251. The Infected Blood Scandal

23:10So you don't want to know how many of income tax, yeah, and imagine the chance of going out and they decided they wouldn't do that cut in income tax, which they would have been tempted to because they couldn't afford to have a million. And now they can do it. I'm not saying that this shouldn't happen. But you know, I don't want to be silly about this, but it's also now becoming clear that since the 1950s, the UK, the US and others at US particularly, it's really clear testing probably 2 .2 million people have been prematurely killed by the fallout of nuclear tests. And whether governments are going to be compensating them, again, I didn't.

23:43Yeah. Just don't find it on this defensive point. You see, I would argue that the way that the government responds to questioning at the moment about Rwanda, about Brexit, about some of the biggest issues where they've entrenched into these incredibly defensive positions about COVID corruption. I think these are things which ultimately probably there will ultimately have to be an inquiry, I think, into the way that Brexit has been done and the damage that has inflicted upon the economy, they will probably at some point be an inquiry involving the police at times, I think, into the whole COVID corruption thing.

24:19There will be an inquiry, there is an inquiry, the inquiry is going on into Grenfell. But what happens is that the government sets a position and then cannot bring itself to admit, yeah, you might have a point. And eventually, they have to admit there's a point because the evidence becomes overwhelming. And then we end up with this process. Now, I'm not equating any of these with the Infected Bloods' candle. I'm simply saying that for all the fine words yesterday, it's the mindset that has to change. Because there's not much incentive, is that for the government to announce an investigation into itself ever?

24:47Yeah, but there's always an incentive, I think. I think the public are far more tolerant of forgiving of governments that get to the right place even if it takes a bit of time, even in this crazy social media here and now world. So I think it's the mindset that needs to change, both of ministers and of civil servants. Now, MPs and mental health, did you hear this radio for a while? No, no. So I'll just tell you briefly about it. It was on half hour. It was presented by a woman called Jennifer Nadle, who co -founded Compassion in Politics. So she's coming from a place that says a bit like your book does that politics is a bit of a sort of laboratory for mental ill health.

25:25Now, some very moving interviews, guy called Elliot Colburn, who I don't know, who talked about a time when he was actively suicidal and talked about, he was 28 when he was elected, he's now in his early 30s, made the point, which I thought was really interesting, he says that the public look at MPs and don't imagine that they've actually allowed human emotions, like the rest of them. He said, when he finally spoke about it in the commons, he got a really warm response. Kirsta Mahwant over to him, Brishisunat called him in, but then he said privately, eight MPs came to him and said they had been in exactly the same position, but none of them felt able to say so publicly.

26:01When we have talked about it before, haven't we? I mean, I talked about the fact that there was a member parliament, when I came in through himself under a train, and wasn't particularly reported at the time. Part of it is that the, I think there are many things that make people deeply, deeply unhappy, but for me, the big thing is that the whole job is a sort of fraud. When you're a minister, you are pretending, in my case, that you are a full -time constituency MP in Cumbria, that you're a full -time legislator voting in Parliament, 350 miles south, and you're also a minister responsible for programmes in Pakistan, Nigeria, abroad, and it's a lie, my goodness in the world of social media, your constituents are very good at saying, I've noticed it six days since you were up in Penraeth, why weren't you opening the hospice?

26:51At the same time, other people, I noticed you missed the vote on, it could be an important thing, could be contaminated, why were you not in the contaminated blood vote? You know how much that matters to me, and at the same time, you're supposed to be visiting your programme in Nigeria, right? So that's the first thing. Second thing is, of course, the portfolio itself, as you know, you're reshuffled in the modern world every year, but even if it's every two years, and most MPs don't know anything about their portfolio, it's completely nonsense. Coming to something, you've made the China minister, never been to China in your life, standing up at the dispatch box, you're lying, I mean, it's a complete fraudulence, and people are saying, I really, I don't know, the right honourable minister, you know, confirm that the latest investments in Chengdu province in China reveal the increase in corruption in Chinese Communist Party, and you have to be like, I don't know, a Chengdu province, isn't it?

27:37And so there's no... You don't, you stand up, you read the line, the state, there's been given to you. Right, and you're pretending with your civil servants, that you know what's going on, you're pretending with a public, and then you're taking responsibility, you know, who will take responsibility for what happened in Liverpool Prison, or I take responsibility? Well, sort of yes, but also worthy, this is sort of arrogance and man -minded, I really, do what? I mean, so the whole thing is not not... There was an interview with somebody who had been a minister recently, who didn't want to identify himself, and whose voice was somebody else read out his words, and he made a very similar point, he said that you come into Parliament, you've made all sorts of promises to your constituents, you have no real capacity to get much done as a backbencher.

28:21You then go in to be a minister, which he was, and he said he found that those same frustrations, and he ended up having a breakdown. And so he talked about that. We had Kim Leadbitter, the sister of Joe Cox, talking about, you know, who followed Joe Cox, was murdered, Kim followed her into the seat, and talking about just how, again, this is a theme of your book, just about how kind of crazy the place is, and how... But also, all of them talking about how social media has made a difference in terms of volume of work, but also abuse, and how that affects them. So it was quite moving at points, and Milton, the former mental health minister, she spoke, she said she'd been in the whips office, and she could see how the whips office actually was a kind of a negative impact upon the mental well -being of MPs.

29:07And sometimes it's like related to specific policy outcomes. So the Welsh transport minister, Lee Waters, was the guy who brought in the 20 mile an hour speed limits and Wales, which would become incredibly unpopular. And he spoke on the programme just about the level of abuse and online hatred that he was getting, and how it really, really started to affect him very, very badly. And both him and Kim Leadbitter made the point that if we're not careful, the sense of the life of a politician is going to become so relentlessly negative that nobody in their right mind is going to want to be a politician.

29:44That is dangerous. But as you said in the interview, it requires you quite saying, say to the public, oh, well, he's me, I'm an MP and my mental health's a bit wobbly. The public's just not going to be very sympathetic. I think in more of them talked about it though, they would be. I think that the MPs as a whole, I think a new generation of MPs to come in and be more open about this stuff. Yeah, I think the public can be sympathetic for that, but then as soon as something goes wrong, that'd be pretty angry again. All right, well, I'm not happy. No, let's take a break. Good.

30:16This isn't ad from BetterHelp. At the moment, we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alice's cold plunges. Could be my attempts to meditate or the digital detox that I'm doing in Colombia. But of course, one of the things that we know is that it can be incredibly valuable to talk to another human being, somebody who's actually been trained as the therapist to work through these ideas, calmly objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise.

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31:29That Miumu Red Mother Bomber, the Cousteau Barcelona Cowboy Top, or that Patagonia fleece in the 2017 colorway. All these finds are all on eBay, along with millions of more main character pieces backed by authenticity guaranteed. eBay is the place for pre -loved and vintage fashion. eBay, things, people, love. It's the Smokers Uncrustables podcast with your host Uncrustables. Okay, today's guest is Ruffer on the Edges. Please welcome Crust. Thanks for having me. Today's topic. He's round with Soft Pillowy Bread. Hey, filled with delicious PB &J. Are you talking about yourself? And you can take him anywhere.

32:10Why do you invite him? And we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off? Uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, Crust.

32:25Welcome back to the RESTASPOLITIES with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And before we get on to discuss Israel, Iran, and Mexico, just to alert listeners to the fact that the quasi -quarting interview on the RESTASPOLITIES leading is out. Part one was out last week, part two is out now, and it is quite a listen. I was really quite taken aback by how many OMG messages I got yesterday from people. It was astonishing, wasn't it? I mean, you know, on the one hand, the big story is this is the guy that crashed the economy. And how do you just kind of as a psychological fact deal with the fact that you have crashed the economy, totally destroyed your reputation, blown up your, you know, who'll be remembered forever.

33:06But there's also an amazing story about the chart of Ghanaian immigrants with a brain size of supercomputer rising effortlessly up through the British establishment, becoming chance to the exchequer. There's a man who is very, very fluent, very historically informed, but also, I think, incredibly strangely naive in his endorsement of Boris Johnson and this trust and Brexit, and also what did you think? Thank you. Well, I thought when David Gort was standing of you, I thought his use of the word glib. I thought there was something very glib about the interview. You get laughing at points when we were trying to talk about, you know, the effect on people and so forth.

33:45And I found the most astonishing thing was essentially that sentigave of standing at the dispatch box, kind of knowing that it was all a bit nuts. Anyway, for those who haven't listened, here's a clip. When you were making that statement, standing at the dispatch box, was the part of you feeling this is nuts? It was kind of at the end, I just thought, let's see, that was what I was, because what were you, what vibe were you getting from across from Labour and from behind you? It was kind of, they were kind of quite surprised. I mean, it was, it was, it was a real, and again, it was the sort of style that we, you know, it was very, very bold statement.

34:22And people were like, really? Wow. Oh, God. That was the reaction. But why didn't you, why didn't Sirion be a bit mean, but you knew this trust very well, and I knew her very well. Why couldn't you see what I could see very clearly in 2016, which was that she was silly. She wasn't a serious person. Well, look, I think, I think, I don't agree with that. There were definitely. Did you agree with the unsweeted to be prime minister? I don't actually have the right temperament for it. You know, when things and things do go very badly wrong, you need to keep it an even, an even temper. And what I've learnt is temperament is probably the most important thing.

34:53It's more important than, almost an experience, actually.

35:01So, Roy, that's quasi. What about BB? Well, okay. So there are two things on Israel. What one of the myths and splits within the Israeli cabinet, which we can talk to you. The second thing is that the international, the prosecutor of the international criminal court has now issued an indictment against the Hamas leadership, but also against Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and the defense minister. This is big news. So just very quickly on that to remind people we, people want a bit more detail on this. The prosecutor, Karin Khan, is British. And something I think we should be really proud of in Britain, actually.

35:34So really serious, thoughtful, pretty much by the book lawyer, absolutely follows the evidence where it led. I think, first thing to understand is he won't have done this without an incredible amount of research and work. And he also will have been calling in a lot of other people, people that you and I know actually have been in consulting with him, looking at this evidence with him, documents with him, making sure this is all squared away. So he will have put forward something that he's pretty confident about. It's now going to go forward to another panel of judges, but the chances are overwhelmingly that they will approve that it moves forward.

36:08It's a primary face -to -face investigation. We studied the ICJ ruling on genocide earlier, and at the time, we explained the difference between the international court justice, which did the genocide ruling in this thing, which is the ICC International Criminal Court. It's a court which Israel has not a signature to. And nor is the US. And nor is the US. We are. But 123 countries are. A whole of the European Union is, Britain is. And this means that if the Israeli Prime Minister, or the Defense Minister, were to visit our countries, we are under an immediate obligation to arrest and deliver them to the International Criminal Court.

36:42This will mean that they will be unable to visit most of the countries in the developed world now. It was, I don't know if you saw Karim Khan's presentation. He had two of his colleagues behind him. For those who haven't seen it, we should put the photo in the newsletter because they really looked brutally serious. It looked like the most terrifying episode of the apprentice that there has ever been. And I think what the attack upon him, and it's been quite personal from Israel and from Netanyahu in particular, essentially is how dare you imply moral equivalence between us and the genocidal terrorists of Hamas.

37:22And of course, what he is doing is having been asked to do it, is taking two sides from essentially the same set of events. But it is not moral equivalence because he's not saying they're charged, he wants to charge them with the same things, the different things. So for example, the Hamas leadership, he wants to charge them for crimes against humanity, including rape, another sexual offences used as instruments of war. With Israel, he wants them charged with using starvation against the civilian population as an instrument of war. These are different things. And the point you're making though about what happens in these, we're seeing this, this is a consequence of populism undermining the institutions which hold them to account.

38:07I think the difficulty with having put the two together in the same presentation is it did give the Israelis that opening, and Hamas, they both said the same thing, how dare you put us in with them. And that has led within the Israeli context, I think possibly to this, for the short term, helping Netanyahu's political situation. And what would happen if he, could he have just done it on the same day but split it into two indictments? I think he could have done that, or he could have actually split them up time wise. But then that would have been very, very difficult. He probably just thought, look, I'm looking at both at the same time, therefore I'm going to present the case at the same time.

38:44And as you say, it's then up to a panel of judges, they're not judges, these people, they're prosecute as advised by a panel. I mean, you really couldn't make it up, that Amal Clooney is part of it, and that's the way in the Kennedy. So these are people we know, who have cleared, you know, seriously, they're serious legal people, that's the point. And they've decided this prime face evidence. Now, it doesn't mean that these people are guilty, remember? Absolutely. All it's saying is that the prosecutor thinks that there's a case to be looked at, evidence to be heard, and a court should rule. Nobody should be above the law.

39:15Now, another thing is, so firstly, defending international institutions, international criminal courts, something we've been talking about since the 1930s, finally managed to set up on a great dream since Nuremberg. So we should be supporting it. It's a great symbol of international law. It's outrageous that Republican party is talking about taking sanctions against the international criminal court. This is crazy thing to do. Biden has also been critical of this of this judgment. And Andrew Mitchell, speaking for the British government, a little divide opened up yesterday, which in the Conservatives and Labour, because Andrew Mitchell was pretty abit equivocal and just disappointing and unhelpful and so forth, was David Lammie did a very, very strong, do we believe in international law, don't we?

39:57So I think the politics are tough on this. Now, remember that all Israel needs to do because of something called confidentiality, is to start its own independent investigation. If it does, this whole thing falls aside. Haven't many, many times before, haven't had an El Salvador helping elsewhere. If Israel is prepared to say, listen, we are completely innocent, but we're starting an intern with the ready process, using Israeli law to investigate whether or not we are guilty of these things. The ICC will step aside. That's all that needs to happen. Yeah. Now, the other big news out of Israel in the last few days was Benny Gantz, who is not naturally a friend of Netanyahu, who's a part of the war cabinet.

40:37Yeah, and just to explain, so he general pretty much represented what's left of the kind of center, center rice, I suppose, in his ready politics now. There's not much left left in this ready politics, who only came into the cabinet following the October massacres and horror, and now saying, yes, that he wants to see a post -war reconstruction. If there are less Netanyahu who starts to focus upon the day after, what governance for Gaza will exist post any military operation, then he's going to pull the power. And that's quite an emission that seven months in, he's implying that the Prime Minister is simply not focusing at all.

41:13Well, if you follow the Israeli media, particularly those parts of the media, still critical in Netanyahu, there seems to be a sort of drumbeat from the military, saying they don't know what the long -term strategy is. It's inconceivable what the strategy is. It doesn't make sense. I mean, I was talking to some senior special forces officers who were saying if they were teaching in staff college and a student had presented this military plan that Netanyahu is doing in Gaza, they would have failed the course. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's not getting the hostages back, it's completely failed in terms of getting hostages back.

41:44It's not eliminating Hamas and making a possible comeback. I mean, what is it doing? What's the point of it? Well, it's eliminated parts of Hamas. Other parts of Hamas have simply moved. So now having done the North, they've now focused on the South and now they're popping up again in the North. And because this is what a lot of people said, you can't sort of obliterate an ideology. But I think that the other thing that's coming out of the States is that, and I think this must be what Jake Sullivan, Biden's security adviser and Anthony Blinken have been trying to get across to them. There's so many lessons we're talking the discussion about infected blood, the whole thing about lessons learned, but there's so much kind of work done on post -conflict resolution.

42:24Learning from past mistakes, you go through Somalia, 92, Haiti, 94, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, 2003. And it's the Americans have, I think, been trying to get them to focus on some of these questions. And Netanyahu is so fixated upon, we are going to eliminate Hamas. It's almost as if to admit there is to be that discussion is to accept that that battle is already won when he's, of course, saying it's not. Yeah. I mean, even with seven months' sub -reparation, post -conflict reconstruction tends to go wrong. I mean, the places where it's gone right, Boston and Kosovo, the exceptions, Iraq and Afghanistan, catastrophes, Haiti's been a catastrophe, right?

43:02So the chances are it's going to be a catastrophe. But you need to begin by working out what needs to be done. The entire infrastructure of Gaza needs to be rebuilt, the entire water supply, the electricity, the buildings. I mean, you're talking about $100 billion upwards, worth of investment, would need to go into rebuilding. You'd need to work out how you rebuild every hospital, every school, how you get municipal services going. What is the interim government? Is it presumably Israel's not interested in being a Hamas government? But how's the Palestinian authority going to operate? But this is where it goes back to politics in the end because the hard right that Netanyahu is dependent on, Ben Kivir and Smotridge, they see no role for the Palestinian authority.

43:43The Americans are absolutely clear that there's going to be some sort of international operation in there, but it is going to have to include elements of the current Palestinian authority. And so these are huge questions, but it strikes me that for his own internal political difficulties, Netanyahu feels unable properly to confront and what I think Gantz is doing is basically calling time on that approach. But even because you've got the Defence Ministers also part of this ICC case that's been put forward by the prosecution, this is what I meant when I said that I think for short term, this may have helped Netanyahu because this has become the focus and it's caused so much anger amongst the Israeli cabinet.

44:20So Iran? Yeah. Well, Iran really big news since the last pod. Ibrahim Raezy, present for Iran that we've talked about, great deal, who was a, you know, cleric who was seen a bit in line as a potential future supreme leader, central to the regime really since the 1980s was on his way back from a visit in Azerbaijan and his helicopter crashed. First very striking thing is the incredible self discipline of the media in Iran because Iran is absolutely the center for conspiracy theories, so what you would expect to happen immediately is people suggesting that Israel took down the helicopters, I'm not so down the helicopter, but they actually from the very beginning played very straight.

45:00This is weather, this is spare parts, just went wrong and sanctions meant we couldn't fix that. There's now going to be a period of mourning and then there's going to be an election which adds really in significant terms to our year of elections. We had these parliamentary elections that are on just past where we talked about very, very low turnout, lows there really, and it's not, you'll care people out there saying doesn't really matter what happens, that's not true. Of course it's right that whoever comes like through is likely to be from the more conservative side, but we've seen huge differences between people like Ahmed Inajad, you remember, and Ibrahim Raici, and within these conservative factions, their connections to revolutionary guard or not, their connections to supreme leader or not, their views on sanctions, their views on the west, their views on Israel, their views, and so all of these things can change, and even though the president no longer controls everything, because foreign policies now run by this revolutionary guard corps, the supreme leader seems to be more and more involved in domestic stuff.

45:58I think it's going to be really critical and really worth watching, and thank goodness, thank goodness, at least as far as we can tell, it wasn't some other state that blew up that helicopter otherwise we really would be in a cow. Yeah, it was interesting to see who were first out of the traps to express condolences. It was Russia, China, Modi, Turkey, a couple of days later Charles Michel from the European, on behalf of the European Union. We should have expressed condolences, I mean, you don't think we should express condolences, I'm not even sure that we did, or at any level, and I'm surprised that didn't fuel the...

46:35I think that's a bit odd, I would have thought however much. I think I would have first thought you for our own, just like your enemy, when somebody's killed an helicopter crash, you probably want to express condolences to their family immediately, don't you? Yeah, I think the Americans may have put sort of a very, very bland statement, but the first thing I UK perspective was your friend Tom Tugan out of the security minister, quote tweeting, she'll me shall, some people realise that ricey's regime has murdered thousands of home targeted people here in Britain across Europe, I will not mourn him, not that diplomatic.

47:05But I think the other thing to say to people is that President, in all these elections we talk about this year, when we talk about President, we usually talk about the person right at the top, but of course in Iran, the person right at the top is Supreme Leader by a Tallaham in it. But this guy was very powerful, was a hardliner, helpfully described by most of the tabloids, media around the world as the Butcher of Tehran, because of he was the authorised, a lot of the killings of protestors in the past, and including the recent protests over the killing of a young woman. So now, I think you're absolutely right that they understood straight away, particularly after the recent skirmish in Damascus and the response that they did to that, which then they clearly wanted to draw a line.

47:49They realised straight away this could escalate very, very, very quickly, we do not want it to. But now they will be wanting to use this election coming up to cement the support that they have. There was lots of stuff, it's very, very hard to find out, I mean, it's so difficult to cover these places, but lots of people saying that on social media, insofar as before it was taken down, there was lots of celebration, people celebrating the death in parts of Iran. But yeah, I mean, you couldn't, honestly, it's just like, and the scene, did you see the scenes of where the helicopter came down? You just don't wonder how they were so remote and these red crescent people sort of struggling to get out there.

48:29I walked through those areas where I spent three months walking through Azerbaijan, Harbi, on the Iranian Azerbaijan border, and it's a very odd territory because it's not just very mountainous, very remote high altitude. It's also at odds with the regime often because it's predominantly Sunni not Shia, predominantly Azari Turk, not Persian, and cultural language, Edson area which Saddam tried to play with and pull people over on. Anyway, I think we should really lean into this. The other one I think we're going to do, but maybe we can do in question time is the Mexico elections coming. And we can have a first -girt, my last thing you're watching think about it, maybe we can have another snap at it when the election actually happens.

49:07Cool, let's do Mexico in question time tomorrow. Great, look forward to it. Thanks again, bye -bye.