ten leaders of big countries in Southeast Asia, you know, Singapore and Indonesia, probably the two most significant in a way.

36:08And the front pages of the papers today are full of Albanese announcing more money to invest in Southeast Asian interests. And I think they do see their future very much as it were in this region. But I went to the Adelaide Festival that I was speaking at. I went to a couple of panels on the whole Orcas. This is the defence alliance between Australia and the United States. Just quickly remind people that this was the deal where France was due to build submarines with Australia. It was a huge deal for France. It's going to make a lot of difference the French defence industry and then to the complete fury of France, the US and Britain seem to cut them out of the equation, leaving the French, I mean, almost with drawing their ambassadors, mounting formal political protests, etc.

36:50Anyway, yes, fast forward then on how that's all going. It's really interesting because of course it's a very long term thing. And it sort of depends where you are and who you're talking to. So when I was in South Australia and I met the Premier there who introduced us at the event that we did, Peter Malinowskas. And he was basically saying it's great because the submarines, you know, that's where a lot of the jobs that come from this are going to be based there. So they were very much in favour. You go to other places and it feels very kind of, they're very unsure about it. And so last night somebody was pointing out that this was a deal that was put together by Biden, Johnson and Morrison.

37:25Well, Morrison and Johnson are gone. Biden, if he is replaced by Trump, I think the feeling is here that Trump is just not going to give a damn about, you know, America funding Australians submarine projects when he's got a sort of America first policy. And I think there's a feeling that people aren't sure about what the plan be is. And there's been a surprise. This was very much Morrison's project, but Albanese has taken it over. But I got the feeling talking to lots of people both in politics and something a few defense experts at this event. There's a sort of sense that this thing might not happen in the end.

37:57That the timescale is so long, that the costs are so long. And there is definitely a real sort of fear of Trump returning that if he does return that Australia just kind of won't be on his map in the way that it is with Joe Biden. And I'll tell you the really depressing thing, Rory. One panel with four experts on this subject. The panel was about Orcas and the future of Orcas. And I promised you the UK bit was not even mentioned. It was really kind of, I felt just sort of caught. I mean, I was thinking imagine if this had been put together by Thatcher and Reagan or by Clinton and Blair, the British element would feel to be a big part of it.

38:33It just didn't feel like it was part of it. And how much do you think the UK is still kind of culturally part of the Australian debate or the UK politics? Oh, no. So people are still conscious of UK politics, conscious of the thing. It's just the Orcas that is much less relevant. Yeah, I know. No, there's no doubt. When you're going around the place, I mean, people follow, you're not everybody, but people really know what's going on in British politics. There's a hell of a lot of interesting British politics. And I think there's a lot of sadness at what Britain has become. I mean, I felt for you, Orcas.

39:04I know you love the teals and I met some of the teals. Wait, wait, I hope you've gotten to agree to be interviewed. Yes, of course. These are the most important women. Yes, of course. Or yes, of course. Unlike you, I pin people down and I get them to, at some point we'll be doing, you know, very senior politicians from this country and indeed from other countries who are present at ASEAN. But they do follow it very, very closely. But the teals were, they were fascinating. Can I just sort of remind people, they're called teals because they are environmentally green, but physically conservative, hence blue green.

39:36And they're independence, many of them women, some of the doctors. All of them women. And took these key seats, quite prosperous seats in a surprise factory, which really was about, we always saw as one of the optimistic sense of a return to the centre ground. Yeah. The other thing is that if you come into Australia and you want to, if you're making a speech and you feel you're flagging at any point, just do a big thing about how amazing you think compulsory voting is because they're unbelievably proud of that. And I completely agree. It's like, I just think compulsory voting. I couldn't agree more.

40:08My friend John in Cumberer thinks I'm mad. But I think his only argument against it is that he doesn't really trust voters. I think our democracy has to be based on the assumption that we trust everybody. Everybody should vote. Everybody should be equal citizens and everyone should have a say. Well, I think one of the reasons why the debate feels more informed. Partly, I mean, look, their papers are very influenced by Murdoch and they're not great. But I do feel people are generally more informed. And I think one of the reasons is that actually they understand that some stage they're all going to have to vote.

40:37And I think it helps the debate. I think what the politicians say about compulsory voting is that it makes it much harder for the extremists to get a real grip. Now, there is a hard right problem here. There's probably not as advanced as it is in Europe, but it exists. But I think compulsory voting has been a great thing for them. And, you know, I really, really wish that we would go down the same road. And the other thing that's happening is there's a lot of movement on, I know this is something you feel strongly about, political funding. So the guy, the premier in South Australia, Peter Manalaska, he's bringing forward a bill to ban all political donations and to have state funding of fire.

41:14Fantastic. That's what I like. And at the federal level, at the federal level, they're also talking about not quite going that far. But they are going to a place of having very, very kind of pretty low limits on what people can spend. So there's just that sort of sense of, I think, greater vibrancy. If people are really interested in the geekiness of this, these are great subjects to get into some days. I mean, the argument against people like me who favor state funding as they see it as a challenge to freedom. And it sounds kind of quite authoritarian. And maybe it's difficult for new parties to break in and stuff.

41:47But I think you've got a way less arrivals. And I think state funding is a much less arrivals than allowing wealthy business people to fund the Tories or wealthy unions to fund labor. And all that that means for the mad policies of that generates. The argument that is being used against the South Australian Premier and his plans to ban all political donations is freedom. They're using the freedom of speech argument. And that's probably going to end up in the courts. But I really, really hope he wins. So there is definitely, there's no doubt. I mean, your friend King Charles is due to becoming here in the not too distant future.

42:25And so I was asking, I was with quite a lot of young people at the university yesterday. And I was saying, you know, the people care much. And they're saying, oh, not really. But then I was talking to some of the older people. And they were saying, yeah, well, they might say that. But you watch when he comes here, it'll still be quite a turnout. You won't be happy with this, Rory. You say, but one of them did say, I said, yeah, I mean, there won't be much of the king Camille about it. If Harry and Meghan came, they'd be crabs. Right. Okay. Now let's move on to the serious subject of Sudan. So you really wanted us to focus on Sudan today.

42:57And I think that's really important because it's probably the most dramatic extreme and horrifying thing happening in the world at the moment. And almost nobody is talking about it. We've covered it a bit. We've done a few episodes. But not enough. I was stopped by a woman in streets run, who's actually my local Councillor, local conservative Councillor, who's Sudanese, British, who really said, why are you not doing more on Sudan? And the statistics are absolutely horrifying. So, effectively, there's a civil war between two sides. And we can explain that a little bit in a second. But eight or 10 million people have been displaced from their homes.

43:36That of a population about 40 million. So about a quarter of the population. Over three million children. The healthcare facility is almost entirely collapsed. A lot of the city is lying in ruins. And these horrifying, basically, militia groups. I mean, some of them technically from the rapid reaction force. Some of them who call themselves a Sudanese army. But increasingly, the distinction between these armed groups is becoming pretty blurred. You had the Sudanese army walking down the street carrying the decapitated heads of students that they thought were connected to the RRF. Anyway, over to you.

44:08Maybe we can get a bit into the background of it in a second. The numbers are staggering. And of course, you accept that Ukraine, massive international story, Israel, Gaza, massive international story. But the sort of, the kind of emotions that are being inspired by the suffering of both of the attacks on October 7th, but also the horrors of what are happening in Gaza now. I mean, it's obvious to understand why people feel so strongly about it. And yet, as you say, this is something that because it doesn't get much attention, there's no similar outpouring for what is certainly numerical terms, greater suffering.

44:47And also with, you know, there's so much going on here between these two sides of the Sudanese armed forces and the rabid support forces who were, they were at war in Darfur two decades ago. But what's, I think, different now is that there's a far greater international element to this. And a lot of this has to do with gold. You know, Egypt is getting gold from the areas under the Army control and the gold and from the rabid support forces is heading particularly to the United Arab Emirates. And without them sort of wanting to be part of a solution, it seems to be the problem doesn't get resolved.

45:23And, you know, we've talked a lot in recent weeks about just how big Biden's kind of intray of challenges is. But again, he's expected to play a role in this. He's appointed a special envoy now, a guy called Tom Periello, who did a similar job in the DRC for Obama. The UN have just put in a new peacekeeping envoy. But these proxies, you've got the UAE, you've got Egypt, you've got the Wagner group, you've got Iran, who are supplying arms to one side. And so people are talking about, you know, the need for a ceasefire, the need for humanitarian aid access. But with all this bigger play politics going on around it, it's very, very difficult.

46:00Yeah. So again, just set up the geography for people. So Sudan is a country which is on the east side of Africa along the edge of the Red Sea. So it's right there below Egypt, just sits below Egypt. It's got a port called Port Sudan, which is right opposite Saudi Arabia. But on its west hand side and its left hand side, it stretches right on the Libyan desert and connects with the Sahel, with this whole chain of countries which are on the edge of the Sahara, which have seen military coups in the collapse of democratic governments right away from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of Africa that we've been discussing.

46:36Two main fighting groups. On the one hand, as you say, the Sudanese army led by General Al -Burhan and they're mostly traditionally in the east of the country along the Nile River in what traditionally was the kind of more settled, a richer, more fertile territory and they tend to have more of the support, I guess, of the urban population, the intelligentsia, the business elite. And they are backed by Egypt and Iran. And against them is this man Hamedi with the rapid reaction force. And Hamedi, as we've discussed before on the program, grew up in a camel hurting background. He comes from the west from this much more Arab semi -nomadic backgrounds and he's got these recruits who are again mostly from the drier areas of Sahel.

47:24They're backed by the UAE and in fact were used by the UAE as mercenaries in Yemen. He's got businesses in UAE and there's been some amazing reporting that we again, we discussed briefly if people want to really get into the geekery of this, which New York Times got into where they used satellite images to show that the UAE had set up a hospital in Chad, so on the western side of Sudan, which was basically being used to take and cargo planes, which were delivering rockets, drones from the Emirates to Hamedi and the rapid reaction force. And this is another example of somewhere where we're losing faith in peace.

48:00But actually peace in Sudan isn't impossible. I mean, it's somewhere where if the international community concentrated properly, you would be able to get there more with more confidence, I think, than you might be able to in Russia, Ukraine or Israel, Gaza, and the sad truth is you're right that the US has now appointed a presidential envoy. But for a long time, they didn't. The State Department was digging its heels in insisting that the Africa Bureau could do it. The Africa Bureau simply didn't have the contacts that it needed with Saudi, UAE and other key players to really get the stuff sorted.

48:35There is also a Ukraine element to this, I think, because Hamedeti, who is a pretty, I mean, I suppose he would, he would come on leading, but he's a very, I mean, you know, he became powerful and wealthy because he was very close to the former head of state Omar al -Basha. And that's when he got started to get access to a lot of the gold resources. He then turned on his masters at war, helped to get rid of him, joined a transitional government for a short period of time, then took part in another coup. And within the Russian context, though, he's been reported pretty widely that he's helped Russia access billions worth of Sudanese gold, sort of laundered in various complicated ways that I don't understand.

49:18Our own parliament, the Foreign Affairs Committee, did a report last summer, I think it was, reckoning that the Wagner group was earning more than a billion dollars through this gold smuggling, which was absolutely essential for helping Russia to carry on the Ukraine effort with it, despite all the sanctions. You talked about the Ukraine angle, but it really matters for the Red Sea. I mean, Sudan matters for the Red Sea, it matters for the Sahel, it matters for North Africa, matters for the Horn of Africa. It also matters for Israel Gaza, because, of course, the American needs all of these different countries, Egypt, UAE, the Saudis, to help out on that as well.

49:58So, you know, we've taught a lot about that David Miliband lying about, you know, the age of impunity. I mean, you're looking to people who, on the one hand, you're saying, please stop doing this nefarious stuff that's helping this war in this part of the world. And meanwhile, we'd like you to help us do this to try to bring peace in this other war in a different part of the world. Yeah, the ICG, the International Crisis Group. We've done a great interview of which people may want to listen to again with Comfort Iroh, who's the head of crisis group. And crisis groups produced a really good paper showing how peace could happen.

50:31And what they basically argue is that you've got to be prepared to negotiate with these armed people without conditions. And the problem is that the US has been saying we won't talk to Mehdi, we need these conditions, Saudis been saying we can't have UAE involved in the discussions. Basically, you need to bring them to talks with no preconditions. You need an unconditional ceasefire. You need to get Cairo, Egypt, and UAE on side. And you need to be very flexible. I mean, there's so many egos now involved because there's a Saudi process, there's an Egyptian process, there's sort of Ethiopian process.

51:07But it is exactly where the US used to be able to come in and coordinate these sort of things and lean on people. And I'm afraid an example of something we talk about, which is that as the US has slightly withdrawn and Biden, this hasn't taken a particular personal interest as you don't, it's not that the world stabilizes, it's that you end up with half a dozen other players getting involved. Well, I hope the next time you meet your local Councillor that she thinks, at least we've tried to give it a go and explain it, but it is absolutely horrifying what's happening there and not easy at this stage to see how aware it ends.

51:42Well, and I said slightly depressing end, but I'm going to finish just with that final thought again, which is just to say, we must keep believing in peace and keep believing it can be done and it has been done and it can totally be done and sit on if people believe and commit to it. It's also true that in the end we can get to peace even with Israel -Ghazar, if people believe in it and commit to it, however gloomy the world seems to me. Well, listen, Ruri, if we want to end on a happy and old, why don't we go into this in question time? Why don't we reveal that the answer to the question that we posed at the end of last week's question time?

52:16On 29th of February, the leap year question, yeah. When Lucinda Borg asked us to propose to her boyfriend on her behalf, he said yes. Oh, how lovely. How nice of a rending. That's really nice. I'm very good at it. Peace of human happiness. Thank you. See you soon. Bye -bye.