423. Question Time: Glastonbury’s Israel fallout, New York’s socialist mayor and why NATO called Trump ‘daddy’

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1:23Welcome to TheRestIsPolitics question time with Mirory's Judd. And with Mirory asked Campbell, and really by my reckoning in the main episode you mentioned Zora and Mamdani three times. And that's very good because we've got lots of questions about him. Here's one from Henry Allen. What do you think the impact of Zora and Mamdani's win will be globally and for the Democrats? So this is the guy who has beaten Andrew Cuomo in the Democrat primary for the mayor of New York and who was, you know, I'd say given quite a lot of hope to people on the progressive side of politics around the world. Well, it's an incredible story.

2:00An absolutely incredible story. So just to remind people a little bit, even friends of mine who really knew New York politics had not heard of Zora and Mamdani, came from absolutely nowhere. The only people I knew who knew him well were intellectuals because his parents are an amazing celebrity intellectual couple. His father, Mahmoud Mandani, is one of the great kind of post -colonial theorists. He's a big professor at Columbia. His name was very much associated with the big demonstrations at Columbia University. His mother is a very famous filmmaker who made, you know, monsoon weddings, Salam Bombay.

2:40So that a lot of my South Asian friends knew them, a lot of my friends in New York knew them because the parents are darling of the Cannes Film Festival, the non -review of books. But Zora is young, bright, light, light, but my goodness, nobody in American politics was talking about him. And because the person running who seemed absolutely guaranteed to get it was Andrew Cuomo from the great political family of New York totally stitched up. He raised an incredible amount of money. And I was talking to someone who said that basically you turned on a local television in New York. You would get 19 or 20 ads in the hour you were watching just for Cuomo.

3:18And the traditional story in American politics is all about television advertising. Raised enough money, buy enough television ads. And you can win. Now of course that model began to creak 2016 with Clemson and Trump. But my goodness, Zora Mahmoud Mandani has totally blended up, came from nowhere and used essentially TikTok to cruise to victory over you. Well, he actually did a version of what you did, Rory. When you were running for London Mayor, Rory, the famous Rory Walks, he walked the entire length of, I mean, sort of dozens of kilometers and he was visiting sort of here and everywhere, brilliantly made little media packages.

3:58He had very, very simple policy messages, free buses, and a lot of the interviewing. I mean, I think one of the other things that I learned. Listening interview. Yeah, exactly. I learned this doing it in a much less successful way. But in the moments running for London Mayor, where I actually thought I had a chance of defeating CityCun, where the moments where I really went viral by listening, staying in people's homes, being out in the streets, being challenged by people. Because I think we're in a world where we want the raw reception. But he's really demonstrate, I mean, far far better than I ever could, because he's really native to this medium.

4:36Yeah, what he did was he a lot of people in their party lose an election. I think, oh, well, it wasn't that bad and we won anyway. Let's go and we'll just sort of carry on with the message. But what he went out was he noted the data said that actually Trump in the presidential election did far better in the poorer areas of New York than historically would have been the case. So one of the first big things he did was to go out with a camera crew, with his own people. And genuinely taught to people not just sort of tell them what he thought, but ask them again and again, why did he vote for Trump?

5:08What was it about him? What was it about our campaign, etc., etc. And then that sort of reflected, was reflected back in some of his campaign messaging. He cut through all the sort of big money stuff. And by the way, our colleague, RESTISPO, his US Mr. Mooch, he was big from Co -OMO, big against Mamdarm, he's slightly buying into the idea that this guy is a terrible kind of lefty. I mean, by our standards, he's not that left wing. Free buses was not to like. Well, there's a bit of an analogy with Ed Miliband, who we just did a long leading interview with, who also had this, Ed and David had this famous, very famous public intellectual left wing father, which is true for us as well.

5:46But he himself doesn't come over as a sort of, you know, lofty interlude. And he's got a wonderful smile, which we talked about, Kamla's smile. Smiles in politics are very, very important. Also, Wes, Wes is sued, which is interesting. Stand out in the streets. He's quite formerly dressed, given that he comes from these sort of Bernie Sanders AOC edge of American politics. So what are his policies? His policies are free bus passes, city owned grocery stores, rent freezes, free childcare, a lot of focus on transport. Communism is Donald Trump calls it, communism. He's an out and out communist. He's talking about a 2 % tax, flat tax on the wealthiest in New York as well.

6:29The reason I was talking about him last podcast though, is that he suggests where I think labor inevitably is going to go. So my big prediction on UK labor is that in the end, they're going to go left. They're going to embrace wealth taxes, and they're going to realize that the way that you have to operate in a populous environment is not to try to hold the center. But in fact, what they're going to have to do is go left. And I think Mamdani senses that he's senses that he's in a moment, which is much more comfortable with wealth taxes, much more comfortable than more, you know, soft socialist, social democratic approach to the world.

7:04And I think that's where UK labor will follow him. They'll take his example. Yeah, I was actually talking yesterday to an American who works for the, he kind of, he helps progressive politicians get elected. And he was, he gave many very interesting arguments, is that we've got to somehow get away from these labels of left and right. And, and, and that in the current circumstances, taxation should be seen as an issue of fairness, of equality, and also, I've actually trying to get the economy going. Because one of the best ways to get growth going is to give poor people a lot of money to spend, rather than having your money wrapped up in rich people, keeping their savings and their, and their assets.

7:42So I think that, and we, thank you to our listeners who've been nagging us to interview Gary Stephenson. We, we have done it. It will be coming out in the next few weeks. But I think there's something in this. And, look, I think that the other thing that he's done, I watched his interview. I heard he was on meet the press on the weekend, you know, one of the famous Sunday shows in the States. So I watched it. And actually the other guy who was on it was Chris Murphy. And we should give him a shout out because he's been brilliant on Trump and corruption, which we talked about in the main podcast.

8:10But what was really refreshing about watching Mum Darni is he's very relaxed when he's talking. Now listen, they're all going to pilot in him now. Eric Adams is going to go for him. The establishment is going to go for him. The Republicans are clearly going to go for him big time. Trump's already started. But he's got this very refreshing manner. He was given several sort of opportunities, just to whack back at the Republicans, whack back at Trump. And he didn't, he just kind of, he's got his own message. He's got his own framing for it. He's kept coming back to it. He speaks very fluently, very naturally.

8:44Now I think he's a breath of fresh air. And the fact that we're talking about him here in London just underlines how much people are yearning for these sort of young progressive voices to give us a bit of hope. The final one for me is that of course he's coming in on the back of the Eric Adams corruption scandal. So the existing mayor of New York got up to extraordinary shenanigans. The FBI and the DOJ were after him. They were just on the cusp of being able to really pin down the kinds of benefits he'd taken from the Turkish government and return for granting favors to them, including tapping his phone.

9:19And then Trump decided to drop all charges against him. And Adams went from being the darling of the Democratic party in New York to becoming a Trump synthesizer. He's now thinking of running as an independent again. He's very pro crypto. Back to that story again. So crypto money could come in behind Adams. But he's been banned from the matching funds program in New York. So we could end up in a world in which Adams is running as an independent. Cuomo is running as an independent. And Mamdani's trying to run against both of them. Anyway, good luck to Mamdani. It's the first time we've talked about him.

9:53I suspect he won't be the last. Now Rory, this one's from Jess. After Glastonbury's plays of support for Gaza, an accusation of BBC censorship is impartiality becoming a cover for moral failure on Palestine. What are your thoughts on this and the coverage of Bob Villan's chance? Don't forget an e -cap people. Well, again, I mean, I've been signing out of it because I've I've been in and out of doing stuff and including some medical stuff. So what I saw was emerging and suddenly seeing the astonishing anger on every side. Obviously front pages in the telegraph. Many friends reaching out to me saying, this is completely disgusting.

10:37This is the end of the BBC, how dare Bob Villan do this. And what I haven't seen in the reporting is anybody finding a way of expressing disgust and outrage at people calling for the death of soldiers and linking it to what it would feel like to be calling for the death of national soldiers in any country, along with the way in which this whole thing has become sucked into the vortex of people's views either pro -Israel or pro -Gaza and that we can't actually step back and let I suppose if I was going to be cliched, let the police do their job, work out whether these people have committed a crime, work out how they're prosecuted, instead of immediately deciding whether we're against them or for them.

11:24Let me have a go at being measured and sensible, all the things that people look to us for. Point one, musicians down the years have as part of their stock and trade said and done controversial things, often because they believe them, but often because they want attention and we are living ever more in an attention economy. Is the sex pistols in the royal family an example of that? That would be a very good example of that, but so would Elvis gyrating, I mean Elvis started a global moral panic by making sexual gestures while he did, okay? I'd say the Beatles have done stuff, the Rolling Stones have done stuff, Frankie goes to Hollywood, sex pistols as you say, it's just part of what musicians do.

12:13Second point that I would make is that it is entirely possible to be offended, upset, disgusted, particularly if you are Israeli, let alone an Israeli soldier, to have a guy standing up on a stage in front of thousands and thousands of people live on the television saying death to the IDF, okay? And at the same time feel that the reaction to it, and this is where I'm coming from, I think the reaction to it underlines the complete loss both of genuine moral bearing and any sense of perspective. The fact is that so this guy, guess I don't know about you, I'd never heard of them. I definitely never heard of them, but I mean don't don't know about me, I mean I've obviously I've barely heard of the sex pistols.

13:05You mentioned there's a, I've heard in kneecap, I was aware that kneecap that one of them was involved in a court case that he'd been pictured carrying a his ball of flag, etc, etc. This guy comes along and starts going death death to the IDF. As it happens I was watching it because I couldn't work out when Rod Stewart was coming on, obviously I wanted to see how really Celtic shirts would appear on stage with Rod Stewart. And we look at Shadow and that just not to trivialize this huge issue, both of us have said to Rod if you're listening that we would be very happy to appear on the stage with Rod if he would ever have us, but not least because he's obviously my cousin, he's a Stewart, but also because you're a huge fan of him.

13:43Yeah, I was less of a fan of him saying that Nigel Farage is worth a guy, I mean I don't know what that was about, but anyway, he's trying to wind you up, it's musicians being outrageous. He could well be, he's getting ahead of him, exactly, because not just before the election he said Keir Starmer was a good bloke and he should give him a go, so plough plough plough. The minute he said it, this guy, the minute he started that chant and my sense was when they were doing free, free Palestine, I reckon 80 % of the crowd was going along with it. When they went to death, death, the IDF, I think it, my sense was the volume went substantially down, but thousands of people were saying it, okay, the next point I would make is that immediately Kimmy Badenock, Nigel Farage, all out there, Richard Tyson, and they were all, I'm making the difference between this woman Lucy Connelly, who's in jail because she did a tweet saying, I can't remember these act, tweet was basically, you know, it was interpreted to say these people deserve to have their hotels and their homes burnt down, okay.

14:45Surely we can differentiate, and I'm sure when it comes to this criminal investigation, this is where it will probably go, in the middle of riots that are taking place in your country where you are covered by the law of that land, any suggestion of it's okay to burn people's houses and hotels down, I think that's a bit of a problem. You can argue about whether the sentence was too long, too short, you can have those arguments, in the end we've got judges who do that stuff. And are we seriously saying that as a result of this guy standing up there and doing these chants, somebody in that crowd is going to say, oh yeah, I haven't really thought about that, before I think I'll go on a plane to Tel Aviv now and I'll go and kill an Israeli soldier.

15:32It's just, we've just lost our bearings, a meanwhile, Rory, meanwhile. And by the way, I didn't think the music was very good, the bits that I heard, I thought the attention seeking was off the scale. Meanwhile, the same day that we're all getting excited about this, there are children queuing for food at these so -called humanitarian centres being shot by Israeli soldiers and it's not even on the news. Last night, Channel 4 and well done Channel 4 by the way for showing the documentary that the BBC have refused to put out about the healthcare system in Gaza, so last night, Channel 4 News, they did a report on the activity of Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

16:22When was the last time we heard about that in our debate? So we have Keir Starmer, Kemi Bade, Nigel Frag, all of them out there, absolutely terrible, terrible this guy, Bob Villain, this band Bob Villain, right? Where's the outrage? Where is the outrage about thousands of kids? I mean, I just think it's sort of, it's exasperating, and meanwhile, Rory, the BBC will do what the BBC usually does when it's under pressure, it will now sort of cave a little bit the other way. Not a single national media outlet covered the report that was published a couple of weeks ago, vested interest, not vested interest, but I contributed to the report, an analysis of the BBC coverage of Israel and Gaza, which far from being anti -Israel is actually, this analysis showed pretty compellingly, they analyzed over 30 ,000 pieces of content of language, on prioritization and so forth, and actually the very, very strong conclusion was, if anything, there is a very, very strong pro -Israel anti -Palestinian bias.

17:35And I just think, what are we talking about? We're on day three, four, I've talked about Bob Villain, yesterday he was, his agents dropped him, he's had his visa to the US remote. I've got him on list, I don't care that much, but I do care a lot about what's going on in Gaza. Right, Rory, let's have one of your famous explainers, because that's what people are asking for, Lizzie, in your emergency episode on Sunday, you mentioned Trump taking credit for the Rwanda Congo Beesteal. How true is that claim? The claim that he's taking credit, I think is true, the actual role he played, I don't really know.

18:11What's the real story behind the agreement? Looks like the US is in it for more minerals and trade. I'd love to understand more how this has come about, and why it's not making other news outlets or headlines, because it feels very significant. Okay, quick explainer. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which used to be known as Zaire, is geographically the largest country in Africa. Stretch is all the way from East Africa, right the way to the West Coast, and it's been a very, very tragic place. In 1994, a war, civil war broke out in Rwanda that brought in a lot of the neighboring countries.

18:50Three million people were killed. UN peacekeepers were deployed. By the time I was the African minister, there was a moment of kind of temporary peace. The Kabila family had been ruling it. I went to see Lauren Kabila, the president. He stepped down, man called Fidik's Tishkedi took over. But over the last couple of years, there's been an explosion of violence again in eastern Congo. And in particular, the center of this is a group called the M23. And the M23 are predominantly led by Tutsis, Kenya Rwanda speakers connected to the government of Rwanda. So it's the government of Paul Kagami. And since the beginning of this year, they captured Goma, which is an enormous city in eastern Congo.

19:35And then they've taken another major city down called Bukavu down on the south edge of the lake. 3 ,000 people were killed as they took Goma. 570 children being raped a week, according to UNICEF, 700 ,000 people displaced. The airport was closed. A lot of this connects to Coltan smuggling, gold smuggling minerals moving through into Rwanda, a completely dysfunctional Congolese state. It's almost too large, ethnic divisions. And Qatar and the US have been involved in peace deals. And as you say, Donald Trump announced this great triumph, which is the government of Rwanda, the government of Congo, signed up to a peace deal.

20:16And what's the contents of peace deal? The contents of peace deal is the stuff that you often see in peace deals. So demobilization, reintegration, cease fires, refugee return, joint coordinating mechanisms for security. But how does it work? And as far as we can tell, the M23 isn't really involved in these conversations, nor are the governments of Uganda and Burundi, who had troops on the ground along with Rwandans. And Golar isn't really featuring in this. So there is a real risk that although it's absolutely the right thing that the US, Qatar and others are trying to bring some kind of peace and that they're getting Rwanda and Congo involved because Rwanda is the major player now in East and Congo.

20:58I still have my doubts that it's going to be able to bring peace to a completely tragic situation. I mean, the, if you look at the pictures that emerged of the thing, it was classic. You had Trump sitting at the Resilute Desk, you had leaders from Rwanda and the DRC there. You had Vance and Rubio standing behind Trump. And of course he signed his thing. He loves his signature. And he then he holds up the thing. And for him, I suspect that'll be job done according to Michael Wolfe. I don't need you to follow Michael Wolfe on Instagram, but he's so sadonic. But he's still clearly quite well plugged in.

21:42He said on one of his posts the other day that Trump was phoning all his usual sort of his big friends the other night and saying, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get the Nobel. I'm going to get the Nobel. And the story, the story, the story there is of course all these countries. The Pakistanis did it first, but now this is true from Congo Rwanda. They nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, I think we should go into a break, but I'm not going to be very surprised if if your friend Mark Russo, the head of NATO, doesn't nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize too. I mean, it is incredible that Trump sort of by behaving outrageously, humiliating people around the world, undermining the international legal order, the result is that everybody cow towels flat as him.

22:28It also leads to bad policy because what's happened is Rubio who presumably has done with the US diplomats quite a lot of the groundwork on this, they are under pressure. Trump's got to have something to sign. He's got to have something to sign. Then the leaders come over, or the politicians come over in the countries and they're under pressure. Got to have something to sign, got to have something to sign. And then as you say, back in the real world, you have all these groups who are not being brought into the process and they're the ones with the arms, they're the ones with the grievances. And then what happens when they decide, you know what, we don't know this deal, it doesn't really work.

23:04So they haven't done the work to give this deal a chance of sticking. And why would people stick? Because the experience of Vladimir Putin, the experience of Netanyahu is that you can apparently make a deal with Trump and then you can flounce it and just go on and do what you were doing and nothing happens to you. The M23 in Rwanda, which now controls Goma, is incredibly well -armed and organized. And this is partly to do with support from the government of Rwanda. We should point out for our British listeners, we are not talking about the motorway from London to Brighton. Not talking about it away, no, exactly.

23:41This group, if you go and see the most talking to a friend in Goma recently, they are very, very well -armed, they have very fancy high -tech kit. They're operating as a government, they've basically shifted the international border and they're issuing passport stamps. Their political head is the old head of the Congolese Electrical Commission. Goma is the city that I love, I mean Congo is a, I mean one thing maybe that gets lost in this is that along with all the horrors that are happening, it's the most wonderful country on earth. Goma is very beautiful right against this lake. Congo has this incredible history of, as you know, music, we should talk more about Congolese music.

24:23It's got some of the most stunning natural landscapes in the world. It's got the most incredible potential in terms of its mineral wealth. I actually, if I wanted to move some of the world, I'd probably want to live in the damn credit of Republic of Congo. It's one of the most attractive astonishing places left on earth. And yet at the moment, as you say, being driven into horror with Trump putting this sort of peace process on top, I'd struggle to see how it's going to work. I lost his peace process embedded into it, some of his big donors who are the guys who are already looking at the minerals and the wife.

24:58You see, I don't know whether we've answered the question. Just before it goes to Brayroom, my favourite cartoon of the week of Conmer were, I think it might be in the New York Times. It was an American newspaper and it was the Nobel Prize Committee that you mentioned sitting here at the table. The capture just said, shall we just give it to a barber again as a joke?

25:20That would be good global trolley. Anyway, let's come back. When we come back from the rate, we'll talk about Gavi and USAID. Hello everyone. It's Gary Lenika here from The Rest is football, just a quick message to tell you all about the club world cup tournament that's taking place in the US at the moment. It's 32 of the best teams from all around the world, battling it out to be crowned the best side on the planet. We've reached the knockout stages of the competition, which means all the big guns will be going head to head. Manchester City, Ramadred, PSG, Chelsea and Bayern Munich are just some of the sides vying to lift the trophy.

25:56Join myself, Alan Shira, Mike Riches and our experts out in America, Alex Aljo as we guide you through the explosive final stages of the tournament. To make things even better if you're watching the video version of the show on Spotify or YouTube, you can also watch all the goals and the best bits of the action as we discuss the games, a first for podcasting. Just search the Resties football you get your podcasts.