564. Burnham’s Media Machine and West Bank Settler Impunity

23:21Okay. I think if you deliberately mislead the journalists, they're going to get very, very pissed off. And unlike the Americans, by the way, as you and I have talked about this, the Americans don't seems to me stick together at all. The British media pack is much more herd-like. And if they start to think that you've been misleading journalist A and journalist B, journalist C and journalist D think it could have been them. And so they'll push back hard at that. But I think at the moment, I'm actually in Italy at the moment, and we're staying with some friends, some of whom work in this international communications world.

24:02And I just said, look, I'm about to do the podcast with Roy Stewart. We're going to talk about Andy Burnham's comms, what do you think about it? And they all said, I think he's absolutely nailing it. But where the question is absolutely right, though in the end it is about what are the big decisions you're going to take what is the the economic strategy you're going to pursue what is your foreign policy these big questions are what ultimately will define success or failure not you know how many views he gets on tiktok well also

24:29Rory Stewart:what a new world he's in i mean it's i was looking at this amazing reuters report which has been done by reuters institute report from oxford university looking at where people get their news from again we can we can share that in the newsletter but the numbers are absolutely staggering i mean the number of people who say they basically are not interested in the news has gone from 16 to about 25 the number of people whose primary source of information comes either from social media or from people like us podcasts is now more than the people who get their information from newspapers than television.

25:08Rory Stewart:So it's gone above 50%. And even within, we know print media is collapsing, something we've talked about a lot. And we know that television news watching is going down. Maybe less reported is the fact that traffic to the newspaper's own websites and content is dropping very dramatically too. I saw a really interesting example of this. You can see it again and again And if you go on X and you see what these companies are having to do to try to get people in, I saw one of the most kind of big blue chip names in British journalism trying to work out how to convince people to register on their website and see if they can offer them a few free articles a month.

25:51Rory Stewart:How do you think you do that in the modern world? Again, do you imagine that you're the economist or the FT and you're trying to get people to register and get three free articles? How would you do it on X? Have you got an answer? Have you got a good answer? So what you do is you post something saying how to relax on your holiday and get off your phone. Click here, free registration, and you can read the article. In other words, you're one of the big blue chip news organizations, but you're beginning to believe that the best way of getting people to register is to send sort of lifestyle holiday advice.

26:27Rory Stewart:I think that sounds terrible. Yeah. That's the opposite of what I would say. Absolutely. I'm not having that at all. If that's the FT or The Economist or Bloomberg or Politico, no, I don't support that strategy at all. But, you know, look, I'm nearly 70, Rory. Maybe I'm just sort of out of all this. But it's interesting. I like talking to, I had a really good chat with one of his comms team about, you know, because what I think is going on, I don't think they're obsessing about it. The thing I used to loathe about doing the job that I did with Tony Blair was the sense I had that the journalists are never happier than when they're actually talking about themselves and their own trade.

27:08And that's why, you know, whatever strengths or weaknesses or mistakes, whatever I made, that's what really used to drive them mad about my relationship with them. I was always conscious of the fact that they were interested in me in large part because they were so interested in themselves. And so I like the idea of maybe think that Andy Burnham, And, you know, I hear he still reads the newspapers. I think we need to iron that one out, but he still sort of gets the papers. And, of course, the worst thing about all government buildings, I don't know why they do it, they leave the newspapers lying about everywhere.

27:40So if you're waiting to see somebody, and there's the Daily Express or the Daily Mail there, you know, you're tempted to pick it up. No, don't. Don't waste your time. It's going to get inside your head and knock you off track. So I think that they shouldn't overthink it. They know he's very – at the moment, he's popular. He's had a good start, but you're now going to build up to the party conference, return to parliament. The big stuff has to start happening. And around it, you build a communication strategy. But his job is, that's a small part of it. And so the questioner is absolutely right.

28:17You and I, journalists, will talk about his comms. He'll think about it a bit, but don't think about it too much. And he's so naturally good at it in terms of this style that he has. It's going to grate on some people. And already people are saying, you know, when will this TikTok nonsense end and all that? Just ignore it. Because if he was only doing TikTok, people would think he was a joke. But they see him doing TikTok. They see him doing the big speech. They're going to see him in Parliament. Don't underestimate how important that's going to be when Parliament comes back. So I think he's doing pretty well.

28:47Rory Stewart:I do think the tone has been very good. I mean, he's not a comedian. He's not Boris Johnson. He's not even like George Maloney. He's not actually trying to generate content by doing outrageous things. He's certainly not Trump. And nor is he showing off. I mean, there's not a sense of kind of massive personal vanity or projection or overly selling. I mean, so I think, no, I think it's great. Well, Rory, before we go to the break, you had a little break from the sort of intense podcast work and allowed me to do a three-part miniseries with Steve Rotherham. Metro Mayor of Liverpool, city region, huge friend and very close political ally of Andy Burnham.

29:31And Steve and I sat down and we've done this three-part series, which we're calling Becoming Burnham. And it traces how Andy Burnham went from a teenager radicalised by Thatcher-era Liverpool to being our seventh prime minister in just over a decade. You can hear about all sorts of things. This is all from Steve. Andy Burnham's imposter syndrome. Catholic guilt complex. We're going to hear about Andy Burnham, the DJ, Andy Burnham, the footballer. Very interesting on how his word humiliated he felt, losing particularly the second leadership election, the one that was won by Jeremy Corbyn. An astonishing story about how Andy Burnham actually found out about the Manchester Arena bombing, which will alarm some people, but there we are.

30:17his big beef with Boris Johnson and the battle for COVID funding, Manchesterism and all that. And above all, maybe Steve's very well-informed predictions of how Britain is going to develop under Andy Burnham. So that's all coming up on Becoming Burnham. You won't want to miss it. So sign up at therestispolitics.com. Here's a quick taster of the series that I've done with Steve Rotherham. Who'd want to be Prime Minister of this country? On Monday, 17th July, 2026, The UK got its seventh Prime Minister in just over a decade, Andy Murray Burnham. Some call him the King of the North, others a vibes leader.

30:54All warmth, no weight. Well, I'm sitting down with the man who knows him better than anyone, Steve Rotherham, Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. I got introduced as Andy's busy mate. So how do you think he's feeling right now? I think he's probably thinking, how did this all happen? Just weeks into his new job as Mayor of Manchester, Burnham has to lead a city in shock. breaking news out of Greater Manchester. Phoned Andy. Phone rings out. Phones Andy again, the phone rings out. Andy, my girls are in Manchester. A bomb's gone off at the arena. Can you get the girls out of Manchester? Do it.

31:28Get them out now. Good evening. The next pretty defining moment was COVID. Protect our NHS. Stay at home and save lives. And there was Boris Johnson trying to play me and him off against each other, stupidly believing somehow that we weren't phoning each other every night Every time I had a conversation with Johnson, I'd be telling Andy and vice versa. A frustration of a Prime Minister, the political leader in this country, playing politics during one of the most difficult times that any of us have ever been through. Andy's people skills are very, very good. And yet, his relationship with Keir, it seems to me, did very quickly become a bad one.

32:04Yeah. Do you think if he had been allowed to stand in Gorton Denton, that you might have had Andy back in? He didn't want all the best players on the pitch. We're going to squander this three-figure majority and we're going to lose the next election as Nigel Farage. The first set of local elections frightened me. The second set literally had me petrified of what might come next. To hear my three-part series with Steve Rotherham becoming Burnham, sign up at therestlispolitics.com.

32:28Rory Stewart:And just a reminder that members have access to a whole range of brilliant series, including Caroline Lucas's new series on climate and national security, my series with Matt Clifford on artificial intelligence, Alistair's deep dive on populism, the story we both did looking into the real J.D. Vance, and much, much more. When we come back from the break, we'll get into something completely at the other end of the scale, which is settler violence, the West Bank, and what's happening in Israel-Palestine at the moment. Hello, everybody. It is Dominic Sandbrook here from the premier goal hanger podcast, The Rest is History.

33:04And I wanted to tell you about a new series that we have out this week.

33:08Rory Stewart:It is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Now, of course, this is one of the great landmark events, one of the darkest moments, really, in modern British history. It pitted neighbour against neighbour and set the streets of Belfast and indeed of Britain ablaze. Now, I can't exaggerate how important this story is. In fact, I think in Britain, we don't talk about this as often as we should. You had a low level civil war in part of the United Kingdom. You had in 1972 almost 500 people dying in a single year. It changed the way I think that Britain thought about Ireland, but also the way that Britain thought about itself.

33:43And of course, it was a constant factor in a lot of people's daily lives. If you want a deep dive into perhaps the darkest moment in modern British history, then join us this week on The Rest is history wherever you get your podcasts.

33:59Rory Stewart:The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

34:28Rory Stewart:Welcome back to The Restless Politics, Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Rory, Noor, TripPlus member from Wiltshire. In light of Palestinians being besieged in their own homes in Khuzra in the West Bank, and the increasing expulsion of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, what can be done to rein in the terror wrought by extremist settlers on Palestinian communities? Is the world doomed to watch helplessly until America ends its unequivocal support. Let me begin with two quotes from members of the Israeli Knesset, a minister and a former minister, to set what seems to be happening in Israeli politics.

35:10Rory Stewart:Here's one of them. I think targeted killings should be carried out every night. 30 or 40, not only those who pose a danger. If there are those who are not worthy of life, they're not people. In fact, I'm already complimenting them by calling them people. That's a quote from one minister. A minister. Think of it. So really interesting, because you'll pick up that there's a very interesting echo there. He's using an equivalent of a German word, Lebenswertes Leben, you know, people who are not people, unpeople. Here's a quote from another minister, former minister, Merof Cohen, who's more from the center.

35:50Rory Stewart:Villages are being attacked, communities deliberately driven from their homes, sheep are being slaughtered, orchards burnt, people are being attacked because they are Arabs. This is indeed terrorism. It is Jewish terrorism. So that's Mirav Cohen talking about what is now happening in the West Bank. And she's brutally clear, but we've got Naftali Bennett, who's many people think is a potential future prime minister, saying we did not establish a Jewish state so violent groups could operate within it. We've had the chief of the IDF saying it's completely unacceptable what is happening. But here's the question.

36:33Rory Stewart:Israel is the most effective security state almost in the world. Extraordinary intelligence service, internal intelligence service, army. Its control of the West Bank is unbelievable. surveillance, vehicles, roads, infrastructure. And yet apparently it is completely unable to protect a house with a few Palestinians in it from being attacked by violent settlers with the Israeli army standing right by and it goes on for days. How's that possible? Well, it's possible. It's only possible if they're working together. And I'm afraid that's the conclusion that you're left with, is that actually this is part of the Israeli state and the way that it operates.

37:16And the questioner, how can this be stopped? The international community, for want of a better phrase, has to stand up in a way that at the moment nobody seems to be standing up. Apart from the NGOs, is anybody really speaking out against this at all? You know, we talked earlier about Andy Burnham clearly wants to be a domestic prime minister. Fine, I get that. And that's maybe quite a good thing, then, if somebody as high profile as Ed Milab and his foreign secretary. But my God, I could have done with some pushback from the British government on Netanyahu, calling Britain the Islamic Republic of Great Britain.

37:53I mean, there are a lot of people in Britain who can't stand him. And that has turned a lot of people against Israel. You and I, I think, are both supporters of the state of Israel and supporters of a two-state solution. Very few people have done as much to damage it as he has. For him to talk about the Islamic State of Great Britain, I find deeply, deeply, deeply offensive. To be fair to Mick Huckabee, we've talked about him before. He is the American ambassador to Israel. He is as big a supporter of Israel as you're going to find. He is a huge supporter of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, despite its illegality.

38:29And he has described the settlers who have been besieging these homes in Qutra as, quote, Israeli terrorists. That's as tough a statement as I've ever heard coming from him. The point is this, though. I saw, I can't remember where I saw it. I saw this picture in the, I think it was in the New York Times. And I've actually kept it here on one of my documents. It's of a young girl with her mother in their home, in Khuzra. And they're just looking out at these people who are terrorizing them. And they just look like, I mean, they're really kind of beautiful faces. And they're looking out with this sense of kind of dignified fear and total bewilderment as to what's going on.

39:13And what happened is that the security forces did go and they did say to the settlers, listen, go away. And then the settlers went away for a bit and then the security forces went away again. and then of course the settlers came back. What's the judgment they've reached now? Well, we probably have to get the Palestinians out of there then. Who does that help? That helps the settlers who are bit by bit slowly taking over the whole place. And Rory, I know you wanted to talk about the numbers game and the land. So why don't you just talk us through what's actually happening in terms of land taking?

39:52Rory Stewart:Well, let's start with a brief explainer and reminder. So So after the 1967 war, Israel annexed the West Bank. So this big Palestinian territory, which was then administered by Jordan. And what you've seen since 1967, in what's called by the British government, the occupied Palestinian territories. So international law does not recognize this as part of Israel. International law sees this as it would see Israel being in South Lebanon at the moment as a country invading its neighbor and occupying its neighbor. Settlements have been rolled out. And of those settlements, about 163 are considered illegal by Israel, and about 143 are considered legal by Israel, but they're all illegal in terms of international law.

40:41Rory Stewart:And if you look at this map of area A, B, and C, which is a map of the West Bank, you basically see that the majority of the territory now is under Israeli control. It's area Sea. And areas A and B are these tiny little archipelagos or islands increasingly separated from each other by Israeli security forces. And the Israeli settlers are reinforced by Israeli governments who, on the one hand, seem to want to say, these were illegal, we don't approve of it, sorry it's happened, but by the way, we're going to provide schools for them, we're going to provide water supply for them, we're going to provide roads for them, and we're going to send in the Israeli military to protect these settlements.

41:21Rory Stewart:And by the way, we're going to approve more settlements, which is happening at a very, very rapid rate at the moment. So what's going on? If you look at a map and what's happened over the last 80 years in the region, but particularly since 67, it seems pretty clear that what's happening is this is being annexed. The Israeli government, most Israeli politicians don't like that language, although there are people in the Knesset who are very open about it and simply say this is Judeo-Samaria, this should be part of Israel. But if you look at what's happening on the map, it's happening again and again.

41:54Rory Stewart:And the tendency seems to be to be pushing Palestinians out of almost all the rural areas, and this is what a lot of the settler violence is about, olive trees being attacked, orchards being attacked, sheep's being attacked, into urban settlements, which are increasingly divided from each other. So I was talking to a Palestinian friend today, and they were saying that they had just taken them two and a half hours to travel 15 kilometers that morning from Ramallah up to Jerusalem, driving 15 kilometers. Almost nobody in their family at the moment is visiting places like Hebron because you simply don't know whether you're going to be able to get there at all.

42:29Rory Stewart:And it's not just the checkpoints will suddenly be closed, it's the settlers will actually attack your cars on the road as you're moving through. So this is two types of legal system. The settlers are mostly judged by civilian law, and they almost never are successfully prosecuted. 94 % of investigations against settlers have had no indictment, and only 3 % of them have ended up in convictions, whereas the Palestinians are processed by military law, military courts, military detainment. And to make it even worse, there's a third group which is causing a lot of the mayhem, which is a group called Hagmar, which is a form of reservist militia, who the Israeli settlers predominantly from those areas with guns, who've been directly involved, one of them has shot two people, drove his car into someone praying.

43:23Rory Stewart:No investigations happened. Why? Because the police say, the Israeli police say, well, we can't investigate them because they're soldiers. And then the military say, oh, they're not really soldiers. So they're not business for the military court. Anyway, back over to you. maybe a good point to tell listeners and viewers who haven't yet got across the latest episode of leading you and i sat down last week with these two extraordinary guys mayos inon and aziz abu sara mayos lost his parents on october the 7th and he gave a really harrowing account of what it was like discovering that his parents had been murdered aziz's brother was basically died because he was tortured inside Israeli prisons.

44:06So you've got a Palestinian and an Israeli who both lost close, close family members because of this conflict. They've now come together, written an extraordinary book together, but they're now basically campaigning for peace. And I'd love it if some of the people, the big decision makers, listened to them. But also I think all of us should just listen to two people who are explaining why the current approach of the authorities, pretty much wherever you look is never going to work and the only thing that's ever going to work is if people do somehow reconcile in the way that these two are doing and asking others to do it's

44:44Rory Stewart:the most i mean if people haven't listened they must it's probably i think one of the most encouraging conversations i've had one of the lovely things about this podcast is that we've got this privilege i guess to talk to people every week and i just left so moved and inspired And it's strange because what they're saying is they accept sounds naive, but they basically say, just work backwards. It's got to be about peace. It's not in anyone's interest to keep slaughtering each other. And once you accept that peace has to be the answer, it's possible. It can happen. This cannot be the route. There are still figures in the Knesset and in the IDF who recognize that this is a recipe for disaster.

45:31Rory Stewart:That if you release violent settlers, if you push more and more Palestinians off their land, you are going to repeat the Nakba. You're going to repeat that massive cleansing, which then led to decades of terror, resentment, hatred, and alienated Israel from the entire Middle East. So it's got to stop. And those were two wonderful voices, Israeli and Palestinians, suggesting how that might stop without too many recriminations. There was very little jargon. There was very little talking about the past. I love the way that they kept saying, this could be done in two weeks. So two weeks comes and two weeks goes.

46:07it's not been, yeah, but we could do this in two weeks. And I just love that mindset, because actually it is true. He could end this. He could end in two weeks. Just on the figures, Rory, so the West Bank, roughly 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, 511 ,000 Israeli settlers, okay? Palestinians now, they occupy roughly 30 % of the Gaza Strip, right 30 percent 40 percent of the west bank and 13 percent of east jerusalem so they've been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed it makes me think of those police operations of kettling where you just get people into kind of small ever smaller spaces but what does that do

46:50Rory Stewart:one is it reminds me a lot of when my father was fighting the communists in the malayan emergency where they created something called a white areas policy where basically they removed communities from rural areas and put them in these urban settlements so that they could supervise them and surveil them and put gates around them and fences around them. The second thing is, I was wondering whether there wasn't an echo when we were talking about the Hagmar militia with the Royal Alistair Constabulary and a question of whether it can possibly make sense for the Israelis to say the people responsible for security in this area are the settlers themselves and expect to police their own neighbours and expect them to be fair with Palestinian families.

47:34Yeah. The chief executive of UNICEF, just come back from the West Bank, says he's worked in humanitarian development for two decades and more. He's never seen anything as bad as he's seen in the West Bank. Pope Leo, my new hero Rory, particularly now that my blurb from the rest of his politics is on the front cover of his book, he's come out with another statement today. Let's end this discussion on something a little bit more positive, though. So you probably know, Rory, I'm sure you watched Burnley against West Ham on Sky Sports Football yesterday.

48:07Rory Stewart:Absolutely. Good comeback, wasn't it? Good comeback. Yeah, very good, very good. I mean, some weaknesses, I thought, in the midfield, but otherwise fine. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Anyway, but here's this thing. We were talking last week about racism in the context of Abdul El-Sayed. And I got this lovely email from a gentleman by the name of Wakas Farid. He said, you mentioned the racism Al-Sayed was facing because his wife wore a headscarf. Well, guess what? At Burnley Football Club, the women's team, unlike the men, were promoted last year. They're now a professional team. They've employed a team doctor who happens to be my wife.

48:46Check out at the exercise medic. and she's the first headscarf wearing sports medicine resident doctor in the country, by knowledge. So there we go. Burnley Football Club is doing the right thing.

49:00Rory Stewart:Let's finish on a more positive note, as you say. Carl, Alistair and Rory, it's the last couple of weeks of the summer holidays and I'm completely out of ideas for what to do with my children. Any suggestions? I mean, I feel for them. I've got my children endlessly playing football with me at the moment which you would approve of you any good i'm a bit better than they are yeah are you do you let them win do you let them win it's only because they're nine and eleven no i'm really i'm really competitive then there's only three of us we take turns in goal and then whoever scores gets to go in goal but i'm always i'm always trying to hoof it from a large distance i was talking to some of this last night what age do you stop losing deliberately with your kids but do i get the sense that you've never lost deliberately um i i yeah exactly i'm like Boris Johnson, like, mowing down the Japanese children on that.

49:49Rory Stewart:Now, come on. But apart from football, do you have any other suggestions for what children could be doing during their summer holidays? They should be thinking about the future of the world, Rory. They should be thinking about the big challenges facing the planet because it is their future that we're talking about, okay? Now, do you remember? So here's the thing, and I'm being serious here. This is for parents to get their kids involved, and it's for kids to get involved anyway. Okay. So do you remember that last year we helped promote a competition for Politica, policy ideas for positive change, where 16 to 18 year olds submitted their ideas to change the country for the better.

50:33And this year, Rory, it's even better. It's not just the UK. There are no category restrictions. You can write on any topic, Make 800 to 1 ,000 words, deadline September 20th, okay?

50:46Rory Stewart:Just a small addition, which I mean, I'm going to get in there before you point it out. Traditionally, the majority of entrants were from private schools. And since the appearance on TRIP, I'm pleased to say, there's been an incredible turnaround. 84 % of entrants were from state schools. So there's still a lot of people from private schools entering. I encourage them to do so. It's wonderful that you're sending in. But there's a huge number of people from state schools also entering too. Well, that is good news, Rory. And I was really impressed the way that you said that. And you said you were pleased that this had happened.

51:15By the way, I saw this week. Did you see? Have a guess, Rory. Which UK university has the highest percentage of students from private schools?

51:23Rory Stewart:UK university core, blimey. Could it be something like Durham or Bristol or Edinburgh? Well done. Durham. Durham is number one. Number two is Imperial College. Number three is Edinburgh. Number four is Oxford. number five is exit to six ucl seven cambridge 28.2 eight lec nine is bristol and ten is newcastle so there we are 6.5 percent of uk children go to private schools but that's the numbers 39.1 percent at durham nice working class area when i was at oxford i think it was still over 50 percent and i guess when my father was there probably would have been 80 90 percent yeah Listen, it's 16 to 18-year-olds, no category restrictions.

52:05Rory Stewart:Idea can be on any topic, but these are ideas for positive change, 800 to 1 ,000 words. Deadline September the 20th. It's a lovely length, 800 to 1 ,000 words, and love to see a great idea for positive change. A shout out to last year's winner was Rosie Halsall. She wrote a piece of tackling barriers to women's sport, recommending free sports bra fittings across all secondary schools. And since that, by the way, she has met her MP. She's been on BBC News. She's been on her local news. she's connected with sheffield united football foundation and she's working with radix big tent and booby doo a sports bra company to transform her idea from theory into practice so that is what we want we want ideas that we can then help promote and support and get them to happen and to sign up for that just follow the link in the episode description now alice i'm going to do something which is very very mean to you but occasionally you tease me so i'm gonna i'm gonna tease you because this is going to be extremely painful for you oh alistair i received a little box in my house and a note and it went like this this is my house of scotland dear rory was horrified to hear alistair mentioning two french preserve makers on trip recently here are some classic scottish preserves we are a second generation producer based in galloway love the pods and books keep up the great work all the best rory hesketh it seems to say so let's do a little shout out for scottish preserves yeah and and here is look here's amazing cherry jam uh from gatehouse of fleet raspberry jam best best humor i don't know whether anyone can see it here yeah and um it's it's not totally branded the um the the the the jam but it's really lovely it's It's called Galloway Lodge.

54:02Rory Stewart:Galloway Lodge. Very, very simple branding. The most delicious jam. And of course, I'm here speaking to you in Perthshire. And Angus and Dundee, absolute centre. Dundee, centre of the marmalade. Got all those famous-y, got all those oranges. Jam and jute and journalism. That's it. Jam, jute and journalism. That's it. So I didn't want to put you on the spot. But along with everybody praising you here in Creep for your piping, I just wanted to say that you missed a trick on Scottish jam. Well, the only reason I mentioned the French guys is because I was in France. I mean, if I'd have been in Scotland, I'd have talked about Scottish jabber.

54:33I think to say they were horrified is strong. That's what he said.

54:37Rory Stewart:I can share the note with the news. I'm not making that up. No, I'm sure he's not. But I think that's a bit harsh on me, if I may say so. Somebody relentlessly promotes everything good about Scotland and Scotland being everything good. Talking of which, although this is rather upset me as well, we've just had piping live in Glasgow. We've had the World Pipe Band Championships. one by another bloody canadian band i told um mark carney about this and he said this is the consequences of global scotland well here's another positive spin i was yesterday uh sunday was the the creef highland gathering and it was incredible i mean really incredible you had the morrison's pipe band you had the comry pipe band you had aylith you had blair gowry marching through down the high street and king street huge i mean i don't know how many hundreds of people huge noise But then we had the Kattery Police Academy Band.

55:31Rory Stewart:So there we are, all the way from the Gulf to Kreef. Ah, well, in which case, I'm going to give a shout out to my teacher Finlay, because my teacher Finlay, who runs the National Piping Centre in Glasgow, he taught the Kattery Pipe Band. He teaches them. Oh, I wonder if Finlay was there. You should tell him to say hello. He probably was. He was definitely a pipe in life. But the other thing we should put in the newsletter, because as you know, Rory, one of my remaining campaigns in life is to get universal love for the bagpipes played well. There is, the BBC, we sometimes criticise, they did a great job of covering it because they were just pumping out stuff on social media and on their website.

56:07There's one particular shot of the masked bands playing Scotland the Brave, and it is, honestly, you can see why the bagpipes led people into war. It's fucking brilliant.

56:18Rory Stewart:Final shout out. My childhood friend, Thomas Grotron, who very sadly died, was absolutely at the core of getting these first big mass bands gatherings going in edinburgh and glasgow 25 30 years ago really began getting these mass you know 10 000 people i think is what he was aiming for at one point so i think that was a hugely wonderful legacy the biggest you know canada win the simon fraser university canada win the world championship australia's got the current world record for the biggest mass pipe band gathering final point rory maybe this was clues we did a poll last week because we're now becoming the rest is jam yeah what is our listeners and viewers favorite flavor of jam i mean i'm sorry you lot this is pathetic strawberry and raspberry and apricot oh brilliant i won go on then go on now let me let me know so next week i want to poll on whether people agree with me that the labrador is the best dog because my mother was furious i i literally came back and she was boiling because she has these Pekingese.

57:22Rory Stewart:And she was like, not only was she furious, her Pekingese were absolutely furious. With you? Yeah, yeah. She was saying, what on earth are you doing, my mother said, supporting a fat, greedy thing that lolloped off a cod boat. Okay, well, I'm happy for our listeners and viewers to be polled as to what is the best dog breed, as long as they all say Cavalier Key, Charles. Okay, that's it. That's it. That's it. Very good. Thank you. Great to talk to you. Great to talk to you. Bye-bye. Bye.

58:20Rory Stewart:until the end of August. If that sounds good, head to therestispolitics.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. 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.

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