283. Did Reform UK create a fake general election candidate?

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1:05Welcome to TheRestlessPolitics .com. It's Question Time with me, Aster Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, Josh Whitticom seems to have started a trend. He sent us a question recently about new prime ministers and sleep. And now Joe Lyset, another very, very, very, very funny man, who you may remember once lit up the Law Rikunzburg programme by pretending to be a massive supporter of Lysetrust. And I think he may be taking the piss out of us a little bit now, but let's see. His question is as follows. Hi, Aunt, hi, Deck. I love TheRestlessPolitics .com. You guys are the best. Now, my question is, now that Lysetrust has gone, I feel politically homeless.

1:44No one entirely aligns with my views on the world as she did. How do I, another people who feel that none of the options are entirely satisfactory, make a decision who to vote for. Do you vote with the best interests of others at heart or vote for the most vulnerable in society? Or is the some other approach? Do let me know. Lots of love. Bye. So, Rory, what would you do if your light Joe Lyset pretends to be a real supporter of Lysetrust? Where do you go now? Well, well, let's assume we were taking it seriously. This would then be a question from those Tory party members who were very angry that Rishi Sunaik came in, like Nadine Doris, who we were on with in Channel 4, felt that Boris Johnson was the great hero of the party and that Lysetrust was this great successor.

2:32The other people who'd probably follow would be the Daily Mail, who also think that Conservative parties gone too far to the left. Or Andrew Neal, who I just did a big interview with, who kept saying to me that the Tory party's massively left -wing and needs to become more right -wing. So, what are these guys supposed to do? Probably they're supposed to either vote for reform or they're trying to get behind Kemi Badnark or Swela Bravaman or Priti Patel in the forthcoming Tory leadership election. Obviously, I very much hope that the view is defeated because I think if you look at the maths, we lost more seats, many more seats to the Lib Dems, the Conservatives than they did to reform.

3:10And therefore, you cannot possibly win by just trying to appeal to reform voters. So, maybe Joe Lyset should go off and start to pretend to be a massive supporter of Nigel Farage and Leanderson. That would be a good apology. I can't see him doing much with the current Tory contenders. Now, talking of reform, Tom asks this question, do you think reform will be able to prove that all of their candidates in the election were real people? Are you aware of this story? I saw the headline in the Guardian, but tell us a little bit about this. Well, essentially, the story is that there was this amazing picture of one of their candidates.

3:47And it looked like, you know, there's sort of 1960s movie posters where film stars just looked like they were kind of made out of clay. Well, this guy, his hair looked fake, his eyes look fake, his skin looks fake. And it turns out, so somebody run this story, I think it's private eye, broke this story. Are they actually fielding fake candidates? Which by the way, is a criminal offence. So this is why this is more serious than just a bit of a joke. The guy has now come and said, yes, I am a real person, but I did use AI to create the picture because we didn't have time to get together with a rosette and the right backdrops and so forth.

4:27But I wonder, because if you think about the reform party's famous vetting company was paid much the disgust of rise of rise, they paid 144 ,000 pounds to a company that didn't actually vet anybody. Did they actually, in the vetting process, were there a few people who actually thought, you know, we need, we need candidates in seats where we've got no chance of winning, which is get them on the ballot box so that we can add up all the votes and have a greater vote share. So at the moment, before we're going along saying we had a million votes for MP, maybe some of them were for fake candidates.

5:01Yeah, well, my guess is that what we'll turn out is that they weren't fake candidates, but that they were a pretty ropey bunch of people who will then turn out to not have been properly vetted as we know. But we'll see how this develops. I suspect they're real people, they're just real people who have nothing to do with those constituencies. So they leave for it, Jen, and probably everybody's nephews, cousins, interns, and anyone they could stick in. In which case, Rory, Mr Farage, the party's owner and Mr Tyse, the party's bankroller, I think they should give a fair and reputable newspaper like the Guardian access to the full candidate's list, and just say, right, here we go, here they are, and this is a dress going toward them.

5:40The reason they're not doing that is presumably I think not that they're AI, but that half them are unbelievably embarrassing and that I can't really want to see who they put up as their paper candidates last night. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't, didn't, Shultz, you've talked quite a bit about Palestine. Could you please talk about the countries and the conflicts and what piece we need in other areas, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, etc. So this is something else that you've done quite a lot of, which is to remind people of the fact that the world is getting more and more dangerous, and we're reporting on it less and less.

6:14So it talks it, remind people a little bit about Sudan, and then I maybe can do a bit on Myanmar. Well, Sudan is probably the worst conflict anywhere at the world at the moment, if you actually measure it by people displaced, scale of violence, and this is a, we talked in some length about the actual, the issues a few weeks ago, but I think there's a, we used to talk about the CNN factor in politics, where what CNN, when CNN became the first sort of big global news media organisation, if CNN were reporting something, the politicians kind of took it seriously. And I find it remarkable how the world's media is, I mean, I'm in this hotel in Istanbul, last night was channel hopping.

7:00You can literally get hundreds and hundreds of TV channels for all around the world, you know, watching news, and you can very, very quickly spot that there are two or three big stories happening at any one time. But that's it. Al Jazeera, to be fair to them, they have continued to feature all of the three that we're talking about here, but very, very, very few do. And the result is, of course, for a normal listener, that you just don't get a sense of whether things have improved or got worse. So you get a snapshot. I mean, things that you follow closely, let's say France, if you hadn't been concentrating, you'd get the idea that the far right were about to sweep and then it would turn out, they came third, but in the equivalence of Sudan or Myanmar, you never get the second bit of the story.

7:43You never know how the whole thing actually turned out. So, look, we talk about a lot on the program about Israel and Palestine. We talk quite a lot and we could do even more on Russia Ukraine. And I think we should really push to try to get an interview with President Svansky and try to get out to Ukraine. Sudan has actually changed a bit since we spoke, but nobody's obviously following it. People remember that basically it's a standoff between two factions, a man called Ghorhan, who represents the old Sudanese armed forces and against him, a man called Hamedi, who used to be associated with the Janger, we've militia.

8:20And when we were reporting last, they were driving east Hamedi's forces. But in fact, they didn't get as far as people thought. There's been a slight standoff there. There's a lot of horror going on around the Darfur region. Still, Khartoum, the capital city, is basically completely uninhabitable. I mean, it looks like some of those images you see of Gaza. It's just sort of a total or Berlin at the end of the war. It's beyond imagining. Very complicated politics of different, Middle East and countries, particularly in African countries, supporting different sides. So the UAE continuing to funnel supplies into Hamedi through Chad, well denying it.

9:02It's very sad when these peace talks happen in places like Geneva, UAE are like, what are you talking about? Despite the fact that we know have satellite imagery of their planes landing, the military supplies being unloaded. There's two things going on there. One is the impunity that now goes in a lot of diplomacy with saying things that aren't true. And one of the reasons for that relates to the point in the question, which is that we don't have the journalists there either with the access or the resources or the know -how and the wherewithal to explain what's happening. I just, while you were talking Sudan war and clicked on news.

9:43And I mentioned Al Jazeera, the top story is a day old. What's Sudan like after 15 months of war displacement and brutality? That's Al Jazeera. The next one is two days old from Arab news, Cairo conference, Urges and Media End to Sudan war. We then into BBC, three weeks ago it says Sudan conflict, millions face starvation. CNN is the next two weeks ago, NBC news three weeks ago, Voice of America one week ago, and Vatican news four days ago. Be interested to know when the UK papers properly report it less. And the change is very dramatic. So when I was in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, back in the day, so we're now going back, or even Indonesia in the 90s, there was a very, very large foreign press corps who I would ever place I turned up in.

10:36Marie Colvin would be there with her eye patch, John the Anderson from New Yorker. But there would also be some very regular correspondence from the big UK newspapers. Obviously in New York Times correspondence, people like Carlisle Goul. And Anthony Lloyd, who's an amazing Times correspondent, very, very courageous, I mean almost a recklessly courageous Times correspondent who's just got back from Afghanistan this week. But that, my goodness is dying. And part of it is the way in which newspaper editors in the UK now use data on how much an article has shared to decide what they want to print.

11:10So we talked about this with friend of mine who was an Africa correspondent. As soon as he added to start looking at how much articles are read and shared, it turns out that doing reporting on what's still going on. So the question is about conflicts and the answers in Africa alone. There are conflicts at the moment in the Central African Republic, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in South Sudan, in Sudan itself, of course, ongoing in Somalia, an ongoing conflict in a loss of the Sahel, where these military coups have happened and Democratic governments have been toppled. But what he found is that if he did a report on new discoveries on Neanderthals or early hominids, suddenly, everybody wants to share stuff about early human evolution in Africa.

11:54Nobody wants to share anything on conflict in Africa. And the result is the editors just say, we'll stop giving a story on that. We're not going to think about the expenses. We're not going to buy a flight for you to fly to Eastern Congo because nobody's going to read the story. That's why journalism has to be about not just about profit and not just about ratings. It has to be, we have to rediscover somehow the role of it being educative and informative about things that really matter to the world. And if the whole world gets to a place where we just don't care about these places, I think we become less serious and we become less civilized.

12:32While you were talking there, I just had a quick look at that, top story, the Al Jazeera one. What's Sudan like after 15 months of war displacement and brutality? And the figures of starvation and of death are absolutely horrific. And you know, you do, there is no this sort of hierarchy of suffering. And listen, at the moment, you know, we have Israel, Gaza, Russia, Ukraine as you said. But you mentioned Zelensky. Zelensky still has to fight so hard to keep the story at the front of world leaders. And of course, help by Putin, you know, dropping bombs where we then have pictures of children being, you know, massacred in while they're undergoing chemotherapy.

13:17Which is why communication is simple. And that's of course one of the geniuses of Zelensky, he's an extraordinary communication and charismatic performer. But you're absolutely right. What the world chooses to pay attention to has always been very, very arbitrary. It's not that we step back and look in absolute terms at the exact numbers of people being killed or whose impoverty. It's very, very random. And this is true in so many things. I just did a British museum debate. British museum very kindly posted a debate, which was partly about the Elgan marbles. But what I suddenly struck me is that even then there, we just talk about certain things like the Elgan marbles and the Benin bronzes.

13:58And we don't talk about, you know, 2 ,000 other objects that we might be talking about. And that's largely because of effective communicators hammering their message again. And again, I mean, communications has never been so central Myanmar, just to finish. Burma. There, people remember the lady Al -Nsansuqi was toppled in a military coup, a military hunter is in place, military government again. And brutal fighting. So that's both on the fringes of the country, which are these minority areas in the hills, you know, more ethnic groups like the Shahn Kachin Keren, Rakhine, whether Rohingya, of course, is you, you remember.

14:33But also known central Burma where there are a lot of more kind of progressive democratic minded young Burmese demonstrating continually against the military using 3D printing to make weapons. The military seems to stabilize the area of sort of Yangon up to Napier -Dor. But it's terrifying how far Burma is going backwards and how little, you know, the US and China, for example, are really doing to stabilize that situation. And that's why we need an American president who can communicate because it's not just about, I mean, this is the problem with Biden. It's not just about running things day to day, having a good team.

15:10It's about having the charisma and the communication skills if you're going to get involved in peacework over you. Well, let's stay broad. Karmaf Taylor, South Africa election impact. And this is a good example where we talked a lot about the election as it was happening. But the question is, what has been the impact of the recent South Africa election because we haven't sort of revisited that? I mean, it has been very interesting. We said at the time, it's first time ever that the ANC have not won a kind of, you know, an overall majority. So Ramaphosa, President Roe -Selr Ramaphosa, has had to put together a coalition.

15:43He's unveiled a cabinet of 32, which is pretty large for a cabinet. The ANC have got 20 positions. Yep. And the Democratic Alliance, which came second in the election, they have got six. Their leader was appointed as agriculture minister. The leaders of four other parties were also named ministers. So this is a totally different way of governing South Africa. It would be very, very, very interesting to see how it works. Yeah. And to take a step back, we were pretty gloomy about South African election. And actually, this is the better result than people thought. So people assumed that what he would do is try to reunite the ANC, which would mean reaching out to pretty far left groups and also reaching out to Jacob Zuma, his former rival.

16:34And it seemed unlikely that he would reach out to the DA, which is a sort of more center -right, progressive free market party, which the traditional ANC has often characterized as a white party. Actually, not totally fairly. I mean, it does have a lot of white voters and white representatives, which also got a lot of black voters. But the assumption was political reality would mean that he would end up going to a less and less realistic, more nationalist, populist position. Instead of which, he's made the rather brave decision of reaching out to the DA, very difficult negotiations about roles they take, but a good direction for South Africa.

17:13So here, the fact that we're not following South African, updating people means that people are missing out on good news. Yeah. Okay. All right. Quick break, and then we'll have more questions.

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19:38Now here's one from Mushroom 3D. Great name. How much does something as strenuous as election night affect an MP's mental health? Watching what happened to Jess Phillips got me very emotional. I can't imagine how hard it was for her even if she is tough. Did you find, when you were running as a, as a candidate, did you, did you find an impact on your mental health? No, I found the big impact is the day to day grind the gap between the expectations, research, the public and what you actually deliver that you're just disappointing, allowing people down all the time. I think what Jess went through was particularly horrible.

20:15I mean, for people who didn't watch that, she was one of a number of labor MPs who got caught up in very, very strong campaigns by people who felt that Kirstama had not angry about Kirstama's position on Gaza. And this ended up with her being shouted at by a group of men at the count but also a text beforehand. I mean, what was your sense there watching that? I thought she was very emotional. I mean, look, Jess has got to wear her on the sleeves. She's a very emotional person. And I think she's, you know, you talked earlier about charisma and communication. Jess is a terrific communicator. And this was the whole Galloway Workers Party lot who were just vile to her, vile to her staff, vile to the people campaigning for her.

21:00These are the same people that in Batley and Spen, when Joe Cox's sister, Kim Leadbetter was standing to replace Joe Cox. The Galloway's mob were up there during the time when Joe, when Kim was sort of forced to sort of take refuge away from them. It's some really horrible stuff going on. And I thought it was, it was interesting on the night how many people, I think, were touched by Jess for that speech. But then there was this discussion about there should be some sort of, I'm by the way, I know that Lindsey Hoyle, the speaker, is kind of obsessed about this issue of MPs safety. There was another candidate who became an MP, who reported that, you know, the day after he'd been elected, his home had been smashed up with a sledgehammer.

21:46You know, it's not when I talked to my sister, you know, as you know, my nephew got elected. And my sister's like, you know, worried about, you know, why do people put themselves up for this and what have you? And that's a real danger when people think, you know, you shouldn't put yourself forward. So I think the mental health point candidates, campaigns are unbelievably tiring. And I was pleased by the way, Marie, that a lot of the MPs, although my Twitter feed, honestly, could have, if there was one more picture of a new MP getting onto the train to say, heading to Westminster, looking forward to represent XXX, will give my all, et cetera, the hundreds of them.

22:23But I thought it was interesting how many spoke about, they did feel they had a sort of proper induction process. So maybe things have changed since you were first elected. That's very encouraging. I mean, there's some great young MPs coming in, actually, really, I mean, of course, most of them coming on the Labour side run because Conservatives lost so many seats. And some of the really talented Conservative candidates sadly didn't make it in a World Tana, Richard Harrison, who would have been great additions. Don't forget the Lib Dems Roy, the Lib Dems, who's strategy worked, giving the record number.

22:55Absolutely. And the Greens, you know, really interesting, really interesting development. But no, I mean, there's some really great Labour candidates, young Labour candidates who come in. I wonder whether we couldn't do a leading interview with, um, three or four of the new candidates and get a sort of representation of new MPs coming in. Here's a slightly geeky question, which I just like to deal with because people often ask it, we don't do it, Stuart Bertie, please can you explain the national debt? How much is it? How much did it grow? Is it even important? Um, so the national debt, which is at the amount that the country's borrowed and needs to pay back is usually expressed in relation to the gross domestic product.

23:40So, you know, how much the country produces in a year. And the European Union tried to have very strict rules about the relationship between those things. And in the UK, from the sort of time of sort of late that through major, through Tony Blair, you know, it kind of hovered between the sort of 30, 40 % and then the financial crisis hit. It exploded after the financial crisis up to about 80%. The Conservatives made this one of their big objectives to try to bring it down, but they didn't make much impact. By about 2017, 18, they got it down from 80 % to maybe kind of 70, something percent. And then it's shot up again with COVID and Ukraine.

24:23And it's now over 100 % of GDP. So 101 % of GDP, $2 .7 billion. But the real problem with it is not the debt. It's the deficit, which is the amount that we borrow additional every year. So we keep adding another 40 billion to it every year. That's the problem that Labor governments inherited. And of course, interest payments are much higher. So people used to say back in the day, oh well, there's money matter because it's very low interest so the government can borrow a lot of money, pay for big infrastructure projects and make its money back. But we've now entered a more high interest rate environment.