340. Question Time: Assisted Dying, Texting Macron, and the Politics of Scandal

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1:05Welcome to the rest of this politics. Question time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So listen, we were talking and we slightly let people down on the last episode because we began on the fact that I was intrigued to see you sending some very fluent French text back and forth with manual Macron. And that then led into Kierstame riding down the Champs -Olysées in what was it, was it a tank, was an armed personnel carrier? Anyway, some piece of military kit, the two of them rolled down the Shazalisi on, to celebrate Amas' stay together. And it's an interesting question, isn't it?

1:40Because Stalmer suggested that he doesn't want to be part of the customs union and civil market. We are at a moment where as Trump disengages from NATO and from the Ukraine, Russia confrontation, the pressure for Europe to step up will be bigger and Britain is of course along with France the largest most significant military power in Europe. And that relationship was going to be key. Tell us a little bit about where you see the potential and could it be overblown? Am I too excited about it? Well what are you thinking about this? Well the first thing to say Roy is this is question time and the question that we had on this that I'm looking at was Jojo McCarthy.

2:17What did you think of Macron and Starmer riding a military vehicle, no it wasn't a tank, through the streets of Paris, will we be seeing them on the We Have Ways podcast in the near future? I suspect not. And Rory, the way you phrase that question, you do this very subtly and very cleverly, but you basically seem to be saying that because I was having a text exchange with Emmanuel Macron, as a result of that, Kierstarma went down the Sean Z. Leasey in a military vehicle. I did not know Kierstarma was down the Shons Elis, the Illumina's Vehicle, until I read about it in the media. So I just want to make that clear.

2:54That being said, yes, I do occasionally speak to Emmanuel Macron, because I was involved in his first campaign in particular. I thought it was really interesting. So here's Starmer became the first British Prime Minister since Churchill to have the honour,

3:18and that's how is a fellow world leader to come and share in this amazing event. Obviously the British French ties, military ties are very, very strong, but I think it was a very deliberate decision by Macron. If you remember, one of the first things he did when Trump was elected first time around was to give him that honor. Right. And of course, Trump loved all that. Now, Macron is in a difficult position politically. He's in a second term and he can't do a third but he had that snap election that you advised him against, which ended up with the government kind of in crisis. Michel Barnier has calmed things down, but at the same time, Macron is not as powerful a figure in Europe as he was.

4:01But he is still the president of France. He's still passionately believes. We talked about this last week, that amazing speech he made at that meeting of European leaders after Trump was elected. Do we want to write history or do we just want to read history? And I think this is him saying, look, I didn't think Brexit was a good idea for you, and I thought it was a bad idea for Europe. And I hope that you'll sort of think about more sensible relations. Meanwhile, we have to be serious about European foreign and defence policy. And I think having Kierstarmer there was very much part of that messaging to the world, which I think is a very important message.

4:36Macron's really getting leaning into obviously this more confident, aggressive language. which he gave the speech in which he said that Europe is in danger of becoming the world's herbivore, following Trump's real action, and it's going to be eaten by the carnivores. So he obviously has been pushing this vision of Macron really becoming a block independent from China and the United States in everything from defense and security to, I guess, AI and tech. Is that something that you can see, Stama wanting to get behind or is Stama's personality more sort of, as you'd put it, more pragmatic, less utopian, more tentative, about less likely to buy into kind of Grand French dreams.

5:16Well, I think we'd be wrong to say it as a Grand French dream. I think it's macaron, albeit from a more limited position of power than he had maybe in his first term, or at the start of his second term. I think he's just telling a few home truths about the nature of power in the world. And we talked in the main podcast about Germany. So Trump is going to be taking office as Germany will be in the middle of an election because the current German government has not been able to hold a coalition together. That's pretty chaotic. It will be happening at a time when if you read the opinion polls, Merun Le Pen without doing very much, it's kind of, you know, pretty much on the march.

5:53It will be doing so at a time when in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, you've had the rise of the far right and also with even within Scandinavia, we've seen within the Swedish government, the fact that the true Democrats are now pretty powerful there and not to mention the Netherlands and so forth. So, you know, I think Macrons is just telling a few home truths both about the nature of European politics but also about the nature of European power. And of course, from the British perspective, you know, Macrons, they're clearly wanting Britain to be part of this debate, but we're doing so from outside the European Union.

6:27And of course, the Brexit is the same. Well, this is fantastic because we'll be able to do cut out and do a trade deal with America. I mean, that's for the birds right now. for the birds. But do you think that ideologically personality terms, Stammer is up for an exciting bold new vision of Europe's role in defense and security in the world. I mean, we had a question here which I thought was quite interesting on this Kazamira headly walker. As a UK voter who resents having to care about the American elections more than others such as the German ones, and we've definitely done quite a lot in German elections recently, I was wondering if there's a way to reshape the international order away from America, is this possible?

7:05Would a space left by American dominance just be filled by another national strong went now? Before we get into the details of Kazmir's question, which I think is a really good one, what do you think Starmer's instincts is? Is he somebody who sympathizes with Macron's home truths or would he fall into the category of the slightly cynical friends that I have in Germany who think, oh well this is Macron being a bit grandiose and it's not really very realistic? I think it's not a question of being realistic. I think if we don't take that approach, we've got real problems. Because from the British perspective, we are, whether we like it or not, we are actually on our own.

7:41The special relationship, it was interesting when we did the podcast from New York, Anthony Scaramucci, who was very much saying, yes, it's real, and the new incoming administration will see Britain as the most important relationship. I'm not sure about that. I'm not convinced of that. At some point, I think Kirsten was going to have to make a pretty big choice. Well, no, he's going to have to straddle both. He's going to have to try to develop closer relations, economic, and political with the European Union at the same time as trying to maximize the possibilities of the fact that we do have historically this very close relationship with the United States.

8:15And of course, he does it with a very mercurial president coming in. But if you look at the numbers, Rory, on just to take trade, so take imports, 55 % European European Union, 10 % United States, 10 % China, 26 % west of the world, our exports, 47 % European Union, 15 % United States, 6 % China, 32 % the rest of the world. So what Trump does, because he's the 300 pound gorilla, is he comes in and makes people think, right, the decisions all have to be about Trump. But if as a result of that, we decide, right, well, let's just put all our effort into getting much, much closer to America at the expense of a relationship with European Union, I think that would be a terrible mistake.

9:01It's also as we've discussed before, the world has changed so much even since the Brexit vote. Because the Brexit vote happened at a moment where the Brexit tears could still be relatively optimistic about global free trade. You know, it was the very end of the period where it felt as though free trade was expanding in the world. But that year, of course, Trump was elected, and that was the beginning of a move towards protectionism. So Trump put up big tariff barriers, Biden kept them in place. Global trade has now halved. So having been growing it about twice the rate of global GDP, it's now running it about that trend rate.

9:40So we're now in a world in which it's completely unrealistic for Britain to fantasize about a world of new trade deals. In fact, many people are very worried in the US that Trump who basically believes tariffs are the answer to everything is going to put not just 60 % tariffs against Chinese goods but 20 % standard tariffs against all goods from everywhere else in the world that would include United Kingdom. And so there's that and then there's the security story which is that the fantasies that David Davis and Michael Gove and others had about being able to do trade with China of Of course, don't make any sense in a world in which we're very aware that Xi Jinping is a strategic rival and where we've seen with Russia Ukraine the dangers of being very open to economies that can get us into military entanglement.

10:31So the pressure to push back towards a customs union with Europe is much, much stronger than it would have been eight years ago. I don't know. And also, you talked in the main podcast about, you know, we need big goals and big targets and we'll have you. And I was saying, yes, we do. And sometimes they're necessary, but also they can lead to disappointment. So there you had Brexit and you had Johnson and Gove and Davis and the rest of them saying, you know, these trade deals are going to fall out of the sky. We're going to have this amazing deal with America. It hasn't happened. It was probably never going to happen.

11:02And if it happened, if the UK government now said, right, the big goal, we're going to try and get some sort of massive, fantastic, singing and dancing American trade deal, I mean, just think about the effort that you've got to go into to do that, dealing with the Trump administration. So I think we've got to be careful about not falling into this trap of because Trump has been elected and because you know is such a sort of high profile forceful figure in the world that somehow we have to shape our foreign and economic policy around his arrival. We don't, you know, I think here's time I would have thought carefully about oh my god Trump's just been elected.

11:41I really want to be seen riding down the shores of Alize with Macron while I'm glad that he decided the answer to that was yes. I was on the Sophie Ridge program on Sky and Sam Coats the Sky political reporter. He was doing a thing about how much time Kierstam was spending abroad. He listed all the visits that he's done and he was in Samoa for the Chogham, he was in Paris and now he's in Baku for COP. Now look there is always a danger with Prime Ministers that you discover as you know and I discovered this to be honest is that sometimes the foreign policy side of stuff is more interesting and there's a danger that you take your eye off the ball.

12:20But I think at the moment in this period of history and of all the challenges that we're facing as a country that is, you know, in my view made the catastrophic decision to leave the European Union. This foreign policy stuff and the relations that our leaders develop, they really, really matter to the stuff we need to do domestically. We had a question from Jane Abbott which which I think just to finish off this whole question raised by Kazmir about what happens to the world as the US leaves. She asks what Trump's election means for Saudi and Iran. And I think let's just touch on that very quickly because you can see that Saudi has kept going with an Iran deal.

13:00And it looks like the deal, it's still pretty shadowy, but looks like the deal will be that the Iranians are supposed to stop their backing for the the Saudis are going to stop backing some of the insurgents in the Arab areas of Iran. And this is presumably because there are two possible options that places like Saudi face towards Iran. One of them was to say Iran is an existential threat, so we're going to line up with the US and Israel as our protectors against Iran. The other view is maybe we need a detente with Iran, and that actually the best way of guaranteeing the best way of Iran. guaranteeing our security is to have better relations with Iran.

13:41And the fact that Iran proved in its missile exchanges with Israel to be less powerful than people anticipated, maybe means that Saudi can be a bit more confident about balancing itself towards Iran. And that's going to put it in an interesting position with Trump because I think we've assumed because Jared Kushner and Trump's family have made a lot of money in UAE and Saudi and that he seemed to have a good relationship with Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayat in UAE. That's going to continue forever. I'm not sure that's true. I think we could be getting into a world where as Saudi and UAE becoming increasingly wealthy and confident, they're going to increasingly show their independence, not just from the US but even from a new Trump administration.

14:25I think you're right that this is not a straightforward as maybe we might think. I think that we should come back to this and do a big thing on what Trump relations with some of those big powers in that region will be. I think we should come back to that on the main podcast sometime. There's a question here where I'm gagging to ask. Okay. Izzy, should there be a limit on the number of former prime ministers who can attend the armistice day? And I got a message while I was watching the Senna's events on Sunday. I got a message from a friend of mine using the special forces. And it just said WTF, look at the state of them.

15:01So let's just go through. Here's time as the Prime Minister. Yep. And then you've got John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, who looks ever more like Michael Fabricant, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. And somebody pointed out that we had 24 years for four prime ministers and then six prime ministers in eight years. And there's a line down that you say is becoming looking more and more like Jim Callahan, namely David Cameron, that the dividing line does seem to be, uh, seem to be Brexit. When Richard Nixon fell from grace, was he then involved in all the big sort of national events?

15:45Don't know. And Liz Trussroy, my favorite tweet of the week, somebody pointed out that if Liz Truss lifts to 96, She will spend more days at the centre tap than she spent as Prime Minister in Downey Street. That's pretty good. Okay, I'll ask the quick break, then more questions.

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18:19Now, here's a niche question which is going to test you, Alistair, and maybe a trick question. Thelma Montes, can you please discuss what's going on in equatorial, guinea -alistar? No free press means a limited reporting, but it looks like a sex tape scandal could be sabotaging Mr Engonger's chance, the presidency. What are your thoughts? Well, you knew that I knew about this because I sent you a link to a report about it and said, My God as sex scandals go. This is something else So equatorial guinea if you've ever been to a tutorial. I've never been to a talk to look I really wanted to go when I was African minister, but it's ex -Spanish guinea It's 1 .7 million people very very oil rich massively cropped But yes, it's somewhere I don't think actually the British government has an embassies.

19:09So they tended to try to send me places we had diplomatic representation. Well, so essentially what this story is about, it is very, very hard to get your head right this. So, as you said, there's no real free press, but there is social media. And several hundred videos have been leaked on social media and they're sort of flooding everybody is sharing them with each other. And these are videos of a guy whose nickname is Bello, of course he's apparently quite good looking, his name is Balthazar Ibang in Gonger, and it's him having sex with different women in his office and elsewhere. And a lot of these women are the wives of people who are already in the government.

19:58So there's a lot of, I suspect,

20:13I'll be honest, I didn't know his name until I looked it up because Equator McGinney is a country that I've never been to and I don't know that much about. But he's 82 years old and he's as you say presiding over a pretty corrupt country with a very strong influence on the country. small, incredibly wealthy, a elite and lots of the people who live there actually living in poverty. There's been a lot of big scandals, including one of the President's sons, who's now the Vice President, he once paid a quarter of a million dollars for a glove that was encrusted with crystals that previously belonged to Michael Jackson.

20:52That's a good look. There's no opposition activist then to get chucked in jail. I'll be on just quickly a little facts on him. He's the second longest consecutively serving current non -royal national leader in the world behind Cameron's Paul Bia. So he's been basically the president of Ektor Organicist in 1982 right the way through to 2024. Well this guy Mr. In Gonger seems to have a certain charm for the ladies is all I can put it. But bloody hell you talk about government splits when these guys see their wives and it includes senior some of the guys who run the army their wives. So anyway, it seems that this guy in Gonger fancies himself as taking over as president.

21:37But why don't know is who took the videos? Whether he took the video. The other allegation is that he took the videos himself. Whether he was taking the videos for private consumption or whether he thought he'd help him. What one small edge on this, Sarah Lepido has done an incredible interview, if you people have time, with the niece of the current President of Victoria Guinea, whose father Francesco Marcius was the first President of Victoria Guinea. And her story is incredible, so she's a young, guinean woman who's father was the first President, and at the age of seven was sent off to school in North Korea in Pionyang, and went off to an elite school where Kim Il Sung would check up on the telephone from time to time.

22:21While she was there, Obiang, the current President of the Victoria Gini, killed her father who was accused of incredible human rights abuses, she then grew up in North Korea before eventually moving to Spain and she's had a lot of very, very difficult low -income jobs around the world and has now published a book called Black Girl from Pion Yang. So, Sarah Piedot's interview, I think, is worth listening to, but it's also an incredible insight into a woman whose life is sort of beyond imagining to be a president's daughter, brought up in a boarding school in Pionyang, this very close relationship, and probably the best insight into the North Korean regime that I've come across.

23:00But now on a rather unfortunate journey to try to clear her father's name, the dictatorial uncle, who was the previous his present vectorial guinea. So people who want to pick up on that, that the podcast is called Transition on the Wire. Well, Roy, I think there's definitely a film in the The Sex tapes. The story you just told is a movie as well. Yeah. I think Ectoreginea could be a massive series of movies. Yeah, I think you could. Talking movies, by the way, I went to see Blitz this week. Oh, yes. It's absolutely fantastic. I'll tell us a little bit about it. Well, it's about the Blitz. It's about a Sergio Ronan who, the Irish actress who's playing a cockney mum with a mixed race son.

23:40The son is a young boy played by a young actor called Elliot Hefferman who's absolutely amazing. Paul Weller musician, he's the granddad sort of tinkly away at the piano. So it's about the blitz and it's honestly it's a Stephen McQueen film and it's one of his best I think. Oh, Brennan, here's my little cultural plug. look, I went to see the Silk Road Exhibition at the British Museum. And that is amazing because it suddenly reveals that Anglo -Saxon Britain, you know, Femstead, the Dark Ages after the Romans left when we really seem to be a pretty cold island cut off from the world, had far more contacts with Central Asia.

24:19There's a coin of offer who built offers dyke that border with Wales, which is an Arab coin that says, Allah, Allah, Ila 'am, its profit and on the other side it says offer Rex and then there's a a Sasanian bowl made from Persian silver found in a church right up on the Scottish border and fragments of Chinese silk from treasuries in Europe in the late 8th century so unbelievable and they've brought. I'm in sort of slightly resentful of this. I tracked halfway across Central Asia to see this incredible mural in a relatively remote part of southern Uzbekistan which has now been moved wholesale to the British Museum so you can turn up and see it there and it appears to represent Korean ambassadors turning up in a Central Asian court.