268. The Tories' 'taxtopia' attack, Macron's gamble, and the politics of football

25:46British politics is just lurching from one side to the other. One quick point, which I think both of us are passionate about people listening to this on the podcast. If you haven't registered to vote registered today, if you're listening to this on Channel 4, you need to actually stop listening to us and go and register straight away. The registration deadline is midnight on Tuesday. If you haven't registered, go and register immediately. Oh, 100%. 100%. Well, listen, talking to volatility after the break, France and the French election. See you after the break.

26:25This 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 a 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.

27:01They've got over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than five million people globally. And you can join a session literally at the click of a button, change therapists anytime. So obviously not about fixing you, but it's about hearing yourself clearly, maybe for the first time. So talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % of their first month at betterhelp .com slash rest politics. That's better H -E -L -P .com slash rest politics. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a partner like Shopify, they have the tools you need to start and grow your business.

27:37From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Hines, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your site, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify .com slash special offer.

28:03Welcome to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. I'm the artist Campbell. So Alice, you are talking to us in Germany, but the real story at the moment is France. So tell us a little bit about your friend Emmanuel. Well, I'm actually leaving here as soon as we recorded this to go to Bad France. It is absolutely incredible what is happening. People say our election is a bit boring. The French election right now is whatever the mega opposite of boring is, that is what it is. Yeah, it's looking pretty peculiar. So we talked about this last week, this is a remember. And my take on it was that he has made a massive mistake, that it's a classic thing, that young men feeling trapped suddenly think they need to show that they're strong, take the initiative and do something reckless.

28:52And the examples that I came up with was Humsey Yusuf in Scotland. Rishi Sunak, I hope you agree with me that Rishi Sunak made the most cast astrophic decision. Oh, yeah, sure. I always thought that right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. This is not going well to put it mildly. And let me just explain, there's been some amazing, deep analysis in a lot of the French media. And by the way, or you talked about polls in relation to the UK, France is obsessed with opinion polls and they really have an impact during the campaign. And Alice, just before we take a steep, just remind us what it is that a manual macro has done for people who've not been focused too much on it.

29:28Just give us the basics. The French system, you have the president at the top, you have the national assembly that is elected separately and from the national assembly emerges a government. Because Macron's party did so badly in the European elections and the national front, the Hassan -Blauen National Marine Depends Party did so well getting over 30%. He decided the country has to face up to this choice, get serious and he's called a general election for the national assembly. So he's still got, he's going to be there till the rest of the term three more years. That's not in doubt, but there will be a new national assembly.

30:04And this is happening almost exactly the same terms to British election. Absolutely, there are two rounds, I'll explain the system in a minute, but there are two rounds and they go either side of the UK general elections. The first round is the 30th of June, the second round is July the 7th. There are 577 constituencies and it's a curious system where lots of candidates will stand in each constituency. If you go into the election and you get over 50 % of the vote, which hardly ever happens, you've won. If on the other hand, which happens in most constituencies, the winner gets a 38 and then the next one gets 32, they will go through to the next round.

30:43If any of the other candidates get 12 .5 % or above, which doesn't happen as often as you might think, but they will also go through and then they have a runoff. Just again to explain the logic to listeners, the point about this is that it means that you need to have a reasonable bit of the vote to make it through. You need 12 .5%. That's the way I think when it was designed, probably of excluding very small extremist parties that might be picking up 3 -4 % of the vote. Exactly. Now what's happened is that the small extremist parties have become big extremist parties and they are going to be in most of the runoffs.

31:17The figures on this are absolutely remarkable. When you drill down into the results in the European elections, the far right RN, Le Pen's party, they won in 93 % of French communes. Just trying to say, what do you mean they won in 93 % of French communes? What's the commune? A commune is like a dist, we would call it a district, so it's not a constituency, it's a district. But when you go through, most parts of France, in most parts of France, the Le Pen party won. Just again, the difference between that and Britain is that often, for example, for Russia's party will do very well in certain parts of the country, but not others.

31:57Maybe very well in places like Clackton, Leswell in London. Whereas what you're saying. You know, a scurrying. Yeah, exactly. But so based on this analysis, you've now got essentially three blocks because what's happened is you've got the far right, which is made up of national rassoublemon, Lesionneau, and this other smaller far right party called Ricanke, Ricanke, on the left side of things, four parties have come together to form a popular front. And they go from absolute out and out communist party, very, very hard left to the kind of old socialist party, social democrats, what have you, with greens and all that.

32:32And then in the middle, you've got Macron's Alliance, which is really struggling. Based on some modeling, which Le Figaro newspaper did, when we get to the second round, they believe that in 536 of these constituencies, the runoff is going to be between the hard right and the hard left. Macron's Alliance on the current analysis make just 41 constituencies. Le Ripebrike, which is the old Tory party, would make three. And we should say about, we said when you said straight away, you thought this was a terrible disaster. I said, what I thought he was trying to do was to sort of really shake things up and see how things fell.

33:12On the right of the party, you've had two amazing things have happened. Les Ripebrike, like I say, the old Tory party, is it worth? They're closest to that. Their leader, Chotti, immediately announced, well, the country's clearly moving right, we should move right with it. Let's do a deal. We're going to do a deal with Le Pen. The rest of his party went absolutely nuts. Literally stormed his office. He locked himself inside the office. They were banging on the door. And then once his critics have managed to get hold of either Twitter or Facebook, one or the other, he still has control of one. They have control of the others.

33:45He's got this social media account. Exactly. So this thing going on where one social media account is saying he's gone, he's no longer the leader. And then the other one is saying, oh yes, I am. I'm still here in my office. Just to pause on this for a second, because it's an amazing story. There's so many amazing stories in France. But step back for a moment, the background to this is that France was dominated, like most other countries in the world, by two big parties, the sort of centre -right party and the centre -left party. And these parties were shattered. And we can come back to this by this phenomenon which Matt Cross part of.

34:21So what happened in France is that as he burst through in the centre, you ended up instead of having a left -wing party and a right -wing party, you end up the centre party and then a pretty far right and a pretty far left. And the old parties that used to run France, as you say, the equivalents of Tories and Labour, collapsed. It's a bit more complicated than that. We can talk about someone coming back. But this party that we're talking about now, they Republican, was the party of General Google. This was like one of the really big established parties. And it's been totally shattered. I mean, as you say in the current polling, they might end up with four seats.

34:54They could end up with, you know, 6 .5 % of the vote. And one of the problems that they face. And this is why, you know, maybe British listeners might be interested in this, American listeners might be interested in this. As they've got squeezed, they're trying to work out whether they're going to have to lurch further to the right and make a pact with marrying Le Pen and the far right in order to get seats or whether they tack back to the centre. And this is partly about geography. Jotty, who's their leader, represents Lyra Pupica in the south and the south of place that needs tend to be more far right, more populist.

35:28But there's another bunch of his party members and MPs who represent sort of prosperous suburbs around Paris. So I suppose a little bit more like in the British context, Tory voters in the home counties who tend to be more centrist and they're horrified. It's like Bravaman V Hunt. Is that sort of exactly. And Jotty's decided he's going to go Bravaman. Become Bravaman and head off towards Le Pen and the other lot of storming. Okay, back to you. Just look, there's a couple of very well -known British political figures who are featuring quite large in the French elections. One of whom, with both of whom we've already mentioned, one is David Cameron and the other is Liz Truss.

36:04David Cameron's name keeps popping up because the commentary act has essentially decided that what Macron has done is the equivalent of Cameron deciding to have a referendum, which he thought would address a problem, which actually made the problem worse. And Liz Truss is featuring because Le Pen will be the presidential candidate, but the guy who will be prime minister if there's a Rassam Le Monde national government is this young charismatic guy, Jordan Bardela, who's only 28. And he is very, very smooth, very handsome, very, very good on social media. And as in Germany, quite a lot of young people backing him, all the TikTok bollocks and all that usual stuff.

36:43But what's interesting about there, the attack of the Macron people, Bruno Le Mère, the finance minister in particular, on the national front, on the RN party, is actually to say, if you go with these people and their unfunded tax cuts and their unfunded promises, you risk doing to France, what Liz Truss did to Britain, and the Truss Sidario is become a part of the French debate. And again, that was one of the things we mentioned that Macron wanted to do was to try to get more pressure put onto the national front and the Rassam Le Monde agenda. We'll come back and to asking you a little bit more about the detail of both this new left wing grouping and the centre.

37:25But once more, just to go through, there are different figures, but you know, that the poll that I saw has the far right, which is this man called Zimor and Maïchial, although she's now left on sort of 4%, and then Le Penz party, RN on about 31%. Le Republiquat, which is, as you say, the old Tours is shrunk down to 6 .5%, Macron, the president governing party, on about 18%, and then this new popular front, which is the left wing thing, getting up to 28%. So let's just talk about the new popular front for at the centre of it is a guy called Jean -Luc Menachon, who won 22 % in the presidential election, but did slightly less well in the European election.

38:08Formatrotzkyite, Euro -Skeptic, pretty pro -Russian, Luke Warman has support Ukraine. You know, I didn't condemn the October 7th of tax. What is he? Is this sort of Jeremy Corbyn figure? I'd say, I mean, he certainly, somebody who's very, he was very, very vocal in his support of Jeremy Corbyn and his policies, I think, particularly on foreign policy. He's actually, so his party, they call themselves France Unbowed, he's a very divisive kind of figure. What I'd love to be in a fly in the wall of the meetings that these guys had, because they had to sort of put together, you know, sort of policy proposals.

38:43And it goes from very, very hard left. And by the way, he's not the furthest out there, there are others. You know, the Communist Party of France is still, you know, it's still sort of bailing the drum, you got him, you got the greens, you've got the few other sort of ecological, there's a lot of candidates in this, this election. And then right up to the, you know, the kind of right wing of the old socialist party. So they're trying to sort of say, right, well, the only way we, we're now in a battle for the soul of the, the future of the country and it's between us and the hard right. And Macron risks being completely squeezed out.

39:17And if that analysis is right and he ends up, his party ends up only in 41 of the 500 almost 600 constituencies, that is a total disaster. And even if, even if we weren't for more optimistic pulses, a more optimistic pulse suggests you might get 90 seats, Republican, RN, the far right might get 220, the left might get 150. Yeah. So then in that case, the RN then have to make a coalition. Right. But it's still crushing for Macron. And I think it means that he's, it means that he's absolutely broken the mold. And then had the mold smashed in a decade. And if we go back to the, the oddity of the logic of this, I mean, you said because the far right got double the number of votes that he did in the European elections, he decided to trigger an election when he put it like that.

40:06It sounds a bit weird, right? It's crazy. We're going to talk about football and politics now. I'm in Berlin. I was in Munich for the Scotland game, but in a few other games, did the rest of his football check it out? But we're going to talk about the, that relationship between politics and football. And that will involve actually starting in France because some of the very interesting is going on with the French squad in the European Championships. Last night, Kylian and Bappe, who you may have heard of Rory, who's one of the most famous footballers on the planet, he did a very, very, very impressive, quite emotional appeal or purple policy to the French people, urging them to take this election really, really seriously to understand that the country was in peril.

40:51Yeah, for those of us who are watching, and those of you who aren't watching, Alice was sitting in, there's the most enormous room I've ever seen since I last watched. Is that guy that used to do lifestyles the rich and famous on Telly? Well, I'm actually sitting in a rather splendid apartment, which turned out to be very good value for money for the, for the rest is politics and the rest is football team, who are here in Berlin for the Euros. Gary Linnecker, and Alan Shire and Michael Richards, you may know, as well as doing the rest is football, they also work for an organisation called the BBC.

41:25But this is very much goal hanger territory, and it is very, very nice. I could show you the bedrooms where I could show you the sauna. Amazing. I could show you the lovely roof terrace looking out over the Bundesland. But before you make us all jealous, though, let's, let's try to sort of flip this around and get us from football and think, one thing that's very striking for me, Alice, that is talking to you and getting a chain of what's perhaps every minute. It seems as though half the people who ought to be running their countries in this very difficult economic time, it'd be found in the football stadium with you watching football.

41:57You spend all your time being like, oh, I just spoke to an EU commissioner, and then I saw you chasing with your, your amazing instrument of war, the Hungarian Prime Minister around the stands. Tell us a little bit about that. I did. So I actually, I should apologise to you, Afer, because it was a breach of their rules to smuggle the instrument of war into the stadium. But several of us managed to do. I think there were about, I heard about four different sets of backpipes around the stadium. I got mine in. I said, I was with some, some friends from Scotland, and I said, if Scotland's score, I will get the pipes out and I will play them.

42:30And the fact that Scotland's scored an own goal by, by German, wireless losing four nil. I nonetheless did get the backpipes out. Therefore, Orban, who was sitting a few rows behind me, was aware of my presence. And that broke the ice. So at the end of the game, it was very strange, because everybody else sort of went out of, he was in the kind of, you know, the V, I was in the VIP, but he was VVIP. And he, they all went out. He sort of stayed on his own, whether he's looking for the camera or he didn't want to go and talk to people. So I just thought, right, I'll show Rory Stewart how you get people on the podcast, right?

43:09So I went up, he said something about my backpipes. And did you know him? Did he know who you were? I don't know if he did, but he was very, he was actually very warm and welcoming until we got into the sort of depths of the conversation. I just said, look, you know, I used to work for Tony Blair and we did meet once, you may remember me not, and he sort of nodded and pretended. And I now present the podcast with a former conservative and it's the most popular podcast in the country. And I just think it'd be good for you to explain yourself to an international audience. So I basically said to him, do you think you're really, she's good enough?

43:44And that sort of said, well, I think she's quite good. I could understand what he's saying there. And he says, well, you know, I'm not saying, no, I'm not saying, yes, I mean, which I took as a no. He basically said, I'm not big on doing foreign media and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, I think you've got some very interesting ideas, which I would really, really like to test. Well, on this UA for thing, just very quickly, what's going on security? I turned up to watch the World Cup and catch up with my restless politics recording equipment with me. So I came straight from the airport.

44:13And as you know, when we record, we travel around with these little microphones and things. And I was immediately stopped. I wasn't allowed into the game because my little restless politics microphone, I guess they were worried was going to be some sort of sound broadcasting equipment. So how did you manage to get him with your bag, Pops? Charm. Charm. There was a guy on the gate. And also, Roy speaking the language helps. I said to him, I know the rules, but listen, you know, this is a once in a lifetime. Scotland never qualified for major tournaments. It's like, come on, have a heart. I'm not going to say what your gate it was because then you might get in trouble.

44:44He said, I'm going in. In you go. And then I go in. And once you're in, you know, you're in. So yeah, I played Scotland, the brave. And then I had a wonderful time on the today program because they asked me to play them out on the program. And they were expecting me to play Flora Scotland. And I played Ode to Joy. And I stopped just short of the Pips so that Amor Rajan had to come in and sort of explain what the hell was going on. So just more seriously though, in the margins of these things, I hope the justification for this is not just Alistair Love's football, but that you're also in addition to Orban meeting European commissioners, you're having a chance to to hog knob with the the grain, the good.

45:22Given this is a sense, is there any sense at all given this is all happening in Germany that people are concerned about what's just happening with German elections? We just talked about French elections, German elections, the AFD, which makes, you know, Suela Braviman look moderate. I mean, this is a proper party with proper kind of proto -neonazies in it, has just crushed Olive Schultz the chance to the ruling party in the election, particularly in East Germany, very dramatic in the elect, all the way down East Germany. What's your sense given the Urine Germany and given presumably a reading Germany's paper, assistant's Germany's on how people are reacting to that result?

45:59Obviously it depends who you talk to, a bit like our reform friend on the train. You do meet people, I had a chat the other day yesterday in a cafe with this guy who was, you know, former Christian Democrat, basically, he was the lion, he basically said, I think, conventional politics has failed us, the Ample III, you know, the three -part coalition is not delivered and I just think we've got to show you things up, that was his kind of line. If you talk to most of the people in that sort of, you know, VIP bit, they're all pretty horrified at what's going on, but they understand that the concerns that are being expressed are real.

46:37One quick thing on that, which I picked up in Italy over the last couple of days, is a strong feeling that Europe is now going to row back from a lot of its green commitments. The green party was crushed. The sort of center rice is probably going to continue to dominate the European Commission, the parliament, but this is going to mean that almost certainly Europe is going to get out of its current commitments to electric vehicles. It's going to back out of a loss of the stuff that it's trying to do on net zero. And that's going to matter, matters immensely for global climate in the world, matters a lot for European industry, but it's also going to potentially put the Labour Party in Britain in a very interesting position if and when they win the election, which is that they will have to then decide if Europe suddenly starts pushing out its ideas on electric vehicles and net zero.

47:29Is a new government in Britain going to try to hold on to those old commitments, or is it going to let them slide as Europe lets them slide? Well, I'm sure you and I hope that they do hold on, but I agree that is a very big part of the debate. I think a lot of this is about Trump. I've been shocked at the extent to which the far right have been able to weaponize this issue. Again, I think it's actually the very, very wealthy Uber elite who are driving this, but pretending that it's about sort of helping, you know, working class people. The other person I met, Rory, who I have to say, pretty splendid and a killed, was John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland.

48:04And he was there and I said, I mean, that's quite a thing, taking a day out of the campaign, in fact, two days because he had to come out of the table. But as you point out, our country doesn't qualify that often. Correct. And also, I guess the other thing he said, looking at his social medium, he did spend the whole time going around the squares where there were hundreds of, over a hundred thousand scots were in Munich. And he really was kind of working the crowds and going around and talking to people and so forth. I hope he doesn't think I'm speaking out of turn here, but I had a chat with him about, you know, his thoughts of the election.

48:36I mean, he wasn't hiding the fact that the SMPs, you know, up against it. He thinks he has managed to stabilize things quite well, but clearly there is going to be an increase in labor support. But also, it was interesting how he actually, he said, you know, the main thing that's driving every in this election is just the desire to see the back of this government. And he was saying that he really, really, really hopes that if there is a labor government, that one of the consequences will be the ability to have a proper grown -up relationship between the UK government and the Scottish government.

49:07And I think as we said, probably the most interesting thing the Labour manifesto is around this question of devolution. Correct. How do you give more power? So listen, we're both you and I on the side of trying to make democracy work. I mean, as a glimpse of the blinding obvious, but making democracy work in a world of kind of authoritarian strong men and women. So your friend Victor Albanan, and remember, Maloney and Italy, who's from the far right, an Italian Prime Minister is not very powerful, but a French president, if the pen becomes the French president, really has power in France, really has power in the European Union.

49:41I mean, that's a big game changer. So as we fight for democracy, past of the fight, is about making democracy work and partly it's about getting democracy closer to people. So that's I think why talking about getting the right relationship with Scotland, getting the great relationship with directly elected mayors and Britain, giving proper financial power back down to these local areas, is going to be part of trying to save democracy because at the moment, too many people are saying, well, you know, look at China, look at Saudi Arabia, what we need is a dictatorship to deliver economic growth and investment.

50:13I think the thing about what I really hope in the first, you know, probably the first few days of a Labour government that if and when they win, that that care does sort of reach out to John Swini, to the leadership in Northern Ireland, to leadership in Wales, and signal that putting that back on a mature footing is an important thing. To more, we interviewed Mark Drakeford, the former leader in Wales, Labour leader in Wales, yeah, was yeah. And you know, with the stories he was telling us about, his inability, even to get, not just to get a phone call to Boris Johnson, but like, you know, with, with anybody serious and senior in the UK government because there actually was, leave it to us, we're big, you all, it will go away.

50:49These relationships are very difficult. I remember when I was the minister for justice trying to deal with the mayor of London's office, and it was really interesting to me, I was trying to come, in this particular case, I'm afraid I was trying to come in a pretty constructive fashion saying, we're going to do stuff around electronic tagging so that we don't have to send 70 people to prison and we're going to want to do this stuff on life crime. And I realised that essentially the deputy mayor in Citiqun's administration in London just saw me as a Tory. She did not want to have that kind of constructive conversation.

51:25She wanted to sit down with me and say, you've screwed us over, this is austerity, and she was thinking about our meeting as a press release to hit the Tories. And I think the challenge often in trying to get this relationship right between central government and devolved government, doesn't matter what's the, whether it's Scotland or London, is trying to get people to be a bit less political. This is why people get a chance to listen to our leading interview with the two Andy, Sandy Burnham and Andy Street. What I loved about them is that both of them were quite non -political, they were quite practical, quite good about really thinking about constructive things, and the thing that slightly worries me a bit about the S &P, and I dealt with them quite a lot too, is there were oftentimes where I felt they couldn't quite resist getting the political jab in, even if you were trying to be constructive and open.

52:13Well, all I can say is that next time I bump into Keir on walking the dog, I sure, in fact, I'll be honest, I already have passed on, that John Swinney is very, very keen for a productive cooperative relationship, that he, Nicholas Durge and Alex Salmond never felt that they were able to get with the Conservative government. Now, Rory, I'm going to put your political judgment to the test. Okay, I'm sure you've got your wall chart at home for the Euros. Yeah, absolutely. So you've probably worked out already, Rory, that England, who are, let me let you in on the secret, are going to qualify for the knockout phase, they will play the quarter final, probably on July the 6th.

52:56So July the 4th is the election, July the 5th, let's say a new Prime Minister takes office in Downey Street. If you were that new Prime Minister, Rory Stewart, would you feel that you should go to that football match on July the 6th in Germany to support England? It's all about authenticity, it's all about who you are and your interests in the world. So if it's Rory Stewart becoming Prime Minister, who knows absolutely screw all about football and has made it clear that all he's interested in is the geeky business of trying to get on with running the government. And Pots. No, I wouldn't be there.

53:29If only you are, you are, Alistair, as Prime Minister, then I think it would be completely on brand and you guys make great patriotic play. I suppose, Colin. I'm trying to think of a football supporting Prime Minister. What about if you were Rishi Sudak or Kislam? Well, Rishi Sudak, I'd say don't go because you're only hope as Rishi Sudak is to try to sell yourself as the geeky details guy who's running his sleeves. I'm trying to worry about the budget. Maybe if you're Kislam, and you've just won an enormous victory, you might say I'm going to fly over very briefly, show that I'm somebody who can connect, relate, I'm really proud of where England's got.

54:05I'll be with them for a short time and then I'll get back to the day job. What do you reckon? I can see the argument for that, but I think I would advise against. I think that if you just want to campaign by saying the countries in a mess, we've got to roll our sleeves up, really work out, get it done. I do what we did last night, which is watching it in a pub with Angela Rainer, allow people to post a few social media pictures. Definitely go to the final if they get to that. I think people would expect that even if it was Rishi Sudak's Prime Minister to be able to do that. If they were playing France, you'd be able to.

54:34What is the final? I mean, Macron might not be there. I mean, I know Macron will still be there. So you can sit with Macron if it was England and France or shots. It was England, Germany. All right, Roy, we'll have pleasure as always. Let's do it. You do a last plug for July the 4th, the night of the election coverage on Channel 4. You and I, up all night, Emily Maikless, Colin Loss, as usual, showing his incredible stamina. He will have been up at 6am, bathing in freezing water, and then he'll be up right the way to you. Actually, you'll be really annoyed because it'll be the first time you miss your 6am morning swim because you'll have to be with us till 9am in the morning.

55:09The only thing I've got in the rider is no noisy snacks anywhere near me, no crisps, no biscuits, lots of fruit, lots of sparkling water, and a lido in the studio. A lido in the studio. Or just an ice bath that you can put yourself in for 10 minutes. Actually, that's a good idea. That is a good idea. Good. See you soon. See you soon. Bye -bye.