Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 369. Question Time: China’s DeepSeek, Ambassador Mandelson, and misogyny in politics About this episode What’s the danger of China’s DeepSeek? Why are male and female politicians still treated differently? Are politicians right to appease leaders they don’t agree with?
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0:04 Rory Stewart? The Rest Is Politics is powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.
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1:44 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...
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1:56 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve. And of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
2:20 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think you're not already sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona Fiona managed to do this?
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2:43 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
2:53 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
2:59 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death. That's what.
3:04 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
3:07 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
3:08 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
3:22 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.
3:26 Alastair Campbell? And with me, Alastair Campbell. And Rory, there's a question here from Tom, who wants one of your famous explainers. Rory, I don't know why they think you do explainers. I think I'm very explicatory. They obviously think you're better at these sorts of things. Rory, please could you explain on DeepSeek? Have you tried it? Why did it wipe billions from Western tech firms? Why did Nvidia in particular take such a massive hit? What's your thoughts on the dangers of a Chinese-created large language model that refuses to answer if you tried to talk to it about Tiananmen Square or Taiwan? Thank you, says Tom. Love the show. Go on then, explain away.
4:01 Rory Stewart? DeepSeek was released as an app on your phone. Could download it a few days ago. And it is something very, very similar to ChatGPT in the way that it works. You type in a normal query and it produces a very sophisticated response very, very quickly. Why is this important? It's important because. There were two fundamental ideas around AI. If you and I had been speaking about this six months ago. One of them is that America would always have the lead. And connected to that was that these AI models needed to require an incredible amount of investment in chips, water and electricity. Because you needed to run these huge expensive churning models.
4:45 Rory Stewart? And those two ideas were connected because the idea was that it was only things like Microsoft and Google who would actually have the money and the compute power and the sheer muscle to be able to run these enormous large language models. And the cliche as recently as a few months ago was China will always be one or two years behind. So we're not going to be surprised if China catches up on, you know, Chat GPT three two years after we release it, but we'll always have Chat GPT four out by then. And suddenly China releases this model, DeepSeek, which turns out to be quicker and smarter in many, many ways than Chat GPT and be ahead of the American models.
5:28 Rory Stewart? And then in addition, they announced that they had managed to produce this thing with very many fewer chips, with less use of electricity, less use of water and less money spent on training the model. And that affects a lot of things. I mean, Trump was about to invest $550 billion in electricity, partly because these large language models are a problem actually for climate too. These large language models consume so much energy. Now, if you were to talk to our friend Reid Hoffman, who we interviewed on Leading, he would say, but remember, he's on the board of Microsoft, but he would say, ah, well, you know, okay, I thought we were going to be a few months ahead of China and maybe we're not as far ahead of China as I thought.
6:11 Rory Stewart? But basically, there's a lot of evidence suggesting that all they've really done is intellectual theft. They've basically stolen Chat GPT, repackaged it and released it. And anyway, the model they released, yeah, okay, maybe it's quicker and smarter and faster, but we could have done it. We just chose not to because we were actually investing in trying to get to the next snazzier model rather than producing a lighter model. I think that maybe.
6:39 Rory Stewart? Possibly the truth is somewhere in between. It may be that China has not pulled off something quite as spectacular as people suggested. And Nvidia stocks, they're the manufacturer of the chips that you need for AI, plunged five hundred and forty billion and then recovered a little bit, probably overvalued anyway.
6:57 Rory Stewart? So may not have achieved anything quite as dramatic as people thought, but it's still unbelievably interesting because it suggests that the US cannot rely on this massive lead. And it also suggests that one of the things that's stopping AI being rolled out, one of the reasons, for example, that we're not replacing all call centers with GBT four at the moment, is less about hallucination, it's more about cost. In fact, it costs more to run these models than a human, employing a human in a call center in Kenya. But if China has worked out how to do it cheaply, then it'll make a big difference.
7:33 Alastair Campbell? There was something, what's the right word, Roy? Find me the right word for this. The feeling I had on seeing these tech billionaires complaining that their tech and their data was being misused for profit by somebody else. I sort of, I kind of thought there was a bit of, you know, well, the biter gets bit from time to time. But it was, it just shows you the centrality of these tech companies to the, to the markets. We were literally, we're talking about for twenty four hours or so, market turmoil in different parts of the world, but particularly the US, because these share values were just, you know, were plummeting
8:15 Alastair Campbell? because suddenly people think, my God, the Chinese can do this, do this better, which of course, from China's perspective is a, is a great hit. Of course, there is that political point. And again, how much will people care about this? You and I probably would care quite a lot. Would you want to respect and value and trust something? Whereas if you, if you did say, why is Channeman Square famous? They will give you all sorts of parades that went on and happy events and so on. And they won't mention what most, you and I and most of our listeners would know it for. But then again, you look at some of the, the American, let's look at Twitter right now. Twitter is a sea of misinformation and misleading, you know, bullshit put out by Musk.
8:58 Alastair Campbell? So I thought it was a very, very interesting. I mean, Trump called it a wake up call to the American tech industry in a way it was.
9:05 Rory Stewart? Well, it's also fascinating because I put out a little tweet saying this was a real game changer. Immediately got attacked by enormous number of Trump supporters, saying, you don't know what you're talking about. You're a complete ignoramus. And then as soon as Trump came out and said it was a wake up call, they all suddenly went silent on me.
9:20 Alastair Campbell? Suddenly your IQ went from being low to being high again.
9:24 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I suddenly became much smarter again. The other question, I guess, which the US tech companies are betting big on is the idea that people won't want to share their data with China. And I wonder whether that's true, because if you think about what you'd be using it for, there's so many things. DeepSeek can do so powerfully, so quickly and so cheaply straight away.
9:45 Alastair Campbell? Are you, are you using it?
9:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I'm using it all the time and I'm actually often moving stuff between ChatGPT and DeepSeek and comparing them. And I'll, I'll take an initial ChatGPT answer and then I'll feed it into DeepSeek saying improve it.
9:58 Alastair Campbell? And do they improve it?
9:59 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, they often actually make it much, much sharper and they bring in data that wasn't in there before. So for example, if you were to ask ChatGPT, put the pros and cons around Heathrow Airport. And then you were to take its answer and paste it into DeepSeek. DeepSeek would suddenly have all the facts and figures inserted that ChatGPT didn't have.
10:17 Alastair Campbell? When you said earlier today, I need to get back to the hotel for half an hour to do a bit of research. Did you just sort of ask ChatGPT and DeepSeek or do you actually read anything? Are these famous books that you keep referring to, do you actually read them?
10:29 Rory Stewart? I, I, I do a combination of an enormous number of things. So as you saw, I've been reading books about Donald Trump's first term. I've also been on the internet, trying to get my head around Merz's five point plan. I've been calling my friend Geld Knauß, and then I was calling my unfortunate friend Felix, who does not want to be associated with my views on tariffs. And then I've been trying to organize those thoughts using large language models. So you're quite right, part of my preparation is indeed these things. And I think you will find that we will increasingly be using these as. You know, I I think it's like having an incredibly smart eighteen nineteen year old with infinite patience alongside you who you can use as a research assistant.
11:11 Alastair Campbell? I do sometimes put in to chat G P T. What do you think Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart will discuss on their podcast this week? And I do it after we've recorded and they quite often get between fifty and ninety percent, I would say.
11:24 Rory Stewart? Final creepy thing and then I'll stop talking, right? Final creepy thing. And this was chat G P T and it wasn't Gemini and it wasn't wasn't deep sea. I took four photographs of my living room in in London and I asked it. Who lives here? And it produced three names, of which number one was Rory Stewart.
11:44 Alastair Campbell? Number two?
11:45 Rory Stewart? Number two was Simon Sharer. Number three, for some reason, was Helena Bonham Carter. But it was it was a kind of, but I saw I it would be interesting to work out how it put that together.
11:55 Alastair Campbell? It found a magazine piece somewhere with some pictures.
11:57 Rory Stewart? No, I don't think so. I think what it did is it, I mean, it it did give an explanation of how to come up with it. It said that it had noticed that the frame around the mirror looked Jordanian, the carpet was Afghan, but it had a Buddhist reference. The table looked like it was had a jolly pattern, but there were also bits of old posh, upper class, English. Furniture and paintings. And so it concluded this was somebody interested in history and travel who lived in a London house. And it could tell from the proportions of the window. It was pretty impressive. And the fact that it chose me first, I thought was was weird.
12:30 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Now, a question from Ross Branigan in Zurich. What do you make of Lord Mandelson's newfound adoration for Trump? He was quick to disavow his previous criticisms, which comes across as disingenuous at best. Pathetic at worst. Another example of how tyrannical leadership is normalized when so many other countries seek to brown nose. Those who otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. What do you make of it?
12:56 Rory Stewart? So Peter Mandelson is our new ambassador to Washington, but he's also somebody that you have known very, very well for many years. Give us a little portrait of this man who's now been made the ambassador to Washington. Tell us a bit about his life, tell us a bit about his character, and then we'll get on to the nub of what he's done.
13:11 Alastair Campbell? Ah, well, when I first met Peter Mandelson, he was applying for a job to be Communications Director at the Labour Party, back under Neil Kinnock's leadership, and he got that job. Prior to that, he'd worked as a TV producer under John Burt. And he then went through various stages of staffdom at the Labour Party before eventually becoming an MP, Cabinet Minister, in and out of the Cabinet a couple of times, blamed me a bit for him for the outbursts.
13:50 Rory Stewart? Can we pause on that? Why did he blame you? What were the outbursts? And why might you have got blamed? And was this fair?
13:55 Alastair Campbell? I don't think it was fair. I think he blames me because he couldn't bring himself to think that maybe Tony had made that decision. And also, there was, in relation to one of his departures from government, it is true that I basically said, I've got to have an answer, because I was sort of getting harangued by the media, and I was about to go and do a briefing. And I think my body language was just not very good. I went downstairs to the lobby room, and I said, look, Peter's seeing the Prime Minister now, let's just sort of see how it pans out. I wasn't on form. So I think he felt I was sort of hanging him out to dry.
14:34 Rory Stewart? So to remind people, the reason that he resigned, the reason Tony Blair decided to let him go, and the reason you thought that you needed an answer, is that one of them was a controversy about, am I right about getting visas for a man who'd been a wealthy Labour donor? And another one had been about somebody paying for his mortgage? Or have I got these things confused?
14:55 Alastair Campbell? The first one was about the mortgage, Geoffrey Robertson, fellow Labour MP, who helped him with his mortgage. And then the second one was about the Hindus getting a British passport. I don't know, there were wealthy donors, but they were very, very wealthy business people. And in both of them, essentially, it was the process that became very, very difficult. That being said, Peter is a phenomenal
15:20 Alastair Campbell? Political talent, he's clever, he's done other jobs, he's been a European Commissioner. He came back to be essentially deputy to Gordon Brown, who's given the title First Secretary of State. And he's also, you know, he's always escorted controversy, but is a very, very, very smart political thinker and political operator. And in relation to the question from Ross in Zurich, if, I mean, I was thinking the other day, if either you and I, Rory, have been nominated for this position, there is far more to recant than what Peter Mandelson has said about Donald Trump. They dug up an interview he did with an Italian journalist, I think it was, where he said
16:03 Alastair Campbell? that, I think he said he was racist and he was a bully and very, very mild by comparison with the sort of stuff that you and I have been saying. So he then did an interview with Fox News, would you believe, to say that those comments were wrong and ill judged. Now, Ross says that's disingenuous at best, pathetic at worst. I think it is just sort of saying, right, I'm going to be the ambassador. My job is to try to have good relations with the United States. The United States at the moment is totally dominated by Donald Trump and the people around him. My job is going to be to get in with them. So I totally understand why he did it. I understand why people like Ross think it's appalling.
16:45 Alastair Campbell? But it is, I'm afraid, kind of the sort of thing that diplomats have to do.
16:49 Rory Stewart? So let's step aside from ambassadors at the moment and think about world leaders dealing with Trump. So when we saw Kevin McCarthy, the former leader of the House of Representatives in Switzerland last week, he said that what you have to do is just understand that all Trump's bluster is just that of a businessman trying to get a deal. And the way to deal with it is to make concessions to him and go and be nice to him and work on your golf. So I guess the question to you strategically, Alistair, would be, what is it that a leader is supposed to do? And my instinct is that they need to line up, that actually this idea that Kevin McCarthy and Trump have, that you can divide them, pick them off one by one by inviting them for games of golf. And that's what he's trying to do with Britain and the EU.
17:34 Rory Stewart? You know, I think, you know, Europe's very unfair and Britain's slightly unfair, but you know, maybe I'll be nicer with Britain than I am with the EU. Actually, we need to form up in solidarity against him.
17:45 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
17:46 Rory Stewart? To some extent, you need to stand up to a bully.
17:48 Alastair Campbell? Who actually said, I think it was Mark Carney who used that very phrase. The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them. We also talked to Tommy Viter about this on this week's leading. And he was very much, I think, in that camp that said, he doesn't respect, he doesn't respect weakness, he respects strength. So that means playing to your strengths. So I would argue, just to go back to Peter Mandelson briefly, I would say that from, Peter knew he would take a hit with people like Ross in Zurich by doing what he, he knew that. But in a way, he's playing to his strengths because Peter is seen as somebody who's quite Machiavellian. He's very good at getting in with people, he's very good at forming relationships. And so he would argue he's clearing the ground so he can actually do the job.
18:33 Alastair Campbell? Um, we'll see if that works. All it will take is one sort of thing that Trump spots in a newspaper or on Fox News that upsets him and he'll do the same. He'll try to do the same as he did with, with Kim Darick. I agree with you though, I think that actually a bit more unity between leaders. So for example, I was disappointed at the response from a lot of governments about Trump coming out of the Paris Climate Accord. You know, I think that was an opportunity to say, we will have very constructive relationships with, with, with the United States. But it's important people recognise that that was an internationally reached agreement, which was having an effect. He was taking the world in the right direction and it's not a direction that I share. I just think I would have wanted to hear a lot more of that kind of thing.
19:18 Alastair Campbell? And I think he does respect strength more. Now, if you're a, if you, the fact is, America is a much more powerful country than virtually every other country in the world, with possible exception of China. So therefore you have to think about it very, very carefully before picking a fight. But I think what he's shown, what he's being shown by Canada and Mexico at the moment is that when he does pick a fight, there's no point just rolling over, you've got to pick a fight back.
19:41 Rory Stewart? Which is why it would be sad, for example, if he managed to sort of charm Britain. You know, he might well think, oh, well, I picked fight with Canada and Mexico, I'm about to pick a fight with the EU. So what I'll do is I'll cosy up to Britain in a sort of divide and rule strategy. So I don't have a unified. G7 all west against me.
19:59 Alastair Campbell? We're recording this on the day that Keir Starmer has the meeting with European leaders. That might be part of his thinking as to why he said what he said. One thing Tommy Viter and I have in common is we cannot stand doorstep interviews in front of airplane engines. Kamala Harris used to do it all the time with the engines going and he's sort of shouting and the wind's blowing around the air. But he said that, you know, Europe's really bad, maybe Britain won't be so, so bad. It's totally a divide and rule. And I think Britain's got to be very, very careful that we don't say, okay, well, that's so good to get that. Let's go and try and get a trade deal. Let's hope he lasts, it lasts longer than the one he signed with Mexico and Canada. And meantime, you know, Britain has got to be rebuilding its relations with the European Union.
20:43 Rory Stewart? And that's why we need to rejoin the customs union. Anyway, on that great note, time for a break and we'll be back soon with a question about Australia.
20:52 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
21:03 Speaker 03 Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.
21:09 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped doing it? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.
21:13 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
21:16 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
21:17 Speaker 03 Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.
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21:57 Rory Stewart? Richard Robson, as you will be aware, Australia will be soon going to the polls. We're deeply concerned about the media's right wing promotion and the billionaires here that have been celebrating with Trump, giving large donations to right wing parties. It seems that the cost of living crisis here is really affecting people's opinions on the success of Albanese's policies over the last three years. What would be your advice to Albo and the parties to the left in fighting back and stopping the LMP gaining power again? We're terrified of Australia turning into America. Thank you. Go on then, what's your advice?
22:30 Alastair Campbell? I don't know what my advice is, but I think there is definitely a big American impact upon this election. And it's showing itself in Peter Dutton, the Liberal leader, the Liberals, remind people their Tory party as it were, in very, very, he really is starting to strike a very, very populist note. And I think from Albanese's point of view, he's come out very, very strong against Musk, which I think is a good thing. He's kind of no messing around with that. I think he's identifying that this sort of far right kind of global engagement thing is happening. The right wing newspapers are gunning for Albanese because they always do. So I think he's got to stand up and be strong.
23:14 Alastair Campbell? This goes back to our previous conversation. He has got to give a sense of Australia's future and it's got to be rooted in decisions that he's taking, some of them is already taken, some of them he's going to take if he gets another term, that speak to the things that people really care about, but fight back against this stuff in a way that I think the progressives thus far have been a bit scared of fighting it.
23:36 Rory Stewart? Well, it's amazing that Albanese is facing such a big problem because of course, I felt very much on my visit to Australia, how lucky Australia is compared to Europe. I mean, many of the things that we would have thought would drive populism in Europe aren't happening in Australia. For example, there's not a massive debt crisis, the budget, it's got a budget surplus. Australia's also got this amazing ability to balance being really rich in natural resources and really good at services. It's got immigration control, right, going all the way back to stop the boats, but it's also got a very interesting, diverse, talented population coming in.
24:12 Rory Stewart? It's got compulsory voting, it's got a single transferable vote, it's got all the structural, economic and social mechanisms in place which you would have thought would make it easier to fight populism in Australia than almost any other advanced, mature democracy. So why is it with all that Albanese is still struggling?
24:30 Alastair Campbell? He's not struggling in a way that, you know, Schultz is struggling. Last poll I saw on preferred prime minister, Dutton's on forty, Albanese's on thirty-four. Among women, Albanese's on thirty-six, Dutton's on thirty-one. This sort of populist right wing thing is very much a kind of macho, male-dominated thing. So that's not, that's not terrible. One thing, on the, the last more general poll, the coalition, which is what they call the Liberals, fifty-one percent among men, Labor on forty-four, four percent undecided. Women, Labor on forty-nine, Dutton's party on forty-six. So it's close. And so therefore, nobody should think this is kind of slam dunk, the right wing populists
25:15 Alastair Campbell? are going to win. I think Albanese understands that the, the blue collar worker is absolutely key to winning, but also they are the ones that are being targeted in the main by this kind of right wing populist stuff. And so I think you'll see stuff that he will very, very directly be pitching towards, towards them. But no, it's not, it's far from over, far from over.
25:39 Rory Stewart? I mean, should the Labor Party, this has invested interest from our point of view, but making more use of Peter Malanowski's incredible premier of South Australia, who's leading the charge on campaign finance reform, which I guess is partly in this person's question, you know, getting the billionaires out of politics, making sure the muskies as well can't buy Australian politics, social media reform, et cetera. I mean, that's a real start, right? Or am I putting too much emphasis on one person?
26:03 Alastair Campbell? No, I think when you get to the federal elections, then the, the focus very much is on the leader, and that's Albanese. But essentially, you've got to use your big campaigners, and they've, they've actually got a lot of good campaigners, the Australian Labor Party, and they do love a campaign. I'll tell you one thing, which I really think, both in Australia and New Zealand, somebody should come along and change there. This three-year election cycle is just absolutely nuts. It doesn't feel that long ago that we were talking about when he won. And now here we are, we're talking about, we're hanging around waiting to see when he announces when the election's going to be. It's probably going to be in April or or May. We should come back another time. We should maybe think about doing a special
26:47 Alastair Campbell? on the Australian election because I think it will be very, very interesting. But I saw Dutton, an interview Dutton did recently, and he was, he was hammering quite a lot of Trumpian style talking points, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a playbook.
27:02 Rory Stewart? Given that you've managed to get us such luminaries as Angela Merkel and Bill Clinton, do you think Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton might, might be interviewed on the podcast?
27:10 Alastair Campbell? Well, I suppose, so I know we have a lot of listeners in Australia. I think, I think they're, they're definitely in our top five countries. So if anybody from Albanese team and Peter Dutton seem listening, please do get in touch with restispolitics.com. Right, David Colley, having just watched the excellent Brian and Maggie, which sponsored the podcast last week, where would you position your interview style on a typical episode of leading? Zero being a doormat, 10 being a Brian Walden special. I don't think Brian Walden was 10 because 10 to me is rude, aggressive, argumentative. I think Brian was a very solid eight.
27:48 Rory Stewart? Very good.
27:49 Alastair Campbell? Where are, where are we Rory? Where are we?
27:51 Rory Stewart? Well, I think, I think interviewing is changing, isn't it? I think it's, it's getting more old fashioned. There's more leisure, there's more time. Tommy Vita, who people should listen to, had a lovely line, didn't he, about the fact that when Joe Rogan was interviewing Trump, the thing that impressed him most is that he was able to keep going for three and a half hours without going to the bathroom.
28:08 Alastair Campbell? That's not bad, a 78, you got to hand it to him. I still think there's a place for really aggressive, confrontational interviewing. There was a very good one by German standards with Alice Vidal on German television recently. I can't remember the name of the woman who, who did the interview, but it was very, very strong. Just wasn't letting her get away with bullshit. But the thing we found when we're doing the podcast interviews. Is that it's like when we did the guy from Mossad, Uzi Arad, there were things he said that we could have pushed back on them, but you just know that you're then going to get into a kind of, oh, well, you say this, you say this, but people still get get lost.
28:49 Alastair Campbell? So I think unless what they're saying is just outright untrue, objectionable, can I let them get away with it a bit? Because the most important thing, I think, in an interview, isn't what the interviewer's questions are, it's what the answers are. You're trying to get interesting answers. And if you put somebody completely on the defensive, just by being very aggressive, then you're unlikely to get good answers. You might get good theatre, but you don't get good answers.
29:16 Rory Stewart? So we're thinking about that a lot, aren't we? Because we've just interviewed, as you say, the Israeli National Security Advisor, you know, it would be the same if you went to interview, I guess, Xi Jinping or Pro Boa in Indonesia. How do you get the balance between drawing out what's most interesting about them, how their minds work and how they view the world, and balance that against reminding the listeners that you disagree with them? Particularly true if you were interviewing Donald Trump. I mean, is the point to try to, maybe Trump's the most extreme and absurd example, but I don't know, Steve Bannon, is the idea to try to get to the heart of who this guy Steve Bannon is and how he views the world? Or is the point to go on record saying that you think he's a fascist?
29:56 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, or Musk. How would you interview Musk? Very interesting life story, lots of interesting ideas.
30:02 Rory Stewart? Presumably, the reason why traditionally you do challenge them, even if you know it's not going to get anywhere and it makes the interview worse, is that you don't want them to get a free platform for building their supporters because they go unchallenged, I guess, right?
30:16 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. But I think you can challenge people without necessarily falling into the trap of it just becoming kind of, you know, like some to some interviews, it's like listening to sort of, you know, polystyrene going dragged down a window because you you know they're just locked into a battle that is going to go nowhere. It's a draw. It's a score. It's a no score draw from the start. It takes five minutes to get through it. I think sometimes we maybe are a bit soft. The other thing that I think our interviews we try to do is to draw out people's personality and their character. And I think you're less likely to do that. I think if they're prickly, that's going to come out wherever, you're going to see that. But I think if you make them prickly by being that sort of seeming a bit cynical
30:59 Alastair Campbell? or not really interested in their past or whatever it might be, I think you're less likely to get an interesting conversation.
31:05 Rory Stewart? Now, here we are. Vanessa Rogers. Why do you think misogyny and sexism are still acceptable in today's society? Why is it that the patriarchal society we live in has come on so little in the last few decades? Why is it that Rachel Reeves, who was an undergraduate PPE from Oxford and a master's in economics from LSE, is demeaned as Rachel from accounts when all her male predecessors weren't even referred to by their first name alone when Chancellor Exchequer, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Adam Zahawi, Ed Al?
31:34 Alastair Campbell? Well, why do you think misogyny and sexism are still acceptable in today's society? They're not acceptable in today's society, but they're very present in today's society. I think a lot of that is, I'm afraid, driven by this kind of politics that we've seen come back in recent weeks, which is very, very male-focused, very macho. Trump is an example of it. Farage is an example of it in a different way. Orban is an example of it. Modi is a bit of an example of it. It's not necessarily that they're, you know, I don't know what their attitudes to women are. We know from Trump because of all the things he's said and done. But I think there's this feeling that they think they're playing into that the whole
32:19 Alastair Campbell? women's revolution thing went too far. I mean, it's absolutely nonsense, you know, inequality. If you look at the kind of the equality between men and women, I'd say men still come out on top, you know, it's very hard to argue that this society is tilted too far towards women. But that is a very useful line of attack for people, particularly on the right, to sort of to get going. So the answer is the patriarchal society, it has come on, but it still exists. The thing about Rachel Reeves, I mean, the fact is, I think that's more about, is she, let's, you know, Liz Truss was, I'm not equating Liz Truss and Rachel Reeves politically or competence-wise, but, you know, Liz Truss was demeaned.
33:02 Alastair Campbell? She's known globally as the lettuce because that was sort of part of the approach to her now. So I I think that bit I'm I'm less persuaded of. Um, I think Rachel from accounts is a and a way of trying to undermine her because she's the Labour Chancellor. But, you know, lots of, why do we call John Prescott two Jags? Because it was a way of saying he's not really entitled to have nice cars because he's, you know, working class bloke kind of thing. So I think there is politicians have always been demeaned in language by their opponents. And don't forget as well, it's been weaponized for money. You know, Andrew Tate makes a lot of money out of spreading misogyny and knowing that there are some young men who want to hear it and buy into it.
33:48 Rory Stewart? And now launching a political party, I was I was interviewed on a a podcast recently by somebody who clearly seemed to be quite keen on him and saying, you know, what did I think about how Andrew Tate was coming back into politics? And there's this idea that's spreading amongst a lot of particularly young men. Excited by Silicon Valley that what you need to do is, you know, smash things up, move things, break things, challenge things. Even young women, I was talking to a twelve year old American uh last week. Who was saying, well, you know, she she knew she wasn't supposed to like Trump, but it was exciting. At least he was doing things, at least stuff was happening.
34:28 Rory Stewart? And I I think one of the underlying stories here is that we've allowed the sort of ordinary business of government to seem to people completely inert and paralyzed as though nothing can ever get done. We've given this huge space to the right to present themselves as the kind of party kind of energy and direction. And I think particularly for younger people, I again, I mean, I we missed this during the election, but talking to two fifteen year old Americans who. Were just astonished by how good Trump's social media campaign was and how bad Kamala Harris's was, you know, how they were able to get exactly the right messages for young men hitting their phones. And some of it would be very specific, you know, they could
35:11 Rory Stewart? work out, obviously, if you were Jewish and they could pass messages on Israel, they could work out if you're interested in gaming and there could be interesting stuff about gaming. Whereas all Kamala Harris was doing was sending texts saying, please give us more money.
35:22 Alastair Campbell? Right, on trust, Rory, Oliver Moore, somebody else pointed this out to me as well. When asked if you had to pick only one media outlet to get your news from, which would it be? In one of the last Q and A sessions, neither of you mentioned the BBC. Might you expand on this? Isn't the BBC supposed to be this all encompassing media outlet? I suppose that was a bit of an oversight. We should have said, yeah, the BBC is still pretty good.
35:44 Rory Stewart? I love the BBC. I completely love BBC. I'm heartbroken by what's been done to BBC World Service, but they are an incredibly impressive outfit. I mean, you know, we've just been travelling and we just met a BBC producer in a country who was so well informed, so rooted, doing a really great piece of investigation, running a great programme. I think the problem from our point of view is that what the BBC has online for reading quickly is often pretty short. And so if you're looking for the 3,000 word or the 2,000 word analysis, I'm afraid the New York Times is more likely to be providing it than the BBC. But I still think the BBC is an amazing thing.
36:23 Alastair Campbell? But it is interesting. I think when we were growing up, or when we were younger, we would have, I think BBC instantly would have been the thing. I think the BBC has done itself a lot of damage in various ways over the last two or three decades. However, I do think, yeah, BBC basically is still a very good thing. Now, another great institution of the United Kingdom, Rory, Mark Anderson wants to know, why is King Charles not speaking up in support of Canada, one of his Commonwealth realms against Trump's antics?
36:53 Rory Stewart? It's a good question. I mean, I'm sure he'd want to, desperately want to. And I imagine he's taking advice presumably from the British and Canadian governments on what they think is suitable and what isn't suitable for a monarch. I mean, Britain, to some extent, you sometimes when you talk to diplomats in Britain, they think Britain's only chance with Trump is that he likes the royal family. So maybe he's having to balance these two competing instincts. There's the interest of Israel and Canada and the interest of Israel and Britain, where people are saying, for goodness sake, don't annoy him, because Trump's mother famously was a great monarchist and the one thing he likes about Britain is royal family. I don't know. It must be a very, very difficult position to be in.
37:32 Alastair Campbell? That's, that's the most open you've ever been at a question about King Charles, I have to say, Rory. So that, I think you've been talking to him and I think he's planning something.
37:42 Rory Stewart? No, no, no, that's, that's, that's, that's not the case at all, Alistair.
37:47 Alastair Campbell? Rory, time for another explainer, I fear. Simeon Politik, what a great name for a Rest is Politics listener. Simeon Politik, Politik as in the German version with a K at the end. Can you please give some background on M23? That is not the motorway, that is a military group. Where they arose from, any tribal, ethnic affiliation, what they stand for and demand, and why Rwanda would want to offer them military assistance. This is big stuff going on, isn't it?
38:16 Rory Stewart? This is really, really big stuff going on. So to put it in context, this is happening in DR Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, which is this enormous African country which straddles the continent. And it is home to well over a hundred separate insurgency groups. And one of those groups in the eastern Congo, probably the most powerful at the moment, is the M23. In terms of its ethnicity, it's traditionally a Tutsi-dominated group. And Rwanda, people remember during the genocide, that that genocide was targeted by the Hutu community against the Tutsi community. So some Hutu leaders were killed, but it was predominantly a genocide of the Tutsi.
38:56 Rory Stewart? And so the emergence of the M23 as a group comes out of, partly out of that conflict, and it has historically received support from the Rwandan army. It's received support from the Rwandan army partly because Rwanda has said that the Tutsi ethnic group are under threat, because there are also Hutu rebel groups in eastern Congo, part of the insurgency, and there are many, many other types of insurgency groups. There are people who are proto-communists, there are Islamists, almost every conceivable different ethnicity has its own militia group. It's come into the news, though, most recently because it has yet again managed to capture
39:38 Rory Stewart? Goma, and Goma is this enormous city, which I know quite well, of about one and a half million people, on the northern edge of a large lake. It's the centre point for all aid and relief organisations into Congo, Congo, one of the poorest countries in the world, Congo where there have been many Ebola outbreaks. And Goma, you know, is a place I've visited frequently, both when I was in the British government and when I worked for NGOs, because it is the big centre of operations into eastern Congo. So, highly controversial, massive recriminations between the Congolese government and the Rwandan government, international players trying to get involved, there's been a big UN peacekeeping
40:19 Rory Stewart? force, struggling to control the situation in eastern Congo for more than 20 years. But, again, you know, to bring it to our bigger themes, eastern Congo is also a place where China has come in very hard. So, last time I was there, I found myself sitting next to a Chinese copper mining engineer. Then I met with American companies who were talking about how they were getting out of eastern Congo and handing over to the Chinese because they were unable to meet the environmental or labour regulations. And it's also a place where private military companies are beginning to play, and where a lot of the source of the things that we care about, poverty, population expansion,
40:59 Rory Stewart? violent diseases, and the huge sucking sound as the United States extracts itself from Africa and refuses to play the role that it would have played, in fact, that it played only a year ago when this was happening in eastern Congo, which was the immediate response was of the US. To try to resolve the problem between M23 and others.
41:16 Alastair Campbell? I mean, and it's not just America, though. I mean, it does seem to me that a lot, an awful lot of countries who you might have expected to get involved at least pretty openly and diplomatically are just kind of sitting this one out. And of course, we, you know, the UK, we had Rwanda absolutely central to our politics because the last government was trying to get this system underway to get, send people arriving on the boats to Rwanda, went nowhere. Do you think that Kagame, as the leader of Rwanda, has in part been doing these kind of international deals and international arrangements as a way of softening
41:58 Alastair Campbell? our response, other countries' response when this kind of thing's happened? Because it does seem like a straightforward intervention in another country's affairs, is it not?
42:08 Rory Stewart? So Kagame is a very, very able politician. He models himself on places like Singapore. He's pulled off a pretty remarkable economic success story. He's taken over this country that was torn apart by genocide that killed well over a million people. And he's generated the fastest growth rates in Africa. He's also clearly, to put it mildly, an authoritarian ruler. He matters to people well beyond its size. It's geographically very small countries you can see on a map. Because it is one of the few development success stories in Africa. It's a place that's positioning itself as a centre for African services. And as you say, you know, because he's very innovative and cares about development,
42:52 Rory Stewart? a lot of people want to work with Rwanda. You know, if you wanted to do an international development programme and pilot it, it's one of the most effective governments that you can work with in Sub-Saharan Africa. Things will happen very, very quickly. Plans will get done very, very quickly. As you say, he also offers things like that Rwanda deal about hosting third country asylum seekers for the United Kingdom. The one country that has got into a real confrontation with Kagame is not the UK or Europe, but the United States. But it's also a sense in which the world's changing, which is you get a sense that President Kagame doesn't need to worry as much about the United States as he would have had to fifteen, twenty years ago.
43:37 Rory Stewart? That he feels that there are many other people that he can, he can deal with. And American criticism cuts less hard.
43:44 Alastair Campbell? Kenya and Angola have been trying to sort things out, haven't they? But they, again, they, they, they're going to struggle without one of the big players really backing them.
43:53 Rory Stewart? Absolutely. Angola matters in Congo, really matters in Congo. It's a, it's a wealthy country. It's got a decent military. It was actually involved in persuading Kabila, the last president, to step down. But fundamentally, the problem with Congo is governance, corruption, complete inability to get any public infrastructure built, decades of looting irresponsible ministers, which makes it very difficult for them to project onto the, into the international community. Project the world, seem credible. Okay, final question for me, Alistair. I've been saving this up because I think it's a real Alistair question. Sally McKee from New York. Please can you tell me where I can find and learn that song the German protesters are singing?
44:37 Rory Stewart? And what are the words in English, please? I wish we could sing it here. There we are, Alistair. Over to you.
44:43 Alastair Campbell? Well, if this is the one that I think it is that they're singing at these protests that I mentioned on the main podcast that have been attracted by Friedrich Merz repositioning himself in relation to the far right in the vote that we described in detail on the main podcast. It goes as follows. Werdet euch leistet Widerstand gegen den Faschismus hier im Land? Auf die Barricaden, auf die Barricaden. Now, you, you must be able to translate auf die Barricaden.
45:14 Rory Stewart? Yeah, I think we can do this, the barricades, isn't it?
45:17 Alastair Campbell? To the barricades, yeah. And the first bit means defend yourself, resist fascism here in this country. There you go.
45:25 Rory Stewart? Alistair, if, if we gave you a quick pause, would you be able to get the tune?
45:30 Alastair Campbell? On my bagpipes?
45:31 Rory Stewart? No, no, no, just, we just to hum it or something. Can you, can you just type it in and see if you?
45:36 Alastair Campbell? Rory, it's a lovely song and I'm glad that they're singing it against fascism in Germany. I would happily play my bagpipes and play that tune, it's quite a hard tune to catch. But I think the lyrics better than the melody.
45:50 Rory Stewart? I think it sounded quite rousing, but anyway, maybe we can put a link into the newsletter for members.
45:56 Alastair Campbell? Excellent.
45:56 Rory Stewart? Right, lovely to see you.
45:58 Alastair Campbell? All the best, speak soon, take care, bye.
46:02 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
46:12 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
46:19 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.
46:23 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
46:26 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
46:28 Speaker 03 Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd, rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.
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