315. Question Time: Should we fine people for missing doctor's appointments?

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. So, Rory, let's start with Kaling Parker. What are your views on Michel Barnier's appointment as Prime Minister of France? Is he up to the job? So, you know this guy really well. Can I just sort of act as the questioner and the listener here? So, what we notice here is that Michel Barnier was associated with the right. I mean, what used to be called the go -list parties. He was like a parliamentary aide for various right -wing ministers. He served in various right -wing governments. So, presumably, if you're from the French left who got the most votes or most seats and the parliament out of the last election, you must be completely furious that Macron's rejected the candidate that you've produced from the left.

1:32And as instead brought in somebody which would be a bit like, I don't know, the Labour Party's views if after they got most seats and parliament, suddenly somebody appointed, I know Jeremy Hunt as the Prime Minister. Is there a dodgy analogy? Look, what's happened is that we've told a lot about the snap election and that when we've gone through the results, which essentially have ended up with this left alliance having the most seats, but not enough to form a majority and no alliance with which to form a majority. And then this sort of out on the far right, the Pens Party, although not doing as well as they expect to do after the first round, having a pretty sizable chunk in there.

2:10And Macron has to appoint a Prime Minister, that Prime Minister has to form a government and has to try to get a budget through very, very soon. And went through all sorts of processes or sorts of people and has come up with the one that he thinks might be able to command a majority. The problem and the reason why the left are, as you rightly say, very, very angry about it, is because what they think he has done in appointing Michel Barnier is deliberately appointing somebody that he hopes Le Pen will not pull the plug off. The problem is Le Pen now, although she didn't quote, win the election, this has given her enormous power because the truth is she can pull the plug.

2:58Yeah, because the left's not going to vote for money. So the only way he can really operate as Prime Minister is with tacit support from the far right deciding not to vote against him. So presumably Macron had two choices. He could either put his centrist block with the left or he could make his centrist block depend on the vote the far right. Why did he decide to make his centrist block depend on the vote from the far right rather than making his centrist block going to coalition with the left? Well, the name that the left put up Lucy Castell, there was no way he was going to have a sympathy because she has her entire stick was about undermining the basic reforms that he's been taking through.

3:35Add it to which this is his attempt. I hesitate to use Theresa May's strong and stable formulation. It's an attempt to get some sort of stability and he would argue, I think, that any other the other groupings would not have worked. But the reason why the the left up in arms about it is because as you say, they don't think this reflects sufficiently the outcome of the election. Now, what Barnier has to do, and what you'll try and do in the next few days, he is a very, very skillful political figure. And I do think actually his his role having held 27 European governments together, whilst up against this never -endingly changing group of people and policies on the Brexit side of negotiations.

4:18He did a pretty good job of holding those 27 together. He's a good listener, he's a detailed person. He's somebody who he has had some pretty choice things to say about Macron in the past. But he's somebody who is about will spend an awful lot of time sitting down for a long time with people who wouldn't necessarily consider him to be a political ally. His job is now to try to form a government. Key appointment is going to be the finance minister. Don't know who that's going to be. And again, will he go left? Will he go right? Probably go trying to go somewhere in the middle. But then he has to form a government.

4:53They have to get a budget through Parliament. It's going to be very, very, very, very fraught. I would argue he's gone to the most difficult jobs in the world right now. And then get the budget through the EU and deal with the fact that France has got a budget deficit much bigger than the EU allows and its rules and stuff. Exactly. So tell us a little bit about Michel Bonnier. He ran, didn't he, at one point, to be president, where he sounded like he was going quite right wing. He was making some quite tough statements about immigration. And obviously, he came from a right wing party initially.

5:22Remember we interviewed him for leading? You were abroad. I was virtual and you were with him. But we were both there. Yeah. And yeah, I've got to know him reasonably well. In fact, Fiernan, I had a bit of time with him his house in France last summer. And he's, look, he is pretty right wing. I think that stands on immigration that he took. I think it was twofold. I think one that was him as he was trying to get the nomination for his party, signaling he was going to be tough on immigration. I think it may be one of the factors that Macron weighed up in deciding to call him in. He didn't really feature much in the in the runners and riders.

5:58He's somebody who I remember when we were at his house. He's got a very, very nice wife who's pretty glamorous but very, very down to earth. And he was somebody who, you know, because you do, when you saw him in the brakes and you go, you see, I think you saw somebody who was very protocol, very quite austere. He looks very smart, doesn't he? He's very, very, he's got smart white hair, guy, very well dressed, but very, very polite, very polite, even when he was dealing with the sort of, you know, the shambles of some of the secretaries he stayed yet to deal with on brakes. He's very, very polite, very measured.

6:33The time I saw him really expressing a bit of passion was when he was shown around his office and all these sort of pictures on the wall and why have you? And the ones that he really, really, really clearly got emotional about were about when he won the Olympics for Albertville, which is the town in the Alps where he was born in the Alps. He was put in charge of getting the Olympics. So it was quite nice. I don't know if you watched the Paralympic closing ceremony, Rory, I suspect you were busy, but Macron who got booed slightly and the thing, but they're right behind him in the shop was Barney, who was suddenly gone from essentially being, you know, somewhat in retirement to now being the Prime Minister.

7:18I think, look, I think it's going to be a very, very tough job. I think you ever got that job. It was going to be difficult to do over the long term. But I think the more I thought about it when he appointed him, I think he's got as good a chance as anyone of making it work because of the skills he's developed over a lifetime. Two quick things. I mean, obviously you're going to have to get a Scabriela towel now to be infued on leading sets. That's your task for the month. Second thing is I don't get why marrying the pen would vote for him. I would have thought if you were marrying the pen on the far right in France, all your interests because what you care about is being president next time round is staying as far away from the shambles of the government as you possibly can.

7:58You don't want to be in the position of the Lib Dems, the Netclag of being a minority voting to support the government and then taking the blame for what they do. Well, look, what Le Pen has always done is sort of play the long game quietly. She's not been making a big fuss through this whole thing. The Elisei gave the impression that she'd sort of signal, yeah, we'll go with Barney. She's denied having had any conversation about that at all. I think she'll enjoy the sense of being very, very powerful without actually having to do very much and watch whilst the Macron government tries to form, tries to get a budget through and then she'll be sitting there hoping that it's a complete mess.

8:37It's interesting you mentioned a towel. I mean, a towel I am sure now we'll go away and start to think about how he might make a pitch for the presidency. At the next election because he has actually he is widely considered to have done a pretty good job and he's actually in the polling in France and they're obsessed with polls in France, but he's doing pretty well. He may end up coming out reason to roll from this, but we'll see. Now, Tova Wang, what are the implications of Dick Cheney backing Kamala Harris? Well, I don't think Dick Cheney backing Kamala Harris what's surprising though it is, is going to make very much difference to anyone really.

9:10I don't think Dick Cheney has a big natural constituency left. His daughter, Liz Cheney on the other hand, I think has been a courageous outspoken appealing voice to the Republican right. I'm more worried by either Musk endorsing Trump because despite our views on Elon Musk, what of course you pick up very quickly on Twitter is he has a massive fan base, particularly of young men who believe that because he's the richest man in the world, he's the smartest man in the world and like nothing more than sharing weird fake handwritten slides of seven leadership lessons from Elon Musk. Musk now saying he's going to reform government efficiency, potentially gives permission for some of these kind of business types to be like, well, I don't know, sure, I really like Trump, but if he's bringing in Musk to sort out efficiency government, so I am a bit worried about that.

9:59Yeah, I learned there's no doubt he's got a massive following as we said last week, he's sort of bombards Twitter with his own views, he can get attention for anything that he says or does. He posted a truly ridiculous picture of himself with these huge letters, DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency. I think that you're probably right about Cheney. I don't know if you've seen that the latest campaign had, that the Harris campaigners has put out is a collection of comments from, it's got Mike Pence, it's got Millie, the former head of the military, it's got the guide, the former defense secretary who's done it into your CNN saying that the nation's security is at risk with Trump.

10:37Scott John Bolton, Trump's security adviser, they're running this line, the caption is, take it from the people who work for him, Donald Trump is a danger to our troops, our security, our democracy. The surely must be, it's not that long ago, historically, that Bush and Cheney were in charge and had very, very big support. I mean, Cheney was the original neo -conservative. He's like one of the guys on the sort of, on the staging from kind of Reaganism to Trump. So he can't be sure he's not completely irrelevant. Yeah, I suppose that's right. It's just, I mean, I suppose a question is really all comes down to these key swing voters.

11:14I've been talking to Democratic organizers here in the States over the last few days and my goodness, we're getting into funny, funny games. The amount of money going into targeting just 100, 150 ,000 people who could decide this election. Well, thank God for that. So a little of it, those seems to be about policy. The basic belief in US politics, the moment is that it's all about peer pressure. So in America, unlike in Britain, the information on whether or not you voted as public. So a lot of the communication now is about reaching out to people who you think are sympathetic towards you. And obviously avoiding the people you think might vote the other way.

11:50And it's trying to guilt trip them. You know, your neighbor's voted, your friends voted, why haven't you voted yet? And they can do that in the primaries. They can do that in postal votes. And obviously they'll do that on the final day. Just before we leave America, we did have a question from somebody asking about how the electoral college works. This is a Gillian booth. Still can't get my head around how the American electoral college works. Yeah. Seems such a strange system compared to the Australian electoral system. Can you do a for our lesson formless as explanation illuminate this for an old Aussie?

12:19So in 48 of the states, plus the District Columbia, there's a winner -taxal system, which means that if you get first pass and the number of electors that each state has is roughly proportional to its population, but it favors the smaller states because you get a minimum number of electors in the smaller states. And the reason that this is absolutely vital and the reason the entire US election is coming down to seven or probably more likely three or even one state is that if you can narrowly squeak through with, you know, even 10 ,000 votes in Pennsylvania, you can swing the whole thing. And the final thing to understand about the electoral college is in the very unlikely situation that you have, although not completely unlikely, given where we are on the polls, that you have a tie in the electoral college, it then goes through to Congress to determine who becomes president, which is where it will really matter who's got the votes in the House of Representatives.

13:18Just let people know that the numbers in the states that we'll all be talking about on the night, Pennsylvania is the one that everybody talks about as being the most key. That's going to 19, Wisconsin 10, Michigan 15, North Carolina 16, Georgia 16, Nevada 6, Arizona 11. But I think Pennsylvania is going to be absolutely key. They are spending both sides, spending an absolute fortune, as you say, of all the money. I mean, Harris is out fundraising by a factor of almost three to one at the moment. I'm pleased, everybody, if they're saying to you that they're putting all that money into small numbers of people and targets advertising because, you know, they have to do these big nationwide stuff.

14:02But ultimately, there are so many places where everybody knows that what the results going to be is we talked to Frank Lutz about that on leading Western areas, you know, you know, who's going to win California, you know who's going to win Alabama and, you know, the rest. That's where you fight. Alice, the question for you, Alex Crompton, why is it that there is often such a large divergence between polls and betting markets? What does each tell us? For example, right now many polls have Harris's pulling ahead, but the betting markets have trump as the favorite 53 to 46. And he thoughts on this and maybe explain a bit to listeners what how these betting markets were.

14:36I'm not big better, but I think that the betting markets are often more a reflection of where money is being placed. So that might be the fact that somebody might want to manipulate the betting markets to get the odds changed. But also there may well be a lot of kind of people who bet on politics who just, you know, want Trump to win. The big bettas, they are absolutely frustrated upon the outcome. We interviewed Nate Silver recently and that'll be out on leading soon. And he was making the point that in this election, it's going to be so close, he's not sure actually he's going to bet on it. But where the big bettas go, they will be putting huge sums of money on often at very, very, very, very small odds.

15:24But what I think the betting markets here have been driven by probably is a combination of the chatter, the polls, and where the bets are going. People don't necessarily bet according to what the polls are saying. Is that any sense? Goshy. Here's a question that came to you from someone that you actually met called raspberry Lewis. Alistair, we met at ULCH few weeks ago. We had a lovely chat about tympson. So that's essentially just run me an hour ago. And who's looking forward to coming on the podcast. He's the man that ran this amazing business that employs ex -fenders who's now the minister of state for justice.

15:59Corbin and the NHS and everything in between. My question is, would you be in support of some potentially means -tested fee for missed hospital appointments? It's disgraceful that particularly when the NHS is on its knees, over 120 million appointments are missed every year. So let's say, Alistair, why wouldn't you support people being charged, I don't know, five or ten pounds for a missed appointment? I remember meeting this gentleman and I also remember the chat, and that same day, the doctor that I was seeing was complaining to me about how many missed appointments they are having to deal with.

16:33I was actually, because I would try everything not to miss an appointment. But I was saying, actually, I found it incredible that I get a letter, I get an email, I get a text message, and I get a message on an app to remind me about my appointment, and quite often I've been getting phone calls to remind me of an appointment. And I kept saying to people, isn't this a huge waste of money to have all these different ways to remind people they've gotten an appointment? And they were saying, well, it's because we've got so many missed appointments at the moment. Well, say, if we could charge ten pounds per appointment, we'd be able to generate 1 .2 billion pounds a year off these missed appointments.

17:08So why not? Yeah, but hold on a minute, how much do these systems cost to chase down 10 pounds of appointment? I don't know. A some countries, obviously, charge a minimal amount for an appointment of any sort in the first place, whether you miss it or not. And the idea I suppose is that if you charge people a little bit, they're more likely to value the appointment, and they may be more likely to turn up. So even if it was a no -show or something, like I don't know, 5 pounds or something. I noticed you're slightly avoiding this. Is this because you feel this is a massive political bomb and that if you supported any former charging?

17:40Well, I'm probably my beloved. You're necessarily going to indicate anything about what a label would do. I did notice the care staff emphasising the importance of reform. At some point, they may have to look at all sorts of different funding issues. I don't know. I as a human being who basically supports the NHS and thinks that doctors and nurses do an incredibly difficult job on the massive stress, facing often quite a lot of sort of angry people. I just think that people should, if they have an appointment and they've agreed to that appointment, I'd like it to be easier to change the appointment.

18:13I quite often find it a real struggle to change the appointment. You get the text message, you get the letter, then trying to change it can be quite tricky. But I think on balance, I would, but I'd love to know how much it would cost on whether we'd have a system that would do it without actually ending up costing us even more. Now, you're right. Yes. This question is from somebody called Anthony Save the NHS. If you're going to get questions from people who directed at me, this was very much for you. When Rory is on Radio 4, he uses a perfect receive pronunciation accent. When he does the rest of his politics podcast, he reverts to a mid -Atlantic twang, dropping end consonants.

18:54Is this him trying to appeal to me? I've not noticed that, but I noticed that when you're on Radio 4, you will say party. But when you're, I noticed in Chicago, you will say party. Maybe it's just I'm a weird sort of mimic of the other person. Well, I'm not obviously mimicking you, but maybe my mid -Atlantic twang is some sort of weird attempt to adjust to Alistair. I don't know. Do you recognise Anthony Save the NHS? I've been mocked for this for a long time. Have you? Yeah, yeah. It is also trying to married to an American. Yeah. And it's also true that my kids can literally change from a complete American accent to a complete British accent, depending on who they're talking to.

19:31But do you think when you're on the BBC, because he specifically mentioned Radio 4, do you think when you're on the BBC, it sort of speaks to something very British within you and you have to speak like a true Brit? Yeah, it could be that. All right, right. Quick break, and then we'll come back with more questions.

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22:01So, dahir, Hey, Rory and Alistair, have you been following the recent tensions between Somalia and Ethiopia? What do you think about Egypt's involvement in the crisis? What are your thoughts over the... Well, this is another one that is sort of massively important, but doesn't seem to be getting that much attention at all. So, essentially what's happened is that Ethiopia landlocked since Eritrea moved off after a pretty brutal war that I covered back in the 80s, I think it was. It becomes landlocked once access to the sea does a deal with Somali land, does a 50 -year lease on a naval base, but of course Somali land is a breakaway territory from Somalia.

22:46The deal in quotes unspoken, partly spoken is in exchange for getting the access to the sea and the ability to build a port. They're basically are leasing 12 miles of coastline from Somali land that they will recognize Somali land. Somalia therefore, very, very, very unhappy. Kick out the ambassador, shut down their consulates, and meanwhile, now Egypt, big power, big country, has decided to give them support, so thereby is all getting a little bit tense. It gets even more complicated because all these other players, Qatar, UAE, Turkey to name three, also back different provinces within Somalia.

23:36And Somali land itself, I mean, I visited Somalia and Somalia, and Somali land in many ways has been a success story. It'd be much more peaceful than the rest of Somalia has done better in terms of its administration, terms of holding elections, and terms of economic development. A lot of very prominent British Somalis are from Somali land and are very sympathetic towards Britain, recognizing Somali land's independence, which the world has tended to hold off from doing because they're very worried that Somali is going to disintegrate further. And there's question of these policies around ports and roads all the way down the Horn of Africa is vital because you've got China and investing in ports, you've got UAE and investing in ports, you've got other Gulf countries investing in ports.

24:19And as you say, Ethiopia, all of them trying to get access to that coastline. And in the case of Djibouti, I think they've managed to sell part of their port to the French part of the Americans part to Chinese and part to UAE. I think Djibouti is the only place outside China where China now has a military base. Right, it's certainly got a Chinese military base along with everybody else's military base as well. Yeah, yeah. So Egypt has now sent a couple of C -130 military airplanes to Mogadishu. They're planning to send 5 ,000 soldiers in the short term to support an African Union force. Somalia and Ethiopia, constant war of words at this about this.