526. Trump's Orwellian Maths and the King's Special Relationship Mission

Is the so-called ‘special relationship’ between America and Britain already broken, and is it even worth saving? How can the UK and Europe achieve independence from the US on defence, tech and nuclear? Is Trump's comical mathematical illiteracy actually a serious threat to democracy? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at https://fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Video Editor: Josh Smith, Bruno Di Castri Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter 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.

• 0:01Alastair Campbell?

  Trump's vanity and narcissism is such that he sees himself as the king. He wants to be an emperor, he wants to be an unelected monarch.

• 0:09Rory Stewart?

  And the question now is, is it broken? The continual humiliations and insults from Trump. Does this mean that Britain now needs to think about a radically different grand strategy for the next 20 years?

• 0:19Alastair Campbell?

  Trust has broken down because of the way that Trump has conducted himself.

• 0:22Rory Stewart?

  The whole world is locked in a kind of abusive marriage where the Trump administration is saying to everybody else, "You can't afford to leave me."

• 0:30Alastair Campbell?

  The most powerful man in the world can't count, can't add up, doesn't know what a percentage is. Why have we got somebody so stupid as president and why do we treat them as normal?

• 0:41Alastair Campbell?

  This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

• 0:43Rory Stewart?

  Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long, usually arrives with a bill. And from the 1st of April, 75% of renewables obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation.

• 0:58Alastair Campbell?

  So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching?

• 1:03Rory Stewart?

  Because policy sets the floor. The saving itself is automatic. What suppliers offer beyond that isn't, and that's where real competition operates.

• 1:13Alastair Campbell?

  Fuse goes beyond the mandated saving. Customers who switch save around an additional £200 on average. In the Fuse Energy app, you can see exactly what you're using and what it costs with 24/7 support if you need it.

• 1:26Rory Stewart?

  Listeners to the show will also receive a free TripPlus subscription when they switch.

• 1:31Alastair Campbell?

  Get more than just lower rates. Switch today at fuseenergy.com/politics using the code POLITICS and save around £200 on your bills.

• 1:39Rory Stewart?

  Visit fuseenergy.com for full details and terms and conditions.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:52Alastair 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... Managed to watch it. There you go.

• 2:05Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve. And of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And 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.

• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:35Rory 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 2:51Speaker 02

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• 3:29Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 3:31Alastair Campbell?

  And with me, Alastair Campbell. So with the King in the United States, we're going to be talking about his role in diplomacy. We're going to talk about Donald Trump and expectations for the visit. We're going to talk about what that says about the broader relationship between the UK.

• 3:45Rory Stewart?

  The special relationship.

• 3:46Alastair Campbell?

  So called, between the UK and the US. We're going to talk a lot about the Balkans because we did a very interesting interview with the President of Serbia this week and we're going to get into. Broader picture in that region, which is, I think we don't talk about enough. And we're going to talk a little bit about what's happening inside Labour on a day when Keir Starmer yet again is facing a few travails. I had a wonderful expression on my German podcast this morning, Rory, about King Charles. Said he's a diplomatischer Wunderwaffe.

• 4:14Rory Stewart?

  Oh, what's that mean?

• 4:14Alastair Campbell?

  Means a diplomatic wonder weapon.

• 4:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh, wonder weapon.

• 4:17Alastair Campbell?

  So there you go.

• 4:18Rory Stewart?

  Let me start you off then on the King's visit. So right at the heart of this is this whole question of this thing called the special relationship, which was put together almost exactly 80 years ago, this phrase by Winston Churchill.

• 4:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Rory Stewart?

  And it defined a world that was an anomaly, emerged really in the Second World War through the relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill. And after the Second World War was a big UK bet that they could be the junior partner in a US liberal order. And broadly speaking, America leading the world and us doing what we were told would work because there'd be free trade, there'd be a clear financial system, there'd be a rules-based international order, there'd be United Nations. And it's not always been easy and there have been moments where it's been a bit scratchy. So I was reminded not just of the fact that Harold Wilson refused to go into the Vietnam War, but Edward Heath refused to allow the US to use British bases or overflight for the Yom Kippur War.

• 5:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 5:15Rory Stewart?

  There were controversies even in 1986 Libya bombing, where other European states refused to allow the US to use bases or overflight. And we did. And then, of course, there was the relationship that you saw with Blair and Bush. But ultimately, it sort of worked as a bet for Britain. We diminished in size, we became a smaller and smaller economy, and we somehow managed to keep a form of global power going through this US relationship. And the question now is, is it broken? The threats on Greenland, the tariffs, the continual humiliations and insults from Trump. Does this mean that Britain now needs to think about a radically different grand strategy for the next 20 years? Over to you.

• 5:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and also it wasn't just the fact of the special relationship, the other pillar. Was our leadership role in Europe. So the problem is that over the last decade, we've there's a risk that we lose both. And that's why I think at the start of Trump's second term, Kierstam was right to try to build some kind of relationship. But he's discovered, as does everybody who crosses Trump, that unless you, when Trump says jump, you just say how high, then you fall out. The reason why I think Der Spiegel calls Charles a diplomatischer Wunderwaffe, wonder weapon, is because Trump's vanity and narcissism is such that he doesn't

• 6:34Alastair Campbell?

  really see Kierstam as his opposite number, because he sees himself as the king. He wants to be an emperor. He wants to be a unelected monarch. He behaves like one. He surrounds himself by sycophants in the way that

• 6:47Rory Stewart?

  A medieval monarch would.

• 6:48Alastair Campbell?

  Medieval monarch would.

• 6:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Alastair Campbell?

  Says Rory Stewart, lest I say that any monarch surrounds himself with sycophants, amongst two Rory Stewart might be.

• 6:56Rory Stewart?

  I think contemporary monarchs may be surrounded by sycophants, but given that they're not shaping all foreign policy.

• 7:02Alastair Campbell?

  No, also, I think to be fair to your friend, the king, I think he does actually quite like to occasionally meet people who challenge his views and what have you.

• 7:09Rory Stewart?

  But the risk of them, I mean, I'm sorry, just on this king thing, I think it's a really, you know, when we're trying to understand how Trump makes decisions in foreign policy, you know, we've tried different types of analysis. We've had the very strong one, I think, which you and Michael Wolf were pushing, which is the reality TV star. There is the view which is often sold by the mooch, which is he's fundamentally either interested in headlines or making money. But I think another very powerful way of seeing him is to see it really as a court and to, I mean, I've been reading recently in a very geeky way about Elizabeth the first dealing with the Spanish and the Netherlands in the late 1500s. And you get a very Trumpian sense. I mean, she, she will promise troops and then she'll pull them

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  out. She'll insist they pay for the troops, which are her own troops. You know, you've got to pay for my bases, but then I'm going to reserve the right to move them off somewhere else. And why does this happen? Well, fundamentally, because she's a queen, right? And Trump is behaving like that. And a lot of the things that we're going to get on to with Serbia, with bribing, with corruption, comes out of the nature of this court.

• 8:12Alastair Campbell?

  I did, talking of course, I did the podcast The Court of History the other day with Sidney Blumenthal, who used to work for the Clintons and a guy called Sean Valence. And it was interesting, they were essentially, it's the court of history, but they essentially were seeing Trump in those terms. And Sean actually made the point that within the White House now, in terms of any history, there are the occasional picture of a Lincoln or an FDR, but essentially all of the historical stuff in there now is about Trump. And he actually said that Trump's view of history is that history is what has preceded his arrival and it's all been a preparation for that.

• 8:51Alastair Campbell?

  And that's how he thinks. And so what King Charles has to do, and it's going to be a very tricky thing because if you remember when Trump came over here when the Queen was still alive, I think I'm right, he's the only person I ever saw walking in front of the Queen. You know, he just thought, I'm more important, I'll walk in front of these troops here for me, I'll go and say hello to them. There will be something unexpected. I was talking to somebody who kind of works in the palace planning stuff. He said, you know, part of their planning has been, there will be something unexpected. What do we do? And the answer is stay calm and carry on, basically. It's interesting how they're not filming everything. There's going to be a lot of kind of grainy colour and black and white photograph of the history books. His encounters with Trump are not all on camera.

• 9:34Alastair Campbell?

  They're obviously worried Trump will say something and it will be difficult. Let's just imagine if Trump does go off on one, about London, about Sadiq Khan, about Keir Starmer, about Iran. It does put your friend, the King, in a difficult position because he can't just stand there if Britain and the government of Britain.

• 9:49Rory Stewart?

  Is being insulted.

• 9:50Alastair Campbell?

  Is being insulted.

• 9:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 9:51Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I don't think Trump will do it, but you can't rule it out. I think the key thing is going to be Charles's speech to Congress because that will be a text. And what we hear, by the time a lot of people listen to this, it will already have happened. But what we hear is that he is going to emphasise, yes, cooperation, yes, reconciliation, yes, there have been times where we've fallen out. But ultimately, international law, alliances, uh, democracy. So I really, really, really hope he pushes hard on the values buttons because I think that is what the world needs to hear.

• 10:25Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. I wonder though, and that seems very good. I mean, in the immediate term, it's almost, I guess, what you would have advised the King to do. Talk about international alliances, talk about democracy. But the the deeper issue is raised by Serbia, which we're going to get in on to a little bit later in in this program. Which is the Serbia option of dealing with Trump and the Gulf option and the Balkan option is very, very transactional. Pretty close to lobbying, bribing contracts to try to get his attention and access. That's one option. Option two is.

• 11:01Alastair Campbell?

  I can't see the king doing that.

• 11:02Rory Stewart?

  No, option two for Britain, I'm trying to think about British options, you know, can they be, can Britain behave like a Gulf country or a Balkan country? Probably not, because we may not have as much to offer and our political culture wouldn't allow us.

• 11:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  To behave like. Option two is the kind of Macron option, which is to make great statements and claims about a new world order. But it's not quite clear whether it ever gets delivered. I mean, you can imagine Macron still making those speeches in twenty thirty five and not much has changed. Option three is that you really begin to do the serious work and working out how Britain gets lockstep with Europe. And begins to work out how it becomes more independent.

• 11:40Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 11:40Rory Stewart?

  Now more independent on critical minerals, AI, nuclear, et cetera, really does the work. I'm so. But I fear the British option, default British option is to basically do nothing. Take that speech at Congress literally and pretend it's all going to be fine. Pretend that, you know, because it's too costly, too risky, too expensive to work out how on earth we're going to work without Trident and cloud computing. Let's just keep our head down, hope Trump's an anomaly, lean into the idea that America's always been our friends and somehow it's all going to be fine.

• 12:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, that was, that would not work, I don't think. That also depends on whether we think that post-Trump, America reverts to some kind of normality. And I'm not convinced that it does, even with the Democrats, frankly. The couple of leaders you didn't mention there, who I think are really interesting to watch at the moment. One is Carney and Canada is now amongst the many moves they made, now announcing their own sovereign wealth fund. They are talking about getting a lot closer to Europe. And Merz yesterday, I don't know if you saw it, I sent you, I'm going to give you, do you remember my favourite German word that I learnt last month? Planlosigkeit?

• 12:43Rory Stewart?

  Oh my gosh.

• 12:44Alastair Campbell?

  Planlessness.

• 12:45Rory Stewart?

  Planlessness.

• 12:46Alastair Campbell?

  That's what Merz has said about what's happening in Iran. Merz did a very, very critical intervention yesterday. He basically said Iran has been underestimated, they're humiliating Trump. And in fact, they're humiliating an entire country. And it's happening because they went into this without a clear strategy.

• 13:03Rory Stewart?

  I understand that for a second, that's really interesting because obviously Germany, as usual, at the heart of a lot of this conversation. Because they're the people with the money and they're the people who would finance the process.

• 13:11Alastair Campbell?

  Less than they had and also he's really worried about the effect of the Iran war on their economy.

• 13:16Rory Stewart?

  But given that immediately after the Iran war, he was, seemed to be a bit sort of, international law doesn't really matter. I'm going out to see Trump, I'm sitting next to him and Trump starts insulting the Spanish leader because he's not supporting the Iran war. And Merz doesn't really intervene. And so the first few days, the Iran war, Merz took quite a lot of political cost, deciding not to be very critical of the Iran war. And to sort of gently imply.

• 13:43Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know why, I think?

• 13:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Alastair Campbell?

  Because Israel was involved and it's so difficult for German leaders to criticise Israel. And it's interesting how he's, this was very much focused on the United States, what he was saying yesterday.

• 13:54Rory Stewart?

  And why politically, once you've taken the cost of not really coming, you know, not finding your great Spanish Prime Minister moment? Why then two months later come out and make the critical statements?

• 14:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think because he was hoping that if the world pressed in a sort of optional one, two, three kind of way, that something might, might come of it. What's happened over two months is Trump has listened to nobody, essentially apart from himself and his sycophants. And I think what Merz was reflecting, and it was interesting how he did it, he did it in a Q and A with schoolchildren. And it was very, very strong. So I think he's just decided. This is a sort of tipping point thing. Macron's definitely there. Macron did a briefing on to journalists the other day where he was basically saying we've got to kind of move on from America. I think Carney was there ahead of all of them. I think you're right that there's a danger that the UK just thinks we can kind of muddle through.

• 14:46Alastair Campbell?

  And the the goal of this visit of the King is to improve the relationship. So in a way, what the King and possibly the government will want out of this is at the end of the four days, people to say, well, he went and things seem better and Trump behaved, but we won't be back to normal because it's not that long ago that Trump had a state visit here.

• 15:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Alastair Campbell?

  And said how much he loved the UK, et cetera. So you'll say all that again.

• 15:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Alastair Campbell?

  But the fundamentals haven't changed. And your point about tech, nuclear, these are massive issues that we have to get on top of. And I know in Q and A, in the question time, we're going to talk about some of the tech issues, but I still worry post Peter Kyle that I sort of feel that AI is almost vanishing from our debate.

• 15:30Rory Stewart?

  Can I just come back to this European point and the Carney Metz? Firstly, it's not an easy decision. I want to give credit to why, you know, Starmer and Whitehall may sometimes look like they're burying their heads in the sand.

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, just on that, look at the price Kira's paid over Iran. Just look at the very simple thing of saying, this is not our war. We don't support what's been just look at the the consequences of that in terms of rhetoric.

• 15:55Rory Stewart?

  And also this extraordinary statement, which is worth talking about a little bit, which is that Elbridge Colby has prepared a position paper suggesting that the US may no longer support the UK in its attempt to hold on to its sovereign territory in the Falkland Islands and instead be prepared for me there in Argentina.

• 16:11Alastair Campbell?

  And you know, the next chapter, what I predicted with the next chapter in that story, that will be the next time that Hexeth and Colby go on about how, you know, the once great British military. In other words, they're picking on something where they can say, well, we know that this will annoy the Brits, but actually they're below the line. They're basically saying, we wouldn't be able to do it without us anyway. So I thought that was. A very deliberate, very provocative, very aggressive move. They undermine themselves by tying it in with the idea that Spain should be kicked out of NATO, which can't be done.

• 16:45Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 16:45Alastair Campbell?

  Because if you kick Spain out of NATO, NATO's done.

• 16:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Alastair Campbell?

  Now, you could argue, we talked about this before, you could argue NATO's done already.

• 16:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Alastair Campbell?

  Interestingly, again, from the briefing that I picked up, Charles is going to talk about the importance of NATO. And again, I hope he does.

• 16:59Rory Stewart?

  Let me just come back to this thing. So I think there are two moves. There's the bury the head in the sand move. And as you said, it's, there's a cost. And it's not just rhetorically being bullied and humiliated by Trump. It's that we don't really know how to think about having a nuclear deterrent, which isn't basically being covered by the Americans. We don't really remotely know how we could build up our own large language model, like a chat GPT or Claude. We've no idea really what we would do without American cloud computing, or the dollar, or Five Eyes. In other words, we've spent 80 years becoming completely dependent. We're like, I sometimes think we're sort of, potentially the whole world is locked

• 17:41Rory Stewart?

  in a kind of abusive marriage where essentially the Trump administration is saying to everybody else, you can't afford to leave me.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Rory Stewart?

  You know, yeah, okay, you might complain and I might humiliate you and beat you up. But the fact is, you'd never be able to make it on your own.

• 17:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Rory Stewart?

  Too expensive, too complicated.

• 17:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Rory Stewart?

  Screwed, right?

• 17:58Alastair Campbell?

  That's because we believed we had a relationship of trust. And that trust has broken down, largely, I would argue, because of the way that Trump has conducted himself.

• 18:09Rory Stewart?

  And it turned out they weren't really joint bank accounts. We didn't really have joint ownership of the house.

• 18:13Alastair Campbell?

  And there was certainly no pre-up.

• 18:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, there was certainly no pre-up. So painful, horrible, you can see why people want to bury their head in the sands. And my experience in government, and you're a bit more optimistic about government, but my experience in government is generally change is difficult. And if the whole institutions, our secrets, our intelligence service, our foreign office, our army, has spent 80 years built around the assumption that they're just junior partners to the United States, changing that requires a complete revolution at the top of the civil service, top government. Let's now go down the other option. Let's imagine that we really concluded that it's not sensible anymore to put all our eggs in the American basket. That doesn't mean getting involved with China. It doesn't mean we'll ever be entirely independent. There will still be many things we'll have to depend on the US for.

• 18:59Rory Stewart?

  And in many ways, we'll share things with them, but we need to hedge. And that brings us to our stub square. And how do we develop this European, Canadian, British square? The pessimistic view, which would be the Elbridge Colby view and the view from the Republicans is they'll never get it together. You know, my various wives may claim they're going to leave the house, but the fact is the Germans are never going to fund it. The French are going to be selfish and just insist all industrial policy is done in France. The Canadians are going to talk a great game, but then already want to get it close to Europe. And and Britain has too many internal political problems and it doesn't have the money to do it. And do you think there is a world in which Germany, France, UK, Canada can really begin to pull? So and what would be those steps?

• 19:44Rory Stewart?

  And what would Metz have to do? And what would Macron have to do? And what would Stalin have to do to actually rebalance?

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  Poor, well, I honestly do think that it means us getting back into European Union fully fledged. I've come to the view that the sort of single market customs union is nice, but it it's not going to take you there. I worry, as you know, as you call him, my friend Emmanuel Macron. But I do worry that he doesn't necessarily share this vision. I worry, we'll talk about this maybe when we talk about Vucic. I worry that actually Macron is the one who is most reluctant on enlargement. I'm actually with Zelensky and Vucic. And in a sense, they've we've if we're going to make Europe big, make it big.

• 20:31Alastair Campbell?

  And if that means changing some of the the rules, then see whether that can be done.

• 20:36Rory Stewart?

  So just tell me more about Macron, because that's very interesting. So not keen on big enlargement. And also a little bit hesitant on creating this fourth corner. I mean, how does it work? What's going on Macron's head?

• 20:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he has. You you mentioned the nuclear stuff. France is now the if if you if people understand that our nuclear deterrent is very wrapped up in America, militarily, technically, et cetera. France literally has the only independent nuclear deterrent in Europe. That gives them an extra strength. I think he sees that as a strength that should be exploited. But I think this is about politics. I think they're genuinely worried about their politics and the impact of enlargement.

• 21:11Rory Stewart?

  So that he would think it's just politically impossible. It'd be too unpopular, it would help repen too much.

• 21:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, so I think you, I think you talk the talk, but you don't necessarily. You know, in the end, the member states have got to give the leadership on enlargement. You know, the, the commission can do all the stuff and they can go through chapter by chapter as they do. Montenegro, for example, is making huge progress at the moment. But the big step, I think we're talking about big steps. Colby, you're right, is going to sit there thinking, these guys aren't going to make the big moves. I think the only big move is actually for people to say, this requires more Europe, not less. It requires, absolutely requires us to be back in there.

• 21:46Rory Stewart?

  Germany?

• 21:47Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I think the Germans would be more pragmatic about it. I think they would.

• 21:50Rory Stewart?

  And does Matt Scott a sort of big grand strategic view, do you think?

• 21:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know, but I think, I thought, I, this is the reason why I think it was so interesting what he did yesterday. The big grand strategic view used to be, we are absolutely all in with America. That is changing, that is clearly changing.

• 22:06Rory Stewart?

  Even from someone who's on the right?

• 22:08Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 22:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and would have been more sympathetic, actually, because the left in German politics did have a tradition of being a bit anti-American sometimes, right?

• 22:15Alastair Campbell?

  Still there.

• 22:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Alastair Campbell?

  I don't believe Angela Merkel would have said what Matt said yesterday. So that's changing. But I, I think what I worry about from Labour's perspective is that we're doing this kind of incremental change. I think the French and Germans are doing their equivalent of it. And I actually think what we need, you know, we talked to your friend Gerhard Knauß about John Monnet a lot. We kind of, I think we need another Monnet to come along and say, look, this is, this is not big enough what we're thinking at the moment.

• 22:42Rory Stewart?

  It's interesting, we'll, we'll, we'll maybe take a break and then come back to Vucic. But the transition into Vucic is, one of the things that he was saying is a security argument. He was essentially saying, Europe faces two paths. And he was almost blackmailing and threatening. He was saying, you know, either the US basically scoops up the lock of Eastern Europe and the Balkans and creates its own transactional relationships with them, dividing Eastern Europe from Western Europe. Or Europe reaches out, brings in these countries. And as Zelensky said, is a security argument.

• 23:11Alastair Campbell?

  And, and, and he was adding in Norway, Turkey, UK, Ukraine. Rory, if we'll go to the break, you know, I've been utterly obsessed about Trump and percentages.

• 23:20Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 23:20Alastair Campbell?

  And we now have to confront this because it is more serious than people think. So look, if I get my spectacles like that. Yeah. Okay, I'm holding that. What happens if I take my finger and thumb away? Oh, they drop onto the table. Correct. Yeah. They've dropped onto the table, right. I got that one, right. That is a basic fact that we all accept. Yeah. We understand gravity. Yeah. Because of Trump and Putin and polarization, there's nothing that is accepted universally as truth, apart from science and maths. Yeah. Okay, what is two plus two? Four. What is three times three? Nine. If you go into a shop and buy something for forty pence and you give a pound. Yep. What does the shopkeeper give you back? And what are the various formal notions that could be? I feel like I'm doing my kids.

• 24:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, exactly, exactly. But there's not a single person listening to this. Yeah. Including the least educated who don't understand that basic maths. I'm worried you're gonna ask the question. I don't know the answer. Suddenly, suddenly you're gonna be like, what's three times fifty two? I'm not gonna do that. I've got some more complicated ones coming. If you see a shop. Yeah. And it says fifty percent off everything. Yes, okay. Okay. Yeah. And you go in and before you bought a mug in there that cost ten pounds. Yeah, five pounds now. Correct. Yeah. Fifty percent of Ted is five pounds. Five pence comes off. Yeah. So if something's a hundred percent off. Oh, yeah, it would be free. Okay, if it was two hundred percent off. Ah, then, then, then the shopkeeper would have to give me money, maybe? Correct. Yeah.

• 24:44Alastair Campbell?

  God, you're doing really, really, really well. So you can't have more than a hundred percent drop. Ah. Okay? Yeah. Impossible. Yeah. So why does Donald Trump constantly say, constantly say that he's cut drug prices by variously three hundred percent, four hundred percent, five hundred percent, and twelve hundred percent? And why is that not covered anywhere in the world's media? It's amazing. What do we think he means? Well, I'm going to explain what he means because the other Robert Kennedy Junior. Explained what he meant. He was asked by Elizabeth Warren at a Senate hearing, what was the difference of the cost of a drug on Trump RX, which is their website?

• 25:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Alastair Campbell?

  And the price at Costo.

• 25:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Alastair Campbell?

  Kennedy didn't answer the question, but he said, he said this, President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There are two ways of calculating percentages.

• 25:36Rory Stewart?

  That's very good.

• 25:37Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. He then says, he says this, wait a minute.

• 25:39Rory Stewart?

  Where's it, my nine year old does that? Daddy, there are two ways of doing the maths problem. There's my way and everyone else.

• 25:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there might be, but he then goes on to say, if you have a $600 drug and it goes to $10.

• 25:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Alastair Campbell?

  That's a 600% reduction.

• 25:53Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 25:54Alastair Campbell?

  Is it?

• 25:54Rory Stewart?

  No, it's not.

• 25:55Alastair Campbell?

  No, it's 98.33%.

• 25:58Rory Stewart?

  Correct.

• 25:58Alastair Campbell?

  Because 600 minus 10 is 590. The next day, in the Oval Office, Kennedy reports to Trump on his encounter with Warren with the World's Meter there. He says she was ridiculing President Trump for his math. Math, I hate that, which they, which he, which she was, saying you can't reduce something by 600%. So Kennedy, thinking he's smart, tries to show her wrong. He said if a drug went from $100 to $600, that's a 600% rise.

• 26:24Rory Stewart?

  Wow.

• 26:24Alastair Campbell?

  Is it?

• 26:25Rory Stewart?

  No, it's six, six times. It's gone up six times.

• 26:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, but that is a 500% rise.

• 26:30Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 26:30Alastair Campbell?

  Because the increase, 60 minus 100 is 500. You divide the increase by the original price, 500 divided by 100 is five. To convert the percentage, five times 100 equals 500%.

• 26:41Rory Stewart?

  So he's trying to say it's a 500% rise and therefore Trump might think it's a 600% reduction.

• 26:46Alastair Campbell?

  He might think whatever he thinks, but then we have, then we have, it's actually an 83.3% change. Okay.

• 26:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Trump then steps in. Kennedy's been blowing so much smoke up his backside that he's now smiling and saying, yeah. He said, I take a lot of heat. I would say 500, 600, 700. We also say sometimes 50, 60, 70, 80, 90. People understand that better. There's two ways of calculating it, but either way, it doesn't make any difference whether it's 60, 70 or 80. Nobody's ever heard of it. But it's also 500, 600, 700, depending on the way you want to look at it, the way you word the calculation is either way, but Bobby, you're doing a fantastic job.

• 27:24Rory Stewart?

  Brilliant.

• 27:25Alastair Campbell?

  It is utterly, it's the most brain dead. It's just nonsense.

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  You can't, you can't, and then nobody, can you imagine if Joe Biden had said that?

• 27:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Alastair Campbell?

  Can you imagine if Keir Starmer said that? Can you imagine Macron, can you imagine if you and I said it on the podcast?

• 27:43Rory Stewart?

  People get caught.

• 27:43Alastair Campbell?

  Fifty percent is the same as five hundred percent.

• 27:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  They would think we'd lost it.

• 27:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Alastair Campbell?

  So why have we got somebody so stupid as president and why do we treat them as normal?

• 27:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's a good question.

• 27:54Alastair Campbell?

  What's the answer?

• 27:54Rory Stewart?

  It's a fundamental question. I don't, I think he, I think what he's doing is, uh, just, he just thinks big numbers are better. So he'll just produce a bigger number. I, I don't think it's really mass. I think what he's trying to say is, well, you know, I've reduced it a lot and, uh, you know, sixty percent doesn't sound like very much.

• 28:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, one, he hasn't reduced it a lot.

• 28:12Rory Stewart?

  Why don't I say six hundred percent? And that doesn't sound like very much. So why don't I say twelve hundred percent? That sounds a bit bigger.

• 28:17Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, you're.

• 28:18Rory Stewart?

  I just wanna be big.

• 28:18Alastair Campbell?

  You're normal, you're normalizing the abnormal. And the reason why I think this is serious, I think it's right out of the nothing is true, anything is possible playbook. This is about me, and it's also deliberately dumbing down his country.

• 28:29Rory Stewart?

  It's a different type of thing, isn't it? It's total sort of absurd bullshit. I mean, Putin wouldn't do that. It's because traditional dictators, nothing's true, everything's possible, are trying to say things which might be plausible. I mean, they're lies.

• 28:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Rory Stewart?

  But they might be plausible.

• 28:45Alastair Campbell?

  Special Ministry operation.

• 28:46Rory Stewart?

  This guy has gone into a different realm.

• 28:48Alastair Campbell?

  I genuinely think he doesn't know the difference. These Iran negotiations with Iranians, right? The Iranian Foreign Minister is a former nuclear engineer, right? He sends in Vance and Whitkoff. Vance, who by the way, stands there nodding as Trump comes up with this numerical bullshit.

• 29:03Rory Stewart?

  Well, but this is an opportunity for the Iranians. Maybe they can say, we're not reducing our nuclear stop bar by ten percent.

• 29:08Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, you're not taking this seriously. You're not taking it seriously.

• 29:12Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I.

• 29:13Alastair Campbell?

  Do you not see that as a serious point that the most powerful man in the world?

• 29:15Rory Stewart?

  Can't count.

• 29:16Alastair Campbell?

  Can't count, can't add up, doesn't know what a percentage is.

• 29:19Rory Stewart?

  I think all of it.

• 29:20Alastair Campbell?

  It's terrifying.

• 29:21Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's horrifying. It's horrifying. It doesn't horrify me as much as what's about to happen to Britain due to our complete inability to restructure our

• 29:29Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 29:29Rory Stewart?

  international relations. But yes, I agree.

• 29:31Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 29:31Rory Stewart?

  Trump is horrifying.

• 29:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't think you've taken it seriously enough. No, so the reason I think it's really serious, because I think it's, I think this is Orwellian. I think it's him essentially saying, whatever comes from my mouth is the truth, even if it is not borne out by reality. And I think if we can't all agree on what a fact is. I don't know how you have a democracy.

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and that that'll be true right at the heart of any democracy, that the idea of truth, accountability, transparency, all these jargon words are bound up because you can't vote for someone unless you can trust them to deliver what they say they're going to deliver, and you can't hold them accountable unless you have some idea of what the truth of what they're doing is. So, once you create a world in which a leader can say, black is white, Orwellian, you know, red is blue, there is no way of holding anyone accountable.

• 30:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and that's where he wants to be. Okay, let's take a break and then come back and talk about the Balkans and a little bit about Labour.

• 30:25Rory Stewart?

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• 30:57Alastair Campbell?

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• 31:17Rory Stewart?

  A bit like having a select committee in your wallet.

• 31:21Alastair Campbell?

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• 32:32Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest of Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 32:35Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 32:36Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, I think of all the interviews we've done, I'm not sure any of them, with the possible exception of Al Shara, have got quite as much publicity as particularly the Balkans as the interview that we did last week with President Vujicic. But before we go into that, why don't you, well, we got a bit of feedback from people saying, you know, we, I thought it was one of our most interesting interviews, but people saying, we don't know much about this part of the world. Kind of why does it matter? So tell people, before we get any further, why it matters as much as it does.

• 33:09Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think that the first reason it matters is that this is where the big European war was, right in the very heart of Europe. So if you look at a map, Serbia is sitting there in the middle of the European Union with European Union countries all the way around. And that was where in the early 90s Yugoslavia broke and a war particularly broke out between initially Serbia, Croatia and Bosnian Muslims with these horrifying genocides, millions of refugees, hundreds of thousands of people killed, Sarajevo under siege, paramilitaries, war criminals, Miladž, Karadžić. And then in 99, the Serbs...

• 33:54Rory Stewart?

  Mounted an operation which was an operation of ethnic cleansing, even potentially genocide against the Kosovo Albanian population. So that's an autonomous region in southern Serbia, which meant a lot to Serbian nationalists because it was the place where in the late Middle Ages, they'd fought a great heroic battle against the Ottomans, but was by 1999, majority dominated by Kosovo Albanian Muslims. And that then led to the second intervention. First intervention was everybody getting involved in intervention in Bosnia, stopping the war, stopping the killing in Sarajevo in the mid 90s. And the second intervention, which you were very involved in, was this intervention in 99, which eventually ended

• 34:38Rory Stewart?

  up with Milosevic's troops, the Serbian leader's troops being pushed back, Kosovo achieving autonomy, and then eventually being recognised as an independent state by many countries, but not, for example, by, certainly not by Serbia, but not even by places like Spain.

• 34:52Alastair Campbell?

  I think there are five countries which don't recognise Kosovo inside the EU.

• 34:56Rory Stewart?

  And Vucic matters because Serbia was supposed to be part of a story which, to some extent Croatia's part of, which is how this horror, this civil war, this ethnic cleansing was fixed by joining the European Union. Borders disappear, you're integrated into a whole new political structure, and Serbia was meant to be on that journey. It hasn't happened, and instead of which, it's ended up with an Orban-adjacent authoritarian ruler, who we interviewed. Over to you.

• 35:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, just to give you the background, Yugoslavia was made up of Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Macedonia. So two of those have joined the European Union, Croatia, Slovenia, and Montenegro is getting closer and closer and closer. You get the feeling that the Serbs are not, they're really not happy. Vucic was clear, he's not happy about Montenegro getting in ahead of Serbia. So what followed from Yugoslavia was what was called Fri, the Federal Republic of Serbia, of Yugoslavia, which was the Union of State of Serbia, Montenegro. Montenegro then becomes independence, you've got Serbia. I found it fascinating to see him. I've seen him a few times in the past. He and I were opposite numbers during the Kosovo War. I thought he'd have mellowed a bit in relation

• 36:11Alastair Campbell?

  to Kosovo, but I don't think he has at all. Whether that was just for a very nationalistic domestic audience, I don't know. The main story that seems to have appeared in Serf media Was when he said to me, some of us have principles, Alistair, which was seen as a sort of direct hit.

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  And which he's been selling out.

• 36:29Alastair Campbell?

  legality of what we did.

• 36:30Rory Stewart?

  We had an interesting series of meetings with bits of his staff and and they were very much insisting that he doesn't control the media. My goodness, the coverage demonstrates just how much influence he has over certain really key bits of the media. Once they decided they were briefing out, some of us have principles, Alistair. It was everywhere. I mean, tell us a little bit about how how much everywhere it was.

• 36:52Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I have I have a friend who was there, who was just sending me as they were landing, all the stuff that was that was being covered. And I mean, it was it there were dozens, even just the fact of us being there. If you remember, I posted a picture of my tree of the day in a park outside the hotel in Belgrade. And even that led to dozens just regurgitating. One of them actually said, you know, Belgrade welcomes the return of the NATO bomber, right? Which I thought was a bit off. He was so nice and charming before the interview. And actually, I didn't Fiona, my Fiona, thought he was rude and aggressive. I didn't find him rude and aggressive. I just thought he was very spiky and absolutely determined not to give an inch on Kosovo.

• 37:34Alastair Campbell?

  So most of the stories were actually about the Kosovo war.

• 37:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me let me just do a quick explainer on the Kosovo war, so people understand the two sides of this. So from the point of view of the United Kingdom and the United States and those other countries, I think it was almost nineteen of them who joined the alliance. This was the responsibility to protect. Here was a Kosovar Albanian Muslim population that was being ethnically cleansed and the West was intervening to save lives, drive back the Serbian aggressive forces and defend the human rights of the Kosovar Albanians. From the Serbian point of view, Kosovo was absolutely part of Serbia. This was an illegal intervention with no proper UN clearance and backing.

• 38:19Rory Stewart?

  It was breaking the sovereign borders of a European state, interfering in its own internal affairs. And they very much see Kosovo as being a central part of Serbia, totally reject the idea of its independence. And he was also trying to argue in the interview that what happened in ninety nine was actually the end of the global international order.

• 38:40Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 38:41Rory Stewart?

  Because it was an operation without UN sanction. It broke the sovereign borders of a state. And from his point of view, there's absolutely no difference between what NATO did in Kosovo and what Vladimir Putin did by seizing parts of eastern Ukraine, claiming he was protecting the indigenous Russian population.

• 38:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it was a huge, huge moment. I mean, Tony Blair hadn't been prime minister for that long. He actually, we had to work quite hard to persuade the Americans that this was in their national interest as well. Couldn't have been done without the Americans. And it was pretty brutal. It was brutal on both sides. And I think the reason why maybe there was quite a lot of spikiness between me and him, when I was based at NATO, we used to just, everything that came out from Vucic, we said that, well, he was the head of the Milosevic line machine, because they were, you know, propagandising the whole way. Very interesting to see, we had a lot of reaction to this interview and we've just sort of boiled it down. So here, I give you the sort of, the crux of the listener feedback, Rory. Listeners appreciated the opportunity to hear an opposing perspective. And I thought on Orban, it was really interesting to hear that, to hear somebody who likes

• 39:41Alastair Campbell?

  Orban and gave us reasons why. Some found value in listening to an articulated voice from the right and that felt that we at least engaged with that without our usual kind of sneering if it had been Boris Johnson or whoever. Quite a lot of people said they actually thought it was the best episode we've done, possibly for that reason. And the, and the basic thing coming through was how important it is in a polarised world to try to understand people of different opinion. Negative sentiment, and I think a lot of this came from inside Serbia. My friend, Nemanja Vidic, do you know Nemanja Vidic, Rory? Former footballer, Man United and Serbia. He sent me a mail, I said, what do you think? And he said, I think, I think he'd have liked it. You gave him a great platform.

• 40:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and I think, I think the Serbian opposition, a bit like people who are opponents of El Shara in Syria, are just like, you are total puppets, the regime. You came in, from the moment you arrived, Vucic's propaganda machine and his basically state-controlled media used our presence to legitimise him, mock the West, boost his nationalist credentials and that we were puppets in his hand.

• 40:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I think the reasons, and this is what's come through in the, in the feedback, is they felt we didn't push him hard enough and democratic backsliding. The, the problem is with these interviews, we, and you know, he was generous with his time, but the problem with these interviews, if, so he sort of, and he did something very clever, which, and I knew what he was doing, he basically said, I'll give you the judiciary. I'll give you the judiciary, yeah, maybe on that we've not been great, okay. But once you get into an argument about you control the media, no, I don't, yes, you do, no, you don't. It's, I just think it's so boring. The fact is, he does control very large parts of the media.

• 41:16Rory Stewart?

  There are two types of problem on that. It's very, very difficult, to be honest, for an outsider coming in to Spain or Serbia to ever have the full detailed stuff that a Spanish opposition politician or Serbian opposition politician would have to construct these arguments. But the second thing is, we have to make a choice, which is not an easy choice. If you go in in order to use it to prosecute the case that this guy is an authoritarian ruler, then it's a show where you and I are just telling our audience that we disapprove of Vucic. The second choice is to try to let these people speak for themselves and trust that the audience can take on board the fact that we don't approve of this guy. In fact, we think this guy is an extremely uncomfortable fact who is backsliding on democracy,

• 42:01Rory Stewart?

  pro Orban, flirting with Trump, pushing back on media, a very difficult actor, but we're going to give him a voice. And also, I think, you know, with Vucic, we're also gambling on something, which is the guy has changed his position so often. The big game is going to be, as we talked about in the first half, can we get Serbia into the European Union? And what does that involve in terms of holding one's nose and saying potentially, this is a nationalist authoritarian? But the bigger strategic interest of Europe is going to be getting places like Serbia and then trying to convince someone like Vucic to come along.

• 42:37Alastair Campbell?

  And at which point you would, I think actually that would be the reason and the, it would give you the, the opportunity to get rid of the whole thing of, you know, unanimity, which is what gave Orban the power to block so much of what the European Union majority wanted to do. You know, and a lot of people apparently got upset by the fact that I said at the interview, nice to see you. And he said, please, please come back to Belgrade more often. But again, I think that's, that assumes that all you should do, he and I having been literally enemies in a war situation, that assumes that you should hold on to that position forever. Now, I feel on Kosovo, he is holding on to the position for political reasons, which I understand.

• 43:18Alastair Campbell?

  And we could have sat there all day and just said, well, hold on a minute, no, this resolution, that resolution. We'd have lost people. I think it is important. There are some limits. I mean, there are some people that I wouldn't want to give necessarily give a platform to. But let's just imagine we were interviewing Donald Trump, right? Now, Donald Trump, his team would know pretty quickly what we think about him. Would we just want to expose him for what we think he is? Or would we actually want to hear why he is like he is? I think we'd want to do a mix.

• 43:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, the same would be true if you interviewed Nigel Farage or Kam Badenoch. And presumably Farage is worried about coming on the show because he doesn't think he's going to really give a chance to explain his views.

• 43:59Alastair Campbell?

  Which is not true, which is not true. And if we did that, by the way, we'd get a lot of people attacking us, but it would be the right thing to do.

• 44:04Rory Stewart?

  I also thought that Vucic.

• 44:05Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, can I just say, I think people are sick of these gotcha interviews. I just, I watched one the other day. What was it? Oh, it was Lewis Goodall. I think it's really good, but he was doing an interview with Darren Jones, Keir Starmer's chief secretary. It was unwatchable after a few minutes because, and Darren Jones handled it really well because he was quite humorous about it. But it's this whole gotcha thing. You're a bad person. I'm a good person. I'm speaking on behalf of the public. It actually is populist. It's playing into the idea as opposed to with Vucic, you're an interesting person, you're a very complicated person, and we're going to try and find out a little bit more about who you are and what you're trying to do. And by the way, I thought his stuff on China was absolutely fascinating.

• 44:46Rory Stewart?

  The final thing that I wanted to bring up, and there's so many other things I took away from it. So I was there in Montenegro and in Kosovo, nineteen ninety thousand as a British diplomat and moving back and forward with British soldiers. And I, looking back on my twenty six year old self, I must be honest.

• 45:04Alastair Campbell?

  Were you twenty six?

• 45:05Rory Stewart?

  I was twenty six then.

• 45:06Alastair Campbell?

  He was, he was twenty eight.

• 45:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I must be honest that I hadn't thought about it for a long time. And to be reminded by Vucic of the very, very negative, deep sense, you know, we walked past a building that had been hit by the NATO bombs that still has graffiti on the side.

• 45:23Alastair Campbell?

  That's the army, Kosovo, the army's returning.

• 45:26Rory Stewart?

  Yep. Me desperately trying to remember some of the Serbo Krad that the British government very kindly paid for me to learn. I'm trying to read these Cyrillic things. But the other thing that I think connects to the first half is this question of how they deal with Trump. And they, I mean, Republika Srpska.

• 45:45Rory Stewart?

  Albania, Bosnia, the rest of them. Without naming names too much, it is astonishing in that region what you pick up on. One of the leaders, it's claimed by somebody who knows a lot, gave twenty million dollars to somebody who'd been part of Trump's first administration, believing the guy would get him into the Trump second administration, and feels cheated and ripped off because the individual got a job in a different part of the Trump administration, didn't help him. Another one of the leaders has apparently handed over all the mines in the territory that he controls, and in return gets to swagger around in Mari Lago. The stories about hotels everywhere, you know.

• 46:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the army come out, the bomb site.

• 46:30Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 46:31Alastair Campbell?

  That was the site that Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. were trying to turn into a five-star hotel.

• 46:36Rory Stewart?

  Totally bizarre stuff, right? Suddenly Albanian coastal development is taking place with Trump allies. The Bosnians are now giving contracts to the brother of Flynn, who was the disgraced national security adviser and Trump's lawyer, with a company that's never done any business, that's just got over a billion-dollar contract to try to move gas lines through Bosnia.

• 46:56Alastair Campbell?

  You're not doing the Balkan case for enlargement much good here, right?

• 46:59Rory Stewart?

  Donald J. Trump Jr. suddenly turns up in Republica Serbska of all places, which is this Serb nationalist enclave of Bosnia where he's suddenly doing business. So it's and they're so frank about it. I mean, nowhere outside the Gulf have I heard countries talk so openly about the idea that essentially, and you know, they're all spending money on lobbyists. I mean, eye-watering amount. And what are these lobbyists? These lobbyists are basically people in Washington who claim that if you give them colossal sums of money, millions, millions of dollars, they will get you in, shake Trump's hand, go in for a meeting, get some concession. The case of Republica Serbska, all the sanctions were

• 47:42Rory Stewart?

  lifted. Is that or is that not connected to the fact that Trump's companies have suddenly got mining concessions and Donald J. Trump Jr. is building hotels?

• 47:49Alastair Campbell?

  No, I mean, look, the corruption, Skarim Muci keeps saying this, or the rest of the politics of the US, corruption is off the scale. And it's in plain sight. I mentioned last week the interview that Eric Trump did on live on television about a multi-million pound contract he just landed at the Pentagon. Well, was he going to get the, is he really a kind of military expert? Does he really know about drone technology? Or could it be that he's Donald Trump's son? So.

• 48:12Rory Stewart?

  And as with all corruption, my final thing that I thought is is how angry they keep getting because they'll pay someone money and nothing will happen. And one of the problems with corruption is that you don't know who's lying to you, who actually has access, who doesn't. A lot of people, I think, in the Gulf are very, very angry with the United States at the moment because they feel they gave a huge amount of money and Trump isn't replying to their calls.

• 48:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think the hotel falling through, and there's the Culture Minister.

• 48:38Rory Stewart?

  Tell us about the hotel.

• 48:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, so what's happened is that the hotel, this site, which is an extraordinary thing, it's been there ever since the war in nineteen ninety nine.

• 48:45Rory Stewart?

  And it's left with the bomb damage and the way Victoria.

• 48:47Alastair Campbell?

  The bomb damage is there, it's all sort of, you know, the ground has not been repaired, the buildings are not repaired, the windows are all shattered. And it's there as a reminder. And by the way, those reminders have been a very effective part of the propaganda that Vukic was, Vukic was continuing by, because that's what makes you think, we were attacked. This was their army headquarters. We were attacked. We didn't attack anybody. And a lot of the younger kids now, they think that because that's what they're told. So Kushner and Trump Junior wanted to turn this into a five star hotel and offices.

• 49:15Rory Stewart?

  But it doesn't make any sense. Can I just interrupt you? It seems completely mad, right? So you've got this enormous monument in the middle of your country to the war with all its shrapnel damage.

• 49:24Alastair Campbell?

  And you want the aggressors to come and rebuild it?

• 49:25Rory Stewart?

  Into a five star hotel?

• 49:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and and an office block.

• 49:29Rory Stewart?

  I mean, it seems kind of slightly weird. It would be like, I don't quite understand how, I'm trying to find the analogy, but most nationalists I come up with are too sick to be plausible. But if you've made your whole national identity around this wrecked, smashed up bit of, you know, I don't know, what, I mean.

• 49:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the thing is, no, I can see it.

• 49:47Rory Stewart?

  Tell you what it is, that the Chinese come and demolish the Statue of Liberty and decide to to build the Chinese Embassy on its site.

• 49:53Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 49:54Rory Stewart?

  And that's what it feels like to me.

• 49:57Alastair Campbell?

  I can, listen, put it this way, the nationalists did not like the idea of the aggressor coming along and building this hotel.

• 50:03Rory Stewart?

  That's my Statue of Liberty analogy.

• 50:04Alastair Campbell?

  The other thing I would say, though, is that having been to Belgrade periodically, but, you know, with quite long gaps between the visits. The city itself is transformed.

• 50:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Alastair Campbell?

  And there would be something quite positive, I think, if they could get rid of that eyesore. And say the war is now in the past, but they don't want the war to be in the past. And I also think the big point in European Union, they're never ever going to get into the European Union until they resolve the issue. And I didn't get any feeling from him that he saw.

• 50:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's hope that's not true because we want them in the European Union, they're not going to resolve the issue. So I think actually we need to return to a much more imaginative structures of how we get these countries into the European Union. Because if we get stuck with that, you will say Moldova can't come in because they haven't resolved the conversation with Transnistria. Ukraine can't come in because Crimea is a separate Serbia can't come in because they can't recognise Kosovo.

• 50:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 50:51Rory Stewart?

  You know, Bosnia can't come in because we're going to. If we're actually to get them in, and I think the argument is we need to, warts and all, warts and all.

• 50:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 51:00Rory Stewart?

  Then we need a bit of courage.

• 51:01Alastair Campbell?

  And the reason why this matters so much at the moment is the European Commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kost, the woman that I went to Ukraine with. She's warned the six Western Balkan countries that are trying to get into the European Union that they are on the path to losing seven hundred million euros from the EU growth plan by the middle of this year. If they don't step up on the reform, reforms on which she says there is too much backsliding. Anyway, if you've missed this interview that we're talking about so much and that has been front page news for several days in Serbia and the whole episode played out on their news programmes. Then just search Leading wherever you get your podcasts.

• 51:41Rory Stewart?

  And do just again, go back through the back catalogue of Leading. There are some amazing things. Naz Shah, for example, who we interviewed, I thought was extraordinary. She is a Labour backbencher, which doesn't sound very exciting to people, but in fact, if you listen to the story, is the most moving story of female courage, resilience. I mean, she is that. That's one tough lady and that's an extraordinary story. So if you haven't listened to Naz Shah, Naz Shah, Sarah McBride. What did you think about Sarah McBride? Tell us about Sarah McBride.

• 52:11Alastair Campbell?

  Love Sarah McBride.

• 52:11Rory Stewart?

  Sarah McBride, transgender US Congresswoman, talking incredibly calmly and openly about her experience. I know this will be offensive to some listeners. Please listen. I'd love, love to.

• 52:25Alastair Campbell?

  Or is, or is when I posted it recently, as somebody said, oh, two white men talking to a white man.

• 52:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, there we are. So anyway, if you're of that view, do listen to the interview and then come back to us and tell us what you honestly think.

• 52:36Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, right. Very briefly, there's not much point lingering too long on this because we're recording this on Tuesday morning. There's going to be a vote in Parliament later on the day as to whether Keir Starmer should be referred to the Privileges Committee. Labour are defending it very, very robustly, saying the whole is a lot of nonsense. It's a deliberate stunt to try to equate him with Boris Johnson. Meanwhile, Philip Barton, former head of the Foreign Office, who, one of my favourite diplomats ever. He was in our private office when, early in the Blair years. His nickname for me is Bartonob because, as you know, you may know, Rory, I've never congratulated anybody on receiving an honour because I don't believe in the honour system. But I've always called him Bartonob because he got his OBE while he was in Number 10.

• 53:21Alastair Campbell?

  And then at 11 o'clock, we've got Morgan McSweeney, so that will doubtless, I think it'll be the first time that most members of the public have seen him or heard him.

• 53:29Rory Stewart?

  And are you expecting great revelations or are they going to be rather cautious and dull?

• 53:32Alastair Campbell?

  I sort of feel Fiona keeps saying that she thinks this story has got to where Westland got in the Thatcher era. Westland was this big scandal about the sale of a helicopter company.

• 53:43Rory Stewart?

  To the US. I mean, interestingly, Heseltine who got.

• 53:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it was US v Europe, wasn't it?

• 53:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, Heseltine who got into that is maybe an early precursor of this whole conversation that's dominated this whole podcast, which is, how do you think about being less dependent on the US and have more of a European thing? And Heseltine was basically saying, we cannot have a situation where we are totally dependent on the United States for our helicopters. We need some strategic autonomy.

• 54:05Alastair Campbell?

  His storming out of the Cabinet was one of the highlights of my journalistic life.

• 54:09Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, but what she said is that pretty soon people got confused by Western and couldn't remember what it was about.

• 54:12Alastair Campbell?

  And also, so I think when I was, I actually ended up turning the radio off this morning because they were going, you know, somebody I'd never heard of who'd given written evidence, was it contradicted by the verbal evidence that was given last week? And I was kind of losing the will to live. And I just feel it's one of those frenzies. Keir Starmer has admitted he made a terrible mistake in the employment. I'm not convinced that all this kind of ins and outs on the vetting process is going to go anywhere, so.

• 54:35Rory Stewart?

  So you're not expecting great revelations?

• 54:36Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not, not, but you know, famous last words, I think, but I think Philip Barton will have been pissed off at the process. I think Morgan Misswenee will probably find it hard to say he wasn't pushing quite hard to get Peter Mandelson in place come what may, but we shall see. And meanwhile, the local elections are limbering up and hardly anybody's talking about local election issues. One thing we do know is they're not going to be a pretty night for Labour.

• 54:56Rory Stewart?

  Right, and the polling is pretty extraordinary. In some of the polling we've seen, we've got Reform leading Labour by, you know, nine percent, twenty-nine to twenty in the national polls, even if that narrows. We've got, I think, sixty-three percent of the British public saying there's been little or no change under the Labour government. This is polling done by Portland, Portland PRF. Personal financial's gone from plus one to minus eight. Net sentiment on the economy down by ten, so public opinion's not in a happy place.

• 55:23Alastair Campbell?

  No, it's really not. There's not much point in getting deep into it today. I think we got into it pretty deep last week. Some of our listeners thought too deep, others thought, love it, hearing Alice to say negative things about the Labour Party, enjoyed that, but will doubtless come back to it. But I, famous last words, I think this is a storm that is blowing out.

• 55:43Rory Stewart?

  We've done a, a romp around the world, but right at the centre of it is this question of what on earth Britain does with the US, how Serbia deals with the US, and I think this is again and again coming back to the big, long-term issues of what kind of world we want to shape. And we will be returning to that, I think, a little bit in Question Time, where we're going to be talking about Palantir, a company that's been very much in the headlines recently. It's a big US tech company that now has a dominant position, not just in the Ministry of Defence, but in things like the National Health Service. So we'll be talking about, we'll also be talking about the Foreign Office cutting its International Humanitarian Law Department, which, you know, I would again link to this weird problem that Britain has of trying to work out what it's going to do in a post-American

• 56:28Rory Stewart?

  world. You wanted to talk also about mental health.

• 56:30Alastair Campbell?

  I always want to talk about mental health.

• 56:31Rory Stewart?

  And grief.

• 56:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, maybe a little bit on grief, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 56:35Rory Stewart?

  Looking forward to it.

• 56:36Alastair Campbell?

  Cool.

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