Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 492. Should Europe Boycott the World Cup? (Question Time) About this episode Could Trump’s continued Greenland threats spark international boycotts of the World Cup? Does Robert Jenrick’s chaotic defection to Reform strengthen or weaken the Conservatives? How stable is the ceasefire in Syria, and should it be celebrated as a major victory for Trump?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more.
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Transcript 9,313 words · 10 speakers
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2:49 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So here we are in Davos again. So we're going to talk about actually how Trump's actions in Greenland might result in boycotts around the World Cup and in particular whether Alistair should be going to the World Cup. We're also though going to be talking about what we've seen in Davos, what we've learnt about the world from Davos. We're going to be getting into Robert Jenrick's defection from Conservative Party. So this was the heir apparent to the Conservative Party. He's now gone over to Nigel Farage's reform. And does that mean that reform is on track to replace the Conservative Party or the opposite? We're going to talk also finally about Syria where there has
3:31 Rory Stewart? been a confrontation between the Syrian government and the Kurds, huge boiling issue that's been there for a year, which at the moment is being celebrated by Mark Rutte and others, by another great achievement by Donald Trump. I'll try to explain a little bit, having been in Syria, what it's like on the ground. And then we'll finish talking a little bit about your friend Neil Kenner, who we just interviewed on leading. Well, let me ask you that first question. Comes from Margaret, who's in North Carolina. I really respect Alistair for seriously considering not attending the World Cup and for recognising the danger of normalising what's happening in the United States. At what point do we stop expressing surprise at Trump's actions and start calling this what it is, the emergence of autocracy in America? And what would it take for England
4:14 Rory Stewart? and other European countries to boycott the World Cup in protest? And just as a, to remind listeners, for people who are real sort of Rest is Politics Question Time geeks, we actually asked listeners to respond on whether Alistair should go and watch the World Cup. And no secret, he absolutely loves football and Scotland has qualified. So it's one of the most exciting things that's happened to him in decades. We had 5,000 votes across Instagram, no 66%, yes 34%, 1,000 votes on Spotify, no 78%, yes 22%, 250 responses on email, no 91%, yes 90%. So on aggregate, 84% against attendance. What does that make you think about going to the United States?
4:57 Alastair Campbell? I've actually firmly decided anyway. That probably did help me, push me in that direction. And my son Callum as well, who was, he was also intending to go and has decided now, no, he's not. And not because of me, just because he's made that decision independently. And we, you know, both my sons and I have followed Scotland through thin and thin.
5:18 Rory Stewart? When was the last time they qualified for the World Cup?
5:20 Alastair Campbell? In 1998. So I went to that. In fact, I persuaded Tony Blair to come out and see the team on the way. So it's sad and I really do feel bad about it. But, and by the way, I should say, that does not mean I think that everybody who goes is a terrible person. I think that, but I think if, in my position, it was the same for you, I think it is, you are in part making a statement that this is okay. And, you know, if I make the point, as I do, that Trump uses everything to political ends, and by God, he's going to use this World Cup with his friend Infantino. And I'm afraid, I've told you before about this
6:00 Alastair Campbell? book I read, a German book by Volker Hesse called Berlin 1936. I sort of feel that that's what we're seeing. And what was really interesting, I went through a lot of the, the messages that came through with these votes. And by the way, I had hundreds and hundreds myself as well, both on social media and directly to email and DM and all that stuff. But a lot of Americans saying that they feel that outsiders objecting and protesting in whatever way they can to Trump helps them.
6:30 Rory Stewart? The emails and, that, that, there's, I mean, we should, we should get on to this because partly what many American writing and have been talking about is to bring the focus back on what's happening domestically. I mean, we're talking a lot about Greenland.
6:43 Alastair Campbell? Exactly.
6:44 Rory Stewart? But in fact, the horror of what's happening in Minnesota and the sense of creeping authoritarianism.
6:49 Alastair Campbell? But lots of people said that was the tipping point.
6:51 Rory Stewart? Let's, let's move on to the next question. What would happen if we took the second half of her question, if there was a mass boycott?
7:01 Rory Stewart? Of the US World Cup and and the analogies here for people are of course that when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan nineteen eighty, there was a boycott of the Olympics. There was a big sustained boycott of South African teams during apartheid. There were big sanctions against Russian sports people.
7:20 Alastair Campbell? Still are.
7:20 Rory Stewart? Still are, following Putin's invasion. But to do it against the United States would be completely different. I mean, all the countries that it was done to before were, in a sense, more peripheral than the United States. The US was the central rule organizer. The US organized a lot of those moves. And Trump, of course, would weaponize it.
7:41 Alastair Campbell? Hundred percent.
7:42 Rory Stewart? And of course, the US has so much control over the sponsorship, the deals, the companies. He would present it as loser countries victimizing the US and he would use it probably to boost his own poll ratings. So the only way I think you could pull it off is if you made it very much focused on a single issue Greenland. And if you had a huge multilateral coalition, where Trump can't present it as just a marginal thing, but basically the entire world boycotts the World Cup.
8:09 Alastair Campbell? And and it would be very interesting to see where public opinion went on it. Because the truth is, we've got two of the four UK countries have qualified, England and Scotland. There is massive interest in the World Cup. We are both footballing nations and I'm not convinced that most people would necessarily support it.
8:30 Rory Stewart? Oh, you think the British public wouldn't be in favor of not sending our teams?
8:33 Alastair Campbell? I don't, I think, I think.
8:34 Rory Stewart? You think it's such a huge thing that actually sports fans would be really, really hurt and confused?
8:39 Alastair Campbell? Look, if it if it develops into, we actually see the sort of pictures that you described in the main episode of American troops arriving on Greenland and fighting with Danes.
8:48 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
8:49 Alastair Campbell? Then I think that's a different level of thing. But if it, we're just in the, carrying on in this stage of Trump's bullying, Trump's intimidation. There'll certainly to my mind be no pushback from within FIFA.
8:59 Rory Stewart? He won a Prix Prize, a FIFA Peace Prize, there is a FIFA Peace Prize. He also got a second Peace Prize we didn't talk about enough, which is that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize handed it over. It's really great. It would be like, I don't know, maybe I was lucky enough to get into a university and then I decided that I could just let my mate get into the university.
9:19 Alastair Campbell? Or if Usain Bolt were here, you could put his gold medal around your neck.
9:23 Rory Stewart? And I'd be the fastest sprinter.
9:25 Alastair Campbell? The fastest person on the earth, yeah.
9:27 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
9:27 Alastair Campbell? I mean, it's pathetic. It's truly pathetic. It's like, in fact, if I can plug the new world, I've just seen our front page this week. It's Trump with a green dummy in his mouth, saying, we're about to see what happens when a baby doesn't get what it wants.
9:44 Rory Stewart? Which is extremely, his thing to the Norwegians, I mean, anybody who hasn't followed this amazing tweet.
9:50 Alastair Campbell? It was a letter though, it was a letter.
9:51 Rory Stewart? To Januska Sora, who we've interviewed.
9:53 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
9:53 Rory Stewart? In which he says, listen, you guys, the Norwegians, didn't give me the Nobel Peace Prize, so to be honest, I'm not that interested in peace anymore. I mean, of course, I'm still going to do a bit of peace.
10:00 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but you can't see me purely as the president for peace.
10:03 Rory Stewart? Anyway, I'm going to take what I want because you didn't give me the Peace Prize.
10:06 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely, really. But look, I don't know what happens if the, because it would be a huge thing for any of these countries to say to their football associations, we don't want you to go to the World Cup, given how much it means to them, given the financial, economic situation attached to it, and so much else that goes on with it. So, yeah, we'll see. But look, I feel settled in my opinion, but I know I'm going to feel very, very sad when the World Cup comes around.
10:33 Rory Stewart? I think there should be a boycott, even though Trump will use it to his benefit, even though it won't change US foreign policy. I think it will actually be very useful domestically in the United States for opponents to Trump to say, this is unbelievable. Every single European country and many other countries around the world.
10:50 Alastair Campbell? It would have to be that if it was another divide and rule.
10:52 Rory Stewart? It's a very, I mean, I don't know who else is qualified. I mean, are there any other countries which might be amused to team up with us and refusing to tell?
11:00 Alastair Campbell? Oh, who are not in Europe?
11:01 Rory Stewart? Yeah. Are there Asian countries that could come along?
11:03 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, they could. Listen, it's a.
11:05 Rory Stewart? Has China qualified?
11:06 Alastair Campbell? No. Thanks to Infantino's money-making expansion of the whole thing, there are more countries than ever at the World Cup. Look, it could become a thing. I don't think we're far from that. Here's one for you to think about, Rory. Should the king go to the 250th anniversary celebrations? Because that's the plan.
11:23 Rory Stewart? Well, definitely not if that anniversary involves making another claim on Canada. Because he is the king of Canada. Canada's a sovereign nation.
11:32 Alastair Campbell? But just in Greenland alone. This is still going on, should Kier Starmer and the king sit down and say, you know what? Bad idea.
11:40 Rory Stewart? I think, first thing, this is very unfair to the king, because of course, the king doesn't make these decisions on his own. Right, this is a decision for Kier Starmer. But I'm afraid this Greenland thing crosses the line beyond anything we've seen. And that we have to respond so firmly, so clearly, and above all, together. I keep coming back to this. Everything coordinated, Carney, Macron, stand together. Right, next question.
12:02 Alastair Campbell? Just before you go, I just want to give a little sense of the flavour of the issues that are raised, particularly by American listeners, about why they felt this is, they may have crossed the line. And these are the things that they've sort of put up with up to now. Politicisation of law, delegitimisation of courts, attack on a free press, normalisation of rule breaking, reframing of minorities' security threats, personality cult, aggressive foreign policy, and of course, all the lying and everything else that we know about.
12:28 Rory Stewart? Okay. Jackie, who's from Derby. Hi, guys. I caught wind that you're at Davos this week. During what's a pretty significant week geopolitically, what's the most interesting thing you've heard? Well, first thing, before I get onto that, I mean, my goodness, there is a lot of nonsense. I mean, if you wanted to tease this amazing gathering of people. I mean, it's extraordinary. I mean, it's such a ragbag of peculiar, different types of people. People quite understandably running small charities, trying to raise money, hoping they're going to meet some Saudi trillionaire, who's going to give them fifty million dollars because they met him over a cup of coffee. People trying to reignite issues that seem to be dying. And other people who, you can kind of imagine, sort of thing.
13:13 Rory Stewart? When you're having a conversation, will sort of stand up and say, the one thing I want to say is, treasure your parents. So a lot of that stuff, right? A lot of, lot of kind of kooky self-help stuff going on, which probably is a sign that we are in massive, massive decline because actually the whole spirit of this thing is being sapped from within. This, this whole thing was set up on the basis of globalization, free trade, rules-based international order. And what can you really say when Trump is going to Greenland except be nice to your parents?
13:49 Alastair Campbell? Be nice to your parents, give him a big hug.
13:50 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
13:51 Alastair Campbell? I, look, as you have seen Rory, I get very, very irritable at these events. I cannot stand the sort of status consciousness that goes on. You know, we, we are lucky enough, Rory, we've got white badges.
14:07 Rory Stewart? They're very good.
14:07 Alastair Campbell? We're very important. We walk around with your white badge. And then you meet other people. I met this other guy who only had a green badge, would you believe? And when he said, how much do you have to pay for that? And I said, well, don't upset him with nothing. Oh my God, he'd paid forty thousand dollars to be here.
14:23 Rory Stewart? To have a less good badge than you.
14:24 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
14:25 Rory Stewart? Yeah, that must be annoying.
14:26 Alastair Campbell? Must be really annoying. But the, the friend that he was with, however, said, you will not believe how much business I do here.
14:33 Rory Stewart? Right.
14:34 Alastair Campbell? He was in sort of tech world, but he, he said, I will do, I will have meetings that follow on from meetings I've already had, or that create new meetings I will have. But I, he reckons his, his business benefits to a factor of about a quarter by coming to Davos.
14:49 Rory Stewart? And the network thing, I mean, if we think about, we were here last year and we were up in the, the main street, which you can only get into with a fancy type of badge. And that's where we saw the Syrian Foreign Minister.
15:00 Alastair Campbell? And that's where we fixed up the trip to Syria.
15:02 Rory Stewart? That's where we saw John Kerry, that's where we saw the former Swedish Prime Minister. I mean, so it just standing in that street, that Bill Gates was wandering around, I mean, I think.
15:11 Alastair Campbell? So you, so that, that part of it is fine. But I'll tell you what, I absolutely does my head in, in a way that I cannot even tell you. I'm thinking of getting a gigantic badge made on here and say, do not ask me when I arrived in Davos, do not ask me when I'm leaving, do not ask me where I'm staying, do not ask me how I get from my hotel to the Congress Centre, because you don't really care. And I can't stand all the fucking small talk that goes on. Whereas there is this thing develops. I, at breakfast this morning, I overheard these six, I think they were from Mongolia. And they were sitting there and they would, they talked for twenty five minutes about the different ways that they had found to get to the Congress Centre. Just do it, don't talk about it, do it.
15:54 Rory Stewart? Okay, now you did however have one conversation which you did think was quite interesting.
15:58 Alastair Campbell? Well, I would say the most interesting conversation, because to me, being interested is stuff that you, learning things you didn't know. Um, and I had a meeting yesterday with a group called the International Justice Mission, where they educated me about an issue that I was vaguely aware of, but the scale of it is truly horrific and I should tell viewers and listeners to be prepared for some truly horrible things. So this is International Justice Mission, they basically exist to help try to prevent violence against the poor. And in particular, women and children, it is all violence against the poor and slavery and all the stuff that goes on. But they, they explained to me that the, the single biggest commercial child sex abuse situation that's going on
16:44 Alastair Campbell? is online child sex abuse. Where you can sit at your laptop at home as a pervert and you can use the web, and not the dark web, you can use the web to make contact with people in different countries around the world and you can order bespoke scenes of child abuse. Including siblings, animals, ju- ju- just the, the most depraved stuff imaginable. And they were saying that they, they, they've got a team working in the Philippines, apparently the Philippines is really big for this. And they reckon half a million children have been abused in this way.
17:27 Rory Stewart? And I think one of the things that shocked me most is Britain is responsible for a lot of this, a lot of the customers are British.
17:33 Alastair Campbell? We are third in the list, USA is one and we are third, I can't remember who's number two. Um. But it's and and the point they were making, the reason they wanted to see me was because they say they've got to find a government that will take the lead on this and e- educate the public about it, ventilate the issue and persuade the tech companies to make changes that they say can easily be made to make this impossible.
17:58 Rory Stewart? And of course.
17:58 Alastair Campbell? The stuff they were describing was beyond our.
18:00 Rory Stewart? I I think one of the things maybe to do is is to to get them on for a few minutes to talk. But um it's also if we take it bigger is such a sign of how things are going wrong. Because of course, we're in a world in which Elon Musk, instead of being interested in monitoring this stuff, is going in completely opposite direction. He's enabling his AI systems to generate nude images of celebrities and ordinary private people and spread them all over. I mean, we we and I think maybe this relates back to this question of what we're looking at in the United States, what we'd be boycotting if we were not going to the World Cup, what Greenland represents. And I think part of it is this question of who they think they are.
18:44 Rory Stewart? And and in particular, the sense that Trump's vision, it's not quite. I mean, people say it's fascist, it's not completely fascist. The odd thing is that in Germany and Italy after the war, they were in a terrible situation. I mean, Germany being defeated in the First World War, it had mass unemployment, fights in the streets, there was this deep resentment, they were stabbed in the back, all this sort of stuff. Italy, when it was doing its fascist adventures, was a relatively marginal impoverished country trying to establish itself. We've never seen before this, which is the global hegemon.
19:19 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
19:19 Rory Stewart? The wealthiest, most powerful country in the world, the country that created these alliances and underpinned them, that doesn't actually face any significant security threat from Greenland, that they couldn't, as you pointed out, deal with perfectly well by putting their soldiers there if they wanted to, right? Suddenly deciding to do this stuff and doing it in a way that is so vindictive, sadistic, public, humiliating. It is a sense that they want to recreate some strange world. And you you don't read this stuff, but I think it's, I don't almost encourage you to read this stuff, this sort of fantasy fiction, sci fi fiction.
19:54 Rory Stewart? Sort of worlds where technology has been created and then democracies collapse and some empires taken over, run by mad dictators with crumbling computers.
20:04 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, maybe you're right, Shidri, because the other thing that we didn't cover in the main episode on Greenland is that there's also a division going on between the national security argument that says we need this for national security. And then you have people like Peter Thiel and Musk and these guys, they see Greenland as the place where they may be carry out some of their libertarian experiments for the future. So you're absolutely right, but just bringing it back to Jackie's question, the thing about Davos. So why would a charity like that be here? These people are fighting for this campaign, partly because they need money. And I bumped into David Miliband, who runs this huge charity in New
20:45 Alastair Campbell? York. He's had to sack thousands of people since USAID did their cuts. So I bumped into him in the street and I said, where are you going? He said, I'm just off to try and talk another billionaire into giving us more money. So you've got these billionaires wandering around the place. And of course, the inequality that they have created, that they thrive and they thrive on, these charities, really good causes trying to do good things, but they're doing them because the governments have pulled the plug on them.
21:10 Rory Stewart? And which means also that instead of there being any central coordinated response.
21:14 Alastair Campbell? Sort of very piecemeal.
21:15 Rory Stewart? Incidentally, we need to, we'll go to the break now, but I would like you to return to our campaign to give the Nobel Peace Prize to USAID and work out how we can coordinate that building lights. Anyone who wants to get behind that, we've looked at the rules on how you nominate. We need organizations to write in, so please get in touch if you'd like to help us nominate USAID for the Nobel Peace Prize.
21:35 Alastair Campbell? And don't forget, the part of our plan originally was that whoever is American president at the time should be invited to accept it. But they should bring along those presidents who were in charge when USAID was doing it.
21:46 Rory Stewart? And celebrate everything that America did on combating malaria, AIDS, international development, generosity to the world.
21:52 Alastair Campbell? All right, let's have a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about Robert Jenrick and we'll talk about your trip to Syria.
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23:30 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.
23:34 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell.
23:35 Rory Stewart? Question from Finn from Manchester. Could Robert Jenrick's sacking from the Conservative Party create an opportunity for Kemmy Badenoch to pull the party back towards the centre ground? And when Jenrick defects to reform, how can Nigel Farage credibly present reform as the remedy for the Conservatives' recent failures?
23:57 Alastair Campbell? Well, we preempted that second part of the question on the issue of Nadeem Zahawi's defection. I think it's very, very hard for reform to say we're the big change makers when apart from Farage and maybe Tice a bit, maybe Zia Yousaf a bit. You know, it is very much seen as a one man band. They're bringing in these these new people, but they're all basically failed right wing conservatives.
24:21 Rory Stewart? And a very odd group. If you stand them all behind, I mean, it was true, actually, in in some of the earlier incarnations of Raj's parties, he had people who'd been sacked for cash for question stuff coming out of the Tory party. But this time it's sort of Anne Whittaker, Nadine Doris, and I don't really remember John Redwood's leadership challenge against Major and the very peculiar people he had lined up.
24:42 Alastair Campbell? Tony Marlowe and his bright jacket and all that stuff.
24:45 Rory Stewart? It's got a bit of that feeling that if they that and that's why Raj is now writing articles in The Telegraph saying, I'm setting a deadline for Conservative MPs to defect. We can't just be a home for failed MPs.
24:56 Alastair Campbell? Well, the latest failed MP who's come over is this guy, is Andrew Rosendell.
25:00 Rory Stewart? I'm very fond of Andrew. He's an eccentric fellow, but I'm very fond of him and I can tell you a little bit about him.
25:04 Alastair Campbell? But was he not big on Conservative friends of Russia?
25:08 Rory Stewart? Andrew, I mean, also was accused and then, I think, exonerated under allegations of abuse and was suspended from the House of Commons. But he was on the Foreign Affairs Committee with me. He is, I don't know quite how to describe him, he's a big Brexiteer. He is the was the chairman of the APPG on flags. He knows more about the flags of the world than anyone on earth. He's in a world of endless portraits of the Queen. He's and quite a lot of Brexit movement was like that. There were the sort of sinister dishonest people and then there were people who were sort of motivated by sort of strange kind of 1890s patriotism.
25:45 Alastair Campbell? Strong and strong leadership.
25:47 Rory Stewart? Well, yes, and Andrew, yeah.
25:50 Alastair Campbell? Well, as I've said in many, we have not got to the bottom of the Russia Reform story. Sadly, most of our media have given up even thinking about it. Look, Kemi Badenoch is widely said, as they say in two ways on the BBC, is widely said and widely reported of handled Jenrick's defection well, preempted it, put out a statement that was pretty strong.
26:11 Rory Stewart? Just remind people, it was quite interesting. So she got wind that he was about to defect reform, which would have been an enormous moment. Just remind people, Roger Jenrick.
26:19 Alastair Campbell? Robert.
26:19 Rory Stewart? Sorry, Robert Jenrick.
26:20 Alastair Campbell? So well known, they're always just forgot his name.
26:22 Rory Stewart? Robert Jenrick was the heir apparent in the Conservative Party. In fact, for the last 12 months, the story's been Kemi Badenoch's toast. There's only one person who can possibly replace her, who's Robert Jenrick. And he had huge support in the right wing from the Tory Party. He's the guy that was doing all these social media videos, challenging people going on the tubes. He disrupted her conference, you remember?
26:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
26:44 Rory Stewart? You were commenting when she had to go on the Today Programme, he'd been out there saying there are no white faces in the city anymore, etc. So the smart money was if he just sat there, eventually Kemi Badenoch would be toppled and he'd become the leader of the Conservative Party. Instead of which, he was going to defect to reform, which would have been a huge opportunity for Farage to platform him and say the guy, the future leader of the Conservative Party is chairman of reform. She got there ahead, said, broke the whole story herself in a really good way. She said, this guy's the snake on the grass, he's heading over to reform.
27:14 Alastair Campbell? Put up with him for too long, he's now Nigel Farage's problem.
27:17 Rory Stewart? And he's sacked.
27:17 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
27:18 Rory Stewart? Which I think probably took eighty percent of the effect of the defection away.
27:24 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I think in media terms, it took a lot away from it. I think in strategic terms, it's still pretty damaging for the Tory party. But I think where Finn is absolutely right is there's an opportunity for Kemi Badenoch. Because I've always felt that the really big challenge for the Conservatives is to stop pretending that by moving to the right, they can somehow keep hold of the people that have been flocking to Nigel, have been flocking to Nigel Farage. So I think she needs new ideas, new thinking, new people. So I think it is an opportunity and she has to show whether she can seize it. When she first came along, you can remember, I said, look, this one's just not going to last, she's not going to make it. But I think she's become stronger, I think she's become stronger in Parliament. She's got amazing self-confidence.
28:06 Rory Stewart? Well, we talked about her budget speech, which was brutally effective. She got out ahead on the under sixteen social media ban.
28:14 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
28:14 Rory Stewart? Which she will have taken from people like us championing South Australia, and she got there ahead of Starmer. She came out clearly on the issue of Trump, so she's beginning to find her feet, which is, it's a sort of reminder in politics that it's so easy for the conventional wisdom to be.
28:28 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
28:29 Rory Stewart? This person's finished.
28:30 Alastair Campbell? And of course, this new conventional wisdom could equally turn out to be wrong, but I think she's showing something that I hadn't seen early on. I still think there's something about her manner that I think puts a lot of people off. But I think it is a real opportunity for her. And I've said a couple of weeks ago, and I got inundated with people saying, oh, wishful thinking. I think we have hit peak Farage and I think this Trump Greenland stuff. Handled properly has the the capacity to do to Farage what Carney did to Polievra. But it's all it's a lot harder, obviously, if you're the party of government doing it. Carney at the time was, you know, coming in from the outside. He was replacing a prime minister who was on his way, so.
29:11 Rory Stewart? Maybe my final thing, I think two things for Cami. One is clear distinction from Farage. But the second thing is she needs to start now making the centre right argument. She needs to present herself, and this is, I think, the edge. She needs to say that the world has changed and therefore we need strategic autonomy. We need economic growth. We need different values in our economic system, and it's particularly on the economic growth story. There's enough time has now passed. Labour's struggling eighteen months on. There is a sense that Labour has been captured by left wing backbenchers who cannot contemplate cuts to welfare, cuts to disability payment. We need to spend more on defence. We need to get British industry going. We need to deregulate.
29:54 Rory Stewart? We need to get all the stuff, actually, that Peter Kyle, I think, has been doing really good stuff, and I want to really support Peter Kyle. I think he's an extraordinary appointment and he could be a great, great business secretary. But unless Keir Starmer gets behind Peter Kyle and lets him drive an agenda that's going to help entrepreneurs, business and investment, that'll be a huge opportunity for Cami Bednok.
30:15 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, anyway, there we are. I don't know whether Cami will welcome me saying that I think she's improving hugely. Of course, it does help. It sort of does help Labour if the Tories and Reform stay sort of fighting each other on this ground. And there is a possibility that the next election becomes, in terms of the way it's framed and the way and the outcome, a sense of who is going to lead either a progressive alliance or a right wing alliance. I think that is kind of maybe where we're where we're heading. But I I think that I think we have peace past peak reform and I think that. The other two main parties need to put more pressure on him.
30:56 Rory Stewart? In which case, Jenrick made a huge error.
30:58 Alastair Campbell? I think Jenrick has made a huge error, and the reason for that is that he's gone right across the spectrum. And he doesn't look to me like somebody who really believes what he says. He's just thinks it's all about how you say it.
31:08 Rory Stewart? Farage is it's a one man band, and the chance that Jenrick gets rewarded by being part of the Reform brand seems extremely unlikely.
31:14 Alastair Campbell? But also, he's pissed off. I imagine Farage is pissed off the sort of Richard Tice, Tices and Zia Yousaf's who thought they were the main kind of second in command, as it were. He's brought in another one. So it's, anyway, we'll see how it, we'll see how it pans out. The little limbo, I want to ask you about Syria. Josh from Liverpool. With the Syrian government now taking the total control of the northeast and the STF agreeing to integrate into state institutions, that's Kurds who've been sort of resisting this, how realistic is it that this ceasefire will hold? You've just literally just got back from Aleppo. So tell us what you saw and tell us what you think of Josh's question.
31:47 Rory Stewart? First thing is that the question of what's going to happen between the Syrian government and Kurds is very, very new. And we're getting lots of contradictory information. Let me give you a sense of what it was like in Syria. We were there together a year ago. We took the same trip actually from Beirut.
32:00 Alastair Campbell? Did you have to do the same drive through the car wash?
32:02 Rory Stewart? Absolutely, all that stuff.
32:03 Alastair Campbell? Change the car.
32:04 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, all that kind of weird, yeah, yeah. And then, then we got to the border and actually I was delayed at the border for a very long time because they accused me of being a journalist.
32:12 Alastair Campbell? Oh, Rory.
32:12 Rory Stewart? Coming with you.
32:13 Alastair Campbell? Well, you'd rather be called a lefty.
32:14 Rory Stewart? Exactly, exactly. A lefty better than a journalist. Anyway, we got in and I saw many of the ministers in the new government. I travelled a bit around the country. The first thing to say about Aleppo is the level of destruction is beyond imagining.
32:32 Alastair Campbell? And going back way back when or worsened.
32:36 Rory Stewart? So we, we, we, going back way back when, but you know, we stood just outside the central souk, which has been restored a bit. And we were in the middle of rubble. It was like, it's like pictures of Gaza on a smaller scale. And when you look at the cost of rebuilding, you know, some of these stories, many of the buildings, I was looking at four, five story buildings, cost a couple of million each to rebuild, right? So you're talking about costs running into the tens of billions to begin to reconstruct. And actually, what's happening seven, eight years onwards, many businessmen just aren't bothering. Because the cost of clearing the rubble, which is full of bombs, mines, et cetera, and putting up the building is far more than any revenue you could ever generate from your building.
33:17 Rory Stewart? Now, the same will be true in Gaza. I came back on the plane with somebody who'd just come out of Gaza, working in demining. It's almost impossible, he says, to contemplate rebuilding. I mean, all the sewage systems have been destroyed. There's bombs and ordinance all the way through the stuff. They can't get basic equipment in. So many of these places, I'm afraid, you will visit in years to come. And you will just see the whole centers of cities abandoned and people beginning to create brownfield sites on the outside and people living amongst ruins. So we're trying to work, this is Telkwas Mountains Shoshana's NGO with the Syrian government, on trying to think a little bit about some reconstruction of buildings, some support
33:57 Rory Stewart? for the amazing Syrian traditions and handicrafts, textiles, jewelry, woodwork, try to get some jobs and income back, get some of those talented Syrian artisans back into the country. But the bigger politics has barely moved in a year.
34:12 Alastair Campbell? But this is a big success for Al-Shara, isn't it? It could be.
34:15 Rory Stewart? Okay, so.
34:15 Alastair Campbell? It's the basis of it.
34:16 Rory Stewart? So I think, as we've explained to people before about Syria, there is a big Arab population that is Sunni, which is the base of Al-Shara's support. And of course, Al-Shara came from a very extreme version of Sunni Islamist, effectively terrorist organizations, and has now become a sort of champion of trying to create a more multi-ethnic Syria.
34:39 Alastair Campbell? Is your sense of that is genuine?
34:42 Rory Stewart? I think, yes, he genuinely wants to try to reunite Syria. And one of the ministers we saw is a Christian woman. You know, I saw Alawites, I saw the patriarch of one of the churches. He has to deal with the fact, though, that the Alawites in particular were very, very close to the old regime. And so there have been huge fights out on the West. That seems to calm down a bit. But get out to those areas and there's a sense that although it's calmed down, they're not reconciled to the government yet. The drees in the South have effectively become a...
35:20 Rory Stewart? It feels like a sort of Israeli mini-state. Israel provides air support for them. They've effectively declared de facto independence from the Syrian government. And then there are the Kurds up in the northeast, who basically controlled all the land beyond the Euphrates. Now, just as I was arriving in Syria, a fight broke out in Aleppo between the Kurds and the central government. And when I talk about a fight, the minister I was on my way to visit was attacked by a drone with a wingspan, you know, about twice the width of my own arms, which hit the side of the building and exploded and almost killed her. A fight then started between the Syrian government and the Kurds, and we could see troops rolling up and down the streets.
36:01 Rory Stewart? Hundred and thirty thousand people were displaced in Aleppo in about 24 hours. The Kurds were driven back from there. And then the story was, there's going to be a war, that the Syrian military high command wanted to take the fight to the Kurds. The Kurds wanted to take the fight back to them. And what we've seen over the last few days is that the Syrian army has now advanced across the Euphrates. Darazor and Raka seem to have fallen. The SDF, which of these Kurdish forces, has been pushed back. A lot of this must be with Turkish support, because of course those same Kurds in Syria are associated with the Kurdish resistance to the Turks. And then I'm getting emails, of course, from many people who were very close to Kurds, saying there are atrocities, this is a terrible betrayal.
36:45 Rory Stewart? The United States is divided. The US military are sentimentally very pro-Kurd, because the Kurds were their biggest allies in fighting ISIS. And they see this as a victory for extremists. But Tom Barak, and it appears Trump himself, is behind the push of the Syrian government. So, very brutal, very messy. And the question is, can Al-Shara continue to reunify his country, often with these violent attacks, but keep the violence sufficiently under control, keep human rights abuses sufficiently under control, to be able to reunify by force a country as fractured as Syria? And can he get the economy going? Because if we compare it to Bosnia, that's my final point. You know, when you and I went into the Balkans after those wars... There were massive donor conferences.
37:29 Rory Stewart? The World Bank, the EU, the UK, the US would be putting tens of billions into rebuilding. Rebuilding Syria, right? Nobody's stepping up to do that in Syria. So how is it supposed to be rebuilt? And indeed, nobody's actually really stepping up to do it in Gaza either.
37:43 Alastair Campbell? The other thing we should say about Gaza, while we're all talking about this border of peace and the billion dollars from this and the billion dollars from that, and the fact that Gaza was barely mentioned in our presentation of the thing. Two and a half thousand buildings have been demolished since. We're up to nearly 500 in terms of Palestinians killed since, and I think three Israeli soldiers killed. There was also this very interesting piece, I think it was on the BBC, who'd done some stuff showing how the yellow line has just been quietly moved.
38:10 Rory Stewart? Yeah, and to remind people, the yellow line is the line within Gaza. So what's happened is that Israel has taken a stretch of what used to be Gazan territory to create a sort of buffer zone.
38:20 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
38:20 Rory Stewart? And it's now moved the line at the edge of that further into Gaza territory.
38:23 Alastair Campbell? So people who sort of thought their operation called the old yellow line had been moved in and sort of, you know, taken out. So we should, just because Donald Trump says he's delivered peace in Gaza, it has not happened. And the cost of reconstruction is on a scale even beyond, dare I say, the border of peace.
38:39 Rory Stewart? So much going on in the world, but final note, just to update, we did Yemen last week, and maybe one of the things that people didn't follow is that there was these southern separatists backed by the UAE who attacked the Saudi-connected official government and then were driven back by the Saudis. And there was this extraordinary moment where Saudi literally bombed a UAE vessel. First time, these two very wealthy Gulf states literally throwing munitions at each other. UAE withdrew. Saudi invited the leaders of the southern separatists for peace talks in Saudi, and they appear at the moment to have vanished, totally vanished. So you turn up for a peace talk in Saudi and there's no sign that you're around anymore.
39:21 Rory Stewart? The leader, however, of the southern separatists was flown out on a private jet by UAE to Somaliland. Israel and UAE are now very close through the Abraham Accords. Israel has just recognized Somaliland. Somaliland now looks set to be a base for the Israeli military to fire missiles at the Houthis in Yemen. Saudi has responded by forcing the rest of the Somali government to break its ties with UAE. Saudi is also confronting UAE in Sudan. So we're in a very, very interesting world where these two major Gulf countries are against each other. Now, let me develop the final thing. I saw some senior Afghans on Saturday.
40:01 Rory Stewart? And they were saying, the thing that we don't understand when we talk about Greenland is how so many of the borders that we're looking at are recent colonial borders, basically. You could talk about Africa, we could talk about the Middle East, but even Central Asia, they were saying, listen, don't underestimate how many pushed to in Pakistan basically consider themselves Afghan. Don't underestimate how many people in Azerbaijan think they should be part of Iran and how many people in Iran think they should be part of Azerbaijan. Don't underestimate that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, these borders are very recent, very fluid, very, very artificial. Once you begin allowing the idea that that settlement, which basically said,
40:44 Rory Stewart? I don't care what the history was of how this country was created and what its borders were. I don't care whether the boat landed 400 years ago, 700 years ago.
40:51 Alastair Campbell? That is now sovereign territory.
40:53 Rory Stewart? These are now the borders of the world. And since 1945, these are going to be the borders of the world. And you don't get to say, but there are a lot of Hungarians in Romania and we'd like that back, please. And I'm about to talk this afternoon to Albin Kurti. Many Serbs saying Kosovo is part of Serbia. Many Serbs saying Republic of Serbia should be part of Serbia. So this stuff in Greenland is an unravelling of something which may be much, much bigger.
41:15 Alastair Campbell? Thanks for that. Because I think, I think the other thing I'd say is that just listening to that, your talk about going to Syria, just underlines how important it is to listen to people go. Because I'd read a lot about it following this sort of ceasefire deal and seeing the sort of headlines, but it's clearly still a lot more complicated than they reflect. Final question from Bethan in Swansea, who's a Trip Plus member. Listening to your leading interview with Neil Kinnock, his oratory, even at 83, is truly remarkable. What lessons could Starmer take from Kinnock's ability to inspire and move audiences? Does he need more of that emotional connection with voters? Or is his more restrained style better suited to today's chaotic political landscape?
41:56 Alastair Campbell? I mean, I don't think it's just Kier. I don't think it's just Kier. I think our politics generally, I mean, who would you say is the? In Britain, the finest current political orator.
42:06 Rory Stewart? It's terrible. It's so strange that you have to ask that question. We can't answer it. Because British parliamentary tradition was all about oratory.
42:13 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
42:13 Rory Stewart? I mean, any time in the last three hundred years you asked that question, there would be obvious answers. You would have been like Pitt the Younger, Churchill. You know, and Aaron Bevan was a great speaker. You would, you would, Michael Foote was a great speaker. You'd be able to generate these names very rapidly. You know, Enoch Powell, nutty though he was, was a great speaker in the House.
42:30 Alastair Campbell? I mean, Boris Johnson was.
42:31 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah.
42:32 Alastair Campbell? Got skills of oratory, just a total liar. Who would you, come on, I'm going to put you on the spot. Who today, if you were to say, I'm going to name a British person who's got really fine oratorical skills, who would you say?
42:46 Alastair Campbell? Bloody hell, no.
42:48 Rory Stewart? It's very strange, isn't it? It's as though they, well, I have an interesting one, actually. I was in, I was in the car yesterday with somebody who was one of John Major's aides coming up to Davos. And he said that he had to approve all the speeches made by Cabinet Ministers during Major's government on a Friday. It was his job. And they were, all of them, big picture pieces. These Cabinet Ministers were out every week making big philosophical arguments for conservatism. And it's all completely disappeared.
43:15 Alastair Campbell? Do you know what's really interesting, Matt? I forgot about, back in the days when I was a journalist, one of the things you used to guarantee on a Friday, when it's usually quite quiet, is this plethora of speeches arrived saying Douglas Hurd, speaking to the Conservative Party Association and such. Whether these speeches even ever took place, but they were arguments.
43:31 Rory Stewart? Grand big arguments. They were not, we have invested an extra two million pounds.
43:37 Alastair Campbell? Do you think we have to admit that maybe Farage is the only one who's quite a good public speaker?
43:41 Rory Stewart? Yeah, he's good. He's got real talent there.
43:43 Alastair Campbell? I think Anna Sarns.
43:44 Rory Stewart? Well, do you know, Camilla Bednok's speech at the Budget was an extraordinary piece of effective oratory.
43:50 Alastair Campbell? Need to see more of him.
43:51 Rory Stewart? I like, we like Hillary Ben.
43:52 Alastair Campbell? No, he's a good, he's a good, he's a good.
43:54 Rory Stewart? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he knows how to do it.
43:55 Alastair Campbell? Very good in the House of Commons.
43:56 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
43:56 Alastair Campbell? Oh my God, that's so depressing. Anyway.
43:58 Rory Stewart? It was extraordinary. Encouraged people to listen to it because it was extremely moving, very, very interesting. Wonderful kind of glimpse on British parliamentary history, politics, the Labour movement, Thatcher, and the character of this man who so nearly became Prime Minister.
44:16 Alastair Campbell? And I, I actually do think the campaign against him was so vicious. I think it did have a real impact and actually what I saw and what I've seen many times in news, I think he would have been good in that job. My Fiona said that she thought it was the best interview we'd done.
44:30 Rory Stewart? Very good.
44:31 Alastair Campbell? However, she's quite biased. Anyway, first part was last Monday, second part is next Monday, but you can get early access to part two by becoming a member of Trip Plus.
44:41 Rory Stewart? Very good. Oh, you did that very well, Alistair. Well, lovely to see you here at the World Economic Forum and we'll be seeing you.
44:46 Alastair Campbell? You're enjoying it more than I, aren't you?
44:48 Rory Stewart? Yes, I mean, I'm on my way to interview Albin Corti.
44:51 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
44:51 Rory Stewart? The, who we interviewed together on leading, Cosfay.
44:54 Alastair Campbell? I'm on my way to interview, to, to chair a panel on mental health, which of course, all these billionaire globalists, they really care about their, about, about their staff and their people. But, well, Corti's had a great win.
45:08 Rory Stewart? Amazing, isn't it?
45:09 Alastair Campbell? Incredible win in the election.
45:10 Rory Stewart? Extraordinary. And rather, I mean, quite interesting. I mean, we would get, maybe offline, we can talk about this a bit more because it's sort of, in many ways, he's a sort of anti-politician. You would have thought he did a lot of things wrong, but he's not corrupt. He says it how it is. And maybe a bit like the Moldovan, who I thought was another great leading interview we encourage people to watch.
45:30 Alastair Campbell? And by the way, I asked her that question, if there was a referendum on reunification, how would you vote? And everybody said to her, she won't answer that. And she answered it so directly. She said she would reunite with Romania.
45:40 Rory Stewart? And no, it's completely extraordinary, right? So she is the leader of an independent country who said, if there was a referendum, I would join my country with Romania. It'd be like Albin Corti saying, I would join my country with Albania, right? It's, it's really astonishing because you would have thought all the ego and incentives of being the leader of a small country is independence.
45:59 Alastair Campbell? And it created a huge outcry, but she seems to, you know, she seems to be one of those politicians, you ask a straight question, give a straight answer.
46:05 Rory Stewart? I, I was a bit worried about that. I sort of slightly thought that if she'd had an Alastair Campbell sitting in the background, he would have been like, you do not need to answer that question straight. That's going to create a media furor for a week that you don't need.
46:16 Alastair Campbell? Well, it did. It did. But maybe she thinks she did need it because it was an opportunity to highlight just how dangerous things are from Moldova right now because of Russia. I think that's what it was about. Anyway, there we are. We've been blathering for a long time now. We've just seen another massive entourage go by. I think that's the Mongolian deputy foreign minister and there's lots of people around him with his feet clicking away. Anyway, yeah, I'm quite keen to get home, Rory.
46:42 Rory Stewart? Very good. Okay. Well, thank you again. Bye bye.
46:45 Alastair Campbell? See you soon.
46:45 Rory Stewart? Bye.
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