352. How to solve the small boats crisis

24:35Yeah, I think you have to do both. But my point is I'm just trying to draw a sense of the parallel that I seem to be hearing from within people who've been working for both governments, Labour and Tory, is that I think there was a sense of real frustration under the last government that the entire system was being bent towards a scheme which nobody in their heart thought was going to work. It was all about politics. I think what she's doing the first half of this parliament is trying to fix the system where it needs repair and improvement, trying to bring that in. And then the politics have to take care of themselves in the second half of parliament.

25:13And I know that's difficult. I know. I don't think you can leave the politics the second half. I mean, I guess a ridiculous cheeky of me to say this to you because you're much better at the stuff than me, but it seems to me that's a false choice. I completely agree with you. It's not easy. Yeah, it may be. No, I'm just trying to explain what I think they're doing. Yes, what I think they're doing. I don't. I don't. They've got to do it both, haven't they? They've got to both have really good policies implemented well and they've got to communicate the hell out of it. Are they going to be in trouble?

25:37I'd love to know if any of our viewers and listeners who saw and you can get it on what you know, what you get the interview. I was actually quite impressed by the way she handled it. And I can't put my finger on why. She wasn't defensive about what is a very difficult issue. That's why I quite like it. I had a sense that she in her own mind thinks she can resolve this, but she is at that stage of the operation where she's putting in place the things that will help her do that. She's not over claiming. And one of the things that I think is, I mean, I was, no, I tell you what it was. Andrew Niel, who used to be quite a serious journalist, and he did a tweet this morning, breaking news, Kier's starmer to visit Britain.

26:20Ha ha ha ha ha. And because Kier's starmer, you know, he was abroad again yesterday in Norway and he was talking to defense ministers overseas today. But then I made the mistake of putting in Kier's starmer's name, tracking lots of comments about Kier's starmer on social media. They are relentlessly negative, relentlessly. Now, a part of me says to myself, what the hell are they doing? Why is there no operation to engage with that push back on it? Yeah. And what have you? But then another part of me says, that kind of is the world that we're in. It's a bit of a nightmare. It makes government harder.

26:52I think one of Kier's strengths, I really do think this, you made the point, this mid -impression, but when you said you saw him at that state banquet, and you thought he was calm, unflappable, pretty clear about what he was trying to do, I think they should make more of, we are not going to play the game of our opponents. However, in doing that, you have to make sure the public understand what the strategy of your opponents is. Yeah, I think that's right. The only thing I would add is that it's a little bit easy, I fear, or I sometimes felt, definitely when I was a minister, to feel quite virtuous, and that you were doing the right thing and you were listening hard to civil servants and you were doing a lot of policy initiatives that nobody really appreciated.

27:36And I remember getting very, very irritated, but labor -atonance challenging me over the dispatch box and I'd get very pedantic, and I'd list the 35 things that our department was doing and I'd demand from my opponent, did they know about this or that or the other? The problem is that we may need more radical solutions, we may be in a more radical time, and it may be the kind of solutions that the departments are producing are too mild, they're too cautious, they're too much within the system. And if that's true, if it's true that you've actually got a big old problem that is very unlikely to be fixed with the kind of classic submissions that come across to you.

28:16That's where, just to finish this section, just as a sort of indicator of another way of thinking about this. Your friend Tony Bra has come out with 10 policy priorities for the UK in 2025, and that would be another way of thinking about this. I noticed he doesn't put immigration and I would put immigration, but he says you've got to reimagine the British state. You've got to take a lead in next -generation digital infrastructure, so he's like the nation's compute capacity is all shopped to pieces, and we need to massively increase investment. We need to think big, start small, move fast on AI, so really, really driving it through.

28:54Keep up with climate commitments at a reasonable cost, so a lot of that is making sure that there's finance for the poorest. Recognize the cost of poor behavior in schools. We haven't heard much of that from Labour, actually, but that's very much. You can see where Blair would want to get on that. He's saying, forms of poor behavior exacerbated by smartphones are on the rise. Poor behavior lets down students, peers, and teachers, consistent standards of discipline need to be implemented. I'd be interested in your thought on why Blair thinks that's obvious and Labour doesn't. Changing in healthcare, bring tax policy back into the real world.

29:27Now, this is where he says we need a broad base of contribution. This basically means that Blair is saying, and I couldn't agree with the more that the problem in Britain is that people on low and median incomes are not paying tax. Now, that's a very controversial thing to say, because people on low and median incomes are struggling. But if you make so much of the tax burden fall as the currently down to the top 0 .1%, you have a very unstable system, because those people are very mobile, and they can sweep the rug on for under you. And then he's got a big international space. Anyway, that's what I think Blair would be doing.

29:58There would be those 10 things, and I'm not hearing that from Starmer. I think you're hearing parts of it. I think I've not read Tony's thing here. It's in my inbox, and I know it's there. That felt a little bit, as you know, I don't like saying anything you're remotely negative about Tony. That felt a little bit like 1997 -2008. A bit of the AI bit. If you replace AI with technological revolution development. What was the superhighway? What was your phrase? The information is superhighway, that was the word. I'm surprised identity cards isn't it? It should be. I'm all for identity cards. In fact, somebody tweeted the other day, he says, I need to find somebody who loves me as much as totally rare loves identity cards.

30:43No, look, I think there is, I'll give you an example, right? So when I started looking to this, I was saying, what has Labour actually done? Okay. Board of security command, I was aware of that. I knew about that. I knew roughly what it was trying to do. I knew there was 100 and I think it's 150 million queer attached to it, etc. Anti -smuggling action plans signed with other EU seven nations. It wasn't aware of that. New agreements with Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, to tackle people smuggling through the Balkan states. I mean, as you know, I do a lot of work in the Balkans, but I wasn't actually aware of that.

31:13Agreements with Germany and Iraq, to tackle the people smuggling gangs, I was aware of that. It wasn't aware, and this may be tribute to such chavis brother Baz, but some quite impressive figures on enforced returns, which are up, and also on people smugglers. And so, and I, here's what I wasn't aware of, which I think actually anybody who's genuinely interested in this debate should be, since July election, immigration enforcement has convicted 53 people smugglers, including 23 individuals for piloting small boats, leading to over 52 years in jail sentences, work with the French has prevented over 25 ,000 crossings, etc.

31:50Now, I can't help thinking that if this is the massive issue that we think that many people think it is, seeing people smugglers go to jail for taking people on the channel, I absolutely think they should be screaming out from the rooftops. So, I think it's about marrying this with a, with a communication strategy that doesn't underplay, doesn't oversell, but so step by step, we're getting on top of this. That's right. So, Rory, can I just one final thing before we go to the breaks? Why do your Tory former colleagues, why do they bang on about this ECHR thing, when it would have next to zero impact upon this, because of these other conventions and treaties that you draw?

32:31So, let me give you a quick, quick final thing for the break inside into the manias of the Conservative Party. One branch, the Conservative Party, decided that their number one problem in the world was not the European Union, but this completely separate thing called the European Court of Human Rights, which incidentally was created by the Tories. It was a big thing that Churchill once did and that the Tories were very proud of after the war. And the basic story of the European Court of Human Rights, as you're aware, as with most things set up by great powers, is we really like it when we're going around, bossing other people around, but we never actually expected it to turn around and have a go at us.

33:04That's part of the problem, incidentally, with the International Criminal Court in Israel. Everybody was very happy when it was telling off people in Africa, but not happy when it's telling off our allies. So, I did a huge debate if anyone really wants madness, an hour long debate in the House of Commons, which Jacob Riesmarg where I was defending the European Court of Human Rights and he's attacking it, if you really want to send yourself to sleep. But one of the main reasons why we cannot leave the ECHR is that the entire Good Friday Agreement is based on it, because the Good Friday Agreement was written at a time when sadly neither side really trusted the British courts.

33:38There had been this thing about hooded men, and the result of this was that the ECHR has written in page after page of the Good Friday Agreement. The ECHR has also written into the Trade and Corporation Agreement, which was the Brexit deal done by Johnson. But why do these, why do our media, when these generic type people and for our type people, trot out, let's just get out of the ECHR, why are these points never, ever, yeah, I don't know, but it, of course, it, it's very suitable, isn't it, because they managed to make an amazing thing about leaving the European Union, they've now left the European Union, but this sounds a bit like the European Union, it sounds like another European Union, they can leave.

34:15Yeah, okay, let's take a break and come back and talk about D .J. Trump.

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35:36Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. I'm a analyst at Campbell, and Rory, we've just interviewed Bill Clinton, former American president on leading, which was great and went straight to the top of the charts, I was pleased to see, but you want to talk about Donald Trump and where do you think we are? Yeah, well, Bill Clinton, a small transition, and do please listen to it, and he was very, very clear, provocative, interesting, has already intrigued a lot of people, made a lot of people very cross, I'm getting attacks on, we didn't challenge him enough on his statements about, yes, we're out of power, Palestine, blah, blah, blah, all of which means you've got to listen, because he's really got a lot to say.

36:15Okay, Trump, so remember Trump has, for the last three weeks, while we haven't been covering him, has been making a number of appointments, staggering, in fact, he's basically filled his entire cabinet and many of the levels below, long before he's got into office, which was almost the reverse of what he did last time, where he left almost every position unfilled for astonishing length of time, and the appointments now that we sort of step back a bit, fall into three categories, fall into the category of genuinely worrying eccentric people with very tordry records. First, second category, minus celebrities, without spoken views, third category, surprisingly kind of orthodox establishment figures.

37:05So let's go through, so category one would be Cache Patel, for the FBI. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Cache, would be Pete Heskith, the Fox News Guy. I think Pete Heskith is probably more in category one, he's more in the eccentric. So category two, he's brought in a number of television doctors for various health appointments, Dr. Oz being probably the most best known, but there's a couple of others too. He's brought in as his education secretary, a woman who ran the world wrestling federation. And then category three is Margaribio. Yeah, Margaribio at state, his treasury secretary is a very, very interesting potential appointment.

37:48Scott Bassant, who was George Soros' partner, is a kind of titan of the hedge fund industry, funded our goal, is a big deficit hawk, and has now been brought in as treasury section in a way that sort of, if you want to be one of those people that you and I occasionally encounter when we go to a certain kinds of events who wants to be cheerful about Wall Street and finance, it's people like Scott Bassant that they're going to be talking cheerfully about. But just for my people of the general kind of spread of all this, this stuff, it's fascinating, because maybe we hear less about the more normal appointments, because it's the mad appointments that we're going to focus on and that obviously New York Times focuses on.

38:30But for what it's worth, Howard Lucknick in commerce was the CEO of Cantifit's Gerald, and that was huge, it's kind of billionaire businessman. He's the one that Musk wanted to be treasury secretary. Right, exactly. So he's got commerce instead. Frank Bissignano, Social Security, ran a big fintech from David Purge, who's his ambassador to China, ran Reebok before he became a senator. Then you've got the celebrity lot. So Scott Turner, who was a national, an NFL star, who's doing housing and urban development, Dr Oz, who's doing Medicare, Dr Janet, who's another TV doctor, who's a search in general.

39:09Can I put Judge Judy in charge of justice? It'll be very very good, that's what we need. Rob Rinder can come and do justice. And then I think perhaps the more serious ones that people tend to focus on a lot. We know about JD Vance, the vice president, we talked about a lot, but has some very, very eccentric views on a lot of stuff. So which category are you putting him in? Oh, I put him in the more eccentric edge of this stuff. I mean, he's right out there on not wanting to support Ukraine against Russia. He's boasting of his, his, me more having 12 guns in a house, kind of stuff right. But Pete Heskith defense.

39:47So he's the guy, people will have seen him, he's a very kind of good looking central casting, musly guy who does a lot of Putin taking the shirt off stuff with Crusader to twos on his arms, who's a former Fox News presenter. And he's all about taking on woke in the military and believes that the American military's gone mad because it's trying to buy electric tanks while the Chinese are doing for climate change reasons while the Chinese are just trying to feed them. Tulsi Gabbard, director of the national intelligence, was a Democrat congresswoman that appears to have taken on weird Russian talking points, suggesting that the Ukrainians are developing biochemical weapons.

40:26Also visited Assad and came out saying he wasn't to the enemy of the United States. That's that. Yeah. Kashpatel who you raised, FBI, he's the one that my American friends say if he goes through this country is FUCKED. Yeah. So Kashpatel was himself in law enforcement, worked at a junior level, of which he boasts about a great deal, bought into the Trump story, and has been a big defender of Trump taking out classified documents claiming that it was all completely legal. And then of course RFK and health and RFK being of course JFK's nephew Robert Kennedy's son, who is a famous skeptic on things like polio vaccines, and suggested at one stage that 19 ,000 people had been killed by COVID vaccines, and that a 2020 study suggested that COVID was less compatible with Chinese and Jewish DNA.

41:20Anyway, over here on your thoughts on all this whole setup. Yeah, it is, I mean, is it really three weeks since we've talked about Trump? Three weeks, haven't spoken about three weeks. Is that because we've been mainly been doing Syria and Syria, France, Germany? Yeah. France and Germany. I mean, I watched Trump's interview. He's only done one really big interview. He's done a press conference, but he did this big interview. It's really funny. The woman said, this is your first big interview since the election. And he said, congratulations. So, you know, the value, but what was, I tell you what I found quite interesting about it is that when you think about his campaign style, which is all about certainty, you know, vote for me and everything's going to be great and everything's going to be beautiful.

42:01I'm going to fix you, create in 24 hours, et cetera, et cetera. And what came out through the interview was an absolute sort of confidence about now being uncertain. Ukraine, well, we don't know what's going to happen. I think he says about, I'm much more aware of the complexities. The logistics are very complicated. Deportations, logistics are really complex. We're going to see how it goes. And the interviewer said, yeah, but I mean, to do the numbers you talked about in the campaign, you're going to need 24 times the detention capacity that we've gotten system. Well, we're going to see how it goes.

42:31Everything's very complicated. We're going to start with the criminals. And then we're going to see about the others. Has he been learning from a vet Cooper? No, I think this is learning. I think this is, you know, promise one thing and do something a bit different. I think he's sort of, and then he very mixed messages on even some of the deportation and the revenge stuff. I mean, revenge stuff, he sort of was trying to play it all down. January 6th, pardon's well. We're looking to that. Maybe it'll be big stuff on day one who knows, but then absolutely going for Liz Cheney, you know, these people lie, they deserve to be in jail, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

43:07And then he said this, Rory, what was the name of that, that face cream that you were a bulldog? Bulldog, yeah. I was quite stunned to hear that you use face cream. But anyway, I'm sure the mooch will be fascinated by that. He's the swap loads on your face creams. But did you know the other thing? He's launched this thing. He's launched a perfume called Fight Fight Fight. What does it smell of the bottom of a wolf or something? He says, he says it's a beautiful smell. He literally is on television. He's the president -elect talking about if you want a great Christmas present, buy my new perfume, Fight Fight Fight.

43:44He's got a book out called Fight Fight Fight. So what it said to me was that I don't know that he's kind of, and then he's press conference again, the bit size saw, just a bit weird. He had this Japanese business guy there who was probably to invest $100 billion. And then while the guy there, in front of all the cameras, probably say, come on, make it $200 billion. You got loads of money. Yeah, $200 billion. It all just felt like a TV show. Well, he is a TV personality. I mean, of course, that is true. Listen to you. It does sound what was promoting face creams and books. It sounds a bit like the rest is politics podcast.

44:19And that's sort of clue into the fact that the line between entertainment and politics needs to be blurred. But you've put your finger on something which is the genuine multi -trillion dollar question for the world. So we know what theoretically Trump said he was going to do. So he said he was going to put 60 % tariffs on China, 20 % tariffs on the rest of the world. And that would have been enormous. It would have massively slowed global trade. It would have driven up prices enormously in the United States. And it would collapse global GDP. It would have been a really big deal. But he's now suggesting that instead he's going to put up tariffs much less than that.

45:01And he's putting them up now. He says there's a bargaining chip to stop China and Mexico importing fentanyl. And that's a totally different statement, isn't it? Because if you're saying this is the threat that I'm putting in place to change your behavior, but I'm going to drop it. If you stop doing it, that's completely different to saying I'm trying to protect American industry through these tariffs and build up American jobs. So it completely different logic. The same with Ukraine, he said that he was going to fix it in 24 hours. And you'll remember that his son tweeted out this thing saying no more daddies allowance with a picture of Zalentzky and cash.

45:35Just 11 days for the election. But he's now a point to General Kellogg. And Kellogg is on record saying if Putin comes to a deal, we'll drop support. But if Putin doesn't come to a deal, we'll provide more financial support. An arms to Ukraine, which seems to go completely against that story. On the deficit, you've got this weirdness that on the one hand, he's talking about these enormous tax breaks, which potentially could add six, eight, ten trillion dollars to deficit. On the other hand, he's appointed a Treasury Secretary who's a deficit hawk who wants to cut the deficit. And there we have a clue from the last time round because this was true last time.

46:11He appointed Steve Mnuchin who again was a deficit hawk as Treasury Secretary and then ramped up the deficit. He appointed John Bolton who was a massive, wanted to go and bomb Iran apparently because he Trump had seen John Bolton on Fox News and liked his tough talk. But once he put him in, he then wasn't tough enough in Iran, so Bolton then resigned. Yeah, there's not much emerging. I mean, Skyrimutri keeps saying that Trump and Muscov already fall now and Muscov is kind of out with, okay, it doesn't feel like that to me. And we haven't seen, we haven't had quite the kind of personality soap opera stuff that we've had with these people that we had the first time around.

46:49I've got no doubt that that may develop, but it's sort of, it feels much more that he's kind of operating to, even if it's a bit sort of all over the place in the room, all these contradictions, feels much more like a plan. And of course, he loves what he is. He's this extraordinary storyteller. So one of the bits of the press conference that I watched, he was asked about whether Xi Jinping was going to be coming to the inauguration. And you kind of did this whole riff about, well, he might be and he might not be. And you know, we've had this kind of contacts and there've been papers and reports.

47:18And he just sort of is telling a story the whole time, very little, which has anything to do with people's lives. Yeah, but it's a color. I mean, when we did you be Clinton, I remember Clinton talked about he had this genius, he could use the word genius, which you know, you don't spray around with many people, for making people feel that he was somehow, you know, talking about them and their lives, taking their problems and making them feel that he was there to help them. You and I look at that and think, well, how can people really believe that? But so many people do. Well, this is also the, what you're describing there that he's doing that interview is how that book, The Art of the Deal works.

47:52It's all about bringing you with him, taking you behind the scenes, making you share in his thinking and his decision making. Final thing I think to finish on before we move on from Trump, the sort of big picture, the big picture in foreign policy is beautifully laid out by a guy called Jeremy Shapiro in ECFR. And what he says is that there are three basic views on US foreign policy in the MAGA camp. They all agree that their anti -work, their all anti -immigration, their suspicious agglobalization. But there are three camps on foreign policy. One of them is, he calls the restrainers, which are basically the out and out isolationists.

48:31And those are people like Richard Grennell, J .E. Vance, who basically don't want the Americans getting involved in other countries. The second category are what he calls the prioritized, and that means prioritizing China. And that's particularly Mike Waltz, the new national security adviser. But others who basically say, Russia, Ukraine, everything else in the world is a distraction, we just got a prioritized in China. And then the third lot, which he calls the primacists, is where this article that you share with me, maybe you could talk about a little bit from Mitch McConnell comes in, which is an older Republican tradition, which Trump has turned away from, which says, actually, the US does need to have a presence around the world.

49:10It needs to participate in international institutions. It's not going to be able to deal with China if it doesn't realize that actually China is bound and without Africa, China is bound and with Russia, China is bound and with Iran. So maybe just finish on that and give us a sense, this Mitch McConnell piece and this Republican tradition, which is vanishing with Trump. I mean, I honestly never thought that I would go to bed last night, and my final words of the day would be, that was a really interesting piece. I've just read by Mitch McConnell. It's on the Foreign Affairs magazine. And of course, Mitch McConnell is somebody that Trump is going to whack around a bit.

49:42He's been a fairy, been a very powerful figure in American politics for a long, long time. He's, he's into his 80s. He's still a senator from, from Kentucky. And as you say, his basic take on this is the isolationism is a really big mistake for America. He's very critical about Biden and Obama. We'd expect him to be because he's very tribal like that. But he's got this line, the response to four years of weakness, which is how he defines Biden, must not be four years of isolation. And he's actually quite critical of Trump in some extent. And of course, you know, we know that Trump does not like criticism.

50:18He says that Trump was stronger in Ukraine than Syria than Obama. But quote, sometimes undermine these tough policies through his words and deeds. He courted Putin. He treated allies and alliance commitments erratically, sometimes with his hostility. He withheld $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine. These public episodes raised doubts about whether the United States was committed to standing up to Russian aggression. He actually, he actually quite praises Europe, which is very unusual for a Republican politician. It is in Europe, basically, they, they have responded to the demand that Trump made in his first time that they should contribute more to NATO.

50:58More than two thirds of NATO members now meet or exceed the alliance's target of spending. This progress is not without exception. One of the West's most glaring vulnerabilities to the influence of Russia and China and Iran is Hungary's self abnegating abyssance to these countries. Now that, to me, was really, really interesting. That's him taking an absolute pot shot at Trump's friend Victor Alban. So I think there's two things going on here. One is, as you say, there is still this group in the Republican parties that we should not give up being the most powerful country in the world. And part of that is our hard power, not just our power.

51:32But secondly, he's making absolutely clear. You may think everybody's scared to call you out and stuff, but I will be there. And so will be others. And they're going to call you out and stuff. It's a very, very interesting piece. Well, we'll share that in the notes. And that then is our transition just finally to finish on France and Germany, because of course the one thing we do know about Trump is that his instincts are regardless of whether he's going to be a restrainer or a prioritizer is less focus on Europe, less focus on Ukraine, probably less money, putting more pressure on NATO. And the question then is if we have that Trump, that Trump, which as you pointed out a couple of weeks ago was sending out messages in caps saying we're not going to get involved in Syria, is Europe going to fill the space?

52:16Will it fill the space with Ukraine? Will it fill the space in Syria? Will it fill the space in the West and Balkans? Will it fill the space in the Caucasus with Georgia? And they're the two big engines, the massive economies of Europe, the kind of mummy and daddy of Europe, France and Germany are in trouble over here. Yeah, and we, so we talked last week about Macron looking for a new Prime Minister after Michel Barnier fell. He's got one, Francois Beroux, 73, comes from Dan South West, quite a practicing Catholic, six kids. He's their fourth Prime Minister in France this year. He heads his own party, Moudem, move more democratic, close to Macron.

52:58But the buzz is that Macron having been aware that Beroux was putting himself forward for this, then decided he maybe wanted him as number two to somebody else. And there was a, what we call a difficult conversation that was sad, when, which Beroux may well have said, well, that's all very well. But if you do that, then you're going to lose the support of my MPs. It doesn't have a massive number of MPs, but you know, at the moment, Macron needs all the support he can get. By the way, Rory, how good is your French? It's okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I will send you this extraordinary documentary that I watched last week.

53:32And it will confirm you in your view that you were right that Macron was wrong to call a snap election. This, the, I can't remember the title of the program, but it was an extra, they interviewed virtually, apart from Macron, they seem to me to have interviewed virtually every senior French politician. And they all think it was a mistake to do what he did. But and Beroux is in it and makes clear that he thought it was a mistake. And, but the whole thing is just as you get a sense of, of Macron sort of losing power. And you can send Le Pen looking more and more confident as you go through the program.

54:08And it's a very, very, very interesting. Of course, I love it, but you can enjoy it. So that's, and anyway, Beroux's there. He's going to face exactly the same problems as Barney, but he's probably going to lean more towards the left in trying to get support where his Barney led towards the, to the right. But the numbers there are pretty tricky. And we want in Germany, I watched part of the debate in the Bundesstärke yesterday. And this was shots losing a confidence vote. He wanted to lose the confidence vote because he wants to have an election. And so it gives us a sense of what debate in the Bundesstärke is like compared to the House of Commons.

54:38What's the difference in the atmosphere? Well, yesterday actually wasn't that different to a kind of pretty fearsome one, but they don't, they're not sat opposite each other. Right. You all go up to the same lectern. Right. So they're leader after leader going up to the to the lectern. And so where the lectern is, shots makes his speech and shots. He was pretty feisty for him. And he was basically tearing into his opponents pretty well and saying why the country didn't election clear the way. Really going for Christian Lentner, who's the leader within the coalition that he felt really letting him down badly.

55:10And then he has to sit over there to the right. And then Mouts went up and, if either he's Mouts, who is current favourite to be the next chancellor, he really laid into shots and then so did the Greens. So they're all just putting the boot in pretty heavily. And then there was some very heavy stuff on the television users as well last night. So I think this is going to be a very, very tough campaign. Shorts looked like he had a bit of a spring in his step. We're looking at the polls. I'm not sure why he does, but he looks like he thinks he can really improve his position. The alternatives for Deutschland, not in as strong as positions they were, but of course, you know, the campaign goes through to all third week, February 23rd.

55:44So they've got time to sort of pull things around. But meanwhile, what it means is that as Trump is coming into office for the second time around, France and Germany are in a state of pretty weak political position. And really matters for this whole question of because I think the way to think about it is that when Trump came in in 2016, you had Angela Merkel in place. You had Macron elected the following year in 2017, Trudeau's there to reason Maisard. I mean, maybe less about Trudeau's May, but you had a very, very powerful sense of a sort of unified, more progressive centre to balance Trump at a time when Germany was an economic superpower, making the play.

56:26And now he's coming into an environment where the leaders have very, very poor net popularity ratings. You know, a Macron shorts below minus 50, Trudeau almost down there, Starrmer at minus 38. I mean, there's not a lot of political capital to put against Trump. And of course, we have the violence, the massive violence in Ukraine and the Middle East, which he didn't face that last time. I guess the one European leader who looks to be in Rizu in the polls is better than expect is Malone and also Tusk in Poland. Yeah. Tusk is a Donald Tusk is ever giving his home. And did you see Macron Tusk doing a handshake and they were sort of aping the Donald Trump style of handshake and where he tries to sort of remove your shoulder from your soul?

57:09Oh, goodness. Yeah. Well, there was a first -hanging French article that I glimpsed where they were looking at the picture of Zelensky, Macron, and Trump at the opening of Notre Dame. And saying this was almost like a return to the Middle Ages, these kind of sort of male politicians sort of posing almost as superheroes while inaugurating a cathedral they felt was kind of, you can imagine, you can imagine the art. Thank you. See you soon, bye -bye. See you soon. Take care.