480. Trump, China, and the Scramble for Latin America (Question Time)

What’s really driving Trump’s interventions in Venezuela and the rest of Latin America – oil, drugs, or democracy? Is Labour failing on its promise to reform and ultimately abolish the House of Lords? Why is there so little coverage of the Palestine Action hunger strike? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Gift The Rest Is Politics Plus this Christmas – give someone a whole year of Rory and Alastair’s miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. Just go to ⁠⁠therestispolitics.supportingcast.fm/gifts⁠⁠. And of course, you can still join for yourself any time at ⁠⁠therestispolitics.com⁠⁠ The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away free TRIP Plus membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP Plus gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ⁠⁠⁠fuseenergy.com/politics⁠⁠⁠ ⚡ Listen to 'The Killer in the Kremlin', narrated by John Sweeney, here: https://open.spotify.com/show/26GthIscR9Gh2D5inMBs75?si=800be6c77b824d23 __________ Social Producer: Harry Balden Video Editor: Adam Thornton Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

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• 2:40Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:44Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:45Rory Stewart?

  We've had a lot of questions around Latin America, so we're going to look at Trump's policy toward Latin America and what's going on there, all the way from Venezuela to Argentina to the Trump corollary on the Monroe Doctrine, which is a great word there. We're going to look at the House of Lords and the Constitution in the UK and what's happening with bills stuck in the House of Lords, reforms to the House of Lords. We're going to look at Bulgaria, European country where there's been protests that have just toppled a government. We're going to look at Palestine Action, which is the British NGO prescribed as a terrorist organisation now, where some of its members are on very, very prolonged hunger strikes, which has barely got any coverage at all. And we're going to finish with a question which has come in about podcasts and what

• 3:29Rory Stewart?

  long-form podcasts are and whether they could offer hope. So first question, Tom Young, who's a TripPlus member from Shrewsbury, and actually we got a similar question from Mike from Toronto. Tom, when you discussed American aggression towards Venezuela recently, you framed it as a shift in the global order, an evidence of America's new approach to international law, but could it instead be the same America, with the difference being that we are no longer part of its inner circle? If we look at US actions after 9/11, military interventions in the Middle East, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, does this really represent a change or is it simply the same America that just happened to be our ally in the past and is no longer? Mike, Toronto, building on what you've been saying about the Trump administration's foreign

• 4:12Rory Stewart?

  policy strategy, is it too simplistic to view his approach in South America as an extension of his longstanding admiration for Putin and a tough guy, we take what we want because we can mindset? Alastair.

• 4:25Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, right, okay. I kind of half-agree with both of them, I think. So it's interesting, when we talked last week about the national security strategy, we were very, very focused on Europe. Um, for obvious reasons, because we're European, this is where we live and this is what we know best. But if you, I spent part of the weekend listening to stuff on my favorite Latin American podcast, America's Quarterly. And of course, they were amazed, well, maybe not amazed, but they were pointing out that when you go, went through that national security strategy, it was Latin America that was, as it were, the first place. When they were doing their Tour d'Horizon, the strategy paper started with Latin America.

• 5:10Alastair Campbell?

  And I think it's fair to say that the, the, what this White House is more focused on Latin America than any American government that I can remember. They've got this massive naval alliance that is developed, that is gathering in the Caribbean, targeting, they say drugs, in Venezuela.

• 5:31Rory Stewart?

  Which I believe is, is the, am I right, the largest American naval deployment in the Caribbean since 1962, since, so since the Cuban Missile Crisis. I mean, this is an enormous, you know, huge American cavalry, it's massive proportion of the American fleet now parked off Latin America.

• 5:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And you've got, obviously, people think it's about Venezuela, that the administration says it's about drugs. Uh, lots of people think, actually, no, it's about oil and it's about, um, trying to get rid of Maduro. But then you've also got Colombia there thinking, is this about us? And you've got Brazil thinking, is this about them going after us because of Bolsonaro? So it's, it's there. You've had the, the inter, the direct intervention elections in Argentina, where he basically said, we're giving you 30 billion, whatever it was, but it's on condition that Millet does well in the elections. I'm pardoning your 45-year criminal drug-dealing former president, and I'm going to support you, but it's on condition that you elect this guy.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  In Honduras.

• 6:32Alastair Campbell?

  In Honduras, yeah. We've just had a guy elected in Chile, Cast, who is, um, very, very proud of his slogan, "Make Chile Great Again". So and and

• 6:45Rory Stewart?

  Very original, very brilliant.

• 6:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's even better than that, Rory. Also, Chile first. So I think we know where he where he's coming from. And, you know, you so I think Latin America is going to be incredibly interesting in the next the next period of the Trump presidency. He's clearly putting a lot of energy into that. And where the first question has a point, I guess, is, yeah, when when somebody is, as it were, on your side, maybe you do feel instinctively more in favor of what they're trying to do. But it's very hard to get people to come out either in favor of or against what Trump is doing in relation to Venezuela. I've not heard a single peep out of most of the European leaders.

• 7:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, it puts it puts everyone in a very difficult position. I mean, we were talking yesterday, both of us together, to Moises Naim, your friend, who most people on the podcast, I hope, will remember his three Ps: populism, polarization, post-truth. But he's now, to your delight, got three Cs on Latin America, which are corruption, crime, and cruelty.

• 7:45Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, you got them in the wrong order, Rory. You got them in the wrong order.

• 7:48Rory Stewart?

  Ah, sorry.

• 7:50Alastair Campbell?

  Is crime, corruption, cruelty. Crime is the way that they're winning power by being really tough on crime and immigration. And that was absolutely the case in the election we just had in Chile. Corruption is what then they engage in. I'm not, by the way, suggesting that Mr. Cast is corrupt, but corruption is what they engage in. But then, as you say, you pointed out the sheer cruelty of a lot of the policies, talking people like Bukele and El Salvador, et cetera.

• 8:18Rory Stewart?

  So he he pointed out one thing, which is how split Latin America is. So when people talked about populism, if you bought by a book on populism in Latin America in, I don't know, 2010, they're basically talking about the left. What they mean by populism is that after the commodity booms in the late 2000s, a lot of that money was used by left-wing populist governments to introduce pretty left-wing policies. So, you know, people were talking about, for example, Uga Chavez in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Kitchener in Argentina, Eva Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. Now, when people talk about populism, they're increasingly talking about right-wing

• 9:02Rory Stewart?

  populism. So we have, as you say, Mile Argentina, we have what's happened in Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica, increasingly going right wing. And when you've got the sort of These huge countries like Mexico and Brazil, which are being run by people who basically come from a left-wing populist tradition and therefore find themselves in a much more uncomfortable position towards Trump. So in Mexico, the president very much criticizing what Trump's doing. And your point about Venezuela, I mean, Moses was also saying how split the regime is. There is a position of sort of regime change, which is it seems to be the Marco Rubio position. But then there's the totally different Trump position, which we're all very familiar with, which is, you know, his position towards

• 9:46Rory Stewart?

  Putin, which is no regime change. We're going to do normalization. This is all about business. Richard Grenell, his envoy, who caused huge chaos in the Balkans, is now causing chaos around Venezuela, which is, yeah, as long as America gets good deals here, gets a bit of oil flowing, we don't whine too much that Maduro is a man who steals elections and is an autocratic dictator.

• 10:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think the other thing that's really interesting about this that indicates a change which the European leaders find hard to adapt to. We talked a lot about for Trump, it's all about his personal relationships with individual leaders. He doesn't like multilateral institutions. He hates the UN. He really likes to be one-on-one. He likes to be the dominant person within that relationship. And of course, that is maybe a more Latin American way of approaching politics. And that's another reason, I think, why he's doing what he's doing. He's developing these relationships. So he says to, for example, the guy in Colombia, he says, you know, get in line or you're next. He says to Brazil,

• 10:51Alastair Campbell?

  you know, and this is one, by the way, where it failed because he basically said, you know, unless if you put Bolsonaro in jail, you're going to be in real trouble. But he's in jail. He's been, well, he's been convicted of, you know, sort of attempted coup. Now, Brazil is really interesting because as you say, it's a form of left-wing populism. So he's not going to, he's not, he's not naturally going to be drawn to Tallulah. However, the real world catches up even with people like Trump. Brazil currently ranks second

• 11:23Alastair Campbell?

  In the whole world for rare earth reserves. China is number one and Brazil is number two and Brazil is number two. Ahead of number three, which is India by a long, long way. And what you have now, I think, is Trump sort of thinking, well, yeah, I've got the politics there, but I've also got to do all this kind of the money stuff and the business stuff. So he will be wanting to develop a relationship with with Lula that is less, I would say, less combative. Um, with Mexico is interesting because of course, you know, they're on the, it's their closest neighbour. He's built a whole sort of rhetoric about Mexico. Shane Baum is not sort of taking it lying down.

• 12:02Alastair Campbell?

  She is kind of, she's one of the few who is maybe being a bit, a bit less Mark Rutte and a bit more Mark Carney.

• 12:09Rory Stewart?

  I think it's great that our question is, um, and you are bringing us to look at this. What was pompously in the national security strategy called the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And basically what it means is, um, anybody in Latin America looking at the US or any business. You know, thinking maybe we're going to put our supply chains in in Mexico or we're going to go mining in Chile. Are dealing with a world that is so radically different. It's almost impossible to remember what it was like 12 months ago. I mean, one element of it, of course, is obvious to people, which is the old institutions don't work anymore. In the past, if you were trying to influence American government policy, you would go to the Senate or you'd go to USAID.

• 12:53Rory Stewart?

  Now you just have to find a friend of Trump. Um, secondly, all these free trade agreements are just crumbling in front of our eyes because it's all about tariffs and sectors. So the Central America free trade area has basically collapsed. Um, and weirdly, um, the way he's playing tariffs increasingly in Latin America isn't country by country, it's sector by sector. Which of course also suits him because it means that, you know, he can be cutting even more D O T cells at a more micro level. I'll give some textile concessions here. The other question that we asked Moises Naim was this question around the big US-China conflict. So the idea is this is America's backyard. America can keep troops in Latin America. America can own all the mining in Latin America. China's got to get out.

• 13:39Rory Stewart?

  And what Mois has pointed out is, yeah, okay, that may be what Trump thinks he's doing, but you're ignoring the fact that China is so deep into these countries. You know, China's economic connections with Brazil are so profound in terms of exports, that in the end, China is building all the Huawei telecoms infrastructure in countries like that, that China is absolutely dominating the processing of all the minerals coming out of places like Chile. So how far is America going to be able to push this with all the weapons and all the money and all the leverage? Argentina, you know, which is the most pro-American of all, has Chinese listening stations in southern Argentina.

• 14:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I wonder whether Trump knows that.

• 14:24Alastair Campbell?

  Whether he's gonna, whether on the back of of this podcast, he'll he'll learn it and and then Milley will not be in the same place. I guess what all of them have to worry about, though, Roy, this this sort of is the central problem they're all gonna face, is they don't want to be forced to choose in a way. I mean, Milley is all in in a way, he's all in. But as you say, he's still got big investments, deals being done with China. But are they going to be forced to choose between America, which is their biggest investor, or China, which is their biggest trading partner? That is a really, really tough place for them to be. And I think that what they're having to do is to, it's a little bit like Keir Starmer with with Trump,

• 15:06Alastair Campbell?

  you know, trying not to be fallout with Trump and to get closer to Europe. They don't want to fall out with Trump, but equally, they don't want to lose the connections that they've got, the trade connections they've got with China. Added to which, China militarily, one of the things I read in America's quarterly, was that China is actually, in terms of the sort of people-to-people stuff, is very, very active in terms of military cooperation in Latin America. So I think you're right. I think a lot of it is about China. And for these countries, that is gonna confront them with some very, very difficult choices.

• 15:41Rory Stewart?

  Final one maybe for me is, what is really lacking here is thinking about the big structural challenges in Latin America. And let's take the analogy with Britain and Europe. Really, if we're worrying about Britain and Europe over the next 10, 20 years, it's gonna be, are we gonna be able to make the structural reforms to get our economy going, get our defense and securities? Are we gonna be serious? And Latin America, I mean, is of course in a really deep mess in a whole series of different ways. Average incomes famously in Latin America were roughly the same as those in the United States in about 1700. They were about half in about the end of the 19th century. They're now about a fifth of what they are in the United States.

• 16:23Rory Stewart?

  This is a region of the world that is really struggling and it's really struggling for those three Cs that you mentioned. I mean, the corruption, the complete ineptitude of state structures, the horrifying criminalization in the sense that the drug trade is now, as you keep pointing out, no longer just a Colombian phenomenon, it's spilling in every direction. And the way in which Venezuela contributes to that. So if you were a traditional American administration looking at Latin America over the last 50, 60 years, you would be thinking, how do we work with the Latin American Development Bank, with the IMF, with the World Bank? How do we think about economic reforms? How do we increase state capacity? How do we create free trade areas?

• 17:05Rory Stewart?

  How do we really put the basics in place that let these countries, which are massively performing under potential, begin to harness their incredibly impressive educated population, their incredible natural resources, their incredible location to really become prosperous and stable? But that, of course, is not what Trump is doing.

• 17:22Alastair Campbell?

  No, and also, can I pick you up on one point, Roy? You talked about, you put Venezuela into the drug equation there. If you actually look at where America's drugs problems are coming from, Venezuela is quite low down the list. And that's what's making them think that this massive military buildup is not necessarily about drugs. Just to give you the details of that, Roy, there are now something like 15,000 American sailors and marines involved in this fleet, a dozen combat vessels, they've got destroyers, cruisers, they've got amphibious assault ships, and they've got this, their biggest carrier, the Gerald R Ford, they've got F-35s there, they've got submarines, support ships, amphibious ready groups.

• 18:06Alastair Campbell?

  This is a, this is a big, big, big operation. And then the other thing that, when we, when we talk about oil, there was a very, very good piece on Sky News by Ed Conway.

• 18:20Alastair Campbell?

  Who was explaining, why would they care about Venezuelan oil? Given that America, America's production of oil is so far ahead now. But the point he was making is that what's happening as a consequence of fracking on all this shale oil is it's this very thin oil that the Americans are producing. The countries you've got to go to for the very thick, black stuff, Canada, Venezuela and Russia. And that is why Venezuelan oil is so attractive. And what this, one of the most dramatic things last week in relation to the military operation

• 19:01Alastair Campbell?

  was when these Navy SEALs dropped down on and took a tanker, a tanker that was part of the shadow fleet taking sanctioned oil. And that was a message that was basically saying, we know where this sanctioned oil is being sold and we're going to stop it. And that, I think that was a noise said, that was, Moises Naim said that was a very dramatic moment and quite a strategic moment as well. So this, this is a, this is big, raw geopolitical stuff going on here. And of course, it's Trump's genius that he's able to make a, most Americans think this is about stopping drugs coming into America. It's about a lot more than that.

• 19:40Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay, well, thank you for that, Alison. Huge credit to you and, and thank you, Moses, for spending the time with us yesterday as well. Question from Liz in Edinburgh. Hi, guys. Labour promised immediate Lords reform, but after a year, we've got one bill stuck in ping pong and the Lords are now blocking flagship manifesto commitments like day one unfair dismissal rights. If an unelected chamber can override the elected government's mandate, isn't that a constitutional crisis? Now, I'd love your views on this. My sense from having been a member of parliament is that when you hear that a manifesto commitment's being blocked, well, it can't really because the Salisbury Convention.

• 20:23Rory Stewart?

  So if the government really wanted to drive through its commitment on day one dismissal, it would do so. The reason it's not driving it through is it's lost confidence in it. The Treasury, Rachel Reeves, et cetera, don't want that anymore. And they may have convinced Liz that this is all the fall to the House of Lords. But the reality is that within the House of Commons, there's not much support anymore and there's very little support in industry from day one dismissal. But anyway, over to you.

• 20:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think there is a lot going on in the laws that we should be very, very worried about. I think the way, there's a couple of things I'd say on this. So there was another question we got that was saying, you know, why doesn't Keir Starmer just pack the law so he can get his majority through? Now, just last week, he has actually put a whole new batch of peers in. Now, lots of them are very good friends of mine, but I just think we have reached a point now where the House of Lords is beyond a joke, where we're now talking well over 800 people who are in the House of Lords and who are legislators for life. Well, not legislators for life if Labour do follow through on the manifesto because they were, they were going to increase or introduce mandatory retirement age at

• 21:32Alastair Campbell?

  80. I guess the question that Liz is putting is that Labour made a big deal about House of Lords reform. And yes, we've had the hereditary peers bill.

• 21:43Rory Stewart?

  Meaning the hereditarys leave. So in the next session, there won't be people, there'll only be life peers. People won't be able to be in there because they've inherited a title.

• 21:52Alastair Campbell?

  Correct. So, and that I, I can remember back in our day, I was, I did a lot of negotiations with a guy called Viscount Cranbourne, who was a real Tory toff. And we did a deal, we did a deal about the sort of changes that we made then. And now, the point about this is that I think that partly because of this hereditary peers bill, in all sorts of different ways, and I know lots of Lords will be very angry at me for saying this, there is deliberate buggeration going on. There are, just, let's just take the assisted dying bill, for example. Assisted dying bill, private members bill, the House of Commons has backed it. There are over a thousand amendments have gone down.

• 22:35Alastair Campbell?

  Now, is that really about improving this bill? Is it really? Or are they just hoping that eventually it runs out of time?

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's take them one at a time.

• 22:44Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 22:45Rory Stewart?

  My, my experience is that the House of Commons was very, very bad at really scrutinising legislation, really looking at the details of bills. We had no incentive to because we were forced to vote on a three line whip. In fact, actually, um, the Member of Parliament in Cumbria, who's got part of my constituency, has just been stripped of the Labour whip because he dared to oppose the government around the question of inheritance tax for farmers, right? So this is a Labour government that basically if you deviate by a quarter of an inch, uh, is whipping you. There's very little incentive for MPs to really master the details of legislation. All of that, for better or worse, is forced into the House of Lords. So.

• 23:27Alastair Campbell?

  Let me just jump in. Do you not think even at committee stage, when this goes into the, uh, in committees in Parliament, do you not think that there's any real scrutiny goes on there either?

• 23:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't want to be unfair to colleagues, but I participated in a lot of committee stages of bills. I sat on bill committees, I sat on secretary legislation committees. I mean, for example, you, you will have heard this from friends of yours who are members of Parliament. If you express to the whips that you know about an issue and you'd like to be on a bill committee, they immediately don't put you on that committee. They don't want anyone on the committee who knows anything about the subject. And it's, it's a longstanding convention, the Labour whips do it, the Conservative whips do it. So you can forget the bill committees because anyone who expresses, I remember this my early time, I said, I, I got in touch, saying I'm deeply interested in local devolution. Can I be on the localism bill? Absolutely not. People who were health experts were not allowed, doctors were not allowed on the health committee bill, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's still going on.

• 24:23Rory Stewart?

  And the committee stage is, is basically often members of Parliament making long flowery speeches. Amendments, yes, are put down. And if it's, if it's a really, really big issue and if you can really mobilise people, I almost pulled this off with the Customs Union. So I was only, I think, in the end, one abstention and one vote from getting the Customs Union amendment through the House of Commons. So you can get amendments through the House of Commons, but you're doing it in the face of all your party opposition. You're working as a one man band, rushing around, getting people signed up. So it's the Lords that has to do all this stuff. And the Lords catches so much. Okay, which, which brings me to the, the sort of bigger point.

• 25:05Rory Stewart?

  We're creating now a House of Lords, which is going to be very difficult to staff. So obviously, for, for, you know, very understandable reasons, people have got rid of the hereditaries. But the hereditaries were a group of people, they were, remember, your compromise that you got was Robert Cranbourne, was ninety two of them elected from the hundreds of people that were entitled to come in. And they tended, obviously, to be wealthy people who had a sense of wanting to be in the House of Lords and participate, right? Once they're removed, there are very few people with voices on rural issues or farming left. And you're now getting attendance requirements where the expectation is that if you become a life peer, you spend three to four days a week in the House of Lords.

• 25:49Rory Stewart?

  Right, this is not possible for anybody with a job. It's actually not even possible for a retired person who's on boards. Let's say you were non-executive director of two or three boards. Maybe you could spare a day a week. And furthermore, it also requires people basically to be in London. So it's going to be increasingly difficult to work out where these people are going to come from.

• 26:10Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, but Rory.

• 26:11Rory Stewart?

  And you're not paying them very much. And you're not, and you're then saying they've got to retire, retire. So how are you gonna, how are you gonna keep this whole thing going? What is this thing? How are you gonna get scrutiny?

• 26:19Alastair Campbell?

  You know, Rory, you've just, look, that there has to be proper scrutiny of government legislation. I don't have any disagreement at all. That has to happen. Parliament, the Commons should do a better job. I agree with that. But you've just described, just the way you describe it. How can this be a modern democratic system for the scrutiny of the laws that affect every, the lives of every single person in this country? And I just think we've allowed it to become this out of control monster. Eight hundred and fifty peers. Now, as you say, lots, lots of them can't go in.

• 26:56Rory Stewart?

  Listen, I, I don't, don't disagree with you at all. But, but what we need is a much more fundamental rethink. You know, I think the best element of the House of Lords, I'm afraid, is, is, is probably the cross benches, which is appointed by a House of Lords Appointment Commission. It's not party political. And that's what tends to bring in, you know, I guess, these people that we talk about when we're trying to praise the House of Lords, the diplomats, the astronomer royal, the. Generals, the people who are actually bringing genuine external expertise as opposed to people who are Labour or Conservative special advisers.

• 27:32Alastair Campbell?

  Lord Lebedev, who can bring the Russian perspective.

• 27:35Rory Stewart?

  I also think that there's a lot of space for looking again at citizens' assemblies helping to select people. But what I wouldn't want is an elected House Lords, because then you just have a fight like between the Senate and Congress about whether House Comms or House Lords are more legitimate, because they're both equally elected.

• 27:53Alastair Campbell?

  No, but what I think you're seeing, and I think this, honestly, I wouldn't underestimate how much this turns people off politics as a whole. You have a situation where in opposition, Labour say, the way our democracy functions is dreadful, the House of Lords is doing this, is doing that, and we're going to reform it. So the Labour manifesto is very, very clear. When you go back and read the Labour Party manifesto, there was a lot of reform that was going to come to the House of Lords, okay? Thus far, we're not very, very, very far down that track, okay? Now, one of the reasons for that is because those who are already in the Lords can actually block stuff, they can make life difficult for the government, and they're doing that. But, so I would like, if you talk about a citizens' assembly, I would like a citizens'

• 28:38Alastair Campbell?

  assembly that was brought together to devise, to help to devise, an entire new political system.

• 28:44Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 28:45Alastair Campbell?

  Of which a second chamber, in whatever form, would be a part. But nobody can pretend that this second chamber is an effective way of being part of the government of this country. I just don't, I can't see it.

• 28:57Rory Stewart?

  I'm completely with you, with your citizens' assembly. I'm completely with you that we need transformation. But given we are where we are, a huge tribute, I think, to those life peers who are continuing, pretty poorly paid, working pretty long hours, to do the work that the House of Commons is never going to do, which is actually scrutinising the legislation, getting it done.

• 29:20Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, but one of the reasons I think they're working very, very long hours is because I think actually there is, and this is something that peers I know have said, is that, as you say, they're all being dragged in there to vote the whole time. But in part, I think this is because the Conservatives have taken the decision to make life as difficult as possible for the government by getting the House of Lords to be much, much more proactive. Now, as a result... Partly as a result, Kierstam has now filled the place with another couple of dozen of people, as you say, special advisers, former events managers, all sorts of different people from a Labour background, council people and so forth. Now, they're perfectly

• 30:03Alastair Campbell?

  good people, okay, and as you say, it is a form of public service, but all it does is keep perpetuating what is ultimately a nonsense in the 21st century. And let me just come back to this thing about the assisted dying bill. So this is, we talked to Kim Ledbit who's bringing this one. You and I disagree on the bill, okay, and that's, that's fine, and there are disagreements within Parliament as well. But it has gone through 29 committee sittings, it's had 90 hours of scrutiny, okay, it's been the most scrutinised private members' bill in the history of Parliament, it's had a final vote in the Commons with a majority, it's had a second reading passed in the House of Lords, and we've now had

• 30:45Alastair Campbell?

  942 amendments tabled. And of course, every single person who tables that amendment thinks their amendment is important and they should be entitled to debate it. And if you actually went through every single one of them, the sort of debating that people say they want when they're scrutinising legislation, it's going to take us about 20 years to complete. And meantime, we're going to run out of time, and what I think could have been Parliament showing that it's addressing a really serious issue in a really serious way, I think just gets drowned in politics. And I think that turns people off politics.

• 31:22Rory Stewart?

  I guess we need to, I mean, obviously, we're both influenced by the fact we have different positions on assisted dying. I thought that bill needed much more scrutiny. I'm very worried by the data that's coming from the Netherlands, and I think this is exactly the kind of bill that needs close House of Lords scrutiny. But at the same time, I agree with you completely that a lot of what's going on is party politics, which is why I would rather that we're not party politicians in the House of Lords. I mean, I think the whole point about my trying to move away from a directly elected second chamber is about getting the party politics out. That's why I'm interested in citizens' assemblies, House of Lords' appointment commissions, cross benches, et cetera. So that at least if they're scrutinising and amending, they're doing it out of conscience

• 32:06Rory Stewart?

  rather than they're doing it because they think it's some clever party political game.

• 32:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but on the way to that, you have to get turkeys to vote for Christmas and say, yeah, we're going to vote to get rid of ourselves.

• 32:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, you don't quite, do you? If the, if, if, I mean, to be, to be a bit brutal to Labour, if the House of Commons is brave, it can do whatever it wants. I mean, in fact, the reason why the House Lords' power was curtailed is because Lord George basically threatened to wipe them out in over a hundred years ago now. So the government, if it woke up tomorrow and wanted to get rid of the House of Lords, it could wake up tomorrow and get rid of the House of Lords. I mean, there's a slight tendency here. And remember, one of the reasons they keep it, I think, is that it's a management tool for them. They get to incentivize Labour members of Parliament by offering them seats in the House of Lords if they're good and they vote in the right way. So I, I, I, in the end, the responsibility of this sits with Keir Starmer.

• 32:57Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay, but it has to be in a manifesto, doesn't it? Otherwise, they can bugger around with it forever.

• 33:02Rory Stewart?

  They have quite a lot in their manifesto that they can get on with.

• 33:05Alastair Campbell?

  That is true, that is true.

• 33:09Rory Stewart?

  Good, okay. Well, let's, let's take a quick break and a lot of interesting things to come back to after the break. See you in a bit.

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• 34:21Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 34:24Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And this question is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Britain's clean energy story is changing so quickly, but did you know, I'm sure you do, solar has become faster to build, cheaper to run and easier to fit into the countryside than a lot of people might imagine. So the question today is from Lisa Pollack. Why can't Britain unlock the land it needs to power a clean, affordable energy future?

• 34:44Rory Stewart?

  So Britain is building a lot of solar. I think something like 1% of our landmass currently, but it's driving up fast. Some people think we could get up to 1% of the landmass, the UK, covered in solar. And of course, the big revolution, as China got going with incredible competition between thousands of Chinese companies developing micro techniques for manufacture, they brought the price down 99-fold. So it is a very cheap, affordable way to generate electricity and will be a huge contribution to the grid. But there are normal problems that we often talk about. One of them is where do you locate these things in a way that can actually be close to demand and close to where the grid is? One of the problems with wind turbines, they're often generating up in Scotland and then

• 35:28Rory Stewart?

  you have to pay an incredible amount of money on the transmission distribution lines, getting it down to the public. A lot of it is about the way our networks developed. A lot of it is also about the fact that we've got farmland, which is trying to grow food. And many, many people find these are big industrial intrusion style landscape. There's going to be a huge scandal around what the Duke of Marlborough is doing around Blenheim, where thousands of acres of prime farmland in Oxfordshire is about to be covered over in solar panels. But anyway, over to you.

• 35:55Alastair Campbell?

  Am I weird in being somebody who actually, when I'm saying in an aeroplane, I'm looking down on a vast landscape, I like looking at huge solar farms. I like.

• 36:09Alastair Campbell?

  Trump's windmills. I I love when I'm when I'm on a train and I'm going through a a sort of middle sized British town. I love it when I look up and some of the houses have got their little solar panels on there. Am I am I just a bit weird?

• 36:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't think people mind the roofs, but I don't know where you live in rural France, but if there are particular fields and things around you, some lavender field that you like to walk around with your dog, and you suddenly have the entire three quarters of a mile surrounding your village covered in panels, um, you might not like it quite as much. I mean, I I think I think the the view from the plane may be a little different from the view within the community.

• 36:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I'm talking about the views from planes in in in areas that are not built up. Now, Britain is a pretty crowded place. We know that. But I'm talking about, I remember having a flight, I didn't even know where it was, but I'm looking out the window and I think it might be North Africa. And it was just like, wow. It was every bit as interesting as loads of desert. I mean, am I going to get desert fans shouting at me now?

• 37:08Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no. Listen, listen, I I I think if one could work out the transmission problem, how does one get the electricity from the Sahara to the rest of the world? The Sahara Desert could be an extraordinary place to generate solar power. And we could, I mean, in fact, there's wonderful sci fi novels written about this, that if one could sort out the transmission and sort out the politics, it's the ideal place in terms of sunlight, in terms of land use, and you don't have the fights that you would have in Britain about the farmland, food production, landscape, industrial intrusions on landscape, etc.

• 37:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, anyway, Fuse Energy is on the case, people. Britain's clean energy future will appear field by field, where solar fits naturally strengthens local communities, brings long term value to the land. And here's the thing, if you think you know land, whether you're looking out of an airplane, that you think can help build that future, contact Fuse Energy at [email protected], start a referral and you have the chance to win £2,000. Now, Victoria, spelt in the Bulgarian way. Long time listener here. I wonder if you've been following what's unfolding in Bulgaria? Yes, led by young Bulgarians, the country just saw its largest protest in decades against a corrupt government. Do you think genuine democratic change is possible in countries where corruption is entrenched? What does it say about the state of the EU's newer

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  member states? Well, this isn't just a newer member state, it's one that's joining the euro very, very shortly. You follow it, Rory? I thought it was fascinating because they were huge and they brought down the government.

• 38:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, one of the things that surprised me about it is 26th November, the protests seemed, unless I got the wrong end of the stick, I was expecting when I heard protests against the budget in Bulgaria, that it would be a bit sort of gilet jaune, that it would be like the French protesting against the pension age going up. In other words, generally, people, particularly students, you would think would be protesting in favour of more government spending and against cuts. But I think, weirdly, these protests were against tax increases and against higher social security contributions. So it was trying to keep taxes low. Have I got that the wrong way around?

• 39:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but also in part because one of the reasons they were raising money was to give a pay rise to people who work for the state.

• 39:24Rory Stewart?

  Ah, very bad, very bad. Yeah, I'm always in favour of that. I like paying people who work for the state more.

• 39:30Alastair Campbell?

  But I think people who work for the state in what we might call the security, securocrat side of life. And so they started out reasonably small, these protests, and grew and grew and grew and grew. And eventually, there was a no confidence motion coming before the parliament, and the prime minister stepped down literally just minutes before that was happening, presumably assumed they were going to lose it. So it does sort of show you that protests can work. Whether it will lead to any real change, I mean, the point about corruption, I don't know. One of the figures right at the heart of this, a guy called Dilan Pifski, great name, this huge sort of giant of a man. He's been investigated for all sorts of corruption and influence peddling and bribery

• 40:14Alastair Campbell?

  and all sorts of stuff. And Bulgaria, I think I'm right in saying, is the listing of corruption in the EU from Transparency International, Bulgaria is at the bottom of that list or of the top, depending, is the most corrupt country.

• 40:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, pretty corrupt anyway. But, but I, I mean, just, just to sort of, I, I think it's, it's really interesting. I also think though, that we've got to look at the counterfactual, which is, yes, there are problems in Bulgaria, there are problems in Romania, problems in a lot of countries in Europe. But the counterfactual is, where would they have been without the European Union? And I think Bulgaria is a really good example of a country that is immeasurably better off than it was in 1989. It was a relatively poor, marginalized, fragile part of the, of the Eastern Bloc coalition. And it's now well on its way to being a pretty prosperous, integrated liberal democracy that has benefited enormously from market reforms,

• 41:11Rory Stewart?

  from European Union joining. And, and so I hope we don't get into a sort of total death spiral of overplaying this, because I think actually a lot of these places would be a lot worse off, including Hungary. I think Hungary were probably a much more terrifying place if it wasn't part of the European Union.

• 41:26Alastair Campbell?

  And also, the other, the other thing I was going to say is about, you know, joining, it's joining the Euro this new year. So in the middle of a corruption scandal and a change of government, one of the biggest things in Bulgaria's history is about to happen. It does sort of make you wonder though, about all of the convergence criteria. I mean, there are some very, very, very strict convergence criteria that allow you to join the Euro. And if this is the picture of Bulgaria, that the Bulgarian people seem to say that it is, then, I don't know, how do I put this, have they all been properly met?

• 42:06Rory Stewart?

  You're sounding quite German here. That's a very German view of the whole situation. That's what they say about the Greeks, isn't it?

• 42:11Alastair Campbell?

  It is what they say about the Greeks. That is what, is what, is what a lot of Gordon Brown's five tests that kept us out of the Euro were about as well. So there we are. Now, listen, here's a really interesting question, Jill in Hampshire. And we pride ourselves occasionally on talking about things that the rest of the media tend not to, but this is one that I think we should probably have a look at. Bobby Sands' hunger strike is one of my news memories of my childhood. And for those who are younger than Jill, Bobby Sands was an IRA member, hunger striker, whose hunger strike and subsequent death was a huge, huge global event. Okay, that's setting the context.

• 42:54Alastair Campbell?

  Consequently, says Jill, I'm baffled as to why the Filton 24 hunger strike doesn't seem to be considered newsworthy. As I understand it, some of the hunger strikers are in a bad way and have been taken to hospital. I'd love to hear you talk about it and also hear your thoughts as to why the BBC and other mainstream media are not covering it. Lisa in Wells, why is nobody mentioning the hunger strikers? I remember regular updates on the Northern Ireland hunger strikers on the main news channels in their day. What's changed? Where can we find the missing news on a regular basis? I mean, it is very interesting, this, isn't it? What's your initial reaction to that?

• 43:31Rory Stewart?

  Firstly, to decode for people who aren't on top of the Filton 24. Filton is the office of an Israeli company called Elbit Systems. It's Israel's largest arms manufacturer, supplying 85% of Israeli military drones and 85% of land-based equipment. So they occupied the Filton facility for 24 hours. This is Palestine Action. And they're a direct action group. And we've talked about Palestine Action in the past. They're not part of the groups that have been working for a long time on two-state solutions that have been constructively engaging in trying to work out how to get a peace settlement

• 44:12Rory Stewart?

  in the Middle East. They are instead a group, I suppose, maybe people will disagree with me about this, but maybe they're a little bit more like what used to happen on Greenham Common, right, for elderly listeners or younger listeners, these are people protesting against American nuclear weapons on British soil used to break into the bases. And the government has prescribed them and considers them a terrorist organisation. And this is something that most of my friends, the intelligence and security services, privately disagreed with profoundly and thought was insane because it effectively forces the police to arrest people who are not doing what we would conventionally consider to be terrorist acts, right? They're not blowing up buildings, killing civilians. What they're doing is disrupting things. And now they've gone on hunger strikes.

• 44:57Rory Stewart?

  So just before I come back to you, just the facts on this, there are three people who've been hunger striked for more than 40 days and they're in critical condition. And there are three other people in serious condition. A guy called John Sink has described as almost skeletal. They are at imminent risk of death on their hunger strike and it's not being, not being reported. Yeah.

• 45:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Bobby Sands, he was in Long, the May's Prison, Longchamp in Northern Ireland. And his hunger strike began on the first of March and ended on the fifth of May, 1981. So that's 66 days. So from going on strike to dying was 66 days. And you've got three people, as you say, Kessazura, Amu Gibb and Heba Muraisi, who'd been on hunger strike for 40 plus days. Now, I can remember, I mean, Jill says that this, this was one of her sort of news memories of her childhood. Bobby Sands was huge news around the world. And, and bear in mind, Rory, at that time, there wasn't that much

• 45:58Alastair Campbell?

  space for news. There was, you know, back in 1981, you had the BBC sort of three times a day on the telly. You had a couple of radio programmes that you might be considered news. And you had 24 page newspapers. We now have so much news space. And yet here we are, a big, big issue, Gaza, Ukraine, massive issue, Palestine action, how governments deal with terrorism, big issue. Prisons and what goes on in prisons usually made you find that to be of interest. So I'm struggling to find the answer to this. I'm struggling to find the answer. I was visiting a prison recently. I saw some protesters outside. They were walking away from the prison.

• 46:41Alastair Campbell?

  And they had this placards and it was about hunger strikes. I presume it related to this. And I asked a couple of the people there, what's that about? I don't know. I don't know. It's like, so they were just a couple of people standing outside the prison.

• 46:54Rory Stewart?

  It's extraordinary. I think 2,600 people have now been arrested for demonstrating solidarity with Palestine Action. And they thought that once they crossed 1,000, it would become a big media story. So yeah, really interesting. The politics of this, the way the algorithms work, the way editors work, what people want to cover, what they don't. I mean, this goes almost to the podcast we did yesterday on the strangeness of the rise of the far right and Russian influence. We live in a very weird attention landscape where stories that you would have thought, I mean, if you were Palestine Action, you put all those things together. People's passionate concerns about Gaza, the sense from many, many people in

• 47:38Rory Stewart?

  Britain that this is not a terrorist organisation and it should not have been treated as a terrorist organisation. All these people who've been arrested in solidarity and now people on hunger strike about to die, you would have thought this would be one of the biggest news stories of all time. And it isn't.

• 47:53Alastair Campbell?

  And they've also not been charged with terrorism offences. So what they're demanding is they want immediate bail. They want this Israeli company sites in the UK to be shut down. They want the lifting of the Palestine Action terrorist designation. They claim that their communications have been censored. They want that stopped. And needless to say, they're calling for a fair trial and the restoration of what they call basic rights in prison, library, education, religious items, et cetera. But I guess it's back to Bobby Sands. Lots of books have been written about Bobby Sands. Lots of films have been made about Bobby Sands. And one of the films I saw was reenacting how the prison authorities at the time were trying to deal with this hunger strike.

• 48:36Alastair Campbell?

  And some of the attempts to force feed him and so forth, which is pretty horrific. But the other thing I remember, Margaret Thatcher was being briefed like daily about the state of Bobby Sands' condition. I doubt whether this at the moment is, given it's not on the media radar, is this on the government radar? This is a terrible thing to say. Maybe these campaigners are thinking, well, people are only going to listen to us when one of us dies.

• 49:05Rory Stewart?

  Well. No, no, no. Okay, well, let's finish with a more cheerful question from Gillian in Aberystwyth. You and your podcasting colleagues at Goalhanger are selling out venues across the world. Most of us no longer find 24/7 rolling news satisfies our appetites for informed debate on complex issues. Do you think the shift towards long-form podcasts with space for informed discussion represents a source of hope? Does this signal to politicians and parliaments that people crave calm strength and substance over tired petty soundbites? Well, listen, I think, I want to push you on this one. You are somebody who understands journalism unbelievably well from every direction, local, national, government communications, et cetera. And you're doing this podcast.

• 49:49Rory Stewart?

  And one of the things we've been experimenting with the last couple of weeks is doing real long form, where we say, okay, we're going to, you did it, remember, we went through every step of the Ukraine plan, step by step. We went through the Gaza peace plan like that. We did it in real depth on the Trump National Security Strategy. We've just done it on Russian interference in British politics.

• 50:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think we've got to be careful not to think that some weeks, people actually might just, might want us to bounce around from a few things. But I think at the moment, the world is so difficult, so challenging, so complicated. I think people are looking for a kind of a deeper understanding, or they're looking away. And I think that that is dangerous. I think the fact that people are, the number of people I've been going to say, I just don't listen to the news, not because they think the BBC is terrible or Sky is terrible live TV, they just say, I can't cope with the news. So let me give you an example. I woke up the other day, you turn on the radio and the first two words are President Trump. And you just go, oh, God, no, not again. It's kind of exhausting.

• 50:53Alastair Campbell?

  But I do think there's something about the way journalism has developed, exacerbated by this kind of algorithmization of life. So, for example, I, I, look, I will defend the BBC. I think what Trump is trying to do in trying to sue it utterly ridiculous. And they should just tell him to piss off and, and deal with it very, very strongly. I defend the BBC, but I do think that their coverage and 24 seven news generally is sort of very largely driven by this new culture that's been created by, you've got to keep people angry, you've got to keep people excited, you've got to keep people thinking that everything's hyper and dramatic. Well, actually, we are in a hyper dramatic world, but what I think people also want is a bit of context and a bit of a deeper understanding.

• 51:38Alastair Campbell?

  That's why we read books. But so I think it's, yeah, but I, I think the shift, I think there's something inextricable about it. I mentioned Ed Conway on the podcast yesterday, who did that on Sky News. He does really interesting stuff that by televisual standards is long form, but it's like four minutes, you know? That thing he did on Venezuela was if, was a few minutes, you know?

• 52:01Rory Stewart?

  I do think the thing that I'm probably most proud of that we've done is that step by step go through the Ukraine plan and the step by step through the Gaza plan. Because I think there genuinely, people were getting in touch, saying, nobody else is doing this. I also think the, um, the mini series, I mean, I'm plugging at the moment, the fact we've done a, a, a long members mini series on AI. Again, there isn't space really in mainstream media to even explain what large language models are, how they work, what they can do, what they can't do, why we should be worried about them, why they could make our economies more productive, but also lead to 30, 40% of people losing their jobs, which is going to be the episode next week.

• 52:43Rory Stewart?

  Why they could transform our military defence, but also make us much more vulnerable to attack. Why they could generate wonderful new medicines, but also horrible new viruses. And perhaps biggest of all, the question of control. And what happens if literally these things get out of control? And in a small percentage chance, but still a real significant chance could end up killing us all. And yet we barely have any space to talk about this.

• 53:09Alastair Campbell?

  Talking of the current episode of Leading is you're in plug mode is John Sweeney, Scotland's First Minister. And I mentioned, I mentioned, Roy, that I'm a subscriber to Holliday magazine. My God, there is an interview this week with Ian Murray. And I'm amazed it hasn't made headlines. Ian Murray was the Secretary of State for Scotland, therefore very well known to John Sweeney. And I think John Sweeney, like a lot of people, was shocked when Ian Murray was sacked as Secretary of State from Scotland, Scotland in the in the reshuffle. Well, Ian Murray has done an interview with Mandy Rose, the editor of Holliday. And my God, he's frank about what happened and about the process of being sacked

• 53:51Alastair Campbell?

  and then reinstated. I think any journalist who wants a story, just a nice Sunday for Monday story, check out Holliday magazine. By the way, Roy, the other thing, my final point about the podcast form is you it does lend itself to you. You know this, we you develop relationships with all sorts of people based on the fact that they listen to the podcast. And I just want to read something out. I hope that Tariq won't mind me reading out this message he sent me. Tariq Panja is a journalist at the New York Times. Hi, just a short note of thanks. My dad Abdul Gafar Panja passed away December the 6. During his final years, he really got into podcasts in a big way. And yours and Rory's was always his number one to the extent he would only refer to you both by your first names. We

• 54:35Alastair Campbell?

  always knew who he was on about. So thank you for giving him the pleasure of your company. Best wishes, Tariq. So that is a relationship that you and I had with somebody that we never met, but whose child feels compelled to tell us that that meant something. So that having meant something to them, that means something to us. And that makes the world go round.

• 54:59Rory Stewart?

  Well, wonderful, Tariq. Thank you for being in touch. Sorry to hear about the loss of your father. And thank you to everybody who listens to the podcast. See you soon.

• 55:06Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

• 55:07Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 55:11Rory Stewart?

  This episode was brought to you by Penguin Audiobooks, our partners for the audiobook club, the titles that challenged us and echoed our thoughts long after their closing line.

• 55:21Alastair Campbell?

  One book that has stayed with me was Killer in the Kremlin by John Sweeney. Have you read that one, Rory?

• 55:26Rory Stewart?

  No, tell us about it.

• 55:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Killer in the Kremlin, John Sweeney, and I think I've said to you before, I've always felt a little bit bad about John Sweeney because I once made sure he didn't get to ask Vladimir Putin a question at a press conference that Putin was doing with.

• 55:39Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my goodness, what?

• 55:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I did, I did. It was bad of me and I have apologised to him, but I knew he was going to ask him about Chechnya at a difficult time when we were trying to get on with Putin. So I've held my hands up to that and I think John Sweeney is a very, very, very good Germanist. But what the book does is it sort of threads a lot of the things that we've talked about over the years, Chechnya, as I mentioned, Crimea, the downing of MH17. It brings it all into one story, which is the pattern behind Putin's power, not a sequence of disconnected crisis. And he's got a very lovely delivery. So visit penguin.co.uk/trip to browse our audiobook club or find the link to Killer in the Kremlin in our bio.

• 56:24Alastair Campbell?

  Find Penguin audiobooks now on Spotify.

• 56:27Speaker 05

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalises your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.