362. Question Time: Labour’s education error and Blair’s mistake on mental health

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1:17Welcome to the RESTIS Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we ended the main podcast, Rory, by saying we were going to talk about Serbia on question time. And we have had questions about Serbia. And maybe the best one, this is one from Marco. Please, can you explain what's going on with the student protests in Serbia? These are a big of these approaches. If you've been following this, you say, haven't I think there's a couple of interesting needs going on, but maybe tell us first about the process themselves and then maybe we can go back to why it's Serbian matters and what's going on in Serbian more fully.

1:49So essentially what's happened is that an awning at a railway station crashed 14 people were killed instantly. This is in a place called Moby Sad. 14 people killed, three other severely injured and a 15th person has died since. And the accusation is that the reason was shoddy building work because of corrupt deals and the public have got very, very, very angry about it. So what's happened? These student protests that are taking all sorts of different forms and quite interesting, a bit like some of the protests that we've seen here, no sort of no leader of the protest movement, lots of democracy within the protest movement, there are votes about what to do next and where to protest and how to protest and so forth.

2:43And actually Ali's under Vukic, the president who's got this reputation as a very strong man leader, follows a lot of the kind of the putin way of doing things, It feels like he's very much on the back foot. He's been making all sorts of offers. He's talking about, so you know, loans that can be done for students who are struggling with their finances. Also, they've been demanding that all the papers related to these contracts are published. Some of them have been, they're now going through them all, really, really in fine detail and demanding more. And so this is a very, very interesting protest movement, which does seem to have caught them pretty much on the back foot.

3:23And the reason obviously why it matters is Serbia was right at the center of the Balkan Wars and They're in the center of Yugoslavia as it splintered apart and as Croatia and Bosnia and Multindigro Slovenia will break away North Macedonia and The question of what happens in Serbia really matters because with Trump coming in and suggesting he doesn't really care about countries breaking national borders and reinforcing nationalist rhetoric. There is the fact of repeated statements by Vucic, who is the Serbian leader, about his claims to re -annex northern Kosovo, which became de facto independent from Serbia after the Kosovo was.

4:09And in order to do that, he is relying on about 50 ,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo, who have withdrawn from the Kosovo institutions, they're refusing to vote, refusing to participate in the police. And in these demonstrations, some of the people demonstrating are actually further to the right than Vuchich. There's a lot of complicated things going on. You can't see European flags, for example, in these demonstrations, there are people protesting against the Lithium mines in Serbia, which Germany wants Serbia to invest in. And we now also have in Croatia the election of a very, very eccentric, far -right populist, who was previously the Prime Minister now back as president, Zoram Al -Anabich.

4:50And I just don't know quite where this happens. You have that lovely moment in yesterday's podcast, where you talked about how quickly things can change in 10 years. Of the scenarios we might look at, there is a very likely scenario that we end up back in conflict in the Balkans again. And why will it happen? It will happen, and I suppose this is probably true, and in Northern, Well, none, I think in 1967 -68, nobody predicted that Northern Ireland would collapse in the way that it did. And it can happen very unexpectedly if Vuchich starts threatening more than Kosovo or Republic of Srebzka, there are now 200 ,000 Bosnian Muslims now scattered back and living within Republic of Srebzka.

5:27Mosques are being rebuilt, their refugees have returned. If they start arming themselves because they're worried that the thing is going to start off again, you get the tit for tap taking off. Is that right? there's some of these are the far right that are protesting. So when we think of, is this me sort of, you know, I think of students, I'm assuming we're talking here about broadly anti -government because they're more to the left. Is that wrong? I think some of these people are to the right and some of these people are anti -European and some of these people are curiously more proputing the Vuchich.

5:55I mean, it's one of these situations where you sense a bit like, you've pointed out with Putin that, that however right when he is, there are people furthered his right and some people are saying which it hasn't gone far enough in defending Serbian interest. He's also got another problem which is really interesting. Europe has refused to impose sanctions on Serbia but the US now has. The US has now imposed really strong sanctions to try to force Serbia to leave the gas problem, the Russian state gas company investment in Serbia and just at the moment as that's crippling energy supplies for Serbia as a by -john has announced it's no longer going to be providing gas to Serbia possibly because it's had its arm twisted by Russia.

6:42So Serbia whose economy is in trouble, whose population is collapsing, it's losing a lot of young university educated people. Almost everybody in Serbia gives the impression that they want to kind of move to Germany is finding itself facing big energy problems. And this is where the European Union needs to step up to keep coming back to this that if we're to avoid a war on the Balkans, we need to restart engagement and give, ultimately in the long term, political hope to countryside Serbia that they have a future, otherwise we're going to get into a dark place. One of the factors in this, the railway renovation that's been done with Serbia, the deal that was done was with Chinese firms.

7:21So whether that is what sort of fans, if you're saying that nationalism is involved in this, the students that I've seen being interviewed are very much what I would identify as going to traditional quite left -wing students who are basically saying we're fed up of corruption, we're fed up of a government that is basically just, he speaks to people that do as they're told the whole time. And they are, you know, they are definitely having an impact. And I guess the point that you're making relation linking this to Kosovo is you're thinking that what sometimes leaders do when they're under pressure over an unrelated issue, they go which they go to the issue that they know will always fire up their nationalist base.

7:59Particularly, I think, in the case of Serbia, with the Trump government coming in and Trump signaling that he doesn't have much sympathy for all these old international rules. I mean, if a conflict were to start again in the Balkans, this time, the US is very unlikely to participate. And a lot of the security infrastructure was based on US intelligence, small number of US troops. British presence, Britain was quite important in K4, I mean you were right there on the ground during the initial cost of intervention. So it's one of these things that's worth watching. It doesn't mean that we can say that there's any more than the 20 -30 % chance of it happening, or even be that precise about what the child's somewhat is just happening.

8:39But in all the risks we're looking at around the world, this matters. And it's odd because if you go to monster, which is in the old creation Bosnian disputed areas of Bosnia. It's remarkably successful. There's a good mayor, you can go there, he's not traveling around with bodyguards, since the institutions are working. As I say, you've had 200 ,000 Muslim refugees returning to Papua Cusub, so there's a lot of positive stuff on the ground, but it is, it's franchise, It's fragile. I suppose in the same way, Lord Nilem was still pretty fragile after the good Friday agreement and in some ways may still be.

9:19So Alistair, here we are. This is a very good question for you. It's from a man called Tom Holland who I believe presents a podcast called The Rest is History. I have heard of it. He may have had a role in establishing the rest of the policies. Yeah. That's the guy, the very same guy. Spider -Man himself. So question particularly for Alistair. Because I always look to him for an insider's perspective on the government thinking, Oh, good love of that. What justification could there possibly be for Bridget Phillips and cancelling the Latin excellence program? An aberablanistic, which over the past couple years has been funding over 8 ,000 students at a range of state schools across the country to study the language of Cicero and Virgil.

10:00Wasn't the government's justification for charging BAT on private schools so that it would enable precisely such schemes to be funded? And why cancel the funding in the middle of school? Yeah, so that students hoping to do GCSE that in the summer will be left without teaching in February. It seems to me both cruel and finestine all the more so because the scheme only costs one million pounds a year, but maybe I am missing something. Ah, that's that's a very clever Tom Holland -esque He doesn't think he's missing anything does he? I can't ever say that I recall the government saying that the justification for charging VAT in private schools was so that that they could enable such schemes.

10:38And by the way, what he doesn't ask there is, what do we think? I actually think that any, one of the things I criticize the government I work for for in relation to was the downgrading of modern languages. And I also am a great, I do actually think, I did Latin at school, I'm glad that I did Latin at school. And I think Latin was one of the reasons why I became interested in other languages. So I am also a fan of Latin. However, the thing I think he is missing is that this was one of the programs that the Conservative government had said they were going to extend without actually having any funding for it.

11:16And as I understand it, what the current government is doing is currently looking for some sort of philanthropist to fund this. Now, that is not a good way to fund an education system. I completely agree with that. But that is, I think, the thing that he might be missing. But I, you know, broadly I do agree that if you're studying something and you're taking it through to GCSE, but then you're something to live with, you know, with no teaching, then that is not a good thing. I mean, is it that Latin is seen as a bit elitist because it's only 8 ,000 students, Richard Phillips and doesn't really care.

11:50I mean, there's a part of her that was a bit like that. People listened to the leading interview, but there was a strange moment in that when I was challenging her around what would happen to children who left private schools and and returned the same section and she said, I don't care about the top 7 % I care about the other 93%. I mean, is there a bit of that going on in this? I don't think so. But put it this way, I saw the reports about it and I actually started to make inquiries off my own back. And that is what they said. It's like, this is not something we necessarily set out to do, but it sort of falls into one of those programs for which there was no proper funding going forward.

12:24And that's what they said to me. And I think by the way, you're broadly, you're slightly exaggerating, I think the tone of her interview, she didn't say, I don't care. I think she said that her focus was on the 93%. And so I think you should see this slightly separate from the VAT question. I think the answer to the VAT question, by the way, not least in part of the world where I live in London, Southeast, there is plenty of capacity right now within the state, say to lots of state schools are under pressure to shut just because of the falling roles. But I think on this, I hope, and this is definitely what they were saying to me and maybe Tom should make contact with them and get in judges to as to how he thinks my work, but they are looking to keep this going but not under the current spending envelope.

13:09Right, okay. Well, here's another one for you. Ribbon back set. What does Alice to think about as old Boss' comments on too many Brits self -diagnosing themselves with depression feels a bit off -brand and perhaps even dangerous in the current climate? Katrin, what do you think of the comments made by Tony Blair questioning the amount of money being spent on mental health and the paroles of losing agency to govern your life when someone translates their problems into a mental health condition. There's a fellow suffer from depression. I wonder whether you would have advised him to address this issue.

13:38Definitely, can I just do the rather odd thing of sort of defending your boss for a second and then give you a chance to maybe disagree with him a little bit? Yeah. So Britain is facing an incredible explosion in the costs of disability benefits to the government. And there are nearly 900 ,000 people in Britain, almost a million people who are out of the workforce. And part of this seems to be, I think, a 50 % jump since COVID in the number of people who are being diagnosed and receiving benefits for different forms of conditions. When there's no particular reason to think that there's been a 50 % increase in the number of people who are ill and part of that is maybe that the conservatives cut down very hard on other forms of benefits for that during that time in office, which made the disability benefits that much more lucrative, comparable to other forms of unemployment benefit.

14:34And that Rachel Reeves is facing having to manage a country where she needs to do two things. She needs to cut spending and she needs to get people back into work and increase productivity. And she's going to struggle to do that. And I think this is what Tony Blair was trying to say, unless she can face up to the fact that something very strange is happening with disability benefits in Britain and the disability benefits bill, which isn't happening anywhere else in Europe over the... I mean, it won't surprise you to know that I didn't actually like what he said. And I think at a time when we're struggling to keep mental health properly on the NHS agenda and I think we're going backwards in terms of the media debate around mental as well.

15:18I'm not sure that it was it was very helpful. I'm going to read you a couple of things. The first is from page 7 of Tony's biography, autobiography, where he says this. Now he says, very nice things about me, says I was like a rock through the campaigns blah, blah, blah. Then he goes on to say in my experience, there are two types of crazy people. Those who are just crazy and are therefore dangerous and those who's crazy and has lends them creativity, strength, ingenuity and verb. Alistair was of the latter sort. The problem with them is that they can be immacurial, difficult and on occasion erupt with damaging consequences.

15:53Above all, we must realize you can't tame them. You could reason with them, but the thing that makes them different and brilliant is the same thing that means they don't conform to normal, predictable modes of behavior. And I called him out for that at the time because I think that under I just think it misunderstands what we mean when we're talking about mental illness. Now the other thing I want to read to you is the letter that mine, the charity of which I'm an ambassador, sent to Tony. Dear St. Tony Blair, we agree. We do need a proper conversation about mental health. Mental health problems are just as real as physical health problems and we are in the middle of a mental health crisis.

16:33Change is possible and the solutions are out there but we must start from a place of understanding and face the reality, what's happening? This is the key point. The reality is that mental health accounts for 20 % of all health issues, but gets 10 % of NHS funding. Two million people in England currently sat on waiting list for mental health support. Now, if we think that mental illness is, you know, when you see somebody who's hearing voices, when you see somebody who's kind of on the streets and behaving strangely, then that's mental illness that, you know, somebody who doesn't necessarily get mentally ill and I think Tony, one of Tony's great strengths is a kind of optimism and a vibrancy in the way that he looks at life, but I think there's a danger that he doesn't understand that for a lot of people depression is real, anxiety is real.

17:24And I think that particularly with the numbers now people living in poverty and millions of people now that we would say are living in pretty difficult economic conditions. I think it's just too dismissive to say that these are people who are kind of self -diagnosing. So yeah, I is very, very rare as you know Roy that I criticized my old boss, but I didn't really like what he said there. There's a very good book just coming out by Hillary Kotten on the work we need, and she would add into this that part of the reason why we have so many people not in work is that But work in Britain is often less dignified, longer hours, more poorly paid, in worse and more demoralizing conditions than in other European countries.

18:10And that addressing this problem of getting people off benefits and to work is partly about increasing the quality of the work that we offer people compared to other countries. There are many reasons why people are reluctant to go to work when the work they go into is depressing. But also I think you have to, you know, there may be all sorts of reasons for it, but it is a fact. It's an empirical fact that the number of young men taking their own lives is higher than it's ever been. You go into schools now and talk to teachers and headteachers about young girls and anxiety and social media. I mean Tony's a massive believer in technology.

18:46We talked about AI on the main podcast. You and I support that notion that technology is going to lead to a lot of problem solving and solutions to challenges that the country in the world faces. But there's definitely something going on with young women that may relate to social media, it may not. But that there is more anxiety out there. By the way, I saw an amazing speech the other day. I was just scrolling through. I think it was Instagram. And somebody posted the speech at Sandhurst of the outgoing head of the army who was speaking to officers. And if we can find it, it's this General Patrick Sanders talking about unusual capacity for violence.

19:26Yeah. And what was great about it was, you know, he was basically challenged in this notion that the younger generation with this kind of woke generation, that actually they were a lot of tough young men out there and you get them in the army and your job as officers sort of shaped them and so forth. But I think we, on the one hand, we want to be kind of very dismissive of our younger generation. But on the other hand, though I see this every time I go into schools, there is something real going on. And I don't think we're even making the effort fully to understand it. I think I mean, without being unfair to General Spatrik, I think he's also talked openly about some of the mental pressures that he felt in the job.

20:07And there's an extraordinary speech. I mean, his line was British soldiers are often get this scrawny, ill -educated and underprivileged, but they have a nobility of spirit, a streak of cheerful and irrepressible defiance, a joyful wildness, and above all a capacity for sudden violence that when tempered by disciplines, value and esprit to core, makes them amongst the most hard to beat soldiers anywhere in the world. And whatever nonsense you hear or see written about a weak generation, I don't recognize it. The soldiers, the friends I've been privileged to serve with these 40 years and whom you're about to command will scare you to death under pressure and under fire and sometimes in barracks too.

20:52Yeah. Well, that's the great thing about racist politice question time. We can start with me criticizing very rare criticism of my old boss about mental health. And we end up with you reading out a speech from the head of the armed forces. He leaves his job that I spot on Instagram. Should we take a break? We'll take a break.

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22:25Right, Rory, as you know, this episode is powered by Fuse Energy. So I was going through all our questions and my favourite energy related question came from Jeff Spink. Oh yes. Does Donald Trump not have a point in trying to get his hands on Greenland, given that the natural resources they have are going to be of enormous benefit to ever get their hands on them. I mean, that is a kind of pretty Trumpian transactionalist way of thinking about it, but maybe it does have a point. Look, it's terrifying. I mean, you've seen what's been going on with him saying he's gonna make Canada into the 51st state.

23:04He's gonna grab the Panama Canal. he's having a go at Greenland and it's very difficult actually to understand what he's doing and even his supporters struggle to work out where the line is between humor and whatever But I suppose it's an opportunity to talk a little bit about Greenland. So Greenland really matters. It's a massive US Air Base It's sitting on top of a lot of rare earth minerals and with climate change and the ice sheet melting around it It's gonna open up new routes between effectively Russia and the United States with massive strategic importance. And in fact, this whole question around the Arctic is something we haven't talked about enough.

23:42We should do maybe quarter of a program of the main part on the Arctic someday. Yeah. So yeah, he's totally right that if he's thinking about what matters in the near proximity of the US, Panama, Canada and Greenland are absolutely central. But equally, when you're dealing with a special relationship with your nearest ally, doing that kind of stuff, and then having Elon Musk or Wingman following up by calling Justin Trudeau a girl because he's tried to step up over Canada and saying, you're not the governor of Canada or any more girl. I mean, I was really quite taken with the fact that the economist, for example, wrote an editorial Greenlander should sell up to Donald Trump.

24:18And now some really interesting facts in there, largest deposits of crucial rare earth metals outside China, estimated 52 billion barrels of oil. reserves relatively untapped. And as you say, the climate change is meaning that they're going to be more accessible. So we shall see, but every country in the world is going to be looking at how they meet their own energy needs. And it's a very Trumpian way that he's launched this debate. Anyway, all good conversation to our energy, because this episode is powered by fuse energy. And you should sign up for the fuse energy app, which will allow you to get, if you sign up before the end of January, get some merch from you and me Alistair.

25:01Download it now, use it referral code, politics have to sign up, visit getfuse .com slash politics for the terms and conditions and to learn more. Okay, Rory, one of the big things that happened last week, Mark Zuckerberg, and here's the question from Sander in Canada. With recent developments and meta brackets, Zuckerberg roll back on fact checking. I'm curious to hear your reflections on some of the things you discuss with Nick Clegg, when he joined you on leading. How should we interpret his nonchalant attitude on the show towards social media's polarizing role and its large political influence?

25:32What is he making the meta -zuckerberg thing? It's completely shocking. I mean, it's beyond imagining what Mark Zuckerberg has done. It's not just getting rid of the 40 ,000 odd fact checkers because they're not the key to the whole thing. The most desperate thing he's done is to get rid of the basic algorithms which were in place to try to reduce hate speech. And he's also reduced one of the things that Nick Clegg has said, which is few years ago, they were saying, well, nobody on our feed really is that interested in politics anyway. So we're going to tamper down the politics. He's reversed that as well.