402. Question Time: India vs. Pakistan | What Happens Now?

7 May 2025 · 1 h 1 min

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Podcast Episode Summary: The Rest Is Politics - Episode 402

Overview

In this episode, titled "Question Time

India vs. Pakistan | What Happens Now?", hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart tackle pressing questions regarding international relations, particularly between India and Pakistan, as well as discussing UK politics, climate policy, and the political landscape in Europe.

Key Topics Discussed

  1. India-Pakistan Relations
  2. The conversation opens with the recent tensions in Kashmir following a terrorist attack that prompted military strikes by India against what they termed "terrorist infrastructure" in Pakistan.
  3. Statistics Shared:
  4. India claims 10 deaths and 32 injuries from the strikes.
  5. Pakistan reports 26 fatalities and 46 injuries, asserting they shot down five Indian fighter jets, a claim India disputes (stating two were downed).
  6. Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell analyze the implications of India's military actions and Pakistan's potential responses, emphasizing the risks of miscalculation leading to broader conflict.
  1. Historical Context
  2. The discussion touches on the colonial roots of the Kashmir conflict, highlighting how British partition decisions exacerbated religious tensions between Hindu and Muslim communities.
  3. Mustafa Suleiman's criticism of their historical overview is noted, which prompts deeper reflections on the colonial legacy affecting current geopolitical issues.
  1. UK Political Landscape

Tony Blair's Climate Policy Critique

  • The hosts discuss whether Tony Blair should be expelled from the Labour Party for his critical remarks on the government's climate policies, particularly in the context of local elections.
  • Alastair Campbell suggests Blair's comments may have unintended consequences for Labour's electoral strategy.

The Divided Political Landscape

  • Rory Stewart notes the increasing divide between urban and rural voters in Britain, with Labour now seen more as a party of professionals rather than traditional working-class voters.
  • The discussion includes the political consequences of these divisions, particularly in relation to the Reform Party's gains.
  1. Global Politics and the Church
  2. The conversation transitions to the upcoming papal conclave, discussing the candidates and their potential influences on the Catholic Church's direction.
  3. There is speculation regarding how political figures are engaging with these developments, particularly in light of historical relationships between church and state.
  1. German Politics and the AFD
  2. The episode also examines the recent labeling of the Alternative for Germany (AFD) as an extremist group by German intelligence, exploring why American politicians have defended the AFD.
  3. Rory Stewart emphasizes the complexities of balancing rights within a democratic framework against concerns for constitutional protections.
  1. Future Outlook and Recommendations
  2. The hosts conclude with thoughts on potential political changes in the UK, with a call for more ambitious and thoughtful engagement with Brexit and the European Union.
  3. They also reflect on the importance of addressing the socio-economic issues facing smaller towns in Britain, advocating for systemic changes to ensure equitable resource distribution.

Conclusion This episode of *The Rest Is Politics* offers a nuanced analysis of pressing global and domestic issues, encouraging listeners to consider the interconnectedness of historical contexts, current political strategies, and the implications for future relations both within the UK and internationally. The discussions are characterized by a commitment to rational debate and the importance of understanding the past to inform present actions.

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Transcript

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0:00Thanks for listening to The Restless Politics. Sign up to The Restless 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 TheRestlessPolitics .com. That's TheRestlessPolitics .com. The restless politics is as ever powered by our friends at Fuse Energy. And if you've got an electric vehicle or you're thinking of switching, Fuse can help you with that. They're offering a new overnight charge in tariffs that makes things very, very simple. It's available now through their iOS app and Android's on its way.

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1:02So while your car charges, you're also helping our podcast. Just head to getfuse .com slash politics, download the app and use the code politics when you sign up. Practical, painless, no commit you required. Welcome to TheRestlessPolitics question time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. You will notice that we are dressed in a certain way now, me in a certain tie and Rory in one of his Afghan waist coats. And then later in the program, we're in very different clothes. And the reason for that is that we recorded most of what you're about to hear yesterday. And we also talked about Kashmir because we had a question from none other than a Mustafa Suleiman internet guru and who's been all leading before.

1:52And he asked the question introduction to the history of Kashmir was what he called extremely lightweight and completely glossed over the important colonial context. So we talked about that and we talked about Kashmir, but of course since then, and I regret to say as we predicted after the terrorist attack in Kashmir a couple of weeks ago now, India has taken action against Pakistan, blame Pakistan for the terror attack. They've launched, they've targeted nine different sites insisting that they're all what they call terrorist infrastructure. So we have India saying that 10 people have died, 32 injured, Pakistan saying 26 people have been killed, 46 injured, and Pakistan also saying that they claim to have shot down five Indian fighter jets.

2:44So this is very, very, very tense. Ruri, what do you make of it? Well, two weeks ago, we discussed the options that face Modi, so there was this very, very disturbing attack in Kashmir targeted against Indian holiday makers, where they were massacred in this beautiful Swiss Valley. And Kashmir, as we explained, is the absolute crucible of a lot of the violence in India in particular because a predominantly Muslim population, which was reluctant to join India after 47, we can get into the details of how that worked. Most of the settlements questioned later, but anyway, I became part of the Indian state.

3:22And after a period of relative peace, this terrorist attack happened. And that then, as we said, was likely to lead to a series of options for the renderer Modi. 2016 -19, when there were attacks, India did respond. And what we pointed out two weeks ago is the big debate was what kind of response? Was it going to be response within Jamak Kashmir? Was it going to be response within Pakistan? Occupied Kashmir? Was it going to be within hybrid of Pakhtunwala? Or was it going to go into Punjab itself? And the closer it got into Punjab, the more risky we thought it would be. And indeed, it has happened in Punjab.

4:03One of these attacks is only 30 kilometers away from Lahore. And the reason that matters is that Punjab is the big population economic center of Pakistan, the Sizun Tur, and attacks simply up on the border region. So it's got symbolic importance. But as you say, it seems to have been a relatively limited strike. Now, these are all relative terms, but the footage suggests it was more on the precision end. And India at least is claiming that the people struck were people actively involved in planning new terrorist attacks on India. Now, you and I will remember from Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere that that is what governments tend to say.

4:48And sometimes it turns out not to be the case and you can hit the wrong targets and your intelligence goes wrong. But anyway, that at the moment is a story. Well, I'm sure, just jump in there. There is a guy, Malan and Masud Azar, who is a UN designated terrorist based in Pakistan. He has said publicly that 10 members of his family and four of his closest associates have been killed in the strike. Now, I have no idea of knowing that's true. Although I can see why he did it, why he said all the things he did, in a way that may have helped the Indian narrative that we are only targeting people involved in what they call the terrorist infrastructure.

5:29Absolutely. I think so the most optimistic scenario from the point of view of what I suppose the world is concentrating on most, which is peace, would be that India has done a relatively precise strike against terrorist infrastructure. But, and here are the butts. I talked about the Punjab, but the next part is the butt you mentioned, which is the shooting down of these planes. Now, India at the moment, I think, is acknowledged two planes down, not five. But Pakistan is saying that three of the planes shot down were Rafael fighters, which India recently purchased from France. And we're meant to be great game changes in the Indian Air Force because they allow you to shoot from the Indian side of the border remotely.

6:16So there is a real sense of potential humiliation for the Indian military that these famed fighters were shot down. Now, again, that isn't necessarily the end of the world because again in 2019, Pakistan shot down a plane captured an Indian pilot who was quickly returned and third world war indeed did not happen. But there is a question of whether Modi will come under political pressure because those planes came down and then the bigger question of course is what does Pakistan do now. And in 2019, Pakistan responded with strikes into India, which India denied really happened at all and said didn't cause any damage.

6:56What sort of strikes can Pakistan do? Well, they're not the equivalent of these terrorist bases in India. So they would have to hit military paramountry infrastructure. And the question is, does Pakistan hit Indian military bases with soldiers in killing people? Or does it more symbolically hit half deserted border posts? And this is where the danger comes because there are certain factors which make it more dangerous in 2019. One of them is the new Pakistan Chief of the Army staff is comes from a more religiously conservative, more nationalist background has been making much more inflammatory comments about India.

7:39So you've got that Pakistan side and the I think it's a job that is well done. I think what's worth saying about him as well and about Pakistani military figures more generally. We look at arm, we think of arm military figures and American military figures and European military figures who tend to be very much subordinate to the political leadership. This is a guy whose face you will see on posters, you will see it on the back of the cars and lorries. He is a big public figure with a big public profile. Absolutely. In fact, to some extent Pakistan is a democracy under a military government. The decision to, for example, lock up in Rankhan was driven very much by the military, the military organized and inverted commerce, the elections, which means stuff about boxes and quite a lot of the country.

8:25There are, I think we talked about this, that when you go to the Pakistan parliament and go to visit the Chief Whips office, you see a colonel static in the Chief Whips office, effectively telling people how to do the whipping operation. So the, yeah, this man is probably the most powerful man in Pakistan and so how he thinks about the world really matters. On the other side, you've got a different Modi, a more confident Modi, an Indian economy that is in a stronger position that may feel under more political pressure to respond vigorously if Pakistan strikes him, getting the tits back and forth.

9:02And then the final difference is that we're in the world of Trump. So 2016, 2019, there was a huge concerted effort as you can imagine by the old kind of international players led by the US to try to help broker peace. This time, a Trump signal strong supports for Modi, but more than that, he signals in difference. He's not somebody who's particularly interested in getting involved in an India Pakistan dispute and Modi may feel that he has more freedom and even Pakistan may feel them have more freedom to be aggressive. So I told you Trump was asked about it yesterday last night, and he talked about it almost as if he was a bystander.

9:42Yeah, I just heard about that as we were coming to the over office and you know, these guys have been fighting for a long time. It looks like a bad one and you know, I hope they can sort this out. It was like very, very, very passive in the in the response. And I guess the other point to make, I mean, it's not as if we don't have enough international crises going on at the moment. I think to have Rashi Hukrain, Israel Garza, Sudan, all the other conflicts that are going across Africa and then to have India, Pakistan. And as we said in what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, with China very, very closely involved as having the third part of Kashmir.

10:20I mean, I guess the other thing we have to be very wary about is in those countries, including ours, whether it's a very large Indian population and a very large Pakistani population, sometimes living in the same places. I mean, whether we just got to keep an eye on that kind of leading, that those sort of tensions spilling over as well. Yeah, you're completely right. When I was in parliament and it would have been true for you when you were in government, the three biggest issues that really hit British communities were Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, and India, Pakistan over Kashmir. And you different MPs with different constituencies would come on a huge pressure on those issues.

11:01They're very much live issues in the British parliament. They're not just international issues. So I think we have to watch this space. It is a dangerous moment. The danger of courses around miscalculation. Best case scenario is Pakistan responds with a relatively calibrated limited response. India says, okay, that's done now. And the whole thing dies away as it did after 2019. Worst case scenario, Pakistan hits in a way that Modi feels forced to respond to and off we go. And then of course, people will point out the obvious, which is that these are two new clear on powers. Two new clear on powers with a very, very bad history of relationships between them.

11:48Now, the chief minister in Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, and I don't know exactly where he stands on the political perspective. He has been out straight away saying that the onus lies with Pakistan to as he put it lower the guns. Now is that because he is the chief minister of Kashmir wanting to bring down the temperature or is that because he's the chief minister of Kashmir. So what I'd heard before is he didn't have very good relations with the Indian government. So Omar Abdullah is a very interesting figure. He is of course a Muslim who strongly opposed the decision by Modi to make Kashmir a federated minister territory.

12:36He was criticized for having meetings with the Pakistan government. So to some extent, if you're a Hindu nationalist, Omar Abdullah is a society suspect figure. In fact, he's actually been detained in the past. But he's also now the chief minister of and federated ministered Indian state. And therefore from the Pakistani point of view, a little bit suspect on that side. Probably without sounding too centrist data about it, maybe a sign that he's doing a good job, if both sides are a little bit suspicious of his stance. Final thing on him, he was born in in Rochford in Essex. His mum is English.

13:16And both his father and his grandfather were chief ministers of Jamal Kashmir. And we talk about this a little bit with Japan. We talk about this a little bit with India. But you know, you with your class analysis of politicians and their backgrounds. Here's another example. I guess the other final point for me is the economically. This is going to hurt Pakistan a lot more than India. India is much bigger, bigger military and so forth. And Pakistan at the moment, they've got this massive IMF bailout program underway. And you know, they've got real economic problems. So India can probably endure this longer and with more titting and tattling than the Pakistanis.

13:56Yes. Although I think Pakistan's resilience and nationalism can be fueled by the economic problem. So we have these sort of weird things. Now listen, because we won't now have in this episode that your answer to Mustafa Salaman, John to just briefly give the an edited version of the answer that you gave and rebut the idea. No, I don't think we should rebut it because what we said was we said, what we discussed this, let's start in 1947. And he essentially, Mustafa is essentially saying we didn't focus enough on the history. Fair point. Yeah. So Mustafa's point, which is a good one, is that a lot of the tension between Muslim and Hindu communities in India does partly reflect the fact that the British Empire, the Raj emphasised those identities, lent into them and created different legal structures for Muslim communities.

14:54And part of this was a policy, frankly, of divide and rule, putting communities against each other in order to keep the British government in place. And partition, which created the problem in Kashmir, tour India apart, was put together very, very quickly, very hastily, the Radcliffe Commission that drew the border. And this is something I'd love to talk to Willie Downer and Paul and the Empire Pod team about how odd it is, Britain in India, along with all the unbelievably negative things, racism, colonial exploitation, killing, looting that took place. The one thing they traditionally prided themselves on was granular knowledge.

15:35So in a John Lawrence, he was the vice right spent 40 years in India, spoke Indian languages fluently, spent a lot of time in rural areas. And yet, when it came to partition, Radcliffe, who chaired the Commission, hadn't visited India and the thing was put together in five weeks, drawing lines right the way through the middle of villages and somehow ignoring 200 years of British granular study of India in the process. And it's also funny, true, that the creation of this Kashmir problem is about the Maharajra Kashmir. And that's partly about the British relationship with what's called the Princely States.

16:13In other words, the British Empire in India directly administered certain places, Bengal and Kalkata, for example, but there were 537, I think, Tennessee States ranging from tiny things about the size of my constituency around Penrith to enormous places like Kairdrabad, which were ruled indirectly through political agents. And Kashmir was one of those territories. So thank you, Mustafa, for drawing attention to the fact that British rule is also part of the backstory for the tensions happening in Jamak although I would also say it's a very, very classic situation which reminds you asked a bit of an old island of the real problems of a government, increasingly Hindu nationalist government, administering a predominantly Muslim territory, wherever those sectarian divisions came from, even if they were exaggerated by colonial authorities are very real.

17:10Well, I think I've told you before about a time when we were in India and Pakistan and we went to Pakistan first. And I remember as we were leaving the dinner to go to India, one of the military guys just saying to me, just remind them that the missiles are not very far away and then with this sort of big toothy grin, the hatred is deep and the apologies is do a large extent defined by Kashmir. This has been almost become an emergency podcaster, but it's what we call a Q &A top up kind of emergency question and now listeners can get on with listening to the stuff that we recorded yesterday.

18:00Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me Rory Stewart and me Anastak Amal. Just to put you on the spot here, Deborah from Germany. I think I can guess you'll answer this, but should Tony Blair be expelled from the Labour Party for his egregious backstabbing maneuver on the eve of the local elections? I'm quoting Deborah here, trashing the government's net zero policy which led to rejoicing in the ranks of reform and the conservatives and will definitely, of course, some voters to switch to either reform conservatives or the Green Party or Sam from Cambridge. Does Alice to think Tony Blair's climate change outburst was wise, given the clear conflict of interest with the Saudi interests, or perhaps more politely so we don't actually get your back up from the beginning and put you into fuel defence and mode.

18:43Douglas Thackway, do you agree with Tony Blair's intervention regarding net zero policy in the UK? Do you agree? Well, I'm guessing that Deborah and Sam and Douglas and the many, many, many others who asked questions about Tony Blair and net zero have not necessarily read the Tony Blair in suit report that led to the screaming front page headlines. However, I did remind him in an exchange of messages and the phone call that he is a very experienced politician. He knows that in the week of the local election, at the time when the reform in particular, are banging on about net zero, the timing was far from help.

19:24Presumably in his defence what he said to you on the phone on the text is, you know, that really wasn't what I meant and if people had read the full report, they would have realized they had a much more nuanced position to which your response would have been. That's all very well, but we are three days away from the local elections and nobody's going to read it in the way that you'd like them to. If you do read the report, which I did afterwards, actually there's lots where he supports what the government is doing. He's actually making a bigger point about some of the strategic issues involved in the in the in the movie.

19:52Well, the thing is fair to say Ed Milivan was not happy. Well, then let me try to play devil's advocate and see if I can make the case for Tony Blair. So, channeling Blair, I think what he'd probably say is we're in real danger of ending up with expensive energy and so that British steel, 50 % more for the energy to run British steel than European competitors, probably four times more than US competitors. We are chasing dropping carbon production in the UK and killing our industries potentially in the process and we're not making much impact on the big global picture in the end because we're a pretty small economy.

20:33That's where he was actually dressing the world rather than the UK, but yeah. And we're not properly taxing carbon consumption. In other words, we push all the factories into China and we continue to buy just as many T -shirts and toys as we did in the past. So we're not actually affecting our full carbon footprint. So I think there are two sorts of pretty serious arguments you can make, politics aside, which actually have been made in some of our leading interviews. The first argument is the argument that Dieter Hell made when we interviewed him on leading, which is that the whole thing is nonsense and the climate stuff is nonsense and the Paris targets an nonsense unless we actually put a proper global carbon tax in place which properly puts the cost of embedded carbon into place.

21:17And the second argument, which is the argument that was made to some extent when we interviewed Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman on the show, that the real answer to this is technology and that rather than cussing production, what we should be doing is putting a lot of money into carbon capture AI, nuclear fusion. And that's the way it goes. Exactly what Tony will say. And it's because he hangs out with people at Reid Hoffman and Bill Gates. Yeah, I don't think he has thought it through and his institute is thinking it through. I don't disagree with that, but I don't resolve from the point that he is ultimately one of the most high profile experience politicians on the planet.

21:58Anyway, we had some very friendly lively exchanges about whether it would have, as I said yesterday, I don't want to sound like Roy Keane, but Tony, that wouldn't have happened in by a day. Very good. Okay. Now can I ask you about another fascinating massively important political event? Well, it is an election, isn't it? Yeah. We've got quite a few questions about Conclave. Hugo Craigs seems to think he speaks for all humanity. We have all watched Conclave. We don't know that we've all watched Conclave, but fair enough, Hugo, a lot of people have watched Conclave, the film. So a question to you is who are the front runners for the papacy?

22:36From which wing of the church are they? And how will the various different factions play out in this Trumpian world? Well, of course, as we said yesterday, Trump thinks he should be the Pope, but let's park that. Let me begin by saying it's an amazing election. How people have really seen this in that film, that Robert Harris book and the film that came out of it. I've been talking to Rupert Short, who was the TLS religion editor and now teaches the Oxford and has written a really interesting book called The Eclipse of Christianity and Wyatt Matters. And he's been very passionate. He gave me two hours on the Conclave and what's happening with Pope.

23:09I'll try to digest it with apologies to Rupert who objects some implications. I think the first thing he'd say is that every one of these elections is a massive, massive game -changer. And the really classic example is Pius XII was in for 20 years. They brought in someone called John XIII who they thought was an elderly man who'd be a safe pair of hands, not shake stuff up too much. And he came in and brought in the Second Vatican Council, which was this biggest thing of 400 years, massive drive towards the liberal laying got rid of that in mass blah blah blah. But unfortunately, was only in for a few years, at which point Paul the Eleventh arrived, who suffered from something called Hamletismo, in other words, indecision, and seemed to put it in.

23:53They call it. Hamletismo, yeah. Is that a genuine work? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it a Vatican word or is it a Italian word? I think it's more Vatican. I think it's something that really he embodied this. Then we had John Paul II who was supposed to bring strength for character and who was very very reliant on a cardinal rat singer for his theology, then was on the more conservative side and rats and of course became Pope Benedict. And then Pope Francis came in and again, this is another point which is the complete unpredictability of these people. And actually, I'm going to be very interested in this and a lot of these elections because I'm one of the stories of elections is you have to, you do keep saying no idea what somebody's going to be like as a leader until they're actually there.

24:35You can't really tell whether they're sounding cautious before an election and then they come in and they're massively radical or they're sounding radical before the election they come and they really do very much. Well, so these guys are allowed to campaign. Can they can they sort of go around the conclave is saying, look, I don't know if you've thought this about me, but actually I'm very this one. I think very that. Can they do that? Robert Harris illustrates it very well. What's having? So they're all locked up together, all the cardinals are locked up together and it's very important for this election.

25:03No phones. No phones. There's a very naughty thing happening in conclave, which is the man organizing the election played by Ray Fines has a bit of contact with the outside well, but basically not supposed to have any contact with the outside world at all. And the Ray Fines character in the film is he the Irish guy who's the current sort of standing for the Pope or is he the state secretary who's also one of the candidates? Can you be the organizer and a candidate? Yes, absolutely, which indeed Ray Fines was in that movie, an organizer and a candidate. So Francis, for example, came in and people thought he was going to be quite, you know, conservative.

25:36He'd been quite an authoritarian provincial and came in and became quite liberal Pope. And on one of the big controversies, the heart of this whole thing about what direction the church goes in is that a lot of conservatives, particularly American conservative Catholics, kind of JD Vance, wing of the party, did not like the fact that he thought that you could bless divorced couples. And they also didn't like his line when asked about a sexuality he said, who am I to judge? The basic answer there is, well, you're the Pope. You're the top man. You're supposed to be judging. So, so in terms of, you mentioned Vance there.

26:11Do you think that Vance is visit to meet the Pope and be publicly the last person to see him, which starts with all that stuff about, you know, whatever you do, don't meet JD Vance, you could die the next day, added to Trump's AI photo. Do you think that will weaken any American influence? Because the politicians do try to influence this event? Yeah, they do. They do and Americans are the big, big fundraisers, big philanthropic fundraisers. So, one of the problems has been that some of the figures associated with sex abuse have been big American fundraisers. And that's been a big problem in the past.

26:48Sex abuse has kicked in again also because the two of the leading candidates. So Paralleline who's the kind of continuity candidate. He's the secretary or exactly the foreign minister. Yeah. He's the guy who did this very controversial deal with China, where China seems to be given a sort of veto over the point of the bishops, which led to Cardinal Zan, who's the very famous Hong Kong bishop who bore witness against the Chinese. And there's some guy from the Philippines who would be the first Asian Pope for a long, long time. He's another one who could be criticized enough. He was a big leader, but there's been a big article in the times, very, very critical, credible female journalists now coming out and pointing to their role in all of this stuff.

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27:31So they could be taken out of the last minute by this. When you say taken out, we're talking, we're not talking, we're not talking mafia. No, no, no, no, but you saw in the conclave that, yeah, you suddenly up and then you're gone. Then you're gone because up in the votes, it's very, very, the voting system is almost identical to conservative leadership election, the way in which it works. Liz Truss for Pope. And also, this sort of weird thing that you see at a straight in conclave, which was true for some like me running leadership, which is you can get relatively few number of votes in an early stage, but as people drop out, you can suddenly jump lots of number of votes.

28:07Then you can drop again as people flip back and forward. I mean, I saw the film a long time ago. I can't remember. Does it go down in the end to vote of two between two candidates? Two candidates. It's not a single transferable vote thing. You actually go through, you just drop out and then you have the vote again. Exactly. People drop out of society, isn't it? So very, very exciting. And should be on telly, really. The question, I guess, for the church is, are they going to look and that the than Pope Francis, because Pope Francis is a bit like chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in Britain, is somebody who was almost more popular with people outside the hierarchy, the sort of general population he was within the hierarchy.

28:50They thought he was maybe a bit loose in a route to Tony Blair. Maybe as an experienced man, he shouldn't have been creating headlines quite as much as he did off there. So we'll see. And there's some very interesting sort of interesting Ghanaian candidate. I've been reading a book recently by Robert Sarra, who's from Guinea, who is a formidable intellectual, very profound mystic, but also can be extraordinarily kind of conservative and intolerant about the modern world. And I think that will be sad. And he's, he's almost 18. I'm going for Mateo Zuppi. Oh, right. And Italian Pope again. I think so.

29:35Yeah. I think so. Although I want the guy I want is a guy called Avaline. And the only, I don't know anything about him other than the fact that he's from Marseille. And I like Marseille. I like the football team and I like Reckless. Yeah. There is an American born guy in the running. This guy, Robert Francis, prevost or prevost. The other thing I didn't realize is that one of the things that's being held against my man from Marseille is that he's not entirely fluent in Italian. And this is really stupid question. Is Italian the language of the Vatican? Traditionally it was Latin. Yeah. But but but but actually increasingly they don't speak Latin to each other.

30:11They speak Italian. So they do speak Italian. Yeah. So that might be all the cardinals sort of speak in Italian all the time. Yeah. The reason I like Zuppi and this is really trivializing and very important thing. His nickname is Don Mateo, who is a crime solving priest on Italian television. Very good. So they're very good. So I'm going for Zuppi. And I think it's our name ending in beginning with Z is quite. You're thinking of this. You're not voting. You're doing it all on the best their names. No, I do think it's important. And what's extraordinary is when the white smoke comes out, which is now the announce, you know, we've got a pope.

30:42A person that now today you and I have probably not heard of is going to become overnight. One of the best known, most recognized, most talked about, most written about people on the planet. It's a really interesting thing that where suddenly they become big figures and they could become big figures for good, which I think most people would argue Pope Francis did or for bad. Well, I'm going to come now to a question for you from Ronnie, but just a sort of small note. The church in many ways pioneered democracy. I'm very struck by the fact that small note. That's a really big note. We can do a whole episode on that.

31:17Well, I just struck when I stayed in monasteries. It's almost always been the case that the abbot is elected by the other monks. Yeah. And that's been true from the very, very earliest days. And it's really interesting, because I'll spend 20 years looking at this person. And even traitors might say, don't even speak. They look at this person and choose and write. Ronnie, given Germany's history, it seems appropriate that the German spy agency has labeled the AFD an extremist group. Why have so many Americans leapt to the AFD's defense to tell us about this? Is our German expert? Well, the German is not quite the cover of the MI5, but it's a sort of intelligence agency that part of its role is to ensure that the German constitution is upheld.

32:00And there's been this debate. There was a debate actually about whether they should have done this before the election, and they felt they had a stare at politics. So they didn't do it before that, but it was widely expressed that they would identify the AFD as a far -right, extremist party. Interestingly, one of their MPs has stood down on the back of it. I think if this was Trumpian, and it's the same as Le Pen, Le Pen, the judgment that she cannot stand, seems to have been broadly accepted by the public. And likewise, so this is one of their representatives, who said, no, if we're identified as right when extremist, I can't be part of this.

32:36But I think what the danger with it at a time when you've got the new government coming in, melts as we're speaking, is just lost a vote to become chancellor in the parliament. He was expecting to win on the first vote. So there is the danger that you have the Romanian effect, the sense that you, if you're taking people away from what the public have done, the public have voted for these people to have some say in their lives, and you're then saying, no, they can't be part of this debate. We're going to see similar here, by the way. We talked on our local elections yesterday. You've got a very interesting case in Donkaster, where the mayor has been re -elected, whose labor, but the council has gone overwhelmingly reform, and it's, you know, how does that relationship now work out?

33:19So I think this debate, the government, mayor has been quite cautious about it, he said, the interior ministry has to study the report, etc, etc. But they're going to have to make big, big, big judgments, because how can you identify a party as being right when extremists, and essentially anti -constitutional, and at the same time, they've got this huge block sitting there in the parliament, so it's quite a big problem. Yeah, a big, big problem. And of course, set up after the Second World War, deliberately to prevent the rise of another Nazi party. And so there's a very formal technocratic procedure where these agencies spies, constitutional court, wares all the evidence.

33:59And so they determined in the past that it was okay to refer to some AFD members as fascists. Now they've been labeled as extremists, but this is really matters, because it's all about trying to protect the German constitution. Yeah. And the other part of the question about the people weighing in, I mean, two of the first people to weigh in were JD Vance and Marco Rubio. If I were Mark Carney ahead of the G7, I think I would, which is coming shortly, I think I was sort of right to all the leaders and say, happy for this meeting to go ahead, but I really think it's about time that we stopped interfering in each other's domestic politics.

34:37Shut up about the first state, shut up about the AFD, tell your best friend must to shut up about riots in the UK. I mean, what the hell has he got to do with JD Vance? The Marco Rubio thing, it's also, we didn't believe it for a second. I just talked to a very senior American state parliament, who was responsible for all their policy in Africa. And she was explaining to me that in African elections, even as recently as four months ago, inconceivable that they would ever have backed one party over another, made any public savings to the American government. In fact, they actually went out of their way always to reach out with equal time to all the leading candidates.

35:16Absolutely. This thing of the CIA, of course, in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, they used to be a little dark. But covertly. But not the politicians. I mean, it's really, really weird. But also Trump last week had, is it the Polish presidential election that's coming up? And he had the opposition candidate in the White House last week saying what a great guy was. So this is absolute blatant interference. And it's usually based on ignorance. It's usually based on them not understanding. So the fact is that, would JD Vance understand what the German Constitution says, why this matters, why it's rooted in law and in history?

35:53I think what's so interesting about this particular Trump government is, I think I'm right in saying it's the American government, which is the least European in terms of its experience of any American government that I can ever think of. Many of them in the past would have spent some time studying at European universities. They would have served in the military in Germany. They would have fought alongside Europeans. It's very, very interesting how little contact emotionally they have to to Europe. The other thing about Vance, I thought of this in relation to the Pope, when Trump did the AI picture of him as the Pope, here's this guy who's like, allegedly a really big Catholic.

36:39Why is he saying nothing? The Magical crowd, do you remember when the French, the Paris Olympic opening ceremony, there was that sketch about the last supper? Yeah. The Magical crowd went nuts. Yeah, there were absolutely crazy about it. This is sacrilegious. There's the, his boss, the Trump posing as the Pope and Vance says, oh, that's all fine. Let me rant on about the AFD in Germany instead. Okay, well, really quick break, then I want to ask you about King Charles heading to Canada. Good. Look forward to it.

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38:21Welcome back to the rest of politics. Question time with me, Alice Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So Patrick Keelty, I'm assuming, because I know I do know he listens, that may be Patrick Keelty, the presenter of the late late show in Dublin. What do you make of the timing of King Charles visit to Canada where he will open Parliament and deliver the speech from the throne. A monarch has not delivered a throne speech in Cullinacence 1977 or opened the Canadian Parliament since 1957. Now I think this is your friend, the King sending a very strong message to DJ Trump. Well, yeah, to remind everybody, of course, King Charles is the head of state of Canada and Australia and New Zealand and the United Kingdom and other places too.

39:05And he's in a interesting position because the King is somebody that Trump seems to venerate. He seems to have any Trump claims it's because of his mother. This very strong interest in the monarchy. And I think the mooch has reflected on this a bit because maybe because Trump sees himself as a bit of a monarch. He's really interested in these kind of ancient institutions. And so the King is in a very interesting position because he seems to have this kind of credibility and leverage. It was used by Keirsthama because of course, King Charles is a constitutional monarch so he has to respond to the elected government.

39:43Keirsthama used a letter from King Charles to invite Trump on a state visit which caused a lot of controversy. And Canadians felt very angry about this because this was happening at the same time as Trump was saying that Canada should be the 51st state. What the King essentially symbolizes is a statement of excuse me, Donald Trump. Canada is in a 51st state. I'm the head of state of Canada. And insofar as you claim to have this great reverence for me and my institution, you're trying to take part of country down the head of state. They also have a strong relationship, Mark Karnie and the King because they work very, very closely on climate finance and sustainable market initiative.

40:24That when Mark Karnie was working the bank of England, huge interest. We talked about Tony Blair and Net Zero. What the King and Mark Karnie were really focused on is how you get the corporate sector and the trillions of finance behind shift to renewable biodiversity. And of course, Mark Karnie visited the King when he was over. So I think it's something which is very deliberate and it's an interesting question of the ways in which British soft power could continue to open this platform. I mean, Mark Karnie's had huge attention around the world because of the nature of his rise becoming Prime Minister, winning the election.

41:02But it also means that here we are today, we're speaking on the day that the new German government is taking office. Now, it might be on the news a bit, but it won't be kind of wall to wall across the news channels. But the fact of King, the King Charles going to open the Canadian Parliament means that Mark Karnie's first King speech is going to get way more global attention than otherwise would. And you can bet your bottom dollar, it's going to be shown live on all the American channels, which of course Trump will be hopping between. I think it's a great move. And as you say, when the King does something on behalf of the UK government, whether it was taking part in the VAD, VD things or whatever, as you say, open the Parliament, he will not have done this without probably having had it suggested by Mark Karnie and would probably wanted to have checked with the UK government as well.

41:57I don't know how this specifically works. But so that means he has been confronted with the choice and he's decided, yep, I'm going to do that. Good for him. I have a question for you. On the UK and Europe, Gage Farm from Scotland, what effect would Britain returning to the European single market have on the British farming sector would it benefit or harm agricultural interests in the UK? Positive and benefit. And one of the things I said yesterday that I was worried, that the reaction to the local elections will be to kind of be a bit more reforming in some areas. I am really more and more of the view that on the Brexit issues, the government has to be less timid, more ambitious.

42:41Got this big meeting on May 19th, Kierstammer hosting European Union heads of government. I really think something really big has got to come out of that in terms of cycling direction. It won't be this, but I think there are so many different areas where the government could be coming to an arrangement with the Europeans that would get us in a better place. But it's a big, big, big, little choice. And I do think we've just been too timid about this because we keep saying we don't want to revisit the arguments of 2016. It's almost a decade ago now, but I think it's become settled even amongst Brexitiers.

43:16I mean, loads of them that, you know, well, regardless of what I thought at the time, it's not really gone as planned. So that gives the government an opportunity. It's small footnote on farmers. The small farmers in particular were a real beneficiary of the common agricultural policy because France and many of the Mediterranean and the European Union really believe in farmers, really believe in their role in culture, their role in communities, their role in landscape. And so they had these single farm payments designed basically to keep small farms alive. And in Scotland and Wales, essentially these structures remain in place, but England under both the Conservatives and Labour went really weirdly ideological.

43:58And basically against small farmers put all the emphasis either on biodiversity and rewilding from the environmental side or on production and scale big farms on the other side. And in my former constituency, Cumbria, you can see so quickly that we're going to be losing in some cases hundreds of years worth of landscape and things we've preserved. In some cases, almost since the normal conquest, falling very, very quickly away. And within 10, 15 years, people will go into the landscapes of places like the Lake District and there won't be farms there anymore. And we will miss them terribly and it's nowhere or not a bit.

44:38Now we've got a question here, rather shameless self -plugging by one of our colleagues in the podcast world, Mr. Al Murray. Oh yes. Their podcast on the Second World War, we have ways. Hi Chaps, we interviewed Sukiya Starma on the podcast yesterday. Episode is out today if anyone wants to listen. After our historical chat, I think by that he means they talked about history as opposed to it was a historic conversation in itself. Starma mentioned the importance of rearmament for UK economic growth, not just strengthening NATO. Where should the government focus investment in terms of defence? Land forces, naval strength, emerging warfare like drone technologies?

45:16Well, she talked about Dr Alex Younger about that. He was talking about the, you know, in the Ukrainian context of the defence manufacturing industry is changing so fast. So there you go. Help our plug is podcast. He's obviously looking on the look at you listening. Well, firstly, both Al Murray's podcast and our podcast are coming out on victory in Europe, 80th anniversary. And many of you who live in London, for example, will have seen Lancaster bombers flying over on the bank holiday Monday. And I'm, you know, really struck by this. I've been doing a little bit for the Amazing Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which helps preserve the graves, including my father's brother, my uncle's grave, and, and Sicily and the graves that I I saw in Iraq and elsewhere.

45:58And it's also interesting in the family because my sister's been trying to get going on VE Day celebrations in our town and grief and has been sending my mother stuff from the daily mail about memories of people who remember VE Day and my mother's like, well, don't be ridiculous. Why didn't you talk to me? I was 10 years old when VE Day happened. I'm quite happy to talk to you about that. On this question, we should do a bigger thing on this technology is changing very fast. And what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine is right at the heart of this, particularly cheap drones, electronic warfare, raises huge questions about these expensive platforms, you know, $150 million, $35 planes, aircraft carriers, all of them now under threat from drones that cost a few thousand dollars.

46:39And there's a very, very complicated story about how all these things are coordinated and the information space, how an iPhone links up to what you get from a plane and how this all works. So we should do this properly, but our mario is completely right to us get and if one was really brave about drones, AI, cyber technology, a huge amount of legacy weapons systems will become obsolete. But you still ultimately need to find missiles and drop large amounts of munitions on people and other shops. And have an army, have a big army. And I think I do the technologies of changing, but if we just look at the sheer numbers and how they have changed in what were then the major powers and what are now the major powers.

47:25And I was looking at the stats the other day for the growth of the Chinese military. It is absolutely phenomenal. Whereas, you know, we can now fit the entirety of our army into one of our bigger football stadiums. Anyway, thanks for that. And sticking on security issues, Mr Dominic Forrington, I've just finished listening to the excellent interview you did with Sir Alex Younger, that's the former head of MI6 on leading. At the end of the episode, Rory mentioned that he met Sir Alex in four different positions at SIS. I'm not for one minute suggesting that Rory's let slip and he passed work at SIS, after maintaining for years that he's never been a spook.

48:03Dominic, I don't think you were listening closely. So good Rory, please discuss just a little how he managed to meet the future C whilst in the future. Yeah, exactly. I met him as a minister, I met him as a member of Parliament, I met him as a star. I met him as somebody running a charity in Afghanistan. But really encourage people to listen to it and also encourage people to listen. If we haven't plugged enough, Atel Gwande, who I thought was incredibly wonderful, who's this extraordinary, impressive doctor who I'd like to see almost given a Nobel Prize, who talked both about what's happening in the world of international development and infectious diseases, but also about advanced medical technology.

48:46So that's me avoiding the question. Over to you, question on towns and cities, Wilbarra, is the political divide between the inner city metropolitan areas and the rest of the country now bigger than ever? How big a problem is that for our national politics? Quick, explain our answers as we go into the question. Essentially parties at the Conservative party don't have any votes in other city metropolitan areas anymore. They're labor heartlands. London's a classic example of this. Do you feel there's a big divide and is there a big problem for our national politics? I remember after the Brexit referendum, somebody said that this referendum was one and lost in towns that few of, few of us have ever heard of because they don't have football league football clubs.

49:28And I was over the weekend, I was in Gainesborough, I was in a couple of small -ish towns in Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, which has always been pretty brexity, but it's gone very reform. And I think there is this sense of the divide. And interestingly, the Australian elections, one of the many, many criticisms that's being made against Dutton, the leader of the Conservatives there, who just lost, is that he was open in saying that I'm going after he called them the forgotten people in the suburbs. Now, obviously, Australia is a vast country, whereas we're pretty crowded. But I think there is a feeling in, I regularly hear people, in fact this time I went to the Bernalais Player of the Year Awards the other day, and there's quite a few of the fans were there and I was chanted away to some of them.

50:12Some of them, they absolutely have this belief that London has everything. And then a sort of dial -down version of that is Manchester has everything, leads as everything. And I think there is, if you look at the people who Labour now look to, used to be sort of traditional working class voters, I mean the classic Labour voter now is the sort of professional graduate. I saw some data on this the other day that if you have no education beyond 16, you are four times more likely to vote reform than if you are educated beyond A levels. And obviously you've got uneducated people in cities and you've got lots of educated people in towns, but I think that's sense of cities feeling vibrant, dynamic about the future and a lot of towns feeling pretty run down.

51:02It's a problem, it's a problem. And I think the new towns fund, although it's got I think a lot going for it, I just give you a very, very small example, I had a phone call last week, Keetley Cougars at Rugby League Club in Keetley where I come from, and they'd been promised funding over the under the new towns fund and suddenly they see the council trying to undo it. And I think that's just because you combine resources, really tight control and resources, and people feeling that in the smaller towns maybe they don't have to worry so much because the backlash won't be that great. That is another message of these local elections.

51:39You know, we were talking the last podcast about what the difference might be between Britain, Australia and Canada, as a vital with similarities, and it strikes me that the biggest difference is that those are federal systems where you have these very, very strong local regional governments, you know, we interviewed Peter Malamolskis, for example, on leading who's doing very different things since health Australia to elsewhere. And if you have a more devolved federal system, inevitably, you're going to get more investment and infrastructure prioritising those places instead of what we have in Britain, which is the Treasury gets its numbers out, does its calculations, and every pound invested in London always looks better on their spreadsheets because they get a better return for it.

52:18They're thinking short term, not long term. So I think we're really going to fix this over the longer term and get moderate centre -ground politics back. We need to have something more like a federal system where we're properly devolving down. Well, if you know, I was in Manchester as a say over the weekend and Manchester just feels kind of bussy and it's always been a bussy place and it's always been one of our bigger, better cities, but it feels very, very different. I'm not saying that's all down to Andy Burnham, but I do think that sense of Manchester having its own identity through the Football Clubs, through an elected mayor that people know inside Manchester and now outside Manchester.

52:55I honestly do believe this and it's got to be more devolution but with the power and with the financing and not having screaming haggdabs every time that for example Andy Burnham recently said, we've got to start calling out the disaster of Brexit so he could have said the same. Elinid Morgan in Wales saying that, you know, she's going to campaign against some of the welfare changes. Now I know that Peter Kahl of his list always asks to go, he's going, you say it would have happened if you were a day, it exactly would have happened if you were a day that you'd have got a grip of all this, but if we believe in devolution, we've got to genuinely, genuinely believe it.

53:30Now how about this is a final question or if Nick Longson? You can always judge a person's character by their musical tastes. What are you into? Can you expose any shockers or speculate on the taste of any world leaders? Well, of course we know about Albin Easy because he told us about. Yeah, and he's a pointed out he missed K -pop entirely. He did. He did. But he's a big rock music guy. He's a really into rock music. Tony's into rock music. Tony Blazer was into rock music. We had a band in the university. He was in the ugly rumors, yeah. So come on, I've never really got to the bottom of your lack of musical taste.

54:02Okay, so here's the shocker. I went to a Rester's history show, live show at the Abahol, where they were playing Chikovsky. Pedal tree, we call it, but yeah, pedal tree. And I suddenly realized that some of Chikovsky is actually my vision of hell. I have never felt so bored, appalled and sort of revolted. That's the podcast. What about the music? That is on the podcast. Chikovsky, the composer. Sometimes I sit there listening to some of his ballet music and I actually feel my life going away from me. I remember at the age of 15, a more painful experience. So it's not cracker. And more painful experience listening to that.

54:40And also one of his violent concertos. I actually, I feel more unhappy listening to Chikovsky's music than or my anything on it. So there's my little revelation. God, tell us what you like, though. That's what you don't like. I completely love church music. I love Mozart. I love Bach deeply, deeply. I can stretch as far as Beethoven and get about as far as Schubert. Okay, by the time I get... And now let's come into the modern age. Yeah, why time? What was your favorite part? What was your favorite part? What have I got to Chikovsky? I've given up. Running stones. I like running stones. What's your favorite role in Stodesong?

55:12You're not allowed to say satisfaction. No. What I like. What's that one about? What's the one about? It's the devil speaking.

55:29This is all staying in. This is like Tromba, this is like Tromba, who's asked about which is favorite bit in the Bible. Anyway, listen, the reality is the reality. The reality is that I don't really listen to anything except classical music before about 18. Right. Do you know what I listen to all the way through the Manchester, through the Pete District? Which is beautiful. Well, Abba was part of it because I was channel hopping between heart -greatest hits, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. You can do it by the decade. So heart is your thing. No, not heart. Sometimes it's the other channels. What's the other ones you like and if there's radio channels you see on when you go to the pub?

56:12I sometimes do radio one to try and stay in a bit with what's happening. But really, it's a bit trendy. It's basically a little bit. The other one I listen is Magic Soul. Magic Soul. I mean, I'm really into Motown. Is it six music? Do you do that? Yeah, a little bit. My devil song, the producer has just pointed out a simple thing. It's everything with the devil. I just think it's sad because I find music. I mean, I like some classical music. I'm like you. I mean, Fiona loves going to ballet and opera and all that stuff and sometimes I like it. But sometimes I don't. But I could listen to a lot of modern pop music all day long.

56:58I could listen to Handle all day long. Yeah. I love, I love I like church music. I love ten of voices. I love Gregorian Plains song. Yeah. Oh, that's stuff. Philip Gold. Yeah. When he was dying, listen to Gregorian chanting quite a lot. That's good. Hey, I had a final funnestor in dying. One of my most grand aristocratic friends, her grandfather when he was dying. He rigged up his bed with his pillow behind him and he attached a set of brains that thought you used to ride a horse to the forepost of bed at the other end. And his butler read him from his hunting diaries while he held onto his reins till he died.

57:36Oh, so good music. There's just a story about Philip Gold and dying. Oh, I see a dying story. He's like, okay, okay. Well, I'm sticking with music because I'm leaving from here to go to Penteville prison to play my backpipes to the prisoners. If they haven't suffered enough, they get out me explaining to the backpipes. His final story from the from the same man. You should love that. We're taking music and really cool. You're taking me to the prison. I'm really pleased and also pay tribute to the amazing works done with opera and prisons. Yeah. Thank goodness, it's not much ballet and prisons going on.

58:05Otherwise, I wouldn't go and watch it. Listen, final anecdote to really annoy you in terms of this guy and his horse. So he during the second marble, he was, he was, who was this guy? Fox hunting. I don't want to continue. But he's fox hunting. And he's he's got his full, he's got his full hunting pink son and he's charging with his horse and his hounds and things. Is it real? He's a real fox and the fox gets into a a football pitch where some young men are playing football. I don't know, it's on 1943. And the fox manages to get out the other end. And so the hunt has lost the fox and the Lord leans down from his hunter and looks at these young men and he says, what the bloody hell do you think you're doing?

58:50Don't you realize there's a war on?

58:56You got a lame, ladies, really. You can't tell stories about that about your your fellow tops. Well, there you go. We've come a lot of ground today, haven't we? We have. Thank you very much. I'm still determined to educate you in modern music. Good luck. We'll take you to have a voyage. Good luck. See you soon. Bye bye.

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