543. The Disaster Britain Still Can't Escape and Trump’s Iran ‘Deal’

WEBVTT
1
00:00:01.250 --> 00:00:04.209
Happy anniversary. Ten years since we voted to leave the
2
00:00:04.250 --> 00:00:07.469
European Union. How has Brexit been for you? Boris Johnson
3
00:00:07.509 --> 00:00:10.220
and Nigel Farage may be a lot wealthier than they were,
4
00:00:10.259 --> 00:00:13.060
but they are the exception. A decade has been long
5
00:00:13.099 --> 00:00:16.179
enough to establish Britain is poorer and weaker and Brexit
6
00:00:16.199 --> 00:00:18.289
is one of the reasons. An economy six to eight
7
00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:21.429
percent smaller than it would have been, investment lower, productivity
8
00:00:21.469 --> 00:00:24.070
lower and businesses who were promised an end to red
9
00:00:24.109 --> 00:00:27.699
tape drowning in the stuff. And yet, the divisive populist
10
00:00:27.710 --> 00:00:30.000
politics that helped fuel it is far from dead. We've
11
00:00:30.019 --> 00:00:31.940
seen the worst of it on the streets of Belfast
12
00:00:31.980 --> 00:00:35.200
last week, a horrible stabbing by an asylum seeker whipped
13
00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:38.939
up into riots and a house-to-house hunt for immigrants. We've
14
00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:42.590
seen its exploitation by Russia in the evidence that arson
15
00:00:42.619 --> 00:00:46.250
attacks on Keir Starmer's home and car were organised by Moscow.
16
00:00:46.729 --> 00:00:50.049
then backed by the far-right here. And even in quiet,
17
00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:53.340
wealthy Switzerland, their weekend referendum on whether to have a
18
00:00:53.380 --> 00:00:57.000
population cap was the brainchild of their right-wing populist party.
19
00:00:57.159 --> 00:00:59.420
And in Germany, I'm hearing of fresh legal moves to
20
00:00:59.460 --> 00:01:02.700
establish that their far-right party, the AfD, is in breach
21
00:01:02.740 --> 00:01:05.709
of the country's constitution because of its commitment to what
22
00:01:05.750 --> 00:01:10.519
they proudly call So, a decade on from the toxicity
23
00:01:10.540 --> 00:01:13.840
of the referendum campaign, how worried should we all be
24
00:01:13.939 --> 00:01:17.379
about the far-right's continuing influence on our lives, and what
25
00:01:17.439 --> 00:01:21.030
hope is there of liberal democracy fighting back? All this
26
00:01:21.079 --> 00:01:25.280
and more to come in today's episode. This episode is
27
00:01:25.319 --> 00:01:26.599
brought to you by Fuse Energy.
28
00:01:26.879 --> 00:01:29.659
Now, moving home has a way of revealing a mountain
29
00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:33.280
of background tasks and endless to-do lists. There's dealing with boxes,
30
00:01:33.459 --> 00:01:36.819
the broadband, the change of address forms, and the discovery
31
00:01:36.859 --> 00:01:38.599
that you own far too many mugs.
32
00:01:39.019 --> 00:01:42.060
And because of that, people often just accept whatever supplier
33
00:01:42.099 --> 00:01:44.920
happens to be there. They're too busy unpacking. But choosing
34
00:01:44.959 --> 00:01:48.109
your energy supplier really shouldn't add to the pile.
35
00:01:48.439 --> 00:01:53.000
With Fuse Energy, switching supplier takes just three minutes. one
36
00:01:53.019 --> 00:01:55.519
of the quickest jobs on the moving checklist, and crucially,
37
00:01:55.799 --> 00:01:58.280
one that could save you up to £ 200 on your
38
00:01:58.340 --> 00:01:58.819
energy bills.
39
00:01:59.019 --> 00:02:02.920
Almost 300,000 customers have already made the upgrade. New home
40
00:02:02.980 --> 00:02:05.189
or not, there's no reason to stick with an expensive
41
00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:08.889
energy supplier. Switch to Fuse Energy in just three minutes.
42
00:02:09.550 --> 00:02:13.569
Use code POLITICS and you'll get a free TripPlus subscription
43
00:02:13.949 --> 00:02:17.590
on top. Sign up today at fuseenergy.com slash politics.
44
00:02:17.810 --> 00:02:21.439
Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions.
45
00:02:30.490 --> 00:02:32.490
Welcome to the Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
46
00:02:32.669 --> 00:02:33.689
And me, Alastair Campbell.
47
00:02:33.789 --> 00:02:36.789
Today, we are at the 10th anniversary of Brexit, and
48
00:02:36.810 --> 00:02:38.949
we're really going to get into how did that go?
49
00:02:39.150 --> 00:02:42.710
And on the second half, extraordinary news, which is that
50
00:02:42.750 --> 00:02:46.650
it seems as though finally, despite all our scepticism, we're
51
00:02:46.669 --> 00:02:49.849
on the cusp of a proper deal in Iran.
52
00:02:50.050 --> 00:02:50.849
I'm still sceptical.
53
00:02:51.090 --> 00:02:54.330
And you're still sceptical. Let me start you though with Brexit.
54
00:02:54.669 --> 00:02:58.150
So 10 years on, A bit of post-traumatic stress. I
55
00:02:58.229 --> 00:03:01.449
was a member then of David Cameron's government, an environment
56
00:03:01.590 --> 00:03:06.219
minister campaigning for Remain. Not hard enough. Not hard enough.
57
00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:10.219
And I was at the great Royal Show in Edinburgh,
58
00:03:10.500 --> 00:03:14.689
the agricultural show, Royal Highland Show, up all night in
59
00:03:14.710 --> 00:03:18.060
my hotel room. watching the results, David Dimbleby coming on.
60
00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:20.719
And then of course, as somebody who then went to
61
00:03:20.780 --> 00:03:23.580
Theresa May's government, I was right in the heart of
62
00:03:23.699 --> 00:03:27.780
this fight where you and your friend Tony Blair were
63
00:03:27.879 --> 00:03:31.039
very much saying, this is ridiculous. We need a second referendum.
64
00:03:31.740 --> 00:03:33.819
And I was trying to say, let's make the best
65
00:03:33.860 --> 00:03:36.060
of it and try to get a customs union or
66
00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:38.979
a single market compromise out of this. Let me though,
67
00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:44.340
just take us back to where I think the fundamental
68
00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:49.319
arguments were and how weird that moment was. Fundamentally, you
69
00:03:49.400 --> 00:03:54.199
had the Brexiteers saying two things. One of them was
70
00:03:54.659 --> 00:03:58.349
Singapore on Thames, which is, if we leave the European Union,
71
00:03:58.669 --> 00:04:03.409
we can deregulate, cut taxes, become more pro-business, more pro-innovation,
72
00:04:03.509 --> 00:04:06.110
and Britain will boom like Singapore or Dubai. And the
73
00:04:06.150 --> 00:04:09.870
second argument was the global Britain argument. Europe's slow and sclerotic.
74
00:04:10.069 --> 00:04:13.110
All the growth in the world is US, China, India.
75
00:04:13.349 --> 00:04:15.590
And we need to lean into those places with new
76
00:04:15.659 --> 00:04:18.959
trade deals, new relationships, and throw off the shackles of
77
00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:23.220
this old place. And the problem with it is twofold.
78
00:04:23.420 --> 00:04:27.220
Number one, Britain didn't want to be Singapore on Thames.
79
00:04:27.399 --> 00:04:29.319
Turns out, actually, if you look at the last 10 years,
80
00:04:29.660 --> 00:04:32.220
we haven't deregulated. We haven't dropped tax. In fact, corporation
81
00:04:32.259 --> 00:04:33.060
tax has gone up.
82
00:04:33.449 --> 00:04:33.730
Why?
83
00:04:33.990 --> 00:04:36.670
Because actually, we're much more social democratic and European than
84
00:04:36.709 --> 00:04:39.569
anyone wants to acknowledge. But it's the global Britain thing
85
00:04:39.610 --> 00:04:43.750
which has been the biggest disaster. Because of course, that story,
86
00:04:43.899 --> 00:04:46.339
we can rely on the US, we can do wonderful
87
00:04:46.379 --> 00:04:50.360
integrated trade deals with China, looks much bleaker 10 years later,
88
00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:54.040
because we've understood how vulnerable we are to being exploited
89
00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:57.060
by our dependence on the US, how vulnerable we are
90
00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:00.470
to Chinese supply chains, how vulnerable we are to Russia
91
00:05:00.509 --> 00:05:05.569
and gas, and how actually, In Ukraine, in energy crises,
92
00:05:06.290 --> 00:05:09.529
in the economy, with AI, we need to be much
93
00:05:09.649 --> 00:05:11.790
closer to the people right on our borders, which is
94
00:05:11.810 --> 00:05:14.069
the European Union. In other words, a whole security argument
95
00:05:14.089 --> 00:05:16.269
has emerged that has wrecked global Britain. And on the
96
00:05:16.310 --> 00:05:19.529
other side, we had Remain. And Remain had its fair
97
00:05:19.930 --> 00:05:23.829
share of pretty extreme apocalyptic predictions, some of which didn't
98
00:05:23.870 --> 00:05:27.889
come true. total collapse of the city of London, World
99
00:05:27.910 --> 00:05:31.649
War III, total inability for Britain to survive. And actually,
100
00:05:31.689 --> 00:05:33.759
the reality, and this is what I want to provoke
101
00:05:33.800 --> 00:05:42.899
you with, is damaging, underwhelming, slow decline, maybe 3%, maybe 8%.
102
00:05:42.899 --> 00:05:45.560
So it was neither the heroic, certainly not the heroic
103
00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:47.860
future of the Brexit years, nor was it quite the
104
00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:51.300
complete extreme catastrophe of the total breakup of the European Union,
105
00:05:51.339 --> 00:05:53.399
the collapse of our financial sector, et cetera, that some
106
00:05:53.439 --> 00:05:54.310
on the Remain side predict.
107
00:05:54.540 --> 00:05:56.879
Look, I think going back, it was a terrible campaign
108
00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.560
on both sides. I thought the Remain campaign, led by
109
00:05:59.620 --> 00:06:04.480
Cameron Osborne, was pretty complacent. It allowed itself to be
110
00:06:04.740 --> 00:06:10.019
projected as Project Fear. And the Leave campaign was just
111
00:06:10.790 --> 00:06:14.889
riddled with charlatans and chancers and liars. I did a
112
00:06:14.930 --> 00:06:18.430
debate at Bloomberg the other day with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who
113
00:06:19.050 --> 00:06:21.610
they can't even bring themselves to admit there's any downside
114
00:06:21.649 --> 00:06:24.269
to any of this stuff. That's what I find extraordinary.
115
00:06:24.810 --> 00:06:27.720
Even though the audience, and of course he immediately said, ah,
116
00:06:27.740 --> 00:06:29.740
we're in London. If you went to Cornwall or Wales,
117
00:06:29.779 --> 00:06:31.759
it would be very different. I don't think it is
118
00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:34.220
very different. As you know, I'm obsessed in audiences of
119
00:06:34.279 --> 00:06:36.620
asking them what they think. And fair enough, people who
120
00:06:36.870 --> 00:06:39.610
come to hear me speak might be sort of less
121
00:06:39.709 --> 00:06:43.110
levy than remainy. But I think the country has decided
122
00:06:43.129 --> 00:06:48.100
it's been different. You know, you're right. It wasn't apocalyptic.
123
00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:50.800
But when you say sort of quite casually, well, might
124
00:06:50.819 --> 00:06:54.790
be 3%, might be 8%, 3% is bad enough. Take
125
00:06:54.829 --> 00:06:57.089
that out of your economy. But if you go to
126
00:06:57.129 --> 00:07:01.750
the latest analysis by the government's official kind of data people,
127
00:07:02.069 --> 00:07:05.389
they're talking about between 6% and 8% take out of GDP,
128
00:07:06.290 --> 00:07:09.949
between 12% and 18% on investment, 3% to 4% on productivity,
129
00:07:10.089 --> 00:07:15.069
exports down, red tape massively up. And I thought that,
130
00:07:15.209 --> 00:07:17.990
I mentioned Rhys Mogg as, you know, one conservative on
131
00:07:18.529 --> 00:07:21.189
one side of the argument. Michael Heseltine, who was our
132
00:07:21.290 --> 00:07:23.629
first interviewee on Leading four years ago.
133
00:07:23.709 --> 00:07:25.389
And who I was just up at the Lake District
134
00:07:25.410 --> 00:07:26.089
Book Festival with.
135
00:07:26.189 --> 00:07:26.550
Oh, very good.
136
00:07:26.569 --> 00:07:27.670
Still firing on all cylinders.
137
00:07:27.709 --> 00:07:29.649
He's amazing. Was this a book about trees?
138
00:07:30.449 --> 00:07:32.069
Yeah, but he talked a lot about Romaine.
139
00:07:32.149 --> 00:07:34.120
Of course he did. Of course he did, because he's passionate.
140
00:07:34.149 --> 00:07:36.060
But he wrote a piece in The Independent at the weekend,
141
00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:38.920
which I thought was absolutely brilliant. But just this one line,
142
00:07:39.439 --> 00:07:42.740
never have so few done so much damage to so
143
00:07:42.819 --> 00:07:46.910
many with so little ability to execute what they lied about.
144
00:07:47.509 --> 00:07:51.370
Where are the peons of praise to Brexit from Johnson, Gove, Farage,
145
00:07:51.430 --> 00:07:54.350
Cummings and their accomplices for the land of milk and
146
00:07:54.389 --> 00:07:56.870
honey they told us it would deliver? They don't normally
147
00:07:56.930 --> 00:07:59.769
hold back from giving their opinions. The reason is obvious.
148
00:07:59.810 --> 00:08:03.720
Their scandalously false prospectus has turned to dust and ashes.
149
00:08:03.779 --> 00:08:06.579
They are the guilty men and should hang their heads
150
00:08:06.639 --> 00:08:09.000
in shame. It has all proved to be a con.
151
00:08:09.139 --> 00:08:13.000
And yet, very interestingly, as you keep pointing out, Farage
152
00:08:13.060 --> 00:08:14.420
is actually not very damaged.
153
00:08:14.439 --> 00:08:15.350
This is all so weird.
154
00:08:15.620 --> 00:08:16.689
So he remains very popular.
155
00:08:17.129 --> 00:08:21.009
Popular. I would delete the very and say quite with
156
00:08:21.050 --> 00:08:21.509
some people.
157
00:08:21.529 --> 00:08:23.310
More popular than most of the other leaders, given what
158
00:08:23.350 --> 00:08:24.689
he delivered. I mean, given all that. I mean, I
159
00:08:24.709 --> 00:08:26.589
agree with you on all of that. And there is
160
00:08:26.670 --> 00:08:28.850
still a sort of fondness for Boris Johnson out there
161
00:08:28.870 --> 00:08:31.629
in the country that you sometimes encounter. People think he's funny. Yeah,
162
00:08:31.949 --> 00:08:33.519
I found it on the train on my way up
163
00:08:33.529 --> 00:08:36.539
to Cumbria. And Dominic Cummings, I was talking to someone yesterday,
164
00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:39.419
absolutely on our side, but the cliche with Dominic Cummings,
165
00:08:39.460 --> 00:08:41.909
they repeat again and again, is, may be a bit radical,
166
00:08:41.970 --> 00:08:43.909
but my goodness, he's right about a lot of things.
167
00:08:43.970 --> 00:08:47.460
In general, he's managed to reposition himself as this kind
168
00:08:47.480 --> 00:08:53.679
of prophet on technology, defense, civil service, et cetera. Michael Gove,
169
00:08:53.700 --> 00:08:57.200
you just mentioned, he did a whole podcast, Laying Into Us,
170
00:08:57.379 --> 00:09:00.539
in which basically the thesis of the podcast is, why
171
00:09:00.559 --> 00:09:03.059
is Dominic Cummings more right than we are about things?
172
00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:05.679
The story was because Dominic Cummings is such a brilliant historian,
173
00:09:06.370 --> 00:09:08.309
and so much cleverer than we are, and et cetera. Actually,
174
00:09:08.330 --> 00:09:09.669
it wasn't so much clever, it's because he has a
175
00:09:09.669 --> 00:09:12.990
sort of different form of intellectual education. And oddly, at
176
00:09:13.110 --> 00:09:15.090
no point does anyone say, wait a second, if Dominic
177
00:09:15.110 --> 00:09:18.909
Cummings is such an amazing prophet and a genius, why
178
00:09:18.950 --> 00:09:21.889
did he decide to lead us into Brexit and inflict
179
00:09:21.929 --> 00:09:23.970
all this damage on us? Why is he not judged
180
00:09:24.389 --> 00:09:26.409
by that one big scrub? Why is Michael Gove not?
181
00:09:26.429 --> 00:09:28.970
Why is Boris Johnson? Yeah. Well, and the answer in
182
00:09:29.029 --> 00:09:32.950
part is this is a form of madness in our
183
00:09:33.009 --> 00:09:36.669
politics and in our media, that these people... who have
184
00:09:36.730 --> 00:09:39.360
done so much damage. I mean, Heselton is right about this.
185
00:09:39.379 --> 00:09:44.440
They've done so much damage. And in any other political environment,
186
00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:48.080
I think they'd be done. I think Johnson's finished. I
187
00:09:48.200 --> 00:09:50.159
really do think he is. But Gove's moved on back
188
00:09:50.179 --> 00:09:54.909
to the world he loves, right-wing media pontificating. Cummings, I'm
189
00:09:54.929 --> 00:09:56.769
not sure what he does, but as you say, sort
190
00:09:56.809 --> 00:10:00.080
of parades as this great sort of tech guru. And
191
00:10:00.149 --> 00:10:03.519
Farage is kind of still doing the rounds. And if
192
00:10:03.539 --> 00:10:05.919
you look at the polls, may think he's going to
193
00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:08.860
be the next prime minister. It is utter madness. I
194
00:10:08.940 --> 00:10:11.940
must plug Rory. In fact, this is literally just off
195
00:10:11.960 --> 00:10:13.360
the press. I'm going to give you this copy. I've
196
00:10:13.379 --> 00:10:16.419
written the foreword, so I declare an interest. The New
197
00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:20.409
World has done this, A History of Brexit and 256 Disasters.
198
00:10:20.850 --> 00:10:24.549
And I think we should get the cartoonist, Martin Rosenthal.
199
00:10:24.610 --> 00:10:29.059
There's Paul Dacre. Isn't he beautiful? In between the factual analysis,
200
00:10:29.080 --> 00:10:32.240
we have these chapters on Brexit bullshitters. And I've got
201
00:10:32.259 --> 00:10:36.299
to say, it's the finest... There's Cummings. There's your friend,
202
00:10:36.580 --> 00:10:40.399
the genius Dominic Cummings. Look, he's absolutely awful. And then
203
00:10:40.419 --> 00:10:40.700
we have.
204
00:10:40.759 --> 00:10:42.820
Could we get the quote from Cummings? That was quite interesting.
205
00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:45.700
The quote from Cummings, would we have won without immigration? No.
206
00:10:45.759 --> 00:10:48.970
Would we have won without £ 350 million for the NHS?
207
00:10:49.029 --> 00:10:49.230
No.
208
00:10:49.330 --> 00:10:51.309
Would we have won by spending our time talking about
209
00:10:51.350 --> 00:10:54.330
trade in the single market? No way. They're all real quotes, these.
210
00:10:54.710 --> 00:10:56.409
Michael Gove, I think the people of this country have
211
00:10:56.429 --> 00:10:59.330
had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying they
212
00:10:59.350 --> 00:11:01.889
know what's best. Well, we know where that landed. But
213
00:11:01.909 --> 00:11:03.759
this is the best one. I mean, there's Nigel Farage.
214
00:11:04.679 --> 00:11:07.159
If Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad.
215
00:11:07.250 --> 00:11:09.610
I'll go and live somewhere else. And he's still sort of,
216
00:11:09.629 --> 00:11:10.289
you know, hanging around here.
217
00:11:10.309 --> 00:11:11.889
But instead he came up with something else. He decided
218
00:11:11.929 --> 00:11:15.149
he'd instead, he'd send his donors to go and live
219
00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:15.639
somewhere else.
220
00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:17.820
And then he could get their money at any time.
221
00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:20.200
David Davis, there'll be no downside to Brexit, only a
222
00:11:20.220 --> 00:11:24.659
considerable upside. So they are utterly shameless.
223
00:11:24.700 --> 00:11:27.059
Let me now do the boring thing of playing the
224
00:11:27.100 --> 00:11:30.509
devil's advocate, right? Because obviously we agree on this stuff.
225
00:11:30.570 --> 00:11:33.169
We were both Remain voters. We both think it was
226
00:11:33.789 --> 00:11:35.250
the wrong thing to do and Britain would have been
227
00:11:35.269 --> 00:11:37.169
better off in the European Union. So what would they say?
228
00:11:37.490 --> 00:11:39.250
What they would say, I think, and I don't know whether,
229
00:11:39.269 --> 00:11:42.309
and tell me whether I've misunderstood this, whether Jacob Rees-Mogg
230
00:11:42.330 --> 00:11:44.889
said something different. Here are the arguments that they'd make.
231
00:11:45.240 --> 00:11:48.120
First argument, I think they'd say, it wasn't all about
232
00:11:48.139 --> 00:11:51.840
the economics. It was about sovereignty and control. So they'd
233
00:11:51.860 --> 00:11:54.580
say it's no accident that actually Dominic Cummings' campaign was
234
00:11:55.370 --> 00:11:59.289
take back control. They would say probably on the economics
235
00:11:59.480 --> 00:12:03.019
and anyway, the economic data is clouded by the massive
236
00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:05.779
impact of COVID, the Ukraine war and all this sort
237
00:12:05.799 --> 00:12:07.679
of thing. It makes it quite difficult to count.
238
00:12:07.940 --> 00:12:09.659
And they also say the European economy is not doing
239
00:12:09.700 --> 00:12:10.899
so well. So what are you all about?
240
00:12:11.039 --> 00:12:13.629
Absolutely. Which is what we got from James Cleverley. European
241
00:12:13.649 --> 00:12:16.330
economy is not doing so well. So I was going
242
00:12:16.350 --> 00:12:21.269
through a little checklist and I think the argument doesn't
243
00:12:21.509 --> 00:12:28.120
quite work because fundamentally, the problem of Brexit is on
244
00:12:28.179 --> 00:12:33.679
the Singaporean Thames, there was never any public willingness to
245
00:12:33.740 --> 00:12:36.980
exploit those kinds of opportunities. And on the global Britain,
246
00:12:37.399 --> 00:12:39.990
the globe changed. So let me just try those two.
247
00:12:40.549 --> 00:12:44.210
So on Singaporean Thames, look, theoretically, yes.
248
00:12:44.649 --> 00:12:46.250
I thought you were going to put their case here.
249
00:12:46.529 --> 00:12:48.830
But you've now quickly gone straight back to why they
250
00:12:48.870 --> 00:12:49.370
were wrong.
251
00:12:49.590 --> 00:12:51.220
Well, let me try to put their case once more then.
252
00:12:51.379 --> 00:12:51.529
Okay.
253
00:12:51.909 --> 00:12:54.070
I'll put it in the strongest form. The strongest form
254
00:12:54.090 --> 00:12:56.450
would be this, it wasn't done right. So I guess
255
00:12:56.509 --> 00:12:59.220
if you're Dominic Cummings or you're Jacob Rees-Smogg, what you
256
00:12:59.269 --> 00:13:04.299
really think is actually, if you leave the European Union,
257
00:13:05.159 --> 00:13:09.460
you could develop a real niche for yourself being different
258
00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:11.440
from the European Union. And what would being different from
259
00:13:11.460 --> 00:13:14.460
the European Union mean? Well, exploiting all the opportunities. You
260
00:13:14.500 --> 00:13:18.470
could cut your corporation tax down, You could change your VAT.
261
00:13:18.509 --> 00:13:20.909
You could get rid of all the regulations. And here's
262
00:13:20.929 --> 00:13:23.330
the model, the optimistic vision for the next 10 years
263
00:13:23.350 --> 00:13:26.950
of Brexit. Let's imagine a massive Brexiteer got in. What
264
00:13:26.990 --> 00:13:32.419
they would say is, we could become the technology innovation
265
00:13:32.539 --> 00:13:34.779
testbed of the world. So let's say AI. They'd say, look,
266
00:13:35.139 --> 00:13:38.179
European Union's just passed a whole series of very restrictive
267
00:13:38.779 --> 00:13:39.720
regulations on AI.
268
00:13:39.840 --> 00:13:41.120
We have nothing to do with it.
269
00:13:41.250 --> 00:13:44.029
American companies are going to be reluctant to invest because
270
00:13:44.049 --> 00:13:46.750
of all these data restrictions. We could become the great
271
00:13:47.100 --> 00:13:51.100
testbed and partner for the US for pioneering the most exciting,
272
00:13:51.820 --> 00:13:55.200
cutting-edge AI models. We could do the same on pharmaceuticals.
273
00:13:55.559 --> 00:13:59.960
All their regulations might stop them. We could cut taxes massively.
274
00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:02.990
We could bring in global wealth. We wouldn't need to
275
00:14:03.049 --> 00:14:05.370
worry about state aid rules. So we could do an
276
00:14:05.450 --> 00:14:08.490
enormous investment program where we could bet the house on
277
00:14:08.529 --> 00:14:10.029
certain kinds of things. We don't need to worry about
278
00:14:10.169 --> 00:14:12.769
fiscal rules, etc. So that'd be the story. What would
279
00:14:12.789 --> 00:14:13.549
be your response to that?
280
00:14:13.649 --> 00:14:16.250
Well, that is kind of what Nigel Farage says, isn't it?
281
00:14:16.289 --> 00:14:19.710
He says that And because he's the, in some ways
282
00:14:19.750 --> 00:14:23.049
in this contest, the uber charlatan, because he's absolutely getting
283
00:14:23.110 --> 00:14:25.190
away with it, unlike Johnson, who's out, unlike all the
284
00:14:25.230 --> 00:14:28.600
rest of them, you know, Rees-Mogg lost his seat, Gove's out, etc.
285
00:14:29.539 --> 00:14:32.299
What would I say to that? There is an argument
286
00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:35.440
that says that the politics of the Conservative Party, which
287
00:14:35.480 --> 00:14:37.220
is what gave us this mess in the first place,
288
00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:42.440
then went post-referendum, whereas you say Theresa May doing her
289
00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:44.750
best trying to make sense of this, David Cameron's off
290
00:14:44.779 --> 00:14:46.820
in the wilderness, Johnson's sitting there trying to sort of,
291
00:14:46.830 --> 00:14:49.269
you know, wait to pounce, which eventually he does. And
292
00:14:49.330 --> 00:14:53.429
so their argument, Farage's argument, is we didn't actually do Brexit.
293
00:14:53.490 --> 00:14:55.690
We haven't had Brexit. We haven't really left. And now
294
00:14:55.710 --> 00:14:58.909
you've got people like, you know, Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves,
295
00:14:58.950 --> 00:15:01.529
trying to get us closer. And that's the argument that
296
00:15:01.549 --> 00:15:04.549
they run. But I think that overlooks, and this is
297
00:15:04.620 --> 00:15:06.500
the argument I tried to have with Jacob Rees-Mogg, and
298
00:15:06.519 --> 00:15:08.779
it was very interesting with Rees-Mogg, because You know how
299
00:15:08.820 --> 00:15:11.879
normally he prides himself on being very polite and very charming?
300
00:15:12.500 --> 00:15:15.429
He absolutely, I think because he knew he has no
301
00:15:15.490 --> 00:15:19.929
real argument to go on, he went absolutely into, to me,
302
00:15:20.090 --> 00:15:22.830
you're a liar. We can't believe anything you say. It
303
00:15:22.850 --> 00:15:23.710
was really interesting.
304
00:15:23.730 --> 00:15:25.049
You're right. Normally he's super cautious.
305
00:15:25.070 --> 00:15:27.840
He's absolutely cautious. And so because I said, as I
306
00:15:27.899 --> 00:15:30.320
always do, you know, these people lied and they think
307
00:15:30.340 --> 00:15:32.899
they've got away with it. And he came, sort of
308
00:15:32.980 --> 00:15:35.799
rather dramatically, a bit like Keir Starmer with his, you know,
309
00:15:35.840 --> 00:15:38.470
I've got a letter to give to Trump. He said, ah,
310
00:15:38.830 --> 00:15:42.470
I've got notes. I've taken notes from Peter O'Bourne's book,
311
00:15:42.730 --> 00:15:45.909
and his book has footnotes. So he goes through it,
312
00:15:46.110 --> 00:15:47.710
and I couldn't get him off this thing.
313
00:15:47.769 --> 00:15:49.929
And this is Peter O'Bourne criticizing you about Iraq.
314
00:15:50.210 --> 00:15:53.070
Not just Iraq, but, you know, my life as a journalist.
315
00:15:53.350 --> 00:15:55.690
So he'd come prepared to attack Alistair Campbell.
316
00:15:55.730 --> 00:15:57.889
He decided that was the... And to be fair, and
317
00:15:57.970 --> 00:16:02.409
poor old Michel Hussain, who was moderating. This audience had
318
00:16:02.450 --> 00:16:04.820
come along to hear about what we thought of Brexit
319
00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:06.799
and it got sort of very, but I thought that
320
00:16:06.820 --> 00:16:11.149
was really interesting because Jacob Rees-Mogg's normal modus operandi is
321
00:16:11.210 --> 00:16:14.600
very calm. Very sort of faux factual.
322
00:16:14.639 --> 00:16:15.340
Doesn't play the man.
323
00:16:15.419 --> 00:16:18.019
Doesn't play the man. And that said to me, I
324
00:16:18.059 --> 00:16:20.639
was rather quite pleased by it. And I'm so used
325
00:16:20.659 --> 00:16:23.120
to being called a liar by Tories that it never
326
00:16:23.159 --> 00:16:26.370
bothers me. And I didn't even really bother rebutting with
327
00:16:26.399 --> 00:16:27.950
all the public inquiry and all that stuff. Because he
328
00:16:27.970 --> 00:16:31.710
just said to me, you've got no argument. And you
329
00:16:31.730 --> 00:16:34.529
know when we, I then said to the audience, Brexit,
330
00:16:34.549 --> 00:16:39.049
success or failure, it was 100% failure. 100%. So then
331
00:16:39.070 --> 00:16:41.490
Jacob Rees-Mogg just goes, oh, well, this is because we're
332
00:16:41.529 --> 00:16:44.049
in Bloomberg. And if we went to Cornwall or if
333
00:16:44.100 --> 00:16:46.940
we went to South Wales, it'd be very, very different.
334
00:16:47.019 --> 00:16:49.419
It was like this in the referendum. And I'm sort
335
00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:50.779
of saying, well, are you saying these people have got
336
00:16:50.940 --> 00:16:54.539
no– they know the economy. They're all working in the economy.
337
00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.139
And then he said, yes. And then I gave the figures, 8%, 6%,
338
00:16:57.139 --> 00:17:00.470
whatever it will be. Well, there are very different figures.
339
00:17:00.509 --> 00:17:02.129
We're into alternative facts territory.
340
00:17:02.190 --> 00:17:05.869
Okay. Let me try another argument against Jacob Rees-Mogg, which
341
00:17:05.990 --> 00:17:06.470
is– Oh, good.
342
00:17:06.490 --> 00:17:07.269
You're back on my side. Okay.
343
00:17:07.289 --> 00:17:09.559
Back on your side again. Which is that actually the
344
00:17:09.700 --> 00:17:13.990
fundamental problem is that this vision of Singapore on Thames
345
00:17:14.329 --> 00:17:17.150
misunderstood what kind of country Britain is. That actually the
346
00:17:17.309 --> 00:17:21.630
British public, including most of the Red Wall Brexit voters,
347
00:17:21.750 --> 00:17:26.539
are not actually up for a low tax, highly deregulated.
348
00:17:26.579 --> 00:17:28.519
I mean, let's look at the actual debates. What could
349
00:17:28.539 --> 00:17:29.920
you have done by leaving the European Union? Well, you
350
00:17:29.940 --> 00:17:32.920
could have said, we don't need to waste billions of
351
00:17:33.019 --> 00:17:36.799
pounds meeting EU water standards. We can put poo into
352
00:17:36.859 --> 00:17:39.670
our lakes. We can save all that money and we
353
00:17:39.710 --> 00:17:42.269
can put it into something else. You could say, listen,
354
00:17:42.309 --> 00:17:44.890
now that we've left the European Union, we can cut
355
00:17:45.009 --> 00:17:47.390
our tax rates down to the very minimum. We can
356
00:17:47.430 --> 00:17:50.130
get rid of all the workers' protection. We can get
357
00:17:50.150 --> 00:17:52.480
rid of all that stuff because we really can become
358
00:17:52.519 --> 00:17:56.960
American Singaporeans. But the problem that they face is that
359
00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:00.740
all the polling suggests there is almost no support amongst
360
00:18:00.759 --> 00:18:04.490
the public. There is support amongst a small group of
361
00:18:05.170 --> 00:18:09.490
entrepreneurial businessman who loved Singapore, loved Dubai. That's why Rishi
362
00:18:09.529 --> 00:18:11.789
Sunak was quite interested in this. Obviously, this was Liz
363
00:18:11.839 --> 00:18:15.440
Truss' vision. But what did Liz Truss discover over her
364
00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:18.220
49 days? She discovered there was no support from the
365
00:18:18.279 --> 00:18:20.900
public or the markets for turning Britain to that kind
366
00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:23.599
of thing. In fact, the problem actually is that Britain
367
00:18:23.799 --> 00:18:26.789
isn't Singapore or Hong Kong or even the United States
368
00:18:26.829 --> 00:18:29.930
being held back by a European manacle. In many ways,
369
00:18:30.230 --> 00:18:35.069
our cultural social attitudes are very Scandinavian. They're very sort
370
00:18:35.089 --> 00:18:37.990
of European. So it turned out that what stopped us
371
00:18:38.009 --> 00:18:40.069
doing this wasn't being in the European Union. It was us.
372
00:18:40.269 --> 00:18:43.450
But also, if you go back to that cartoon about Cummings,
373
00:18:44.210 --> 00:18:46.650
it's not for nothing that they decided that the National
374
00:18:46.690 --> 00:18:48.890
Health Service, and it was a massive lie, but not
375
00:18:48.910 --> 00:18:51.819
for nothing that they decided actually money for the National
376
00:18:51.880 --> 00:18:55.700
Health Service was the way to win the referendum. Okay. Right.
377
00:18:55.759 --> 00:18:57.220
Not cutting the National Health Service.
378
00:18:57.240 --> 00:18:59.259
No, exactly. So this is why the whole thing is
379
00:18:59.279 --> 00:19:03.559
this kind of network of myths and mythologies. So one thing...
380
00:19:04.049 --> 00:19:07.269
Rees-Mogg and I agreed on is that I don't sense
381
00:19:07.309 --> 00:19:09.869
in the public an appetite to sort of have another
382
00:19:09.890 --> 00:19:12.869
referendum anytime soon. But I do sense in the public
383
00:19:12.910 --> 00:19:15.390
a growing acceptance that Brexit has not been good for
384
00:19:15.410 --> 00:19:18.490
the country. And therefore, this government has to, in my view,
385
00:19:18.539 --> 00:19:21.299
do more to get us back to that closer position.
386
00:19:21.319 --> 00:19:22.900
But politically, it's very, very difficult.
387
00:19:22.980 --> 00:19:28.079
Another paradox. I absolutely resonated with one of their points, right?
388
00:19:28.509 --> 00:19:30.670
Totally want to grant one of the Brexiteers points, which
389
00:19:30.769 --> 00:19:33.559
is that as an MP, I observed that we were
390
00:19:33.619 --> 00:19:36.259
blaming Europe all the time. And there was a problem,
391
00:19:36.279 --> 00:19:40.240
I don't know, with sovereignty or accountability. But again and again,
392
00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:43.380
if the public complained about something to the local council
393
00:19:43.420 --> 00:19:45.210
or their MP, they were told we couldn't do it
394
00:19:45.230 --> 00:19:47.690
because Europe wouldn't allow us to do it. And civil
395
00:19:47.730 --> 00:19:50.740
servants would frequently say, you can't do that. because European
396
00:19:50.819 --> 00:19:53.559
laws won't allow you to do it. And I felt
397
00:19:53.579 --> 00:19:55.740
that was bad for our democracy, right? I'm standing up
398
00:19:55.839 --> 00:19:57.789
as a member of parliament. You've elected me. I'm going
399
00:19:57.809 --> 00:19:59.789
to be a dynamic government. I'm going to get things done.
400
00:19:59.829 --> 00:20:01.829
What real issues were there where that applied?
401
00:20:02.150 --> 00:20:05.730
Well, it turns out, and this is the problem, that, firstly,
402
00:20:05.769 --> 00:20:08.170
that many of those regulations we wanted to keep anyway.
403
00:20:08.470 --> 00:20:12.130
And partly it's dishonesty, right? So instead of saying, the
404
00:20:12.190 --> 00:20:15.180
reason why you can't do whatever you want to do
405
00:20:15.220 --> 00:20:18.420
on water quality is because of a European Union regulation
406
00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:19.099
on clean water.
407
00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:20.559
Which has driven up the quality of our water.
408
00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:24.099
We would have had to say, actually, we want clean
409
00:20:24.119 --> 00:20:26.000
water or we want dirty water. Or if they said, Minister,
410
00:20:30.430 --> 00:20:34.140
You can't plant all these trees because something in the
411
00:20:34.200 --> 00:20:38.680
Common Agricultural Policy doesn't allow the use of the single
412
00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:41.119
farm payment for that. If they went to the Union,
413
00:20:41.160 --> 00:20:42.630
they would have had to be more honest and said,
414
00:20:42.990 --> 00:20:46.329
the way we've designed our farm support package wouldn't allow
415
00:20:46.390 --> 00:20:49.640
you to use it for this. The real indicator of
416
00:20:49.680 --> 00:20:53.460
why this went wrong is that we haven't got... I
417
00:20:53.500 --> 00:20:55.640
imagine one of the only benefits of Brexit might be
418
00:20:55.680 --> 00:20:57.279
that we'd get a bit more accountability and a bit
419
00:20:57.299 --> 00:20:59.440
more trust in government. If we go back to that
420
00:20:59.579 --> 00:21:02.839
fundamental idea that we love, the buck stops here, the
421
00:21:02.920 --> 00:21:05.029
only advantage of Brexit is we might end up in
422
00:21:05.049 --> 00:21:08.789
a situation where ultimately ministers, prime ministers, councillors are able
423
00:21:08.809 --> 00:21:11.369
to say, the buck stops here. I made this decision.
424
00:21:11.430 --> 00:21:14.190
It's not the fault of. But instead of which, we've
425
00:21:14.210 --> 00:21:16.650
just found another baddie. It's not the European Union. Instead,
426
00:21:16.710 --> 00:21:21.470
we blame laws. We blame the European Convention on Human Rights.
427
00:21:21.930 --> 00:21:23.190
We blame processes.
428
00:21:23.230 --> 00:21:24.369
We blame civil servants.
429
00:21:24.390 --> 00:21:26.599
They've moved on to a new set of lies. Listen,
430
00:21:26.619 --> 00:21:29.160
let's broaden it out to other bits of Europe. So
431
00:21:29.319 --> 00:21:31.980
I mentioned in the introduction, Switzerland had this referendum at
432
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:35.829
the weekend. Now, as it happens, it lost But it wasn't,
433
00:21:36.130 --> 00:21:38.890
you know, people said it was a comprehensive defeat for
434
00:21:38.910 --> 00:21:40.789
this idea you have a population cap, but it's 55-45.
435
00:21:40.819 --> 00:21:44.180
I mean, it's like, you know, it's a lot of support,
436
00:21:44.220 --> 00:21:45.099
quite a low turnout.
437
00:21:45.259 --> 00:21:47.319
Not a mad idea. It seems to be a perfectly
438
00:21:47.500 --> 00:21:50.000
sensible idea on the surface that you decide what kind
439
00:21:50.019 --> 00:21:52.099
of population you want and you plan towards it. But
440
00:21:52.140 --> 00:21:54.829
the problem is, the small print was, If you breached
441
00:21:54.849 --> 00:21:58.150
the population cap, you would leave all the European agreements
442
00:21:58.329 --> 00:22:00.509
on moving to people, etc.
443
00:22:00.549 --> 00:22:04.009
Exactly. So Switzerland would have had to completely reorder its
444
00:22:04.049 --> 00:22:06.910
relationship with the European Union. And it was interesting how,
445
00:22:07.569 --> 00:22:09.869
you know, the immigration debate here tends to be about,
446
00:22:09.910 --> 00:22:13.789
you know, low labor cost people who are working in
447
00:22:13.890 --> 00:22:16.329
kind of, you know, lower end of the economy. There,
448
00:22:16.410 --> 00:22:18.490
it's about the Swiss saying, why are these French Germans
449
00:22:18.549 --> 00:22:21.170
taking all our top jobs as scientists and doctors? It's
450
00:22:21.210 --> 00:22:23.910
a very different sort of debate. But then the other
451
00:22:23.950 --> 00:22:27.200
thing that I think is worth talking about, which I'm
452
00:22:27.220 --> 00:22:31.680
going to bring together, we had this extraordinary story. I've
453
00:22:31.700 --> 00:22:33.400
been worried about this for some time because remember when
454
00:22:33.420 --> 00:22:35.970
we were in Poland, I was in Poland, Donald Tusk said,
455
00:22:36.809 --> 00:22:40.470
I'm really shocked that the prime minister's house and car
456
00:22:40.549 --> 00:22:44.789
get attacked. And it's covered in the British media like
457
00:22:45.029 --> 00:22:47.829
Liverpool 2 Arsenal 1 on the one hand this on
458
00:22:47.849 --> 00:22:50.049
the one hand that he thought it was truly shocking
459
00:22:50.690 --> 00:22:55.019
that the Prime Minister's house and car were being firebombed
460
00:22:55.799 --> 00:22:58.779
and it now transpires and there was a you know
461
00:22:58.799 --> 00:23:01.519
I have regularly criticized the BBC political coverage but there
462
00:23:01.539 --> 00:23:05.720
was a brilliant investigation on the BBC yesterday the background
463
00:23:05.769 --> 00:23:09.369
to this case of this Ukrainian and Romanian who have
464
00:23:09.410 --> 00:23:12.779
now been convicted on these offences is And basically they're
465
00:23:12.859 --> 00:23:19.049
organized by a Russian dirty tricks. And the far right
466
00:23:19.589 --> 00:23:23.029
are instead of, this is Tusk's point about it, you
467
00:23:23.049 --> 00:23:26.430
see it as a football match. So Tommy Robinson, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon,
468
00:23:26.450 --> 00:23:30.279
who's just been in Moscow at one of Putin's jamborees,
469
00:23:31.220 --> 00:23:36.160
and he has been ventilating this conspiracy theory that what
470
00:23:36.180 --> 00:23:39.700
this case was actually about was that Keir Starmer was
471
00:23:39.759 --> 00:23:43.269
involved in sort of sexual relations with these three Eastern Europeans,
472
00:23:44.049 --> 00:23:48.190
even posting fake pictures of them together, okay? And if you,
473
00:23:48.210 --> 00:23:50.049
I don't know if you've been across this.
474
00:23:50.109 --> 00:23:52.809
But that has been quite a big thing. The idea
475
00:23:52.869 --> 00:23:56.420
that Keir Starmer is like kind of a threesome or foursome.
476
00:23:56.460 --> 00:23:59.640
Well, all that he's, he has these Ukrainian.
477
00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:02.069
Rent boys, Oh, they're men. I'm sorry.
478
00:24:02.089 --> 00:24:05.109
They're men. Oh, right. Okay. And yeah, so it's like,
479
00:24:05.150 --> 00:24:05.650
you know, so.
480
00:24:05.670 --> 00:24:07.630
And does this really sit with our normal idea of
481
00:24:07.690 --> 00:24:10.089
Keir Starmer? It's quite an interesting thing to do. I
482
00:24:10.130 --> 00:24:12.230
don't understand these social media campaigns. I mean, normally you
483
00:24:12.289 --> 00:24:14.210
find someone who looks a bit dodgy and then you
484
00:24:14.390 --> 00:24:17.009
project these things. Or does it work better if the
485
00:24:17.049 --> 00:24:19.250
guy seems really respectable and then you're like, he.
486
00:24:19.109 --> 00:24:22.230
Seems respectable on the surface. But the thing about a
487
00:24:22.269 --> 00:24:24.329
lot of these conspiracy theories, when they start online, they
488
00:24:24.369 --> 00:24:28.970
get ventilated, is that the more outlandish they are sometimes, the, look,
489
00:24:29.410 --> 00:24:35.269
Hillary Clinton in the pizza. The sort of bloodline. QAnon,
490
00:24:35.289 --> 00:24:37.910
all that stuff. So that's partly what this is about.
491
00:24:37.950 --> 00:24:41.380
And so you have people, I felt this, I mentioned
492
00:24:41.420 --> 00:24:45.500
the troubles in Belfast and we talked recently about Henry
493
00:24:45.559 --> 00:24:49.839
Novak's murder and the way that Farage responded to that.
494
00:24:50.240 --> 00:24:52.940
The instinct of a lot of our political base now
495
00:24:53.049 --> 00:24:57.880
on the right is to say whatever happens happens. Our
496
00:24:57.980 --> 00:25:00.359
job is to try to turn that into a problem
497
00:25:00.740 --> 00:25:03.740
for the government. So while Tusk is right, we should all,
498
00:25:04.119 --> 00:25:07.039
regardless of our politics, we all should be appalled if
499
00:25:07.099 --> 00:25:10.569
Keir Starmer's former house, where members of his family are living,
500
00:25:10.670 --> 00:25:11.369
gets firebombed.
501
00:25:12.210 --> 00:25:16.349
And listen, I don't want to be pompous about it,
502
00:25:16.430 --> 00:25:21.650
but I imagine 10 years ago, we would all solemnly
503
00:25:21.730 --> 00:25:24.119
have stood up in the House of Commons, given condolences,
504
00:25:24.200 --> 00:25:25.079
said we stand for.
505
00:25:25.380 --> 00:25:28.190
Well, 10 years ago, for example, when Joe Cox was murdered.
506
00:25:28.329 --> 00:25:31.089
Regardless, yeah, of party. Yeah, absolutely.
507
00:25:31.650 --> 00:25:38.319
But Nigel Farage did not attack, condemn the violence. In Belfast,
508
00:25:38.359 --> 00:25:40.759
he said, this is going to happen. This is going
509
00:25:40.779 --> 00:25:43.380
to happen unless you deal with it. Now, the Belfast
510
00:25:43.400 --> 00:25:47.289
situation is very, very interesting because horrible, horrible stabbing, asylum
511
00:25:47.309 --> 00:25:51.589
seeker stabs somebody, it's filmed. It's horrible. And again, I
512
00:25:51.609 --> 00:25:53.789
think 10 years ago, yes, there'd have been a visceral
513
00:25:53.829 --> 00:25:55.710
reaction on so many levels, but you would have at
514
00:25:55.750 --> 00:25:58.880
least listened to the police, listened to the politicians for
515
00:25:58.890 --> 00:26:02.460
a bit. Instead of which, not least ventilated by people
516
00:26:02.480 --> 00:26:06.539
like Elon Musk and people like Tommy Robinson, etc. It's
517
00:26:06.660 --> 00:26:09.279
whipped up literally into a riot. And also there's been
518
00:26:09.299 --> 00:26:10.259
some very interesting reporting.
519
00:26:10.279 --> 00:26:11.319
And then there's the hit list.
520
00:26:11.920 --> 00:26:13.059
And then the hit list.
521
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:14.900
And then the use of checkpoints. I mean, one of
522
00:26:14.940 --> 00:26:17.980
the things that's interesting in reporting you sent me is
523
00:26:18.019 --> 00:26:21.369
the sense in which they're using a playbook that goes
524
00:26:21.650 --> 00:26:23.670
all the way back to the troubles in Northern Ireland
525
00:26:23.970 --> 00:26:26.329
in the 80s and 90s, which is you use checkpoints
526
00:26:26.390 --> 00:26:29.650
to delay people. And that then stops the police getting.
527
00:26:30.150 --> 00:26:32.430
And even the firebombing was another thing. I think there
528
00:26:32.450 --> 00:26:34.990
were tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes
529
00:26:35.029 --> 00:26:38.190
during the troubles through firebombing. So it's as though people
530
00:26:38.210 --> 00:26:40.400
are learning from paramilitary techniques.
531
00:26:40.519 --> 00:26:43.460
Well, there's some very, I think the police are reluctant
532
00:26:43.579 --> 00:26:45.980
to sort of load it onto paramilitaries but there's some
533
00:26:46.009 --> 00:26:48.470
very interesting reporting in the in the northern ireland press
534
00:26:48.509 --> 00:26:51.109
from journalists who live there who know this stuff inside
535
00:26:51.190 --> 00:26:56.049
out who are saying without any doubt in their mind
536
00:26:56.529 --> 00:26:59.190
there were there was paramilitary involvement to this but my
537
00:26:59.250 --> 00:27:01.549
point again you're you're saying what would have happened 10
538
00:27:01.549 --> 00:27:04.789
years ago 10 years ago most paramilitary activity would have
539
00:27:04.809 --> 00:27:08.119
been condemned across the political establishment but no what you
540
00:27:08.130 --> 00:27:09.910
have on the right is well you know they've got
541
00:27:09.950 --> 00:27:12.359
a point they've got a point they are having their
542
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:15.150
jobs being taken so these What used to be kind
543
00:27:15.710 --> 00:27:20.490
of British National Party BNP argument is now with people
544
00:27:20.509 --> 00:27:24.130
like Lowe, Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore, center stage
545
00:27:24.289 --> 00:27:25.319
in part of our politics.
546
00:27:25.380 --> 00:27:27.940
Well, let me see if I can sum it up
547
00:27:28.019 --> 00:27:29.660
in the way that I see this. I think what
548
00:27:29.680 --> 00:27:34.240
you're saying in both halves is our whole politics is
549
00:27:34.319 --> 00:27:38.160
about finding problems. Most of those problems are actually internal
550
00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:41.019
to do with us and blaming someone else. It's the
551
00:27:41.039 --> 00:27:44.059
classic nationalist move. If Scotland's not performing well, it's the
552
00:27:44.099 --> 00:27:47.009
fault of London. If Britain's not going great, it's the
553
00:27:47.049 --> 00:27:50.289
fault of Europe. If my life's not going well, it's
554
00:27:50.309 --> 00:27:53.190
the fault of the immigrants. And what we found, if
555
00:27:53.250 --> 00:27:55.349
I just sort of, I maybe wasn't, I'm worried I
556
00:27:55.390 --> 00:27:58.029
wasn't structured enough in thinking through the European Union. If
557
00:27:58.069 --> 00:28:00.349
we go through the little list of arguments they would
558
00:28:00.369 --> 00:28:02.970
have made, they would have said 10 years ago, Britain
559
00:28:03.029 --> 00:28:08.490
was too regulated, too uncompetitive. Europe was growing too slowly.
560
00:28:09.009 --> 00:28:11.990
and politicians weren't accountable. And I think it's possible for
561
00:28:12.029 --> 00:28:16.089
us to say, all those things were correct, but leaving
562
00:28:16.109 --> 00:28:18.210
the European Union didn't fix any of them.
563
00:28:18.309 --> 00:28:20.150
Or what you could say is there is a point,
564
00:28:20.450 --> 00:28:24.099
they had a point, whether that point was sufficiently strong,
565
00:28:24.130 --> 00:28:27.160
in my view it wasn't, to say, let's tear up
566
00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:29.359
the whole thing, and then pretend that we're going to
567
00:28:29.380 --> 00:28:30.240
tear up the whole of Europe.
568
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:32.779
Because what it turned out what happened is that we
569
00:28:32.799 --> 00:28:34.440
left the European Union, we didn't fix any of those things.
570
00:28:34.619 --> 00:28:36.920
So it would be a bit like, my life's going badly,
571
00:28:37.390 --> 00:28:39.309
And I blame my friends or I blame my partner.
572
00:28:39.349 --> 00:28:41.009
And I imagine if I just leave my partner, I
573
00:28:41.289 --> 00:28:43.069
don't talk to my friends anymore, everything will be better.
574
00:28:43.190 --> 00:28:46.170
Norma Percy, the veteran documentary maker, I couldn't watch the
575
00:28:46.190 --> 00:28:48.519
whole thing because watching Gove and Johnson and these people
576
00:28:48.559 --> 00:28:50.259
just sort of, you know, the whole thing was like
577
00:28:50.299 --> 00:28:53.720
a sort of boys game, Cameron as well. But the
578
00:28:53.799 --> 00:28:58.440
end of Norma Percy's two-part documentary on Brexit essentially is
579
00:28:58.799 --> 00:29:02.279
Boris Johnson admitting there was no plan. And that's the
580
00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:07.470
worst thing. Final point with Germany, there's... Really, something really
581
00:29:07.519 --> 00:29:10.319
quite interesting happening there, which, and I'd really be interested
582
00:29:10.420 --> 00:29:13.740
in your take on it. So, Dmitriev, Putin's right-hand man,
583
00:29:14.039 --> 00:29:16.819
has been busy posting absolute peons of praise to the
584
00:29:16.859 --> 00:29:20.319
alternative for Deutschland. And when I posted a reply to
585
00:29:20.380 --> 00:29:24.240
one of them, he came back straight away, warmonger, you know,
586
00:29:24.259 --> 00:29:29.220
the change is coming. So they're very on this all
587
00:29:29.259 --> 00:29:29.660
the time.
588
00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:34.599
So Kirill Dmitriev, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, has his Alistair Campbell dossier.
589
00:29:34.839 --> 00:29:37.289
Well, it seems to be. It was basically saying that
590
00:29:37.329 --> 00:29:40.670
the warmongering bureaucrats who opened the borders, et cetera, et cetera,
591
00:29:40.690 --> 00:29:43.400
et cetera, they're the ones who need to wake up. Now,
592
00:29:43.700 --> 00:29:48.599
what's interesting, though, is that the Russians openly, like J.D.
593
00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:51.519
Vance did in Munich, like Donald Trump does, you've now
594
00:29:51.579 --> 00:29:55.740
got MAGA and the Russians basically saying in Germany, AFD's
595
00:29:55.799 --> 00:29:58.200
our party, okay, at a time when the AFD is
596
00:29:58.220 --> 00:30:02.299
doing quite well. Now, if you're a German person who
597
00:30:02.319 --> 00:30:05.259
believes in the constitution and they've got a written constitution
598
00:30:05.299 --> 00:30:08.289
unlike us. So there's something very interesting going on, which
599
00:30:08.390 --> 00:30:11.269
there are only three bodies that can refer anything to
600
00:30:11.309 --> 00:30:15.670
the constitutional court. That's the government, the Bundestag, the elected
601
00:30:15.710 --> 00:30:20.400
chamber and the Bundesrat, which is made up of the lender. Okay.
602
00:30:21.220 --> 00:30:24.269
And there's a debate going on at the moment. The
603
00:30:24.309 --> 00:30:28.670
government is weak, the parliament tricky, as whether the Bundesrat
604
00:30:28.869 --> 00:30:32.910
should not refer the AFD to the Constitutional Court because
605
00:30:32.950 --> 00:30:35.470
there are a lot of their leaders who are on
606
00:30:35.549 --> 00:30:39.529
record as saying things which go fundamentally against the Constitution.
607
00:30:39.589 --> 00:30:43.029
Again, just to explain to the audience, basically this is
608
00:30:43.109 --> 00:30:45.549
about banning. The AFD.
609
00:30:45.849 --> 00:30:46.849
Or many parts of it.
610
00:30:46.849 --> 00:30:48.410
Parts of the AFD. So what you would do is
611
00:30:48.430 --> 00:30:51.410
you'd use this procedure to say, actually, this is a
612
00:30:51.470 --> 00:30:55.430
neo-fascist organization that is a profound danger to the German constitution.
613
00:30:55.589 --> 00:30:57.609
These were the things that were put in place after
614
00:30:57.650 --> 00:30:59.750
the Second World War. What are the lessons that how
615
00:30:59.829 --> 00:31:02.430
would we have stopped the Nazi party from rising? Well,
616
00:31:02.529 --> 00:31:05.109
we should have said in 1929, the Nazi party is
617
00:31:05.250 --> 00:31:09.009
not a legitimate democratic political force. It's banned by the
618
00:31:09.049 --> 00:31:11.410
constitutional court. It can't run. So all that stuff's there.
619
00:31:11.950 --> 00:31:14.369
And there are two questions. Can they do it? And
620
00:31:14.410 --> 00:31:15.470
should they do it? Back over to you.
621
00:31:15.799 --> 00:31:18.960
Well, can they do it? Yes. And the constitutional court
622
00:31:19.019 --> 00:31:23.000
in Germany is respected much more than most institutions are
623
00:31:23.039 --> 00:31:25.420
in most countries. And the case that I think would
624
00:31:25.460 --> 00:31:28.339
be made, and it all depends on, there are two
625
00:31:29.400 --> 00:31:34.130
very popular leaders in the lender. There's this guy, Özdemir,
626
00:31:34.150 --> 00:31:36.490
who's the new leader in Baden-Württemberg, and a guy called
627
00:31:36.549 --> 00:31:41.579
Wüst in Nordrhein-Westphalia, who are, one's green, one's CDU. And Essentially,
628
00:31:42.079 --> 00:31:43.819
if it happens, they are going to have to lead
629
00:31:43.880 --> 00:31:47.480
this movement within the Bundesrat. And they could do it
630
00:31:47.519 --> 00:31:50.099
because it's been done before. The thing is, it sounds
631
00:31:50.180 --> 00:31:52.380
extraordinary to us. You ban a political party from standing,
632
00:31:52.400 --> 00:31:55.259
but they did it twice under Adenauer. And then they
633
00:31:55.279 --> 00:31:58.279
did it twice with the neo-Nazi party. They're now called,
634
00:31:58.299 --> 00:32:01.059
they were called the NDP. They're now called Die Heimat.
635
00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:04.940
So it's been done before. But you have leading figures
636
00:32:04.980 --> 00:32:06.880
in the AFD. A lot of this is, you know,
637
00:32:06.900 --> 00:32:09.809
we've talked before about Martin Sellner, this Austrian identitarian guy. Yeah.
638
00:32:10.269 --> 00:32:12.049
A lot of this is about remigration.
639
00:32:12.309 --> 00:32:16.029
And remigration is about people who generally are not white
640
00:32:16.089 --> 00:32:19.019
and generally Muslims being hundreds of thousands being booted out
641
00:32:19.059 --> 00:32:21.579
of Germany, including, it seems, German citizens.
642
00:32:21.680 --> 00:32:23.740
Including if they've been born in Germany and they have
643
00:32:23.759 --> 00:32:27.099
a German passport and German citizenship. So that says in
644
00:32:27.119 --> 00:32:31.980
the constitution, they're all equal. Okay. So that policy basically says, no,
645
00:32:32.259 --> 00:32:34.500
you're not equal because if we get into power, you're gone.
646
00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:37.779
And the reason why these lender elections coming up, particularly
647
00:32:37.799 --> 00:32:40.410
in Saxony and Halt, are so important is because they
648
00:32:40.450 --> 00:32:44.089
have policing powers. And the other thing that I read
649
00:32:44.130 --> 00:32:50.440
this week, the Björn Höcke... who's this very out there, very, very,
650
00:32:51.029 --> 00:32:53.910
I can call him a Nazi, a neo-Nazi on here now.
651
00:32:53.990 --> 00:32:54.630
And not be sued.
652
00:32:54.769 --> 00:32:57.630
And not be sued because a German judge has decreed
653
00:32:57.650 --> 00:33:00.089
that that is a fair label for him. And by
654
00:33:00.109 --> 00:33:02.769
the way, Thuringia, where he is from, that's where Hitler
655
00:33:02.809 --> 00:33:05.589
got his first sort of electoral foothold. The AfD are
656
00:33:05.609 --> 00:33:08.349
going to be deliberately holding one of their main conferences
657
00:33:08.529 --> 00:33:11.289
on July the 4th, 2026, because on July the 4th, 1926,
658
00:33:11.289 --> 00:33:18.839
was one of Hitler's most famous conferences. rallies in Weimar.
659
00:33:19.119 --> 00:33:22.579
It's kind of deliberate trolling. But so I think this,
660
00:33:22.789 --> 00:33:25.509
I think this, you know, to us, it sounds like, well,
661
00:33:25.549 --> 00:33:28.750
let's say the government tried to ban Tommy Robinson. Tommy Robinson.
662
00:33:28.809 --> 00:33:29.670
Or Rupert Lowe.
663
00:33:29.690 --> 00:33:33.069
Or Rupert Lowe. Yeah. Right. You and I both probably think, well,
664
00:33:33.089 --> 00:33:34.650
that's not going to, people are going to think. But
665
00:33:34.690 --> 00:33:36.470
in Germany, I think it might be a little bit different,
666
00:33:36.509 --> 00:33:38.930
partly because of the history, partly because of the respect
667
00:33:38.950 --> 00:33:40.769
of the court, but also so many of these people
668
00:33:40.849 --> 00:33:45.619
are on the record saying things which on the surface
669
00:33:45.910 --> 00:33:49.819
are And then.
670
00:33:48.619 --> 00:33:51.420
The question, sorry, just to fast forward, is that if
671
00:33:51.480 --> 00:33:56.220
the AFD actually ultimately takes power in Germany and starts
672
00:33:56.309 --> 00:34:00.170
pushing ahead with remigration and 800,000 Germans are expelled from
673
00:34:00.210 --> 00:34:03.230
the country, we would then be asking ourselves, shouldn't we
674
00:34:03.769 --> 00:34:06.130
have taken them to the constitutional court and banned them?
675
00:34:06.890 --> 00:34:09.199
Because it's too late by the time they're actually running
676
00:34:09.389 --> 00:34:10.420
a neo-fascist state.
677
00:34:17.110 --> 00:34:18.760
Their big worry was you'd take them to court and
678
00:34:18.780 --> 00:34:21.280
you didn't win the case. But I think if you
679
00:34:21.300 --> 00:34:23.000
look at the, you don't have to say it's the
680
00:34:23.019 --> 00:34:25.480
whole party. So I think they're going to be focusing
681
00:34:25.519 --> 00:34:29.000
on Turingia and Brandenburg, where they've got some pretty extreme leadership,
682
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:32.610
and also on some of the youth organizations. But I
683
00:34:32.650 --> 00:34:35.469
think we need to understand that this stuff happening in
684
00:34:35.590 --> 00:34:38.469
Europe is linked. And the point I make, you've now
685
00:34:38.510 --> 00:34:41.489
got Trump and MAGA, you've got Putin, you've got the
686
00:34:41.550 --> 00:34:44.710
hard right here. who are all basically pushing the same
687
00:34:44.750 --> 00:34:49.400
message that you sort of limp-wristed European liberal Democrats, you're
688
00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:50.599
done and we're coming for you.
689
00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:53.340
My final thought, which I keep saying again and again,
690
00:34:53.380 --> 00:34:55.760
is when you see the same thing happening in America,
691
00:34:55.860 --> 00:34:58.440
Britain and Europe, it's probably not about any of the
692
00:34:58.460 --> 00:35:00.420
things we think it's about. We tend to think it
693
00:35:00.460 --> 00:35:05.449
might be immigration, European Union, economic growth. No, nonsense, right?
694
00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:09.280
America's growing strongly. It's got strong employment. Europe's not growing.
695
00:35:09.599 --> 00:35:12.320
Some countries got high immigration. Some have got lower immigration.
696
00:35:12.360 --> 00:35:15.280
Some have taken back control. Others haven't. It's social media.
697
00:35:15.619 --> 00:35:18.130
The only thing that can possibly explain in such a
698
00:35:18.250 --> 00:35:26.110
short timeframe that 30 countries with completely different socioeconomic trajectories, constitutions, structures,
699
00:35:26.679 --> 00:35:28.880
end up in the same place, I'm afraid, as social media.
700
00:35:29.059 --> 00:35:31.219
Okay, before we go to the break, a couple of plugs.
701
00:35:31.239 --> 00:35:34.760
You mentioned James Cleverley. He's the former Foreign Secretary for
702
00:35:34.780 --> 00:35:37.449
the Conservatives, still in the Shadow Cabinet now, and he
703
00:35:37.510 --> 00:35:39.550
is our current guest on Leading.
704
00:35:39.650 --> 00:35:41.909
And that's good, because if people want to hear a
705
00:35:42.030 --> 00:35:44.769
pro-Brexit argument, don't rely on me to try to venture
706
00:35:44.789 --> 00:35:47.889
a request. Listen, James Cleverley, he's quite tough, he's quite clear,
707
00:35:48.050 --> 00:35:50.630
he's a Brexiteer, and he does his best to call
708
00:35:50.690 --> 00:35:52.769
us out and push back against our arguments on Brexit.
709
00:35:52.789 --> 00:35:54.449
So Want to hear the other side of the story?
710
00:35:54.710 --> 00:35:55.989
Listen to James Cleverley on leading.
711
00:35:56.010 --> 00:35:59.150
Pretty half-hearted, I thought. Just search Restless Politics leading wherever
712
00:35:59.170 --> 00:36:01.630
you get your podcasts. And another plug finally before the
713
00:36:01.670 --> 00:36:05.719
break is part four of our mini-series on reform that
714
00:36:05.739 --> 00:36:08.260
we've done in conjunction with The Observer. And this one
715
00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:12.019
focuses very, very heavily on Mr. Farage. So just go
716
00:36:12.039 --> 00:36:14.239
to therestlesspolitics.com to find that. And now we'll have a
717
00:36:14.260 --> 00:36:15.719
break and then we'll come back and talk about Iran.
718
00:36:17.550 --> 00:36:21.840
Hello, dear listeners. As many of you will know, Father's
719
00:36:21.900 --> 00:36:25.559
Day is coming up on the 21st of June.
720
00:36:25.739 --> 00:36:27.139
And we know that a good number of you will
721
00:36:27.159 --> 00:36:30.500
be wondering what to get your centrist dad this year.
722
00:36:30.780 --> 00:36:34.909
And we have the perfect idea. Get him a membership
723
00:36:35.239 --> 00:36:38.409
to the Rest is Politics Plus and make the most
724
00:36:38.489 --> 00:36:43.159
of our 25% membership. discount on a gifted annual membership.
725
00:36:43.320 --> 00:36:46.940
And that gives you access to all these members-only miniseries
726
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:49.800
that we're making. It gives you early access to question time.
727
00:36:50.030 --> 00:36:53.849
Just head to therestispolities.com and click on gifts. The gift
728
00:36:53.909 --> 00:36:56.869
will land straight in your dad's inbox on the day.
729
00:36:57.030 --> 00:37:04.510
It's the only present for a centrist dad. We are
730
00:37:04.550 --> 00:37:09.929
getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with
731
00:37:09.929 --> 00:37:12.949
350 passengers on board.
732
00:37:12.989 --> 00:37:14.070
The Great Gain.
733
00:37:14.630 --> 00:37:18.449
Strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.
734
00:37:20.429 --> 00:37:25.869
We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was... Russian.
735
00:37:26.730 --> 00:37:27.730
Holding the Russians.
736
00:37:27.510 --> 00:37:29.590
Accountable is World War III. They took down a British
737
00:37:29.659 --> 00:37:30.969
passenger jet containing 350 people.
738
00:37:30.989 --> 00:37:34.599
The man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got
739
00:37:34.619 --> 00:37:38.019
to ask yourself, do you want to play or not?
740
00:37:38.079 --> 00:37:39.260
You're the Prime Minister.
741
00:37:39.559 --> 00:37:47.059
You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context.
742
00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:50.360
All the relevant context will be structured as a framework
743
00:37:50.460 --> 00:37:54.280
today and disseminated into an Operation Order, or FRAGO.
744
00:37:55.969 --> 00:38:00.929
A frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes.
745
00:38:02.809 --> 00:38:03.929
New from Goldhanger.
746
00:38:04.230 --> 00:38:06.130
Who is going to be able to pull this off?
747
00:38:07.250 --> 00:38:11.260
You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy.
748
00:38:11.389 --> 00:38:13.300
An audio drama journey like no other.
749
00:38:13.320 --> 00:38:15.960
Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapon.
750
00:38:17.210 --> 00:38:22.579
Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller where Britain
751
00:38:22.679 --> 00:38:30.219
plays its strongest hand against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt.
752
00:38:31.590 --> 00:38:48.500
Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to
753
00:38:48.519 --> 00:38:50.119
The Rest of the Politics with me, Alistair Campbell.
754
00:38:50.460 --> 00:38:51.760
And with me, Rory Stewart.
755
00:38:52.119 --> 00:38:54.460
Rory, you sounded very excited about this Iran deal in
756
00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:57.570
the introduction, but I am far from convinced that this
757
00:38:57.659 --> 00:39:00.510
is actually a deal in the conventional sense. It's a
758
00:39:00.750 --> 00:39:03.349
memorandum of understanding. It seems to me that the really
759
00:39:03.489 --> 00:39:08.070
difficult stuff is now being parked for these negotiations. So
760
00:39:08.769 --> 00:39:11.309
we're going to have... Vance and the hapless Kushner and
761
00:39:11.349 --> 00:39:14.409
Witkoff up against the Iranian nuclear scientists again. Yeah.
762
00:39:14.630 --> 00:39:17.559
So listen, it's far from resolved, but it's a hell
763
00:39:17.599 --> 00:39:20.099
of a big change because it's what we've been waiting
764
00:39:20.179 --> 00:39:24.179
for for two months, which is finally the Iranians and
765
00:39:24.219 --> 00:39:27.690
the Americans signed a memorandum of understanding with the Pakistanis.
766
00:39:28.530 --> 00:39:31.800
And they've both said, pop, that they've signed off on
767
00:39:31.840 --> 00:39:35.000
this MOU. And the key point is that the Straits
768
00:39:35.059 --> 00:39:37.940
of Hormuz now look like they will reopen.
769
00:39:38.159 --> 00:39:38.739
Not immediately.
770
00:39:39.639 --> 00:39:41.360
And there's many things that could go wrong. Could be
771
00:39:41.380 --> 00:39:43.360
the Iranians, could be the Americans, could be the Israelis,
772
00:39:43.619 --> 00:39:47.269
could torpedo the whole thing. But it feels to me
773
00:39:48.050 --> 00:39:51.719
as though finally, Trump and Iran actually want to get
774
00:39:51.800 --> 00:39:54.739
this done. My mother's theory is Trump wants to get
775
00:39:54.760 --> 00:39:58.559
it done before the 4th of July, 250th Independence Day celebrations.
776
00:39:58.599 --> 00:40:01.480
He doesn't want to be distracted by everyone endlessly grinding
777
00:40:01.539 --> 00:40:05.099
on about who moves. That's the Sally Stewart view. The Iranians, listen,
778
00:40:05.159 --> 00:40:09.539
they have really enjoyed the fact that despite the American
779
00:40:09.719 --> 00:40:15.659
and Israeli bombardments, 75% of their entire ballistic missile launch
780
00:40:15.699 --> 00:40:19.630
capacity and indeed their missile stockpiles are still intact. quarters
781
00:40:19.670 --> 00:40:22.730
are still intact. This is some of the largest bombing
782
00:40:22.969 --> 00:40:27.340
on world record. The number of targets, they were doing
783
00:40:27.340 --> 00:40:31.739
500 targets a day. This was the highest precision weapons,
784
00:40:31.820 --> 00:40:35.219
the greatest targeting ever. Actually, it barely took out a
785
00:40:35.260 --> 00:40:39.119
quarter of what Iran has. Big story there. Nevertheless, the
786
00:40:39.179 --> 00:40:42.800
Iranian economy is groaning. They're desperate for the oil exports.
787
00:40:43.320 --> 00:40:46.019
Trump's announced that he's stopping the blockade and they can
788
00:40:46.059 --> 00:40:48.800
go through and Iran's announced stop. Now, how could it
789
00:40:48.840 --> 00:40:51.030
go wrong? Many, many different ways. And I've been talking
790
00:40:51.110 --> 00:40:53.730
to friends in the Gulf about this and I've talked
791
00:40:53.750 --> 00:40:56.539
to a bunch of people who weren't. In Pakistan, people
792
00:40:56.559 --> 00:40:59.340
have read the MOU. They think that one of the
793
00:40:59.360 --> 00:41:02.719
big sticking points, which is Lebanon, may be less than
794
00:41:02.760 --> 00:41:04.679
in the past. So the big sticking point there was
795
00:41:04.719 --> 00:41:08.650
Iran was saying, so long as Israel keeps attacking our allies, Hezbollah,
796
00:41:08.690 --> 00:41:10.389
in Lebanon, we're not going to sign this deal. And
797
00:41:10.429 --> 00:41:12.809
that's why Trump got very, very angry with Netanyahu, because
798
00:41:12.829 --> 00:41:15.389
just on the cusp of the deal, he struck Lebanon.
799
00:41:15.409 --> 00:41:17.130
Yeah, but look at the response to this deal in Israel.
800
00:41:17.309 --> 00:41:19.250
The hard drive figures that we talk about a lot,
801
00:41:19.269 --> 00:41:21.150
Spotrich and Ben-Gabir, they've come out and said this is
802
00:41:21.190 --> 00:41:23.929
bad for the world and bad for Israel. The politics
803
00:41:23.969 --> 00:41:26.329
of this are really, really tricky. He does seem to
804
00:41:26.349 --> 00:41:28.909
have lost that sort of grip on Trump.
805
00:41:29.349 --> 00:41:32.159
You've put your finger on it. How important is Israel?
806
00:41:32.659 --> 00:41:35.960
You're absolutely right. Israel's furious. They want to continue the
807
00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:38.039
war with Iran. They want to continue the war with Lebanon.
808
00:41:38.420 --> 00:41:40.699
They're being stopped not just in Iran and in Lebanon.
809
00:41:41.280 --> 00:41:43.820
So the question is, is that going to be enough?
810
00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:47.559
Will they be able to derail the US and Iran?
811
00:41:47.579 --> 00:41:50.530
They've been able in the past because basically, They do
812
00:41:50.570 --> 00:41:53.449
things in Lebanon without US permission. The US feels forced
813
00:41:53.570 --> 00:41:56.840
to support them, and the Iranians are outraged. I think, though,
814
00:41:56.900 --> 00:42:00.179
what happened with this deal is finally the US and
815
00:42:00.199 --> 00:42:02.920
Iran decided, we're going to get beyond the Israel thing.
816
00:42:02.980 --> 00:42:06.050
We're going to see Israel as a spoiler. Netanyahu tried
817
00:42:06.090 --> 00:42:09.110
a last-minute attempt to derail with yet another attack in Lebanon,
818
00:42:09.309 --> 00:42:11.469
and actually it just hurried up the MOU, which got
819
00:42:11.489 --> 00:42:14.389
it out. I think the sticking points that could unravel
820
00:42:14.449 --> 00:42:17.539
it are firstly that there's a lot of legal argument
821
00:42:17.780 --> 00:42:21.159
inside the MEU, little legal language on a non-aggression pact
822
00:42:21.260 --> 00:42:25.500
between the US and Iran and on sanctions relief and
823
00:42:25.539 --> 00:42:29.380
release of assets. And my guess is Trump will probably
824
00:42:29.440 --> 00:42:31.639
not follow through particularly on the latter. And then what
825
00:42:31.800 --> 00:42:34.610
is Iran going to do if he doesn't lift sanctions,
826
00:42:34.670 --> 00:42:37.670
if he doesn't release assets? Do they return to war? Well,
827
00:42:37.690 --> 00:42:39.710
the gamble is they might not.
828
00:42:39.730 --> 00:42:41.289
Or do they just turn the tap off on the
829
00:42:41.309 --> 00:42:43.630
streets of New York? That is the terrible thing about this.
830
00:42:43.769 --> 00:42:51.420
They basically have been handed a tactic that they probably,
831
00:42:51.780 --> 00:42:53.599
I'm not sure they thought of using before. If they
832
00:42:53.619 --> 00:42:55.699
thought of it, they never did it. But they now
833
00:42:55.739 --> 00:42:59.090
realize they can do it with catastrophic consequences and that
834
00:42:59.139 --> 00:43:01.230
Trump doesn't have the global support that he thought he
835
00:43:01.250 --> 00:43:06.989
would have. So I think, look, I think this deal is, Well,
836
00:43:07.010 --> 00:43:10.280
we haven't seen it. The Memo, the Memorandum of Understanding
837
00:43:10.469 --> 00:43:11.360
is pretty short.
838
00:43:11.380 --> 00:43:12.760
A page and a half.
839
00:43:12.800 --> 00:43:17.360
A page and a half. The JCPOA was like hundreds
840
00:43:17.400 --> 00:43:21.719
and hundreds of pages backed by incredibly detailed documents. So
841
00:43:21.940 --> 00:43:24.260
it feels to me a little bit like the Gaza
842
00:43:24.300 --> 00:43:28.039
plan that was projected as this is peace in our time.
843
00:43:28.500 --> 00:43:31.699
But then the detail... wasn't there and we're still in
844
00:43:31.739 --> 00:43:34.000
a complete mess there and i think with this i
845
00:43:34.019 --> 00:43:35.920
think there's so much that can go wrong and go
846
00:43:35.940 --> 00:43:38.300
wrong quickly this is fascinating because because if you go
847
00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:41.280
back and i know trump's rhetoric you've got to so
848
00:43:41.320 --> 00:43:43.400
he basically said that the attack was to deal with
849
00:43:43.440 --> 00:43:46.260
an imminent threat okay well it wasn't we're going to
850
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:49.380
destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the
851
00:43:49.420 --> 00:43:52.920
ground you've given you've pre-rebutted that one it will be
852
00:43:53.239 --> 00:43:57.090
totally obliterated We're going to annihilate their navy. They've done
853
00:43:57.110 --> 00:43:58.750
a lot of damage to the navy, they have. We're
854
00:43:58.769 --> 00:44:01.929
going to ensure that their terrorist proxies can no longer
855
00:44:01.989 --> 00:44:04.579
destabilize the region or the world and attack all forces,
856
00:44:04.719 --> 00:44:08.219
no longer use their IEDs or roadside bombs. We'll see.
857
00:44:08.239 --> 00:44:10.840
Well, and on that one, the key two proxies are
858
00:44:10.880 --> 00:44:14.699
Hezbollah Houthis, and probably you'd add the Iraqi militia. Actually,
859
00:44:14.739 --> 00:44:19.079
what we found, oddly, is that despite Israel's amazing intelligence
860
00:44:19.139 --> 00:44:22.239
operations and attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Pajar attacks,
861
00:44:22.460 --> 00:44:26.699
which killed 1,500 people, Hezbollah remains surprisingly resilient. They're now
862
00:44:26.760 --> 00:44:29.280
managing to manufacture their own drones, and it turns out
863
00:44:29.300 --> 00:44:32.639
they can manufacture them without Iranian backing. Furthermore, the Houthi,
864
00:44:33.179 --> 00:44:36.619
who are their proxies in Yemen, reminded people they can
865
00:44:36.659 --> 00:44:39.340
still shut that down. They did not achieve the objective
866
00:44:39.380 --> 00:44:39.920
on the proxies.
867
00:44:40.199 --> 00:44:43.360
Right. Then, Let's go into what I think is the
868
00:44:43.380 --> 00:44:45.000
big one. I'm going to read the whole thing. To
869
00:44:45.019 --> 00:44:47.360
the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces
870
00:44:47.380 --> 00:44:49.559
and all of the police, I say tonight, you must
871
00:44:49.639 --> 00:44:52.820
lay down your weapons and have complete immunity. Or in
872
00:44:52.840 --> 00:44:56.300
the alternative, you face certain death. Lay down your arms.
873
00:44:56.340 --> 00:44:58.840
You will be treated fairly with total immunity or you
874
00:44:58.860 --> 00:45:01.840
will face certain death. Finally, to the great proud people
875
00:45:01.880 --> 00:45:04.780
of Iran, tonight, the hour of freedom is at hand.
876
00:45:04.880 --> 00:45:07.719
Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside.
877
00:45:08.119 --> 00:45:10.960
Bombs will be dropping. When we are finished, take over
878
00:45:11.000 --> 00:45:13.360
your government. It will be yours to take. This will
879
00:45:13.400 --> 00:45:16.320
probably be your only chance for generations. In other words,
880
00:45:16.920 --> 00:45:20.489
regime change. And that has not happened. The regime was
881
00:45:20.610 --> 00:45:23.610
toppled in terms of the top people, but the regime
882
00:45:23.690 --> 00:45:25.110
is still in place.
883
00:45:25.130 --> 00:45:27.329
But it's stronger. And so to just that final one,
884
00:45:27.610 --> 00:45:30.019
there was always a fight. even at the top of
885
00:45:30.039 --> 00:45:33.380
the Iranian state, about where their security lay. Did their
886
00:45:33.420 --> 00:45:37.420
security lie on reaching out to the international community, getting
887
00:45:37.500 --> 00:45:41.909
support in the UN, getting peace deals in place, making
888
00:45:41.969 --> 00:45:46.090
agreements on sanctions on nuclear? Or did their security lie
889
00:45:46.369 --> 00:45:51.769
in rearming, building up massive missile bases, pushing ahead with
890
00:45:51.809 --> 00:45:54.409
a nuclear program? And the problem is, it's the hardliners
891
00:45:54.630 --> 00:45:58.260
who've won. Because every Iranian will have concluded, The one
892
00:45:58.429 --> 00:46:02.309
thing that saved them was not being nice, being moderate, negotiating.
893
00:46:02.849 --> 00:46:05.690
The only thing that saved them is that they buried
894
00:46:05.710 --> 00:46:07.550
their missiles a long way underground and they were able
895
00:46:07.590 --> 00:46:09.909
to disrupt the Straits of Hormuz. And the Revolutionary Guard
896
00:46:09.949 --> 00:46:14.300
has been completely vindicated, narrowly in their view, that actually
897
00:46:14.360 --> 00:46:17.659
what stops regime change is being armed to the teeth
898
00:46:17.719 --> 00:46:18.619
and refusing to cooperate.
899
00:46:18.920 --> 00:46:19.699
If you're an average.
900
00:46:21.449 --> 00:46:23.789
I don't know what an average Iranian is, but if
901
00:46:23.829 --> 00:46:27.710
you're a kind of middle-of-the-road Iranian, not a massive fan
902
00:46:27.750 --> 00:46:29.510
of the regime, but you're just kind of keeping your
903
00:46:29.530 --> 00:46:32.829
head down, what do you think in terms of who
904
00:46:32.889 --> 00:46:36.699
has won or lost this? I think the Iranians think
905
00:46:37.199 --> 00:46:41.599
that survival is winning, and they've survived. They now have
906
00:46:41.639 --> 00:46:44.519
a strength because of the way they've handled the straightforward
907
00:46:44.539 --> 00:46:47.039
news that they didn't necessarily have in the same way before.
908
00:46:47.599 --> 00:46:50.440
They've shown American power to be weaker than the Americans
909
00:46:50.480 --> 00:46:53.210
project it. And the Americans keep saying that the great
910
00:46:53.309 --> 00:46:55.489
triumph in this, I saw an interview with Pete Hexeth,
911
00:46:55.530 --> 00:46:58.570
the Secretary of War, and the great triumph is that,
912
00:46:58.889 --> 00:47:01.369
you know, they've made sure Iran will never have a
913
00:47:01.510 --> 00:47:05.190
nuclear weapon. But that was signed up to in the
914
00:47:05.250 --> 00:47:08.969
Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was signed up to in the JCPOA.
915
00:47:09.010 --> 00:47:12.409
And in fact, there were moments when Ayatollah Khamenei suggested
916
00:47:12.449 --> 00:47:13.989
that he thought it was un-Islamic to have a nuclear
917
00:47:14.010 --> 00:47:15.670
weapon in the first place.
918
00:47:15.730 --> 00:47:17.369
Yeah. And 97% of the stuff was kind of moved
919
00:47:17.389 --> 00:47:20.769
out of the country. So I think it's very, very hard.
920
00:47:21.670 --> 00:47:24.510
Unless you are absolutely believing every single word that Donald
921
00:47:24.550 --> 00:47:27.909
Trump says to you to see this as a victory,
922
00:47:28.110 --> 00:47:29.920
even by the objectives he set out for himself.
923
00:47:30.139 --> 00:47:33.750
So I think the answer on Iranian people is 90%, 85%,
924
00:47:33.750 --> 00:47:39.059
90% of Iranians absolutely hate their regime. They think they're
925
00:47:39.079 --> 00:47:43.429
a bunch of violent, corrupt people. theocratic people who've locked
926
00:47:43.510 --> 00:47:46.210
them in a horrible, isolated world. And they would be
927
00:47:46.469 --> 00:47:49.750
hugely relieved if this regime went and Iran could become
928
00:47:49.789 --> 00:47:52.780
a normal country. They're totally fed up with the Revolutionary
929
00:47:52.840 --> 00:47:55.980
Guard trying to turn their whole country into a crusade
930
00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:58.400
against Israel and the US. And they think this nuclear
931
00:47:58.420 --> 00:48:01.559
program is mad. And they think that this regime has
932
00:48:01.639 --> 00:48:07.179
invited war and horror. But also, they are so furious
933
00:48:07.659 --> 00:48:09.050
with what US and Israel did.
934
00:48:09.119 --> 00:48:09.320
Why?
935
00:48:10.300 --> 00:48:13.380
Because what they did is they bombed Iran, they killed
936
00:48:13.460 --> 00:48:16.219
hundreds of schoolchildren, and they did not topple the regime, right?
937
00:48:16.260 --> 00:48:20.179
So all the people who were supporting the crown prince,
938
00:48:20.239 --> 00:48:23.079
the formal shah and everyone, who were promising that if
939
00:48:23.119 --> 00:48:25.300
we're nice to the American and Israel, there's going to
940
00:48:25.340 --> 00:48:27.849
be a lovely toppling the regime and a democratic future
941
00:48:27.869 --> 00:48:30.570
is going to emerge. It's all nonsense, right? So I
942
00:48:30.630 --> 00:48:33.550
think they're in the sort of bind that you would
943
00:48:33.590 --> 00:48:37.309
feel in if a government that you really, really hated
944
00:48:37.349 --> 00:48:40.619
and that you'd been trying to get rid of suddenly
945
00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:42.760
vindicated you in a war against someone else.
946
00:48:42.900 --> 00:48:46.119
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I think you're right. I think Israel
947
00:48:46.579 --> 00:48:48.860
has the potential to be the real difficult thing because
948
00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:52.679
the Iranians will be on the lookout for Israel trying
949
00:48:52.699 --> 00:48:56.199
to undermine this. The Israelis, it seems to me, Netanyahu
950
00:48:56.449 --> 00:48:59.070
will be under pressure to undermine it, including from within
951
00:48:59.110 --> 00:49:01.690
his own cabinet. And then the question is how Trump reacts.
952
00:49:01.730 --> 00:49:06.570
And we're talking about a 60-day period where these... continuing
953
00:49:06.590 --> 00:49:07.630
negotiations that go on.
954
00:49:07.809 --> 00:49:11.010
We've also talked a lot about the economy and the
955
00:49:11.070 --> 00:49:14.289
impacts on the economy. We'll be doing some more episodes
956
00:49:14.329 --> 00:49:16.849
around this. The honest answer is the economic damage to
957
00:49:16.869 --> 00:49:20.409
this is very, very lasting. In the best case scenario,
958
00:49:20.449 --> 00:49:23.699
vessels might start moving through the strait next week. But
959
00:49:23.719 --> 00:49:25.739
you can see all the ship owners saying we need many,
960
00:49:25.800 --> 00:49:28.579
many more assurances before we start sailing our vessels. There's
961
00:49:28.599 --> 00:49:30.219
going to be a massive log jam because there are
962
00:49:30.239 --> 00:49:32.780
thousands of vessels and it's quite difficult navigating them through.
963
00:49:33.400 --> 00:49:35.679
There are thousands of sailors who need to be evacuated
964
00:49:35.699 --> 00:49:38.340
from these boats. There are certain bits that are ready
965
00:49:38.360 --> 00:49:41.260
to move. Fertilizer, for example, is ready to move. It's
966
00:49:41.300 --> 00:49:44.159
stockpiled in places like Qatar, but it's missed a lot
967
00:49:44.179 --> 00:49:46.820
of this year's growing season. So the impact on this
968
00:49:46.840 --> 00:49:49.780
year's growing season is dramatic. Oil can be moved relatively
969
00:49:49.820 --> 00:49:53.059
more easily. Gas is a problem, partly because the Iranians
970
00:49:53.119 --> 00:49:55.869
attacked some of these gas fields. Some of them will
971
00:49:55.909 --> 00:49:58.690
take two months, four months. It's difficult to put a
972
00:49:58.710 --> 00:50:01.179
number on it to get going again. Some percentage of
973
00:50:01.239 --> 00:50:03.380
it won't be able to get going again for some years.
974
00:50:03.780 --> 00:50:07.309
And none of these states still quite know, are Iran
975
00:50:07.349 --> 00:50:09.190
going to charge tolls? Are they going to try to
976
00:50:09.250 --> 00:50:11.030
charge a million dollars a vessel? They said they won't,
977
00:50:11.210 --> 00:50:13.889
but there's some weird, ambiguous language in the MOU. And
978
00:50:14.550 --> 00:50:18.139
we don't know whether, and nobody can model this, nobody
979
00:50:18.179 --> 00:50:21.500
knows whether the impact, if you're a cattery, Is it
980
00:50:21.559 --> 00:50:23.420
going to be, in the best case scenario, okay, there's
981
00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:25.250
been a bit of disruption for a few weeks, but
982
00:50:25.469 --> 00:50:27.349
we'll be able to get back to where we were
983
00:50:27.630 --> 00:50:29.110
within a year or two? Or is it going to
984
00:50:29.130 --> 00:50:32.889
take three years or seven years? Is your economy contracting
985
00:50:32.889 --> 00:50:36.920
17% this year, 10% this year? Dubai, I was talking
986
00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:39.159
to someone in the UAE who was being very optimistic
987
00:50:39.199 --> 00:50:42.619
and saying, listen, yes, Dubai is suffering, but people wrote
988
00:50:42.659 --> 00:50:44.940
us off in 2008. They wrote us off in COVID
989
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:47.719
and we bounced back, so we'll bounce back again. But
990
00:50:47.929 --> 00:50:51.090
to be honest, nobody knows. And it isn't just the Gulf.
991
00:50:51.289 --> 00:50:55.579
As we've said before, the Asian economies are shattered by this.
992
00:50:55.599 --> 00:50:58.260
The European economies are shattered by this. And it's going
993
00:50:58.280 --> 00:51:00.329
to take a long time, even in the best case,
994
00:51:00.349 --> 00:51:00.869
to untangle.
995
00:51:01.030 --> 00:51:04.030
Well, there we are. 10 years on from Brexit and
996
00:51:04.110 --> 00:51:06.699
now a few months on from the launch of the
997
00:51:06.719 --> 00:51:09.739
Iran war. Both of them pretty difficult big subjects. We've
998
00:51:09.760 --> 00:51:11.719
got more difficult big subjects to cover in Question Time.
999
00:51:11.739 --> 00:51:13.920
We're going to talk about defence. We're going to talk
1000
00:51:13.960 --> 00:51:17.539
about AI and in particular this extraordinary decision by the
1001
00:51:17.579 --> 00:51:22.039
Americans to say to Anthropic you cannot give your latest
1002
00:51:22.280 --> 00:51:25.750
frontier model stuff to anybody who is not American. You
1003
00:51:25.789 --> 00:51:27.309
know a lot about that and we'll hear about that.
1004
00:51:27.329 --> 00:51:29.670
We're going to talk about an astonishing close election in
1005
00:51:30.250 --> 00:51:33.360
Peru and And we're going to reflect a little bit
1006
00:51:33.480 --> 00:51:36.050
on possibly the greatest, well, Donald Trump said it was
1007
00:51:36.070 --> 00:51:38.550
the greatest sporting event in history. That was the UFC
1008
00:51:38.610 --> 00:51:40.969
fighting on the lawn of the White House, which made
1009
00:51:41.110 --> 00:51:43.150
me throw up. Brilliant.
1010
00:51:43.409 --> 00:51:44.530
And I'd like to do a bit of a deep
1011
00:51:44.570 --> 00:51:47.820
dive also into what is actually happening with British defence spending.
1012
00:51:48.199 --> 00:51:50.260
How should we be spending this money? Why did Healy go?
1013
00:51:50.320 --> 00:51:52.719
What's this new man going to do? Cool.
1014
00:51:52.739 --> 00:51:53.019
See you then.