229. Putin’s sham election, Sunak under threat, and the rift between France and Germany

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Elisd Kamal. And today, the sadgies and really interesting international news, we're going to do France and Germany and the relationship between French President Macron and Chancellor Schultz. We're going to be looking at the Russian elections, which sounds a bit weird, but we'll justify to you why Russian elections worth looking at. We'll do a little bit on the current problems of the UK Conservative Party and stories over the weekend that there might be a leadership challenge against Rishi Sunak before the end of the year. And then we'll look at the election of a new first minister of Wales, bringing the first, I think, black leader into leader nation anywhere in Europe.

1:31But let's start on France and Germany, which we're lucky enough to have with us, a man who loves France and Germany, speaks for a good French and German. Introducing a new guest. That's right. Exactly. So give us a sense on where you think things are, because it's actually the very few people I know who've got such a kind of sympathy for both countries and understanding of both in the British world. Yeah. Well, they had a meeting the other day with Donald Tusk and it was set up really as this new Prime Minister of Poland, and of course, very well known to both of them because of his leading role in Europe.

2:03And I think he came a very, very difficult time for them. I don't know if there's any doubt that they're not soulmates, Macron and Schultz. I think Macron sees himself as a European leadership figure. Schultz is Chancellor Germany, which is widely seen as the most powerful country in Europe. But they then things really kicked off when they had this meeting on Ukraine a few weeks ago. And Macron talked about troops on the ground. And Schultz went straight out to say this is just not going to happen. Macron talked about cowards. He reminded people that the side implication that Schultz might be one of those.

2:44Well, he also reminded people that there were countries at the start of the Ukraine war that talked about sending helmets, which of course was Germany. The Germans are very slightly fed up. There's a thing called the Keel Institute, which does an analysis of who's sent what and says that Germany is second behind the United States and France is well down the list. The French have got very uppity about that saying that they have a lot more. From Germany, which has been repeated in the press, and this will be what's disputed, the claim is that Germany has promised, I guess the word is promised, 17 billion euros worth of munition supplies.

3:24And France is fighting only 3%. So that's the German view that France is really not putting its way. And then presumably the French say that's statistics nonsense. They're putting in more than that. Well, and they also say that what they're putting is more effective. So the current argument going on, one of the current arguments going on, is the fact that the British and the French have provided cruise missiles, which will aid to fire much longer range. And the German cruise missiles, this Taurus system, which is deemed to be more effective, short -sagement seems to be that if the Germans do provide those, they also have to provide troops who have to be on the ground.

4:02And that then is risk be saying that two complicates to train the Ukrainians. Correct. Now, Ukrainians argue that they could do that. Ukrainians have been complaining that lots of these promises from lots of different countries just have not been fulfilled. Anyway, so then had this meeting with Tusk and they all came out, it's called the Vymar triangle, the three countries. And they came out, Schultz said unity is strength. Macron said they were united and determined. Tusk said that it shows that all these terrible rumors are bickering or overstated. But you do hear constantly that both personally and the teams do not get on very well.

4:39The history of this is really important because Germany and France have been the engines of European integration since the 40s. Since people started first talking about what used to be called a Franco -German Federation. So after the Second World War, these countries which had been really at loggerheads, violently from 1870, when Prussia took Paris and then seized Alsace -Lorraine and then the French seized the Rhineland. These are disputes about bits of German -speaking territory west of the Rhine. Always through to the end of the Second World War and after the Second World War, a really concerted attempt made by German and French leadership to get beyond that and talks actually about single currencies even as early as that, single armies, single governments.

5:22And this really continued, I think, through a lot of very interesting relationships. So Adnauer and DeGol, 5863, Branson, Pompidou, Schmidt and Gisca Destner, most dramatically probably coal and meter on, 1982 to 1945. Pondyfans, famously. And then we had Shreder and Shirak and then Merkel with Sarkozy on the Macron. Most of those relationships seemed to sort of work. And this one, well, let me, let me, let me say on the first thing, tell me a little bit about your sense of how French -German relationships worked when they were strong. Maybe they sort of call me Tron Shreder -Shirak Eras. You shouldn't overstate, understate, rather, the whole issue of ego in politics.

6:05So I think Shirak Shreder, who we saw very, very close up, you always had the sense of Shirak being Ligonum, the big guy. But Germany was the big country and that sort of balanced itself out. I think with Shalts and Macron, it does feel less integrated than those. I think Merkel understood that Macron likes the big moment. Yeah. Okay. Shalts is very kind of, you know, quiet, steady, incremental. So when Macron, one of his early statements and he said that NATO was brain -dead, which of course, he Trump said it. We're going, this is absolutely terrible, but he said it. And Merkel came out and said to him, I'm really fed up of having to sort of, I like your grand gesture.

6:48I love that you're a disruptor. But why should I be the one to pick up the pieces afterwards and try and put it all back together again? And I think with Shalts, he just finds the whole big, big vision thing a bit irritating. So in relation to what's going on with Ukraine, I think he finds it irritating that Germany is spending more money on this. I think he finds it difficult that the French don't understand sufficiently why this is so difficult psychologically for Germany. Interestingly, although Shalts is not doing very well in German public opinion at the moment, the one place where he's doing quite well is in his handly of Ukraine.

7:23Tell us about why it's psychologically difficult for Germany. I mean, I was talking to someone in Germany yesterday who said that, you know, one of the first things you mentioned was her grandfather in Stalingrad. So their historical experience of war with Russia runs very, very, very, very deep. Shalts knows that. You mentioned Ville Brandt there. There's something in the German psyche that thinks that Ville Brandt's osteopoliteek, the sort of let's try and get on with the East even during the Cold War, was one of the reasons why eventually the Berlin War fell. Reagan likes to take the credit, that to like to take the credit, but I think they think actually it was Germany's more cooperative approach.

7:58Yeah, really interesting isn't it? Because you exactly right, the narrative in the states is that the Soviet Union was crushed, the Berlin War came down because Reagan was very assertive and confrontational. And as you're saying, there's another narrative that actually the more cooperative approach was what made the difference. And so now, and bear in mind we're in a European elections year, so Macron feeling under pressure from Le Pen, Le Pen identified as being sort of putin poodle and therefore Macron emphasizing that by with the tough guys. Meanwhile, Shalts is now presenting himself as Friedenskanzler, the peace chancellor, which again is how Brandt presented himself.

8:38So there's a really interesting difference between these two. They both face a similar challenge, which is that in both cases, the far right and the far left in France and Germany are basically propoten. I mean, in the case of the AFD in Germany, violently propoten, I mean actually in a financial links to Russia, very, very clear that they would turn on the Russian gas again. It's the cutting off the Russian gas, which is driving the cost of living crisis in Germany. They would not provide any weapons to you train and really blaming the US for blowing up the gas line. So that's the right in Germany.

9:15And by the way, one of the reasons why they're doing particularly well in the east, where there's still that sort of nostalgic historic sense of, well, we've always been different and we've always been a bit closer to them anyway. Right. So there's more good feeling there. And actually, I'd like you to bring you back to that because another factor that Shalts is facing, we talk about election years, but of course in Germany, it's a bit more complicated, it's a federal country where state elections matter more. And there are going to be elections now in Saxony, Suringia and Brandenburg, which are significant states, which are in former East Germany, where the far right and the far left are doing well.

9:53So we have that in Germany. So you've got this sort of push for peace and the response from Shalts in Germany is to try to modify them by being peace chancellor. In France, you have a similar situation where the right and left are more inclined to take Putin's position on Ukraine, but Macron has decided that his response instead of modifying them is to confront them. Whereas at the start of the war, he was very much, you know, remember the phone calls with Putin and quite warm and quite friendly and trying to bring him in the old time. So he has definitely shifted. And he's become sort of, he's sort of taken kind of Churchillian tone, isn't he?

10:27He's very much, you know, talking more radically in everyone else, we may have to put troops on the ground and also I mean, they've slightly wound back from the troops on the ground. I can remember during Kosovo, the argument about Borden Tupin as their court in German, I'm ever sure to be very, very agitated by Borden Tupin. But what's happening in relation to Macron? I think he was, he was pushing it. He was saying we should rule nothing out. He got picked up as being there, going to send in ground troops. And he's unwound from that. However, he's definitely out as a pretty hawkish figure on this.

10:59And underlining, as Biden did, he stated the Union speech, that if Putin wins in Ukraine, then that will not be the end of the matter. Whereas Germany still don't talk about Ukraine winning. They talk about them not losing. They're sort of put in not winning in Ukraine, not losing. And I think the other thing to understand about the Germans is that a close relationship to the United States is a fundamental pillar of their foreign policy. Anyway, with France, it's always a little bit more ambiguous. So we have this almost kind of conflicts of personalities, which you laid out. You know, Macron is very colourful, provocative, figures shorts are a bit duller.

11:40I mean, shorts really seems at least from the outside to really struggle to be able to communicate and dominate a big stage. I wonder whether I'd like to explore this, whether actually in a funny way, his story doesn't echo Rishi Sunex. He was the kind of finance minister during COVID, like Rishi Sunex got a lot of plotlets because he was handing out a lot of money during the COVID period, struggled to win his own party election, found himself inserted as chancellor, and then has really struggled to do the charisma, public facing stuff. I mean, he's been a kind of pretty big national figure for a long, long time in a way that Rishi Sunex wasn't.

12:15It is interesting though, but if you think about Merkel, she's not what you'd call traditionally charismatic. She's not a Macron or a Shirak. She's more shorts. She probably has a broader appeal, but I think he has struggled, and I think he's, the word you hear a lot in Germany is disappointed that he hasn't quite risen to it. He would argue that people knew what they were getting with them. He is the kind of more stayed sober sort of types. This then, all the Ian Duncan Smith's defense. The quiet man is turning up the volume. They can do volume. I've seen him do volume. I also think that Macron does seem to be able to provoke.

12:59He provokes strong feelings in other people. Tuscany probably did play a useful role in basically saying to them, listen, you know, this is not good. And there's a very interesting speech. I don't know if you had time to see it. I sent it to you from Mouts, who's the opposition leader. Yeah, he's leading the right wing, CDU party. Yeah. And he actually made the point. He couldn't think of any chancellor in German history who would have allowed this relationship to become so publicly so difficult, even Shredder. So we've talked about the fact that the left in Europe in general has been in trouble.

13:31We looked at the statistics since the high point of Tony Blair today, fewer and fewer sort of social democratic parties in Europe. And in Germany now, under real threat. So there are three people in the coalition on the Liberals, Greens and the SPD. And they are doing incredibly badly on the polls. The sort of center right party CDU's doing very well. AFD now very strong. So Thurinia, when we're watching these elections this year, they look like they're above 30%. And probably with this left wing party, which we haven't discussed much. The linker. Yeah, which is with this is this is Vagen Knecht that the you were the last 10.

14:11She's like a sort of populist leftist. Possibly she combined with AFD may get over 50 % of the voting during it. And then you've got these splits within the German coalition. So you've got big chairs of parliamentary committees from the CDU and the Greens putting out joint top heads attacking shorts. You've got senior Liberals voting against the government. The Green Foreign Minister clearly seems to be actually more pro -Ukraine and seems to be going she would be sending to us. So and then you've got this weird phrase coming out of the SPD where they're talking about freezing the conflict leader and parliament.

14:45And nobody quite knows what freezing the conflict means. Well, I think it's back to this point about is, you know, nobody wins, nobody loses. You just kind of hold the line on it. Just maybe there's a bridge into talking a bit about the Russian election. Just on the last poll, 60 % of Germans oppose supplying Ukraine with these Taurus missiles, 60 % and that's up from 14, 9 in February. 20 % of Germans think they should be doing more to support Ukraine. 40 % think they've sent enough weapons and 40 % think he's gone too far. So shorts is very much in line with a public. It's getting increasingly so cold feed about getting lost.

15:22The other thing that I think's been really interesting is the way that German politics is all about Ukraine and very, very little about Gaza amongst the political parties themselves. It's not like Britain where it feels as though Israel, Gaza is actually a much more important international issue in defining politics than Ukraine today. But it's closer, isn't it? He is open about saying he does not want to provoke Putin into thinking that Germany's also in his sights and he's saying that. And the Gaza thing though is interesting. You quoted 60%, 60 % of the German population wants an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

16:00Not a single political party is even talking about that. So there's a huge gap emerged between all the political parties and Germans, particularly younger Germans. But again, just as they feel emotionally the Russian issue affects them much more deeply. Likewise, I can remember Angela Merkel, I was used to say the two absolute fundamentals of foreign policy, pardon Europe, were close to America and absolute support for Israel because of the history that brought Israel into being. And presumably that could change. I mean, there's a very big Muslim population in Germany. Young people are taking a very, very different view of this.

16:36Okay, under Russia. Right, so Rory, Putin won. We got that one right. We predict that. Yeah, he was going to win. Yeah. Unfortunately, we're getting few too many right. It was a little bit too easy to predict that Bangladesh was going to go in the direction it was. It was a little bit too easy to predict India where Modi is going to win. Yeah. UK, absolutely confident in my picture. I know you are. But I think there is a paradox between the the fact we're having more and more elections with more and more people voting, but we're not necessarily a more democratic world. And it was interesting when Putin announced that he'd won almost 90 % of the vote, which was just about 12 % lower than Saddam Hussein got in his biggest triumph when he got 100 % of the vote.

17:20I think Kim Jong Un's record was 99. Yeah, it's good when he get over 100. That's when you really, really want it. But it was interesting who who congratulated and who didn't. So North Korea, China, Venezuela, Iran, Iran, they sent their heartfelt congratulations. Modi in India. Yeah, wonderful thing. Congratulations from India. Yeah. Congratulations from UAE. So India and UAE are more surprising than Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea. And really does suggest these are countries where UAE India really meant to be part of the sort of America would hope. Your friend Jamie Rubin would very much do.

18:01My friend Jamie Rubin would very much want to emphasize that the balance against China and the Pacific is India and that the US relationship with UAE is very strong. But it's very, very challenging for the US when an election has happened, which is, I mean, just to talk people through how bizarre it is, essentially Putin was supposed to step down, supposed to finish his president in 2008. And he did this strange thing of putting Medvedev, who was the prime minister and as president from 2012 when he became the prime minister. I think we all know who's in power then. Yeah. And then he came back again, technically in 2012, same time as Xi Jinping.

18:42And then changed the whole constitution in 2020 to allow himself to run for at least two more six years. So he now feels like his president. He runs against him every time a few sort of candidates, but they're never a threat. So he had three candidates. He had a communist. He had a nationalist. And then this is weird party that's been critical. The new people's party. All these people get a tiny percentage of the vote. One of them, they made policy was execution of all Ukrainian prisoners of war. Right. Yeah. So it's not exactly, yeah. Slavitsky, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Not exactly challenging the central narrative.

19:18And Karatanov, I think, you know, real kind of old communist, but you can sort of see what the former KGB, the FSB is doing then. You know, let's have one party, which is communist, one which is ultra -nationalist, and one called the new people's pub, which sounds as though it might be sort of liberal democratic, although actually it's massively pro -theoccurationally. Which is what you're talking about on the Q &A. Was it last week or the week before about why do these dictators hold elections? But you could see from the way they presented it. If you're a Russian citizen who just watches state TV, you think, oh, this is an election and Putin's won again, and they all are very happy.

19:53And he's then out using this to say, I've now got popular support for any reforms I bring forward in the future, many of which will be more repressive. And I've got a popular support for the war in Ukraine. So it's very helpful. If he doesn't do it, he doesn't have this wonderful opportunity for kind of festival of people, doesn't have the events to turn up and can't claim those mandates. Yeah. And even though he's surrounded by voices from America, Europe saying this is not a free and fair election, people in Russia are not hearing that in the main. I wonder from a propaganda point of view, actually, whether those kind of states wouldn't want to hold elections even more frequently if they're quite useful ways of appearing on a stage and maybe letting people.

20:33Well, the fact that we, you know, you could argue that we shouldn't really call it an election. Because it's not an election in the way that we would understand it. Yeah. And yet we talk about, you know, Putin winning another term, winning another term like he's been democratically re -elected. It's more like a sort of medieval royal procession, isn't it? Maybe, you know, I think kings would sort of come through the streets of London every three, four years to get people cheering and give us a chance to do that. It was very interesting, when they played the national anthem. You reminded me of, you know, sometimes you see footballers who look like they don't quite know the words.

21:05Yeah. I looked at it, he was sort of mumbling the national anthem. I wonder whether you know in his head is so grand that he shouldn't even have to sing it because essentially it's about him. It's very much he is the state now. Even more troubling would be if he's beginning to slightly lose the plot so that we can have a fantastic kind of, you know, it's that elderly daughtery people want to hear. Jeron Tukris is all over the world. Yeah. Kim Jong Un becomes the only one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, I'm on, Putin. I mean, I guess it makes me wonder whether we're not slightly missing our labeling and that we shouldn't be talking about an age of mononkies coming back that Erdogan, Putin, Modi, Xi Jinping.

21:46If you were a Martian looking at us, you might think these things actually resemble more kind of kings, the way that mononkies used to operate. The more we saw them. The more the successors. Yeah. Can they get their kids lined up as a question? I mean, we know that Trump would, but I don't know who Putin's successor would be. And I think part of his strengthening of his power within Russia is that there's nobody. I mean, there's nobody that anybody is talking about as a possible successor. Does Vladimir Putin have children lining up succession? And what's going on? Yeah, he has, I don't know that he has any sons.

22:18He has two daughters that we definitely know about who are now in there. They'll be in their 30s because when Putin and his then wife, Ludmilla, came to London, he brought the kids. My daughter, Grace, does a whole comedy sketch about how the wife wanted to go to shoes shopping and Grace advise them to go to clerks. But I don't think this is Putin who's really into clerks shoes. But they even back then they were absolutely proud of it. And the whole was Grace's. Grace was, well, this was, she'd have been a child and they were children. So her advice on clerks was based on a child's decision. I always make them fashion, but I remember even back then, although their daughters were quite small, they'd be late 10, 12, something like that, they were paranoid about them not being photographed.

23:05And Grace went shoe shopping with them. No, they didn't go shoe shopping. They went on the London eye, all three of my kids with Putin's kids went on the London eye and sort of wandered around there with Sheree and Fiona and Mrs. Putin. Mrs. Putin didn't look very happy with Vlad, I have to say, a lot of the time. It's a bit of a sort of Melania feeling. Ah, not quite as bad as that, but it wasn't, I didn't feel close. Yeah. And anyway, that's now gone. I'm not sure what the daughters do now. There's, there are rumors that he's got other kids with other women. He went out and went right, I skated for a ballerina or something.

23:40I think it was a ballerina that he was sort of quite friendly with and maybe still is. Maybe I'm confusing for that he's an amazing ice hockey player as me. It says he is. It's wins every year. It has an annual match where he always scores the winning goal. And does he play right famous ice hockey players like you playing Maradona? I don't know. There is a nice hockey player. It's quite his famous Maradona. Yeah, he plays with the best. He beats the best. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and they organize it so he wins. Yeah. The, can I just very quickly, before we go to the break, the present of Afghanistan, I remember what's doing, it's Ashraf Garnie, invited up to the presidential palace.

24:13An Ashraf has a kind of a man with a doctorate who'd been a professor at Sajjana Halka at his early 60s and he invited up the Afghan Olympic sprinting team. And he said to these young men, you know, I'm pretty good at sprinting. I'm going to race you. And so these 18, 19 year old Afghans are like, what, what, and so in the front of the presidential palace, Ashraf Garnie takes off his shoes and in his shower, comedies stands at the start line with these sort of astonished 18 year olds. And they set off and the president manages, I think, about six steps before he falls on his face. Did he honestly think he could win?