388. Question Time: Adolescence, Mexico at a crossroads, and Carney’s Canadian momentum

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1:30Welcome to the rest of politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Anastagambo. So where should we start? We'll write this one Jonathan Dillahunti, good name. There have been a number of times when you've been mown the lack of a coherent message from the left in opposition and also the global trend in right wing populism. I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you think, Claudia Scheinbaum and the Marina Party fittings is equation. By the way, I've been checking somebody picked me up on my pronunciation because I always say Scheinbaum because if you're reading German, that's what you would say, because she's not German.

2:04So I've been reliably informed by Mexicans, which you call her Scheinbaum. Scheinbaum. Do you want to say that, Rory? Well, I think Mexico is an amazing place to start because it echoes two things that we've been talking about a lot in the pod. Firstly, it's a really interesting counterbalance to Turkey because it's actually an economy very similar size to Turkey. GDP capital very similar size to Turkey. And like Turkey, it's sitting right on the edge of this massive developed economy. So Mexico, obviously, doing the manufacturing of the United States, Turkey doing manufacturing for Europe and like Turkey, huge issues around migrants, very large number of Mexican migrants going to the States, large number of Turkish migrants.

2:49Going into Europe and in both cases, different forms of populism. But the second thing we're going to do later on the show, of course, is compare it to Canada, which has also been that receiving end of Donald Trump and Mexico has responded in a very different way. But anyway, over to you on your view, some Scheinbaum. Oh, sorry, how are we pronouncing it again? Scheinbaum. Scheinbaum. Scheinbaum. Scheinbaum. Very good. So she's a very interesting woman. She's a scientist by training and background. So that's similar to Merkel and thatcher. She was head of government of Mexico City. She's a big environmentalist.

3:28She worked on the intergovernmental panel on climate change. And the thing is she was seen, including my other thing, when we were talking about the Mexican elections before it happened. It was very much a question of how was she going to get out of the shadow of Andres Manuel López Abrador Amlo, the predecessor as leader of Mexico. She won the general election in a landslide. Since then, she has a little bit like, as you say, Canada has had its politics defined by Trump to a certainly stent so has Mexico since she took over. She has handled it very differently. And she is currently enjoying, I checked, the same level of approval rating that Tony Blair was enjoying immediately after his handling of Princess Diana's death when it was up in the 80s.

4:16So she's got one of the amongst the highest ratings of any leader in the world right now. And the obvious thing to say is, well, that must be because people think she's handled Trump quite well. She has twice managed to stave off tariffs with personal interventions. She praises him privately about his focus on immigration and drugs and so forth. But she's not done anything big and public in terms of attack. But the other thing is that she's actually turned out to be a lot tougher on security than Amlo. And I think this may be in part, be driven by that. She's got a very, very tough message on crime and law and order.

4:58And then the other thing is that the social programs that she's doing, they do appear to be starting to bear fruit. Now, lots of leaders get very, very high ratings early in their presidency or their premiership and then maybe start to fade. But nobody can say she's not genuinely popular right now. Let's just just look at Mexico for a second. So we did a long section on Turkey in the last pod episode and we talked about how Turkey set off on its route towards populism and authoritarianism. Mexico is not as far along the route as out of the one, but it's moved a long way. And although Claudia Shainbaum is now moving into a different world, we've got to acknowledge that she was very much a product of Obrador, product of Obrador's party and Obrador put her in this position.

5:51And Obrador has taken Mexico a long, long way away from its liberal democratic traditions. I know recently, well, a man called Ernesto Zedillo, who you may remember, was the president of Mexico. And in fact, one day we might want to, if that was of interest. And he represented a moment where if you go back to the 90s, early 2000s, Mexico looked like it was really on the journey to being the old Washington vision, not the Trump Washington vision, but the old Washington vision of a particular form of liberal democracy and open free trade and joining NAFTA and all this kind of stuff. Obrador took over and things began to change.

6:32Obrador is a kind of classic populist. He's somebody who has played some extraordinary games with reinventing himself, some Mexican nationalists, speaking for the indigenous community, although he himself is actually, his name suggests from Spanish roots. He clearly had big sympathies, at least rhetorically, for people like Castro. And towards the end of his rule, just before Korda Shambam came in, big, big changes, one of them against the judiciary, terrible. So he had been challenged by the judges, particularly Supreme Court. So he and Shambam lent into the idea that the judiciary in future will be elected.

7:12That basically puts the executive, his party in control of the judiciary. And even more worryingly, potentially some of the criminal gangs in Mexico and charge the judiciary. He's also turned against the independent regulatory agencies. He's brought the army very much under his control. Obrador gave a lot of businesses to the army, set up a new national guard under the army. He controls still the party, which Shambam is now the president of. So its Obrador's son is the secretary general of the party. Obrador selected and put in place all the governors. So Shambam very much seen as his creature being used by Obrador.

7:50And then I guess the question is, will she break free of him? And if she breaks free of him, is she going to reverse some of these trends towards authoritarian populism or not? How is she going to break free of Obrador? And then I guess the final thing is which makes Mexico very, very different to Turkey, is that although both of them have these huge informal economies, 40, 50 % of their economies are completely informal, means they're not registered, they're not paying tax. And Mexico's has got still huge agricultural base, 10, 12 % of people working in agriculture. But what makes Mexico very different is that over the last 10, 15 years, the Mexican cartels took over control of the cocaine distribution in the United States from the Colombian gangs.

8:34So the Mexican drug cartels became enormous. The homicide rate in Mexico is astonishing. There was a small reduction under Obrador, but not a big reduction. An extortion is through the roof. So we've had Mexican companies closing 200 stores because of extortion. We've had senior businessmen being killed. And it's even worse if we're a small and medium -sized person. Small and medium -sized businesses in Mexico basically cannot survive without paying off either the cartels in the informal sector or in the formal sector, paying off the police, the tax authorities, the civil servants, the health and safety inspections and the cartels.

9:10I hadn't really thought of the extent to which the Amelow shadow was there because I'm looking into the way that she's dealing with crime and drugs in particular. I got the sense that that was the means by which she was trying to escape. He became identified. I don't know whether he actually ever said this, but he became identified. A bit like David Cameron's Huggahoodie with this phrase, hug is not bullets. And she seems to become much, much tougher. And you're right that judicial reform was controversial, but there's and the other thing that happened fairly earlier in her presidency I think, which sort of galvanized as well was the discovery of this mass grave where they found bits of clothes, bits of bones, furnaces where bodies had clearly been piled in there.

10:10And this whole issue of the disappeared, 120 ,000 people reckon to be missing. A lot of them dead, just taken away by the cartels and shot. So that maybe gave her the feeling that she had greater permission to take a far tough align. By the end of her first 100 days in office, the government reported that it arrested over almost 8 ,000 individuals, seized 66 tons of drugs and dismantled more than 100 amphetamine labs. So this is where she's trying to signal that she's taking a different approach. And I think the other thing is just as Trump has transformed politics in Canada, so I think because she has been seen as being under attack and handled that attack quite well, that that is probably the other factor that is making it look feel like a very different sort of leadership.

11:05I think we should say by the way, Rory, if any of her team are listening, we would love to have her on the podcast. She's clearly a very, very interesting modern leader. Final thought for me, I've first had a huge shout out to my friend Michael Reed, who's written a great book called Forgotten Continent on Latin America and then you book on Spain, who I spent a long time talking to yesterday. Secondly, just on your point there around handling Trump, I think it would have been difficult to predict for any of us a few weeks ago how Mexico would respond because there's a strong tradition in Latin American nationalism of being anti -Yankee.

11:40Yeah, you know, it's the Castro tradition, the Shava tradition, and actually the tradition, the Mexican revolution. So you could have imagined that Mexican politicians would feel almost forced to be very defiant towards Trump, instead of which, as you say, the presidents chosen to be very understated, not lose her temper and make all these concessions which feed into this self -around crime because the Republicans have been saying for a long time, and this is obviously the back of a lot of what Trump's talking about. This Republicans has spent years under the door saying that Mexico had gone soft on fentanyl, soft on cocaine, and that's why we've had Republicans talking, you know, even a year ago, about bombing facilities.

12:20So she's responded to that, but I still think it may remain a little bit fragile because it depends how far Trump goes. If he really follows through on tariffs, and the big change, I guess, between Trump and Biden, is that Biden was very happy for businesses to move from China to Mexico. That was called near shoring, but Trump often sounds as though he actually wants to businesses in the United States and of reshoring. He'll have a big fight with corporate America because Mexico is so central now to building cars and almost everything that happens in the US economy, but if he, for some reason, decides to have that fight to corporate America, that will have a huge impact on the Mexican economy.

13:03And again, if he starts putting covert operations in on the ground, contractors in on the ground to chase drugs, which is another thing they've been talking about, I think Kodishan Bam will feel that she's going to have to respond nationalistically to this, but fascinating thing, as you say, she is Jewish and a Catholic country. She's a woman in quite a macho country. She's quite a sort of intellectual in a strong populist tradition. She's somebody who in many ways sounds technocratic, but she's part of a government that hasn't only taken control of the judiciary, the regulatory agency, the military, but a bit like Turkey is basically taking control of the media.

13:43You know, 90 % of the media now in Mexico is controlled by the government. And maybe we give populism in Mexico a bit more of a past because it's left -wing populism. Right. You might have a point there, Rory. Now, here we are. We have a lot of questions this week for reasons which will become obvious about young men, inspired by, and here's the question from Meg, what are your thoughts on the show adolescence? And it is one of those TV programs that really does seem to have cut through. It's on Netflix, four part series about a family whose lives are ripped apart when a young boy is arrested for allegedly killing a girl in his class.

14:24And he's 13. I've watched the first three out of the four. Right. I'd love to know what she thought. I mean, I watched it was Shashana. Firstly, I just think artistically it was unbelievably good. The acting was incredible. There's also the courage of the director. I mean, the third episode that I just watched is basically an entire episode where he's taken the confidence just putting you in a fictitious room with two people talking to each other. And yet it's done with such brilliant acting, such fantastic script writing that you just can't leave it alone. I think it's fabulous. I mean, I'm glad you said it actually because I think that there's a danger sometimes with these things that you go straight to where you think the political debate has gone.

15:08And over the fact that the reason why it's been able to have that impact is because it is a brilliant piece of art and culture. And I think with Jack Thorne the writer, we've also been feeling and I've also been watching toxic town. Drathorne also wrote that. So, Steven Graham, a great actor, the boy who plays the 13 -year -old and never acted before. And as you say, each episode just follows one camera just sort of, you know, and the way they do it, it's almost like watching I guess it is a little bit like being in the theatre, but it's even more technically, I think it's even more brilliant than that.

15:46And then I think on the themes, and of course this comes at a time where we've just had Gareth Southgate, the former England manager to the Dimbleby lecture. And it was really good actually very much on this theme as well about the role of young men, how they see themselves, the extra pressures that they're under that maybe we didn't have growing up or even even my kids didn't have growing up. And I think that one of the things that comes through adolescence is how parents and teachers we like to think that we know what our kids are up to and the factors that are changing their lives. But do we really know the impact that social media has had on them and is continuing to have on them?

16:25And what it's doing to them, to their self -esteem, to their relationships and so forth. So, I think it's brilliant television, dusk pack -up punch, dusk carry -up point, but I think it's part of the debate rather than the whole debate as it were. Well, a thought and a question. So, I was watching it with Shashana, who used to teach in very difficult schools in New York and Boston. And the thing that she noticed, particularly in the second episode, is a portrait of a school that had completely lost control. And every time we went into a classroom, she was remembering what it was like teaching in Harlem or teaching in Boston.

17:06And just the sense of how all your energy as a teacher is going into just trying to control the classroom, trying to stop people from shouting, whacking people, walking out. And therefore, with all your energy on discipline, very, very difficult to get any teaching done, because even if you can hold the class, even if you can stop people shouting out, that doesn't mean that you're actually managing to communicate any information to them. And the the detective inspector, whose son's in the school just says just how depressed he is. And you know, there's endless visions of teachers showing endless films to people and wandering off and not being the customer again for a show.

17:47She really resonated with that. She absolutely recognized it. This is why she thinks it's going to be so popular in the US. The absolutely resonates with her experience of operating in the US public school system. But you obviously have profound interests in state education in Britain. And what did Fiona think about that? Because, of course, it's a pretty terrifying portrait of non -functioning schools in Britain. Yeah, I mean, a similar impression about the sense of hopelessness of the one of the teachers in particular who seemed very, very nice, but really didn't have much of a clue what was going on literally in a direct orbit within the school.

18:28I think Fiona's sense is of schools, not the fictional adolescent schools at where, but of schools that she's involved in, is that they do an amazing job in unbelievably difficult circumstances. We bumped into the head teacher of one of our local schools who was, you know, who I think would say, and I've been to the school, is convincing when he says that he's giving the kids in there a pretty good education. But I think they'd all accept that some of these broader social problems now mean that the job of teacher has changed fundamentally. And I was always part of teaching that was the pastoral, that was the social work and the environment, but there is no much more fundamental part of their life.

19:15But what I'm hearing from you is that you think that not many schools are that bad because that porch of a school, I don't think you really would think that you were giving people a decent education. I mean, there's a lot of lovely posters on the walls. I mean, every corridor you go down, there's lovely images of kind of the cycle of life and posters about showing respect and love and the other. But the classroom management has collapsed so much that kids are not getting basic education. Well, the two things I say to that, the first is, it is a drama. And the second is, this is a school in a drama on the day after one of the children has been murdered.

19:57So I think he's not a documentary about the day in the life of an ordinary Northern England school. Because the other thing that came through that slightly went against that was, and maybe this is because they were, you know, in a sense, they're just hundreds of kids thrown together to be actors for a day. And my god, some of those kids could act. And not just the 13 year old boy, the main character is unbelievable considering he'd never acted before. But all of the ones with the smaller parts as well, they were remarkable. But actually was how smart they were. You know, they actually looked pretty smart and they were, they were smart mentally.

20:37There was, there was a vibrancy about those kids. And I think that I guess what I was left with was, was the sense of hopelessness that actually a kid that by, you know, if you saw the child and then if you saw the way that he conducted himself, these of his parents and so forth, you thought that's a, that's a nice balanced child who's probably doing okay at school even though he gets picked on a bit. Whereas it turns out no, he's actually been kind of radicalized and this whole sort of in -self thing going on. One of the things I found really interesting was that they, they chose to act this part of somebody who felt that he, he turned against women because of this feeling that he thought they found him ugly when he so clearly wasn't ugly.

21:24But he'd been radicalized in a way that was, yeah, literally had just played with his mind. And then, and the scene you're talking about with the, with the child's psychologist. Although again, back to the drama point, I was in the other person I thought to this word, he said, they'd seen it, who'd worked in schools and worked with a lot of child's psychologists and said that, you know, she was, she was too nicely dressed and she was, she was sort of, you know, showing too much of her own emotion. I think sometimes we're going to be careful with these dramas that we don't read so much into them that we start to treat them like, like documentaries.

22:00I think we should just appreciate it for a brilliant, brilliant piece of story telling. Partly because it was so brilliant. I mean, I've never seen any police movie take you through the sort of detailed procedures, processes, paperwork of checking a child in, summoning the solicitor, getting the blood cells, taking the sort of, no, I thought that was all brilliant. Right. Now, on that, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back on Canada.

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23:42So, Alice, the back from our break, your favourite subject, Canada. Flair, how will the US trade war and Trump's rhetoric shape the Canadian election? Morgana Wise, Mark Carney, calling elections so soon and just a little plug before we get the Alice to answer? We've done some really great interviews recently with senior Canadian politicians, including two separate interviews with Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister who's just called the election. And a special episode that she did with Karen Febun and with Bruce Anderson. So, over to you. Well, I don't think anybody's surprised that this is what he did.

24:17In fact, I think we said, we said a couple of weeks ago that we didn't expect him to hang around long. We had nine days between winning the leadership election which made him Prime Minister. He managed to fit in a visit to Paris to see Macron to the UK to see Kierstammer and your friend, the King, which I think hopefully settled Canadians down a little bit as to where British hearts are in relation to this existential threat because I think that's how they feel. I was at an event last night and there was a Canadian guy there and the reason I knew he was Canadian was because he was wearing the maple leaf on his lapel and I said, do you always wear that?

24:58Is it not? I've just worn it since Trump started threatening Canada. So the question, how will the trade war and Trump's rhetoric shape the Canadian election? It already has. It is one of the prime reasons why the Liberal Party is back in the game, having closed this 20 point plus gap in the polls with the Conservatives under Pierre -Pollier. It's one of the reasons I think why Mark Carney won the leadership election by such a big margin because people thought this guy's been around the block when it comes to the economy. He's rolling the Bank of England, Bank of Canada, in business. He seems like he's a pretty tough guy and I think then in relation to why he's calling it now because he's got momentum.

25:42It still would be an remarkable comeback for the Liberals to turn this around. I've been looking at a lot of Canadian newspapers in the last few days. I mean some of them are very, very biased against him. Prawli -Ever has got quite a lot of media support. I watched his announcement, to be called in the election, framed it very much as looking after the economy, looking after Canadians, Canadian National Pride, standing up to America, has made no effort to have a conversation with Trump. Prawli -Ever has I think shifted his agenda a bit, but it's in the end I think America and Trump will be a big part of the campaign.

26:20But it's interesting, I'm the last couple of days already. You've seen a lot of the debate getting on to very conventional domestic election issues. This tax, that tax, this education policy, that education policy. So I think it's going to be a curious mix of a very traditional election campaign with this remarkable backdrop of Trump and tariffs. Yeah. And Prawli -Ever presumably, his campaign will try to be as domestic as possible and we'll try to focus on Trudeau's record and people being fed up with Trudeau and the Liberal Party. They're trying to link Karni very much to the Trudeau story. A bit harder to do that than if it had been Christian Freeland, because of course, Christian Freeland was Trudeau's deputy and finance minister.