469. Is Starmer Out of Moves? Asylum Gamble, Tax Chaos, and Open Infighting

28:15He sounds really interesting and what have you. But his big point is actually that, as you mentioned France there, he believes that the British government should be doing deals with individual European countries, particularly Germany. And he also mentioned Denmark, and we'll come on to Denmark in a minute. Because ultimately, the only deterrent that is actually going to work is if you make that journey knowing that when you arrive, you get sent straight back. Absolutely. Because that is what happened with Turkey. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it works. And as Gerald points out, with Turkey, there was something like a million people crossing the Mediterranean in a very short period.

28:53And as soon as the EU-Turkey deal was put in place, which basically meant anyone crossing the Mediterranean to Greece returned to Turkey, the numbers dropped to a few thousand in a month from a million. I watched the whole, I don't normally do this, but we got back from Manchester and I went home and I actually watched the whole of the statement. Oh, my Lord, when the rest of us sit and watch box sets, you're watching statements. I watched the BBC Parliament channel and I watched the whole thing from start to finish because one, I wanted to see the extent of Labour backbench disgruntlement, which there's actually a bit but less than I thought there might be.

29:26I also wanted to see how the Tories and Reform and the other opposition parties handled it. Interestingly, Kemi Badenox, who was Shabana Mahmood doing the statement, Kemi Badenox was the leader of the opposition. For the Tories, it would normally have been Chris Philip, the Shadow Home Secretary. And she actually was in a place of saying, far better than what went before. You're a lot better than Yvette Cooper at this job. Good start, got to go further. And then reform, Farage and that lot, they were basically saying, looks like she's auditioning to join reform. then worst of all to wind up labor Stephen Yaxley-Lennon the self-styled patriot Tommy Robinson came out and said you know even though he thinks Shubana Mahmood isn't really British he made that point in the in the comments he came out sort of broadly accepting so I kind of watched the whole thing and at the risk of triggering all of my family because the family whatsapp group was not happy about this policy including over breakfast this morning with Fiona who was still sort of mildly raging about the whole thing, feeling that this is just sort of playing to reform, the issue's not really as big as people say, etc.

30:36I actually think that what she's trying to do is, and this is what Keir Starmer has told her to do, is get this off the agenda from the place where it is right now, almost at the top. In fact, in some polls you say it is at the top. And you do that in two ways. One, by fixing it, that's the most important thing. but also by showing that you're trying to fix it with something that's convincing and compelling. And I have to say from watching her, I was trying my best just to step back from what she was trying to do. It was impressive. She really knew what she was on about. You really sense she was sort of deep into the detail.

31:15And I think that one of the reasons why Labour's got themselves into a bit of a mess recently is a lack of clarity about where they're coming from and a lack of strength in how they project it. Now, it could all go tits up if there's a massive rebellion and they don't get it through Parliament. But my sense is that she did enough. And I had a message last night from a Labour MP who was more positive is the wrong word, but when he spoke, it was... And I said, oh, surprised that you all stand there. And he said this thing, he says... And he's based up north. And he said, listen, we have got to fix this because this is the gateway issue to the hatred of us right now.

31:53The problem is, though, I suspect that her policies will not significantly reduce the numbers. It won't be anything like as effective as safe third country return because many people, I'm afraid, will go through the asylum process. They'll be rejected and they will then choose not to return to their countries. They will avoid being forcibly deported. They'll disappear into the grey economy. they'll be supported by family. And what we will then have is increasing destitution, because basically what she's doing is she's saying that if you've failed your asylum process, you're going to have less support on housing, education, employment, welfare.

32:36But for many people who've spent two years traveling from Sudan or a year and a half traveling from Afghanistan, done, they're still going to prefer to illegally stay. And provided they avoid getting arrested by the police and they don't turn up to their tribunals, they can often continue for many, many years to operate in the grey economy, but in desperate situations. They're lucky they'll have families supporting them, but they will be exploited by employers who will not pay them properly, who'll make them work too many hours. That's the problem. We're not in a situation where when your appeal is refused, you're immediately put on a plane out.

33:15It's very difficult to get full figures on how many people stay when their asylum claim is rejected. We can see, for example, that there are about 100 ,000 claims a year and about 10 ,000 people leave a year. That doesn't necessarily mean that 90 % of them are staying because some of these are claims from previous years. Nevertheless, there is a significant issue around people whose claim is rejected and who are not deported, because actually, generally, you get deported if you're in prison or the authorities can get you. Instead, those people choose to go into the grey economy, and then they're in a very difficult situation.

33:52No mainstream benefits, no housing, difficult to access work, education, health, they'll be exploited by employers because they don't have legal status. But many people who have claimed asylum and been rejected will choose to do that and be supported by extended family networks rather than being removed. So it may not actually reduce the number of people claiming asylum that much. One other thing we should put in the newsletter is a very interesting piece that Fraser Nelson wrote. And I thought it was very interesting how the government deliberately set off this debate that we're modeling it on Denmark, centre-left government that's been very, very tough on asylum.

34:31And actually, Fraser Nelson's piece is really interesting because it shows 10 areas in which this is actually not nearly as tough as Denmark. And he's not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just very interesting that it's, you know, you throw out a headline to the media and they go, oh, Denmark, Denmark, Denmark, Denmark, and then nobody actually goes and bothers and looks at the detail. At the small print centuries, you often talk about policies which get big media coverage, but actually in detail, not much happens. And a classic example with Denmark is that Shabana Mahmoud has announced, copying Denmark, that asylum seekers can have their assets confiscated, like their e-bike, if they're not contributing towards their housing.

35:11Yes, that exists in Denmark, but apparently it's only happened 17 times since the law was introduced. There's only been 17 assets confiscated in Denmark. And because in some cases it was their jewellery, this line ran here that Shabana Mahmoud wants to take away your jewellery. And she was very, very clear in the House of Commons, that is not what she was talking about. It was a really detailed piece. The other really interesting point he made is that he said Keir Starmer doesn't really like big policy debates playing out in public, but Shabana Mahmood has decided she's going to have a really big debate about this and she's going to see how it plays out.

35:47Which is probably the right decision. You've got to take some risk. And what do you think of this? So this, one of the things that really seem to be winding people up is the idea that you get your status checked you know with this great home office bureaucracy that never seems to be able to check much every 2.5 years and it's up to 20 years before you can get settled status and i think the reason that fiona and grace in particular were getting really wound up about this is because actually when grace was at primary school some of her best friends were kosovans who came here because of what was going on in the kosovo war settled here are now, you know, there's one family we know where they've got three kids, all of whom have, you know, gone on to university, doing good things, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

36:29And there's this sense that, you know, had we had this system then, they might have gone back after 2.5 years, five years, whatever it might be. So here's one for you. Let's just take something like Syria. So there we are. We were in Syria with al-Shara. He was in the White House last week with Donald Trump, spraying him with perfume and sort of essentially saying, this guy's great. Does that mean that Syria is now safe? And therefore, should all the Syrians who came into Europe, and many of them also into the UK, that they now go back? And if so, how? Syria is safer because Bashar al-Assad isn't there.

37:05But there are still areas of Syria which are unbelievably dangerous that I wouldn't suggest anybody travels to. You've seen the fights with the Druids and the Alawites. There are ISIS Islamic State cells out in the southeast. But that basically means we don't send anybody back to countries that are dangerous. Most of these countries, I mean, every country is on some danger. Let me push further. Afghanistan. I mean, Afghanistan will be a really good test case for the way that Britain thinks about this. Afghanistan, in some measures, is safer, right? In the sense that I was back there in August.

37:34For the first time in 20 years, I could stop, have picnics on the roadside. The Taliban has significantly reduced the number of people being killed. There aren't terrorist attacks because they, the Taliban, who were doing the attacks are now the government, and there's not fighting taking place. on the other hand it is a patriarchal chauvinistic regime severely repressing the rights of women on the one hand you could say well yes you can go back to afghanistan probably go on holiday in afghanistan and you're not going to get killed on the other hand what do the british public think of women living in a situation like taliban afghanistan what are the courts going to think i i my view my answer to this is i think gerald is right which is the british government needs to say in a big global refugee coalition, I keep coming back, just share the button, get Germany, France, Britain, Canada, everybody to sign up to say, we will take 0.05 % of our population annually, and we'll take real people, female judges threatened by the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we will not accept anybody coming informally across on a boat.

38:40And if you could get that coalition together, get the new head of the UNHCR behind it, because they're looking for a new head of the UNHCR at the moment, rethink this whole... Tom Fletcher. He's already got a job. He can have that one too. He can have that one too. I think there'll be a non-British person getting that job. Then there is a chance of doing this. And I think it makes sense for the whole world to do it together because in every country in the world, this issue is leading to the rise of populism and even the edges of proto-fascism. But Roy, how do you do that in the context of climate, which is going to produce far more refugees than we have now.

39:17An American government, we're going to talk about this later, that is not even bothering to turn up to the G20 and not even sending anyone to the G20, didn't go to COP. So the idea we're going to get greater international cooperation at a time of this rising nationalism, I think it's going to be very, very tough to do that. Well, this is the big trick, isn't it? To say, okay, America's isolated itself, and this is the opportunity for Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia. Yeah. And do you try and do deals with China and try and get them to engage more positively on this kind of stuff? Very sadly, China and Japan are very, very bad at taking refugees and asylum seekers.

39:52The number of asylum seekers taken in Lichtenstein is more than the whole of Japan. I mean, it's extraordinary. And then, of course, we don't talk enough about the fact that most of the burden is being borne in Asian and African countries. So Uganda takes millions of refugees. Many of the refugees from Myanmar end up in Bangladesh. many of the refugees from afghanistan end up in pakistan iran so there's there's a more complicated story here about developing countries or poorer countries taking a huge burden of refugees i was taking still we cannot survive as liberal governments unless we put proper controls in our borders which are humane and just and take the people who we decide we can take let's say britain took i don't know 40 000 people a year france took 40 000 people a year germany took 50 ,000 a year.

40:40The Netherlands took 20 ,000 a year. And we're talking about refugees as opposed to those people coming and applying for jobs and getting visas. We're talking about people who you could go out to the public and explain very clearly, this is the criteria on which we're taking it. We're sharing the burden with all other European countries. These are the kind of people, female judges from Afghanistan, for example, and we're not accepting people who pay people smugglers to turn up on boats. Okay. Well, listen, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about But another question that we asked people on tour, which is, is Donald Trump creating a fascist United States of America?

41:18See you then.

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43:43Welcome back to The Rest is Politics. I'm me, Ernest Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Now, one of the questions we asked our audiences on our recent tour is this. Are we witnessing the birth of a fascist USA? It's really interesting. Every audience was roughly the same. The highest was Glasgow. 82 % agreed with that proposition. 18 % disagreed, but it was above 70 % everywhere. That's quite a big statement. Are we witnessing the birth of a fascist USA? And of course, it's something that triggers people on the right, that kind of response. It even used to trigger your friend, Tony Blair. I think it still does trigger him a bit.

44:19Yeah. I mean, I sometimes think, I mean, I use words like proto-fascist because I don't want to get drawn into the people excusing Donald Trump on the grounds that he's not Hitler. I mean, obviously he's not Hitler. But that doesn't mean that what he's doing is not unbelievably dangerous and troubling. One of the ways of talking about it is to look at Trump's coalition. So traditionally, we've talked about Trump's coalition as having three bits to it. Tech bros like Musk or your friend, Curtis Yarvin. Brackets, not my friend. Second group, the broad kind of MAGA base, which is tens of millions of voters and therefore pretty diverse, all the way from white, less educated communities with economic anxieties, right the way through to black Pentecostal churches in some cases and school mums on the other side.

45:08And then finally, this group called Christian Nationalists. And we haven't spoken much about them. And of course, the reason we're talking about them today is that Nick Fuentes was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and then was a massive attack by Ben Shapiro. Now, just to explain to people who don't get into the weeds of all this, Nick Fuentes is a young influencer with genuinely fascist views. He's on record saying a lot of women want to be raped. They want men to beat the SHIT out them. He talked about the Jim Crow laws saying big deal, blacks weren't allowed to drink from water fountains, who cares, it's just a water fountain.

45:46He said that Jews are responsible for every war in the world and they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power. So this is Nick Fuentes. He was platformed on Tucker Carlson. So Tucker Carlson interviewed him for a long time. That's a big show. And Ben Shapiro, who is a Trump sympathetic right-wing podcaster, then attacked, exposing all these divisions within the setup. It then led me down this path of getting a sense of Christian nationalism. What's your sense of Christian nationalism? Before I start ranting on... Well, I'm fascinated by this obsession that the Christian right, which Trump is responding to, have with Nigeria.

46:21So the Nigerian thing, they basically say that Christians are being persecuted. Now, there's 50-50 Christians and Muslims, and there is some inter-ethnic, inter-religious violence, no doubt about that. But to say that this is a level of persecutions against Christians, which requires the American administration to intervene, given all the things they don't intervene, in a continent, by the way, that I think Donald Trump has never visited, certainly never visited as president, which I think shows you where he puts Africa in his scale of priorities. I have been stunned, and I don't know how it's happened, that the Christian right is the Christian right.

46:57I, as you know, perhaps this is just my bias, but I've always assumed that Jesus was a socialist. I certainly think he had pretty socialist outlook and principles, in my view. Now, when you see these pictures of Trump with all these sort of evangelical pastors sort of laying their hands on him and seeing him like, you know, a second coming of Christ, what I found really interesting when we were on tour, we got lots of questions about AI, and you were doing this big series for Rest His Politics members on AI, And I sense you're on a journey of becoming much, much more sceptical, where in a sense you're becoming into something of an alliance with the Christian right because you see them as being scared of this because it's going to eat into whatever it is that they believe.

47:41So unbundle that one for me. Yeah. Well, so firstly, I think you're right. This is an amazing reminder how different America is to Britain. In Britain, as I often point out to Americans, the church is often seen as a pretty left wing. Famously, conservative governments always getting really annoyed with bishops. Well, the American bishops produced a video this week, did they not? That was really quite powerful about the operations of ICE. Absolutely. Attacking exactly what Trump is doing in terms of the brutal treatment of immigrants and the way in which churches are being violated as places of sanctuary, etc.

48:15And the Pope came out with a very powerful statement about COP and condemned the lack of global leadership. Well, I think he means the leaders who didn't turn up. Right. So if you're from the Christian nationalist right, you see this as part of all your institutions being taken over by woolly liberals. So increasingly, there would be anti-bishops, anti-university professors, anti-bankers. They talk in one bit of the Christian nationalist movement about the seven mountains. They're almost like Marxists. They define all these big institutions that they need to take over from government to education.

48:47This was something that Charlie Kirk was associated with. In fact, in some ways, Charlie Kirk, the man that was assassinated in this horrible incident, shows you some of the links between these groups. He was somebody who began in some ways as a sort of tech bro enthusiast, then became very much part of the MAGA base and then very much embraced Christian nationalism. This part of America, though, and I was talking to a Daily Telegraph journalist called Tim Stanley, who has written articles about this and has also written an article on Timothy McVeigh, written a book actually on Timothy McVeigh, and the links to the 1990s Christian militia movements in the United States, where a lot of this comes from.

49:27He's also talking to a priest who was my local priest called, you'll like this name, he's called Father Yaroslav Skywalker. And they were both trying to help me understand. I need to know more about Father Yaroslav Skywalker. I think his parents are partly Russian and partly Star Wars fans, I think is the way to interpret what's happening there. So what they're both pointing out is that you have to understand that there's a much stronger tradition in the United States, firstly of fundamentalism, but secondly, of reading books like the Book of Apocalypse and believing that what we might see as sort of poetic language is in fact direct prophecy about the current day.

50:08And in this view, the Christian nationalists are not saying Trump is Jesus. What they're saying is that he is like one of these Old Testament kings who ushers in the moment of the second coming. And actually, he might be, they acknowledge personally quite evil, but he's a sort of enabler for this moment. And then you get into even stranger moments, which is that if you're Mick Huckabee, who's the American ambassador to Israel, then you believe in various things such as, for example, there's going to be some new movement in Jerusalem, the temple is going to be rebuilt in Jerusalem. A lot of this is taken from the book of Revelations.

50:45And when all this gets together, you suddenly see breaks within that movement. So Nick Fuentes, who's a Christian nationalist, but he's a very extreme Christian nationalist. He's a Christian nationalist who seems to believe in a Catholic theocracy. He doesn't believe in democracy at all. He wants, effectively, America to be administered by a sort of Pope figure. Well, that's what Curtis Yavid wants. He thinks J.D. Vance should be a monarch. Should be a king, yeah. Maybe without the theology. And the only reason why this matters is you could say these people are fringe people who don't matter at all.

51:15But Rod Dreher, again, who's somebody who you wouldn't have any truck with at all. He's an American intellectual. He's very close to Viktor Orban and has moved to Hungary. He has just come back from Washington completely shocked to discover that he claims 30 to 40 % of Republican staffers are listening to Nick Fuentes, listening to this man who says, women should shut up, Jews control everything, and most black people should be in jail. It's pretty terrifying, isn't it? Just back to fascism. So Umberto Eco, whose definition of fascism is one of the sort of... we're going to be a real European intellectual.

51:50I'm Berto Ecker. Where are we going next? Michel Foucault? Sorry, am I not allowed? Just because you want to be a public intellectual doesn't mean that other people aren't already public intellectuals. Let's just go through them one by one. The principles of fascism as he defines them. A cult of tradition. Rejection of modernism. Just quickly on that one. The tradition is very different, isn't it, in America to Europe. So in Europe, it could be a traditionist like me who... Enlightenment. Yeah, yeah. Or it could be someone like me who's nostalgic about small farms in Cumbria or the British Army or something.

52:25In America, tradition means revolutionary tradition. It means the right to bear arms. Yeah. It means white. And it means white, yeah. We were looking the other day at those posters from the Department of Labor. I mean, they literally, this is about advertising jobs in America. The pictures they use literally look like 1930s Germany. I'm sorry, blonde hair, blue eyes. That's the look. Two kids, man, woman. And some of this is conservatism from the 1930s in America, which was anti-New Deal, anti-Roosevelt, anti-what they saw as a liberal elite, very much against any attempts to help civil rights in the South.

52:59So it was racist and it was violent back in the 30s. And this is coming back again. Yeah. Modernity, defined by the Enlightenment and rationalism, is seen as the beginning of moral depravity. Action and a can-do attitude are valued over intellect and reflection, sure. Disagreement is treason. Critical thinking is seen as a threat to the movement's unity. What's he calling Marjorie Taylor Greene at the moment? Marjorie Traitor Greene. What was she a year ago? An absolute heroine. Fear of difference, exploiting xenophobia and racism, they do that. Appealing to a frustrated middle class, that's their working class, that's what they do.

53:30obsession with plots enemies are both too strong and too weak pacifism is trafficking with the enemy contempt for the weak machismo selective populism and then the final linguistic characteristics using an impoverished vocabulary to limit critical reasoning and discourse well he certainly does that so i think he i think you know the question was are we witnessing the birth of i mean tony did you're right tony says to me stop making comparisons with Hitler. But in terms of the attacks on judges, in terms of the attacks on the media, now including the BBC, not even his own media, but going global on attacking anybody that isn't just a bow down sycophant, that is the birth of fascism.

54:11And in Britain, we need to acknowledge that that's what Tommy Robinson is about. 100%. There is a lot of whitewashing now happening of Tommy Robinson. A lot of people saying you can't call him racist, you can't call him fascist, because he's not Hitler. And when I challenged him, Hitler wasn't Hitler until he became Hitler. Absolutely. When I challenged Tommy Robinson on Twitter, we were talking about this on the tour. Immediately he came back. You talked about machismo from Umberto Eco. He said, Rory Stewart is weak spiritually, weak emotionally, weak intellectually, weak physically, right? It's all about strength.

54:42Again, when I challenged him back, his supporters come in and they say, you never answer any questions. Here are two questions to answer. Number one, are there too many Muslims in the UK? Number two, if there are, how many should there be, right so i answer back one no two c1 and then unleashed on me is extraordinary abuse but if you think about what would happen if you replace that word muslim with are there too many jewish people in the uk are there too many black people in the uk then you see where the problem is and people are just not waking up to what tommy robinson represents and what this movement represents with endlessly whitewashing endlessly i keep talking to you i'm getting more and more aggravated about this.

55:23I go and meet wealthy, educated people in Britain who are now saying to me things like, well, you know, look at the economy going, and maybe we need to sort things up. I had a farmer in Cumbria met me in the street, and he said, taxes are terrible. As a good Tory, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, labor taxes are terrible. He said, I'm just asking you, but do you think we need a Trump? No, we definitely don't need a Trump. But this is becoming more and more mainstream. Finding on Marjorie Taylor Greene, she will matter because votes matter. In fact, for Trump, if he's a one-term president, he may not care too much about what's happening between MAGA and the Christian Ashes, but he's got to get stuff through Congress.

56:04And Marjorie Taylor Greene is a problem. She is somebody, just to remind people, when the 2018 California wildfire happened, she put forward the theory that this was a space laser fired by the Rothschilds. and this is why the california wildfire happened when challenged recently about this anti-semitic theory she said she was unaware that the rothschilds were jewish it was the first time she'd ever heard this now she is now becoming somehow hero of anti-trump people because she's calling out trump on the epstein files but try to remember where she comes from oh yeah she's also she she did an interview the other day where she was talking about the nature of the toxic discourse and the interviewer said but you know you were fine with it until he started attacking you and she said yeah except i was part of the problem either she's having a to stick with the religious uh analogy she's having a sort of road to damascus conversion or she's just decided i'm no longer part of the in crowd so and she's now because we're in this mad conspiracy world world where those people get followers she's now going to try and build her own her own base but the fact that Trump was asked about her and said straight away, you know how good he is with nicknames, Marjorie Traitor Green.

57:16You know, he's decided she's an enemy. And back to Umberto, my good friend and fellow European public intellectual Umberto Eco, you know, identifying your enemies and giving them no quarter whatsoever. And I think the thing is, I've reread that recently, that Project 2025 thing. If you look at it through the lens of where Trump might go, I think it's hard to escape the view that the people of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bournemouth and London are right. Maybe the better question will be, might we be? And a lot of that then depends on the response. And this is where we have a slight disagreement. The rest is politics US because I was struck by the fact that they've been saying he'll have elections, right?

57:58Of course, he'll have elections. Hitler had elections. Putin has elections. Putin has elections. The populists in Latin America have elections. That's not the litmus test in the modern world. Elections will happen the problem is what you do to all the institutions around and if you lose do you accept it because back to 2020 which he certainly didn't in 2020 yeah good well listen that was a canter through the extremely depressing american uh state of american politics um back to question time tomorrow we're going to talk about china and japan that is kicking off a little bit uh since the election of a new japanese prime minister bbc chile chile and we've got mexico and also this to you that finally, it seems, Netanyahu is calling out some of the activities of the settlers in Israel.

58:44And also, Rory, because it's all been a bit heavy, a bit of fun. As you know, because you were there every night, we started our shows with little films of this sort of small army of rest is politics impersonators. Yeah. And one of them, of course, had the, I thought, the best joke of all, which is the fact that you always say that they get my voice much better than your voice. But they do. What I then discovered is one of the reasons for this is that when I hear them, I start imitating their voice. I'm imitating the imitators. You did on one occasion, yeah. No, I do have a very hard, I remember it impersonating, Rory Brimley used to do me and Tony Blair.

59:22And there's an actor called Andrew Dunn who did me and I bumped into him once. He says, you're very hard to get because your voice keeps changing a bit. And I do, I have a mix. I have a bit of Scottish, a bit of Northern. I've lived in London most of my life. I don't really have, whereas you are, all these impersonators do have you said, you know, let's have the poshest voice I can think of. A little bit of mid-Atlantic. A little bit of voice going up at the end. Speaking slowly to foreigners, they do that as well. The most difficult one of all, I think, is Nottingham in Britain. And we did that because we just did this wonderful interview on Punch, which is about to come out.

59:51I'm leading this amazing play about a man who killed somebody with a punch and the extraordinary forgiveness from the family of the victim. Yeah, that's our Monday. But that is all about this extraordinary story of training voices to deal with the Nottingham accent, which actually has very, very posh vowels in it suddenly appearing unexpectedly. Anyway, tomorrow, one of our impersonators apparently has asked us a question. Good. See you tomorrow. See you then. Bye.

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1:00:42As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and division, one national consensus still stands firm. Roast potatoes. Oh God, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas might I gently suggest a year's membership to the rest is politics plus it's the thoughtful kind of present ad free listening bonus episodes early access to Q &A's book discounts and perhaps I think most interesting it's our mini series available only to members focusing on the world's most complex characters some topics.

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