308. Question Time: Can you be friends with someone you totally disagree with politically?

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alice Campbell. Why don't we start with Taliya Sanchez, who says I'd like to hear your thoughts on a recent report predicting a post -pandemic spike in bad behaviour in schools due to homeschooling. Do you think we've all been too quick to brush off the guaranteed lasting impacts of such an unprecedented time, particularly for our children and young people? This is actually something I learned a little bit about when I went to a school recently where they had already noticed a really big rise in exclusions. And of course, there aren't that many places that excluded children can go to.

1:28So this report did spell out that they think this is directly related to the impact of COVID. Did you take a look at that, Rory? Yeah. So to give a sense of the country's a whole, so about 3 .5 % of pupils in the UK traditionally were suspended from school. But being suspended from school correlates with or goes along with a lot of other things that can be very worrying in terms of poverty, in terms of your life chances. So you're just over 3 % excluded from school generally, but in prisons we found often 35 % of the prisons have been excluded from school. So it's got a strong connection. There's a lot of controversy about this.

2:05There are people who think schools are using exclusions much too much, but there are other teachers that you talk to who are just like you simply don't understand that we don't want to exclude children from school, but occasionally you have a child who's completely disrupting the education for every other child in that classroom. And you sometimes have no choice. You've got to think about the other children. And if one person is, you can imagine if one person is really kicking off at the back of the classroom, nobody else is going to pay any attention. They're just going to be looking at the child that's kicking off.

2:34So getting that balance right, working out how you deliver good education for those students who aren't at risk of expulsion, while also looking after the children who get expelled is very tough. Fiona has been sort of chair of governors of various schools for young. So I know that they could a real lens to try to avoid exclusions as sometimes as impossible. I think there are schools where frankly kids get excluded all too easily because they worry more about the results and the off -stead than they do necessarily about the welfare of all the kids. But there is a rise of 50 English secondary schools have suspended more than a quarter of pupils after the pandemic.

3:09And that is much more likely to be happening in the areas in the poorest areas. Three times more likely to be suspended as those in in wealthier schools. So there's definitely a problem coming down the track here and I think it's good to be aware of it. Yeah, so a lot of the sadness seems to be people who were a primary school age during COVID and therefore were effectively at home, not at school. And maybe didn't socialize, missed out on education for that critical period. And that seems to be really contributing to them struggling to reintegrate as sort of play where if putting it all behavior difficulties when they're getting back.

3:44Yeah, just thinking with post pandemic for a minute, we get a lot of questions about long COVID. We should probably come back to it and do it properly at some point. But I was struck by this in Edinburgh a couple days ago. Isabel Hardman, the journalist, was chairing one of the events I did and she was saying that she's got long COVID and she was describing what the effect that it had had on her. And likewise at the book signing, after the event there was a woman there I saw she was sitting in a chair in the queue and I became fixated by watching her sort of come through the queue. And she explained to me that she was going everywhere carrying a chair because she kept having to sit down every she wasn't, you know, didn't need a wheelchair or such, but she just kept having to sit down because she was had this kind of permanent exhaustion that was related to long COVID.

4:24So we should come back to that at some point. I've got a very close friend who has been completely devastated by this and there are a lot of support groups out there. Kate Weinberg has written a very interesting book talking about her experience with long COVID and has also helped organize forums for people. It's very complicated because it seems to manifest in so many different ways and doctors are struggling and of course as with other related illnesses sometimes people who are suffering from it feel that they're being treated as though it's purely psychosomatic and there's nothing real going on.

4:57But my goodness, you know, my friend John basically says he has not had a good day in three years and sometimes just feels that life is hardly worth living. Over to you. Right, Roy, one of this one, Luke Davis, can you speak about the political significance of Pavel Dureff's arrest in France, particularly his links to Russia? Macron is Adam and the arrest is not political by the way to view. So this is the boss of the direct messaging platform telegram who has been arrested and a judge as extended his period of detention, which means he can now be detained for up to 96 hours. Needless to say the sort of musks and all the sort of free speech libertarians, the zones, this is an absolute outrage.

5:37What do you think of this one, Roy? Yeah, well, so Pavel Dureff telegram is huge, maybe a billion users now, so it's bigger than Twitter X. It's like a WhatsApp messaging platform. It was developed partly to deal with Russia itself. So Pavel Dureff is not a sort of agent to the Russian government although a loss of Russians use telegram. I mean, famously that was the way of keeping up with the Vagma group was looking at telegram. Do you use telegram? And I said, you look at it a bit. No, should I? I think it's interesting, but I mean, his deal basically is to say that the way to protect free speech is to have a platform that governments can't get into.

6:15And that, of course, is very threatening because it's also in this a bit, you know, like the discussions around Bitcoin and stuff, when something's completely removed from government control, yes, it's an opportunity for freedom and protecting you against bad governments. But it's also a huge opportunity for criminals to flourish telegram becomes the, and this is where the French government's getting involved. It's less about anti -Russian stuff. It's more about saying this is a platform that really allows criminal gangs to operate free of surveillance from governments. Yeah, I suppose one argument I heard when this issue came up a while back about whether this encryption stuff had gone too far was, and this would be an argument, I guess the telegram we were making in defensive duro is that when the telephone came along, the fact that criminals used the telephone to carry out their criminal activities by communicating to each other about what they were going to do together, that didn't lead to us all saying that the telephone should be shut down.

7:15But I think the difference here is that when you know that technology is being used to get round the law, to commit criminal activity, and the platform that you have built is the means by which that is done that that takes it to a different space because the fact is that the police and security services can't listen to telephone calls and so forth. So it's very, very interesting. And of course, I guess that the musk of this world and musk I see is continuing to sort of troll -cage, starma, and spread absolute lies about Britain and the state of Britain on social media. I guess this might just put a little bit of wind up them.

7:55Yeah, the musk thing we keep bang on about it, but it is beyond imagining. He managed to retweet a deeply misleading article from a far right Islamophobic account saying, can this be real question mark? And by doing so, God, by the time I looked at 47 million people to view a post suggesting that starma was going to be spreading asylum seekers around here. The thing basically said is the fact that the Labour government now had a plan to basically put asylum seekers ahead of British, you know, to all sorts of stuff, can this be real question mark? Has musk, well, no, you jerk is not. And he gets 47 million views since 350 ,000 likes by the time I looked at it.

8:42That's because he's basically said to the algorithm, can you make sure that my tweets go to everybody? It's not difficult. I mean, well, Daddylon, oh my God, you've done well. People, you've lost a people, you've got, he is virtually the number one thing that I see on the, I am cutting back so much on shitter as Lane Andrews calls it, but when I do nip on there to sort of, you know, post an interview that we've done, Bruchikago invariably Elon Musk is at the top of my timeline, so we know how he gets all the views. Catherine T. Rory, how do I continue a relationship with my dad who represents everything I struggle with in today's particular climate, Brexit voter, reform party supporter, GB news watcher, and is everything I'm trying to fight against in today's particular climate, who believes I'm woke and tells me that me and my wokeness is what's ruined in the country, to maintain a relationship and not challenge it makes me complicit by a standard, it makes me angry with myself while challenging and like I have affects my mental health profoundly.

9:42I'm positive, I'm not the only millennial who's in this position that would love to hear your thoughts. Right, be of, be of advice here, Rory, that's tricky that one. That is tricky and it goes to the heart of a lot of what we talked a lot about and Brexit, where at one point I think almost half of Brexit voters and half of remain voters wouldn't consider one of their children marrying someone from the other side. It was all caught the Chicago Convention where a lot of people talked about how politics was destroying dinner parties. I mean, it's really tough. You have to somehow, as with any disagreements and a father he tried to get back to, what you actually really love and admire about people.

10:18I mean, I'm of course in Cumbering in a majority of my voters voted for Brexit. Many of them would support reform and yet I found many of those people who voted for Brexit remained close friends were incredibly funny, practical, loyal and that's true. I'm sure this is basically what Tim Walsh is trying to say about Trump voters in the US. One thing she could do is a short term thing is to share an article written by Will Lloyd called the end of work spells trouble for the right in the Times yesterday where he argues that actually basically the genius move of Kamala Harris and others is to basically give up on the work rhetoric leaving the right with nothing to complain about.

11:01Will Lloyd says that Kamala Harris's speech was largely notif swore for revealing the extraordinary power of American dentistry. So a typically sort of cheeky article from Will Lloyd that she might want to share with her father. Do you mention Tim Walsh there? Somebody made this wonderful observation about him. The reason why Tim Walsh is connecting with people so much is because he reminds everybody of what their dad used to be like before Fox News was invented and they all started just shouting at televisions all the time. The legacy of Fox News within the American political debate is pretty extreme and the Catherine there mentions the fact that her dad watches GB news and there are not many people do but those that do I suspect are being radicalized in the same way.

11:47And I guess all you can do Catherine is perhaps sit there and watch it and without sort of saying he's daft to be watching it or daft believing it. Do point out when the things that are being said are untrue, do point out the reasons why they're being said and just try to engage in the debate. But this is the thing that I talked to Frank Luntz and David Urban about that I talked about on the main podcast yesterday that I have definitely got myself into this position. Less so here because I don't think I did have borrassed arrangements syndrome as it was called because I always felt that if enough people carried on telling the truth about him eventually he'd be done and he is done.

12:26Whereas with Trump it goes much much much deeper. I genuinely find it hard to understand how anybody, anybody can vote for that guy and it means it's difficult to have a conversation with somebody who does but you got to try to separate the person from that individual action. So in your dad's case voting breaks it's important reform watching GB news. You've got to divorce those facts from who that person is and try to get back to who that person is and bring that real person out of them. For who that helps we've morphed into agony and see you rory. Right, so let's take a quick break and we'll be back after break with a quick question from me on RFK on RFK Junior Kennedy and his endorsement of Trump.

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14:21Welcome back to the RESTIS Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And we are at Gamble. And we have a question here from Simmo and also from Luke Aaron, RFK Kennedy. Why do you think Kennedy has lined with Trump? Do you think the Democrats should have followed due process and elected their candidate and Luke are? I'd be interested to hear you'll take on RFK Junior. The family released a statement distancing themselves from him in his decision to back Trump. How is he evolved to be this person coming from the ultimate Democrat family over you? Well, this goes back to the previous question before the break from Catherine about, you know, families or families and the Kennedies are quite a family.

14:58I think on why he's aligned with Trump, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's done some sort of deal. If Trump wins, you know, get a job or something, I don't know. I think the real reason why he may have pulled out is that post the Biden decision to step down and make way for IcePresident Harris. His Kennedy was pretty much tanking in the polls. It was costing him a lot of money to keep the campaign going. The family were very, very quick to release a statement as Luke says distancing themselves. It probably is pretty awful for them to have to feel that somebody who trades on the Kennedy name and the JFK legend and all that align himself with somebody whose values are so contrary.

15:41And it's interesting that very quickly on the media, when their decision was announced, people were playing back the clips of what these two have said about each other in the past. So whether they'll have an impact, I don't think it's automatic that somebody who was backing Kennedy will back Trump because I think a lot of the people who were backing Trump were coming from the other side of the fence, the other side of the political scale, as it were. What do you say? This is a good summary of this. So Donald Trump apparently said about RFK in April. Totally anti -gun and extreme environmentalists who makes the green -new scammers look conservative.

16:11A big -time tax or an open -border advocate, an anti -military vet. I'd even take Biden over junior. So what he's getting at there is that RFK junior, he's not just the third son of Robert Kennedy who was assassinated and therefore JFK's nephew. His career was as an environmental lawyer where he took some extremely successful but quite radical cases. On behalf, sometimes of Native American communities, sometimes on behalf of threatened natural environments and wildernesses, often against big business, and very much seemed to be on the left and was considered at one point for being the head of the environmental protection organization under Obama and under Biden.

16:55His name was talked about. So he was very much there on the kind of Democrat environmentalist left. He's had a pretty peculiar dubious personal life. I mean, he was very sadly a heroin addict, I think, from when he was 15 -20. In his mid -twenties and that obviously may have part of being caught up with the fact that he lost his father, his father was assassinated. He's had a very rickety private life and his wife left him when I think she'd found record in his diaries, him recording that he'd slept with 36 women in a very short period when he was so married to her. He's had these odd moments like being done for leaving a bear in central park.

17:31He made this incredible claim that he couldn't pay proper alimony to his wife because a worm had gotten to his brain and eaten part of his brain so his brain didn't work properly, he couldn't earn enough. And then Reed Hoffman and others, there accused Reed who we infued on, leading, a recused of funding a campaign to point out that RFK was not a New York resident and therefore actually couldn't run. He'd managed to register himself incorrectly to run to be precedent, leaving him really with no choice other than to work out who to endorse. Well, our friend and colleague Anthony Scaramucci is absolutely adamant that the whole third party thing including Kennedy has been backed and funded by Steve Bannon and other kind of hard -right Republicans as a way of trying to help Trump.

18:18So whether that's right or wrong, I don't know. I'm not convinced the last thing impact is going to be that huge. Here's one, Rory, AGM, when are you two going to discuss Taiwan properly inviting a Taiwanese scholar on spelling out to the public the reality of China? Well, we have literally just before we recorded this interviewed a wonderful person by the name of Audrey Tang. So Rory, you want to tell AGM a little bit about Audrey. Audrey Tang, credibly exciting. Audrey Tang was the digital tour minister in Taiwan and completely transformed the way that technology was used in Taiwan. Firstly, very practically to have an incredible COVID response.

18:57So they didn't have to lock down, they kept their economy growing and booming while also having very few people dying of COVID through the way they used technology, but also just the way in which it's completely rejuvenated democracy, trust in government by using very positive forms of government. I'd suppose digital citizens assemblies to get government going again. So yes, people in trust in Taiwan please do listen to our leading and few coming soon with Audrey Tang. So Rory, we talked a lot recently about Afghanistan falling in your visit though and it provoked a whole loads of questions from people about Afghanistan in particular with a focus on education.

19:36What about this one from Wanda Pommi? Should and can the West Rampant pressure on the Taliban in the face of what seems to be total and utter apartheid situation developing? I'm assuming that they mean the apartheid between men and women. Yeah, it's a gender apartheid. I mean, it is very, very disturbing. The Taliban have made no secrets since they were in right back in the mid 1990s. So over 30 years about the fact that they have this view which really doesn't have much to do with traditional Islam is really a tribal, southeastern Afghan view that women should completely cover their faces. They shouldn't be educated.

20:12They should barely leave home. And the religious authorities, particularly the leader in Kandahar, keeps issuing more and more extreme edicts on this. The story on the ground in the country is a little bit more complicated. I mean, I was just in Afghanistan two weeks ago and actually if you walk around Kabul at the moment, most women are not covering their faces. They're not wearing those borders. There's classic things with a kind of net face covering. And there's clearly a tussle going on inside the Taliban government about how much the stuff gets implemented or doesn't send to an education.

20:45I mean, the very, very strict rules in education. But again, in different parts of Afghanistan, people seem to be being educated online or using private schools or doing different types of things. The question of whether ramping up sanctions would make any difference. I'm afraid not. I think the Taliban government, pretty immune to that kind of stuff. This is not Nigerian politicians who want to go shopping in harrots. These are people who've lived in caves. Have been fighting for 20 years. Don't care very much about sanctions impact on them. The impact of the sanctions on Fortshiair on ordinary Afghans on 35, 40 million people who are struggling to feed themselves and whose economy is tanking.

21:24And the best hope I'm afraid is to keep trying to support ordinary Afghans and trust that the civil society that's been built up over 25 years will gradually exert that pressure. But I didn't think the United Kingdom wagging its fingers is going to have any impact at all. Okay, Alistair, here's a really testing question coming in from Jess. What are we supposed to believe about state knife, which to remind people was this very high level IRA head of internal security in the IRA during the travels in Ireland who turned out to be a British agent and who the British certainly military and potentially the security service allowed continue to operate, allowed him to continue killing people so they could continue getting information from him.

22:08And there's been accusations that the former head of security service, Elizemann and Buller had suggested that they didn't know about it and then Lister succumb and saying she didn't know about it over years. Well, Elizemann and Buller who we interviewed with John Soars in the former head of MI6 on leading a few weeks ago, she is clearly a key Lister to the podcast has followed the various discussions we've had. And she actually sent us this message and we're going to read it because it's quite interesting. I think Paulo Conner, the Fennucan Center will be interested in this because it sort of continues the conversation.

22:40She says, I did not have knowledge of the agent known as state knife who was run by the army when he was in place. This was in line with the need to know principles. It's now clear to me that MI5 had some limited knowledge earlier than I had previously understood. As has been made clear previously, MI5 was not responsible for how state knife was recruited and run as an agent. I'd also like to point out that it was not until October 2007, after I retired, the MI5 for the first time in history was given the lead intelligence responsibility in Northern Ireland. So we did not have absolute authority.

23:18I think that's a reference to the discussion that you and I had and our rules were not necessarily followed by others. So I don't know what you make of that, whether that clears things up or actually just makes me even more interesting. I think I should keep this rolling. Maybe a final question from you, Alistair. Andy wants to know, Rory. If you had to pick someone else to replace the other person on the podcast, who would it be and why? Serious answers only. Serious answers only, Olix. In other words, not a joke. I don't want Erie Malkham or whoever. So you suddenly get so fed up with Bernley's poor performance that you head off to the Muldeeops and I have to think about how to get get it instead.

23:57No, I could do the podcast and I said, no, Rory, I suspect that Andy is imagining our deaths. Oh gosh, so far suddenly I had to die. I don't know that's why. They're imagining the deaths. That's a treasonous. Okay, so, Alistair. It's in Willis. I'm not the king. You're not the king. Well, the plumbers of all the obvious alternatives have already been tried by competitors. That's not entirely true. I mean, David Gorkstad and for you when you were on your retreat, I thought he was very, very good. He is splendid. I worship David Gork. He's very good. Yeah, this David Gork, he's tried quasi -caughting, but he took pretty well on our leading infidine.

24:34Angela Rainer, I'd be very happy to do one with Angela Rainer. Angela Rainer would be good. That'd be good, wouldn't it? Yeah. I had dinner last night with Alassar. I think you and Alassar would be quite good. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah. We need a bit of grit in the oyster, wouldn't we? Yeah. I mean, there aren't that many stories to pick from for me these days, either. No, they're all sort of very, very few. Very few. Very few. I would have, Ken Klaude would have been good back in the day. So we're going David Gork and Angela Rainer. That's about it. That's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

25:00Let's let's end on that and Alassar have a great day today. I think you're running for train and thanks for doing question time in the specific. See you soon. Bye. Bye.