342. Question Time: Farmer vs Starmer, courting China, and the purpose of COP

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1:35Welcome to the REST's Politics Question Time with me, Roy Stewart. And me, Aristocamal. And we're speaking, Roy, as it seems lots of farmers are marching on Westminster with what the sun calls, clocks and farming army. I'm not sure during the class as the right leader of this campaign, but there we are. Great question from Franco Patrick Colo. Will the destruction of British farming be Rachel Reed legacy, just like Mrs. that's just destruction of the colonistry for a hand to your area? I'm just going to say no. So I'm going to say yes, although of course there aren't as many farmers as there were people working the cold industry.

2:13But one of the things they have in common is that in both cases, governments are coming in when there's actually been many, many years of decline already. So what Margaret that she did to the colonistry reflected the fact that through the 70s, the colonistry was already in severe crisis. The Labour governments taken over at the end of a period where in fundamental terms, leaving the European Union was the death blow to British farms. So long as we were part of the EU, France, Greece, many other places that had big farm bases, nearly 10 % of the French population is connected with the farming even in the part -time bases.

2:53Basically set out with laws to protect small family farms. And they did it through two types of things. One of them was the MP for an agriculture constituency, but then I was also the minister in death for during this period. So there were two things. There was something called a single farm payment, which basically just gave you money per hectare of land, regardless really of what you did. And the second thing were these agri -environmental payments, which gave you money for the kind of things you were doing with your land. When Britain left the European Union, and I was still working at Defer, I was at Defer when we left, we were spending over 3 billion pounds annually on support to our farmers.

3:29So how did that relate to the CAP, the common agricultural policy? It came right out of the core of that. So this was these were the two most important elements for the UK of the CAP. Absolutely. And one of the problems was that there was a huge opposition to the CAP from two sides. There was opposition from the Tory right that didn't like subsidies. And in a list trust, who was the Defer, actually was one of these big ones. Why should we subsidise farmers, let free market rip? And the other opposition was from environmentalists who felt that the CAP was keeping alive, environmentally unfriendly, farming practices.

4:03So the fantasy from the right was that you would go to sort of full American and Kansas style industrial farming. And the fantasy from the environmental left was you'd basically abandoned all the land and you'd go over to rewilding. You just let trees grow naturally. And the group that's completely squeezed by this, of course, are the small farmers because the small farmers are neither these huge big industrial operations nor are they able to make two or three hundred acres work by simply letting trees grow and no income from. And for me, farming is our landscape, our soil, our nature, our biodiversity.

4:44And I'd love if I could convince you some time to get somebody like James Rebanks, who is an incredibly eloquent small scale farmer in kind of we're talking about the transformations he's brought in with nature friendly farming. And the real goodwill effort, a lot of these small farmers made to try to make this vision work prove that they could produce food, which we need because we learnt from Russia Ukraine that actually this idea that we don't need to worry about food security isn't quite true. We do need to produce some right food, but do it in a way that respect nature and encourage nature developments.

5:15The problem for them now is they're being hit by a lot of problems they inherited from the last government, particularly the government hasn't upgraded the kind of support they got from Europe. It's been a road of buying inflation. They're getting much, much less income. Now we have a labor government coming in that's hit them in another way, which is inheritance tax on farms. If you've got a 300 acre farm, which is a very small farm in modern days terms, in some light wheelchair, and you try to hand it on over to your next generation, you'll be having about half a million pounds worth inheritance tax.

5:46And the paradox of this is that farms are on very low incomes. Many of the farms my constituency were living on 15, 16 ,000 pounds a year, even if their land was worth a lot. And they're doing it because they're trying to keep something going for profound love of their ancestors, of the land, of the work of farming, but it's not a financially workable system. And that's why almost every other country in the world from Japan right way through to France supports farmers, and why I'm very worried about the direction, which things are going in the UK. These protests are specifically about the changes to the inheritance tax in the budget, where the government insists that most farmers will not be affected.

6:29And you look, this is now a campaign, okay? And sometimes in campaigns, the facts get lost, that comes a battle of the narrative. The farmers are pretty well organized. Yep. They've got a lot of very high profile supporters. I've got to say, when you've just said that about Brexit, there is something pretty nauseating about the way that the politicians on the right who fought for Brexit now standing up as trying to be the voices of the farmer, given that what they did did so much damage to farming in the country. And there is no debate about that. Absolutely. And also very sad that many farmers in my constituency is voted for Brexit because they're not desperate about.

7:06Yeah. And I'm also annoyed by EU regulations, but the fundamental truth, which needed to be got across, we failed to get across the campaign, is that the best protection for small British farmers was small farmers in other parts of Europe. I don't know why the government's saying most people won't be affected because of land values, which are now at least £6 ,000 an acre. And in many cases going up to £10 ,000 an acre, even worse in modern terms would be a very small farm would be affected by this change. And I think that may be a question of something where somebody in the Treasury did some back of the envelope maths, briefed the chances of told her that very few small farms would be affected.

7:45And I think it's also going to matter because Labour's taken a lot of rural seats. The farmers did sort of swing behind Labour at the last election. Yes, and you know, you were very pleased to get, you know, we interviewed the head of National Farmers, you often talked about the fact that farmers were pro -Labor. So I'm hoping this is something that Labour can do a retreat on because it would be a pity. Tweak or retreat? I mean, I'm not saying she's going to do this, but let's say I gave you the uncomfortable job of pulled you in and said to you in number 10, listen, okay, we don't really need to fight with the farmers at the moment and we're not actually going to make that much money off this.

8:22How would we set about doing something that gets good will again for the farmers and puts us as you'd have heard? How would you do that? I think you'd tweak it. It's a little bit of a either -winter fuel thing with this one. I felt there was an argument of what they didn't want to fuel, but once they'd launched it and announced it, they kind of let others take over the debate. And I think that's happening with this. You've got to engage in the debate on the facts because the facts get lost. As you started to talk when it was the first question, I just kind of went on the laptop and I looked at the BBC report of the protest.

8:55From April 26, inherited agricultural assets worth more than a million pounds, which with previous exempt will be liable to the tax of 20 % half the usual rate, okay. And that's quite, that's complicated to take in. And it's easy then for the numbers to be used against either side. That's where government has - this is again, I'm afraid, a communications issue. That is where government has to take the trouble to make sure that people understand what the policy is because the facts get lost. Once you're into campaign, you get so -so -called celebrities involved in the rest of it, the facts get lost.

9:30So I think you have to re -winter the argument, re -making re -winter the argument, if you can't, you tweak it. I don't think you can retreat from this. You can tweak there. So sometimes it's not always necessary to say my credibility is at stake, I'm going to stop and the hold to 100 % of this. Sometimes it's actually good to give a little bit of ground through a tweak. Yeah, absolutely. As we did, for example, on pensions, when we were so successful, it keeps interesting inflation low, that the inflation link to the pension, we were giving pension as a rise of 75p. And there was a massive protest about it.

10:01So how does that - maybe even the Prime Minister is saying, I don't want to give an inch on this because my credibility is at stake. I want to seem strong. I don't want to look like I'm intimidated by protesters. How do you judge when it's right to tweak and give a little ground? I think in the end there's a question of political instinct and political judgment. We said day one, if you remember, on the podcast, at the budget, oh, I'd watch this farming thing, whether they will or not, I don't know. Listen, that you can break through it, pro -tory, and that there was a significant shift. Then I just think it's not good politics to have them all offside.

10:44And bear in mind, these protests will be weaponized by the far right and by the right of the Tory party. It's already happened. And there is an argument, I mentioned the book who owns Scotland. I don't know if there's one of England, but who owns Scotland, basically, is the land in Scotland. It's a pretty small number of people. It's a pretty often, a pretty small number of corporations and people non -doms and all this sort of stuff. That argument has to be out there as well. That doesn't mean you're attacking small farmers, but you've got to have an honest argument about who owns land, how much they contribute back, how farming is done.

11:22Because if you're the government, you don't have that argument, you end up just looking like the guy who's hitting as you say, the small farmer. Next question directed at you from Alice. Is Kierstarm a spending too much time abroad? I would say no to that one as well. I can see why people say that. It's the Prime Minister, people have elected him to sort out the economy, sort out the health service, sort out schools, rebuild the infrastructure. But I think if you look at them one by one, first of all, you and I regularly say he's got to build better relations with the European Union. Well, you don't do that by suddenly if you text and emails.

11:59You've got to sit down. You've got a really good quality time, one -on -one with people. And these like these G20 or COP. Just remind people on G20. So that's just happened in Brazil. The very interesting thing at the centre of this is that Kierstarm had a meeting with Xi Jinping. Now, this is very interesting because it shows how marginalized Britain has become. China is the world's second largest economy and in purchasing parity terms, possibly the world's largest economy. And in six years, Boris Johnson didn't manage to meet Xi Jinping. Liz Trust didn't manage to meet Xi Jinping. Rishi Sunak didn't manage to meet Xi Jinping.

12:37So it's a big deal that Kierstarm has met him. And he's come out of it talking quite sort of positively about how we agreed that we believe in a predictable, consistent sovereign actors committed to the rule of law. We're going to avoid surprises. So quite friendly language coming out of the meeting with Xi Jinping. What did you make of of that? And what challenges might that pose given that Trump's bringing in a very anti -China White House? We actually had a question. There's Ross from MIPSWitch. The UK needs to attach itself to a larger dynamic market. Europe isn't growing. That leaves the US or China as markets to attach ourselves to.

13:12The US doesn't want to play ball right now. Maybe a bold move for strength in relations with China would force them to take a UK US trade deal more seriously. I think Ross is a chess player. I think it was a good thing that he met Xi Jinping. And that's why these summits sometimes can be very, very effective. We had a question about COP. Somebody is saying his COP actually worthwhile. And I sent you last week Eddie Ram, the Albanian Prime Minister, his speech at COP was essentially saying, you know, it was almost saying, what is the point here? We all come here. We all sit in the lounge watching a screen where the speaker who's in the forum is speaking, nobody's watching, nobody's listening, we're all just chatting to each other about other stuff.

13:54There is a use to that. There is a use to that. There is a use to that. But the challenge was from Dave Smolder's who asked the question, as our goal has reminded everyone this year, the three most recent COP summits have been hosted by Petro States and Marad by controversy. The optics have really suggest a model for international dialogue and agreement is broken. Is this then actually necessary? Is there a better way to achieve international climate cooperation? I think COP is a part of it. But ultimately, let's just take China again. They now the biggest emitter in the world. They're behind the US.

14:20Yeah. So the US and China, the two biggest emitters in the world, it may be that ultimately, this is something else that Trump has to try and sort out bilaterally. Now, his views suggest that he's not upright, but they will have to be involved in that. So I think COP is part of a process. It's not the it's not the be all and an end all. But if you go through all the meetings that Keir's time has had and yes, people would rather see him at home. Yes, people want to see him focused on domestic issues. But he has to make the argument because it's right that growth does depend on us having good relations with these countries.

14:57The big foreign policy stuff we talked about Ukraine in the main podcast. Every single one of the conversations there at the G20, they'll all be talking about Trump. They'll all be talking about, you know, what do we do in relation to Middle East and relation to Ukraine and relation to AI, Trump changes the game. Now, therefore, he has to engage in that. What he has to watch out for is the fact that the workload is so intense on the foreign policy front. If you start to give the impression to the public, that's what you prefer. You actually liked being on a plane. You like the red carpet when you're arriving in country A or country B.

15:33So you've always got to be linking what you do as a foreign policy prime minister to what you're doing domestically. I think he's doing that pretty well. China. I'm just looking at a couple of figures which I think are quite interesting on this. So the Brexit here has made a huge play of this, it's the same question that the listener has asked about, here's this huge economy China growing recently fast and European Union isn't growing that fast. Why don't we do more with China? The raw facts are that we have astonishingly little trade in the Western China. So putting in context our imports from the EU are almost 500 billion half a trillion annually.

16:11Our trade with China has increased from 20 billion up to 31 .5 billion. Again, foreign direct investment is interesting sort of thing. The large language model is very helpful at organizing this stuff. It's trying to get my head around this foreign direct investment from China into the UK is 4 .3 billion pounds. That's 0 .2 % of UK in the investment. It's 1 .500. Whereas from the US, would you rough guess, maybe it's unfair to you anyway? 34%. So that is 150 times greater. So the answer to Ross is that would not be a sensible thing to do. Add it to which it would damage with Europe and the US.

16:56I mean, Canada and the North is born sort of tried a version of it. Well, you tried to set an I got on fascinating insight into this because I've been meeting quite a lot of senior Chinese officials and there's something I didn't realize. They talked about a golden age and famously Cameron took Xi Jinping for a beer and all this kind of stuff. What I hadn't realized is that I was told by this Chinese person 10 years after the event that when David Cameron met the Dalai Lama, the instruction went out quietly in China to all the senior Chinese state and enterprises. We're not making any investment in Britain.

17:25And for 10 years British governments were expecting this investment to come and it never came. And the Chinese wouldn't explain why. But the story that I heard, this is very deep background, but I believe my source was that they were absolutely told that as soon as Cameron met the Dalai Lama, no Chinese investment has come to the UK. If you were Jonathan Powell, National Security Advisor, both pleased about that appointment, advising here as Dalai Lama, and the Dalai Lama gets in touch from meeting. What would you do? Difficult question. I did notice here in his statement said that they always say this.

17:55He raised the issue of human rights and the we use and so forth. We've talked about that a bit in the past. It's an odd thing that because I often went into meetings as a foreign office minister with governments, democratic republic, Congo, Myanmar, etc. Raising human rights. And questions, how do you do it? Because often what it is is just one speaking point amongst eight that you've got. And one of the African leaders challenged me directly on this. He said, you don't care about human rights. And I said, what do you mean I don't care about it? I just raised human rights. And he said, no, no, you're just giving us another 40 million pounds of development aid.

18:27So you don't really care about human rights. Do you? And often, often, literally it is you will remember this. It'll be raised human rights and then ask them to approve a British investment of, you know, X billion pounds to help some British company. I may have told you this before, but at the Hong Kong handover, we had to travel to go and see the Chinese. And all our media cared about was will Tony Blair raise human rights? Will he press them on human rights? And I was getting in and out of the pre so because yes, of course he wanted that. So we get there. As you say, you've got a list of things that you've got to say.

18:59And Robin Cook was foreign secretary. I remember him bristling as the meeting went on and Tony had not yet mentioned human rights. And at one point John Holmes is Tony's advisor sort of just scribbles human rights sort of piece of paper sort of shuffles a little across like that. And so we've done all the Hong Kong and the business and all the rest of it. And by the way, we should point out is horrific. What's happened to these democracy guys in Hong Kong that being given these very long jail sentences. So Tony finally sort of and I can feel it, it's coming. And he's saying, so it's one more, if I could just raise this with respect, just raise this issue and they could feel it's coming as well.

19:43And that's the question of and he's just got the first half of the H out and Lee Pang, who was the the Chinese prime minister takes a hanky out of his pocket and is to spit into his hanky chief as a way of drowing out to Tony's where raising human rights. And then of course I go back to the press and they say, did he? Yeah, yes, he raised human rights. Yeah, well, I'm glad you're honest with it because we were guilty of this as a concerted government just as much. And I'm afraid this is something that journalists don't fully understand. When they ask that question, did you raise human rights? And we say yes.

20:20Of course, the journalists are never in the room. And the real question is what actually is the dynamics in that room? How centrally you making it? What kind of carrots and sticks you attach into it? This is why it's quite good, the American system where they bring in the what they call the spray pool at the top. So the two leaders will be standing shaking hands or sitting in a chair. And you throw questions. And sometimes that will be the point at which a leader can signal what the priorities are. Now, when I did the briefing after I was until your interview, he would talk about the human rights issues and present them in that context of a broader relationship.

20:55But like you say with the Cameron Osborne thing, it's very hard to get the balance right. Don't we had your friend when he was Prince Charles? When Zhang Zemin came here for a state visit, do you remember? And Charles basically said he's not turning up for the dinner. Now he couldn't do that as a king, could he? No, this is also a problem here, which is that we've been talking about this issue now for well over 30 years. And has it made any difference? Has China remotely changed its attitude towards Tibet, towards Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, towards its own internal distance? And it's not just a British government.

21:28We'll raise it. Every European leader, every Canadian leader, every US leader will raise it in the meetings. So the question really is in the optimistic story, we're chipping away and by raising it to every meeting over 30 years eventually something filters through. But I question whether that really is the case or whether actually after 30 years of people raising it, whether the Chinese are just spitting to a hand. Well, let's say this then from Aidan Gregory, with all this happening, Sudan, Yemen, Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere, do you think international humanitarian laws collapse after more than eight decades?

21:58And I might add to that, if it is collapsing, does Donald Trump's re -election aid the collapse? It very much aids the collapse. So what's the most dramatic example of collapse is Gaza. What is happening in Gaza, I think, will prove over the next 20 years to be more consequential than any other event we've seen, more than the Iraq war, more than the Afghan war, we are totally underestimating the way that people in the Muslim world feel about what's happening in Gaza and a loss of the global south, the way that I think it has discredited the US, it's discredited the international backers. And in recent surveys in Saudi Arabia, over 90 % of Saudi respondents put Gaza as their number one issue.

22:42At the same time, Israel has declared the Secretary -General of the United Nations, percent and on Gaza, we have a government coming in with Trump with an ambassador who says he believes in the one state solution. Absolutely. And Trump, of course, last time round was the first US president ever to publicly reject the two -state solution, move the US embassy to Jerusalem, accept settlements in international law. I mean, he started this whole stuff and then pushed through the Abraham courts, which were very, very favorable towards Israel. He's now back in again. And he's back in again with a government that is even harder over on that particular very, very right wing, his ready perspective on this conflict.

23:27And I cannot see how international law really survives. He's challenging the international criminal court. He's going to probably defund UNRA. He's appointed to an ambassador to the UN, somebody who's incredibly critical of the entire UN system. So this is something we just talked about in an interview that we did with the Embremer. What other international mechanisms emerge to replace? Well, now I'm afraid it really feels so shabby and discredited. My friend Tom Fletcher is about to start as a big UN deputy secretary general. I think one of the senior people in the United Nations, it's good on him taking on that job, but it feels very tough on him.