451. Is Trump Destroying the UN?

25:27Israel, in ways that we haven't reported on the podcast, has now said that Israeli banks can't correspond with Palestinian banks. Palestinian migrant workers can't cross into Israel, so they can't bring any income in. the customs revenue, which Israel used to share with the Palestinian Authority, has been cut. So there's no revenue coming in. And of course, most of the international donors who used to provide support to the Palestinian Authority, when I was at DFID, of course, we were giving an enormous amount of support. We supported most of the education ministry. Those donor funds have been cut as well.

25:59So huge economic problems. And Israeli lawyers, of course, are using this to argue that you cannot, in international law, recognize the state that's under occupation. So it's a sort of kind of slightly cruel paradox that they're saying, because it's giving them, in a sense, an incentive to continue to weaken the state and occupy it on the grounds that you can't, under law, recognize the state that's being occupied. Which is exactly what they're doing. On the point about the UN, so Palestine has the observer status of the United Nations. And again, because of America's position, it won't move beyond that just because these other countries have said that they recognize it.

26:35But I think it does change. I think it changes the relations with Israel, both for good and for bad. The Israelis absolutely furious with the Brits. You had David Mensah, this guy who's the Brit, who now is a spokesman for Netanyahu. He was on the media yesterday saying that the Jewish community will never forgive the Labour government for recognizing the state of Palestine. This is a reward to Hamas, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, and likewise with the French, likewise with the Portuguese, with the Australians, with the Canadians, very, very angry. But that does mean a resetting and a recalibration of relations.

27:12And I think the Israelis underestimate the extent to which I don't know if you've noticed how often this phrase pariah state keeps being sort of banded around by commentators, by people who are there, what have you. And it sort of feels that is where they're heading. Now, do they care? Is it just that because they have this seeming blank check from Donald Trump that they don't really care what the rest of the world thinks? But that will have consequences long term as well. And I wonder with Netanyahu, as with Putin, whether occasionally they're not just doing very provocative, risky things because it reinforces their strongman image.

27:47So I was sitting there thinking, why would Netanyahu attack Qatar in that way? There was nothing really to gain. If it was a completely failed operation, he didn't even kill the Hamas negotiators. And even if he had, what advantage does he get given the massive disadvantage, which is international condemnation, UAE, Dubai, which had been getting close to Israel, then pushed away, massive Gulf solidarity. and then I thought well isn't that a bit the same as Putin and what does Putin have to gain from striking Kiev just as he's about to meet Donald Trump why are these people taking these risks with Trump you would have thought in both cases they might as well just sit back and the answer must be not just that they've got a blank check not just that they sense they can do whatever they want and Trump will never go against them it actually must instinctively feel them, they benefit from challenging Trump, from provoking the world, from pushing the boundary.

28:43And even if it doesn't make any strategic sense, and this is the standoff between Netanyahu and the Israeli military, the Israeli military is reported to be very angry about the Qatar attack and have thought it completely senseless. The chief of the army staff was against the current operations in Gaza. They say they've achieved their military objectives. Going into Gaza is just going to increase international opposition. It's not going to achieve anything strategic. but Netanyahu keeps doing this stuff. What is it? I mean, is it coalition management? Is it strongman status? Is it polling? I mean, why would you keep poking people without much strategic gain?

29:21Well, it depends where you think Netanyahu is coming from, but I wouldn't rule out the fear that he has that if eventually he gets forced into elections, that he loses those elections, then justice, domestic justice, don't forget he's under all sorts of investigation for corruption and other things, and international justice, he's been indicted for war crimes, takes its course. So he has to stay in power. How does he stay in power? He stays in power by holding this coalition, which is part propped up by these absolute out-and-out extremists, Ben Gavir and Smotrich, who basically think that they have got the idea of the Palestinian state on the run, that they do have impunity.

30:04And while they've got that, they use it. So I don't think it's much more complicated than that. And of course, the consequences of the people who are there, both Israeli and Palestinian, by the way, is absolutely horrific. And it's creating a dissonance, I'm observing now, with many Israelis who were very, very supportive of the operations in Gaza, who are very focused on the hostages, very much committed to attacking Hamas, but are beginning to sound a bit uncertain when they're asked to defend what's being done in Qatar or the bombardments against Syria. You can sense around the edges, not just from the Israeli military, that instinctively they want to defend Netanyahu, they want to say that he's doing the right thing.

30:49But the theories they're producing for why he's doing some of these more extreme things are getting less and less convincing. Let's end this discussion on a piece of a sliver of hope. And that is that is art. There's a you know, I told you last week, I spent some time in the World Food Programme. And there's a Gazan artist called Ahmed Muhanna. And he has an exhibition. He can't leave Gaza. He's in Gaza. He ran out of canvases. So he's done these, he's been using used World Food Programme boxes on which to paint. and the World Food Programme has brought 60 of them out and they're now on tour in Europe.

31:26I think they're in Malmo at the moment, but they're doing a tour of major European cities. And it's just basically just capturing daily life in Gaza. But if people check out World Food Programme Instagram page, they'll see these beautiful paintings on their boxes. Great. Let's take a break. And then back from the break to talk about UK politics.

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34:16Welcome back to The Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. It's the Lib Dem conference this week. Now, who would have thought the Lib Dem conference was interesting? There's a tradition, sadly, in British politics, which I am very guilty of, and I would like to try to apologize, which is that it's traditional within the major parties to be a bit mean about the Lib Dems. In fact, I noticed when we interviewed Nicola Sturgeon on leading, she couldn't resist having a bit of a go at the Lib Dems as well. And it would be interesting at some point to get into what it is psychologically that makes everybody slightly grown when they hear the Lib Dems.

34:49nevertheless, Ed Davey is trying to emerge as rather an interesting voice, standing up for values that you and I believe in, standing up for the center ground, standing up against Trump, standing up against Farage, and becoming one of the last champions for the kind of values that most of us took for granted in the 1990s. The answer to your question, why is it always felt a bit like the Lib Dems don't really matter that much? I think it's because we've, all of us, grown up in a world where we only ever expect the Conservatives or Labour to be the government. And that's why they've always been known as the third party.

35:26At the moment, we still have a first past the post system, which is kind of designed for this idea that it's either going to be Labour or Tory. But we now have a multi-party politics. And I think Ed Davey and the Lib Dems, they did pretty well at the last election. They got 72 seats, but they're still struggling. They're still struggling to be heard. Ed Davey this week had a real old pop at the BBC about the way that they, frankly, just anything that Nigel Farage says or does is deemed to be whoosh-breaking news, whereas the Lib Dems only get covered if he goes on a bungee jump. Let me agree with you and sympathise to Lib Dems.

36:05I was yesterday reading the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper I imagine you never read, but there was a really interesting example of exactly what he's complaining about that. Two stories right next to each other. Ed Davies saying Elon Musk should be arrested in the United Kingdom for his offensive hate speech, which presumably the Lib Dems would have thought would be quite a big story. And next to it, a bigger story with a photograph saying inside the reform headquarters, they now refer to Kemi Badenock, the leader of the conservatives, as Santa Claus with a picture of her generated by AI as a snoozing Santa Claus because she always gives the Reform Party a present at Christmastime.

36:47Now, what is this story? How do you get that story in the Telegraph? It isn't the story. And there was nobody to quote. It was sources inside the Reform Party. There wasn't even any individual quotes. It's not even that interesting. I don't get it. Right. So I can see where the Lib Dems are coming from, which is that my assumption is that some Some desperate reform PR person working with the Telegraph who wants to promote reform have said, if you're looking for a story, how about this? Why don't we say that we call Kemi Baitnock Santa Claus because she gives us a present for Christmas? It wasn't yesterday, the day that the Daily Telegraph led on Nigel Farage.

37:23That was the front page. Yeah. And this was really dramatic, was this story that Farage and Zia Yusuf, and there was an op-ed by Zia Yusuf in the Telegraph as well, were going to deport and revoke people in the United Kingdom with indefinite leave to remain. So as with many Farage's policies, the details of it are still not very clear. But the core phrase is he's going to force all migrants with permanent residency to reapply, meaning that hundreds of thousands of people with legal permanent status in the United Kingdom would risk being thrown out of the United Kingdom and having their permanent status revoked.

38:04These are people, I have friends, I'm thinking in particular of a couple that I know quite well who've been in the United Kingdom now for 25 years, who chose not to apply for a passport because they've got indefinite leave to remain. Their children have got passports, their lives are in Britain, they live in Britain, and they are now facing the possibility of deportation. ditto people who've got visas and established themselves and those people that all of us encounter all the time within the nhs within the care system are now at risk of deportation these people legal rights the united kingdom this is not reform going after people on boats or asylum seekers these are people who might have been in this country for a very very long time i mean i'm i'm pleased to see i'll come back to ed davie and the bbc because i really do think he's got a point I'll come on to that.

38:53But I'm pleased to see that at least some of our newspapers today have actually taken apart Farage's stuff with a little more rigor than they have historically. The Daily Mirror, for example, is pointing out that if this policy were pursued, it would lead to the collapse of the National Health Service. Now, as you know, I was in hospital yesterday, and I had this sort of, you know, operation, and I had a general anesthetic. And the main doctor was spanish the anaesthetist was from the middle east the i had during the course of the day of course i'm a bit mad once i'd come around i sort of asked them all where they were from i had probably about eight different nursing people through the day one was british seven were from seven different foreign countries now these are people that we need in this country to keep the health service going we need people in the care system to help people go so what yesterday was about was Nigel Farage, he's on a bit of a roll, and he thinks he's on a bit of a roll because of immigration.

39:53He thinks, right, I'll continue the roll by going even further. And that way, I get on the front page of The Telegraph, and inevitably, because he's on the front page of The Telegraph, the BBC, ITV, Sky, oh, it must be news. And I just think it's where Ed Davey absolutely has a point. When Nigel Farage had his two-day conference, okay, a guy with four MPs at the time in hours five because danny kruger the christian nationalist has come over he got wall to wall coverage day and night the lib dems the complaint they make so you say about the telegraph laura kunsberg bbc's main sunday program interviewer she had a piece trailing her interview with ed davy she had this piece on the website and the headline was something like is it time for ed davy to get serious enough of the stunts enough of the bungie jumping etc So it's only my view.

40:44Slightly your view. But actually, if you read now, because we knew that Ed Davies speech was today, and this will be recording before the speech, but going out afterwards, I sort of badgered them to send me his speech. And I sent it to you last night. And I actually think, I mean, there's a bit of conference knockabout about Bungie Tumby. I think it's a serious speech. I think he's got some very serious lines in it, not least on Europe, as you say. I think he's got a very interesting and clever strategic line. About 10, 15 times he says, that is Trump's America. Do not let it become Farage's Britain.

41:19He really is pinning Farage and Trump. It's quite a big thing to do. So I actually think Ed Davis got a point. So I thank you for sending me the speech and I read it. And the structure of the speech, if people listen, is he begins saying we've done unbelievably well in the parliamentary elections. We've done very well in the local elections. There's a lot of emphasis on local campaigning. One of the strategic decisions the Lib Dems made in the last election was to go hyper-local, campaign on clean water and constituencies, maternity wards and constituencies, things that really mattered to this particular group as opposed to the big national and international issues.

41:58And then he shifts. He goes after the Tories, congratulates the Lib Dems on getting rid of the Tories. Then he goes after Labour and says that… Yeah, it says that Labour's basically Sunak's party. Continuity Sunak. I didn't quite think that line worked, but his general attack was harder than he normally has attacked Labour. Yeah, and the story basically is their austerity lights, no difference between them and the Tories. And actually, it's interesting, just on this one, Robert Colville writing an article again, I think, in The Telegraph, trying to say to Conservative voters, get behind Rachel Reeves.

42:27She's our last hope for fiscal responsibility in Britain. And this is now an argument coming from someone from the sort of centre-right. if you let farage get in or you let the greens get in or you let corbyn get in or perhaps by implication the lib dems you're back into a world of money trees and borrowing and taxing and spending and goodness knows what and rachel reeves is the last champion of fiscal discipline and control i thought that was what was in the interview with maro itoji on leading and you he basically said he was he was a labor supporter he supported new labor wanted kia starmer to win and you said, yeah, what do you think of the government so far?

43:05And he wasn't exactly saying it's been the best government of my lifetime, but he was making the point, I think, that – and do you remember he said he'd listened somewhere and somebody had said, and he couldn't remember where it was, that everybody from centre-left to centre-right should want this government to succeed? It was Jeremy Hunt on our podcast. And the point Mara was making is if this Labour government doesn't succeed, then the alternative isn't going to be kind of, you know, a moderate Tory party. It's going to be something much more extreme. Well, so then the question, I guess, for the Lib Dems is, will they be able to build a real movement around this sort of passionate appeal against Farage, against, as you say, the sort of vision of Trump's Britain?

43:49It would be interesting to know what their polling people say, how it works as strategy. I mean, you and I agree completely with the philosophical things, but presumably there will be people within the party saying, okay, that's all very well, but that's quite highfalutin. in the end what voters are going to vote on and how we're going to increase our vote share in next election is by focusing on individual seats, real bread and butter issues, cost of living, and we don't really need to get drawn into international human rights. My sense of what he's trying to do with this very clear, and I literally lost count of how many times it says, you know, that is Trump's America, don't let it become Farage's Britain.

44:31That is very clearly the line that he wants us to take out of this speech. And that does take you to the bread and butter issues. It does take you to what sort of economy you want, whether he believes in the health service, whether he actually will build it up. And so I thought it was a pretty clever speech. I think the thing about the attack on Labour, because, of course, if you think back to the last election, one of the reasons that the Tories got wiped out is because Labour and the Lib Dems, they had a kind of informal deal going on. You know, where the Lib Dems could beat the Tories, Labour let them.

45:03They didn't fight. Where Labour were way ahead, they didn't fight. It's now been complicated because we have kind of five parties, maybe even six, if Corbyn and Sultana sort themselves out, who are fighting for votes in every area. So I think it'd be interesting how I still think come the election, it may be if this, what the BBC love to call the rise and rise of reform, if that continues, it may be that some kind of informal lab campaigning coalition as opposed to a sort of formal coalition. And it was interesting how he really didn't want to answer the question about whether he would ever go into coalition with Keir Starmer.

45:42A couple of brief things that come out of that. One is that I think you and I should be leaning more into constitutional reform. What you keep describing, which is a world that's gone from a two-party system to a five, six-party system, is not remotely reflected in the way that our country works. And I'd like to see us get behind a constitutional convention and start thinking about all the things we talk about. Australian-style compulsory voting, New Zealand-style balances of first-past-the-post and proportional, etc. etc. Second thing, this is very unfair to you, but I'm going to do it to you anyway, because I think it represents something interesting.

46:16Of course, when we were covering the election, we knew exactly how many seats of the 122 seats the Conservatives took, reform came second in. Without being unfair, just get a sense of it. What would be your guess of how many seats reform came second to the Conservatives in out of the 122? Do you know the answer? I do, yeah. That's why I'm being unfair. But I had to check yesterday, and I got it wrong myself. Okay, I know for Labour and the Lib Dems, for Labour it's high. Okay. What do you think it is for the Tories? I'm going, I'm going third. It's actually only nine seats. So I got it wrong too.

46:50I'm like you and everybody I know who studies politics. Do you know what? I thought it was going to be low, but then I thought it was a trick question. So I'm thinking he's obviously not low. Bugger. No, no, but everybody I know who's been focusing on politics. And actually Ian Dale wrote quite a good article. So what does that tell you? Wrote a good article. Well, what's really interesting is that the Tories are obsessed with reform, but out of 122 seats, only nine of them is reformed second. In 108 seats, Labour or Lib Dem are second to the Tories. And in 64 of the 72 Lib Dem seats, the Tories are second.

47:20So really what the Lib Dems are occupying is the sort of centre-right Tory voter, sort of people like me, right? They're pulling over. That's maybe why I'm being so chippy about the Lib Dems and resisting it. And by the way, Ed Davies says that in terms. He actually says that in terms that, you know, the Tories are where we've targeted our fire and that's what's worked. But it's also what's mad. So, you know, I was, we were talking about Danny Kruger last week and I was looking again at some of the WhatsApp messages that he sent me when he fired you. Yeah, exactly. When he fired me. And of course, what he was saying at the time was, Oh Rory, it's such a pity.

47:54We've lost you from the conservative party. We've got to keep the conservative party together. And the irony is that the right of the conservative party that drove out me, David Gork, Ken Clark, Nicholas Soames, and then earlier lost Sam Gema, Philip Lee to the Lib Dems. Those days were saying, you know, we've got to keep the Conservative Party together. And it's such a pity that we've lost the left of the party. Those people are now leaving. Adam Holloway, Danny Kruger, Maria Caulfield, Nadine Doris are now gone off to reform. So the Tories are in this extraordinary position where they shed the centre-left by kicking us out, saying how sad it and the very same people that kicked us out are now high-turning it off to reform.

48:34What does that leave the Tories with? Well, that's also why I think that Labour has not been making the right strategic choice in sort of focusing so much of its messaging kind of around what I would call reform light. I think we underestimate how much desire there is for a bit of hope, a bit of optimism, a bit of kind of passion, a bit of a real sense of change. And I'll tell you the other thing, you talked there about the constitutional stuff. I was talking to a minister the other day who's got, you know, a particular really difficult problem to address policy-wise. And I know we're already more than a year into the Parliament, but I actually think, and I've got no doubt Keir Starmer's speech is probably pretty much written by now, and maybe it's too late to do this, but I actually think taking three or four seemingly intractable policy issues, and immigration might be one of them, and saying, okay, this is proving more difficult than we imagined.

49:30This is really difficult. We can only make the changes that we need to make if we actually bring the public with us. Therefore, we are going to do citizens' assemblies. That would feed your desire for some sort of constitutional change. It would be honest with the public that we've got some really difficult choices to make. Right now, this is why I felt Trump's autism thing was such a ridiculous thing to do. At a time when people are trusting politicians and believing politicians less, and therefore aren't necessarily buying into the tough choices we have to make. You've got to bring the public in with you.

50:04And for things like immigration, things like NHS reform, adult social care, which is this complete catastrophe. People in Cumbria have seen 15 minutes a day by carers, never really worked out how to fund that. Citizens' Assembly, cross-party, commissions, constitutional reform. I mean, I'm still a little bit, and this is me being narcissistic, but I'm still a little bitter that I was never able to work with Labour on this stuff. I was desperate before the election to say, can I help support a commission on AI, a commission on the NHS? And I do think there's a real opportunity to reach out across party and create broader swathes of support for Labour.

50:49I'm sort of surprised that they're still thinking so tribally. I think maybe partly because of the way that the Tories have conducted themselves since the election. I mean, I thought one of Ed Davis' strong sections in the speech where he basically talked about how the Conservatives have operated since the election. No apology, no sense of anything we did was wrong. And you saw that today. I heard, I was on the Today programme this morning, talking about podcast crowds and theatres, Rory, as you do. very good and before they had kevin hollenrake the tory party chairman talking about immigration and all this stuff and it it was sort of embarrassing because he was every single question virtually nick robinson was able to come back and say but that was your policy but that was on your watch but and until i think they they have some sort of strategic break and acceptance that part of the mess we're in is because of what they what they left i don't think they're gonna get heard.

51:45So I think that may be one reason. But I agree with you. So for example, I would say on something like, you know, welfare reform, which clearly was, you know, a big part of what Labour is trying to do, got defeated by their own MPs. That's going to make it difficult to sort of, you know, do the next stages of welfare reform, which has to happen. Maybe there is a case for Pat McFadden sitting down with Ian Duncan Smith. And that will give some Labour people the heebie GBs. But Ian Duncan Smith at least did reform that kind of people understood. And whether you agree with it or didn't, he knows the area really inside out.

52:18So I agree with you. I think that what our politics needs is greater sense of we're facing really big challenges. It's so difficult to be in government right now. Okay, part of the job of the opposition is to make it even more difficult. But actually, I think the Tories and other parties would do themselves a lot of good if they actually said, maybe we can help here. Yeah, and they should be able to help. And the advantage isn't just that you could get the legislation through, but if you make it genuinely cross-party on something like adult social care or welfare reform, you can begin to get long-term stuff.

52:54I mean, remember, we're talking about a 10-year housing policy. How do you get a 10-year housing policy? Only if you get the other parties to sign up. Otherwise, nobody believes in a 10-year investment horizon. So it'd be brilliant for investment if we had a sense that there was a cross-party agreement on these things. So let's wrap it up there and then question time tomorrow. What are we going to talk about tomorrow? We're going to talk about… Well, I think we need to look at some very, very interesting things happening in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk. We also have the Moldovan elections coming, which sounds a bit niche, but actually is really critical to European security and Russia.

53:28I think we should also take a look at China and espionage because of this case that's been dropped, which Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the Commons, is very unhappy about. So look at that. And here's one for Roy. Let's try and pick our favorite ever advert on TV. It's the 70th anniversary of TV advertising. Very good. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.