235. What Britain really thinks of politics

24:57In fact, when people look at it, there's a really good graph which overlays the salience issue, how important it is to people against what different party leads on. And that's where Labour's in a very good position, because they're leading on the issues that matter most. The only people who really care about Islamist extremism, work issues and migration, and really put them at the top, are the reform voters. And the reform voters are very different from other voters, and they represent these sort of tend to maybe a stretch 20 % of the vote that makes up far -right populism in a lot of other European countries.

25:34They are all about culture wars. They're totally different if you look at the graph, and people can have a look at this in the newsletter. But you'll see that they don't really care that much about the economy and the NHS. They're putting these issues like migration, workers use right up there. And the issue then, I guess, is, well, let me turn it around. And again, puts you in the uncomfortable position of being Rashid Sunat, if you feel that you've got a bit of a lead on those issues, and that you might be able to chip off a few reform voters by leaning into those issues, and that you're not likely to get much chance now of taking back the lead from Labour on issues like the economy, would you not feel a huge temptation to slightly lurch to the right and the hope that you can minimise your defeat?

26:17I think that is playing completely into their strategy. So I think ultimately that would help them. Just to go through the reform, that would help reform. I think, yeah, it would show them as bigger players. It would say that they're inside his head. It would say that he wants to play on their pitch. So if you go through them, so reform voters, 46 % say stopping legal immigration and small boat crossings, 46 % of current reform voters say that is the number one priority. As it happens, health is second just almost the same as reducing migration overall. And interestingly yesterday, it was one of the most absurd things I've heard since the £350 million for the health service in 2016, Richard Ties, the reform leader, was out saying that they're going to get rid of NHS waiting lists in two years by stopping all spending on net zero.

27:06Then he makes up some fantastical figure, 30 billion or something that we're having to spend on net zero. And so that's all going to go into his pure populism, straightforward populism. But so what they're trying to do there just as in the Brexit debate is say, let's take the issue that our voters really care about, illegal immigration, net zero, which is also very high up. And let sort of, you know, somehow relate them to things that other people care about as well, such as the National Health Service. Some bad news in here for reform, though, by the way. And Rishi Sunak post -Uxbridge when he sort of started to change his net zero strategy, there is still a significant majority of people who would want more policies to reach net zero, rather than fewer policies to reach net zero.

27:48And climate change is reassuringly for people at UME, reassuringly high, and people's list of priorities, you look at the general population, it's not right down there, it's down at sort of number six or seven, which is pretty high in the list. Just on that one, really, less satisfying for somebody like me, is I see their most labor voters getting a better deal out of Europe is in the single figures. So, in fact, seizing more Brexit opportunities is 2%, negotiating close to relation with EU is 8%, so well, well, well down on health service way out in front of everything. It's another one that assists his net that are very, I mean, it's very strong numbers for people who now would prefer to be in the European Union than out.

28:33Yeah. But the problem is that the EU is a really, really a choice. They don't really want to be given the choice, but if you're in a poll, if you're given the choice, then there is now a pretty sizable, I think it's 5743 saying, you know, we would vote to rejoin, and the West Midlands is the only region the country that went against that. West Midlands, I don't know who's going in the West Midlands, there was also the only region that wouldn't get rid of the House of Lords, by the way. A couple of things, maybe before we do go to the break, very strong support in every region and all demographic groups for Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

29:04Sadly, we don't have a vote in that one. We also, we also asked them about their views on Israel and Hamas. And clearly, we ask people who they felt more sympathy with, Hamas or Israel, and it's basically Hamas 12%, Israel 22%. And as in a lot of these questions, an awful lot of don't know. And if I was a kid's thumb, or the one thing that would worry me in all this, is just how many people are saying don't know on issues and on attributes and on. And that just is feeding all this general sense of sort of disgruntlement about politics as a whole. And again, we keep coming back to this, then we just the nature of the question.

29:40I mean, if we next time, I think we should ask whether people feel more sympathy for the people of Gaza or for the people of Israel. Exactly. And you've probably got very different results. Very, very good in Hamas. The final depressing kicker, and we should ask this the next time we do this poll, and actually we'd love questions from listeners. Help us form this poll. You know, please write in and suggest questions you'd like asked if you're into this stuff. I think we should ask what would happen if Farage came back. And my fear is that looking at this data, you'd probably see a big jump in the reform vote if Farage came back as reform leader and a drop in the conservative vote.

30:14And you could almost end up in a situation. It doesn't seem unrealistic to me that Farage could end up on 21 % the conservatives on 19 % going to the next election. Yeah, I'm not convinced of that because I think that, you know, he felt Farage's own net positivity based on this poll is minus 20, which is not that much ahead of Johnson and Soonak. I think we've got maybe got a little bit of peak for Farage, but I could be wrong about that. Thank you. Time for a break. Take a break.

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32:38Welcome back to the dresses policies with me, Aleister Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart, and now we're going to shift to a place where polling is actually much more sparse and unreliable, which is India, but where I think both of us are pretty confident what's going to happen in the upcoming Indian election. Well, the first thing to say about India is stating the obvious. It's a very, very, very big country. Population 1 .4 billion and more than 950 million will have a vote. And this election is going to take place, starts next week, 19th of April. It's happening in seven phases across the country.

33:13This is for the Lok Sabha, which is their kind of their parliament. And then we'll get the results on June 4th. And I think we're both very, very confident that Narendra Modi will get his third term. And I mean, he is an incredible operator. He really is an incredible operator. And I'm in France at the moment, and I was passing through Paris the other day. I went into the railway station. I picked up Le Monde de Promatique, which is a very good newspaper, which I'm sure you know, Rory, which is sort of a monthly foreign policy French newspaper. And they have done a huge thing on India. And the front page headline land in democracy.

33:51Question mark. India, a democracy question mark. And the question mark is meant to cast doubt upon the fact that it is still a democracy. Now, I know the Indians will get very, very angry at that suggestion. But the fact is that Modi has done an incredible job at cementing his own power. And doing it in a way that as, you know, I think a lot of the things that we talk about, whether it's kind of undermining of courts, whether it's about far greater control of the media. And also the thing that I think is, is perhaps most worrying. There's a piece in this paper by a guy who's written books on India.

34:26And he, I don't know, you may know this word, Rory, Modi Tvah. So we've had Hunde Tvah, which is essentially the, you know, the use of, of kind of in a secular country that is meant to be secular country, sort of the emphasis of the Hindu religion. But Modi Tvah is the combination of Hindu superiority over Muslims, right wing nationalism and the cult of the personality. The cult of the personality is extraordinary. You told us a little bit about this then, because you, you saw some of this. And in fact, I think at one point you were approached to go stride his, um, well, a biography. But so Modi, actually, I mean, in terms of the politicians, we often cover internationally, came to big national elected prominence relatively late.

35:07I mean, he'd been a party organizer from his very early childhood. I mean, he was, you know, a child when he first joined this sort of semi paramilitary group associated with the BJP, the RSS. And then he became a kind of key behind the scenes party organizer. I'll get a little, little sort of summary of him. He's, he's known as mid 70s. He's born in 1950. And the age of eight he joins this group. He then during the 70s, which is when Indira Gandhi, so nearest daughter declared a state of emergency in India, he's pretty much went underground because his party were considered extremists. And he was running safe houses and he was traveling in disguise at some points as a Sikh.

35:45And then in his thirties, he comes back to prominence again, beginning to organize elections for the BJP, which is the Hindu nationalist party in places that Ahmed Radh, when he's 40, he gets involved in this Ram Rat Yatra, which is the, we talked about this because this was the pilgrimage connected with the destruction of this ancient mosque, the Babri Masjid in Iodia and the attempt by the Hindu nationalists to rebuild a Hindu temple. Which I'm not done. This is my side, but they've not done. But it wasn't until 2001 when he was 51 that he actually became chief minister, chief minister of Gujarat.

36:21And since then, totally consistent apparent became the Prime Minister of India in 2014. And one of the things that you've talked about is his use of holograms and a lovely tip here, you talk a little bit about what that looked like. The other thing that came very quickly in his campaigning style is people wearing masks with his face on them. So you can often see, you know, 500 Indian women and Sarees, all of them with Narendra Modi's bearded face on them. Very early use of aggressive social media. So he had a million followers on Twitter very, very quickly. Anyway, over to you on holograms and campaigning techniques.

36:56I think as a campaigner, he's quite formidable. So the hologram, I think he was the first one to use this where essentially he would be at a rally in a big Indian city, say, and that have a huge crowds there. But meanwhile, around the country, in dozens and they can do this, you can replicate this in hundreds of different places, the technology that has him literally standing on the end of a truck, but it's an image of him, but delivering exactly the same speech as he is delivering in person. And he was sometimes getting bigger crowds for the hologram than he was for the real thing. And it's just like your favorite abatast.

37:32It is exactly the same technology, exactly the same technology. And then, and the mask thing is all about, you know, it's about his face, it's about people feeling that they're part of it as it were of his team. There's this app that they have where basically there's a game on there. And every time you like or agree with something that he's said, you get points on this game that you play. So there are all these things. And of course, you know, the thing about controlling the media so that the last of the sort of TV stations that gave him a hard time, New Delhi TV suddenly ends up in the ownership of one of the the oligarchs, is one of the richest people in India, one of his closest friends.

38:08He's just a formidable campaigner and around the world. I mean, I was in Singapore last week, as you know, and I hadn't realized he'd been to Singapore and spoken one of the big stadiums there when he went to, he was at Wembley when David Cameron was prime minister, he went to Wembley and sixty -year -old people turned out here and speak. He filled out stadiums in Houston, in New York, in Sydney. This is the other thing which because of of course, Nairu when he was prime minister, he tried to project a sense of India on the world stage, but it was very much kind of for the elites. What Modi has done incredibly successfully is to project himself as a big player in the world and get the masses behind him in so doing at this sense of saying, I'm just the kind of ordinary guy and I can become this big figure on the world stage.

38:52I think what we can do is a country if we do that. And there's now a much more aggressive foreign policy. So you had for example, when the American Secret Service discovered this plot for Indian Secret Service, we were sort of taking out a few people on American, or wanted to take out a few people on American and Canadian. And did in Canadian. And did in Canada? And did in Canada? And did in Canada? And did in Canada? And it assassinated someone in Canada, yeah. Absolutely, and they came out and said this is typical of these sort of, you know, former global leaders turning on us. And so much, much more muscular, quite aggressive against Pakistan, quite aggressive against China even.

39:27Refuse really to get involved in condemning Putin's invasion of Ukraine? Well, worse than that, Roy. It's worse than that. They've the dealing in arms between the two is pretty, pretty high profile, but also on oil. So you've got, those are the world sanctioning Russia and sort of, you know, saying they weren't taking any of their oil. So what's happening is crude oil is going into India is being refined there, it's being repackaged as Indian oil, and they're being sold onto Europe. And this is a sense of the US and Europe as it were being between a rock and a heart place. So initially, Europe and the US tried to be pretty firm with the Render Modi.

40:05So in fact, just to remind people that was a horrifying set of riots in 2002 in Gujarat, initially a group of Hindu pilgrims and some activists on a train were killed. And in response, there was mass killing, in which probably 2000 Muslims were killed. And maybe as many as 100 ,000 were displaced in Gujarat, including the killing of a very senior Muslim politician, S. Anjafri. There was rapes, the word mutilation. And at no point did Narendra Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat, condemned this. And that was because he is very much a Hindu nationalist. And he's a Hindu nationalist who projects himself frequently against Muslims.

40:46He was also that led to him being there was a travel ban placed on him. You couldn't go to I think America, I think UK or UK or Europe, exactly. So all these countries and the UN did formal investigations. So initially, the international community tried to freeze him out. But of course, over time, over the next decade, as he became more and more powerful as chief minister and then eventually became Prime Minister, the international community flipped. And instead of banning him from traveling, they began to welcome him and why? Well, because the US doesn't have many options in Asia, they're looking for counterbalance against China, which they see as the fundamental strategic threat.

41:23And so they have had to pursue a policy of reconciliation with him despite that. And we can talk about some of the other things which mark him out, not just as a very popular politician, but a very worrying politician. 2019 revoked the special status of Jamal Kashmir. So that's the area which is disputed between India and Pakistan and has been the site of very, very intense tensions between Muslim and Hindu communities. He introduced something called the Citizen Amendment Act, which basically fast -tracked non -Muslims who wanted to get Indian citizenship and discriminated against Muslims. And then there's all the stuff that you've been talking about, which is, you know, the courts have not challenged this stuff in the way that one would have expected.

42:06And he's used the intelligence bureaus to investigate a lot of NGOs. And opposition politicians? Absolutely. And one of the problems with India in a sense. And this is true, maybe less so, but to some extent, in place like Bangladesh too, is that it's a strange combination of a very rule -bound bureaucratic society with also strange flexibilities around the rules, which means that almost anyone at any time can get in trouble with the courts because they haven't quite got their tax, right, or they haven't filled out a bit of form. So you had investigations not just of organizations supporting gay rights, but also Med San San Frontier, the Sierra Club, Avars, kind of big international NGOs.

42:49And this is all about this horrible jargon phrase, the shrinking space for civil society. And then, as you say, big moves against some of the leading media, particularly the English language media. On the popularity, though, there's a thing called the Morning Consult, which does this sort of poll, and it tracks popularity of leaders around the world, Modi's number one in his own country. 78 % of Indians approve of his leadership, and the nearest rank behind that is Mexico, 63%. So he's genuinely very popular, but of course, it's easier to be popular if you do have such control, and you do have the opposition tied up and decimated, and so forth.

43:23But I think the point on foreign policy with China, in a sense, he probably gets more leeway because he is not China, and he is in that part of the world, and he knows that, and he plays that very, very well. So for example, when when the Canadian thing happened, where the Sikh separatist guy was killed, the Canadians protested, they were attacked for their troubles, and Joe Biden was not at all happy about it, but his only protest was to say that he wouldn't go to their national day rally. He didn't do a big thing about it. He just said, I'm not coming to your national day rally. So who went, he made your macro.

43:57And so, you know, they still were able to project Modi and project India as this sort of huge player in the world, and it is interesting to me how he's managed to make a big part of his domestic appeal, the fact that he is a major player in terms of the global profile of India now. And of course, when you see that there was a poll recently of young people, and 88%, there was a poll of 5 ,000 people, 88%, said that they felt it was in poor in the India, in the near future, got a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and the India should be part of the, it should be added to the G7.

44:33So they've got this sense now of a bit of swagger. Now that's that, that's going to be careful about that, but I think it is because he is able to, he knows the point you made, the Americans want the counterweight. So he probably gets away with a lot more than maybe other countries could. An incredibly frustration for opposition politicians in India, because they really are failing to land a blow. So one of their problems is there are certain arguments they want to make. One of them is that he hasn't actually performed much better on the economy than his predecessors. Man Mohan Singh had actually generated really significant growth before the 2008 financial crisis.

45:08I think he's done pretty well on infrastructure. That's right. He's done a massive, it's an interesting economic policy because we talk a lot about this. He's massively increased the amount they spend on infrastructure, I think from about 0 .5 % GDP to about 1 .7%. But he's reduced expenditure on health and education compared to his predecessors. And he's gone for a loss of these freeports, especially economic zone type things, which we've been talking about. So he's a real believer in stuff that makes you uncomfortable.

45:40He allows more pollution, lets fast -track businesses, let's get rid of labor regulations here in order to bring investment in. So he's pretty right -wing laissez -faire in his economic policies. And of course the opposition politicians also get infuriated because he's perpetually taking credit for things that other people have done. I mean, anything that's happening on a state level that has nothing to do with the federal government, he'll put his face all over, things that have been done by his predecessors, he'll put his face all over, and yet he manages to do it. I mean, what would be your advice to an opposition politician dealing with someone who's so brilliantly nimble at taking credit for things that he hasn't done?

46:16Well, very hard. And what does the politician do when, for example, the Congress party, the main opposition, came out of the other day with their manifesto, which covered all sorts of different issues. And his line was he's been written by the Muslim League. So essentially taking it straight to one of his points, look, he's a very, very difficult opponent. I guess all you can do is sort of keep going, but it's harder and harder and harder, the longer that he's there. Because I think one thing we should not, I think we can argue about Putin, whether he is genuinely popular or not, I think with Modi, it's very hard to say he's not genuinely popular.

46:53You know, people will be able to vote against him if they want to, but he's got the media completely wrapped up. This guy that's taken over Andy and you, Delhi television, I mean, he's like, he's one of the guys is back, Modi from the word, go and lots of journalists left there. So I think it's very, very, very difficult. I think that the one thing I'd say is about in relation to the economy, they have this sort of idea running that they're, they called it the Great Asian replacement that they're essentially replacing that they're becoming the dominant force in Asian. I think on the economy, that's a bit far fetched.

47:24Yes, they're growing faster than China and they probably will do for a while, but they've got problems with their economy as well. So I think let's be honest, he's going to win the election. It's a done deal. It's pretty unprecedented, isn't it? He's going to likely to end up with a single party majority coming in again, you know, been in since 2014 and very much defining the I mean, he's one of these figures that represents a whole new age, isn't he? I mean, Putin was re -elected back as president in 2012, Xi Jinping came in in 2012, and the entry Modi came in in 2014, and these have become the big central figures of that age, haven't they?

47:56One of the opposition figures you've mentioned there, so Rahul Gandhi, he basically says he's been excluded from Parliament because he has chased what he calls irregularities in some of the business dealings that Modi has with some of these billionaires that have backed him. And you know, that's hard. There was this scandal related to price fixing. This was by this guy Adhani, price fixing and inflating his wealth, and there was not much of a debate about it. Parliament and eventually the Supreme Court were named a group to investigate. Three of the six who were investigating, had a complete of interest.

48:33Surprisingly enough, they concluded there was no evidence of wrong doing whatsoever. Very hard to find that. This I think is the big sort of not fully explored story in India because generally speaking, these populist authoritarian rulers end up becoming very, very close to business elites. And you can see this in Modi's India, that the Indian economy is increasingly dominated by just 20 companies. It's a very dramatic change over the last 20 years of how these 20 companies are taking a bigger and bigger role in the Indian economy. And some of them are basically still exploiting licenses and special permissions to get themselves in key keep positions in the economy.

49:12And Modi presents himself as this very ascetical arm, Admi, ordinary man, both about having sold tea in a chaiwala, fasts very publicly, lives through the systematic Hindu image. The question is, are the opposition going to really be able to land blows on what his relationship with these businesses are and whether corruption's operating? And at the same time, of course, he's hitting back in the most outrageous way against Congress. I mean, he referred to the Congress government as the Delhi Sultanate, but in other words, a pro -Tembo -Slam government, he calls Sonia Gandhi, you know, Pasta, then you know, sister Pasta, as Shetagan, which means the white woman.

49:52I mean, there's a lot of sort of, not just anti -alete because he's obviously portraying the Gandhi dynasty near his descendants as being this upper -class English -speaking elite out of touch group compared to him. Cast, of course, is still very important in Indian politics. And caste is a very traditional, very ancient Hindu division between different fixed statuses in society of which the Brahmin, who were the traditional priestly class, are the most famous, but there were other upper -casts, including upper -casts of warriors, for example. And these groups, the three upper -casts in particular, have dominated Indian politics, Indian business, Indian society for a very, very long time.

50:39And since the 1970s, there has been a big push to try to give more opportunities to excluded caste. That includes people who were traditionally the Dalits, who in some ways were considered untouchable, who were condemned to do a lot of very, very difficult, dirty manual work, and who found it very difficult to get into positions. So there was a big push of, for positive discrimination, to try to transform Indian society. And then a new group emerged, which is where Modi comes from, the OBC's, the other backward caste, very interesting that this word backward is used in this way. And certain groups, such as his father's group, which were traditional oil sellers.

51:19So a lot of this is about people being fixed in the same profession generation of generation, were identified as having been marginalized. He's used this a great deal to present himself as somebody from the bottom, challenging the elite. But paradoxically, a lot of the BJP Hindu vote and power base actually comes from the traditional upper -casts. And he hasn't really done much to help the marginalized castes. In fact, he's got rid of some of the positive discrimination legislation. And the Congress party's pointing out that increasing numbers of members of parliament and members of the civil service and business elite are now increasingly coming back again from these upper -casts.

51:58So he's presenting himself, and it's made classic populist move, presenting himself as the man of the people. But in many ways, his policies are benefiting the rich and the elite. Yeah, yeah. And of course, we started by talking about the elections about to take place. And it's such a huge country and you've got so many different campaigns being fought. There's going to be billions. Billions are going to be involved in this. When the 2019 campaign, the rate can cost about three billion euros. And this followed laws which Modi brought in in 2017 to anonymize donors. So he has the backing of the oligarchs.

52:33They can pump the money in. There's the bit of the old revolving door goes on that we talked about in relation to the UK. And back in 1991, Roy, there were two Indians in the Forbes list of billionaires. Do you know how many there are now? No. 179, including Mr Ambani, who is the third richest man in the world after Mr Muskin, Mr Bezos. He's worth around 108 billion. And then he's somebody who's been very, very close to Modi for a very long time. Now, nothing wrong with being close to people, but I think if you add together all of the different changes that he's made, some of which we've talked about, I think that to go back to where we started the Le Mans Diplomatic and the question is India still a democracy?

53:14It is still a democracy, but it's a democracy that is being shaped very much in one man's image. Which brings us, I think, to a final and very different type of politics, which is to return just briefly at the end to the issue of Gibraltar. And to remind people, Gibraltar, a much, much smaller place. It's 30 ,000 people, as Alex, that keeps mocking me, I said, connected to the mainland of Spain, which will be the correct way of framing it. It's not not an island. It's a little peninsula sticking off the side of Spain, which has been a British possession since the early 18th century. And we've been lucky enough to get the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, who Alex, René, know reasonably well, to come on and give his side of the story about allegations around conflicts of interest, corruption, the sacking of a police chief, and such warrants.

54:03So over to you, Alex, to just give us a bit of a sense, the background of this, before we get the Chief Minister on to finish our show. Yeah, so we talked about Gibraltar last week as one of the several issues that we were looking at under the umbrella of corruption. And I think he's a listener, it turns out, listens to every episode. And I think he felt a bit hacked off that we'd sort of included him alongside people like Medvedchuk in Russia, and you know, Rishi Sunak in the 15 million pound on us and all the other stuff that we talked about. So he basically said, look, you know, he'd quite like to come on and just defend himself, defend Gibraltar.

54:39And so being good public service people, we thought, why not? So Fabian, thank you very, very much for joining us on the rest of politics. Will we a bit harsh on you last week? I thought you were. There's been a number of guardian articles on Gibraltar in the past six months. You happened to have chosen the worst one to concentrate on. There was an excellent piece in December in which Margaret Hodger was talking about how Gibraltar was the benchmark jurisdiction for transparency because we're the only overseas territory to have a register of ultimate beneficial ownership that is open. And you're a demonstration that you can do these things and be a successful financial services center.

55:20Chief, and thank you for joining us. This is great. Can you just take a step back and explain in very broad terms what it is that your opponent is accusing you of? What's the big story here? What's what's what's he claiming so that we can then understand what your responses are? And also Fabian, what what is the inquiry being tasked with finding out? So the inquiry is into the circumstances leading to Ian McGraill's early retirement as Commissioner of Police. Those are the terms of the inquiry. That's what Mr. McGraill asks of the inquiry should be about. In fact, lawyers for Mr. McGraill refer to the inquiry in a different way.

56:01They refer to it as an inquiry into corruption and Gibraltar. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is it that McGraill is trying to imply and infuse that he gives the newspapers so that we understand what it is, what accusations you're defending yourself against? What is it that he is trying to suggest happened? The allegation that the former Commissioner put is that somehow I was engineering his early retirement because he was seeking to execute a search warrant against somebody who is a partner of mine, etc. Now it is absolutely true that because he lied to me about that, I lost confidence in him.

56:36But as I said to him at the time when he came to see me, it's very important. Search warrant versus a production order, there are two completely different rights engaged here. The right of the police to obtain a search warrant versus the right of a defendant, not to have his privacy improperly affected. In suggests that by giving him a piece of my mind, I was somehow pushing him to change the way that he was conducting the investigation when he had actually come to see me after the search warrant had been executed. This is where the rub is. This is not an inquiry into any form of corruption. This is an inquiry into the circumstances leading to my loss of confidence in him and the governor's loss of confidence in him.

57:19Just before we get into the nub in the details of the controversy from last week, tell us a little bit about how it feels. You've been in now, I remember dealing with you many years ago. You've now been Chief Minister for a dozen years. I do not and a bit, just reelected for another four. I remember Rory dealing with you when you were a minister and doing a lot of work with the Conservative Party and with the Labour Party and having now relationships that span different generations of UK politicians. It gets a little bit stickier. Once you're in your second decade, that's why I've said this is my last general election as leader of the party.

57:54I won't lead the party into the next general election. I've had my fill of this job and it's my obligation to see this through for Gibraltar, in particular with the EU negotiations that are ongoing and we're paying the COVID debt. But after that, people will feel free of failing Picanto. So let's just get to the question that we talked about last week because it is this issue of the police chief McGrail and the allegation that we talked about and there's now this public inquiry, which I think started yesterday, that you put him under inappropriate pressure because he was getting close to somebody that you knew.

58:33So that's what we were reflecting. So just give us your side of the story on that. Well, I'm very pleased actually that the inquiry proper has now started. So a lot of what was the myth around all of the issues that will be looked up in the inquiry has become a reality and counsel for the inquiry. Well, that's the sort of independent counsel there, all the other counsel are for different parties, myself included, but counsel for the inquiry has gone through all of the evidence in his opening. And of course, there is no evidence to suggest that there is any corruption in Gibraltar. And the evidence which Mr McGrail relates to, which his counsel prefers evidence of corruption is simply my view and not just my view.

59:13The view of the governor of Gibraltar, remember the governor is appointed by the foreign and Commonwealth secretary to represent his majesty, the king who makes the ultimate appointment. Both felt that we had been lied to by Mr McGrail. And as a result, we lost confidence in him. He lied to me about that search warrant that you're referring to. The question was not whether he should execute it, not executed, etc. He told me that he had executed the search warrant on this person who is well known to me as a friend of mine and part of mine after he had executed the search warrant. No question of not executing it.

59:48And I said, why didn't you get a production order? A production order is designed to protect the rights of lawyers, journalists, people with in the medical profession who are holding privileged information of others so that they give the information which the police wants, but not the other information which is privileged. And that's a protection of the human rights, both the who is the subject of the order and those people whose information they have. So it was a case of loss of confidence, not of pressure, and just remind yourself of what's addicted when he lost confidence in Crescita Dick. She was gone within a few hours.

1:00:21In this case, it was a longer process Gibraltar law is different, and ultimately I have no role to play in that, although my views are relevant, it's only the governor who can require commissioner of police to resign or retire. And he was the one who took the ultimate step after clearing his lines with the foreign office, with the minister for Europe and foreign office lawyers, who as warrior will remember are incredibly sticky when it comes to looking up detail. Chief Minister, thank you. And I think obviously the inquiry will go through this and we very much heard your part of you. Can we take a step back for a second then and look at the broader story of being chief minister Gibraltar?

1:00:59And what Gibraltar is to the world and how you would describe it and how things have been since Brexit and what relationships are particularly with Spain with whom you share land border? Well, you've been the chief minister of a place which is two and a half square miles by one mile with 32 ,000 people on that land mass is always going to be a very personal relationship with every single one of your constituents. And it's been an absolute privilege, of course, to hold the post for 12 years as I have already. We've pushed a very progressive agenda in that time. We've brought in abortion rights.

1:01:31We've brought in rights for equal marriage. We've brought in civil partnerships. And actually we had civil partnerships for heterosexual couples before even the UK had that. So we've had a really progressive agenda. We've rebuilt every school and Gibraltar. Every school in Gibraltar will have been built by a socialist administration by the time that I left office. So a real investment driven progressive agenda which I think has transformed the social fabric of Gibraltar as much as it's transformed the actual fabric of Gibraltar. So when you look back at that period in office, you say, my goodness, you know, this is a job that is leaving a positive, indelible mark on the nation that I love.

1:02:15But of course, Brexit happened and it changed the dynamic of everything that we were doing and made us focus principally on maintaining the relationship that 96 % of the people of Gibraltar wanted to have, which was to stay in the European Union. And hopefully, you know, in the incoming months, we'll be able to show the result of that negotiation, which will be a future relationship for Gibraltar with the European Union, which will include in effect shengen style, a fluidity of movement, and in effect, a relationship with the single market, which will make us feel like part of the single market in goods, but not in services.

1:02:49I'm very surprised that you didn't complain at a last week's podcast of the fact that Rue at one point said that Gibraltar was part of Spain. I think that was far worse than anything that we said about the regrael inquiry. But but on the kind of the geopolitics, you are clearly you said, search 2000, it's tiny. How and you were you had a vote on Brexit. I think you were the first vote to be counted. It was into the 90 as you say 96 % wanted to remain. So what has Brexit done to Gibraltar? What are you doing to try to fix it? So of course, the current economic model of Gibraltar is based on 15 ,000 workers who live in Spain, some of the Brits, but most of them Spanish and other European nationalities, being able to come into Gibraltar every day in order to service our health and care sector in order to service our financial services and online gaming sector.

1:03:40So the current economic model doesn't work. If those 15 ,000 people can't come in and out, they're very fluid fashion at the end and beginning of every working day. So the work that we've had to do, actually working very closely and very well with Spanish colleagues and working hand in glove with colleagues in the FCDO in London is to negotiate with the European Union a way to deliver that continued fluidity despite the member state United Kingdom through whom we were part of the European Union having departed the EU. And actually, you're Spain and Gibraltar have been able to work quite collegially at that frontier until now and negotiations we hope will be able to enable us to have a way of setting in stone a new relationship which guarantees that fluidity of persons and goods going forward without it any way affecting sovereignity.

1:04:28It's wonderful this a lot of the investment you've been able to bring into Gibraltar. Am I right in saying quite a lot of this has come rather surprisingly from online gaming that online gaming represents, I don't know, 25 % of your GDP, more than 20 % of your employment, 40 % of income, I mean, tell us a little bit about this and how this industry developed and how this has actually given Gibraltar economic opportunities that presumably didn't exist before and when did this start? So online gaming started as telephone betting in the old days before that thing we call the internet which is now ubiquitous.

1:05:03And a bookie from London called Victor Chandler, Mootor Gibraltar and started taking his bets in Gibraltar rather than taking them on a show in the United Kingdom. From that we've developed very quickly into what is now the online gaming industry and Gibraltar online bookmakers represent the top online gaming companies in the world, the floated ones, the ones that are PLCs and the Gibraltar regulator is the toughest regulator of online gaming in the world. That is to say, we look at the United Kingdom regulator online gaming and we look at the regulators of other what you might call onshore jurisdictions using the old lexicon and they are not as tough a regulator of online gaming as the Gibraltar regulator is and that's important for us because online gaming is a space where you have to be very careful with who you permit to operate.

1:05:51We don't allow any small companies, we allow the big companies to operate from Gibraltar and that gives us the confidence that we are ensuring that a gamble aware policies etc etc be implemented by our operators. In terms of the mixture in Gibraltar, how much of this is things like playing poker online and how much if it is doing adventure games or role playing traditional multiplayer video games. So principally what you've got is casino gaming and card gaming but that's one part of it then you've got a very important part which is sports betting which is taking bets on the matches that we might be watching on television or other types of matches that we might not all be watching and are specific to those who are particularly interested in that.

1:06:35There is now the development of the gaming world also becoming a part of how people you know stakes some of their money but it's not just that that Gibraltar does. Gibraltar also does automotive insurance. We take I think it's one in five of every automotive insurance sold in the United Kingdom is sold to an insurer and automotive insurer in Gibraltar and the people who come to work in the online gaming industry and come to work in insurance they're all coming across that frontier every single day so you can understand that Brexit really did produce major challenges for Gibraltar and for our public finance because as you rightly say we finance all our investment in new schools etc through the revenue that the government of Gibraltar receives in part and in great measure from those operating in the online gaming space and the financial service of space.

1:07:26Is there a part of the worries that the economy has become so dependent on an industry that let's be frank historically around the world has had some pretty shady elements to it and that might be one of the reasons why people are are keener than you would like sometimes to suggest that Gibraltar has a broader image problem. Oh, the if you think of the broader world in online gaming and you don't look at what Gibraltar has done to make itself the point I was making before the toughest regulator of this space so you'll find that it's not very often the Gibraltar companies that are the ones that are in the news actually its companies elsewhere that are having those problems some of them in what we would in the old lexicon have called the onshore jurisdictions.

1:08:09I think as a regulator we're doing remarkably well and demonstrating that we are amongst the toughest in the world. Can I finish from me with a slightly more jolly question give us a sense of the food of Gibraltar to the culture of Gibraltar and maybe a little bit of the traditional language. Can you give us some sentences and traditional Gibraltar language and give us a sense of the atmosphere and culture of the place. Gibraltar is a eclectic mix of Italian, Maltese, Spanish, Mourish and of course British, that Mediterranean and yet Latin style. Switch from one language to another seem beloved and you'll love being here because Gibraltar is a place that welcomes you with love and that's why we have every time that you want to come.

1:08:53So get yourself down here eat some of our special genuities, chickpea flower contraptions and in particular get down for kind of a titanite where we do all of the food available in Gibraltar down our main street and our case mix. First time I went was to interview for the mirror one of your predecessors who is now still an MP, Joe Bessarlo, just how old is Joe Bessarlo now? I was born Alistair in 1972 and Joe Bessarlo was first elected to Gibraltar's parliament in 1972. Wow. I've been 52 years on this planet, he's been 52 years in parliament, he's 84 years old and although I've said I'm retiring from frontline politics he hasn't.

1:09:39He's the oldest serving parliamentarian in the Commonwealth as far as I can find. A former leader of the socialist party, the founder of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party in Gibraltar as a result of his roots in the British trade union movement and the British Labour Party. So an icon over the British left. My final final one because we didn't do this, the other thing we talked about last week which I think we should give you the opportunity to respond to as well. Was this allegation that you've changed the law on public enquiries so that you as it were we'll be able to interfere in this one.

1:10:12You want to deal with that? Well, it's a very simple change to the law we've had to make. We updated our law from the 1888 act to the equivalent of the 2005 act in the United Kingdom. It is identical to the United Kingdom act and the reason for that was because first of all we needed to modelise our legislation. We've also got a COVID enquiry coming up. It needs to be under the new legislation. But second, because we knew that we had to assure a restriction notice and that restriction notice has to cover a very small amount of information which is for national security purposes not to be referred to publicly and in the public interests of Gibraltar not to be referred to.

1:10:45The chairman when he opened the enquiry of Monday says he's now seen our notice and he thinks he can continue to do his job to inquire into the events surrounding in McGrails early retirement without any difficulty as a result of the notice that we have issued and that he can report. So I think there was a little bit of international hysteria put about by Mr. McGrails lawyers as to what we were doing. In fact, I understand they even said that they believe that Gibraltar wasn't a place governed by the rule of law. Well, you know, Gibraltar is more than just governed by the rule of law. Gibraltar respects the rule of law and it's the touch joke of everything that I've done whilst I've been in government and indeed every other chief minister appointed before me.

1:11:22And if we were not to observe the rule of law, the United Kingdom government is there looking over our shoulder to make sure that we do. Well, thank you for joining us and thank you for listening. It was only because you listened that we knew that you wanted to come in on the first place. So thanks for that. And that is an all the time. Thank you. Thank you very much, chief minister. Have a have a great day. Thank you all very much indeed. I was very struck both by the fact that I like the chief minister and I've always liked him. But how strange and this is being a bit unfair to him, but how strange and difficult it is for politicians when they come under attack and how jargony they get.

1:11:59I mean, it's something that, you know, you must think about a lot when you're thinking about politics. How do you when you're under attack in that way? Defend yourself without sounding overly defensive. The problem is that I feel, but I think quite a lot of the public feels this is that when you hear a politician defending themselves, you don't really listen to the detail of what they're saying. You just take on the tone and the body language. And of course, I find myself very unfairly. I'm sure in this case, just feeling even more suspicious than more the politician talks. I'm like, what are you not telling me which bit of this am I not getting?

1:12:35And so I'm a real believer in politicians defending themselves with much simpler, shorter words and not getting into the weeds of things because I don't think it helps. No, I think what's going on there is the inquiry has just started. They're probably following it very, very closely at some stage. We'll have to give evidence, I assume. And maybe not jargony, but perhaps a little bit legalistic. I actually thought he was a lot franca than I thought he would be able to be the fact that he could come straight out and say, basically, this guy lied to me. Now, I know he said that before, but you've now got the inquiry on going.

1:13:08So I thought he I thought he did a pretty good job of defending himself in terms of of the substance and also this thing about the change of the law. I think this is one of those things that just looks very, very odd that you're changing the law to time on public inquiry. Is it a time such a high profile when is happening? Yes, I think so. I mean, his best hope in this case, honestly, would have been to say, listen, this is a storm in a teap cut. This guy, yes, was head of police. I love admiration for him, but ultimately he issued a search warrant and did something where he'd been dishonest with me and I found it necessary to remove him.

1:13:46I've got a lot of respect from him, but it's ridiculous to suggest that I did this because I was trying to cover up something or protect a friend. I'm afraid this is just about the fact that when you're working with someone, they shouldn't light you and leave it at that. Yeah, although I think he is point, the constitutional point about the governor general being the person who actually appoints was probably worth making as well. And also, he assumed that all we do read the Guardian. I'd read lots of stuff about from the Gibraltar media about this. I'm leaving away that I've read the Guardian.

1:14:17Anyway, it was good to have him on. And let's see what the inquiry concludes. Let's wait for Sue Gray. Take care. Bye -bye.