Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 398. Question Time: Trump’s Plan to Overhaul US Diplomacy About this episode Will Harvard win its fight with Trump? What caused Zelensky’s approval ratings to hit an all-time high? Which right-wing politician would Alastair swap places with?
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2:50 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.
2:53 Alastair Campbell? And with me Alastair Campbell.
2:55 Rory Stewart? And Alistair, very, very large number of questions this week focusing on Israel, on the Red Crescent, on the killing of 15 rescue workers, Gaza in general. But I wanted to ask you this one in particular from Francis. Who or what do you think is stifling debate on Israel's war crimes? As one example among many, on Radio 4 last week, statements that Assad had committed war crimes went unchallenged. But as soon as a guest tried to discuss Netanyahu's possible war crimes, the reporter silenced him, saying Netanyahu was not present to defend himself.
3:30 Alastair Campbell? War. Interesting, interesting. I guess the fact that Assad has done a runner and is somewhere in Russia with nobody really knowing where, living under Putin's protection, maybe makes broadcasters think they can get away with saying more than if they're talking about somebody who's the current Israeli leader. That being said, you know, I said on the main podcast that had the Pope not died, we were going to talk about Israel and Netanyahu on the main podcast. And as you say, we've got loads of questions about it this week. And, you know, there's so much going on that, again, Trump takes so much of the oxygen out of the debate and we've had the Pope dying and, but Israel, there is, I've been looking at Harretts, the Israeli newspaper, and a couple of other Israeli
4:14 Alastair Campbell? media analysts. There's so much going on at the moment. You had the Red Crescent, where the government has finally admitted that they made some pretty bad mistakes. And I think it's fair to say that a deputy head is going to roll. You've got the chief of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet, who has made this really remarkable statement about Netanyahu in an affidavit, essentially saying that Netanyahu asked him to spy on Israeli citizens who were involved in anti-government protests, that he asked him to put personal loyalty above the rulings of the Supreme Court. Netanyahu, needless to say, has dismissed it. And in Britain as well, Rory, I mean, this did get a fair bit of coverage, though maybe not as much as it might have done.
4:59 Alastair Campbell? A very substantial group of the British Board of Deputies are British Jews, publishes this open letter in the Financial Times, very, very critical of the Netanyahu government, very critical in the interviews around it, particularly with Ben-Gavir and Smotrich. I'll just give you one line from it. "Israel's soul is being ripped out and we members of the Board of Deputies are British Jews, fear for the future of the Israel we love and have such close ties to." And then going through some of the other stuff that's going on. Obviously, you've got Médecins Sans Frontières, one of the big medical organisations there. They said that Gaza's been, quotes, "turned into a mass grave of Palestinians. We're witnessing the real destruction and forced displacement of the entire population." That's from their emergency coordinator.
5:44 Alastair Campbell? And, you know, I just think that, another one, a piece in Harretts, "The Situation Gaza, No Longer A War But An Unrestrained Assault On Civilians." Ehud Olmert, "Israel Is Closer To Civil War Than Ever." Amos Harrell, these are all commentators. "A Month Into Resuming The Gaza War, Israeli Army Strives To Conceal Its Confusion." Editorial, "Netanyahu's Considering A Limited Strike On Iran." This is complete insanity.
6:10 Rory Stewart? You're getting to something really interesting. But there's another side of this story too. So I'm in the States at the moment and I was talking to someone who, on the basis of this letter, said that they thought almost nobody was still defending Israel's bombing campaigns in Gaza, that people who'd been sympathetic a few months ago were finding it now indefensible. And they quoted that letter.
6:34 Alastair Campbell? Are you talking about people in Israel or people around the world?
6:36 Rory Stewart? People around the world. So I think they were saying, nobody who who doesn't feel a very close connection is is really defending what Israel's doing at the moment. But it was unquestioned. Somebody else said, no, that's not true. If you look at the American Senate and Congress.
6:49 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
6:49 Rory Stewart? They are almost unanimously supportive of what Israel's doing. There's no question from Republicans or Democrats in any way of the actions that are being taken. And I'm I'm here at Yale, and today, a society has invited Ben Gavir to speak. So Ben Gavir is this, you know, really a very, very unpleasant, troubled person with connections to far-right nationalist groups and crime, who's a member of Netanyahu's government, is is being invited here to speak on the campus. So we're still far from a sort of uniform story here, particularly in the US.
7:25 Alastair Campbell? No, and also, don't forget, you just had Donald Trump hosting Netanyahu. And although Netanyahu didn't get all that he wanted, he certainly has still, I think, a lot of political support. I'm just reading this book. I'm going to plug yet another foreign language book, which I think should be translated into into English. It's a book by a guy called Michael Ludus. And he's he very much comes from the left-wing perspective. He's a he's a senior member of the party named after Zara Wagenknecht, the kind of Corbyn-plus figure in in Germany. He was a candidate at the last election. But it's called Krieg ohne Ende, War Without End. And the subtitles says, Why We Have To Change Our Attitude To Israel If We're Ever Going To Get Peace In The Middle East. And
8:11 Alastair Campbell? it is, yes, I say, it's written from a particular perspective, but he's unbelievably critical of Britain in relation to our role in the history and this sort of succession of sirs and earls and lords and vikats, who sort of, you know, paved the way to very critical of the Balfour Declaration, felt it was all done in a very cavalier fashion, set up the Nakba when the sort of half the Palestinian population were forced from their from their homes, very critical of Germany, essentially saying that Germany has has made it a sort of, you know, he has this phrase, Staatsreizung, that it has, it's a reason for the state of Germany is to protect the security of Israel because of the the Holocaust. And that has then led to a stasis in policy
8:55 Alastair Campbell? development, very, very critical of America. But essentially, as you go through it, he's painting a picture. Which does lead you to the place where we are now, where you have people like Ben Gavir and Smotrich, who are absolutely open about thinking, no, there's no such thing as a two-state solution, there is a greater Israel. And that includes the West Bank and includes Gaza. And so it's a difficult read, it's a troubling read. And the point he's making, actually goes to the point you just made, that actually, Israel has phenomenal support around the world. And especially in those places where it needs it most, which he sees as America. He quotes David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, at one point as saying, listen, we don't need to worry too much about Britain and the Labour Party, the British Empire's
9:40 Alastair Campbell? gone, the Labour Party doesn't have many Jews in it, and they're in government, the focus has got to be on American and American politicians. And, you know, as you say, it's very rare that you will find somebody in an American senior political position who doesn't instinctively automatically say, I stand by Israel. And what this guy argues, what this guy Ludas argues, is that Israel's right to exist, which you and I would support, and which I suspect most of our listeners would support, has been taken by people like Netanyahu, people like Ben Gavir and Smotrich, and their supporters around the world, to mean we have the right to do whatever we want, and we don't have to be judged in the same way as other countries, because we can say we are
10:23 Alastair Campbell? the, quotes, only democracy in the region. So they are British publishers, it's a very, very interesting read, and it's worth getting into English.
10:33 Rory Stewart? Good.
10:34 Alastair Campbell? Shall we go to Harvard? How far is Harvard from Yale?
10:37 Rory Stewart? Not that far, it's up at Boston.
10:39 Alastair Campbell? You're in Connecticut, where are you?
10:40 Rory Stewart? New Haven, Connecticut.
10:41 Alastair Campbell? You're in Connecticut?
10:42 Rory Stewart? Yeah, as you say, but in the news at the moment, Harvard.
10:45 Alastair Campbell? Is it sort of Oxford-Cambridge? Do they see each other as their rival? They say, no, we're the top dog, no, we are.
10:51 Rory Stewart? We definitely would see it as that, but it is true that Harvard is now increasingly the big, famous international brand. I mean, it's become like Eton or something, it's become...
11:00 Alastair Campbell? Oh my lord, not that bad. Well, Poppy Fleming, Poppy Fleming wants to know, how significant is Harvard President Alan Garbus' pushback on Trump's demands? Is it naive to see this as a sign of hope? What does it say more broadly about the conservative relationship to academia?
11:15 Rory Stewart? So, just step back for a second. One of the things that Trump is doing is attacking universities, along with many, many other things. And in the case of Harvard, they wrote Harvard and they said, we're going to withhold over $2 billion worth of federal grants and they've threatened to strip its tax exemption. And they've demanded that Harvard report international students, they've accused them of antisemitism, and they want an outside overseer appointed to make sure there are diverse viewpoints at Harvard. So from the point of view of the MAGA cultural warriors,
11:55 Rory Stewart? these universities are seen as, you know, left-wing, woke, antisemitic places which receive far too much federal money and have too much wealth. And it's not just Harvard. I mean, Columbia's had its money taken away, as we talked about, been moved against Northwestern. And there's something also happening at the state university level that we don't talk much about. So I was at Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, two weeks ago. And there, the state government is also trying to get involved in what can and can't be taught, trying to challenge wokeism, trying to set up centers to bring in diverse viewpoints.
12:28 Alastair Campbell? Just on that, they don't, they don't really mean diverse viewpoints, do they? I mean, Trump, when he means diverse viewpoints, because he means he wants the universities basically to be full of people who support him. And J D Vance has talked about Orban's success in taming the universities.
12:44 Rory Stewart? Yeah, this is the basic theme, isn't it? That what they say, if you say it quickly, they might have a bit of a point. So it's obviously true that universities tend to be pretty left-wing. And, you know, 90% of professors are left-wing, not right-wing. And it is true that I have had colleagues who feel that there's a sort of left-wing censorship going on and it's very difficult. You know, for example, we talked in the last podcast about transgender issues and obviously Kathleen Stock in the UK would be an example of somebody who feels that her career was completely blighted because she tried to say... Things openly about biological sex and gender and that universities don't welcome that and they cancel you and that it's a very intimidating environment.
13:23 Alastair Campbell? And yeah, you've just you've just said that Benga V is on the campus today.
13:26 Rory Stewart? Yeah, so it's a bit unclear. It's not something the university is celebrating. It seems to be a sort of group associated with the university or the university itself. But yeah, thi- this is right at the heart of the culture war, though. And in the case of Harvard, Larry Summers, the previous president of Harvard, said there was genuine antisemitism at Harvard and supported the sacking of an Ottoman scholar, scholar of 18th century Ottoman government, who was the director of the Middle East Centre at Harvard, who I knew lost their job. Anyway, in the middle of all this, and this is where you're absolutely right, there may be a point about universities being pretty lefty and right wing views not being welcomed, but Trump is not doing it in a spirit of sort of good faith and trying to encourage diversity. He basically wants to shut down anyone who disagrees with him.
14:09 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
14:10 Rory Stewart? So I used to be at Harvard. I used to teach at Harvard. I used to run a centre at Harvard. And one of the things I used to do is raise money for Harvard. So the first problem raising money for Harvard and getting any sympathy for Harvard is Harvard is unbelievably wealthy. I mean, it's sitting on an endowment of fifty four billion dollars, fifty four thousand million dollars, and in some figures, well into the sixties, its total wealth, if you take its land and debts into account. But, and this is what I discovered, I ran something called the Car Centre for Human Rights Policy at the Kendi School.
14:39 Alastair Campbell? A car centre?
14:40 Rory Stewart? The Car Centre, yeah.
14:41 Alastair Campbell? Well, you're a mechanic.
14:42 Rory Stewart? Two R's. Every centre has to set its own bucket. So in fact, the endowment's broken into eleven thousand separate restricted endowments, you know, eighty percent of the money's restricted. So you can't move it around very easily between bits. And three hundred million of these cuts has fallen on the medical research side. And that's a problem here for Yale, too. So Yale is supporting, I think, about thirty seven thousand patients in different trials around the New Haven area, a lot of that funded with federal money. So federal money stops. And they're also going after visas. So they're also saying that they're not going to allow visas for foreign students to come to these universities unless they choose. Gerber has chosen to stand up. Columbia didn't. Columbia basically caved, got frightened by the money and caved.
15:25 Rory Stewart? Gerber has said, okay, we'll stand up. But we're now getting into some of these questions that you're quite interested in because fundamentally Harvard's private and tax exempt and gets government money. So you get some of the grumbles that you'd get from that you had about private schools in the UK, you know? Why are they tax exempt? Why are they getting all this stuff? They spend six billion dollars a year and these universities are the kind of crown jewel of the United States. I mean, America, as we've often said, doesn't have very good public education, doesn't have very good public infrastructure. But one of the few things it does have is these universities. And most of these great tech geniuses go briefly to places like Harvard or Yale, often dropping out after a year and a half or two. And Bill Gates went to Harvard for a bit and then dropped out. Zuckerberg was at Harvard for a bit, dropped out.
16:09 Rory Stewart? They are a lot of what makes America extraordinary. They're very wealthy and they can get the very best academics in the world because it's not just that you can get a big salary. It's also that they'll pay for your research assistants, your laboratories, your kit, your investment if you're a scientist. And so just to finish, on the one hand, yes, it's true, these universities are insanely wealthy and their endowments are mad. And so at some moods, when I was at Harvard in 2008, I thought this was a bit like the monasteries before the Reformation. You know, we as professors were like fat abbots sitting around in these monastic institutions, eating fine food and wearing fine clothes, which wasn't what these things were supposed to be set up for.
16:47 Rory Stewart? On the other hand, they're actually the goose that lays the golden egg for lots of America services, exports, technology, the American economy and American status in the world is based on having the best universities in the world. And that's what Trump seems destined to kill.
17:03 Alastair Campbell? I mean, it does seem strange. It reminds me a little bit of elements of the last government and their constant undermining of the BBC. I think the BBC is a, whatever complaints I might have had with it from time to time, I think it's a very, very big part of our global reputation and it's worth protecting for that alone. And it seems weird that when, as you say, one thing that America has got is this reputation for a, you know, a sizable number of really top quality universities. When you look at the list of Nobel Prize winners from these top Ivy League universities, I mean, it's quite phenomenal. And yet they want, seem to undermine it. And I, just before we, we started recording, I was watching a thing at one of these town halls.
17:45 Alastair Campbell? It was a Republican politician, I can't remember his name, and somebody in the audience worked for one of these universities and said, as a result of the decisions that the Trump administration and the Doge has made, we are having to end a program which was making progress in scientific development of a program to treat Parkinson's. And you could sort of feel in the audience, this sort of, whoa, oh, like, you know, not necessarily relating the way the debate is going. So the line of the White House, when Harvard, who have now announced, announced that they're taking legal action against the administration for the demands that they're making, and the line from the White House went as follows, the gravy train of federal assistance to
18:27 Alastair Campbell? institutes like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families, is coming to an end. Taxpayer funds are a privilege. Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege. So it's full on, you know, we're with the people, struggling American families, against you, who are just there to feather your own nests. And that is, I'm afraid, populism in a nutshell.
18:53 Rory Stewart? A bit like attacking USAID, and we've got this in, leading interview with Atul Gawande coming, who's a Harvard professor in, in medical science, who talks about the real impact for real people from this. But politically, it is something Trump and Vance probably can get away with, because these particular targets, overseas development aid, professors at Ivy League universities, are not exactly the most popular thing with a voter in Dayton, Ohio.
19:17 Alastair Campbell? No, but they're doing an awful lot of damage to their soft power. And maybe they just don't think that matters. But I think if you look at their... Reputation around the world is measured in all sorts of different ways, but you know, look at the tourism numbers. There's a piece in one of the French papers the other day, there's absolute American boom at the moment on the south of France. And one of the reasons is this, I just don't want to be in America while all this is going on. Maybe just before we go to the break, Roy, this is a really good one, staying in the, in the States, Emily M., I hope that's not the presenter of a, of a rival podcast that occasionally appears just below us in the charts.
19:51 Rory Stewart? Peddles.
19:53 Alastair Campbell? Can you please explain what on earth Trump is doing to the US State Department and its embassies abroad? This, this relates to what we've just been talking about.
20:00 Rory Stewart? Yeah, amazing story. So this, this was leaked by the New York Times. It's, it's still a proposal and the State Department is vigorously denying it. But the proposal is basically to shut down all the Fulbright scholarships with a few very limited exceptions, shut down all the attempts to get access into state departments. It's an attempt to make American diplomats more diverse by encouraging people from minority backgrounds to join the State Department, which is exactly what should be happening. And the administration wants to shut that down. But then also closing embassies, you know, talk about closing a lot of their embassies in Africa. It's a very, very odd thing to do if you're the global superpower at a time when China and others and Russia are reaching into Africa, doing more and more in Africa.
20:44 Alastair Campbell? So as you know, we're, we're both very big fans of the New York Times and think it's a pretty good newspaper. The Trump administration clearly hates it. But what was your sense of that story? So they're, they're on the story, people speaking on condition of anonymity, et cetera. And then the administration flat out denies it. Where did that leave you at the end of reading?
21:03 Rory Stewart? Well, so the theory that I got, I talked to a senior State Department official yesterday about this. And they think that what's happening is that the administration's rolling the pitch, seeing how people respond and will probably come out in the next 24 hours with a slightly milder evisceration of the State Department. But because it's not quite as big as it sounded, they'll get away with it. Is that a kind of playbook? Is that something people sometimes do in politics? They announce something very big and then see how it plays and then do something a bit smaller?
21:34 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. I mean, I can't think of any examples, obviously, but yeah.
21:40 Alastair Campbell? His, his me love to happen from time to time. Um, what about, listen, I have a quick yes or no before we go to the break. Pete Hexath, the Secretary of State of the Defence, will he survive? Yes or no?
21:54 Rory Stewart? It's all about loyalty. I think if he shows loyalty, he can be pretty incompetent and survive. But there is briefing against him starting, isn't there?
22:01 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm a no. I think he's, I think he's toast.
22:04 Rory Stewart? Final quick one for you. Julia Wren, there were lots of reports on how Zelensky's approval ratings spiked after a shouting match with Trump, jumping from 57% of Ukrainians trust in Zelensky to 68%. Where is this now and how much does it matter?
22:18 Alastair Campbell? Well, last time I looked, his ratings were good. And there was a spike after the shouting match in the, in the Oval Office. And listen, I've got no doubt at all, Zelensky would wish that had not happened. But one of the things I think makes him a very effective campaigner, communicator, politician, strategist, if you like, is that he's very good at using things that go badly to his benefit. And I think what he did on the back of that was to do a renewed blitz around the world, getting promises of money and political support. He's still doing these nightly messages, putting out his message out there. So his, his ratings are good and no matter how many times Putin and Trump and Whitkoff
23:00 Alastair Campbell? echo the Putin talking points, which they do now as a matter of course, I think Zelensky remains very, very popular. I've got to say, Rory, one of the, one of the high, high points of the week was Whitkoff in the Elise Palace comparing the decor to Mar-a-Lago.
23:20 Alastair Campbell? And saying, in fact, I saw Jonathan Powell was in the show. Jonathan was sort of nodding with this sort of, you know, what the fuck is going on now? And he basically said, and the thing is, Jonathan, you go to Mar-a-Lago and like the president himself, he designs all that, you know? And Rory, have you seen the White House recently? The Oval Office, it's, it looks like a sort of bizarre. It's just got all these bits of bling everywhere. The mantelpiece is covered with all these bits of bling. So yeah, I don't know when the Elise Palace was built, but I suspect it was built before the United States existed. And he's there basically comparing Baralago to the Elise Palace, anyway.
23:58 Rory Stewart? Okay, now, the rest is politics, as everyone knows, is powered by fuse energy. And we've got a question from Brian. So Brian asks, the UK seems to be finally gaining some momentum on EV rollout. That's, I guess, electric vehicles catching up with the US. But government policy is still lagging behind in terms of promoting use of electric vehicles. Are government subsidies sufficient in the face of Trump's tariffs? Any views on electric vehicles? Do you have an electric vehicle? Do you have friends with electric vehicles?
24:27 Alastair Campbell? I have a hybrid. The only time I really use my car is when we drive through France. But I tell you what we did notice on our last drive through France, through a couple of towns, was actually this mention of BYD, the Chinese car. I haven't really noticed that many of them in Britain. I don't know if you have, but I've noticed more of them in Europe this time than I've been here. And I think what's happening with the Chinese in relation to tariffs, where they've got these massive tariffs on them, 145%. So they are now going to be trying to get into other markets. And I think that's important. I mean, last time I was in Norway, I was really struck by just how many fully electric cars you see around the place and also just how much of a of a system that they have.
25:09 Alastair Campbell? So I think the infrastructure is still something that we have to, we have to crack.
25:13 Rory Stewart? And China, which is incredible, the number of electric vehicles now going. So you're right, BYD. The Chinese did something which is a sort of miracle. I mean, we talked about Chinese industrial policy before, that they decided they wanted to be a leader in electric vehicles. And then they have this odd combination of massive state subsidies and then massive competition. So there were sort of thousands of little electric vehicle companies competing with each other, which eventually ended up with a lot of innovation and three giants. And BYD can basically sell a really good electric vehicle for about 40% cheaper than any of the American or European competitors. And so that's a really good thing if these governments want to let people on low incomes
25:54 Rory Stewart? get electric vehicles, which is essential because in Britain, there was meant to be this 2030 date, only five years away. That was then pushed out by Rishi Sunak to 2035. Then charges, as you've pointed out, when I was the Environment Minister in DEFRA, I think we reckoned we needed about 300,000 charges. I think we've only got about 55,000 in place at the moment. Big problems trying to get them into rural areas and central urban areas. They're easier to put in a kind of spread out suburban context. And still quite a lot of people don't really like electric vehicles. You know, is BYD able to deal with people's anxiety about range and time it takes to charge other forms of technology?
26:33 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, we had Ezra Klein on the podcast recently on leading and I listened to an interview he did the other day. He was interviewing his colleague at the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, who just got back from China. He was really praising the BYD product, as it were. And, you know, I did, I did on the back of that, I did take a look. Now, I would much prefer to buy British. We're back to the Pope and the order of love here. I'd like to buy British and if not British, European. As I said recently, I've never been that impressed by American cars. Sorry, but I think I would take a look at BYD. Will I be accused of being young Patreon if I did that?
27:11 Rory Stewart? Well, and also you're going to get yourself into this whole question about manufacturing jobs at home and tariffs and all this stuff, which is right at the centre of the Trump world.
27:18 Alastair Campbell? I wouldn't do it now. I mean, we're going to get rid of these tariffs.
27:23 Rory Stewart? It's probably the most powerful example in the world, isn't it, of the trade offs, which is on the one hand, we want people to have cheap electric vehicles because it's really good for the climate and our transition. And on the other hand, we're trying to protect manufacturing jobs at home.
27:36 Alastair Campbell? Anyway, Rory, he gets to the segue to the plugging bit. EV home charger installs are now live with Fuse. Standard installs are finished within seven days of booking. Download the app, sign up with the code POLITICS and get fuse.com/politics for full terms and more information. Shall we take a break?
27:54 Rory Stewart? Take a break on that.
27:56 Speaker 03 This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one year old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.
28:31 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics, question time with me Rory Stewart.
28:34 Alastair Campbell? And with me Alastair Campbell. Now here's a great question Rory from Sam who's from Wakefield in Yorkshire but currently, very luckily for him, in Sydney. If you had to swap lives with a politician from the other side for a month, fully embedded in their job, who would you choose and why? It goes on to say, "Thank you for keeping myself and my partner entertained and informed on our road trip around Australia." Well thanks for that Sam, I hope you enjoyed our interview with Anthony Albanese at the weekend. So Rory, who would you swap with on the other side of politics?
29:02 Rory Stewart? I'd be tempted to say, but it's not really the other side, that the most interesting and exciting job in the world at the moment is Friedrich Mattes as Chancellor of Germany. But if he's not on the other side, I think I'd have to say I'd swap with David Lammy. I think this is an amazing opportunity for Britain to get much closer to Europe, to be much more imaginative about the Customs Union, to recreate a European defence and security architecture. This is the kind of Jean Monet moment. And so I'll take David Lammy's job if that's okay.
29:32 Alastair Campbell? Well, I'll take Donald Trump's.
29:37 Alastair Campbell? I would definitely take Donald Trump's job. I think there's one job on the other side of the political fence that I'd feel more comfortable. In fact, I'd take pretty much anybody being there right now, but yeah, I think I'd go for Trump.
29:51 Rory Stewart? Here's one for you. Annie Bruff, Gensac, France. "One of my neighbours is trying to twin our French village, presumably Gensac, with lime kilns in Scotland. There'll be haggis, bagpipes, Bordeaux, men in kilts. Would Alastair and Fiona come and play the pipes for the event?" I presume Alastair playing the pipes, not Fiona.
30:11 Alastair Campbell? Annie, that's a very, very kind invitation. And what I'm going to do is, subject to my diary, I'm happy to look at it.
30:18 Rory Stewart? On twinning, I don't know whether everybody who listens internationally is aware of this practice, but as you drive around towns in the United Kingdom, you see the village or the town name and then what it's twinned with. And my two favourite ones were Dal in Scotland. Is twinned with boring in Oregon and bland in New South Wales.
30:38 Alastair Campbell? No, that's not true.
30:40 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that's that's true. And then and then my favourite one is Rutland. So I went to give a talk for Alan Duncan in Rutland, the MP. And Whitwell, which has got nineteen houses, is twinned with Paris.
30:52 Alastair Campbell? Blimey, is that the Paris?
30:55 Rory Stewart? Well, the Paris, except Paris doesn't recognise the twinning. Only Whitwell has it on its sign.
30:59 Alastair Campbell? Ah, my my daughter, who's got a comedy podcast, and she was interviewing earlier, the comedian Joe Lysat, who has just done this brilliant TV programme. He's famously from Birmingham and he's gone to every Birmingham in America. Of which there are many.
31:18 Rory Stewart? Now, here may be a real Alastair question. So from Mike Corn from Derbyshire, who's a Trip Plus member. Thank you, Mike, for being a member of Trip Plus. Alastair, this morning, my German teacher was unable to give me an appropriate translation for disagreeing agreeably auf Deutsch.
31:37 Alastair Campbell? Oh, Lord.
31:37 Rory Stewart? We speculated whether such an expression existed in the German language and wondered if you could find the necessary vocabulary to express the sentiments. So there we are, there's our disagree agreeably, that being our byword. How would you say it in German?
31:51 Alastair Campbell? Oh, that is that is a great question because you see, if disagree agreeably, which if people don't know is the motto of our podcast, what's nice about that is disagree is a very simple verb and then agreeably and the agree agree bit goes together. And in German, the trouble is in German, to say I disagree, so there's two words in Britain, in English, ich bin nicht einverstanden. I am not in agreement. So you're talking about four words, one of which has got four syllables. I think what I would end up with is angemähen argumentieren, which means argue pleasantly. But I don't think disagree agreeably works in German for some reason.
32:37 Alastair Campbell? Or you could do, you could go with widischke und ohne Goll, which means contradict with no resentment.
32:44 Rory Stewart? Contradict with no resentment.
32:45 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, it's sort of the same, is it?
32:47 Rory Stewart? Contradict with no resentment, though, seems to have sort of more profound philosophical depths, doesn't it?
32:53 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. What about argue, argue, argue pleasantly? Does that work? It doesn't really work, does it?
33:00 Rory Stewart? No, no, no, I like, I like contradict with no resentment. I think resentment is a very powerful word. Okay, here's a really strong question. Lauren Neumann-Orblinger from Bavaria, who's one of the German theme, and a Trip Plus member, thank you, Laurie. Theoretically, could the blue states secede from the US? And what would it actually take practically to do so? The answer is, Laurie, absolutely not. This is what the Civil War was all about, right? The Civil War was all about these southern states trying to secede from the US. The Constitution does not allow states to secede, and this was settled by the Supreme Court in a case relating to Texas. It's one of the things that makes the United States very unusual.
33:40 Rory Stewart? You know, when we were talking about Scottish independence, it's almost impossible to find an analogy in the United States because, in effect, Abraham Lincoln went to war about the ability of a someone like Scotland to decide they wanted to leave the United States.
33:57 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, it doesn't mean it can't be an option sometime in the future, surely.
34:00 Rory Stewart? Well, theoretically, within the US Constitution, it would require the full consent of the whole of,
34:05 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
34:06 Rory Stewart? probably ratification of three-quarter of the states. Let's say thirty-eight out of fifty of them would have to agree. So it would be much more like Scotland can secede provided England and Wales vote for Scotland to secede.
34:19 Alastair Campbell? What about those, like you had, say like you had an American state that became to the United States of America? What Hungary under all man sometimes feel is becoming to the European Union, where the other, the other forty-nine states wanted to get rid of one. Does that work?
34:34 Rory Stewart? Can they boot it out?
34:35 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
34:36 Rory Stewart? Interesting question, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's also this interesting question of new states. I think Americans focus on certain things quite selectively in school. They focus a lot, obviously, at the moment on civil rights and Western expansion. But I, I discovered very few Americans have a sense of how Hawaii became a state, which was basically a kind of colonial operation financed by American business to top a, top a queen.
34:59 Alastair Campbell? Now, here's one, Laurie, and this will allow me to revisit an argument we had a while back. From Tanya Newton, with more and more officers now responding to mental health crises, addiction issues and homelessness, situations they're often not trained to handle, what role should the police actually play in dealing with society's deepest challenges? Should they step back and let social services take over? Or are these issues now inseparable from public safety?
35:26 Rory Stewart? Well, it's fundamental and it's something that prison officers also worry about a great deal, which is that police officers are trained to be police officers primarily, but increasingly they're being asked to be so many other things: social workers, mental health counsellors, family conflicts advisers and a dozen other things. And that's because they're being asked to fill a massive space left by the dismantling of so many bits of public health and infrastructure that used to exist.
35:55 Alastair Campbell? AKA austerity.
35:57 Rory Stewart? Yeah, AKA austerity, but not much sign that your dear government is really rebuilding much of this or putting much money into getting it going again.
36:04 Alastair Campbell? Well, they're trying, but I definitely would argue that they might be doing more. The reason I say it allows us to revisit an argument, Roy, do you remember recently you were making one of your sweeping statements, that all Labour MPs come from the spaw of Labour, the womb of Labour MPs?
36:21 Rory Stewart? With the absolutely astonishing stat, which I still am reeling from, if it's true, that someone did some research and discovered 25% of them, 66 times the general population, have a parent who was actively involved in politics as a councillor or as an MP.
36:36 Alastair Campbell? No, no, it didn't say that, it said he was very political. He could be very political at any walk of the walk. Anyway, you also said that police officers tended to be the children of police officers, and I thought that was absolute nonsense. So I checked with the Police Federation. According to their latest pay and morale survey, this is really sad, 75% of police would not recommend joining the police to others. That is, and it's the fourth year in a row that that number has gone up.
37:06 Rory Stewart? That's very sad.
37:07 Alastair Campbell? That's pretty dangerous.
37:08 Rory Stewart? It's very bad, very bad. And I think you often hear that, don't you? You often hear people in a lot of professions saying this, teachers saying it, civil servants saying it.
37:16 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. No, and I think it is, I think it is due to the sort of the, the fact that they have, I know quite a lot of police officers and they, you know, I think we still have an image of them either chasing people around in cars or catching criminals or, you know, a lot of their work now is out in the community, dealing with really difficult stuff that they would probably be the first to say they're not fully trained.
37:39 Rory Stewart? I, I've had a really positive experience recently with the police, both the, the Met and the Norfolk Police, who were incredibly thoughtful, courteous at following up on a, a difficult issue that I was dealing with. And I was so impressed by um how thoughtful they were and how professional they were.
37:56 Alastair Campbell? I've seen police, you know, recently involved in a situation where somebody we knew was in real psychological distress and they were absolutely terrific. They were really, really, really good. So listen, there's bad cops and there's good cops, but I think they, you know, it, we should all be worried that three quarters of police say to their kids, hey, you don't want to do this. It's pretty crap.
38:19 Rory Stewart? Jamie O'Neill, final one for me. If you could bring back one forgotten or failed policy idea from the last 50 years and give it a second chance, what would it be and why? So given I'm dropping that on you with no warning, I'll give a first step for me. For me, the big change in Britain that we need is to make sure that adult social care, so looking after the frail elderly is something that's properly funded in the way that the NHS is funded. And actually, it would take some burden off the NHS because one of the problems that the NHS faces is because we don't have a proper NHS for the frail elderly, for adult social care, it ends up taking a huge amount of the burden of that back onto the state.
38:58 Rory Stewart? And the failed policy idea that I would bring back was Theresa May's idea, which was the right way of funding it, which is a sort of wealth tax. What it does is say that
39:09 Rory Stewart? After people die, the state will take some of the cost of looking after them out of the value of their house, not while they're alive, it won't be about taking their house away when they're alive, but after they die, some of the value of their house will be taken back by the state. And I thought that was a very good way of resolving two problems at the same time. Massive inequalities of wealth, partly to do with a lot of valuable housing being in the hands of older people, and also a real problem with funding something where in Cumbria, at least when I was the MP, I often found that elderly people were lucky if they got fifteen minutes a day with a carer, which isn't enough to change you, let alone Fiji.
39:46 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Okay, if I could bring back one forgotten or failed policy idea from the last fifty years and give it a second chance, what would it be and why? I wonder about being four members of the European Union or I wonder if that might be, I wonder if that might be quite, and if I'm not allowed that one, maybe Sure Start, I think that's quite a, quite a good idea. But look, clearly it failed in that, the Cameron government failed to persuade people that the policy had been good for Britain, but I think most of Britain now thinks that maybe that wasn't a very good thing to do. So the policy failed in part because we were given the chance to put our future in the hands of Chances
40:25 Alastair Campbell? and Charlatans like Johnson and Farrar. So yeah, I don't think I'll ever give up on that. And by the way, my friend Eddie Rama, another upcoming election on May the 11th, he's going for his fourth term, and he sent me a poll the other day, eighty-six percent of Albanians want to join the European Union.
40:46 Rory Stewart? I like your Sure Start thing, and I think maybe we could join forces and see if we can put a bit of pressure on the current government, both on Sure Start and on adult social care. I mean, they're both things that cost money, and Rachel Reeves will be reluctant to do them. But
41:01 Alastair Campbell? But the tragedy of Sure Start is it was such a successful policy. It was a really successful policy. The data showed that it was, it worked.
41:09 Rory Stewart? Yeah, no, I'm with you. I'm with you. And, and you know, my adult social care, I'm going to have enough time on this, but it is true that a lot of the problem that the NHS is facing is that because people aren't adequately looked after at home, they end up in hospital much more than they should. And that's hugely expensive. It blocks beds, it puts huge strains, it's much more expensive in the long run than having a decent system for looking after people at home. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why despite the amount we spend on the NHS, all our money ends up going to hospitals and we get worse health outcomes. You know, life expectancy, this is Atul Guande's point, in Costa Rica is the same as what it is roughly in the UK, and they spend about a tenth as much on health.
41:50 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I think I'm right in saying that. Atul Guande is out on Monday on leading, so people should look forward to that. See you soon.
41:57 Rory Stewart? Thank you. See you soon. Bye bye.
42:14 Speaker 04 The Great Game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.
42:22 Speaker 05 We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.
42:28 Speaker 06 Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.
42:30 Speaker 07 They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.
42:33 Speaker 04 Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!
42:46 Speaker 04 We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.
42:57 Speaker 06 A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?
43:02 Speaker 04 Yes.
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