574. Germany’s Political Disaster and Can the Lib Dems Fight Back?

23:22Rory Stewart:They're actually struggling to man the committees, they're struggling to get people speaking in debates. That's another thing. If we're going to keep an appointed House of Lords, we need to keep thinking about rebalancing to make sure these different interests have a voice. Yeah. So as a pledge to Minette and to all our rural listeners, we will come back to this at some point. And also in the newsletter this week, we've got a piece from Julian Glover. Former Guardian correspondent, former speechwriter for David Cameron, who is very concerned from, in his case, from the Peak District about how to think about proper rural policy for Britain.

23:55If you haven't signed up, sign up at the rest his policies.com forward slash a newsletter. Okay, well, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about...

24:02Rory Stewart:First thing we're going to talk about is the Lib Dem conference, and then we'll get on to some more jolly questions for question time. Three, three, four, five. We are getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board. The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess, uh, Prime Minister... With high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister.

24:46You've done nothing! Are you prepared for coming?

24:51Rory Stewart:We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, and disseminated into an operation order, or frago. A frago that says to kill the president of Russia? Yes. New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy! An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller, where Britain plays its strongest hand against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

25:52Hi, everybody.

25:53Rory Stewart:It's Dominic Sandbrook here from The Rest is History, and we are here to tell you about a thrilling new series on the blood-soaked climax of the French Revolution, the reign of terror. So the French Revolution is one of the most significant episodes in the whole of world history. It essentially lays the foundations for contemporary politics as we know it, but it is also unbelievably dramatic. We'll be discussing the murder of the firebrand Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub. We will be going to the guillotine with Marie Antoinette. And in our final episode, we will be telling the story of the extraordinary and grotesque downfall of one of the chief architects of the terror one of the most evil men in history some would say maximilien crobbis pierre so if you want to hear this epic series search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts

26:58Rory Stewart:Welcome back to The Restless Politics, leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Rory, you're gagging to talk about your friends, the Lib Dems. Well, question from David. Rory said the Lib Dems can't get these middle third flexible voters. Why not? Sorry, Rory, what is a middle third flexible voters? Where did you say this? I think David's referring to the fact that there's been some really interesting polling suggesting that there is a very optimistic, often younger, more dynamic third of the voting population, which is quite different, strangely, from either left-wing Labour voters or right-wing Tory reform voters in so many different things.

27:39Rory Stewart:They're more confident about the economy, they're more relaxed about immigration, they're more interested in global alliances, and they feel better about their lives. And they should be the natural central vote. And the Lib Dems are somehow struggling to really animate and excite them, just being the Lib Dem conference. And I just thought there's something kind of heartbreaking about it. I mean, we've kept saying for years now that I thought Ed Davies should be taking more of a national, international position. They've got 70 seats in the House of Commons. It's huge. And I still believe the right leader would be able to turn that into a formidable fighting force preparing to go into coalition after the next election, probably with Labour, right?

28:24Rory Stewart:It's a likely scenario. So it could be incredible. And they probably won't lose those 70 seats either. Those are pretty safe seats because the Tories in their monstrous mistakes have basically lost what were Tory seats to the Lib Dems because a lot of traditional Tory voters like me are so horrified by the rightward lurch that they're going to the Lib Dems. Do you think the Tories are going the way of the CDU? I think the Tories are in real danger, real, real danger. And they're in real, real danger because that's even worse than the CDU position. Because I don't think they're going to be able to, in the end, capture back those reform voters.

28:55Rory Stewart:But the sort of voters that David Cameron built his coalition on have gone to Labour and the Lib Dems, and I'm not sure they're coming back anymore. So some have gone to the Lib Dems. Of those 70 seats, an enormous number of them were Tory seats. And the Tories have vanished. I mean, it's incredible. Places like Sussex, where the Tories were once dominant, I mean, they barely have a seat on the council. They barely appear in places like Lewis and Hastings. It's really weird what's happened to them. They have stepped up the gas a little bit on Europe. Now talking about, you know, we've got to get back into the single market and the customs union.

29:30Rory Stewart:This is the Lib Dems, not the Tories. It's the Lib Dems, yeah. And they've also, you know, big speech saying we need global regulation on AI, we need to think about AI safety. But so the question I guess for you is, how do we get to this world where I will say on the show, why are they not talking back international issues. Then they will come back to me with a series of furious WhatsApps saying, we are literally taking something identical to your position on everything from middle powers to Europe to AI. Why the hell are you not reporting on it? I do have a lot of sympathy for the Lib Dems. I think it goes back to our culture and our media culture their conference coincided with Charles Spencer's book that we talked about anything to do with royal scandal and it's you know it used to be that that would okay be very big fodder for the papers but it's now like all the media will go for one big story and you almost feel sometimes like unless it's Trump although I think even thankfully I think that's fading a bit but there was a point at which you know unless it was Trump you weren't getting much debate about politics more generally.

30:37So I think the down market sort of thrust of much of our media, not all, and I don't want to tar them all the same brush, but you know, generally, my view is that something like the Liberal Democrat Conference, regardless of whether journalists think it's a bit dull, regardless of whether they think the positions aren't radical or exciting, should be covered, should be covered on all of our TV channels. I don't mean live, I just mean that it should be taken seriously, they should be covered seriously. Not as a sort of add-on, especially when you compare it with the way that the media cover reform.

31:10With what is it, seven MPs, six or seven MPs, Lib Dems have got tons of them. Now you can complain, and I can criticize the Lib Dems for not understanding how you need to build a profile, why they need to do better than they are. But I think it is unfair to treat them like, well, if they're not going to be as interesting as reform, we're not going to cover them as much as reform.

31:30Rory Stewart:Here's an idea for you. I think part of the problem is they don't really believe in themselves. They don't really see themselves as a national governing party. And that is foolish because we're in a world where over the last four years, all over the world, parties collapse, parties explode. When everything we cover is about the fact you can't assume where you were four years ago is where you're going to be again in four years time, right? So I would like to see them presenting themselves almost like a Mamdani insurgent party. I'd like them out in every constituency, out on the street, everybody doing cool social media, giving a sense of a party that's really moving and that could actually get a majority at the next election.

32:08Rory Stewart:I think they're in a defensive crouch. They're like the England football team in the final stage of that ghastly World Cup. Okay, interesting. Rory brings in football commentary of the Lib Dem conference. Thank you very much indeed for that. Anyway, yeah, I watched Ed Davies' speech. Look, he's not a great orator. he's got a nice manner a nice style but there's something there's a fire in his belly yeah there's a fire there's something does he feel like somebody who's campaigning to win who's disrupting who's pushing who's driving the national conversation probably not probably not will they think that their conference went quite well that because that would speak to complacency if they did but listen it's bloody frustrating i remember there was a press officer called ollie grender back in the day when i was on the mirror and we used to make a joke she'd come down every day with these press releases and every day, all around the press gallery.

32:55And you know, I love your Percivalians.

32:59Rory Stewart:So you've been doing it for 40 years. This has been a problem for them. It has been a problem, but they only break through sometimes on an issue. Charles Kennedy on Iraq. Nick Clegg got some breakthrough. Nick Clegg got into government. So the right leader could really give a sense of energy and possibility. There was a bit of talk around the conference about whether they needed to replace Ed Davey with Daisy Cooper. Daisy Cooper was very, very clear, not interested. Ed's going to be there until the election. Is Daisy Cooper the kind of the Mamdani Burnham figure they need? She's got a bit of fire in her belly.

33:30Anyway, they're not in a great place. But as you say, they should be in a better place. But honestly, I think it's bloody hard for them.

33:38Rory Stewart:Really hard. They need to think again about what they're doing. They do. Why don't you go and help them? Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, if I was involved, I would be making the pitch that they're going to be the next government. And I would say, we're in a world where everything can change in two years and take the fight out to everybody in every constituency, make the big national arguments. Because that's what effectively reformed us. Why are people interested in reform? Because they think they could be the next Prime Minister. Why is nobody interested in the Lib Dems? They're giving the impression they've got 70 seats, they'll always have 70 seats, and all they've got to do is do the right campaign.

34:10Rory Stewart:I think they've set themselves a goal of getting 100. It's not enough. The goal should be 300. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Think big, says Rory Stewart. Right. Talking of thinking big and long, Carl, when will you do proper two to three hour conversations with guests? We've done some, but we've put them into parts. Listen, Carl, you may think that we just live in a studio for your benefit, to give you our wisdom. We have lives to lead. We have things to do beyond the podcast. Would you? I was quite interested in this. I wouldn't mind. So Joe Rogan does some obviously, famously. Is it that you sort of think that the audience would lose attention or is it, I mean, why don't we do longer?

34:51Well, we have done. We've done a few two-parters with Theresa May, John Major.

34:55Rory Stewart:But as you say, the two-parters sort of implies we don't quite trust people to stick with the Joe Rogan three-hour. The three-hour is quite interesting, isn't it? Because it reminds me, my father had a friend who was an interrogator and he was famous for being the best interrogator. Oh, interrogation is a different matter around. I don't know about a long interrogation. But he would just ground people down through... Actually, he was famous because he was so boring that people would tell him everything by the end of three hours just to get out of the room. Oh, he wasn't torturing and stuff like that?

35:20Rory Stewart:No, no, no. His technique was to be so persistently dull that by the end, you'd tell him anything to get out of the room. Well, it's not going to make a very good podcast, is it? Well, except I'm hoping that we'd be really dull for two and a half hours. And then finally, in desperation in the last half hour, they'd drop their guard and release some incredible revelation. Yeah. Well, look, if you... It's very difficult for a politician to just repeat the same line for three hours. I think there is something quite interesting about it. Because if you'd been advising a politician on the sticky book, you'd tell them not to do a three-hour interview.

35:50Rory Stewart:Okay, Carl, we will do this. Let's get our listeners and viewers to tell us who do they think they would listen to talking to us for three hours. Who would we want to talk to for three hours? All these Lib Dem names are running through my head and I'm not going to mention them because it would be me. Who would we want to talk to for three hours? I'd talk to your friend, the King, for three hours. I'd definitely talk to the Pope for three hours. Would you talk to Rishi Sunak for three hours? Three hours would be a stretch. Yeah, I think I would. Yeah, very good. It'd be a stretch, though. It'd be a stretch.

36:19Okay. What you'd probably have to do is a lot on his life, a lot on his childhood, but then you'd... I think an hour...

36:27Rory Stewart:Blaise Metroly, do her three hours? Blaise, head of MLS six, three hours? No, because I don't think she'd be able to give what we'd want over three hours. I think she'd be brilliant over three hours, but maybe she'd have to be discreet. Discretion is always a bit of a problem. No, I think for an hour, Bray's would be great. And there is a plan. Don't worry, we've got a plan. I've just read this book, Profiles in Cowardice. I'd actually love to get George W. Bush for three hours. One, because he never does interviews, so he probably won't ever do it. Two, because he's actually a much more interesting character than people think.

37:00Rory Stewart:Why don't we lean into this? We can fly out to Texas to see him. He won't do it. Really? Pretty sure. Pretty sure. I've asked, yeah. Let's try again. Okay, we'll try again. But listen, he's done no interviews since he left office. Such a lovely idea. What a great idea. The profiles in cowardice, it has him, this is going to lose us, the interview. It has him as one of the profiles. Oh. Because he says nothing about Trump. That doesn't sound very good. No. So I don't think he'd do it. Romney would be good, wouldn't it? Romney, three hours? No, you wouldn't do Romney. Romney, three hours? Do you know who I'd love to do, but he's dead?

37:32Lee Kuan Yew. Lee Kuan Yew. Be great.

37:34Rory Stewart:I'd have loved Lee Kuan Yew for three hours. I thought for some horrible section, you're going to mention some football manager or something. I'm sure I'd die for three hours. I think so. Okay, Carl, we'll leave that with us. We'll have a think about it. Here's a great question, Roy. Dylan, would you rather be a master of languages or instruments? Well, this is really a question for you. No, it's not because you're a... Come on, come on then. Would you, go on. But languages in my case, how about you? I think languages. But I'll tell you what, if I could play, I only play the bagpipes. I think if you could play the piano really, really, really, really beautifully, I think that would be quite a cool thing.

38:10Rory Stewart:It'd be an amazing thing, wouldn't it? Yeah. It'd be a really, really amazing thing. Just a little plug for Persevillian. It's a lovely moment in it where you reveal that one of the reasons your German got so good is that Fiona pushed you back to focus on German during COVID. Yeah, because she knew that I would be impossible to live with, imprisoned without being able to live my normal life. No, it's one of the best things ever. I actually love being able to speak. When I go to Italy, I can understand a lot of what's going on, but I find it really stressful that I can't engage properly. So I think language is, but I've got to say my bagpipes have given me an awful lot of pleasure over my life.

38:48Rory Stewart:Okay. Here's a serious one for you, Alistair. Julia, your thoughts on the attacks on the RNLI, Royal National Lifeboat. Just disgusting, horrible, revolting. We'll remind people what's been going on. So the point is the RNLI have actually been saving migrants' lives so often, escorting them across the channel. One of the things that I think really struck people is there was imagery of the French escorting these boats essentially out of French waters and then being met by British boats and then escort them all the way to Britain. I can see why the public would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're told these guys are illegal migrants that we don't want them crossing from France.

39:24Rory Stewart:And here's these visions that basically they set off in their rubber dinghy and the French escort them and then hand them over to the English and the English escort them through. The RNLI are an extraordinary organization and they exist around our coastline, mainly volunteers to go out and rescue people at sea, which is incredibly dangerous. And so I think that as a result of this hard right protests and these guys in balaclavas putting online the names the faces and in some cases the addresses of people who are working for the rnli it is utterly disgusting even worse in a way well it's all bad there was actually an rnib royal national institute for the blind that came under attack because some of these idiots didn't realize that the rnib was different to the rnli and now you've had in Portsmouth, Seaside, see the RNLI actually saying they've had to shut down their RNLI base because of all the attacks they've been getting.

40:27And this is what gets me, so it gets my goat about, I'd love to talk to Nigel Farage about this when he comes in for his three hour interview, the way that he will light a fire and then go away. So he at one point described the RNLI as being like a migrant taxi service. Okay. Now I get that as a piece of rhetoric, but you can't then divorce that from this kind of thing happening when people that you will then say are more extreme than you go out and put these people under pressure.

40:53Rory Stewart:The reason obviously to explain this strange phenomenon is the RNLI would say they're not political. Their major objective is to stop people dying. And the fact is it's unbelievably dangerous crossing the channel in a small boat and people have died. And so they feel they need to save their lives. Now, the answer to this, keep coming back to, is we need to have a proper agreement in place with France, Belgium, Europe. Yeah, but while we don't, you need charities like this who will do the work that nobody else appears to want to do. And let's just think, what are they actually saying? What are they saying in saying that this organization which exists to rescue people at sea, are they saying that actually if anybody gets into distress while trying to cross the channel, that actually they should just die.

41:40That's what they're saying.

41:41Rory Stewart:Yeah. They're saying that the possibility of death might deter people from crossing. It doesn't actually deter people from crossing. People will just cross anyway and they'll die. It's not even about the deterrence. It's the fact that they say, well, they deserve to die and nobody should help them. And if they help them, we should attack them. Anyway, I hope I'm not the only person who, as a result of these people protesting, is they made a reasonably sized donation to the RNLI last week. I hope lots of people do the same. A great organization. One of my formative experiences as a journalist was the Penly lifeboat disaster a long, long time ago, back in the early 80s.

42:16It was just a lifeboat that went out and was lost.

42:20Rory Stewart:These organizations are amazing. I mean, mountain rescue teams are also extraordinary. Cave rescue teams, air ambulances, a lot of these things. When we talk about talking to Gordon Brown about what was his twin thing You know, we've got breakdown of the world order, but then we also have breakdown of community and civic cohesion. Churches, trade unions. People wanting to volunteer to support things in their locality. So for these people then to sort of turn this into a campaign for their racist, you know, far right stuff. Disgusting. So Rory, there's me complaining that I'm too busy. it's not very good for my brand of saying that i'm too busy that you add something else to your portfolio this is from kate could rory talk a bit about his new position at the lse thanks francis what lse module are you teaching rory well this has been a big change i'm very very grateful london school of economics as you know i was teaching at yale and you're no longer doing that i'm doing a little bit oh i see you've got something to pick up something basically replace me because I suddenly thought I love teaching students.

43:26Rory Stewart:And then I thought, it can't be that the only students in the world are in America and I have to keep flying back and forth across the Atlantic. Surely I can find some students in Britain who might be prepared to put up with me. London School of Economics looks like they might be able to do that. Yes, I want to talk about the difficulty of politics and the reality of it. So I'm about to give a lecture in a course taught by somebody called Johnny Hall on British diplomacy and international development, talk about what it's like being a minister. But I also want to talk about hope. I want to talk about what we do about a world where the old world has collapsed and a new world is being built in the most difficult circumstances of an American president like Trump and AI and the way it accelerates everything and how we do talk about things like middle powers and how we construct values and a better future.

44:12Rory Stewart:So I'm really looking forward to it. I'll do it with some public lectures. I'm also, not this year, but next year, we'll be doing some seminars where I'll be sitting with smaller groups of students, going through readings together, discussing. And it's lovely. I love teaching. Good. Excellent. You mentioned hope there. On the way to the studio this morning, I was stopped by a guy just around the corner who said he came to our show at the Festival Hall. And he said that when we brought on Miles Inon and Aziz Abusara, the Israeli and the Palestinian who now lost the members of their family in the violence and who now campaigned together on peace, he said that he took his young son and they left watching them talk to us with hope this week podcast you i'm so glad you talked about hope in a context to with the lse because you remember that every year now there's this campaign be hope trying to get podcasts to be more hopeful and we've been pretty gloomy on lots of things this week but let's just end with this question from sir tim berners lee inventor of the world wide web etc when we look back at history major technological shifts from the nuclear age to the birth of the internet have forced humanity to invent new models of global cooperation.

45:21In an era marked by geopolitical friction competing interests, what gives you hope that governments, industry, and civil society can still come together to tackle new challenges for the common good rather than letting them deepen our divisions?

45:36Rory Stewart:Yeah. And he mentions AI. Well, look, it couldn't be a better question, could it? He's been driving on trying to set up a CERN for AI. We're doing this at the time of the UN General Assembly, we're doing it when we're talking about Carney. I think interestingly, I'm much less groomy than I used to be because I think people like Carney and to some extent Tim Berners-Lee are suggesting what the shape of things could be. Even with AI, you're beginning to see things like the King's Summit actually with details. This is how verification is going to work. This is how international cooperation could work.

46:06So I think we can develop quite a hopeful vision

46:11Rory Stewart:Local level could be devolution, civil society, international level, alliance of middle powers, and then work out what the missing components are. We talked about a UN Secretary General who could really begin intervening directly in state conflicts and peace building in a way they haven't done again. Technologies that are being ignored. And also the ways in which the challenges we see today may not be the challenges in five years' time. Five years ago, we wouldn't have talking about AI. Now AI is absolutely central to everything Burnham's saying at the UN, right? So who knows what demography will do, what climate will do, what poverty will do, what flooding will do.

46:47Rory Stewart:But we need the structures to do that, which is why it would be such a pity if Burnham didn't rise to the challenge, if Merz became more and more domestically focused in Germany rather than taking Germany's leadership role in the world. We desperately need everyone, Japan, South Korea, Australia, to be following that Canadian lead. And that's what gives me hope over to you i actually found gordon brown's interview hopeful he's over at the un now sort of you know banging the drum for the things that he believes in i think what tim is saying and what we're saying and what you're saying about your course and what this whole be hope campaign is about is it's so easy to just feel completely downcast by all the stuff that we hear all the stuff that we see and we shouldn't sugarcoat problems there are massive problems out there but I thought it was interesting at the festival hall when we asked them asked for a show of hands on who was pretty happy with their own lives and most people said yes now lots of people some people aren't happy with their own lives but I think there is a disconnect we talk about the disconnect between politics and people I think sometimes there's a disconnect with people's sense of the world as a whole and the sense of their place within it and the latter tending to be more positive than the former and so that's what keeps me hoping also as I keep telling you You do the students.

48:04I love talking to school kids because they give me hope. Some of them are a complete nightmare, but a lot of them are not. And they've got a better take on the world that we give them credit for.

48:11Rory Stewart:Brilliant. Well, let's finish on that. Thank you very much, Huss. See you soon. Bye-bye.