527. Are American Tech Billionaires Threatening British Democracy?

21:28Rory Stewart:They're just kind of weak and everyone needs to pull themselves up and stop. Weak and woke. Yeah. No, I thought it was really interesting. And what it says to me, and look, I've been saying this ever since the election, that I think the government should be doing way more on mental health. And I keep hearing that something is coming, and let's hope that that's true. What that polling says to me is that politically, this is a much stronger and more important issue than people realise. And it also relates a lot of it to young people as well, who are feeling a bit kind of let down by the government.

21:58Rory Stewart:And without being, again, a bit over grandiose about this, how do we differentiate solutions which are targeting mental health head on compared to an analysis that maybe says, actually, this is partly caused by a society where the schools are no good, the NHS is creaking, work doesn't seem to be delivering dignity to people. And that really, what one needs is a country that's really sorting that stuff out. Yeah, I guess the question is there is how much of this is a consequence and how much is a cause. And look, you've got to deal with all of those things, but I think on its own terms, and you will get people still who will say, although I hope this polling might actually get people to dial down on the kind of woke, you know, generation, Gen Z, just everything is terrible and anxiety.

22:47There's no doubt anxiety is a real thing and has grown particularly amongst young women. And is it dealable with?

22:55Rory Stewart:I mean, if I mention the mental health stuff, what are some relatively straightforward things that a government could do that could help people? Well, it's the things that we've already done. It's talking therapy. And there is the data there to show how effective. It's not always effective, and it's not effective for everybody. It is for a huge number of people. If you can get talking therapies for people who are starting to feel anxious, depressed, anorexic, sick whatever it might be all the kind of common mental health issues fund it properly have it available and also recognize that if you do put the money at the right end you end up saving so much money further down the track and and is that i mean it's ridiculous but would you you know can technology help with doing more of the stuff online help or do you feel it needs to be traditional face-to-face well it's really interesting on the the other thing that they did in the survey was the most trusted communicator of mental health remedy were people who talked about their own mental health experience.

23:55Rory Stewart:Like such to yourself. The least trusted was online chatbot. Now, I think there's a place for that. I do think there's a place for that. But it's, you know, I've seen this so often with people, is how much, I've got a friend at the moment who's really struggling with depression. He's got an absolute blind spot about medication, just does not want to take medication. Now, that's fine, that's fine, you can do that. But medication is hugely helpful for lots of people. Totally. And for me, it's been a lifesaver. Did you have a block initially? Were you initially? Oh, yes. Okay. I had a block about seeing somebody.

24:27Yeah. Nothing wrong with me. It's everybody else who's crazy. And I had a block about using medication for a long, long time. And this is why the thing about talking therapy is so important, because in the end, I found somebody, a guy called David Sturgeon, who's sadly now dead, who I totally trusted.

24:40Rory Stewart:And on the medication, one of the things that you, that one of the, I don't know if it's an urban myth, but the story that you often hear is people feel that it sort of has side effects and they don't want to keep taking it because they don't. Well, it can. It can. It does have side effects and you just have to manage those. I mean, the medication I'm on now, Sertraline, is probably the sixth medication that I've been on and some of them have been terrible side effects. Okay. So you have to keep experimenting. You do, and you have to kind of, this is why the relationship's so important. And I had this, David, who was so wonderful, because he wouldn't say, this is going to work.

25:17He'd say, let's give this a go. And you give it a go, and eventually you find something. And I find too many people give up too soon on the talking therapy, and they give up too soon on the medication. But this really, really interested me, because that says to me, if you're thinking the traditional Trumpian Faragist view, I bet Farag's view on mental health is very much, oh, pull yourself together. I don't know that. He won't come on the podcast to tell us. But I think if this says to me, if you're going into tough working class communities, a lot of the stuff that is making their life worse than it should be is about mental health.

25:52And that's this to me is those people saying that and government needs to listen.

25:57Rory Stewart:We also had a question about grief that interested me. And maybe that's it's a good segue because you've just been reading a book on grief. So the question is from Emily, which is, do we talk enough about grief, think enough about how to cope with grief? Now, I've got to declare an interest. We've talked before about when your name is on the front cover of a book. Which mine was with Gary Stevenson, but it didn't stop us having quite a spicy... If you buy Gary Stevenson's book, mine's the only name on the book. Well, I'm in the middle here on this book by Lindsay Nicholson, and I should declare an interest.

26:27Lindsay Nicholson is one of my oldest friends. When Fiona and I were trainee journalists half a century ago nearly lindsay was also a trainee journalist and her husband was a guy called john merritt who was my best friend right and who died in his 30s like a tavistocs thing we were all in the west country west country all down the west country and the book's called how to survive losing it all and lindsay has written a previous book about john my best friend her husband dying followed by her daughter dying both died of leukemia and her daughter died she

26:56Rory Stewart:was age nine and have and her husband also died of leukemia age in his sort of late 30s in his 30s yeah and and and is that related and presumably genetic well they say not they say not and then lindsay was pregnant at the time with her daughter hope so the book of the things is how to survive losing your husband losing your child losing your career which she did recently losing your health she had breast cancer losing your hope and losing your mind so it's how to survive losing it out losing it all without losing hope. She's a brilliant writer, which helps. But it is just the kind of, and she talks very openly about the fact that there have been times when she's been completely suicidal.

27:35Rory Stewart:So, I mean, I still think one of the strongest interviews you've done with leading is with Naz Shah, but some people felt that it was a bit depressing. I actually felt it was quite outlifting to hear actually. Is this book a bit depressing? No, I think it's uplifting because it is about keeping hope. And she does get through these. I mean, she's... How do you survive those things? She would argue friendship. She would argue family. She would argue the ability just to kind of keep going. And the fact that she was pregnant when John died with Hope, I think Hope has kept her going. And Hope's now married with a family and so she's a grandmother.

28:18She did find another guy and um they got married and it seemed to be a kind of perfect second marriage uh but it all went wrong when he ran off with somebody from his swimming club but so she went through and she's i mean there's these and she had a terrible car crash in the middle of all this so it feels like she's got a misery memoir to tell but it's not it's like it's how you keep going and she talks she says there's not a single hour of the day that she doesn't think about her daughter ellie who would now be 37. And we've stayed very, very close to her. She comes with us to Scotland every Christmas, New Year.

28:57It is incredible. And so John's death, her husband, who was my closest friend, and he died. I don't quite know how you get over that, but she then had all the other stuff on top. But I think it's important, the point about grief. I mean, you do get through it. People do get through it. Well, let's just say it's very different, isn't it,

29:17Rory Stewart:with different people. I mean, I think there's, I was thinking about this a bit on the way in today, that sometimes if you were to, I don't know, go online, you'd get a sense that there's a sort of recipe. You know, grief follows these paths and it's what you say. I thought about it a lot because my father died when he was like 92. I was with him when he died.

29:39Rory Stewart:And actually, I think it's, I haven't felt sort of shattering grief. I was very sad but I also felt that I'd got to know him very well we talked about everything we could talk about he told me every story he could and I'd been expecting him to die for 15 20 years partly because from about the age of 75 onwards he kept saying I'm almost done and we talked about death and I was with him at the end and I think that's how you create a good death another great book about this Philip Gould another I've had so many close friends who've died and he wrote a book called when i die because he knew he was going to die and i just think we don't talk about death enough we don't think about it enough we're scared of it i mean fiona's mom's in her she's 101 and um so you know we know she's not going to be around for long she doesn't want to talk about it which i think is fine but i think there is something i think there is helpful if you do i think so i find it very helpful that my father was happy to talk about it and he's had It had a good life.

30:38It had a good life. Audrey's had an amazing life.

30:40Rory Stewart:And if you won't talk about it, then you're slightly sort of accelerating towards the edge of the cliff and dropping off. And you just have to assume that they sort of knew they were going to die. And I think it feeds panic when you're alive, if you're not thinking, actually, there's a kind of natural, logical, perfectly healthy conclusion to this. So your dad died in old age. Yeah. My dad died in old age. Your dad and my dad were born in the same year. My dad was 82. My mom was 88. Did you feel great grief at that? Or did that feel sort of more natural? My dad felt, I'll tell you what I felt, is I wasn't there for either of them.

31:15My dad, because I was doing a marathon, and by the way, we must give a shout out to the Mr. Sebastian Solway, the first sub-2R marathon. Obviously, I thought I was going to do that one day,

31:29Rory Stewart:but it turned out. Do you want to tell us your time? That year was 3.53.01. 3.53. It was actually almost identical to Shoshana's time. And I was probably 20 years older than Chisholm. You're right. So we were going to have a shout out, sorry, while we're talking about heroes, Yomif Kacheltra, the Ethiopian. I feel so sorry for you. Who came in just 15 seconds behind, broke two hours and was second. And he's Buzz Aldrin, isn't he, in the history books. It's very extraordinary to break two hours, set the world record, and then find this another guy 15 seconds ahead of you. Talking about parents, it was a wonderful interview with Sebastian Solway's parents this morning.

32:04We were talking about he's going to come home, he's going to build a new church for the village he's going to buy us a new car he's like the guy and he was so kind of diffident and modest about it that's what i found amazing watching a big interview afterwards so with my dad i wasn't there because i was doing this marathon and he he was it wasn't like he was expecting to die that day but he did die that day and with my mom it was even worse because i was in jordan in your old neck of the woods for the king of jordan's funeral no i was no no no it was i was just doing some work there and um and i was in a meeting and came out and there's 10 missed calls from fiona five from my sister and of course this my mom had a stroke but you know i now think it's the best i think her death in a way was

32:46Rory Stewart:amazing and was the one of the two of them that that that was easier with you or were they both very difficult i think my mom's is more difficult because i think it i think when you lost your second but your mom's still alive when you use the second parent you feel that sense of is now your generation. You're in charge kind of thing. And so, and also that fact that she died unexpectedly. My dad was expected, my mum was unexpected. Are you doing a good enough job with your own kids in case you got knocked over by the bus? In talking about? Death and would they be able to cope with it? I mean, have you prepared them for your end?

33:21No, probably not. In fact, Grace regularly talks about, I had a terrible dream and dream that you died and she woke up crying and da-da-da. No, Grace finds all that stuff very, very difficult. but I definitely will do I definitely will do I'd love to be like Philip Gould and say right I'm going to die I'm going to plan it these are the hymns that I want this is the service I want

33:42Rory Stewart:get on with it because as we keep I've got music I've already sorted the music okay good that's all been written down I've got the music but the music changes okay this is the great thing about music but basically it's going to be a lot of Scottish folk music a lot is Burnley going to feature in this? I think there'll be a Claret and Blue Flag somewhere yeah yeah I did say to Tony Blair Tony Blair and I were at a funeral a couple of weeks ago and I said by the way Sean Dyche is going to be doing the main eulogy at my funeral

34:12former Burnley manager and Tony just said not if I'm alive he's not

34:16Rory Stewart:Oh that's very sweet There we are Okay let's take a break and then come back and talk about people seem to love knowing what we read Rory so we're going to tell them what we read again This episode is brought to you by ITV. There is a new drama on ITV and ITVX called Secret Service, a political thriller that appeals both to Rory and me, not least because of our very different and varied backgrounds, I might say, makes it uncomfortably plausible. Yeah, the premise is simple. What if Russia had an asset right at the very top of the British government? I mean, I think it's a great story, isn't it?

34:55This is David and Gordon from the Rest is Classified podcast. This transmission has been intercepted. From the streets of Malta to the corridors of Whitehall,

35:06Rory Stewart:the enemy is closer than you think. Even podcast channels aren't immune to interference. I'm trying to do it today. So anyway, it's based on the Sunday Times bestseller by ITV News at 10's Tom Bradby, someone who understands that world. And it stars Gemma Artherton and Rafe Spall. Secret Service, out now on ITV1 and ITVX. Recommended both by Rory and yours truly.

35:34Hi 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 Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest Is 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.

36:23And 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. And 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.

36:58And 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. Now, 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.

37:35Welcome back to The Rest is Politics. We meet Anastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Talking of books, we've also been asked, who is this? Josh, what have you been reading or watching this week? And I know you keep saying you want to mention this documentary.

37:47Rory Stewart:Yeah. On Channel 4. Yeah, I just did a documentary on Channel 4 on the Suez crisis. I mean, and I just thought maybe it's a good way of kind of wrapping up my contribution and then back over to you. I've done a number of documentaries recently on history, a bit on which I did with Tom Holland on Caesar against Cato, just on Suez. So hold on, Dominic Sandbrook stood in for you here. Yeah. And then you stood in for Dominic Sandbrook. And I stood in for Sandbrook on the BBC history thing. A bit of pedultery going on. A bit of pedultery going on, yeah. But Suez is really interesting. So it's interesting for two things.

38:19Rory Stewart:Firstly, the Suez Canal was thought about in the same way that we think about the Straits of Formus today. This was the great artery which everybody was dependent on for their oil. And the idea is you cannot let a kind of anti-Western nationalist regime have their hands on our throats. And that was the reason why Israel, France and the United Kingdom intervened to reopen the Suez Canal. And that feels a lot like what Israel and the US are saying about the Straits of War Moose and Iran at the moment. With similar consequences. Similar consequences, right. The second thing is it's about US power.

38:51Rory Stewart:Because actually it's really a story about the fact that the UK, France, Israel assumed that the US would have their back. And actually what happened is the US turned entirely against them, organized the United Nations to vote them down, and then threatened to bankrupt the entire British economy and destroy Stirling. so that the Chancellor of the Exchequer Macmillan has to go in and see Eden, the Prime Minister, and say, we need to be out of this war in 24 hours or we're bankrupt. And this is fascinating because it's a moment, only 10 years after the Second World War. It tells you a lot about that special relationship where Britain is still manufacturing 25 % of the manufactured products in the world.

39:29Rory Stewart:I mean, Britain is still a pretty major country. It's still spending nearly 10 % of gross natural product on defense. 7 % of the British population is directly employed by the armed services in some way or another. And Germany is spending about less than half of what Britain's spending on defense. Japan is spending about a fifth of what Britain's spending. And their economies are beginning to take off. And we keep going with services, Navy, Army, Air Force, even after the humiliation of Suez spending and spending on on defense. Meanwhile, Germany and Japan gets to a situation where Britain goes from 25 % of the exports world to only 10 % of the exports world in 20 years.

40:10Rory Stewart:And Germany flops up to 20 % and Japan's overtaking it. So it's a really, really, you know, tells you a lot about power, world waterways, and the United States. So is this one episode? There's two episodes. Two episodes. It's out already? Yeah. And you can see it on Channel 4, Catch Up. Yeah. Okay. Well, listen, I had a fabulous weekend because Burnley weren't playing, because one of the other teams we were meant to play were in the cup semifinal. I stayed in the house all weekend, apart from going swimming in the morning and taking the dog for a walk. And I sat on the sofa with three books and nonstop football on in the background, which occasionally I watched.

40:54So you sort of read and then you look at the screen and read. And I did a bit of work. And then on the Sunday...

40:59Rory Stewart:It's the sound on on the television. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I only put it up when there's something sort of, so I've got a feel for whether it's going to be exciting or not. Some of the Scottish football in particular is fantastic at the weekend. So I was reading these books and I then decided on Sunday morning when I heard what had happened to Trump or what hadn't happened to Trump when the guy going into the hotel a long distance from where Trump was and I thought this is going to be a complete new sponge. So much blather and babble is going to be spoke. I don't want to watch it. So I just didn't look at my phone.

41:31I didn't watch the news. I just read and watched football.

41:36Rory Stewart:Much better for your mental health. And better, actually, incidentally, for all of our mental health, because then we don't get so many WhatsApp messages from you. I'd like to encourage this to happen over the weekend more often. Okay, exactly, exactly. Okay. Sorry, don't give away our trade secrets. Sorry, sorry. Anyway, one of the books I read we've already talked about, How to Survive. So the next one, which was this, Peter, and I wonder if, do you remember my book of the year last year, Carlo Masala, What If Prussia Wins? Peter Chappelle, What If Reform Wins? Ah. A scenario, and it is, I mean, Ferdinand Mount on the cover says, hilarious, terrifying.

42:14Anthony Selden says, we all need to take this scenario very seriously. So it's a scenario, so it basically starts and Farage is winning the election. and then it goes through it's written as a diary and it goes through the utter total chaos that ensues and what he's done is he's taken policy positions that faraj thais yusuf the rest of them have set out and he then goes through the process of them being put into practice so he goes coming out of the uchr he goes defunding the bbc he goes he doesn't do much on health i don't think there's anything on health um and of course net zero okay and i won't give away the ending but shall we just say it doesn't last long before it goes completely totally tits up and it's partly it's very there's a bit where i'm reading it thinking this is actually happening it's very credible but then as you get into the thing working it's a complete and total disaster so i strongly recommend that one and then this one i'm i'm three quarters of the way through how to sell a genocide which i've I've read, yeah.

43:18And what did you think of it?

43:19Rory Stewart:Well, I thought it was really, really moving. I mean, what Adam Johnson's doing there is he's forensically documenting the way in which people reported the Gaza war. Everything from the adjectives they use, the way they describe the two combatants, the amount of attention they pay to casualties on the Israeli side compared to the Palestinian side. Over to you. No, I, and what's interesting is he doesn't cover Fox News. He doesn't cover the right-wing media. He covers the liberal media, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times. And I guess his point is that that's a more powerful case, that if it was just Fox News, you know, all our listeners would be like, yeah, well, obviously Fox News does that.

44:03Yeah, and essentially what it does is it paints a pretty credible picture of what I think they sometimes call at the BBC institutional bias. And the bias is very much against any real portrayal of the Palestinians as anything other than kind of barbarians and anything other than Israel as victims. So it changes. It changes over time.

44:30Rory Stewart:He also makes a point that he uses headlines to illustrate that in Ukraine, the headline will always be Russia bombs somebody. And in Gaza, the headline was always a bomb went off with no subject. So Israel's never identified. He also points out that when it comes to Russia, they're very happy to use the word genocide, to take the views of the Ukrainians, to always be skeptical of the claims the Russians make. Whereas when it comes to Gaza, they assume that the Israeli military is always speaking the truth. They make no real attempts to verify. They refuse to report things which the Israeli military hasn't itself verified.

45:13Rory Stewart:And they also talk about institutional pressure. So, I mean, this will make, I think, some of our listeners very, very uncomfortable and will feed into their general sense that we are anti-Israeli. But I think if you can bear to read it, it's definitely worth looking at. And interesting, when you say if you can bear to read it, because it sort of feels at times like you're being hit over the head with a hammer. It's utterly relentless. uh i mean it is compelling but i i several times had to put it down and go back to one of the other ones or go back to the football because i found it really not just disturbing but and you know i the one thing i'd like to have seen is whether he couldn't have also maybe have done al jazeera or a spanish tv station that was very pro just just to see whether there was another interesting to see actually if he did us what he'd find i think how much did we pull our punches I think in the first, I was thinking about that, I think in the initial period after the October 7th, he'd have felt we were very much in this space.

46:17Rory Stewart:Like the New York Times. We were like the New York Times. Yeah, being instinctively pro-SRED. And I think over time, we got, but do you think, by the way, he's used AI to do things like, I mean, it literally sort of says, you know, they use the word massacre 3 ,614 times. How do you get that? That's relatively easy to do with AI. Is it? How do you do it? Well, you simply get a program that gets into those articles and counts the words. Am I sort of missing a trick with some of our research? I often do it. So for example, let's say you took a... One of my running jokes is I will get the South Sudan development project and I will search for the word, you know, one of the tribal groups, Dinkran, it'll appear zero times.

47:00Rory Stewart:You go to find and it tells you how many times okay and then you type in a word like sustainability and it'll be like 352 times will come up so you can do that with all these documents your point about russia as well as a lot of um you know in the first hundred days after russia's invasion of ukraine 262 children were killed in the first hundred days of israel's assault on gaza more than 10 000 children were killed mentions of child deaths and related terms were 33.4 percent higher for Ukraine than for Gaza. He really goes for Jake Tapper on CNN. There's an introduction that really goes for the BBC.

47:34Talks about people who have been interviewed about Palestine for years who suddenly find they can't get on the shows.

47:40Rory Stewart:And a big hit on Morning Joe, which is what Katya cares on a lot. Absolutely, they get a real big hit, yeah. Anyway, I'm glad you felt like I did it. It's a really tough read. There will be some of our listeners who think it will just be completely biased. But it's got a lot of data in here. It measures it. He's clearly done the work. And it's a horrible read in a way, but I think it's important that people do see it for what it is. And he's clearly very much on the Palestinian side. So I imagine that if you were on the side of Netanyahu, you could go through that book and you could point out that he's equivocating about Hamas atrocities and lots of other things.

48:16Rory Stewart:But some of that stuff, the direct comparison on reporting on child death, whether or not you actually accept that the Israeli government claimed that the Al-Shifa hospital had a massive underground terrorist bunker underneath as their reason for attacking. Then it turned out there was nothing there and that was never reported. Or right at the start, immediately after October the 7th itself, the stories of 40 babies being beheaded, which became a fact. And which then actually, I mean, he also points out, of course, that Biden repeats a lot of the stuff without fact-checking. Yeah. That's the other thing that strengthens the case here.

48:50This is not a left-wing pro-Palestinian guy going at Donald Trump. This is one year of the Biden's term. And then this headline from The Onion, a satirical publication, ran the headline, Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas. It was the thing that you wouldn't get heard in any of this hour unless you first went on and said, of course.

49:18Rory Stewart:He also had something I thought was interesting in terms of government communications. He points out that the Biden administration's strategy for dealing with this was to use unnamed sources inside the administration to brief headlines in New York Times saying, the president is powerless, he can do nothing, or the president is very angry, it's about to change. And he said it was like a skit, not a story. The same line would be repeated again and again. Nothing would ever change. But clearly the administration, aware of how uncomfortable people were, despite the fact clearly the U.S. actually had enormous power.

49:53Rory Stewart:They were providing so many weapons, so much money for this. And in fact, the Israelis are very open. He quotes them saying, thank goodness Biden never asked for a ceasefire because we would have had to do it almost immediately. But the administration briefing, he's powerless or he's angry. He's powerless. He's angry. it is it's a very very interesting challenging read so that's that's why i was doing it the weekend rory and i'm sorry if you missed all my whatsapps to be encouraged more weekends with books and football please um kate what does the government need to start prioritizing to help young people well mental health definitely part of it i actually yesterday was sitting here in the studio with Vicky Spratt, who is a journalist who has taught thousands and thousands of Gen Z.

50:39And she's doing a mini series for us. We're now commissioners, Rory, we're commissioners as well as presenters. She's doing a series on the Gen Z story.

50:50Rory Stewart:I'm really sorry, but roughly Gen Z, roughly how old? 14 to 29. Thank you very much. Born in 1997. Yeah. And 15 years on. Otherwise, otherwise you become a millennial. Very good. And she's looking at debt, student loans. She's looking at the housing. So broadly speaking, teenagers and young people. Yeah, yeah. So she's going to be looking at housing, debt, student loans. We get so much feedback on student loans and also social media as well. So she's doing several parts and then we're going to wrap it all up. She and I are going to talk about it. And then we're also going to talk to Angela Rayner, who's done a lot of the stuff that's actually been aimed, you know, particularly in the housing and the rental market.

51:33And then I think at some point, you and I should listen back to the whole series and talk about it too.

51:37Rory Stewart:Lovely. Looking forward to it. Thank you. And the first episode is out on Friday. That's the Gen Z story presented by Vicky Spratt. Starts Friday. Go to therestedspolitics.com and you'll find it. Well, Alistair, just to finish on a very serious note, bella how tall is the president of serbia well should we guess i'm gonna guess at six i'm six three and i reckon he was a good four inches taller than me so i'm gonna guess that um six seven what are you saying god they're tall people i mean all i know is that he his staff are complaining that he's taller than eddie rama and eddie rama wears platform heels to make himself look taller that's not true ah well wikipedia says he's one meter ninety nine what is that in feet and shillings and pence famously wikipedia is really really bad on height i i really struggled to find out what arnold schwarzenegger's height was rishi sunak's height was boris johnson's height i'm often quite interested in this and a lot of film stars their height is not public it's actually surprisingly difficult who's the one who stood on the box alan ladd he used to stand on a box the new new...

52:45Humphrey Bogart stood on a box. Yeah, yeah.

52:47Rory Stewart:Tom Cruise is not tall. No. But it's actually surprisingly difficult getting to... Do you ever feel you need a box when you and I are doing a show together? I should do, should do. I quite like being little and large. Little and large is good. You think he's good? Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised he's only$1.99 because that's 6 foot 6. I'd have thought he'd be bigger than that. And also, I think Eddie's taller than that. Okay. Now, Alistair, thank you very much. So we covered a lot of ground, but I think maybe the things that stick with me most, Palantirian International Humanitarian Law, which is about how Britain thinks about a little bit more sovereignty and independence, and then a lot on grief, mental health, and the complicated issue of how you report conflict and war, how you actually get balance.

53:29Rory Stewart:And finishing with this extraordinary controversy over the height of present lutich. See you soon. See you soon.

53:44hi 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

53:59Rory 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, and I believe that in the end, good will triumph.

54:40I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10 ,000 and he would never have said anything like that. It's unthinkable.

54:46Rory 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 handwrite for her conference speeches. And they'd be full of all the stuff about the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life is struggle.

55:23Her speechwriters 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 good is 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 if you want to hear more search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts