492. Should Europe Boycott the World Cup? (Question Time)

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1:53Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. I'm with me, Rory Stewart. So here we are in Davos again. So we're going to talk about actually how Trump's actions in Greenland might result in boycotts around the World Cup and in particular whether Alistair should be going to the World Cup. We're also, though, going to be talking about what we've seen in Davos, what we've learned about the world from Davos. We're going to be getting into Robert Jenrick's defection from the Conservative Party. So this was the heir apparent to the Conservative Party. He's now gone over to Nigel Farage's reform.

2:25And does that mean that reform is on track to replace the Conservative Party or the opposite? We're going to talk also finally about Syria, where there has been a confrontation between the Syrian government and the Kurds. Huge boiling issue that's been there for a year, which at the moment is being celebrated by Mark Rutter and others, by another great achievement by Donald Trump. I'll try to explain a little bit, having been in Syria, what it's like on the ground. And then we'll finish talking a little bit about your friend Neil Kinner. Could we just interview you on leading? Well, let me ask you that first question.

2:56It comes from Margaret, who's in North Carolina. I really respect Alistair for seriously considering not attending the World Cup and for recognizing the danger of normalizing what's happening in the United States. At what point do we stop expressing surprise at Trump's actions and start calling this what it is, the emergence of autocracy in America? And what would it take for England and other European countries to boycott the World Cup in protest? And just to remind listeners, for people who are real sort of rest-of-politics question-time geeks, we actually asked listeners to respond on whether Alistair should go and watch the World Cup.

3:34And no secret, he absolutely loves football and Scotland has qualified. So it's one of the most exciting things that's happened to him in decades. We had 5 ,000 votes across Instagram, no 66%. Yes, 34%. 1 ,000 votes on Spotify, no 78%. Yes, 22%. 250 response to an email, no 91%, yes 90%. So on aggregate, 84 % against the tenants. What does that make you think about going to the United States? I've actually firmly decided anyway. That probably did help me, push me in that direction. And my son Callum as well, he was also intending to go and has decided now, no, he's not. And not because of me, just because he's made that decision independently.

4:16And we, you know, both my sons and I followed Scotland through thin and thin. When was the last time they qualified for the World Cup? In 1998. So I went to that. In fact, I persuaded Tony Blair to come out and see the team one way. So it's sad and I really do feel bad about it. And by the way, I should say that does not mean I think that everybody who goes is a terrible person. I think that but I think if in my position it was the same for you I think it is you are in part making a statement that this is okay and you know if I make the point as I do that Trump uses everything to political ends and by god he's going to use this world cup with his friend Infantino and I'm afraid I've told you before that about this book I read a German book by Volker Hesse called Berlin 1936.

5:09I sort of feel that that's what we're seeing. And what was really interesting, I went through a lot of the messages that came through with these votes. And by the way, I had hundreds and hundreds myself as well, both on social media and directly to email and DM and all that stuff. But a lot of Americans saying that they feel that outsiders objecting and protesting in whatever way they can to Trump helps them. Emails in. I mean, we should get onto this because partly what many Americans writing and have been talking about is to bring the focus back on what's happening domestically. I mean, we're talking a lot about Greenland.

5:48But in fact, the horror of what's happening in Minnesota and the sense of equipping authoritarianism. But lots of people said that was the tipping point. Let's move on to the next question. What would happen if we took the second half of her question if there was a mass boycott of the US World Cup? And the analogies here for people are, of course, that when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980, there was a boycott of the Olympics. There was a big sustained boycott of South African teams during apartheid. There were big sanctions against Russian sports people. Still are. Still are, following Putin's invasion.

6:26But to do it against the United States would be completely different. I mean, all the countries that it was done to before were, in a sense, more peripheral than the United States. The US was the central rule organizer. The US organized a lot of those moves. And Trump, of course, would weaponize it. And of course, the US has so much control over the sponsorship, the deals, the companies. He would present it as loser countries victimizing the US, and he would use it probably to boost his own poll ratings. So the only way I think you could pull it off is if you made it very much focused on a single issue, Greenland, and if you had a huge multilateral coalition where Trump can't present it as just a marginal thing, but basically the entire world boycotts the World Cup.

7:14And it would be very interesting to see where public opinion went on it because the truth is we've got two of the four UK countries are qualified, England and Scotland. There is massive interest in the World Cup. We are both footballing nations. And I'm not convinced that most people wouldn't necessarily support it. Oh, you think the British public wouldn't be in favour of not sending our teams? I don't know. You think it's such a huge thing that actually sports fans would be really, really hurt and confused? Look, if it develops into, we actually see the sort of pictures that you described in the main episode of American troops arriving on Greenland and fighting with Danes.

7:52Yeah. then I think that's a different level of thing. But if we're just carrying on in this stage of Trump's bullying, Trump's intimidation, there'll certainly, to my mind, be no pushback from within FIFA. He won a FIFA Peace Prize. He also got a second Peace Prize we didn't talk about enough, which is that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize handed over. It's really great. It would be like, I don't know, maybe I was lucky enough to get into a university and then I decided that I could just let my mate get into the university. Or if Usain Bolt were here, you could put his gold medal around your neck.

8:28And I'd be the fastest sprinting world. On the earth, yeah. I mean, it's pathetic. It's truly pathetic. It's like, in fact, if I can plug the New World, I've just seen our front page this week. It's Trump with a green dummy in his mouth saying, we're about to see what happens when a baby doesn't get what it wants. Which is extremely, his thing to the Norwegian, I mean, anybody who hasn't followed this amazing tweet. It was a letter, though. It was a letter. To Janis Karsora, who we've interviewed. Yeah. In which he says, listen, you guys, the Norwegians, didn't give me the Nobel Peace Prize. So to be honest, I'm not that interested in peace anymore.

9:03I mean, of course, I'm still going to do a bit of peace. Yeah, but you can't see me purely as the president for peace. Anyway, I'm going to take what I want because you didn't give me the peace prize. That's absolutely terrific. But look, I don't know what happens if the, because it would be a huge thing for any of these countries to say to their football associations, we don't want you to go to the World Cup, given how much it means to them, given the financial economic situation attached to it, and so much else that goes on with it. So yeah, we'll see. But look, I feel settled in my opinion, but I know I'm going to feel very, very sad when the World Cup comes around.

9:37I think there should be a boycott, even though Trump will use it to his benefit, even though it won't change US foreign policy, I think it will actually be very useful domestically in the United States for opponents to Trump to say, this is unbelievable. Every single European country and many other countries around the world. But it would have to be that. It would have to be that if it was another divide and rule. I mean, I don't know who else is qualified. I mean, are there any other countries which might be amused to team up with this and refusing to tell? Oh, who are not in Europe? Yeah. Are there Asian countries that could come along?

10:07Yeah, they could. Listen, is it thanks to - Is China qualified? No. Thanks to Infantino's money-making expansion of the whole thing, there are more countries than ever at the World Cup. Look, it could become a thing. I don't think we're far from that. Here's one for you to think about, Rory. Should the king go to the 250th anniversary celebrations? Because that's the plan. Well, definitely not if that anniversary involves making another claim on Canada. Because he is the king of Canada. Canada's a sovereign nation. But just take Greenland alone. If this is still going on, should Keir Starmer and the king sit down and say, you know what, bad idea?

10:44I think first thing is it's very unfair to the king because, of course, the king doesn't make these decisions on his own. Right. This is the decision for Keir Starmer. But I'm afraid this Greenland thing crosses the line beyond anything we've seen and that we have to respond so firmly, so clearly and above all together. I keep coming back to this. Everything coordinated. Carney, Macron, stand together. Right. Next question. Just before we go, I just want to give a little sense of the flavor of the issues that were raised, particularly by American listeners, about why they felt this has crossed the line.

11:16And these are the things that they've sort of put up with up to now. Politicization of law, delegitimization of courts, attack on a free press, normalization of rule breaking, reframing of minorities' security threats, personality cult, aggressive foreign policy, and of course, all the lying and everything else that we know about. Okay. Jackie, who's from Derby. Hi, guys. I caught wind that you're at Davos this week. During what's a pretty significant week geopolitically, what's the most interesting thing you've had? Well, first thing, before I get on to that, I mean, my goodness, there is a lot of nonsense.

11:46I mean, if you wanted to tease this amazing gathering of people, I mean, it's extraordinary. I mean, it's such a ragbag of peculiar different types of people. People quite understandably running small charities trying to raise money, hoping they're going to meet some Saudi trillionaire who's going to give them$50 million because they met him over a cup of coffee. People trying to reignite issues that seem to be dying. And other people who you can kind of imagine sort of thing. When you're having a conversation, we'll sort of stand up and say, the one thing I want to say is treasure your parents.

12:25It's a lot of that stuff, right? A lot of kind of kooky self-help stuff going on, which probably is a sign that we are in massive, massive decline. Because actually, the whole spirit of this thing is being sapped from within. This whole thing was set up on the basis of globalization, free trade, rules-based international order. And what can you really say when Trump is going to Greenland except be nice to your parents? Be nice to your parents. Give them a big hug. Yeah. I look, as you have seen, Rory, I get very, very irritable at these events. I cannot stand the sort of status consciousness that goes on.

13:08You know, we're lucky enough, Rory, we've got white badges. They're very good. We're very important. It's extremely important. Well, you walk around with your white badge. And then you meet other people. I met this other guy who only had a green badge, would you believe. And he said, how much do you have to pay for that? And I said, well, I don't want to upset you, but nothing. Oh, my God. He paid$40 ,000 to be here. To have a less good badge than you. Yeah. Yeah, that must be annoying. Must be really annoying. But the friend that he was with, however, said, you will not believe how much business I do here.

13:38Right. He was in sort of tech world, but he said, I will have meetings that follow on from meetings I've already had or that create new meetings I will have. But he reckons his business benefits to a factor of about a quarter by coming to Davos and Bia. And the network thing. I mean, if we think about we were here last year and we were up in the main street, which you can only get into with a fancy type of badge. And that's where we saw the Syrian foreign minister. And that's where we fixed up the trip to Syria. That's where we saw John Kerry. That's where we saw the former Swedish prime minister.

14:11I mean, so just standing in that street, Bill Gates was wandering around, I think. So that part of it is fine. But I'll tell you what absolutely does my head in in a way that I can't even tell you. I'm thinking of getting a gigantic badge made on here to say, do not ask me when I arrived in Davos. Do not ask me when I'm leaving. Do not ask me where I'm staying. Do not ask me how I get from my hotel to the Congress Center because you don't really care. I can't stand all the small talk that goes on. Whereas there is this thing develops. I had breakfast this morning. I overheard these six. I think they were from Mongolia and they were sitting there and they would.

14:47which they talked for 25 minutes about the different ways that they had found to get to the Congress Center. Just do it. Don't talk about it. Do it. Okay. Now, you did, however, have one conversation which you did think was quite interesting. I would say the most interesting, because to me, being interested is learning things you didn't know. And I had a meeting yesterday with a group called the International Justice Mission, where they educated me about an issue that I was vaguely aware of, but the scale of it is truly horrific. And I should tell viewers and listeners to be prepared for some truly horrible things.

15:26So this is International Justice Mission. They basically use this to help try to prevent violence against the poor, and in particular, women and children. It's all violence against the poor and slavery and all the stuff that goes on. but they explained to me that the single biggest commercial child sex abuse situation that's going on is online child sex abuse where you can sit at your laptop at home as a pervert and you can use the web and not the dark web you can use the web to make contact with people in different countries around the world, and you can order bespoke scenes of child abuse, including siblings, animals, just the most depraved stuff imaginable.

16:21And they were saying that they've got a team working in the Philippines. Apparently the Philippines is really big for this. And they reckon half a million children have been abused in this way. And I think one of the things that shocked me most is Britain is responsible for a lot of this. A lot of the customers are British. We're third in the list. USA is one and we're third. I can't remember who's number two. And the point they were making, the reason they wanted to see me, was because they say they've got to find a government that will take the lead on this and educate the public about it, ventilate the issue, and persuade the tech companies to make changes that they say can easily be made to make this impossible.

17:02The stuff they were describing was beyond our own. I think one of the things maybe to do is to get them on for a few minutes to talk. But it's also, if we take it bigger, is such a sign of how things are going wrong. Because of course, we're in a world in which Elon Musk, instead of being interested in monitoring this stuff, is going in completely the opposite direction. He's enabling his AI systems to generate nude images of celebrities and ordinary private people and spread them all over. I mean, and I think maybe this relates back to this question of what we're looking at in the United States, what we'd be boycotting if we were not going to the World Cup, what Greenland represents.

17:43And I think part of it is this question of who they think they are. And in particular, the sense that Trump's vision, it's not quite, I mean, people say it's fascist. It's not completely fascist. The odd thing is that in Germany and Italy after the war, they were in a terrible situation. Germany being defeated in the first world war, it had mass unemployment, fights in the streets. There was this deep resentment, the stabbed in the back, all this sort of stuff. Italy, when it was doing its fascist adventures, was a relatively marginal, impoverished country trying to establish itself. We've never seen before this, which is the global hegemon, the wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, the country that created these alliances and underpinned them, that doesn't actually face any significant security threat from Greenland, that they couldn't, as you pointed out, deal with perfectly well by putting their soldiers there if they wanted to, suddenly deciding to do this stuff and doing it in a way that is so of vindictive, sadistic, public, humiliating.

18:45It is a sense that they want to recreate some strange world. And you don't read this stuff, but I think it's – I don't want to encourage you to read this stuff. This sort of fantasy fiction, sci-fi fiction, sort of worlds where technology has been created and then democracy is collapsed and some empire is taken over, run by mad dictators with crumbling computers. Maybe you're right, Shizuri, because the other thing that we didn't cover in the main episode on Greenland is that there's also a division going on between the national security argument that says we need this for national security. And then you have people like Peter Thiel and Musk and these guys.

19:24They see Greenland as the place where they maybe carry out some of their libertarian experiments for the future. So you're absolutely right. But just bringing back to Jackie's question, the thing about Davos. So why would a charity like that be here? These people who are fighting for this campaign? Partly because they need money. And I bumped into David Miliband, who runs this huge charity in New York. He's had to sack thousands of people since USAID did their cuts. So I bumped into him in the street and I said, where are you going? He said, I'm just off to try and talk another billionaire into giving us more money.

20:01So you've got these billionaires wandering around the place. and of course the inequality that they have created that they drive and they thrive on these charities really good causes trying to do good things but they're doing them because the governments have pulled the plug and which means also that instead of there being any central coordinated response very peace build incidentally we need to we'll go to the break now but i would like you to return to our campaign to give the nobel peace prize to usa id and work out how we can coordinate that build a mindset anyone who wants to get behind that we've looked at the rules on how you nominate.

20:33We need organizations to write in. So please get in touch if you'd like to help us nominate USAID for the Nobel Peace Prize. And don't forget the part of our plan originally was that whoever is American president at the time should be invited to accept it, but they should bring along those presidents who were in charge when USAID was in. And celebrate everything that America did on combating malaria, AIDS, international development, generosity to the world. All right, let's have a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about Robert Jenrick and we'll talk about your trip to Syria.

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24:29Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Question from Finn from Manchester. Could Robert Jenrick's sacking from the Conservative Party create an opportunity for Kemi Baden-Ock to pull the party back towards the centre ground? And when Jenrick defects to reform, how can Nigel Farage credibly present reform as the remedy for the Conservatives' recent failures? Well, we preempted that second part of the question on the issue of Nadim Zahawi's defection. I think it's very, very hard for reform to say we're the big changemakers when, apart from Farage and maybe Tice a bit, maybe Zia Yusuf a bit, it is very much seen as a one-man ban.