Latest / Pod Save America / How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead

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How a Political Party Can Rise from the Dead · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I don't
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: have to tell you guys this. Things feel pretty bleak
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: out there for Democrats right now. Republicans control the White House,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: the Congress, the courts, the right wing media feels more
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: influential than ever. And I think it can be easy
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: to lose hope and worry that we might not ever
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: be back in power. But I want you to imagine
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: for a second that you're a member of the Labor Party,
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: the British equivalent of the Democratic Party in 1997. You
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: would have been out of power for 18 years and
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: during election after election after of devastating defeats and Margaret
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Thatcher and this historic period of Tory rule. And so
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: that's why that experience is why I wanted to talk
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: with today's guest, Alistair Campbell. He was one of Tony
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: Blair's most trusted advisors during his time as prime minister.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: You should think of Alistair as the British David Axelrod.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: But most importantly for this conversation, Alistair was with Blair
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: in the years before the Labour Party finally won back power.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: And he was one of the key architects of Labour's
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: rebranding and media strategy that ultimately led them to a
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: landslide victory. Alistair is considered a master of driving a
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: media narrative and was sometimes even referred to as the
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  Speaker 3: king of spin, although I don't think he liked that.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: We'll talk about how Alistair and Tony Blair helped pull
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: the UK out of the iron grip of Thatcherism and
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  Speaker 3: what lessons, strategies, and tactics Democrats can steal from that
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  Speaker 3: experience to win back power here. We also cover what
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  Speaker 3: Alistair makes of Donald Trump generally and also what he
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: makes of Trump just upending 75 years of US foreign
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: policy by turning away from our traditional allies in Europe
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: and aligning with Russia. And finally, we talk about what
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: we can learn from right-wing populist parties all over Europe
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: about the MAGA movement and how to defeat them. And
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: if you want to hear more from Alistair, you should
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: check out his excellent podcast, The Rest Is Politics. He
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: and former Tory party MP Rory Stewart cover what's happening
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: in the UK. They also cover US politics, global events
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: all around the world. It is a weekly listen for me.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: as is Crooked Media's own Pod Save the UK, which
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: covers British politics more from the left like we do
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: on Pod Save America here. And it is also just
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: consistently hilarious and worth your time. So with that set up,
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  Speaker 3: here's my conversation with Alistair Campbell. Alistair Campbell, welcome to
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Pod Save America.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Absolute pleasure to be here, Tommy.
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  Speaker 3: So Alistair, the Labour Party over in the UK was
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  Speaker 3: on its ass for 18 years. 1979 until 1997, including
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: the majority of that under Margaret Thatcher, who is this
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: towering figure in British and global history, frankly. In 1994,
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: you leave a job in journalism to help Tony Blair
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: and the Labour Party right the ship and finally win
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: back power. From reading your diaries and listening to your
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: excellent podcast, I get the sense there were times when
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: you and Tony Blair felt like the Labour Party was
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: as hopeless and divided as a lot of Democrats feel now.
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  Speaker 3: How did you guys approach this monumental task of rebranding
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  Speaker 3: the party and preparing to get to an election where
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  Speaker 3: you could finally win back power?
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I think the ship was already being righted.
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  Speaker 4: So the Labour Party, as you say, out of power for.
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  Speaker 2: A long time.
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  Speaker 4: Mrs Thatcher wins in 1979. 1983, catastrophic defeat. 1987, she
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  Speaker 4: wins again, quite big. But I'd say that Neil Kinnock,
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  Speaker 4: who was... Tony's predecessor, but one, and John Smith, who
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: was Tony's direct predecessor, whose death led to Tony taking
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: the leadership, they were definitely starting the process.
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  Speaker 2: But the fact that.
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  Speaker 4: You're talking about two leaders over successive elections underlines that
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  Speaker 4: the Labour Party was very difficult to change. And that
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  Speaker 4: led us into this theme of modernisation. And once we'd
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  Speaker 4: sort of settled on that as the key core theme,
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  Speaker 4: everything kind of flowed out from it. And it was
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  Speaker 4: also fundamental in signaling to the public that, you know,
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  Speaker 4: this guy, Tony Blair is a bit different.
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  Speaker 3: And so I think we were getting an important point,
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  Speaker 3: which was that this wasn't just, you know, cosmetic changes.
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  Speaker 3: You were signaling to voters that the, the labor party
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: was now different. In fact, he started calling it new labor.
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  Speaker 3: One of the things I really like about your podcast
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  Speaker 3: is you guys talk a lot about the importance of
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  Speaker 3: a political party, not just having a day-to-day message, but
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  Speaker 3: a 30,000 foot narrative and a story that ties it
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  Speaker 3: all together. And as simplistic as it might sound to
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: you and to me, if you ask people what Donald
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Trump wants to do as president, they'll say, make America
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  Speaker 3: great again. And that is a framework for everything he does.
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  Speaker 3: Whereas I feel like Democrats often feel like they have
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: a laundry list of policy ideas, but it doesn't feel
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  Speaker 3: like a coherent story. How did you think about developing
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: and staying true to that 30,000 foot narrative?
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  Speaker 4: So in opposition, what we were trying to achieve, our
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: objective was easy. We're trying to win. And we're trying
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  Speaker 4: to win big so that we can get stuff done.
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  Speaker 4: The strategy came together pretty quickly around this theme of modernization.
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  Speaker 4: And I always say that a good strategy, you should
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  Speaker 4: be able to sum up in a word, a phrase,
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  Speaker 4: a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a speech, and a book.
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  Speaker 4: Now that's top, that's a very top-down approach.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 4: And you can argue that in the modern age, maybe
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  Speaker 4: there are different ways of doing it, but I would
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  Speaker 4: argue that Trump in a way does do that. His,
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  Speaker 4: His strategy right now is, I would argue, is destruction
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: or it's domination or it's megalomania. I don't know quite
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  Speaker 4: how you'd phrase it, but he knows in his head
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  Speaker 4: kind of what he's doing and why everything that you
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: talked about, joining the dots and things, painting a picture.
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  Speaker 2: I always used to have this.
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  Speaker 4: View, this kind of image in my head. So we're starting,
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  Speaker 4: you know, you and I, obsess about politics all the
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: time and have done for a long time. But I
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  Speaker 4: think one of something that we both know is that
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  Speaker 4: most people don't.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 4: And that was all that, that was also, I think
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  Speaker 4: a genius that both Tony Blair and Bill Clinton shared.
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  Speaker 4: They know that most people don't follow this stuff very closely.
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  Speaker 4: What I always used to have in my head was
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  Speaker 4: what we call the big picture. And every time you
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  Speaker 4: were doing or saying something, you had the capacity to,
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: to land a tiny, tiny, tiny dot on that picture.
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  Speaker 4: And if you didn't land a dot that signed up
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: with the last dot and the next dot, and you
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  Speaker 4: were painting a picture on your terms, then in politics,
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  Speaker 4: what happens is that your opponents, political or media, they
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  Speaker 4: come and wipe out your dots.
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  Speaker 2: The whole time.
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  Speaker 4: So our framing was, if it didn't say modernization, don't
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  Speaker 4: say it. if it didn't speak to the theme of modernization,
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  Speaker 4: just go away and stop bothering us with these stupid
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: ideas that are about taking us back, not forward. And
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: the thing about New Labour, New Labour just sort of
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: happened in a funny sort of way because we were
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: doing this conference and you know what it's like when
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: you're sitting around trying to think of a, you've done
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: all the hard stuff of speech writing and policy and
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: all that, you know, but then Tuesday before the conference starts,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: the set designer comes in and says, you know, what's
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: the backdrop going to say?
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  Speaker 2: We had a meeting. I'll never forget. It was me.
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  Speaker 2: Tony was there. I was there.
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  Speaker 4: Peter Mandelson was there. Philip Gould, who's our polstron strategist
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: was there and two or three other people were sitting
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  Speaker 4: around the favorite was a new approach for labor and
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: then a subline and a new approach for britain or
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: something like that and i thought one it's too long
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: two it's a bit winky wanky doesn't say anything so
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  Speaker 4: i'll never forget it i i just said new late
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: i wrote on my pad new labor New Britain and
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: I circled it and I passed it to Philip and
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: he just went tick tick and that was it but
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: even Peter Mandelson who was now our ambassador in Washington
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: no doubt absolutely loving it he was right on the
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: outer side of the outer edge of modernisation he was
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: like uber new labour but I remember even Peter saying
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: I think this might be a bit bold for this
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: time you know shouldn't we just wait But one of
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: the great things about Tony was that if you persuaded
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: him of the intellectual reality of a proposition.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: He'd go with it.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: And that is what we were saying. We were basically
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: saying to the public, new Labour means we're going to
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: change the Labour Party. As we change the Labour Party, you,
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: the public, need to understand that with the same vigour,
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: energy and drive and direction, we're going to change the country.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: And that's why New Labour, New Britain became the strategy.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: And it remained the strategy throughout the entire time we
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: were in government.
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  Speaker 3: You talked about this question of, is something too bold?
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, when you guys won in 1997, it came
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: after this long period of conservative rule that we talked
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: about that included... major economic challenges, some intra-Tory party scandals,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: I assume some exhaustion with the incumbent. And please tell
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: me if I have this story wrong, but before the election,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: there was a politician named Roy Jenkins who said, Tony
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Blair took such care not to make any mistakes that
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: he resembled a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: a highly polished floor. And I love that metaphor because
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: it gets at the balancing act you have to make
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: in politics between appealing to voters with big, bold ideas
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: and not making a mistake. And a version of that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: debate is playing out in the Democratic Party right now.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: James Carville said Democrats should take a strategic pause, let
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: Trump self-immolate. Many others, myself included, thinks that we Democrats
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: need to much more aggressively present an alternative. I know
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Democrats are far from holding a Ming vase right now.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: We're holding a plate of shit. But how do you
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: think about the balance between big.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Old– Yes. Full of it.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: But, uh, you know, that balance between big, bold ideas
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: versus kind of running against your opponent or not screwing up.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: How did you think about that?
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: Well, I, I mean, I love James Carville and I
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: yield to nobody in my admiration of him and respect
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: for him, but I think I'm more with you on
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: this one. Um, but we had this debate in the
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: UK before the election, because people, basically people said labor
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: under Keir Starmer was pursuing a Mingva strategy, uh, get
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: the barnacles off the boat. Don't upset people. We're 20
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: points ahead in the polls. Let's just go nice and easy,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: nice and easy, nice and easy. And then you look
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: at the results, where on a third of the vote,
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: they get a massive majority. And you think, okay, well,
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: you know, that strategy worked. I could argue that maybe
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: some of the difficulties they've had in government have been
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: because of the caution in the strategies, then bred a
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: caution in governing as well. But I think the Democrat
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: position is... Look, I do agree that I think Trump's
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: going to self-immolate, but I wouldn't bank on it because.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: The guy's got away with everything he's ever done, up
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to and including being a criminal.
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: And whenever I hear people saying, just let the other
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: guy screw up, that's not a strategy.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: The strategy's got to.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: Be help them screw up. And as they screw up,
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: make sure that the public has switched on to an
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: alternative that's sitting there Right in front of your eyes.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: And of course the, the, if you think about the,
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: the kind of damage that Trump is doing already, um,
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: to the Democrats, which he did in the election and
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: is continuing to do. I mean, it's made that speech
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: the other night. It was in Congress. So just amazing.
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: The extent to which you just get Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: Biden keeps going. And of course I don't, I don't
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: buy this idea that just goes down well with his base.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: I think, I think there's a broader resonance. to be attacking,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: because people seem to like the way he attacks. And
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: I think the Democrats have got to learn from that.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: But I think the other thing I'd say is that
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: people always think they've got lots of time in politics.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: I mean, Labour at the moment in the UK, you know,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: Keir Starmer's doing pretty well on the international front. But
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: on the domestic stuff, you know, we've got a lot
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: of big problems, a lot of decisions that have been
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: made that are really quite unpopular. And I bump into some.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Of the Labour people and I say, listen, you guys,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: you've got to do this, you've got to do that,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: and what have you.
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: And they say, oh, you know, stop moaning on, you know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: we've got a lot of time. I say, you haven't
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: got time. You've got two years max, and then you're
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: into the next thing. And, you know, where I think
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: your system doesn't lend itself to what I think the
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: Democrats need to do right now is that, you know,
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: the old cliche about when there's a crisis in the world,
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: America doesn't know who to phone in Europe. Right now,
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: it feels to me like there's a crisis in the
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: Democrat Party in the United States. And Nobody in Europe
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: knows who to phone in the Democrat party. We don't
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: even know who to follow. We don't know who to
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: be interested in, you know, and we don't, we can't
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: see a process. So, you know, I look at the
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: stuff and you sent me some really interesting polling that
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: I read this morning about the, the reaction to Trump's
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: speech and the Democrats reaction to it. And there's a
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: part of me that because I look at Trump and
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: thinking the guy's a liar, he's a criminal. Uh, he
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: doesn't care about anything but himself. He hates Canada. How
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: could anybody hate Canada? He hates Europe. He's just sort of,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: you know, he's surrounded by these terrible people like Vance
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: and Musk and Hexen and so forth. But, you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: what even I felt watching the speech, I sort of
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: had this sense that I understand why the Democrats are really,
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: really pissed off and really, really angry. But when I
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: looked at them sort of holding up their stickers and
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: the guy with the ponytail shouting him down and all
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: that stuff, I just thought, I'm not sure this is helping.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: You know, to me, what the posture should be is, Jesus,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: how the hell did we let this happen? How have
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: we enabled this guy to win again? We can't just
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: keep saying he's a terrible human being, he's this, he's that,
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: he's that. We've got to look at ourselves and what
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: our relationship with America and the American people is. And
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: so then I look at what I was fascinated in
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: the polling, was the attacks on Trump that seemed to
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: be landing with people were the ones that Bernie Sanders
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: is making about the billionaire class against working people. And
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: actually his attacks seemed to be the ones that were,
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: it's quite a sizable sample I saw, it seemed to
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: be the ones that were breaking through. And the other
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: stuff that, you know, you and I as political nerds
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: and geeks, again, would probably think are incredibly important, like,
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: you know, the undermining of institutions, democratic abuse and all
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: that stuff. He was like, oh, well, OK, you know,
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: who cares? Let's just get the economy going. Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, you made so many good points there. I
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: think I love this idea of don't wait for your
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: opponent to make a mistake, help them make a mistake
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: and then pour gas on the flames once it happens.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: I think that's very important. I totally agree with you
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: that there is no singular leader of the Democratic Party.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: There probably won't be until someone emerges and uh, in
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: a democratic primary, you know, which would be after the midterms,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: which is far too late for waiting for that.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: What about the process of analyzing defeat?
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Does that happen? Is there a post-mortem?
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: I think there, there's not a singular post-mortem. There's not
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: like a DNC run post-mortem that I know of. I mean,
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: the new DNC chair is, I think, going around the country,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: talking to people, thinking about what happened. We on this
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: show are having a series of conversations about what happened.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, frankly, this is one of them and thinking
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: about ways to kind of rise from the ashes. But
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: to your point about the kind of images at the
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: State of the Union, it was lots of different groups
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: of Democrats with different forms of protests. And I know
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: something you were famous for in government was message discipline,
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: enforcing message discipline, trying not to let other members of
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: the Labour Party undercut what Tony was doing. Do you
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: think that that idea is quaint in an era of
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: everyone can make a public statement from their phone in
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: the bathroom whenever they want?
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: I don't honestly think that the principles have changed. I
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: think the atmosphere and the environment has changed.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: I'll give you, actually, yesterday I was with a guy.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: You may know called Matthew Barzun. He used to be
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: the U.S. ambassador under Obama in London.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: And we were just having a chat.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I know Matthew very well. Good friend. Yeah.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: He's a great guy.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: And he and I were chatting about this, that, and
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: the other. And he's over here at the moment. And
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: he was saying to me, he says, you know, you've
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: got to help me get a grip of all these
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: kind of junior ministers they've got.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I said, what do you mean?
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: He said, well, what happens every day? is that you
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: have a junior minister or somebody who's not top-level cabinet
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: who is pushed out onto the airwaves because every morning
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: the BBC, Sky News, you know, all these different radio
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: and television stations, they expect to have a minister to
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: go out and talk.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: About the stuff of the day. And he says, you
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: hear these guys.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: And one, they sound like frightened rabbits. Two, they literally
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: sort of just read talking points. They don't kind of
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: basically speak like human beings, a lot of them. And
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: he said, and so I was, I was, yes, I
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: was about message discipline and I still do believe in
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: message message discipline, but that's not the same thing as
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: say the same thing all the time. It's having the
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: same conversation. And this again goes, I'm sorry. You know,
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: people should recognize that Trump for all his evil OCT is,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: is just brilliant at having conversations with people. He converses
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: when he's talking. I mean, to stand up for 100
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: minutes in front.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Of a group of people, you know this as well
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: as I do.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: Who there's nothing much that politicians hate more than listening
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: to other politicians make speeches, which they think they.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Could do better.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: But basically, when Trump's speaking, there's something awful about it,
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: but there's something mesmerizing about it because he's He's kind
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: of communicating in a different way. So the conversation I
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: was having with Matthew was basically about trying to inspire
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: and motivate and educate younger politicians and people, say, in
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: government over here, around Europe, not to assume that message
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: discipline means be boring, not to assume that being message
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: discipline means you literally read a line to take off
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: a page. You absorb the line to take. You have
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: to prod it, analyze it. You know, expose its weaknesses
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: and strengths and then take it into the conversation with
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: the public. And I just think, so I still think
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: message discipline is important. And I'll give you, I don't
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: know if you follow our, the superior version of football.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: I know you have that silly NFL thing, right, that
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: you call football.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: But real football, there's a guy called Arsene Wenger. who's
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: a very famous manager. He's French, but he was the manager.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Of Arsenal for years and years.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: And years, one of our biggest teams. And I interviewed
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: him a while back for a, I wrote a book
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: called Winners and trying to learn the lessons of politics,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: business and sport and whether you could, and it was
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: some great, you know, I met some great American people,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: Billy Bean and Floyd Mayweather in the same book about politics.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Try and beat that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: So anyway, the, um, So Arsene Wenger said this thing about,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: he said, we've gone from, and I think this is
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: so important for politicians to understand what this means. We've
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: gone from a vertical world to a horizontal world. In
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: the vertical world, leaders could sit at the top of
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: an organization, say like Churchill during the war, and they
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: could make decisions and the decisions could, they go down
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: through the system, or in that case, through the entire population.
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: In a horizontal system, the leader tries to sit at
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: the top, but is surrounded by noise created by others
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: 24 hours a day. And he says, the thing that
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: really has always stuck with me, he said that the
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: pressure to be tactical is thereby increased and the response
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: should actually be to be more strategic. And the thing
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: I keep saying to politicians, and Trump again is a
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: good example, is I know it's easy if you're Trump
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: and now he's president, you've got the pulpit, okay? But
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: If you are, I say this to campaigners and to politicians,
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: if you've got a really good message, if you've really
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: got something interesting to say, you'll get it out there.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: You won't get it out there as easily as you
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: used to because, you know, it used to be when
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: I was first in working with Tony or when I
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: was a journalist, if you got the same story in
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: the UK on three national paper front pages, you could
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: say you're going to dominate the agenda for a day.
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: What I think you have to accept now is nothing
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: necessarily dominates the agenda and it doesn't matter. Because what
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: matters is that where you are landing those dots on
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: the big picture, you're landing them completely on your terms.
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: And what I felt, I mean, I had really enjoyed
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: seeing you at Chicago at the DNC. And I think
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: I got a little bit carried away in the Kool-Aid
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: of the whole thing. When I thought about it on
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: the way home, I thought, yeah, you know what? wasn't
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: just that the messages weren't really messages directed at people
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: who might be thinking of not voting Democrat. It was
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: also that there was actually a bit of dissonance in
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: a lot of the messaging. It wasn't clear whether this
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: was going to be a cost-of-living election, a community cohesion election, a.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Woke.
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, I hate the whole debate about woke, but
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean when I say that.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: No, I know you're actually anti-woke. You think we need to,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: I remember hearing you say that you felt like you
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: need to focus more on social justice issues in response
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: to some of this bullshit coming out of Trump and
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: et cetera.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: I actually think it would give, and this is kind of,
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: I guess, where people like AOC are. I think that
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: in seeding the ground on this whole woke debate, we've
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: sort of, we've conceded to a really bad idea that
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: does really bad things. So I actually argue that fighting
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: for what woke actually means, i.e. being alert to injustice
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: and wanting to do something about it, the right are
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: brilliant at this. They will take something that they worry
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: might be a weakness or an advantage to the other side,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: and they poison and contaminate it. And they do it
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: with the help of a kind of, you know, right-wing
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: media ecosystem that then makes the left lose confidence. And
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: I think on stuff like, you know, like right now,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: let me tell you, this could be completely wrong because
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: you're in America and I'm not. If I was on
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: a board, like a big conglomerate board, I know they
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: worry about who and what the government does and what
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: have you. I'd come out and say, this is now
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: the time to absolutely double down on DEI because I
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: think it's the right.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Thing to do.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: Even as I say that, I can see why people
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: going into politics might think, yeah, well, look at the polls.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: The polls are driven. The polls are driven by the
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: nature and the terms of a debate. Control the nature
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: and the terms of the debate.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's really well said. Now, let me
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: just say, critics listening to this would say, the biggest
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: mistakes Tony Blair made, the biggest mistakes the Democratic Party
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: made was getting away from our roots as a pro-union,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: pro-worker party and instead embracing globalization, free trade. They'll sort
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: of sum it up as neoliberalism generally, and they believe
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: that's what led us to Trump. What's your response to
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: that argument?
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: My response is that there is something in it, but
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: it's not the whole thing.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: I always felt.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: During the Blair, Clinton, even Schroeder, I mean, now he's
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: kind of Putin's best mate, but at the time he
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: was you know, part of the same thing. We have
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: this thing in Germany, the new center. I think that
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: we were doing that on the back of a peace
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: dividend falling, the collapse of the Berlin wall, which meant
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: that we weren't having to spend squillions and squillions of
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: money on defense. And we were able eventually to put
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: that into things like schools and hospitals. And the second
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: thing was that we were, you know, our economies were
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: doing really, really well. And, globalization was one of the factors.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: What I think we never fully understood or did was
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: warn people that there might be downsides to this. And
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: so I think we got slightly carried away on the
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: idea that here we were in the UK, the US, Germany,
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: some of the sort of, you know, the countries that
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: had been basically more out of power than in it, right?
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: That we felt like we were kind of riding a
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: wave and, and, and we, we were, we were the
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: people that looked to for economic stability and economic growth
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: and economic prosperity.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: For us as a labor government, that was a really,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: really new experience.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: And I think what we didn't do then was understand
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: that a lot of the kind of things that were
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: coming beneath that, the Polish builders, um, you know, the
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: undercutting of, of, uh, of wages and prices, Immigration that
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: we were, you know, we were going to business. One
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: of our biggest weaknesses in those, that period we talked
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: about when Labour was kind of tanking against the Tories,
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: it was because we weren't seen as being trusted by business.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: So we made a big thing of winning over the
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: trust of the business community. And of course, the business community,
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: particularly big business, but not just big business, they were
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: saying to us, you know, we don't have the workforce.
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: We don't have the people that we need to kind
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: of do the jobs that need to be done. So
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: we need more immigration. And so, yeah, let's get it.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's bring them in.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: And I think that we just, the unintended consequences of that,
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: I think probably were a factor that led to Brexit.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: I still think Brexit could have been defeated, but, you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: that was definitely a factor.
• 30:21
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• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the U.S.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: And the U.K.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, we famously have this special relationship, meaning that
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: we are the closest of allies, you know, in the world.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: There's rarely daylight between the two countries on major issues.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: After that, you know, the U.S. is historically really close
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: with Canada, democracies in Europe, NATO allies, etc. But in
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: just the past few weeks, I mean, Donald Trump has
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: upended 75 years of U.S.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Foreign policy.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: He's voted with Russia at the United Nations. He sided
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: with Putin against Ukraine and all of Europe. Interestingly, Keir Starmer,
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: despite being from the Labour Party, has gotten along better
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: with Trump than most leaders. But is there a concern
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: you're hearing in sort of British political circles? that the
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: transatlantic alliance has, is broken for, you know, at least
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: the next four years, if not irreparably changed.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Just before I talked to you, I was doing a,
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: an interview with German radio, um, and trying out my German,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: Tommy is not easy, but just about got there. Uh,
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: and as I was doing it and it was interesting
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: doing it in in a, in a, in a, what
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: is not my mother tongue. Cause my mother tongue can
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: always find the words and you can usually find the
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: words because you're clear in your, in your thinking. And
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: as I was speaking, I was sort of, I felt
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: myself falling between, I know what I think and I
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: know what I want to say. Cause these guys are
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: just destroying everything.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: But a little bit of my head was saying, don't
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: say anything that might get picked up and be seen
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: as being unhelpful to get started. Cause you know, Part
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: of my brain is still trapped in the old job.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: As it were.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, I know. I get it.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: I get it.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: What if Friedrich Merz is listening to this on his,
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: you know, as he's in the gym or something on
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: German radio, and he thinks, oh, so this is what
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: the Brits think. And there's me thinking this. But what
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: I really think, when you say, is there any disquiet?
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, there is, a lot.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: There was a brilliant interview, which you should look up,
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: that a guy called Alex Younger did. He's the former
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: head of MI6. He did an interview on BBC Newsnight
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: two or three weeks ago now. But it's the best
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: thing I've seen in trying to explain what he thinks
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: is happening in the world. And it's what I think
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: is happening in the world. What I think is happening
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: in the world is that America has re-elected or elected
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: for the second time a president who basically sees the
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: world as a place to be carved up by strong men.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: And at the moment, there are three. there is Xi Jinping,
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: president for life, Putin, president for life, and Trump basically
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: wants to be president for life. And in addition, he
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: wants to be the richest man in the world and
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: the most powerful man in the world and the most
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: famous man in the world. Now, he's probably, he's right
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: up there in terms of the most famous. He, I
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: don't know, do you know Fiona Hill, who was his
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: foreign policy advisor in the first term?
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: She's a Brit. Yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: She wrote a fantastic article about her experience with Foreign
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: Affairs magazine. And, Honestly, it's just so worth reading now
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: because like all of us, I think she assumed that, well,
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: that's Trump done. I can unburden what it was like.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: But she actually made the point that Trump, she made
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: this point that whenever, if Trump was with his advisers,
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: he'd listen to them up to a point. But as
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: soon as a strongman leader came into the room, he
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: would listen to that person.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: He would listen to.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Putin or Orban or Modi or Erdogan ahead of his
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: own advisers. Um, and then the second thing she said
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: was that he absolutely bought this idea that Putin was
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: the richest man in the world. And he really admired
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: that for taking, for taking a country and turning it
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: into almost like an extension of his business interests. But
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: you also had an army and a nuclear weapons, uh,
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: nuclear weapons.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Well, just so folks know, I mean, the people who
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: think Putin's the richest man in the world believe he is,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: he got there by telling all the Russian oligarchs. uh,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: you now owe me 50% of what's yours and you
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: don't have it. There will be no debate. Yeah.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: And, and also that he's, you know, he's got stuff
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: all around the world and there's a huge, I don't
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: know if it is or isn't, but there's a massive property,
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: not far from where I live, one of the biggest plays.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: And I'm, and people say it's owned by, it's owned
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: by a Russian, but basically people say it's owned by
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: a Russian, but it's actually, It's actually Putin. So he's,
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: you know, anyway, so that's, and I, so what I
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: think that, no, there's no doubt when Kier went to,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: and this was, this was a big deal for him
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: because he's had a pretty tough start as prime minister.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Macron gets there, does his thing. I thought Macron handled
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: it pretty well, got the balance right between sort of
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: flattery and, you know, French, France's national interest and trying
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: to speak up for Zelensky. I think the sort of
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: expectation was that Keir wouldn't be able to kind of
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: pull it off in the same way because he doesn't
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: have those sort of silky, macronist skills. But actually, he
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: did very, very well. But there were people who, you know,
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: seeing him, there were objections to Trump. I mean, you know,
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: so that whole thing about, you know, the king wants
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: the second visit to be great and.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: The first, and this is unprecedented, this is historic.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: I completely get why he had to do it and
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: why he did it. Um, but I think there's a
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: worry now, if there's a worry now it's, I guess
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: it's in the space of, are we kidding ourselves and
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: thinking that Trump's ever going to give these security guarantees?
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: And if he doesn't, what does that mean.
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: To countries like France and Britain saying they're going to
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: put boots on the ground, by the way, I'll tell
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: you who is number one hate figure in the UK
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: right now.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: It's not Donald Trump.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: I've just about to ask, tell me about JD Vance.
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, either that guy is utterly malign or unbelievably stupid.
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: And I don't think he's unbelievably stupid. So when he
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: goes on Fox News and he was talking about the
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: Ukraine situation, he was justifying the sort of double bullying
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: of Zelensky, which was utterly revolting. I think people around
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: the world were just sick watching that. But just to
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: wind back a bit, Vance goes to Munich, one of
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: the most important defence and security conferences in the world,
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: And basically makes a speech talking utter shite about free
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: speech in the UK and France.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Okay. Bullshit.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: Doesn't talk about Ukraine. Doesn't talk about the big stuff
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: that was happening.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: So that was the first thing. Then what really got
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: people going was he goes on Fox news. I don't
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: know why they, do they only do interviews with Fox news?
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: Is everybody else just not allowed to talk to these people?
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Basically, yes.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, JD, to his credit, will go in more
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: hostile places, but they love Fox News.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: It's state TV. Okay.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: If you jump into him, Tommy, we'd bump into him.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: We'd just tell him we'd love to have him on
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: the rest of his politics.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: I will.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: I'll let him know.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: We text often, yes.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: So he goes on Fox News and he says, he's
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: talking about the security guarantees of having lots of American
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: companies drilling for minerals is far better than 20,000 soldiers
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: from some random country that hasn't fought a war for
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: 30 to 40 years. Well, if you listen to the
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: rest is politics this week, I've listed all the wars
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: in which British soldiers have fought and died alongside Americans
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: in the last 30 to 40 years. And I'll tell you,
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: I've got friends in the British military who if JD
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Vance comes on the state visit, if and when it happens,
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: they're not happy. So when I say it was either
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: willful or stupid, It's stupid to kind of why would
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: you want to have a row going about that? We
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: have to come out and say, no, I wasn't talking
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: about Britain. And Rory Stewart on the podcast today is
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: he's listed all the other countries that were involved in
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: fighting with the Americans. And bear in mind, Trump again
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: today talking about Article 5, saying, well, why should I
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: help them? They're not going to come and help us.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: The last time Article 5 was deployed was 9-11. And
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: that was because every other country in NATO said, this
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: is an attack upon America. An attack on one is
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: an attack upon all.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: We're with them.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: And now this guy. And what I find most distressing is,
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: what's happening and this is what I think is keeping
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: people awake at night me included is that we're now
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: in this world where America which whether you like America
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: or not and a lot of people don't like America
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: but we've always you know I've always been pretty pro-American
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: in the main but we now have an American administration
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: that treats friends as enemies and enemies as friends You know,
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: Zelensky has been abused, derided, briefed against, shouted at, made
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: demands of. Putin, zero, no demands, no harsh words. Zelensky
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: is a dictator, not Putin. Zelensky is the one who
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: started the war, not Putin. I mean, it's mind blowing.
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: It's sort of, it's gaslighting on a global industrial scale.
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: That's what I think people are finding very, very difficult.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: And look, I don't want to go on some whiny
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: tangent about conservative media, but I'm very glad to hear
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: that you and many of your friends are exercised about
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: these comments by J.D. Vance, because the man insulted hundreds,
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: if not thousands of dead British troops and French troops,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: by the way, because it's the French UK proposal for
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: this peacekeeping force. And like when Barack Obama dared to
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: move the Churchill bust out of the Oval Office, it
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: was this goddamn scandal that hailed us for weeks and
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: weeks and weeks because, you know, the Murdoch press, the
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: right wing tabloids, especially in the UK, just, you know,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: pumped oxygen on the fire and fed the flames over
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: and over again. And like, this seems like, you know,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: now we have this legitimate breach that I think we
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: should actually be kind of concerned about.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: And did he get much play in America? The Vance
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: thing about the random country?
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: It did, but you know, the Steve Bannon adage of
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: flood the zone with shit is highly effective and we're
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: all just kind of waking up to the next outrage
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: every day. We are going to take a quick break,
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: but before we do, I want to tell you some
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• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:57
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• 43:48
  Speaker 3: One other thing I love about the rest of politics
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: is that you and Rory, you talk a lot about
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: international issues and you guys focus a lot on right-wing
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: populist parties, especially in Europe, leaders like Marine Le Pen
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: in France. We got Elon Musk's buddies over at the
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: AFD in Germany, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Nigel Farage in
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: the UK. Unfortunately, the list goes on and on. Here
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: in America, we are now dealing with the kind of
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: MAGA version of right-wing populism. Are there common threads you
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: see among these right-wing populist parties that are worth kind
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: of highlighting and then successful tactics to combat them?
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: Well, the first thing I say is that, you know,
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: not least through the work that Steve Bannon does, they're
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: unbelievably well organized. Are there common tactics?
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. Are there common threads? Yes. Is there a common ideology?
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: I think there is.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: And Trump is, whether by design or by default, he's
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: become the kind of absolute global pinboy of the whole thing.
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: But I tell you what I'm absolutely amazed at. I
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: think I've said this to you before, that whenever I'm
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: talking to anybody about American politics, particularly on the right,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: or even when we interviewed David Petraeus on the podcast
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: a while back, there's a military guy. And even in
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: that interview, Victor Orban's name came up. He said, to
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: understand what's happening in the right wing in America, you
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: have to understand Victor Orban.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: These people love Victor Orban.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: And then I wind through and I check J.D. Vance
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: doing interviews about Well, one of the first thing Orban did,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: he's very clever. He took on the media, he took
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: on the universities, he took on the courts. Hey, and
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: guess what they're doing? You know, so I think that
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: they join up. It's very interesting, though, when at the
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: last CPAC, Jordan Bardella, who's the number two to Marine
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: Le Pen, and he's this young, very handsome, very articulate
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: guy who clearly thinks he's going to be the next
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: leader and probably half of his mind thinks he might
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: even get in there before the presidential election.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: But he pulled out of the CPAC because of the
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: Steve Bannon Nazi salute. So I would argue that the AFD,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: Musk's people, and by the way, I think Musk cost
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: them votes rather than added to them. What was amazing
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: about the German election, I went out for the German election,
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: the polls didn't shift. Other than the only place where
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: the polls really shifted were for the the left wing
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: populist party who went almost doubled during the campaign. And
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: I think that was Musk motivating people who probably weren't
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: going to vote.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Uh, I don't think the, the.
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: So with the help of Trump, but actually the, the
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: forerunner in this is Putin. They've established that you don't
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: necessarily have to pay a price for lying. Now, to
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: be fair, our country, Johnson's got spat out the system.
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: It wasn't over the big lies. It was eventually over
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: a kind of smaller set of lies. But, you know,
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: he's gone. He probably thinks he can come back, but
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: I think he's done. But that sort of form of politics.
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: And then the other thing I think that they do,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: they're very, very good at certain themes that they push
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: the whole time. Woke is obviously one of them.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: Climber.
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: I am amazed at how they've managed to win this Or,
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: you know, push the dial back on climate as well
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: as they've done. Again, they do it partly by lying,
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: but they also do it by co-opting people and arguments
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: that go against what we thought was a conventional wisdom.
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: And I remember after the first, Trump's first term, I
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: remember I was doing a thing with Al Gore in 2016. Germany,
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: I think, or Austria. And I said to him, what
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: are you going to do? I mean, the climate campaign,
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: how are you going to do it with this guy
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: in the White House? He's a climate denier. And Gore said,
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: he was pretty chilled. He said, listen, we're just going
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: to have to work around him. You can work around
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: this guy. Now I think that's, and likewise with Michael Wolff,
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: we talked to Michael Wolff last week and he said,
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: don't get too upset. Just wait the guy out. You've
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: got to wait the guy out. And I think that
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: worked for the first term. I don't think that.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Works for the second term.
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: Because there's so much, he's so much more powerful. He's
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: so much, better organized, it seems to me. And he's
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: got these people around him and this media ecosystem. I
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: think we're right to be worried about this media ecosystem.
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: And we've got the same thing developing here.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the interesting story to me about
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: this recent election in Germany, I do love that it
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: seems like JD Vance and Elon Musk turned off voters
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: and harmed the AFD. There was this interesting split at
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: the end where you saw this surge in support for
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: left-wing parties that I think mostly came from young women
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: who Whereas younger men went to the AFD. And what
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: you're seeing though, is just a lack of faith in
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: these sort of traditional parties, be them sort of social
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: Democrats or conservative and a look for alternatives because younger
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: people are pissed off and they feel like the system
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: has not worked for them and they're turning away.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: And I think that's a big lesson.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: And they're right, by the way, they're right.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: And I saw in 2019, you were doing an interview
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: with the garden where you said the populism of the
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: right would not be defeated by the populism of the left.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Can you unpack that a bit and tell me if
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: you still think it's true?
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: I think there's a form, well, the populism of the
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: right to me means you don't see politics as a
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: way to solve problems, you see politics as a way
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: to exploit problems. So I don't think we should do that.
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: I think we should always pursue a politics that is
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: about trying to address problems and make life better for people.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: The second part of the right wing populist is polarization.
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: We don't exist to bring people together. We exist to
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: drive people into tribes and get them fighting each other.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: I don't want to do that. I don't think the
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: left should do that. And the third part of their
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: shtick is lying, post-truth. So I don't think we should
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: do any of those things. What I do think, however,
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: that we need to learn from them and do better
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: than is done now relates to the way that we
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: communicate and the way that we relate to people in
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: their lives. I feel sometimes that politicians on the left
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: They do think that people are sitting around obsessing about
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: what politicians are saying and thinking and doing.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: They're not. They're not.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: So how do you get into those people's lives? Or
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: how do you get into their lives in those times
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: when you need to be in their lives, like they're
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: deciding whether or not to vote and they're deciding what
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: to vote. How do you get into them? So is
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: that when they're making that decision, one, they know who
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: you are, they know what you stand for, and.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: They quite like it. Right now, they.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: Don't know who A lot of the other side are.
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: And when they hear them, they just think, I mean,
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: the big thing that's really harming labor here at the
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: moment is people's feeling that, or saying that they don't
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: think the change that was promised has been big enough
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: or fast enough, right? Now, and meanwhile, they see Trump
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: with his fucking pen and he's, you know, here's another
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: one and here's another one with banning straws. Right, executive
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: orders left and right.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Right, okay.
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: But what I think is that the process is, The
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: reason why so many young people are zoning out is
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: that one, they can't afford a house. The jobs are
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: pretty insecure. Uh, they're not going to be better off
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: than their parents. And they look at politics and they
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: see slow processes, often pretty average people, not inspiring, not motivating.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: And so I think that's.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: The bit of, it's not populism. Um, in the.
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Traditional sense, but how do the politicians on the left
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: become the friends of these people? Because naturally that's what
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: they should be. How have we allowed a situation where
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump inherited wealth, billionaire, uh, Boris Johnson, who went
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: to the, you know, the most expensive school in Europe,
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: Oxford daily telegraph somehow becomes a man of the people,
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: Nigel Farage, a city trader, you know, And even, okay, J.D.
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: Vance has got the dirt poor background, but he's still
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: Ivy League. Trump's still Ivy League. They're all Ivy League people.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: How have they become the voice of working class people?
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: Whereas people who actually do, in my view, care about
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: working class people. That's why I think Keir Starmer in
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: the UK and Angela Rayner, I don't know if you
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: know Angela Rayner, he's number two, he's got the most
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: amazing backstory. But I think if this Labour government doesn't
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: succeed in winning back the working class and you said
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: earlier about you know we lost them in part through
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: globalization i think we lost them i think in the
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: uk we lost a lot of them through the period
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: when jeremy corbyn was in charge because yes it's true
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: fair play to jeremy corbyn he motivated a lot of
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: young people to maybe to the left of you and
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: me to get engaged and get involved but he turned
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: off a lot of people who are what i would
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: call traditional working class british patriots um And back to
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: the thing about big moments. One of Jeremy Corbyn's biggest
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: moments was that he'd just literally been made leader of
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: the Labour Party, won the election. Everybody stunned that he'd
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: done it, but he did it. And one of the
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: first events was this establishment event at St. Paul's Cathedral.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: And he stood there and didn't sing the national anthem.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: And it sounds crazy, but it's the sort of thing
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: that people remember. They say, ooh, this guy's not on
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: our side, is he?
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: Oh, it doesn't sound crazy at all to me. I
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: was sitting in an interview with Barack Obama in Iowa
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: in 2007 when a reporter asked him why I wasn't
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: wearing a flag pin, and he answered it honestly, and
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: it became a thing for four more years or however
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: long it followed us around. Final question for you, and
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: thank you for giving me so much time. I was
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: looking last night at this Pew Research does polling asking Americans,
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: do you trust the government? And they've been doing it
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: for decades. And the average peaks at like 77% in 1964.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: the beginning of LBJ's administration, trust levels plummet through the
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Vietnam War all the way through the Carter administration down
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: to about 27%. It kind of bounces up into the
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: 40s during Reagan, then spikes after 9-11 as people rally
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: together after the attacks, and then bottoms out again after
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Iraq and the financial crisis and never really recovers. And
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: I think some of the drivers of this loss of
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: trust were Vietnam, Watergate, the Iraq.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: War, and the financial crisis.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: And just for listeners, you know, if listeners want to
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: hear you dig deeper into all things Iraq, you and
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: Rory did an amazing two part series on the Iraq
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: war from different perspectives around the 20th anniversary. And it
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: was just like riveting listening. And I highly recommend it.
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: But I'm wondering, I mean, Democrats have now we used
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: to be the party that didn't trust institutions. We didn't
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: trust the intelligence community. We didn't trust the government.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: We accused Bush of lying us into war. Now we're
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: the ones defending institutions. Now we're telling people to trust
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: the CDC about the COVID vaccine or trust the FBI, right?
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: And I'm wondering how you think about this loss of
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: trust in government and institutions and how to get it back,
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: but also if we need to change our posture as
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: a Democrat and not be so trusting of the government
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: and maybe not worry about the lack of trust in government.
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Well, I think there's a difference between lack of trust
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: in the government and lack of belief in principles and institutions.
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: What I'd worry about most if I was American right
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: now was the sense that the rule of law is crumbling,
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: that the institutions that uphold the rule of law, the
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: attacks upon judges, the packing of courts, all the stuff
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: that we.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Know, I'd really worry about that. There's a little whiff
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: of that.
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: Over here at times, but not like there is in
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: the States. So I think where you're absolutely right is
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: you don't want to become, in opposition, the defender of
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: a status quo for which you're not responsible. And that's
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: a real risk for the Democrats right now. That's why
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: I think the other lesson to take from, actually from Macron,
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: if you look at it in positive ways, and from
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: Donald Tusk in Poland, is that, whether it's on the
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: right or on the left or in the center, you've
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: got to have, when there is so much kind of
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: angst in the world, you've got to have a disruptive
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: message about the change that you're going to make because
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: so much needs to change. Status quo just isn't working.
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: And so Trump was all about change. Macron was all
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: about change. Keir Starmer's slogan was change. This thing about
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: trust is really interesting because like you say, you said 9-11,
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: the trust levels went up. I still believe that when something,
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: COVID actually is an interesting example. Around the world, yeah,
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: lots of anger, lots of division, but around the world,
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: most governments said what they thought should be done. And
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: most populations said, okay, this is tough.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: We get it.
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: We'll go along with it, right? So what do people
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: understand by government? Government means everything from whether your streets
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: get cleaned and your bins get emptied to whether Donald
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: Trump works off a nuclear weapon at China one day.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: government is the services that we all depend on. Why
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: are people really angry with the last Conservative government? Because
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: they ran the National Health Service into the ground. That
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: erodes trust as well. So I think that sometimes when
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: we poll people about whether do you trust politicians, they
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: say no because all they ever read about is the
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: politicians being bad and scandal and what have you. When
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: you explain to people I think there has to be
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: greater levelling with the public about what politics is, what
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: is good, the good that it does, the bad that
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: goes on. It goes back to the point I made
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: about my conversation with Matthew. Have honest conversations with people
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: about what's going on. Don't worry if you say something
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: a bit loose that a paper that opposes you, you're
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: going to turn it into a scandal because they're going
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: to do that anyway with something else. So I think
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: this trust thing, I think it goes back to this
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: thing about having genuine, honest conversations with people and showing
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: that you can make change through politics. And I think
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: a lot of it is about the way, look, Trump
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: is such a polarizing figure. America, I guess this is
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: impossible at the moment. But I think in Britain, with
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: somebody like Keir Starmer in charge and Germany because of
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: their coalition systems and France, if Macron has a decent
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: successor and somebody in the center wins there. And actually,
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: it's been interesting to see something like Maloney who has
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: operated in a slightly different way to what we expect.
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: He's still pretty far right and stuff.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: In Italy, yeah.
• 58:45
  Speaker 4: Orban's the only real hard right. Even the Slovakian guy
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: came back in the fold yesterday on defense, you know,
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: at the summit in Brussels. And there's even talk today
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: amongst people I've been talking to who were at the event.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: In Brussels yesterday. There's even talk about, you know, is.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: It time to start thinking about how we get hungry
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: out of the European Union?
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, so there is a fight back. I like
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: that idea. Well, yeah, so do I.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: But, so I think, I've waffled on so long, I've
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: forgotten what your final question was now. You're going to
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: remind me if you remembered it.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: Trust. Yeah, so.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: I think we got it. I think we got there.
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: So I think that the trust thing is, it's more
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: complicated than sometimes than we think. I think the other
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: thing that's going on, there's just a lack of deference
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: in the world anyway. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: There's lack of respect for authority. That's not necessarily a
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: bad thing. And the other thing that's happened, it's happening
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: in Australia right now, there's an election coming up in Australia,
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: is that fewer and fewer people always vote the same way.
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: And that is, you've got the Republican, Democrat, and occasionally
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: a third candidate. In other countries, other alternatives are emerging. Uh,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: even though Kia Slamma got a huge majority, it was
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: the lowest joint vote between Tory and Labour than there's
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: ever been.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Right. So people are.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: Looking for alternatives. People are looking for alternatives. Um, and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: I think we just have to have a more grown
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: up debate with about, about people with people and.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: The left go back.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: Maybe the big point I want to try and make
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: to you and your, your colleagues is that we can't
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: afford to lose our confidence about without sounding arrogant, being right.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: These guys, they've got really bad ideas. Look, what Trump is.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: Actually doing is bad for America, bad for Canada, bad
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: for Europe, bad for relations with China. It's bad on
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: so many levels. But because they've built this phenomenal political
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: support machine, even the people within that support machine, like
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: Marco Rubio, who know that.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: It's wrong, they've got to go along with it.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: Whereas what we do when we do stuff, we sort of, oh,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: I'm not happy about that. So you flake off. We've
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: got to be more confident that we're actually on the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: big issues of what the world, whether it's climate, whether
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: it's inequality, whether it's the way that we treat each other,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: whether it's we solve problems better in alliance with others
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: rather than hating each other.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: We're right about that. We're always going to be right
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: about that.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: And so let's just be a bit more confident about it.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: You never win an argument that you don't join. I
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: think that's important advice. Well, Alistair, thank you so much
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: for your time. Here's to hoping for a Labor 1997-style
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: victory at the midterms in 2026.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you what, if you don't get it,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: he'll say, okay, I'm around forever.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I'm now with Xi and Putin.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: I'm here for you.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: I know. Yeah, so if we don't win that, I'm
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: going to be talking to you about the passport again.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: So let me know.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: Hopefully you have someone in the foreign office. Thank you
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: again for your time. I really appreciate it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: No, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.
• 1:02:03
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