386. Trump's 'Bomb Yemen' Group Chat

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• 0:04Alastair Campbell?

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• 2:57Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:59Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell. And we were going to kick off with the British economy, but not for the first time. Doubtless not for the last, the Trump administration has sort of slightly put us off plan. So we're going to do the British economy in the second half. We're going to talk about Turkey, but we're also going to talk about this incredible, I don't know what to describe it as even, war planning by chat. Signal group of the American administration's most senior national security advisers, basically splurging out all sorts of stuff about military planning and accidentally adding a journalist to their group. I mean, I don't know where to start.

• 3:38Rory Stewart?

  Quick explainer then, just to bring people in. So we're talking about March 15th, so about 10 days ago. And Mike Walts, who's the National Security Advisor, sends a Signal message to Jeffrey Goldberg, who's the editor in chief at The Atlantic. And The Atlantic is a sort of very highbrow, long established America magazine that runs long form essays. And Goldberg thinks it's a bit weird, particularly when it then turns out that the group is called the Small Group Focused on the Houthis. And as the list fills up, and this is basically like being put on a WhatsApp group, the Signal group, Marco Rubio, J D Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Besen, the Treasury Secretary, Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, Ratcliffe from CIA, Whitkoff, Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller.

• 4:20Rory Stewart?

  Stephen Miller being one of the great ideologues of the Trump administration end up being put on this list. And either they or their designated aides begin this conversation. And the conversation is clearly about the fact that Donald Trump has said to them that he intends to launch strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Quick reminder on that, Houthis being a group which is not a traditional Sunni group. It's a form of Shia group increasingly close to Iran that has taken dominant position in much of Yemen and has been firing missiles at 100 different ships. They say in solidarity with the struggle of people in Gaza, which have sunk three ships and killed four people. Biden shot a lot of rockets at them, the British and the Israelis joined in some of these rocket attacks.

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, Trump wants to do it again. And this then opens the whole conversation and I'll just get to the end of the story. Fundamentally, what's happening in the story is, along with an enormous security leak, which I'd love to come to you on straight away, is quite a lot of interesting content on the different views of Hegseth, Vance, Stephen Miller, on what on earth they think they're doing in the world and what on earth they're doing with Houthis. But let's go to the security leak first.

• 5:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's sort of mind blowing. Let me just say what I would have imagined would have happened is that there would have been meetings in secure rooms. There would have been the national security infrastructure, top advisers surrounding these people as they were discussing it. This has the flavour of, I mean, complete with emojis. This has the flavour of a group of guys planning a stag night or something. You know, should we go next month or should we wait for a month? There's this factor and there's this, there's that factor. So I think on, just on the security side of things, I, I find it hard to imagine that if this had happened under the, any previous administration, I think heads would have rolled instantly.

• 6:10Alastair Campbell?

  And you're talking here, you've got the entire infrastructure, you've got the head of the CIA, you've got the chief diplomat, you've got the defence guy. And what these, the people who work for these guys, I mean, Hegseth, we know, is sort of seen as this kind of TV guy. Most of the Pentagon top brass will be thinking, what the hell is this guy doing here? This has been reinforced. Forced by the idea that they're just not serious.

• 6:32Rory Stewart?

  What they are discussing in an enormous amount of detail is exactly how eventually cruise missiles are going to be flying into particular locations in Yemen. Also on this group are undeclared operational CIA officers with their identities and names, targeting details, timing details on when the attack's going to happen. So if a foreign government were to penetrate this Signal group, and this is not an official US platform, it's not an official US secure platform for discussing, it's a commercial platform. They would be able to know the names of CIA officers, when the strike's taking place, where the strikes are taking place. In addition, of course, regardless of how secure Signal is, they have such bad communications precision and security

• 7:15Rory Stewart?

  that they've randomly added somebody who has nothing to do with the US government, has no security clearance at all, who is in fact the editor in chief of The Atlantic. And they're very lucky because when he writes his reporting, he actually redacts the name of the CIA officer and takes out some of the detailed targeting information.

• 7:30Alastair Campbell?

  I wonder whether whoever added him as The Atlantic thought that that was NATO or something, that the sort of North, that wasn't something to do with The Atlantic. I mean, the whole thing is like, it's just farcical. The fact that they're communicating in this way, in this very cavalier kind of way between each other, indicates a, a style of government that I think is, is pretty alarming. I think a lot of their allies will be quite alarmed by this. And the other thing that comes through, as you say, going right through the thread is the fact that Trump has asked for this. So there is a bit of a discussion about, well, is it the right thing to do? Vance is a bit sort of skeptical. But a kind of basic feeling is, well, we've got to do it because he's asked us to.

• 8:09Alastair Campbell?

  And then the other thing that comes through, particularly from Vance and Hexus, is that this contempt for Europe is really, really deep. You know, I'm sick of bailing these people out and yeah, I agree with you, they're freeloading yet again. And it's sort of a contempt which we've also seen again this week in relation to Denmark. JD Vance talking about how Denmark's not a reliable ally and his wife making this ridiculous trip to Greenland to watch a dog race. A plane yesterday arrived in Greenland with a hundred plus. Secret Service guys to go and set up this visit from Mike Walz, the security guy, and Mrs Vance. I mean, this is absurd. And what we're seeing, I think, is that what this WhatsApp

• 8:53Alastair Campbell?

  group, Signal group has shown is a sort of a style. Well, you know, what we're seeing again is in their responses indicative as well. Donald Trump saying, I don't know anything about this. I think the Atlantic's a terrible magazine. Their ratings are hopeless. Their sales are falling. I think it's going to go out of business. And Hexeth coming out basically attacking the journalist, saying that this is a guy who's only ever done hoaxes about Trump. Nobody within the administration taking responsibility for the fact that this is a massive security breach.

• 9:22Rory Stewart?

  I think it also lifts a lid, as you as you're pointing out, on what's happening now to the US and national security planning. So traditionally, what you would see is people sitting in the National Security Council around a table. And as you say, each one of them would be heavily briefed with their aides and assistants behind. They would all have a common information picture. So, you know, this is the stuff that we did in the British National Security Council. But you'd put up a slide deck where everybody would agree on the basic facts. You'd have a view on what the impact of attacking the Houthis were going to be on the shipping lines, what impact you might have on oil prices, what impact you might have on your strategy for the whole region. How does it tie in, for example, to your Middle East strategy? What difference is it going to make in Gaza? What

• 10:05Rory Stewart?

  impact's it going to have on Egypt, etc. And then everybody would talk in turn. And in the old fashioned system that exists in the US and in the UK, each of those individual people will often talk on behalf of their own department. So the Defence Secretary would probably talk about some of the technical considerations, how many cruise missiles we got, where our aircraft carriers are based, and what the likelihood is of hitting the targets properly. State would then come in and give you the broad strategic picture. How's it going to affect the region? So here's a good question for State. We told off the Saudis and UAE for attacking the Houthis. The US government said that the Houthis took them off the terror list and put huge pressure on Saudi and UAE not to attack the Houthis. And Trump didn't respond in the last

• 10:50Rory Stewart?

  When the Houthis attacked Saudi and UAE, but we're responding now because they seem to be threatening Israel. How are we going to explain that to our partners, right? And then finally, I guess, some communications people might come in talking about how this goes forward. Now, none of this is happening here. Firstly, no officials are in a room. There's no common information picture. And the conversation basically is focused on really only three issues. Issue number one, we don't like Europe and we're worried that by doing this, we might be somehow bailing out Europe. And Stephen Miller then puts a lot of emphasis on, yeah, we better get the money back from Europe if we do this. Second thing is comms. How on earth are we going to explain this to the American people? None of them have heard of who the Houthis are. Doesn't this contradict other stuff that we're saying?

• 11:34Rory Stewart?

  Can we pin this on Joe Biden and Iran? And number three, President Trump has said something. We don't really know why he said something. We don't really have the confidence to go back to him and question what exactly the reason is that he wants to hit the Houthi. We thought he was an isolationist. He didn't like doing this stuff. He's doing this stuff. How does this make sense? But in the end, we're too afraid to do this because Stephen Miller's come in and said Trump's already green lighted this. So we'll try to provide a justification after the event.

• 12:01Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that is just a very, very accurate description, it seems to me, of not just of this chat group war room, but also of how they operate, following his whims, following no real sort of focus upon fact, no discussion. No, we don't know this wasn't necessarily the entirety of the discussion, but no sense of anybody from Congress being involved, no sense of anybody being brought in to be briefed on it, no sense of talking to allies, no sense of anything other than Trump has had a bit of a whim. How do we make that work for for us? Bear in mind, this is the, these are the people who, when Hillary Clinton was, you know, using her own private email, which is on a, you know.

• 12:45Alastair Campbell?

  This is so, so, so, so much worse for all sorts of different reasons. But this, this led to the entire MAGA movement suggesting that she should go to jail. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News guy turned Defence Secretary, there were clips running all over social media last night of some of the stuff he used to say about, you know, if something's top secret, it's cuss, it's top secret, you don't talk to anybody. Everybody knows the rules, apart from me now that I'm in, actually in charge. And I just can't get my head around the fact, this is going to do so much damage unless there is actually some sort of accountability, unless actually there are heads that are wrong. There's no sense that that is going to happen. It's just another day, it's another story, it's another big blah that we can all talk

• 13:29Alastair Campbell?

  about for ages, and then we'll forget about it and people will move on. And Mike Johnson, the Speaker, so there's Congress, which is being sort of emasculated before our very eyes, and Mike Johnson basically comes as, well, I've just been in the Oval Office with the President, and he then just gives the line to take. Somebody's made a mistake, they'll look into it, it won't happen again. The Russians are going to be laughing their heads off yet again at them. They've had such a good week. They've had Steve Whitkoff, Trump's connection to Putin, did an interview, which I think will, I hate to talk about Tucker Carlson because I think he's a sort of malign force, but the fact is, as an interview, I think communications and political communications students for generations to come will watch that interview between Steve Whitkoff and

• 14:12Alastair Campbell?

  Tucker Carlson as an example of how easy it is for Putin to manipulate Trump. It is the most remarkable thing where Steve Whitkoff, an American, whose qualification for this job as Special Envoy seems to be that he's played golf with Donald Trump quite a few times, essentially is feeding and having fed back to him Kremlin talking points in a, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, which at times absolutely beggar belief.

• 14:42Rory Stewart?

  I think it's an amazing echo of what we've seen from Signal. In this new world, we're getting insights into the heart of this administration in real time in a way that was almost never possible before. And there's something about podcasts. Part isn't it? Because we also benefit from this. The fact that Whitkoff is prepared to sit down for an hour and a half, really sort of uncensored and untrained, just shooting the breeze with Tucker Carlson, suddenly reveals an incredible amount about the kind of anthropology to be pompous of the Trump administration. I watched it yesterday and it's really interesting. It's interesting partly because sometimes he's quite surprising by being less extreme and less obviously nasty than one gets the impression the Trump administration is. So he comes across as quite an amiable

• 15:26Rory Stewart?

  elderly man who talks very politely, sounds very reasonable all the time. And you can absolutely see how the MAGA crowd listening to this are going to think, well, it sounds all right. I'm just saying I'm going to listen to all sides. There are some very interesting little glimpses into foreign policy thinking from Whitkoff, which we haven't seen before. So really important on Ukraine, this interview reveals that they are considering, or at least Whitkoff's considering, giving Article Five guarantees to Ukraine without NATO membership. So full US security guarantees for Ukraine without NATO membership. Number two, he seems to be saying that he doesn't think that Hamas can be militarily defeated and they're going to have to continue because Hamas is an idea. Nevertheless, some disarmament can happen.

• 16:06Rory Stewart?

  And number three, he seems to be being very positive towards Ahmed El Sharah, the Syrian president who he interviewed, saying that he genuinely believes he's changed and can be a partner for peace in the region. So there's three huge revelations, which are very odd and which may turn out, of course, because the way the Trump administration operates, be completely undermined by Trump next week, who may well say, no security guarantees, Jelani is not to be trusted, and we want to continue the war against Hamas. The other thing that, of course, goes through, which you've told us about again, is loyalty to Trump. I mean, in answer to almost every question, Whitkoff keeps saying, of course, don't give me any credit. The real genius here is President Trump. Only President Trump would have been able to do this. This guy's so outcome focused, et cetera. And then, of course, we have this weirdness around Putin,

• 16:51Rory Stewart?

  where he talks about how Putin has painted a beautiful portrait of President Trump that he's carried back, that Putin's told him that he's prayed for President Trump's health. And that he keeps saying, and Tucker Carlson keeps echoing this, what a straightforward guy Putin is. He's a straight shooter. And Tucker Carlson says, yeah, every leader I've talked to around the world says, whatever you think of Putin, you can absolutely trust him to say it how it is.

• 17:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I I found those bits pretty chilling because again, I think there's a danger with this, like with the the signal thing. Even already, the new, when you're watching the news coverage of this, it's sort of, you know, the White House has accepted that a mistake was made, blah, blah. There is an abnormal government being covered as normal. It is so abnormal to have somebody who's clearly not that qualified in this level of negotiation, being the person to go to sit down to negotiate one on one on behalf of Trump with Vladimir Putin. It is not normal. And then what is really not normal is for that to be an American who is clearly utterly desperate to see this guy as a good guy. I actually felt sick watching him explain the thing about the painting.

• 17:59Alastair Campbell?

  Because he was basically saying to Tucker Carlson, who as we know is an unadulterated member of the Vladimir Putin fan club. And he was saying to him, but you know, Tucker, let me just explain how how nice this guy is. That one of the first things he did, he got this painting commissioned by one of Russia's greatest artists. And it's a beautiful painting. It's a beautiful painting. And I was able to take that back and show it to the president with a message, with a message from Vladimir Putin. That's how close these guys are. And then there was the other thing you didn't mention in in the other thing that I thought was interesting. We're going to go on to talk about Turkey in a minute. He talked about there's some great news going to be coming out of Turkey. And I think we're going back to this thing about the strong men. He just loves

• 18:43Alastair Campbell?

  to be seen on a par with these guys. So then when, and then the thing about the praying, I mean, you know, the image, if you knew nothing about current affairs and you suddenly just relied for your analysis of Russia and Putin on this interview between Carlson and Witkoff, you get a sense of Putin as a as a family man, a nice guy, a God fearing person who just wants to do the best for his country. And then also the level of ignorance. When he said about, I mean, the thing is, the the big issue here, Tucker, what we're talking about here, Tucker, is these these four or five provinces, there is um.

• 19:20Alastair Campbell?

  Curzon and there is, um, there is Crimea, Crimea. And then there's, and then Carlson comes in and says Lugans, which of course is what the Russians call it. With a G, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lahans, Lahans. So he can't even name these damn provinces. And then he says, and they had a referendum there and they speak Russian. This is like somebody saying that because a lot of Irish people speak English, Ireland is actually still part of the British Empire. So it was puke breaking. And yet it's, this is the guy in charge. It's mind blowing.

• 19:57Rory Stewart?

  Final one that links the, the signal revelations and the Whitkoff interview is the contempt for Europe. So there's a very striking thing, which I think will be a theme for the next four years, which is when he says, Europe unfortunately is dying, Europe's dead. The future is the Middle East. The future is Israeli tech, Saudi UAE investment in technology, young leaders, dynamic, growing economies, people who want to do business. That's what Trump understands. Europe is dying. Very interesting because there's two things that he doesn't mention there. Firstly, those economies in the Middle East are one tenth the size of the European economies. He's got a completely out of whack vision of how important they are.

• 20:38Rory Stewart?

  And secondly, he doesn't remotely take into account the fact that Europe are liberal democracies. They're the United States longest standing allies. They're part of NATO, whereas Saudi Arabia and UAE are autocratic monarchies. And all these countries are involved in very, very aggressive actions against human rights dissidents, against their neighbors. None of that features. So complete shift in region, complete shift in values.

• 21:04Alastair Campbell?

  This thing in Europe is interesting because the guy's not an experienced politician and he, and he, he was being led, he was a witness being led quite a lot of the time by Tucker Carlson. So for example, the BBC headline out of the interview was actually Whitkoff agreeing with a question from Carlson that Keir Starmer's position on boots on the ground, coalition of the willing, was a posture under pose. And he said, you know, yeah, it's, was Starmer up to, is this just? Just like a posture and a pose. Yeah, Tucker, it's just a posture and a pose and they feel they've got to be like Churchill. Now, no serious senior politician would have kind of fallen into that little sort of trap as easily as he did. But I think that does again indicate this sort of contempt for anything European.

• 21:49Alastair Campbell?

  And there was then this awful bit where basically Carlson again was leading him and saying, you know, oh, why would, why would he want Ukraine? Why would he want it? I mean, once he gets this bit back, he'd find, and you see, why would he want any of the, when they talk about, you know, then he'd go for other European countries. Why would anybody want these countries? I wouldn't want these countries, says Tucker Carlson. And they're sitting there laughing about the whole thing. I just found it sickening and, but as you say, very, very revealing of a deeper thought. And I think we're, you know, we really are kidding ourselves if we, if we hold on to this idea that America's still got Europe's back. But there's just too much from private and public, what they're saying. There's too much utter contempt.

• 22:29Alastair Campbell?

  And we haven't even talked about their continuing ongoing stuff about Canada, which now, now going to an election. So shall we turn to Turkey?

• 22:36Rory Stewart?

  We have covered Turkey quite a lot. In fact, we, we did a podcast recording when I was in Gaziantep after the earthquakes in Turkey. Erdogan has been in power now in Turkey effectively for well over two decades. And what we have with Erdogan is a kind of vision of what's happening more and more around the world. So he is somebody who's been on a slow journey, slower than most, from being a leader that the West was quite optimistic about in the late nineties, early two thousands, through to where he's going now, which is making the final shift from a populist to a full authoritarian ruler. And, and that's just happened in the last week where he's announced that he's arrested the main opposition leader, the mayor of Istanbul, locked up all his aides.

• 23:21Rory Stewart?

  So, quick reminder of this story.

• 23:23Alastair Campbell?

  He, as you say, he's been there 22 years, first as prime minister, then as president and with more powers going to the president. And he's another one who fancies, I think, being, being in powerful life. Ekrem İmamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, pretty popular, has seen off Erdogan's candidate several times, including in one election that he won, which Erdogan, the authorities announced was not legitimate, so they made them do it again, and he won by an even bigger margin. Nobody seriously believes that these charges are anything other than trumped up. And they were preceded, don't forget, by the Istanbul University.

• 23:59Alastair Campbell?

  Withdrawing the academic qualifications that Imam Alou has. And the reason for that is that to one of the qualifications to stand for president is you have to have a higher education degree. So he's lost his degree. He's been charged, formally charged now, been put in jail. And we've had six successive nights of very, very big demonstrations in a country where 90% of the media is pretty much government controlled. So they're not necessarily seeing the scale of the demonstrations. They all know that the government has put in place restrictions against large scale

• 24:40Alastair Campbell?

  protests and yet these protests seem not to be going away. They're desperately trying to keep them peaceful. The protesters are desperately, I think, trying to keep them peaceful because they're worried that if they do turn really violent and nasty, there has been water cannon and rubber bullets and pepper spray, but it's not really, really, really kicked off yet. And I think there is a worry that if it did, then the crackdown would be enormous. 1300, something like 1300 people have been thrown in jail. So this feels like a step towards genuine, full on autocracy.

• 25:11Rory Stewart?

  In the world in which you were in Downing Street, Turkey began candidate negotiations with the European Union and then accession negotiations in this period, 99 to 2004. And everybody thought, okay, this is wonderful. Erdogan is like a sort of Muslim version of a Christian Democrat. And this new country can join the European Union and we can become, and it can stretch to the Middle East. Second period, 2004 to 2014, everything in the world begins to change and Turkey changes with it. So as China explodes, Middle East becomes more important. And as the financial crisis happens and the European economies are hit, Turkey begins to think, well, maybe I'm not quite so dependent on these dynamic, fast growing European economies.

• 25:54Rory Stewart?

  I'm going to be diversify a little bit more away towards China and the Middle East. And in doing so, he becomes a kleptocratic plutocrat. So he becomes more corrupt, he becomes more tied into businesses and he's less interested in losing his presidency. Position. Next thing, which connects with something we've done, which is our interview with Ahmad Al Sharah and Syria. So again, something happens in Syria and it changes the whole world. The Syrian civil war drives five million refugees out of Syria. And that is of course leads firstly to the rise of far right parties in Europe because they've got it. They're responding to this massive surge in immigration. Secondly, it means that nobody's interested anymore in Turkey joining the European Union because at a time of anti-immigration, people don't want Turkish immigrants coming to the European Union.

• 26:40Rory Stewart?

  And the third thing that happens is that Turkey is suddenly able to present itself as the country that's stopping Syrian migrants going to the European Union. So an EU-Turkey deal is made, Turkey keeps three million Syrians. And suddenly the relationship between Turkey and the EU becomes much, much more transactional. Finally, fast forward to where we are today, Trump comes into power, all the norms change. Europe's suddenly very worried about Ukraine. They want Turkey as a possible ally in Ukraine. And this is the point at which Erdogan sees his final opportunity to go much more authoritarian because he knows that Europe isn't going to really criticize him. He knows that Trump really isn't going to care at all. He's got much more freedom of movement than he did in the late nineties, early two thousands.

• 27:23Rory Stewart?

  And he completes his journey away from a sort of competitive authoritarianism where the odds were stacked against the opposition because he fixed the media, fixed the universities, fixed civil society, but it was still theoretically possible to win and the opposition sometimes won in some of the cities. Towards a situation now where he's moving fast towards a one-party state.

• 27:43Alastair Campbell?

  But as you say, the politics, the geopolitics around it have changed. I found that the American administration response was the only thing I could find, very little reaction from any American politicians. The official line from the State Department was that we don't interfere in the political processes of other countries, which is, I think that's news to a lot of people down through history. And so that was that one. And then Macron, who in the past has been very critical when Turkey has kind of been on this road to autocracy. Very, very quiet, as you say, because of, because of these other factors, especially at the moment, I think, Ukraine. We were talking. Talking a few weeks ago about doing a big episode on Turkey, becoming so much more of a

• 28:24Alastair Campbell?

  power broker in some of these big, you know, Middle East, Ukraine, Asia, the relationship in Europe and Asia. So I think that he is thinking, if there's ever a time when I'm going to get away with this, it is now. And that's why these protests are one, very, very brave, but also very, very important.

• 28:42Rory Stewart?

  I had an amazing conversation for about an hour and a half yesterday with a Turkish academic called Burke Essen, who's I think a really great analyst of this. I mean, he had an analogy, which I thought, you know, might appeal to you. He said that the way to understand the old Erdogan system is it's it's like a football match in which one team has 11 players and the other team has nine players and the ref tends to favour the team with the 11 players. But if you don't understand, you're not concentrating on the game very much, you're just occasionally glimpsing it on television. It does look like some sort of fair competition's taking place and it's occasionally possible even for the team with nine players to score a goal. But basically it's stacked against you. That was the old, old system. It was also interesting because what Burke was reflecting on is the way that, I mean, he's very brave.

• 29:28Rory Stewart?

  I mean, he's calling this out in an environment that is getting more and more authoritarian. You know, where genuinely people are being locked up, people using, losing their university jobs. There still seems to be space, Burke thinks. I mean, he's speaking to me from Turkey for academics such as himself to call it out and to try to speak up for a different secular liberal version of Turkey. He also really though wants to get people to focus on the fact that he thinks Trump is doing exactly the same thing, but much, much quicker. That Trump's going through the journey against universities, against the media, against the judiciary.

• 30:02Alastair Campbell?

  Judges.

• 30:03Rory Stewart?

  Judges, against independent agencies at a much more accelerated pace. And he said this is partly something he's observed, which is the way that the populists are different in their second terms. That Erdogan was much more aggressive, having left power for a bit when the Islamists came back into power. That autoband started as a sort of, almost a kind of liberal lost power and then when he came back was much more conservative. And that that's definitely the case for Trump. And I think his final point would be the huge difference. Between, you know, middling countries like Turkey or Mexico or even Brazil going down a populist route on the one hand, or small countries like Hungary. And on the other hand, what happens when you get a superpower like Trump doing it?

• 30:44Rory Stewart?

  I mean, his capacity to do harm is so much bigger than anything that Erdogan has. And you can see it also in how much more outspoken he is that, you know, generally when Erdogan or Orban, these populists turn up at international meetings, they're relatively polite. They make their most extreme statements at election rallies to their own domestic audiences and their own local languages. That's when Erdogan will call the German government neo-Nazis, for example. But when they go to international conferences, they're quite polite.

• 31:11Alastair Campbell?

  Erdogan was, as part of his communications on this since the arrest, first of all is to say, to go through this pretense that it has nothing to do with politics. And they they sent out the the Justice Minister, a guy called Yilmaz Tunç, and he went out and said, attempting to associate judicial investigations with our president is an act of audacity and irresponsibility. It sounded very kind of Dmitry Peskov when he was in the early days of Putin taking over the judiciary in Russia. And I think the other thing to to to to understand in this is that because we do live in a, you know, pretty, even though we might have complaints about our media, we, you know, it's a, we do have a genuinely free media.

• 31:53Alastair Campbell?

  It is quite amazing to think that in in Turkey, it's not always been like this. They have a sort of free media in that you will see there will be a column, there will be this, there will be criticism, there will be debate. But ninety percent now of the Turkish media essentially is is controlled by government or by businesses which support the government very, very closely. And you are seeing that develop in America. You're seeing it partly developed by voluntarily that newspapers and broadcasters who are sort of, you know, limiting what they say, they're volunteering just to be, and that's just taking care. Now, that might sound odd, given that we've just talked about the guy from The Atlantic, who was pretty cautious in how he reported, but he didn't, he understood there's a very big difference between being a journalist and working for the government.

• 32:39Alastair Campbell?

  But in Turkey, you've got these big protests going on. I was talking to somebody last night who said that, who lives in Istanbul, but who said, who'd been at work, who said they're not really aware of them. So it's only word of mouth that is getting these crowds to come out because actually, imagine if this was Britain with hundreds of thousands of people out on the street through the night, it would be rolling news, it would be Sky News 24 hours a day, and we'd all be aware of it, we'd make a judgment about whether to join or not to join. So I think it'll be very interesting to see at what point, I've got no doubt at all, there will be a crackdown, a real crackdown at some point, and it'll be interesting to see what point that happens. And I think one of the reasons he's waiting is because he's waiting to see whether this international reaction does take place, and thus far, so far as he's concerned, it's gone completely according to plan, I'm afraid.

• 33:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think good point to take a break and come back to the very different subject to the UK economy, but thank you very much.

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• 35:18Alastair Campbell?

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

• 35:20Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 35:22Alastair Campbell?

  Just a quick reminder for people, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories, is our latest interviewee on leading. Very, very interesting, very, very passionate, got a lot of response, a lot of people saying she was great. And we had our usual massive pushback from people, we always get a massive pushback from when we talk about the Middle East. But anyway, it's worth listening to, and I hope that you do if you haven't already. But let's talk about the economy. Let's talk about the Spring Statement. We're recording this on Tuesday, it'll be out Wednesday, early hours, and then later in the day, Rachel Reeves will stand up in Parliament for what feels like a bigger moment than maybe that it should be.

• 36:06Alastair Campbell?

  That's why we will be doing a, I won't call it an emergency pod, but we'll be doing an instant reaction to the Spring Statement with none other than one of the heroes of The Rest is Politics, Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, live on the Rest is Politics YouTube channel today, Wednesday, 3.30pm. Keep an eye out on our social media accounts for any more details.

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  And everyone will be able to watch that live on YouTube, and if you want to catch up afterwards, it will be available for members of The Rest is Politics Plus wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're not already a member, you can go to therestispolitics.com to join. So Alistair, you're quite right, this is a very interesting moment because the story was that we were going to move away from two big fiscal events, or two big British budget events a year, to one. And this was Rachel Reeves' great announcement, and there was general applause because it was going to give us more policy stability. And instead of everything lurching around every six months, the government would say what it was doing once a year. However, she ran into a bit of a problem.

• 37:12Rory Stewart?

  And the problem is that she set herself a very strict fiscal rule and gave herself very little wiggle room. So her fiscal rule, which is about getting how much she borrows, how much she spends, she only left £10 billion out of what's projected to be nearly £1,500 billion worth of government spending within a couple of years. And Not actually that surprisingly, the Office for Budget Responsibility, looking at what's happening around the world, has revised its forecasts and she now looks as though she's going to be in real trouble. So to put it in context, it looks like she's going to have to borrow £23 billion more than forecast. And remember, she'd already was borrowing

• 37:55Rory Stewart?

  a lot more. This is £151 billion against the £87 billion, which was forecast before she came in. So nearly £63 billion higher in overall terms. And that leaves her with three choices. Either choice number one, she just puts her head on the sand, pretends nothing's happening, hope the world may change in the next six months and return to the whole thing in the budget in the autumn. Option number two is she reduces borrowing or increases taxes or cuts spending in order to sit within her fiscal rules. So she does something dramatic to make sure that she's not borrowing and spending too much. Third option is she changes her fiscal rule again and says, actually, I want a more flexible fiscal rule to make it through it. Over to you.

• 38:38Alastair Campbell?

  Or she could, just on that one, she could, for example, do something similar to what the Germans have just done, which is tweak it by taking defence and security out of it. But that people would very, very quickly see that what that was doing. But I think she could maybe tweak it in relation to this broader security situation.

• 38:57Rory Stewart?

  Before we get on to what she's going to do, just from a, let's set aside the technocratic economics. From a political comms perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages? The number one, saying, well, I don't want to react too quickly, figures change, let's wait till the autumn. Or option two, I'm going to show that I believe in my fiscal rule and I'm going to cut. Or option three, I'm going to go down the German option. Or I'm going to re-describe my fiscal rule in some way so that I have more headroom. Which, what are the pros and cons of each?

• 39:30Alastair Campbell?

  The, I mean, I'm pretty sure which one she's going to do. And it's not, it's not the last one. I think she's going to, she's going to stick to her guns. And the pros of that are showing strength, commitment to stability, she'll think that the markets

• 39:45Alastair Campbell?

  Respond reasonably well to that. The cons of that, I think, are the extent to which the political and the economic story is starting to intertwine in a way that is not great for the government. I think she will want in her statement to project all lots of the sort of progress that has been made, for example, in waiting lists and you know, real wages and interest rate cuts and what have you. But I think in terms of how people are feeling about the politics of the economy right now, it's not great. And I think that, interesting, Roy, ju- ju- just to call me a bit sad, but as part of the preparation for this, I went back and listened to the chat that we did with her last year before she was elected, which, if you remember, got quite sparky between

• 40:31Alastair Campbell?

  between you and her. It was also, I'd completely forgotten, Roy, this was the, this was the place where you revealed your predilection for very expensive pots because you were explaining that, you explained the va- the huge cost, the additional costs of your getting your thousand pound pots into the country from the, from the Netherlands. But a couple of things really interesting, went listening back to it now. The first is the extent to which cuts under the Conservatives drove her into politics in the first place, motivated her in terms of her political career. She was very, very clear that her politicisation, it's really interesting, she was born in nineteen seventy nine, the year Thatcher came to power,

• 41:14Alastair Campbell?

  and her first vote was in nineteen ninety seven, the year that Labour came to power. And she's very much of that generation that felt, growing up, Thatcher's Britain was not good for people like her. So cuts, really sort of visceral about the Tories not spending enough on schools, not spending enough on textbooks. Her mum essentially losing her job as a special educational needs teacher and so forth. And then her, her analysis of the, of the last government and their inability to, as it were, stand up for people like, like me. So that's why I think this stuff with welfare cuts, the huge welfare cuts that we talked about last week, I think it should be finding that very, very difficult.

• 41:53Rory Stewart?

  Small, small sort of side note on that. So. That I thought was really interesting in terms of trying to understand her because normally what you'd expect is you'd say the problem with the Tories is cuts and austerity. And therefore, what we're going to do is we're going to be much more social democratic. We're going to try to make a state that feels a bit more Scandinavian. It's going to be much more about generous welfare payments, much more about thinking about equality, maybe much more ambitious green agenda, much more big investment in, I don't know, roads, supercomputers. And we're going to turn the whole economic model around from a very kind of tight worry about the markets,

• 42:36Rory Stewart?

  cut expenditure, Thatcherite state to a more generous state that borrows more, spends more and invests more in welfare in the future. Is that right?

• 42:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that that that that makes sense. And I think that one of the reasons why politically things have become quite difficult for her is this feeling that, you know, we we had this in a question last week about, you know, what is the difference between some of the things that conservatives did in the past or that conservatives talk about now? It's always quite uncomfortable for Labour activists when they hear Tories saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's going even further than we would have done on welfare and and so forth. And then, but then the other thing that I thought was really interesting that came through in the interview. And bear in mind, you know, she's in opposition. So we all know the game that was being played at that time. They were fairly cautious, didn't want to make mistakes, didn't want to make promises that were going to come back to haunt them.

• 43:27Alastair Campbell?

  But we pressed her a bit on whether she was actually comfortable with the basic core institutions of economic management. And she was Bank of England independence, the work of the Office of Budget Responsibility. Now, one of the things you've got to say about the Office of Budget Responsibility, which was George Osborne's creation, is essentially we've we've now given it almost godlike status. When it comes out tomorrow and gives the revised growth forecast, that is going to be as big as anything that she that she says. And and I think that one thing I think that's that that you hear. From, and this is bound to happen because things haven't been going that well.

• 44:09Alastair Campbell?

  Just to, you know, give you one sort of anecdotal sort of factor in relation to this, I sent you the the Labour equivalent of Conservative home, who's up, who's down. This is this Labour list thing about, you know, who's the most popular member of the cabinet, who's the least popular. Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner are far out in front. And Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall are right down at the bottom with negative approval ratings. Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting's pretty low down. Now, what that's saying is that the ones who are giving the difficult messages are the ones who are getting hit quite hard in terms of their their popularity within the party. But that becomes a problem. And the thing is that this, we've got to keep reminding people, this is a Labour government

• 44:53Alastair Campbell?

  and Labour governments are expected to do Labour things. Two things Gordon Brown never lost sight of. One is the Chancellor has to drive the Treasury. Don't let the Treasury drive the Treasury. The Chancellor has to drive the Treasury. And that means being very, very clear about what you wanted to do for you. And the second thing is never, ever, ever forget that you're that you're Labour. Now, we talked a lot in the podcast about her understanding of Labour history and her commitment to Labour history. What's been difficult is this, she's desperately trying to avoid this being called austerity mark two. But once you get into some of the numbers that we're going to see in the spending round to meet this fiscal rule, it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough.

• 45:33Rory Stewart?

  I mean, she's inherited a big problem. And and the big problem is is much more than any government. And she didn't really want to acknowledge that, I felt in the interview, which is Britain's aging. We want growth, but a lot of the public doesn't want immigration. We want more houses, but a lot of the time we don't want the environmental costs or the neighbourhood costs of building those houses. You know, we we want services, but we don't want to pay higher taxes. So she's inherited this big problem and our growth is kind of anemic. But she didn't help herself because she has a tendency. I think unnecessarily to tie her hands behind her back. But the first big example of this was she ruled out seventy five percent of the tax rises by

• 46:17Rory Stewart?

  saying that she wasn't going to raise corporation tax, national assurance or VAT.

• 46:21Alastair Campbell?

  And and in complex.

• 46:22Rory Stewart?

  In complex, yeah. The second mistake she's made is she's committed to this fiscal rule and left herself a very, very tiny headroom. And once she's made those commitments, she somehow feels that she she can never get out of them. So she she she said, you know, we're not going to come back with more tax rises. She just said it to end the Treasury Select Committee. And she has been given opportunities which the Germans took to say, security situation's completely changed. We're going to change our fiscal rules or we're going to raise more taxes. She won't do that. That then means that she's basically stuck in the austerity light world. The growth's not coming and she's committed to not raising taxes and not borrowing anymore. So she's not going to have any money she had to cut.

• 47:06Rory Stewart?

  And there, everything comes down to something that my friend, who you know, Felix Martin, wrote a rather good article in Reuters about. Which is whether Labour is going to be able to deliver on what, at least for some people, seems to be the most exciting potential path to growth. Which is that you get a lot of statements out of Kier Starner and increasingly out of West Streeting. Saying the way we're going to create growth is not by borrowing and spending more. We're going to create growth through efficiency. We're going to get rid of regulations. We're going to get rid of red tape. We're going to bring productivity into the NHS. We're going to get rid of quangos. So there was this thing about sacking the chair of the Competition Markets Authority.

• 47:47Rory Stewart?

  And there, the hope, I guess, from Felix and others is that although all that stuff sounds quite Tory. It's only Labour that actually has the political capital to really make the tough decisions to bring efficiency into government. Bring productivity into the NHS, that getting rid of NHS England, which we haven't discussed in a lot of detail. Is is part of this movement. So be a vision of a much more efficient, much more accountable government. Um. Do you think that can fly?

• 48:15Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it has to fly in in in reality, but I think it's going to be very difficult. You see, the the scrapping of NHS England. Interestingly, I've spoken to people who work in the National Health Service who are not as alarmed by that as I thought they might be, because they actually say there is massive duplication and it is very, very confusing to work at the frontline with all these different missives coming down. I think that the the idea of these sort of huge civil service cuts, and I'm always very suspicious when people say we're just going to, you know, affect the back room. I always wanted to know, I mean, I think I was I was deemed to work in a back room, I guess. But, you know, where are all these back rooms in government, you know? And and I always think with efficiency, I mean, we've got the whole dodge thing going on with Musk,

• 48:57Alastair Campbell?

  which is on a different scale. But there's always a part of me that thinks, well, you know, why do we are we are we saying we've always been incredibly inefficient? And, you know, why are we sort of having to admit that? I think that I think it doesn't hit the scale of the problem that they're talking about. And I think the other the other thing that we we we need to acknowledge is the the cost of borrowing, the reason why she's so, one of the reasons she's so wedded to this fiscal rule, is because the cost of government borrowing is now astronomical. The money that we are paying to service the debt is on a par with anything else that government is doing. And the cost is going up. The cost of government borrowing is represented by bond

• 49:38Alastair Campbell?

  yields. It's gone up to 4.6%. Well, that's kind of, we're now, we're talking, I don't want to make any other comparison with trust quartet, but, you know, we're talking that level.

• 49:48Rory Stewart?

  And a hundred hundred billion pounds a year, isn't it now?

• 49:50Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. Hundred hundred billion pounds. And this is something that, you know, there's two things that you'll hear from Rachel Reeves and all her, the other Labour ministers when they're on the airwaves in the next couple of days, and they won't be wrong. One is, we inherited a terrible mess and we're still trying to work, trying to fix it. That is true, even if the public get bored hearing it. And the second is that these, there are international factors here that have made our life more difficult. Both of those things are true. However, when you look at the the numbers, I'm just looking at a graph. Somebody sent me uh debt stock as percentage of GDP. Gordon Brown thirty seven percent. George Osborne sixty five percent. Then we're into the nineties through Quateng. We're now at ninety eight. Debt payments as percentage of revenue.

• 50:35Alastair Campbell?

  Again, you go back to Gordon Brown was fairly high, but Rachel Reeves is is even higher. So these are these are trends that she will be very, very worried about. Now, as to what she does, I and you you were saying here the the sort of pros and cons of, I guess, the pros and cons of doing little things or big things. In the end, I don't think you've got any choice. I think we're going to have to do big things on the economy. I don't even think you have to say single market customs union. I've I've I've got a new acronym, Rory. It's called AFTA. A F T A, the Alliance of Frictionless Trade Associates, something like that.

• 51:14Alastair Campbell?

  Frictionless trade, okay. So it could be the Association of Frictionless Trade Allies. It could be anything. Um. But that is, I think that reform is one thing, and I think you and I both agree that public services do need reform. That's fine. But unless we sort this trade relationship with Europe, unless we do get back to some sort of frictionless trade. I think the we're just going to be going from, but remember, one of the things that Keir Starmer said is going to put an end to sticking plaster politics. There is a danger that we just could have go from budget to spring statement, budget to spring statement. And we have the same debate every time. Are we going to put up a bit of tax? Are we going to cut more spending? And where is the growth going to come from? Because don't forget, this is something else she said several times in our interview.

• 52:00Alastair Campbell?

  Without growth, we do not get the funding for our public services. Well, right now. Yes, we we talked to Peter Carl recently about AI, and you can see maybe there's part of a growth strategy there. You can see it may be in relation to the planning, but as you said, there are a lot of problems related to that, political problems. But in terms of an overall plan for growth for the economy. I still feel that they're they're struggling to articulate it because actually they don't have that many levers right now.

• 52:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, unless they did very, very radical things, you know. I mean, if obviously, if you were a Tory listening to this, you'd say, maybe we need to rethink the whole of the NHS. That the NHS is now absorbing so much more of our budget all the time. And that there are other other systems around the world which you could look at, etc. But you can imagine the total allergic reaction which would happen as soon as you hear that kind of stuff.

• 52:46Alastair Campbell?

  That's the Farage position, though.

• 52:47Rory Stewart?

  Let me just finish with a thought which you've just inspired me, which is, we just did this interview with Peter Kyle. For members, the second interview, taking members' questions. And I thought that was a, if you were really looking for a detailed way of understanding why the government's in such a mess. What Peter Carl explains really beautifully is the trade offs. So on the one hand, he really wants Britain to be an AI superpower. So he's talking very much in the kind of language that almost a Thatcherite would talk about. He's talking about deregulation, changing copyright rules, more risk capital, tax breaks for American companies. Generating much more energy to run these huge data centers that are going to use half the power of Los Angeles.

• 53:31Rory Stewart?

  Driving more productivity in businesses, loosening the planning laws to get these energies facilities built. Bring in US firms and technology. And then, on the other hand, he's having to balance that with, well, yeah, but on the other hand, if we change the copyright rules. What's that going to mean for the creative industry in Britain, its incomes? And if we suddenly loosen up all the pension funds, what risks is that going to mean for people's pensions? And we bring all these tax breaks to the economy and maybe get these big companies to come here. But that suddenly means that we're very, very vulnerable in the way that Ireland is on our income to these US techs companies.

• 54:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 54:06Rory Stewart?

  We're going to do these big energy things, but what's that going to mean for climate? And we're going to do productivity, but what happens for all these companies when everybody loses their jobs? And what's going to happen to everybody lose their jobs as the productivity comes? And finally, how does this all work in our geostrategic calculation? I mean, you know, we don't really want a world run by Musk and Zuckerberg. And that's when Peter then starts saying, well, yes, of course, we want more productivity. But we're going to force these companies to make sure that they invest more in retraining the staff when they lay them off. Because if they're making bigger profits, they have to invest more. And yes, we want these companies to come, but they have to commit to putting in. Green energy investments in order to make sure that everything we're doing is renewable. This is the stuff, I guess, that Rachel Reeves and Kirsten are struggling with all the time, which is, how do you get a clear message and which side of this ultimately are you on?

• 54:51Rory Stewart?

  Because we can all do the on the one hand or the other, but Labour's big decision is, is it going for growth or is it going to be going endlessly for, well, we don't want to be like the Tories. We're going to have put in regulations in place, incentives in place, conditions in place to make sure that we don't end up with people losing out at the other end.

• 55:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they've said they're going for growth and it would be a very, very big thing for them to change that approach now. Our friend Peter Kellner wrote a very interesting piece yesterday, I think I saw it. And he was drawing comparisons with Labour in the past. And the comparisons aren't exact, but, but, but he, he made a very, very interesting observation. His view, and look, devaluation of sterling is an argument that sort of ran through several Labour governments in the past. And, but his view very strongly is that the Labour government that came in after a long period of Tory power in nineteen, October nineteen sixty four should have, had a dreadful inheritance like the Labour government did now and should have devalued. Okay. But because Attley had done that,

• 55:54Alastair Campbell?

  somewhat against his will, having been pushed into it back in nineteen forty nine, I think it was. Jim Callaghan as Chancellor didn't want to say, oh, I don't wish, we mustn't become known as the party of devaluation. So put it off and put it off and put it off, then ran, had another election two years later, won it, got a bigger majority, but then the, the core problems came back, run on the pound. And instead of going for devaluation, they went for spending cuts, went for freeze on wages and other taxes, booze and petrol and what have you. And then low and behold, forced to devalue fourteen percent, I think it was. And the point that Pete is making is that Labour today feel like they're being pushed towards something that maybe in their hearts, they know they should be doing.

• 56:40Alastair Campbell?

  And it won't be surprising to know that he and I both agree that that relates to this relationship with Europe. And that the arrival of Trump. And the new security environment vis a vis Putin, vis a vis Ukraine, but particularly now with the new American administration, is actually an opportunity for the Labour Government to stand up and do a major reset. And that reset may involve, just as they've broken the manifesto promise in relation to international aid to pay for the extra defence spending, which people seem to accept, actually, there may be other manifesto commitments that have to be broken to acknowledge this. So, for example, everybody knows that even though Keir Starmer's got some political credit for saying we have to increase defence spending, it's going to have to go even further. Now, how's that going to get paid for? And

• 57:24Alastair Campbell?

  if that's where they think they're going to get pushed to, do it now. Don't get pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.

• 57:29Rory Stewart?

  That's the important thing, isn't it? If you can see in advance that the tax rules that you've set yourself, the fiscal rules that you set, are simply not compatible with where you need to go, which is maybe spending 3% of GDP on defence, or your commitments on the customs union are not compatible with the new world, get out there, make the argument now. If you can see the, you know, the train coming at you down the tunnel, do something about it. The risk is that they're going to try to tinker technocratically around the edges. And the other risk, I suppose, is that Morgan McSweeney, this key figure, who seems to be very focused on the Red Wall, is going to say, all that matters to my Red Wall voters is you never raise tax, and you never do anything that sounds like being nice to Europe, and you never do anything that allows too many immigrants to come in.

• 58:12Rory Stewart?

  And if they, if Morgan McSweeney wins that argument, they're not going to be able to achieve their growth objectives.

• 58:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there you go. So that's the big argument that probably, and I don't know if that argument is raging within government. And look, this, this is, she, she was clear at the start, again, something she said in the interview, that she didn't want to get to a place where you have these huge fiscal events coming around every few months. But there's a danger that that's happening, whether she likes it or not. And I always say, I think she's still in that place, where we're still less than a year into the Labour Government, they're still in that place where there's just about enough goodwill left, there's just about enough sort of, I think there's quite a lot of credibility still. And I think Keir's enhanced credibility in terms of the way that he's handled the foreign stuff. But I think that sense of the overseas scenario gives him an opportunity to build on the success

• 59:02Alastair Campbell?

  that he's had in that, personally and politically, and to match that now alongside a domestic economic agenda that is about signalling. Big changes, because I think if we just sort of, this feels a little bit like we're beginning to kind of, you call it tinkering or limping or whatever it might be. But the one thing that we're not feeling is that the booster, the growth booster rockets are sort of somehow, you know, waiting for us around the corner.

• 59:26Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you on that. That's a good thing to close on.

• 59:28Alastair Campbell?

  See you for question time. We should talk about lots of things we didn't talk about today because of all the other things that were going on, not least the ridiculousness of the American administration. I want to talk about Mexico, actually. I think Claudia Schoenbaum, very, very interesting woman.

• 59:41Rory Stewart?

  And I think we could also talk a little bit about Adolescence, the amazing new Netflix series that's on right now.

• 59:47Alastair Campbell?

  Thanks a lot, Rory. See you tomorrow for Paul Johnson.