350. Assad in Moscow, Trump meets Zelensky, and Farage’s secret strategy

29:06So the point she was making about, you know, famously she said that thing of her shuffling desk when she took in a million Syrians when the refugee crisis was on. And there's no doubt that has made politics in Germany much harder. The debate about asylum and immigration and refugees is in a different place to where it was. So this is going to be a challenge. Yes, it's a real reminder. I mean, Sir, it's the most dramatic reminder of why global security matters. I mean, often the temptation is in an age where people are understandably very concerned about living standards at home. To think, look, we don't have the time or the energy to worry about what's happening in other parts of the world.

29:52And that's very much, you know, the Trump thing. Let's leave NATO. Let's stop internationally. Let's bring it all home. But Syria is such a good example. That conflict spilled 9 million refugees. It destabilized Lebanon, it destabilized Jordan and it led to the rise of these populist far -right parties in Europe directly off the back of the images, those millions of students leaving. So, keeping a more peaceful world, which used to be our objective before we gave up on it about 10 years ago, is really matters to us at home, matters to us right. Close, it's, if these things are not as far away as we think, particularly in a world where you can travel so much more easily.

30:38Well, that's why it was so interesting to see the different responses of Biden and Trump, Joe Biden put out a statement. And to be fair to him, the support that he's given to Ukraine has weakened Russia. You could argue that the support that he's given to Israel in relation to the current conflict there has weakened Iran. And he was kind of taking, he wasn't overdoing it, he was taking a little bit of credit. Okay, and meanwhile Donald Trump goes all caps on true social. This has got nothing to do with us. We've got to stay out of this. Overlooking the fact there are American troops in Syria. American troops in Syria both special forces both in the south and in the northeast and actually sent comm has been doing bombing raids over the last couple of days.

31:26I mean that's quite interesting as a reminder of how at the moment at least still under the remains of Biden and administration how quickly and immediately America moves to think, okay, this is a possibility that goods could be coming through from Iran, through this route from Iraq, we're going to hit them from the air in the immediate aftermath of this thing happening. Well, to Anjali Blinken, the Secretary of State, he echoed Netanyahu's point. He said that there's a real danger that the Islamic State group will try and, you know, reestablish their sense of sort of, you know, operations inside Syria.

31:57So, So, yeah, this is unbelievably complicated and difficult and very hard to see. I mentioned the UN, there was a meeting of the UN, but the UN Security Council was really interesting. It felt to me it was like this was form. It didn't feel like they were making decisions, they were all saying things. Yes, exactly. I think there's a good segue to what you want to talk about after break, which is going to be France. And I guess that the segway is this, some of this, how do you deal with a terrorist group, you know, a group that used to show allegiance to this man, Zawahari, who was, who has been lightened, deputing and successor, and that came out of this man, Abu Saqawi, who was this kind of brutal Jordanian maniac, who was killed by USS Strike.

32:46How do you deal with the terrorist group? That's quite old stuff, which we've never been very good at. we've never really known what do you do with Hamas, his Balar, IRA, Al Qaeda, particularly Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, you know, it was responsible for 9 -11. I mean, you could not have a more iconic extreme group to be dealing with, right? The second question, though, to Segway to France is, how can Europe respond? Let's say Trump is going to follow through. Let's say he's serious that he's not going to do anything in Syria. He's not going to provide people. He's not going to provide money, traditionally you would say, okay, this is where Europe might step up with developmentate, reconstruction aid, you know, not boots on the ground, but big generous fund because Syria matters to Europe, not least in terms of refugees.

33:37But can it do it in an era where Germany is very weak and France is very weak and the two big traditional motors of Europe are struggling, which brings us to all that you've got to say to us from France. Okay, let's take a break and we'll come back to that.

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35:07Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And Alistair, you're in France, so that's exactly where we wanted to get to, because France, my goodness, is right in the centre of world news at the moment. For a couple of reasons, Notre Dame and the total collapse, the French government and the collapse of their prime minister, so over to you. Well, it was sort of surreal the weekend. You saw these two frances, really, because I mean, I don't know how much you followed of the Notre Dame thing, but it was absolutely incredible. I mean, I was, I started watching and I couldn't stop.

35:41It was, it was this incredible documentary on the whole of the renovation and it was like they had cameras around everything the whole time, including those cameras in the sky that show you the sort of how fast everything's being done. And just these incredible people who were like thousands of them, you know, these tiny bits of restoration of art and of sculpture and it was an amazing achievement. Lots of world leaders including Trump, Prince William was there and leaders from around the world. And it just, you had a sense of this is just an amazing country. And meanwhile, who was welcoming, Macron was welcoming the really big Jesus, who was welcoming everybody else, he was Michel Barnier, who's the prime minister, who's government has just collapsed.

36:29So you have this sense of this amazing country that can do amazing things. Yeah, whose politics right now feels in a complete mess. And, you know, this goes back to Macron who dissolved the parliament, called a saperlation, and the result basically is chaos, because there's none of the three big blocks, and none of them can actually form a majority. So Barney, I tried to get a budget through the hard riot, and the hard left came together, and it defeated him. So this afternoon, Macron is sitting down in the Alesa with the leaders of political parties, apart from Melanchon's lot on the hard left who say they're having nothing to do with it.

37:14I think they could pay a price for that, but anyway they're having nothing to do with it. And then on the hard right, Marine Le Penz lot, who are essentially doing the don't like the format of the talks that he's proposing. This is, I mean, without sort of overpushing a criticism of your friend, Mr. Macron, to remind people the first problem is this guy totally unnecessarily triggered an election. I mean, the guy's going to be president until April 20, 27, he's supposed to go. Thirty months to go. He had a slim but just about workable majority. he then triggered an election where he lost his majority, right?

37:52And the result is that we ended up, Le Pen didn't do as well as she hoped because he created an alliance with... Well, the left created an alliance. Yeah, but he's co -operated with them by dropping candidates, didn't he? So this is funny, system sort of transferable vote system. And by very cleverly saying, we won't run against the There's a number of tactical problems. So, as tactical problem number one, he blows his majority, which is a fundamental problem. Tactical problem number two is he runs an election where he basically works together with the left to defeat Le Pen. And then he forms a government which is almost entirely dependent on Le Pen against the left, right?

38:39Yeah, that's because what it goes to the heart of is that the right are refusing to count a left -wing Prime Minister, the left is refusing to accountants a right -wing Prime Minister. Barney A to be fair to him did a pretty good job of holding it together as long as he did. But along as he did, in retrospect, turns out to have been a few weeks. Shortest of Prime Minister in the history of the Fifth Republic. But that is the fundamental problem that now exists. And that's now, they're trying to find a replacement for Barney A. hilariously, while I say hilarious, there's not very funny if you're French.

39:16There was a poll in the weekend in La Fiegao and when the French public are asked who of this list, they give it a very low list of names to choose as a possible prime minister and guess who came top? Michel Barnier. Oh, great. I can't pretend I've been speaking to many people down here, but the ones I've told you are basically saying, Macron's not popular, that's true. But the blame game is actually for the whole of the political class now. What are these people doing that they cannot get together and sort this out? Okay, so to be pretentious for a second, I mean, part of the problem is that DeGole set up this system called the Fifth Republic and the 50s.

39:51And what it creates is this hyper -power for president, which is what Emmanuel Macron is. I mean, you're far more powerful, almost to any president on earth. You know, people make jokes about him being like Napoleon or Louis Catoz and a very, very weak parliament. And that creates the mindset that the president gets to go on television whenever they want and give to our lectures and pontificate at the Sorbonne and act like a sort of king and not pay much attention to their parliament. Except if you end up in a situation where you no longer have the governing party in parliament, in which case you can't pass a budget and you can't pass any legislation.

40:28Then the challenge comes, if you are somebody like Matt Cron who has got slightly sort of big thinking, visionary tendencies. We're going to call it leadership. Leadership. Yes. Are you going to make the concessions? Are you going to be flexible enough? Are you going to be skillful enough in doing this very difficult business of running a minority government? Are you going to be able to, you know, let's say he continues with what he's doing at the moment, which is holding meetings, which Milachion doesn't turn up to and the pen doesn't turn up to. Milachion has 71 seats. The pen has 124. He would literally have to get basically every single, he'd have to do something very clever.

41:07He'd have to split the new front populace. His split is sort of left -wing coalition by... Which has 193 seats, by the way. Getting rid of the Melanchor bit, which is the far left, worse than Jeremy Corbyn, nutty bit of it. Proassade. Proassade, yeah. And get every single person, basically, in Parliament, who isn't part of either the pen or Melanchor to come with him. And I can't see that happening because all the evidence suggests that he's refusing really to accept what happened in the selection. I mean, even that bunny -air government that he formed had far too many people of his own party in it.

41:47Melanchor didn't do this morning where he, and he's got such a sort of sneer -y kind of tone or what have you. But where he had a point was in saying, you know, you call the election, it sort of blown the system up, But you now just want a government, there's still a government in your image. Well, that's not very democratic. Well, it doesn't work, does it? I mean, you literally cannot lose your majority and then behave as though you've won the election and tried to run a government which is stuffed full of your own people and basically ignore the people that took all these seats. The other thing is happening, watching the seating plan at the Notre Dame thing was pretty amazing people watching.

42:28So the former president's turn up and so there's Sarkozy turns up, we call it Bruny and Francois Alon, my friend Francois Alon, as you call him, turns up was Julie Gaye. She was looking absolutely stunning. Basically the subtext is these French presidents turning up with these sort of extremely glamorous spouses seems to be sort of part of the French political culture. Yeah, certainly does. So they're sitting over there near Tabanie and then in comes Zelensky who's sitting a few rows back It's a lensky gets this amazing round of applause the ripples around the church in what's Trump No applause at all, but Trump is going to be seated next to Macron On one side and Mrs.

43:09Macron on the other side. He's obviously this is a classic Macron kind of big gest and Gholzges, and to be fair to Macron, he got Zelensky and Trump together and they had a decent conversation with you. But while Macron was greeting the final people, it meant that for several minutes, who should be sitting next to each other in the front row of Notre Dame, with just an empty chair between them, but Donald Trump and Jill Biden. That's horrific for Jill Biden. And to be Jill Biden class act, she chatted away, Jill Biden's daughter who was an extra little daughter. She chatted to Trump. She did. Yeah.

43:48And Trump made an effort, or seemed to make an effort, first one to see it. It's hard to know. See, yes, and then you have this another leader and then they're not a little gap and then it was Prince William. And an interesting use of Prince William there, because he, I think, was asked to go by the British government. He would have been asked, sorry, we know this, from the way that that the Roth family work, the British government will have asked him to go. Foncestry will have requested this. And will have requested it because they would hope that he would help to reinforce the relationship with Donald Trump.

44:18And their sense as the Donald Trump likes the monarchy. It was usually happened. They had a 35 minute meeting at the, I think it was at the American ambassador's residence. Trump put out this bizarre clippet of how good looking Prince William is and he's much better looking in the flesh. But meanwhile I've talked about how we should call you and love them and all that stuff. There were two people who were missing. Kierstarrmer was missing, but perhaps more significant was Olaf Schultz, the German leader, was missing. And this was a hell of a big European moment. Donald Trump's there, Zelenski's there, Macron's there.

44:53And I know Schultz doesn't like Macron, and I know Schultz has got a lot of domestic problems at home. but that was strange for what could have been an interesting moment for European leaders coming together. Well, I don't know what happened in relation to all the sort of invitations. Did Trump invite himself? Did Macron invite Trump? As you say, you'd assume that the government made the decision about Prince William, but actually might it have been King Charles who said, you know, I think the family should be there or whatever. And also, you have to remember, the German president was there. Right.

45:23So Prince William's representing Britain, the German president is representing Eddie Ram, our friend Eddie Ram, who was there, very noticeable, five rows behind Trump. Zelensky as I say, got an amazing, amazing response. But the politics of the Macron Trump's Zelensky meeting were very, very interesting. And again, goes back to my point, for Macron had an a pretty amazing weekend with that and with Notre Dame. But now he's back to the sort of, you know, very much back to the day job. There was a, there was a columnist in one of the French papers I was reading yesterday. It said that Macron made a great speech about the France that he loves.

46:01And now has to go back to work in the France that doesn't love him. Yeah. So, so, so just, I mean, just in case listeners think, why are we spending so much time on France? It really, really matters. Just remind people, I mean, it massively matters in the world. It's one of the largest economies in the world, but most importantly of all, as Donald Trump withdraws from the world, and we've had Elon Musk and Ron Paul tweeting that all US international age be cut, and I was talking to people in the US administration, who said, actually, they think it's quite likely that Trump will cut all international development aid.

46:36This is the moment where Europe has to step forward. 400 million people, Europe's got four of the 10 largest economies in the world, seven of the largest in GDP per capita, and what really matters in Europe, Germany and France. And unfortunately, Schultz basically his whole coalition collapsed just after Trump was elected. And we have Macron in a position where, unless he can sort out his prime minister and his parliament, we won't be able to pass the budget. it. If he can't pass the budget, how's he going to provide extra support for the Western Balkans, Caucasus, Syria, most importantly of all?

47:15And this is why it really matters to listeners. How is France going to support Ukraine? I mean, let's say Trump pulls out and Europe wants to say it really matters holding Putin back that if Putin takes Western Ukraine or demilitarizes it, that is an existential security threat to the world order and to Europe and Finland and Sweden and Britain and everyone comes forward. You need France. It's one of the largest economies in Europe and Macron is increasingly, I'm afraid, feeling like this figure who delivers grand speeches. But nothing happens and Europeans are going to be looking at him thinking it doesn't really matter what the French President says he can't follow through.

47:53Maybe it's on the line that whilst this was all going on, Ursula von der Leyen, who was in the original list of world leaders who would be attending Notre Dame. She wasn't there in the end and I wonder whether that was related to the fact that while Macron has been weakened by this political position, she was often Euroquai signing a trade deal between the European Union and Mercassaud, Macron having specifically said France does not support it. Because of French farmers. Because of French farmers. And it's a huge deal this thing. The European Union has been trying to get this over the line for about 20 years.

48:28Millay and Lula were at this thing, Millay, not a big fan of it, but sort of being persuaded. And this of course is about the change world of Trump because of the whole importance of tariffs that's coming in. So I think maybe next week we should maybe come back to this whole thing about tariffs and trade and how this relates. But listen, just a few minutes left. Let's talk a little bit about Mr. Farage. Well firstly, you went on question time with him and you spent a lot of time with him before. I did and you know you can't underestimate what a sort of player he is within our politics right now.

49:01What I enjoyed about the actual program was that when I absolutely went from over Brexit, this was in Lincoln which is a pretty Brexit area, but I've always felt with Raj, if you absolutely go from over the damage that Brexit has done, you can get the public on your side. What is not happening in our politics, I'm afraid, is anybody wanting to talk about Brexit? But let's put that part of every minute. By the way, Rory, I know how much you'd love a good plug. I'm going to plug the new European as last year giving a copy of my 2024 diaries to anyone who wants to subscribe for a pound a week. So this week, for example, I've written about in my several hours in Nigel Farage and some of the things that he said and I think they were quite revealing some of them.

49:47I mean, some of them is in the sort of, you know, the hell fellow well met stuff about, you know, God, the hospitality used to be so much better when Dimbo was the charge, used to get proper meal and decent red wine and he said all that stuff, but just to give you some of the points that he was making. So he really doesn't rate Kemi Badenorch. I mean, that came over loud and clear. He said that in Parliament, he says to Savi Wilson, and that the two of them sat there. And my people said, Sammy Wilson asked of MP, yeah, democratic years and every time that can be bad enough so far I stood up to ask a prime minister's questions.

50:22They sort of turned to each other and said, you know, why is she going on that? So for example, it was about Louis Hay, the transport secretary, resigning. Just sorry to pause that again for this is what Sammy Wilson and Nigel Faraz are saying is that their political instincts are there a bigger, more obvious themes that the public will really respond to that, can we bet, and I'll get it yet, finding. Yeah. They would be standing up saying, I don't know, what would they presumably be focusing on immigration or cost of living, would they? So far, every time she stood up and they sort of thought, not sure why she's doing that.

50:55Yeah. Other things he was saying, he actually thinks the more that the Tories try to compete with reform on reforms agenda, the likely it becomes that he becomes a bigger figure, not a smaller figure. And in his mind, I think what's in his mind is that the Jorri Party's done labor and not governing in the way that people wanted or expected. And he sees himself in a position to do a kind of reverse takeover of the Jorri Party. This then ties fact that there's now these persistent stories that Elon Musk, who clearly really dislikes Kierstama, and it's very sympathetic to reform language and reform views on Britain, might give $100 million through UK companies.

51:38Yeah, he denied that. He said he doesn't he said he doesn't believe that story. He thinks his nonsense, but He thinks the reason he on muskers turn on Kierstarma is because musk is a free speech absolutist The reason why I think Starmer keeps going on about two -tier care is because it plays into musk's belief that Kierstarma is blaming social media for the riots and quotes locking people up for nothing So he's definitely, look, I think where we should worry about Elon Musk in relation to reform. It's perfectly obvious that Musk is going to get put his weight behind it. That is more about turnout, it's more about driving.

52:18We talked a lot about young men, it's driving people to vote. We'll talk in our next podcast a bit about Romania, which is the most dramatic example we're looking at. We're quite literally somebody from nowhere on the back of TikTok and 70 ,000 fake Russian accounts was close to sealing the elections. So and and we saw this also. I mean, why does Musk matter for reform? Why do we need to be worried? Well partly because the other thing that Trump demonstrated is that in the modern world you don't really need a ground game anymore. I mean, you know, people like me were hypnotized by the fact he had no offices in Michigan.

52:52He had no volunteers out on the ground when the Democrats were doing all the good stuff traditionally that you did, knocking on doors, having well -run offices, is getting a leaflets out. He instead came in on the back of things like doing interviews on a podcast on Gerogon. So I think in my opinion, we need to be more worried by Elon Musk, almost than we are by Donald Trump. I think this guy is basically a fascist, in my opinion, says he covering himself for the lawyers, right? And what I mean by that is this guy really wants to whip up a mob behind him. He gets immense narcissistic vanity and delight from being the leader of a far -right populist mob and he'd love to have it running in Britain, in Germany, in Austria as well as in the US.

53:33And we need to do campaign finance reform. I mean, the idea that one person could give a hundred million pounds. I mean, remember, British elections, not like US elections, they cost like seven, eight million. As some are giving a hundred million, it's like ten times as much as the entire election cost. Yeah. The other thing that was confirmed to me, and I've spent a lot of time, fair bit of time in Forage in the past, but the other thing It was confirmed to me. He's one of those people in politics. You don't really talk about policy with Farage. He moves it very quickly onto positioning and strategy and media and process and personality.

54:06He told me he still reads 10 newspapers every day and he reads them presumably in order to get a feel. He's getting a feel for where the papers are going. Yeah. So when he and Sammy Wilson are sitting there watching the PMQs, it's partly sort of raw political instinct, skimming the headlines, just getting a sense where he thinks the public is to land the killer blow every week. And I guess that's where you would have been too right in opposition. I mean, just sorry, I don't want to obviously you'll come from a very different direction, but you presumably like Sammy Wilson -Frage will have tried to have quite a brutal, pragmatic view every week when you were in opposition on what you hit in PMQ's that actually matters.

54:46How did you think about that? Just just a second. Yeah, but we would always try to relate it to a bigger strategy. I think the point he's making is he doesn't have a sense of what strategy came me bad and I was trying to put together. Nigel Farage has a pretty clear strategy, which is, you know, it is populism. He's a populist, right wing politician who's trying to say that the elite are out of touch, the establishment are out of touch. I represent you, the people. Now, what I got from the audience is that actually, If you challenge that and confront that, you can punch that balloon fairly quickly, but no enough politicians are doing that.

55:21And I say those in those thoughts was interesting, both from the audience and also from we'll do question time tomorrow, but from the many, many questions that we got this week. How few of them were about Keir Starmer's speech, which was made on that day. And this is the other point he made. He said, yeah, actually, I got the sense he quite liked Keir Starmer and had a bit more respect from the most people who do. But his big take on the speech was, he's got to learn how to use an auto cue properly. He actually said to me, he said, when he stood in Downey Street and did that very short speech outside Downey Street, I can't remember the exact number.

55:56He said, he looked down at his notes, 134 times, I counted. You know, it's all about presentation. Well, we're coming to the end and we'll take this up again tomorrow in question time, but I do think this is very interesting. I'm also just listening to you in treat by the fact that two people who disagree as profoundly as you do, and you've been unbelievably rude to each other in public, are still able, somehow in the green room, to have quite an interesting conversation. Well, I arrived there early because I went up early to have lunch with my sister, who lives near Lincoln. He arrived there early because he'd been tipped off that there was going to be a big demonstration against him.

56:32I felt wrong because I used to get big demonstrations arriving at a question time and I was there. But actually the demonstration never turned up because or a few people did but not very many and so we had we had several hours to kill and Look, it was it was interesting. He's not a he's definitely not stupid But unfortunately you didn't manage to get him as an interview guest on leading no, how do you know that? Because you would have told us at the beginning of Great joy. No, I will send you the I'm intrigued by the fact that he's so reluctant to commit. He gets away with so much, right? I think he worries that an hour with us would be polite, respectful, but we'd be able to pin him on stuff.

57:14And so I think he's very, very reluctant. So let's close the podcast by doing two things. Further plug for the new European, free copy of my diaries. If you subscribe for a pound a week, just go to the new European website. Secondly, Nigel, I know you're listening, I know you're listening because your friend Andy Wigg will tell me and you're welcome to come on I've asked you about ten times now and I cannot for the life of me think why you won't commit to come on leading Very good. Let's hope you listen. Thank you Alice. Let's speak tomorrow. Bye. Bye.