Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 189. The King's Speech, performative cruelty, and Argentina About this episode How have voters responded to President Biden's intervention in the Middle East? Was Sunak's summit on AI a success? Who will be the next Argentinian president?
Join Rory and Alastair as they discuss all this and more on today's episode of The Rest is Politics.
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Transcript 11,716 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair Campbell? And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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2:28 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to Rest is Politics with me, Alice Campbell.
2:31 Rory Stewart? And with me Rory Stewart.
2:32 Alastair Campbell? And unusually, in recent weeks, we're going to start domestic because we're recording this shortly before King Charles arrives at Parliament to deliver the King's Speech. We should talk a little bit about the AI Summit that we talked about last week. And then obviously, again, I think we have to talk about the Middle East and both of us want to talk about the elections in Argentina, which are both important but also fascinating.
2:59 Rory Stewart? Very exciting.
2:59 Alastair Campbell? For the way that they're going.
3:01 Rory Stewart? And I think we said before that next year is going to be the biggest.
3:05 Alastair Campbell? Two billion people are going to vote.
3:08 Rory Stewart? Extraordinary.
3:08 Alastair Campbell? In general.
3:09 Rory Stewart? So two thirds of all citizens in democratic countries will vote next year. And this is the biggest year on record since records began in the 1960s. There's never been a democratic fest like next year.
3:21 Alastair Campbell? Including us, including America, including Europe, European elections.
3:24 Rory Stewart? So it's going to be astonishing. And so that's next year will be the big Rest is Politics Democratic election year. But Argentina is this year.
3:31 Alastair Campbell? Rest is Politics Democratic elections. Sorry, it's almost tirade. It's almost tirade. Anyway, so King's Speech, did you have any help in writing it, your friend, the King? Or should we explain that the King doesn't write the King's Speech?
3:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah, so the King's main thing that he was doing last week was a trip to Kenya, which was very interesting, where he was navigating his way through Britain's colonial legacy, particularly the Mau Mau conflict, which was Kenyan independence movements where British troops were involved in atrocities. He went out of his way to give medals to Kenyans who had been poorly treated by the British during the Second World War, hadn't been recognised. He met families of people whose relatives had been executed for participating in Mau Mau. And did a number of apologies on behalf of the British government.
4:21 Alastair Campbell? What do you what do you what do you think people made of that? Because it it did get a fair amount of coverage, but it wasn't like huge in the way that I thought it might have been.
4:28 Rory Stewart? I mean, it's a very interesting. I mean, it I think implies how much Britain is changing. I think fifteen, twenty years ago, the King apologising for British imperial atrocities would have been huge news and possibly bits the right wing press would have been outraged. And, you know, what's the King doing?
4:44 Alastair Campbell? That's what that's what surprised me, because it it sort of played, we're going to talk about the King's speech, where there's a lot of sort of culture warrior stuff going on. And it could easily have been picked up as a sort of woke, you know, why are we apologising for our past, teaching of history, all that stuff that the right tend to go with. But it just got a, it was kind of number three, number four on the news. It didn't get much traction in the papers.
5:04 Rory Stewart? And I think he did it quite, I mean, obviously, I'm a fan of his, but I I think partly it was done quite thoughtfully. So the meetings with the Melma families were done privately in the residence. And then some of the families gave interviews after saying that he'd been compassionate and respectful, but it wasn't a big sort of public media thing. And I think he got the language right. And I think oddly, if you do apologise relatively straightforwardly, it's remarkable what you can, how accepting people can be.
5:32 Alastair Campbell? Now, you you today, Roy, are wearing a very, very smart suit, which did not come cheap. I can I can spot that. But I was very struck by the fact that Charles was wearing this white suit at one point, which I couldn't carry thereof. Do you think you could?
5:45 Rory Stewart? No, I don't think I can carry. I've I've tried. When I was younger, I tried, but I I can't I can't do it. No.
5:51 Alastair Campbell? So we I presume, will he be wearing the same clothes? We'll know by the time the podcast comes out. But will he be wearing exactly the same clothes for the King's speech as he did when he read the Queen's speech on the Queen's behalf last year?
6:05 Rory Stewart? Yes, I think it will be. Although, you're right, we need some real royal heraldry experts. There'll probably be some subtle differences. There'll presumably be a difference in the crown and all that kind of stuff. So just very quickly for international listeners, the King's Speech is the government announcing its programme of legislation going forward. And traditionally, because it's His Majesty's government, they do so by giving the speech to the monarch, previously the Queen, now the King, to read out. Tell us a little bit, I mean, do you remember your first Queen's Speech?
6:35 Alastair Campbell? I do, vividly.
6:36 Rory Stewart? Go on, tell us a little bit about that.
6:37 Alastair Campbell? Well, because, I mean, it is a phasey how people, you will hear people say, so like, for example, today, when they talk about, you know, new oil and gas drilling rights. Now, I think, given King Charles' record in the environment, we can assume he's not going to be very happy about that, but he won't reveal that. And yet, people will say, why is he doing that when he so clearly doesn't believe in it? Because there are still a minority, I hope, of people who think that the King writes the King's Speech. The government writes the King's Speech. I must confess, one of the most, this is going to sound terrible, one of the most thrilling moments of my life was watching the Queen in 1997 talk about
7:20 Alastair Campbell? a National Health Service for the Betty or the Few. I really enjoyed that. We did get pulled back once or twice on...
7:28 Rory Stewart? Because you weren't setting into it some of your great strap lights?
7:31 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, there was an element of, obviously, the Queen, the King, now the King, they're not meant to be in any way political. And that is difficult sometimes, because the government strategy can be the same as a political strategy. I suspect we will see quite a lot of politics in this King's Speech. In fact, the government is briefing that it is essentially a political exercise.
7:51 Rory Stewart? But there'll be a little bit of pushback from the palace if they try to get them to say the long-term economic plan is working, or get Brexit done, or...
7:58 Alastair Campbell? They would push back, yeah. And there were some pushbacks, but, I mean, so it sort of goes back and forwards. I'd imagine they'll have had a draft a few months ago, which should have been very, very outlined, and then the language gets more and more refined and eventually, you know, but I would say, one or two phrases a year, they probably said, I'm not so sure about this.
8:18 Rory Stewart? And this is very important, obviously, because it's laying out the government's legislative programme, but it's probably, to put it in context, one of... Three or four really important events a year, along with conference speeches, budgets. Yeah.
8:31 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
8:32 Rory Stewart? And the press, newspapers will really orient themselves around these three or four big events a year.
8:37 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, although I my sense already is that the media is starting to focus much more on Jeremy Hunt's autumn statement coming up in a couple of weeks' time as opposed to this, which which does feel very fag end.
8:53 Rory Stewart? It's given example of a government at the beginning of its term. What sort of thing are you getting at?
8:56 Alastair Campbell? Well, Bank of England, minimum wage, Scottish Parliament, sure start, I think.
9:02 Rory Stewart? And I remember as an MP for these things, so the the tradition is that the King speaks in the House of Lords, which is down the corridor on the other side of the lobby from the House of Commons. So we all traipsed.
9:13 Alastair Campbell? Well, first of all, you have to be summoned by Black Rod. Black Rod comes and smacks his rod on the door.
9:17 Rory Stewart? That's right. And then we all march out together through central lobby.
9:21 Alastair Campbell? Horrible small talk all the way.
9:23 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. Yep. Chatting to your colleagues from other parties and then you find yourself standing at a sort of bar, like an altar rail, keeping you out of the House of Lords. Well, you cram and you listen, listen to the speech and and then you traipse back again in the other direction. And then the House of Commons, the Parliament Terrence makes speeches on the King's speech. But I guess my memory of it, having done it, I suppose, nine times, is exactly that sense. Is this going to be a great barnstorming speech, which is really going to appeal to the party, which I guess is is what you would have felt in ninety seven, which is a lot of your new MPs there. New election, hearing these words, minimum wage, big thing, Queen says it.
10:05 Rory Stewart? And Rishi, of course, is going to be looking to try, if he can, to craft the narrative of action man and show that he's being dynamic. Let's just whip through the King's speech a little bit and talk about what's in it. What is it? And as far as we can tell, he's going to announce his tobacco changes, which will mean that anyone who is currently fourteen or younger in Britain will never be able to buy tobacco. And probably Labour will support that.
10:30 Alastair Campbell? I suspect that I think that's already sort of bought in that that that will go through. I mean, they are they are putting crime and sentencing right at the heart of this. And my big worry about the whole thing is that is that I sense Suella Braverman's influence all over it. Again, coming up with the idea of longer sentences, more people going to jail. At a time when they're actually emptying the jails early or letting people out early because the jails are already so full.
10:56 Rory Stewart? And this is something where you're completely right, and it's very, very worrying. So on the one hand, there's the stuff that we were congratulating Alex Chalk, the Secretary of State Justice, about last week, which is a presumption against these short sentences, sentences under 12 months. But at the same time, they're talking about mandatory prison sentences for repeat shoplifters, burglars, thieves. Now, mandatory is a big problem because that really fills the jails. It gives the judges no discretion at all. And they're also saying that rapists will have to serve twice the length of prison sentences they currently serve. So no release at halfway time. And those longer sentences really fill the prisons.
11:38 Rory Stewart? There are other problems actually in the prison system at the moment, including remand prisoners, people waiting to go to court, being held in huge numbers. But this will be a big, big question for Labour because on the one hand, Labour doesn't want to show weakness on crime and justice, so they don't want to suggest that they're being soft on rapists, shoplifters, burglars. On the other hand, Keir Starmer in particular will be very conscious, as somebody whose professional life has been spent around criminal justice, that the prisons are unbelievably full and there's absolutely no way, I think, that we're going to be able to accommodate all these people.
12:11 Alastair Campbell? I think their real problem with this King's Speech is, and they're actually, they're stupid enough to be briefing this, that it's not really a legislative programme, it's a set of political traps for Labour. So for example, you've mentioned in relation to the crime stuff, likewise on oil and gas drilling that we mentioned. It's about trying to sort of separate them out. And they're already getting into a muddle. So for example, you've had Rishi Sunak saying that the measures on oil and gas are going to lower the cost of energy, without explaining why. You then have Claire Coutinho, who's the minister responsible, literally hours apart from Sunak, saying, no, it won't. And I do think, I mentioned the Autumn Statement with Jeremy Hunt.
12:54 Alastair Campbell? I think it'd be very odd if there is no connection between a government programme and the cost of living crisis, given that we're coming up to that, that next big, big moment. So I just, I just feel that we're seeing a government that is... Focused on the next election, absolutely everything is about in that context of, as it were, us against Labour. And I just think, I'm not sure the public will buy this in terms of, I think that once you start to discuss everything in the context of the next election, you have a sense, I think, of a government that's losing its way.
13:27 Rory Stewart? Few other geeky things going on in it, which I think are interesting. One of them is trying to deal with leaseholds. So in Britain, as you know, there are these extraordinary setups where landowners can issue 99-year leases, where effectively they can sell you the house almost for the full price of the house and then in 99 years take it back in. So there's an attempt to address that, hasn't gone as far as people want it. And a classic example, I don't know what the backstory is there, but a classic example of a typical government programme where there's huge ambitions, we're going to reform the whole system, and then the whole thing turns out to be slightly half-hearted because it's not addressing flats and various other things. There's a bill on technology, which is the government demanding that they are informed in advance of any advanced security features
14:09 Rory Stewart? put on phones, which is already causing big trouble. So you've got Apple saying that they are going to stop FaceTime services in the United Kingdom rather than comply. So an interesting standoff between big tech and the government in terms of how far you can go. Football?
14:26 Alastair Campbell? Football regulator.
14:27 Rory Stewart? I'd like to hear a little bit, what do you think about this?
14:28 Alastair Campbell? One of my, probably going to ruin the rest of her career, one of my favourite Tories, Tracy Crouch. I actually am, I'm supportive of the football regulator. I know a lot of people in football are not.
14:38 Rory Stewart? Tell us what it'll do.
14:39 Alastair Campbell? Essentially, it will, it will put somebody outside the industry, above the industry, able to kind of set direction and regulate its working. So that, for example, I'm imagining that the, the whole thing about fit and proper person test, which is, I don't think has ever, ever been applied. And let's be honest, we've got some fairly unfitted, improper person, persons in charge of football clubs.
15:00 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
15:02 Alastair Campbell? That they would perhaps be, have a greater say in that. So I think, look, Tracy Crouch is taken seriously in the football world. And I think that's another one that might well, might well go through. So listen, it won't all be terrible, but in terms of what they are trying to project, I think it is very much on this culture war Braverman agenda. And some of the stuff that they were briefing out at the weekend was horrific.
15:25 Rory Stewart? Just before we get on Braverman, because I know you want to do a lot on Braverman, but just three more things they're doing. So one of them, they're doing drip pricing in airports, which is an interesting example of something I often felt in politics, which is that you can be very caught up in the sort of big issues, you know, what are you doing about inflation or taxation? But there are often things that really irritate voters in my experience, you know. In my days, it was cold calling, it was incentivising traffic wardens, these kind of really irritate people. And in this case, it's airlines hiding the costs of extra charges for luggage and sort of thing. So I do sometimes think that there's a role for government, doesn't matter what government, in addressing some of those smaller consumer facing things. Did you do some of those things? And did you find they were popular and they were?
16:07 Alastair Campbell? Oh, Lord, what sort of things did we do like that? I mean, one thing I was going to talk about that doesn't require legislation. So, for example, and you're absolutely right, I do want to talk about Braverman because she's making my blood boil at the moment, which I know is what she wants to do, and I should try to resist the blood boiling. But for example, there she is saying that we're going to find charities who give tents out to homeless people, which I just think for us as a country in 2023, to have a Home Secretary who says that. And I was thinking about, for example, what we did in the Rough Sleeping, Rough Sleepers Initiative. And there's a wonderful quote from Michael Barber, who, you know, you and I both know and like, and who ran the delivery unit for Tony Blair.
16:51 Alastair Campbell? She said that sometimes government is not about legislation, it's about identifying a problem and then putting in the resources and the team and the strategy to address it. And we should maybe put in the newsletter, the graph that showed the steady decline of rough sleeping under the Labour government. And she is basically saying that these tents are a cause rather than a symptom. And it's just performative cruelty for me, it's performative cruelty. For her then to say this is a lifestyle choice, for people who are living on the streets, and she says it's a lifestyle choice. And interestingly, Rishi Sunak was being interviewed yesterday. He was asked whether he agreed with that as a description. And there's a game going on here because we've now had the hurricane of
17:36 Alastair Campbell? immigration. We've had the hate marches, which we'll talk about in relation to the Middle East, where she's saying that anybody goes on these marches, it's a hate march. And we've now got this thing about the lifestyle choice of tents. Rishi Sunak has kind of distanced himself from those and yet gives her the licence to go and do all this stuff.
17:56 Rory Stewart? Or may not give her the licence. And I think it may be, we've discussed this a lot in the past, because I think, you know, six, nine months ago, you were saying that he should fire her as Home Secretary, and maybe he should have done. But I think to some extent, once he's decided not to do that, and she represents a very popular party, right, how does, how does he stop her?
18:12 Alastair Campbell? So, so there's a fabulous piece-
18:13 Rory Stewart? Because in the end, you can only control your cabinet ministers by firing them. I mean, if they, you can't stop the Home Secretary going out saying nonsense unless you're prepared to fire her.
18:22 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. And she may just think that she's got absolute licence. There's a wonderful piece in last week's New European by Matthew Dankoener. He's actually making the case that he thinks Sunak's as bad as Johnson and Trust for different reasons. He gives him some credit for some things, but he's got this line, though, "I do not believe Sunak buys the Braverman spiel for a second, but he's happy to exploit it for electoral purposes to spark flints close to the most dangerous cultural tinder." And I think another one that maybe we can talk about in this context, rather than when we get on to the, talk about the Middle East. This thing about the march, the, the, the pro Palestinian march at the weekend.
19:00 Rory Stewart? And she'd suggested earlier, didn't she, that she was considering arresting anybody who showed a Palestinian flag? That was her too, wasn't it?
19:06 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. I, look, there's, there's been a march, you can argue, there's a brilliant speech, by the way, for German speakers of, of Habeck, the Vice Chancellor.
19:15 Rory Stewart? Which, which has been all over Twitter, been shared, yeah, yeah, been incredibly popular.
19:19 Alastair Campbell? With subtitles?
19:20 Rory Stewart? With subtitles, yeah.
19:20 Alastair Campbell? Okay, okay. Well, people should look at that because it's a very, it's a really- As a piece to camera, it's incredibly powerful. Essentially, he's saying, he's trying to do what we've been doing and what Barack Obama was trying to do in the clip that we should also share, where he's sort of trying to give the two sides. But he's also, he's really sort of saying, we mustn't fall into the trap of feeding the hate on either side. And I'm afraid, I think Suella Braverman is deliberately doing that.
19:47 Rory Stewart? So let's just stop on her for a second. I mean, she is an extraordinary mystery. I think, as I've said before, she's a Buddhist. People who work with her say that she's extremely amiable and nice. She's not, you know, many of these conservative candidates have been accused of bullying. She's not particularly accused of that. She's meant to be sort of in person, quite pleasant. She was an Erasmus scholar, so she studied in Europe. She set up the Africa Justice Initiative with Cherie Blair, where she was going around doing rule of law and stuff in Africa. And so suddenly, this quite mild-mannered, European-educated, Africa-justice Buddhist is saying all these things and sort of portraying herself as some sort of extraordinary kind of Cruella de Vil figure. I've never seen anyone in
20:31 Rory Stewart? politics where there's such a weird disconnect between the sort of mild private character and this incredibly kind of brutal public exterior.
20:39 Alastair Campbell? And I do find it brutal. I think just to talk about these people in tents, like, you know, a lifestyle choice. I mean, has she ever actually got to talk to any people who live in tents? And by the way, I'm really angry that there's no Mental Health Act. That was promised in the 2019 manifesto. Yet again, they've pushed it to one side. Saeda, our friend Saeda, who we interviewed on Leading recently, I mean, she has been out saying really harsh stuff about Braverman. She calls her an arsonist. I think she thinks she's a Islamophobe. And of course, I think we, we're both white. A lot of our, most of our listeners are probably white. We've grown up imagining that
21:21 Alastair Campbell? All racists are likely to be white. But I'm afraid, I think Braverman is somebody who, because she's not white, she's able to be very extreme. And yet, people find it hard to call that out because she herself is not white. But I see her as an extremist, I'm afraid.
21:39 Rory Stewart? Just on rough sleeping, a couple of things. One of them is, yes, Labour did a very good job. Secondly, Andy Burnham did an amazing job. I mean, I was very struck when I was trying to run to be Mayor of London, that Sadiq Khan was really struggling to get rough sleeping under control in London and blaming all sorts of people. And Andy Burnham in Manchester got to grips with it very, very quickly with very similar levers to play with. Most exciting, though, for me is what's happening in Canada, which is, Canada, they did an experiment where they gave £4,400 of basically unconditional cash to rough sleepers. So really radical.
22:15 Alastair Campbell? Give directly.
22:16 Rory Stewart? Give directly. And it was completely transformative. They didn't spend it on drugs and alcohol. Almost all of them got into accommodation, began earning enough money to start supporting friends and family, and in quite a quick period of time began saving the government money.
22:30 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, that's the whole point about a preventive approach to these things.
22:33 Rory Stewart? So I'd like to encourage, when you speak to Kier again on your wanderings through your neighbourhood, cash to rough sleepers. Take courage, very radical, but the evidence from Canada is absolutely compelling that instead of, and there are two ways of doing it. There are brilliant programmes that I've seen in the Midlands where you can provide incredible wraparound, 24/7 support, help people into housing, mentor them, sit with them. But that's very, very expensive and you end up spending an incredible amount of money, £40,000, £50,000 per person, on the mentoring and the wraparound support. The Canada approach is much more radical, costs a 10th as much, and is having astonishing results.
23:11 Alastair Campbell? Just finally, on the rough sleepers, what the principles that we put at the heart of it, one was this focus, as you say, on trying to rehabilitate, give people a sense of their own future. The second big thing was mental health support. And I think if Swella Braverman actually did go around and talk to some of these people sleeping in tents in the streets, being helped by these charities. Then I think you discover that mental health, mental illness is a big, big, big part of this.
23:39 Rory Stewart? So one of the other things they found in Canada, again, I keep pushing direct cash as the answer, yeah, is that actually when you give direct cash to people, you free them up and you reveal much more what specialist support they can receive. So actually, it turns out that not everybody requires the same support as you can imagine. And the great thing about the cash is it gets people into accommodation, sorts out their finances. And at that point, it becomes much easier then for people to identify you need a bit of extra mental health support, you need a bit of education support, et cetera. But starting with the cash and, and that's actually is, is going to be quite controversial for some of the charities.
24:11 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely.
24:12 Rory Stewart? Because many of them will hear this and say, you've got to be kidding. We know these people. If we give them £4,400 of cash, they're going to abuse it. It's not true. The evidence from Canada is very compelling, so I would encourage people to take risks.
24:22 Alastair Campbell? Interesting, very interesting. Now, shall we briefly talk about AI and the summit?
24:27 Rory Stewart? Very good. Quickly on that, I mean, we, I think almost about to go into our break, but I think it was very striking how many of the great AI stars the world turned up. They're very impressive. They're very busy people. They live at the other end of the world. Most of them live on the west coast of the United States. My friend, James Monika, who I hope we're going to be able to interview, who's Google's great head at AI, came in. Obviously, all these other people, we've been interviewing, Mustafa Suleyman was there, Reid Hoffman was there. It, it was a big event.
24:55 Alastair Campbell? Miriam Clegg's husband was there.
24:57 Rory Stewart? Miriam Clegg's husband was there, who hopefully we are going to interview.
25:00 Alastair Campbell? One day, he's promised.
25:01 Rory Stewart? To succeed in getting, no, so I, I think it was a significant event and the government will be, will be happy with it. I think the eccentric thing around the edge of it is what you felt in communications terms about watching Rishi Sunak interview Elon Musk.
25:16 Alastair Campbell? Well, I spoke to a couple of people who were there who said they found that part of it utterly toe curling. One of them actually said he couldn't bear to stay in the room while it was going on. There's a passage in my book, which is called.
25:29 Rory Stewart? But what can I do?
25:30 Alastair Campbell? That one. Where I talk about Musk as an anarcho-capitalist and it's Francois Hollande, who we also talked to, leading. He said that he worried that what was happening here was that these anarcho capitalists were not just having great influence on the world, but actually they would become more powerful than politicians. And you did have the sense there, if you looked at the two, not just their physicality, because Musk is huge and Rishi Sunak is quite small, but just in terms of the power dynamic, you felt like Sunak was rather an excited interviewer.
26:04 Rory Stewart? If you were giving advice to a prime minister, would you generally say probably best not to interview someone?
26:11 Alastair Campbell? No, I still think it was a good thing to do. I do think it was a good thing to do. And because Musk is a very, very interesting character. Fiona's actually been reading.
26:19 Rory Stewart? You don't think you'd want to flip it around and maybe have them both interviewed by a third person?
26:23 Alastair Campbell? Possibly, possibly. I think that, but I think Sunak felt that was his way of imposing himself on the event. I just think he came over as a little bit too excited to be in the presence of Elon Musk.
26:32 Rory Stewart? So you don't think the format's wrong? You think somebody, you think you wouldn't have advised Tony Blair not to do that?
26:38 Alastair Campbell? No, I thought it was fine, but I just think that the dynamic between them was odd. And I also think that, we said this last week before it happened, that the risk with somebody like Musk is you just have no idea where he's going. So you've literally had at this summit, Rishi Sunak saying, this will not destroy all jobs.
26:57 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
26:58 Alastair Campbell? And you have Elon Musk comes along and basically says, this is going to destroy all jobs. And, you know, unless you really want to work. And it was interesting to watch the, the kind of reaction from the Tory MPs was very negative to it.
27:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
27:11 Alastair Campbell? But I thought in terms of the event as a whole, I thought it didn't harm it. Fiona's reading the Walter Isaacson book on Musk at the moment, and we were driving back from this book festival in Dorset, and so I was listening to it with her. And I hadn't quite realised just how fascinating Musk's whole backstory is, his childhood, his life. I mean, getting into this whole rocket business aged 30, he clearly has got something very, very special about him. But I think that in terms of, you'd said last week, and I hadn't quite realised the extent to which Joe Biden's executive order, in terms of policy. Was probably a bigger thing than anything that came out of the AI summit. But I thought it was a good thing to do, and I think the fact it's going to be every six months now
27:55 Alastair Campbell? shows that political leaders around the world are on it.
27:58 Rory Stewart? It's quite impressive. I mean, one of the nice things about the Mark Carney interview, which people should listen to on leading, is that he points out that we may have made more progress on climate and the environment than people acknowledge, that he says that when Paris was signed, it was aiming at about three and a half degrees. And now he thinks we may be getting down to two degrees. And that's interesting because generally speaking, Yuval Noah Harari, who we've also interviewed, tends to say, and I think it's true, that humans find it difficult to really make big policy decisions until the crisis is already there. In other words, we wouldn't really be able to tackle climate until the waves are literally lapping into our houses. And we wouldn't deal with AI until the robots walk down the streets. But actually Biden, Sunak and others are demonstrating that they have been able to move more nimbly on AI than you would have expected.
28:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I spoke last week at this thing called the the Big Green Net Zero Festival. And because it was a kind of set piece, as it were, I did a lot of research and there's some amazing stuff happening and also in the figures. So for example, Norway, which let's remember has made itself one of the richest countries in the world by being an oil country. Electric vehicle sales have reached ninety three percent of total new car sales on the back of tax rebates, which are making electric vehicles cheaper than petrol and diesel. And the total cost of car ownership is now twenty percent cheaper than it was. One of Trump's capitals, Texas, Texas now has greater use of solar and wind than any other state in the United States.
29:28 Alastair Campbell? So there's all sorts of heat heating heat pumps are now outselling gas boilers in the United States. And and I found this analysis of Biden's inflation reduction act by Credit Suisse of all people, who said it was the biggest single act of climate change legislation anywhere in the world. So there's a lot of stuff happening. I was I was like you, I was I was I was struck by how upbeat Carney seemed to be about the whole climate thing. And politically, by the way, back to the King's Speech, I do think that Sunak has made a political mistake with his switch on the environment. And I think business is just moving on without that signal.
30:06 Rory Stewart? Let's hope so, although there's been some slightly worrying signals that Shell has been reversing and has lost a lot of its green staff who've been resigning because the chief executive seems been giving up on quite a lot of their stuff. So it remains quite fragile because there will still unfortunately be a lot of businesses out there who will see this stuff as extra cost and will be reluctant, which is why governments need to be very firm and need to have these clear dates.
30:28 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
30:29 Rory Stewart? Which is why I agree with you about what Rishi Sunak did. Right, time for the break.
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32:24 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.
32:27 Alastair Campbell? And me Alastair Campbell.
32:29 Rory Stewart? And we wanted to do a couple of things. One of them was to obviously talk again about what's happening in the Middle East and then move on to the Argentinian elections. One thing that you've been in touch with Humza Yousaf, the first leader in Scotland, whose family was in Gaza. And what did he say again?
32:46 Alastair Campbell? Well, just because we've been trying to get him on the podcast and there was a plan for us to do it when you were in Scotland recently, but he got stranded by the weather. So I just sent him a message saying, "Hope to you as well" and solidarity and all that because of the thing that was going on with his wife's family. And he was very, very, very obviously relieved that they were out. But I think it's been interesting to watch his public pronouncements in relation to the issue of the ceasefire, very, very strongly out there. And I think that I saw an interview with one of the United Nations people who I thought made a, this is going to sound harsh, but it's not meant to be. He said he thought
33:28 Alastair Campbell? this debate here about the ceasefire was something of a red herring because it's not going to happen. There is not going to be a ceasefire because neither side at the moment are going to allow it to happen. So I think politicians outside, their role has to be, what influence can they bring to bear to make the situation on the ground better?
33:46 Rory Stewart? But I guess the question is, what direction are you hoping that those politicians are going to be exercising their influence insofar as they can at all? I mean, some people in the region would say, many Americans would say that the idea that Netanyahu is going to listen even to the United States is perhaps overrated.
34:05 Alastair Campbell? I think he'll listen to the United States. Will he listen that much to European leaders?
34:09 Rory Stewart? And how much will he listen? Because I think there is a very interesting thing going on there, which is the arguments that we're making to the Israeli government for restraint are generally based on military logic. You're not going to be able to eliminate Hamas. I mean, I was reminded when we were in Afghanistan that I remember having a blazing row with someone in 2005 and I was saying, "Don't go into southern Afghanistan and start fighting the Taliban." And they said, No, there are only 2,500 Taliban fighters. I don't know how on earth they thought they could count the number. They're now saying there are 40,000 Hamas fighters. How do you count these numbers? Because these are secret organisations, that's the claim.
34:53 Rory Stewart? The coalition forces then went into southern Afghanistan and killed 20,000 people at least. And then the next thing we heard, there were 30,000 Taliban fighters. So I, I think the military logic doesn't hold, but of course, that isn't the only reason that it's happening. It is also true that, a bit like our debate about prison and criminal justice, there's an element of revenge and deterrence in the Israeli calculus. Some people in, in the Israeli government will not say explicitly, but they will be thinking, we want to demonstrate that we will kill many more of them for every one of us that we kill. And we will do this again and again, and that this is our, our best defence.
35:36 Alastair Campbell? I mean, the health ministry in Gaza says that the, the death toll is now into five figures.
35:45 Rory Stewart? Over 10,000.
35:46 Alastair Campbell? And that 40% are children. And it was interesting to watch the Israeli communications people's response to that was essentially, you can't believe anything they say. This is the other point that Humza Yousaf made when I was in contact with him, is this deliberate conflation of every Palestinian, everybody in the Gaza Strip with Hamas. Anybody who has stayed in the north means that they somehow are supporting Hamas. And every, I, I watched an interview with Mark Reggev, who both you and I both know.
36:17 Rory Stewart? Because he was the ambassador here.
36:18 Alastair Campbell? He was the ambassador here, and a very smart guy, very close to Netanyahu. By all accounts was a pretty effective ambassador. And he's now been brought back essentially as to be one of the chief spokesmen in this pretty amazing communications machine where they, I mean, I noticed the guy, when I was up in Scotland recently, they had, there was somebody on for the IDF, he had a Scottish accent. Um, the, the, I saw a, an IDF spokesman the other day speaking in utterly flawless German on a German TV channel. So, and, and Mark Reggev is a very, technically a very, very, very good communicator. He's also a very intelligent guy, but what I noticed about him yesterday was literally not giving an inch on any question.
37:02 Rory Stewart? And it's an interesting question. I mean, I was listening to the Today Programme interviewing an IDF spokesman. And what was fascinating is just how aggressive the IDF spokesman was being and how much clearly their communications decision seems to be to go into full-on frontal attack, never give an inch, be as absolutely aggressive towards the interviewer as you can possibly be. And I found it unsettling. I, I would have thought particularly at the moment that there would be space for a communication style, even if it's just a communication style, which at least recognised nuance, talked about the difficulty. I mean, if you
37:41 Rory Stewart? think about the way in which spokesmen communicated in Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo about spilling casualties, that the normal communication style was quite subdued. The military spokesman would say, of course, you know, it's very difficult, tragedies can happen, we're fighting in a very difficult environment, no doubt people can be killed, you know, we're doing our very best. But that, that isn't the style at all.
38:04 Alastair Campbell? And, you know, there's a specific example on Channel Four because they'd done an interview with a doctor in one of the hospitals who was talking about the impossibility of working because of lack of fuel, lack of this, lack of that. And he was very, very moving. And then Krishnan Guramurthy then interviews Mark Reggev, who basically, his line is, you can't believe anything that they say because they're all being directed by Hamas. And then it gets into this argument with Krishnan Guramurthy saying, well, no, you don't know that. Um, this is somebody that, you know, we go to great lengths, we speak to different voices. And Mark Reggev then deliberately takes it down this line of, anybody who is
38:46 Alastair Campbell? on the television from Gaza is basically scared by Hamas and therefore must be seen as a voice of Hamas.
38:52 Rory Stewart? Why do you think the decision's been made to communicate in that much more abrasive style?
38:57 Alastair Campbell? I think partly because that tends to be their, their modus operandi.
39:03 Alastair Campbell? But also, I think they are feeling, and this is why I think they're so wound up about the these huge marches that are taking place in different parts of the world, including hugely in the United Kingdom. So I think they're feeling very, very pressured, very, very defensive, and they want to, for obvious kind of communications reasons, they want to take it back all the time to October the 7th. They started it. They don't particularly want, I think, to talk about the the history. They don't particularly want to talk about some of the things that they've not been doing in the recent past. But you're right, it's a very, very aggressive form of communication. And, you know, you mentioned Kosovo there.
39:45 Alastair Campbell? I can remember during the Kosovo conflict, and also in relation to Iraq, that pressure that you feel to explain how you were trying to avoid civilian casualties. They don't seem to feel that pressure. And I think what they are trying to do is basically essentially to say, if you're still there in the parts that we're bombing, then, you know, we gave you the chance to leave. And and they are saying hospitals, schools, et cetera, Amos Hughes, they've died, their fighters, therefore.
40:10 Rory Stewart? And of course, as I think we've discussed a lot, and I think the the interview which we did with Yuval Noah Harari on internal Israeli politics, a very good way of illustrating this, but it is far from the case that all Israeli political parties remotely agree about even fundamental things like the two-state solution. So Ben-Gavir's party, which is a very important part of this coalition, simply rejects the two-state solution entirely. Smotrich often also talks about having no interest in it at all. He simply wants everything that's currently called Palestine to be Israel. So we often, in the British context, imagine that there is absolute concern, there are many people in Israel who are strongly in support of the two-state solution, but there are also people who simply don't want to use the word Palestine at all, don't want
40:54 Rory Stewart? to recognise it at all, including the Minister of Heritage, the sort of Nadine Doris position, who's from Ben-Gavir's party, who said that one of the options that they were considering was dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
41:05 Alastair Campbell? Or sending them to Ireland. Was the other proposer. I think he did get, has he been suspended by Netanyahu?
41:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
41:11 Alastair Campbell? I think he has, yeah. I think the, the other thing that was on this Channel Four News programme I watched last night was an interview of one of the, that organisation, the Sisters and Brothers of Israel, who said they were not going to serve because of the judicial reforms that we've talked about before. Basically, the guy was saying he doesn't trust Netanyahu, but he does trust the IDF. And I think that's where a lot of public opinion is now in Israel. Not necessarily trusting Netanyahu, but they do trust the IDF. But listen, it's, it's, you, you mentioned the point about the, the military logic. Netanyahu yesterday was saying that, you know, the expectation is that Israel will keep security control of Gaza at the end of whatever this phase is going to be and however, however long it's going to last.
41:56 Alastair Campbell? But I don't have a clear sense of what the, the long-term military plan is. And it's not been explained. And these, you know, all I've been saying, and I think you agree with this, is that when you are conducting this kind of bombardment, it is incumbent, I think, upon those doing it to explain the logic at all times. And the logic isn't, you can't simply just go back to October 7th and say, that is why we're doing all of this. You have to be able to, I think, give a deeper explanation. But they've decided in terms of their communication, it's going to be very black and white, it's going to be very hard, no shades of grey. And I think we're just going to, we're going to have to get used to that.
42:34 Rory Stewart? Very interesting also. We've talked a bit about UK domestic politics and the way that this is playing out. So, two things. One of this, that support for Biden amongst Arab voters has dropped, and Muslim voters in general has dropped dramatically.
42:48 Alastair Campbell? You see, I, I think people are focusing very much on, say, Muslims in the UK and Arab voters in, in the United States. I think the other thing that's happening is that young people in general, perhaps not as well informed of the, the history. I saw a terrible thing, and it was at The Observer at the weekend, only 2% of British schoolchildren learn about the Middle East in history. 2%. And one of the reasons is that it's deemed to be too kind of controversial and sensitive and so forth. That's, that's terrible. That's got to be changed. So I, I, I think the, there are, there are some terrifying polls out this week, if you, like me, and like you, think that Trump is a sort of real threat to the world.
43:30 Alastair Campbell? In five of the six most important swing states, Trump is now ahead of Biden. And Trump is now closing in on Biden amongst the black population. When you think that Trump spent yesterday being hauled up by a judge for behaving inappropriately in court in a massive fraud case, and yet every time these things happen, he seems to get more support, not less.
43:52 Rory Stewart? Absolutely unbelievable. And it also tells you a lot about British politics, that as we've pointed out, there's very little difference between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak's public positions. But the latest Times poll found that only 27% of Labour voters think that Starmer's handled it well, whereas 72% of Tory voters think that Sunak's handled it well. And given they're saying the same thing, it tells you a lot about different composition of the parties.
44:18 Alastair Campbell? Of that divide, yeah. And I think if you, look, I haven't seen any demographic analysis of the people who've gone on marches, but I imagine that there won't be that many hardcore Tories who are going on those marches, there will be a lot of Labour supporters.
44:31 Rory Stewart? And we've had the recognition of Burnley Council.
44:34 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah, as council leader and ten councillors.
44:36 Rory Stewart? And so do you have much to do with Burnley Council, or is it just football that draws you in?
44:40 Alastair Campbell? I do know, I do know quite a lot of the Burnley councillors, yes, and I know the excellent Labour candidate, Oliver Ryan. But there are some seats, there's another one, Leicester, is, you know, it's very, very tricky, the politics there. I think for these Labour candidates who've been, you know, fighting on the cost of living, fighting on health service and all this sort of stuff, where they feel very comfortable, now they're suddenly thrust into a very, very difficult political argument. And I do think that at the outset, Labour should have perhaps had a bit more nuance and a bit more subtlety in the position, because it was pretty obvious to me where this was heading very, very quickly.
45:15 Rory Stewart? And he got in trouble, and just to remind again international listeners, he got in trouble because he appeared to be asked whether he defended cutting off of water and electricity, and it sounded like he thought that was fine. And it took him nearly five days to clarify and say he didn't think that was fine.
45:30 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, because this is why in these situations, every word, so he was asked whether he backed that, and his answer was Israel has the right to defend itself, which was taken as yes. But I think that for Labour, he can't, he can't back off the basic position now, but I think Labour as a more critical friend of the Israelis is a better place to be.
45:52 Rory Stewart? Well, there we are. Now, let's bring this to Argentina. So Argentina had first election 22nd of October, runoff 19th of November, and there were two previous presidents who could have run, Alberto Fernandez, who was the guy that was in from 19 till now, and Cristina de Kirchner, who we'll talk a little bit more about, who was in from 2007 to 2015. So they didn't run. Instead of which, the final two are absolutely extraordinary. So do you want to tell us a little bit about the two final candidates?
46:24 Alastair Campbell? It is the most incredible runoff. So you've had, their system is you have the presidential election, you have to get, I think it's 45%, and if you don't, then it goes up to a runoff of the first two.
46:36 Rory Stewart? Which is similar to the French presidential system.
46:39 Alastair Campbell? Similar, not identical, but similar. And they also have, interestingly, compulsory voting from 18 to 70. And you can vote at 16 and 17, but it's not compulsory, which is quite an interesting sort of, we should maybe think about that. So the two that have made it through, one of them is the economy minister who has presided over 140% inflation. So that is pretty amazing. That's Sergio Massa.
47:03 Rory Stewart? Just on that, on your basis of a normal political analysis, an economy minister who's presided over 140% inflation.
47:09 Alastair Campbell? And 40% living in poverty.
47:10 Rory Stewart? Yeah, and has seen the dollar go from 80 pesos the dollar in April 2020 to 1,200 pesos the dollar today. So in just three years, unbelievable loss in the value of currency. And nevertheless, did better in the first round of voting than his rival.
47:25 Alastair Campbell? Than Javier Millay. So Javier Millay, so that's Sergio Massa, who's the leader of the Union of the Homeland, which you say is the parent.
47:33 Rory Stewart? And he's connected to Peronist and Kirchner. He's from that tradition.
47:35 Alastair Campbell? Although he's slightly distanced himself from that. And he's also in the past said that Cristina should go to jail, but he seems to be backing down from that now. And then Javier Millay is this guy who's constantly compared to Trump and Bolsonaro. He's a kind of economist, radical right. He picked a massive fight with the Pope. During the campaign, he goes around with a chainsaw to sort of show that the whole system needs to be chopped down. So Massa ended up with, number one, over thirty-six percent, and Millet ended up on thirty percent, which is not much beyond what he got in the primaries, in the primaries, which is like a kind of dummy run. And the big loser was
48:18 Alastair Campbell? the Conservative, Bulrich, and she only got, I think, twenty-four percent.
48:23 Rory Stewart? But now her voters now are the key. So who are they going to go to?
48:26 Alastair Campbell? Well, she's backing Millet. Whether all of her voters will is another matter.
48:32 Rory Stewart? So she's backing the Mr. Wick. The other thing to understand about Millet, which makes him really famous, is that he had a mastiff dog, huge, huge dog, called Conan the Barbarian.
48:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
48:43 Rory Stewart? Obviously a testimony to our previous interviewee on.
48:46 Alastair Campbell? And by the way, Javier, if you're listening, yes, we would have you on.
48:50 Rory Stewart? Very happy to have you on. And then he sent off some cells from Conan the Barbarian to Worcester, Massachusetts, to have it cloned. So he ends up with four identical mastiffs, who are basically Conan the Barbarian reborn, who he's called after right-wing politicians, of which the one he refers to most is Milton, Milton Friedman. And frequently in his political speeches, he cites a conversation that he's had with Milton. So he will often say, I've been thinking hard every night, but Milton advised me to.
49:20 Alastair Campbell? Milton the dog.
49:21 Rory Stewart? Milton the dog.
49:22 Alastair Campbell? The dog advised him.
49:23 Rory Stewart? Yep. And he's quite happy to say this at the Senate and things, you know, I've been talking to Milton, and Milton has said, really, this is where we should go. And his economic policies that he's pushing for include essentially getting rid of the Argentine currency and replacing it with the dollar.
49:35 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
49:36 Rory Stewart? And you can understand, in a sense, why. I mean, if you've gone from eighty pesos to dollar to one thousand two hundred pesos dollar in just three years. But of course, the problems with that are many. And one of them, people will remember from Greece's experience through the. Financial crisis is that if you lose control of your currency and pin yourself to another country's currency, which is what you do with the dollar, you lose a huge amount of flexibility in being able to drop your exchange rates, to rebalance your exports. And Argentina went through this a little bit in the past. Anyway, let's just pause for a second. Maybe we could do a little bit of history of Argentina.
50:14 Alastair Campbell? Peronism.
50:16 Rory Stewart? Peronism. Yeah, go on. Tell us also about the main facts about Argentina we know. And the thing for which you are most famous in Argentina is, of course, your amazing appearance with Diego Maradona.
50:27 Alastair Campbell? Oh, Rory, please. Honestly, I'm going to have to talk about playing with Diego Maradona again. I mean, okay, we should probably do a whole special episode.
50:34 Rory Stewart? I'm really sorry. He's not around for us to interview.
50:36 Alastair Campbell? I know. Apparently, his final words were, I once played with Alice.
50:40 Rory Stewart? And what he learnt from you. Yeah, that's right.
50:43 Alastair Campbell? We should say to our listeners that the producers are now, headed hands, sick to death of hearing it. I never tire of talking about Diego Maradona, but I won't do it now. So Peron, he's one of the, we talk about isms, you know, Thatcherism, Blairism, Sunakism, or whatever. But Peronism is one of the kind of defining political philosophies, certainly in terms of Argentina. So Juan Peron, who was part of the coup back in the day, and then president, then lost, then his party was banned.
51:19 Rory Stewart? So president, late 1940s, early 1950s, and with a wife called Eva.
51:24 Alastair Campbell? Here's a question for you. How old was Eva Peron when she died?
51:27 Rory Stewart? Gosh, I have no idea. Seventy?
51:29 Alastair Campbell? Thirty-three.
51:30 Rory Stewart? No.
51:31 Alastair Campbell? Isn't that amazing?
51:31 Rory Stewart? That is amazing.
51:32 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. And she's probably now more famous than her husband, thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
51:37 Rory Stewart? Are you going to sing "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina"?
51:39 Alastair Campbell? I don't know. But he was like this incredibly charismatic leader. When you read his definition of his own political philosophy, it sounds very like New Labour. It's like, you know, economy, it's social programs, it's a bit of patriotism without being kind of overtly nationalistic.
51:58 Rory Stewart? But it was incredible.
52:00 Alastair Campbell? It became very, very.
52:01 Rory Stewart? And we also forget, yeah, exactly how brutal it was. And really, Peron invented or reinvented populism in a way that dominated Latin American politics. So he was all about the people against the elites.
52:14 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
52:15 Rory Stewart? And Argentina, just to take it back a little bit, I mean, Argentina was this astonishing success story in the late 19th century. Unlike Brazil, Mexico, it was a country which really was dominated by European immigration, predominantly Italian immigration, which rapidly overwhelmed the indigenous population so that it felt the late 19th century more like maybe Canada or Australia in terms of relationship between immigrants, European immigrants and the local population. Had this incredible economic boom late 19th century with the invention of refrigerated ships that allowed people to move Argentine beef across the world. GDP per capita in Argentina was higher than in the United States by the end of the 19th century. It was one of the seven largest economies in the world.
53:00 Rory Stewart? It remained by the time Peron took over, one of the 15 largest economies in the world. So this enormous giant and really did feel as though this was an Australia or a Canada, this kind of country. And of course, your friend Diego Maradona, as his name implies, part of that Italian immigration movement.
53:16 Alastair Campbell? Since 1946, the Peronist candidate has won 10 out of 13 elections in those which they've been allowed to stand. There was a period when they couldn't stand, they were banned. The one that we got to know quite well was Carlos Manam, who was also a Peronist, but he moved it to the right.
53:32 Rory Stewart? Yes.
53:33 Alastair Campbell? Mass is moving it a little bit back to the centre left, but they, so they fight under this umbrella of Peronism. And the thing that he's now emphasizing in the runoff against Millet, he's going very heavy on. Family, religion and la patria, the nation. And I think the reason for that is he's probably, he's working out that is why Millay seems to have got stuck at thirty percent is because he did, let's say he picked a fight with the Pope. The Pope ended up calling him a Nazi. The Pope called him a Nazi and he called the Pope a filthy leftist. And I think to call the Pope a filthy leftist in any, if you're going to list the countries where the Pope is very, very popular,
54:18 Alastair Campbell? Argentina is going to be very high up there.
54:19 Rory Stewart? Is he not an Argentinian Pope?
54:21 Alastair Campbell? Well, that is the other reason. So I think that he's, it'll be fascinating to see what happens now because although Bullrich has sort of swung behind Millay, I don't think you can guarantee that all her voters will.
54:34 Rory Stewart? Now, again, for, for listeners who aren't Latin American specialists.
54:38 Alastair Campbell? Like us.
54:39 Rory Stewart? We've talked exactly like us, like, like, like, like us. And one of the ways to think about what's happening in Latin America is that many of the countries followed a pretty standard evolution. So Argentina, like many of the countries in Latin America, went from military rule in the late seventies, early eighties. So people in Britain will remember General Gaultieri and the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Then went through huge debt crises in the nineteen eighties. Mexico had this enormous debt crisis in eighty two, but it's true of Brazil, true of Argentina. And then in the nineties, they got these technocrats. So you were talking about Menem in Argentina, Cardoso in Brazil, Zé Diogo in Mexico. So the nineties, they, they went much more sort of third way neoliberal.
55:21 Rory Stewart? And then in the early two thousands, they began to benefit from a massive commodity boom, which also brought in more left wing populist governments who benefited from the commodity boom, spent money like water, but increasingly got themselves caught up in corruption scandals. So in, in Brazil, famously the car wash scandal, which ended up with Lula, who's now back again.
55:44 Alastair Campbell? In jail.
55:45 Rory Stewart? Going to jail. I mean, he literally took a beachfront apartment from a businessman. But in Argentina, corruption is beyond everything. I mean, there's a famous cliche about British politics that, you know, British politics is about class, all else is embellishment and detail. To some extent, you could say Argentinian politics recently has been about corruption and all else is embellishment and detail. I mean, the corruption scandals are just beyond imagining. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, in some cases, billions of dollars of others. So Ketchner herself is caught up in incredible allegations about building enormous roads to nowhere in her own base, constituency
56:28 Rory Stewart? base in remote areas, where the contractors kick backs, the delays. I mean, if you think HS2 is bad, I mean, this stuff is beyond imagining.
56:35 Alastair Campbell? Presumably, this is why she didn't run in the end, is that she feared what would be coming her way.
56:40 Rory Stewart? She was found guilty and sentenced to six years in December 22, and she's now appealing. There's also this great notebook scandal that caught her up, where one of the government car service drivers was keeping notebooks over a period of seven years, just recording the cash coming in and out, the deals doing.
56:58 Alastair Campbell? Well, recording it for his own benefit.
57:01 Rory Stewart? In the notebooks, and people are a bit suspicious about what, nor he told he was doing, keeping these notebooks going for 10 years and then handing them over. But absolutely extraordinary. So recorded, I think, $160 million in bribes.
57:11 Alastair Campbell? So hold on, the driver's driving the car and Christina's in the back of the car doing these deals?
57:17 Rory Stewart? Not Christina always. It's often different sorts of ministers connected to her. But Jose Lopez, for example, was found stashing $9 million in cash and luxury watches in a convent. So he was the minister of, I think, development.
57:32 Alastair Campbell? We thought God would be looking after him.
57:33 Rory Stewart? And a lot of the businesses have testified now in Argentina. I mean, Paul O'Rourke, who's one of the most famous billionaires, just says, we just had to pay bribes. Ketchner's had eight and a half million dollars of her own cash frozen. Her daughter's had six and a half million dollars of her daughter's cash frozen. And again, one asks where exactly this money comes from.
57:51 Alastair Campbell? This is the other reason why it's pretty remarkable that Massa did as well as he did, because if you're the finance minister. Of the government that's presided over all this, then it's, I mean, I have no evidence to say one way or the other about him, but it's hard to sort of think that doesn't get counted against you as well. And yet he's got thirty six point six percent of the vote.
58:13 Rory Stewart? And and and part of the point is that in Argentina, and this is true in Brazil too, that the leftist populist politicians will suggest that these corruption charges are completely politically motivated. And it's definitely true in Argentina.
58:28 Alastair Campbell? Well, that's the that's the game Trump is playing now.
58:30 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. The the judge, exactly like Trump. But particularly in Argentina, the judges tend not to act until there's been an election. And then they turn against the government. And so there's a real problem with the judiciary, because the judges can decide when to take a case, when not to take a case, when to proceed. So anyway, really worth watching.
58:48 Alastair Campbell? Oh, no, it's going to be fascinating. It'll be absolutely fascinating. And the other thing, whoever wins, I mean, we talk a lot about if Keir Starmer becomes prime minister, he's got a really difficult sort of, you know, circumstances to inherit. But Argentina, you're talking about, they're very close to hyperinflation. They've been in triple digit inflation now for quite some time.
59:07 Rory Stewart? So I I was talking to an Argentinian friend on Monday night for dinner, who said the the key thing to understand, this maybe he may have been unfair to his own countryman, but he said the key thing to understand is that Sergio Massa is very, very good looking, and that really matters in Argentinian politics.
59:20 Alastair Campbell? He is very good looking, and he's very smart, and he's a survivor. And the thing about being good looking, I don't know if I've told you this before, there was once a study in an American university, they had a hundred pairs of two sets of pictures. And the pictures were of two candidates in elections which had already happened. Okay, so the elections, and they were council elections, senatorial elections, they weren't kind of household figures, we're not talking sort of Trump Biden. And they presented these pictures to a very large sample of people and said, who do you think won?
59:56 Alastair Campbell? Based on the pictures and they got like nine out of 10, right?
59:59 Rory Stewart? And it's largely they just picked the better looking one.
1:00:01 Alastair Campbell? They they picked the one that they thought looked more like a winner.
1:00:03 Rory Stewart? I was always very struck by this when I went with the Foreign Affairs Committee and Defence.
1:00:06 Alastair Campbell? It's probably why you lost to Boris Johnson, isn't it?
1:00:08 Rory Stewart? Absolutely.
1:00:08 Alastair Campbell? Because he's such a good looking guy compared to you.
1:00:10 Rory Stewart? That's what it was, exactly. No, when I went with the Foreign Affairs Committee, Defence Committee to Washington, I was always very, very struck by the fact that we were all really small and weird looking. So me and my friend Frank Roy would go into the thing and every American senator we met was well over six foot.
1:00:26 Alastair Campbell? Perfect teeth.
1:00:26 Rory Stewart? Looked amazing and kind of, yeah, no, it was really, in fact, actually, I thought the security guards in the Capitol found it very difficult to believe that we were members of Parliament.
1:00:37 Alastair Campbell? Well, there we are. We should keep a very, very close eye on Massa and Millay, but it's going to be whoever's the last man standing has got big, big, big challenges ahead.
1:00:46 Rory Stewart? Right.
1:00:47 Alastair Campbell? See you next time at Question Time.
1:00:48 Rory Stewart? See you next time for Question Time.
1:00:52 Speaker 07 At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
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