526. Trump's Orwellian Maths and the King's Special Relationship Mission

20:06Well, I honestly do think that it means us getting back into European Union fully fledged. I've come to the view that the sort of single market customs union is nice, but it's not going to take you there. I worry, as you know, as you call him, my friend Emmanuel Macron, but I do worry that he doesn't necessarily share this vision. I worry, we'll talk about this maybe when we talk about Vucic, I worry that actually Macron is the one who is most reluctant on enlargement. I'm actually with Zelensky and Vucic and in a sense, if we're going to make Europe big, make it big. And if that means changing some of the rules, then see whether that can be done.

20:53Rory Stewart:So just tell me more about Macron, because that's very interesting. So not keen on big enlargement and also a little bit hesitant on creating this fourth corner. I mean, how does it work? What's going on in Macron's head? Well, he has. You mentioned the nuclear stuff. France is now the, if people understand that our nuclear deterrent is very wrapped up in America, militarily, technically, et cetera. France literally has the only independent nuclear deterrent in Europe. That gives them an extra strength. I think he sees that as a strength that should be exploited. But I think this is about politics.

21:23I think they're genuinely worried about their politics and the impact of enlargement.

21:27Rory Stewart:So that he would think it's just politically impossible. It'd be too unpopular. It would help Repent too much. Yeah, so I think you talk the talk, but you don't necessarily... In the end, the member states have got to give the leadership on enlargement. The commission can do all this stuff and they can go through chapter by chapter as they do. Montenegro, for example, is making huge progress at the moment. But the big step... I think we're talking about big steps. Colby, you're right, is going to sit there thinking, these guys aren't going to make the big moves. I think the only big move is actually for people to say, this requires more Europe, not less.

22:00It absolutely requires us to be back in there. Germany? I think the Germans would be more pragmatic about it. I think they would.

22:07Rory Stewart:And does Merz got a sort of big, grand strategic view, do you think? Well, I don't know, but I think, I thought, this is the reason why I think it was so interesting what he did yesterday. The big, grand strategic view used to be, we are absolutely all in with America. That is changing. That is clearly changing. Even from someone who's on the right? Absolutely. And would have been more sympathetic. The left in German politics did have a tradition of being a bit anti-American sometimes, right? Yeah, still there. I don't believe Angela Merkel would have said what Matt said yesterday. So that's changing.

22:37But I think what I worry about from Labour's perspective is that we're doing this kind of incremental change. I think the French and Germans are doing their equivalent of it. And I actually think what we need, you know, we talked to your friend Gerald Knauss about John Monet a lot. We kind of, I think we need another Monet to come along and say, look, this is not big enough what we're thinking at the moment.

22:58Rory Stewart:It's interesting. We'll maybe take a break and then come back to Vucic. But the transition into Vucic is one of the things that he was saying is a security argument. He was essentially saying Europe faces two paths and he was almost blackmailing and threatening. He was saying, you know, either the US basically scoops up a lot of Eastern Europe and the Balkans and creates its own transactional relationships with them, dividing Eastern Europe from Western Europe. Or Europe reaches out, brings in these countries. And as Zelensky said, it's a security argument. And he was adding in Norway, Turkey, UK, Ukraine.

23:33Rory, before we go to the break, you know, I've been utterly obsessed about Trump and percentages. Oh, yes. And we now have to confront this because it is more serious than people think. So look, if I get my spectacles like that, okay, I'm holding that. What happens if I take my finger and thumb away?

23:48Rory Stewart:Oh, they drop onto the table. Correct. They've dropped onto the table, right. That is a basic fact that we all accept. We understand gravity. Because of Trump and Putin and polarization, there's nothing that is accepted universally as truth apart from science and maths. Okay, what is two plus two? Four. What is three times three? Nine. If you go into a shop and buy something for 40 pence and you give a pound, what does the shopkeeper give you back? 60 pence back. And what are the various formulations that could be in? I feel like I'm doing my kids' homework. Yes, exactly. But there's not a single person listening to this, including the least educated, who don't understand that basic maths.

24:28Rory Stewart:I'm worried you're going to ask me a question. I don't know the answer. Some are going to be like, what's 73 times 52? I'm not going to do that. I've got some more complicated what's coming. If you see a shop and it says 50 % off everything. Yes. Okay. Okay. And you go in and before you bought a mug in there that cost£10. Yeah. £5 now. Correct. 50 % of Ted is£5. Five pounds comes off. So if something's 100 % off. Oh yeah. It would be free. Okay. If it was 200 % off. Ah, then the shopkeeper would have to give me money maybe? Correct. Yeah. You do really, really, really well. So you can't have more than 100 % drop.

25:08Okay? Yeah. Impossible. Yeah. So why does Donald Trump constantly say that he's cut drug prices by variously 300%, 400%, 500%, and 1 ,200 %? And why is that not covered anywhere in the world's media? It's amazing. What do we think he means? Well, I'm going to explain what he means because the other Robert Kennedy Jr. explained what he meant. He was asked by Elizabeth Warren at a Senate hearing, what was the difference of the cost of a drug on TrumpRx, which is their website, and the price at costo? Kennedy didn't answer the question, but he said this, President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages.

25:49There are two ways of calculating percentages.

25:53Rory Stewart:That's very good. Okay. He then says this. Wait a minute. Where's it? My nine-year-old does that. Daddy, there are two ways of doing the maths problem. There's my way and everyone else. Well, there might be, but the day goes on to say, if you have a$600 drug and it goes to$10, that's a 600 % reduction. Is it? No, it's not. No, it's 98.33%. Correct. Because 600 minus 10 is 590. The next day in the Oval Office, Kennedy reports to Trump on his encounter with Warren, with the world's meter there. He says she was ridiculing President Trump for his math. Math, I hate that, which she was. Saying you can't reduce something by 600%.

26:32So Kennedy, thinking he's smart, tries to show her wrong. He said if a drug went from$100 to$600, that's a 600 % rise. Wow. Is it? No, it's six times. It's gone up six times. Yes, but that is a 500 % rise. Right. Because the increase, 60 minus 100 is 500. You divide the increase by the original price. 500 divided by 100 is 5 to convert the percentage 5 times 100 equals 500 %

26:58Rory Stewart:so he's trying to say it's a 500 % rise and therefore Trump might think it's a 600 % reduction he might think whatever he thinks but then we have then we have it's actually an 83.3 % change okay now Trump then steps in Kennedy's been blowing so much smoke up his backside that he's now smiling and saying yeah he said I take a lot of heat I would say 500, 600, 700 we also say sometimes times 50 60 70 80 90 people understand that better there's two ways of calculating it but either way it doesn't make any difference whether it's 60 70 or 80 nobody's ever heard of it but it's also 500 600 700 depending on the way you want to look at it the way you word the calculation is either way but bobby you're doing a fantastic job brilliant it is utterly it's the most brain dead it's just nonsense.

27:48You can't, you can't. And then nobody, can you imagine if Joe Biden had said that?

27:54Rory Stewart:Yeah. Can you imagine if Keir Starmer said that? Can you imagine if Macron, can you imagine if you and I said it on the podcast? I know. People get lost on it. That 50 % is the same as 500%. Yeah. They would think we'd lost it. Yeah. So why have we got somebody so stupid as president and why do we treat them as normal? Yeah. It's a good question. What's the answer? It's a fundamental question. I don't, I think he, I think what he's doing is just, He just thinks big numbers are better. So he'll just produce a bigger number. I don't think it's really mass. I think what he's trying to say is, well, you know, I've reduced it a lot.

28:25Rory Stewart:And, you know, 60 % doesn't sound like very much. Well, one, he hasn't reduced it a lot. So why don't I say 600 %? And that doesn't sound like very much. So why don't I say 1 ,200 %? That sounds a bit bigger. But Rory, you're... I just want to be big. You're normalizing the abnormal. And the reason why I think this is serious, I think it's right out of the nothing is true, anything is possible playbook. This is about... And it's also deliberately dumbing down his country. It's a different type of thing, isn't it? It's total sort of absurd bullshit. I mean, Putin wouldn't do that. Because traditional dictators, nothing's true, everything's possible, are trying to say things which might be plausible.

28:59I mean, they're lies, but they might be plausible.

29:02Rory Stewart:Special military operation. This guy has gone into a different realm. I genuinely think he doesn't know the difference. These Iran negotiations with Iranians, right? The Iranian foreign minister is a former nuclear engineer, right? He sends in Vance and Wyckoff. Vance, who, by the way, stands there nodding as Trump comes up with this numerical bullshit. Well, but this is an opportunity for the Iranians. Maybe they can say, we're not reducing our nuclear stockpile by 10%, reducing it by 1 ,000%. You're not taking it seriously. Do you not see that as a serious point that the most powerful man in the world...

29:32Can't count. Can't count, can't add up, doesn't know what a percentage is.

29:36Rory Stewart:I think all of it... It's terrifying. It's horrifying. It's horrifying. It doesn't horrify me as much as what's about to happen to Britain due to our complete inability to restructure our international relations. But yes, I agree. Trump is horrifying. Well, I don't think you've taken it seriously enough. No, so the reason I think it's really serious, because I think this is Orwellian. I think it's him essentially saying, whatever comes from my mouth is the truth, even if it is not borne out by reality. And I think if we can't all agree on what a fact is, I don't know how you have a democracy. Yeah, and that'll be true right at the heart of any democracy, that the idea of truth, accountability, transparency, all these jargon words are bound up because you can't vote for someone unless you can trust them to deliver what they say they can deliver.

30:22Rory Stewart:And you can't hold them accountable unless you have some idea of what the truth of what they're doing is. So once you create a world in which a leader can say black is white, Orwellian, you know, red is blue, there is no way of holding anyone accountable. And that's where he wants to be. Okay, let's take a break and then come back and talk about the Balkans and a little bit about Labour.

31:04Rory Stewart:daily. And yes, it can feel like opening the books at the Treasury, but eventually you'll feel like the chancellor of your own idyllic exchequer. Of course, you'll want to examine the data around your balance. For that, there are tools like Starling's Spending Intelligence. It's an AI-powered search bar within Starling Current Accounts where you can ask a question about your spending habits and get an instant answer in-app. It helps deepen your knowledge and make more informed money decisions. A bit like having a select committee in your wallet. Search Starling Bank to find out more. Good with money starts here.

31:45Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samarick here from The Rest Is History. Now some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest Is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest history which is all about britain in the 1970s a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own so right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the middle east are rippling through the world economy when britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise people are arguing about europe the government has got a few issues with the trade unions and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say, governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues.

32:33And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on The Rest is History, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now whether you love her or loathe her we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975 a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about we'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand as people said at the time to the International Monetary Fund the IMF for a then record bailout.

33:25Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course, it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts.

33:47Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So Rory, I think of all the interviews we've done, I'm not sure any of them, with the possible exception of Al-Shara, have got quite as much publicity, particularly in the Balkans, as the interview that we did last week with President Vucic. But before we go into that, why don't you, we got a bit of feedback from people saying, you know, we, I thought it was one of our most interesting interviews, but people saying we don't know much about this part of the world, kind of why does it matter? So tell people before we get any further why it matters as much as it does.

34:24Rory Stewart:Well, I think the first reason it matters is that this is where the big European war was, right in the very heart of Europe. So if you look at a map, Serbia is sitting there in the middle of the European Union with European Union countries all the way around. And that was where in the early 90s, Yugoslavia broke and a war particularly broke out between initially Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnian Muslims with these horrifying genocides, millions of refugees, hundreds of thousands of people killed, Sarajevo under siege, paramilitaries, war criminals, Mladic, Karadzic. And then in 99, the Serbs mounted an operation, which was an operation of ethnic cleansing, even potentially genocide against the Kosovar Albanian population.

35:18Rory Stewart:So that's an autonomous region in southern Serbia, which meant a lot to Serbian nationalists because it was the place where in the late Middle Ages, they'd fought a great heroic battle against the Ottomans, but was by 1999, majority dominated by Kosovar Albanian Muslims. And that then led to the second intervention. First intervention was everybody getting involved in intervention in Bosnia, stopping the war, stopping the killing in Sarajevo in the mid-90s. And the second intervention, which you were very involved in, was this intervention in 99, which eventually ended up with Milosevic's troops, the Serbian leader's troops being pushed back, Kosovo achieving autonomy, and then eventually being recognized as an independent state by many countries, but not, for example, certainly not by Serbia, but not even by places like Spain.

36:06I think there are five countries which don't recognize Kosovo inside the EU.

36:10Rory Stewart:And Vucic matters because Serbia was supposed to be part of a story which to some extent Croatia is part of, which is how this horror, this civil war, this ethnic cleansing was fixed by joining the European Union. Borders disappear, you're integrated into a whole new political structure. And Serbia was meant to be on that journey. it hasn't happened. And instead of which, it's ended up with an Orban-adjacent authoritarian ruler who we interviewed. Over to you. Yeah, just to give you the background, so Yugoslavia was made up of Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia.

36:48So two of those have joined the European Union, Croatia, Slovenia, and Montenegro is getting closer and closer and closer. You get the feeling that the Serbs are really not happy. Vucic was clear. He's not happy about Montenegro getting in ahead of Serbia. So what followed from Yugoslavia was what was called FRY, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was the Union of State of Serbia-Montenegro. Montenegro then becomes independence, you've got Serbia. I found it fascinating to see him. I've seen him a few times in the past. He and I were opposite numbers during the Kosovo War. I thought he'd have mellowed a bit in relation to Kosovo, but I don't think he has at all.

37:28Whether that was just for a very nationalistic domestic audience, I don't know. The main story that seems to have appeared in Serf Media was when he said to me, some of us have principles, Alistair, which was seen as a sort of direct hit as the legality of what we did.

37:44Rory Stewart:We had an interesting series of meetings with Bitsworth staff, and they were very much insisting that he doesn't control the media. My goodness, the coverage demonstrates It's just how much influence he has over certain really key bits of media. Once they decided they were briefing out, some of us have principles out of state. It was everywhere. I mean, tell us a little bit about how much everywhere it was. Well, I have a friend who was there who was just sending me, as they were landing, all the stuff that was being covered. And I mean, there were dozens, even just the fact of us being there.

38:18If you remember, I posted a picture of my tree of the day in a park outside the hotel in Belgrade. And even that led to dozens just regurgitating. One of them actually said, you know, Belgrade welcomes the return of the NATO bomber, right? Which I thought was a bit off. He was so nice and charming before the interview. And actually, I didn't, Fiona, my Fiona thought he was rude and aggressive. I didn't find him rude and aggressive. I just thought he was very spiky and absolutely determined not to give an inch on Kosovo. So most of the stories were actually about the Kosovo War.

38:53Rory Stewart:Well, let me just do a quick explainer on the Kosovo War so people understand the two sides of this. So from the point of view of the United Kingdom and the United States and those other countries, I think it was almost 19 of them who joined the alliance. This was the responsibility to protect. Here was a Kosovo Albanian Muslim population that was being ethnically cleansed and the West was intervening to save lives, drive back the Serbian aggressive forces and defend the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians. From the Serbian point of view, Kosovo was absolutely part of Serbia. This was an illegal intervention with no proper UN clearance and backing.

39:33Rory Stewart:It was breaking the sovereign borders of a European state, interfering in its own internal affairs. And they very much see Kosovo as being a central part of Serbia, totally reject the idea of its independence. And he was also trying to argue in the interview that what happened in 99 was actually the end of the global international order. Because it was an operation without UN sanction. It broke the sovereign borders of a state. And from his point of view, there's absolutely no difference between what NATO did in Kosovo and what Vladimir Putin did by seizing parts of eastern Ukraine, claiming he was protecting the indigenous Russian population.

40:11Yeah, it was a huge, huge moment. I mean, Tony Blair hadn't been prime minister for that long. He actually, we had to work quite hard to persuade the Americans that this was in their national interest as well. Couldn't have been done without the Americans. And it was pretty brutal. It was brutal on both sides. And I think the reason why maybe there was quite a lot of spikiness between me and him, when I was based at NATO, we used to just, everything that came out from Vucic, we said that, well, he was the head of the Milozovic line machine because they were, you know, propagandizing the whole way.

40:38very interesting to see we had a lot of reaction to this interview and we've just sort of boiled it down so here i give you the sort of the the crux of the listener feedback rory listeners appreciated the opportunity to hear an opposing perspective and i thought on orban it was really interesting to hear that to hear somebody who likes orban and gave us reasons why some found value in listening to an articulated voice from the right and that felt that we'd at least engage with that without our usual kind of sneering if it had been boris johnson or whoever quite a lot of people said they actually thought it was the best episode we've done, possibly for that reason.

41:12And the basic thing coming through was how important it is in a polarized world to try to understand people of different opinion. Negative sentiment, and I think a lot of this came from inside Serbia. My friend Nemanja Vidic, do you know Nemanja Vidic, Roy? Former footballer Man United in Serbia. He sent me a message. I said, what do you think? And he said, I think he'd have liked it. You gave him a great platform.

41:32Rory Stewart:Yeah, yeah. And I think the Serbian opposition, a bit like people who are opponents of al-Shara in Syria, are just like, you are total puppets of the regime. You came in from the moment you arrived. Vucic's propaganda machine and his basically state-controlled media used our presence to legitimize him, mock the West, boost his nationalist credentials, and that we were puppets in his hand. And I think the reasons, and this is what's come through in the feedback, is they felt we didn't push him hard enough on democratic backsliding. The problem is with these interviews, and he was generous with his time, but the problem with these interviews, so he sort of, and he did something very clever, which, and I knew what he was doing, he basically said, I'll give you the judiciary.

42:16I'll give you the judiciary. Yeah, maybe on that we've not been great, okay. But once you get into an argument about you control the media, no, I don't, yes, you do, no, you don't, I just think it's so boring. The fact is, he does control very large parts of the media.

42:30Rory Stewart:There are two types of problems. It's very, very difficult, to be honest, for an outsider coming in to Spain or Serbia to ever have the full detailed stuff that a Spanish opposition politician or a Serbian opposition politician would have to construct these items. But the second thing is we have to make a choice, which is not an easy choice. If you go in in order to use it to prosecute the case that this guy is an authoritarian ruler, then it's a show where you and I are just telling our audience that we disapprove of Vucic. The second choice is to try to let these people speak for themselves and trust that the audience can take on board the fact that we don't approve of this guy.

43:09Rory Stewart:In fact, we think this guy is an extremely uncomfortable fact who is backsliding on democracy, pro-Orban, flirting with Trump, pushing back on media, a very difficult actor, but we're going to give him a voice. And also, I think, you know, with Vucic, we're also gambling on something, which is the guy has changed his position so often. The big game is going to be, as we talked about in the first half, can we get Serbia into the European Union? And what does that involve in terms of holding one's nose and saying, potentially, this is a nationalist authoritarian, but the bigger strategic interest of Europe is going to be getting places like Serbia in and trying to convince someone like Vucic to come along.

43:51And at which point, I think actually that would be the reason and it would give you the opportunity to get rid of the whole thing of unanimity, which is what gave Orbán the power to block so much of what the European Union majority wanted to do. And a lot of people apparently got upset by the fact that I said at the interview, nice to see you. And he said, please, please come back to Belgrade more often. But again, I think that assumes that all you should do, he and I having been literally enemies in a war situation, that assumes that you should hold on to that position forever. Now, I feel on Kosovo, he is holding on to the position for political reasons, which I understand.

44:32And we could have sat there all day and just said, well, hold on a minute. No, this resolution, that resolution. We'd have lost people. I think it is important. There are some limits. I mean, there are some people that I wouldn't want to give, necessarily give a platform to. But let's just imagine we were interviewing Donald Trump, right? Now, Donald Trump, his team would know pretty quickly what we think about him. Would we just want to expose him for what we think he is? Or would we actually want to hear why he is like he is? I think we'd want to do a mix. Yeah.

45:05Rory Stewart:Yeah. Well, the same would be true if you interviewed Nigel Farage or Ken Baden-Arkham. Presumably, Farage is worried about coming on the show because he doesn't think he's going to really give a chance to explain his views. Which is not true. Which is not true. And if we did that, by the way, we'd get a lot of people attacking us, but it would be the right thing to do. I also thought that Vucic... And by the way, can I just say, I think people are sick of these gotcha interviews. I watched one the other day. What was it? Oh, it was Lewis Goodall. I think it's really good, but he was doing an interview with Darren Jones, Keir Starmer's chief secretary.

45:32It was unwatchable after a few minutes. And Darren Jones handled it really well, because he was quite humorous about it. But it's this whole gotcha thing. You're a bad person, I'm a good person, I'm speaking on behalf of the public. It actually is populist, it's playing into the idea. As opposed to, with Vucic, you're an interesting person, you're a very complicated person, and we're going to try and find out a little bit more about who you are and what you're trying to do. And by the way, I thought his stuff on China was absolutely fascinating.

46:00Rory Stewart:The final thing that I wanted to bring up, and there's so many other things I took away from it. So I was there in Montenegro and in Kosovo, 1990, 2000, as a British diplomat, and moving back and forward with British soldiers. And I'm looking back on my 26-year-old self. I must be honest. Were you 26? I was 26 then. He was 28. Yeah. I must be honest that I hadn't thought about it for a long time. And to be reminded by Vucic, of the very, very negative, deep sense. We walked past a building that had been hit by the NATO bombs that still has graffiti on the side. That's the army. Kosovo, the army's returning.

46:40Rory Stewart:Yeah. Me desperately trying to remember some of the servo-crut that the British government very kindly paid for me to learn. I'm trying to read these Cyrillic things. But the other thing that I think connects to the first half is this question of how they deal with Trump. And they, I mean, Republika Srpska, Albania, Bosnia, the rest of them. Without naming names too much, it is astonishing in that region what you pick up on. One of the leaders, it's claimed by somebody who knows a lot, gave$20 million to somebody who'd been part of Trump's first administration, believing the guy would get him into the Trump second administration and feels cheated and ripped off because the individual got a job in a different part of the Trump administration didn't help him.

47:28Rory Stewart:Another one of the leaders has apparently handed over all the mines in the territory that he controls and in return gets to swagger around in Mar-a-Lago. The stories about hotels everywhere, you know, this bit of coastline has been given. The bomb site. Absolutely. That was the site that Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. were trying to turn into a five-star hotel. Totally bizarre stuff, right? Suddenly, Albanian coastal development is taking place with Trump allies. The Bosnians are now giving contracts to the brother of Flynn, who was the disgraced national security advisor, and Trump's lawyer with a company that's never done any business.

48:06Rory Stewart:It's just got over a billion dollar contract to try to move gas lines through Bosnia. You're not doing the Balkan case for enlargement much good here, right? Right. Donald J. Trump Jr. suddenly turns up in Republic of Serbscribable places, which is this Serb nationalist enclave of Bosnia where he's suddenly doing business. So, it's and they're so frank about it. I mean, nowhere outside the Gulf have I heard countries talk so openly about the idea that essentially, and they're all spending money on lobbyists. I mean, eye-watering them out. And what are these lobbyists? These lobbyists are basically people in Washington who claim that if you give them colossal sums of money, millions, millions of dollars, they will get you in, shake Trump's hand, go in for a meeting, get some concession.

48:53Rory Stewart:The case of a Republican Serbsk, all the sanctions were lifted. Is that or is that not connected to the fact that Trump's companies have suddenly got mining concessions and Donald J. Trump Jr. is building hotels? No, I mean, look, the corruption, Skaramuja keeps saying this, the rest of the politics of the US, corruption is off the scale. And it's in plain sight. I mentioned last week the interview that Eric Trump did live on television about a multi-million pound contract he just landed at the Pentagon. Well, is he really a kind of military expert? Does he really know about drone technology? Or could it be that he's Donald Trump's son?

49:26Rory Stewart:So listen - And as with all corruption, my final thing that I thought is how angry they keep getting because they'll pay someone money and nothing will happen. And one of the problems with corruption is that you don't know who's lying to you, who actually has access, who doesn't. A lot of people, I think, in the Gulf are very, very angry with the United States because they feel they gave a huge amount of money and Trump isn't replying to their calls. Yeah, yeah. And I think the hotel falling through, and there's the culture minister. Tell us about the hotel falling through. Well, so what's happened is that the hotel, the site, which is an extraordinary thing, it's been there ever since the war in 1999.

49:59And it's left with the bomb damage. The bomb damage is there, it's all sort of, you know, the ground has not been repaired, the buildings are not repaired, the windows are all shattered. And it's there as a reminder. And by the way, those reminders have been a very effective part of the propaganda that Vucic was continuing. Because that's what makes things, we were attacked. This was their army headquarters. We were attacked. We didn't attack anybody. And a lot of the younger kids now, they think that because that's what they're told. So Kushner and Trump Jr. wanted to turn this into a five-star hotel and offices.

50:30Rory Stewart:But it doesn't make any sense. Can I just interrupt you? It seems completely mad, right? So you've got this enormous monument in the middle of your country to the war with all its shrapnel. And you want the aggressors to come and rebuild it? Into a five-star hotel? Yeah, and an office block. I mean, it seems kind of slightly weird. I'm trying to find the analogy, but most of the analogies I come up with are too sick to be plausible. But if you've made your whole national identity around this wrecked, smashed up bit of, I don't know. I'll tell you what it is, that the Chinese come and demolish the Statue of Liberty and decide to build the Chinese embassy on its site.

51:08Rory Stewart:Okay. Yeah. That's what it feels like to me. I can listen, put it this way. The nationalists did not like the idea of the aggressor coming along and building this hotel. That's my sexual liberty analogy. The other thing I would say, though, is that having been to Belgrade periodically, but, you know, with quite long gaps between the visits, the city itself is transformed. Yeah. And there would be something quite positive, I think, if they could get rid of that eyesore and say the war is now in the past, but they don't want the war to be in the past. And I also think the big point in the European Union, they're never ever going to get into the European Union until they resolve the issue.

51:41And I didn't get any feeling from him that he saw a way to resolve it.

51:45Rory Stewart:Well, let's hope that's not true, because we want them in the European Union, they're not going to resolve the issue. So I think actually we need to return to a much more imaginative structures of how we get these countries into the European Union. Because if we get stuck with that, you will say Moldova can't come in because they haven't resolved the conversation with Transnistria. Ukraine can't come in because Crimea is a separate. Serbia can't come in because they can't recognize Kosovo. Bosnia can't come in. If we're actually to get them in, and I think the argument is we need to, warts and all, warts and all, then we need a bit of courage.

52:15And the reason why this matters so much at the moment is the European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Koss, the woman that I went to Ukraine with, she's warned the six Western Balkan countries that are trying to get into the European Union that they are on the path to losing 700 million euros from the EU growth plan by the middle of this year if they don't step up on the reforms on which she says there is too much backsliding. Anyway, if you've missed this interview that we're talking about so much and that has been front page news for several days in Serbia and the whole episode played out on their news programs, then just search Leading wherever you get your podcasts.

52:55Rory Stewart:And do just again, go back through the back catalog of leading. There are some amazing things. Naz Shah, for example, who we interviewed, I thought was extraordinary. She is a labor backbencher, which doesn't sound very exciting to people. But in fact, if you listen to the story, is the most moving story of female courage, resilience. I mean, she is that. That's one tough lady. And that's an extraordinary story. So if you haven't listened to Naz Shah, Naz Shah, Sarah McBride. What did you think about Sarah McBride? Tell us a bit about Sarah McBride. I love Sarah McBride. Sarah McBride, transgender US congresswoman talking incredibly calmly and openly about her experience.

53:34Rory Stewart:I know this will be offensive to some listeners. Please listen. I'd love to hear. Or when I posted it recently, somebody said, oh, two white men talking to a white man. Yeah, there we are. So anyway, if you're of that view, do listen to the interview and then come Come back to us and tell us what you honestly think. Yeah, okay. Right. Very briefly, and there's not much point lingering too long on this because we're recording this on Tuesday morning. There's going to be a vote in parliament later on the day as to whether Keir Starmer should be referred to the Privileges Committee. Labor are defending it very, very robustly saying the whole thing is a lot of nonsense and it's a deliberate stunt to try to equate him with Boris Johnson.

54:10Meanwhile, Philip Barton, former head of the Foreign Office, who was one of my favorite diplomats ever. He was in our private office early in the Blair years. His nickname for me is Bartonob, because as you may know, Rory, I've never congratulated anybody on receiving an honour, because I don't believe in the honour system. But I've always called him Bartonob. Because he got an OBE. He got his OBE while he was in number 10. And then at 11 o 'clock, we've got Morgan McSweeney. So that will doubtless... It'll be the first time that most members of the public have seen him or heard him.

54:43Rory Stewart:And are you expecting great revelations, or are they going to be rather sort of cautious and dull? I sort of feel, Fiona keeps saying that she thinks this story has got to where Westland got in the Thatcher era. Westland was this big scandal about the sale of a helicopter company. To the US. I mean, interestingly, Heseltine who got into that is maybe an early precursor of this whole conversation that's dominated this whole podcast, which is how do you think about being less dependent on the US and have more of a European thing? and Hesseltine was basically saying we cannot have a situation where we are totally dependent on the United States for our helicopters.

55:18Rory Stewart:We need some strategic autonomy. His storming out of the cabinet was one of the highlights of my journalistic life. Anyway, but what she said is that pretty soon people got confused by Weston and couldn't remember what it was about. I actually ended up turning the radio off this morning because they were going, you know, somebody I'd never heard of who'd given written evidence was, was it contradicted by the verbal evidence that was given last week? And I was kind of losing the will to live. and I just feel it's one of those frenzies. Keir Starmer's admitted he made a terrible mistake in the appointment.

55:44I'm not convinced that all this kind of ins and outs on the vetting process is going to go anywhere. So you're not expecting great revelations. I'm not, but you know, famous last words. I think Philip Barton will have been pissed off at the process. I think Morgan McSweeney will probably find it hard to say he wasn't pushing quite hard to get Peter Mandelson in place come what may, but we shall see. And meanwhile, the local elections are limbering up and hardly anybody's talking about local election issues. One thing we do know is they're not going to be a pretty night for Labour.

56:11Rory Stewart:Right. And the polling is pretty extraordinary. I mean, some of the polling we've seen, we've got reform leading Labour by 9%, 29 to 20 in the national polls, even if that narrows. We've got, I think, 63 % of the British public saying there's been little or no change under the Labour government. This is a polling done by Portland, Portland PFO. Personal financial has gone from plus one to minus eight. Net sentiment on the economy down by 10. So public opinion is not a happy place. No, it's really not. There's not much point in getting deep into it today. I think we got into it pretty deep last week.

56:43Some of our listeners thought too deep. Others thought, love it. Hearing Alistair say negative things about the Labour Party, enjoyed that. But we'll doubtless come back to it. But famous last words, I think this is a storm that is blowing out.

56:57Rory Stewart:We've done a romp around the world, but right at the center of this is this question of what on earth Britain does with the US, how Serbia deals with the US. And I think this is again and again, coming back to the big long-term issues of what kind of world we want to shape. And we will be returning to that, I think a little bit in question time, where we're going to be talking about Palantir, a company that's been very much in the headlines recently. It's a big US tech company that now has a dominant position, not just in the Ministry of Defence, but in things like the National Health Service.

57:32Rory Stewart:So we'll be talking about that, but we'll also be talking about the Foreign Office cutting its International Humanitarian Law Department, which, you know, I would again link to this weird problem that Britain has of trying to work out what it's going to do in a post-American world. You wanted to talk also about mental health. I always wanted to talk about mental health. And grief. Yeah, maybe a little bit on grief. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to it. Cool.

57:59hi it's dominic here from the rest is history and here is that clip that i mentioned earlier the other thing is something else you get some grantham and that's the methodism and actually this to me i think this is one of the absolute defining things of thatcherism is the tone the

58:14Rory Stewart:moralistic evangelical tone yeah and the low church tone rather than the high church tone completely. Margaret, as a girl, had to say grace before every meal. She had to go to chapel three or four times on Sundays. Her father, as a lay preacher, went on and on and on about hard work, individualism, thrift, clean living, all of this. And this is what I think makes her politics different. There is a moralism to it, a low church moralism that is totally unlike anything that any other Tory leader says before her. So in 1984, an interview with the Times, I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil.

58:51And I believe that in the end, good will triumph. I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10 ,000 and he would never have said anything like that. It's unthinkable.

59:01Rory Stewart:Also, I mean, what's interesting is that it's giving to the left what the left often give to the right. It's casting the left as evil and the right as virtuous. And usually it's the other way around. Completely it is. I mean, you see this reflected in her archives which are online at thatcher foundation website which is brilliant by the way this amazing digital archive you can see all the notes that she would hand write for her conference speeches and they'd be full of all the stuff about you know the evils of socialism good versus evil what the really great religions of the past teach us what life you know life is struggle her speech writers would cut all this they'd say god this is bonkers but it would find its way in one way or another and i think you're absolutely right she thinks socialism is not just wrong she thinks it's she thinks it's morally it's evil it's corrupting and people in 70s britain you know they're used to thinking socialists are well-meaning and idealistic maybe they're a bit deluded but blah blah blah blah well she doesn't think that she doesn't think they are well-meaning idealistic she thinks that they're doing the devil's work yeah and that's what makes for her admirers it's so invigorating and for her critics i mean if you're on the left right and you're used to thinking yourself of yourself as the goodies to be told actually you're not you're the bad people it's insulting and it's why i think one reason why people take it so personally um when she sort of wades into battle.

1:00:33If you want to hear more, search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts.