318. Question Time: Does America really care about the ‘special relationship’?

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart. We're going to start with a question from me to you. Well, from Caitlin Razzle to you via me, can you explain a bit about the special relationship between the UK and the US? Who first articulated in those terms? Does it still hold any relevance today? And those are actually Patrick. Similar question. Can Kier Samma maintain the special relationship with Trump Wins? And is the public warm relationship with Biden? Between Lamy and Blinken? A potential liability after Republicans win. And funny, Sharon Els, if Trump succeeds, how should Kier Samma deal with him?

1:28As I see it, the British Prime Minister has to be friendly to the US President for obvious reasons. But most of the British public perceive Trump to be barking and now mowing mad over you. Sharon Els' question then reminds me of when George W. Bush followed Bill Clinton. Tony Blair's very, very, very first telephone conversation with Bush as incoming president happened when Tony was doing a visit to Warwick University with Bill Clinton. So it was just one of those amazing moments where you realize of power moving away. And Bill Clinton being conscious of it because we had to explain to Clinton's people that Bush's people had come through and said, could they do a phone call with Tony Blair?

2:13And this is the sort of time slot that's that he's free. And the only one that we could do is we were at Warwick University. Oh no. Bill Clinton. Of course, Clinton being an absolute pro is, it doesn't. You've got to take that call and off you end. And I guess what the lesson from that is that during that election, and obviously things are so difficult with the current election, I'll come on to say why. But everybody knew that Tony Blair had a close relationship with Bill Clinton. But he stayed out of the election campaign. And he made sure, not least by taking that phone call, that he would develop a good relationship with George W.

2:49Bush as well. On who first articulated this phrase, a special relationship, it was Churchill. Churchill made a speech in Fulton Missouri, I think it was quite famous. I think that says Iron Curtain's speech isn't it? Yeah. The Iron Curtain coming down the speech here. Yeah. But he talked about that. That's where I think he first articulated the special relationship. And I don't think, given that the Iron Curtain, that was what he, as it were, wanted to be the main thing. I think special relationship was probably just one of those phrases that he sort of tossed out there. But it sort of has taken on a life of its own.

3:25And I think it means a lot more to Brits than it does to Americans. And it's true though, that last week, I mean, Joe Biden did roll out the red carpet. And the point about if Trump does win, when we were in Chicago, and we met quite a lot of people from the embassy, and they were working away. They were the people who were somebody from the embassy who introduced me to that guy, David Urban, the Trump person. And I think the part of their thinking would be, that would make an interesting interview for your podcast. But also, they might be thinking, I'm showing the Trump people that we're, you know, we're balanced about this.

3:55We're not just going around the place, so that we like Kamala Harris. We're dealing with Trump as well. So, if Trump does become president, God forbid, I'm sure Kierst, I'm a will put in place people and try himself to make sure there is as positive as relationship as possible. It's first thing, I'm just in terms of communication language, how extraordinary Churchill was at producing these phrases. I mean, that single speech, after he was no longer prime minister, generated the phrase, the Iron Curtain, and the special relationship. I also discovered he'd produced the phrase in the House of Commons from the cradle to the grave, as a way of talking about the NHS, et cetera.

4:30The thing that you noticed, so being the US, I'm talking to you now from Yale. And we've got, obviously, as you can imagine, at our school here, a huge variety of students from around the world. And I noticed in one of our classes that an Israeli believed that the US Special Relationship was, was Israel, a Canadian believed it was with Canada. And we've also had the French believed that the US has a special relationship with them going deeply in history to do with their cooperation in the revolution, the Japanese, et cetera. So the US is quite profligate with its use of the phrase, social relationship.

5:09Yeah, of course it is. It goes around the world. It makes one wonder how special it is, which is one of nine. There's also a generational thing going on because the Association of Marshall Scholars, which is very fixated upon the US UK Special Relationship, they have done a, a, a, a, a very good thing, it's then in you and I. Very good to see the Marshall Scholars. Do you ever have a last year? We did, yeah, we did a lot of interesting. Again, we met some Trump people there. Interestingly, they've done this survey of Americans. Respondents over the age of 30 still perceive the United Kingdom as the United States most important ally and strategic partner.

5:43But younger respondents are afraid to have a very, very different view. Ooh, what do they think? 36 % of US residents under the age of 30 rank China as America's most valuable strategic partner. Ooh, and this compares with four percent of respondents over the age of 70, 27 % of the young ones see the UK as the most important, whereas it's more than double that for those over 70. So that suggests there's a bit of a generational divide going on there. And but also fascinating because given that this cross -party bipartisan support for a confrontational policy towards China. Exactly, exactly. I think younger people in the US want so much friendier relationship.

6:26Well, I wonder, I wonder, I hate to give such praise to the technological advances of China. I wonder whether TikTok is a big part of that because the thing that most young people associate with China is not Taiwan and it's not tariffs and it's not all the sort of big stuff that we talk about is TikTok. So there we go. Now, let's stick in America, Rory. Seb Landsman, can you tell us what is going on with the New York mayor, Eric Adams and his team? Do we know why his chief counsel, Stepdad is not just his chief counsel, by the way? He seems to be facing a lot of scrutiny, but where does this all originate?

7:00Well, so this like a lot of US corruption scandals is complicated by many different factors. I mean, his friends will say that Eric Adams, who is the very, very colourful mayor of New York, just keeps unfortunate company and maybe has a fader of judgment. So he was very close, for example, to a Rolls -Royce driving bishop that's just been put in prison for fraud. He appointed one of his top aides, a friend who'd been implicated in corruption. High ranking officials in his administration, their homes have been raided. His own telephones have been taken away. He's just lost the New York police commissioner who's just resigned and probably resigned in connection with the fact that somebody who ran a cafe in Brooklyn has claimed that one of the aides in City Hall said that if he paid a bribe to the police commissioner's twin brother, all his problems would go away.

7:54And as you say, the chief lawyer, it's something we touch on a little bit, but we don't talk about maybe enough, which is how strange American city politics is. I mean, in so many ways, America sort of leads the world, but when people are talking about how shocked they are about Trump facing felony charges, I'm here in Connecticut talking to you right next to City of Bridgeport, and the mayor of Bridgeport faced 16 counts of racketeering extortion bribery tax, all of which he was convicted on. Spent nearly 10 years in prison, came out again, stood again for election, tried to rig the election, and was successfully re -elected in 2015 and 2019.

8:33And part of this sadly is sometimes the Democratic Party machine. So I mean, once the police unions behind you, once the Democratic Party machines behind you, once the church leaders are behind you for African American churches, sometimes, you have a pretty powerful voting block. Final thing, just in case people are interested in this, the best film on this is this amazing film street fight about Cory Booker running in in Newark against sharp James before sharp James was put in prison for corruption charges. But I don't know, I mean, Eric Adams's followers would say I'm being unfair here, and that this is slanders from his opponents, and it's because he's an African American.

9:09You're not the only one being unfair if you are being unfair because I mean, Eric Adams is quite a big figure, Mary New Yorker, big name in the Democratic Party. And I think that, if I don't know if you remember, if you may have left, I can't remember. Jim Merritt, the Chicago, the convention, there was that big CNN sort of party house, thing, be somehow managed to get an invitation. We were invaddled our way in most days. You'd left Chicago, Rory, and I was about to do an interview with that guy, David Urban, the Trump guy. And there was a little gaggle of journalists hanging around, and they're obviously waiting for somebody.

9:44So we said, you know, you're waiting for it, they were waiting for Eric Adams. Oh, you said, what's he done? He says, oh, well, we've just heard he's not got a speaking slot. So a long, a long he comes, looking quite cool with the Eddie Shades on and these, you know, couple of bodyguards around him, what have you. And they were sort of firing questions at him. He just sort of went through them. But I wonder whether the reason he didn't have a speaking slot was because all this stuff was sort of bubbling away. And I was reading a thing on political which is listed all of the different people. The headline was Eric Adams Shady in a circle comes back to bite him.

10:15It's just a list of all the people that he's hired, including people who got all sorts of records before he hired them. So I think the lesson of this story is, you know, be very, very careful who you're high when you're in a big public job. It's got a couple of great lines. One of his strapped lines during the campaign was, I think, I'm dyslexic. I was arrested. I was rejected. Now I'm elected. And then he's got another one that he runs at my home, which he says, if people question him about these dodgy associates, he says, I'm perfectly imperfect. And this is a city made up of perfectly imperfect people.

10:52I think that's better than the first one. Margillian, Margillian. Now, what about this, Rude? Delia Dunlop, what is the significance of Turkey deciding to join the BRICS? That's Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa? What does it mean for his accession into the EU? And what does this say about multipolders and more broadly? So BRICS formed in 2006, Brazil, Russia, India, China was South Africa joining in 2010. And we've covered this as expanded recently further. So Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and UAE have joined Saudi Arabia, instead, it's considering joining. And as a bi -jian, a Malaysia of applied quite a symbol of a shifting world because in the 1970s, when the G7 was formed, which the kind of Western big economies, they formed about 70 % of the world economy.

11:38Now in purchasing power parity terms, the BRICS are about the same size as the G7. Over you on analysis on Turkey. Well, I think this is really interesting and I'm surprised it hasn't had had that much attention. Look, I think a lot of this is about different powers and different regions trying to shape a new world order, China most obviously, India as well, Russia obviously. But I think that what I mean, it is incredible how many of these big foreign policy situations that we talk about, how Turkey sort of pops up in some form or another. So here's Turkey that has for some time sort of wanted, leaning into the idea that it wants to become a member of the European Union, if you remember during the Brexit debate, one of the most powerful arguments for Brexit was Michael Gove lying about last chance to stop Turkey joining the EU.

12:28But I think this is about them signaling that they're in nobody's camp, they're going to do their own thing, they're going to forge their own path. There was a vote in the UN, I think it was last December, and there was a resolution calling for a new international economic order and 123 member states, which was mainly African Asian Latin American countries voted in favor, 50 voted against. The only abstainer was Turkey. Now, this is part of the theme, I don't know, that you raised for this last week when you were talking about China welcoming African countries. I mean, essentially what we're talking about here is the balance between the Old West, the US and its allies and the rest of the world.

13:11And there are a couple of things come out of that. Is the world becoming as it were a standoff between the US and China, or is it disintegrating into a world with lots and lots of middle powers? So we've talked in Sudan and Somalia about how half a dozen countries are getting involved, smaller countries. Turkey being one of them, I mean Turkey has been very influential in the chaos in Libya, it's been influential in the Israel Hamas standoff, it's been influential in Sudan, it's been influential in Somalia. And if I remember visiting Somalia and getting a sort of crusty lecture from a British colonel about all the wonderful stuff Britain was doing and supporting Somali.

13:48But then when I talked to the head of the Somali Intelligence Service, it was Turkey, he talked about most of the time in terms of support they were, they were assuming Turkey in the CIA. So does that? And I think you're probably right that what Turkey is doing a bit like Saudi UAE is not really throwing its weight in behind China and Russia. But keeping its options open and deciding it doesn't need to be just in one camp or another and it can be a bit more alicate on the menu. And I think probably Erdogan will be reading the politics of the European Union very, very carefully and probably saying to himself, look, you know, I can bleat all I want about the European Union, but as things stand, they're not ready to accept as a member and the politics make it harder for them.

14:29So I will make sure they understand that I've got other options. And you know, of course, people remember Turkey's also a member of NATO, they were very, very recalcitrant and slow in backing Sweden and Finland from being allowed into NATO. I think he's just a little bit like a bit like Modi. He likes people to be aware of his power and his strengths. And of course, you know, Turkey is, I think I'm right, the Turkey's population is greater than Germany, if it did join the European Union, it would be the biggest country. They're basically saying we're not East, we're not West, we're not Europe, we're not Asia, we are kind of whatever we need to be at the time, which in a way is a little bit like China used to sort of do their foreign policy when they were not the China of today.

15:12It's the biggest story, isn't it, in some ways, of the last 25 years or one of the big stories, Turkey, because if you were being super optimistic when you guys were in office, and I guess you would have discussed this, there would have been a story that Turkey becoming a democracy, moving away from military rule, getting this, you know, working class effective, merervous, stumble out of the one elected, could have been the beginning of a democratic state potentially joining the European Union right on the edge of the Middle East. And suddenly, you're reaching out, Turkey has borders with Iran, Turkey has borders with Syria, right?

15:51So suddenly, you could be in a situation in which you have a democratic pro -Western European Union member state pushing that kind of Western model out into the Middle East. That of course isn't quite how it went. What happened is that Erdogan, after early promise, became more and more autocratic, the European Union slightly turned against, and all those developments to the Middle East that people were looking for didn't really happen. But I think if we're telling the story of what happened to some of the dreams of the 1932 -thousands when we really thought France's Fukuyama was right, history's ended, the whole world was going to become follower -western model.

16:30Turkey's a really interesting case study of what didn't quite happen. Yeah, absolutely. Now, Rory, guess which subject we have the most questions on this week, and it's not the first time. It's Long COVID, isn't it? As I said, it is. It is. A lot of people want us to do more on Long COVID. There's obviously something going on at the COVID inquiry that we're not aware of, because there's just been very little coverage of it. Lots of people saying that the report on the COVID inquiry has just gone away. Lots of people saying that Long COVID is ruining a lot of people's lives. So what I think we should do is rather than answer them now, is we should go away and perhaps come back next week and have a proper discussion about Long COVID.

17:05Yeah, huge amounts. So this week, I thank you to Anne Marie and Jay Kennedy, but actually dozens of others coming in. No, it doesn't, this week. They're really worth it. It did make me wonder slightly whether we're becoming like, you know, those MPs who suddenly find that they've got 7 ,000 emails on the same subject. But anyway, they're right. Anne Marie is right. There is far too little discussion at the moment about COVID and Long COVID. All right, Alice, quick break. And then more questions.

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18:42Andy Ferry, the saddest aspect of Sam and the Sturgeon, a troubled union that was a TV documentary, was that this formidable partnership had been great friends as well. How are they no longer talk? What were the friendships, Anna Stern -Morrie regret sacrificing at the ultra -political progress? Have you lost friends through politics? Yeah, I have slightly. I'm afraid Boris Johnson was a bit of a deal breaker for me. When I found people that I liked and admired coming out and endorsing Boris Johnson and saying how wonderful he would be and how much integrity he had and how he'd be the most terrific Prime Minister.

19:17Yeah, Rishi Sunak, for example, I can't say we were particularly close friends, but that was really the moment which I just was bewildered and couldn't work out. What he was doing, I'm afraid probably I, Robert Jenryk, I'd probably slightly lost it on there. My PPS, who I was very close to, endorsed Boris and I found that very troubling. I guess Brexit probably did it for lots of us. We found ourselves in very, very awkward relationships over Brexit. On the Sam and Sturgeon, I mean the big political partnership in your life, which again I always think, maybe you think people talk about too much and you don't want to be in the middle of because they're both your friends, but I always think you hint at, but our listeners don't fully understand and maybe we can explore in our leading interview with Douglas Haddock on his set.

20:00It's Blair and Brown. Rory, if you read volumes one to eight of my diet, nobody can say I haven't talked about the Blair Brown. I think it's possibly the fact that I have one of my recurring dreams that I used to talk to my sadly dearly departed psychiatrist David Sturgeon about. I did use to have these these dreams where I was constantly in the middle of literally in the middle of fights between court and totally. Sometimes I've evolving weapons as well. That's probably why I don't auto -battery. You can leap into wanting to talk about it. I've lost any really close friends. No, I don't think I've lost close friends, but then I've always been quite picky about my close friends.

20:43But I've definitely found, well, another met leading interview with David Davis. I mean, I was very friendly with David Davis when I was a journalist. That continued. I might still seem very, very rarely. But again, for me, Brexit was a bit of a deal breaker. It wasn't just the issue. I knew that he might have those views. It was that lack of seriousness about it. I couldn't agree more. I kept friendships with people who voted for Brexit. I don't know problem with that at all. I think it's the way in which people conducted themselves. Particular forms of dishonesty and resistance that really threw me off balance, not the factors itself.

21:21We've got a question here on malaria, which has come a number of times and we haven't done it. Maybe it's worth just putting up in lights because malaria and no more UK has just released a report showing that cutting malaria can lead to a GDP boost of nearly 127 billion dollars for malaria and domestic countries in Africa. They're leaning into this partly because of what role could international development play in achieving the Labour government's manifesto aim, what unique assets could the UK bring to the table? Quick reminder on this. On malaria, I mean, obviously, it's the most devastating disease that kills an incredible number of young people debilitates adults.

21:58Bill Gates, one of the things he's been associated with, Closian has done very good work on. There's been huge advances. It looks as though we may be approaching certain forms of malaria being able to get a vaccine. Bed nets have made a big difference. It's not that 100 % of bed nets are used as bed nets. Some of them may be used for fishing when you give them out, but pretty 60, 70 % of them are used as bed nets and they're a very cheap way of preventing someone getting malaria. Let me use that as a segue into do you expect Labour to talk more about international development? Or is that very much a blare -brown camera thing?

22:30Well, I hope so. If you remember, plucking yet another leading interview, when we first spoke to Kia's Stama, he recommitted to the 0 .7 % of GDP for international development and that sort of slowly got eroded. I don't know where it figures in their priorities right now. If you've followed David Lamy since he became, so he's now head of the foreign Commonwealth and development office because Johnson, one of his many acts of vandals and got rid of DFID. I really think it's important that the Labour government does get back into this in a leadership role. If you think about our place in the world, and where our leadership in the world came from, it is partly as a consequence of the role we had as a leading player in Europe.

23:09Well, that's gone. It's partly to go back to the earlier question about a special relationship because we had a very special, we do have a special relationship, but that's been eroded as well because part of what the Americans saw as the importance of the special relationship was, as I was as something of a bridge into Europe. And then the third thing, it was DFID and our role in development. So those sort of big, three big things that I think gave us a bit of colour of extra clout in the world. They've all been diminished. And I was talking to somebody who works for one of the big development charities the other day and said it's actually been the biggest tragedy of their career, that the big players they've always seen as America, Japan, US and Germany.

23:50And we're no longer there in the same place. So I really, really hope that we do sort of pick this up. It is heartbreaking, isn't it? Because Britain, one of the things that made DFID really interesting is that it was much more serious about evidence and sometimes very shocking evidence of it. It would follow the research. So it was very early into giving cash, which is something obviously I believe in strongly through GIF directly and to plug here. Very awkward plug. I've just done a TED talk. If anybody's interested in TED talk where I've tried to explain why I believe that actually we could end global poverty in our lifetimes with half the amount of money we currently spend if we started giving lump sum cash instead of these incredibly complicated wasteful programs we currently do.

24:34And Britain was one of the only countries that you could imagine really taking that kind of challenge being really radical because DFID had the independence to do it. It had the kind of staff to be radical. It was a bit separate from the political process because the point is 7 % commitment. So if we're looking for signs that Labour's prepared to lead not follow, be a bit brave, take a bit of risk. I'd love to see them taking Syracy the cash revolution being done by charities like GIF directly. And if people are interested in this debate because I think we could end global poverty in our lifetimes, do please have a look at my TED talk.