516. Trump’s Iran Delusion and the Limits of American Power

22:09And meanwhile, you mentioned Ukraine. Again, barely on the news, Russia carried out the largest aerial attack in a 24-hour period since the start of the war, 948 drones. By the way, Zelensky, I mean, I think he did play a bit of a blinder at the weekend in heading off to the Gulf and doing these defense deals with the Gulf, which I see he's now being criticized by America for doing it, as it were, what they say, behind their backs. And the Saudis being criticized.

22:38Rory Stewart:After Trump really insulted Mohammed bin Salman, I mean, I think... Why do you say the words, Roy? Say the words. I think it comes better from an old Etonian. What was the exact phrase? He basically said that he doesn't want to, but he's basically got to kiss my ass, is what he said. And the Saudis are very upset about that. Well, yes, because, as you can imagine, there are cultural issues here. I mean, this is talking about somebody else's head of spate in that way would be seen much, much more devastating in someone like Saudi than even in Britain, where, you know. It's even worse than saying he's no Churchill.

23:16Rory Stewart:It's even worse than saying he's no Churchill. And it's really weird, isn't it? Well, it's not really, because it's all of a piece with who and what he is. He talks like this all the time about everybody, including his own colleagues. I mean, there is lots of rumblings that he's behind, you know, behind the scenes. He's very critical of Vance at the moment, thinks Vance isn't hard enough over on the war. So I think we're seeing, I loved reading this piece by this guy, Dennis Brogan, because it really felt like this is decades of American arrogance coming to a head in the form of this guy who honestly believes he is sort of some so special creature that if he says something is going to happen, is going to happen.

23:58I'll tell you what's really doing my head at the moment. If you think about how many times during when Gaza was top of the news every day, that we would hear Wyckoff and Kushner off to see somebody, they're about to do a deal. Trump says the deal's within reach. Trump says we're about to do this. We're now getting the same in relation to Iran. And it leads the news every time he says it. The BBC the other day covered his entire cabinet live. A hundred minutes of him rambling about Sharpie pens and this sort of competition of sycophancy of his cabinet. It's just madness that we're dealing with at the moment.

24:32I honestly think this is a form of madness. It's a cultural madness. And it sounds to me, Rory, let me just ask you this, these people that you're talking to who don't want to accept that this is terrible for the world, is there part of them that they just don't want to think and talk about all this?

24:47Rory Stewart:Yes, I think there's a real sense of exhaustion. There's a real sense of, were so appalled by Trump, we don't really want to think about this. But there's also a sense that America, look, I mean, I'm being critical of America. It is all the things that we love about America too. I mean, you go outside, everybody's smiling. It's beautiful. It's many, many parts that are incredibly wealthy and prosperous as well as there being poverty. I was just talking to someone who's just been down in Mississippi. And he was just saying, you know, endless towns with churches and people very proud of their towns, but just very insular.

25:24Rory Stewart:My final thought on this, which struck me, is I was thinking a lot about Suez, because there's a weird circular argument going on here, which is the US on the one hand says the reason we had to attack Iran is it was so weak. And now they're saying the reason we have to attack Iran is their response shows they're strong. And then they're saying, well, we can't stop now because Iran has demonstrated it controls the Straits of All Moose. And my response is, well, it always controlled the Straits for me. And they're like, yeah, but once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. You can't allow a country like that to have control over Straits.

25:58Rory Stewart:That was what Britain, France and Israel said was Suez. We said, you know, NASA, this Egyptian nationalist had taken over Egypt, taken over the Suez Canal. And Britain, France and Egypt said, we can't allow an unfriendly nationalist regime to take over this vital waterway. So we have to intervene. And of course, when we intervened, America moved against us. And Eisenhower had this amazing line when he basically destroyed our whole operation, which is, we cannot subscribe to one law for the weak and one for the strong, one law for those opposing us and one law for those allied to us. And that's what I want to hear people say to Rubio and Vance and Trump.

26:39Rory Stewart:No, you don't get a different law because you're stronger, dear United States. You don't get a different law because you're allied to us, dear United States. And the problem is that what they're doing now with the Straits Hormuz, which is saying this is such a vital waterway, we cannot allow Iran to exercise territorial sovereignty over its own territorial waters, is that causes chaos for the Chinese claims on the South China Sea. This raises issues around Turkey's control of the Bosphorus. I mean, America is in a very odd position. It refuses to ratify the UN Convention on Laws of the Sea, but it's trying to claim customary international law as a reason for keeping these straits open while defying international law in every other direction.

27:27Rory Stewart:And so this is really bad stuff, and it gives so many things to people like China to play with if they want to stop American vessels going through the South China Sea. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me just before we go to the break a couple of uh quick points for me the first is i think we don't focus enough on the different objectives of the usa and israel right now and we're seeing that in the way that it's playing out in lebanon uh we're seeing it with israel clearly worried that trump might end the war before it's you know obliterated iran's ballistic missile program and its ability to develop develop nukes so i think that's something worth watching but the other thing rory did you noticed that there was a tour of Russian parliament members in Congress this week.

28:12I mean, they are on their side. I mean, I can't, I just found it incredible. They were being shown around, were shown how nice everything was, and they were being treated with such respect. And meanwhile, congressmen and congresswomen were going in, those who are cleared to get classified briefings on the war, including Republicans, were going in to get these briefings and coming out one after the other saying, we don't really know what's going on here. We are very frustrated. We still don't know what the aims are. We still don't know really what the details or the direction of this campaign are.

28:45So I still think we're in the place of making up as they go along, everybody bowing down to Trump, whatever he says is right. And it's a recipe for catastrophe. And I think that's what we're living. And I'm just shocked. I'm even more shock that all these people you're with, presumably a lot of the academics and hanging around university campuses, they kind of say, oh, you know, as long as we're okay, it's fine. And who cares about the rest of the world?

29:10Rory Stewart:Let me just finish on that. Because I think a lot of Americans listening to me will be enraged and our mailbox will be full of enraged Americans writing and saying, what the hell are you doing saying that we're not opposed to the Iran war? I think what I'm trying to say is that yes of course as you say in the opinion polls people are against it of course the majority of people i talk to think trump's an idiot what's striking is that just isn't anything like the level of detailed engagement into the strategy the consequences nothing compared to what i saw with iraq afghanistan it's the sense that the american political culture has become much less worried about allies in Europe, much more insular.

29:54Rory Stewart:And part of that is just things like the shale gas revolution, the fact that American energy is much less dependent on the Gulf. Okay, let's take a break. And then we'll come back, we'll talk about what's betting that's going on in the war. And related to that, there's this very interesting report written by former civil servant Philip Rycroft on the growing fears about foreign interference in our politics in the UK and what to do about it. Great. Looking forward to it very much. See you after the break.

30:47Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

31:20Rory Stewart:Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Spring Fest means more sun, more fun, and more free at Lowe's. Keep your yard in line with an additional free Ego 56-volt battery when you buy a select Ego mower, trimmer, or blower. Plus, keep landscaping fresh with stay green one cubic foot garden soil five bags for ten dollars our best lineup is here at lowe's valid through 4a while supplies last selection varies by location soil offer excludes alaska and hawaii welcome back to the rest of politics with me rory stuart and with me alistair campbell and rory i want to talk a little bit about polymarket this polymarket betting has become absolutely enormous and bear in mind this isn't a country that until not recently you kind of had to go to Las Vegas to bet.

32:12So let me just explain what Polymarket is. It's a global cryptocurrency-based, largely cryptocurrency-based prediction platform that allows you to bet anonymously on the outcomes of events, whether that's a football match or a ceasefire or a military attack or somebody being assassinated. My favorite bet that I saw on the market this week was you can 4 % of people have got a bet on that Jesus will come back in 2027. So good odds for that one. And you can do this without uploading any form of identity at all. Can I just interrupt on that?

32:49Rory Stewart:That's a very interesting bet. Because if the second coming happens, I think the question around whether or not you get your money back from Polymarket is a bit moot. So 4 % of people who have bet on the second coming have bet that it's happening in 2027. Now, Rory, insider trading, this arises when people know with certainty something that is going to happen at a certain time, something which may move the markets. Hence, as you remember from government days, market sensitive is a classification upon a lot of government papers. And just to interrupt for a second, I mean, without sounding too much like Dominic Sandberg, this is a very, very long story.

33:27Rory Stewart:So Lloyd George's government before the First World War was almost brought down by something called the Marconi scandal, where the cabinet knew in advance, basically, that the British government was about to take a huge stake in Marconi, the radar company. And the chief whip and various others members of the cabinet made massive investments in the shares shortly before the government announcement was made. And it almost brought down the government. So it's been something we've been very, very aware of. In fact, a lot of the novels attacking corruption in British politics in the late 1800s, early 1900s, are about ministers and others profiting from inside information on the markets.

34:07Rory Stewart:On which, back to you. So with most betting, so for example, who will win the next election, or who will win when Scotland go to the World Cup and play Morocco, we can't know. You and I cannot predict, even the players and the managers can't predict, okay? In football, you're not supposed to bet on teams in which you're directly involved either for if you're involved in any game as a manager or player you can't bet on that game right right so if you're the goalkeeper you can't bet that the goalkeeper is going to let in four balls no four goals or you don't let in for i mean you do let in four balls but you don't call them four balls anyway you can't do that it's the point you can't do that some of the big markets just to give you a flavor of some of the things that are on polymarket how many times will Elon Musk post a tweet on X over a given period?

34:58That is a big market. Now, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. It's a bloody easy way to get richer if you say, well, I know exactly how many times he's going to post because I'm not suggesting for one minute he does that. There's a big market.

35:10Rory Stewart:But it's anonymous, so there would be no way of pruning. I mean, I don't think Elon Musk is wasting his time doing this. No, he probably isn't, but he might tell his friends. But if he wanted to, it's anonymous. Here's another one. There is a huge market at the moment on when will Donald Trump meet Xi Jinping. Okay? Right. And this is an anonymous crypto, so there's no way of knowing whether it's actually Trump's secretary making the bet. Correct. And we have no evidence that he or she would make that bet. There are a lot of bets made on this market on Maduro in Venezuela being taken. There's an ongoing dispute about an enormous multi-million bet which gave the accurate date for what the better called an invasion but the market is and says well it wasn't an invasion it was a capture so you're not getting paid so one of the most grisly examples of this is a israeli journalist who suddenly found himself receiving abusive messages online yeah saying why did you describe a particular missile event in israel in particular way.

36:12Rory Stewart:I want you to redefine the way it's described." And he responds in a relatively calm way initially saying, well, this is the information we receive from the military and this is the kind of missile it was. And it becomes clear that somebody has made a bet on what kind of missile is going to land and whether or not he gets paid out is being influenced by how the journalist does or does not describe whether what fell were the interceptors or the missile itself. And the reason why, and it was a very, he wrote, we talked about a couple of weeks ago, he wrote it in the Times of Israel. And what was interesting was how the level of intimidation upon him grew and grew and grew to the point where he became really quite, really quite scared about his own, his own security.

36:55But the point is, there is a lot of betting going on, on when bombs are being fired, where they're landing, the damage they do, when there'll be a ceasefire, when they won't. And of course, the other form of betting is, and this is what happened when Trump announced that he was not going to go ahead with obliterating Iran's energy plants. Shortly before that, these massive bets went on, buying and selling of oil at different prices and so forth. So I'd like to think that if this was Britain, Lloyd George notwithstanding, we would think, well, hold on a minute, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, they're not going to be doing that sort of stuff.

37:27But I regret to say, with the current American administration, your instinct is to think, well, yeah, they probably are doing this sort of stuff, because they do think they can get away with absolutely anything. And the other thing, Rory, the public integrity section of the Justice Department, a recent move by the Trump administration was that it reduced the number of attorneys from 30 to 2. So there are now two people in the Department of Justice who are looking at these integrity issues. I just think this is all part of the sense that if you have power and you have money, basically you are entitled to go out and get more and hang the consequences if you have to fly a bit close to the wind.

38:10Rory Stewart:So one of the things you're pointing to here that I hadn't thought about is how on earth is anybody supposed to police this? I mean, if the point is that the crypto is anonymous and the bets are completely anonymous, how are law enforcement agencies supposed to prove that administration officials are or are not benefiting from insider information in this way. And it's also very weird, isn't it? Because it's also a little bit different from defrauding shareholders or defrauding a bank. What you're doing is you're basically defrauding the other person on the other end of the bet, aren't you? It's very similar to throwing a fight or throwing a goal.

38:51You don't know. This is the other thing. If you put loads of money on there, let's say that you'd been successful with your bet that Kamala Harris was going to be president, and you were owed lots of money by a market. You don't know where that money is coming from. You don't know whose money is actually coming your way and how much of it is going through some sort of money laundering and washing process. You just don't know because the whole thing can be anonymous.

39:13Rory Stewart:So just a final one, because we didn't push Nancy Pelosi hard enough on this. No, we didn't. But there's an extraordinary set of statistics around her husband's trades, which are massively outperforming the market, and many of which seem to have a strong correlation, says he politely, with the kind of information that you might be able to receive if you were on the inside in Congress. And the defense seems to be it's not illegal. In other words, the United States just hasn't put proper legal frameworks in place to try to stop this kind of insider trading, either from Congress on the stock market, or now you're saying this polymarket betting on what's happening in a war.

39:52Rory Stewart:Just a reminder, because Alistair mentioned it, this weekend, we'll have a Sunday read on the disturbing world of polymarkets and the people who've made tens of thousands from betting on Iran. Our reporter has interviewed one man who made$20 ,000 in one day, predicting when the Ayatollah would be killed. You'll find that in our Sunday read, our newsletter this weekend. Sign up via the link in the description below. And that leads us, I think, nicely, Roy, to the Rycroft Review. This is the report of the Independent Review into Cantering Foreign Financial Influence and Interference in UK Politics.

40:22And this was largely prompted by the conviction of Nathan Gill, reform MEP, former leader in Wales who's now in jail after pleading guilty to eight counts of accepting Russian bribes. there are 17 recommendations in the report the big ones are a cap on political donations from british voters living abroad 100 000 a year and a moratorium on crypto donations not a ban it was being described as a ban i think it should be a ban it's a moratorium which says the ban will remain in place until the electoral commission in this parliament has satisfied the sufficient regulation in place let's see where that goes because i think it should be banned not least because some of the things we've been talking about in relation to America.

41:05But I'll tell you the paragraph that really kind of made me sit up, goes back to our early discussion. So it says, the UK is a target of long term strategic foreign interference and espionage from Russia, China and Iran, which in different ways seek to further their strategic interest and cause harm to our institutions. Separately, beyond these hostile state threats, I'm cognizant of a potential new threat, an emerging willingness of foreign actors and private citizens, including from allies like the United States to interfere in and influence politics abroad in pursuit of their own agenda. I mean, he's basically adding the United States to Russia, China and Iran as forces that we have to be very, very worried about in terms of interference in our democracy.

41:49Rory Stewart:And partly that's Elon Musk explicitly saying he's going to be funding far-right parties and finding ways of getting money to Tommy Robinson or Rupert Lowe or whoever. The only thing that strikes me is how weird our system of funding is. I wonder how many British voters understand that at the moment, you can be a British citizen who doesn't live in the UK, doesn't pay tax in the UK, and you can still funnel money into a political party in Britain. You can also be a non-British citizen. I mean, not have a British passport at all, not even be UK resident for tax purposes, but have a company in the UK and be funneling money into British politics.

42:32Rory Stewart:I mean, I just don't understand how we allowed that situation to happen because in many countries in the world, that just can't happen. You know, I complained a lot about funding for Labour and Conservatives and others, but Labour, the problem was things like trade union funding, the Conservatives, a loss of the funding that we were receiving, I don't know how you'd put a number on it, some would have to go through the numbers, but was coming in from people who were not residents in the United Kingdom and weren't British citizens. And I'm interested why Philip Rycroft doesn't go further. I mean, why is he saying there's a cap of 100 ,000?

43:07Rory Stewart:Why is he not saying it's banned entirely? Does he have any reason to say that British citizens who don't live in the UK should be able to give money to political parties? Why should they be able to? I think he's referring to people who are on the electoral register in the UK, so you can be living abroad. But if you're on the electoral register, you can make donations. Look, I would be much tougher than this. The problem that he goes through, and I think this is probably part of his brief, was that he's saying there is no public or political support for state funding of political parties. Is that true?

43:38Rory Stewart:I think it probably is true. Turned out in South Australia that he managed to get there, didn't he? It did. It did. It did. Oh, I bet the polling suggested there wasn't much support before he did it. And then he pulled it off. And it turns, I mean, this is why I'm suspicious of polling in general. I mean, it's like your point about the Iran war. I mean, the polling may suggest everyone's discussed it. But if nobody's actually talking about it, what level of priority is it? Yeah, and you're right, Peter Malaski did get that through. The point about crypto is that because it's developing so fast, its impact on our politics is potentially enormous.

44:09Let's just take Reform UK. Reform UK objected to this for obvious reasons, because they got 10 million quid out of one guy, this crypto guy in Thailand, Christopher Harbourn. And it was very, very interesting that the Prime Minister's questions that preceded the Cabinet Minister Steve Reid's statement on the Rycroft report, they staged a walkout. Farage led his MPs out of the chamber, I suspect because he didn't want to be around when the Commons was talking about all this stuff. But I watched one of Farage's press conferences the other day, and the production values are extraordinary. Now, that doesn't necessarily win your election, but what it revealed to me is they have got money to burn right now.

44:52And if we don't know where that money is coming from, and the truth is with crypto, you don't know, because it can be anonymized. And the fact that they have jumped up and down to the extent that they have makes me think that there's something really, really fishy about crypto funding, which I'm glad they've stopped it for now and I hope that they go further and do you remember when we were in Moldova or he's interviewing Maya Sandu the prime minister and that guy which I can't remember if you were there we're talking to one of the security guys about the levels that Russia was going to to try to influence the outcome of that election and a lot of it was money pouring in via crypto we have the same thing in Romania and we're now seeing the same thing in Hungary if you go to Hungary at the moment you would think there was an election going on.

45:37And this campaign, largely funded by the Russians, you'd think the election was between Orbán and Zelensky and von der Leyen, because there are posters absolutely everywhere. People have been bombarded online with stuff. So the reason I like this report is because I think it's drawing attention to a problem that we probably thus far, this answers your earlier question, why we allowed this to happen, because we've always made assumptions that we're not really a corrupt sort of country. And if you read Oliver Bullough, Oliver Bullough has written a lot about financial crime. You read his books, London, the UK has done a terrible job at keeping our economy clean, truly terrible.

46:14Rory Stewart:And then you've got this story that Kwasi Korteng, the former Conservative Chancellor, has now taken over as the chair of a crypto firm into which Nigel Farage has invested over£200 ,000, taken a 6 % stake. There was reporting, which I don't know whether it's been validated that Farage would make an enormous amount of money if the company grew to a certain height and that actually the news around quasi-courtang and Farage had helped to get a lot of excitement and money pouring into this crypto firm. But just stepping back for a second, I don't quite understand Philip Rycroft's statement that there's no public appetite for funding parties and therefore you should allow people who don't live in the United Kingdom or who aren't British citizens to put in money.

47:03Rory Stewart:I mean, what's the worst case scenario? Let's say you stopped people outside the United Kingdom living outside the UK or who weren't British passport holders from putting money to political parties. The parties would just have less money. And then the public could decide whether they're comfortable with the parties having less money to spend on leaflets and advertising or whether they want to fund it themselves. But I don't see why the fact that the public doesn't support public funding of parties means that we have to take money from people who aren't British citizens resident in the United Kingdom.

47:31They would argue that, so Christopher Harbaugh, living in Thailand, would argue that he is a British citizen.

47:35Rory Stewart:But he's not a British citizen living in the United Kingdom. I mean, I'm trying to say there should be two requirements, yeah. I suspect that he was following a brief in that. There's a couple of points in the report where he says, this was not part of my brief, but. And I wonder whether that was one of them. But I think this is a fair start. But I'll tell you something else. When you were on the way to America, I did this um a long interview with liam byrne the labour mp who's written this very good book about populism which has come up we're doing as a mini-series in the near future and his team have calculated that 100 so this is funding works in different ways 173 million is the total money that has gone into what he calls the uk's populist right media political complex so this is in particular GB News, The Critic, Unheard, these sort of things.

48:24We talked recently about GB News and the New World's investigation into them. And likewise, not just Nigel Farage, who's a very wealthy man now because of all his outside earnings, but people like Lee Anderson gets paid by GB News, Jacob Rees-Mogg gets paid by GB News. Now, that can get reported if there is transparency around those payments to those MPs. But there's something weird about 173 million is not money to be sniffed at. It might be in American politics, but in ours, that is a lot of money. And that is the equivalent of funding if you have a political objective in a broadcast media operation.

49:01Rory Stewart:Well, Alice, listen, we've just got to get behind the Malinowska state funding of political parties. It doesn't matter that it's unpopular. It's not that unpopular. It's not going to cost a huge amount. And just roll it through. Because I challenge an incoming government to turn it in the other direction and say, we're giving up on state funding. We're going to return to a world where somebody living in Thailand can send you and making their money in Bitcoin, can send$10 million randomly to a political party and completely skew the power between different political parties in Britain. I mean, there can't possibly be any citizen who thinks this is normal or fair.

49:38Rory Stewart:It's absurd. Okay. Maybe people don't want to pay money, but we live in a world where we're very suspicious of elites. We're very conscious of i mean look i in fact actually if i go back to my obsession at the beginning about consequences there are two paradoxes here which link the point about iran and the point about reform and crypto the first is that this is about people who don't bear the consequence if you're living in thailand you don't bear the consequence directly of what happens again if you're very very wealthy you're insulated from most of the consequences of what happens on the street you don't have the same kind of stake because you're protected.

50:16Rory Stewart:And the second thing is this paradox that these parties like Reform that portray themselves as being patriotic nationalists are relying on foreign money coming from people domiciled in other countries, right? Chris Harbourn has a Thai name, lives in Thailand. This really weird thing about on the one hand, we're all about you know presumably patriotism blood and so on on the other hand we're investing in a completely anonymous globalized oligarch underwritten cryptocurrency platforms to fund our nationalist movement i've just found a bit where it talks about who can and can't as the 1998 committee on standards and public life report concluded it should be confined to those who live work and carry on business in the united kingdom the only exception to this should be british citizens who live abroad, but are on the UK electoral register.

51:10That is a tricky one. That is a tricky one.

51:12Rory Stewart:I think certainly my experience of the kind of donations coming into the political parties is that clearly there is a lot of movement there in definition of things like business. You know, one of the suggestions, for example, is that even if Musk couldn't directly contribute, his British registered business could. Well, the other point is that, and the report says this, is that there are no AI technologies that you could end up paying through different anonymized names. If you have a limit, just go just below the limit and keep doing it with different usernames. I mean, there's so many ways to get around that.

51:46That's why I think the easiest thing to do would just say, crypto, sorry, in our politics, you're having no role whatsoever. But even now, they'll be trying to work out how we get around this. And of course, don't forget a lot of the foreign interference is done through crypto as well. What they told us in Moldova was that Putin and his team would literally pick an oligarch in Russia and say, right, you're funding the anti-Meyesandhu campaign in Moldova. Just get on with it. Get the money in there somehow. So it's a very, very murky world. But I thought it was a pretty good stab at it. And I hope the government sees it through as the beginning of big reform.

52:23Rory Stewart:Great, great first stab. Well done, Philip Rycroft. Because remember, until this came through, I think there might have been literally no limit. I think actually you would have been able to have some wealthy individual give 400, 500 million without being in the UK. But I also don't know why we don't use caps on donation, caps on spending more aggressively. We do caps on spending well in local constituency campaigns. In the US, there are caps on donations, which were then ruined by this terrible, terrible invention of these political action committees. But caps on donations is also a very logical way to do it.

52:56Rory Stewart:Try to drive it towards, you know, the classic story about the Obama campaign, which is small grassroots donations is a much healthier way of thinking about politics. Yeah. Okay, well, question time. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about Cuba. We're going to talk about these very interesting cases on social media in the United States, where Mr. Zuckerberg and others got a bit of a whacking. We're getting lots of people continuing to ask us for our cultural recommendations, Rory, so we'll do a bit more of that. And final plug for me, Rory, the interview series that I've done with Liam Byrne, Labour MP on populism.

53:32First episode is out on Friday, this Friday. And if you're a member, you will get that. If you want to become a member, you just go to therestispolitics.com and you'll also get it.

53:42Rory Stewart:Great. Thank you, Anastasia. It covered a lot of very disturbing issues about contemporary culture, contemporary money and lack of responsibility and accountability. Thank you very much. See you soon. See you soon. Bye-bye. tutoring