Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 223. Islamophobia, chaos in the House of Commons, and the North Korean election About this episode What do Lee Anderson’s inflammatory comments mean for the Tory party? Is it possible for Parliament to have a united front on Israel-Gaza? Will North Korea ever collapse?
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Transcript 12,407 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair 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.
0:19 Rory 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.
0:42 Alastair 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?
0:49 Rory 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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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1:33 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
1:35 Rory Stewart? And with me, Rory Stewart.
1:37 Alastair Campbell? So Rory, lots to get through. I fear we're going to have to talk about Mr. Lee Anderson, Muslimist trust and Musa El Arabim and the debate raging in and around the Conservative Party about Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred, as Kemmy Badenoch insists we have to call it. We should probably talk a little bit about what happened in the House of Commons last week over the Gaza debate and the speakers handling thereof.
2:02 Alastair Campbell? Two years on from the special military operation, as Russian journalists have to call it, we know as an all out invasion of Ukraine, we should talk about that. And I think we're both quite interested in what's going on or not going on in this election year in what was expected to be the da da North Korean elections. They seem to be being delayed, Rory. So we'll have a little bit of a chat about that as well. So where do you want to start with in relation to your old party?
2:31 Rory Stewart? Well, I think probably the most disturbing is this question around Lee Anderson and his comments. And then probably we can get on to the slightly more bizarre antics of Liz Truss appearing at this kind of Trump conference in Baltimore promoting her book, which in case anyone hasn't heard is called Ten Years to Save the West.
2:54 Alastair Campbell? Shall we have a bet about whether it sells more or fewer than either Politics on the Edge or But What Can I Do? I'm going for fewer.
3:05 Rory Stewart? It's quite a title though, isn't it? And she's obviously going for this US audience. But before we get on then to the sort of serious stuff around Lee Anderson, let's just stop for a second on what happened. So just a quick reminder, this is a conference called CPAC that used to be a very central conference for Republicans in the US, but is increasingly become a Trump fan conference. The really dominant British figure in this conference seems to be Nigel Farage, who is a sort of celebrity with bits of the Republican right, far better known than Liz Truss, and turns up at these things and gets huge crowds. It was a very odd decision for her to go because it is absolutely full of people denying
3:47 Rory Stewart? that the Trump lost the election. Part of the sort of carnival atmosphere of a lot of these Trump things, there are people walking around dressed as the Statue of Liberty or dressed as different amendments that they care about. There was a pinball game about January the 6th. And into the middle of all of this, Liz Truss stands up and makes a speech in which she first complains that her plans for Britain, which just to remind people, were £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts, which essentially led to a massive loss of face in the British economy and her leaving office within just over 40 days. Anyway, claimed that she'd been frustrated by the deep state. And then went on and did an interview with Steve Bannon, the very controversial ideologue
4:29 Rory Stewart? of Donald Trump's populism, in which she said he should come over to Britain and sort out Britain and said that she thought we needed to get rid of Biden. Over to you.
4:39 Alastair Campbell? I mean, the whole thing was weird. Look, I hesitate to say this, but I sort of wonder what her family are thinking. There's something very, very odd about what's going on with her. The speech itself was a sort of truly terrible speech. When you think that not long ago, she was Prime Minister of our country, not long before that, she was a Remainer, not long before that, she was a sort of Liberal Democrat supporting Republican who wanted to get rid of the monarchy. And now here she is, is sort of out and out on the very far fringes of a very right wing Republican Party. And the thing with Steve Bannon was, I mean, you know, we talked about how there have been people who've been useful idiots to Putin. I thought Truss was a useful idiot, Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon, as Scaramucci
5:23 Alastair Campbell? said when we interviewed him on Leading, he understands what he's trying to do in a way that Trump just does it sort of instinctively. But when, for example, you have Liz Truss, former Prime Minister, saying that we're about to have a by-election in Rochdale, where there is a radical Islamic party that's standing and that's going to win. I mean, what is she, is she talking about Azar Ali, the Labour candidate who Labour have dumped? Is she talking about George Galloway?
5:47 Rory Stewart? Probably talking about George Galloway. And of course, that's feeding into something that we're about to get on to, which is the really strong interest in bits of the populist right, but also in eccentric bits of the kind of liberal secular left of wanting to see Islam as the kind of existential threat, and particularly this idea that Britain has been taken over by Islamists, which we'll get into in a second.
6:11 Alastair Campbell? She and Suella Braverman are both sort of pushing at that same door. And Bannon, of course, he was just lapping it up because it feeds into his whole thing about the great replacement theory. But what she was doing, basically, she was standing alongside Steve Bannon. Calling for the current serving American president to be got rid of and spouting nonsensical conspiracy theories. And yet, you know, we just, we sort of seem to be treating it as the British media is a bit of sort of weird political theatre. We're talking about former prime minister here.
6:40 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's a sign, though, partly of just how marginal she's become. And, you know, there is a group within the Conservative Party which likes her. There's a guy called Sir Simon Clarke coming out endorsing her all the time. And of course, she'd been signing her budget at conference. But her net popularity ratings are unbelievable. She's at minus fifty four percent in the UK. To put that in context, Boris Johnson's at minus twenty five percent, Rishi Sunak's at minus twenty seven percent. I mean, she is a very, very, very marginalized figure. And, and I think there's something really odd about her attempts to cozy up, because it clarifies the fact that basically, she would be a sort of traditional Republican, not a Trump Republican. I mean, her actual
7:24 Rory Stewart? views on the world, you know, she's famously radically in favour of free trade, you know, whether successful or not, she really believes in free trade. And of course, Trump's Republicans are isolationist. She is very much was up there on the stage pushing for why America needed to lean in harder to Ukraine when Trump backing Republicans are trying to block the sixty billion dollars of aid to Ukraine. So she's a sort of, doesn't actually sit with this Trump party at all. And when she was asked whether she believed the election had been stolen by Biden, she said, no, absolutely not. He won fair and square. So it's a very, very odd thing she's doing.
7:58 Alastair Campbell? We'll get on to about Ukraine later, but I do think it's sort of both she and Boris Johnson sort of constantly talking up the need to stand by Ukraine. Well, the biggest, among the biggest single threats to Ukraine right now is Donald Trump and the possibility of him returning as American president. Something which both of them are openly supporting. They're politically and intellectually now all over the place. You know, we're going to talk about Lee Anderson in a moment and Suella Brabham. Is it just now that we live and Trump is the kind of absolute ultimate of this? We live in a, in a political media environment now where it's really just about the attention that you can manage to get for yourself. Even when, in Johnson's case, you've been driven out of office in disgrace.
8:41 Alastair Campbell? And in Truss's case, you've been driven out of office, having absolutely bombed the economy. They can still get the attention. And is that what that sort of modern politician wants? Is that all they want?
8:51 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, I think you've put your finger on it, haven't you? Somebody was commenting that very few people watch GB News. Very few people necessarily agree with what they're saying, but by saying outrageous things, they get far more clicks and likes. I mean, I'm responsible for this part, you know, I was attacking Lee Anderson's comments. And of course that ends up with, you know, one and a half million people seeing Lee Anderson's comments because I'm attacking them. So you're right, Boris Johnson came out and said, there's little doubt the world felt safer and calmer and more stable under Trump, right? It's extraordinary kind of comments. Partly, I think it's that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss like winding people up. There's a kind of shock jock element to it. But you're also absolutely right, they get a lot of free press because of course the media jump all over it, don't they?
9:36 Alastair Campbell? Well, let's, let's just talk then about Lee Anderson. So look, I don't think if we've, we've talked before about, you know, how high up the Thatcher ministerial ladder would Rishi Sunak go? How high would Mark Harper go? How high would some of these sort of pretty second rate ministers go? But Lee Anderson, it strikes me is, you know, not very bright. He's got it like Johnson, like some, he's got a capacity for attracting attention to himself. But what he said about Sadiq Khan on GB News, you're absolutely right, was to my mind, a voidly, straightforwardly, a piece of racism.
10:13 Rory Stewart? Yeah, so what he said is, Sadiq Khan, who for international listeners, first Muslim mayor of London, he's given our capital city away to his mates. I don't actually believe the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they've got control of Khan and they've got control of London. Back to you.
10:30 Alastair Campbell? Now, so essentially what he's saying is that Sadiq Khan is not a mayor for all London. He's a mayor for not just Muslims, but what he defines as Islamists, which in. A mainstream mind is something much more dangerous and much more threatening than Muslims. So he's saying that London, the capital of the United Kingdom, has been taken over by Islamists who have got control of the mayor. And even the way, when you watch him, it was very deliberate, you know, even calling him Khan in the way that he did. It was a very, very deliberate statement. But if you go through what's happened since then, you have virtual silence from the cabinet.
11:11 Alastair Campbell? You have one or two good people, one of them we'll be talking to soon, Sadjid Javid. When I say good people, I'm saying good people on this issue, comes out straight away and says this is wrong. Sayyid Avarsi, who we interviewed on leading not long ago, has been absolutely, you know, really getting ahead above the parapet on this. And again, today, calling out Kemmy Badenoch and things that she's saying. And if you just compare, not that long ago, you had the entirety of the Conservative Party out there saying that anybody who attended the meeting where Azza Ali, the Labour candidate who said some silly things about conspiracy theories about Israel, anybody who attended the meeting should be expelled from the Labour Party.
11:52 Alastair Campbell? And yet this, we now see a WhatsApp group, these bloody WhatsApp groups of Tory MPs that keep getting leaked out, where these Tory MPs are saying, oh, my constituents are really, really upset about Lee being expelled and, you know, what's the world coming to kind of thing.
12:08 Rory Stewart? Just on that, I mean, obviously what we're missing is that the chief whip, Simon Hart, who is a moderate, thoughtful, well-respected guy, moved to suspend Lee Anderson. So Lee Anderson was booted out of the Conservative Party.
12:21 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but hold on, Ray, he was booted out because he wouldn't apologise. What I've not seen, a single Conservative come out, Sunak's been on the radio this morning, this is Monday morning, Oliver Dowden, the deputy thing, Deputy Prime Minister yesterday, they keep saying it was wrong and it was inappropriate, but then they won't say, they insist it wasn't racist, it wasn't Islamophobia.
12:42 Rory Stewart? That's really weird, but I think that the truth may be sort of halfway between us, isn't it? Thank goodness they've moved to suspend him from the Conservative Party. I mean, it would have been absolutely horrifying if they'd left this guy. In and just to remind people who this man is and why this thing's all blowing up. He is a man who was a Labour councillor. I think he was expelled from the Labour Party. He was then the parliamentary aide to Gloridel Piero, who was Labour MP. He then swapped to the Conservatives, I guess, because he was a big pro Brexit, anti immigrant person. And now has become, found himself right on the kind of right wing of the Conservatives. And he became deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. He's had himself in a lot of hot water because he, as you say, is the kind of, yeah, sort of Trumpian shock jock.
13:24 Rory Stewart? He's somebody that the kind of Brexit UKIP Reform Party is always trying to tempt over. And he's also presumably trying to martyr himself, isn't he, for his future career? One of the reasons he's not apologising is he's rather enjoying the fact that there's going to be a lot of people out there on Twitter who are embracing him and attacking the Conservative Party.
13:43 Alastair Campbell? It's interesting, Nigel Farage was literally straight out saying, you know, come over to the Reform Party. You're far more suited here. And if you look at The Telegraph today, we should talk a little bit about the guy, this guy, Paul Marshall, who is the big money behind GB News and who's also trying to get a big stake in The Telegraph. Because he has been exposed by Hope Not Hate of having this kind of anonymous, secret Twitter account where he's been liking and reposting all sorts of tweets on this kind of Islamophobia agenda and gay rights and anti homosexuals, et cetera. And this is why I think Ofcom has got to get a grip. Because on the one hand, as you said earlier, not many people are watching GB News.
14:25 Alastair Campbell? Very few people are sitting there and say, oh, it's Lee Anderson's show on GB News. We're talking kind of, you know, a few thousand, top whack. But lots of journalists are watching because they know that this has become something where they're trying to take the media ecosystem even further to the right. And we have such a right wing ecosystem already. So this morning, The Daily Telegraph, which I have to say, used to be, for all that it's always been a Conservative Party supporting paper, it used to be a serious newspaper.
14:51 Rory Stewart? It's been many, many years since it was a senior.
14:53 Alastair Campbell? Oh, I agree, no, I agree.
14:54 Rory Stewart? You're showing your age here. I haven't seen it as a serious newspaper for 15 years at least.
14:59 Alastair Campbell? I'm going back, I'm going back to the time when I was a journalist, when you used to think The Daily Telegraph was kind of worth taking seriously. But there you are today, the front page lead is, you know, the Red Wall revolt over Anderson's sacking. And based upon this WhatsApp group of Tory MPs complaining about Lee Anderson being given the boot. Now, of course, there is a racist element in this country, there's a racist element in every country. However, I think it's one that by and large has been kept pretty well under control in this country. But what this is doing, what Anderson was doing, what Bravam was doing going into the Daily Telegraph to say the country, I mean, get this, this is in its own way worse than Anderson. She said, "The country is now
15:41 Alastair Campbell? run by Islamists, extremists and anti Semites." Not, "There are Islamists and extremists and anti Semites," but the country is being run by-
15:50 Rory Stewart? Yeah. Well, can I just comment on that? So this is a big, big theme, and it's not just a UK theme, as I was saying, it's a US theme too, and it goes back before 9/11. And there are kind of, Douglas Murray is one of the exponents of this in the UK. Christopher Hitchens, who actually was from the left, was a big exponent of this. And it's a movement which does a lot of things. So, quick explainer on this phenomenon of this way of talking about Islam. This is a group of people in the US, in the UK, and in Europe. So people like Hert Wilders in the Netherlands are another example of this, who say that Islam is a uniquely dangerous religion, that it is the only religion in the world that has
16:34 Rory Stewart? aggressive views of heretics or of homosexuals, that it is incompatible with open civil society, that our society is being taken over by Islamists, and they use statistics to try to point out what percentage of people in London support Sharia law. And off the back of that, they try to present Islam as a fundamental threat to Western society. And they are also trying to say that the very word Islamophobia, right, which is the the idea that these people have an irrational fear of Islam. They love the phrase that it, as The Spectator, for example, produced this, "A word created by fascists, used by cowards to manipulate morons." So what they're trying to say is, they're not racists, they
17:19 Rory Stewart? are just absolutely opposed to this religion. Maybe we could talk a little bit about why this is a very, very, very dangerous way of looking at the world and a very misleading way of looking at the world. But my goodness, it's it's getting traction. And what I found when I came out on Twitter attacking Lee Anderson is the very, very standard set of responses to me from people who supported him. So I had people coming saying invasion is the word. Then I had somebody posting an incredibly detailed statistics on how many Muslims there were in the country, how many of them supported Sharia law. I had people coming talking about the Rotherham gangs.
17:55 Rory Stewart? That's another big part of this whole thing, that the police turned their back on the abuse of people in Rotherham because they were afraid to confront Muslims. And then you remember Donald Trump also used to say Britain's been taken over by Islamists. I mean, this has been a trope at London, sorry, been taken over by Muslims, going back eight, 10 years.
18:15 Alastair Campbell? I know you're not a big fan of Sadiq as the mayor, but I like Sadiq and I think he's done a pretty, pretty good job. But the elected mayor of London, getting targeted in the way that he was by the elected president of the United States was frankly weird. But we all know the reason why Trump was doing it. It's exactly the same reason why Steve Bannon, I mean, Steve Bannon on a platform at the CPAC conference, talking about the Rochdale by-election. You know, these are people who want to spread the hatred and the division, who see it in their political interests of spreading the hatred and the division. And the bit that Liz Truss, maybe, I mean, look, maybe she literally wasn't listening, but I doubt it. She was clearly loving it, being on that platform with Steve Bannon.
18:58 Alastair Campbell? He called Tommy Robinson Stephen Yaxley Lennon, his real name, you know, rabble rousing, trouble making, hard right Brit. He used the word hero, heroes like Tommy Robinson have been calling this out. And she just stood there grinning at him. So I think what you've got here is is a problem. Which they are determined to make into a crisis for the country. And you had, you had Farage straight away. I don't imagine that Farage is the most God fearing person on the planet. There's Farage out talking about, you know, we're forgetting our heritage as a Judeo-Christian country. I mean, for Suella Bravman to say the country is being run. Has she seen how many, has she ever looked at the House of Commons? Has she ever looked at the British establishment? Has she ever looked at our economy?
19:42 Alastair Campbell? Has she ever looked at our media? So they're deliberately trying to inflame things.
19:47 Rory Stewart? One thing I think there, which is really important, is the way in which a problem, and obviously there is a problem, there are people in our society who are Islamists and even people who support jihadists.
19:58 Alastair Campbell? Of course, yeah, there are. By the way, Roy, the security services are on record as saying the biggest threat at the moment comes actually from the hard right.
20:08 Rory Stewart? Yep, exactly. So, so I think that's what I was leading up to. So obviously there is a problem, but what these people are doing is trying to pretend that this is the biggest problem in the world, that it's dominating our whole society. And, and it's the same internationally. So internationally, instead of focusing on the problems posed by Russia, China, or the horrible murders taking place in, in South Sudan or in, in eastern Congo, they are focusing on Islam, as though Islam is somehow, whether in Britain or internationally, the number one big thing. In my view, it absolutely is not, right? There are many, many bigger problems that we're dealing with. And this idea, and you've just done this with Suella Bravman, that somehow Islamists are running the whole society,
20:52 Rory Stewart? is really, really dangerous. And I, I think we need to find a way of explaining firstly, with respect, just what a positive role Muslim communities play in Britain. And we need politicians speaking for that. We need to speak with affection about just how constructive, honourable, engaged Muslim societies are in so many bits of British life. And secondly, to make the very obvious point that religion is not one thing, that there are many different Islams, many different approaches, with many different beliefs, and that. The jihadists don't speak for Islam. The critics bizarrely seem to be agreeing with Osama bin Laden.
21:31 Rory Stewart? They seem to be suggesting the only true Islam is this very mad, distorted, extreme jihad-y form. And they're ignoring all the Muslim scholarship, all the hundreds of millions of modern Muslims. Well, we're just talking about the Indonesian elections, right? Largest Muslim majority country in the world. And it's not a place that's a hotbed of Islamists and jihadists. But getting these facts across to people seems to be so difficult.
21:57 Alastair Campbell? But that's because we have, in large part now, a media, a large part of our media that isn't interested in getting facts across. You said there about, you know, what is the proportion of Muslims in our, in our population now? Did you, did you check the figures?
22:11 Rory Stewart? Well, the, the figure that I got is 1.3 million Muslims in London, of which, he claims, one out of eight supported global Islamic caliphate. I don't actually, actually think that's right. I think what he's picking up on is that one out of eight said that they supported Sharia law, which is a quite different claim to an ISIS global Islamic caliphate.
22:31 Alastair Campbell? The point is that too many people within this debate don't actually want to focus on the facts. So, for example, back to that Telegraph story, Red Wall revolt over Lee. I, I would love to see somebody go out today and talk to 100 people in one of those red wall seats. You're not going to find that much support for Lee Anderson, in my view. You'll find a lot of grumbling about public services. You'll find a lot of grumbling about the state of the country. And we should maybe talk a little bit about why we think they're doing it. Because, look, I could be completely wrong about this, but I think I've got enough experience and knowledge of elections and election cycles and election periods. I don't think this is helping the Conservatives at all. And I think actually it would help Rishi Sunak more.
23:15 Alastair Campbell? Yes, as you say, they've removed the whip from Lee Anderson, but they've sort of ended up in the worst of all worlds because they've removed the whip after a while, but they won't bring themselves to come out and say, yes, there is a problem with Islamophobia. And I saw Saidi yesterday. She said that she watched Oliver Down's interview and he was this mealy mouthed. Analysis and it was it was mealy mouthed and soon after they was mealy mouthed. He was basically saying, oh, what he was said was wrong and inappropriate and he should have apologised. But when he was pressed, well, what were you asking him to apologise for? He said, well, because what he said was wrong and inappropriate. Why was it wrong and inappropriate? Well, it was wrong and inappropriate.
23:53 Rory Stewart? It shouldn't be difficult to answer that because he claimed that Sadiq Khan is controlled by Islamists.
23:58 Alastair Campbell? Exactly.
23:59 Rory Stewart? Islamists are running London. I mean, it's completely grotesque.
24:01 Alastair Campbell? Sadiq Khan, whatever you think of his politics, he was elected by a very large majority of Londoners and he does the best that he can to represent all of them. That's what he should say.
24:12 Rory Stewart? It's also completely mad that Sadiq Khan is an Islamist. I mean, there's just no evidence for it at all. I mean, Sadiq Khan, yes, is a Muslim and comes from Muslim heritage, but there's absolutely no evidence that he's an extremist or in any way endorses any of these views. I mean, it's really weird stuff.
24:29 Alastair Campbell? What we also know is it will lead to more attacks on him. I mean, you know, there's lots, there was lots in the media over the weekend about, you know, security concerns around MPs, et cetera. I think it's terrible for our country. I, I, I think I'm right in saying that when Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson were Mayor of London, I'm not sure they needed round the clock security in the way that Sadiq does now.
24:50 Rory Stewart? You're also right electorally, aren't you, that it doesn't even make much electoral sense. Zach Goldsmith, when he was running to be Mayor of London.
24:57 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, he played this game, didn't he?
24:58 Rory Stewart? Yeah, began to lean into the idea that Sadiq Khan was an Islamist and did him no favours at all. In many ways, it actually defeated his whole campaign because people saw how ridiculous it was.
25:06 Alastair Campbell? And look, there is no doubt there will be elements of people will be sitting there and there'll be phony in radio stations and they'll be telling each other on Telegram and all this, oh, it's all terrible, the country's being taken over. I mean, fine, let them get on with it. But for the people in positions of leadership should be challenging that rather than playing to it. And what I think you're seeing with far too many of the Conservatives, many of them focused on what they think is going to happen after the election. I think that includes Truss, I think it includes Brabham. It clearly includes Anderson, who's, you know, he, he could actually set a record because if he's been, I think he was kicked, was he kicked out of the Labour Party? If he could, if he left. Right, so he got kicked out of Labour, he's been kicked out of Tories, maybe he should join Reform and he could get a place in the Guinness Book of Records. He's the first guy to get kicked out of three parties. I also think, by the way, maybe before we go to the Speaker, Rory.
25:51 Alastair Campbell? I think it's interesting, this very sad piece in one of the papers of the weekend, talking to people in Rochdale, sort of saying, you know, what have we done to deserve? What have we done to deserve this awful political situation that we've got? And it was quite clear to me that they, they just, that they were at a loss as to know how to vote. Now, I've got to say, I, I think it would be terrible for our parliament if George Galloway ended up back there, because, I mean, talk about a guy who's very good at sort of, you know, hatred and division. And I saw Wes Streeting saying he, if he was a, voting in Rochdale, he'd spoil his ballot paper. I'm not sure that was the right message to give either. I, I think if I were in Rochdale, I would try and work out who is best placed to stop George Galloway becoming an MP and spreading his particular form of
26:33 Rory Stewart? Sounds, sounds like you're endorsing the Labour candidate there. Um, I mean, but it's a sign, isn't it, of the, the mess that everyone's got themselves into. And I think that's a good transition, isn't it? Because one of the reasons why the rhetoric is, is mounting up is because of Gaza. And there's been a big spike in antisemitic threats. I mean, there's, we shouldn't in any way minimise that. I'm talking to Jewish friends who's reporting stories to their children being spat at, having their yarmulkes taken off their heads. And at the same time, there has been an increase in Islamophobia rhetoric of exactly the sort that we've seen from Lee Anderson. Um, so just quick explainer on what happened with the speaker, because I think it's an example of how odd the British
27:14 Rory Stewart? system is. Because basically what happened on Wednesday is the speaker made a technical decision on an amendment. An amendment is somebody introduces a motion and then you amend it, you, you put a little side note to modify it in legislation. And this stuff is pretty obscure even for most MPs, partly because most MPs vote with a party whip most of the time and don't take much interest in parliamentary procedure. There will be a few dozen MPs that are really up on this stuff, but most MPs are just going through the lobbies.
27:43 Alastair Campbell? I think that's a bit harsh, right? I think, I think more of them take an interest in parliamentary process and debate than you're saying. I do, honestly.
27:51 Rory Stewart? It may have changed since my day, but I, I promise you, if I was to take a selection of 50 MPs who join with me and quiz them about the minutiae of what's happening with this amendment thing. Many of them would struggle to to provide the argument. And actually, I think that's one of the reasons the journalists didn't manage to explain it very clearly. Anyway, the the the thing is that three times in a parliamentary session, the SNP, which is the third largest party, Scottish National Party, gets to have an opposition day. And that allows them to put forward a motion precisely targeting the issue that they want to speak about and the issue that they want to vote on. And they chose to bring forward a motion on Gaza. And with all opposition, doesn't matter whether it's Labour or SNP, these things are always designed to trip up all the other parties.
28:35 Rory Stewart? You know, whenever Labour brings a motion forward, it's designed to embarrass the government as much as possible. And in this case, the SNP brought forward a Gaza motion, which was designed to embarrass Labour as much as possible. Because what you do is you come up with a motion which sounds to the public perfectly sensible. So if someone votes against it, they're like, this is absolutely outrageous. This is why, if you look at my they work for you record, they say, you know, Rory Stewart voted to make poor people poorer, voted to, you know, punish the homeless, abuse Syria, et cetera, et cetera. Because the motion is always crafted so that if you vote against it or abstain on it, you're voting against motherhood and apple pie.
29:09 Alastair Campbell? You said about the the journalists struggling to explain it. I think one of the best explainers was actually on the News Quiz, which is, for those who don't know, is a Radio Four comedy programme. But they said that essentially what the SNP were doing, I can't remember the exact sort of details that he was, is that you put down a motion saying, I love cuddly rabbits.
29:30 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
29:31 Alastair Campbell? You know, but then you go in to say, but I think that all murderers should be hung, drawn and quartered.
29:40 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
29:41 Alastair Campbell? And what happens is that you say, well, I'd happily vote for loving cuddly cuddly rabbits, but I'm not sure about that second bit. And of course, so then you vote against or you abstain. And then the campaigners go out and say, he wants to kill all cuddly rabbits. That's how it works.
29:55 Rory Stewart? That's why the so called transparency, they work for you voting record stuff is so misleading because it seems very straightforward. But you're absolutely right. What happens is you look at my voting record, I'm voting against cuddly rabbits again and again. Because actually, the motion usually says, I love cuddly rabbits and the Conservative government. The most evil government that's ever existed.
30:13 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
30:14 Rory Stewart? You as a Conservative can't vote for that. And it looks like you're voting against it. Anyway, in this case, the SNP decided to call for an immediate ceasefire. Labour instead wanted an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. And the government wanted an immediate humanitarian pause. So these three tiny little differences in language. And at the last moment, the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, is a former Labour MP. Although when you become Speaker, you become impartial. He chose to break with all parliamentary procedure and allow the Labour amendment to be voted on first. And basically by doing so, what he did is he turned it from being an SNP day where the SNP defines the language and defines the vote.
30:57 Rory Stewart? Into a Labour day where Labour defines the language and defines the vote.
31:01 Alastair Campbell? I think you've explained it very well, but the reaction did sort of indicate, I think, that the main purpose of the SNP. The particular wording and the particular motion was actually as much about trying to cause trouble for Labour MPs and the Labour leadership. As it was for, as it were, the people of Gaza to whom they said they were speaking.
31:24 Rory Stewart? Which is true for all opposition day debates. And there's nothing different about that. It's like saying that's true with every Labour motion, it's true with every SNP. That's what they do. They're crafted to do that.
31:33 Alastair Campbell? But normally in opposition day debate, you're doing that in relation to the government. What happened here was you're doing it between, as it were, two opposition parties. And then the government pulled the plug. And again, there, there's a lot of confusion as to exactly why or when it was done. But you've got Labour people saying that they did it because they were worried that they were going to lose on a vote. And also that they by then felt that they were sort of, because they were quite happy with the SNP causing difficulty for the Labour Party. But what it ended up with essentially was all three of the parties looking a bit, kind of the public looking on thinking, what the hell is going on here?
32:07 Rory Stewart? Yeah, but why is it an important principle? I think all that's absolutely right. And the politics of it is that last time that SNP put forward a motion, there were big rebellions against Keir Starmer over this. And people were afraid that nearly 100 MPs would rebel against Keir Starmer. And endorsed the SNP and it was Labour Party. So there's every reason in the world politically for Keir Starmer and Labour not to want SNP to do this. And this kind of politics would have been very damaging to Labour. The problem, though, is that the Speaker broke the parliamentary procedure. He took the opposition day debate away from the SNP, helped Labour with their political problems. And he said that the reason why he did it was that MPs said to him that they'd been threatened by extremists.
32:50 Rory Stewart? And that if they'd been forced to choose whether or not to vote for the SNP motion, they would have been in trouble. And what I guess the Labour MP that's saying that is saying is that if they'd voted for the SNP motion, yep, okay, that's fine. But they would have had to resign from their front bench position and they would have been in trouble with Keir Starmer. And if, on the other hand, they voted with Keir Starmer, they would have been accused of being against a ceasefire in Gaza. So they were in a difficult position. The reason why this is a big problem is that the British constitution is all about these unwritten rules. And what the Speaker did was pretty outrageous. He didn't even appear at the end of the debate. The clerks, who were the officials who were meant to preside over this, advised strongly against what he was doing, saying it was breaking procedure. And actually, the senior clerks didn't attend the end of the debate, apparently, in protest.
33:35 Rory Stewart? And the combination of two things, firstly, him breaking parliamentary procedure to favour a party. But secondly, him doing it because MPs said they were being threatened is very dangerous. We shouldn't be changing parliamentary procedure because MPs claim they're being threatened. Otherwise, you're encouraging more extremists to threaten.
33:51 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I've actually, not in recent days, but having the past spoken to Lindsay Hoyle about this issue of MPs' security and the levels of abuse and hatred that they face and so forth. And we forget so quickly, it's not that long ago that David Amos was killed. It's not that long ago that Joe Cox was killed. And I remember, I think it was, was it Charles Walker? I saw one, there's a Conservative MP saying that the thing I know about Lindsay Hoyle is he's absolutely obsessed with MP security. But I agree with you, we have to have in a healthy democracy, the MPs able to go about their business, to live their lives without being in fear and to make decisions which are always going to upset somebody. Okay, you've got to have that.
34:34 Alastair Campbell? And we shouldn't be changing anything in our process where we basically say, well, I'm going to change my vote because if I don't, I'm going to get physically intimidated, my family attacked, whatever it may be. So I understand the principle he was trying to enunciate. However, I think that the combination, I think it just underlined again, two things. One is the toxicity of this issue, but also it sort of felt like another day where our current political system felt that it was creaking under the, under the weight of people's expectations of what the political system should be doing. There was an interesting moment when one of the SNP MPs spoke and very, very passionately, very, very powerfully, and there was a round of applause from the SNP MPs. And Lindsay
35:18 Alastair Campbell? Hoyle stood up and said, you've all well know, you're not meant to applaud like that in the House of Commons because that's a rule. And so one of the SNP MPs shouted out, it's a new rule. And of course, that is the danger with this. And that's when the kind of that sense of order breaks down.
35:32 Rory Stewart? Yeah, we saw the beginnings of this, so for Brexit, where both the Remainers and the Brexiteers started breaking parliamentary procedure to try to get there their way. The other thing that's reminiscent to Brexit here is that I believed strongly that there was a majority in Parliament for a soft Brexit, that there were lots of Labour MPs who basically would have been happy to vote for a customs union and a lot of Conservative MPs who were happy to vote for the backstop, which was the same thing. And we never got it through. And this is another example of this. I think there's an overwhelming majority of MPs who want a ceasefire in Gaza. And the fact that you've got these three parties absolutely at loggerheads, unable to get a majority in Parliament, proper majority in Parliament
36:14 Rory Stewart? for it, is just a sign of the way in which our party system is so screwy and weird.
36:20 Alastair Campbell? Hmm. I think the worst thing from the public's perspective was that, I mean, it really was one of those situations where there was a lot more heat than light. And I was looking at some of the Scottish media over the weekend and it was all sort of, I'm not blaming the politic, well, I'm blaming them a bit actually, but it was all framed in the context of, well, it was a good week for the SNP because it meant that they were being talked about and it was a Good week for the SNP because, you know, they've now got the speaker where they want him. It was a good, it was all this sort of tactical stuff. And, you know, meanwhile, the death toll mounts and the death toll mounts and the death toll mounts. Now, I don't buy this idea that it doesn't matter what happens in the British Parliament and that nobody in Gaza.
37:01 Alastair Campbell? You know, you hear people say, well, nobody in Gaza is sitting there saying, well, I wonder what, which amendment Lindsay Horowitz is going to take to the motion, et cetera. I think it does matter what the British Parliament says and does. But I think it's sad in a way that you couldn't get to a position where actually you think, well, maybe a Sunak or a Starmer actually says, why don't we actually try and get together and genuinely have a united message about this? Where, and would it be that difficult to do? Maybe it would.
37:28 Rory Stewart? No, no, I didn't, I didn't, I don't think the difference between Labour's language around an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the government's language around immediate humanitarian pause. You know, we're, we're talking about trying to solve Northern Ireland or two-state solutions. This is not a difficult thing to get a compromise on. Well, maybe time to take a break, but wow, what a, what a week in British politics.
37:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, I suspect it will be quite a few of those before the next election.
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38:28 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
38:31 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell. And before we talk about Ukraine, Rory, I need to check in with you. How's your, how's your heart rate? How's your pulse rate after your little spat with Jamie Rubin on leading?
38:41 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that's right. Encourage people to listen to Jamie Rubin on leading. It was very interesting, actually. I mean, I don't know whether I was getting wound up, but Jamie was getting a little bit wound up and apologised at the end, sweetie. And maybe I should have apologised more. We got really, and if people want to listen to leading, it's a good chance to do it. He was providing a very, very strong defence, as you'd expect, of the Biden presidency, and a very strong defence of America still being the indispensable power in the world. And I was trying to question that and suggesting that actually America's power has diminished a lot since the 1990s and that people are very worried about American isolationism. One thing for the record, I was thinking about this last night, he called me out on Syria. So I was saying that America lost quite a lot of reputation when Obama did not hold
39:26 Rory Stewart? the red line that he said in Syria. He said, you know, if they use chemical weapons, I'll bomb them. And they use chemical weapons and he didn't bomb. And Jamie Rubin, I think, pushed me two, three times to say, well, if you were in favour of intervention in Syria. And it was right that he did that because the truth is, I was very conflicted about Syria. I would have been very doubtful about an intervention or invasion of Syria. I did think narrowly on this particular question, if someone uses chemical weapons and the US government says, if you use chemical weapons, we'll bomb you. Should the US government bomb? Yes, they should. I think chemical weapons are an unusual thing. But I think he's pointed to something sort of bigger and more important, which is that he senses that someone like me is in a pretty difficult position. On the one hand, I've been very critical of American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and doubtful about full-scale intervention in Syria.
40:11 Alastair Campbell? As has he, as has he, by the way.
40:12 Rory Stewart? Right. But on the other hand, I'm saying America is this indispensable power and it's not doing enough in the world and it's less relevant to the world. And I think just to maybe bring this back to you on Ukraine. I mean, the reason this is relevant is that Ukraine is now becoming, I think, the latest and probably most dramatic test of whether America is actually a reliable ally. And so much depends on that. Because the way in which Biden left Afghanistan, abandoned it to the Taliban, totally unnecessarily, made a lot of people in the world wonder whether America was going to stay the course with its allies. Its refusal to act in Syria. For the UAE and Saudi, as I said, it's refusal to back them against Houthis and myself.
40:52 Rory Stewart? But now Ukraine, if the Republicans, the Trump Republicans, back out of Ukraine and let Putin consolidate and increase his position in Ukraine, I think that really is very damaging, very damaging for the ability of South Koreans to depend on the US, the ability of the Taiwanese to feel they're dependent. In fact, all around the world, anyone who relied on the US for defence will lose that faith even more than they have already.
41:21 Alastair Campbell? The other really interesting part of the interview that I found was him describing this new job that he has at the Global Engagement Centre, trying to counter Russian, Chinese, Iranian propaganda. And this difficulty that there is now of democratic systems defending themselves within the kind of media political ecosystems against dictatorships which have free access to our space, as it were, but which is not reciprocated. And he said of all the challenges he's faced, whether that was arms control or the Balkans or all the different things he's been involved in as a diplomat, particularly when he was working for the Clinton government, he described this as the most difficult issue that he's dealt with.
42:02 Alastair Campbell? And I think this does act as a link to Ukraine, because I think what we're seeing two years on is a really quite dangerous waning of the levels of support that there were at the start. Now, you could say, well, that's obvious because the longer something goes on. But if you're the dictatorship that Russia is, then you can do things like, and I'm not, by the way, saying this is the system we should have, I'm simply making an observation, that he wipes out Navalny just ahead of a sham election. He can put out all sorts of figures for the support. We don't really know how many people have died. So you've got this war going on, dependent upon Western support, that is so clear from
42:46 Alastair Campbell? everything that Zelensky's been saying, dependent particularly on the Americans but also dependent on the Europeans. And there's this debate happening, as you said, in the Republican Party in America, where essentially it's becoming almost like... You know, well, we, why should we be the ones who are helping out the Ukrainians? And that's why these voices, I thought, one of the most powerful, well, there have been two very powerful speeches I've seen this week. One was an interview with the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaya Kalas, about why the West has to stick to this because if it's Ukraine first, don't imagine it's going to be Ukraine last. And the other thing is your, if I can say, Rory, your former fellow Bullingdon Club member, although both briefly, I think, the Foreign Minister of Poland.
43:28 Rory Stewart? Can I just, on the record, I resigned at my first meeting because I was so disgusted. I think this guy, Radek Sikorski, ran it all the way and I think was a great friend of Boris Johnson's and everyone.
43:38 Alastair Campbell? Radek Sikorski is currently Foreign Minister of Poland. We should put in the newsletter this fabulous intervention he made at the United Nations, where he went through the Russian ambassador's speech line by line. I'll just say briefly some of the main points. He calls them a criminal Kiev regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government. He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the Defence Minister is Muslim, they have no political prisoners. He blamed the war and US neo-colonialism. In fact, it's Russia that tried to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century under the Bolsheviks. This is their third attempt. And on and on and on it went. It was line by line. A very powerful and, you know, pretty brave thing to do, face to face.
44:18 Alastair Campbell? I mean, we had it, when we get to Q and A tomorrow, Rory, we had a question about whether diplomacy needs a sort of reset where people are too polite to each other. This was a very, very, very effective piece of aggressive debating and I recommend that people see it.
44:34 Rory Stewart? We often do shout outs to ECFR, European Council on Foreign Relations, and they've done a really interesting poll that we'll again put in the newsletter on the views of European countries towards Ukraine and the way in which that's shifting. So the poll suggests, and it's a big, big poll across all of Europe, suggests that now only 10% of Europeans think the Ukrainians are going to win, 20% think the Russians are going to win, 35% think it's going to end in some kind of settlement. So their expectations are gloomy. On the other hand, their support for Ukraine. Ukraine is very strong. So overwhelmingly, a plurality, not a majority, but a plurality of people very much feel that their countries should keep supporting Ukraine.
45:18 Rory Stewart? And Europe has put in nearly a hundred billion dollars so far compared to about seventy five billion from the US. The problem, though, is that if the US were to stop funding, it's almost inconceivable that Europe would be able to double its funding. And in any case, it simply doesn't have the missiles, doesn't have the weapons that Ukraine needs, even if it provided the money. One thing I wanted to raise with you, though. The countries that seem to be most keen on a settlement and most sort of, I don't know, quite pro-Russian, but definitely most skeptical about the Ukrainian government are Hungary, you can understand that. I mean, Orban's a big kind of pro-Putin guy. Italy, maybe you can understand that a little bit with Giorgia Maloney. Romania, but also Austria and Greece.
46:03 Rory Stewart? And it's sort of consistent across most of the questions. That doesn't matter whether it's questions about whether Russia is going to win or whether we should have a settlement or how much we should support Ukraine. Those are the five countries which seem to be weakest in their support for Ukraine. Any views on what it is in Austrian, Greek, Romanian politics that means that people are seem to be more, I suppose, pro-Russian on this?
46:28 Alastair Campbell? Look, Austrian politics is probably something we should talk about a bit more often than we do because I think there is a bizarre link between right-wing extremism and Austria has a pretty strong right-wing element in its in its politics and this bizarre support for what they define as strong Russian leadership. With Italy, interestingly, I I I we talk a bit about Maloney and how she's trying to be a little bit different to how she projected herself when she was an opposition figure. I thought it was interesting she went to the event with Zelensky on the day of the second anniversary. I think it was her, Prime Minister Belgium. Prime Minister of Canada, Ursula von der Leyen, were all there at a kind of little ceremony that they did. So that, I guess, was her expression of support. I think the
47:13 Alastair Campbell? other thing that we underestimate how big a change this is going to be for all of these European countries if they engage in this debate about defence spending. So if you look at, I don't know where Greece and Romania are in relation to defence spending, but I imagine they're a lot lower. I think Poland is the top at the moment in the European context. Germany has increased its defence spending, we're increasing defence spending. But I wonder whether it's part of that, that they're continuing to look to the bigger countries to lift the load on defence spending.
47:44 Rory Stewart? I think Greece is weirdly quite high without having a very effective military.
47:48 Alastair Campbell? Look, Greece actually is one of the few countries on paper that is up there, above the 2%, but I think that their issue in the spending is that they have very, very, very high pensions for their military, and I think that's what takes up a lot of the money. So I'm not sure that they're as it were as combat-ready as those figures might suggest.
48:07 Rory Stewart? Well, we're going to get the Greek Prime Minister on leading soon, and he's a very interesting, I think, quite moderate centrist figure who's defeated populism. But there's also, I think, a very strong tradition of Greek sympathy for Russia, going all the way back to Russia's support for Greece against the Ottoman Empire. So maybe this is more historical stuff. Just quick summary of where we are, because I think a lot of people will have heard this, but essentially, on the plus side, if like you and me, you're on the Ukrainian side in this, the remarkable thing is that Russia failed to take Kiev. The remarkable thing is that there's been a massive increase in European defence spending. Sweden signing up to join NATO, a sense that the European Union and
48:49 Rory Stewart? NATO held together much more strongly than people thought, that Germany, who Putin would have bet would sort of refuse to confront him because they were worried about gas exports, actually held firm. In some ways, been quite impressive in the way that it's unified Europe and NATO against Putin.
49:06 Alastair Campbell? On the point about, you know, go back to the very, very start, and if you remember when the Americans, they got hold of the intelligence related to the planning of this, and the original planning in the Russian system was that this was going to take three days, and here we are, two years later. And as you say, at the moment, conventional wisdom that the Russians are doing better, but that can turn around again, provided that the commitment from America and Europe is maintained.
49:35 Rory Stewart? Yes, the thing, I suppose, on the other side of the story is that the hope for sanctions didn't work in the way that people expected. Biden produced this great line that the ruble had been reduced to rubble. And actually, as Russia's
49:49 Alastair Campbell? That's not, that's not happened.
49:50 Rory Stewart? No, has ramped up its defence spending, its economy will grow faster. Germany, China and India are buying its oil. And even though these were the most comprehensive sanctions imaginable, they tried to exclude it from the basic payment systems of the world, from SWIFT and all this stuff. There's just been a use of different types of ships, different types of cryptocurrency, de-dollarisation, a lot of cunning schemes to make sure that Russia continues to export and get its income in. So I just think that the challenge for politicians, and I'd love to hear you on this and how you make this political case, because it'll be central for an incoming Labour government. The argument has to be that this is not just about Ukraine. Yes, of course, it's ground to a stalemate. Yes,
50:32 Rory Stewart? of course, very few people believe in a Ukrainian counter-offensive is going to work anytime soon. And yes, AVDCA has been lost to the Russians. But the major point is that if Putin is allowed to get away with this, what that means for the security of Europe, for America credibility around the world, I mean, it's a much, much bigger threat to international global security.
50:56 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, just on AVDCA, according to the Institute for the Study of War, more Russians have died in the seizing of that one place than died in the entire Soviet Afghan War. I think that we've, now, it's very hard to get accurate figures, that's for sure. Zelensky this weekend came out and said, I think that the Ukrainians had lost, he said, 31,000 soldiers.
51:19 Rory Stewart? Which is much lower than a lot of independent analysts think. They would think nearly twice as many.
51:23 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And then some of the, you know, again, how do you, how do we even get to know or assess? But there've been independent news sources in Russia, which think that the scale of Russian military death is in the 80,000s. Some American assessments go even higher on both. But we're talking about a lot of people who've died. And so I think the the politics of this are fundamental. I think it gets harder and harder for Zelensky to keep making the same points again and again and again and again to the European countries that they have to see this as as their fight as well. But I I I mentioned earlier the intervention from Kayakala. Some I think these some of these Baltic
52:04 Alastair Campbell? countries are saying the sorts of things that we should be saying, that if he wins, this is not going to be the end of it. And that is the lesson of history. It's also the lesson of Putin, that what he gets away with, as soon as he gets away with, he thinks he can get away with more. And therefore, I think it does have to become part of the argument for going into the next election, that we probably are going to have to increase defence spending. I also think, by the way, that if and when whoever wins the next election, Rory, and by the way, David Gork, with whom I did an event the other day, he he shares your view that it's probably going to be quite a big Labour win. He also, by the way, Rory, said that, you know, he's still on the bench. If you have to pull out at all, he's there waiting on the bench. And his third request to you, third
52:48 Alastair Campbell? point, was that if I can do an event for the local bookshop in Chorley Wood with the paperback of my book, you can do the same with yours. That was from your hero, David.
52:58 Rory Stewart? Very good. Very good. It's from my hero, David Gork, yeah.
53:00 Alastair Campbell? Says, I, yes. Shall I tell him you'll do that?
53:07 Alastair Campbell? Maybe.
53:07 Rory Stewart? You've got to follow up with, is that a yes or a no? Just keep asking until eventually I weep. That's the great thing.
53:13 Alastair Campbell? And then and then you can say, I've been very clear.
53:15 Rory Stewart? I've been very clear, exactly. Just you, at the beginning of this, and we, I guess we're coming to the end of the podcast, but you wanted to bring us on to the North Korean elections. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your thoughts on North Korea. And I've got some stuff to say about North Korea, too.
53:29 Alastair Campbell? Every week, I, one of the things I do is I go through the list, because there are so many elections this year, go through the the the list of of all the elections and see which ones, you know, maybe we should, we should think about discussing. And So what I discovered this week is that I thought, my God, there's meant to be an election in North Korea. Now, on the one hand, we can say, well, what's the point of an election in North Korea, given the place is a complete dictatorship? But they do have elections to something called the Supreme People's Assembly.
54:02 Rory Stewart? And you'd be pleased, Felix? It's not the proportional representation system I want. It's a first past the post Keir Starmer style election.
54:10 Alastair Campbell? Well, it's even less pleasing than that. Essentially, you have a candidate and you can say yes or no.
54:17 Rory Stewart? And I believe if you say no, you have to pick up a very different red pen in the open voting booth, seen by a party official to say no.
54:26 Alastair Campbell? I think it might even be worse than that. I think you have to come out and put it into one box or another. So the yes votes go very clearly into that box, and the no votes go to that one. But what is interesting is that, because he made this, Kim Jong-un made this speech recently, pretty changing strategy, essentially saying it's no longer like trying to unify, we're very much two states and that's the future. And essentially, we're at war as opposed to trying to build peace. But he also, he does want to change the constitution and that is seen as quite a big deal. And so I think that what was meant to happen, they thought the elections were going to be mid-March, around March
55:07 Alastair Campbell? the 11th. And then the first session would have been March the 22nd, then a big opening ceremony, and then he would have been able to go on to get a new State Affairs Commission Chair and amend the constitution. But it's been, for some reason, nothing has happened. All the preparations that are meant to happen before this sham election have not happened. So anyway, it's just interesting because, of course, in South Korea, we're coming up to, I think they've got their election in April. So it just shows that even within a dictatorship, when you have elections that aren't necessarily free and fair, that you have worries around them that make it quite difficult even to have them when you know that you're going to win.
55:46 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that's right. I think these countries are always more fragile than they look from the outside. And there's absolutely a day is going to come when North Korea will, when the regime will collapse. And in a way, that isn't necessarily as much a thing to look forward to as people might suggest. It will be a moment of real anarchy and chaos, which will impose huge strains on the world in South Korea when the North Korean regime comes down. But it's also, you've pointed to something interesting about all these regimes, which is the way in which they still want to pretend to certain kinds of legitimacy. So oddly, North Korea still pretends to have a kind of multi-party system. There are two miniature little parties, which are controlled, of course, by the the main party.
56:30 Rory Stewart? But one of them got fifty seats in parliament. And it's a sort of relic of a nineteen forty's parties that's kept artificially alive. And other bits of the system, they don't pretend at all. So for example, if you are arrested as a political prisoner in Stalin's Russia, you would have a show trial. They'd at least go through the motions. And before they shot you, they'd tell you what you were being shot for, what the charge was. In North Korea, you simply disappear. There's no pretense at a trial. And there are, you know, better, it's difficult to get figures on this, but there's definitely at least one hundred and fifty thousand political prisoners in camps, which is a proportion of populations, you know, similar to Stalin's Russia. And a couple of other things, I think that, I mean, it it changes, of course, you know, as we've changed from the great leader to the dear leader to the supreme leader,
57:14 Rory Stewart? which is the kind of grandson, grandfather, father's son, change of leaders in the family.
57:19 Alastair Campbell? On that, Roy, on that bait, why are you so confident therefore that one day it will collapse? They've lasted a fairly long time.
57:25 Rory Stewart? They've lasted an unbelievably long time since the nineteen forty's. But it's partly that the whole thing is so inherently bizarre. Their textbooks, for example, insist that South Korea is this incredibly poor country with millions of unemployed, where you can't go to school because you you're not allowed free education in South Korea. I mean, their claims become madder and madder. I mean, up till the nineteen seventies, there was at least not such a huge gap between North Korea and South Korea. But they can now see South Korea getting prosperous. They can also see China, which, of course, they have more access to than other countries, incredibly prosperous. And the system is so odd.
58:07 Rory Stewart? I mean, one of the things in it that we we talked about Korean history and Korean culture, and Korea had a very strong caste system, like a sort of very rigid class system. And in North Korea, it's been Kept going but inverted. So it's the sort of world in which you sometimes jokingly fantasize about in Britain. If you are the descendant of a posh person in North Korea, you are considered a hostile force and you're not allowed to live in a city and you're not allowed to live, go to a posh university. So if your great grandfather was a landowner or your great grandfather was kind of part of the elite, the great grandchildren are not allowed
58:48 Rory Stewart? to access any goods at all. If on the other hand, your great grandfather was a revolutionary hero, you get fast-tracked into all the government jobs.
58:56 Alastair Campbell? Those are North Korean style leveling up.
58:58 Rory Stewart? Yeah, it's exactly, it's a proper leveling up. And it's called the Songbun system. But it's one of the ways in which control is kept because you know that if you step out of line, your great grandchildren are still going to be suffering. It's not just you.
59:12 Alastair Campbell? Interesting.
59:13 Rory Stewart? It's also, I think, really interesting economic system because it's sort of a very, very pure version of totalitarian communism. Much more than Stalin's Russia, much more than North Vietnamese communism. There's basically no private enterprise at all. I mean, in Stalin's Russia, 50% of the potatoes grown were grown on little private plots by farmers. But in North Korea, there are basically no private plots. They're tiny, minuscule, and everything comes from the state. Your rice comes from the state, your wheat flour comes from the state, your black and white television comes from the state. And you go every week to these indoctrination meetings, which make Conservative Party meetings seem mild by comparison. You have to do three a week, two hours of listening to indoctrination.
59:58 Rory Stewart? And in the third one, you self-criticize yourself. So you have every week to talk about how you didn't polish the great leader's picture enough, or you turned up late for work and then someone else will criticize you.
1:00:07 Alastair Campbell? We talk a lot on the podcast about, when we're talking about elections, about sort of modern campaign techniques. One of the factors that is being weighed up in the balance as to when he finally should commit to this election so that he can set up this new sort of constitutional board to get his constitutional change through, is that one of the reasons why mid-March is less appealing is that this is the time of the year when the winds from the southeast tend to be very, very strong. And that helps those who are launching balloons filled with propaganda pamphlets into the north from the south.
1:00:42 Rory Stewart? So, right, right.
1:00:43 Alastair Campbell? So that is one of, one of the factors apparently across Kim Jong Un's desk right now as he tries to work out when to have this.
1:00:50 Rory Stewart? And as I think you, you said at the beginning, I mean, I think just to finish, because of all these weirdnesses, it's easy to see it as comical, but of course it's unbelievably dangerous because trying to keep this incredible totalitarian society going and keep this one family rule going.
1:01:08 Alastair Campbell? Whilst developing nuclear weapons, whilst building new relations with China and Russia, and by the way, Putin is expected to go there after his election sham win in March.
1:01:19 Rory Stewart? Because they've been a huge supplier of actually weapons to Russia, I mean, helping Russia and Ukraine. And the only way that this regime survives is by this endless brinkmanship, firing nuclear missile tests, threatening people, is absolutely vital to the survival of this family. So all the incentives are in favour of a very, very dangerous situation. This is why we can't just see what Europe and the US does in Ukraine in an isolated way, because the US has 25,000 soldiers still in Korea and has done since the 1940s. And the, the problem with Trump's let's pull out of everywhere is that our whole modern system is based on America presence across the world in many of these conflicts. And
1:02:02 Rory Stewart? once it starts collapsing in Ukraine, it's very, very likely that we're going to end up in a much more violent, and of course, nuclear violent world.
1:02:09 Alastair Campbell? Now, well, we started with Lee Anderson, we're ending with Kim Jong Un. And I suppose the other election worth briefly mentioning that's happened at the weekend was Belarus.
1:02:19 Rory Stewart? Ah.
1:02:20 Alastair Campbell? Guess what? Lukashenko won.
1:02:21 Rory Stewart? Lukashenko won. The anti-corruption campaign of Lukashenko won, yeah.
1:02:26 Alastair Campbell? There we are. Well, lovely to talk to you as ever.
1:02:28 Rory Stewart? Thank you, Alison. Speak soon.
1:02:30 Alastair Campbell? See you soon. Bye.
1:02:31 Rory Stewart? Bye bye.
1:02:37 Speaker 03 Here we are getting a statement from Number Ten. On that flight, with 350 passengers on board.
1:02:46 Speaker 04 The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.
1:02:53 Speaker 05 We assess, Prime Minister... With high confidence, it was Russian.
1:02:59 Speaker 06 Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.
1:03:01 Speaker 07 They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.
1:03:04 Speaker 04 Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: You want to play, or not? You're the Prime Minister! You've done... Nothing!
1:03:18 Speaker 08 We would need to understand the policy context.
1:03:20 Speaker 04 All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. Disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.
1:03:28 Speaker 09 A FRAGO that says to... Kill the President of Russia?
1:03:33 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:03:35 Speaker 06 New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?
1:03:40 Speaker 07 You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy!
1:03:44 Speaker 06 An audio-drama journey like no other.
1:03:46 Speaker 07 Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.
1:03:50 Speaker 06 Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.
1:03:53 Speaker 08 We have two types friendly key...
1:03:55 Speaker 06 Where Britain plays its strongest hand... He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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