355. How to start a campaign, Gisele Pelicot, and the biggest surprise of 2024

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1:20Welcome to the rest is politics, Boxing Day edition with me, Rory Stewart. I'm the Aleister Campbell. Boxing Day is when I travel up from London to Scotland. So I'll be up in Scotland for the next week. No doubt like me doing it via a Burnley game. Is that your normal routine? No. No, no. No, it's strange. You're not in my case. No. We should talk about Burnley at some point. But I think maybe this is a chance to sort of think bigger about what's been going on. And I guess the first question maybe to you is what surprised you most in 2024? And maybe kind of remind people a little bit about what another 2024 was?

1:59Well, if you remember, when we started talking about 2024, we said it was going to be the year of the elections. More people voting than any time in history. I guess the thing that surprised me a bit is the way the incumbency became a big problem in elections, rather than what it often has been in history, which is an advantage. Every single party of government went backwards. That's a pretty amazing thing. First time since, basically since data has been collectible. And in the majority of cases lost, didn't they? And often lost year. And even where they won, like the ANC and South Africa, still in government, but then I part of a coalition.

2:38Modi was expected to get another huge win. He didn't. He went backwards quite sensibly. And as you say, lots of the elections here in the UK, the Tory government fell in America, the Democrats lost Trump, etc, etc. I think though the thing that surprised me most, and this was going to be in the Christmas Day podcast when we talked about the most underdiscussing, the one that I had as my second choice, if you just said the same thing, I was going to make my first choice, was actually the way that climate change has gone right down the particular gender, which is incredibly worrying, very, very dangerous, but also, testively, I'm afraid to the fact that the hard right do weaponize these issues incredibly well.

3:27And so I think that's been the surprise that so cop, for example, if we were to say to most of our listeners now, what do you remember from cop? Do you remember any of the big decisions? Do you remember any of the big moments, any of the big speeches? I'm not sure that remember that much. No, it's unbelievably startling also an opinion polling that, whereas a couple of years ago, climate was very, very high on young people's agenda, it's now much lower. In fact, we began seeing this in some of our live events. We did a big event. You'll remember in Methodist Central Hall and Westminster, we're about 5 ,000 school children.

4:01And that was a really early sign of the fact that for the first time, for us asking a group of young people where the climate was a priority, very few hands went up. And another sign of your point is that the people that should really have been making the moves, which are the G20, which are the 20 wealthiest countries in the world, to emit 85 % of the world's carbon, did so little serious on this when the G20 met. And cop went down, what I'm afraid in the end is a very important issue, but in the end is a bit of a rabbit hole, which is the question of development assistance to emerging countries rather than what on earth to be done about the fact that we are so far off beating Paris now.

4:49Remember Paris was going to try to hold global warming to 1 .5 degrees? When are sailing through two degrees, sailing towards three degrees? Emissions are continuing to rise. Well, of course, we said yesterday that the biggest event, politically of the year, was Donald Trump, being the real -etched president. And this is Donald Trump, drill baby drill. This is Elon Musk recycling as a waste of time, as his new tweet of the moment. So no, I think that has been the surprise of the year. That issue has fallen in a way that is really alarming. And to be fair to Ed Milliman, I know he gets a lot of criticism from lots of different people inside and outside government, because some people think he's too much driving the greener -genre as it were, without necessarily being fully cognizant of some of the other consequences, but at least he's showing leadership on this still.

5:39And that's what's been missing is you go about the algorithm, or when our goal was kind of, you know, the big voice -all climate, there's nobody has really replaced him. No. Well, so surprised for me, I think is the many, many ways in which the world did not behave in the way that geopolitical experts anticipated. And I think it's a really interesting way of wrapping up the air of the two of us having a chat, because I would argue that what happened in Syria, what happened in Israel, what happened in the US, and I could, you know, develop this more, but let's just focus on Syria, Israel, and the US, was really surprising.

6:21And it showed 2024 to be quite different from the years that preceded it. And one of the reasons that we get things wrong is we understandably often think about things like a straight line on the graph, the way things are being in the past, the way things that will continue. Syria, most startling of all, I mean, obviously, for seven years, Bashar al -Assad, had been sitting there in control of most of the country, and Al -Jalani was the ruler of a tiny little city state perched up on the Turkish border. Within just over a week, that regime collapsed, and he's taken over the whole country. So that's a real, most straight line example.

6:58But Israel just to remind people of all the surprises there. So Netanyahu started the year as one of the most unpopular leaders imaginable, just clinging to power because people didn't want to replace them in the middle of the Gaza war. And has turned that around to be a figure of considerable political power and popularity again in Israel. Hispular and Iran, our views of them are completely changed. You know, we started the years saying that hispular was the most powerful, non -state act for the world, 25 ,000 people under arms, over 100 ,000 missiles, including precision missiles, and the one group that Israel could not take on, and they've proved to fold like a paper tiger.

7:46Iran's much -vaunted Russian air defense system turned out not to work. It's missile strikes never got through, and Iran is also folded like a paper tiger. But I also think that we wouldn't have predicted that Israel would have turned so much against the international rule -based system over the last year. We're ending the year with them having declared the sexually general of the United Nations, personas on Grata, rejected the authority of the International Criminal Court, and closed their embassy in Dublin in Ireland, because Ireland has had the temerity to try to speak up for these international courts.

8:24And that's before we get onto the US and on the US, but just I'd throw it back to you. I guess the big things there are Trump demonstrated a new world of politics where you don't need a ground game anymore. So he didn't have an office basically operating in Michigan when the Democrats had tens of thousands of volunteers out on the streets knocking on doors, the law forces in every town. He did it on the back of social media and three hour interviews on Joe Rogan, and we saw a version of that in the Romanian election where a completely unknown character suddenly flipped to prominence off the back of TikTok and 60 ,000 fake Russian accounts.

9:02But he also demonstrated that he could get an astonishing proportion of the African -American and Hispanic vote coming over to him. And again, I didn't think we would have predicted at the beginning of the year that the felony convictions would have absolutely no impact on him at all, right? Every year. You've reminded me of a conversation I had at one of the Christmas batches I went to where Stephen Fry was present, Rory. Yes. And he told me this story that he was in Australia at the same time as you, and he's sitting on a plane flying from one Australian city to the next, and who should be plunked down next to him on the plane, but Rory Stewart.

9:40And he told me that he was saying to you, he was very worried about the American election, and you said, don't worry, it is absolutely nailed on for Kabbalah Harass. And he said, he spent the next few weeks telling all of his friends, don't worry, calm down, it's going to find some of them put money on it, Rory, because Stephen Fry was telling me to spoke to this guy really well informed, very plugged in. So there we are. That must have been your biggest surprise, given how confident you were. Yeah, yeah. That Trump was not going to win. And you did look very shocked on the night. I think I sort of in my gut felt something was going very badly wrong in the last few days.

10:19And I'd spoken to some of the Democrat strategists who I could tell from the tone of their voice, they were very, very anxious. But you, you took it remarkably well. I'd have been very, very upset if I'd have been you. Actually, I've, it's been really interesting getting something so publicly and magnificently wrong in a number of ways. One of them is that I've given an enormous number of right -wing trolls on Twitter. Pleasure. I love you. I'm so much joy. So that I literally now, if I put out anything, like on what the weather looks like out the window or whether I had a good meal, there immediately I can get 900 replies saying, shut up, get off this platform.

11:01Nobody's going to listen to you again. Somebody who's wrong about absolutely everything. So it's become being wrong about Trump is wrong about everything. Yeah. The second thing though is that I found it quite nice, actually, because I find it very, very awkward being on a little pedestal and people sort of tripping around me as though I'm some sort of seer that was secular saint. To have a massive public humiliation and failure is gratifying. It makes me feel more normal, makes me feel more down to earth, makes me appreciate the podcast and those people who continue to listen to it and be nice to me more.

11:36So I think it's been really good for me. Well, we had you, we had your wonderful sermon yesterday about hope and as we're still on a religious theme, that was very life of Brian. That was always look on the bright side, get good stuff out of bad, et cetera. Now here, personal highlight, Rory, personal highlight of the year. Look, my political highlight was seeing the back of the Tories, laboring with a big win. I spent the entire election night with you in a channel for studio and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So that was great. The podcast personal highlight was probably getting Angela Merkel on, possibly as well filling the O2.

12:10That was nice. But the personal highlight for me was probably seeing my daughter Grace fill the Hammersmith Apollo amazing and have two and a half thousand people sort of in convulsions of laughter as she talked about some pretty difficult things that have got on in her life. So that was probably the wonderful. That is wonderful. Well, I've enjoyed the podcast a lot and actually in addition to the bits that you've mentioned, I was a bit skeptical about us doing the US election coverage. But I was very pleased we did it. I thought it was a lot of fun. I thought you chaired it well. I think Dominic Sandbrook worked well.

12:43I thought Marina Hyde and the mooch came in very well and it was lovely to be able to do that coverage. Despite the outcome. Despite the outcome. Personal highlight. I mean, again, it's difficult to avoid talking about children. So I was now seven, Sasha's 10. There, as you know, two lovely little boys, they have moments of lacking confidence, as I guess we all do. So the moments I remember are moments of them just displaying amazing kind of get up and go and encourage. So either just when things are tough at school, he can just put a big smile on his face and come down and poke me. And Sasha, who's very shy of public speaking, I slightly pushed into reading the lesson in church and he very sweetly said to me in the middle of the service.

13:33He said, thank you for making me do this. I think this is really great and stood up and did it and looked up from his lesson and looked at around in the eyes and spoke slowly and clearly and it was lovely to see. So there we are. No, that's good. That's nice. That's nice. Now we're on to books. I haven't been reading as much as I did last year, I don't think. But I've mentioned my book of the year on the podcast we did not long before Christmas, which was this one, Patriot, Alexan Evalnik. And it really is the book of the year in so many ways because he was murdered by the Russians in February.

14:09The book is out already. It's become a bestseller in different parts of the world. And it's just a fantastic read because he's such an amazing character. It's stuff that he's been writing about different stage of his life, at different stages of his life. And some of the most interesting and revealing bits are his diaries from inside prison. And of course, because we know the ending of the book, he dies. There's a kind of added tragic feel to it, but it's ultimately a very, very hopeful book. He basically within it, he is saying, look, in the end, this guy, Putin and his regime, they are so bad, they are going to go.

14:45They're going to go. And it may take longer than you think, but it's going to happen. And I'm going to be part of that. And of course, the other thing, I really enjoyed meeting his daughter in an event we did in Norway. And his wife, Julia and his daughter, Dasha, they are kind of, this book is kind of part of their fight and part of their story now. And I think that's my book of the year. The political domestic one that I'm going to say, this biography by Guy called Stephen Walker, who's a Northern Ireland journalist, and it's a biography of John Hume, John Hume, great man. And okay, you can say that he was a Nobel Prize winner because of the Northern peace process.

15:22But actually, I still don't think people fully understand outside Northern Ireland what a huge figure in their history he is. And the other thing, Roy, that is you know happens when we do this podcast, we get sent lots and lots of books. And often they're annoying and they line a pile by the bed and you don't read them. But do you remember I said a while back when we talk about the farmers, there's a really good book called Who Owns Scotland. And I don't know why somebody's never written a book called Who Owns England. And this one was said to me by a guy called Guy Shrupp's Hole and it's absolutely brilliant.

15:56It's similar to the book who owns Scotland. But honestly, Roy, you cannot read this book and defend the establishment, the juke, the extent to which land is used for tax dodging, the oligarchs and the sort of new money, the old money. It's a brilliantly researched piece of writing. And then my non -political, well this is actually very political but my German book of the year is, and again it didn't come out this year, but it's Berlin 1936, Zech St. Target in August, 16 days in August. This has been translated in doing English. But it's a wonderful book about the Berlin Olympics and it's seen from all different perspectives of athletes, of people who are working there, of Hitler, of a woman who is obsessed with the idea that you wanted to kiss Hitler, of lots of Brits involved, Henry Shannon's in there sort of weaving in and out beautifully written and it gives you a real feel for this sense of normality around the Olympics at a time when the abnormality of Hitler and his power was becoming ever more apparent.

17:02Brilliant book. Oh, well lovely. Just following on from your point about, Ernavalne, there's a lovely book that's just come out by Julian Evans called Odessa in Love and War. It's dark sometimes, quiet, fascinating. It begins with him as a travel writer turning up in Odessa, this city and Crimea in the middle of a blackout, trying to find a host in an apartment, and is just shot through with personal connections with bringing alive the people and the landscape. But my book of the year, which people need to pre -order, is a collection of essays by Norman Lewis. Do you remember Norman Lewis? So could a quiet evening.

17:45So Norman Lewis was a sort of legendary figure who continued traveling into his early 90s with a sort of strange background where he never had enough money to go to university. He made money stealing umbrellas and selling them to try to finance his first trips. He was picked up by British intelligence during the war. And this book, which is published by Eland and brought together by a man called John Hat, a wonderful collection of essays. And John's got this lovely story when John was a travel editor for a now defunct and not much lamented magazine called Harper's, which was like a kind of fashion magazine.

18:23He contacted Norman Lewis and said, Norman, you know, I'd like to get you to write a travel article for my magazine, which is mostly obviously advertising shoes and handbags. Where would you like to go? And Norman Lewis said, well, John, ideally, I would like to go somewhere where there is a vicious civil war, no running water. And if possible, a very, very lint and uncurable form of malaria. So where did he go? John, I think, had to negotiate him to go to some Italian island. As he couldn't quite keep his job. Excellent. Oh, that sounds great. The publisher will be thrilled by that plug. I'm sure, especially if it's not out yet.

19:07Okay, what about best film of the year? Well, the film that I'm really obsessed with is Alex Garland's film Civil War. And the reason why that matters, I don't know if you've heard about it, it's basically taken a sort of Balkan style war or a Syrian style war and put it in the United States. Is this only there are checkpoints outside Washington. There's a weird technocratic precedent trying to hold the thing together. Well, weird people take out, and the reason it matters is that when we look at Bosnia or when we look at Syria, it's very often the case, particularly as British people, we distance it.

19:43We think, well, it couldn't happen to us. We're good. Well, we're educated people. We forget that Syria was at peace for 800 years. We forget how startling the Afghans of a war were to Afghans who've been a peace -finalia century. We forget the Northern Ireland just over the road. Just over the world, exactly. So this brings it to kind of wonderful light by showing Pennsylvania breaking apart into conflict. Anyway, every, I'm going through a film that I think I mentioned when I saw it on the podcast, which is the Outrun, Sursher Ronan playing an alcoholic. It's one of the most incredible portrayals of the descent into alcoholism.

20:21And yet it's somehow a very, very hopeful film as well, not least because of nature. And she goes back home to Orkney. And it's a beautifully film, beautifully shot. She's an amazing actress. And that of course resonates. A lot of themes in your life, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to trip you into your best. This is sounding like one of these Sunday colors supplements, your best sort of box set or series on TV. And while I give you time to think mine is a Netflix series called The Diplomat. Okay. I didn't see, but yeah, I've heard a lot about it. You'd love it. And I still really love it. It's got a really cool, quirky American ambassador in London.

20:59And a British Prime Minister, loosely modeled on Boris Johnson, who's attempting to, for the sake of the most ludicrous populistic scuse, declare war in Iran, an elderly dodging American president. And just the most startling relationship between her and her husband, who's a sort of rich had whole work figure and whose deputy she used to be in his now. He's now like the wife of the ambassador. But he totally refuses to do what he's told. And she's trying to manage her collapsing marriage and this guy that keeps trying to back into the limelight when she's meant to be the ambassador. So recommend it strongly.

21:38Every, there's a German box set, which I can't remember the name of. So that's pretty hopeless, which fear when I watched a world back, which was brilliant.

21:50I All right. Which is, and I've got a weird feeling that last year, my book of the year might have been saying nothing. Yes, that rings the bell. Yes, that rings the bell. The book about the disappearance of Jean Maconville in Northern Ireland and saying nothing the series, which is based upon the book. But it's essentially the story of the IRA at the height of the trouble. Jerry Adams of very, very large figure within it. And at the end of every episode, this thing comes up to as Jerry Adams denies having ever been a member of the IRA or having ever taken any part of any of the events that we've filled sort of thing.

22:25But it's for anybody who wants a kind of feel, a sense of what it might have been like to be either a perpetrator or a victim in the troubles in Northern Ireland. It's harrowing at times, but it's, it's brilliantly done. So yeah, I'm going to say nothing. And if Fiona pops in with a coffee at any point, I can ask you to remember the name of the German one, but she may have gone out. Okay. And I said, let's take a quick break on this Boxing Day special podcast episode.

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24:07Okay, now here's one for you. Best new place visited, home or abroad. I am going for Lake Anise. Not necessarily, because it is a beautiful area, but I'll tell you why I'm going for Lake Anise. Remind us where Lake Anise is. Well, it's in France, we're quite near Switzerland. Right, okay. So we're talking kind of Alpine. It is a very beautiful area, but there are a bit more beautiful areas of France. This is not where you gave yourself hypothermia, swimming last year. No, that was late Geneva. That was late Geneva. Hypothermia, late Geneva. But it is a swimming, there is a swimming reason for this.

24:41The reason I'm choosing Lake Anise is, if you don't know, I went for a swim there. We go around the place trying to find beautiful new swimming spots. You could swim out for, I don't know how far, and you could see the bottom of the water, because it was so clean. And when you investigate why it is so clean, it is because they, the local authorities, around Lake Anise are determined that it should be clean. And they do the things that you need to do to keep it clean. They measure, they track, they are very strict about how many boats can go on there. And in addition, the Treasury would say they pay, because it's not cost -free, it's quite expensive keeping waterways clean.