240. Question Time: Should Britain nationalise its railways?

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1:51Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, as to Campbell, and Rory, can I start with an apology? Oh, yeah. Not to you. Well, I guess to you, partly, because you know, I don't like it in my factor on. Yeah. Liz Trump, no relation, has Brits listening in Brussels. What a great name, Liz Trump. That's a great name. I mean, sort of if Truss and Trump had a baby, I mean, oh God, no, horrible thoughts. Liz Trump, as Brits listening in Brussels, we love your podcast. We ended up shouting in the kitchen whilst listening to your latest episode in which you discussed female authors.

2:25Amelie Notom is Belgian not French. She was born in our commune of Etterbeck, also famous for the European institution, Strom et hage, Marouin Filet, and Hermann Frond Rompay. Who's Marouin Filet, Rory? A J &M. He's a footballer, Rory. I knew that one. So anyway, I really do apologize Liz, and you weren't the only one to get in touch to say that I assumed Amelie was French. She is Belgian. That means that my favourite French language current writer, my favourite current football manager, Vincent Company, and my favourite all -time singer, Jack Brell, are all Belgians. So I hope that makes up for my faux pas.

3:05But we will have to do something on Belgium. Yeah, we should. I mean, I think she goes on to say, I love to hear thoughts of her, my country can exist and function so well, despite half the population not being able to understand the other half, Flamished Strait French, with an elite professional class in Brussels, they would provide bilingual education, hence access to all the best highest paid jobs, which demand two or three languages. Also, why isn't the Brits so poor at languages compared to the rest of Europe? I can mention another book there. My friend Tom Baldwin and Mark Sears of Co -written, Tom is the guy who wrote the book about Keir Starmer.

3:34They've written another book now called England, and it's about seven myths that have driven our politics to the place that it's in, and the country. And I think the answer to the question of why Brits so poor at languages is because we just assume that we're superior. Right. We must do something about it, and I think it'd be fun to do something about it. Listen, here's a question on the Maldives from Kerry. Can you please discuss the recent election in the Maldives and what it might mean for their relationship with China? Quick explain them before I come to you on the election. So Maldives' tiny place, 500 ,000 people, and I'm massive.

4:10Cold war between India and China were quite literally the Chinese will build some enormous bridge called the China Maldives Bridge, and then India will build an even more enormous bridge called the India Maldives Bridge. And it's become vital because China sees this island as being a great refueling point and strategic base in the sea, and of course India who's much closer to Maldives also sees it as vital for its maritime security. The country's basically an island that makes most of its money off tourism. I mean, like 95 % of its money off tourism, lovely place, I think it's gone holiday, not like I've never actually been there.

4:49Have you been there? You mean Maldives? No. No. No. Maybe we should maybe we should go to Maldives to follow. So we're going to do Belgium, and now we're going to do special resties policies in the Maldives. That's right. That's right. Important to follow. Anyway, and China of course tends to spend more money than India. It has poured more money, but because India is closer, it's able to put more ratcheting on security. And this has translated into political parties in the Maldives basically being very nakedly either pro -China or pro -India. And my understanding is the pro -Chinese party in the Maldives just want a landslide, is that right?

5:23They have. I mean, essentially this is a big win for Beijing. So the president, Mohammed Muizu, absolute landslide, they won 70 out of 93 seats, which means they've got massive control. And as you say, it was pretty much, there are obviously lots of different domestic issues, but the opposition party, the MDP, led by an ex -president, guy called Ibrahim Mohammed Sohli, who we've talked about before, he is seen as very, very pro -India, and he won 15 seats against 65. So that is all a big, big yes thumbs up to the president's plan to plow ahead with much, much closer cooperation with China. And that is quite a big deal.

6:12And I think it's just a reminder of something we sometimes talk about. I mean, so the Chinese economy is obviously in big, big trouble. It's going to struggle to grow huge problems around the property market, huge problems around aging. But it would be a real mistake to conclude from that that China's international power is really waning. In fact, what we can see with these kinds of things, and in many other places around the world, that China is still the second largest economy in the world, the largest export from the world, the largest manufacture in the world. And even if it's getting older and its economy isn't growing so fast, it continues to increase its power dramatically in many, many parts of the world.

6:52And we've seen that it still remains very strong in Africa. And I would argue, as actually strengthened its position against the US and Africa over the last four years. So there's a lot going on here, as you can imagine, in the states of everybody trying to talk about how China's economy is weak. But it reminds me a little bit of people saying, this was something Obama did, saying Russia's economy was so weak and it was getting so old in 2014 that it wasn't really a threat to the world. This idea that there's a direct connection between your economic growth and your demography and whether or not you're a major security player, I think, is a mistake.

7:30I think China is actually even as its economy struggles to grow. I think it's flexing its international muscles more and more. And there is a security element to this as well, as there was in the recent election in the Solomon Islands. And the government has actually asked there are many, many Indian military personnel who are there and they operate Indian Renaissance aircraft to essentially patrol in the country's borders. And the president has asked them to leave. Now, where are they going to get that security from in the future? Well, maybe they're going to China. Yeah. So these things, we may think of a small country that's rightly obsessed about climate change because that's such a sort of existential threat.

8:11But all of these smaller countries now are tend to be caught up in these bigger geostrategic struggles. By the way, just to brief your Modi, Rory, I said, I don't even see you, I sent you a thing about an Australian journalist, television journalist who's been essentially kicked out of India because they don't like the reporting. I suddenly got just a very, very thin glimpse into Modi's cyber warriors when I was critical about Modi on the rest of politics with you a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. It is impressive or slightly worrying. Both. What an incredible social media army he has to attack anyone who dares to criticize.

8:50I'm sorry. I suspect that means that we, we, the Sadiq Khan will be getting the same treatment because of course, he was quite critical, wasn't he? When we interviewed him on leading the other day? Yeah. Yeah. That'll be interesting for him. You were in Singapore and here's a question about Singapore from somebody called Martin. You just got back from Singapore. Yeah. Both of you have waxed lyrical in your praise as Singapore's approach to government. It would be nice to hear alongside this praise, the acknowledgement that it's a pseudo democracy that's been ruled by a single family for almost its entire existence.

9:17How do you balance your praise for Singapore with its notorious intolerance of dissent that would be viewed as routine in any actual democracy? I don't think you mean to routine. Maybe a something outrageous in any actual democracy. Well, the first point about the family, so Lee Kuan Yew, the original founder, it is true that his son is the current prime minister who is stepping down, but he'd be very hard pressed to find anybody, including well beyond Singapore, who doesn't think that Lee Kuan Yew is an extraordinary leader and who built this incredible success story. And likewise, anybody who's ever met the son, Lee Sian Long, who is, who is about to go, he's a fritchy, he's one of the cleverest political leaders I've ever met.

10:03So I don't think you could say he's only there because he is the son. And likewise, there have been other prime ministers in between and there's going to be another one starting soon, Lawrence Wong. And I think that sometimes is, I can see why from a purely Western perspective, you can say, well, you know, they have pretty, pretty easy time with the media. They're a pretty government, this is very, very strong government and so forth, but it's certainly not, it is a democracy in that there are opposition parties who are in parliament, who have freedom to campaign and do campaign. And I must, I must, Rory, can I brief free, read you a letter?

10:42You know, we, I told you recently that one of my favorite ministers out there, I called Sean by everybody, but he's the Minister of Law, K. Shanmigan. Was he the guy that kindly was reading my book? He was reading your book and he told you how he was sending pictures of pages of your book to colleagues in the civil service and in the ministries and in the government to say, this is, you know, just, he loved the book. And and anyway, the reason I wanted to draw into your attention again is because the economist did, and it is Royal recently about Singapore that was very much on the lines of our questioner, very, very, you know, questioning a lot about Singapore's success and standards, et cetera.

11:23So let me just reach his, Sean's Facebook post, the economist cannot resist sneering. It's an instinct lodged deep in the unconscious of the British commentary at class. They cannot stand that are people they were accustomed to lecturing and now doing better than they are across the board. Take governance. Lawrence Wong will be our fourth prime minister in 59 years, meanwhile in the UK, Mr Rishi Sunek is their fourth prime minister in 4 .9 years. Mr Boris Johnson, when he was prime minister, accepted a holiday worth 15 ,000 pounds and 50 ,000 pounds for renovations from donors. In Singapore, anyone who did that would have been charging court.

12:00All the economy, we started as a British colony with per capita GDP of $500 American dollars. Now it's more than 80 ,000. We have the fifth highest GDP per capita in the world, well ahead of the UK. On our media, the economist refers to our docile press. It obviously prefers a situation like in the UK where one person can control major media outlets and have politicians pay court to them and where media owners can influence who gets elected and who becomes prime minister. A similar situation in Australia was described by a former prime minister as a cancer on democracy. And he goes on and on and on, following this says, in social cohesion, in the UK, a Tory party donor recently said of a black MP that looking at her makes him want to hate or black woman.

12:41His party said all should just move on from the comments, that's it. In Singapore, a person who made such a comment would be charged in court. What price your sneer? Pretty good. There we are. We should link to the economist article, which makes clearly the other case on this. But it's an interesting thing. I mean, I was obviously I'm speaking to you from Yale while I'm teaching at the moment. And I've got a a Rwandan student here who makes similar arguments for Rwanda, which has had a very, very impressive economic development story since the 90s, along with an authoritarian government. And it's it's a real question.

13:17I mean, repeated it again and again through the developing world, which is if a government is able to deliver really dramatic improvements in people's social economic conditions, and does it with a more authoritarian, less democratic method of government? How do you get your head around that? Because we were brought up to believe that there was an easy going together. No choices to be made that liberal democracy and economic growth were natural partners. Yeah. But of course, most dramatically of all China is the situation where 700 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty. There's been this most incredibly economic growth without the big democracy.

13:52And I think this is one of the issues when, you know, when you look at opinion polls in the Middle East and in Africa, people increasingly will say that they prefer the Singaporean system or the system in Dubai, for example, which is another authoritarian state to Britain, France, United States. So it's a really raw nerve where I think those who believe in liberal democracy need to make a much, much clearer better case. We've talked before and I've written about John Major's speech that he made a while back in democracy. We trust question mark. And he basically says, there is an arrogance to the democracies that we assume that we're just better.

14:28And the feeling I always get when I go to Singapore is when you talk to people, the politicians, they are very, very, very conscious. In a way that I think a lot of our politicians are not of delivery. In other words, they feel if they have to be delivering, according to the priorities that they've set out, they have to be delivering good public services. They have to be delivering on the economy and so forth. And they are very, very, very conscious of the arguments that are pushed their way by the opposition. And also, you have to look at where they are in the world, very, very different place to where we are.

15:03And so I think it's easy, as Sean says, it is easy to sneer and it is easy to make the case that they're not necessarily running the same way that our democracy does. But at the same time, I think in terms of where they've come from, to where they've got to as a democracy, it's a very, very impressive story. Listen, I mean, there are serious constraints on the media and serious constraints of our political parties, but they're one of their biggest achievements with some corruption. And it's made it very, very powerful example in a region where there is endemic corruption that Singapore basically managed to eliminate corruption almost entirely.

15:36I mean, it's less, less corrupt and Britain. Here's a little nerdy question from Karen Ward that I liked because sometimes people want us to talk about the nerdy details of politics. Does the House of Commons have a seating plan? I often see my MP Chris Elmore standing by the speaker and many other MPs squeeze like sardines on the benches. I know the front bench obviously sits in an order but not sure how it works in the Rose behind. Actually, the truth is there's absolutely no seating plan. So and the benches are deliberately designed to not be able to hold all the MPs because when it was bombed during the war, there was an idea of going back to a system of actually having enough room for everybody in Churchill said, no, he really liked the sense to hub up.

16:18So I spent a lot of my early years sitting on the stairs, not actually on a chair. And even when you're a cabinet minister, there's no seating plan. I mean, broadly speaking, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor get to sit in the middle, more senior ministers. I think you're overlooking the deputy Prime Minister, Mr Oliver Dowd. I think the deputy Prime Minister might get there as well. Also, overlooking the deputy Prime Minister, Mr Oliver Dowd. But otherwise you come in and you squeeze in and a lot of it, of course, is so your constituents can see you on telly. So there was a lot of push. You'll notice often behind the Prime Minister or behind the leader of the opposition will be the sort of rising stars of the party that people want to get on television, show.

17:00And in the early days of the Cameron government, it was often an opportunity for Cameron to show diversity in the new intake for the people that he would sit behind him and they would be captured on the media. I used to get very angry if there was a shot of the front bench, say whether it was Tony Blair or a minister at the front bench, if the commons was busy. And there were no women or people of color behind. I think that was something we thought of. But there is a sort of informal plasmol. I know that, for example, across the, so you've got the, where you've got the dispatch box, and then the Dennis Skinner, who was an absolute veteran, used to always have the same place.

17:35Every other MP, the beast of Bolserver, absolutely. Every other MP, if they were sitting there, knew that if he came in, they would move up. I was, I think Ted Heath had a place when he was in the back benches that I think Theresa May has now. I think I noticed that she always sits in the same place. And I wonder if she's already established that if she comes into the commons and somebody sitting there, they sort of, they shuffle up a bit. That's right. Very senior people in the father of the house often had a kind of set position. But no, you're right. I mean, apart from these kind of few kind of legendary big figures, the rest of us largely kind of shakwis and where you can shove.

18:09Well, though we tried to, I mean, Jacob Riesmog made a sort of system right from the moment he arrived. It has this incredible kind of lounging where he's almost lying on the bench and he used to sit right at the end of the chamber, kind of sort of drag himself, unfold himself onto his feet. And then you've got the whips who often stand behind the speakers chair, so they can't be seen from the television cameras trying to sort of whip up people into these kind of football chance. So you can see them kind of conducting from the back of the speakers chair, trying to get people to shout, yeah, yeah.

18:44Okay, we're right. Loads more questions to come. Take a quick break.

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21:03Here's one from Sal, which has been the issue has been angering me for days. Why on earth would Labour dismiss out of hand Europe's offer to talk about free movement of 80 to 30 years? Sal goes on, I'm thinking of ending my membership and voting, Lib Dem because of this, though I know it will be wasted voting my constituency. It's so infuriating. I guess the straight answer to the question why I know would Labour dismiss out of hand is because they don't want anything which allows the Tories to make a big deal about Labour trying to shift their position on Europe because that will then allow them to as it were reopen the Brexit debate.

21:43I agree with Sal, I think that to dismiss it out of hand at a time when there is so much, there is so many difficulties arriving from the Brexit, the government's Brexit deal that have to be fixed, I found very, very depressing. Well it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking. I mean, and it's such a good proposal and it's such a defensible proposal and it hits a particular group of people in a really useful way. I guess the only thing I presumably kissed on might have been a bit annoyed with the timing. I mean, would he presumably would have liked Europe to have consulted a bit more closely on when they announced that somehow they made this offer.

22:22But then again, I don't know, I don't know the answer to that, but it slightly worries me that at some point there is going to have to be some kind of pivot towards a position that says Brexit is not working. It's damaging as economically. Our number one mission is a growth. We're going to have to address some of these issues. But I also think for my here's so many young people saying they don't feel that the political parties understand them, care about them, get their issues and so forth. I think the Tories go on, I mean, that ridiculous David Frost had a piece the other day saying, you know, we've got to stop a Labour government otherwise that there is a risk of them undoing our greatest achievement, which is Brexit.

23:05I mean, if you're honestly saying Brexit was your greatest achievement, but the point is that it's got to be addressed at some point. We're going into the election with this is a massive elephant in the room. One thing that I think we need to do more of, you know, people like you and me who want a much closer relationship with Europe and would like Labour to announce that we join the Customs Indonesia, etc. Is to use some of the Brexit's words against some Jacob Riesmogs being out there saying essentially that the problem is that Brexit wasn't done right. But what he really means by that needs to be made clear, which is that they had a fantasy that once they left the European Union, they would go for this incredible kind of low tax, deregulated Singapore on temp stuff.