330. The US Election: One week to go

26:04So the Liberals seems to be streets ahead, they lost traction during the campaign itself. But the other thing is really, really interesting. I sent you this morning, right? I don't know if you had time to look at it. I sent you analysis by the Australia Institute, which is a research organisation. And the headline is the steady decline of voters choosing the major parties is reshaping Australian politics. And there's a graph, which we can put in the newsletter, state by state, showing how over the past four decades, the share of votes that's going to smaller parties and independence is risen in both state and federal elections.

26:40And it's really quite dramatic. And one of the most interesting things in Queensland was this guy, you know, we've talked about the Saira Vagen Connect in Germany. I don't know if you picked up about the Qatar Australian party because they managed to get three seats. They managed to get a abortion and abortion rights right into the heart of this debate. So again, we can romanticise about the Teals, but this is a party literally started by a guy. He then gave the leadership over to his son. And it looks like they're going to get three MPs out of this one, but they really, really impacted upon the debate.

27:12Stepping back for a second, I mean, so you're right, there's a lot of interesting things happening, a by Dan Australia, but the big picture, knowing very little about Australia, and I'm speaking to you, and having been here for just over a week, with another week and a bit to go, is just how healthy in some ways democracy feels in Australia. Very unusual, I mean, we're normally on this podcast talking in a gloomy way about the far right in Germany or whatever nonsense is going on in Britain or what's happening in the US. This is a very surprising country. It's a country where there's a strong liberal democracy, where the GDP per capita, how wealthy average people are, is much, much stronger compared to Britain than it was 25 years ago.

27:52So 25 years ago was about kind of just slightly below Britain. It's now well above Britain. As we all know, all our doctors are hiking it off to Australia to get jobs, the healthcare system works. Obviously, the sun shines quite a lot up here in Queensland. And there isn't the equivalent of really, on a national scale, the sort of far right populism that is tearing Germany to pieces, France to pieces, Hungary to pieces, etc. And they're very, very proud of compulsory voting, and they think that's a reason for it. Compulsory voting is amazing, and I also think preferential voting. So this thing that, you know, which was the way the London Meryl used to work, that if you didn't make it, get enough in the first round, you went through to a standoff, which allows these independence to come through.

28:33I also wonder though, to be a bit controversial, maybe wind you up a bit, whether one of the reasons why there isn't a far right movement here, we're not seeing the kind of populism we're seeing in Europe, is paradoxically because Australia did take quite brutal control of its immigration. And obviously, the thing that's really tearing Europe to pieces is the perception that people don't have control over immigration. That's what's giving the gift to the AFD in Germany, and of course, people talking about votes in Britain. That doesn't wind me up, because I think there's something in it. I think a lot of Australian politicians who listen to what you just said will be surprised, because I think they do feel a lot of the same pressures that our politicians do, but I think you're right.

29:11I think they've got far more cause to be optimistic. And remembering that they're in this place on foreign policy and big strategic stuff, which is they probably feel that their relations with Britain have weakened because of Brexit, and then much more focus on the European Union. They worry as much as we do about what's going to happen in the United States, but I think in terms of their own politics, the point I was making about incumbency though, so if you take Albanese, I mean, he won, anyone pretty well against Scott Morrison, but he's already, his ratings are already pretty low. Just quickly on that one, I mean, he'd just remind, he won on a very impressive, positive campaign.

29:52So Scott Morrison was very sort of mini -populous to ask first, as they're in Albanese, was all about a new politics and common interest and unions working with business and reaching out across the aisle. And that's how slightly come off the rails, hasn't it? I mean, Dutton has managed to punch into the middle of that. Interestingly, the guy in Queensland, I watched his acceptance speech. Now, this is a guy who's got a majority of one. And he's also in Brisbane, the capital, he got very little support. What happened was a really big rural, urban divide. So they got a lot of support and rural areas less so in urban.

30:27Just again, to bring that lesson out, I mean, that's the way in which although I think we both agree, Australians in a much stronger position than many other liberal democracy, that's a sort of parallel, isn't it? Because there's a sense that Labour the left is increasingly becoming a party of better off urban people and rural communities. In Trump's case, that would be Flint, Michigan, or as Johnson's case, the Red Wall are increasingly voting conservative for cultural issues, conservative for cost of living issues, whereas the left is getting the cities. Exactly. But I think Dutton, who's this former policeman, he's got these literally completely bally looks, looks like a better hard man.

31:06And he is proving to be quite a difficult opponent for Albanese because he's just going pretty much full on pressing the populist buttons. Now we'll see if it works, we'll see if it works. But my point is, and I just think in Cumbansy is such a hard thing in modern politics. And I think that's why Labour have lost in Queensland. In Cumbansy very hard, and also trying to hold the centre, trying to hold the progressive centre is very difficult. I mean, the classic example for Albanese is that even though the Australian economy is in a position that would be the complete envy of the British economy and you know, able to run budget surpluses and things we can even fantasize about.

31:43Nevertheless, of course, cost of living really matters, people are feeling it, people don't like what's happening on interest rates, they don't like what's happening on housing prices, so that stuff makes it feel like the Netherlands or Canada or Britain, so a lot of things in common. There's also problem stagnant median wages, so another problem they've got in Australia that we all have is this problem about what's happening to people in lower wages. But Israel, another classic example of ways in which Australia is not that different to the rest of the world. Albanese is stuck, you know, on the one hand he's accused by the Murdoch press, and I'd love to hear you a little bit about Murdoch press in Australia, but he's accused of abandoning Israel by them.

32:20And of course, the progressives and the Greens are being complicit in genocide. Murdoch and Murdoch papers in Australia, politicians probably talk about them way more than ours do. He has this big network of regional papers and they are pretty vile about labor, they always have been. They love these sort of, you know, a bit like with the freebie route with the UK Labour Party, they've had this great thing to get their teeth into recently because Albanese and his partner have bought this multi -million pound luxury beachside house. How did he afford that? He came from quite a modest background.

32:52Where does the money come from? I don't know. I don't know. I can't say I've looked into his deeply as the Australia papers are. All of those is causing a lot of grief. Also freebies on Qantas is also causing some problems. He's been getting upgrades on Qantas here. So I think the Mitzemeckos have written there too. Yeah, that stuff never helps, does it? Well, at least he's not going around getting into fist fights with constituents as one of the labour and pieces right now. Anyway, should we take a break and come back on Japan and Georgia? Very good. Looking forward to it. Thanks.

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34:35Welcome back to the rest's politics with me, Anastak Campbell. And with me, Rory Schutton, coming very, very close just to remind people to tune in on YouTube. We'll be sending out all the details to people, but it's very exciting. We're going to be on with our US politics opposite number. On with the great Anthony Scaramucci, but also on with Dominic Sandbrook from the rest's entertainment, doing an amazing US election special out of the US. So looking forward very much seeing you flying straight from Australia to see you there. In the last podcast, we raised the issue of Georgia and Japan, both were going into elections and both have turned out to be really, really fascinating.

35:15So to depress listeners who are already worried that I've miscalled the US election, Georgia, where it looked as though the opposition parties were in a pretty strong position, and most of the polling was suggesting they were going to win, and the exit polls suggested they were going to win. Skippy -Doo, Sudden Surprise, the pro -Putin authoritarian Georgian dream party, has suddenly brought in a massive victory up from 48 % in 2020 to 54%. In 2024, getting over 90 % of the vote in some of these rather remote rural minority areas of Missouri, she and Muslims and Armenians and various else who've turned out in astonishing ways as far as possible from the election monitors into Bliisi.

35:57Anyway, every... There are a number of exit polls that came out as soon as the polls closed, and most of them gave the combined opposition, several parties who were all united by their opposition to Georgian dream gave them the win. And then a polling company with very close links to Georgian dream came out and basically said, no, no, no, they're all wrong. It's 54 % for Georgian dream. And then the electoral commission, which also has pretty close links to Georgian dream, they came out and said, Georgian dream was won. And then you've had the president, no less, the president of the country has gone out and said this election is being stolen, and is calling on people to take to the streets and protest against it.

36:38And meanwhile, you have just to give you a sign of who side people are on, Victor Orban, as we speak, on Monday, is en route to Bliisi to congratulate Georgian dream on their wonderful historic win. And Georgian dream have always said that Orban is like their model. And one of the things that people should be really, really worried about, and Geefa Hofstadt, another of our previous leading guests, he has constantly been very, very critical of the European Union and the European Commission, for not being strong enough on Orban and the anti -democratic tendencies that he is, you know, exporting to different parts of that region.

37:12He is basically saying that, you know, surely this is now the sign that the European Union has to take far more seriously the way that Orban operates, the way that it links up with Russia and their interference in elections and so forth. So this is a big deal and it's a bad deal. And, you know, you just go to feel for people in countries like this where they cannot trust their own electoral processes. Let's just develop for a second this Geefa Hofstadt thing. So it's again, just to give an explainer to listeners, basically in 1989, the Communist Party collapsed in Central Europe and then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

37:49And the story really from 1989 to 2004 is that in Central Europe and in the Baltic states, there were all these countries that were desperate to join the EU and NATO. And basically by 2004, they had succeeded. Meanwhile, in other places, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which are these countries and the Caucasus. So just on the eastern edge of the Black Sea up above Turkey and Iran and below Russia collapsed into war and Moldova collapsed into war and Ukraine basically vanished. So you had two different stories happening in these sort of former communist states and on the edge of the Soviet Union.

38:26On the one hand, states moving rapidly towards Europe and NATO successfully of which, you know, one of the real poster children I suppose was Romania. I mean, Romania was a pretty desperate poor place. Lithuania was pretty poor, but by 2004, we're looking pretty successful. And that then meant that these states, as they came out of their civil wars in the 90s, began looking at that European model and thinking, well, wait a second, Romania and Lithuania can set off on these pretty positive paths. Maybe we could too. And these led to these things called these color revolutions where many of these countries had, you know, orange revolutions, other revolutions called off in different colors.

39:01And it was at this point that things became existential. And this is where I think your friend Giver Hoshchut is right. The European Union essentially took its eye off the ball and instead of really focusing on the question of the eastern edge of the European Union and enlargement, they allowed Russia to make the play. And particularly after 2014, which is when Putin takes Crimea, so 10 years ago, first time he changes these borders, he has had a determined effort to make sure that Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and these other countries are going to remain within the Russian sphere of influence and the opposition parties that are trying to push for a pro -European western model are on the defensive and they're just not getting the support from Europe that they'd hope partly because there's no leadership in Europe.

39:47On the actual day itself, there was a European Parliament mission that was there along with lots of other election observers. And the general view was that the election day itself was pretty well organized. But they did say that they saw a lot of pressure, a lot of tension, physical assault of observers, lots of instances of stuffing ballot boxes, all the stuff that you associate with the kind of ballot ringing that we've seen before. And the final result, the official result as it were, Georgian Dream 54 .08 % and the union of these pro -Western opposition alliances 37 .58. So that's according to the chair of the Electoral Commission and that's a very, very big gap compared to even the Georgian Dream supported poll that came out.

40:32So that means they've got 91 seats and 150 member parliament. What it doesn't give them is the super majority which they need to make constitutional change. And one of the changes they were planning to make, this is absolute butanism, was to ban all the main opposition parties. So you can see why the opposition, they do see this as existential because if they don't, you know, at least establish that this election was somehow taken from them unfairly in the international public mind, then it will be like Putin and this you start at this sort of game and then once you get away, when you get away with the next one.

41:07My friend Geralt Knaos who I seem to be quoting almost more than I normally do my hero David Gork. Or your mum. Your mum hasn't even had one mention yet. My mum has no feature. He would ask, why is it that it's Victor Orban who's out on a state visit and why are the other European leaders not playing the other side? Why are they allowing Orban to have a foreign policy in Georgia, a pro -Putin or authoritarian policy? I mean, the Orban fantasy obviously now is this is great. You know, France is going to go with Marine Le Pen. My friend Alice is doing better and better in Germany. The Netherlands has gone with health builders.

41:44Austria has had a far right party come up top in the polls. So he knows what he's about and he's obviously looking and hoping that Trump's going to go in that direction too. Why are we not seeing the other European states, other European leaders pushing in the other direction? Who else could be on that plane? Yeah, but what would they do? Are they going on that plane in order to say well done, Georgian Dream U1 or accept the result or are they going to plane to say we share the concerns of the opposition? We'll go on the plane before the election? Well, they did sort of, Versa of Undelied did set out this sort of big financial package.

42:19But I think that they've got, for off that's point, is that they don't fight hard enough for the values that are meant to be at the heart of the European Union. And that's what allows Orban just to get away with doing whatever it feels like. By the way, I'll just briefly on Austria -Roye, really interesting there. As you say, kick or won a hard right party, won in that they top the poll. But every other party has refused to form a coalition with them. And therefore, the president is taking the very unusual step of not asking kick or to form a government. He's gone to the next party down, which was the governing party, the Chancellor Karl Nehammer, and asked him to form a government if he can.

43:02So that is, I mean, God knows where that's going to end, but it's going to take a long, long time to sort out. I'm worried by that too. I didn't think necessarily this is going to hold together. I think we're assuming that these politicians are going to hold their nerve. I'm worried that just for self -interest and power, some of them are going to break away. These coalitions won't work. And again, potentially Germany, really, it's just the CDU that stands in the way of this sort of center right, stand in the way of the FD and taking place. But I think there are lots of people in the Austrian -Less far -right, for example, Kuts, former Chancellor, who might be tempted to come to some kind of arrangement with a far -right.

43:42So I think it's still possible that we could end up with a very dangerous situation in Austria. Yeah, I think he's pretty discredited, but the other thing is the numbers. I mean, even if you put what would be a grand coalition of the conservators and the social democrats together, you end up with a majority of one, which is why they're now talking to the liberal party to try and build something bigger. But the point again is that I suspect that kick or they will be enjoying to some extent the fact that he's basically saying we top the poll, but they won't even let us talk to the other parties about former government.

44:13And therefore that might lead to another election down the track. Which presumably Marine Le Pen is going to lean into. I mean, that'll be an obvious narrative for her going into presidential election. So let me just finish that on this. What has gone wrong with European foreign policy? Now, they spent a lot of time between sort of 2004, 2014, mucking around with treaty change. And a lot of the treaty change was about creating an external action service in a common European foreign policy. And basically, they put a lot of money into them at least, but they now feel completely irrelevant in the Israel, Gaza, West Bank, 11, and debate.

44:46They seem to take their eyes off the Caucasus and Georgia. The Balkans is not going well. Serbia is not going well. Cosfers not going well. Bosnian is not going well. Afghanistan, they seem to just throw in the towel as soon as the US announced that it was leaving and they had no independent policy at all. So what's going on? What's happened to the idea of European foreign policy? I think you're underestimating the impact that the drive towards nationalism is having on the big international institutions. You could say the same question about the United Nations. You could ask the same question about NATO, particularly with what's happening in relation to the upcoming American election, the possibility of Trump.

45:24So there was a very good interview, I saw by the way. I can't remember the name of the guy. A French politician was interviewed and he was arguing for much stronger European foreign and defence policy. By the way, I thought it was interesting. I was pleased that John Healy, the UK defence secretary, signed a pretty serious significant alliance with the German Defence Minister. I've always thought that Britain's way back into the European debate is through security and defence. I hope that's just the first step. But this French guy was making the point. He says, are we really going to sit around every four years dependent upon the votes of a few people in Michigan and Wisconsin to decide the security of Europe?

46:06He was basically saying that the reliance, the dependence upon America for our security has just gone on too long. We can no longer rely on it in the way that we have done so to the Second World War. So I think you're being a bit harsh about foreign policy. I think it's actually the deeper question is, why has the politics of international institutions become so bloody difficult? Yeah. There's also a question of European leadership, isn't there? Because macro is seen as a sort of slightly pompous Louis XIV figure holding forth in the Alize, if you're German or Swedish. And your friend Olaf Schultz, the Chancellor in Germany, doesn't exactly have a real credibility or legitimacy.

46:44You normally say my friend Macron, not my friend Schultz. I think you pick up a few Aussie habits. You pick up these sort of, you're wacky liberal, you just head the ball out. Yeah, but where's the European leadership? Where are the people who are really going to be able to articulate what that foreign policy is? Or lead on issues like the Middle East or Cox's or Balkans? Well, listen, there's an international bond that line has got another term. And, you know, I think she's a pretty impressive figure. But I think it's very, very difficult at the moment as they head of any of these big international institutions.

47:13They're dealing the whole time with politics that has become much, much more fractured, much, much harder to coordinate. And all, man, this is where F. Hofstad is right. All, man, is just taking the piss. He's not waiting for a concerted, consolidated, agreed line between all the countries of the European Union about how to respond to the Georgia election. He's just saying, right, okay, my side, when I'm in there to say, well done. That I suppose is the other alternative, isn't it? Which is maybe accept that you're not going to get a unified European foreign policy with people like all men around.

47:47And therefore, the other European states and Hungary is a mini -mini state with a declining population of small economy. So why are the other states? Are we going to stake Spain, France, Germany, Sweden? I mean, why are they not leaning in? Why's it all bad? And being allowed to make the running? Why can't they be making the running as individual states more for liberal democratic values in the West? I think those that try, like Macron, as you say, has become unpopular in his own country. And all of them are having to address really difficult politics within their own borders. And a lot of it goes back to the point you made out of immigration.

48:25Immigration has become a really big challenge. You talked about the way that the Australians had approached it. Now, Australia is an island and it's a big country, massive country with a population of fewer than 30 million. But you then within the European Union, you're talking about, you know, dozens of smaller countries, but all of whom are having to address a problem. And I think that what's happened is that the internationalization of the institutions worked very well for a while and is now working less well. And that is forcing everybody to respond to lesser and greater degrees to this old America first, Germany first, France first, Hungary first, whatever it might be.

49:03And don't forget as well with Orban, there's a guy whose domestic record is actually pretty poor. But first of all, he's got a group of the media, got a group of the legal institutions, played the Putin playbook. And now is able to sort of parade as this big foreign policy figure. But it's very depressing, which brings us finally just to conclude with an update on Japan. So attentive listeners of the podcast, indeed attentive, follows world news, will have followed the fact that there's been a new Prime Minister in Japan and the new Prime Minister chose to do the one thing that the rest of politics advises against, which is calling a snap election.

49:38Did not work for Rishi Sunak, who had he held his nerve and held on, would now be looking at better economic figures. Didn't work for Macron, who got himself an event of medicine. It hasn't worked for the Japanese Prime Minister, who looks like the domination of the LDP, which has dominated Japanese politics since the 1950s, had a bit of a wobble in the 90s, but has been absolutely the dominant force since the late 2000s, has basically come to a grinding halt. It really has, yeah. A disparate coalition has come after him and he's managed to blow his majority. And I think I'm right in saying, I think you predicted that.

50:09I think when we talked about it, I said that I still reckon the LDP would somehow pull it off, but they haven't. With their coalition partner, Komito, they've got 215 out of the 465 seats, so they're pretty well sure. You need 233 to get a majority. And Shigeru Ishiba, who's the former Defence Minister, this was his sixth attempt at becoming part of the leader, and he said that he called the snap election to bolster his position. Well, it really, really has backfired very, very badly. He's going to stay on. He says he's going to try build a coalition. The guy who ran his campaign, as basically decided to fall on his sword, but I think it's very, very hard to see how this guy lasts long term, not least because he's actually not very popular with his own and peas.

50:55And if you're not very popular with your own and peas, and then the election suggests that you're not very popular with the public, it's hard to see how you survive much longer, to be honest. That's just to make Japan, which is a very, very, just the most fascinating country, but to make it more real for British listeners, there's a little bit of the Ming -Var strategy stuff going on that we talked about in the way that Labour ran against the Conservatives. So Mr Ishiba himself had initially sounded like he was very radical. In fact, one of the reasons he was unpopular with MPs, but popular with the public as a whole, is he was always seen as a real kind of radical guy, and he was going to be doing stuff on interest rates and capital gains taxes and a nation version of NATO.

51:37And we hear bandend almost all that. Meanwhile, the opposition, and this again is a little bit out of the Kierstamer playbook, Rana campaign, where it was almost impossible to see any policy difference, what they were really running against as the LDP being a bunch of corrupt elite out of touch guys. You've been above too long. Exactly. It's your anti -incumbency, it's general sense that these people are corrupt and useless, rather than any grand specific policy proposals. The opposition clearly have increased their presence in the parliament. It'd be very interesting to see where he goes to try to form his coalition.

52:13I can't see them putting up with him for that long. They're pretty ruthless to Japanese when it comes to their political leaderships. Great. We shall see. Meanwhile, you and I are going to be back tomorrow, wednesday with question time, and then, Thursday, we're going to give our views on the budget. Are you going to be able to watch the budget somewhere, Rory? Yeah. I will be able to watch the budget somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane. Excellent. And then we'll listen to what Paul Johnson says and we'll say, yeah. That's right. That's right. Exactly. That's the way we go. How unusual approach the budget.

52:44That's how you should approach the exact thing. Very good. Okay, I'll ask the war. Thank you for the time. Bye -bye. See you soon, bye.