236. Question Time: The fight to be Donald Trump’s VP nominee

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1:51Welcome to the rest's part of this question time with me, Arrest Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, what do you think was the subject which produced the biggest volume of questions this week? It wasn't overwhelmed me, but it was definitely the subject with the most questions. Uh, Gibraltar? No, William Rag. Oh, William Rag. He was in Parliament with me, William Rag. Let me give you a few of them. Dave Kussell, why is Willie Gate being covered up? What's hiding behind this story? Sarah C, why doesn't employment law apply in Parliament? In any other working situation, if a member of staff gave away contact details of colleagues and unknown party, which resulted in high risk, they'd be immediately suspended, most likely, sacked Katie Parker, why the tour is circling their wagons around William Rag.

2:39So do you want to do one of your famous explainers about Willie Gate? Yeah. So William Rag was an MP at the same time to me, still in Parliament, stepping down. He very much became a, I guess, a professional backbencher. Uh, he did quite a lot actually about Parliamentary ethics and standards in public life, which is why it's been particularly, I guess, ironic that what seems to have happened is he's, he's openly gay, but he went onto a website and somehow shared something that he felt made him blackmailable, maybe an image or something. And the man who he was dealing with then demanded, as I guess, the price for not revealing this stuff, that William Rag share the phone numbers of members of Parliament with him.

3:29And the man who got the phone numbers, then went on what we call a fishing expedition, which is that he started sending texts to members of Parliament quite cleverly disguised. You know, they would say, hi, just getting in touch, we met in the House of Commons bar. And do you remember and, you know, send me an image yourself. So they're quite kind of flirty images trying to, I suppose, find gay MPs who might vaguely think that they'd met someone of the House of Commons bar. They were flirting with a few years ago and a couple of MPs then responded, I think, by sending presumed sex explicit images back.

4:06And we, this has obviously led to real horror in the House of Commons that William Rag decided to share the confidential phone numbers of members of Parliament on the basis of blackmail. Yeah. So what the question seemed to be saying is that although they're vaguely aware of this story, it hasn't really taken off as one of those sort of big scandals. And there does seem to be a sort of pretty concerted effort to keep it low profile. And I think who knows who it was. But the two, the stuff that I've read by the journalist who were targeted by this same operation, it was two women, one called Charlie, one called Abby, who tried to get these people sort of into their network.

4:48And anyway, I guess it just does show you, be very, very, very careful about stuff that you sort of, when you start getting unsuristic stuff on WhatsApp or wherever else it might be. But it does seem that he's not getting the normal sort of, you know, British media scandal treatment. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, my friend Matthew Paris, who was a member of Parliament in the 80s and was gay, has written very movingly and partly about some of the problems of being a gay and peer at that period when it was career destroying for people to be aware of of what you were doing. And of course, you talked a little bit about, I think, was it your section state for whales who had to resign.

5:30Ron Davis, yeah. Ron Davis, because he had been, I guess, had lied about being with a man. But I thought this was something that we were over that in there are many openly gay maps of Parliament now that it isn't career destroying anymore. Sex scandals shouldn't be career destroying. And therefore, it's very worrying that somebody could be blackmailed in this way, because we generally assume now in government, I mean, you know, when I joined the foreign office, people were worried if you were gay that you could be blackmailed into revealing national secrets. But we've largely given up on that view, because generally, I think we think that if somebody's openly gay, that they shouldn't be available to blackmail.

6:08So, I guess it depends on what was exchanged with Charlie Abbey or whoever else was there. Let's move on to Dozy Daisy. What are the implications for Europe and the geopolitics of Russia infiltrating European politics following the Slovakian presidential result? Did you follow that at the weekend, right? Yeah, well, I mean, we've talked a little bit about this. So Europe remains, as we go into these European elections on a knife edge between, I guess, traditional social democratic politics, which has been fading in Europe. I'm broadly speaking, Europe has got more and more right wing governments, but the real push now is shift further right towards right wing populism driven a lot by people focusing on immigration, on climate change, and taking Russia's side and Russia Ukraine.

6:54And Slovakia was an election we were watching carefully over you. Well, the general election, the parliamentary election was won by this guy, Robert Fiko, who took power for the fourth time, but the presidential election was fascinating because the guy who was anti him and anti the sort of pro -putin stance was well ahead in the first round, well into the sort of 40s, and he is one of those we have a runoff, and it's the first one to get to 50%. And what happened during the second part of the campaign, when it was down to two, the challenger plus this guy Peter Pellegrini, who was the pro -Russian candidate, is that they managed to turn it, and this just shows you the power of campaigning and the power of lies, as well, I'm afraid, because the president has no say in foreign policy, okay?

7:43And yet they managed to turn the whole thing into an argument to about who was forerun against war, not who was forerun against Ukraine or Russia, but basically they projected the opponent as being for war. And lo and behold, Pellegrini has won it, and so I think it does 53 .2 to 46 .73. So Ivan Korkok, who was the guy who was challenging, he's well ahead and loses in the second round, and Pellegrini, I suspect, would have made Vladimir Putin quite happy. That being said, all -bound, who is the sort of European poster boy for this stuff, he is facing massive protests in the moment, one of the weekend that was really, really quite huge.

8:24Next question, which I think is really, really good and really central, is around Trump and his vice president. So we got a couple on this Kenneth John Miller, who do you believe Trump will choose this as running mate for November's election? And if you were both presidential candidates, who would you choose as your running mate? So I don't know whether people have been following this closely, but predictably, Trump, there are two things we know about Trump that he really cares about. One of them is making a massive media Huha, sort of celebrity Huha, and the other is raising money. And predictably, he's turned his vice president's search into both.

9:00So his approach of vice presence vaguely reminiscent of your approach, I was such trying to find somebody to do this podcast with you. He's gone out in a series of social media events asking his supporters who should be his running mate. But unlike you, he's also linked it to a fundraising campaign. So you get rafts of emails from Trump's campaigns asking you to think about firstly, who his running mate should be, what issues the running mate should focus on. And as you know, Trump has decided, although, you know, a lot of the polling suggests that the big problems for Biden are around cost of living and Biden's age.

9:39Trump's focus is on electronic interference. So this claim that, you know, the election was stolen, bought a control and crime. That's what he really seems to be leaning into. And then he keeps asking people not just to send him money, but to tell him who on that basis should be his vice president's. And who are they suggesting? Well, some of them are obvious people who were front runners against him. So there's been a bit of talk about Marco Rubio. There's been talk about Ronda Santis, but he seems to have ruled himself out. He was the his main contender from Florida. Talk about Nikki Haley, but she also seems to have said that she wouldn't serve as his vice president.

10:19And I think that's smart because she should be in a good position to run again for the Republican leadership in four years time. And anything that touches the Trump brand is likely to be sunk. Tim Scott, who is an African American senator, is seen as a front leader. And you can see an incredible range of other people coming forward. But I think one thing that we can be certain about is that boy is he going to humiliate all these candidates. He's going to put them through a sort of apprentice style run. He's going to tease them, pretend they're going to get the job. Then he's going to slag him off and knock him out and he'll create a huge media circus out of it.

10:54Went to, I mean, how did Mike Pence emerge? He just sort of emerged. And he wasn't a bit of a surprise at the time. Yeah. Well, the story there is that Melania had been his great backer. But since as we keep hearing from your friend, Scarim Uchi, that Trump and Melania actually barely speak, it's unlikely that she's going to have much weight this time. There's quite a lot of talk about representative Elise Stepheningk of New York, who's seen as a bit of a kind of rock filer. Anyway, any of your thoughts on this whole thing? I guess the name that popped into my head was one of these kind of Fox News people, the sort of awful Tucker Carlson or something like that.

11:32I mean, let's just think about the psychology of Trump. Why did he like Mike Pence until he hated Mike Pence? He liked Mike Pence when Mike Pence was sort of not very visible and didn't do very much. The minute that he became visible by saying, do you know what? I think the American Constitution is quite important. He turned right against him. So I think you're going to have to have a very, very large ego to take this on. So that means it's quite a wide pull. You're then actually going to probably, if you've got any sense, realize that it will end in tears for you personally. So yes, you'll get to be able to say you're a vice president of the United States.

12:06It's quite a big deal, but it probably will end in tears. So that narrows it down. And then I think you've got to work out which of these people are either going to be motivated by a massive self -confidence that they think they'll be able to tame him or they genuinely, genuinely, genuinely believe in the guy. Now you and I find that impossible to believe, but a lot of people do genuinely believe in the guy. Might even go as far as, you know, something like that, Marjorie Taylor Greenwoman, who, you know, because he probably wouldn't quite like the idea of putting a woman on the ticket. So I don't know what do I know because I can't claim to be inside Donald Trump's head and nor do I really want to be.

12:42He's interesting because he, you know, we talk a lot about polling in the last podcast. And it's interesting how he very much does seem to be somebody who is making the weather rather than being uniquely guided by polls. I mean, often his moves are quite counterintuitive and his focuses are a bit counterintuitive. It's very interesting how Joe Biden, who I, you know, follow his social media stuff, he's putting stuff out about Roe v Wade and abortion all the time at the moment. So the Democrats clearly think that they're onto something with Trump's various positions on abortion. And he does seem to realize he's in a bit of trouble because he's trying to he's trying to get into a different position.

13:21He's now saying it should be the responsibility of the States, not a federal matter. And that is upset both the Democrats and the kind of, you know, the real hard right Republican people as well. We should do more on that, but you're absolutely right. Roe v Wade's overturning by the Supreme Court and the pushback on abortion rights in the U .S. has massively alienated and horrified a very, very large number of voters. And if Biden wins, one major reason is going to be people's anger with Trump on what he did on abortion. And this is important because Trump won the majority of the vote of white women when he got his fiction in 2016.

13:59So this is a really critical issue from him. And as you say, we can expect to see softening his position on abortion, but of course by doing so, take the risk of alienating a very pumped up Republican base. Mark R with what he calls growing questions over Angela Rainer's tax affairs. Is this going to damage labor in the general election? I didn't know there are any growing questions at all. There is there is one question, which was part of Michael Ash, a book that Michael Ashcroft published about Angela Rainer to do with Capitol gains on on a councilhouse that she brought. Yeah, this is just to explain to people in UK law.

14:39If you sell your primary residence, you don't pay Capitol gains tax. And so people are always concerned that people are going to gain this and claim that something is their primary residence when it isn't if they're living between two homes. And she has a partner who has another house which she spent some time in. And so the conservative attack line is that they think they've picked up by following her social media that she was spending more time in her partner's house, not her own house when she sold it. And therefore she should have paid more tax. She's then said, and I think this probably is a political mistake on her part that she received expert advice from lawyers saying that she'd done the right thing.

15:17But then she's refused to produce that expert advice. It's I don't know. I mean, do you think it's getting much traction? Do you think it's doing much damage to her? Yeah, I think there's an awful lot of snobbery going on here. I think if I think of some of the scandals which the newspapers barely bother with. And yet this one, some of them, particularly the right -wing papers are going at it, hammer and tongs. And you know, the guy I looked to a lot on tax is this guy Dan Needle who played a big part when the Deams Ahawi was he was looking to his tax affairs. And he said Capitol gains tax complicated over the law very hard to blame Angela Rainer if she doesn't understand.

15:56And if she if if she has done something wrong or paying the wrong amount of tax, that's not necessarily a crime. So her saying, you know, that she got the advice and so on. I just think this is something where the right -wing we've got so little to go on at the moment that just sort of like, you know, this looks like a bit of a bad one for Labour. Let's just keep banging it. And the I am suspicious of the fact that it started off in one of Michael Ashcroft's books. And you know, I'd love to know how much tax he's paid down years as a non -dom. Okay, we'll read lots more questions to come. Let's take a quick break.

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18:23Question for you from Asparagus Next Left, which is a amazing name. Asparagus Next Left. Why is the Scottish hate bill law highly controversial causing uproar when the exact same laws been happening in place in England and Wales when they're complaints from anyone for the past couple years. So this is the introduction of a hate law in Scotland, which apparently, almost as soon as it came into force, led to thousands of complaints being amounted by scots against others, accusing them of hate speech. And the center of this is JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author, whose people tried to report for tweets around the transgenderist youth.

19:07So I'm sure almost everybody in the world knows JK Rowling is a committed feminist who finds a lot of the transgender movement threatening to what she thinks are the interests of women and has found herself right in the centralist controversy. And she then slightly made more of this by I think slightly saying, you know, send me to prison and presenting themselves a bit of a martyr. And Holmes used to have said, you know, I disagree with these or I found your tweets offensive, but I don't think you should go to prison. Anyway, any insights into this whole hate speech stuff has gotten? I do find the the who are that it's generated quite hard to understand.

19:47I mean, essentially, what they've been saying is that this sort of particularly with online stuff that this hate hate and abuse of threatening and abusive behavior has been on the up. And it focuses on age, disability, transgender identity and sexual orientation, not women because apparently they're doing something separate about that. And I've got a lot of time for JK Rowling in terms of first, sort of, you know, her amazing status as the creator of one of the most extraordinary literary success stories of all time. But I found the way that she stirred it up. I just couldn't quite get the point.

20:24And so I think that we do have a problem with abuse and intimidating and threatening behavior online. And all I see this is an attempt to warn people that there are limits. And I think they were fairly clear about what those limits are. It's not an attack on free speech. So I just think the whole thing was weaponized in a way that whether whether that could have been avoided, I don't know. I suspect it will settle down. And I hope it does. It's part, though, isn't it unfortunate of a lot of political problems that Holmes the use of his is facing. I mean, I was obviously, you know, likes him a lot for his sympathetic towards him when we interviewed him on leading.

20:55But he does seem to have been to put it mildly unlucky in quite a lot of his political moments since he's taken office. And one might suggest more than unlucky that he's getting things wrong. He's not being as skillful a politician as one would have hoped because he seems to be perpetually generating these issues. Okay. That's the Roy, that's taking me right into the next question, Roy. William Stuart Lockhead, question for Rory. I've noticed that your usual rational approach to issues disappears when you're talking about the union. I found that disappointing. You normally employ reasoned arguments.

21:34I'd like to hear your defense. Do you accept anything in that? Yeah, I accept something in that. I think I've always noticed this in my view about Scotland. I mean, because I'm a Scottish unionist and very, very proud of being Scottish and very proud of the United Kingdom, I find it rarer and more personal than any other politicalist you. And I find it very difficult to be relaxed about it. And you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm able to detach in dealing with Labour much more easily than I can with dealing with the S &P Scottish National Party. And 2014, I was very passionately committed to the campaign for the union, built a huge, you know, had volunteers bring 100 ,000 stones, think the Scottish border is going to evolve.

22:19And I don't know what is something about nationalism really triggers me. So I think that's a good observation. All my normal objectivity, all my normal ability to say, oh, come on. Surely you can see the other side of this disappears. And I think it's where probably I come closer to understanding some of the things that you can see that would be, I mean, it's obviously much more extreme, but with Israel Gaza that people feeling identity so strongly that they don't find it easy to hear the other side. Well, I thought by the way that the interviewer did with Ed Kessler on leading. And by the way, we had a question which slightly relates to this.

22:59It said that, you know, whether we always agree, Carl, and you always agree about who to interview on leading is there's someone one of you would like to interview the other has said, no, this was one where I was, this was somebody you'd heard speaking and you'd met him. And so you were pushing for him and I was like, oh, God, are people really going to get this guy? And what have you? But I found it fascinating. The most fascinating thing relates to what you've just said when he was talking about the difference between dialogue and conversation and the dialogue is when you put yourself in the other person's shoes.

23:27So if I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who does believe in Scottish independence, can you do that? Can you see their point of view? I find it very difficult. I mean, I can do it as a kind of a debasing trick. But you don't believe them. Well, it was a bit like when I was asking Angela Rainer to tell me what she thought a Tory like me thought. And she made a stab at it, but it was pretty unconvincing because she's just basically out of sympathy with Tories. And so yeah, I guess I can try to produce an account of it. But no, I got it. It's difficult. And you're not quite like me on this.

24:06I mean, I guess you are more on the union side than against, but you probably felt more passionate about the Brexit referendum than you did about the Scottish referendum. Yeah. And I think the Brexit referendum sort of on it shook up my moorings in relation to independence from what I'd say. I actually thought, God, if you imagine if Scotland could get out of the UK and get into Europe again, that would be pretty cool. But it's so, so yeah. But I think that's a very good question. That's a very good example there, Mr William Stuart Lockhead, of you asking a question that I suspect you thought Rory would push back on, but actually is accepted the premise of your of your question.

24:42Catherine Glover, between you, you must have visited quite a few British embassies, which is your favourite why? I've been to dozens of embassies and my favourite embassy by a mile just because it's such a beautiful building with an incredible garden is Paris. Yeah, it's, it's, we're so lucky there aren't we? I mean, so the British Embassy in Paris is this wonderful kind of small palatial mansion, very, very near the President's house with incredible history in it and you know, going all the way back to Duke of Wellington and and Napoleon's mistress and all this kind of stuff. Beautiful staircase.