Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 96. Johnson's £800k loan, Zahawi's tax trouble, and Russia in Africa About this episode Who gave Boris Johnson an £800k loan when he was PM? Is Nadhim Zahawi's political career over? Why is Russia on a charm offensive in Africa?
Alastair and Rory cover all the latest political news from both the UK and abroad in today's episode of The Rest Is Politics.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair Campbell? And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:43 Rory Stewart? Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
1:47 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell.
1:48 Rory Stewart? And Alistair, you wanted us to, I think, focus on four main issues today, is that right? You were going to do Nader Zahawi and his tax situation. You were going to do Boris Johnson and the chairman of the BBC. Then we were going to touch on Germany and Leopard tanks. And I'm speaking from Kigali in Rwanda. So you suggested maybe we should do a little bit on Africa towards the end.
2:10 Alastair Campbell? There's a lot going on there, which you are well placed to talk about. But yeah, I think we have to start with your friend, Nadhim Zahawi, who we discussed last week, suggested that he might be in a little bit more trouble than the fairly tame media coverage at the time was suggesting. And I don't know if you've been able to see much of our media out there, but the the coverage appears to be anything but tame now. And of course, we're speaking on Monday evening, not long after Rishi Sunak has asked his so-called independent, so-called ethics adviser, Laurie Magnus, to look into Mr Zahawi's tax
2:50 Alastair Campbell? affairs. And I just wonder now whether waiting for Laurie Magnus will become the new waiting for Sue Gray.
2:57 Rory Stewart? Yes, well, presumably that's the hope, isn't it, of the government? Just to remind again, listeners, because it's fresh in our mind, but may not be fresh in everybody's mind. But one of the great delaying tactics during Boris Johnson's investigation over Covid was to initially say that they couldn't say anything until the Metropolitan Police had reported. Then they weren't going to say anything until Sue Gray reported. And then somehow the timing of Sue Gray's report interfered with the Metropolitan Police report. So that instead of an immediate resignation, you had this sort of four, six month delay going on, which I guess, is that what you think's going on here as well?
3:32 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I think both in relation to Zahawi and we'll come on to the BBC chairman, Richard Sharp, and his relationship with Johnson and of course with Sunak, because he's one of Sunak's closest friends. Sharp was his former boss. But the BBC have announced an internal inquiry into whether there was a conflict of interest related to Richard Sharp's appointment as chairman of the BBC. And Sunak has asked his ethics adviser to look into Zahawi's state of affairs. And you won't have heard, because I know you've been in meetings all day, you won't have heard your excellent former colleague Dominic Greve.
4:13 Alastair Campbell? On the radio this morning, he was making the point that this is all very well, but actually it's not difficult to establish the facts on this. And it's for Rishi Sunak, just very quickly to establish the facts. And when Sunak says of Nadhim Zahawi's tax affairs, he says that, you know, there are clearly questions to ask and questions to answer. I can't help thinking, these are questions that should have been asked before he was appointed to be Chancellor of the Exchequer.
4:38 Rory Stewart? Again, to remind listeners of the scandal. The scandal is-
4:41 Alastair Campbell? You love reminding listeners, don't you?
4:42 Rory Stewart? Just to take back the context. So Nadhim Zahawi just paid the inland revenue, millions of pounds, whatever the three point something million pounds on the basis-
4:52 Alastair Campbell? Well, it could be more. We think it's more now.
4:53 Rory Stewart? Right. But at least three and something million pounds on the basis of tax that he ought to have paid, capital gains tax, to do with a offshore company founders' shares. And he seems to have made this payment, is this right, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer or just before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer?
5:12 Alastair Campbell? According to the absolute oracle on this subject, Dan Needle, great name, and he is the former tax lawyer who has been pursuing this. And it's really interesting. I tweeted today saying that this could be the first year when the journalist of the year is not a journalist, because this guy has really pursued this while most of the rest of the media have laid off. Nadhim Zahawi threatened him with libel. Turns out that he's threatened him with libel over things that seem to be true, which I think of itself is a sackable offence. But there we are, we'll see whether that happens. I think the most important point within relation to HMRC
5:51 Alastair Campbell? is that the payment that he's made has included a sizable punishment, if you like, which he's had to pay because he didn't submit his forms as they should have been done. And one of the many interesting voices I've heard on this in the last 24 hours, a guy called Edward Troop, and he was on the radio yesterday, he used to work for HMRC in a very, very senior position. And I thought I knew everything about the honour system because I had the unfortunate task and I had to coordinate the damn things because I was present, I used to present them as ridiculously in our system as the Prime Minister's spokesman who presents them.
6:32 Alastair Campbell? But I didn't know that honours, the list of people up for honours is sent to HMRC and they have a traffic light system of red, amber and green.
6:42 Rory Stewart? Goodness.
6:43 Alastair Campbell? And one of the stories yesterday was in the Sun on Sunday, I think it was, that Zahawi was up for a knighthood and had been turned down for it. Now, all these, no pun intended, red lights are flashing all over the place. Now, it doesn't surprise me at all that Boris Johnson never asked any questions when he made him chancellor. But given we were told that Sunak was bringing back grown up politics, I wonder whether it isn't a little bit more odd that Sunak appears to have asked no questions about Zahawi's tax affairs either. So while he was chancellor, boss of the HMRC, he was doing a deal with the HMRC, which
7:25 Alastair Campbell? included a punishment for non-declaration of tax. Now, my chaps in the Lido Change Union Committee, to a man, were absolutely spitting about this.
7:36 Rory Stewart? Your professional opinion, what do you think this means? So we're recording this, I think, on the 23rd of January. Now, Zahawi is still chairman of the Conservative Party. Do you think that's going to be true in a week's time?
7:46 Alastair Campbell? Well, they're obviously going to do the, you know, let's wait for Laurie Magnus, he's going to become the new Su Gray, but I think a lot will depend on what happens at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. I think it's quite unfortunate for the government that the main pieces of legislation in the Commons this week are the Economic Crime Bill, which are all about, you know, tax avoidance and money laundering and Russian money in the economy. And I see David Davis's manoeuvres on that one as well with another Labour ally. Last week he was working in Handing Glove with Stella Creasy, this week it's Liam Byrne. I think it's very, very difficult for him. I don't see, and also it's doubly unfortunate for him that he's chairman of the Conservative
8:31 Alastair Campbell? Party, because that's one of those jobs where you have to go, you're meant to be out there the whole time, sort of. Talking to the media, fronting up problems for the government.
8:38 Rory Stewart? What would be your political advice if you found yourself, obviously you wouldn't want to find yourself in this situation. But if you found yourself in the situation of advising Rishi Sunak, what would you be advising him to do at the moment?
8:46 Alastair Campbell? Get the facts. And see, Sunak's made this very difficult for himself because the day he took office, he said that he would be, this would be a government, he was obviously disassociating himself as best he could without slagging them from Truss and Johnson. He said, this would be a government guided by professionalism, integrity and accountability at every level. Well, professionalism, you don't stand up in the House of Commons as he did and say, Nadhim Zahawi has answered every question that he's had, he's answered all the questions when he clearly hasn't. You don't talk about professionalism when you send out your Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, yesterday to do the worst media round I've ever seen in my life.
9:29 Alastair Campbell? Where my great friend and hero, Peter Stavnavich, who does some wonderful stuff on social media, he clipped together all the occasions in one interview with Sophie Ridge, that James Cleverly said, I don't have the details on that. I'm sorry, I don't have any details. I'm sorry, I don't know about that. And then started to tell us the reason he didn't have the answers to the questions was because on Saturday he'd had a bit of a rest and he was shopping. I mean, this was so unprofessional, it was untrue. And then as for integrity and accountability, I think to most members of the public, accountability is about putting yourself up for questioning in Parliament and in the media. Nadhim Zahawi is hiding away. And integrity, I think for most people,
10:10 Alastair Campbell? you've blown it. Once you start talking about off-shelf trust, millions of pounds of tax that you clearly didn't want to pay, you're in trouble. So I think Sunak should work out where it's going to end and get there, but forget there first. But he's already missed the boat, I think. Now, on Tuesday, the Committee on Standards in Public Life are doing a big report about my beloved Nolan principles, honesty, openness, objectivity, selfless, integrity, accountability and leadership. And they make a big point, and this I suspect was written before any of this, but they make a big point about the importance of the example that is set by leaders of what they tolerate and what they don't. So if a leader tolerates tax avoidance or tolerates bullying, pretty Patel, et cetera,
10:52 Alastair Campbell? then it does substantially and detrimentally affect the culture that you're supposed to be leading. So I think this is a problem for Sunak as well as Zahawi.
11:00 Rory Stewart? Okay, which brings us on to the absolutely staggering case of Boris Johnson. And in some ways, because he's not Prime Minister, people are not focusing on just how outrageous and disgusting that is. So Boris Johnson, as we discussed in last week's podcast, found himself in some unbelievable financial problem. And he found himself in the humiliating position, it seems, of firstly confessing to the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, that he was running out of money, that he was in debt, that he was in financial trouble. And then somehow convincing a group of friends, donors, apparently it seems led by the man that he subsequently made the chairman of the BBC, Richard Sharp, from Goldman Sachs,
11:45 Rory Stewart? to pull together an £800,000 loan. Now, one of the things that I remember when I was joining the civil services, we had these developed vetting processes. And a lot of it was about whether you were in debt. Because if you were facing £800,000 worth of debt and you had no viable source of income, which is what Boris Johnson seemed to be saying, seemed to be saying, I'm sorry, I'm bust, I can't get any money in, and I owe all this money to all these different people, you are in real danger because people don't really sadly give you money for nothing. And you are absolutely liable to influence and abuse. Since then, he's taken a million pound donation from an individual towards the Boris Johnson Foundation, whatever that is.
12:29 Rory Stewart? And I'd like to know what the rules are and what he can actually spend that on. He's got apparently now use of a Grayson Faber house in London led by his friend Lord Bamford, which is meant to be, according to the newspapers, I know it was true, a £12 million townhouse that he now uses. But the most odd thing is that the Cabinet Secretary somehow did not think that it was necessary to declare that the Prime Minister had just availed himself this credit facility of £800,000. And why the Cabinet Secretary and the Ethics Advisor did not think this was a sort of flagrantly in the public interest to know that, I can't imagine.
13:05 Alastair Campbell? I'm imagining now that there's a lawyer on my shoulder. But we know that the fish rots from the head. And I think he has had, Johnson's presence in Downing Street has had a deeply corrupting influence upon a lot of the people around him. I sent you earlier, or you probably didn't have time to listen to it, but you should have a listen. I sent you a clip of an interview on James O'Brien's show on LBC this morning. A Scottish, London-based civil servant who phoned James's programme, coincidentally, didn't know it was going to happen, but coincidentally on the day that Sunak and Javid finally made their move against Boris Johnson. And this guy phoned up James O'Brien to say, the country needs to wake up, we were becoming
13:49 Alastair Campbell? a corrupt country. He said in today's interview that as a result of that, he was suspended for three months pending an investigation to see whether he's in breach of his civil service contract. He was fired, but he said that he sent a clip of his interview, the first interview with James O'Brien, to Simon Case and said, when is the senior civil service going to stand up for the standards that you're meant to uphold? And the guy was virtually in tears today. And James O'Brien said to him, you know, at least you can have a clear conscience. But he was a guy saying, we've got to wake up. This is full-scale corruption inside our government.
14:32 Alastair Campbell? And I think, you know, I've written a piece for The Independent, which I've just finished, just posted just before we started. And the point I'd make about the BBC is that they do have an extraordinarily good reputation all over the world. But I think they put it at risk when they don't cover their own scandals with the same vigour as perhaps they should, and they do others. And I think there has been a pattern in recent years because of all the political pressures from the Tories, because of the placement going on, whether it's Richard Sharp, whether it's Robbie Gibbs. There's a sort of fear inside the BBC about taking on these scandals.
15:13 Alastair Campbell? And if you go right through them, whether it was corruption in Brexit, the law breaking with Brexit, Russian oligarchs and Russian money in the Tory party, the PPE scandals, the Johnson lies, which just weren't called out when they knew that he was lying, including in interviews with them. And the BBC kind of gets dragged, kicking and screaming to these scandals. Now, fair play to them on Saturday night when the Sunday Times story broke about this one, the story you were talking about, the BBC covered it, they've been covering it. But I suspect they too now will be hiding behind the Richard Sharp's call for an inquiry. Let's wait for the inquiry.
15:50 Rory Stewart? One question, how was the Prime Minister in trouble to the tune of £800,000? So we know that this is somebody who was earning a lot of money. He was being paid, I think, £250,000 a year as a Daily Telegraph columnist, when he was also an MP, in receipt of his MP's money. When he moved into Downing Street, he had a free London house, 10 Downing Street, a country house, checkers. Why did he need £800,000? Who was he in debt to? Now, presumably some of this has to do with his divorces and his alimony payments. But presumably fundamentally, he is profligate. He's not responsible with his money.
16:29 Alastair Campbell? Well, you're asking the wrong person, Rory, because I've not spoken to Boris Johnson for some years. I think the last time I had a proper conversation with him was backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, where he continued to tell me about what a sort of figure of probity and honesty Andrew Gilligan was. Andrew Gilligan being the author of the report about Iraq that led to David Kelly's suicide and the public inquiry that led to the defenestration of the
16:57 Rory Stewart? We've got to do Iraq properly in detail sometime. We can't let you just drop that. We'll do that properly in detail sometime.
17:03 Alastair Campbell? So I'm probably the last person to ask, but I think we know on the sort of, you said, profligate. But I also do think, I mean, this, this thing you said about, you know, I went through developed vetting and I can remember those questions, you know, you literally, and because I've got this sort of Scottish Presbyterian upbringing and all that, I've always been terrified of being in debt. I mean, apart from a mortgage, I just, I've never been, I can't stand the idea of being in debt. The idea of owing anybody eight quid, never mind eight hundred thousand quid is just sort of out of my orbit.
17:33 Rory Stewart? And fundamentally, he should, I mean, people have been saying on Twitter that Churchill was often in debt. And actually, that's true.
17:40 Alastair Campbell? They weren't paid back then, were they? Were they?
17:42 Rory Stewart? They weren't paid, no, exactly. MPs were not paid. So he had to earn all his own money. They only started being paid after the war. The same with diplomats, actually. People who joined the Foreign Office had to have a private income. And the same with, a lot of army officers had to have a private income in order to work in these professions. And there's an amazing book on Churchill's finances, which I believe is called No More Champagne, but it's the most incredible account written by a lawyer who went through Churchill's account books. And the loans that Churchill took out from very, very unsuitable people who he then actually put in the cabinet during the war, loans from newspaper proprietors, loans from industrialists, loans from fellow cabinet ministers, is pretty shocking. Even
18:25 Rory Stewart? more shocking, what Lord George got up to with these horrible scandals in the 1920s.
18:30 Alastair Campbell? Flogging his peerages.
18:31 Rory Stewart? But we're trying to emerge from that. And one of the most fundamental bits of the whole thing, which has been broken in this, which people keep forgetting about, is the transparency bit. It would have been less bad had the whole thing been declared at the time. What I can't understand is why the Cabinet Secretary is sort of appropriate to keep it secret from the public.
18:50 Alastair Campbell? Because I assume he's trying to stay in with his political master and doesn't want to speak truth to power. But speaking truth to power is his job. That is why he has a very large salary. And we've got this new one today, Roy, you probably haven't even heard about this one. The new Health Minister in the House of Lords apparently has huge interests in Covid testing, some company that he's involved in. So that's now going to have to be referred to somebody or other. So there's been a breakdown of due diligence. The other thing, I don't like banging on about the media the whole time, but I had a spat on Twitter with Nick Robinson yesterday. He told me, he told me to give it a break, which is the worst thing you can say to me when I'm on a run about something, you know. I kept going all day, but because I was I was saying, fair play, they covered the
19:34 Alastair Campbell? Richard Sarp story, but Zahawi was still sort of number 11 on the news website. This is when this should have been running for weeks. This has been going for days and weeks, this story, and they've been effectively ignoring it. And I was making the point, Nick said, you know, we covered the Zahawi story when he made his statement. But journalism isn't about covering what the powerful say. It's challenging and and holding the powerful to account by investigating what they say.
20:00 Rory Stewart? I've been watching a lot of Al Jazeera because I've been abroad, and it certainly seems pretty impressive and punchy. And definitely their ticker tape is doing some amazing international stories. They had a story running yesterday, if people watch Al Jazeera television, on on the slap process, which is the strategic lawsuit against public participation, which is often used in London, to go against journalists reporting on scandals abroad. So if you are a Romanian doing a great story on corruption in the Azerbaijani government, these wealthy governments use very expensive lawyers to put an incredibly complex legal case, call a slap on you. And it's been done to stop reporting on Serbia, stop reporting on Poland,
20:43 Rory Stewart? stop reporting on Azerbaijan. But I was really taken by two things. Firstly, how courageous Al Jazeera often seems to be in in surfacing stories that other people aren't. But also this bigger story of the way in which free reporting in Britain in general is being challenged by the courts by expensive wealthy people coming up with pernicious lawsuits, because our libel laws are incredibly strong, much stronger than anyone else's.
21:06 Alastair Campbell? And and Nadhim Zahawi tried to use them against Dan Needle.
21:10 Rory Stewart? I believe the point is that in Britain, you have to prove entirely your allegation. The entire burden is on the defendant. Whereas in other jurisdictions, the prosecutor has to prove it's not true.
21:23 Alastair Campbell? We had some questions about this, which I was actually going to raise in the Q and A, but I'll raise it now. There's a there's a campaign to get an amendment, a bill going through the Commons at the moment. Where essentially they're cracking down on whistleblowers as well, that the public interest defence is not going to be as watertight as as once it was. And we've also had situations where the Americans have refused to endorse some of the some of the tougher changes that we've made in relation to libel in our country. And of course, you know, you look at the the way that Carol Cardwall, guardian journalist, who I think is absolute hero of heroine of of journalism and campaigning, and again,
22:07 Alastair Campbell? who pretty much had to do a lot of it on her own. And I declare an interest here. My brother in law was a part of her legal team. But her case with Aaron Banks was, you know, she was effectively, she was the one who seemed to be on trial through the whole thing.
22:23 Rory Stewart? I think we're maybe just coming up towards our break, but after the break, we've got German Leopard tanks and hopefully a bit of a chance to talk about Africa.
22:30 Alastair Campbell? Good.
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23:09 Alastair Campbell? This week's podcast is sponsored by The New European. I've got to say, they've had some brilliant front covers down the years, but I do like this week's. It's a sort of classic police line up. The headline is the usually suspect, and there are three people there, Mr. Sunak, Mr. Zahawi and Mr. Johnson. And it would be very, very funny if it wasn't all so desperately grim. But talking of great new European covers, they are repeating their offer of a copy of their book featuring the best of their front pages since the referendum of 2016, free to rest this Listeners when they subscribe from just one pound a week Rory.
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24:33 Alastair Campbell? So welcome back to the second part of this episode of The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
24:39 Rory Stewart? And with me Rory Stewart.
24:40 Alastair Campbell? And Rory, did you get time properly to listen to my chat with Marina Litvinenko on Leading, the chart topping new podcast presented by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart?
24:49 Rory Stewart? Very much and very, very topical because we've got a number of things to talk about today which relate to Russia. Obviously Russia, Ukraine and the dispute around Germany sending Leopard tanks. Russia, Africa, because there's been a lot of very strange Russian involvement recently in Mali, Burkina Faso. We talked a little bit before about Kosovo where the EU and the Franco-German Treaty is still trying to find some kind of accommodation between Serbia and Kosovo. And allegations now out that Russians have released videos of Serbian mercenaries being trained to go and fight in Ukraine. So all of that connects very, very well to the interview that you did, which focus on the horror fundamentally of the Putin regime.
25:32 Alastair Campbell? Hmm. And what I found remarkable about Marina was the extent to which she seemed sort of hopeful. She really does seem genuinely hopeful. That Putin will eventually fall and also the husband Alexander Litvinenko's killers will eventually be brought to justice. I mean, I wonder if that's just hope that you have to hold on to in those circumstances, or whether she struck me as genuinely believing it.
25:54 Rory Stewart? I think in the end, her optimism is going to be validated. I mean, I think there's a sense in which Barack Obama is right, that the arc of justice moves in the right direction.
26:03 Alastair Campbell? My current favourite podcast, apart from ours, and our sister podcast, is Der Spiegel Ach Milliarden, which is their foreign policy podcast. And their latest edition is all about the Wagner Group. The numbers of prison, they've got these guys that they basically just take out of prison, tell them that if they allow themselves to be sort of chucked into the front line, if they come back alive, they won't have to go back to prison. And these are really, really, really powerful. Of course, I know you want to talk about Burkina Faso in part of your kind of African overview. And, you know, there's this claim that as the Burkina Faso military government kicks out the French, which it's doing, that actually
26:45 Alastair Campbell? the Wagner Group are being invited in there as well. And there were Russian flags, there were Russian flags being waved at the protest against the French government in Burkina Faso.
26:55 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. So protests in Burkina Faso, military coups happen there. And the flags that are being waved are Russian flags, and also the flags of Mali, where there's also been a military coup, and where also the French have been kicked out. And where also the Wagner Group has been invited in by the military government of Mali. So there's a very strong sense that what's happening in Mali and in Burkina Faso is that we're seeing military coups, followed by the expulsion of French troops, followed by the inviting in of Russian mercenaries, which feels very much as though Russia is playing hard on the continent. And Sergey Lavrov
27:36 Alastair Campbell? He's out there now, yeah.
27:37 Rory Stewart? In South Africa, where the South Africans are looking at doing joint military exercises with Russia and China.
27:43 Alastair Campbell? Russia and China are far more powerful in Africa than the debate in our world really reflects. And I think the other thing that I find fascinating about what's going on at the moment, if you, I think this is the first year, and I can't remember how long, but normally, there is a G7 country election. None of the kind of really, really, really major powers, as it were. I've got an election this year, and I think the two most important elections in the world this year are Turkish presidential elections later this year and the Nigerian elections, which are happening later this month. And I don't think I've read a barely read a word about them.
28:22 Rory Stewart? Yeah, we've got to got to come back. Let's let's come back to that Nigerian subject. So I think it's it's an amazing one and maybe give you a chance to talk about it a bit. But before we get on to that, one of the things you do know a lot about is Germany. And there's been an incredible back and forth around the supply of Leopard tanks. So the Ukrainians have been increasingly saying that the one thing that they're really missing now are tanks because they have a limited window. The Russians are trying to mobilize another 500,000 people. And to really retake territory and cities, they're going to need tanks. And the British have started this debate to be to be complimentary towards Rishi Sunak, which we rarely are. Britain decided to send Challenger tanks, first country
29:07 Rory Stewart? to send tanks. The Americans are sending armored fighting vehicles. But the thing that's really needed are not American tanks, which are incredibly complicated jet propelled things that can barely be operated without a sort of massive supercomputer, but Leopard tanks, of which there are, I believe, nearly 2000 currently in possession of other European armies that could be sent through to Ukraine. And Germany's holding off. So tell us a little bit about why they're holding off. Why do you think Germany's holding off?
29:35 Alastair Campbell? All of Scholz is, if you go back almost a year now to the invasion, and Scholz made that famous speech that we both thought was a kind of massive seismic shift in German foreign policy, when he talked about Siedenwende, this is like a turning point. Since when the the word in German that keeps getting attached to him now is Sorgen, which means to dither or to dilly dally. And and we're seeing this on the tanks. They've been asking, as you say, for some time. They had this meeting of of Defence Ministers in Ramstein in in Germany over the weekend, and still there is no definitive final decision. Now,
30:16 Alastair Campbell? I think the I think the reason, if you boil it down, is the worry that if Germany were to do that, when everybody's saying this is the weaponry that is most important now for the next stage of of this war against Russia. That in a sense that that puts Germany right into it in a way that they don't feel they're right in it at the moment. And so I think Scholz's position is sort of that he'd like to do this, but he'd like to do it under cover of the Americans also doing it. And the Americans are seem less keen.
30:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, they have sent these amazing striker armored vehicles. But since February, Timothy Garton Nash, who you'll know well, and was, you know, one of the leading voices with dissidents in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, has written a really good series of pieces on Substack. Again, people who don't look at Substack, worth looking at Timothy Garton Nash. And he's pointed out that since February, there's been a pattern, which is that the Germans have consistently said with other types of munitions and supplies, we're not going to send it, we're not going to send it, we're not going to send it. And then eventually they end up sending it. So his prediction is they're going to end up sending the leopards anyway.
31:25 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I think that's right.
31:26 Rory Stewart? And presumably Schultz should should get on with it now.
31:29 Alastair Campbell? And of course, the other thing that happened over the weekend, you had this meeting between Schultz and Macron in Paris, where the entire German cabinet went to Paris.
31:37 Rory Stewart? Wow.
31:38 Alastair Campbell? This was clearly and dozens of other politicians, they had this big event, big speeches. And I think there is a sense that they maybe need to repair things because that relationship is not in good nick at all.
31:51 Rory Stewart? Why is that? Why is that relationship not in good nick? Give us some examples?
31:54 Alastair Campbell? Well, this is one. This is one where they don't seem to be in the same place on response to Ukraine, and the military response, they don't seem to be in the same place on energy.
32:05 Rory Stewart? Or not in the same place on China. There was a big standoff on China.
32:08 Alastair Campbell? Exactly. We talked before about how Macron wanted to go with Schultz to see Xi Jinping, and Schultz said, no, I'm going on my own. They're not they're not in the same place on future energy policy. They're not in the same place in on future of Europe. And so and I think the French, the French diplomat I spoke to recently said that, you know, we used to sort of just take for granted that the French and the Germans saw each other as each other's most important ally. Particularly in Europe, but that is no longer automatically the case. So there's a bit of bridge building going on there. But meanwhile, this tanks thing, Scholz is coming under massive pressure. There was a report in one of the American papers yesterday
32:50 Alastair Campbell? that Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, after this Rammstein sort of impasse, really kind of laid into the new Boris Pistorius, the new Defence Minister. It's kind of, you know, they, I think the Americans thought that getting rid of Lambrecht and getting Boris Pistorius in there would lead to them being able to make this change, but it still hasn't happened.
33:14 Rory Stewart? Well, so just a little update for for readers who haven't been following the the news from Ukraine. There's been essentially a pause over the Christmas period. The Ukrainians seem to be in a relatively strong position, and they are briefing out that they're ready to take a place called Kremina and Svatorye, and that would throw Russian forces 40 miles back if they were successful in doing that, close to where the invasion basically began in February. The real challenge is going to be whether, having taken Kherson, which was the big victory, you remember, a few weeks ago, whether they then cross over to the east side of the Dnipro River. So what happened, you'll remember, is that the Russian
33:57 Rory Stewart? troops withdrew from Kherson east of that river, and the question is whether they then push on to try to break Russia's road and rail links down to Crimea. Meanwhile, Russia is rebuilding its key bridge to Crimea. It's trying to mobilize 500,000 troops, and there's a lot of talk in Russia about a spring offensive against Ukraine. So I suppose this tank conversation is the Ukrainians saying, it's not going to be very long before Putin is going to be mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people, and he's going to try to mount a spring offensive, where he's going to try to push them all the way back to Kiev.
34:32 Alastair Campbell? Which is why they want these tanks.
34:33 Rory Stewart? They want to move now to push the Russians back to their starting position before that happens.
34:38 Alastair Campbell? No, we're into an absolute key phase, no doubt about that. I think Timothy Garton actually is right, that Scholz will eventually get there, but you're sensing a Something a bit desperate in the way the Ukrainians are talking about this, that they they sort of feel they need this support now.
34:54 Rory Stewart? I mean, we we should return to that. Meanwhile, we've we've touched a little bit on Africa. I'm I'm talking to you from from Kigali in Rwanda, and I came briefly through Addis Addis Abra on my way through. So Ethiopia, which we discussed a few weeks ago, there has been the beginnings of a peace agreement. And the Americans announced yesterday that the Eritrean forces were finally withdrawing from northern Ethiopia. But at the same time, Somalia, the depth of the drought now going into its fifth year, is pushing over 10 million people now into extreme starvation. And at the same time, al-Shabaab just mounted another attack in Mogadishu last week. There have been counterattacks by the US military
35:35 Rory Stewart? that have been striking Shabaab militants. That's now spreading into Kenya, where there's now a lot of conflict. And much of this conflict around the whole of Africa, but also in the Sahel, so that whole belt that takes you right the way across from the west coast to the east coast of Africa, the bottom of the Sahara Desert, is increasingly driven by climate change and desertification and conflicts between nomadic groups and farming groups, and increasingly terrorists and Islamic State militants, which is where the French got involved in Mali and Burkina Faso, where the Wagner Group, as we just said, now involved, but often fighting in a very brutal way about resources, which brings us a little bit
36:19 Rory Stewart? to to the country which is really in the heart of this, which is Nigeria. So Nigeria, in context, one in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050. And by 2030, within seven years, the majority of the extreme poor in the world will be in Nigeria. Nigeria is the country the second most affected in the world now by extreme flooding. It's a country with an enormous GDP off the back of its oil, so over $500 billion a year. And yet, suffering from the most extreme problems of every sort, from Islamic State operations and insurgency in the north, through to extreme poverty and flood events, and an election coming. So tell us a little bit about the election coming in February.
37:04 Alastair Campbell? It's a sort of strange two-stage process, not entirely like the French system, but you kind of do have to whittle a few. I think there's about 18 candidates, but there's only three that really have any serious chance of making it. The outgoing president, Mohamed Bouhari, he has to go because they have a strict two-term limit. And the candidate for his party, the All Progressives Congress, is a guy called Bolo Tinubu. The two main challengers are a guy called Abu Bakr, Attiku Abu Bakr, the People's Democratic Party. Now, they're both pretty old. I think they're 69, one of them's in his 70s. The favourite
37:46 Alastair Campbell? at the moment is a guy called Peter Obi, who's a mere stripling at 61. And he's actually the Labour Party, but he's even wealthier than Nadhim Zahawi. I mean, he is like, you know, and all three of them are very, very wealthy. They've variously got all sorts of allegations hanging around their heads about, with Tinubu, there was stuff about him being involved in the drug trade, and he did some sort of deal with the authorities to get out of that. Abu Bakr, embezzlement. Peter Obi, he was in the Pandora Papers in
38:30 Alastair Campbell? relation to tax avoidance stuff.
38:33 Rory Stewart? And his campaign chief's just been done for money laundering. Bolo Tinubu, who's the Lagos governor, we talk about British politics being bad, he had to pay $41.8 million in a lawsuit on tax evasion to settle it. And then in the 1990s, he had to pay a $460,000 settlement on heroin trafficking.
38:54 Alastair Campbell? I know.
38:55 Rory Stewart? Abu Bakr, the second candidate you mentioned, I think his wife carried $40 million in cash into the United States, which the US Senate exposed in a report.
39:03 Alastair Campbell? And I read a piece in Foreign Policy Magazine.
39:08 Alastair Campbell? And they said that when you define the strategy, like Peter Obi is at least sort of talking about, you know, trying to do something a bit different. And he's got the backing of Obasanjo, by the way, the former.
39:19 Rory Stewart? Yeah. He's a good, a good guy. I mean, or at least I've always been very impressed by.
39:23 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And also he's also, he's the African Union mediator in Ethiopia and Tigray, isn't he?
39:28 Rory Stewart? Yeah. No, Obasanjo is a really well-respected figure in Africa and one of the few Nigerian presidents that I think emerged with credit and has played a really important part in peace negotiations.
39:39 Alastair Campbell? Is he, is he distinguished, Roy? Do you think we can give him?
39:41 Rory Stewart? I would definitely say he's distinguished. He's not the youngest, youngest man in the world.
39:45 Alastair Campbell? No, he's kidding. But the other two, their strategy does appear to be based around taking some of this money, millions and millions and millions of which they have.
39:54 Rory Stewart? Hundreds of millions, yeah.
39:55 Alastair Campbell? And, and giving it to voters.
39:57 Rory Stewart? So, so, so to put political context on Nigeria, obviously Nigeria, enormous country, vast, rapidly growing population, a population where I believe 84% of voters are under 35, although that's not unusual. Mozambique, 50% of people in Mozambique are under 15. Obviously, when we talk about, you know, we've talked about Japan and the way in which its population's slowing down and the way in which Britain's population will really only go up with immigration, but Africa is the big exception to that story. It's the one part of the world where population's still growing very dramatically. So Nigeria finds itself in very, very significant problems, particularly in the northeast of the country, where there's been a combination of a Boko Haram insurgency, people will remember, famously,
40:41 Rory Stewart? young girls being kidnapped, but also spillover from this whole conflict in the Sahel region, terrible problems on climate change, which means that there are millions of people receiving humanitarian assistance, I think nearly $3 billion of humanitarian assistance this year, going to the northeast Nigeria. But unfortunately, the nature of Nigeria is that there are millions of other people displaced up and down the country with flooding events, climate events, but it has the most extraordinary natural resources. It has an incredibly entrepreneurial, dynamic population. It's one of the most exciting places to visit if everybody wants to go on holiday. Incredible cuisine, music, culture and energy. I mean, anybody goes to Lagos, it's like getting an electric bolt.
41:26 Alastair Campbell? Right, you read with your chin there, you talked about music. Name me a great Nigerian musician.
41:31 Rory Stewart? I can't do that, I can't do that. I'm rubbish on music in general. Can barely name a great Scottish musician.
41:36 Alastair Campbell? I'm going to give you a great Scottish musician because I've just been listening to the new album of Duncan Chisholm, the great Scottish fiddler, called Black Cullen, and it's absolutely brilliant.
41:46 Rory Stewart? To step back, just as we wrap, the World Bank's now put out its projections for 2023. It looks like we're now going into the third worst economic conditions globally that we've had in four decades, apart from the financial crisis and Covid. Developed countries barely growing, Africa certainly not growing enough to keep up with its population growth, and a horrible combination of inflation, high interest rates, meaning that there's no investment going into Africa, people are struggling to service their debt, much that towards China, which we've discussed again. Chinese Foreign Minister just finished a big tour. Egypt, when we come back to North Africa, Egypt's inflation now at 22%.
42:30 Rory Stewart? The Chinese have put $59 billion into trying to build a new city on the edge of Cairo. Tunisia, which we discussed again, really struggling. I think something like 14% of people turned out for their elections and now demonstrations gets Tunisian president. So let's watch Africa, I think, in the weeks, weeks ahead.
42:50 Alastair Campbell? And just maybe, maybe that was quite dispiriting, but let's end on something really dispiriting. Obusandu's report, he estimated that 600,000 people were killed in this two-year Tigray war in Ethiopia.
43:04 Rory Stewart? Oh, 600,000.
43:06 Alastair Campbell? Which is way more than Ukraine, which gets so much focus. And it's, it's way more than the total that you got, that were lost in five years of civil war in Colombia.
43:15 Rory Stewart? And that's both us not paying attention, and it's also the Ethiopian government basically shutting out journalists very, very effectively, so the reporting didn't get through.
43:24 Alastair Campbell? The Nobel Prize winning Prime Minister thereof.
43:26 Rory Stewart? Nobel Prize winning Prime Minister, dangerous thing. If you're ever offered a Nobel Prize, Alster, perhaps turn it down.
43:31 Alastair Campbell? I don't know about that.
43:34 Rory Stewart? Okay, on that, we will wrap.
43:36 Alastair Campbell? All the best. See you soon.
43:37 Rory Stewart? Bye bye.
43:40 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.
43:44 Speaker 03 On October 2nd.
43:45 Speaker 02 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
43:50 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess.
43:53 Speaker 02 And Digger's gonna dig us up.
43:55 Speaker 03 From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
43:57 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze in there, that's what.
44:01 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
44:04 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
44:06 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.
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