377. Question Time: How will Europe defend itself?

Should the UK impose a ‘War Levy’ on VAT to raise immediate funds for defence? How much independence does Starmer have over the nuclear arsenal? And, what happened to the funds intended for Ukraine support raised by the sale of Chelsea football club? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away FREE TRIP+ membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP+ gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit GetFuse.com/Politics ⚡ The Rest Is Politics Plus: Become a member to receive early access to Question Time episodes to live show tickets, enjoy ad-free listening for both TRIP and Leading, receive our exclusive newsletter, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and join our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: Evan Green, India Dunkley Video Editor: Joshua Smith Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:35Rory Stewart?

  Now, as you know, Restless Politics powered by Fuse Energy. There's been a new analysis by the Confederation British Industry, which has found that the net zero sector in the UK is growing three times faster than the UK economy at large. The net zero economy grew by 10% in 2024.

• 1:55Alastair Campbell?

  Wow. Well, that is, that is clearly, I think, very, very good news. I'd love to know how that's measured. What do we mean by the net zero economy as opposed to the UK economy at large? But anyway, let's take it at face value. It's also, what popped into my head as you were saying that was constantly seeing Nigel Farage, Richard Tyson, all that lot. Basically saying that net zero is sort of, you know, what's responsible for our economic problems. But what that seems to be saying is that it's actually part of the solution to our economic problems. Anyway, we've got a question here from Ed. And I'm assuming that's not Ed Miliband, who's the Secretary of State for all these issues. As a climate conscious reader listener,

• 2:40Alastair Campbell?

  I was pretty horrified to read, says Ed, that BP are planning to ramp up gas and oil production and cut renewable energy plans. Similarly, Equinor have pledged to halve their renewable energy investments in the next two years whilst ramping up fossil fuel activities. Shell are also backing down from proposed offshore wind investments. What can climate positive governments and companies do to combat this damaging behaviour from legacy energy giants? Well, I guess we are.

• 3:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, some of this, I think, is, is precedes Trump. But some of this is, is post-Trump. I'll suggest just sort of footnote on that CBI report. Yes, I mean, the UK is doing really well and it's, and on that, and it's, it's good also because actually a lot of that is, is quite productive and a lot of it is not just London and the South East, it's about green jobs up in other bits of the country. But it's 50% less than the growth in those sectors in Europe as a whole. And in China, nearly 10% of its GDP is now associated with clean energy.

• 3:42Alastair Campbell?

  You see, I, I think the, the impact of Trump is enormous in so many ways. And one of his thing, drill, baby, drill. And that's why I do speak up Fred Miliband in the job that he's doing at the moment. Because I think the question there, what can climate positive governments and companies do to combat this damaging behaviour? They've got to keep trying to challenge it and keep trying to signal, stress to people why this net zero journey is so important. But you've just got to keep going with what you believe. I remember, you know, I've told you before about when Al Gore, I was with Al Gore not long after Trump got elected first time round, and he said, we're just going to have to work around this guy. Now, that's very, very difficult when you're talking about a very powerful, very driven United States president, but one day he'll be gone.

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  It's not totally straightforward because of course, the North Sea producers point out that we're not changing our consumption really. We're still importing an enormous amount of oil and gas. We're just importing it from other places and we're not getting any benefit from it. So, one of the challenges for Fred Miliband is how do you avoid kind of crippling British companies, British oil production, and then British consumers just keep getting all the same stuff from elsewhere? So you have no impact at all. Final one before we get off, this Fuse Energy inspired question. We both love watching foreign language television and if you haven't seen it, there's a great Norwegian series called Occupied. And its beginning is the Norwegian Prime Minister announces that he's going to stop

• 5:07Rory Stewart?

  all oil and gas production in Norway and all exports. And the result is that the European Union and Russia conspire and Russia invades and occupies Norway to get its oil and gas production going again.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  I'm all for bold leadership, but I think for an Norwegian Prime Minister, but Norway, listen, Norway's a great example of where they, you know, they are an energy giant, but they understand that renewables is the future and that's where they're putting an awful lot of their investment. Anyway, with all this in mind, this is a long-winded way of saying, switch to Fuse, which invests 100% of its profits into renewable projects around the world.

• 5:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that, one of the things that's interesting about Fuse is they're not just buying certificates to claim 100% green energy. Because the UK renewables can't always meet demand every hour. Sun's not shining, the wind's not blowing. Many companies buy certificates to appear fully green.

• 6:07Rory Stewart?

  But their actual energy mix does include fossil fuels. At Fuse Energy, they reinvest all profits into building more renewable energy. So they're focusing really on the real world impact. It's not just a shell game where they're playing with certificates. They receive certificates, but they use the proceeds to fund more wind and solar projects, not to make unfounded claims.

• 6:28Alastair Campbell?

  Rest is politics is powered by Fuse Energy and Fuse are giving away free trip plus membership for all of 2025 to new signups.

• 6:37Rory Stewart?

  And just to remind people, the great thing about being a trip plus member is you don't have to listen to adverts. When you listen, you get early access to question time episodes like this one. You get book discounts, you get pre-sale tickets for live shows. And we're also increasingly going to be generating exclusive content for subscribers. So that could be little series, that could be niche interviews, which Alistair and I do, which are just for subscribers. So to sign up, for terms and conditions and find out the benefits of being a subscriber, visit getfuse.com/politics.

• 7:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 7:22Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, we did lots of America and Europe in the main podcast, but I think we have to stick with it because we've got so many questions. I mean, thousands of questions and so many of them are actually about the issues that we were talking about yesterday. So here's a couple of you to kick off with Rory, both from from members. Stephen Flatley, now the United States is not a reliable NATO partner, stated as a statement of fact by Stephen Flatley, and we, the UK and Europe, need to take more responsibility for our defence. How much actual operational, technical and political independence do we actually have over our nuclear arsenal? Good question. Jeff, also a member, should the UK and European countries impose a war levy on VAT to raise

• 8:07Alastair Campbell?

  immediate funds for defence? Most people would broadly support this and it would send a strong signal to Putin. And maybe just throw this one in, we've got questions about A. And the the fact that aid is being cut to pay for this increased defence spending. You've spoken a lot about the importance of aid. What do you think of aid spending being cut to support defence spending? So there you are, Rory, kick off with those.

• 8:27Rory Stewart?

  So this this follows on from yesterday and the big story, which we're all working our way through. Because in four weeks, we've had to rethink all our major strategic assumptions. And in some ways, it's daft of us. We should have seen this coming with Trump won. So we've actually had eight years to really begin to wake up to the possibility that the US is no longer going to be a predictable, reliable ally and that the entire rules-based international order the US created is being abandoned by the US. But it was such a big deal, such a difficult thing to get our heads around. And because, of course, the US has been the largest economy in the world and the largest military in the world for 80 years.

• 9:09Rory Stewart?

  And it basically created the UN, created NATO, created the World Bank. That imagining a world without it, I'm still struggling for what what exactly the metaphor is. It's more than a foundation stone. It's like, you know, two thirds of the entire building is being removed. We talked in the last podcast about vulnerabilities a little bit, but I guess Stephen Flatley's question gets to that. So let's just start with that and try to understand what the vulnerabilities are and why getting independent from the US is much, much easier said than done. Well, firstly, it's because so much of our kit comes from the US. So enormous amount of, you know, our F-35s, for example, which is the attack aircraft we decided to buy,

• 9:55Rory Stewart?

  are basically built with some UK components, but basically built in the US. And the Americans, when they sell these things around the world, often demand that they retain the data.

• 10:09Rory Stewart?

  That these planes pick up. So these planes are full of extraordinary kind of data gathering stuff, but it's all considered top secret. The data is owned by the US. I think at one point we had to negotiate, just shortly after I left government, I think we had to give $400 million to an American defence company to be able to have our own data from our own planes, right? And as the Afghans discovered, if you buy American kit, you're totally dependent on American contractors to do software updates. And if they don't provide the software updates, the whole stuff is grounded. So the reason the entire Afghan air force and helicopter force collapsed and the Taliban took over the country is the American removed all the contractors who were there doing the software upgrades, which have to happen after every

• 10:54Rory Stewart?

  mission. Then there's the problem that America retains the right to not deliver stuff. So Sweden had ordered a lot of Patriot missiles and the United States suddenly said, actually, we can't really afford to give them to you because we want them ourselves for something else, right? This whole world of US defence equipment was not just about the performance of the kit, because sometimes American kit is over engineered, unbelievably expensive. And as been proved in Ukraine, we're in a world where in fact, the Ukrainians are showing that you can use thousand dollar drones and iPhones to do a lot of the stuff that 150 million dollar planes were doing. One of the reasons we buy the kit is because of

• 11:37Rory Stewart?

  security guarantees. So the most extreme example of all is Switzerland buys F-35s. Now, an F-35 is the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world, and it's there to do these incredible long range stealth missions. There is literally no reason for little Switzerland, this neutral mountainous country, to have these planes. The only reason they buy them is that implicit is you buy it and America has your back. Now, America no longer has our back. I think very few people now believe that Trump is going to do anything to defend a European country if it's attacked by Putin. So we then have to think about how we replace all this stuff.

• 12:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, you can just about imagine that there could be British, Italian-designed planes or French-German-designed planes. And in fact, the Typhoon and Raphael can come into that space. There is stuff we can do to replace American anti-aircraft missiles. Rheinmetall is now producing more and more 155-millimeter munitions. Your German pronunciation's coming on, Roy. Thank you very much. But we're still dealing with the fact that perhaps our biggest single vulnerability is in tech, because the world of defence is increasingly a world dominated by companies

• 13:00Rory Stewart?

  like Palantir and Anduril, SpaceX. And they would say, we've got you over a barrel. So when I meet these people from these American companies, they're like, Europe's finished. You're completely dependent on American tech. The future of the world is American tech, and you can't live without us. And wars are won on the basis of our tech platforms. And of course, the seven largest tech companies in the world are American. So what would it mean for Europe to actually become independent of Google? Independent of the cloud services provided by Microsoft? We have something called SAP, which is incredibly important for running supply chains.

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  But even that lives on cloud computing services provided by these enormous American companies. So there is a double strategy here. There's a strategy about making our own defence equipment and finding markets for our own defence equipment. And then there's an entire strategy about developing a technological infrastructure, where, again, we don't really have the finance in place. I mean, famously, we innovate, but we don't produce commercial companies, because it's much easier to get funding in the US. There's not a big European market for investing in tech. We don't take risk in the same way that the US does. So tech companies are perpetually... Flipping over to the US, there are potential companies, there are great Germans, Swedish,

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  British companies could be building in, but we'd have to completely change our financial infrastructure as well as spending a lot more money. Over to you.

• 14:30Alastair Campbell?

  It's partly what they were talking about at the conference in Kiev, hosted by Zelensky and a lot of the European leaders were, I mentioned the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. She was absolutely clear that, you know, Europe has to start to be able to compete on this because, these weren't the words she used, but the notion being that we've just fallen so far behind. And I think the other thing that maybe goes to Stephen's question is so much of our defence budget, so we talk about 2.5%, and I saw Tobias Elwood, former Tory MP, Defence Select Committee, former soldier, and he was interviewed, he was in Kiev yesterday. He was saying that the best thing Britain could do as a way

• 15:13Alastair Campbell?

  of showing leadership to the rest of Europe was actually to say, we're going to match, eventually we're going to match America. But of course, to go to one of the other questions in that, those questions I threw at you at the start Rory, to spend more on defence means to either grow the economy substantially, which doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon, or make cuts elsewhere. And a lot of people, you and I were both livid that the Americans have sort of basically got rid of USAID, the US Agency for International Development. But now the British government has gone after aid and development as the first thing to go when spending for more defence. So the question there, how do we feel about that? Very, very bad.

• 15:56Rory Stewart?

  Yes, so yes, India's question, let's get into that for a second. So you've spoken a lot about the importance of aid. What do you think of aid spending being cut to support defence spending? Now, this is partly about, if we're going to be serious about stepping up, it's not just serious about manufacturing, it is about becoming a serious country in terms of our skills and our soft power as well. So we would need to, if we're going to become properly independent, the US, really invest in rebuilding the Foreign Office, rebuild our development infrastructure. Really work out who we are in the world and how seriously we're doing it. Because a lot of what we've done for the last 60 years, I used to make jokes about this,

• 16:38Rory Stewart?

  but genuinely, my first boss in the Foreign Office, when you asked him what to do, would say, find out what the Americans are doing and doing a little bit less. And if you've got that culture, you don't really feel that you need to develop all the linguistic skills that you need, the scale of the embassies that you need, the scale of the development infrastructure, the number of intelligence stations we would have to open in places like Africa because we can no longer rely on the Five Eyes process. Alison, a question for you. So you started on this in yesterday's pod and I thought it was really interesting and I want to develop this. So let's imagine that we really thought about Europe

• 17:17Rory Stewart?

  and maybe we thought about the European Union plus a number of non-member states, which the United Kingdom would be a very important example, which bolt on and integrate economically defence and security onto the European Union. And maybe, to be radical about this, that could be the UK, it could be Ukraine, and it could be Turkey. And this could be Norway. And it definitely could be a vision, for example, I think, of customs union and single market without initially free movement of people, perhaps without ever free movement of people. Why?

• 18:00Rory Stewart?

  Because most European countries don't want free movement from Turkey. Many voters in Britain don't want free movement into Britain. And the European countries are in a different situation than they were in 10 years ago because they are facing labour shortages, so it's less of a priority for them.

• 18:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that, interestingly enough, the other name that was half in jest, thrown into that mix at the meeting in Kyiv by the Norwegian Prime Minister was Canada.

• 18:23Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 18:24Alastair Campbell?

  The other thing, Rory, I didn't have time to send it to you because I just got this this morning, but I was sent a, I was sent a very interesting paper on something called the Rearmament Bank. And at first I looked at it and thought, this is just going to be one of those sort of, you know. Winky wanky, I've got a great idea, I can save the world. And so you always look at who's actually sending this thing and who's involved in it. So the first name was Guy de Celyier, who was involved in founding the EBRD, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. The second name was General Sir Nick Carter, former Chief of the UK Defence Staff, who I happen to know of old, has been very, very worried about the decline in UK defences.

• 19:09Alastair Campbell?

  And then finally, Edward Lucas, Senior Advisor at the Centre for European Policy Analysis. And essentially, what this is talking about is relates to what you've just said, talks about getting a core group of like-minded European NATO members that has to be veto-proof. That's the first thing, complementing the defence mandates that that already exist. But basically saying you need 10 billion upfront state finance in order to borrow 90 billion. And essentially, based on the process that was that was modelled by the EBRD. So I think these are new structures that are going to have to start coming up because the current structures right now don't look fit for purpose. You know, did you ever think

• 19:51Alastair Campbell?

  you would see the day when the United Nations, which we've always thought post-war was this great institution where the world politics could play out, where we, the UK and France, were on the wrong side of a vote, where on the other side you had China, Russia or America? Well, we were on the right side of the vote, weren't we? We were on the wrong side in that we couldn't get them over. We were totally on the right side of history, yeah. And we were voting the right way, but we were we were not with the Americans on that. That felt pretty threatening. And that does mean that these other sorts of institutions are going to have to have to develop and evolve. And I

• 20:32Alastair Campbell?

  think this is what Merz was talking about. I think he was talking about these like-minded, pro-European, pro-NATO countries. And it is interesting, we've talked a lot in recent weeks about The potential for Turkey's power in some of these issues and relationships. And this is a classic one. If this had the Turks backing it, it, you know, it could get off the ground.

• 20:51Rory Stewart?

  Let's lean into the Turks for a second. So Turkey has a lot of soldiers, big military and more willingness to fight. They've been a big supplier of drones to Ukraine. They are strategic adversaries of Russia in the Black Sea and of course in Syria, where they were on different sides. And Erdogan has now volunteered and said he's happy for the idea of Turkish troops to deploy to Ukraine and for Ukraine to join NATO. As we talk about who future European allies could be, I think Turkey is a very important part of that. Now, we might also think about, you talk about Canada, other democracies, Australia, South Korea, Japan.

• 21:33Rory Stewart?

  Now, these are enormous economies with huge amounts of resources if we wish to try to have some kind of rebalance and strategic independence. My friend Gerald Knaus from ESI, who I adore, is very interested in Jean Monnet and the great visions of the early 1950s. And of course, he would say that what we need is to envisage something which is more like the coal and steel community. In other words, something that's more than just an economic union, that has a sort of political security infrastructure, but isn't as bureaucratic, isn't all about the Commission, your point about Nick Carter and vetoes, isn't about, you know, arguing about the common fisheries policy, which would be the first thing that would get involved.

• 22:15Rory Stewart?

  But in order to get there, Alistair, like I've now given you this task. Okay, you've got Keir Starmer, you've got Macron, you've got Mertens in a room.

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  You've got Tusk.

• 22:27Rory Stewart?

  And you've got Erdogan. Yeah, and you've got Zelensky. How do you actually get them to get beyond the rhetoric and really step up? And I mean, let's say our objective is within a year to create a new outer circle of Europe, a new form of European defence and economic alliance. How are we going to get there as opposed to just waffle about it and miss the chance entirely?

• 22:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think this is already beginning to form. I think we're seeing it in the statements now, there are massive issues that arise from it. You talked about one of them yesterday, which is actually the extent to which we, the UK in particular, are so linked into America. But I think you'd have to do this in a way that ultimately the Americans said, yeah, that's kind of what we want. Because what Trump keeps saying and what the American message is, we can, well, you and I focus a lot on them being no longer a reliable ally. But let's just understand that what they're essentially saying is you lot have taken us for granted for too long. Do more of your own stuff. Look after your own backyard better than you've done. So I think you, you mentioned some of the names there and there would be others. You get them in a room. Essentially, they have to agree. And this could happen quite quickly.

• 23:34Alastair Campbell?

  As I understand it, Keir Starmer is going to come back from Washington. He and Macron have been talking pretty regularly in advance of these two visits that they're both making this week. And I think it's this weekend, they're then going to gather some of the other European leaders. It wouldn't take that long before you say, look, we have to accept now, we have to have a reshaping of the European defence and security situation. And the fact that the Norwegian Prime Minister yesterday was talking about it in the way that he was, the fact that the Danish Prime Minister was talking the way that she was, the fact that Macron spoke yesterday as he did, that Keir Starmer is going to be saying much the same thing on, on Thursday. I don't think it would be that difficult.

• 24:16Alastair Campbell?

  And that's why I think this rearmament bank is really interesting. You would have to have the development of institutions that sat alongside and in some cases maybe eventually replace existing institutions. And the EBRD, if I remember, that, that got together very, very quickly and started to deliver big budgets and big projects. I think it probably was within a year, but I think it was very, very quick.

• 24:43Rory Stewart?

  I mean, it'd be interesting to see whether Starmer has the confidence to say, I am now appointing a lead envoy and this is my objective. We're going to negotiate with these partners to create this economic and military cooperation structure. It's going to be a formal structure. This is how we're going to work and we're going to integrate these things. We're going to integrate finance across Europe, defence funding, we're going to identify all the gaps, we're going to work out how do we put nuclear weapons into Germany.

• 25:10Alastair Campbell?

  Manufacturing.

• 25:11Rory Stewart?

  Manufacturing.

• 25:12Alastair Campbell?

  This is what I said yesterday, when I said that I thought that this is. You know, people have sort of all sorts of complaints that they've had about Keir Starmer. But this in terms of UK and Keir Starmer leadership is actually a massive challenge and opportunity. And I think if he rose to it, it could actually be the making of it. I was very impressed yesterday. I saw James Heapy, former Defence Minister, Ben Wallace, who I've been, I've been sort of keeping an eye because he's been saying some very interesting things. And also Tobias Elwood. It was very interesting hearing them. I actually thought, you know, the point you keep making about these ministers are much better when they're out of office than in it. They were all three of them speaking with real insight and conviction,

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  but also coming from a position of understanding what Keir Starmer does right now is unbelievably important for the future of Britain and for the future of Europe. If you see it in that context, I think the country is ready to come behind something really quite big on this. And I think it will involve us getting through the crap that gets talked about Brexit. And actually understanding this, there's something existential about this. It is a massive challenge and it involves us understanding we are a major European power when it comes to defence and security, but we've got to become even more major. And we've got to get the others to to develop in the same direction.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 26:46Speaker 03

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

• 26:52Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 27:00Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 27:10Rory Stewart?

  Obviously, a lot of the questions that we're getting at the moment are focused on the US end of this as well. So, Fulp, who's a member on Discord, another member's question, and thank you for members who are sending in questions. Could you please explain what's going on with Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, both making Nazi salutes to crowds recently? They know what it means, it's clearly deliberate, and yet they deny it. What's their intention? Follow-on question: how do they marry their apparent support for Nazi ideology with their apparent trenchant support for Israel? This is a really interesting thing, and there's been some good journalistic coverage on this. Clearly Musk and Bannon are playing ambiguously on the line on this stuff. So they do these salutes, and then they deny that that's what

• 27:55Rory Stewart?

  they intended to do. But Jordan Bardella, who is the young, more charismatic face of the French far-right, who was at this conference in which Bannon did this salute, recognised it enough as a Nazi salute to say he wasn't going to speak at that conference.

• 28:12Alastair Campbell?

  It didn't seem to bother Nigel Farage or Les Truss in the same way.

• 28:16Rory Stewart?

  No, but it's interesting that the far-right, people like Bardella, are conscious that they know what's going on. They can read the signs. And some of the journalistic coverage is pointing out that what you're going to see probably quite soon is MAGA crowds doing Nazi salutes themselves, almost as a dare, and then it becoming more and more normalised. So let me take one aspect of Fulp's question. You talked about America wanting Europe to become independent, yes, but it's a little bit worse than that, isn't it? Because they're also a government in America that is deliberately trying to undermine the mainstream elected European governments by supporting their far-right opponents, you know, by actually

• 29:00Rory Stewart?

  using Twitter, and we can get on to what that means, but using it as a massive social media platform. To deliberately undermine elected governments in the way that Russia has done for many, many years, the United States is now doing completely openly. And remember, these far-right governments that they're supporting, as we keep pointing out, don't share any of the strategic vision that we're laying out. They don't want close European solidarity. They are unashamedly pro-Putin. And so there's a tension going on. On the one hand, there's a vision of creating NATO without the United States, which would still have, broadly speaking, the old security values of NATO.

• 29:45Rory Stewart?

  And another vision, which is the United States funding far-right groups that want to give up on all the guiding principles of NATO.

• 29:52Alastair Campbell?

  This is what's been interesting about what's going on in Germany. Historically, the AFD has broadly defined it as anti-American, seeing as it's always like, America, why rely on America to occupy Europe? But once Elon Musk comes along with promises of support and money and, you know, as we said last week, three quarters of all stuff on X was basically coming from that sort of AFD perspective. Look, it's like there are some words that we know that you shouldn't use, okay? And sometimes they get used. And people do it, as you say, because they feel that they've been dared to do it. And this is the danger of this whole weaponization of the so-called free speech argument. What they mean by free speech, a lot of these people on the right,

• 30:34Alastair Campbell?

  is they want to be able to say things that society has deemed to be too offensive to be said. They want to go back to that. And likewise, I think with the Nazi thing, it's never gone away in terms of there being an attraction amongst some people, particularly men, an attraction to this notion that politics ultimately is about power, power is about domination, and you dominate other people. And it's been really interesting, when I was in Germany, you talk to Germans, even people on the right in Germany. They can't really understand why the Americans can't see why this Nazi thing runs so

• 31:19Alastair Campbell?

  deep. Why somebody like Musk makes a speech to the AFD and says, you've got to get over your guilt and all that stuff. A reasonable German doesn't understand why a reasonable American can't see that. So this is, I think, very, very deliberate. What Bannon did, I think, was deliberate. What Musk did was deliberate. Why do they deny it? To go back to the question, this goes back to their thing about owning the libs. They want us to get upset about it. And that guy who's just been appointed as Patel's deputy at the FBI, this guy Dan Bondingo, a kind of right wing conspiracy theorist podcaster, he is on record as saying he exists to own the libs. He wants us to get angry and agitated. So, so we had a question from Jess this week.

• 32:04Alastair Campbell?

  Do you have any advice for when big events in politics and the news begin to strain your mental health? I think that is happening. And by the way, my answer, Jess, is I think you just have to be very, very careful about not spending all your time following the news, looking at the news, reading about it and so forth, and almost try and step back from it. It is very, very, very, very hard. But right now, we need to understand, Rory, you need to understand, I need to understand. And just think about this. In the last couple of weeks, you've been attacked on social media in various forms by Elon Musk, J D Vance and Dominic Cummings. What's that about?

• 32:41Rory Stewart?

  And Donald J Trump Junior.

• 32:42Alastair Campbell?

  And Donald J Trump. What's that about? It's about owning the libs.

• 32:45Rory Stewart?

  And each one of these attacks gets 10 or 15 million views and then thousands of associated threats coming in. I took Sunday off and didn't, didn't look at Twitter at all and felt much better. I genuinely don't know. I mean, just for a second on this, I genuinely don't know whether there's any point by being there. I mean, occasionally I think, okay. If I'm annoying J D Vance enough, and if I get a chance to challenge him on something as important as this, it's worth doing. But in other moods, I think, no, no, no, I'm just playing into their game. This is ridiculous. I'm not changing anyone's opinion. I'm just giving them an enormous desire to troll me. But I don't know what you do about it. I

• 33:26Rory Stewart?

  mean, if I don't go on, I then get all these messages from friends saying, are you okay? Because they're seeing that from the mild, J D Vance says I have a low IQ, through to the slightly worse Elon Musk saying I'm a corrupt grifter, through to the Dominic Cummings, I should be killed. What do you do about the fact that there are tens of millions of people saying this stuff or sharing this stuff?

• 33:49Alastair Campbell?

  I think you have to separate them from what you think that reasonable people think. It's like, we had a question this week, you know, I really enjoyed Alistair calling Elon Musk a real twat, but does it really help debate? And the truth is, no, it doesn't. So we all maybe, I think, get driven slightly to a place we don't necessarily, in the cold light of day, always want to be. For a lot of these people, they're making money out of being offensive, they're making money out of being extreme. My Fiona keeps saying to me, I don't know why you're on there, all you're doing is helping Elon Musk get even richer. There may be something in that, but I don't look at the replies in the way that you do. I don't know how many likes I get, or they get, or I just don't look at

• 34:31Alastair Campbell?

  it. I use Twitter to express a view. Very occasionally, I will engage with people, but in the main, I just scroll through. I don't actually spend that much time in there, far less than you do.

• 34:43Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I just want to put this out here to continue how to really annoy the far right. So here we are, dear Mr. Elon Musk, we should ban Twitter completely in the United Kingdom and in Europe. It is clearly now a mechanism being used to undermine our democratically elected governments and supporting far right parties.

• 35:04Alastair Campbell?

  I would buy that. The only thing is, so then people will say, well, how do you square that with still being on it? Answer, because this is something that anybody who was around when the B N P were taking hold and gaining, you can't vacate space to them. So I think there is always a reason to be there. I actually think that that would be a good move. Now, we're going to be interviewing Peter Kyle quite soon. And he would probably say, listen, AI, whether we like it or not, is part of the economic and future success of this country. Are you seriously saying that we're going to upset all these massive players and that? I suspect that would be what he'd say. We'll see.

• 35:42Rory Stewart?

  One of the interesting things is, of course, were we to do that, Elon Musk, who at the moment seems to own a great deal of Donald Trump, will then deploy full American economic trade and other sanctions against the United Kingdom in the name of free speech in order to protect the 40 billion that has been invested in his company Twitter. So as Europe tries to defend itself, I think the big existential threat in Europe is actually that we're going to be undermined from within.

• 36:11Alastair Campbell?

  That's what J D Vance said about Europe.

• 36:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, this is the last chance saloon for the coalition in Austria. This is the last chance saloon, I think, for the coalition in Germany to prove that they have an alternative.

• 36:22Alastair Campbell?

  I agree, but Roy, just on Germany, I don't think that Musk added much to the support of the AFD. And I think he may have helped the other, particularly the left wing party, De Linka. I think he helped mobilize them. And I think there was within decent people, a sense of, I'm not being told who to vote by this guy. I think they were always going to get around 19, 20%. That's what the polls have been saying for months. So I'm not convinced. I think actually this was not a good result for Musk. I'm not even convinced it was a very good result for Putin. Because I don't think, like, I think we look at Hungary, you look at Slovakia, you look at some of these other elections, Romania that we talked about before. I think you could argue Russia really made an impact.

• 37:04Alastair Campbell?

  I still think they made an impact in Brexit, by the way. And I will think that to my grave. But I don't think they did in Germany.

• 37:10Rory Stewart?

  They may just be learning, though, because now you've got essentially Russia and the American presidency working on the same side. I mean, they're all doing the same. They're all trying to support far right groups in Europe. Russia, because the far right groups are pro-Russian. America, because they think that the values of Europe are not the values of the Trump presidency. And they want to bring in people. Who share the votes. I think we're underestimating how much social media has changed everything. We've talked in the past about how much the crisis we face is about fundamental economic conditions and why it is or isn't the 1930s. And the truth is that, yes, life is difficult in Europe, but my goodness, it's not the 1930s. But the thing that makes

• 37:53Rory Stewart?

  the far right take off is social media. I mean, I think it's no coincidence that 2012, which is the beginning of the age of populism, is also when Twitter and Facebook get off the ground. And I think if we don't shut these things down, I think our democracies are in real trouble.

• 38:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, okay. Well, listen, there you go. Elon, JD, Rory Stewart, you can have another go at him because he's basically said Twitter should be shut down. I think there will come a point where some country or other decides to. Have you noticed as well, Rory, how they never attacked China or Russia over impinging on free speech, which is quite amazing. But we also had a question about Chelsea Football Club, which bizarrely, Rory, does relate to this. A question which came from Matthew, a member. Can you explain what has happened to the money that was meant to go to Ukraine from the sale of Chelsea Football Club? Do you remember this one?

• 38:45Rory Stewart?

  I do, because I work with a lot of nonprofits. This is an enormous fund that was supposed to be supporting people in conflict, not just Ukraine. It could be used for people in conflict in Sudan and Afghanistan and elsewhere. And I knew some of the trustees. And this has been going on for many, many years now.

• 39:03Alastair Campbell?

  Been going on since Abramovich was, you know, had to sell Chelsea. So there's 2.3 billion pounds sitting in a British bank account. It exists to fund humanitarian programs for victims of the war in Ukraine at no cost to the British taxpayer. It was created when Abramovich sold Chelsea. He proposed that the fund should be offered up as humanitarian money, I presume as a way of avoiding extra sanctions. It was agreed between our government and Abramovich that the sale, that the money would be used to fund humanitarian programs supporting victims of the war in Ukraine, wherever they were in the world, but it still hasn't gone.

• 39:49Alastair Campbell?

  The money is sitting in a bank account. So as I understand it, I spoke to somebody at Save the Children about this. They actually lobbied David Lammy. So the official line, if you phone the government press office, is to say, oh, this is sitting in the desk of David Lammy. But David Lammy said he wasn't aware of this. So, listen, this is the Rest is Politics on the third anniversary backing Save the Children in calling for this money to be released and given to people with humanitarian needs in Ukraine. I mean, two billion, you can buy quite a lot of humanitarian aid with that at a time when in other parts of the government arena, we're cutting it.

• 40:28Rory Stewart?

  Final serious one for me, and then I think maybe can finish with some lighter-hearted ones. So Johnny's saying, should Europe now be looking to China as an alternative partner if we can't rely on the United States?

• 40:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, let me throw one at you in the same arena, Rory. Michael O'D. If China decided to spin up a full replacement to USAID, would Rory agree to run it? How would he weigh the huge humanitarian benefits against being a pawn in an authoritarian soft power play? That's a great question. I think he would.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  No, I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't run a Chinese development organisation worldwide. No, I think that would be too dubious.

• 41:10Alastair Campbell?

  What about as a deputy?

• 41:12Rory Stewart?

  As a deputy. I think your great friend David Cameron went off to do a few investments with China, didn't he?

• 41:19Alastair Campbell?

  You can't go through a week without having a dig at David Cameron. I mean, I think we're going to have to ask David Cameron to come on the podcast, but just do it with me.

• 41:28Rory Stewart?

  It's very interesting. If you look at the China Daily yesterday, and actually one of their foreign policy magazines too, and these are things which are basically written by the staff in the Chinese Politburo. For the first time, there's no criticism of Europe. And for the first time, you see them saying that Europe is a force for stability. China is a force for stability. Europe has complex security needs and it needs to make more multilateral arrangements with other countries, for which brackets read China. So there will be people now within Europe saying, well, you know, China's not democratic, but at least it's a bit more predictable than the United States. It has long 15, 20 year plans and it's not trying to steal Greenland from us.

• 42:10Rory Stewart?

  And, you know, really, do we have any alternative if we've got to get off American tech other than to look at Chinese tech? And after all, they produce a lot of stuff very cheaply. They can transform our electric vehicle fleet. And of course, the other way too. I mean, Germany's entire car industry depends on selling to China, right? 50% of the profits of European luxury goods and automobile manufacturers are made in, made in China. So I think there will be the beginnings of very strong movements in Europe, at least on things like trade, to start getting closer to China. And Europe probably isn't going to have any choice other than to do that. On the other hand, it should be very wary because China is not a longstanding friend of Europe.

• 42:53Rory Stewart?

  China, boy, if you think Trump can be transactional. As, as I said, it appears that as soon as David Cameron met the Dalai Lama, China basically cut off 10 years of investment into Britain. Its relationships with Russia are complicated, to say the least. Its economic power is so immense that it's very difficult for individually European countries to negotiate with it without being ripped off. But I definitely think that one of the unintended consequences of what Trump is doing is that instead of what Elbridge Colby, who's the policy chief now at Defence, is fantasizing about, you know, he's, he's put out a statement saying, Europe should spend 5% on defence and take overall support in Europe.

• 43:38Rory Stewart?

  And also, Europe should be supporting the US against China. We should be deploying into Taiwan and this and the other. And forget it, right? I mean, if you can't have it both ways, if the US abandons Europe, they're not going to be supporting the US against China. And if anything... They will be undermining US attempts to isolate China.

• 43:56Alastair Campbell?

  Here's my last serious one, Mrs Premise, why has the head of the Commonwealth had nothing to say about repeated threats to Canada's sovereignty? More broadly, who can lead international solidarity against US aggression? Why does it seem to me so far? And we've actually answered this before about we both agree that there should be more British and other Commonwealth voices speaking up for Canada against this dreadful, sort of constant denigration of Canada as a sovereign state. But it's also an opportunity to tell you that on leading on Monday, we've got the two contenders to become the next Prime Minister of Canada, because whoever replaces Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party will become Prime Minister until the next general election.

• 44:39Alastair Campbell?

  So that's Chrystia Freeland, who we've talked to for the first time on the podcast, and Mark Carney, who we're talking to for the second time. So that's out on Monday.

• 44:47Rory Stewart?

  And my goodness, they're good. I mean, in terms of mental health, I do think listening to France Timmermans and Chrystia Freeland and people really cheer me up because these are really quite gnarly experienced older politicians with a lot of worldly knowledge, who are pretty frank about Trump, pretty sensible in their views and remarkably, I think, open about their failings, their thoughts. All these recent interviews have really kind of cheered me up.

• 45:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I'm going to throw this one out there. Are you going to change your name to the rest is adverts? Now, that first of all, to say to people, if you don't want any adverts, become a subscriber. But secondly, I'm going to keep an eye here out for that because I get very irritated on podcasts if you get too many adverts.

• 45:32Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I mean, I think we should be honest with people about how this podcast runs. So all these wonderful people who film us and us and the whole team keep going, either because of adverts or if people don't want adverts because they subscribe. But as you say, there's, there's, there's obviously people getting frustrated and irritated by that. Okay, Catherine, this is a good question for you. What, Alistair, is your all time favourite song? And obviously I'm going to ask you to sing it.

• 46:02Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I can't sing it. I can't sing it.

• 46:04Rory Stewart?

  You can't sing it?

• 46:05Alastair Campbell?

  I've got, I've got two. I've got, well.

• 46:09Alastair Campbell?

  A s'offrir en partage. That's the start of it. It's Quand on a que l'amour by Jack Brel and I vary between that and Ne me quitte pas. They're both by Jack Brel, who is my favourite all time singer. But I was very sad about Roberta Flack dying, I was so sad about that. Such a beautiful voice. All right, you're going to tell me your all time favourite song.

• 46:33Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 46:34Alastair Campbell?

  Come on.

• 46:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm afraid it's.

• 46:36Alastair Campbell?

  And you have to sing it, you have to sing it.

• 46:38Rory Stewart?

  No, I definitely can't sing it. I I tried to sing it once actually in a D-Day celebration in Normandy and it went horribly wrong. It's it's La Show Pianger by Handel and the mayor of this little French town, so a woman who was the mayor of the French town, who'd welcomed me and my father because my father's regiment, the Black Watch, had liberated this town after D-Day.

• 46:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Rory Stewart?

  She asked me what my favourite song was, I mentioned this, and she, who was a much more serious musician than any of us, tried to get a singing Handel in her kitchen. And my father, who used to be a great musician with beautiful voice, had gone completely deaf and was totally off key. And this is a much too challenging piece of music for me to attempt at any situation, let alone on your podcast.

• 47:18Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, let me let me give you one that you can answer my final question. Charlotte, do you have any book or TV recommendations this week? So I've been reading lots of Friedrich Merz books in between reading Charlotte Alick's new novel called Dunkles Wasser. And TV Rory, I have found, thanks to our friend David, who goes to the swimming in the same place as we do. I can't believe this, but he said, do you ever watch BBC Alba, the Gaelic TV? And I said, well, I do, actually, I watch a bit of football on there and I quite like just chugging in to see if I can understand you. Because my dad was a Gaelic speaker. And he said, the best thing I've seen on telly for ages is something called The Island.

• 47:57Rory Stewart?

  A Gaelic detective show?

• 47:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it's a Gaelic murder mystery. It's about a rich guy and his family and this young girl who was forced to leave the island when she was young. And she goes back as a police officer investigating this murder. And it's great to think there are so many. Actors who are acting in Gaelic. And I guess part of me says, well, why shouldn't they?

• 48:21Rory Stewart?

  I've been trying a bit of bit of foreign language stuff. Um, uh, so I I was looking at Squid Game, which is a South Korean thriller.

• 48:30Alastair Campbell?

  Is that subtitled or?

• 48:32Rory Stewart?

  Subtitled. Yeah, all these things are subtitled. You get original languages. A Dark, which is a German time travelling thing.

• 48:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Rory Stewart?

  But I was quite disturbed by Dark. That that that was closer to a horror horror horror movie than I was ready for.

• 48:46Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, if you see a programme of a title that's called Dark, it's sort of going to like this novel I mentioned, Charlotte Link, right? And you know, it's called Dunkles Wasser. That means dark water. Right? That's not going to be a happy.

• 49:02Rory Stewart?

  No, that's true. Well, my book recommendation for the week also has Dark in its title. It's Mark Mazova's Dark Continent: Europe's 20th Century, which is a really fascinating story about how nationalism and fascism emerged in Europe and how Britain and France fumbled it and missed it. And and then if you if you want really cheesy watching, last night I was watching Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix. Michael Connelly, one of my great heroes, American, writes the Harry Bosch series, which are great police procedural set in L A. And this is a spin off from it done by Netflix. It's quite lighthearted, you

• 49:45Rory Stewart?

  know, it's not it's not the quality of The Wire, for example, or the French Bureau. But but if you're if you're on a plane or something and you just want something to, I don't know, what was Cameron's great phrase for this? Was he chillax with?

• 50:01Alastair Campbell?

  Another little another little pop.

• 50:04Rory Stewart?

  Then you should watch Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix.

• 50:07Alastair Campbell?

  Very good. Okay. Well, good talking to you as ever.

• 50:10Rory Stewart?

  Speak soon. Bye bye.