377. Question Time: How will Europe defend itself?

0:00Thanks for listening to the Restisted Politics. Sign up to the Restisted Politics Plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics .com. That's therestispolitics .com. Now as you know, the Restisted Politics Powered by Fuse Energy. There's been a new analysis by the Confederation British Industry, which has found that the net zero sector in the UK is growing three times faster than the UK economy at large. The net zero economy grew by 10 % in 2024. Wow. Well, that is clearly, I think, very, very good news.

0:37I'd love to know how that's measured. What do we mean by the net zero economy is supposed to be the UK economy at large. But anyway, let's take that face value. It's also what popped into my head as you were saying that was constantly seeing Nigel Farage, Richard Tyson, all that lot, basically saying that net zero is sort of, you know, what's responsible for our economic problems. But what that seems to be saying is that it's actually part of the solution to our economic problems. Anyway, we've got a question here from Ed. I'm assuming that's not Ed Milliband, who's the Secretary of State for all these issues.

1:14As a climate conscious reader listener, I was pretty horrified to read, says Ed, that BP are planning to ramp up gas and oil production and cut renewable energy plans. Similarly, Equinor have pledged to halve their renewable energy investments in the next two years, whilst ramping up fossil fuel activities. Shell are also backing down from proposed offshore wind investments. What can climate positive governments and companies do to combat this damaging behavior from legacy energy giants? What I guess we are. I mean, some of this, I think, is precedes Trump. But some of this is post -Trump. I'll suggest just sort of footnote on that CBI report.

1:57Yes, I mean, the UK is doing really well, and it's on that, and it's good also because actually a lot of that is quite productive, and a lot of it is not just London, the southeast. It's about green jobs up in other bits of the country. But it's 50 % less than the growth in those sectors and Europe as a whole. And in China, nearly 10 % of its GDP is now associated with clean energy. See, I think the impact of Trump is enormous in so many ways, and one of the his thing drill, baby drill. And that's why I do speak up Fred Miller band in the job that he's doing at the moment, because I think the question there, what can climate positive governments and companies do to combat this damaging behavior?

2:36They've got to keep trying to challenge it, and keep trying to signal stress to people, why this net zero journey is so important. But you've just got to keep going with what you believe. I remember, you know, I've told you before about when Al Gore was with Al Gore not long after Trump got elected first time round, and he said, we're just going to have to work around this guy. Now, that's very, very difficult when you're talking about a very powerful, very driven United States president. But one day he'll be gone. It's not totally straightforward, because of course, the North Sea producers point out that we're not changing our consumption really.

3:12We're still importing an enormous amount of oil and gas. We're just importing it from other places, and we're not getting any benefit from it. So one of the challenges for Ed Miller band is how do you avoid kind of crippling British companies, British oil production, and then British consumers just keep getting all the same stuff from elsewhere. So you have no impact at all. Final one before we get off this fuse energy inspired question. We both love watching foreign language television, and if you haven't seen it, there's a great Norwegian series called Occupied, and it's beginning is the Norwegian Prime Minister announces that he's going to stop all oil and gas production in Norway and all exports.

3:48And the result is that the European Union and Russia conspire and Russia invades and occupies Norway to get its oil and gas production going again.

4:01I'm all for bold leadership, but I think for an Norwegian Prime Minister to say, but listen, Norway is a great example of where they are an energy giant, but they understand the renewables of the future, and that's where they're putting off a lot of their investment. Anyway, with all this in mind, this is a long -winded way of saying switch to fuse, which invests 100 % of its profits into renewable projects around the world. Yeah, one of the things that's interesting about fuse is they're not just buying certificates to claim 100 % green energy, because the UK renewables can't always meet demand every hour.

4:37Sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing. Many companies buy certificates to appear fully green, but their actual energy mix does include fossil fuels. At fuse energy, they reinvest all profits into building more renewable energy, so they're focusing really on the real world impact. It's not just a show game where they're playing with certificates. They receive certificates, but they use the proceeds to fund more wind and soda projects, not not to make unfounded claims. Restless politics is powered by fuse energy and fuse are giving away free trip plus membership for all of 2025 to new signups.

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5:57Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Ernest Campbell, and we did lots of America and Europe in the main podcast, but I think we'll have to stick with it because we've got so many questions. I mean, thousands of questions and so many of them are actually about the issues that we were talking about yesterday. So here's a couple of you to kick off with, Rory, both from from members, Stephen Flatley. Now the United States is not a reliable NATO partner, stated as a statement of fact by Stephen Flatley, and we the UK and Europe need to take more responsibility for our defence, how much actual operational, technical and political independence do we actually have over on nuclear arsenal?

6:37Good question. Jeff also members, should the UK and European countries impose a war levy on VAT to raise immediate funds for defence? Most people would broadly support this, and it would send a strong signal to Putin. And maybe just throw this one in, we've got questions about aid and the fact that aid is being cut to pay for this increased defence spending. You've spoken a lot about the importance of aid. What do you think of aid spending being cut to support defence spending? So they are, Rory, kick off with those. So this follows on from yesterday and the big story, which we're all working our way through, because in four weeks we've had to rethink all our major strategic assumptions, and in some ways it's daft of us.

7:19We should have seen this coming with Trump one. So we've actually had eight years to really begin to wake up to the possibility that the U .S. is no longer going to be a predictable, reliable ally, and that the entire rules -based international order that the U .S. created is being abandoned by the U .S. But it was such a big deal, such a difficult thing to get our heads around. And because of course the U .S. has been the largest economy in the world and the largest military in the world for 80 years, and it basically created the UN, created NATO, created the World Bank. That imagining a world without it, I'm still struggling for what exactly the metaphor is.

7:58It's more than a foundation stone. It's like, you know, two thirds the entire building is being removed. We talked in the last podcast about vulnerabilities a little bit, but I guess Stephen Flatley's question gets to that. So let's just start with that and try to understand what the vulnerabilities are and why getting independent from the U .S. is much, much easier said than done. Well firstly, it's because so much of our kit comes from the U .S. So enormous an amount of, you know, our F -35s, for example, which is that the attack aircraft we decided to buy are basically built with some UK components, but basically built in the U .S.

8:39And the Americans, when they sell these things around the world, often demand that they retain the data that these planes pick up. So these planes are full of extraordinary kind of data gathering stuff, but it's all considered top secret. The data is owned by the U .S. I think at one point, we had to negotiate just shortly after I left government. I think we had to give $400 million to an American defense company to be able to have our own data from our own planes, right? And as the Afghans discovered, if you buy American kit, you're totally dependent on American contractors to do software updates.

9:17And if they don't provide the software updates, the whole stuff is grounded. So the reason the entire Afghan Air Force and Helicopter Force collapse and the Taliban took over the country is the American removed all the contractors who were there doing the software upgrades, which have to happen after every mission. Then there's the problem that America retains the right to not deliver stuff. So Sweden had ordered a lot of Patriot missiles. And the United States suddenly said, actually, we can't really afford to give them to you because we want them ourselves for something else, right? This whole world of U .S.

9:49defense equipment was not just about the performance of the kit, because sometimes American kit is overengineered, unbelievably expensive, and has been proved in Ukraine, we're in a world where, in fact, the Ukrainians are showing that you can use $1 ,000 drones and iPhones to do a lot of the stuff that $150 million planes were doing. One of the reasons we buy the kit is because of security guarantees. So the most extreme example of all is Switzerland buys F -35s. Now, an F -35 is the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world. And it's there to do these incredible long -range stealth missions.

10:30There is literally no reason for little Switzerland, this neutral mountainous country to have these planes. The only reason they buy them is that implicit is you buy it and America has your back. Now, America no longer has our back. I think very few people now believe that Trump is going to do anything to defend a European country if it's attacked by Putin. So we then have to think about how we replace all this stuff. Well, you can just about imagine that there could be British, Italian, designed planes or French, German, designed planes. And in fact, the typhoon and Raphael can come into that space.

11:10There is stuff we can do to replace American anti -aircraft missiles. Iron metal is now producing more and more 155 millimetre munition. Your German pronunciation is coming in already. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. But we're still dealing with the fact that perhaps our biggest single vulnerability is in tech because the world of defense is increasingly a world dominated by companies like Palantir, an Anderil, SpaceX. And they would say, we've got you over a barrel. So when I meet these people from these American companies, they're like, Europe's finished. You're completely dependent on American tech.

11:53The future of the world is American tech. And you can't live without us and wars are won on the basis of our tech platforms. And of course, the seven largest tech companies in the world are American. So what would it mean for Europe to actually become independent of Google, independent of the cloud services provided by Microsoft? We have something called SAP which is incredibly important for running supply chains. But even that lives on cloud computing services provided by these enormous American companies. So there is a double strategy here. There's a strategy about making our own defense equipment and finding markets for our own defense equipment.

12:33And then there's an entire strategy about developing a technological infrastructure where again, we don't really have the finance in place. I mean, famously, we innovate but we don't produce commercial companies because it's much easier to get funding in the US. There's not a big European market for investing in tech. We don't take risk in the same way that the US does. So tech companies are perpetually flipping over to the US. There are potential companies. They're a great German, Swedish, British companies we've been building in but we'd have to completely change our financial infrastructure as well as spending a lot more money.

13:07It's partly what we're talking about. The conference in Kiev hosted by Zelensky and a lot of the European leaders were, I mentioned the Danish Prime Minister Metafredriksson. She was absolutely clear that Europe has to start to be able to compete on this because these weren't the words she used but the notion being that we've just fallen so far behind. And I think the other thing that maybe goes to Stephen's question is so much of our defence budget. So we talk about 2 .5%, and I saw to buy a cell word, former Tory MP, Defence Select Committee, former soldier, and he was interviewed. He was in Kiev yesterday.

13:47He was saying that the best thing Britain could do as a way of showing leadership to the rest of Europe was actually to say we're going to eventually we're going to match America. But of course to go to one of the other questions in that, those questions I threw at you at the spend more on defence means to either grow the economy substantially, which doesn't seem to be happening any time soon, or make cuts elsewhere. And a lot of people, you and I were both livid that the Americans have sort of basically got rid of USAID, the US Agency for International Development. But now the British government has gone after aid and development as the first thing to go when spending for more defence.

14:30So the question there, how do we feel about that? Very, very bad. Yes, so yes, India's question, let's get into that for a second. So you've spoken a lot about the importance of aid. What do you think of aid spending being cut to support defence? Now this is partly about if we're going to be serious about stepping up, it's not just serious about manufacturing, it is about becoming a serious country in terms of our skills and our soft power as well. So we would need to, if we're going to become properly independent of the US, really invest in rebuilding the foreign office, rebuild our development infrastructure, really work out who we are in the world and how seriously we're doing it.

15:11Because a lot of what we've done for the last 60 years, I used to make jokes about this, but genuinely my first boss in the foreign office, when you asked him what to do, would say find out what the Americans are doing and doing a little bit less. And if you've got that culture, you don't really feel that you need to develop all the linguistic skills that you need, the scale of the embassies that you need, the scale of the development infrastructure, the number of intelligent stations we would have to open in places like Africa because we could no longer rely on the five eyes process. Alice, a question for you.

15:42So you started on this in yesterday's pod and I thought it was really interesting and I want to develop this. So let's imagine that we really thought about Europe and maybe we thought about the European Union plus a number of non -member states which the United Kingdom would be a very important example, which bolt on and integrate economically defense and security onto the European Union. And maybe to be radical about this, that could be the UK, it could be Ukraine, and it could be Turkey, and this could be a Norway, and it definitely could be a vision, for example, I think of customs union and single market without initially free movement to people, perhaps without ever free movement to people.

16:37Why? Because most European countries don't want free movement from Turkey, many voters in Britain don't want free movement into Britain, and the European countries in a different situation they were in ten years ago because they are facing labor shortages, so it's less for priority for them. Well, that's interesting enough. The other name that was half ingest thrown into that mix at the meeting in key by the Norwegian Prime Minister was Canada. Yes. The other thing, Rory, I didn't have time to send it because I just got this this morning, but I was sent a very interesting paper on something called the rearmament bank, and at first I looked at it and thought this is just going to be one of those sort of, you know, winky -wanky, I've got a great idea, I can save the world, and so you always look at who's actually sending this thing and who's involved in it.

17:26So the first name was Gida Celia who was involved in founding the EBRD, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. The second name was General Sennick Carter, former chief of the UK Defence Staff, who I happen to know of all, has been very, very worried about the decline in the UK defenses, and then finally Edward Lucas Senior Advisor at the Centre for European Policy Analysis. And essentially what this is talking about, it relates to what you just said, talks about getting a core group of like -minded European NATO members that has to be veto proof. That's the first thing, complimenting the defence mandates that already exist, but basically saying you need 10 billion upfront state finance in order to borrow 90 billion, and it essentially based on the process that was that was modeled by the EBRD.

18:20So I think these are new structures that are going to have to start coming up because the current structures right now don't look fit for purpose. You know, did you ever think you would see the day when at the United Nations, which we've always thought post -war was this great institution, whether world politics could play out, where we, the UK and France were on the wrong side of a vote, where on the other side you had China, Russian, or America. Well, we were on the right side of the vote, weren't we? We were on the wrong side, in that we couldn't get them over. We were totally on the right side of history, yeah, and we were voting the right way, but we were not with the Americans on that.

18:58That felt pretty threatening, and that does mean that these other sorts of institutions are going to have to have to develop and evolve, and I think this is what Mertz was talking about. I think he was talking about these like -minded pro -European, pro -NATO countries, and it is interesting. We've talked a lot in recent weeks about the potential for Turkey's power in some of these issues and relationships, and this is a classic one. If this had the Turks back here, it could get off the road. Let's lean into the Turks for a second. So Turkey has a lot of soldiers, big military, and more willingness to fight.

19:39They've been a big supplier of drones to Ukraine. They are strategic adversaries of Russia in the Black Sea, and of course in Syria, where they were on different sides, and out of the one has now volunteered, and said he's happy for the idea of Turkish troops to deploy to Ukraine and for Ukraine to join NATO. As we talk about who future European allies could be, I think Turkey is a very important part of that. Now, we might also think about -you talk about Canada, other democracies, Australia, South Korea, Japan. Now, these are enormous economies, with huge amounts of resources if we wish to try to have some kind of rebalance and strategic independence.

20:20My friend Geralt Canal from ESI, who I adore, is very interested in Jean -Mony and the great visions of the early 1950s, and of course he would say that what we need is to envisage something which is more like the colon steel community. In other words, something that's more than just an economic union that has a sort of political security infrastructure, but isn't as bureaucratic, isn't all about the commission. Your point about Nick Carter and Vito's isn't about arguing about the common fisheries policy, which would be the first thing that we're getting involved. But in order to get there, Alistair, like I've now given you this task, okay, you've got Kierstama, you've got Macron, you've got Mertz and a Rub -Tusk, and you've got Erdo the one, yeah, and you've got Zelensky.

21:07How do you actually get them to get beyond the rhetoric and really step up? I mean, let's say our objective is within a year to create a new outer circle of Europe, a new form of European defense and economic alliance. How are we going to get there as opposed to just waffle about it and miss the chance and Tony? I think this is already beginning to form. I think we see it in the statements. Now, there are massive issues that arise from it. You talked about one of them yesterday, which is actually the extent to which we, the UK in particular, are so linked into America. But I think you need to do this in a way that ultimately the Americans said, yeah, that's kind of what we want.

21:45Because what Trump keeps saying and what the American message is, we can, well, you and I focus a lot on them being no longer a reliable ally. But let's just understand that what they're essentially saying is, you know, I've taken us for granted for too long, do more of your own stuff. Look after your own backyard better than you've done. So I think you mentioned some of the names there and there would be others. You get them in a room. Essentially, they have to agree, and this could happen quite quickly. As I understand it, Keir Starmer is going to come back from Washington. He and Macron have been talking pretty regularly in advance of these two visits that they're both making this week.

22:22And I think it's this weekend, they're then going to gather some of the other European leaders. It wouldn't take that long before you say, look, we have to accept now we have to have a reshaping of the European defense and security situation. And the fact that the Norwegian Prime Minister yesterday was talking about in the way that he was, the fact that the Danish Prime Minister was talking the way that she was, the fact that Macron spoke yesterday, he said that Keir Starmer's going to be saying much the same thing on Thursday. I don't think it would be that difficult. And that's why I think this rearmament ban is really interesting.

22:58You would have to have the development of institutions that sat alongside, and in some cases maybe eventually replace existing institutions. And the EBRD, if I remember, that got together very, very quickly and started to deliver big budgets and big projects. I think it probably was within a year, but I think it was very, very quick. I mean, it'd be interesting to see whether Starmer has the confidence to say, I am now appointing a lead envoy. And this is my objective. We're going to negotiate with these partners to create this economic and military cooperation structure. Let me form a structure.

23:36This is how we're going to work. And we're going to integrate these things. We're going to integrate finance across Europe, a defense funding. We're going to identify all the gaps. We're going to work out. How do we put nuclear weapons into Germany now? Manufacturing. This is what I said yesterday. When I said that I thought that this is, people have sort of all sorts of complaints that they've had about Keir Starmer. But this in terms of UK and Keir Starmer leadership is actually a massive challenge and opportunity. And I think if you rose to it, it could actually be the making of it. I was very impressed yesterday.

24:11I saw James Heepie, former defense minister, Ben Wallace, who I've been sort of keeping an eye on because he's been saying some very interesting things. And also to buy a cell wood, it was very interesting hearing them. I actually thought, you know, the point you keep making about these ministers are much better when they're out of office than in it. They were all three of them speaking with real insight and conviction, but also coming from a position of understanding what Keir Starmer does right now is unbelievably important for the future of Britain and for the future of Europe. If you see it in that context, so I think the country is ready to come behind something really quite big on this.

24:50And I think it will involve us getting through the crap that gets talked about Brexit and actually understanding this, there's something existential about this. It is a massive challenge and it involves us understanding we are a major European power when it comes to defense and security, but we've got to become even more major and we've got to get the others to develop in the same direction.

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