411. Question Time: Gaza’s Aid Blocked, Trump’s Power Tested & Dominic Cummings’ Big Mistake

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1:22Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Roy Stewart. And we're me, Asked Campbell. Less time, Garza Rory and the Garza Humanitarian Foundation. Stephen Rakes, how do you two personally know what to believe about Garza when there's so much misinformation, journalists can't get into reporting the ground? Take the 31 Palestinians killed in Raffa this weekend. The IDF are straight out saying the reports are fake. Jennifer Brown, what can individuals do for the starving in Garza? Do donations to share a meal, the rest crosses, etc. Actually get to people, what can governments do?

1:58Air left delivery by sea? It is horrible to watch. Well, couple of things. Firstly, it's very difficult to get a clear news out of Garza because people like Jeremy Burn and the BBC are not allowed into Garza. So most reporting we see is from Jerusalem, from Israel, not from Garza at all. And the people who are operating in Garza, which is out of zero, a lot of their journalists are getting killed. There's no doubt that sometimes the stories that come out of Garza from Hamas are false. So sometimes Israel is right to say that that was false. And equally, Israel itself has clearly made things up and lied.

2:34And that was true in terms of the killing of the aid workers a few weeks ago when they were buried in shallow graves and accused of being terrorists who'd advance without light someone or the video evidence showed otherwise. And this is a problem that we're seeing a lot around the world. And one of the reasons we don't really know much about what's happening in China and why reporting from India is getting less good is because people are just not allowing access to journalists. Quickly on the aid things. So listeners will probably know, or most of us will probably know, Israel has effectively blocked the traditional UN humanitarian delivery mechanisms.

3:12So there were these enormous UN mechanisms which have been running since the Second World War with very, very practice partners. And if you go to a UN camp in Salsudan, for example Somalia, you will see UNHCR or IOM organizing the camp, you will see Save the Children, you'll see the Red Cross, you might see Sonsan Frontier, these kind of big international NGOs, IRC or friend Dave Mille -Benz thing. And they are very, very, very experienced in doing this. They know how you organize the lines, they know what kind of food you should be delivering when, what kind of emergency nutrition to bring, what kind of psychosocial services, the kind of pretentious way of saying, how do you find a child that's being raped, rebused or as enthromer, how you deal with that.

4:00Instead of which, what Israel tried to do is essentially contract a pretty inexperienced private contractor to come in and deliver some assistance in very limited points. And the result has been an absolute disaster. They are doing it exactly in the way that the UN wouldn't do. They're concentrating people after 60 days so that there are basically riots to get to the food rather than spreading out the distribution. They're giving out things like pasta that need to be boiled in water when there's no clean water. There are no proper psychosocial services surrounding it. And the only way that you're going to sort this out is by giving it back to the people who have the capacity and the knowledge to do it properly.

4:37I think the other thing that is a part of this, you and I both keep banging on about doge and musk and trump getting rid of or cutting USAID and knock on effect then, we did the same in the UK cutting back on overseas aid and development. When you've had propaganda going from the White House echoed by Israel that these aid organisations are sort of radical left -wing lunatics when actually these are incredibly brave people, genuinely committed to public service, trying to help people with starving or fleeing war and conflict. And then to sort of put this thing together, I'm almost at the point of wondering whether it's been designed to create this chaos.

5:22The question about how do we know, how do we find out what's true, you kind of have to make a judgment based upon all the different things that you hear and see. And certainly on these incidents that Stephen raised and his question is talking about, I listened to an interview with the one of the doctors who was treating the people who had been brought from the incident at Raffa into his hospital, where he said they were suffering from blast and gunshot winds. So that there had been shooting of civilians, of people who were queuing or trying to queue for food that they were open to get. I don't think there's any doubt.

6:06And I think I'm afraid, you know, the old cliche about truth is the first casualty of war is very hard to believe anything at the moment that comes out there. And I think this goes back to point I've been making from the start about the way that some of the Israelis communicate. They are absolutely brutal in the way that they put over their messaging. And I'm sorry, I think they've made themselves largely unbelievable. And that's I think to their detriment as well as to the detriment of people trying to understand what's going on. But watching, there were some aerial shots of these crowds gathering and the chaos that followed.

6:47And I've been ripping off food and what have you with those international organizations that you talked about, right? They're used to dealing with that stuff. To add to it, there are not just hammers and garsers. There's also alternative tribal crime linked families in garsers, which have traditionally been supported against hammers who are actually involved in a great deal of the looting as well. I mean, the lack of any administration, the lack of the ability to stand up any kind of legitimate authority, any Palestinian authority, at the same time as Israel refuses to take responsibility or declare a formal occupation.

7:27Essentially means that the whole thing is also in ways that we don't report enough, often very, very lawless. And that something Israel will point to, but of course, Israel isn't taking responsibility for the fact that to a large extent, that lawlessness is caused by the fact that it isn't making any steps to help set up any kind of government. Yeah. I think Jennifer Brown, though, on your question, what individuals do and do donations actually get to people they do. And of course, those who oppose do good thing, like the right wing newspapers and so forth, they like you to believe that all the money that you give to charity goes on fat cat salaries and people flying business class and all that all stuff.

8:08If you give to charities, some of that money, at least, is going where it is needed. And even the charges that can't get in there, they're worth supporting anyway. And I think these charities are needed now more than ever. Yeah, very, very quickly. A shout out for the fact that if you're interested in supporting humanitarian courses, which is supporting refugees and people who are starving in very concrete ways, look at the disaster emergency committee, which is a fantastic organization, which coordinates charities and appeals in the UK. Look at well established blue chip organizations, save the children, IRC, look at people doing innovative things and cash like gift directly.

8:48But generally, there's a lot of good stuff out there and to choose from and don't get into a cycle of thinking there's nothing you can do. Yeah. Also, we didn't mention the main podcast. We normally plug happily plug our leading interviews, but Jacinda, I'd earn four minutes in and prime minister. And I thought one of the best bits in her book was when she was writing about handling the Christchurch massacre as prime minister and she had a conversation with Donald Trump, who said there's really anything I can do to help. And she said, be kind to your Muslim community. And I just think sometimes that yes, I think people feel absolutely help us at the moment.

9:25They're watching the news. They're seeing these kids in absolute abject desperation, starvation and so forth. And I think we just, you know, we can't get in there. Jeremy Boen can't get in there. As you say, lots of the agencies can't get in there, but we should still support the ones who are trying. Put it that way. Following on from your just to try and here's a question for you about women and politics that this follows on from the excellent listener question from Catherine Dunn, who asks why young women are being taken for granted politically. I'm 22 years old, involved in politics since I was 14.

9:56She works at the Senate for a Welsh Labour member. She's interested in becoming a Senate member, a member of the Welsh Parliament and applied to be a candidate when applications opened earlier this year. School governor, local youth organisation needed, but she thinks she won't be successful because older party members often don't take young women's serious candidates. Young women are ignored in policymaking. There are threats of violence against female politicians, mainly online, which are not dealt with effectively within politics. And then Lynn Cockerfy and then I'll hand over to you. None of the political parties ever try to appeal to women.

10:30If they did, they'd be making offers around childcare, the two -chall benefit cap, social care, maternity leave, legalising abortion, making our streets safe, sorting out misogyny in politics. But no party is interested in that, and sorry I broke my promise to seropeters. As a woman under 30 in politics, the green party is a my view the only truly left -wing major U .K political party. Labour have lost so many of us as a demographic by mimicking right -wing policy in rhetoric. Why should we trust a party that can't keep their promises or do what they're supposed to stand for over the year? Yeah, and then maybe finally we did get lots of responses to this asking young women to tell us whether they thought it felt in order and if so why and what we should do about it.

11:11And I think it's fair to say from the responses that yes, they do think that young women are ignored, possibly taken for granted. Interestingly in the Polish election, there was a gender divide on the voting that more young women voted for the liberal more so mayor and more young men voted for the more right -wing guy. Final point here, maybe from Angie, Jacinda Ardern proves it can be done. I really do think there is a progressive female Prime Minister of the U .K .s future out there and it's not too far away. And Jacinda Ardern did prove it can be done and really did put kindness and compassion at the heart of her politics, but in a way her experience then underlines the problem that these young women are highlighting because she did and continues to suffer an awful lot of online abuse, an awful lot of misogyny, a lot of hatred.

12:05And she sort of made the point that she had to protect herself from it. She didn't say that she left because of all the negativity. She basically said she left because she felt she was running out of steam and she wasn't operating at the standards. She felt she should. But I think that constant negativity erodes your sense of self -confidence and your belief that you can do stuff. Let me sort of pin you down. I mean, some of this is very directly against the Labour Party. This is somebody who actually wants to be a Welsh Labour member of the Senate saying she doesn't think the Labour Party is going to take a serious candidate.

12:40And someone else saying Labour's lost her. She's going green and Lin's saying no party is actually interested in female excuse. I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, imagine your care, Salma, imagine you were trying to put a coherent policy together. Why isn't the government doing more to win over women? What could it be doing to win over women? This comes from the starting point. The question that started this debate off was whether enough attention is paid to young women or whether it's all about young men. And I think there has been huge focus on young men. I think the PLUP TV programme adolescents sort of brought it to a head in a way.

13:14And we've seen, you know, in the whole sort of Andrew Tate stuff and online hate and misogyny and pornography and all this stuff that we know about. And we've got Jonathan Hate coming up on on leading soon. The social media guy who really is author of anxious generation really wants us to sort of crack down on this stuff. This feels to me like an area where a section of the population feels taken for granted. And your answer to what should Labour be doing do not take any section of the population for granted. And understand where these arguments are coming from. So for example, there's another one here, MZO202.

13:50Keir Starmer pledged to tackle violence against women and girls so far as done nothing. That's 50 % of the population is ignoring. Now, as I understand it, Jess Phillips has actually done quite a lot in this field. But here's somebody clearly who doesn't feel that that is something that they're aware of, they've heard of, that they therefore can see as a priority from the government. I need to think about this. I'm not sure what the direct answer is. But I think what you're seeing here is, and you know, you and I get this out when we're out and about, I sense a real sort of gender divide amongst young people.

14:27We shouldn't overstate it because you'll get very right -wing populist women and you'll get very, you know, won't for one of a better word, young men. But I think there is a sort of hardening of views amongst those young men who feel that politics is just completely failing them for one set of reasons and a young woman even feel they're being heard. So I think this starts with them being heard and listened to and they're concerned addressed. Keep your responses coming though, people. Thank you. Right. Joya D, please come, we have an explainer, as your tariff, on Trump's tariff court appeal. Where are we now and are the tariff here to stay?

15:11Ultimately, who will win Trump or the courts? The Trump administration, both last time and this time, have implemented tariffs. And the first time, largely the courts allowed them to do it because they thought that what they did was in one case about national security and another case about dumping practices and that these referred to the 1962 and 1978 Ford trade acts. But this time he's done something different. So what people were remembered is with his famous liberation day tariff. So this was April the 2nd, not April Fools Day. He announced these tariffs that went to everybody including the penguins.

15:50Then he brought down to 10 % and now he's signaled that Europe and China and everyone could be hit with 50%. A US court has ruled that he does not have the power to do this. What he did is he used emergency powers really designed for wartime. And the Supreme Court in the United States has tended to rule that when presidents start using weird ancient decree powers, they need to get some authorization from Congress to do so. And in this particular case, Congress is supposed to have not the president but the legislature control over trade policy. Another court has now come in and said basically that the tariffs can stay in place to give Trump time to appeal.

16:33So the situation is if you are important to the United States, you're still paying the 10 % tariffs and the US government still collecting the 10 % tariffs while the courts try to get round to hearing this case. Trump is enraged and it underscores two things. One of them is the continuing uncertainty which stops business investment because you simply don't know. I mean, you might have thought in January, I need to move my production to the US because if I don't, I'm going to be hit by 10 % tariffs or 50 % tariffs. Now you think, well, who knows what's going to happen because he's playing the Hoki Koki and the tariffs are going up and down and now the courts are going up and down.

17:11The second thing is this bigger issue around the fact that so far at least in thank goodness, Trump has tended to try to work around the courts not openly to find them. Vance talks much more mature language about not implementing court decisions but Trump tends to send new bunches of lawyers and trends to workers way around the back. We haven't yet gotten to explicit situation of Trump explicitly refusing to implement the decisions of courts. Yeah, but we are definitely heading in that direction and you do get the feeling that he's sort of spoiling for that fight at some point but he's probably keen to pick the right moment.

17:48Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about what are there going on in that stable, modern, progressive country than Netherlands.

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19:13Welcome back to the REST's Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So Harry Cooper, what's next for Holland following the Dutch government's collapse? Well, I guess will they get through this without another election? I don't know. The government has collapsed because Het Wilders has pulled the plug because he didn't feel that his ideas on asylum and immigration were being taken seriously, taken forward or properly implemented. And I think if I'm right, unless I'm being too grand about this, this is the theme that we might see repeated because in Austria, the far right has a lot of power.

19:52And of course in Germany, the far right has a lot of power. They're not in the government, but they are now ahead in the opinion polls. And immigration's right at the heart of that. So there are these unstable coalitions which have got the right on the side saying what we want to do is actually challenge the European Union's rules. And Germany is pretty close to doing this actually even under Mertz's government of challenging the European Union rules around asylum and what you can do on borders which calls into question. Sheng and the European Court of Justice, quite big staff in terms of the functioning of the European Union.

20:26And in the case of the Netherlands, Het Wilders, because he wasn't government's, basically being able to collapse the government over it. And in each case, I guess what they will do is they will say this government, a wimpst, they won't tough enough on immigration. We want a new election and hope they'll get more votes in the next election. That's the far right. Is that right? I mean, you said the time when Wilders came top in the election that he would probably be waiting, biting his time, waiting to pull the plug and assume that he'd then be able to do even better next time because people would say, oh, to hell with them, they can't even keep a government going.

21:07We'll see because the reaction of the other parties predictably has been very, very angry, basically saying this is all sort of his opportunism. But you know, the other poor guy Dick Schuf who's the, he's a civil servant who's been the prime minister trying to hold this thing together. And basically Wilders pulled the plug with a tweet, no signature for our asylum plans, no changes to the agreement. PVV, that's his party, is leaving the coalition. And that was that. So there'll be a meeting later today, expectation that the prime minister and the cabinet will offer their resignation. So it looks like we're headed for more elections.

21:53And do you think this strategy will work for the far right in general that refusing to cooperate and bringing down governments is the best way of getting themselves in a better position? I think it can play both ways. I think actually that there's people generally, I mean, you and I might enjoy elections because we're sort of political geeks. But once you've had an election, most people in most countries just want the government to get on and do stuff. So it could, it could go against him. But then of course, you're into a campaign. By he will be hoping that by the end of the campaign, people have forgotten why the whole thing has happened in the first place.

22:28At the time recording, we don't have the result of the South Korean election. Interestingly, the arguments about the declaration by the previous president of martial law remained a very, very, very dominant theme. So maybe voters won't have the, get the leap on this that he's expecting, but we'll have to wait and see. Remind me, is this not part of the calculation around marrying the pens far right party in France? This difficult decision about whether they support government budgets and government votes. And by doing so, get compromised by seeming to have sold out or on the other hand stand in permanent opposition and try to gamble it's in the next election, they can reject it all.

23:11But it's hard to think that something like Vilders, it's a bit like Farage in the UK now. I mean, Farage is a sort of, you know, pretty personally in character. He's been around for a long time. And Vilders has been for a round for a long time. I think he's the longest serving member of the parliament, isn't he? Yes, yes, instance 97. You know, he's playing a long game wants to end up presumably in government. The coalition was formed largely on the basis that he wouldn't be allowed into government. He individually, even though his party was. So he must be hoping that this is the, he's pulling the plug at the right time.

23:42I think one of the things I spoke to somebody in the Netherlands the other day who said that what was, what Vilders was struggling with is that although immigration is a big issue, he wants it to be the only issue. And actually a combination of Ukraine and Trump and China, geopolitics has become much more important. And that has not necessarily been playing to what he sees as his strengths. So we'll have to see. Now, Rory, you clearly got something in common with the subject. We have a lot of questions about this chapter, gentleman by the name of Dominic Cummings. And people clearly see him very much as being a bit like you.

24:18Fin Aworth, Dominic Cummings interview with Sky is it a valid criticism of the broken Westminster model. So there's you and Cummings both arguing that the Westminster model is broken. Did you? I couldn't bring myself to watch this interview, but did you? Yeah, I saw a bit of it. And then I'm following his tweets. So we're back in the normal territory, which is tricky stuff for you and me, which is there's no doubt the part of the problem that we're facing. And this is something we talked to Ezra Klein about is that government feels all over the world paralyzed and inert. We're tied up in process and regulations.