428. Rory vs. Alastair: Are we spending too much on defence?

25:29To pay tribute to another Australian, my hero, Dmitry Grosovinsky, who I spoke to for an hour on this, who is written this incredibly good, amusing, intelligent book on tariffs and trade, which I'd really recommend to people. He would say that underlying those are five completely contradictory ideas around tariffs. I think we've talked about a little bit before. We've talked about the fact that one is you manufacture in China. Then you charge at the US border and you make a lot of money. It's about revenue. Number two, it's about reshoring, moving manufacturing to the US. Then you don't get the revenue because you're making it in the US.

26:07Number three, you're doing it for something else like fentanyl or immigration, in which case it's not economic at all. Number four, you're doing it because you're in a 50 year fight with China. The whole thing is really just about impoverishing China to stop it building up its military. Number six, I think, is just a general sense that you're enjoying the game of extortion, concessions, humiliation. Maybe that's the sort of thing that binds it all together. Along with the first one, which is obsessed with trade deficits, is just a sense that it's a tool in his arsenal to allow to accumulate people.

26:42Brazil, though, is the most interesting. You're right. I should have raised it because Brazil is the one example of these countries that doesn't actually have a trade surplus of the United States. Generally, what he's doing is he's going after countries that sell more to the US than they buy from the US. Of course, one of the big reasons that, again, as Dimitri points out, is that US consumers are wealthy and spend a lot of money. The average American household spends two and a half times more a year than the average German household. And a lot of the goods they buy come from abroad. But in the case of Brazil, that isn't the problem.

27:18Brazil is importing more from the US than it's exporting. So there what he's doing is he's saying that he hates Lula, that he thinks the case against Bolsonaro, his fellow populist leader, who's basically on trial for trying to stage a coup d 'état, is fake. And he's very much against the Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Morales, who's a very, very controversial figure that we were talking about over the weekend, who is a hero of the left and an absolute enemy of other people in Brazil because he's doing many things which are pretty close to absolutist authoritarian and illegal to go after anybody who he thinks is on Bolsonaro's side, including imprisoning business people for making jokes about coup d 'état on WhatsApp, locking up congressman for nine years for contempt, call this sort of stuff.

28:04So all of this stuff is happening. But my question to you is how would the world react if China went around doing this? Oh, exactly. Exactly. I mean, let's say China had got in touch with France and said we'll be imposing a 50 % tariff on you unless you release Marine the pen from jail. Yeah, or if they'd done the same with us and said, unless Julian Assange is released and freed from the whichever embassy he was in with Ecuador, the answer to your question is that we would say this was unacceptable, bullying, intimidating, behavior by rogue state. That's what would stay. But I think this goes to the heart of the way that Trump now operates.

28:47He basically, in all of his international affairs, he's there's a little bit of divide and rule. But what there's a lot of is the demanding of obsequiousness in exchange for not not usually political support, but just sort of not giving you quite as hard as a harder time as he otherwise could. And I don't know if you saw Roy the now infamous meeting with the African leaders where he congratulated the Liberian president on his excellent English either not knowing or pretending not to know that English is the language of Liberia. But three of the leaders who were there, Senegal, Gabon and Mauritania, all as part of their prepared remarks basically said that they thought Donald Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

29:34So this is this is all just part of a we're all when we say we, I don't think you and I are, but I think large parts of the world are playing into this idea that he's the king of the world. He has actually become what Boris Johnson always wanted to be. World king. And that's how he has to get treated. Can you help me understand why what's going on with this culture of so many political leaders coming pretty close to embarrassing themselves in falling over backwards to be unbelievably obsequious. I know people say it's like dealing with a king, but actually might my memory of kind of medieval Britain.

30:12Were you around then, Roy? I was definitely around that. Yeah, I was older than you think. Is that they didn't actually cringe in quite this way that if you were a knight or a lord going into see an English king, you tried to preserve your dignity. Yes, you were polite, but you didn't actually grovel on the ground, call them daddy, tell them they were the best person ever. And if you did, you'd suffer a real contact. I mean, I can't, you see, forget, let me put it, forget medieval England. I can't imagine Angela Merkel or Theresa May groveling to Trump in the way that Mark Rutger's groveling to Trump.

30:46Rutger was the most obvious. However, the reason that sort of was so damaged because it was the combination of what he said in private with what he then said in public with the daddy thing, the sort of took it to a different level. I thought actually watching these African leaders, it was pretty obsequious. I mean, the truth about the Nobel Peace Prize, anybody with a, you know, any sense of the state of the world right now is going to say it is a total absurdity added to which, not least because of which is sometimes called the Richard Holbrook principle, the Nobel Committee basically thinks, if you openly, overtly campaign to get the Nobel Peace Prize or talk about your own strengths and why you should get it, it makes it less likely that you will get it, but he will be saying, yeah, I break all the rules.

31:30This is like a global intimidation campaign of these five people on the committee that I went to last week, but he's co -opting all these other leaders. And here's Nick Thomas Simmons, the British minister, was on the radio recently, and I actually think he's a very, I think he's actually a very good minister and he's done all the kind of European negotiations and that sort of thing. But at the end of the interview, it was thrown at him, you know, Benjamin Naniah who has said that Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize, do you agree? And of course, as we get closer to the state visit in which now being announced for September, they're all going to get asked this.

32:03So by advice to the British government, have a line ready, make sure it is not yes, for me, for me sure that it's something that Trump can maybe not take as a total rejection. Let me just weave these two ideas that you've got together, which is Trump, obsequious Nobel Peace Prize in defense spending. The truth is that Trump is a contributor, massive contributor to global conflict because, in essence, the peace that existed since the Second World War was based on a rules -based international order, NATO, the UN, US as a global policeman, and a sense that you did not invade neighbors and that certain kinds of things were not acceptable, international law.

32:52And of course, there was hypocrisy and many lessons will get in touch and say there was a lot of nonsense going on in the 80s and 90s and the US got a great deal wrong as to the UK. But Trump is the first president to set about very deliberately to dismantle that entire international system to show complete contempt for international law, for the UN, for allies, for state borders. He's somebody who has made it perfectly clear that he sympathises with Putin and authoritarian strongmen, and therefore he has created. It's no coincidence that he comes in in 2016 and a lot of what we've seen over the last 10 years.

33:31Every year, more internally displaced people, refugees, conflict stems from Trump's style of isolationism, but then he drives the conflict. And the consequence of that is that he creates the conditions which makes Putin and Russia become an existential threat to Europe. He creates the conditions which then forces Europe to have to increase its defense standing. He creates the conditions which will lead to hundreds of billions of euros being removed from our health, education, and welfare budgets over the next few years. Our people will get poorer, less educated, less healthy, the world will become more dangerous thanks to Donald Trump.

34:10And that's what the Nobel Peace Prize Committee should remember. Very well put, but also you're looking at today as he goes around saying, and as Netanyahu says, this guy's bringing peace to countries in the region, the fact is he is a driver of this Gaza quotes humanitarian fund, which, and we're going to talk about this in question time, where so many people are being killed while they're literally while they're queuing for food. Gaza is, we keep hearing the ceasefires coming, but has he yet come? No. He's enabling and empowering Netanyahu in his style of politics. And then you've got Russia Ukraine, which is not in a better place than it was when he said he was going to resolve it in 24 hours.

34:50And to which you've talked a lot worry about this sort of sense of the conflict that there is right across Africa from West to East. But there again, he has the African leaders in the country on the day. What was his real interest in all that? It was about minerals, it was about copper, and it was about mines, and it's all about the money stuff. So no, we disagree slightly about defense. I think we are fundamentally united in our view that the Nobel Prize Committee's reputation would be zero, literally zero overnight, if it were to make the mistake of giving the award to Donald Trump. I actually think it was a mistake to give it to Obama so early in his presidency.

35:30I agree. But there we are. Not as big a mistake as Gandhi never getting it. I think that was a bad one. Gandhi never got it. While we're talking about defense, Roy, I think our leading interview this week is with the friend of yours, Democrat Congressman Seth Molton, who is not just interesting because he's a congressman, with some very, very harsh words to say about Trump, but also some very harsh words to say about his own side as well. But also one of those congressmen who really was a sort of serious military veteran, and with some, I thought really moving accounts of his time serving in Iraq in particular when he clearly didn't believe in the policy he was involved in.

36:08But people are interesting, that whole thing about the sort of defense, military, switch to politics. I really enjoyed it. I actually think in our upsum, I listened back to it today. I think I think we were a little bit harsh actually. I found him really impressive listening back, really impressive. So pleased to hear that. Yeah, I was sad that you said that you didn't think he should be president. I'm pushing for Seth to run again for the presidency. People can listen to it, of course, on the rest of his politics leading on our leading stream. Yeah, I definitely think he's got a lot of what it takes.

36:37Let's take a break and then we'll come back with Britain.

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38:01So we've teamed up with Penguin and we've got now the Resta's Politics Audio Book Club, where we're going to recommend titles we spent real time with, those griptose stirdors who echoed long after they ended. Big ideas brilliantly told. So I am going to start with a book that I mentioned on the podcast when I first read it. It is called The Nazi Mind by Lawrence Reese. And it is an incredible account of how ideology can warp entire societies. My recommendation would be Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which recasts your entire understanding of history and philosophy. So these are not books that you're going to flick through absolutely.

38:40The books that you will enjoy more by having them read to you properly, by voices that understand weight, rhythm, and the power of a well -timed pause. Just beautiful. I'm going to get you to read my next audiobook. Visit penguin .co .uk slash trip to browse more of our audiobook recommendations or find a link in our next newsletter and start listening today on Spotify or any audiobook retailer. More recommendations to come.

39:14Welcome back to the Resta's Polities with me asked to come back. And with me, Rory Stewart and Alice, we're now getting onto something that we have talked about in the past, which is the Labour Party public sector reform, particularly what can happen to the National Health Service, how that could be turned around, and the question of the unions and all of this, and particularly this week because there's been a big standoff between Angela Rainer and Unite, the largest union in the United Kingdom, and now a threat of junior doctors going on strike against worse treating the health sector. Can you just begin by just giving us the sense of why unions continue to matter in British politics, particularly for the Labour Party?

39:56And do they matter much less than they did when you were in government Tony Blair, or is it pretty much the same story? I think if you truck it back, so when I was growing up, the big trade union leaders were every bit as well known as all but a handful of the major politicians. I'm not just talking about Arthur Scargill, the miners leader, but there was a whole range of trade union leaders who were, they were big figures on the news all the time. And I think that one of the reasons, so the moment you mentioned the Angela Rainer dispute with Unite, what Unite say this is about is the continuing dispute about the dustbin collection in Birmingham and what they identify as a huge pay cut for some of the people who are involved in refuse collection in Birmingham.

40:51But I think part of what's going on, I'm not minimizing their case, but I think part of what's going on is that these days the union leaders have to actually fight quite hard in what is a political attention economy, if you like, to get noticed. So I think if you know, talking to people who are, you know, close to Angela Rainer, I think they would say that this is about them using Angela Rainer's position as Deputy Prime Minister and the Member of Unite to drag her right into something where they want her to be as it were on their side in a dispute that should be being settled by the council involved.

41:29Just to explain what happened here, Unite says that they've suspended Angela Rainer from their union, Angela Rainer says she'd already resigned anyway. But in a sense, it doesn't really matter whether she was suspended or resigned. This is a big break with the Deputy Prime Minister from the biggest funder of the Labour Party and the biggest union in the country. Yeah, now what is also true, you talked about the difference between our time. I think during our time because we were, we were, we were very deliberately making party funding, the funding of the Labour Party as broad as possible. And that included part of our whole stick to the country, the pitch to the country was that we're a party, not just for the unions, but for business, and for consumers, and not just for those who produce services, but above all those who use them, it was a different part of that messaging.

42:16And so the funding from unions became less significant. It's still important, don't get me wrong, you still have the unions making significant contributions. But I think part of what's going on is actually unite and the leadership, Sharon Graham, making broader complaints about the direction of the Labour Party. And this is, you know, this is given to the opportunity. She's been on the airwaves in recent days and weeks in a way that she in most of the time isn't. And of course the other thing that's going on in the background, I don't know whether this, I'm not saying this is organised, but in the background you've got the whole sort of Jeremy Corbyn's, Aras Sultana, might they be setting up a new party to the left of the Labour Party?

42:55And that I suspect is kind of feeding into this debate as well. And I suppose you might think that it could work for Labour to have a big public fight with the training unions, particularly at a moment where they're being accused of not being fiscally responsible, wavering over welfare, giving into revolts their back benches. I mean, if what Kirstalmer's about is trying to appeal to middle Britain and brand himself as a kind of responsible centrist, then maybe it doesn't do him any harm to be seen as having a bit of a standoff with the unions, because it certainly wouldn't suit him for his voter base if he was seen to rollover all the time, right?

43:32Yeah, I don't think there's any point in having fights for the sake of having the fire. I think these fights should be over things that really matter. What I think is true is that having been defeated, essentially, or having had to back down, for example, on the welfare rebel, on the welfare bill, and change it fundamentally in order to appease the parliamentary rebels, I do think that when, you know, he needs pretty quickly a message that says that does not mean that I'm not in the business of reform, and including a very difficult reforms, where we are going to have to take make decisions that, you know, people that may support us and want to continue supporting us don't actually like.

44:14And maybe that's a useful bridge into the row with the BMA, because of course, I think what one of the things I think Labour thought they'd achieved in the early days of the Labour government was to strike a deal with the striking doctors, and that seems to put the issue to bed for a while. Just quickly for internationalists as BMA, British Medical Association, and a lot of the fight, I think, at the moment, is that right as with junior doctors? Well, they've changed their name, no, to their name has been changed to resident doctors, and I think that was a sensible thing, because junior doctors was a ridiculous label for people who did so much of the work.

44:46The BMA for international listeners, and I suspect a lot of domestic listeners as well, sometimes referred to as the most powerful trade union in the country. It's not seen in the same way as the unite, or, you know, some of them all traditional working class manufacturing unions and so forth, but the BMA operates a very, very, very powerful voice for doctors. I know quite a lot of people in medicine, including the BMA, my sense is that there was a lot of support for the resident doctors first time around, including from, as it were, people in other levels of the medical profession, but much, much, much less so this time, because I think what this one does, it shows that they really do think they're a very, very, very special case.

45:35Now, you could argue, well, they are a special case, because they're saving our lives and all that stuff, but teachers are a special case, and, you know, the bin men are a special case, and so I, I think this is a fight that West treating has to win. It doesn't mean you can't do some sort of deal at the edges, but you can't give in again on this one. A little explainer on what I think I understand has happened is that 90 % have voted to strike between the 25th and 30th of July. There were 11 separate war counts between 2023 -2024, and that, of course, has a huge impact when doctors walk out. You end up missing, you know, over a million healthcare appointments, sends up costing the government about a billion to try to fill in the gaps.

46:16After the election, they got a 5 .4 % rise, and then an additional 22 .3 % rise, starting salaries up nearly 10 ,000 pounds, and now they're claiming another 29%, and that that's what it would take to take them back to where they were in 2008. And they're saying, they're saying it's normally gochable. And that's, again, is disputed again, it depends on how you calculate inflation, because some people say, actually, they're only about 4 .7 % worse off. Polytime B, I think, would normally have been seen on the left, just wrote an article on the Guardian, pretty much taking your position, saying that she doesn't want to be silly, but the PM salary is 57 % lower than it was in 2007, and that even her sympathy for doctors is beginning to wane a bit.

46:59I mean, I guess where this goes to is the fact that we have had for some considerable time a pretty stagnating economy. I fear that that's why ultimately, unless we can get the economy growing properly, these sorts of disputes are going to become more commonplace, and that's why I think it would be pretty bad news if the government had to reopen a pay deal that they thought had been settled. So I suspect what we'll see is a little bit about whether it's around conditions or some of the training, I don't know, but it's a very tricky position to be in at a time when getting waiting lists down. We're actually, I think, we're treating the health service as a doing a good job, but that path has got to be continued right, you know, going for several years before the issue of health sort of gets out of its place at the moment, which is still right at the top of public concerns, but I don't feel either in the vote or the manner in which they've been communicating since.

48:01I don't think the resident doctors are doing themselves that many favors right now, but you know, we'll see. Here's my question on worth treating. I started by being very much supportive of his vision, which many people will remember is a kind of great vision of shifting basically from hospitals to community hubs, from treatment to prevention and from analogue to digital. So the big idea that worth treating had, I think, is that to get better health outcomes, and I guess by that, that's a pretentious way of saying, presumably what we're aiming for is that on average, people in Britain are going to live longer, healthier lives.

48:38In order to do that, we've got to move money away from getting people at stage three cancer. It was quite a good example. I think he gave when we did a leading interview with him. If you can detect it at stage one, you can treat it much more effectively and much more cheaply. So I was all with that, but then suddenly he announced that the big target he was chasing is reducing waiting lists. And I'm worried that's pushing completely the opposite direction, because it seems to me that there is a pretty basic choice, which is quite difficult to get around. Either you are trying to make people live longer, healthier lives, in which case a lot of your money really is going into what we call public health, air quality, not drinking, not eating sugary foods, dealing with obesity, or you're trying to run a fancy health care system.

49:32And those two things weirdly don't go together. In fact, actually, there are people out there saying a Britain smells about 10 % of GDP on health, that what we should actually be doing is spending 5 % on hospitals and 5 % on public health. And actually, of the NHS part, we only spend not 50 % on public health. We spend 2 % on public health. And it's been cut even more, right? So how do you get that 2 % up to 50 %? Well, you could only do it by closing a lot of hospitals. And every single, you know, there's some having been a constituency of every single hospital, no matter how small, no matter how people have raged about it, not being good enough for the building fall into bits, people will always fight to save their local hospital.

50:19But this is where I think the government, when I talked about having fights that are worth having, I actually thought I didn't read it when it came out, but I've since read it was his 10 -year plan. I actually agree with you, I think that vision really works as a long -term vision. Where I think you're spotting the clash is that in the political imperative, which is you've got to get these waiting lists down, because that's the metric by which you're going to show at the next election. Look, we said we were but meantime, you're making a lot of change, which are going to require a lot of fights, including with the public, actually, because some of these things are going to require public change in attitudes, public change in behavior to get a long -term change.

51:00But I think where I think he's absolutely right is the long -term change is fundamental and necessary. Let me give you a challenge and a communication challenge. So here's a little figure. So there were 780 people last year who died unnecessarily through poor practices and hospitals. So it's a difference of like a 100 -fold. 100 times more people died from obesity. And the first number, presumably, many of them now involved in sort of litigation and the health service having to compensate. Exactly. Billions of pounds worth of compensation. But let's say you were given the mission. And the mission was this, to say to the British but look, if what we really want is for the British public as a whole to live longer, healthier lives, what we really need to put our money into is every stage of life.

51:53So before babies are born, making sure that mothers are getting the right kind of vitamins and they're not smoking. After in the first five years, making sure that there's no childhood trauma, they look after their oral health, their fit. And then in later childhood, making sure that there's clean air, there's no junk food, there's good mental health. And then once we become adults, making sure we're not living two sedentary lifestyles, and then when we become older, dealing with loneliness, supporting people in the home, etc. That's where the money should be going. And if we did that, we could massively drive out life expectancy and healthy.

52:29But here's your problem to communicate. So to do that, you would have to put probably actually tens of billions into public health and cut that from hospital. And so what would happen is somebody like me, let's say I have a heart condition, I go into hospital and because of all the cuts to hospital, I die, whereas I wouldn't have done under the old system. But at the same time, maybe 5 ,000 more people are living longer, healthier lives because the government is cutting down on obesity, supporting people in early childhood, helping them live healthier lives. How do you explain to the public that one person they know has died unnecessarily because there wasn't the hospital care available, but thousands more people have lived because the public health.

53:17I think we have to get away. This is tough, but it's, but I quite, I think as a communications challenge, I quite like it. And I think we have definitely got ourselves now into a culture where without really wanting to pay for them through our taxation, we are expecting absolutely brilliant tip -top public services in every aspect of our life. So I think actually, first of all, on the litigation side of things, for example, I think it's tragic that Britain has become this culture. And I also, by the way, I think it's leading to worse medicine because I think doctors are becoming, I've talked to doctors who tell me this, you become more risk -averse, you become, you tend to play safe, and that can actually mean not doing what might be the difficult thing, but the right thing in terms of medical care.

54:12So I think arguing for that cultural change, can we please actually give a little bit more face to our doctors? Can we please give a little bit more face to our health care system? Can we stop spending all our time saying the national health services on its knees? Let's meet the challenges and let's meet them together. So I think that's quite an interesting sort of, you know, national mission to speak up and stand up and say about national health service. I think that was a good communications challenge. And then I think on the other stuff, because this is totally part of this thing about moving from, you know, cure to prevention.

54:43I actually think that I could, I'd love a campaign that basically said, and I'm probably not setting people who may, at times, you know, paid me to advise them in the past, but I think actually saying that, because we, let's be frank, over time we have done it with tobacco, but actually to do the same in relation to junk food and in relation to alcohol, to say, you know, we can, we can decide life's just all about having fun and having what I want, when I want it, even if it's going to make me worse off, health -wise. But actually, no, as your government, you can call it nanny state if you want, but I'm actually going to say, no, I'm sorry, if you're making all this money out of the foods and the drinks that are doing harm, you're paying it through tax, but also I'm going to create a public health fund and you're going to be part of it.

55:30I could see that as being a very, very good communications challenge. I'd enjoy that one. It's weird, though, isn't it, because my clearest example of this was air quality, where I think our department calculated, let's say that if we'd spent 300 million a year on cleaning up air in Britain, it would lead to something like two, three billion worth of benefit in terms of life expectancy. So you were getting a return on investment of kind of tenfold, and yet the Treasury would never do it, because they didn't see it as a direct saving from the NHS budget. And it still not happened. When our air quality is still dreadful and I don't see actually labour putting the money into really making the radical change, you would need to make air quality in the centre of leads or the central London what it should be to stop what are still tens of thousands of preventable deaths every year.

56:20Air pollution in the UK estimated to cause between 20 ,000 and 43 deaths annually, and worldwide it's 6 .7 million. So 28 to 43 ,000 deaths annually. But it is something to do with the way we calculate things. I mean, I suppose it's partly the moral hazard, but maybe we think that somebody dying of preventable obesity, the 82 ,000 people who die every year from federal obesity, that's somehow their fault, whereas maybe somebody going at hospital after a car crash isn't their fault, and therefore we expect the state to do one thing we don't expect the state to do. The second problem I guess is behaviour change is tough.

56:59I mean, it's all very well talking quickly about stopping mothers from drinking or smoking during pregnancy, or sending people into an elderly person's home to nail down their carpet and get the right glasses prescription so they can read their meds and bottles properly, so they don't end up in hospital or falling over. But of course, any local council hearing that, which is put their head in their hands and say, but you just don't understand how complicated and costly and difficult it is to change the behaviour of a mother or get people in inspecting every old person's house to make sure they're not tripping over.

57:30Yeah, 30 ,000 deaths a year than put down to obesity. Of course, the air pollution, the air quality thing is interesting though, so I've had asthma all my life. Right. And you know, it's pretty well treated and I don't have many really bad asthma attacks, but when I have them they're really bad. But I have actually noticed an improvement in London in recent years, and that may be a change of medication. But let's just say that when I die, let's just say that the cause of death is put down as I don't know, COPD, pulmonary disease. Would I then be included in these 32 ,000 deaths? This is where the numbers get very, very difficult.

58:07You know, I could argue that I've died because I've sort of had asthma all my life, but I've treated it pretty well and therefore, you know, but then when I finally pay it, you could argue that I'd be killed by air pollution. So I think the stats on this are difficult, but I think that do we, is there anybody listen to this who doesn't think that Britain has an obesity problem? I'll be very surprised if there is. And I guess is that anybody listening to this who doesn't think that, okay, maybe we're never going to get to spending 5 % of GDP on healthcare and 5 % on public health or 5 % on treatment, 5 % on prevention.

58:40But I don't think there's anybody who thinks that we should be spending only 2 % of the NHS budget on public health. I, I, that can't be right 2%. I mean, even, you know, even the, I see all the, there are lots of advertised. I saw a bigger campaign recently, not least because, and by the way, why nobody has ever been to jail for the bloody MRR campaign a few years ago, including the editor of the Daily Mail and others. You see, there was another death from measles, but I noticed the big measles campaign recently. I've noticed some big, I mean, that is that, does that go down as public health?

59:15I don't know. I mean, I, I don't know whether 2 % comes from. That sounds really strange. It's not just the UK, every country. I mean, I'm in the US at the moment, where unbelievable amounts of money, huge amount of GDP is spent on the fanciest healthcare in the world, particularly for the wealthiest. And yet public health is terrible. But even in, even in the Nordic countries, who are the real leaders on this, they haven't begun to get towards a 50 -50 balance between treatment and prevention. Final start before we go. So we've said both obesity and air pollution in the sort of 30 ,000 territory, road traffic is about 1 ,700.

59:50Suicide is nearly 8 ,000. Yeah. So all of these things, you can say that, but the truth is, these are all deaths that cost a lot of money in different ways. But I, I think, maybe we should get ways treating back on at some point, and we should work on this communications challenge together. And talk more about tech and AI in relation to this, because it's right at the heart of the question of not just what tech can do. Tech can do amazing things. Devices can now monitor your health. But it's to do with whether we're going to allow tech to do it. I mean, I keep grumbling to you that in Cumbria, we only really got on to using the telephone and GP surgeries for appointments, about 120 years after the telephone was invented.

1:00:31So I don't know how quickly we're going to bring in AI. Roy, I've got a question for you because nobody's been able to give it. We'll close with this, but you understand this stuff. And I don't. So I went to the, I went to Wimbledon the other day to the tennis. And on the way in, I was with Grace, my daughter, she decided that she wanted to get good content. And she ended up getting really good content because accidentally, we happened to be sitting directly in front of Leonardo DiCaprio, and we weren't even in the royal box. So anyway, on Root Inn, Grace suddenly decides, you know, it's really hard, I need to get some water and something to eat in case I get hungry.

1:01:07We go to this food shop inside Wimbledon. There's a woman, there are these barriers and there's a woman at the barrier. And to open the barrier, you have to put your credit card on the barrier, okay? So you tap the barrier with your credit card, you then walk through and then I went over there and got a banana and a sandwich and a bottle of water. And then Grace went over there and got something else. And then we walked out. And where do we pay? And the woman said, you've already paid. Right. And I said, how? And she said, it's something to do with the cameras. Right. So what was going on? Well, I think a lot of different things could be going on.

1:01:48But my best guess is that they read your credit card number. They didn't charge you at the point of entry. They then managed to pick up remotely which items that you took through some sort of camera system and then debited your card on exit. I mean, that's pretty fancy stuff if that's what they've done. I mean, I did. And did you and Grace get different charges? It wasn't that you got the same charge. There's one card. We went through one card and went to different parts of the shop. Yeah, well, that must have been what they're doing. It's something that Supermarkets often talk about. I haven't seen it, seen it done at scale yet.

1:02:23Well, there you are. I'm ahead of you on that. That's good. That's fancy stuff. And my goodness, look, if we were, but of course, the problem in health is that we're not comfortable yet, really sharing data in a way that would allow a lot of this incredible benefits to come from. Listen, having looked into Mr Peter Teal of Palantir fame during our discussion of JD Vance from many series, do we really want him to get more of our data than he's already got? Well, that's a good segue answer to end because we of course discuss a great deal about Peter Teal in our JD Vance series. We are doing a special Q &A this Friday on the rest of politics plus off the back of our four episodes charting the rise of JD Vance.

1:03:09Thanks, the radio times for the lovely review, by the way, and invaluable primer on the most complex personality and US politics. So if you have any burning questions on JD Vance, maybe something you've, we've missed and it could be more on Peter Teal, something extra you want to know, just sign up to the rest of politics plus at the rest of politics .com and follow the link at the top of your welcome email. And just to get people up to speak quickly on the fourth episode, we're right into his time now as vice president and focusing on what we've learned about him from his famous speech at Munich, from his spat with Zelensky, from his ups and downs with the Pope, and also a little bit of a countertone with Kirsten as well.

1:03:48So I've really enjoyed making it and I hope you've enjoyed listening to him, those who haven't, I hope you will. What we've got into is whether potential JD Vance presidency, which isn't impossible by any means, could be even more dangerous than Trump 2 .0. We do have a little explainer on the history of the vice president, which I claim to have read 10 books for. I think you'll find you reread at least five of them. Anyway, if you want to hear the first four episodes in full right now, get up to speak before the Q &A, which is this Friday, head to therestispolitics .com to join the restis politics plus.

1:04:18It takes two minutes to sign up and you get the member feeds synced straight up to your preferred podcast platform. So here's a little clip from episode four. Are you more or less worried by Vance presidency or Trump presidency? I think there's a very good chance it could be even worse. When Trump says something, he thinks it is true. Vance knows that he's lying. Vance than a 2021 interview says, we are effectively run in this country by a bunch of childless cat ladies. This Selensky showdown in the way hasn't. It's not normal to have a vice president sitting in there and interrupting. I thought it was utterly disgusting.

1:04:55That was Vance showing I will be your tech dog. This is a guy who's had a pretty rough life, pretty rough childhood. And meanwhile, he has a level of ambition that makes him prepared to do or say anything in the moment to get to the next step and the next step for him is the White House. Take that lack of virtue, that lack of moral character and combine it with the economic and military might of the United States and you should be very, very worried about a JD Vance presidency.

1:05:31So if you enjoyed that and want to tune in to all four episodes and get Friday's Q &A, sign up at therestaspolitics .com. And you get the full trip plus experience. Many series like this, member bonus content, completely ad -free listening, much, much more. Just go to therestaspolitics .com. So Rory, see you tomorrow for Question Time, which is not the same as Q &A, and we're going to be talking. I think we're going to have a very big discussion on Israel and the reaction to our discussion last week. Maybe a bit on Macron and his visit here. What else do I want to talk about? Let's talk a little bit about Spain.

1:06:04Gosh, there's so much going on about it. It's going to be exciting. Let's push it all into the Question Time tomorrow. See you then.