529. Antisemitism, Polarisation, and How the King Outplayed Trump

22:35Rory Stewart:Well, and I think the other thing that makes the drama of a really, really great speech is that you can read the audience. So particularly with the Congress speech, even more than the White House speech, you are so aware that there are an enormous amount of pro-Trump Republican senators sitting there. And you're aware that J.D. Vance is sitting right behind him, often with a thunderous expression on his face, often reluctant to get to his feet. So you've got this incredible dramatic tension of, you know, how's that line going to land? How's that going to land? And the extraordinary revelation that he is able to say things which are very challenging, challenging the American administration's policy straight down the line.

23:20Rory Stewart:Absolutely. does not endorse what they're doing in Iran. He calls for peace. He calls for support for Ukraine. He calls for democracy, human rights, liberty, Magna Carta, the constitution, limits on executive power, investing in climate and the environment. And he's doing it in a way that is drawing enormous numbers of members of Congress to their feet with standing ovations, which could never be achieved. I mean, any democratic politician would be unable to do that, to get a bipartisan response like that for these kinds of values. And then the final thing, without sounding too pro-British about this, he did it in a very British register.

24:01Rory Stewart:I mean, it wasn't an American speech. It was playing very much to a certain sort of quiet, wry British sense of humour underlying it, understatement underlying it, and also a speech that almost only he could have given. You know, only he really can get away with referring to Magna Carta as though it was yesterday. So I really thought, you know, cometh the hour, cometh the man. I mean, this was extraordinary. And if you wanted an example, again, you know, I don't want to overly roll into this, but why I remain such a passionate supporter of the king and the monarchy, regardless of all the things which are illogical and impossible to explain.

24:44Rory Stewart:it was a role that would have been very, very difficult for somebody who wasn't a constitutional monarch to perform. Almost impossible for an elected politician to do something that deft in Congress. Yeah, I've been in Congress for some of these kind of, you know, foreign dignitary speeches. And I remember once when Tony Blair was doing a speech there and there were bits of the speech that the Republicans were cheering more than the Democrats. And then the Democrats thought, well, they're cheering, we have to cheer. You get this almost like a football crowd where a chant suddenly sort of moves around the chamber.

25:19I think I'm right, though, Diane, that the bit where Vance did not stand up when everybody else did wasn't Ukraine. He stood up for that very reluctantly and very slowly. And he clapped in a way that it was almost as if he was trying to make his hands not touch each other. So he didn't make any noise. But the time when he didn't stand up, which is, I think, even more remarkable, was when Charles said his thing about nature being our most precious and irreplaceable asset. And Johnson, Mike Johnson, the speaker, who I think is just generally oleaginous anyway, so probably wanted to be standing up lots.

25:53But he sort of saw that Vance was keeping his bum firmly seated on the chair, but then he thought everybody else is getting up, so he got up. And he looked at Vance, and Vance gave him a really kind of lemon-swallowing, sort of angry look. So what did it mean for Ukraine? Is the sidelining going on? What it said to me was that actually, take away the Trump administration and whatever it is that Putin's got on Trump, take away J.D. Vance, who clearly hates Europe and hates Ukraine. The body of US politics as represented there was completely on the side of Ukraine. And that gave me a little bit of hope.

26:31Rory Stewart:Well, it's a big question, isn't it? And it's the big drama of the United States, these two different Americas, which you can see there. That speech that the king gave, so many of the values are almost universal American values kind of baked into the Constitution. but those republican senators and congress people are the very same people who in all their interviews recently their hearings with judges federal judges have demanded that the federal judges uh accept that biden stole the election and they won't say it and the judges as you say and this is probably the most sort of fatal sign in america's unbelievable the judges refuse to say that Biden validly won the election, something that has been proved repeatedly by American courts.

27:22Rory Stewart:They're refusing to speak the truth. Now, you cannot have a system where your judges won't respect the courts and won't speak the truth just because they want to get a job. Fiona and I were watching the speech live. And after the first 10 minutes, when I realised he was going to exceed my expectations of he was he was going to hit all the buttons yeah i started cheering it like it was a football match you know climate climate yes yes he's done climate nature yes ukraine all this so and then but the other thing rory when they were standing outside the the white house and they were just doing this is when they were saying farewell and they were just sort of standing there having a few farewell pictures and one of the reporters shouted out, what do you think of all the improvements that are being made?

28:11In other words, the ridiculous ballroom. And Charles just stood there for about five seconds. Trump sort of muttered, he liked it. Muttered, right? And then Charles just said, we shall see.

28:28Rory Stewart:It's amazing. And the other amazing thing, which I think is really good, is that you've often pointed out that there's no point in love actually moments that simply alienate and provoke and achieve nothing. And part of the real skill which made it a real act of genius and why I wish I'd written that speech and feel so jealous whoever it did. And I think the king will have played a huge part in it. And when I've seen his speeches, there are scrawling reg spider writing all over them. I've seen a lot of the spider writing in my time. Again and again. But he managed to do it standing up proud for Britain, for values that we all believe in, and somehow did it without alienating or provoking Trump.

29:08He definitely alienated and provoked Vance. And I'll tell you another moment where I saw Vance swallowing multiple lemons was when Charles talked about the importance of Christianity. And they all clapped that. And then he immediately pivoted. And it's why I value so much the work I do it into faith, into faith dialogue. I mean, it was just, it was like, you know, here's one for you. And then here's another one for you. Very good. Loved it.

29:35Rory Stewart:Why don't we take a quick break? And Alistair, you have made us focus on the issue of Mali, this enormous country in the Sahel, which has been right at the heart of global terrorism, jihad, and now the relationship with Russia and what used to be called the Wagner Group. So more of that after the break, led by Alistair and with a question. starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like shopify they have the tools you need to start and grow your business from designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond shopify can help with everything you need there's a reason millions of companies like mattel heinz and all birds continue to trust and use them with shopify on your side turn your big business idea into sign up for your one dollar per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.

30:59welcome back to the rest of this politics question time with me rory shurd and me alistair campbell now rory mali alex from dublin given russia's failure to defend kidal and other malian cities despite deploying its africa core how sustainable is moscow's security partnership model across the continent should russia's african partners be seeking alternative security arrangements or does the Kremlin retain sufficient political and economic leverage to weather this type of damage?

31:26Rory Stewart:Wow. Okay. So firstly, I'm not as up to date on Mali as I should be. And actually, I was reminded to go back into the humility game. I talked to my friend, Adrian, who has been the Africa correspondent for many, many years and actually lived in Kenya for nearly 30 years. And I was talking to him about Mali this morning and he said, well, I'm not really up to date on exactly what's happening in Mali and turn out it's just been there. So anyway, I did talk to my friend Will Brown, who is now ECFR and does a huge amount on Mali and Sahel. And I direct people towards reading the more detailed stuff there.

32:01Rory Stewart:In very broad terms, though, Mali is a butterfly lying on its side. And the wing up in the north is largely empty Sahara desert and traditionally dominated by nomadic communities, pastoralist communities with livestock facing really tough conditions in this arid environment, many of them Arab and Tuareg, and then down in the south on the other wing of the butterfly. You have 90 % of the population, it's more agriculture, and it's more traditional black African. And this has been a big tension all the way across the Sahel between between pastoralists and settled people, you can see versions of it in northern Kenya, see versions in Somalia, you can see versions obviously in Sudan.

32:47Rory Stewart:We talked about Hermeti and the forces there, which is very much people who come from this kind of wilder, nomadic, camel herding background, fighting the people coming from the Riverine Valleys of Sudan. But Mali is the worst of all. I mean, Mali is the place which has really fallen apart. You will have encountered a lot of it through the French press because the French deployed quite early into Mali. And it's been the front line between these Al-Qaeda affiliated groups and these Tuareg affiliated groups who had traditionally found their base up in that empty zone of desert on the northern wing of the butterfly and the southern groups.

33:26Rory Stewart:The French were kicked out. There was this chain of military coups all the way across the Sahel. In almost every case, French and Americans booted out, Russians brought in. And since the Russians have come in, I hand over to you on this, it's gone from bad to worse. The French actually begin to look quite impressive compared to the Russians. Well, yeah. And the other thing to reply, it's not just, you know, when you say butterfly and people think, oh, that's pretty and that's nice. It's huge. It's twice the size of Ukraine. And they kicked out the French about five years ago now. And they turned to Russia, in particular the Wagner group, with my alleged lookalike, according to the rest is classified, who, by the way, have done a very good series on Iraq, Rory.

34:03They interviewed me for it. And as you know, I can't pretend it's my favorite subject to talk about, but we had an interesting discussion about it. So Yevgeny Prigozhin, he goes in there, sets up the troops. But then, of course, when he turned against Putin and eventually got killed, the Afrika Korps, as the question suggests, they take over. And in answer to the question, there are no doubts about the reliability, because the truth is, faced with these separatists on the one hand, and the Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM group on the other, the Russians have fled. And it meant that the rebels, if you want to call them that, the separatists, they were able to enter very close to the capital.

34:44They've assassinated the defense minister, a guy called Kamara, who was a Russian speaker. He was the man behind their strategy. They've severely injured the head of intelligence, and they've taken control of quite a lot of the upper part of the butterfly. And so people are pretty down on the Russians, added to which this whole story, the atrocities in terms of violence against women and girls, rape and torture of the people that they capture has fueled support for the insurgents. The leader of the country, the president, this guy Goite, he came to power in one of these coups that you talk about.

35:19He wasn't seen for several days. And when he finally was seen, it was in a photograph with the Russian ambassador. I think that's the Russians trying to say, we're still in charge here, but they're not as in charge as they were, it would say.

35:31Rory Stewart:I was talking to the African Union representative of Sahel, and he said that he is one of, I think, 165 envoys to the Sahel. You know, as you imagine, every country has a Sahel envoy, every organization has a Sahel envoy. But he said he was the only one actually living in Mali. I mean, it's a really interesting example of the international community going a bit nuts. I think also someday we should talk about how difficult it's been to analyze this. I think many people listening will have been aware that the story around Mali has been on everyone's news for about 15 years. And of course, people remember Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, which is a related story, again, about tensions between pastoralist groups and settled groups and climate change, which is driving a lot of this.

36:19Rory Stewart:And then there are the things that nobody predicted, maybe because we're not paying enough attention. You know, Chad, for example, has held together much more strongly than Mali. Benin, which people thought was going to collapse, you could make an argument that the African Parks, which was an international NGO, which did some really interesting work invested in national parks and community work, contributed to stopping insurgent groups taking over in Benin. There's been quite good responses coming up from Ghana. Ivory Coast hasn't fallen in ways that people might have predicted 15 years ago. So it's not a universal story, but poverty is right at the core of it.

36:59Rory Stewart:Because, you know, when I've been with these groups or in these areas, and I'm talking now, it could be Somalia, could be Sudan, could be even northern Kenya, the poverty is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, it's communities with nothing. You can see them on the edge of World Food Programme feeding stations. You can see them walking weeks out of the desert with infants who are dying on their chests. These are people who have absolutely nothing. I mean, they're the very, very poorest people in the world. Their governments are offering nothing to them. You have the sense that the government in Bamako is so detached from the lives that people are living in the North.

37:37Rory Stewart:And therefore, in certain groups that are able to provide a kind of modicum of sometimes law, sometimes people say, I remember somebody saying about Al-Shabaab, they'll take, yes, they'll take payments at checkpoints, but at least they'll give you a receipt and the next Al-Shabaab checkpoint won't take another bribe whereas when the police come in uh they they fleece you every which way i told you before i i did advise the the the government in benin for a while oh my goodness yeah um i went there it's a really interesting place but it's pro-western pro-western and doing better well rory depends who you talk to so i the the guy that i was dealing with president talon it's a great name it means heel in french as you probably know uh so it's t-a-l-o-n not t-a-l-e-n-t but if you look at the all these kind of transparency international and the democracy index people they basically say and i'm please don't give me the blame for this but they say it's gone from being what was called a beacon of democracy in west africa to something less than that.

38:45The last election, it was very hard to stand in the opposition, media, judiciary,

38:51Rory Stewart:usual stuff. Well, final one, if we're talking about African leaders, Ibrahim Traore, who has emerged in Burkina Faso, has become the great celebrity, the kind of Che Guevara of the rest. He took over a military coup in his early 30s. He's become a TikTok star. He's been helped by AI and the Russians who promote him through Russian television and radio, but also huge bot factories, AI funds. So Nigel Farage? A level beyond. I mean, the guy has become the big celebrity of Africa, and he speaks anti-imperialism, pro-Russian skepticism about Western democracy, and AI generate what appear to be tributes to him from the Pope, songs about him that claims to be by Beyoncé.

39:35Rory Stewart:say, it's an incredible thing. Wow, we should get him on. Yeah, well, we should. Yeah. Ibrahim Traore, if you're listening, please come on The Rest is Politics Leadic. We'd love to. We'd love to. Final point on Mali. The junta under Goethe have made a series of big mistakes. They kicked out the United Nations. I'm sure that was a mistake. They broke the Algiers Agreement. This was the peace deal that they had with the Tuareg separatists. and they also left ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. So they kind of basically were signaling they could go on their own. And they also changed their position in relation to the battle between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara.

40:17So they made a lot of mistakes. But that being said, I think it's good that we've talked about it because I don't think it's on that many people's radar right now and it's pretty grim what's going on there.

40:28Rory Stewart:Well, Alison, maybe as we move on from the grim to maybe lighter stuff, advice on dating people with different political views. And Maggie, can friendships survive deep ideological divides? I think friendships can, but I've never understood how marriages do. James Carville and Mary Matlin. He was working for the Democrats. She was working for the Republicans. I don't know how they do it. No, Joe Johnson, Boris Johnson's brother, who was in Parliament with him, is married to a many gentlemen who ran these incredible front page articles in The Guardian on child poverty, attacking austerity while he was a minister.

41:05Rory Stewart:It is interesting that, but I guess people make it work, right? I mean, I guess, yeah, I suppose they do make it work. I mean, you know, deep ideological divide. I mean, Fiona and I have had some very deep ideological differences of opinion. The Iraq War being one. The Iraq War was definitely one, but there were others. The general lefty bias on my things tends to think Fiona tends to be right on most of these debates whenever they're raised. But maybe that's just my... No, as you being a complete creep. As you being a total creep. No, history has proved me right on so much that we've argued about.

41:39Yeah, she's definitely more, she's got a more romantic, idealistic view of how the world should be and how it therefore could be. I'm probably more practical and pragmatic. used to be able to buy t-shirts and mugs at Labour Party conference with the thing that said, I've never knowingly fucked a Tory.

41:55Rory Stewart:Oh, yes. And Angela Rayner, I think, got into trouble for making a joke along those lines, didn't she? Yeah, yeah. And you used to say stuff like that, didn't you? I think I've heard you say that. Probably. Before I met you, Rory, and realised that it was possible to have friendships across political divides. I'm not sure I could. I think if, look, disagree agreeably, that's all fine and good. It's all fine and good for a podcast. But I think if you've got to do that 24-7. Yeah. Listen, I find it very difficult with friendships, to be honest. I have found it difficult. I think a lot of people found it difficult over Brexit.

42:30Rory Stewart:If you remember what it felt like then, I mean, the polling was unbelievable. 25 % of people voting for each side said they'd find it difficult to talk to someone from the other side. And 50 % said they wouldn't allow their kid to marry someone from the other side, or wouldn't want their kid to marry someone from the other side. But I feel it because, you know, I've got friends who will say to me, well, you know, I'm not a supporter of Donald Trump, but, you know, I've got to say, and I find that really, really difficult. I mean, really difficult. And I quite quickly get dragged into a pretty unpleasant argument.

43:08Rory Stewart:It's the same with, you know, I've been seeing some people around the Tory party in Kemi-Bade not recently. And when they lead with, well, Rory, you know, unlike you, I thought Boris Johnson was a great prime minister. You know, I find it very difficult to keep my temper. And I find myself kind of banging the table and getting a bit shaken. It's not easy. I mean, on the Trump thing, it may be that like, you know, both of us do obviously have forms of Trump derangement syndrome. But I had such a difficult time in the States with people telling me that everything he was doing in Iran made sense, needed to be done, no options.

43:49Rory Stewart:And I didn't find it actually that easy. We're about to release an interview that we've just done with Rahm Emanuel with him saying, yeah, Trump's done some bad things to Europe, but let's be honest, there's blame on both sides and the Europeans didn't spend enough on defense. I find that stuff, I wouldn't find it easy to keep friendships going. And the only way I can do it i don't know how you feel is by saying to friends who say that let's just not talk about that you know i sometimes get that with my mother who's much more right-wing than me i adore her but i have to just shut the conversation down yeah well it's interesting i was i was at the sport industry awards the other night and um i was on table such and such and i was looking at the other names on the table including tanny gray thompson who i've known for a long long time and i think she's great an amazing athlete an amazing person but of course she was a very very big voice in the recent assisted dying debate where you know i felt very very strongly that the house of lords did the wrong thing but similarly i just decided okay i'm going to go up to her i'm going to give a big kiss and i'm going to say it's lovely to see you then i'm going to go and sit down and if it comes up fine but i'm not going to raise it i think the old pre-rest is politics me i think the two big issues that really do it for me one is brexit it i don't mind if somebody comes along and says i'll vote it breaks if i wish i hadn't the ones i can't stand the ones so well yeah it's been shit but i don't care they that's a that's a deal breaker for me private education here you are rory i'll let you out of this one because private education for people who go on about how much they care about state schools so like when we had a with the kids at the school that our primary school our kids went to when we had a very bad offstead and the ones who pull their kids out on the basis that, oh, well, the sport's not good enough, or, you know, my kids have got really special talents and they're not being developed properly.

45:39And therefore I have no option but to, I can't stand that. We've lost quite a few friends on the private school. I wonder on that one, there's an interesting thing there, isn't it?

45:48Rory Stewart:Because partly it's about personal cost and your own personal commitments. So you decided to stick with a school that had had a poor offset. thing. And they're almost implying they care more about their kids than you do. And you've made a difficult decision to stick with it and believe, and you love your kids, and you're going to make it work within the system. I think that's right. I mean, I feel this a little bit with Boris. There was some personal cost to me from going against him, turning against him, leaving politics, blah, blah. And that adds to the kind of anger I feel when people are just like, yeah, maybe that's...

46:30I guess these are not the sort of people who would necessarily become my friends, but I met somebody not long ago who I... They weren't a close friend, but somebody I was, you know, reasonably friendly with. The friendship had evolved with nothing to do with politics. And then I discovered that actually they really, really hated politics. And they hated, you know, they were in that sort of, oh, they're all the fucking same anyway. Once you say something like that to me, I'm sorry, you're not going to be welcome. So there we go. Last question, last question is from somebody called Daria. You often give us your book and TV series recommendations.

47:09I'd love to know some good podcast recommendations too. My first recommendation is going to be the current mini series on a podcast that's called, Oh, let me get this right. It's called the rest is politics. And it's by, and it's not by Roy Stewart. It's not by me. It's by, it's presented by Vicki Spratt. and it's a mini series on Gen Z and I've had some great feedback on it.

47:30Rory Stewart:I've got some great feedback on it too. It's really, just to explain to listeners, it's a huge departure for us. I don't think we've ever put anything out that isn't presented by one of the two of us. No. In fact, barely put out anything that isn't presented by you because you don't take a day off. So this is a big departure and we thought long and hard about it, make sure that we were proud of the product and the quality, but I think it's worked very well and people have responded very warmly, haven't they? I should also say as well, Rory, I mean, I think if it's still the same as it was when we were doing our tour a while back, a third of our listeners are at or under 30.

48:04So we do have a lot of people who are interested in Gen Z, which is 14 to 29. Should also say that we're offering discounted membership to students, 20 pound down from the usual whatever it is. So I hope that will make people want to kind of join the Rest is Politics family. You do that at therestispolitics.com. Sorry to keep going about the rest is, but they do rather dominate this thing. But the other thing I've had a lot of good feedback on is the rest is history series on Thatcher and the 70s. So I think that there's a lot of good stuff out there. Do you listen to many other podcasts, Roy?

48:38Because I'll be honest, I don't.

48:40Rory Stewart:I'm a bit of a nerd on international relations podcasts. Yeah. I didn't actually in this case. But generally, if I knew you wanted to talk about Mali, I'd probably listen to two or three podcasts on Mali. Because I think it's a lovely thing to hear real voices of experts getting in. on that um the the usual suspects council on foreign relations does great stuff csis tends to do really good stuff i think you've talked a little bit about uh the aq podcast oh yeah i love them america's quarterly deep stuff on latin america they're one of my regulars i don't have many regulars most of my regulars are german i'm afraid so for german listeners i'm sure they'd be interested if you want a shortcut to find the best podcast on international affairs run a couple of large language models run, you know, ChatGBT and Claude, ask them.

49:25Rory Stewart:And between the two of them, if you run them against each other, you often come up with a really good short list of two or three recent episodes. Well, Rory, unless he's putting us on them, I don't trust them at all. Why should I let these tech bros, billionaire trillionaires who are currently trying to kill each other in court, why should I let any judgment to them? Ditto, if you're looking for deep dives on, let's say, you know, the Czech Republic or Hungarian elections, there are often, you'll find really, really good local podcasts. Often, they can be a bit stilted because it's often like, you know, the assistant professor of political science from the University of Freiburg talking about this.

50:01Rory Stewart:But my goodness, you get into the details of what's going on. Final one, which if people haven't listened to, maybe worth going back to. The War Game podcast done by Sky News and Tortoise, which imagined a Russian attack on the UK. I told about the fact that I didn't regret the fact that you and I didn't go on on celebrity traitors. I do a little bit regret that I turned down the invitation to go on this. Amber Rudd, Ben Wallace, Jack Straw, Mark Sedwell, I think it was Richard Barron, but a lot of former Labour Conservative cabinet ministers and generals and intelligence chiefs and air security advisors are wargaming what happens if Russia started to attack the UK.

50:44Rory Stewart:And spoiler alert, But it's pretty terrifying when you discover how few options Britain have or what they can do. And it's a route into something we'll talk about someday or so, which is the vulnerability of places like Lithuania and how you would defend the Baltic. Anyway, the War Game podcast, my final recommendation. Excellent. Well, I think we've recommended enough podcasts now, but do stick people with the rest is politics and the rest is politics leading and make sure that they stay. We'll do all the listening to other podcasts for you. You won't have to listen to Prague talks because Rory will have listened to it on your behalf.

51:17Yeah. And as long as we stay number one and number two, one of the highlights of my week is on a Wednesday Royal Act just to take a look. And if we're not number one and number two in the UK podcast episode charts, I get very, very angry. You do.

51:32Rory Stewart:And this is quite a high bar to hold us to for four years. Just to explain to listeners, Alistair insists that we're not number one in the politics category. He wants us number one across all podcasts in the UK, which you achieve almost all the time. But it's quite stressful, this endless – I didn't ask the question on how you keep your work ethic going, but maybe we'll return to that. Carrie's question, where does your relentless work ethics come from? We could tackle on another occasion. Anyway, lovely to talk to you and have a great day. All the best. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Vote Labour.