560. Trump's Hamas Disarmament 'Deal' and Europe's FIFA Boycott

26:02Rory Stewart:And maybe the only people who are being honest, paradoxically, in the setup are Smotrich and Ben-Gavir who are very open that that's their objective. Effectively, without using inflammatory language, they're imagining an Israel that stretches almost from the river to the sea and are basically saying that the West Bank is going to become Israeli and that if security problems continue in Gaza, that also will be resettled. So one of the questions people are going to be looking at is actually Smotrich and Ben-Gavir are so offensive and radical, but is even a more moderate, rhetorically more moderate Israeli government not in practice, pushing ahead with almost entirely the same policy?

26:44Rory Stewart:And one of the clues on that is going to be around Mahwan Barghouti, who we've talked about before, who is the only credible Palestinian leader. I mean, if you're going to imagine a world that doesn't either have this decrepit, elderly, corrupt, hopeless Palestinian authority in Ramallah, or a Hamas leadership, you need Marwan Bhaguti, which is almost certainly why Ben Gavir goes out of his way again and again in videos to humiliate, abuse, torture Marwan Bhaguti, because probably he suspects that this guy is the only significant threat to the plan. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we'll talk about another leader in some certain difficulties right now.

27:22That's Gianni Infantino. We'll also talk about the role of comedic characters in politics on the back of our interview with Count Binface.

27:58Rory Stewart:The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook.

28:12Rory Stewart:Welcome back to The Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Alistair, this, I'm afraid, I feel a bit idle stepping up, but I genuinely think listeners will support me in the view that these are questions well directed towards you. and we've had a lot of them. Eddie, Donald and Aidan, I'm not going to read all your questions, but let's start with Eddie, who's a TripPlus member from Amsterdam. What's going on with this FIFA forward nonsense? Delighted to hear UEFA unilaterally will pull out of the World Cup, but what's actually going on? How can the head of FIFA seemingly hate football so much?

28:47Rory Stewart:Listen, just for people who are not big football fans, I'm afraid you're going to have to explain what FIFA is, what UEFA is and what on earth is going on here and then get into the analysis. Rory, you must be the only person on earth who doesn't know what FIFA is and doesn't know what UEFA is. But just for you, Rory, FIFA is the body which governs world football and is responsible for the World Cup, which we've just seen. And UEFA is the similar body that covers 55 football associations in Europe. So Gianni Infantino, friend of Donald Trump, friend of Mahmoud Bilal Salman, friend of Vladimir Putin, just to go through some of the recent winners of the World Cup bid, I think has had a bit of an Icarus moment.

29:29I think we're talking here about hubris. The World Cup was successful. A lot of the things that people like me and you said might go wrong didn't really go wrong. The quality of football was pretty good. The games were good. The smaller countries really added something. The best team in the tournament definitely won. That was Spain. Since when this plan, we should give a shout out here. We're quite critical of journalists sometimes. Martin Ziegler on The Times broke this story about this plan that Infantino had hatched in conditions close to secrecy, given that his right-hand man seems not to have known about it and he's subsequently resigned.

30:11But essentially, the World Cup could be part privatized. It could be 20 % sold off. And into the mix comes none other than somebody by the name of Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared, son-in-law of Trump. And the whole world of football goes a bit crazy.

30:33Rory Stewart:Now, let me try to play devil's advocate on behalf of Jerny Infantino, who I actually know, paradoxically. I've seen quite a lot of Jerny Infantino. I met him in Davos. You met him in Davos. Very good. So his line is this, that we need to invest more in smaller, poorer countries, that it's really sad, for example, that African nations are not doing better in the World Cup, given that many of the greatest football stars and some of the most talented players in the world come from Africa. And part of the problem is that they simply don't have any money. They don't have money for facilities, for training, for this, that and the other.

31:08Rory Stewart:And that FIFA generates a huge amount of money every time there's a World Cup, but then it doesn't really get any money in the years between the World Cup. So this is a fancy financial instrument which allows them to draw down on their future profits and get a package of money that can be pumped into developing countries and help building up, for example, African nations. Back over to you. Well, Roy, I did not come on this podcast expecting you to become the spin doctor for Giardino Infantino, whose social media videos attempted to put this case, I have seen. They would be more convincing if we hadn't seen the development of Giardino Infantino during the decade plus that he's been in charge of FIFA, which has seen the World Cup going to...

31:56Now, they've all been successful in their own right, But you put them together, Russia, Qatar, United States under Trump, and you begin to see a pattern. There is also the suggestion that he sees himself as the leader of this commercial side of FIFA on a gigantic salary, well into the eight figures. But I think the other thing, I mean, look, Trump does have a habit of once people get too close to him, that he burns them. My friend Eddie Rama in Albania, where are his problems coming from? The fact that he's got this planning deal with Jared Kushner, brother of the guy who's now involved with Infantino.

32:33And yesterday, Trump was asked about this deal. And the questioner in the White House said at one of these pool sprays, did Gianni Infantino talk to you about this proposal for selling off part of the World Cup?

32:46Rory Stewart:Do you know what his answer was? Who? My little insight from people who know Infantino and Trump is that the story is that Infantino has desperately been trying to get Trump on the phone over the last few days and has completely failed to do so. And as you say, the reason why the who is so funny is that Infantino presented Trump with a peace prize. He sat next to him at the World Cup final. Sat next to the World Cup final, yeah. Can I just sort of, before we come back to the details, sorry, one more question though, if you just help us understand. I remember David Cameron being completely furious with FIFA.

33:19Rory Stewart:I don't want to put words into his mouth, but he went out to campaign with then Prince William to try to get Britain to host the World Cup. David Beckham felt that everybody lied to him. He was completely blindsided and maybe being unfair, but he basically came back and said, this is the most corrupt organization he's ever dealt with. I also have a vague memory that the International Olympic Committee has also had incredible scandals in the past. What is it about these global sporting organizations that seems to have this incredible corruption horror. Why do these people at the top of this? Was it Sepp Blatter?

33:53Rory Stewart:Is that the name I'm looking for? Well, Sepp Blatter is a very interesting... We had Havalanche before him, a Brazilian, and he had a pretty colorful track record. It is a sign of just how bad things have got that Sepp Blatter, with a straight face, could tweet that he's worried about the growing corruption of FIFA under Infantino. Just remind us of why that's ironic. What did Sepp Blatter do? So Sepp Blatter was dogged by scandal and accusations of corruption throughout his entire time, pretty much, although he was cleared ultimately by a court of appeals process. And by the way, I'll tell you my answer to your question, why is sport like this?

34:31Because sport is incredibly important, genuinely important to billions of people around the world. Governments know that it's important. So therefore, things like trying to get the World Cup, as David Cameron was doing, or getting the Olympics, as we did for 2012, and as we're trying to do again now, it really matters. And therefore, these people in sport, what they managed to do is to become public, high profile political figures without the usual constraints of politics, like democracy and not worrying too much about where the brown envelopes are going. So that, I think, is the reason. It attracts that sort of person.

35:13Infantino has operated a strategy, and this is why I'm shocked that you've fallen for the spin. There's 211 members of FIFA. When it comes to the votes to who the next leader is, and it could be him, they got one vote each. So he wants the Africans and the poorer countries to think Gianni's the man who's going to get us more money. Now, that might be more money for playing fields, and it might be more money for amateur clubs, but it might also be money for nice holidays for the family, and it might be nice money for handbags and all the other, jewellery and all the other stuff that seems to go down well with some of the people who are in football.

35:52So I think that's the problem. And the big problem for Infantino is that the trust levels have just been eroded and eroded and eroded. There was genuine... I know quite a lot of the European kind of football hierarchy. There was genuine shock at the FIFA Peace Prize thing. There was no consultation. He didn't pick up a phone to anyone and say, we're trying to get the Americans to really get behind this World Cup. You know how naive he is. You know how vain he is and such a narcissist. Do you mind if we give him a Peace Prize? There was none of that. So he does that. Then we had the red card. We talked about this when you were in your retreat, when you came out of your retreat.

36:25The American guy gets a red card and Trump phones up Gianni and says, can't we suspend this red card? And lo and behold, the independent processes. And added to which you then have this Kushner name drops in. I mean, just do the basic stuff. So what you then had was UEFA had a meeting. 55 countries came together and said that if this plan goes ahead, UEFA teams will not take part. Well, imagine a World Cup without Spain, France, England, Germany, Croatia, Portugal. It's not going to be great. It's not going to be great.

37:04Rory Stewart:And so the whole problem, the plan's now dead. Am I right that Andy Burnham managed to find a political moment to get out ahead of this? He did. He was straight out. He was literally straight out. And actually Fiona, who doesn't follow football that closely, but she was saying to me, she said, you know, Keir would probably have waited a bit. Keir's a massive football fan, just as Andy Burnham is, just as I am, but would probably maybe have waited. Andy was straight out. And he's also straight out saying Infantino's not the right guy to lead FIFA. One small thing, because a friend of mine was saying to me, who knows these people, that football is actually quite important in understanding the way the top of the Labour Party works.

37:41Rory Stewart:That Andy Burnham and James Purnell played football together. You play football, these guys. Keir Starmer plays football. You all know how everybody plays football. And it's no accident to our fury that the rest of football has managed to get interviews with a lot of these players. Is there an interesting group of middle-aged men in Labour who play football together? Is that part of the culture? I hope this is breaking news to you, but a lot of people play football. Yeah, yeah. But is it true that James Purnell plays football in the same team as Andy Burnham? There is an MP's team. So when there were MPs, I mean, I've got to say, I've been talking to Steve Rotherham for this series, Becoming Burnham, which is coming out on August 21st.

38:19Coincidentally, the day that I'll be playing football, not with Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Luka Modric, your lookalike. So if you want to get that, by the way, and I really think it is a story I'm very glad we've told, and just join up, become a member at therestofpolitics.com. Steve and I have both played in these matches with Andy Burnham, who is actually not a bad footballer. He's not a bad footballer. However, Steve and I both reflected on the fact that in various games we've played, Steve and I have created opportunities for Andy Burnham to score a goal and run around taking the credit.

38:55So no, I think, but football is important. And so for example, David Cameron had that experience, which was humiliating because I think the team that was trying to generate votes for the bid had been told, oh, we've got a few dozen in the bag. And if you could maybe just talk to this and talk to that, it turned out we've got next to no votes. Okay. And I remember there was a picture of Cameron and William and Beko in this, looked like a bit of a prison cell. I don't know where they were, probably UEFA headquarters or something. They looked just really sad. And Cameron did look very, very angry.

39:25We had the same thing. We had to host Sepp Blatter. And we got this letter in advance and it said there must be a red carpet, similar to when, you know, heads of state and government arrived. He'd like the prime minister to meet him on the doorstep. He must be referred to as Mr. President. He must, all this sort of bollocks, right? And so that's what they do. And of course, Infantino had the same. When Infantino went to Canada recently, his team put a bid through to the Canadian police saying that he wants the same police escort that is given to Trump when he comes. And they said, no, maybe a couple of motorbikes.

40:01So I think that anyway, this plan for now is dead. The question then is whether Infantino is dead. And he's a lot more dead than he was when he was riding high with the World Cup. And that's how hubris works, isn't it?

40:14Rory Stewart:Very good. Well, look, really good. There's a lot of politics in that, and I think it's worth doing a bit of wrestlers football politics. The thing I was listening to in the back of my mind is I went campaigning for a man called David Nabarro, Sir David Nabarro, to become the head of the World Health Organization against the Ethiopian candidate Tedros. and I was flown out with my civil service team to Geneva and I went around meeting all the voters. And again, like FIFA, each country has one vote. And I was sitting down with countries and it was a pretty strange negotiation. We came pretty close to hinting, you know, maybe we could bring forward this lovely investment in health clinics in your country and thank you so much for supporting us and all this kind of thing.

40:54Rory Stewart:And yet again, I sat down with my team at the end of the thing and I I said, I think we've got them all. Every person that we've met seemed like they were signed up behind David Nabarro, and we were completely humiliated. All these people that were dealing with me to whom we made some pretty significant promises did not deliver at all. So this is really, really, really interesting stuff. Okay, Alistair, next question from Scarlett. What does the popularity of a joke candidate actually tell us about how people feel about our real politicians? What's the dangers of voters taking a national view on local politics, and why do comedic characters have an increasing role in our politics?

41:29Rory Stewart:To explain to those few people around the world who aren't following this day in, day out, Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing party reform, resigned because there have been lots of scandals around the funding for his party, triggered a by-election, said he was going to stand against the establishment, show the Tories and others he could come through. And the candidate who's emerged as the big rival because the other parties refused to stand is a man called Count Binface who wears a dustbin or a trash can on his head. What Scarlett is getting at here is the slight anxiety that the voters of Clacton are not really being offered a choice where they can really talk about local constituency issues.

42:08Rory Stewart:Over to you. Yeah, I listened back to the interview we did with Count Binface in the car with Fiona. I was driving along and she was sitting there. The first thing is she laughed a lot. There were bits of it she found very, very, very funny. But also then when we talked about it afterwards, there were quite a few sort of serious points that emerged. If you just look at the Scarlet's question, what does the Joe candidate tell us about how people feel about our real politicians? When Count Bin Faye stood against Andy Burnham in Makerfield, he got 95 votes. Andy Burnham was offering a serious agenda and it was part of a serious plan.

42:42Why is he likely to do better against Nigel Farage? Because even though Nigel Farage got a very big majority at the general election, I think a lot of people in Clacton realise that this is a stunt, that he was finally getting serious questions about the corruption issues related to him and Post George and Richard Tice, who's now also been referred to the Parliamentary Standards Committee. And this was a way of, he thought, parking all that. The main parties, as you say, cleverly and rightly said, this is a stunt, we're not doing it. So that's what has made Count Binface emerge in the way that he has.

43:21There was a very misleading poll a while back, which was a national poll. Who would you like to see win? And Binface beat Farage around the country. There's been the first poll in Clacton, and it's something like three to one, 75 to 25 for Farage. Now Farage is nailed on to win this. The betting markets have him way, way, way ahead. It would be incredible if Count Binface one. But that poll made me think that if Binface had actually managed somehow to get engaged with the other parties and their members and supporters and really put together a ground operation, because what I think we got right in the interview with him is we got a bit of serious and quite a lot of funny.

44:02But I think if you were actually to turn the joke into a joke about how Farage had reduced Clacton to a joke, and this comedic character was going to make Clacton serious again, I think he could be in with a shout.

44:18Rory Stewart:I'm disappointed by that. So the interviews on leading, people can listen to it. It's very funny, but actually comedy can be at its most powerful when it's satirising power and when it's pointing out what's wrong. So I would have liked him to be leaning not into the position of the hand dryer in the pub, but really leaning in through his comedy into satirizing the corruption, the abuse, the populism, the polarization, the post-truth of politics, and also signaling that he would be a really dedicated local constituency MP. He could have got so many volunteers. You know, when I tried as an independent to run as mayor of London, I was overwhelmed by people volunteering.

44:59Rory Stewart:You know, we got, I think, over 10 ,000 people offering to have me to stay in their houses. We had thousands upon thousands of people happy to deliver leaflets in their areas, come and meet us. He could have done that. So many idealistic young people from around the country would have swarmed to Clactam to deliver leaflets for him, knock on doors. instead of which I'm afraid for whatever reason of whatever's going on inside that bin, he decided he was never going to win and that he wasn't going to criticize Farage and he was going to keep going with the joke that he's been doing for 10-15 years rather than flip around and actually become a bit more of a Martin Bell figure.

45:37Rory Stewart:Martin Bell being the guy in the white suit that won as an independent in a corruption scandal. Yeah, and that was in Tatton in 1997 against Neil Hamilton, of course, than one of the many, many people who has fallen out with Nigel Farage when in his same party. Over the weekend, by the way, I read a book by John Sweeney. It's not out yet. I was reading a proof, John Sweeney, who a lot of our listeners may know from what he's been doing in Ukraine recently, but he's written a book about Nigel Farage. I was asked for a blurb quote, as we often are already. My quote was, Nigel Farage will hate this book almost as much as I liked it.

46:09It is pretty brutal, brutal about his time at school, basically saying the guy was a Nazi at school. I mean, this is a book which, if Nigel Farage doesn't sue him, you're going to have to assume that this is all pretty true and brutal about his time as a business guy. And then it's this whole succession of people that he falls out with.

46:29Rory Stewart:Also, you've reminded me with Neil Hamilton, a slight pattern of people who are slightly disgraced coming into the party. We've just done an interview with Dan Needle on leading, who of course focused on Nadam Zahawi's finances when he was a Conservative Chancellor and now he's gone over to reform. The same is true, as you say, with Neil Hamilton, who had this big flirtation with reform. Jenrick's finances are under investigation. Richard Tice's finances are under investigation. One of the chapters is about how cavalier they are about money, and also about Farage's greed. He's got a whole chapter on his greed.

47:02Rory Stewart:Well, I feel that very strongly. I mean, that's the thing that I think we haven't talked about enough. Legal or illegal, what I can't believe is just how much money Farage keeps wanting. I'm the last person who wants to be sympathetic with Chris Harbourn, who's this Thai crypto billionaire who gave him money. But the whole point of the donation, I think, was to free him up personally from having to be dependent on anybody. He keeps emphasizing the personal nature, but there's clearly a big political meaning, which is that if you're worth £5 million, you don't need to take dodgy political donations through indirect means from other people.

47:35Rory Stewart:Which is why I suspect Chris Harbourn, who also gave£9 million directly to reform, will be pretty annoyed that despite having given five million pounds personally to Farage, Farage continued to try to take money in ways that has ultimately got him in real trouble. I want to plug a book that I love and I haven't plugged enough by Robert Skidelsky, who died recently, and his son Edward Skidelsky called How Much Is Enough? And it's a short, lovely book reflecting on this question, really important human question, how much is enough? Is there a moment at which people feel that they've got a fair amount of wealth that we can redistribute, that maybe we'd work less.

48:13Rory Stewart:I mean, it comes out of a Keynes lecture nearly 100 years ago where Keynes imagined people's GDP per capita in Britain would be about fourfold by today. He was right about that. We are four times richer than we were. But he thought the result was that we would start working half as much. And in fact, we're working almost just as much as we were 100 years ago because we want to accumulate more and more. Anyways, how much is enough? That's my plug. And it relates to Farage. Look, maybe he was never going to win. Maybe that's right. But just look at the numbers. So last time, Farage got 46.2 % of the vote.

48:43He got a majority of 8 ,400. Most people don't really enjoy being asked to go out and vote. They think we've had a general election. So I think turnout's probably going to be lower. So he could have, he might have set him, he certainly should have publicly set himself the target of not losing his deposit. Maybe set that as the barrier that is a defeat. If Bin Faze keeps his deposit, Farage has lost. I thought it was quite smart that Bin Faze said that Farage has lost already. I think there's a lot in that. But I think you could have, with a decent ground operation, you could have had a sense of excitement that this was going to be a big moment in politics where somebody who's taken Clacton for granted, lied to the country many, many, many times about Brexit, currently exploiting the whole immigration debate with a new set of lies, you could actually come out and say, listen, Clacton deserves better than this.

49:35There's more to me than just being a comedian who lives inside a bin. And here's 10 things I'm going to do for Clacton.

49:41Rory Stewart:I'm with you 100%. I don't get why we couldn't get there with him. Maybe next time I'm going to campaign with a bin on my head. I wonder actually, as possible, if I put a bin on my head and been a bit more serious about it, maybe I could have taken down Farage and Clapton. I hadn't thought about that. Anyway, final question for you from Kitty. Top books you must read before you die. Oh, sorry, final thing before we get onto that. I'm very interested at the moment on making a programme, potentially with the BBC, on dying and death. The producers keep saying to me, you can't possibly call it dying and death.

50:14Rory Stewart:Nobody wants to listen to something. What are you doing with the BBC? What are you doing on the miniseries? I don't think the rest of the political listeners want my philosophical reflections on death. Well, what's different to our listeners than the BBC? This is where you reveal your total conservatism. It's a different world. What are you going to do with Micah Richards? No, I'm just going to sit there and stroke my chin and talk about death. I think you'd get really annoyed with how pretentious that was. Anyway, listen, over to you on top books you must read before you die. Okay. Well, first of all, we should say that you and I, I suspect this is what's provoked this question.

50:51You and I, for the newsletter, have written suggestions for books that we suggest people read over summer. We'll put a link of that in the newsletter for those who missed it. Also tell us about your books as well, because we love book recommendations. Books Before You Die. Well, I suppose I have to re-plug Philip Gould's book, When I Die, which he wrote while he was dying.

51:10Rory Stewart:What had a really profound impact on you? Can you remember a book that you read when you were a teenager or in your 20s which really did sit with you for some weeks and might have really kind of affected your life or affected you? Well, I'm going to say The Castle by Kafka. Ah, wow. Okay, wow. Why did that have a deep effect on me? It made me very, very depressed. Right. He was quite depressed too, wasn't he? He was a very depressed guy, yeah. Yeah, and that's the sort of vision of meaningless nihilistic bureaucracy, isn't it? Yeah. The other book that had a very profound effect on me at university was Samuel Beckett, or A.T.

51:59Forgotto. Oh, my lord. A bit of a theme.

52:02Rory Stewart:You love pretty grim existential - I didn't say I loved them, I said they had a profound effect on me. Yeah. The book that I remember being most moved by in my late teens was Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which is about a sort of holy fool called Prince Mishkin.

52:22Rory Stewart:Those Russian books, I realized that as a teenager, I sort of saw them completely differently to the way that I see as an adult. I remember reading Tilghenev's Fathers and Sons and being completely on the side of the sons. And now I read it and I'm on the side of the fathers. And when I read The Idiot, I was completely on the side of The Idiot. And now I can sort of see there are some problems with his idiocy. Yeah. I can tell you the book that made me fall in love with the French language is Madame Bovary. Oh, the elegance of Flaubert's language. Just, well, amazing story about an extraordinary woman.

53:00Well, interesting woman.

53:02Rory Stewart:Or as he said, that whore, Madame Bovary. That's the one. And also for the time, I remember thinking, God, I can't believe he wrote this back in the 19th century. Because it was quite racy in parts and did start a kind of moral panic in France at the time. But I just think that is the book. That's the first time I can remember reading a book in a foreign language and thinking, I am completely thinking about this, responding to it in French. So that book made me fall in love with Madame Bovary and the French language. One book about politics, everybody should read before they die, is Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Abraham Lincoln.

53:45Oh, that's lovely.

53:47Rory Stewart:She'll really appreciate that. I think that's the best book about politics ever written. What else? I'm trying to think of... I'm going to be a bit cheesy here, but Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela's story. It's beautifully written. The Pope's encyclical on AI, obviously. So I've done five, Roy. You give me two more and then we can go. I should tell you, by the way, I'm in France and I've had to change my shirt halfway through our recording because I'm drenched in sweat here. Oh, I'm here in Scotland and I've just been, it's raining continually. I've got a massive dripping nose. I took Ivo nine-year-old camping, which was incredible, really fun, just the two of us.

54:31Rory Stewart:Sascha and Shoshana are on a culinary tour of Naples while he and I were trudging through the Scottish Highlands. I wondered where you were because Shoshana sent me a photograph with the caption, he's everywhere. Who was it of? Who was it of? I don't know. Who was it? Luke Comfort? It was a gigantic mural of Diego Maradona in Naples. Oh, brilliant. So we went up into the hills, which was really exciting and moving. I cooked a really rubbish macaroni cheese and I managed to spill all the milk for his hot chocolate in the morning. We had a great time, but I've now got a miserable cold and it's raining all the time.

55:08Is he going to write a book about walking with his father like you did with yours? I doubt it.

55:13Rory Stewart:I mean, he did enjoy it, though. He loves the camping bit. He actually wants to be living in a tent in our garden. I don't think he likes the walking bit as much, but he really loves the camping bit. Well, look, here's another book then for me. Haji Murat by Tolstoy. Very, very short book, but incredible. We've been talking in this question time about terrorism and different perceptions and the way Israel perceives things and the way Hamas perceives things. This is an incredible book by Tolstoy because the leader is basically a sort of Chechen Islamist rebel leader. And he wrote it as an old man.

55:44Rory Stewart:He rewrote it, I think, seven times, eventually making him into the hero. And it's just the most beautiful kind of anthropology. And then for children's books, if people are interested, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, not just a trilogy, but the full lot, where she writes them over nearly 40 years. And initially, they're hero stories about young men becoming wizards. And as she becomes older, she becomes more and more of a radical feminist. And in the later books, the male wizards are sort of slightly pompous, failed figures. And the heroes are the women who don't pretend to be magicians, but actually bring things, solve things in a very practical way.

56:24Rory Stewart:So us, the Caleb Wynne. And I'm going to connect your point about Flaubert with death, because I think what he said is, As he died, la putain Madame Bovary vivra éternellement, tandis que je mourrai comme un chien. The whore, Madame Bovary, will live forever while I... Die like a dog? Die like a dog, yeah. That's very, very... She provoked strong feelings in men. Final two for me. You mentioned the Middle East. Avi Sharit's book, My Promised Land, I think is a really good primer on Israel and how we've got to where we are. And I must give a shout out to Gerald Knauss, who was our guest on the main episode.

57:11I had a very big hit this week where I got a message from a guy, Andrea Fulda. I mentioned his book about China on the podcast months ago and said this book deserves to be translated into English. It now has been. So that's good. and I think Gerald's book What Borders Do We Need roughly translated What Borders Do We Need is a really, really, really good book and I think anybody who's genuinely interested in the immigration debate as opposed to just wants to exploit it should get hold of it find somebody who speaks German get it translated and get it published in English By the way, I hope you've been listening to Caroline Lucas' brilliant series on climate and national security it really has opened a lot of eyes I think Next week, Rory and I are going to be doing a Q &A with her.

57:59So send in all your questions to RestisPolitics.com.

58:02Rory Stewart:Well, thank you, Alex. Lovely to talk and talk again soon. See you soon. Bye-bye.

58:12Rory Stewart:Hello, everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you. We do indeed. As you all know, the RestisPolitics Plus members get early access to Question Time. They get ad-free listening. 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.

58:45Rory 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 miniseries 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.

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