554. Burnham’s Worldview, Trump's Ceasefire Collapse, and Advising Count Binface

22:15Rory Stewart:It's what would have seemed four months ago, a completely intolerable, inconceivable, mad situation in which you've just handed the Iranian regime control of 20 % of the trans of the world's oil. But I can't see what the other option is now. No. Well, the other thing, of course, that's worth thinking about, I mentioned when I was sort of debriefing you when you came out of your meditation about these attacks, including upon the president and upon the foreign minister and upon serious people in the regime who are being attacked at the funeral of the Ayatollah, has appeased us. They were saying, you know, the Americans have just killed this guy, our leader, they've killed him, and now you're sitting down to make peace with them.

22:56And it was interesting, it was after that, that the IRGC fired on these three ships, including one that's linked to Qatar.

23:04Rory Stewart:Right. And that's, sorry, very quickly on that, because I think you've put your finger on something that we don't talk about enough. I mean, the way in which domestic politics plays and the way in which the Iranians aren't actually as free as you think, because they've got their hardliners. Trump isn't as free as he thinks, because he's got his hardliners to deal with. And also, the regime may not control all its own people. I mean, to what extent is this IRGC strike? What the president of Iran wants to happen? Or is it something the hardliners are doing to derail them? Exactly. And just to sort of get a sense of where they all are.

23:32So Trump, who recently was saying, we've done it, let the oil flow. In the last week, while you were away, he declared the ceasefire is over. He said that all the leaders in Iran were scum and there were sick people and yet again threatened to destroy their desalination plants. Meanwhile, there were these really loud calls for vengeance over the death of the Supreme Leader. We've still not seen his son, the current leader. Then we had the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I think they got 14 ships through on Sunday, which was a collapse from what had been happening. And then these attacks on -

24:06Rory Stewart:It's supposed to be 150. Yeah. And now these attacks on the infrastructure of other Gulf countries as well. So it's very, very hard to see where this goes. And now we've had this announcement from Trump that he's going to charge 20 % tariffs for vessels coming through, which is staggering. Because if you go back four weeks, Rubio's argument against Iran is they can't charge tariffs because this is an international waterway. Nobody should charge tariffs. Now, the US has proposed to charge 20 % tariffs. That's a little finger showing you a whole new world where these choke points are not just used to deny regimes access to things.

24:42Rory Stewart:These American choke points on their control of finance straits were used in the past to deny people getting money. Now, it's used as a financial extraction mechanism. When that happens, and there's no American guarantor anymore of free movement. America itself becomes a rent seeker for its security profession. A lot of other weird things are going to happen. We shouldn't worry too much because J.D. Vance says, we have all the cards. They do love talking about cards over there. They have all the cards. There we are. Rory, Caroline Lucas is making a series for us on climate and national security.

25:19And she's obviously listened to recent episodes, Rory, and she's got a little question for us.

25:24Rory Stewart:Hi, Alistair. Hi, Rory. This is Caroline Lucas here with a question for you. I wanted to say that I found your recent energy and climate change question time with Dan Jorgensen really, really compelling. And I thought he made some great arguments about the need for an urgent green transition. He talked very compellingly about the need for cheaper energy, for greater energy independence. But what really struck me was his admission that politicians, including himself, have focused too much on arguments about things like price mechanisms and not enough on the reality of climate breakdown and what that really means in terms of its possible impact on national security.

26:03Rory Stewart:He made the case that climate change is the biggest threat multiplier on the planet and that it could lead to wars and insecurity. So Rory, I know that slightly oddly in my view, you still weren't convinced by some of Dan's arguments by the end of the episode, but I wonder whether you would at least agree with him on this one, that climate and nature do pose a very real security threat. Where I think Caroline is absolutely right is that the argument has to be in the end about the horrors and the impacts of climate change, not about cost. Where I think I get wound up by Dan and by the European debate is by this endless insistence that clean energy is cheap energy.

26:50Rory Stewart:It's a very dangerous thing to say, because all you've got to do is produce energy that is cheaper and isn't cleaner, and the whole argument collapses. And I think it's a really difficult argument to hold that net zero is cheaper when our energy prices are four times that of the US and twice that of Europe. So I think the argument has to be, it is the right thing to do, and it's the right thing to do because climate change itself is horrifying. And this is where the national security picture comes in. It's not just the fact that there are going to be hundreds of people dying from heatwaves in our own country.

27:28Rory Stewart:It's that we will end up by 2030, 2050 with massive food insecurity, with collapse of forest systems, water systems all around the world, huge force migration. We have to keep the emphasis on that. But that also means another thing. What you can't have as a result is the cutting of British international development assistance. The thing that actually I was thinking about is driving me nuts is one of the stupidest things Starmer and his team did is try to stop Ed Miliband spending 150 million pounds on rainforest stuff outside the United Kingdom. bang for buck, you're probably likely to make much more impact on global climate change, spending money in poorer countries, protecting rainforests, stopping them building coal-fired plants, than putting all the money into Britain.

28:15Rory Stewart:And if the reason why you're spending all the money in Britain is to show a good example to the world, in other words, what you're trying to do, because we're only 2 % of global emissions, right, is shape the world, then there has to be a lot of international work and international expenditure. Nothing would be madder than bankrupting our own economy without taking cheaper opportunities to shape the climate debate and get the moral argument out there globally. Well, we're all now agreeing. We're all now agreeing. I agree with everything you said there, Roy. We're definitely agreeing about the big point.

28:45Somebody said this morning, it's absolutely, it's actually quite beautiful, but incredibly sad. It was in The Guardian a few weeks ago, and it's a thing where you can listen year by year to birdsong since 1976. and the scale of bird loss in the UK is honestly terrifying. And if you remember, Dan Jorgensen said that the only podcast he listens to, apart from ours, is one about birds. So the reason I think Caroline is contributing a question is because she's been spending a lot of time in our studios because she's making a mini-series about climate and security. And part one is out on Friday. And I've listened to it.

29:27It is honestly, I think it's one of the best things we've done. Now, okay, with me, she's preaching to the converted, but she's interviewing in this one a general, an army general, who is basically saying this is a huge national security issue and we've got to wake up. She's interviewing somebody who has worked in the development world. The interviews are really, really powerful. And this briefing, so the government, commissioned under the conservatives, carried through with this government. They commissioned this report by our intelligence agencies about the security threats of climate change.

30:06Honestly, Rory, it is absolutely terrifying. It is absolutely terrifying. We are close to tipping point on virtually all of them. And this is why I get so angry with these sort of Richard stupid Tice and Trump saying that none of this matters. You know, just look around, just look out the window. We've had forest fires in Derbyshire. We've had fires in Spain where British tourists were killed. Okay. We're just sort of letting this to happen. And okay, we all contribute. And every time I talk about this, people say, well, don't go to an airplane and, you know, stop using this. I know we can all do our bit, but I just think that the debate has got to get back to a place of saying, if we don't address this, this is where you and I agree.

30:52I saw some polling last week. People hate the phrase net zero. They hate it because it's being weaponized, but they still support in exactly the same numbers as five years ago, the proposition that climate change is real and then it's damaging our lives. Okay. So that's where you've got to win the argument. And just this, so far this year, and okay, the Richard Stupid Ties people say, oh, it's the establishment figures, right? But the UK Health Security Agency thinks there were 1 ,500 heat-related deaths last summer, £800 million in crop losses for British farming, and that so far this year, 2 ,700 people in England and Wales have been killed by the previous heat wave.

31:31Okay? So that's 440 deaths a day at its peak, which obviously these may be mainly elderly people who will be dying anyway, but they're people who would not have died were it not for the the pressure that the heat was putting on their bodies and their underlying conditions. So anyway, Caroline's series is going to be great. Let's just listen to a little trailer now, but I strongly recommend everybody listens to Caroline on climate and national security.

32:11a June day as hot as today. The impacts of this destabilisation will profoundly impact every country on Earth.

32:20Rory Stewart:Because it's been revealed that ministers have tried to suppress the publication of a report commissioned from their own intelligence community. Threats to the UK economy, to our food systems, to our geopolitical stability. The conclusions are frankly chilling. I'm Caroline Lucas. And for the past four decades, I've been doing literally everything I can to try to persuade successive governments that they need to go further and faster to address the accelerating climate and nature crises. And now I'm making this series. Why? Because in all of those 40 years of environmental activism, I have never read an official report that has alarmed me as much as this one.

33:00Rory Stewart:Join me for When Nature Becomes a Security Threat, a new series from The Rest is Politics. So there we are. That's a clip from Caroline Lucas, part one of the series. It's out on Friday, 17th July for members and then new episodes every Friday for several weeks thereafter. At the end of it, Rory, don't know if I've told you this yet. You and I are going to sit down with Caroline to do a question time special on that. And in well in advance of the question time that we're doing with Caroline Lucas, if you want to send us in your questions anytime between now and then, just go to therestispologies.com.

33:34Now, let's take a break.

33:37Rory Stewart:Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Well, now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.

34:12Rory Stewart:Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. Now, here's a question, Alistair, from Ben. Would Alistair help with Count Binface's campaign? And when is he coming on? Now, Alistair, before you answer, just to explain for listeners who haven't been following the ins and outs of all this, as you explained in the main episode yesterday, Nigel Farage, facing these incredible problems and challenges about these millions of pounds of funding and these strange connections to Montenegro-based gamblers, has decided to resign from his seat, trigger a by-election in the hope of proving that the British public still backs him by standing against him in his own seat.

34:54Rory Stewart:And he was hoping he would be running against all the major parties and he'd be able to prove that in the end, the people of Klaxon preferred reform to conservative labor, etc. They all decided that they weren't going to run. And so the only people running are a very strange British tradition, which exists, I think, more in Britain than in most other countries, of comedy candidates, of whom the leading one is a man called Count Binface. And I know Count Binface very, very well, because when I was running for the leadership, and again, when I was running to be mayor of London, I was on the stage with Count Binface a great deal.

35:28Rory Stewart:We did a lot together on social media. We did a lot in studios together. Count Binface is a relatively tall man who wears a dustbin on his head and has a black cloak. So he looks a little bit like Darth Vader with a dustbin on his head. And he is capable sometimes of being quite funny. When he ran against Andy Burnham, his policy was he was going to build one affordable house in the constituency, which is good. It's a good joke at the expense of politicians who never build any. And he was going to rename HS2 as FFS2. Anyway, over to you, Alistair, on advice for Count Binface's communication strategy.

36:12Okay. Well, my favourite Binface policy is that he will force all water company chief executives to swim in the rivers for which they're responsible. That is a policy that I would wholeheartedly support. So would I help him? I am helping him, whether he likes it or not. I'm constantly publishing things. I'm producing a pledge card based on our 1997 pledge card. He doesn't know that I'm doing this, but he's more than welcome to have it because I don't want him to get in trouble with financing. And of course, my going rate, as you all know, Rory, for a campaign is probably about$3 million a minute.

36:46So the pledge card, and this is my pledge card for Count Binface. One, I will hold weekly constituency surgeries, unspoken because Nigel Farage never does. Two, I will answer all letters and emails within three days. Three, for every day I spend overseas, I will spend 10 days in Clacton. Four, any outside earnings that I make will be donated to charities in Clacton. Five, on a postcode lottery basis, I will help one family per week put their bins out. Now, I think that is a great local campaign. When Cat Nealon did the series on funding and reform, she said the thing that people in Clacton most complained about with Farage is that he's never there.

37:29Rory Stewart:I think it's brilliant. But I just just in the next iteration as you develop this, I think one of the things that was so brilliant about his campaign where he says, I'm going to build one affordable house in the constituency is the use of satire. to point out the massive failures of the other side. And so if you can begin to develop a few more lines, which I think the stuff about foreign travel is good, but things that are simultaneously very funny, but are also a beautiful way of satirizing and exposing the problem with Farage. So something maybe which you could do around Montenegro and casinos and gambling.

38:08Rory Stewart:And actually, a little bit of a plug here for Al Murray. This week, Al Murray, who's the co-host of our sister show, We Have Ways to Make You Talk, will be writing in our newsletter about the time that, like bin face, he took on Nigel Farage. And we'll be sharing some of his advice that counts. So be interested, Alice, what you make of Al Murray's views, because I think a comedian could be really good on this. To receive that piece, sign up to our newsletter. The link is in the episode description. The reason I'm interested in this is I think it's something that stand-up comedians can be really, really good at.

38:36Rory Stewart:Because what you want, ideally, is to find something that is both really funny, but also is making a killing point that actually totally attacks the other side. We have one in Cumbria, Willie Whitelaw, when he first ran, ran against a man called Mr. Brownrigg, who was in favour of home rule for Cumberland and fair wages for mole catchers was his big deal. But the key thing here is to go beyond fair wages, mob catchers, and find three or four things which really embarrass Farage. And the more ludicrous they are, and the more they can be making in-jokes about a very successful aristocrat or jokes about security.

39:20You should just do one, because what's happening is people are just doing stuff and pumping it out there. So somebody's done an absolutely brilliant Count Binface version of the Obama Hope poster. It's absolutely beautiful. And so that's doing the noise. Somebody has made a really, really professional, powerful party election broadcast for Count Binface. Count Binface doesn't know about any of this stuff happening. It's just all happening before. I've seen Count Binface this week already on Australian television, American television, German television. The guy's got momentum.

39:51Rory Stewart:And how well is he doing? listen, sorry, just quickly on television, is he as funny as he could be? I mean, or is it a little bit plodding? Is it basically just one joke that he hasn't been on his head? No, he's quite good. He's quite good. Oh, good. Because a few years ago, it wasn't that brilliant. Well, he did an interview. I was on his podcast a few months ago, so people can look at that as well. And he's clever. He knows about politics. He understands politics. And it's so interesting how when you're doing an interview with him, I had a 45 minute interview with him. Once you get through the joke at the start, you're talking to a dustbin, but it feels perfectly natural when he asks you a serious question, you give a serious answer.

40:28Then you remember, oh, I'm talking to a dustbin. But don't forget, Roy, that other people who have started out as these so-called novelty candidates, they've gone on to win. We had the monkey in Hartlepool, who became the mayor. He was the football team mascot. We had the former Alan Howling Lord Hope, who was the leader of the official monster raving loony party after the great Lord Such, who sadly ended his own life at the end of last century. But he was the real kind of star novelty candidate of all time. Alan Hope became the deputy mayor and then the mayor of Ashburton. And then we had Stuart Basil Fawlty Hughes.

41:03He was the first loony member of the official monster raving loony party to win a contested election. And he went on to become the Devon Highways chief. So stuff can happen, bin face. But the great, listen, let's be honest, Rory, the great thing is that Nigel Farage, who set this contest up as him against the establishment, it is him against the dustbin. And hopefully it will be his route towards it.

41:29Rory Stewart:Well, nothing can possibly go right for him, can it? Because if he beats the dustbin, nobody's that impressed that he's won against the dustbin. If he loses against the dustbin, we're in a different world. I'm going to make a little risky prediction. Go on then. He won't stand. Farage may not stand. That's my prediction. I've got no evidence. I'm just saying I'm doing what Farage is. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know. I'm just saying maybe. Wait, so Binface may actually walk it? Well, no, because then you buy a Piers Corbett. Piers Corbett bite then with it.

42:04He's done a very – he sent me his – I don't know why, but Piers Corbett sent me his video this morning of him trolling along the beach in Clacton reading a poem about himself. It's all going to be mad. It's all going to be completely crazy. And meanwhile, Andy Burnham can get in and be serious and what have you. Right, Rory. Dan Needle versus Gabriel Zuckman. Jen says, thank you so much for the very thought-provoking interview with Gabriel Zuckman. This is the Mr. Wealth Tax from France. I'm minded to agree with Rory that the solutions offered by Zuckman wouldn't be a panacea for all of our current problems.

42:36I do think Zuckman has a point, though. If you do interview Dan Needle, could you ask him about policies that would address the sense of unfairness in the current system and what could be done to address it? And this debate has really taken off at the moment because Gary Stevenson, while you're away, did a TV documentary, How Do You Get Filthy Rich? Dan Needle had a real go at him about, I haven't seen the film. I've read a lot about it. I suppose I should watch it, but I've been busy. And then we are getting lots of requests for people to say we should get Dan Needle and Zuckman together. So I listened back this morning to the interview with Gabriel Zuckman.

43:15I've got two observations, Rory. One is I thought he was more impressive listening back than I thought at the time. And secondly, I felt real anger in you that I didn't necessarily feel at the time. I felt you were really getting angry.

43:27Rory Stewart:That's interesting, isn't it? And it'd be interesting psychologically why I get wound up. I suppose there's a tendency to sort of celebrate people with what seem to be wonderfully kind of idealistic, transformatory ideas, and to suggest that centrists like me, who are trying to run things in the way that things were traditionally run, are somehow unimaginative, corrupt, I don't know, whatever. And I feel a kind of passionate desire to try to not allow this idea to get out there. So I would hate to sit through an interview. I mean, look, I had a lot of sympathy with Gabriel, but I would hate to sit through something like that, just sort of indulging the idea that these taxes are going to work, make the British economy grow or help people.

44:22Rory Stewart:And I get so frustrated because something about politics has to be, I don't know, I get very, I suppose I get really wound up by very, very idealistic, hyper progressive politics, because you always, if you're like me coming from the center right, end up being the bad guy, having to try to explain why it's not working. And that, yes, you're right. It seems to generate rage. Because you were quite enraged with Gabriel Attal, although he wasn't really. Maybe it's the name Gabriel. Maybe the name is beginning with G, because you're also enraged with Gary Stevenson. Jamie Rubin, well me out. Yeah.

45:00Jonathan Powell, well me out. Jonathan Powell. But I wonder whether it's – I get quite excited by big ideas and idealism. Somebody saying, look, we can save the planet. We can address issues of inequality. I wonder if it's when it's something that's so fundamental, a challenge, that you sort of feel your inner conservatism just kind of under attack. Because I thought he had a lot of really good points.

45:26Rory Stewart:Well, I also wonder whether it isn't that I get a bit irritated that you get to play the good guy. You get to be down with the kids and be the progressive and be like, oh, yeah, man, I'm really. And I know perfectly well that if, God forbid, you actually became our chancellor, you wouldn't sign up to any of this stuff. No, but Rory, hold on. Hold on. I said to him that I really struggle to see how this works in practice. OK, but I think the other thing you do when we're interviewing people like this is that you're treating them like politicians when actually they're campaigners. He's an academic and a campaigner.

45:59Gary Stevens as a campaigner, that's a very different thing. And I think there is a place for that. I also think this was listening back to it rather than being in the room. If you remember, we were both in quite a bad mood in the room because it was so bloody hot, climate change. But I think that listening back, I found it unbelievably impressive that he was so fluent in English around very quite complicated issues and quite complicated historical stuff as well. He really, really knew his stuff, I thought.

46:26Rory Stewart:He is a brilliant French professor from the École Normale Supérieure, which is, you know, one of the greatest French elite schools in the world that produce Michel Foucault and Canguilhem and all these guys. So it's not surprising that guys say this is Raymond Aron, Jean-Paul Sartre. I mean, you know, he's from the absolute elite of the French intellectual establishment. So you'd expect him to have an unbelievable memory and a quick brain. And he taught in University of California for years. But you know, here, for example, let me, in a calmer voice read you a response I got from a French businessman.

47:00Rory Stewart:The disconnect with people like Zuckman is that they've never actually built a company from the ground up. At my company, the fiscal reality is immediate. He's running a company in the UK, this French businessman. We have to collect 20 % VAT on our services before we see a profit. Once we start running operations, we pay a 45 % effective tax rate on employees, including national insurance contributions. Profits are taxed 19%. He talks about personal holding companies, but they defer, not abolish dividend taxes. In other words, you still have to pay the dividend tax in the end. The real issue with the likes of Zuckman is the moral framing.

47:36Rory Stewart:They make entrepreneurs feel as though the act of creating value is suspect. Regardless of where the entrepreneur takes a single dividend, the company is acting as a tax collector. Zuckman's politics is the politics of envy, pure and simple. So there was a calm French businessman who actually runs the company. Yeah, but Rory, you're doing what people do when they're under attack. You're finding the voice. I'm looking at a whole host of emails that we've received saying, why did Rory give that nice Gabriel Zutman such a hard time? And why is he so threatened by the idea of addressing inequality?

48:10Rory Stewart:I'm going to give anyone a hard time who comes in as an idealistic campaigner and expects to just get deferential treatment because they're progressive and good. I think it's our obligation, obligation intellectually to be tough on people. We have to disagree agree every time we have to do that. And we're going to get Dan Needle on, right? Well, do you want to get them together? We should get it. Why don't we, we can get them together, get them together. I don't know whether they'll do that, but I definitely think we should get Dan Needle on because I think it's exactly what I'd love because it's much less exciting for progressive listeners, but it's a man who really understands tax, really understands the real world and can actually make more moderate centrist policies.

48:47Rory Stewart:So if people are really interested in this, rather than just getting it. Then they just listen to Needle. Yeah. My final point on this, Roof, we'll go to the last question. But it's interesting how you didn't feel this about Yanis Varoufakis. And I wonder if that's because Yanis is much less playing the game of, I know I'm right about this. Whereas what I find with Gary Stevenson and Dan Needle, they both do the kind of, I know I'm right about this. Whereas I thought what Yanis does, he kind of, he explains things from all angles and then says, why, you know, on balance on with that one. You didn't get irritated by him.

49:22Rory Stewart:No, I think exactly. I think, I think, and I'm thinking, I think that's a communication style that probably in the end is really powerful, which is accepting that things are complicated, that there are different views and that on balance you've come down on one side rather than I've got a magic bullet that's going to fix everything. Now, Roy, the biggest question, obviously, of the entire week is from Simon. Did you find the meaning of life on your meditative retreat? It's an incredible thing, these silent retreats. So this was effectively, I guess it was 11 nights, so almost 12 days, of which the silent bit is core 10.

50:02Rory Stewart:It's a really amazing thing to do. I mean, we talk about travel, but it's probably the most extraordinary thing that you can do to yourself over 10 days, which is to not speak and meditate almost continuously from four in the morning until 9, 9.30 at night. And what that does to your mind and what you think about death, what you think about aging, change, meaning, purpose. And I've now, this is the fourth, so I guess I've now done my 40 days and 40 nights. One of the awful things about it is that you're talking to me two days later, and I can already feel how much of it is getting lost, how much you revert.

50:46Rory Stewart:I mean, you pointed out when we started this thing that I was much calmer two days ago than I am now, that already the world is intruding again. But yes, there is real meaning. I mean, there's real, real meaning. And here we are, this is my pitch. The purpose of the whole thing is to try to make you a better person, try to make you act more morally, have what they would call a purer mind, maybe a calmer mind. And I'm sure that that's probably for my money, as close as I can get to the meaning of life. It's about daily improvements around the margins. You know, maybe a way of thinking about it would be if you previously got angry 10 times, now you're only going to get angry nine times.

51:31Rory Stewart:Or if you brooded about something for five hours, now you're and read about it for four hours. But just how you make those endless daily martial improvements to try to be a little bit more loving, compassionate, and maybe for the podcast, focus on reality more. What actually is the reality of the atoms that make up our body, about our deaths, about time, about just how things are, not how we want them to be, how they are. Wow. Well, while you were speaking, I reached to the bookshelf where my most important books sit. You need this one, Rory. My friend Philip Gould, this is a book he wrote as he was dying.

52:11And he definitely, as he was dying, he knew he was going to die. We're all going to die. So we all know we're going to die. You don't need to get chronically ill as he did to think about your life in the context of how it ends. I'm nearly 70 now. I think about it quite a lot. So that sounds really interesting and meaningful. But when you say you've lost it just in two days, what was it? When you came out and thought, I must phone Alistair and find out what's been happening in the world. I presume you phoned Shoshana first, did you?

52:41Rory Stewart:I saw Shoshana first, yes, before you. Yes, I'm afraid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good, good, good. Excellent, excellent. I want that to be the case. So what's the difference between now and two days? Is it just that you're, when you're meditating for all that time, what are you actually thinking about? What's actually happening inside your head? In this tradition, you're trying to think about only one thing, which is impermanence, that things are changing. And you're literally trying to drive all thoughts out of your mind, except as you scan your body, you're in the framework of your body, and you're following small sensations around your body.

53:17Rory Stewart:you're just thinking this too will pass arising passing away arising passing away changing changing changing and the point is that every atom and cell in your body is dying and being reborn and you're aging and you're dying and the world around you is changing changing changing and that's all you're thinking and what and what happens if you suddenly have a thought that comes into your head saying i wonder if england is still in the world cup or i wonder if if the ceasefire is held? What do you do with that thought? So that happens a lot. And of course, when it happens, you often don't notice for a few seconds that your mind started doing that.

53:57Rory Stewart:So your mind starts saying, you know, oh, I wonder what's in the World Cup. I wonder what Alice is thinking as England's in the World Cup. And then you catch it. Hopefully, you catch it within five, 10 seconds. But it could be two, three minutes before you notice that your mind's wandered off down all these sort of funny parts. And then you just have to bring it back to whatever you're concentrating on, on the breath coming in out of your nose or the sensation in your body, and try again just to sit with it very calmly, very patiently, back with the thing. Because you're trying not to get agitated either by pleasant sensations or unpleasant sensations.

54:36Rory Stewart:So let's say you felt anger and you became aware of the physical manifestations, a tight chest or hair thing, you would just sit with it. You wouldn't try to control it or get rid of it. You'd just sit with it and you'd say, hmm, it's interesting. And that says changing, it's changing, it's moving around. You're trying to develop. One of the problems is we don't really have words for these things. The word that this guy comes up with is equanimity, which I think is a very kind of pompous word and quite difficult to put a finger on. But essentially, the idea is that you're not reacting to either your negative or positive emotions.

55:15You're letting them play out. Anyway, there we go. I don't think I could do it for an hour. I don't think I could do it.

55:27No.

55:28Rory Stewart:Does anybody ever leave? Yes, people leave. People leave. Yeah, there's suddenly vacant spaces because you can't talk to anyone. And I was doing it with, I was doing it, this was a Burmese course where it's mostly being taught in Burmese with mostly blue collar Burmese immigrants, US security guards, furniture fixers. And suddenly you'd notice you couldn't speak to people, but you could see them. And they would suddenly, there wouldn't be someone there anymore. It's also true that different people react in different ways. I mean, you're supposed to sit with your eyes totally closed and not open them or move your legs or your arms for an hour.

55:57Rory Stewart:And some people find that difficult. They feel an an itch suddenly developing on that cheek. Can't resist kind of opening an eyelid. Well, good to have you back, Rory. Lovely to be back. I'll try to keep a bit of the calm. Maybe if I'd done this before Zuckman's things would be better. All right, thank you, Alistair. You're looking well. And look, listen, pretty exciting. I know you're, you know, we're both Scotland fans, but pretty exciting about England. It is pretty exciting, though. Yeah. I think we're recording this Tuesday morning. I mean most people in football think that the final is tonight France against Spain whoever wins that will win the World Cup but I just don't think you can think like that because once it's down to one game they're all four now very very good teams and England have and the one thing I will say I'm not you know a flag waver but I will say that this particular bunch I like the German manager Tuchel but this particular bunch of players particularly the really well known ones they're bloody good role models I mean they are really you know positive project a good sense of themselves and what they do and I've actually really really enjoyed the World Cup I've really enjoyed it much much more than I thought I would Fingers crossed Ora Alisson lovely to see you speak soon next week bye bye