298. Question Time: Venezuela’s fate, Hezbollah’s response, and how prisoner swaps really work

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1:50Welcome to the RESTSIS Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, I was to gamble. Alistair, I'd like to start you in Venezuela. So you've had us talking quite a lot about Venezuela and we've done some really, I think, quite interesting stuff. On Ugo Chavez and on Maduro and what's been happening to the Saudi Arabia of Latin America. I mean, Venezuela literally with bigger proof and oil reserves since Saudi Arabia. And now a very poor country with enormous number of refugees. Larger to government or mismanagement. But here's a question of Edward Freeman for you. You've covered Venezuela in political history in recent weeks, including the rather dodgy reelection Maduro.

2:25But I was struck the effects of US sanctions when almost on remark when you discuss the Chavez years in particular. No doubt you're aware of the leftist counter narrative suggesting that if the Americans who let face it have form in this area hadn't turned their back against Venezuela, it would have continued to say it along as successfully, if accentrically as other petro states. Do you think there's anything in that at all? And then finally Anita and Suati, what powers do election observers such as the Carter set to have following the evident breaches to democracy in Democratic law in Venezuela?

2:56Can Maduro be forced out? So a couple of things for you there. I'm going to say the second one first, because I think the election observing issue is fundamental to the fallout since the election. So as people record from our previous discussions, Maduro was facing reelection. They did all the tricks in the banning candidates, confusing the public. We posted a picture last week of the candidates, the presidential candidates list. It was absolutely incredible, about 13 pictures of Maduro. A couple of pictures of Gonzalez is a opponent and you had really hard to work out how you actually voted for him.

3:33And yet this guy was 40 % Maduro, 40 % sometimes more behind in the polls and suddenly pops up the winner. The Americans have said they don't really accept the result. Very, very few people do. But the truth is hardly any election observers were there and those that were there have said they found it very, very difficult to follow what was going on. All of which adds to this picture of an election that was neither free nor fair. That then takes us back to question one. I suppose on that one on sanctions. I mean, you should maybe talk about, we were talking about sanctions on the main podcast. And there's always an argument about whether sanctions actually damage the government that you were trying to damage is opposed to the people that you're maybe trying to help.

4:16And that can cut both ways. I think the American government would have been hard pressed not to use sanctions at some point as they're kind of army against what they saw as a threat to them. Just quickly coming on that. So I think, as we discussed, there are many problems going on in Venezuela. Massive overspending and borrowing by the government. Volatility in global oil prices anyway. The prices jumped up and down on the Venezuelan budget doesn't adjust. That's far too dependent on oil. Huge amounts of corruption, cronism, you know, crazy projects. This is a famous project that they built which was an overhead railroad in the capital city, which barely ran a mile and a half and cost them hundreds of millions was the sort of iconic picture of Chavez that is most eccentric and mad.

5:02So yes, definitely US sanctions, particularly the oil sanctions, have had a negative impact, but they only have an impact because of the grotesque mismanagement to the Venezuelan economy. And it's over -dependent son oil in the first place. I think the other thing it's worth doing though within the context of that is looking at who's got a vested interest in Maduro hanging on. I mean, surprise, surprise Donald Trump has been pretty positive about Maduro because he sees another strong man leader who thinks that strong men leaders shouldn't have to deal with irresistence like electors. Although that's confusing because it was during the Trump administration to a lot of the sanctions were imposed and Marco Rubio has been very anti -Maduro.

5:39Absolutely. No, Trump on the way as president was pretty tough on Venezuela. But now that Maduro has kind of trying to cling onto an election that he's clearly lost, he thinks this is a good sign of a good leader. I mean, who are there sort of remaining allies? Cuba, they get a lot of their energy from Venezuela. Russia needless to say because Venezuela causes all sorts of problems for the region. I think Colombia probably has a kind of pretty slightly facing two ways on this one. We're on the one hand, they want regional stability and all the rest of it. But if Maria and Karina Machado in a free and fair election would have won it, would they want her necessarily has been the big cheese around the place?

6:21Turkey pops up again. I would say is a bit of a supporter. China's got massive debt issues there. I mean, it's lent an incredible amount of money to Venezuela. Her really bad heart on the Venezuelan economy has been losing a lot of money in Venezuela. So it's very, you know, there's a lot of Chinese economic interest tied in. Yeah, my China has begun to ride around the world. But it's interesting how some of the Latin American governments have been trying to take a much more robust approach with China in relation to some of these investments, but not Venezuela. They have a pretty free reign I would argue there.

6:56And then you got Brazil, which again is sort of, you know, I think slightly confused in its position of these Venezuela. So you've got all these different powers that aren't necessarily as keen on the sort of transition that we might think would be obvious for Venezuela to take. Well, and then the question I guess going forward for the Lessons the Podcast is does Maduro survive? So we've just been talking in the main episode about Bangladesh, where a strong authoritarian leader was eventually toppled by protests. So obviously, if Maduro were to flee the country, we would all feel well that's inevitable and we'd be able to tell the story of all the mismanagement over the last few years.

7:39But equally, it's perfectly possible that he can hang on just as the Iranian regime has managed to hang on and defy expectations for more than 40 years. And a lot of this, I think, comes down to security forces, doesn't it? I mean, we've speculated in Bangladesh that maybe the military event she suggested that it was time to move on. Will the security forces remain loyal to Maduro if they do its remarkable how long these regimes can hang on despite massive public opposition? And then of course, you know, we were talking about the Taliban last episode, which I guess the majority of the Afghan population do not support and yet have sort of completely unchallenged authority over the entire country.

8:15Joe Loris, during your time in politics, have you ever been involved in a prisoner exchange deal with another country? And if so, how did it work? Who's involved in prisoner exchange deal? We're involved in obviously a big thing in the Northern Ireland process of prisoner release, which was, I guess, a different version of the same thing that you were in making the decision about who was being released and who wasn't. You were, I guess, balancing competing interests. But this obviously refers to the recent deal done between America and the Biden and Russia under Putin. What did you make of that, Rory?

8:48I felt, I don't know, I felt very, very uncomfortable, I think, really, really happy that people who should not be in jail in the first place in Russia were out, very, very happy for them. I was interested in actually one of them is of course the Wall Street journalist who's been there for quite a while. And the Wall Street Journal wrote in the tutorial that essentially, I was quite pleased if a bit surprised to see echoing my concerns, essentially saying that this does kind of give a green light to Vladimir Putin to take any of the wants in the future, knowing that people will be desperate to do deals to get back the kind of people he got back, like this, we've talked before about the German, the headman in Germany, who's serving a pretty long sentence in Germany for wiping people out in Germany on behalf of Vladimir Putin.

9:39And he's now back home able to plan his next mission. Yeah, it's an interesting one isn't it? I mean, it's been heralded by certain bits to the US media as an amazing last victory for Biden. Yeah. And talking about the role that Germany played in helping to facilitate it and talking about the fact that Alexei Navalny was meant to be one of the people that was going to be swapshood in this exchange. But as you've pointed out, it feels a bit as though Russia has got back some pretty GPS characters, credit card fraudsters, international spies, and the Americans have got back people who probably shouldn't have been locked up in the first place.

10:13So yeah, I'm a bit skeptical about this. And I imagine if you're Putin, you feel that you probably got the right hand of the deal. There's also we should put in the in the newsletter. We would do it. It's such an amazing but quite complicated story. But this story about these two children who have basically been living kind of all over the world, different parts of the world. One of them it turns out doesn't even know who Vladimir Putin was. And have suddenly discovered that they're the children of two deep cover Russian spies who are now back in Russia, a country that they've never been to, speaking of language they've never learned.

10:51Well, absolutely amazing. I think Slovakia was there was where they sort of started off. They went to Argentina. And if you sort of pictures of Putin kind of welcomed, they were the first ones off the plane where these kids, so fear and Daniel, their parents, Maria Meyer and Ludwig Gish. So yeah, they started out in Slovenia working for an IT company. But these are kind of top level deep cover spies. They've been working in different parts of the world. And the children are suddenly be greeted off a plane to be kissed and presentively flowers by Vladimir Putin. And they don't even know who he is.

11:29I mean, there will be a film made about that happily for sure. But I find the whole thing quite uncomfortable. It's something that if indeed they are and it looks very much like they are, it's something that the Soviet Union piloted long before anyone else. And no other intelligence agencies in the world have managed to touch this thing called the Illegals Program, which is where you quite literally train and develop intelligence officers, drop them into another country and make them live out their lives as locals. And in this case, I think these officers spoke to their children in Spanish, post as Argentinians.

12:08It's been no Russian at all. And it's an extraordinary thing to do because the normal way in which intelligence agencies work is that they target people who already have access. They have seen the positions in a government are able to get their hands on secret papers and try to recruit them. This works the other way around. You send people out and then you hope that they can work their way through the system and get close either to classified information or provide facilities and support for Russia abroad. But it's unbelievably expensive and complicated and the cost for the Russian state. And of course, the cost for those families in terms of the kind of lives they're living is unbelievable.

12:44Question for you then, Owen Davis, what are your thoughts on Eleon Ed Morgan becoming the First Minister of Wales? Is this a promising appointment for Wales or just the best for bad choice? This was a very strange slow puncture scandal that hit the Labour Party in Wales. Vaughn getting one as First Minister in Wales. He was the first black leader of a nation in the United Kingdom. So celebrated by many people. But came in with a pretty bad taste in the mouth because there have been shenanigans within the union movement and the Labour movement in Wales that led to him getting in ahead of the favourite.

13:22He replaced a pretty celebrated long -standing First Minister who we infued on the show. And he was then caught up in scandals around donations he'd received from a business person. And I thought it was inevitable that he was going to step down a few weeks ago, but as usually, I call these things too early. It seemed to me obvious that he would step down because he basically lost a vote of no confidence. But as usual, I call these people, he clung on a few more weeks longer than he should have done. Anyway, tell us about your thoughts on the new appointment and what's going on there. Well, I suppose the first thing he said about Eleon Ed, she'll be the first woman First Minister.

13:56She actually, we're recording this on Tuesday and she'll get the job as it were confirmed today. There's no other candidate. And I think the reason that she's emerged as the new leader is because what recent events have shown is a kind of a factionalism that is very, very difficult to manage. And I don't think Vaughn getting really was the guy particularly with this baggage around his neck, holding him down every time he's tried to talk about something, do something, this story was in the background all the time. He couldn't escape it. Whereas Eleon Ed is somebody, I've known her for a long time, but she's very, very nice.

14:31I think her heart is in the right place, and I think her politics are in a good place. What a sort of style of leader is she, I mean, am I to imagine a kind of slightly shy and traversed Theresa May type, or is she a sort of big kind of colorful, comular Harris communicator? I mean, get, give us the sense, the personality of Eleon Ed Morgan. I'd say neither of those, but I mean, not shy and not retiring, but when I say reluctant, not because of that, I think because of the politics, she's very warm, very, very hard working. She, I guess, one of the reasons I know, she was a very close friend of Glamis Kinneck, who was a very close friend of mine, and she's somebody who really made her name in politics as an MEP, has served as a minister in several of the Welsh government administrations.

15:18I worked with her quite closely when she was a mental health minister, she was a very, very good mental health I would say leadership is calm, collaborative, hard working, essentially, isn't it, how we always try and you mentioned Theresa May and Camel Harris, we always try and relate people to people that we know, we've seen an experience in the past. I'm going to think about that one and take it away and think about it. The C word she didn't produce after Carmen Collaborative was charismatic, am I reading between the lines that she's not an electric speaker? No, I think she has good certain charisma.

15:51She's not vice president Harris. No, I think she's a pretty effective politician. She's already in the House of Lords, but has taken leave of absence given that she's been a minister in Wales. Wait, wait, sorry, I try to get my head around this. So one of the weirdness is she's not a member of the Assembly in Wales. She's a member of the House of Lords. No, she's a member of the Assembly. She's already taken leave of absence from the House of Lords to be a member of the Lords and returned to elected politics from a pointed politics. Return to a proper job, yeah. But I think when she did that, I'd be quite surprised if she thought that she'd end up as First Minister.

16:33Listen, I think she'll be calm, effective, diligent, hardworking. I think she'll see her job in the first instance is trying to bring people together because that is not the space. And let's try to work out reading between the lines. What Alice is actually saying about this person and what some of her weaknesses and limitations might be. But anyway, good luck to her and let's find out how she does. Okay, really quick break in the more questions.

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18:20Okay, it was a nice one. Rachel Williams. What appetite do you think there is within government for integrating the arts into policy areas such as housing, health and prisons? The arts are too often seen as a nice to have, whereas in reality alongside the many other benefits that they bring to our country, they can be an integral tool for social change. As I've seen, she says, first hand, at my own organization, Streetwise Opera, where we make opera with people who've experienced homelessness, which I thought, how have I never heard of this? Can I just come in on that? I mean, they are incredible.

18:56So, I was opera. And I came across them first in actually a recording of a Streetwise Opera performing Lashio Chialpyeonga, which is from Handel. And I've got the most beautiful recording of Elizabeth Watts singing it with the Streetwise Opera. So they're amazing. And there's also some great prison operas going on, including Pemla Coopra. So this extraordinary woman, Wasfie Kani, who's set up Grange Park Opera, which is this lovely beautiful opera south of London, set up on the land, I think, a Bamber Gas Coin. Also got something called Pemla Coraopra off the ground, which works in prisons and primary schools.

19:35I had not heard of them. I go to opera a couple of times a year because Fiona loves opera. I'm not a big opera buff. I'd really generally go because Urminella, Yahoo, my Albanian friend is the world's best at the moment. So I go to see her, which is in town. But this is just fantastic. I discovered, they've been around for over 20 years. They work in London, Manchester and Nottingham. And they have weekly group meetings in venues. They bring in homeless people. They were live on Radio 3, performing alongside the BBC concert orchestra. And it's just, you know, it's one of those ideas when you sort of hear it for the first time.

20:12You think what you're telling me that you're going out and you're sort of getting people off the streets and saying, do you want to come and be part of an opera? And guess what? Lost them do. And guess what? They absolutely love it. And guess what? Some of them turn out to be really good at it. And guess what? It helps them get a sense of purpose, helps some of them get into making money, getting back into housing. He's absolutely brilliant. This is something that to support Shashana and the work she's doing in Afghanistan, which is very much about putting culture heritage and art at the centre of development with very poor communities, was very controversial when she began, because people were saying, well, look, Afghanistan's one of the poorest countries in the world, surely what people need is food and shelter.

20:54Why are you investing and supporting woodworkers, ceramics, calligraphers, weavers, traditional heritage and buildings? But the answer is, I think she's learned two things. One is that, which I think is relevant to Britain, is that it brings a real sense of positive pride. It makes people feel not like they're sort of victim or charity cases. It puts them in charge because they're producing something very beautiful and impressive when I'm listening to street wise opera, listening to list with Watts and Lasha Chopeanga. I'm listening to it because it's as good as anything in the world. It's not a sort of condescending, patronizing thing.

21:31I'm listening to it because I love the music. And the second thing is, there's genuine economic opportunities. And this again, we're finding in Afghanistan that actually rather than being a sort of luxury, there is real demand around the world for high quality production. So people can get incomes and get that pride and development livelihoods off the back of this. So, no, I'm full of operation. We've also talked a little bit about some of the other projects like the Klingkin in Brixton, some of the amazing projects that have been done on coffee roasting and prisons. But in every case, the emphasis with street wise and with what Shashana does with Toxman is on quality, it's completely non -patreonizing.

22:11We should put the link to their website in the newsletter because I went on it thinking, this would be like some sort of nice little charity things and that's sweet. Because we all carry our preconceptions whether we're like it or not. And as you say, you then suddenly are in a world where somebody who is, also in cases, was homeless is taking part in this fantastic musical production. And just to bring about to politics, the question was about whether we can get government to integrate this. And I think it is the mindset that says these sorts of things are possible and that then gets the support to do them.

22:47And if I go back to my good friend Eddie Ramos, who's still sort of doing a pretty good job in Albania. And I saw interestingly Ian Dale, who does this sort of weekly Q &A thing. And he said, he was just a name three leaders that he thought were actually doing a good job at the moment. In him, in name of Eddie Ramos, I've already said that to Eddie, please with that I hope. But what I thought was interesting about his life story as an artist is that he really first came to any sort of prominence as mayor of Tirana where he basically was going out and giving people paint brushes and paint. And saying, why don't you just paint things, paint your house this color or do this at the time.

23:28And remember him telling me that when I first met him, at the time there were lots of saying, as you said, that, excuse me, we've got real social challenges here. We've got terrible this. We've got terrible that. Why on earth are you spending money on just giving people a bit of paint to do tart up their houses? And it led to a kind of cultural change. Yeah, I found this again working in presence. I was challenged a lot by the fact that when I began, I was putting a lot of focus on broken windows and garbage in the yards. I was just horrified to turn up the presence and find mounds of trash outside people's cell blocks and in the corridors.

24:09And you can understand why people were like, this isn't a priority. What we need to focus on is more important things like rehabilitation. But I felt that unless we created sanitary, clean places with fixed windows and no garbage yards, it was very difficult to do the other stuff that just giving decent conditions is just really important for turning other things around. I mean, the other controversial example of this was the work done in New York, which was the zero tolerance approach to things like graffiti and broken windows, which did seem, I mean, still a lot of debates about academics about it, but certainly seemed at the time to be a very important part of actually helping neighborhoods improve from turning things around because the insight was if you leave a broken window and graffiti, more people come and put graffiti on it and come and break more windows.

24:55If you fix it back to pristine, they're much less likely to letter and much less likely to abuse. And then more pleasant surroundings just raises everybody's morale. Yeah. Now here's one from Ash Lee. Are you surprised at how well Harris's, that's Kamala Harris campaign is performing leading in the polls within two weeks? Does Rory still believe that not going to an open convention was a bad idea? I was probably wrong on that. I mean, she seems to have come through fine. She seems to be doing well with good momentum. I think you mustn't be too complacent. The US economy is now showing some worrying signs.