In short
Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Politics - Episode 500
Overview
- Podcast Title: The Rest Is Politics
- Episode Title: 500. Japan, China, and the Fight for Taiwan (Question Time)
- Hosts: Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart
- Episode Description: Discussion on Japan-China relations following Japan's elections, implications of Trump's remarks regarding Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance, and reflections on the Winter Olympics.
Key Themes
- Japan's Political Landscape
- Election of Sanae Takaichi:
- Takaichi becomes Japan's first female prime minister, representing the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party).
- Wins a significant election leading to a two-thirds majority in the lower house, allowing substantial political changes.
- Campaign strategies included a short electoral period during winter, raising concerns about voter turnout.
- Implications for Taiwan and China Relations:
- Takaichi's government expresses readiness to support Taiwan against China, marking a significant shift in Japan's defense policy.
- China's perspective perceives Japan's militarization as a potential threat, recalling historical grievances.
- Shift in Global Politics
- Reactions to Takaichi's Election:
- Japan is viewed as critical in the Indo-Pacific strategy against China.
- Takaichi's pro-Trump alignment and militaristic tendencies could redefine Japan's role on the global stage.
- Historical context provided by China's past interactions with Japan, highlighting the complexity of their relationship.
- Economic Considerations:
- Takaichi's economic policies are likened to those of Liz Truss, focusing on substantial tax cuts and increased spending amid Japan's significant debt concerns.
- The potential economic ramifications of her policies and the response of international markets are analyzed.
- Broader Global Context
- Comparison with Portugal's Political Situation:
- A discussion on the presidential election in Portugal touches on cross-party mobilization against far-right candidates.
- The importance of political systems in facilitating or hindering democratic processes is emphasized.
- Sport and Cultural Reflections
- Winter Olympics Commentary:
- The hosts discuss the emotional power of sports and their ability to unite people amidst global challenges.
- Reflections on the Super Bowl performance by Bad Bunny, which sparked discussions about cultural identity and political reactions in the U.S.
Key Takeaways
- Changing Dynamics in Japan:
- Takaichi's victory signals a shift in Japan's political climate toward a more assertive foreign policy, particularly regarding China and Taiwan.
- Economic strategies may face skepticism amid Japan's increasing debt levels.
- Cultural Significance of the Super Bowl:
- Bad Bunny's performance exemplifies the intersection of culture and politics, revealing broader demographic shifts and political implications in the U.S.
- Need for Cross-Party Collaboration:
- The conversation underscores the necessity for progressive forces to unite against rising populism and far-right movements in various global contexts.
Conclusion This episode of *The Rest Is Politics* offers an insightful examination of significant political events in Japan, their implications for international relations, and reflections on the cultural narratives surrounding current affairs. The interplay of politics, culture, and economic policy is a focal point of the discussion, providing a comprehensive overview for listeners interested in the complexities of modern governance.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOJapan's Election and Its Implications
2:24 to 4:22
Analysis of Japan's election results and their impact on China relations.
“We're going to talk about the presidential election in Portugal.”
Sanae Takeuchi's Leadership Challenges
4:22 to 6:30
Discussion on the leadership and challenges faced by Japan's first female prime minister.
“We'll talk about whether we think they're going to work or not.”
The Changing Landscape of Japanese Politics
6:30 to 8:38
Exploration of the dynamics and shifts in Japanese political landscape.
“Koizumi is the son of the man that you knew.”
China's Perspective on Japan's Militarization
8:38 to 11:18
Understanding China's viewpoint on Japan's military stance and relations.
“And basically the story is prime ministers don't last, nothing can get done.”
Economic Implications of Japan's Policies
11:18 to 14:01
Analysis of the economic policies under Sanae Takeuchi and their global significance.
“So let me just give the Chinese perspective.”
Geopolitical Implications of Japan's Leadership
14:01 to 14:33
Explore how Japan's potential shift towards a militaristic stance under new leadership impacts regional geopolitics.
“to the question from our listener, because she is very clearly going pro-Trump.”
Demographic Challenges in Japan and South Korea
14:33 to 15:43
Discuss the aging populations in Japan and South Korea and their implications on immigration and economy.
“Because for decades now, Japan was pacifist economic powerhouse under American security umbrella.”
Immigration Policies and National Identity
15:43 to 16:54
Analyze how current immigration policies in Japan and South Korea may affect their national identity and economies.
“One in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050.”
Lessons from Portugal's Presidential Election
16:54 to 18:06
Examine the Portuguese presidential election and its implications for political mobilization against far-right movements.
“He's saying that anyone, any woman who has three children is exempt from income tax.”
Mobilizing Against the Far Right in Europe
18:06 to 20:26
Discuss the challenges and strategies in countering the rise of far-right parties in European politics.
“He founded this Chega party in six, seven years ago, and has made a huge impact upon Portuguese politics.”
Show all 22 chapters
Looking Ahead: Thailand's Political Landscape
20:26 to 20:42
Preview the upcoming elections in Thailand and the complexities involved in its political dynamics.
“Maybe that's two elections we've covered.”
The Unifying Power of the Winter Olympics
20:42 to 22:26
Explore the uplifting spirit of the Winter Olympics and its role in uniting people amidst global challenges.
“And let me maybe to bring a lighter, quicker tone, because we've done quite a lot of serious, in-depth geopolitical stuff.”
Skiing Culture and Personal Anecdotes
22:26 to 25:58
Dive into the cultural aspects of skiing and personal experiences related to winter sports.
“And it then transpires that one of these American TV stations, one of the ones that's been taken over by these awful tech oligarchs that are destroying the world, they dubbed out the sound of the booing.”
Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Performance
30:55 to 34:20
Discussion on the cultural impact of Bad Bunny's performance and its reception.
“What could politicians love for a Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance?”
Hispanic Vote and Trump's Strategy
34:20 to 38:28
Analysis of the changing dynamics of the Hispanic vote in the U.S. political landscape.
“There's wonderful research on Texas done by the producers.”
Nature and Health Policy Discussion
38:28 to 41:20
Exploration of the relationship between nature, health, and government policies.
“And Dan's point about silos is absolutely right.”
Understanding Happiness
41:20 to 42:00
Insights on defining happiness and its relationship to long-term fulfillment.
Defining Happiness and Fulfillment
42:00 to 43:16
Explore the deeper meaning of happiness beyond momentary pleasure.
“So you're saying it's not really about the minute-by-minute pleasure, it's the sense of a longer project, a bigger activity.”
Art, Grief, and Catharsis
43:16 to 45:14
Discuss the emotional impact of the film 'Hamnet' and its themes of loss.
“Although I'm all kitted out with wearables at the moment.”
Debating Shakespeare's Legacy
45:14 to 47:15
Analyze Shakespeare's character through the lens of personal sacrifice and creativity.
“And I spent the first half hour really not enjoying it because I think this is so not Abraham Lincoln.”
Gen Z Perspectives on Politics
47:15 to 49:39
A young listener shares thoughts on modern politics and generational views.
“How can you possibly expect a parent of an eight-year-old to watch a whole film about an eight-year-old dying?”
Reflections on Culture and Art
49:39 to 52:16
Reflect on personal experiences with art and the importance of cultural engagement.
“when I was sort of bearing my soul about all this recent stuff in the, we're not mentioning Labour, but you know what I'm talking about.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Alastair Campbell:Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.
0:15Rory Stewart:Most of us are buying energy in the dark, not knowing what it costs. You wouldn't do that with your weekly food shop, but with energy, you're often charged first and only find out the number later.
0:24Alastair Campbell:When you don't have that clarity, you usually end up paying more than you should, which is what Fuse Energy is working to change about how energy works.
0:32Rory Stewart:The average household switching to Fuse can save around£200 on their energy bills.
0:37Alastair Campbell:Fuse handles the practical side. The app shows what you're spending day by day and what that actually means for your bills.
0:44Rory Stewart:For listeners to the show, there's an added benefit. Use the code POLITICS when you switch and you'll receive a free TripPlus subscription.
0:51Alastair Campbell:Switch to Fuse Energy and save around£200 on your energy bills. Use the code POLITICS for a free trip plus subscription. Fuseenergy.com slash politics.
1:21Rory Stewart:every step of the way. One in four was a fraud-paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40 % your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. Rated T for team. Hey, everyone. It's the best in the world. CM Punk. Back to shake up WWE 2K26. This year, the show never stops. You're running the greatest spectacle on Earth with the biggest roster we've ever had. Over 400 superstars and legends from every era. Stack the tables. Break the rules. Burn it all down. And yeah, my very own showcase, telling my story the way it should have been told. Because when the show never stops, anything is possible.
1:58Rory Stewart:Available March 13th, pre-order now.
2:08Alastair Campbell:Welcome to The Rest is Politics, with me, Aniston Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, we've done three episodes, at least in recent days, on Labour and the current travails flowing from the Epstein files. So we're not going to talk about that in question time. We're going to talk about the Japanese election. Fascinating. We're going to talk about the presidential election in Portugal. Also fascinating. We have a little bit of sport, Rory. Yep. But the politics of sport. Okay. Winter Olympics. Yep. Super Bowl. Lovely. And then we might do something a bit lighter. Lovely. Later on. Lovely.
2:40Alastair Campbell:Okay. All right. So should we try and be really disciplined and not talk about Labour? And should we try not to talk about Trump? Okay.
2:49Rory Stewart:It could be hard, but we'll try. Okay, I'm not going to take your challenge on not mentioning Trump, because the first question that we're getting is from Matthew Wright in Wiltshire, which is about Japan. What does Japan's election result mean for its relationship with China and tensions in the Pacific? I mean, the beginning of the answer, of course, Matthew, is that Taiwan has become the big flashpoint between China and Japan in this election because Sanae Takeuchi, who is the Japanese prime minister, has now said explicitly for the first time as a Japanese prime minister that they would effectively go to war to defend Taiwan against China.
3:26Rory Stewart:And she is somebody who's seen as being closer to the man that you don't want to mention in this podcast and the US alliance. Just this episode. And it's going to be weaponized a great deal by China. And we'll get into that a bit later in the podcast, how the Chinese might perceive it. But first, tell us a little bit about this election.
3:43Alastair Campbell:Yeah. No, it's an incredible story, this. So, Sanae Takeuchi is the first female prime minister in Japan. She's the leader of the LDP, this incredible party that has been in power all of my life and more. And there's a formidable political machine that's been spluttering in recent years, and prime minister's falling over the edge, a lot of corruption, a lot of gerontocracy. And along comes Takaichi, and she takes over the leadership. She becomes prime minister for the third time of trying, and she's in power for 110 days. She does some really quite bold economic things. We'll talk about whether we think they're going to work or not.
4:25Alastair Campbell:And then she calls a snap election and she does three things that you're constantly told not to do don't make the campaign so short that even your own campaign candidates can't prepare properly she has a two-week campaign never do it in the middle of winter because people struggle to get to the polls she does it in these massive slow falls and don't do it when students are doing exams because particularly like her when she's got a big appeal to young people um so she does all those things. Middle of winter, students off, and it's a literary snap election. And she's won massively, 316 to 465 seats.
5:00Alastair Campbell:Up from 198.
5:02Rory Stewart:So she's gone from a minority to basically nearly two-thirds of the lower house.
5:06Alastair Campbell:And if you get two-thirds in the Japanese system, it means you can make massive change. And she can do that with a bit of support from this other part, of the innovation party. So she's going to do a lot. And she is a very interesting figure. When we first talked about her, when she became the leader, we both said, you know, because she dresses like Thatcher and she says she wants to be seen as the Iron Lady and she models herself on that. And I had a very interesting email from a woman called Tina Barrett, who is a professor of Political Science at a university in Tokyo. And she sent me a long note way back saying, you guys are getting caught out by the propaganda.
5:48Alastair Campbell:This woman is more Listruss than Margaret Thatcher.
5:51Rory Stewart:Well, I mean, so much to talk about here. But I think first thing is, Japan really, really matters. I mean, we'll get on to Portugal in a bit. But Japan is still one of the largest economies in the world. It is America's big partner in the Indo-Pacific, big balance against China. And the first thing I think that really strikes me is a reminder of how unpredictable global politics has become. Because I was following very closely, I was in Japan last year and I was following very closely a series of Japan experts, both Japanese and foreigners, talking about this election. And basically, it's been surprise after surprise after surprise.
6:33Rory Stewart:We got it all wrong. So the first thing is that when she was running for leadership, as you say, because she'd been defeated twice already, and she's a woman, and she's quite an unusual woman from the right, a lot of the conventional wisdom was hoping that the victor was going to be Koizumi. Koizumi is the son of the man that you knew. So he's the Prime Minister's son. He's in his early 40s. He's glamorous. He's quite kind of centrist, more on the left of the LDP. And actually what happens is that he manages to run against another centrist, split the vote. He ends up with 27 % of the vote. She gets 31%.
7:12Rory Stewart:So she comes to a pretty narrow margin against all the pundits' predictions and becomes leader. Next thing that happens is everybody then sucks their teeth and says, well, it's going to be pretty difficult for her because actually, you know, she's seen as a bit of a sort of outsider in a party dominated by these people who are, as we've often said, when we're talking about Japanese politics, many of them are dynasts, you know, they're children, grandchildren of ministers and prime ministers. and she's from a more modest background from nada didn't go uh initially to the fanciest universities etc so it's going to be difficult for her and and she's in an impossible situation the story was she can't do it because a far-right party has emerged since seto which is beginning to pick up big anti-immigrant vote and at the same time she's going to lose her coalition partner on the left who have signaled they're extremely uncomfortable being connected with the right-wing parties so her problem feels a bit like you know for example the tory party in britain you don't want to overstretch it but she's got the rise as your friend chris mason would say the rise and
8:18Alastair Campbell:rise of sansato of reform rise and rise of reform he was a bit upset i thought oh we're not talking
8:24Rory Stewart:about later anyway that's happening on her right meanwhile she's about to lose the left-wing coalition and the story is nobody can change uh japanese politics because to use another cliche from British politics, governance is broken. Japanese government's broken. And basically the story is prime ministers don't last, nothing can get done. The LDP is mired in, as you say, old people, corruption, these incredible factions and policy machines. So she's stuck. And then she calls an election. And then everyone's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, how on earth is this going to work out?
9:00Rory Stewart:Because how on earth is she going to deal with the populist rights and the fracturing Japanese politics?
9:05Alastair Campbell:What we're talking about in the episode we did on Monday, this thing about reputational currency in the bank. So what you're describing is a place where she didn't have that much reputational currency. And as I said on Monday, where politicians get big reputational currency is by winning elections. And she has won so big.
9:26Rory Stewart:Yes, exactly. So I'm going to just sort of develop that. So contrary to most of these pundits' predictions, she's killed it. And again, you can imagine when people call snap elections, people have visions of Macron, but she didn't do it like Macron. Having been in for a long time in a very weak position, she moved very, very quickly. But you've also pointed out three reasons why that election might not have worked. So now she's in. Next problem that we have, which is that journalists writing about it find it sometimes, we can share a New York Times article, which is a classic example of this. they get very excited by the fact she's the first woman she plays the heavy metal drum so there's a lot of memes about her playing the drums with the south korean president yeah and there are lots of special celebrity toys being made with her face and there's a bit of a movement around her etc and so a lot of the journalism is quite personality driven and it's not really asking the questions we normally ask in election what actually happened district by district how is it possible for this party to go from basically being a minority to having a super majority what what on earth happened to the opposition what's happening with this youth vote i mean she's kind of a right-wing traditionalist anti-immigration and then the young people and the other thing that she
10:44Alastair Campbell:and again a position that japanese politicians traditionally have been very wary of getting too close to is actually the idea of militarization and national identity and the military. And she even had a go at China over Taiwan, which again, got very little sort of entrance into the election debate, but has got massive significance because China has already retaliated, banning seafood, urging Chinese people not to go to Japan on holiday. And a fifth of all tourists to Japan are Chinese. Okay.
11:18Rory Stewart:So let me just give the Chinese perspective. So I, I, over the weekend, spent a couple of hours with somebody from mainland China. And he was emphasizing. He said, you know, to be fair, he said, look, some of this is propaganda in our school textbooks, but some of this is genuine belief. The Japanese, from the Chinese point of view, invaded Manchuria, invaded China, committed unbelievable atrocities, killed millions of people. and after the war there wasn't really a denazification and they didn't apologize properly in fact right-wing politicians of which she's a good example continued to visit the shrine dedicated to war crimes so from the chinese point of view they're looking at this and they're saying here is an aggressive nationalistic militarist power that has never come to terms with what they did during the second world war and here's a leader from that faction saying that she is going to fight on Taiwan's behalf against China when Taiwan belongs to China.
12:15Rory Stewart:From the Chinese point of view, and this again isn't being picked up on the coverage, there's a real sense here from China that they're thinking about Japan in the way that maybe Europeans might have thought about a resurgent Germany if it had suddenly militarized in the 1960s.
12:33Alastair Campbell:I think you're right. the China, and to be fair, this podcast too, we don't talk enough about Asia. But if you've got the Chinese Communist Party saying to the Chinese public, please don't go to Japan. We don't recommend you go there for your holidays anymore. A lot of people are going to follow that. And that is a big hit on the economy. And if I go back to my professor friend, Tina, The reason why she says that she's more trust than Thatcher is because of the economic policy that she is already pursuing. So she's really going for very loose monetary policy, big spending, and cuts to tax. So she's promising massive cuts in consumption taxes.
13:21Alastair Campbell:And at the same time, she's talking about massive boosting of spending. Yeah. And Tina, who's a professor of Japanese politics, is saying, this has got a horrible feel of the trust Kuateng mini budget.
13:33Rory Stewart:One of the questions here is, we've talked about this a lot, the Japanese debt to GDP ratio is enormous. Off scale. Yeah, off scale. Normally, people say that that's less of a problem than it would be in the UK because a lot of it is owned by the Japanese internal things. But there's a limit to that. And it's interesting, the markets have responded positively to our election, but there will be many other people looking saying, where on earth is the Japanese economy going? The Japanese economy really, really matters to the world. Final thought. I think we need to watch carefully the geopolitics of this, and this maybe relates to the question from our listener, because she is very clearly going pro-Trump.
14:15Rory Stewart:She sees herself as a disciple very much of Shinzo Abe, who Trump liked a great deal. She will be taking a more nationalistic line against China. We really have to watch this question on the constitution. Is she going to change the constitution? Because she probably will be able to if you want to. To allow Japan to become a fully militaristic power. And if so, this is the big change. Because for decades now, Japan was pacifist economic powerhouse under American security umbrella. If she shifts it to an assertive, more militarized nation state, semi-autonomous, then I think we're in a very different world.
14:52Alastair Campbell:The other thing that she was doing, partly, I think, to deal with this far-right party, was very, very strong line on immigration. Now, of course, compared to most of the developed economies, Japan doesn't have that many.
15:05Rory Stewart:Very few. There's a few Kurds living in some town. Well, they've got slightly more than that. And she claims in her hometown of Nara that she saw a tourist punch a deer in the deer park. Oh, I know, I know. And there was never any evidence of it at all.
15:17Alastair Campbell:So she's got a little bit of, I'm not going to mention the DJT guy, but a little bit of Trumpism to her communication. But the truth is, Japan, I mean, what's one of the stories that we've talked about Japan for years and years and years and years is way ahead of us, the aging population.
15:34Rory Stewart:Median age in Japan, about 51. Median age in Britain, about 40. Median age in Europe, higher than Britain. But by the time you get down to somewhere like Nigeria, it's 16, to give a sense of that. Yeah. What's your favorite Nigerian stat? One in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050.
15:55Alastair Campbell:Yeah. The reason why I keep asking you to repeat that is if I live to 2050, we're going to come back and see where that is.
16:03Rory Stewart:Fake stat news. It's also true that all demographic projections are always wrong. Exactly. I mean, but also, I mean, yeah, I mean, we need to talk about that in more detail some of the time.
Read the full transcript
16:12Alastair Campbell:And so you've got this aging population. They're all living a very, very long time. And yet she's saying no more. You know, we're going to cut back on immigration. Like us, they're going to need immigration.
16:25Rory Stewart:And as you point out, it's obviously not just that they're very healthy and eating good food. It's also they're just not having any children. And that's a problem for South Korea. South Korea, I think, you know, the average number of children is now getting down to about 0.3 per family. So there's this demographic collapse and no immigration coming.
16:41Alastair Campbell:We should do a thing on demography at some point, but you see that the French are right, the government are writing to every 29-year-old basically saying, get on with it.
16:52Rory Stewart:Have kids now. What do you think about Victor Orban's policy? I mean, it's quite interesting, right? He's saying that anyone, any woman who has three children is exempt from income tax. Now, any woman who has two children is exempt from income tax. It's presumably quite, you know, if you were wondering, am I going to have a second child, third child? Being exempt from income tax for your whole life, that's pretty good.
17:10Alastair Campbell:And we've got an election coming up, and I wonder if that might be why he's suddenly saying, let's give some more money to parents. Now, Josephine in Southall, what lessons can progressive British politicians draw from the Portuguese presidential election about how civil society can mobilize and cross-party elites can coordinate to counter anti-democratic movements? And this relates to the presidential election, which is not the same as a parliamentary election. uh i think this is look there is a lot to unbundle here in terms of left right far right progressive battles but i think from the british perspective this is as much about political systems as anything else this is the second round of a presidential system where in the first round anybody can stand and the top two go through and what's happened is that the far right guy ventura who was a former sports TV commentator, the kind of Gary Lineker of Portugal.
18:06Alastair Campbell:He founded this Chega party in six, seven years ago, and has made a huge impact upon Portuguese politics. But what's happened is having got into the second round, there has been this mobilization. So the equivalent for Britain would be if in our, we've said often, what we've known as a two party system becoming a four, five, six party system is if rather than having our parliamentary elections, you had in the next election, let's see who votes for the war. And then the top two, let's say the top two is Starmer and Farage, they go through. Absolutely. And it's much easier to see people allying against.
18:43Rory Stewart:Exactly. So I think the positive story, which is what our question is pushing is, it's rather interesting because what happened is that the Catholic Church came out for the left-wing presidential candidate. Quite a lot of right-wing politicians came out against the far right. So there was a sort of nice story of people creating a kind of firewall to exclude the far right candidate. And boy, is he a far right candidate. I mean, his posters during the election were, this is not Bangladesh, right? This is a key example of his posters. But, but, but, as we've said before, two years ago, people were still talking about the Iberian exception, and the idea that Portugal and Spain were somehow immune to populism.
19:25Rory Stewart:This guy on the far right, this is not Bangladesh, over 30 % of the vote now. That's a big vote. His vote share is basically the same as Keir Starmer got in the last election in Britain. So this is a huge political force. He's taken it from zero to, I think, 50 seats.
19:42Alastair Campbell:And I wonder whether in Josephine's question is the thinking that this shows you can come together and fight them off. Now, on one level, it does. and there was obviously a lot of public awareness so you had quite a lot of conservatives voting for the socialist uh to stop yeah take uh yeah we stopped ventura winning um but i'm not sure there's much beyond that i agree with your assessment this shows that actually in a country that not long ago former fascist country don't forget that we we see this maybe we shouldn't be too rose-tinted about this this is a little bit of a i think it's a warning sign as much as anything else.
20:19Alastair Campbell:It does show if progressive forces get together and fight, they can win. But it also shows that these guys are on the rise. Maybe that's two elections we've covered. Why don't we come back next week and talk a little bit about Thailand? Lovely. Because that's another huge election. And of course, longer to unbundle that one, because the battle there is not necessarily the battle of the ballot box. It's what happens after with the monarchy and all that.
20:42Rory Stewart:Well, let's do that. And let me maybe to bring a lighter, quicker tone, because we've done quite a lot of serious, in-depth geopolitical stuff.
20:51Alastair Campbell:Here goes Rory, sport's not serious.
20:53Rory Stewart:Yeah, there we are. Question from Alex in San Diego. Is the Winter Olympics a sign sport is the only thing that can make us feel good right now? Now, is that true for you? Is that the only thing that makes you feel good at the moment?
21:06Alastair Campbell:Well, there's a lot of things right now making me feel bad, neither of which I'm going to mention.
21:14Alastair Campbell:But here's a great, have you watched any of the Winter Olympics?
21:16Rory Stewart:No, and I'm really sad because I ski. I'm going to ski obsessively. I'm completely obsessed with winter sport. So I love watching skiing.
21:22Alastair Campbell:Well, I watched, I'll tell you what I've watched so far. I watched the opening ceremony, which Danny Boyle will never, ever be beaten. London 2012 were the best opening ceremony of all time. But the Milan Cortina opening ceremony was terrific. It was really, really good. And it was actually quite moving. And the speeches were moving. A bit long. Could have done with a good, you know, Campbell Red Pen through them. But they were good. and their message was about this, about there's so much division in the world, there's so much hatred, sport can bring us together, sports about this, this, this, this.
21:53Alastair Campbell:It was good. And of course, the fact that J.D. Vance was in the audience was, you know, I think it was pointed. And the other moment, notice I'm not mentioning his boss. When the American team came in, the loudest cheer of the evening, bar none, was for the Ukrainian team. The Ukrainian team came in and it was really moving. The whole place went absolutely crazy. They went pretty wild for the American team. And then the feed, the live feed camera, panned to J.D. Vance and his wife, and the booing started. And they cut away instantly. And it then transpires that one of these American TV stations, one of the ones that's been taken over by these awful tech oligarchs that are destroying the world, they dubbed out the sound of the booing.
22:41Alastair Campbell:My other favorite Vance story is an American athlete a skater who was as we say in the sports world tipped for gold she she got silver and i think the reason was that it turns out she was almost missed the start because she was held up by this 40 car convoy ferrying jd vance around milan 40 cars he cost him the gold that's not good yeah
23:07Rory Stewart:so i think well i don't know if he did but i'm saying he did and there's there's a somebody who loves this stuff. Really, all I want to do is live in the mountains and live in the Alps and be at altitude and ski.
23:19Alastair Campbell:Okay. But just on that, you like skiing and your family loves skiing.
23:22Rory Stewart:Not just like it. I'm actually reasonably good at it. I was actually in teams for this kind of thing. Oh, we need film. We need film. We need film. The rest is skiing. Yeah, you can see that.
23:31Alastair Campbell:But let me ask you this though. Why then do you not enjoy and like watching, I've never skied in my life, but I like watching the competition of the skiers. So last night I was watching this sport. I don't even know what you call this sport, where these skiers were, it was like an obstacle course. They were jumping onto tubes and skiing down those and doing these sort of - This is a freestyle? I think it was more than freestyle because it was like barriers and all sorts of stuff. It's almost like show jumping. The other thing I love about the Winter Olympics is that when they're out on the mountain you know it's there are relatively small crowds because it's very hard to get to and you can't build the infrastructure but it's these athletes they come down and then their family are there oh it's so lovely and it's just brilliant the other thing that makes it so
24:18Rory Stewart:unusual is i don't know and maybe there are other sports like this but particularly on freestyle for example when you're coming from the very very top of the mountain down to the bottom if you're the ninth person down the course the course is completely transformed because you're skiing generally for freestyle on virgin powder untouched thick snow um real snow real snow yeah so if you're and and if you're the first couple of people down and you're trying to get lines for your line for your jumps your style your elegance if you're the first person down you can fly off the edge of a cliff you land in fresh stuff and then you can do a beautiful series of turns through that if you're number six three people have already landed there that's wrecked you're going to have to find another bit of the mountain to come down you're going to have to cross their tracks etc Or if you watch Slalom or Giant Slalom, it's true to you'll see that it's getting icier and icier and the cuts around the flags are getting sharper and sharper.
25:07I guess something similar is the fact if you're playing test cricket, that part of your calculation is the state of the pitch over five days and how it develops.
25:17Alastair Campbell:But that's a good point. But whenever we've talked about sport before, you've basically said you've got no interest in sport because you think it's almost like you don't think that you're doing sport, you're doing skiing. Sport to me is watching people in competition.
25:30Rory Stewart:Yeah, I mean, I'm happy if I'm having lunch in a bar to watch people ski. I love to watch people. And I'm learning from them. Basically, I watch it in order to learn technique. I'm interested in learning because I'm interested in their angulation. I'm interested in their weight transfer.
25:45Alastair Campbell:We're going to the Munich Security Conference for the weekend. The ski slope's not that far away. I will indeed be doing that. Well, we've got to get a film of this. You said, I will quote what you said. You said, I'm really quite good at it.
25:57Rory Stewart:I can give you a shot of me skiing in Antarctica if you want. oh yeah you can see me skiing on the south pole yeah excellent talking of poles i've got three
26:05Alastair Campbell:plugs the first is about poles is a while you were doing whatever you're doing yesterday i recorded a mini series with the guy whose book i mentioned about the arctic it's really really interesting i think the first episode is out on friday great guy called kenneth r rosen very interesting very quirky character. Really good. Really enjoyed doing it. Learned a lot. Hope our listeners and viewers will learn a lot. Second plug is the current leading, Jeremy Fleming, GCHQ. Third plug, Rory, have you got Shoshana a Valentine's Day card yet?
26:42Rory Stewart:No, have you got a good recommendation on that?
26:44Alastair Campbell:Well, apparently you can get, you can buy Trip Plus membership as a Valentine's present. You just go to therestedspolitics.com and click Gifts. And this is a perfect present for the woman who stopped me on the tube yesterday and said, my boyfriend loves your podcast. I said, well, get him the bloody membership.
27:02Rory Stewart:Do you know where you and I are spending Valentine's Day? The Munich Security Conference.
27:07Alastair Campbell:Oh, where is this going?
27:09Rory Stewart:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, that's where we're going to be. Yeah.
27:11Alastair Campbell:Yeah.
27:12Rory Stewart:Yeah. It's going to get our romantic moment. The Munich Security Conference, nothing quite as romantic as the Munich. Yeah. I wonder if the Munich Security Conference is going to have weird sort of German chocolates with flowers. God, I hope not. I bet they will. I really hope not. I bet they will. Anyway, let's take a break. and then there's some cultural plugging I'd like to do after the break. Excellent.
27:29Alastair Campbell:But we have to do Big Bunny. Okay, great. See you after the break. See you soon.
27:36Alastair Campbell:Now, just a quick pause in the podcast to mention our sponsor, NordVPN.
27:41Rory Stewart:So February is when routines take over. We drift back into doing serious things online, but in places that are convenient rather than careful. Stations, cafes, hotels, moments where the margin for error with your data quietly creeps back in.
27:55Alastair Campbell:That's exactly the gap NordVPN is designed to close. It hides your internet footprint, so when you're working or travelling on public networks, your information is not left exposed.
28:04Rory Stewart:NordVPN also includes Threat Protection Pro, which acts like a cyber bodyguard that quietly helps block malicious links and checks downloads, particularly useful in February, when inboxes fill up with expense claims, half-term travel and ticket confirmations.
28:20Alastair Campbell:It doesn't change how you use the internet.
28:22Rory Stewart:It simply removes the assumption that everything is safe by default. One NordVPN account covers up to 10 devices. Or install it on your router and protect the whole household.
28:31Alastair Campbell:To get the best discount on your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash restispolitics. You'll get four extra months free on the two-year plan, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the episode description.
28:48Rory Stewart:now just a quick pause in the podcast to mention our sponsor nordvpn we're in february and that is
28:55Alastair Campbell:the month when the year stops being theoretical good intentions turn into systems accounts passwords payments and life starts running through logins again almost without pause and it feels
29:06Rory Stewart:completely normal and it's also exhausting so there you are whacking on all this sensitive information day after day simply as part of your everyday life.
29:14Alastair Campbell:NordVPN works quietly in the background, protects your data as you get on with life online. It adds privacy without asking for constant attention, encrypting what you do and keeping your location private.
29:25Rory Stewart:And we can't begin to tell you how much danger there is if you start having sensitive information and passwords and locations out there. And privacy, as provided by NordVPN, tends to work best when it's built in.
29:36Alastair Campbell:One NordVPN account covers up to 10 devices, or you can install it on your router and protect your entire home network in one go.
29:43Rory Stewart:To get the best discount on your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash restispolitics. You'll get four extra months free on the two-year plan, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. The link's in the episode description. When you want your spring break to feel like... And your kid's pool day to feel like... And your hotel bed to feel like... Ooh, and room service to feel like... Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like... Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton, for the stay.
30:32Rory Stewart:Welcome back to The Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Big Bunny. Yeah, yeah, well, that's right. As Alice has picked up, generally what he does, as you might have noticed, is mock me about my incredible ignorance of popular culture. But most of our listeners will be sniggering at the fact that he calls Bad Bunny Big Bunny.
30:51Alastair Campbell:Listen, before we go, let's have the question, because this was from Catherine in the Wirral. What could politicians love for a Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance? His celebration of love, community, and joy stands in stark contrast to the divisiveness and negativity of Name Deleted and his allies, whose responses to the show looked so pathetic and weak by comparison. I watched Bad Bunny. Did you watch him? No, I watched a bit on the news, that's it, but I've never got into NFL. That's pretty amazing.
31:19Rory Stewart:One of the weird things is if you watch it on YouTube and it's Apple Music sponsored Super Bowl, they don't offer anything other than Spanish subtitles unless you select the auto subtitle function. And so he's singing in Spanish. I mean, you can see why Trump was completely thrown off balance. I mean, firstly, the whole thing's in Spanish. So you've got no idea at all what he's saying unless like me, you're trying to rely on the auto stuff. Shoshana, her Spanish is good but she couldn't follow half these lyrics 135 million viewers it's one of the biggest super bowl is that bigger than the rest is politics ever it's bigger than it's bigger than us bigger than us yeah it's bigger bad bunny is bigger than us and and i don't i don't want to annoy any of the 135 million viewers but to describe that song as purely a celebration of what was it community joy and love joy and love maybe this is a time turn off for younger listeners but it's an extraordinary performance where he's spending most of his time clutching his crotch and rotating in front with an enormous number of surrounded by incredible latino dancers most of whom have got their skirts in the air i mean the i mean it this is this is much more than just a celebration of community and community and world peace the reviews i saw and heard i heard a guy
32:35Alastair Campbell:from rolling stone magazine saying it was the most mesmerizing live show you'd ever seen and And I think I've seen all sorts of people. One of my fellow swimmers, Dan, he showed me a video this morning of, I'm going to look at the script. Was it bad or big? I'll get the big stuff again. A bad buddy performing when all the backing music collapsed, all the electronic stuff collapsed. And it was honestly, it sounded like me at the bath. It was terrible. So has he got a good voice? Or is it the words? Is it like Eminem?
33:10Rory Stewart:Is it the words that are good? I think his voice is interesting, but I think it's the whole picture. It's the whole thing. I mean, it's about the songs are about celebrity. They're about girlfriends. They're about love. They're about Puerto Rico. They're about being a Latino. They're about the fact that other people want to be Latino, can't be Latino. I mean, it's a whole statement about culture and about Puerto Rico.
33:34Alastair Campbell:Yeah, and I'm going to break my promise now. I mean, the thought of the President of the United States sitting, watching in the Oval Office, or wherever he was, ready to say, this is terrible. Because the buildup, all the buildup I heard was this guy was really going to go for Trump because he's gone for ICE. He said they're terrible. He's not touring the States because he's worried about Puerto Ricans.
33:56Rory Stewart:And he seemingly didn't. The only thing he did is he said, God bless America. And then he listed all the countries He's American. I thought the joke was going to be he was going to go Ecuador, Paraguay, Costa Rica, and then jump to Canada. But actually, he included the United States in the whole thing.
34:09Alastair Campbell:Right. But Trump then said, this is terrible. Nobody can understand a word he says. How many Spanish speakers are there in the United States? That was revealing, wasn't it? Because that basically shows that he doesn't see them as being American. Well, and there's rather interesting research.
34:22Rory Stewart:There's wonderful research on Texas done by the producers. This is not something sort of bolted into the back of my brain with a weird memory stick. and it was something beautifully covered actually on TripUS yesterday. But our researchers pointed out that in the Texas election, Taylor Reckman captured approximately 79 % of the Hispanic vote in the district, a 26-point jump from the 53 % that Kamala Harris received in the 2024 election. Precincts with majority Hispanic population swung an average of 34 points towards the Democrat compared with the Democrats' performance in 2022. So there is a real sense that Trump may be losing the Hispanic vote.
34:57Rory Stewart:The surprise in that election, Trump's defeat of Kamala Harris, which made a huge marginal difference, was African American voters and Hispanic voters voting for Trump. And that seems to be, certainly with the Hispanic vote, collapsing and maybe this part of that story.
35:12Alastair Campbell:No, and it seems really strange as we head to the midterms that you single out anybody who speaks Spanish as somehow being a non-American. So there's 70 million Hispanic Latinos in the the United States. That's virtually the population of the United Kingdom. And Donald Trump seems to think that because he doesn't like big bad bunny, as he's going to be called forever, that somehow he should be able to insult them and say they're not really American.
35:36Rory Stewart:Yeah. It's kind of, it's kind of, but it is extraordinary how successful he's been insulting huge bits of his demographic voter base again and again. Yeah.
35:44Alastair Campbell:Okay, Roy. We both love trees. So this is from our friend Darren Moorcroft, ceo of the woodland trust and by the way let me say you know my that wonderful tree in glasgow the argyle street ash that was tree of the year it's now in the poll for the european tree of the year oh and you have we have to go on and vote so go on to is the european tree of the year you can find it all on the the interweb with big bad bunny and um but vote for argyle street so darren says Rory, this is specifically for you. As someone involved in creating the 25-year environment plan, do you share concerns it's become a largely DEFRA-only project?
36:25Alastair Campbell:Very good point. Why, despite growing evidence of nature's cross-government value, does the issue seem increasingly siloed? What does this reveal about how the government works and DEFRA's standing within it, and how would you fix it?
36:36Rory Stewart:Well, so Darren's right. When we were bringing together that 25-year environment plan, even though it was a Tory government, there was a moment of real cross-party optimism around this. And actually, you know, I disagree profoundly with Michael Gove, and I thought he went too far on some of the re-worlding stuff. But broadly speaking, there was a moment where we were working very strongly with environmental charities, with the National Parks, with Natural England, the Environment Agency to define a 25-year plan, which has largely been taken on by the new government and pushed ahead. But at the heart of it is nature or pompously biodiversity.
37:10Rory Stewart:We talk a lot about climate, which is completely critical. But this is about the fact that we are losing species at an incredible rate. many indicators suggesting 85 % decline in various species this idea of the anthropocene which is that basically humans are eliminating biodiversity around the planet and britain particularly brutally affected we have much less tree cover for example than most uh european countries most comparable countries so there is a huge opportunity for us to lean into this um and one of the things that's making me sad is if the government's looking for projects that can really have an impact and catch people's imagination and change perceptions, I want them to return again.
37:53Rory Stewart:And if Emma Reynolds is listening, I'm going to push this again on her. Not just thinking about farming and people who look after the landscape, particularly small farmers who I think are being marginalized, but also trees. So for example, I want to push again this idea that I think the green belt around London could become the largest forest in England. And I mean a native forest. I mean oaks. I mean biodiversity it will be great for the weather in London it'll be great for air quality it'll be great for climate change because the carbon capture it'll be great for the populations millions of people getting into nature but most importantly of all it'll be something that will be there for future generations I mean the oak trees will still be there in four or five hundred years time so imagine if you're Keir Starmer or Emma Reynolds what a wonderful legacy that would be to in 20 years time find yourself in this incredible forest of hundreds of millions of trees with all the transformation of biodiversity.
38:47Alastair Campbell:And Dan's point about silos is absolutely right. If you think about the role that nature could play in our health policy, social prescribing. One of the things I love about whenever Fiona and I are taking the dog out in the morning, there are these tiny kids who are all being sort of led up by teachers who are learning as part of their education is about
39:11Rory Stewart:just sort of living on the heath for a day. So this, I've pitched already this documentary, it's just out on Amazon, on the King, on Harmony. But one of the points that's made there by a professor at Cambridge is that, on your social prescribing point, when you go out into woodland, you're literally breathing in molecules from these trees. When you're smelling pine trees, you're taking the pine molecules into your bloodstream. And some of these molecules have impacts similar in impact to almost prescription drugs. There's also data that shows that every 300 meters further away you are from a piece of green space in a city, your health and your general indicators decline dramatically.
39:55Alastair Campbell:Green spaces, absolutely. I mean, the way that cities are developed is fundamental to this.
40:02Rory Stewart:Okay. And you are a parent of young children in London. everybody will presumably go through what I went through on Saturday, which is what the hell do I do with kids on the weekend, right? And there's a limit to how much you can schlep around the zoo or go to the museum. Imagine if you could get on a train from central London and be immediately in the middle of one of the greatest forests on earth. And there is the greenbelt. Nobody's using it. It's a sort of horrible post-industrial golf course zone that nobody can build houses on because the legislation but nobody's making it work for nature although we should say we're pretty blessed
40:36Alastair Campbell:with parks and and trees and nature given that it's one of the biggest how well we do with that
40:43Rory Stewart:but but but what we don't have um are really lovely natural forest spaces i mean imagine how wonderful it would be to be able to walk for 20 miles through an incredible native forest just on the outskirts of London.
40:57Alastair Campbell:Yeah, with the planes going over. It's the story of the American couple arriving at Heathrow. The pilot says, if you look out of the window, you'll see Windsor Castle, where the Queen lives. And the wife turns to the husband and says, why did she build a castle so needed to do it at an airport?
41:17Rory Stewart:It's good. It's good. I like it. It's good jokes. Okay, here we are. Final one for you, Gareth Tripp plus Cornwall is happiness a state of rebellion in a world in flux and with so many existential threats from the likes of Trump I'd be interested in hearing Alistair and Rory's advice on how they navigate all of this and keep sane and positive and Thomas what do you do outside of politics that gives you hope and joy yeah
41:40Alastair Campbell:well funny enough it allows me to plug one of my 21 books The Happy Depressive oh that's a great title it's good it's good yeah and it's a book about how well it's first of all how do you think about happiness because i think one of the reasons we're in such a mess as a world is we're completely confused about what we mean by happiness okay what do we mean well what i mean by happiness is kind of long-term fulfillment i think what a lot of people think happiness is is feeling good in the moment i actually think that the feeling bad in the moment is often for me the the spur or the inspiration to then do the pursuit of stuff that leads to the long-term fulfillment where I think you find the goodness.
42:23Rory Stewart:So you're saying it's not really about the minute-by-minute pleasure, it's the sense of a longer project, a bigger activity. Totally, totally. And I think along the way, we all have lots of really bad moments,
42:37Alastair Campbell:lots of low moments, lots of setback, and lots of failure. It's how you use them to build the stuff that at the end of your life, you look back and think, well, that really matters. so i think that sense of and that's why i i've said to you before i think we we we think that having a good time particularly in this country where it seems to be having a good time is so often associated with basically changing your natural state yeah through drink or drugs how is how can that possibly really be what the pursuit of happiness is about to me that is usually the escape from unhappiness so and then and what i went did the book not as less that book because that was a sort of that was actually a speech that became a book but then the other book i wrote about my own depression that was an absolute exploration of how do you find
43:23Rory Stewart:happiness even when you're depressed well here's a couple of things that i was thinking about this week um one is i i went for a run yesterday with shoshana uh down to an exhibition that she's just done in the day did she be here uh we went racing we were we were sort of doing a sort of plodding couples jog together. I'd back her against you. Although I'm all kitted out with wearables at the moment. So I'm sort of endlessly following my sort of micro heart rate variations. Pointless. Pointless stuff. And we got to the Garrison Chapel where Shoshana and Turquoise Mountain are doing this amazing exhibition open to the public.
43:58Rory Stewart:Please anyone who's coming through London have a look at it. And what it's showing is all the work of crafts people, particularly women, making incredibly beautiful things in Afghanistan, in Myanmar in Palestine and in other countries around the world and I love that because I was trying to work out why I felt happy in the evening but I thought there were two things I mean one of them is yes I was changing my state with my endorphins but secondly it was the sense of being able to help in a small way with her exhibition talk about her speech and see all this beautiful stuff now the second thing which is completely other end I went to see Hamnet over the weekend have you seen Hamnet?
44:37Rory Stewart:I have Hamnet yeah Hamnet yeah I'm interested to hear your review i'll give you mine well basically uh as the parent of a young boy i was in bits through most of it i mean i just couldn't handle the grief and the horror of this young boy dying but i also felt it was very very powerful i felt a real sense of catharsis i felt a sense of in a way that i very rarely do you know i mean aristotle says you go to the theater and you go through this catharsis and your whole worldviews change i did feel that with that film i found it devastating i was crying all the time but i came out the end of it really feeling yeah that they had made a really incredible point about and one thing you should be able to relate to you i thought is the extraordinary sense that william shakespeare who's the central character it is saying to his wife yes our kids got has just died but i'm going back to work in london i've got to write my play yeah and she's like no you effing aren't but you're not you're not leaving me with a dead kid and all your sympathy is with her you think it doesn't matter what your job is don't abandon your family like this and then you have to get to terms with but on the other hand his job is being the greatest playwright that's ever lived and he's writing the greatest play and what the film I thought did at the end is balance those two things that as it were the tensions of work and life you see I
46:05Alastair Campbell:that's really interesting I went to see O'Mary which is on just down the road here at the moment which is about once you get into it it's very funny it's about Abraham Lincoln being this sex starved gay it's not based on I don't think the real Abraham Lincoln and the wife is alcoholic, mad, demanding, crazy. It's a crazy sort of play. And I spent the first half hour really not enjoying it because I think this is so not Abraham Lincoln. It really offends me. And I felt that a little bit about Hamnet. I couldn't quite get my head around the fact that Shakespeare, who I regularly think is the greatest person who ever lived because of what he contributed to the world and still does and by the way if people haven't seen it Ian McKellen on the Stephen Colbert show last week doing this amazing piece of Shakespeare but anyway which is about what's happening in America now we'll put it in the newsletter um so I got really irritated by it I then got really irritated by some of the production stuff the end when they're all that sort of the the focus on on the wife and the and the the sort of dreamy bits and what have you I thought as a film I thought it was rescued by the performance of the son right who I thought was brilliant But I wasn't as moved by as you were maybe it's because your kids are so young
47:30Rory Stewart:Yeah, I was a bit cross my mother because she told me to go and see it and I was like where is the health warning? How can you possibly expect a parent of an eight-year-old to watch a whole film about an eight-year-old dying?
47:43Alastair Campbell:Yeah, well see I a part of me couldn't imagine that Shakespeare could have been quite as harsh and cruel and self-centered, but maybe he was. And that's the other thing, I think, when you're dealing with historical figures. The truth is we don't know. We know a lot. One of the most amazing things about Shakespeare is actually beyond what he's written, we don't know that much.
48:04Rory Stewart:It's not like big bad bunny. Well, it's amazing. Have you read, for example, Shakespeare in Silver Street, where they take a single two sentences? Shakespeare's only recorded words were in a small court case in London which was then discovered in the 19th century in an archive. But you're absolutely right. I mean, that film is based on Agnes Hathaway or Anne, and one of the questions around her is based purely on his will. He leaves her his second best bed, and there's birth certificate or death certificate stuff, and we have some idea about how many children they had and we know that hamlet died and out of that maggie o 'farrell has created this incredible masterpiece but yes certainly if you were doing the rest is history it's astonishing given his stature today how little was recorded about him i think that's part of the reason why
49:00Alastair Campbell:so it's not just that he's an amazing writer and brain i think it's also that he's that allows itself to mythology um anyway i'm glad you found it moving because that's two things we've learned today, Roy, because normally I say I'm the one who gets terribly moved by, you know, the music and culture. You've been moved by that. And then, and we've also learned that you're an Olympic quality skier. Maybe this is a really good thing to close with. This made me really happy this week. It's a message from one of our readers. Okay. She's called Serafina Jennings. She says, Dear Alistair, my name is Serafina.
49:32Alastair Campbell:I'm 17 years old. I'm a regular listener of Trip. Politics is a huge interest of mine. And after watching your recent episode, this is my monologue when I was sort of bearing my soul about all this recent stuff in the, we're not mentioning Labour, but you know what I'm talking about. She said, I can't help but want to reach out and offer reassurance. As a Gen Z, there is no one better suited to talk about reactionary politics. Most people my age get their knowledge from TikTok. And as an avid TikTok user, I haven't seen this far right domination of the app. Every politics video I watch denounces Farage.
50:06Alastair Campbell:For every video which supports him, there are a thousand comments educating people of the nastier policies reform would implement. And it's not just my algorithm. I went out and made fresh accounts where I don't interact with anything political. And the first videos to do with current affairs were left-wing, pro-abortion, anti-Trump, anti-reform. Not to mention millions and millions and millions of pure disgust at Trump and Epstein. I urge you to look at the Democrats' TikTok page. It brings me a lot of hope for the future. As for the image of new Labour, as she goes on, after the Mandelson revelations, can I just say most people my age hadn't heard of Peter Mandelson until last week.
50:42Alastair Campbell:We covered the Blair-Brown governments in history. He actually isn't mentioned. And from what I can gather, even in A-level politics plays a very insignificant role. Tony Blair is often credited amongst young people and in the many conversations I have as a great prime minister. We've grown up with no memory of new labor, but the stories of non-existent waiting lists, massive education in child poverty, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. finally you'll be pleased to know brexit is treated as the biggest sin of our time among young people repeatedly videos anti-brexit surpassed 100 000 likes denouncing it as the biggest failure we have seen so she goes on she says this is probably a stupid thing to write to you i just wanted to make you transparent there is a future i genuinely believe humanity will always prevail over hatred and lies please don't lose hope so seraphina that made me happy this
51:30Rory Stewart:week that was wonderful it's wonderful i will restrain uh myself from go on be cynical making a massive series of pro-tory skeptical comments about the whole i think seraphina austerity was the right thing to do exactly yeah what's all this exactly no i i love the answer that was lovely stuff um well thank you and uh look forward to hearing what viewers made of hamlet whether
51:56Alastair Campbell:they're on your side or mine i think they'll be on your side i think i was probably in a bad mood I went to see it as a way of escaping from the thing that I'm not talking about.
52:04Rory Stewart:And it didn't lift my mood. And I'd also love if anyone makes it to Garrison Chapel, see what they think about what all these artisans have been doing with Telcos Mountain. Absolutely.
52:12Alastair Campbell:And by the way, if you want to, if you're not a member, and you want to listen to the miniseries on the polar war in the Arctic, then just go to the restlesspolitics.com and sign up after you've got your Valentine's Day gift. Brilliant. Okay.
52:25Rory Stewart:See you soon. Bye-bye.
52:30Rory Stewart:This episode was brought to you by Penguin Audiobooks. There are audiobook club parties. I love Penguin Audiobooks, partly because I'm a Penguin Audiobook person. Selecting the titles that help us think clearly about where the world is heading, what's at stake when power and technology move faster than politics.
52:46Alastair Campbell:And a book that we are recommending to all of you. If anyone builds it, everyone dies.
52:53Rory Stewart:It's written by Lisa Yudkowsky and by Nate Soares. It is a really fascinating lesson. And if you want to see the extreme case for fear around AI, this is a book arguing why AI could potentially kill us. And he does it in the style of really good popular science. He's also very, very good on explaining how in some ways these large language models are evolutionary. They're sort of natural bodies that are developing rather than things that are fully programmed like old models. He was right at the heart of the AI revolution. He's very controversial. There will be people, and you'll see this in the miniseries, who are horrified that we're recommending it.
53:34Rory Stewart:But I think listen to it.
53:36Alastair Campbell:Visit penguin.co.uk to browse our audiobook club and find the link to listen to if anyone builds it. Everyone dies in our bio. Find Penguin Audiobooks now on Spotify.
53:50Rory Stewart:30 years ago, Blinds.com broke the mold and made custom window treatments easy for everyone. Over 25 million windows later, we're celebrating by giving our customers up to 50 % off site-wide during our anniversary sale. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, Blinds.com has you covered. Shop online, access real design professionals, and get free samples. Thank you for 30 amazing years. Shop the anniversary sale now through March 11th and get up to 50 % off site-wide at Blinds.com. Thought Sweetgreen was just salads? Think again! There's a new way to do Sweetgreen.
54:26Rory Stewart:Wrapped and ready, these handheld wraps pack bold flavor and 40-plus grams of protein into something hearty, satisfying, and built for life on the go. from craveable sauces to satisfying textures. They're designed to keep you going without slowing you down. So put that fork down. Try the new wraps today in app or at order.sweetgreen.com. Available at participating locations only.
From the publisher
Are Japan and China closer to conflict over Taiwan, after the landslide victory for Japan's 'Iron Lady', Sanae Takayichi? Does Trump’s crumbling American-Hispanic vote explain his extreme reaction to Bad Bunny's historic, Spanish-only Super Bowl performance? Is the Winter Olympics a sign sport is the only thing that can make us feel good right now?
__________
Sign up for our free newsletter at therestispolitics.com.
Join The Rest Is Politics Plus: Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord.
The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/politics.
Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅
Listen to 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Will Die' by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0p66zkQAAmmJ7PWsCSGgCT
__________
Instagram: @restispolitics
Twitter: @restispolitics
Email: therestispolitics@goalhanger.com
__________
Social Producer: Celine Charles
Video Editor: Adam Thornton
Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne
Producer: Evan Green
Senior Producer: Callum Hill
General Manager: Tom Whiter
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
