556. The US-China AI Arms Race and Badenoch vs. Rory’s Centrism

24:11Rory Stewart:One thing is that I'm not sure that we've fully taken on how unbelievable what Ukraine's managed to do is. I mean, if you go back to Trump taking over, Trump taking over was the introduction of a very, very pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine policy from the White House, putting huge pressure on Ukraine essentially to give up and settle, disarm, get rid of a lot of its military, accept Russian de facto control. etc. Then the US followed up by stopping all its funding, drew$50 billion a year of funding to Ukraine, at times turned off satellites, didn't deliver on missiles which Ukraine had been promised, including Patriot missile defense systems.

24:59Rory Stewart:The US, of course, has been firing Patriots like Bilio out in the Gulf in its Iran war. All of that meant that if you were J.D. Vance, you thought that Ukraine was going to be forced to come to a deal with Russia because they completely depended on the US. The story actually has turned out to be very different. We now have these long-range Ukrainian strikes against vital bits of Russian infrastructure. So, these clouds of smoke going up from Russian refineries. Around Crimea, the Sea of Azov seems to have been almost closed by Ukrainian attacks so that the Crimean garrison of the Russians is in real trouble.

25:35And a lot of this, presumably, or some of this, Feodorov, the

25:41Rory Stewart:defense minister, should have been able to take credit for. I mean, it's a slightly odd thing. I mean, we've had it twice now from Zelensky. Zeluzhny, who's now the ambassador in Britain, was doing an amazing job and was removed. And now he's removed someone else doing an amazing job. I think with Zeluzhny, I think that there was a real sense that Zeluzhny was seen as possibly taking over from Zelensky at a time when Zelensky didn't want that talk. That was something I kept hearing when I was out in Ukraine. Fedorov has been very, very clear that in his view, Siesky was doing a bit of divide and rule.

26:20He actually said at his press conference, instead of thinking about how we defeat Russia, he figured out how to split our own country.

26:26Rory Stewart:I'm sorry, just quickly, the story that I've heard, and maybe this is nonsense, is that there is actually a big tactical disagreement between Sierski, the general, and Fedorov, the defense minister, which is that Fedorov was all about drones, probably very simple, but drones, AI, devolve local commanders, let them run these almost autonomous things forward. Sierski was still trying to run quite an old-fashioned centrally command, military, infantry first, drone and support. So very, very weird to remove the man who seems to be doing the more radical, relevant contemporary tactics and leave in place the guy who represented the more old-fashioned side of Ukrainian fighting.

27:11Yeah. But I think this is what's so interesting about Ukraine is that we see it, and even yesterday talking to the prime minister in Iceland, she was saying that it's a long, long way away but we don't even have an army but people in Iceland really feel that Ukraine is you know fighting for all of us and something was so special about them and that is a kind of outside image that a lot of countries have when you it's interesting when you go there how quickly you pick up on some of these political tensions and political divides and that's an obvious one for the military isn't it because you you have a military that's that sees itself as the professional military and then in some comes some guy from outside who sort of says we need to do this and he's on the phone to elon musk trying to sort out starlink and you know it's just very very different world and i think what zelensky's on this one has decided i've got to stay a little bit closer to the old world otherwise i'm going to be under pressure and the other thing he got rid of when one of the other people i met when i was out there was the prime minister uh yulia syavidenko and she's been sacked as well well she was offered a different job she asked her to be ambassador in Washington, she refused.

28:18So we've now got a new prime minister. So the tensions are there at a time when Ukraine actually militarily seems to be doing pretty well.

28:29Rory Stewart:Yeah, just finally, and not to be uncharitable to your mate Zelensky, is it not possible that actually quite a lot of this is about power politicking and these people being potential rivals that if you were being uncharitable, you'd say this isn't really just about resolving a fight with the general. It's about the fact that Fedorov was becoming too popular and a bit like Zoluzhny. He's moving him aside because he's a direct challenge to his authority. And in fact, ironically, what seems to be happening with Zelensky repeatedly is he moves these people aside and they become ever more popular. But then the other thing that seems to be given is whether if, when hopefully this war does end and there will be an election, that Zelensky will probably move on.

29:14That's the kind of the sense you get. Now, lots of people, when they're in power, they don't want to leave power. So listen, there's no doubt, certainly about Zelensky, people say that openly. They will say to you, look, you know, he was getting too big for his boots. He was getting too popular. Ship him off to London, quite an important job. He stayed close to the Brits, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, it just shows that even when you're at war and perceived to be doing pretty well, politics will always have a way of coming back and making life difficult. Apologies, don't be confused by suddenly we're in a different place at a different time, but we recorded on Tuesday, it's now Wednesday, and since when there has been a major development, which is under the threat of enormous and continuing protests about the sacking of Fodrov, the defence minister, he has now, Zelensky has now sacked the commander that we were talking about, Sierski, and has basically admitted that this is because he wanted to be able to get the two working together.

30:14They couldn't. He sacked one of them, and the public has been in revolt about that. So he's now sacked both, and we are yet to see who, for the long term, is going to replace them.

30:25Rory Stewart:Yeah, he's brought in at the moment a man called Mikhail Drapati, who's only 43, so nearly 15, 20 years younger than the outgoing general, who's a real kind of, I guess, a battle heart in general. So that's very interesting. And Fedorov, as you say at the moment, has been replaced by someone called Yevani Kumara, a former top official at the SBU, which is their equivalence of the MI6 or KGB. And the question remains, how much of this is about disagreements, how much this is about military tactics, and how much this is about personalities and political jockeying on the ground in Ukraine. But it's not great, to be honest.

31:04I mean, Ukraine, you know, let's be brutal about this.

31:07Rory Stewart:Ukraine over the last few months has got itself in a much stronger position. They've gone from the defensive onto the offensive. The Russians are seriously worried. It doesn't look good to me to be removing your top general and your defense minister when you're on a roll and you're winning. And I think that raises some questions about Zelensky's judgment. Okay, there you go, Chloe. We weren't ignorant. It's just that we were speaking before the events that have since taken place. Okay, Roy, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll talk about how Kemi Badenock is handling your beloved party slash former party, whatever we call it these days.

31:46Lovely. Look forward to it.

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32:23Welcome back to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, this is definitely for you. Kamran, Rory, what do you think about the purge of the Tory wets, by which I think they mean particularly recently Theresa May's former Chief of Staff, former Housing Minister Gavin Barwell?

32:40Rory Stewart:First thing, just put my cards on the table. Gavin Barwell's a friend of mine. And this general tendency to move against this group is moving against my group in Parliament. So this comes on the back of an attack by Kemi Bednock also on David Gork, my great hero who'd been Secretary of State for Justice because he'd got a knighthood for running a review of justice for Keir Starmer. She has decided to portray those of us who were, I guess we would have been called under Margaret Thatcher, Tory Wetz. Or if you're an American listener, we would have been Mitt Romney Republicans, maybe. She's decided that we need to be evicted from the party.

33:24Rory Stewart:And she's setting more and more loyalty tests and narrowing the bandwidth of who a conservative can be. So, I mean, obviously, look, I'm going to criticize this and I'm going to be difficult about it. But let me explain firstly what she's doing. And then maybe we can get into the rights and wrongs of it and whether there's a logic behind it. The fundamental thing she's doing is she's saying that you can only run to be a Tory candidate in the next election if you sign up to two things. One of them is rejecting net zero. Oh, damn, I won't be able to stand, Roy. That's me out. I can't stand as a Tory MP.

34:03Rory Stewart:No. Exactly. And the second thing is you'd have to reject the European Convention on Human Rights. Now, just to explain why this is so extraordinary, it's so extraordinary because it was we, the conservative government, who introduced this net zero legislation. And I, as a Tory, was to be found on my hind legs giving one hour defenses of the European Convention on Human Rights against Jacob Rees-Mogg in the House of Commons. and there's a couple of things you take from that one is she is actually saying that people who sign up to what was our government policy and we all voted for it right any mp in the house of commons who was there before you know 2019 um would have voted for this net zero and actually right the way through to 2024 would have supported that policy because it was all part of our policy So by definition, she is asking her existing MPs to change their conscience, to say, I voted for something, I believed in something, and now in order to remain a conservative MP, I have to reject what I once voted for and supported.

35:10Rory Stewart:But the second thing that that ECHR story of me having an hour-long debate with Jacob Rees-Mogg shows is that the whole point of British politics is that these parties were broad coalitions. And so it was possible for Jacob Rees-Mogg and me to be in the same party, and it was possible for us literally to sit in the House of Commons debating each other for an hour with me in favor of the European Convention on Human Rights and him against the European Convention on Human Rights, but neither he nor I would have been thrown out of the party. And the most dramatic example of that was Brexit. David Cameron did not say, I mean, the Prime Minister was in favour of Remain.

35:45Rory Stewart:Most of the MPs were in favour of Remain. But the Prime Minister did not say to our MPs, unless you favour Remain, you're going to be thrown out of the Conservative Party. He allowed 40 % of the members of parliament to be Brexiteers, 60 % to be Remain, and that remained the case. And why is that necessary? It's necessary because the whipping system, which Andy Burnham is so angry about and I'm so angry about, if you're not careful, creates a sort of elective dictatorship in which the prime minister can simply use the whips to drive through his agenda. It's not like the US Senate or the Congress where the senators and congresspeople, at least until Trump, were relatively independent of the president and there was a balance and there was a check of power.

36:28Rory Stewart:Members of parliament are so vulnerable already to a prime minister because he gives them their jobs. A third of them end up on the payroll. They're whipped all the time. They're punished all the time. The one hope for any discussion, dissent, is to accept that these parties are coalitions where people can have different views. That began going wrong with Boris Johnson, who of course kicked 21 of us out of the Conservative Party because we tried to ask for more time to debate the European Union legislation. But it then went wrong with Keir Arma, who started kicking out the previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, because of Jeremy Corbyn's views on Palestine.

37:05Rory Stewart:So this is really worrying. And I think, Kemi Beidnok, it's bad for the Conservative Party. I think it's bad policy. It's bad for the consciences of the MPs who signed up, sincerely, one hopes, to views that they're now being asked to publicly reject. It's like a Stalinist show trial in which four years ago you were expected to champion one thing and say one thing. And then in some animal farm situation, you're now supposed to say exactly the opposite or you're for the chop. But it's also very bad for British democracy because we need different voices in the House of Commons within parties to have any form of accountability or debate at all.

37:43Yeah. I've been reading an advanced copy of Johnny Mercer, his book, who we're going to have on leading soon because he's written about his career. And actually, there's a lot of similarities with you in terms of his assessment of what parliament and government is like. And this sense of - And I suspect Andy Burnham too. Well, Andy Burnham is openly saying that this is partly what drove him out of parliament. Of course, he's now gone back and says he's going to change that. Just on the broader political judgment, though. I've thought from the word go that whoever takes over from your last lot of leaders had to regain some sense of the Conservatives being a party that could appeal to a broad network of people, as it's always done historically.

38:34Whereas what it's done, I mean, Andy Burnham said when he took over, we're not going to win back Greens by out-greening the Greens, and we're not going to win but reform voters by out reforming reform. And I think that they put the Greens to one side for a minute, but in terms of reform, that's the message for Kemmy Baden-Ock as well. This is so clearly about trying to say to reform voters, because she keeps reading in the Daily Express and the Daily Mail that they're all up in arms about the ECHR because it's got the word European in it and Farage keeps banging on about it. That's not the way she's going to win these people back.

39:07She's going to win these people back if she can show the Conservative Party to be serious, particularly about the economy, to learn the lessons from the past and to have a policy agenda for the future, not some kind of, as you say, some sort of ideological purge test that most of them, if they were being honest with themselves, would fail.

39:23Rory Stewart:It's so weird, isn't it? Because it's all very well turning against someone like me, because I wasn't an old party hand, and it's perfectly legitimate to say I was the Johnny come lately and wasn't a proper blue-bud Tory maybe because I'd been in the civil service, I'd been abroad and I came back. Whereas Gavin Barwell, who she's just thrown out, is absolutely at the core of it. When I first was standing as a candidate, he was right there in Conservative Party head office running the candidates list, organized a real proper party person. He ran very, very effective campaigns in a marginal seat in Croydon.

40:03Rory Stewart:He, as you say, was Theresa May's chief of staff and chosen as the chief of staff because he was one of the most liked popular central figures amongst the members of parliament. I mean, he was a really trusted, true blue conservative. It's a very, very weird move to make. I mean, I don't know who the Labour equivalent to someone like that would be. But you're really hitting at a very strong strand of the Tory party. And it connects to an article in The Spectator I read by Lionel Shriver in which she was congratulating Kevin Ben-Ock and says, the Tories need to become the nasty party again. So she laid out all these things they were going to do.

40:46Rory Stewart:They were going to throw out net zero, they were going to be much more brutal on immigration, they were going to be much more brutal on welfare. But her basic line was, the Conservative Party needs to become much more nasty. I think this is mad. Think of the impact that Margaret Thatcher had on people, the sense that a lot of Andy Burnham's political life is defined by his hatred and despair of what Thatcherism represented. But Margaret Thatcher was balanced by a lot of people. Peter Walker, Willie Whitelaw, Carrington, a huge range of people, and then ultimately Chris Patton, William Waldergrave, who represented another side of the Conservative Party.

41:31Rory Stewart:Ken Clarke would be another one, right? The only possibility of the Tory party doing the tough stuff that it wants to do on tax and business is that there's some sense of conscience, some sense of compassion, some sense of care. To actually set out to be the nasty party seems to me catastrophic, no? or am I missing the politics here? No, I think actually to say we need to be nastier doesn't strike me as a very sensible strategy. We should say, just for the historical record, Maggie did have quite a few ideological purges of the wets from time to time once she'd worked out exactly where she wanted to go.

42:06Rory Stewart:She never fired any of them from the Tory party, never would have considered firing from the Tory party. No, she fired from the cabinet, but she didn't kick people out of the Tory party. That's true, that's true. Rory, food security and farming. James wants to know, will Andy Burnham's government do more or less to address the climate crisis? Hope so. Including our food security? Hope so. I've got to replug Caroline Lucas' mini-series that she's doing for us on the climate crisis. Part two is about food security. And it's pretty terrifying. I think this is, the guy sitting next to me on the plane from Reykjavik is absolutely right.

42:39He just said, why are the political leaders, why have they all gone quiet on climate crisis. A few years ago, we were all talking about it. Now things are getting worse, but we're not talking about it. And so what Caroline's series, she's interviewing as she's done through the whole thing, somebody who really knows about this issue of food security, who says there's a realistic possibility decline of forests, glacier-fed rivers is going to lead to global competition for food, code for we're going to have wars over who's got the food, beginning in the 2030s. And when you look at our country, we are so far behind.

43:14I remember when I was in Finland recently talking to President Stutt, and he was telling me just how self-sufficient they are in a crisis, both on energy and on food. So for food, if they were suddenly in trouble tomorrow, they've got eight and a half to nine months, they're fine. We're between, just in time and all that, three days and three weeks if something really bad happens.

43:38Rory Stewart:And actually, to be honest on that one, let me just come in on that because your Finland point's really good. The honest answer is we don't have any strategic food reserves of any sort in Britain. I mean, that figure that we've got three, five days, a couple of weeks, that's not that the government has strategic food reserves. Finland literally has strategic food reserves in the way that China has strategic oil reserves. And it's something the British government could choose to do. And it's something that so many countries and governments have done in history, which is to say we need to have standing by silos full of grain, effectively.

44:12So first episode out last week, second episode Friday, you can get it at therestispolitics.com. And it's Caroline talking to Professor Paul Behrens, who specializes in exactly this issue, food security.

44:25Rory Stewart:Here's a thing. I mean, it's a bit late maybe for Andy Burnham, but maybe not too late at a non-cabinet level, one of the things that happens in Finland is they have an agency tasked exactly with this question of food security. And it brings together all the different bits. The problem at the moment, Angela Eagle's just taken over Indefra, but she doesn't have all the levers around this stuff. I mean, because food security is not just about producing more food, we could produce more food in Britain. One of the things that's happened is that we've gone from about 11 million acres under production to about 9 million acres under production because quite a lot of land has been set aside.

45:04Rory Stewart:Some land, a minority of it, has been rewilded. A lot of land has been planted under trees. So a deliberate choice has been made in Britain not to plant crops where we planted crops. During the Second World War, there were millions more acres under cultivation. It wasn't just people putting potatoes in their backyard. All the fell sides were planted. So we could be producing more. But it's not just about production. It's about resilience. It's about how we think about water management. The sun is very good for growing crops, but it's absolutely no good if you have these water shortages that we keep having.

45:34Rory Stewart:And then there's the whole issue around distribution, packaging, global supply chains, all this stuff we saw around COVID. So let's imagine wildfires in Canada, which are unbelievable. I was just in Cape Cod in the US, just got back. the whole sky in massachusetts was black the the sun at four in the afternoon was a tiny red speck because all this smoke was coming over from canada unbelievable you looked at a map the wildfires right away from the atlantic to the pacific coast wasn't donald trump saying he was going to put tariffs on canada unless they could stop the smoke coming in well that was particularly mad mad trump closer to home for both of us fires the cairn gorms in the north Scotland.

46:16I mean, back to my point, when are we going to wake up?

46:19Rory Stewart:Arthur's seat is up in flames, and it's going to take the fire brigade's days to get a grip of that right on the edge of Edinburgh. But if you put together, let's imagine there were wildfires in Canada. Let's imagine there was a drought in Brazil. Let's imagine India imposed rice export bans. There's a war in Ukraine. Then you suddenly see where the problems come from, because why we're likely to end up in a food security crisis is multiple crises overlapping. And it's very difficult for DEFRA to think about this on their own. So if we're serious about this, firstly, listen to Caroline Lucas's report.

46:54Rory Stewart:But secondly, think about what machinery of government we need to put in place to deal with this. Oh God, it's been quite heavy. I want to get you, if you can bear, onto the question of the World Cup and some football. And we haven't had proper questions from this. So this is a question from Derek, which is, Alistair, being honest in yourself, what did you learn about the world and football? What surprised you? What was interesting for you? And if you were trying to convince someone who wasn't a football fan why it was something worth watching, what did you learn about humanity and the world? Cue plug the new world.

47:28We've done this wonderful photo spread of fans from all 64 countries face painted. I think the World Cup was a gigantic success on many levels, despite who leads America and despite who leads FIFA. I learned as if I didn't know that Donald Trump is a total narcissist. And I know it's pathetic and childish and petulant, but this is what happens when you've got Trump derangement syndrome. I was watching in this pub in Iceland. when the crowd booed Donald Trump, the crowd in the pub cheered the crowd in the stadium. I learned that when I was at the Champions League final, I met this guy, Karanka, who used to be a manager in Middlesbrough, top footballer.

48:15And I said, come on, you guys know what's going on. Who's going to win the World Cup? He said, well, it's pretty easy to work out. It's going to be Spain, France, England, or Argentina. They were the last four. And he thought Spain. He thought Spain, and Spain won it. What stage did he guess the last four? Oh, this was before the tournament started. Oh my gosh. So he managed. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I think the other thing I learned is that even though it lasted a long time, if you love football, you can cope. You can cope with several games. I also think that, I think it underlined, if you talk to the people who were there and you listen to people there, there are two Americas.

48:57two very different Americas. There's the Trump America that we all hear about, and it's just noise and it's performative politics. And people, most of the fans from most parts of the world said they had a kind of amazing time and they had really good receptions everywhere they went.

49:12Rory Stewart:I was in Boston and they were so funny in Boston, so pleased about Scottish fans, so pleased about the fact that the Scots have managed to drink out all the beer in Boston. I mean, I heard this from so many people in Boston. We had no beer left. They drunk us totally dry. That's proof that the market economy doesn't work. That's why you need socialism, Roy. You need socialist approach to beer. I had a question for you from Stocky, my father-in-law. So he is a big, big, loves playing sport, loves watching sport, but played American football, watches American football. But he was a bit bewildered by watching what he calls soccer.

49:49Rory Stewart:he loyally sat through all the games of this but he said can you get alistair to explain to me and many many many other americans where are the plays what they're used to in american football is these very very complex 95 different plays that have been set up where the quarterback gets ready one person sets in stretch another person and he was looking at soccer as a new soccer watcher without knowing much about he found it a bit boring compared to american football because he wasn't able to spot 97 detailed choreographed in advance plays are you able to explain this to the american viewer first of all i would say to stocky that is why i find nfl so boring is because it's it's relentlessly stop start it is rehearsed pre-programmed almost the great thing about so football managers set up with systems so you can see roughly what the system is that they're playing.

50:47And then as the game evolves, they adapt tactics and systems. And the joy of watching football, particularly if you're with somebody who knows about football, I've had the pleasure of watching football with some great managers. They see a different game. They see it like an NFL guy might see an NFL game if they've worked in it their whole lives. I'd also think, I thought what you were going to say, because the main criticism you get from Americans is that it's such a low scoring game, unless it's England against France for the bronze medal. But the reason that it's low scoring is because when two good teams are playing each other, it is really, really hard to score against each other.

51:27So that's why it needs these really special players. They talk about unlocking defences because they're looking for gaps and they're looking for their players understanding what they might do with the ball. So Luke Stocking needs to come to, I'd say, let's say Burnley against Wrexham next year. We can sit down, and we can watch it and I can try to explain. But it's way more exciting than any American sport. I'll tell you the other thing I learned, the other thing I learned, because I didn't go, and deep down, I think I'm glad I didn't go. I think I'm glad I didn't go. But I did miss the Scotland experience.

52:05But it meant I watched a lot of pundits. You asked what surprised me. I'll tell you what surprised me is how good a pundit Wayne Rooney is because Wayne Rooney, reputation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he had the best line of all. Because the other thing that I loathed about the World Cup was that the moneyfication, the celebrification. I mean, the final, they just kept scanning the crowd for kind of, you know, celebrities, some of whom I recognized, some of whom I didn't. And the halftime show, I just thought Wayne Rooney spoke for the world when Gabby Logan said, what do you think of it?

52:40And he said, well, I was glad when it was ended. that I thought it was crap. So keep all that American, this is bad for Stocky, keep that American shit out of it.

52:49Rory Stewart:I was incredibly impressed. I was watching, obviously, the only way of watching in the States is watching the dreaded Fox. But Thierry Henry, I thought, was incredible on explaining Spanish plays. I mean, so fluent and such a wonderful, I mean, I thought he was incredible. Does he do a lot on British telly too? He does a fair bit, yeah. He was so good at both getting the overall picture and also giving us the detailed plays. Was Zlatan Ibrahimovic on as well? He was, yeah. Zlatan was up next to him, yeah. And what do you think? Because he's my teammate in Croatia. Is he? Well, he wasn't quite as fluent as Thierry Loury.

53:25Rory Stewart:Just finally on that one, finally on that one, will you just, sorry, this is so boring, but finally, can you just give us a bit on our German manager and what the hell went wrong? Is there anything interesting to be said on that? Or has it all been said on how we managed to lose this semi-final? I think it's all been said. And now Fiona, as you know, isn't a big football fan, doesn't understand why I've devoted so much of my life to travelling up and down the not very reliable train land to go and see Burnley. But she did watch the England-Argentina game with me, and she now thinks she should be the England manager because as the substitutions were being made, He said, why is he taking off attackers to put on defenders?

54:09Why don't they want to score another goal? Look, I think he fought the last war. They did something similar against Mexico, but that was with 10 men, very different. And they did something similar with Norway, and he thought it's worked before. But this is the difference. Messi had been very, very quiet for most of the game. He suddenly realized they are pushing themselves back. This is where I'm going to go and open them up. and he did it. So now I don't think it's more complicated than that. That being said, I thought, this is what's wrong with our fandom and our media. Tuchel has done a pretty good job for England and he doesn't go from hero to zero just because of one bad period, really.

54:50But the truth is, the best team in the world is France, but the best team in the tournament overall won the tournament. My big worry watching in Iceland was that Argentina, who didn't have a single shot in 90 minutes, were going to get one shot in the 97th minute and win it. But no, justice was done. And so happy for the Spaniards, so happy for the Palestinians who support Spain because of their stance on... Oh, and by the way, Rory, just on that, did you see the story about the guy who devoted himself to erecting huge screens in Gaza so that people could watch the World Cup? He was killed by an Israeli attack.

55:29I mean... I'm sorry. Sorry to hear that.

55:32Rory Stewart:Sorry to hear that. Okay, well, let me try to bring us to an end on a slightly happier note. So we've done some pretty tough stuff. We've done China and AI, these amazing new Chinese models. The latest, most advanced model, Kimi K3, most of you are not going to be able to download, so don't rush to your phone. In fact, it's one of the limitations of the model, almost certainly because they don't have the compute behind it. They're not able to take many more subscribers at the moment. But we've done China and AI, software. power. We've done quite a lot on food security, done quite a lot on the Tory party, director Tory party, done a little bit on football.

56:07Rory Stewart:I just want to finish though maybe with football and you for a second, bring us back to Andy Burnham, our new prime minister, who like you, his two great loves in life seem to be football and music. And in particular, the Manchester music scene talks a lot in his book. It's a lovely book. Thank you for making me read it about Smiths, Morrissey, UB40, Manchester club scene and how important that was to him. And a lot of his time at Cambridge was playing football and going to concerts. Quite European. I mean, he's married a lady who is, I think, a Dutch-speaking woman who was living in Belgium. She's a Dutch-Belgian called Marie France.

56:45Rory Stewart:So, and we're all getting a bit excited by that. And also, he's an English graduate, Whereas Keir Starmer famously wasn't able to name his favourite book and seemed to slightly struggle to communicate his kind of cultural interests. Andy Burnham seems very comfortable with that. So tell us a little bit just to finish about music, football, what that tells us about Andy Burnham. Yeah, well, the first thing to say, I think it's real. It's authentic. And I think the football thing is very, very deep. I mean, he really, really, really loves Everton Football Club. He's also a rugby league fan, like I am.

57:14No, it goes deep. And also, he's not a bad footballer.

57:17Rory Stewart:He's got a lovely story about playing with Mike Atherton at Cambridge, about how useless this famous cricketer was at playing football. Yeah, he was a bit disparaging of Mike Atherton's footballing skills. But no, he's a good sort of midfield general, quite physical, won't back out of a tackle. I was thrilled to see that Peter Reid, former, Peter Reid, who's probably most famous, he listens to the podcast, I'm going to say this, he's most famous for being one of the many, many players that Maradona beat as he went to the other goal in the Hand of God goal game. And I've always said to him, Peter, just stay there, just don't wobble, just stop wobbling from side to side.

57:59But it was great to see Peter Reid in Downing Street with his white jacket on, with Steve Rotherham bottle-feeding his grandchild. No, the football thing is real. And I think that speaks as well to his kind of absolute belief in local community. The sport thing is real. I think a lot of sports people have been in touch with me. I was at the Diamond League Athletics on Saturday with Sepco and Brendan Foster, both of whom have had dealings with Andy through the work that they do. And both really, really positive about him in terms of sport. The UK Athletics people were there really positive. They know that he really gets sport.

58:42And it was great as well, Roy, to see you've got a Scottish tortoise there. Josh Kerr, your fellow Scot, setting a new world mile record. So that was a good day.

58:54Rory Stewart:Unbelievable, the speed. I mean, somebody pointed out that over a mile, he's traveling at a speed that most of us would struggle to achieve over 100 meters. Most of us would struggle to go anything close to that pace for a yard. It was fabulous to watch. It was fabulous to watch. So no, I think the sport thing is important. And it'd be interesting to see how, you know, Keir Starmer, who was an Arsenal season ticket holder, and the security wouldn't let him go where he used to sit, had to go in the box. It'll be interesting to see whether Andy does all that stuff or whether he tries to stay in his usual seat.

59:26Rory Stewart:He claims he's been guaranteed that he can sit in his normal seat for the Everton game. So we'll see whether that happens. That might end up pissing off other fans who suddenly have their legs sniffed as they walk in. Lots of things will piss off fans. Right. Thank you, Anastasia, very much. Look forward to seeing you again very soon. It's just so heartening that you wanted to talk about football, not me. I was going to try and get through a whole episode without talking about Trump I know I'd already failed but anyway we didn't make it see you soon see you soon bye bye

1:00:04Rory Stewart:hello everybody we've got some exciting news to share with you we do indeed as you all know the rest of the politics plus members get early access to question time they get ad free listing they get exclusive series and a host of other benefits And probably for me, the most exciting thing is these exclusive mini series we're doing. And right now we're holding a summer sale. So you can get an extra 20 % off on an annual membership from now until the end of August. If that sounds good, head to therestospolitics.com and use the code SUMMER26 when you purchase an annual plan. Make the most of this deal and join us for a busy summer ahead.

1:00:38Rory Stewart:We've got some brilliant new series coming your way. So new stuff coming, for example, on existential threats. And then there's all the stuff. So what are some of the mini series that you've enjoyed you think people should be listening to? I've enjoyed them all, to be honest. I really liked the Gen Z series that Vicky Spratt did. I've enjoyed the recent one on the funding of reform. I've been very proud of some of the stuff we've been doing on AI. We now have a really good package for listeners going deep into AI around the world. So sign up now and start catching up with our special Summer 26 code purchase on the restispolitics.com.

1:01:14Thank you.