In short
Podcast Notes: The Rest Is Politics - Episode 239
Episode Overview
Title: The Rwanda ruling, Trudeau in trouble, and The Rest Is Politics: US edition Hosts: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart Date: [Insert Date] Description: This episode addresses significant current affairs, including the UK government's plans regarding asylum seekers in Rwanda, the implications of the US Congress's approval of aid for Ukraine, and the precarious position of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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Key Topics Discussed
- Rwanda Asylum Seeker Policy
- Context: The UK government has introduced a controversial policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, aiming to deter illegal crossings via the English Channel.
- Key Points:
- Rory expresses discomfort about the ethical implications of the policy.
- Alastair criticizes the pledge as performative cruelty, arguing it is ineffective and costly (estimated at £350 million).
- Discussion of the legal and political pressures faced by Conservative MPs in supporting this policy.
- Concerns raised about the safety and living conditions in Rwanda.
- Reference to public sentiment shifting toward a more favorable view of immigration in the UK.
- Rishi Sunak’s Speech on Welfare Reform
- Overview: Sunak's speech addresses the increase in people being signed off as sick, proposing stricter assessments and sanctions.
- Key Points:
- Alastair and Rory critique the speech for perpetuating stigma against those on welfare and reinforcing a narrative of "performative cruelty."
- Discussion on the complexities of welfare dependency and the impact of the gig economy, long COVID, and mental health on unemployment.
- Alastair suggests a need for reform that focuses on collaborating with employers to create jobs rather than punitive measures.
- Canadian Politics and Justin Trudeau’s Challenges
- Current Situation: Trudeau faces declining popularity and criticism for his budget and governance style.
- Key Points:
- Discussion on the lack of ideological splits within the Liberal Party compared to political dynamics in the UK.
- Rory highlights Trudeau's past successes but expresses concern over his leadership in the current political climate.
- Speculation on potential successors, including Mark Carney, and the considerations surrounding leadership changes in a parliamentary context.
- US Aid to Ukraine
- Recent Development: The US Congress has approved a substantial aid package for Ukraine amidst the ongoing conflict with Russia.
- Key Points:
- Rory and Alastair discuss the strategic implications of the aid, including the need for artillery and air defense systems.
- Concerns are raised about the effectiveness of US and European support in relation to the speed at which Russia can mobilize resources.
- The conversation touches on the broader implications of American politics and public sentiment regarding foreign aid.
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Key Takeaways
- Performative Politics: Both the Rwanda policy and welfare reform proposals are viewed as politically motivated rather than genuinely effective solutions to pressing social issues.
- Evolving Public Sentiment: There is a notable shift in public attitudes toward immigration and welfare, suggesting that harsher punitive measures may not resonate as strongly with voters.
- Comparative Politics: The episode highlights striking contrasts between UK and Canadian political landscapes, particularly regarding party discipline and the nature of political opposition.
- Long-term Strategy for Ukraine: The challenges facing Ukraine require sustained support and strategic foresight from Western allies to effectively counter Russian aggression.
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Conclusion
In this episode of *The Rest Is Politics*, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart provide an incisive analysis of pressing political issues in the UK, Canada, and the US. Their discussions illuminate the complexities of governance, public sentiment, and the often performative nature of political commitments in the face of real-world challenges.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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0:50Welcome to the rest of the politics with me, Alistair Campbell and me Rory Stewart. So, Rory, we've finally got this Miranda Bill through Parliament. We'll talk about that. And I think the other thing to talk about probably is Rishisunak's recent speech on welfare reform. If I could put my views straight out there, I think both represented a certain form of performative cruelty. You've just been in Vancouver, in Canada, a place that I know reasonably well. And I think we should maybe take a rare dive on Canadian politics, because there's a lot of very interesting stuff going on there. And then maybe after the break, the pretty big events that happened over the weekend in in the US Congress with this bill in support of particularly Ukraine, but also Israel, Taiwan, and other places finally getting through and now on its way to get signed by the President.
1:39Absolutely. So, Rwanda, how do you feel Rwari? If you had been, let me ask you this, if you had been still in Parliament with this bill going through, would you have felt comfortable in voting for it? I think I probably would have felt pretty uncomfortable just to step back a second. If you're a conservative MP voting for this, you will be getting mailboxes full of people, often complaining. You will probably have family members saying, how can you be voting for this bill? But at the same time, on the other side, you'll have huge pressure for loyalty, pressure from the whips. You'll be aware that the Prime Minister has made this one of his five pledges and that, therefore you need to deliver it.
2:20And you'll also be aware that the whips will be saying you, well, they're in much more right -wing positions. So the Swella Brava among others over on one side saying this bill isn't tough enough on Rwanda. And you will have the attorney general and others who are very much the kind of sensible centre of the party, reassuring you that what's been done is legal. So I imagine the majority of conservative go through feeling loyalty and obedience, but probably a little bit of misgiving. Yeah, I mean, Andrew Mitchell, who we both know and like, and has now been promoted to this position of deputy foreign secretary as well as overseas development, was doing the rounds yesterday promoting it.
2:59And I mean, he did a, from the perspective, as you say, of collective responsibility, you have to sort of tow the government line. He kind of did okay, but I sense discomfort. The thing that really sort of troubles me about the whole thing as well as the obvious which we've talked about before. And you talked on the podcast last week about, you know, some policies are cruel, but they're effective, some policies can be, you know, that sort of, this feels like it's cruel and ineffective and won't necessarily work just because they're going to get the odd playing off the ground at enormous expense.
3:31I think your big insight, which is almost all anyone needs to know about it, is that he should never have made this pledge in the first place. I mean, And it's completely daft because he was setting himself up from the beginning for something that was going to be incredibly expensive. So I think you've pointed out it's going to cost £350 million at least. We're already, I think, half a billion. By the way, I didn't realise, on the back of the bill finally going into law, Kagami, leader of Rwanda, they pick up another £50 million. I added to which a lot of the housing isn't necessarily still there.
4:03And I just think, just imagine if the government had put the amount of energy and time and money that they put into this Into sorting out food banks or sorting out child poverty or re -opening libraries or something that really would give people a sense Oh, these guys are on my side. They get what I'm what I'm about. I just feel this is consumed so much time so much energy so much money and And deep down, I thought Alex Carlisle, the former Liberal Democrat MP who's now in the House of Lords and who knows this world inside out from some of the jobs that he's done in the past. And he made the point that we're actually passing a law to say something that is not true is true.
4:46And we haven't really got away from that fundamental. You know, a law says a certain country is safe. Well, there's a very impressive man called David Anderson, who I know about who was the the big review of terror legislation, who was essentially the last man standing in the House of Lords trying to insist that there needs to be a committee to assess this. I also was one of the people who signed a letter pushing hard for an amendment to exempt people on the Afghan resettlement scheme for being included in this. I worked with Dan Jarvis, who's a Labour veteran and mayor and MP on this. Andrew Mitchell was pushed very, very hard on that, and he kept claiming that the existing safe routes allows for those people to come.
5:28That's a very weird one. So just to explain that. So essentially what he's saying is, well, we don't need this exemption because they have other routes to come in. They have to get on a boat. But it's a classic example of something where the whips are in a very difficult position because if I'd been an MP, I would have been saying, well, why not just put this in for safety set? Exactly. Well, you know, just in case someone doesn't make it to do the set for it. And of course, the reason they don't want to accept amendment is largely, and this is true for a lot of government bills, they just want to get the legislation through.
5:57Final thing, you say to imagine if they put the energy into other things, I think that there's also the point that you can see why the government wanted to get control of people crossing in small boats. We're talking at a moment where five people, including a seven -year old child, have just died crossing the channel. And there's clearly something mad about the idea that France, which is a safe country, is providing people coming into Britain. And I think we said before that in the end, it doesn't matter whether they're talking about the US or Europe, we need to think about how to identify people who are genuinely at risk in the countries from which they're coming, rather than allow these informal crossings.
6:34But the biggest problem is that it turned out to be a really ineffective, incredibly inexpensive thing that just doesn't remotely achieve it's subjective. So I mean regardless of what you think about the thing, it's just not remotely going to stop those bates. And also on the one hand, the whole premise is based on the idea, this entire legislation that Rwanda is a safe country because they say it is. And yet on the other hand, the argument why they need this, why they need this entire scheme is so that it's a deterrent. In other words, nobody would ever possibly want to go and be said to Rwanda.
7:08So how are the Well done, visit, this great place that the houses are lovely and everything's going to be nice and unlike the previous people who went there from Israel, they won't be desperate to go back to their own country. And yet at the same time, the whole point is that it's a deterrence. Also, sorry to quote him for two weeks in a row, although he writes some very interesting stuff. Peter Kelner, Paul Stur, has sent round a thing on prospect this morning, essentially showing that the debate on immigration is actually changing in favor of immigration. Now, not necessarily people sort of, you know, coming in illegally and so forth, but I think this whole policy is predicated on a belief that there are squillions of votes to be won by saying we're going to be very tough on immigration.
7:51Peter makes the point that the anti -immigration majority, which was two to one at the time, just after the Brexit referendum, is now level pegging. Which is fascinating because it's at a time when we've had an incredible amount of immigration. I mean the absolute numbers have been much higher than absolutely. I mean I think the total numbers if you take out people leaving the country with something like 1 .2 million and even if you insert people leaving the country it's about 700 ,000 came in and from a much much wider variety of non -European countries huge numbers have come into Britain now from Nigeria, from India, from Bangladesh, Pakistan and it is very interesting that the absolute numbers have gone up steeply but public sentiment isn't Can you explain that?
8:35Why do you think people are less concerned about it? I have no time probably to read Peter's stuff, but if I had to guess, I think I had to go into hospital the other day for some tests. And you do notice the, you know, last time I was in hospital, I can remember making a list of all the different nationalities that were sort of involved and a lot of them were European Union people. I think what's happened is that post Brexit, there's been a sense of public service. He had all that stuff recently about Italian restaurants can't find Italian waiters. And added to which another very interesting piece of poll in this week that I saw basically showed that there is a growing antipathy to this anti -woke stuff and to the culture wars generally.
9:15And I think you're seeing that I think in I don't regularly watch question time, I don't watch it the other day. I'm talking about the BBC question time. And it seems to me that the mood within those audiences has changed that when the Tories or the right wing commentators come up with their sort of usual kind of anti -woke whatever it might be. They're just being met with kind of groaning and head shaking. There's something very interesting here because this means that Britain feels a little bit like an outlier because broadly speaking, if you were looking at populist and right wing movements in most of Europe, going into the European elections in June and in the US, these issues, particularly around immigration, are absolutely front and center.
9:56I mean, you know, if you're looking for an explanation of why the moderate center party is going to get crushed and punished in European elections, it'll be because they haven't come up with credible policies on immigration and voters right across Europe are really think that their politicians don't have control on this. In Britain, it seems to be different. Any ideas on why in Europe people feel their politicians haven't got a control on this and are very angry, but in Britain, it's less than it's you. We're discussing this based on the fact that Peter Kelder has sent me this one piece of polling or this polling analysis, would you and I still be able to go out today and find people who really did feel fired up about this and so I think we probably would.
10:37But I wonder if it goes back to the point that Francois Hollande made that Europe is yet to catch up with our peak populism. And so Peter's analysis goes as follows. The debate is now less about scroungers and more about workers, more attention being paid to the economic and social impact of immigrants. Notably those are what I said. Notably those who work in hospitals and care homes. Also, 18 months ago, Ipsos and other polls, to found widespread support for generous allowances to fill vacancies in a whole range of jobs, including construction, which has been badly hit, hospitality and fruit picking as well as the NHS.
11:12So I think it's sort of more awareness of why we do need a kind of steady flow of people come in. Let me suggest one more thing, which maybe duffed, it's possible that the government's rhetoric around this means that, unlike in a lot of European countries, the public perception isn't that politicians are denying it. The public perception may be that politicians are time, cells and knots are necessarily to try to address it. And of course, Kierstamer hasn't really distanced himself from Rishi Suna much on this immigration stuff. So maybe actually the perception is that the conservative and labor parties are projecting in a way European countries are not that they're tougher on immigration even if the numbers are going up all the time.
11:52Yeah, I think they might have some of the in there. I mean, Labour have said they will dump this reminder plan, but I think the other point that Peter makes in analysis is that Labour may have to move in the direction of identity citizenship cards type approach to this, which I've not really heard much on that. But it was an interesting piece which we should put in the in the newsletter. Should we just talk a little bit about the soon -to -be welfare speech last week, which again I felt fell into the performative cruelty side of life. And so for people that haven't picked up on it and you make a point which we'll get to when we get to Canada which is the fact that politicians get to a stage where nobody's listening and I'd be interested to know actually how many people really picked up on the speech or paid much attention to it.
12:32Anyway four days ago it was a big speech from his point of view and it was trying to attack essentially the sick note culture. So it was a speech where he begins with very sort of reasonable standing language saying how proud he is of the welfare state and safety nets and then he goes on to say but there are 800 ,000 people fewer in work and a lot of the young people and the number of people being signed off as sick has massively increased. So he says a figure I think that gone from being in a less than 20 % in 2011 to 60 % now getting sick notes and that this is a real problem and he tries to say it's a problem not just for the economy but for the individuals who would be better getting into work and then he comes up with his solutions and his solutions seem to be first see much tougher assessments on signals so taking it out of the hands of GPs and setting up some new agency that's going to assess people sanctions so if you are recommended to go back into certain kinds of work and you don't do it in 12 months your benefits will be cut off much more attempts to try to challenge statements around mental illness, etc.
13:38I mean a couple of things on it. I disagree with this way of looking at welfare. I think it's actually missing the point about most of the people who are on welfare. And we can talk about that a little bit more, but I guess it'll be just very quickly on that. Certainly in my experience, in my constituency or traveling around, I don't come across many people who are just idle. I mean, it's not a phenomenon I see. There may be people, but it's just not something I see much of. It's much more about the fact that people are really struggling. I mean, they're struggling to get NHS appointments, the care systems broken down.
14:10And also the nature of the new economy, kind of gig economy is really brusol. I think the pandemic has also been a factor. I mean, you talk to whether it's the fact that people's working have its change, or its long COVID, or I think the pandemic has had this pretty deleterious impact. I really didn't like the way he talked about mental health, though. I felt that we were going back a decade. I felt that at least David Cameron Theresa May seemed to me to understand that mental health was a real challenge and that these were real issues. And the way he talked about it, half of all people saying they've got depression and anxiety but, you know, and the doctors just signed them off.
14:47Well, we're going to put these kind of, you know, perfect. You call them health and work professionals. Well, I don't know what doctor is. So I felt it was almost like othering. It was like, the small boats thing hasn't worked. Let's find a new target to other. Let's go for the sick and the disabled. I really didn't like it. And a bit like the small boat stuff, there's also just a step back. The practicality is the whole thing. I mean, how on earth are you going to do it? I mean, you've got five months before you get booted out of office. This is a massive reform. I mean, setting up this whole new agency, doing the completely different forms of assessments.
15:18I mean, it would take years realistically. If you looked at the problems that we have with the Universal Credit. Yeah, but I don't believe he's doing it to do it. He's doing it as with the small boats because he's got this constituency that he thinks this is appealing to. But I wonder if it has got to a point where maybe is he fated? I feel both of these policies actually are damaging them politically. I could be completely wrong, but I really feel that. Little shout out to a friend of mine called Hillary Kotom who's written a book called Radical Help and is now working on a new book who's the best analyst I know on saying some pretty bold and difficult things about welfare reform, but she would say that what we need to do is follow the Swiss model, which is sit down with employers and say, okay, you have a problem, you don't have enough workers, and then sit down with people who are not in work, and work out where the gap is and really try to work together, work out how you can produce decent attractive work for people who are struggling to get into work, and good workers for employees, and that she would argue, and I, in a direct people's books, that the Swiss are actually pretty good at doing, that's the way to think about it, rather than this kind of sanctioned culture.
16:24Interesting. So, should we go to Canada? There is sort of reverse parallels going on, I think, kind of, that you've got a liberal sort of centrist government, just in Trudeau on his third term as Prime Minister. You've got a conservative party oppositional led by this pretty populist guy, Pierre Polyvra and Trudeau seems to be in real trouble. They've just had a budget, which I think a lot of people in his party see as the last big chance to move the dial. But there's a growing chat that maybe Trudeau's days are numbered and will the Liberal Party actually think we need to give him the heave ho before we get to a election campaign next year?
17:01Well, as you say, I've just come back from Canada and Canadian politics is really interesting. I mean, on the one hand, it's a parliamentary democracy that in many ways resembles Britain. It's there in North America. The first thing that you really notice is that the span of Canadian politics in terms of ideology is really, really narrow. I had a friend who said that the whole of the Canadian politics from right to left would fit into the sort of central of the Democratic Party in the US. And I was trying to push this because I've got a friend. I've got a friend. That's quite right. Right. Now I've got a lot of friends who are in Canadian politics.
17:38I had a friend, well my client who we interviewed, who ran to be, then became a Liberal Party and I had another friend who ran to be head of the Conservative Party and we both know Mark Carney who I think would be a really strong candidate now for the Liberal Party. But when I try to get into the question of what are the splits within the Liberal Party? Because you know that's how I think as a British person, you know, Tory Party tearing itself to bits and Labour Party being blare right against Corbynister. Everyone's completely baffled. They're like, well, there aren't any ideological splits in the Liberal Party.
18:07We're just a centrist party, and literally, it's really odd. I kept trying to push and say, well, surely there are kind of disagreements I don't know about Gaza or about, you know, they're like, no, not really. Yeah, essentially, I think this is why in the end, it probably is all going to come down as it did with Johnson and as it did with trust to the Liberal saint themselves. Is this He's now in his early fifties. His first win in 2015 was an incredible success. I think it was the biggest ever increase. So he went from third to first. It's the only of the three wins. It's the only one where he's actually, as it were, won it, been in the lead.
18:46Since then, he's run the minority government. He's been in, had this sort of confidence and supply arrangement with the, the the new Democrat party, which is really the one that's closest to the Labour Party here, is to the left of the Liberal Party. And you don't have here. You've got a Tory MP's openly talking about shall we get rid of Sunak. There I don't think you do have them openly talking about it, but I think that behind you, you've picked up on this, but I think behind the scenes there is a lot of, you know, is just then done. He's in real trouble. I mean, the figure's so terrible. I mean, he seems to be, you know, maybe as much as 20 points behind in the polls.
19:20When you look at the polling trends, it's almost a mirror image of what's happening here. You just cannot seem to close the gap, and the budget is probably the last chance. It's interesting trying to work out what he's done wrong because again, there aren't sort of big things. It's not like Britain where you would say, oh, the tourists were wrecked by austerity or they were wrecked by Liz Trusses' budget or party gate. Trudeau hasn't done that. He's a very interesting figure. So, very quick explainer for internationalists. I mean, Trudeau took over a liberal party which had essentially been the great ruling party of Canada but had collapsed and he came in and people were a bit doubtful because he's a very very as people will have seen an incredibly kind of good -looking glamorous man whose reputation was based on the fact that his father Pierre Trudeau was the most famous kind of Canadian statesman, this kind of very glamorous, slightly womanizing, well -seeing intellectuals.
20:19Lyle is doing quite a lot of lifting there, Rory. And Justin, which you just say Justin, he really broke through. Obviously, as a baby, he was born when Trudeau was prime minister. There's an amazing old clip of Richard Nixon paying tribute to them having this baby and saying, I bet he'll be a future prime minister. Yes, he turns him into future prime minister. But when he was 28 and Pierre Trudeau died, Justin Trudeau made this amazing eulogy, which of course it was a state funeral, it was live on television. That's when he really broke through it. Until then, nobody has thought he was going to go into politics.
20:56It's very interesting. I'd love you to see if you can think of any British politician who's like this. Trudeau is almost exactly my age. So I sort of get a sense of tracking him because, you know, I left school and I went into the army very briefly and then I obviously went to university. Then I joined the foreign office at Servinarok, set up an NGO and I've got a sense of And during all this period right the way through in the same age, through to his early 30s, it's very difficult to know what he was doing. He was a snowboarding instructor. He was a reserve teacher for a little bit in some private schools.
21:29He appeared once in a CBS mini series. But basically the attempts to profile him from his teen through to his early 30s. Nobody can really find out how to profile him because they just kind of interview the guy who used to be a snowboard instructor when they shared a couch in a Canadian ski resort. And they're like, yeah, he was quite a wild ski. And so obviously when he entered politics, therefore people thought he's a bit of a lightweight because he really hadn't done a kind of rich young man who hasn't really done much of his life. He then proved to be far tougher and far more on message when he came in as Prime Minister.
22:05And he runs a very tight ship. I mean, I think one difference to Canadian British politics, again seems to be the party discipline is extreme. I mean they really everything is a tree line where there's no question of leaking to the newspapers without losing a ministerial job. I don't think he's ever been as skillful as some of his predecessors managing that, managing the people that you have to keep on board. You're absolutely right. I don't think people really Nixon when he was a baby, notwithstanding. I don't think many people thought this guy's future is necessarily going to be in politics.
22:36But then he has this great, when he did some pretty big things as well, you know, legalizing Marioana, one of the first to do that. He was pretty good on the foreign policy. I think it really benefited him as being the not Trump person in North America for those four years. And maybe it's just a time thing. Of course, you know, you go back to the two world wars. There was a guy called William Lyon McKenzie King. He led the Liberal Party from 1919 to 1948. That's 29 years. And he was prime minister for almost 22 of those years. Now, unless you're a dictator like Putin, is it just impossible now to last much more than a decade?
23:14So Trudeau is coming up to his ninth, tenth year? Yeah. Is that maybe the limit that we get? Well, it's interesting, I think, because it also sort of brings us to your friend Macrom, because in the early days, I think people did draw analogies between them. They both seem to be this very glamorous, young, dynamic people. And Trudeau would be, I remember definitely back in eight, nine years ago, he was sort of regularly, if you were looking for some politician to admire around the world and you were a kind of liberal, progressive type, Trudeau would be the natural person. You look at, and now when I say to people, I was talking to someone who's in his cabinet and I was saying, well, what's wrong with him?
23:47What's he done wrong? And their response was, well, he's just too much. And I was like, what do you mean he's too much? And he was like, he's just too much. I mean, you know, he's just done a feminist budget and I'm a woman and I don't even understand what a feminist budget is. And the sense is the impression he's giving, and it may not be his fault, is that he's just, he's just too gorgeous, thinks he's very beautiful, is quite woke, people are getting fed up with his tone of voice, they're just kind of all of him. I mean, it's just not working anymore. Yeah, and of course, I do think that, you know, it must have affected him quite deeply that he's marriage broke up, but boy, he's been tough on that.
24:23So his wife, your right, has left him for another man and has moved him with him and also with it. There is a toughness to true day which you might not have suspected when you saw him as the kind of snowboard instructor. Yeah, but I wonder, I mean, I just I just wonder how what effect that has you has on you. And this thing about whether he's going to go, he did an interview recently where he said these words, I think about quitting every day. Well, look, I mean, I know I wasn't prime minister, but I was in Downey Street and I know from my own experience, I think once you start thinking about quitting, you've basically quit.
24:52We've never got quite to the bottom of the T -Shick of Ireland stepping down and what happened and this pattern actually of these of a number of politicians, you know New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, etc. Did you get a sense? If I had to put my life on it, I think he will step down. My guess is he's going to hold on because I think he's competitive with his father, his father didn't manage four terms and generally politicians need to be pulled kicking and screaming as we see with Biden out of office even if they're not a great thing. No, there's just quickly a step touch on Mark Carnie though. So Mark Carnie is this Canadian who was governor of the Bank of England, governor of the Bank of Canada, well we've interviewed him on the podcast, some people want to follow up, and is somebody who could be really interesting as a potential replacement for Trudeau and potentially as a candidate to lead them into the next election?
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25:43Just what's your instincts on Mark Carnie? I know you've been watching football with what's your sense from a person. Yeah, he's a very big Everton fan and here and I went to the Bern the Everton game together. Who won the game? We don't need to talk about that, Rory. We're doing better now. We're doing much better now. When I watched him from afar when he was, I was vaguely aware of him when he was in Canada and then of course he came over to here and was a very high profile figure in the UK because he was governor of the Bank of England at a very particular time. I always worried about whether he had that kind of what we call the retail political skills.
26:21I think he does have them having got to know him a bit and having sort of seen him with people, seeing him how he manages people. I talk to people. I think he's got a very, you know, you think Governor of Bank of England, Governor of Bank of Canada, you probably think Trudeau style, Silver Spoon, he's not. That's not his backstory at all. It just comes from quite a very ordinary background. And the thing is you and I talked yesterday to just as preparation of this, we had a very interesting call with a guy called Bruce Anderson who's a Canadian, Polster, and strategist, and you said to him, you know, but I can't imagine how somebody could come in from the outside like this in our system.
26:56And he was making the point, which I hadn't really thought of, but it goes back to the point you made earlier, is he was saying that the thing about the Liberal Party, and this made me think of our of the Conservative Party here, they're just pretty ruthless about power. I mean, the other thing I guess, maybe if they are thinking of sort of, you know, making a last minute change, might want to reflect on the last time something similar happened. 1993, Mulroney, very popular prime minister for quite a long time, but then slipping in the polls and they got rid of him. And he was replaced by Kim Campbell, the only ever female prime minister of Canada.
27:31She lasted 130 days and the party got completely wiped out literally two seats. They were reduced to two seats and eventually they didn't exist. The party was replaced and became today's Conservative party. So there might be some of them who think they have to be careful what they wish for. And if they do start to think, you know, Justin's had it. The only people that might, there's the Deputy Prime Minister, here, Christian Freeland, who's also the finance minister who's just done this budget aimed at young people, the three or four other ministers that would be in with the show, but they're all very, very, very associated with the government that's being rejected.
28:09So maybe they will say, do you know what, we need to go right outside and bring somebody in. And the system would allow it. Yeah, the system also allows people to sign up new members, which does give you a bit of an edge. I thought about this one. I was trying to run for leadership with the seven party. it's not possible in the Tory party. So I thought, you know, maybe what I can do is get people to sign up to be conservative members because they're on my side and then vote for me. And in the Canadian system, that is possible. And the people you sign up, can vote, whereas in the British system, people who've signed up very recently can't vote.
28:40They're trying to prevent you coming in from the outside in that way. The other point, of course, that Bruce made was that you can become leader without being an MP. But equally, I guess I'm probably right that there will be a lot of pretty cross MPs who feel we've put in the years, we spent a lot of time delivering leaflets. This is quite a grand person coming up from the outside. He has one, you know, he hasn't, and I think that will be the thing that he really needs to challenge, which his people will say, you haven't put in the hard yards. You've not been standing in the writings. You've not been standing on rainy days, pushing leaflets through doors.
29:15Certainly, that's the response in Britain, wouldn't it? Let's just talk very briefly. We've mentioned a couple of the towers of the podcast before, but it's just briefly about the guy who's leading the Conservative party, Pierre Polly Evra. 44, he's been an MP since the age of 25, quite an interesting backstory, which I think doesn't help, Trudeau, because Trudeau is trying to portray this guy as the friend of the Uberich. He was adopted as a baby, his mother was 16, his father, his adopting father later came out as gay, he's worked in politics all of his life. What he has done very, very well, this does relate to the populism to other parts of the world, including here.
29:48He's absolutely gone for Trudeau over his proposal on the carbon tax and really played into that quite well He's got some quite populist positions, D -Fund, CBC, the Canadian broadcaster He's not a Trumpian. I mean, he doesn't sort of go hell for leather on immigrants and that sort of thing and probably would backfire if he did But he's got a populist feel to him But the other thing that's that's happening and again a bit of a mirror image of us He's not really getting tough scrutiny I think there's just the feeling he's, you know, where he's, you know, we can probably live with him kind of thing.
30:20He's also not laying out a platform for a manifesto. I mean, that again echoes, echoes a little bit of Labour Party in Britain. He doesn't feel he needs to. I think you're part of it. He needs to. He needs to. He's told places that people. Have you read the base lecture? Well, yeah, exactly. Probably over a little bit of a Ming -Var strategy. He doesn't feel he needs to completely tell everyone what he's doing. He's relying on the fact that Trudeau's so far behind. He's also made a repetition as a real attack dog and the guy that kind of gets the zingers off and can add in to Prime Minister's questions.
30:49I wondered by the way whether this is a deliberate strategy that he's running because he thinks maybe Mark Carney will come in. He's very big. He's actually said that if he becomes Prime Minister, he won't allow any of his ministers to go to Davos. The world economic forum is a terrible thing and it's sort of anti -the people and so So I wondered if that's if Mark Carney does go in that maybe he'll try and present him as the sort of you know the ultimate Globalist Davos man kind of thing. I think Trudeau is really in trouble and I think you know I could see Mark Carney as a politician. I really can't and obviously you and I are gonna try to get behind the Mark Carney team if he runs Well, we'll move to Canada and yeah Canada's place nice place.
31:31Yeah, there's a bit bit cold at times bit cold. Oh Vancouver was so beautiful beautiful, so beautiful. Right there on the sea and credible conifer's every year. And when you're with this restaurant, you did a treat you saying this is the best restaurant I've ever been in in my life. Yeah, Tarou sushi and new haven, it's under a, it's under a car park on the edge of a highway. I couldn't believe it. It's this tiny little Japanese restaurant. And you sit at the bar and these very, very serious Japanese men, hand you one by one, these incredibly delicious, perfectly chosen bits of fish on rice. I thought it was incredible.
32:03Wow. But it's quite difficult to find or get it's tiny and under a carpuck. It sounds like a Rudy Giuliani press conference, but anyway, take a break.
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33:27Welcome back to the rest of politics for me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And Alistair listen, I'm not going to let you get away with this, because you have yet again been writing books. You never stop writing books. So while I've barely managed to get out one book in four years, you've written another two books, which I can see vaguely on the edge of the screen. Tell us about your two new books. Well, the first one, Rory. I'm older than you. I don't have that many very young children in my library. but this is the first copy of book one. Oh, lovely. Why politics matters? And it's for basically primary school children.
34:02So I'm going to give, I'm going to dedicate the first one to your two sons. Oh, thank you. And I hope they're like that. I'll read it with them. That's lovely. So this is part of a series called Little Experts. Debra Meadens doing one on money. I'm doing this one on politics. And it's essentially just trying to explain how our political system works. Very, very simple. Lots of pictures, lots of illustrations. and they both arose from the last book because the publisher came to me and said, I really liked it, but what can I do? But you should really be doing these books for kids. And so the second one, where I'm wearing, as you can see, this extraordinary pink jacket.
34:34Yeah, why pink? Why have you gone pink? Because the publisher said it's the only color they could find that didn't have an automatic party political sensation. I, of course, did red or Clara and Blue for Burnley, but I was banned from that. So this is aimed at teenagers and young adults. It's called Alice Campbell Torts Politics. And it's basically just saying, if you lot don't get involved, then our politics is in such a mess. And so I'm trying to inspire and motivate Rory, the younger generation, to really to get stuck in. And I think you should do one as well. I think you should find a way.
35:06Maybe you should do Rory Stewart talks abroad or Rory Stewart talks to development or charity or whatever. I think you should do one of these books as well. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Well, I'm really looking forward to that. I also think it must be quite a discipline writing for younger readers. There's a lovely, there's a guy, you know, the famous American Nobel Prize winner, Feynman. He was asked by one of his colleagues to explain a particular formula, scientific formula, and he said, oh, I'll go away and I'll write a very simple lecture for young people on it. And then he came back to Exeter and he said, I couldn't do it.
35:44and you know what, that means that I don't understand it. And if I don't understand it, nobody else understands it. I, yeah, absolutely. Now, it's, what's been really good, so the, so the, the, the person who's been kind of, you know, pushing me the whole time, her basic role has been to make sure that a child of six could understand this, one of the child of 14 could understand this one. And both of us try to talk in a way that's kind of accessible to people, but we do you, you're bound to use jargon or words that you assume that there's knowledge about. So it has been quite tough to do that.
36:17But generally do think, unless we remotivate a younger generation to understand that politics matters and that it's important and that it's for them, then I think we're in real trouble and we're just going to get really bad people constantly going into politics. So it's coming out end of August, you can pre -order now. And also waterstones have signed up to get, I've got to go in and sign loads of the water stones and you can order them through that and we're going to put the link in the episode description box plugging over Congratulations, right now big news apart from the books is that the US has finally passed this $60 billion package which got stuck in Congress for support for Ukraine and other places including Israel and Taiwan and That of course brings the focus back on the big question.
37:07What is this money for? Why is the US sending $60 billion to Ukraine? And what's the big objective? What are they hoping to achieve now? Because the offensives didn't work last year, didn't manage to break through the front lines. Ukrainians didn't break through and retake territory. Russia is now on the offensive back. They took Avdivka. They feel much stronger and more powerful. They're firing five to ten times as many artillery missiles as the Ukrainians is going back. at the beginning to mount air strikes. And the question is, what's the big idea? And I wanted to just quickly just sort of maybe answer that question in my own terms, and then give it back to you.
37:49Yeah. I think the criticism probably of the way the US and others have played it is that we've been quite risk of us, and we haven't provided the support ever as quickly or in the scale that Ukraine has needed. the pattern that you will remember is that Zalensky goes out and says, I need this particular bit of kit and Germany or the US or wherever it says, no, no, you can't have that, it's not suitable, and then about nine months later, finally provides it. And the reason for this is the US, and here I'm, again, in the episode description box, there's a guy called Jack Watling at Rusey, who is the most unbelievable British expert on Ukraine and flies all the way around the world of Vice and US government, others.
38:36So I was just chatting to him on this. And he says that the problem is that the US government has basically had three objectives. And objective number one was they don't want to escalate this into a war between the US and Russia. Makes very cautious. Second is they want to keep the NATO coalition together and do deterrence. And number three, but very much far down the list was protecting the territory and integrity if Ukraine and this has meant that there's been a lot of slightly risk of us half -hearted measures which have really meant probably that Ukraine's never going to be able to break through.
39:12Oh, sorry, I'm not quoting what I think that I know that you can say that, but that's my instinct. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, it has been the youths that at the start, how has this sort of taken so long? In part of the reason, Mike Johnson, the speaker, the Republican speaker in Congress, He got a lot of credit and a lot of praise rightly for sort of staring down the sort of propute in Maga people But he did take six months as Trump was against him and that's the basic story Exactly. He's actually yep, Trump was mobilizing Republicans against it Yeah, and Johnson went to see Trump Trump seems to have moved a bit which I think is In bold and Johnson to face them down, but it has taken a long time and during that period the Russians appear to have taken advantage.
39:59And we've talked often about the difficulties in the imbalance between the speed at which democracies can work against the speed that dictatorships can work. So as you said before, Russia has become very much a kind of defense military economy. Europe and America are trying to step up in terms of production and so forth, but it's a lot slower. And so this has taken month after month after month after month. It took a lot of quite clever politics and quite dangerous politics from Johnson's perspective. He did this thing where he separated all the issues out. He allowed people a little bit of sort of pick and mix of what they could vote for, what they could vote against.
40:37But it is still quite alarming, I think, 112 Republicans voted against this and 101 Republicans voted for it. So to get it through, Biden had to rely on the Democrats and 101 Republicans. But there's a very interesting piece we should put in the in the newsletter from a guy called David Framu I knew a bit because he was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. So he's a kind of Bush Republican as it were He actually said that he felt the two big losers out of this one was putin and the other was Trump because what this showed Was that maybe there is a growing body of Republicans who are not just gonna take the sort of whatever madness Trump comes out with as their instruction.
41:19And you have to ask yourself, what in the party of Reagan, the party of Roosevelt, the party of Eisenhower, essentially standing up that marjorie Taylor Greene, I mean, they're now started to call her Moscow Marjorie. She almost echoes a lot of the talking points that come out of the, out of the cremated, how the hell has that happened? No, it's amazing. I'm here in Yale and one of my colleagues, it's a down corridor from me, it's a man called Tim Snyder and there's amazing clip. Oh god. Rory, Rory, you're living next to Tim Snyder. I am. Well, he's one of my heroes and we have to get him on the podcast.
41:52He is the man. I'm having a cup of tea with him this afternoon. So I will say I will say that. I'll get everyone. Anyway, he was up against Marchery Telegram and he is the great expert on Ukraine. This is when she basically was trying to sort of suggest that the Ukrainians were Nazis and that Zelensky was corrupt and all the the usual stuff and he basically just sat there and barrelled out the facts of history. And then it was a very good Democrat. I didn't catch his name. There was a very good Democrat who came in the back of him and I mean, it really put her in her place. But that party is not the party of those leaders that I mentioned.
42:28But this does indicate that maybe might Johnson feels more confident that he will have Democrats supportive as a move against him. And that would that would maybe keep him there. Yeah, well, let's just look at the strategic bit for a second. So what are they trying to do? They're basically trying to buy two things. They're buying artillery and they're buying air defense. They're buying artillery because if they can't get the artillery shells, they're dependent on pushing their soldiers forward with small arms and they end up losing an enormous number of soldiers. So they need the artillery barrage to try to stand back and save their soldiers from close quarter stuff.
43:07The air defense stuff is that the biggest threat to Ukraine now is the Russian Air Force. There's a lot of problems with the Russian Air Force, but if they can begin flying medium altitude and dropping bombs the way that they didn't serve, Ukraine will be in real trouble at the moment because of our air defense systems. They've been able to make them either fly very, very low, in which case it's difficult to get accuracy or fly very high and far from a long way away. Similar problem. But they're just beginning to break through at medium altitude, so they need the adoffences. But this stuff, artillery and adoffences, is about trying to defend, it's about protecting their front lines.
43:49And the question is, are they going to be able to use the next year to be in a position to mount an offensive in 2025? Nobody thinks now that Ukraine is going to be able to recapture territory this year. Will they be able to spend six, nine months rebuilding, recruiting training for these very complex combined arms operations? We're going to get David Patreas on leading the American General to talk about the details of how this is done, but this is something we've talked about before. You've got to coordinate all the different arms of your military, all the way from the cooks and logistics, the back, right the way through to your arm, your tanks moving forward and your air all happening at the same time.
44:30It's not something that Britain has done in practice for a very long time, so countries need to work to train and support and recruit. And if we're talking about next year, the big question is Trump. Because this money might get them through the next few months, but they're going to need a colossal amount of money in 2025. And it's not likely that Europe is going to step up enough to fill the hole if the US steps back. So there's a loss of pretty uncertain variables, which makes me a bit doubtful about whether Ukraine will be able to do this in 2025, including the fact that the Russians keep getting stronger in some ways.
45:09Yeah, I think there is a slight problem with the extent to which the expectations have ramped up so high on the back of this. When he saw the American congresspeople waving Ukrainian flags, Zelensky obviously welcoming this. And I think it's important to be realistic This is going to get them back in the game. It doesn't mean that they're going to necessarily be set up to, you know, to make the sort of advances they were talking about a year ago. And the other thing I saw that was quite alarming actually was there was a line came out of the Kremlin on the back of this essentially saying that, you know, that they need to, they need to be targeting now the supply of these weapons.
45:47Because, you know, there's a lot of talk about a lot of the stuff is already in Poland and in Germany in particular. So while they're talking there about, you know, once they know what sort of weapons they're talking about, whether they can somehow find out the transportation and take them out. I don't know. I just thought it was quite creepy. And Steve Rosenberg, the BBC, he put a very interesting post out this morning where he was going through today's or yesterday's Russian newspapers. And I mean, God, they were going for my Johnson in a big way. This is obviously gone, yeah, goes that saying, gone down very, very, very badly the Russians, they will use that for their own narrative.
46:24But I think we're right to be cautious about suggesting that this is going to be a massive, immediate game changer. I think it's something that I think people haven't made enough of, which is the Russians, of course, know that the number one fear of the US is that this could escalate into a bigger conflict, which means that Russia has every reason to signal that they might turn it into a bigger conflict. You know, as you say, they might go after the supplies in Europe that you might get and talking again about that Can you clear weapons because? Russia can't allow the idea to get out that America can do whatever it takes without escalating into a bigger conflict And final thing I think is is you know, what's the end state?
47:08Well, obviously the end state is not that anybody now seriously believes I'm afraid that Ukraine is going to be able to retake East and Donbass. So these Russians speaking more now largely ethnically clandest, more Russian areas of eastern Ukraine, which were taken in 2014, those bits, I'm afraid nobody thinks that Ukraine's going to be able to retake. Crimea may be, but again, pretty unlikely because it's a very, very Russian cultured peninsula. So what this is really about is increasing the leverage and negotiating position of Ukraine when they go into a negotiation. And that will be from the Ukrainian point of view.
47:53Yes, the settlement on territory, you know, Russia giving a bet, Ukraine giving a bet and some settlement. But guaranteeing Ukrainian independence because what the Russians are trying to say is, yeah, that you can join the EU if you want, but we're going to essentially have a Russian puppet government in and Kiev, and we're going to keep all this territory. Yeah, yeah. My final point, we focused on Ukraine, which was the biggest part of this package that went through the House of Representatives. There was also more support for Israel, also commitment to something we talked about last week being ignored.
48:28So thanks, I think we should acknowledge that they also recognize the need for more support for Sudan. humanitarian in Gaza and Haiti as well. And there was also another measure about sort of, you know, trying to stock TikTok having such an influence within the American debate. So it was a pretty significant day all round. Good. Well, I'm here in the US and I'm also here in Yale where the students demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza occupied the center of the university over the weekend and were cleared by police yesterday morning. And you can feel here in these universities, maybe less so in Yale, it's been more extreme in Colombia.
49:08Colombia, but just how raw these issues are. So you had, you know, I went down to see the demonstrations that the pro -GASA demonstrators here, many of them are masked because they're worried that they're not going to be able get jobs afterwards if their faces are seen. Then you've got counter demonstrators who are more pro -Israeli, who are coming, filming, trying to capture social media footage of people making antisemitic statements. And then obviously you've got this question of whether the university does or doesn't stand in the police to get classes started. Columbia Council classes, Yale decided they want to go ahead with classes.
49:46So it's even, I know you've been away the whole have you followed this situation of the this guy Gideon Falter who runs something the campaign against anti -Semitism and the story of this police sergeant who used this phrase openly Jewish and I was really pleased today to see Mark Rowley the Metropolitan Police Commissioner that the Met has apologized for the guy using that phrase but I was pleased to see Rowley standing up for the police officer because the truth is that when you see the whole footage, you see a police officer, I think, trying very hard to keep calm a situation that risks getting out of control.
50:29And I just think that the policing, you've just given some of the reasons why policing is becoming so difficult of these protests because of everybody carrying a mobile phone, people trying to get the police to over react people trying to provoke certain situations. So I actually thought it was, it was a story that on first flush looked really, really, really bad for the police, but I'm glad that Rowley stood up for the guy and didn't bow down to this sort of shouting against him, let alone these ridiculous calls by people like Bravaman for Rowley to be sacked, absolutely ridiculous. Well, I mean, that's the slightly sobering notes to end on, but since we've been discussing the US Biden and funny few, Ukraine.
51:15There is something pretty exciting, which is going to be happening on the rest of politics for the six months running into the US election. So let's just check if our friends on the other side of the Atlantic are ready. Yeah, well, we are very excited about two people about to join us. They will be revealed in a moment. See you in a minute.
51:37So as Rory says, we've got some very, very exciting news in the build -up to the US presidential election. We've been very keen to bring you a lot more American political coverage, as well as our usual RESTYS politics episodes and leading interviews. We have indeed. So for now until the US election, we're introducing a third episode of the With two people we both know and who we hope will be able to bring us some really great analysis from inside Trump and Biden's inner circles, while also looking at US politics and society more broadly. Given that his appearance on leading was so popular, Mr.
52:16Anthony Scaramucci, would you like to tell those of our listeners who've never heard of you who you are? I wish I was a sir, who would have been really better for me if you'd said like... We consult that for you. Sorry, Anthony Scaramucci. I would have felt so much more important. Lord Mooch. Lord, how about Lord Mooch? Could you imagine that? I mean, that would really, you know, I mean, we wouldn't even understand it here in America. So it wouldn't matter as much to us. But so I obviously am the former White House Communications Director fired after 11 days, okay? Or you could say 954 ,000 seconds.
52:52Sometimes I say it that way to my therapist makes me feel better. But prior to that, I was on Wall Street for 30 plus years. Got a 36 -year career on Wall Street. Now I run a company called Skybridge Capital, but have been very active in politics, particularly the last two presidential campaigns. Let's turn it over to Catee Kaye. Yeah, just quickly before Catee comes in. So, any of you who've watched the BBC's US political coverage over the years will be very familiar with Catee Kaye. She's a British broadcaster based in Washington DC. She was the BBC's main anchor on the last two US elections.
53:27So Cassie, would you like to quickly introduce yourself? Tell us a bit more about true US. Yeah. I'm somebody who doesn't need to be a Lord or a Sir. And we'll wonder how I'm going to wrestle with Anthony's healthy ego over the next few months. I have been in America for more years than I can count covering American politics. And we thought, look, if you're ever going to launch a show about US politics, This is a year to do it, right? Where we have a president who is 80 years old, the oldest ever. Another guy running for president who, Antonia Noseau, too, well, who's now sitting in a courtroom up in New York as the first guy to run for president, actually under criminal indictment and on trial.
54:06With so much going on, it seemed this was too good an opportunity to miss. So the show will come out every Friday morning on the rest of his politics feed. And Antonia and I will try and give you a look behind the cuts. I always have this sense that people think they understand America, But they don't really. So we'll give you what's in the news. But we're also both of us very keen to give you a kind of take and inside or in an outsider's take on what makes this extraordinary country tick. It's great to have you both because we thought about doing this ourselves and Rory and I, Rory spends a lot of time in the States and I like to think I understand the US reasonably well.
54:42But I think you're right, Katja. I think that even people who follow this stuff closely I think you guys will be an absolute boon to our listeners in terms of understanding what's going on. And, and actually, your friend Donald, Jay Trump, currently in New York, I quote something you said on our podcast endlessly. You said there is no way this guy can win the upcoming election. Do you still stand by that? No, no, no, no, no, I'm choking because when you think about, you know, when you think about him winning, I think about myself living in Rory's basement. It's a nice four to six years or four forever maybe, but no, I don't think you can win.
55:20And I think that this is the first big blow to him, this criminal indictment and the trial that he's facing right now, but there's other blows coming. This would include the documents case, the insurrection case, and even the election interference case, all of which may or may not come by the election, but these court decisions that are coming. I don't think the Supreme Court of the United States is going to rule that he has absolute immunity. The betting markets in the US, something that we all track in the hedge fund community, now has Biden pulling ahead slightly. And I think that's where it will be as we get towards the end.
55:58And so you have really looking forward to having you in my basement. Can I just sort of follow up, maybe throw you and Cassie, because we had Arnold Schwarzenegger on leading, we interviewed him. And he didn't want to be drawn at all on Donald Trump. kept saying, well, I don't think he's really going to be the candidate anyway. I won't really make it through. What's going on there? And would it make a difference if a big Republican figure like Arnold Schwarzenegger came out clearly against Donald Trump? And why do you think he's been a little reluctant to do it so far? I don't know that it will make a difference because you've got two parties, right?
56:31You've got the Donald Trump party and then you've got the rest of the Republicans. And you speak to people who do focus groups here all the time. I'm thinking of somebody called Sarah Longwell, who we should get on Anthony, because she's great. And she focus groups, Republicans all the time. And she says, okay, if Donald Trump were not the head of the Republican Party, who do you want? And their answer is Tucker Carlson. The party of Mitt Romney, John McCain, Nikki Haley, that's gone in terms of the Republican Party for the foreseeable future. I think he's reading the wins in terms of where the Republican Party is going.
57:05This isn't a party that's gonna allow for somebody who we would think of as a regular, small -sea conservative politician. Would it make a huge difference? Do you think if really big Republican figures came out highly critical? Would they be able to move voters against? Someone's too late. No, I think they could. I think they could dent the system. But remember, this is a system of increments. You get two to three million voters that switch sides away from Trump in the swing stages over. He's never gotten above 50 % never will get above 50 % and He's an unpopular figure in America, but he's managed to win the presidency one time Through the process of the electoral college you can make it even smaller numbers than that I mean you get 10 ,000 Arizona's to switch against him 10 ,000 Georgians to switch against him And that's swung the election as well So all you need is a big figure in one of those states to make a difference But I'm not as sure as Anthony is that Donald Trump doesn't win this just because of the quirkiness of the America's electoral college map and all he needs is just to get to that magic number of 270 in the path for him at the moment Is as clear as it is for Joe Biden.
58:17Well, listen is absolutely fantastic that you are now part of the trip team That's all we've got time for today. We're gonna be back tomorrow with question time and you're gonna be here with the first episode first ever episode of trip US on Friday A huge exciting and I could talk to the two of you forever. See you on Friday. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
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