86. Politics in football, Trump under pressure, and Kosovo

Join Rory and Alastair as they discuss the end of the World Cup and the soft power that comes with it, rising tensions between Kosovo and Serbia, Rory's experiences as Prisons Minister, and the challenge the government faces regarding prison reform. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome to another episode of Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:47Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart. And we, for the first time in a long time, a post-World Cup episode.

• 1:53Alastair Campbell?

  I know, but I'm missing it badly already. I really am. And even though Burnley have got a big game at Old Trafford in the Carabao Cup tomorrow, and we've got the league back, but at the same time, I think it was a fantastic World Cup in terms of the football. And I mean, did you watch the final, Rory?

• 2:12Rory Stewart?

  I did watch the final and I watched, watched it, you'll be pleased to hear with my, my little son, who was incredibly excited and was very pro Argentina, very anti France. I think he felt resentful about England being defeated.

• 2:22Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I, I became very resentful of Argentina during the penalties when I thought the goalkeeper just was behaving extremely badly, but I guess all is fair in war and love and football.

• 2:32Rory Stewart?

  Was it you that tweeted out that you thought he should have got a yellow card for his behaviour in there?

• 2:36Alastair Campbell?

  No, it wasn't, but I think when he kicked the ball away for the guy who, one of the two missed the penalty and he kicked it, I thought that was, you can get done for unsporting conduct, that was very unsporting conduct. And the whole dancing thing, I kind of get it, you're very excited. I mean, it's like, you know, for those players, I know the focus so much was on Messi, but for all of those players, it is utterly life-changing to win the World Cup, especially in a country like Argentina where football is, is sort of, you know, bigger than religion for most people there. It would have been similar in Paris, there were sort of hundreds of thousands of people out, but the scenes in Argentina, in Buenos Aires, when they actually won.

• 3:14Rory Stewart?

  Unbelievable, weren't they? That there was that drone over the central square.

• 3:17Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah. Only for, I can't, you, you occasionally get political moments like that, particularly actually in Latin America, you get some amazing, massive crowd scenes. But no, I think, I don't think anything can do that apart from, from football. I did feel incredibly sorry for, for France. I, I think that, but although to be fair, you know, they should have been dead by, before they got the two goals, because they were so poor for the first 70 minutes. And then, but for Mbappe to come back, it was sort of just, I just thought, all right, they've got two goals, the momentum's with them. Then for Messi to score another one, then Mbappe another one. And then in the penalties, it was just like, I don't think there's ever been a football match quite like it.

• 3:55Rory Stewart?

  Gary Lineker said he thought the best World Cup final he'd ever seen, and, and also the comeback story of Saudi Arabia having defeated Argentina. So obviously I spend a lot of my time in the Middle East and the Arab world is incredibly proud because they defeated the World Cup champions at the beginning of the World Cup.

• 4:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, why don't we, look, there's no point you and I, especially you, because you know, you know about football, but let's, let's, and there's been so much football punditry. But I do think it's interesting to reflect on the whole theme of, of soft power, and which countries we think have done really well out of the World Cup. I think Morocco.

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  Croatia, I think there's a fantastic sort of sport washing for Croatia, which I think has a number of complicated internal problems. But as we talked about last week, both with tennis and football, isn't it is a sort of superstar, isn't it?

• 4:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the thing about Croatia as well, I said, I don't know if you had time to watch it, but I sent you a guy called Lewis Miles made this fantastic film called Croatia, defining a nation. And it's the story of Croatia, but told through football and told through particularly through the footballers at the time when Croatia became an independent country. And there's a guy called Boban, who's a kind of, he's a very political figure now. He's a big figure in football politics. But he was a player in Croatia. And there used to be incredible violence between the Croatian and the Serb clubs. I mean, Red Star Belgrade against Dynamo Zagreb was just, I mean, there were more police than fans there some days. There was a riot and Boban ended up kicking this policeman on the field and it became

• 5:24Alastair Campbell?

  one of those kind of utterly iconic moments. There are statues of it. He is a sort of legendary figure there. But this, this film, it's Croatia. If you think of all the countries that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia, Croatia is the only one that's got this sort of footballing reputation. And it was a very deliberate thing. They built it around a group of young players who won the World Youth Cup. You know, for them, it's only it's a it's smaller than Scotland. It's a bit bigger than Wales, four million people to get to, you know, semifinals, finals, to have this, this generation of players.

• 5:59Rory Stewart?

  Up against countries with tens or even hundreds of millions of people. No, it's incredible. And maybe at the end of the thing, we can loop back a little bit to talk about the rest of the Balkans. In particular, I think you wanted to talk about Serbia and Kosovo, which is a really serious big issue at the moment. But I think maybe we can connect that because Croatia has also been, in a sense, the success in terms of its ability to enter the European Union, move towards the Euro in a way that many of the other former Yugoslav countries haven't managed to do yet.

• 6:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 6:25Rory Stewart?

  For France, can just, just a little bit on France. I noticed there was an article in the New York Times, which listeners might want to look at, talking about ethnicity, written by a sort of a scholar of football, talking about. How the ethnicity of the French team was controversial and that Didier Deschamps predecessor, the previous manager of the team had actually been caught on tape, I think, trying to make sure there were fewer players of African origin within the French team.

• 6:51Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 6:51Rory Stewart?

  Can you give us a bit of an insight onto football politics in France and how this plays into Le Pen and ethnicity and?

• 6:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's something very interesting about Fran. So they've they've won the World Cup twice, almost won it three times now. They're clearly one of the great football powers. But football doesn't have quite the cultural hold in France that it does, say, I think in England or Germany. It was interesting, Macron, who I think, he looked pretty desperate, didn't he? I mean, he was so, fair to Macron, he is a real football fan. He supports Marseille, which even though he's not from that region, he supports Marseille, which I think is, of all the French clubs, is the one that has this real kind of footballing identity. But there's no doubt there is a, there has always been this feeling that in a way that I think when England, particularly during the Euros, you had this sense of the

• 7:43Alastair Campbell?

  the country in the main coming behind the young black players who were getting racially abused and so forth. There was there's a sense that England football team has helped to sort of unite. But I think with France, there is a reluctance sometimes to love them in the way that they deserve to be loved, given how good they are at football. And whether that does relate to the politics, I don't know. I think if you're the manager of a national football team, you've got to pick the best players that you that you can. I also think they're perfectly entitled to go out and find people of heritage, you know, because what we've seen this, this, this World Cup, you know, you had Xhaka who plays for Arsenal, he plays for Switzerland, his brother plays for Albania. Um, you know, you can, you can pick countries.

• 8:25Rory Stewart?

  Amazing. So apparently in the 2018 FIFA side, there were as many as 15 players with African roots in the French team.

• 8:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Rory Stewart?

  And it's, there was interesting moments, again, this article brings up about Islam and the wearing of the hijab in the presidential palace. And as you say, this thing which may be not French at all, which was the interaction. Between Macron and Mbappe at the end of the game, where he goes up and he obviously, if he wanted to be uncharitable, he wants to have a photo opportunity with him. If you want to be charitable, he just wants to commiserate with him and put his arm around him. But Mbappe won't meet his eye, won't really respond to him. And Macron, who for a political geek like me can often seem quite cool amongst the ranks of international politicians, certainly doesn't look remotely cool when he's next to the greatest footballer in the world. He looks incredibly geeky. In fact,

• 9:15Rory Stewart?

  somebody tweeted out, please, please, when I lose a World Cup final, don't let Rishi Sunak come commiserate with me. You do get the sense.

• 9:23Alastair Campbell?

  Look, I think if France had won, I think Mbappe would have flung his arms around him and he'd have flung his arms around anyone. I think in those moments of really hurtful defeat, and he must have been thinking, I mean, I'm only the second player ever to score a hat trick in a World Cup final and I've lost. It's just devastating. So I think probably the last thing you want is anybody around you. I thought it was interesting that when Germany won the World Cup, Angela Merkel was there. Angela Merkel is a bit of a football aficionado as well. She likes watching football. And she appeared in the dressing room and you could tell when they were thrilled

• 10:04Alastair Campbell?

  to see her. And I remember Bastian Schweinsteiger throwing his arms around her. And so people then say, oh, he must be, he must be, he must be a Christian Democrat, et cetera. But no, I think it's just that in those moments, you want to be with that. But I did think Macron, I'm going to be charitable to him. I think he's a football fan. I think he was absolutely devastated. And I think he thought it was part of his job to try to console these guys. But it looked a bit kind of beg friend and it looked like I want to be with the boys.

• 10:32Rory Stewart?

  And just quickly on politicians and football, you were talking about the emergence of this Croatian politician footballer. Of course, George Weir, president of Liberia.

• 10:40Alastair Campbell?

  Liberia, yeah. And here's another, whose son was playing for America in this World Cup.

• 10:46Rory Stewart?

  The greatest Liberian footballer who becomes the president of Liberia. His son then ends up playing for the United States. Extraordinary. So obviously, you're a massive football fan. Tony Blair got in trouble, didn't he, because he had a false memory of attending a football match? What was that again?

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  No, that was an absolute nonsense. It was a total myth. And the guy who made it up has since admitted that he made it up.

• 11:06Rory Stewart?

  Remind us of the story that was made up then.

• 11:08Alastair Campbell?

  The story was, and it's just incredible how these things hang around. The story was that Tony had said that he had a memory of watching Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle United, which basically would have effectively meant that, you know, he, he, he was sort of watching on the terraces before he was bored kind of thing. And but the guy who, this story started on a local radio station up in the northeast, but the guy has admitted it was a joke. But it became one of those things that we constantly have to say, no, Tony didn't say it.

• 11:40Rory Stewart?

  Can I just sort of be serious for a second on that? I'd love to hear about Tony. But just, it's odd how a story which is fake really got into the national consciousness. I mean, I, I don't pay much attention to football, but I remember definitely for my generation, it became a defining example of the fact that Tony Blair was a liar and yet the story isn't true. So that is very odd, isn't it?

• 12:03Alastair Campbell?

  No, that was very, very, very, very frustrating. I, look, I guess when you think about the whole kind of new Labour, new Britain, cool Britannia, all that stuff, there's no doubt that I think it's the one area where my personal predilections maybe pushed a strategy harder than it otherwise would have been. But I really did feel that football was becoming such a big part of the, of the, of the national story, the national life, that the Premier League was taking off as the, you know, the most watched league in the world, that the best players were coming here, that these managers were becoming huge figures in our, in our national life. And so, yeah, I think we wanted to, to be, you know, to be part of that and for them to be part of us.

• 12:46Alastair Campbell?

  And, you know, I guess the, the one that I think a lot of people from that generation remember was when Tony did his, he was doing this heading practice with Kevin Keegan. And he got up into the twenties with heading the ball backwards and forwards. That was quite impressive, wasn't it? It was impressive, but Rory, can I make a bold suggestion that if you were to do that with Lionel Messi,

• 13:11Alastair Campbell?

  even you would be able to get it back because he would basically plop it on your head. He would just make it hit your head and then he would scrabble around to get the ball back to you because that's what they could do. So it wasn't as impressive as it looked, to be absolutely honest. I must say that I'm responsible for taking Peter Mandelson to his first ever football match, which was in Marseille, which I mentioned before. And when we go to France, we always try and see Marseille and my son Callum is a massive Marseille fan. And Marseille has this fantastic atmosphere. And so Peter comes along, he was staying with us, he comes along, they were playing, I think they were playing Toulouse or something, Bordeaux. And they've always had the Van Halen jump. They play that as the players come out incredibly loud and the crowd goes crazy.

• 13:56Alastair Campbell?

  And I can remember Peter sort of turning to me and says, oh my lord, oh my lord, look at the effect this is having on people.

• 14:06Alastair Campbell?

  And the latest time he went to a game was when he was the candidate in Hartlepool. And we went up to stay with Tony Blair in Sedgfield. This was when Tony Blair was, before Tony Blair became, I don't think he was even Shadow Home Secretary, he was sort of whatever he was, he was the MP for Sedgfield. So Tony and I went in the away end with the Burnley fans. Peter being Mr. Hartlepool went in the director's box, but he came to Sears at half time, walking across the pitch. So while the players had got it at half time, Peter Mandelson walks across the pitch and he was wearing this extraordinary knitted Hartlepool United scarf, which a woman from, called Olga from the GMB Union had knitted for him.

• 14:45Alastair Campbell?

  And he was wearing it like he was at an Oxbridge College, you know, it was sort of thrown around the other way around his day. At which point the Burnley fans who are quite, they can be very, very funny, even though we were getting battered and we ended up losing 4-1 against Hartlepool. And they started singing this chant. I don't know if I'm allowed to say the W word, but it's who's the wanker in the scarf?

• 15:09Alastair Campbell?

  As Peter came to, Peter walked towards us, so.

• 15:13Rory Stewart?

  So this is one of the great, great political triumphs of all time. Just quickly on Argentina, because I guess people have been thinking a little bit about Argentina. So, I mean, I'm the furthest away from being the world's expert on Argentina. But just to remind listeners a little bit about the context. I think the first really dramatic thing about Argentina is that it was one of the very, very wealthiest countries in the world famously at the beginning of the 20th century. GDP per capita in Argentina was higher than the United States. Really important in terms of my constituency of Cumbria, because it was the beginning of refrigerated ships bringing beef over that basically wiped out a lot of the UK farming industry, much as the new trade deals with Australia are probably likely to do again.

• 15:55Rory Stewart?

  And Argentina continued to be this hugely dominant economic power right the way through the 20s. And even into the 50s remained in GDP per capita terms, you know, up in the top dozen. To put it in context now, it's like number 65 in the world in terms of GDP per capita. And then went through a series of these lurches from Peron, who came in just after the Second World War. So the Peron East, and then back and forth from what I suppose you'd politely call neoliberal to neo Keynesian economics. But basically, the sum total of it was to trash the Argentinean economy again and again and again. And every one of these presidents who came in claimed to come in and fix the economy and sort it out and sort out balance payment.

• 16:39Rory Stewart?

  But in almost every case, by the time they left, the economy was in a weaker position. And now, just at the moment at which Argentina has won the World Cup, there's been an extraordinary sort of trio of political scandals. First, the vice president, who's the real power in the land. Previous wife, the previous president, previous president herself, Kirtchner, has been now charged with corruption. There was also a big assassination attempt against her.

• 17:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, she's not just been charged for it, she's been sentenced. She's been sentenced to six years and she's she's only out of jail because at the moment because she's she's appealing.

• 17:11Rory Stewart?

  She's appealing to the to the next court up and has said that if she's convicted, she's going to leave Congress, which means that she'll go to jail. And at the same time, her predecessor has been charged with illegal surveillance. The previous president has been charged with illegal surveillance. And inflation, I believe, at the moment is touching ninety percent in Argentina.

• 17:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I I think often when numbers are up like that, listeners in the United States or Europe sort of switch off because we're experiencing ten percent inflation in Britain can begin to imagine what ninety percent inflation is actually like over a year.

• 17:42Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm hmm. Yeah, she's so she's she's been done for corruption, same as the guy in Peru, Castillo, that we mentioned, who's now in this prison police cell with has been built for the other one, for Jumore. And really bad violence in Peru at the moment. I don't know if you've noticed, seen that, there've been quite a few deaths. And his his successor, Boluerta, is refusing to call elections. There's quite a lot of violence on the streets. And you know, when you said, Roy, when you're giving the history of Argentina there, that's why during the referendum, I kept saying there are moments in history when countries choose their own decline. And I really worry at the moment that we're going through a process without facing up to the fact that we may well have chosen our own decline.

• 18:27Alastair Campbell?

  What's to stop? I mean, you know, we we like to think that none of this stuff can happen here, but, you know, I do think that we've we've allowed a a level of corruption now in our politics that we've never had before. I thought that the it was interesting yesterday, the government, the UK government, saying they're going to sue this Michel Monde company, PP Med, whatever it's called, Med Aero, that they're going to try and get the the money back. And I mean, that is the sort of story that we used to associate with Latin America. And it's now happening here.

• 18:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's it is interesting. And it's also interesting how corruption takes different forms in different countries. I was very, I'm I'm speaking now, it's sort of quarter past six in the morning and I'm in the US. And I was looking at a guy called Buddy Xianchi, and Buddy Xianchi was the mayor of Rhode Island. I mean, the corruption there was beyond imagining. The guy was sent to jail twice, came out, ran again as mayor. Literally, the corruption in Rhode Island involved him.

• 19:24Rory Stewart?

  Giving a million dollars to his friend who was called something like Fingers Freddie, who ran a car rehab place.

• 19:30Alastair Campbell?

  He sounds a really good guy. He sounds the sort of guy you want to know.

• 19:33Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. So he gave a million dollars to this guy so that he could turn the top of his car workshop, apparently into a school. It was a million dollars from the education budget. Meanwhile, Boris Zanetti's mother collected the cash every evening. She would sit, this old Italian lady, counting out these piles of cash every time. And he was completely loved. It's the beginning of, I suppose, corruption and populism really together because he had an incredibly successful radio show, which was part of the reason why when he was released from jail for corruption charges, he was then re-elected. Anyone interested in documentaries? There's the most wonderful documentary of of local politics and corruption about Cory Booker's run, and it's called Street Fight. And I

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  don't know whether you've seen it, but he's running against an incredible, it's within the Democratic Party machine, but he's running against this sort of mesmerizing figure who's been the mayor of Newark for, I think, 20, 25 years, who actually controls the police to the extent that they go and rip down Cory Booker's election pictures and put health and safety infringement notices against any shop or restaurant that's endorses him. And this is all pretty recent in the US, this stuff.

• 20:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Well, listen, we, I mean, you're in the States, and I know you've just got up, but I was listening earlier to some of the the coverage of this latest development in Donald, the Donald Trump situation. And they were playing this tape of him basically, I don't know who was shouting at him, he was shouting at somebody, he said, look, get me 11,000 votes. I just need 11,000 votes. Find me 11,000 votes. And, you know, I do think when you've had a Johnson-type figure in charge in the UK, a Trump-style figure in charge in the US, you're talking about two of the most advanced, respected democracies in the world that have been sort of had this kind of inbuilt, you know, corruption embedded in it. And I think that, you know, that Liz Cheney, I mean, you know, I knew her, I

• 21:26Alastair Campbell?

  knew her dad a bit, and he was quite a scary guy, but she strikes me as somebody of incredible courage. And she actually, she's out there today on the back of this congressional inquiry report, which is recommending that Trump is is charged and passing on evidence to those who would who will make that decision within the law enforcement system. But she said, you know, what this shows beyond any doubt whatsoever, this guy is utterly unfit for any public office whatsoever. But then you have a guy comes on, and this is, you know, we're back to our old friend polarization. You then get Trump supporters who come on and say, this is all just a sort of democratic stitch up. And the guy actually said that the FBI provoked the riots on January the sixth as a way of trying to undermine Trump.

• 22:09Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, we're talking crazy, crazy stuff here.

• 22:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, just for the, in my boring role on the other side, I think it is also important to acknowledge that in all these countries, corruption isn't the monopoly of a single political party. I mean, it's striking.

• 22:27Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 22:27Rory Stewart?

  How we've, you know, we've had corruption scandals on both left and right in Britain. The big, big corruption scandal with Labour and Tower Hamlets, when eventually the candidate was expelled and then ran independently. And a lot of these scandals in the US, along with Republican corruption scandals, have been scandals within the Democratic Party. And there's been a long history of that, going back to LBJ.

• 22:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, listen, LBJ was an absolute, I mean, he was a guy who absolutely took no prisoners, winning. It was all about winning. You've also got this European Union corruption scandal at the moment, which is, you know, it's almost a part with Ramaphosa. You're talking about literally bags of cash being found.

• 23:04Rory Stewart?

  Tell us, tell us a bit about that then, a little bit about that.

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's a, it's a Greek MEP, vice president of the, of the parliament. And her dad was found with sort of massive bags of cash. The Qataris were blamed, they've denied it, she's denied any wrongdoing. But I think what's interesting was it wasn't the parliamentary authorities that uncovered this. It was the police and they've really pursued it. And I do look at some of these PPE scandals that we have, or I look at some of the, the peerages that have been appointed. And when I think that, you know, Tony Blair was interviewed by the police in relation to a load of old political nonsense of so-called cash for peerages. And yet there is so much, to my mind, actual evidence of corruption involving peers of whether it's with the relation to PPE

• 23:52Alastair Campbell?

  or their nomination and appointment to the House of Lords and so forth. And yet it seems to me, this is a point you've made before, that because we're sort of now thinking, oh, well, they're all at it, blah, blah, blah, nobody bothers.

• 24:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, the cash for peerages stuff, maybe this is a fundamental problem at the heart of the House of Lords. Because although, so the big scandal was Lloyd George literally sold these things. There was a price list for buying your peerage 100 years ago. So the law was changed to make that illegal. But since then. All the parties have given wealthy, mostly men, few women, peerages, and those are people who've given their parties money. So even though theoretically, there's no cash for peerages from any of these parties, it's a pretty weird coincidence that an enormous number of the people who get peerages from these parties are major donors to those parties.

• 24:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, listen, Rory, before we go to the break, last week, if you remember, we were discussing Latin America, and I quoted one of my favorite people, Moise's name. And I got a lovely email from him this week.

• 24:54Rory Stewart?

  That's right, on the superpower of Guyana.

• 24:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think the reason he wrote to me is I think he thought you were scoffing a little. So he says this, "Hello, Alastair, I've been listening to your podcast, I love it. Thank you very much for quoting me. I think these additional figures about Guyana, open quotes, the success story, close quotes, will be of interest. Some math," I love the way they say "math," "to put Guyana in perspective. It will soon be producing 2 million barrels of oil a day, $70 a barrel, 365 days in a year. This equals 51.1 billion oil each year, population 800,000."

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. I guess, I guess it is extraordinary.

• 25:38Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think they'll go for the World Cup? Do you think they might one day host the World Cup?

• 25:41Rory Stewart?

  But, but I suppose there seems to be, because of natural resources, there's a very different story, isn't there, of small countries that are able to totally transform themselves. But it does help to have a small population if you're sitting on something like that, as opposed to Nigeria, which is sitting on a lot of oil.

• 25:58Alastair Campbell?

  I know, but also if you look at the difference between the United Kingdom and say Norway, it also helps if you have a government who decides, you know what, let's create a sovereign wealth fund and let's properly invest this country for the future, rather than do what the Thatcher government did. Can I close for the break on that very, very political point?

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  Yes, absolutely. Let's go to the break.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 minutes without parent.

• 26:57Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 27:02Rory Stewart?

  And Alistair, you wanted to bring us into the subject of Serbia and Kosovo, which is a really, really big deal. And I guess it's something that connects directly with your life because you were very involved in the Kosovo intervention. And we're now just over 20 years on.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  I know, and I know we've had the World Cup and there's strikes going on. There's lots going on at home, but I do find it pretty amazing. I've seen next to nothing in our media about this. I think it's like quite a big deal. That, you know, essentially there are a lot of tensions resurfacing. Kosovo, of course, predominantly Albanian population. Serbia, there was a war in 1998, 1999, which as you say, we were very involved in. And when Kosovans broke away, Serbia has never officially recognized them, but they've kind of, you know, they've rubbed along. There is a minority Serb population there.

• 27:59Alastair Campbell?

  And Vukic, president of Serbia, he wants to send his own troops up there because there is, there's been a kind of, you know, security concerns about his people up there. This all started last weekend when a Serb former police officer. Was arrested. Now, the Kosovo Prime Minister, he basically says that these protesters that have inflamed the situation are criminal gangs. He's asked the NATO peacekeeping force to to take down these barricades that have now been put up by the protesters. And the other thing that goes on there, we talked last week about these German far-right people who refuse to recognise the state and therefore don't don't use driving licences and so forth.

• 28:41Alastair Campbell?

  There's a whole thing about the number plates because they won't, some of the Serbs will not drive in in cars with a Kosovo number plate. But it's just getting, it's getting very, very tense. And I just, I just don't understand why there's so little focus on it.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's incredibly dangerous. So the the story essentially is that the Kosovo intervention seemed initially actually to be pretty successful in its outcome. And remember, there were four Balkan wars, million people displaced. And then there was a period for about a decade where things seemed much, much more positive. Kosovo achieves its independence. And Serbia was, until 2013, relatively relaxed. There was a good agreement reached with the EU, which was a compromise, wasn't full recognition of everything, but things seemed to calm down. And the fundamental driver in this, I believe, was our old friend, the European Union, because accession to the European Union, joining the European Union,

• 29:40Rory Stewart?

  was the incredible incentive for all these countries, for Kosovo, for Serbia, for Montenegro. And it was the great driver which provided a reason for nationalist politicians to compromise, to agree to mediation from the EU, sometimes the Germans, the French particularly, gave them a reason to steer away from Russia, which is really relevant to Serbia, because Serbia's increasingly been playing a very dangerous game there. And provided the European Union provided the potential framework for peace for the Balkans because it gave a reason for all those countries to transcend their previous nationalist past.

• 30:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Rory Stewart?

  But the tragedy is that since 2013, they've lost confidence in their ability to join the European Union. And they've been given the impression really that the European Union doesn't want them for good reasons and bad reasons.

• 30:35Alastair Campbell?

  It's why it was interesting last, a couple of weeks ago, when Croatia has sort of made it to the next stage in relation to Schengen and entry to the Euro. But I think you're right that, you know, my friend Eddie Rahm in Albania, I mean, he's essentially, he's won three elections. And one of the big messages in all of his campaigns is about, you know, we have to keep on the path of reform because ultimately that's the road to the European Union and he's driven that. And you're right, if people lose that sense of that big hope, it becomes much more difficult.

• 31:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So Vucic, who's the president of Serbia, is a real, a man, you know, from a proper Milosevic nationalist background.

• 31:11Alastair Campbell?

  He was my opposite number during the NATO war.

• 31:13Rory Stewart?

  Right, exactly.

• 31:14Alastair Campbell?

  He was, he was Milosevic's spokesman and director of communications.

• 31:19Rory Stewart?

  And right, okay, so that really puts it in context, so very much on the Serb nationalist side against Kosovo.

• 31:24Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, Rory, he's even, he's even, I know you go on about how big I am, he's even bigger than I am, he's absolutely, I've met him a few times.

• 31:32Rory Stewart?

  Big guy. So what was extraordinary in 2013 is that somebody who was properly associated with nationalism and Milosevic came from that side of the party, was prepared to sign up to that EU mediation. But since they've lost confidence in that, he's begun playing a very, very dangerous game of playing Russia against the EU. And it's not that he's fully pro-Russian, because I think the Russians would love to make trouble there and in Montenegro and elsewhere. Nothing would give Putin more pleasure at the moment when he's under pressure in Ukraine to start another front between Serbia and Kosovo. And to be frank about what the threat is here, the threat is probably not that Serbia would try to take the whole of Kosovo. The threat is that they would try to annex the northern bit of Kosovo.

• 32:17Rory Stewart?

  And the Serb population there, but that would be unbelievable. I mean, that would be a reprise of Russia going to Crimea. It would cause huge problems, partly because there are many Serbs in Kosovo who don't live in northern Kosovo, live in southern bits of Kosovo. And it would open up cans of worms beyond imagining. But if you read the nationalist press in Serbia, every week at the moment, they're talking about

• 32:40Alastair Campbell?

  That's what they're arguing for.

• 32:41Rory Stewart?

  An invasion of Kosovo. I mean, this is, this is really serious stuff. I mean, this is probably the most dangerous it's been in twelve years. And it's, and it's, and it's, and I'd put a 60% chance on it happening.

• 32:52Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. And you're talking about relatively small numbers of people. The population of Kosovo is under 2 million. Over 92% of those are Albanian, around ethnic Albania, around 6% are Serbian. And in these majority Serb areas, you're talking 50,000 people. You're not, you know, you're, you're talking relatively small numbers. And the deal that you mentioned, sorry to keep going back to these, this number plates issue, but that was at the heart of the deal. Because Kosovo, they, they agreed to stop fining people who didn't swap the plates. And Serbia agreed, Belgrade agreed that they would stop issuing their own registrations with the initials of Kosovan towns. So what was happening was that the Serbs were issuing

• 33:34Alastair Campbell?

  the driving plates, the car plate, number plates, to their own Kosovans. And of course, that, even though they don't recognize Kosovo, it went against the agreement that they'd, that they'd had. So they've now re-agreed to that. But then because this guy was arrested and this trouble started, and Vukic's immediate response seems to be, we need to send a few Serb troops up there to sort of help them keep the peace. I mean, it did sort of ring alarm bells. And, you know, to go back to the point I made right at the start, given how many of the real tinder points in our, in European history have been in that region, I, I find it odd that there's been just next to no debate about it. I mean, we're back to our old question about what does the British Foreign Office do these days?

• 34:17Rory Stewart?

  It's also a very important role here for the US because under the Kosovo agreement, Kosovo was not allowed to have its own army. So it's dependent on K4, the Kosovo force. And there are still American soldiers on the ground. The Americans have left Bosnia. But they've still got troops on the ground in Kosovo.

• 34:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there are 4,000 troops of varying nationalities, but with a lot of Americans there.

• 34:39Rory Stewart?

  And that's pretty vital for keeping this peace. Another thing that's happened, we talked about corruption just before the break. One of the stories that's underlying this is that the Kosovo prime minister, it's the prime minister, not the president, who's the key player in Kosovo. The previous Kosovo prime minister has now been indicted for war crimes.

• 34:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I know him quite well, Thatcher, I know him quite well.

• 35:03Rory Stewart?

  Oh, go on, tell us a little bit about him. Give us a bit of a pen portrait of him because he was a great darling of the international community in some ways, wasn't he?

• 35:08Alastair Campbell?

  He was, and of course, he got into all sorts of trouble with these allegations of selling kidneys and other organs and.

• 35:17Rory Stewart?

  Go on, tell us about that. What was the allegation?

• 35:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the allegations were that they were running a trade in organs. And he denied it, he denied it. I met him, well, I met him before he became prime minister, I met him when he was prime minister. And I have to say, I found him really quite very interesting, very intelligent, quite charming. He was genuinely worried about it, I could tell that, but he was absolutely denied that he'd been involved in any wrongdoing, et cetera. But of course, you've got to remember where Kosovo came from or where he came from. It's a bit like when we were dealing with people from the IRA. I mean, we were dealing with them as politicians, but we knew that they'd, you know, they'd come up through some pretty tough ranks.

• 36:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so Hashem Shetchi had been associated with the armed Kosovo resistance, hadn't he?

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  KLA, yeah.

• 36:08Rory Stewart?

  And so his replacement, paradoxically, Albin Korty, who was a political prisoner under Milosevic, and who isn't somebody who's generally accused of corruption and is seen as a sort of more austere, idealistic figure, may actually turn out to be a little bit more dangerous because. Hashem Sachi, although he had all these allegations of corruption, was seen as much more willing to compromise, much more pragmatic, much happier working with EU negotiators. Albin Kurti, with this sort of more austere, idealistic background, is seen as much more rigid and much less likely to compromise. I mean, understandably, the guy was kept as a political prisoner in Serbia for a very long time. He's not really prepared to meet the Serbs halfway.

• 36:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. The other thing about Thatcher is I think that regardless, or partially because he was so keen to escape the sense of what his background was, he was, I think, much more interested in the international side of the role as well. He was always very keen to keep those parts of the international community that were closely involved in Kosovo to keep them on side. And, you know, and so there he is now. I think he's in, he's going to face a war crimes tribunal.

• 37:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, in a special court, yeah.

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  So I think, I'm assuming he's in the Hague now.

• 37:25Rory Stewart?

  That this is where I should be Googling, but I get told off by you for Googling.

• 37:28Alastair Campbell?

  And also, Rory, even though our listeners can't see what you're doing with your hands, I can.

• 37:32Rory Stewart?

  Here they are, up, fiddling with my brand new, posh new watch. Listen, on the question of Kosovo joining the EU and this idea that actually EU accession is one of the keys to peace in the region, one of the problems with Kosovo, which actually relates to our conversations around Scotland and the EU, is that five EU countries refuse to recognise Kosovo: Spain, Cyprus, Slovakia, Romania, Greece. And with Spain, it's worries about Catalonia. With Cyprus, it's obviously worries about North Cyprus. Slovakia and Romania, it's the worries about their Hungarian region. So these are European countries that are very, very uncomfortable about the breakups of their own unions and feel very threatened

• 38:17Rory Stewart?

  by the idea of independence movements within their own countries. And you remember, actually, during the Scottish referendum, that senior Spanish politicians were used by the union as side to speak out and say they were not quite sure they were going to provide a comfortable route. For Scotland to join the European Union because they're worried that this is exactly what the Catalan, the Kosovo, the Hungarian factions in Romania and Slovakia, the North Cypriots, et cetera, are trying to use as part of their independence movement. And that's one of the things that's got Kosovo stuck. And finally, Montenegro. So, Montenegro should be the country that would have had the easiest route into the European Union. Six hundred and fifty thousand people, ethnically relatively homogeneous, Serbian-Montenegrin population, although there are disputes about how Serbian, how Montenegrin and the nature

• 39:01Rory Stewart?

  of their Orthodox Church, but a small country, and yet again, absolutely blocked, and blocked in large part by your friend Macron. Because he continues to think, even with a tiny country like Montenegro, that any more enlargement of the EU is a threat to closer political integration. And this is where, to return to the Campbell-Stewart theme, the European Union should be much, much more imaginative about at least offering single market access for these countries, even if they're not going to put them into the political union. If they offered Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, the four freedoms, including freedom of movement, it would transform the politics in those countries, give the motivation for people

• 39:45Rory Stewart?

  throughout the Balkans to sign up to compromises that they're veering away from at the moment, provide a wonderful counterbalance to the Russian threats in the Balkans.

• 39:53Alastair Campbell?

  That's why the EU Western Balkan Summit in Tirana recently was so important, and why actually the mood music around Macron, who I think you're right, is seen as the, in many ways, the biggest obstacle. Because, I don't know, I haven't really heard Scholz say much about it, but Merkel was very, very keen on the Balkans sort of moving ever closer to the European Union. I can see why with politics as it is, and nationalism as it is, and with Le Pen on the march, et cetera, I can see why they're very worried about it. But the point you made earlier about Russia, and where the Balkans fits strategically between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, is a hugely significant issue. And the European Union, I think they are seized of it, but they're not giving them much hope at the moment.

• 40:33Rory Stewart?

  But I think, single market customs union, I think, as we think about this with sort of soft Brexit UK versions, I think it can also Work the other way for members that they're not quite prepared to take in yet.

• 40:45Alastair Campbell?

  Here's an idea, Rory, here's an idea. What about, this would just be amazing. Imagine getting all the countries of the Balkans into a unified Balkan citizens' assembly. Imagine being a fly on the wall of that one.

• 40:59Rory Stewart?

  I thought you were about to propose a new sort of proto-European outer circle, which would consist only of the UK, Albania, Montenegro.

• 41:07Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God. By the way, just briefly, one other little thing on the foreign affairs front before we get closer to home. You know, I like this thing, the conversation, which is where they put pieces by academics.

• 41:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, quite, quite long pieces.

• 41:22Alastair Campbell?

  Long, yeah. So I read this, this one, the headline, China and Russia's uneven relationship can be explained with one word. And it's written by a woman called Ariel Shangguan, Assistant Professor, Zhan Jiaotong, Liverpool University. And it sets out how the basis of the relationship between Russia and China is a joint statement issued not long before the Ukraine war. And in particular, this phrase, the no limits friendship. But she, she, her whole life, what a wonderful way to live your life. She basically specializes in studying problems of translations in international relations, which is wonderful. And she argues that the Russian word, when you read the Russian version of the statement,

• 42:08Alastair Campbell?

  it is a word, the word is friendship. But when you read the Chinese version, it actually translates as friendliness, which is slightly different.

• 42:17Rory Stewart?

  This is very, this is where we need you as the linguists, we need you to reflect on.

• 42:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I don't speak any of this. I don't, I don't speak any of these.

• 42:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, you'll tell us about the French and German difference between friendship and friendliness. What would be the difference in German between friendship and friendliness? And what would be the implications that do?

• 42:32Alastair Campbell?

  Oh God, well, and what is it in French, amitié? I think it'd be the same word, friendliness. No, it might be amical rather than ami, amical. So it's a bit of a difference between amiability.

• 42:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:46Alastair Campbell?

  I guess, and genuine, a genuine closeness.

• 42:50Rory Stewart?

  How about, how about this word gemutlikat?

• 42:52Alastair Campbell?

  Gemutlikat, yeah, as opposed to freundschaft.

• 42:55Rory Stewart?

  There you go, do you see?

• 42:56Alastair Campbell?

  Gemutlikat is like sort of feeling at ease with, I guess.

• 43:00Rory Stewart?

  So, so anyway, the basic idea then is that the Chinese are being slightly less committed to it than the Russians are.

• 43:05Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. And what it means is that when you talk about there being no limits, there may be no limits to the friendliness, but there are limits to the idea of a friendship. In other words, they're not going, they're not going to support on everything, just as a matter of course. And does that explain why maybe Xi is not quite as pro Putin on Ukraine as his good friend in Minsk, Mr. Lukashenko?

• 43:29Rory Stewart?

  That's very good, very good.

• 43:30Alastair Campbell?

  And I thought that was a very interesting piece.

• 43:32Rory Stewart?

  Um, instantly, just on, on long articles, um, just if anyone's interested in following up on this point about the European Union and its role, positive, potential positive role in bringing peace to Balkans, there's an amazing organisation called ESI, which stands for the European Stability Initiative, which has written a long piece called Elephants and Skopje, Balkan Turtle Race in Ukraine, if people want to pick it up, and we can put it in the, the links.

• 43:56Alastair Campbell?

  Now, shall we, shall we talk a little bit about our own country, the United Kingdom? Um, a couple of things, the strikes are still going on, we've got another nurses' strike today. Uh, I think bigger than, than the first one. And I have a sense of a government that doesn't really have a strategy, it just seems to be, let's sort of tough it out. And I wonder whether part of their thinking is that people are so used now to long waiting lists and decline and things not working terribly well, that they just sort of think, well, you know, let's just sit tight and see what happens.

• 44:25Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's weird, isn't it? And, and you're right. I mean, and maybe it's also that Covid, I'm thinking on my feet here, but whether Covid got people accustomed to total inconveniences in relation to hospital and transport and things, which mean that we're not quite in the world we would have been in three years ago, where, I mean, we did, I guess during Covid, have to get used to not being able to go to hospital and not being able to get on transport.

• 44:49Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing I find quite perplexing, and I can't really sort of work my way through it, when we did the Albert Hall last week, and I made that point about how I think Sunak is deliberately kind of trying to take the oxygen out of the debate, be a bit boring and so forth. So apparently he's done a big interview with the Daily Mail. Now, the Daily Mail is a newspaper that I do not allow inside the house, and I don't read it.

• 45:10Rory Stewart?

  I can't imagine anyone in your house really wanting to read the Daily Mail. It's a slightly odd that you have to put a veto on.

• 45:15Alastair Campbell?

  You just don't know, you might have a, you might have a building worker or a delivery guy who turns up and the mail accidentally drops into the house. That would be very, very difficult for me. So I, I listened to one of the paper reviews, they were talking about it. And so it was Nick Robinson and he said, and Mr Sunak, the Prime Minister's done this interview, he didn't, doesn't do many of these days. And he says this, and he says this, by the time I'd got into the swimming pool at five past seven, I'd completely forgotten what it was. And I've got a, I've got a sense of Sunak, he's a little bit of an, he's a sort of invisible presence. He's not really present in our lives. And is that because he doesn't really have character and personality? Or is it because he's decided not to?

• 45:52Rory Stewart?

  Or is it that he's been listening to the advice on the podcast from?

• 45:55Alastair Campbell?

  From Julia Gillard.

• 45:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, Julia Gillard, who suggested that maybe this is how he should be doing it. We've also, you've also been talking a little bit about prisons. So I, I think you've been pointing out, there's been some very serious overcrowding in Pentonville.

• 46:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll tell you, this is another one Rory, where I just cannot understand a media that has so little interest in, in stuff like this. So this is a, a letter that I was sent, but it's been, you know, it's out there. It's not as if it's a kind of secret. It's a letter that was sent by the independent monitoring board who inspect Pentonville and was sent to Dominic Raab in his capacity as Minister of Justice. And it points out these, I think, quite awful facts. So when Pentonville was designed in 1842, okay, we're talking a long time ago, and it was built to house 520 prisoners, okay?

• 46:48Alastair Campbell?

  There are now, the current operational capacity is 1155, so we're already over double. That is now due to rise to 1170 over the next few weeks, and eventually it is going to top 1200. So the prison population inside Pentonville, which is already, I've been in there, it's incredibly overcrowded, it's very stretched, it's very stressed, it's gone up 20%, it would have gone up 20% since the end of March.

• 47:14Rory Stewart?

  It's one of the horrors. So I, obviously both of us are very interested in prisons and I was the prison minister. I was the minister responsible for Pentonville and other prisons. And these Victorian prisons, and they are, dominate most of our inner cities. So they are these huge castle looking buildings that you can see in Liverpool, in Leeds, in Bristol, and in London, places like Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs.

• 47:39Rory Stewart?

  And they, in almost every case, as you say, cells which the Victorians built for one now house two people. And they are amongst the, generally the dirtiest, most violent prisons in our whole estate. There's been a lot of talk for a long time about selling them off because many of them are on prime real estate. You know, wormwood scrubs theoretically could be sold off, but the cost of building a new prison turns out to be so unbelievable that even the hundreds of millions you'd make from selling off all those acres and wormwood scrubs isn't enough to build one of these new prisons, which seems to come in at well over a billion. And no political party, I'm afraid, ever puts enough focus on the horror of prisons.

• 48:21Rory Stewart?

  Because it's horrible for the prisons, it's horrible for the prison officers, it's horrible for the families, and it's unsafe for the public because there's no way that you can run decent education courses, decent rehabilitation courses in a prison that's so overcrowded that you're barely able to issue people's blankets, toilet paper, unlock them, lock them up and keep the whole thing running safely.

• 48:42Alastair Campbell?

  We've got to move, both in crime and justice and in mental health, we've got to move to preventative systems. There's another terrific piece on today's conversation from a guy called James Nichols, who's a lecturer in public health in Scotland, University of Stirling. And the headline on that one, Drug Deaths Are Rising, Overdose Prevention Centers Save Lives, Why Is the UK Unwilling to Introduce Them? So there are now, I think it's, I'm right in saying there are now 200 of these across the world. Berlin, Paris, Geneva, Sydney, Vancouver, New York have got places where people who are addicted to drugs can go in, they can take drugs and they can, you know, hopefully get the help and support to, to come off them. But our government won't even consider them.

• 49:27Rory Stewart?

  Let's, let's return to that. I think that's a huge issue. And, and final tribute to General Ramsbottom, famous inspector of prisons.

• 49:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Rory Stewart?

  Rambo, he was known as.

• 49:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Rory Stewart?

  Who was a very, you know, went from being somebody who came across as the, he's just died this, this week, that, that's why we're remembering him. But he was an extraordinary example of somebody who looked like the absolute epitome of a sort of ramrod. Straight fine military officer who became a very, very liberal progressive voice and a big critic of successive governments about their treatment of prisoners and also a connection to the Restless Politics because his grandson Christopher stopped me in the street, went to see our live show in London, took a photograph with me, didn't say that he was General Ramsbottom's grandson, but is a great admirer of the Restless Politics. He's had a bit of some tough moments in his life. So also a shout out to Christopher Ramsbottom for listening to the Restless Politics and his grandfather who died this week.

• 50:18Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. And I'm sure that were Dostoevsky alive, he would listen to the Restless Politics. And we should maybe close on a quote from him. A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.

• 50:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you very much. And goodbye to Dostoevsky.

• 50:36Alastair Campbell?

  And to you.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 out of 10 without parent.