429. Question Time: Gaza, Genocide, and Global Hypocrisy

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics.

Sign up to The Rest is Politics Plus to enjoy ad-free listening.

Receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room, and gain early access to live show tickets.

Just go to the restispolitics.com.

That's the restispolitics.com.

The Rest is Politics is officially powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

And something else we all know is that energy deals, they're about as stable, long-term, and reliable as a, I don't know, Donald Trump promise to a country.

But not this one.

Fuse Energy is offering cheap, fixed tariffs for up to 18 months.

No price hikes, no drama.

Just a rock-solid rate you can count on.

And with the July 1st price cap, now's the perfect time to lock in a better deal.

And the average home is going to save about £100 compared to the price cap.

And that's not spin, that is real money back in your pocket.

And here's the clincher.

When you sign up, you get da-da-trip for free.

And you know by now that means afree listening.

It means bonus content like our recent mini-series on JD Vance, early access to question time and pre-sale tickets for our sell-out live shows, powering your home and your brain at the same time.

Head to fuseenergy.com/slash politics.

Download the app and use the code Politics to get a free Truck Plus subscription.

Fixed tariffs, big savings, bonus content.

What's not to love?

This podcast is brought to you by Carvana.

Got a car to sell, but no time to waste?

Hop onto Carvana.com to get a real offer for your car in seconds.

All you have to do is enter your license plate, answer a few quick questions, and if you accept the offer, Carvana will pay you as soon as you hand the keys over.

They even offer same-day pickup in many cities.

Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way to Carvana.

Pickup times vary.

Please may apply.

This podcast is brought to you by Carvana.

Buying a car shouldn't eat up your week.

That's why Carvana made it convenient.

Car buying that fits around your life, not the other way around.

You can get pre-qualified for an auto loan in just a couple of minutes and browse thousands of quality car options, all within your terms, all online, all on your schedule.

Turn car buying into a few clicks and not a full week's endeavor.

Finance and buy your car at your convenience.

On Carvana.

Financing subject to credit approval.

Additional terms and conditions may apply.

Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

And with me, Alistair Campbell.

So, Anastasia, most of our listeners,

I think, will have picked up on the fact that last week we did a very, very big focus on Israel-Gaza,

in which you came out and said that after a lot of very difficult thought, you had concluded that what Israel was doing in Gaza was genocide.

And as you can imagine, that has provoked a huge range of responses from people saying,

congratulations, Alistair, well done, that took courage, that was the right thing to do, to people saying, why are you so late on the bandwagon?

You should have said that two years ago, to people saying, this is outrageous.

How dare you

say that it is genocide.

So I just want to begin with that, because I think

it is the big, I guess, question of our time.

And I wonder what sort of response you'd got over the last week.

A lot of it, for sure.

Both on social media, people getting contact directly with the podcast, also in the numbers.

I mean, it was a very widely shared episode, and also just going around the place.

And even though I will not give any indication of this woman's identity, because she said, I really don't want to be identified, but including out walking the dog one day, meeting somebody who lives near us, who is Jewish,

works in an without giving it away, a kind of Israeli context, as it were,

and who said that she felt that the debate

generally about Israel-Gaza had made her very anxious, very scared at times that anti-Semitism was becoming a real thing.

But she felt that what we had said was true.

And she said that I just think it is indefensible.

What is going on is indefensible.

I cannot find a way to defend it.

She went on to say, the reason why I don't want to be remotely identified is because she said, I haven't yet reached that point where I feel I can say that because of the world that she's in.

So,

and just from a personal perspective, I did feel, I do feel that we've been sort of,

I think those who said, you know, what's kept you have kind of got a point.

I do feel I've been holding back out of a desire to be fair.

But I think it's very hard.

I've written a huge piece in The New World this week explaining why eventually I felt pushed towards it.

And I think actually it's this thing.

I feel it's impossible to be fair to an organisation, or in this case, a government that is being so blatantly unfair to the other side that we're

trying to be fair to.

And then the other thing that was really interesting was how many of the

one of them came through you actually, but how many of the sort of organisations directly involved in this

got involved to say,

I had two, one was Métain-Saint-Fran Frontier, who wrote to me directly, and another wrote to you, pointing out that, yes, we had focused on Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, but Article 1 is very, very relevant to other countries, including Britain.

And I'll just read it.

The contracting parties, that's basically anybody who signs up to the Genocide Convention, confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law, which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Now, the point that your friend was making is that the courts exist to punish genocide, but that the duty to prevent it is the duty that's on all states, not just any states that may be involved.

That comes first.

And that's why,

you know, it's important to see genocide not as a kind of as a single event, but as a process.

And alongside that, so Med Saint-Saint-Frontière, they sent me a letter that they've sent to Keir Starmer and to David Lamy.

And it begins: genocide is being committed in Gaza, and the UK government is complicit.

And it goes on in those terms.

So, you know, look, it provoked a very, very big response.

I'm glad that I said it.

I'm glad that we had the debate that we did.

But I accept that there are some people who are very upset by it, and other people

who basically were saying, what kept you?

There's an email that you shared with me, which was sent to you and then forwarded on to me.

So, I'm a reasonably middle-of-the-road Jewish Londoner.

And then he goes on essentially to make the arguments against what we said in our position.

So, let me just put the case which this man who describes himself as a reasonably middle-of-the-road Jewish Londoner says.

So,

he says that

he doesn't in any way support Ben Gavir and Smotrich.

He says these people, this is the finance minister and security minister, don't and never will dictate Israeli policy or the government.

Otherwise, it might have been a genocide.

Then he says if Israel wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza, this would have been done.

It doesn't and never would.

You actually know that.

Then he says, we didn't mention the hostages.

Then he says, this is a war of self-defense.

Innocents are dying because we're trying to neutralize assailants and they're hiding within the midst of their own civilian population.

Then he says, and this is I think quite central to the whole thing,

Israel is the only insurance policy me and my family and friends have ahead of the inevitable knock on my door to remind me there is no place for Jews anymore in Britain.

It's coming.

And the oxygen that you give to this Jew hatred brings that moment even closer.

And then he finishes by saying, final thing, I'm described all the way through this as the Arabist.

Here is the question.

What would you have done?

What would you do now?

All you have is irony, sneering, and attempts at spin.

Be constructive.

Suggest way forward.

You never have since October 10th, and I venture to say you never will.

And then he says, let's hope no one's removed from Gaza unless they choose to leave.

Let's just hope the disinterested nations of the region help out.

But when you two glibly talk of a prospect for a two-state solution, you have to ask yourself, would any population, government or nation, want to give statehood to a people sworn to your destruction and intended every opportunity to act on that oath?

Would you?

So essentially what he's saying, this is, just before you answer, This is the criticism that I've received, for example, from the head rabbi of the biggest synagogue in Sydney, who delivered an entire speech accusing me of anti-Semitism, which was then reprinted in the Australian edition of the Financial Times.

And essentially what he's saying to me is, I'm anti-Semitic because I'm holding Israel to higher standards than I would hold anyone else to.

I'm expecting them to show restraint,

turn the other cheek.

Whereas we all know that if we'd been in the same situation, we would have killed far more people.

And that my anti-Semitism is to demand that Israel behaves better than it would be reasonable to demand anyone else behave.

Over to you.

How did the guy describe himself?

A reasonable...

Middle of the road Jewish London.

Middle of the road, yeah.

I sent you that one, but I could have sent you the many others that he has sent me

in the past.

He's very angry about, you know, the way that...

And he's not without naming him.

He's somebody who was a friend of yours or just a colleague of yours?

No, not a friend, not anybody that I know terribly well, but...

but somebody that I think is probably a regular listener who quite likes the way we talk about most things and would probably in most circumstances find us pretty bearable, but on this finds us increasingly unbearable.

But I don't, I'm afraid I think this comes from the perspective, so just to give you one example there, he talks about how, you know, how could you possibly want to deal with this essentially saying they all want to wipe us out?

Well, look, yes, Hamas do.

But that, again, that takes me to a point that's been made the whole way through.

This is the point that Ben Gavir and Smotrich make.

And by the way, way, how can you say that these guys don't have an influence upon the government direction when they are the government direction?

These are the two people who have most driven Netanyahu to the place where maybe it's where Netanyahu is wanted to be, but the political position he finds himself in has been driven by them.

But the fact is that, you know, there are a lot of people in Gaza who hate Hamas.

And my point is that

they've been dehumanized.

And I'm afraid I think his letter

dehumanizes them as well, to the point where they're as seen as this homogenous whole.

And let me try to answer him.

He says, what would you have done differently?

Well,

you do not do what Israel has done in Gaza.

It is ethically abhorrent.

It has involved destroying every hospital in the place.

killing enormous numbers of doctors and healthcare workers and doctors are protected in international law.

And it has not achieved anything sensible.

It hasn't got the hostages home, it hasn't eliminated the Hamas leadership, so it's a military catastrophe as well as a moral catastrophe.

And what would you do differently?

Well, you would act with much more restraint, much more proportionality, you would target much more carefully.

You cannot possibly consider killing what it is, 50,000, 58,000 people

as being a reasonable response to this horrible terrorist attack, which was experienced on October 7th.

It isn't.

It is not proportional.

It's not reasonable.

And this question of what would you have done differently, not that.

Look at how Britain responded to 7-7.

And I would go further.

I do not think that the American response to 9-11 was reasonable or proportionate either.

In the end, that was madness, what unfeeled in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This didn't work out.

Or look at how India and Pakistan conducted their negotiations and their diplomacy with military activity recent weeks as well.

No, I think the other thing, where I've come from, and I think it's difficult to get this is where I think people who have always loathed Netanyahu, and I've never been a fan of Netanyahu, but I've always sort of tried to give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt because

he's such a consequential politician in one of the most important regions in the world.

But where I think it becomes intolerable is that I I think a lot of these decisions are made in the context of politics and political survival.

So what would I have done, and I think we did say this at the time, said, look, there is going to have to be some sort of response.

There's no doubt about that.

They will make a response.

They will feel, not least for their own public opinion, they have to show.

One, they're going to do everything here to get the hostages back.

And two, they're going to strike against the people that they see as being responsible for this.

But they've gone way, way, way beyond that.

The other thing I would have done would have been to understand

that soft power means something, and it means something even when,

and maybe even especially when, you're in the exercise of hard power.

By which I mean Netanyahu and the Israeli government, by the strategy they pursued, they've done enormous damage to their standing and reputation around the world.

And I would say, you say that we make Jews' lives more

dangerous.

Have a look.

We'll put it in the newsletter, but there's this incredible,

I don't even know where it was, but it's the American Jewish actor, Mandy Potinkin,

who he's so angry.

I mean, he's, you know, he's so angry.

And his main point is that Netanyahu is endangering Israel, including, he thinks, even its survival, and endangering Jews all around the world, because his actions are creating this sort of horrible sense of anger.

And

I still look, I mean, I still will try to always speak up against Hamas, always speak up for the hostages, always speak up.

And of course, this guy says we don't mention the hostages.

I mean, there is something formulaic, I think, about sometimes, about the way people go back and say, of course, I have to say this, and of course, I have to say that.

We know that the hostage-taking is horrible and abhorrent.

But the fact is that some of them who are now dead could have been kept alive if at various points down the track Netanyahu had actually tried to get them out at a time when deals could have been done, which I suspect he didn't want to do because the military strategy took precedence.

And there's another

fundamental problem in this negotiation.

which is that I was speaking to somebody who's very, very senior in Israeli national security, very close to Netanyahu,

who said to me, of course when the hostages are returned we will then have no reason not to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth so

how are you supposed to get a deal together when Hamas feels the hostages are their one guarantee on some form of restraint by the Israelis that it's the only thing that's holding the Israelis back from going even further

Why would they honestly return the remaining hostages if the sense they get is that when they return those remaining hostages, Netanyahu will just radically increase and redouble his efforts to wipe them all out.

Why would they do that?

And now, the only reason they would do that, presumably, is if there was a ceasefire deal where the US was making it so clear in its pressure on Netanyahu

that they really trusted that Netanyahu would agree not to redouble assaults, but he's not going to do that.

So I'd like actually, it'd be interesting if your friend can write back.

What does he think is going to happen here?

I mean, why does he think that what Netanyahu is doing is going to increase the chance of the hostages coming back rather than just almost guaranteeing that the final hostages won't be returned?

Yeah, or increase the long-term reputation and strength of Israel.

And I suspect, look,

he can also say, by the way, if he wants us to say who he is, I don't mind if he doesn't.

But

listen, we welcome people saying the things they they say not to be too defensive but i've just sort of been reflecting on this having been attacked in this way by the senior rabbi in australia who i i don't know but also how incredibly outspoken the chief rabbi in britain has also been and how open he's been about the fact that his own son is serving in the idf in gaza yeah and i suppose this is always the question isn't it where where the line is between religion and politics where the line is between your Jewish identity

and your support for the Israeli government.

But listen, Rory, we talked last week about this

hideous plan to put 600,000 Palestinians in a so-called humanitarian city.

Now, if you read the, if you follow the Israeli media and the IDF are opposed to this plan, There are reservists out saying this is inhumane and illegal and we want nothing to do with it.

The Lieutenant General who's in sort of the Chief of Defense Staff, part of the Chief of Defence Staff team, he was interviewed and he said this is not part of our military plan, which I think is a sort of military way of saying we're not very happy about this.

And you know, while we're on the sort of documents, and you know, the reason you argued on the main podcast against Trump and his Nobel Peace Prize is because by undermining institutions and statutes and conventions, he's making the world less safe.

Let me just give you Article 7 of the Rome Statute on crimes against humanity.

Now, it sets out there are 11 crimes against humanity, quotes, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population with knowledge of the attack.

And number four is the most relevant to this plan, which Ehud Olmert, former prime minister who we interviewed are leading a few months ago, he has said equates to a concentration cap.

But number four is deportation or forcible transfer of population.

And when you go down into what that means, they say it means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present without grounds permitted under international law.

Well,

you don't, I mean, they're even, you know, the Bengivers and Smotrich, they're saying, well,

this is the plan.

And it's sort of to get them in there and then sort of somehow shovel them off into Egypt.

So I think that, you know,

I just don't see how you can defend that on any level.

Can I come in just before we go to the break?

A couple of quite uncomfortable questions.

So Sarah L., who's a TRIP Plus member from Essex, Israel continues to make tragic errors in the prosecution of its war in Gaza.

This latest attack on children queuing for water should surely elicit a stronger response from the UK government.

I feel helpless in the face of this injustice.

What can members of the public do in response to our government's apparent acquiescence and its subservience to the US?

Do you want to have a go at that?

And then I've got another one.

Yeah, so let's just take this plan.

So Hamish Faulkner, who's the Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East, he has actually come out very strongly against it.

But in that letter that I received from the Méd-Francher have sent sent to Keir Starmer and David Lamy,

at several points in this letter where they point out where they've been asking for the British government to call out certain activities over the whole period of this thing, they keep saying, we did not get a reply.

That's just not on.

Med Sins Francher, whatever you think about it, it is a really serious, reputable humanitarian organization whose voice I think should be heard when you're talking about something like what's going on here.

And I do feel that the that the I think

you said I think you said last week David Lamy made a you know blistering speech and we've had two or three blistering speeches.

But ultimately, I think this is one of those situations where

people are turning away from it at a time when actually we should be turning into it much, much more.

So I think that when the governments speak, they

they sometimes say what I would say, say the right things,

but not necessarily in a way that is going to get noticed by Trump, by Netanyahu,

and by Israeli public opinion.

Okay, well, here's the last question then, Nasser and Amin.

And this is even more uncomfortable.

Well, thank you both for finding the right words to describe the horrors of what's going on in Gaza.

But I can't help feeling that you are both less than frank when discussing the UK's government's reluctance to go harder on Israel.

You claim you don't understand why the UK is continuing to support Israel militarily, But surely from both your positions, you know a bit more than that.

Can you please talk a bit about the role of the lobbying Israel does in the UK, how it functions and why so many in power get sucked into it.

Now, this is really awkward because this touches on a big anti-Semitic trope, which is the idea that Jewish money is somehow controlling politics.

And it's actually interesting.

I mean, I was very struck.

I was talking to

some of my Conservative friends who are beginning to speak out powerfully against what's happening in Gaza.

But again, whenever I said to them, Why do you think the Conservative Party continues to support Israel so strongly?

They keep saying, I don't know.

And I made the same challenge that Nestreen made, which is, well, what do you mean you don't know?

You know, you've been in politics all your life.

Sure, you can have an educated guess on why they keep doing it.

What is your reason on why you think the government keeps supporting Israel?

Well, finally, I'll just give you a couple of people.

I hope they don't mind me doing this, but two of the people who sent me very, very nice messages of support and very broad agreement were Michael Levy, who was the Jewish

chief fundraiser for Labor under Tony Blair, and his son Daniel, who's, I think, amazing young guy who has actually been an Israeli peace negotiator in different times, who I think have both gone from positions of being

broadly supportive of Israel in the broadest possible context, but to a place where they

cannot support the current actions of the current Israeli government.

So I think that from the government's perspective,

I suspect a lot,

I think a lot of it is probably about Trump.

I think it's just sort of, you know, they're feeling that maybe they don't quite have the influence that they would like to have with directly with Netanyahu.

Now, that's been a deliberate thing because Netanyahu cuts them out and Trump cuts them out in terms of saying, you know, we're the big strongman leaders, we're going to sort this out.

And I guess the other thing is it's because they've had, they're under so many assault on so many other fronts.

But I think that, like I said earlier, I think they say the right things from time to time.

But it's the calling out that I think is needed more.

And I thought today for you, today, you know, we're recording this on Monday.

So we've got this report today from the BBC

about the previous documentary.

The one where it turned out to be fronted by somebody who was a child of somebody who was fairly senior in Hamas.

And that was known to the documentary makers, but it wasn't made clear to the public.

And fair enough, Lisa Nandley, as the culture secretary, has called that out, and the reporters said it was mistaken, da da da da.

But I'm not aware of similar complaints, which I, of what I think was the far more egregious position in relation to the documentary that the BBC wouldn't even show.

Look, I know

the questioner there said, you know, of course you must have an educated guess.

That's the best I can do because deep down, I don't really know.

I don't really know.

Where I agree agree with you is I don't buy this idea that it's because you know rich Jewish donors give lots of money to political parties.

I just don't buy that at all.

One of the richest who's given money for many, many years to the Labour Party, as I say, was one of the first people on the phone saying, you know, well done for speaking up about it.

Alistair, just on this BBC report, a couple of quick things.

Number one.

They are pushing for an impartiality clause.

So they're saying that all narrators have to be shown to be completely impartial in their social media.

But it clearly is applied to Palestinians, but not to people who are very pro-thisraeli government.

The Bureau on the Ground in Israel, the Middle East Online Editor, their social media accounts are frequently full of very pro

Israeli government statements, but that isn't taken into account.

They're allowed absolutely to report.

It appears to be the other side is being held to a different set of standards.

The second thing is around the linguistic point.

Palestinians, when they refer to Israelis, use the word Yehudi, which originally means Jew.

And there is a big push now, which the BBC has now accepted, to translate this word as Jew rather than Israeli.

Now, this really matters, because what it means is that when Palestinians are making comments that are criticisms of Israelis, right, in the context of Israel and Palestine, it can be portrayed as criticisms of Jews in general and anti-Semitism.

And this is completely failing to understand the cultural and linguistic context in which people are using those words.

Now, these seem like small things, but this is basically part of a prolonged campaign against the BBC by various very aggressive pro-Israeli lobby groups, which have frightened the BBC into taking a position where they're being much less brave in defending their journalists and their objectivity on this issue than they are in almost anything else.

Another big point, which I think you've made in the past, but I want to sort of emphasize, is this fight against anti-Semitism, the Labour Party, and trying to distance themselves from Jeremy Corbyn.

I mean, I felt that in our interview on leading with Gabriel Atal, the former Prime Minister of France, who didn't really want to be drawn in criticism of Israel, very much said, well, I don't really have a view on that, but kept coming back to anti-Semitism in France.

And so domestic politics seems to drive people who were on the left in the case of Atal or some to feel that the main thing they need to be talking about is domestic anti-Semitism, not the actions of Israel?

I think there is definitely, that is an element within this, and I think that was particularly relevant in the early days, post-October the 7th, when Israel, you know, we said on the very first podcast, you know, Israel's response is, you know, I really fear for what they're going to do to the people in Gaza.

I mean, it's been way worse than anything I expected.

But I think at that point, Labor's...

messaging was driven partly by a genuine sense of solidarity, you know, a country that's under such attack, right to exist, Israel's right to exist, which they keep emphasizing, which is fair enough, hostages.

But I think a part of it was that they were just

slightly in a defensive crouch because they're thinking people are going to be looking for the slightest sign that Labour is, quotes, anti-Semitic because of all the rows that we'd had under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

And meanwhile,

I think Israel has deliberately, as part of its strategy, got to a a place where it feels comfortable in making the allegation of anti-Semitism against anybody who criticizes the Israeli government.

And that's, I think, part of the badness that

we're now dealing with.

Anyway, thank you to everybody who took the trouble to listen.

Shall we take a break?

Let's take a quick break and we'll come back after the break.

This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

Summer.

The season of sunburns, sand in your suitcase, and unsecured hotel Wi-Fi called something like Guest123.

So from Conwell Wall to Croatia, people connect to whatever network is nearest.

No password, no protection, just you, your inbox, and a stranger monitoring your keystrokes in flip-flops.

That's a very good reason to use NordVPN, which is what I use.

It encrypts your connection.

NordVPN masks your IP.

It blocks unwanted trackers.

So it's not just safer, it's also smarter.

Whether you're booking last-minute flights or chasing end-of-season hotel deals, NordVPN keeps online prices honest.

It's the one bit of your setup that works exactly as it should, whether you're at home, abroad, or somewhere in between.

So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com/slash rest is politics.

Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan.

There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee.

The link is in the podcast episode description box.

This is an ad from BetterHelp.

All of us, I think, often do find guidance in very unlikely places, an accidental meeting, seeing someone that we haven't seen for a long time.

But there's something quite different that you can get from a therapist, from a trained professional who has actually had the discipline and the experience to engage.

And BetterHelp has been doing this, finding the right matches between people and their therapists for over 10 years.

They start with a short questionnaire, which helps you connect to an experienced therapist whose expertise aligns with your needs.

And if the match isn't right, you can change it anytime at no extra cost.

It's entirely online.

You can pause your subscription whenever you wish.

BetterHelp has already supported more than 5 million people worldwide.

And for many of them, a right match can guide them through not just the moment, but can make a real, real difference.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash restpolitics.

That's betterhelp.com/slash restpolitics.

Say hello to the next generation of Zendesk AI agents.

Built to deliver resolutions for everyone.

Zendesk AI agents easily deploy in minutes, not months, to resolve 30% of customer and employee interactions on day one.

quickly turning monotonous tasks into autonomous solutions.

Loved by over 10,000 companies, Zendesk AI makes service teams more efficient, businesses run better, and your customers happier.

That's the Zendesk AI effect.

Find out more at zendesk.com.

Welcome back to Risk Broad.

It's Question Time with me, Arist Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart.

So a question from Fatima Shah.

Will Starmer and Macron's migrant deal actually provide a serious solution to what is now a big problem in Europe, or is this just another Rwanda deal remix?

So just to explain, this is something which is the first step towards something that I've been a real believer in and I wished we've been doing from the past.

And in fact, you got cross with me, understandably, because I was kept interrupting the unfortunate Gabrielle Atal, the French Prime Minister, by trying to push him on this issue.

But it seems to me ridiculous that

people are able to leave France, which is a safe country, on very dangerous rubber boats, often actually drowning in the channel, in order to claim asylum in the United Kingdom.

It should stop.

And everybody who comes over should be sent back to France.

And obviously the reason I was pressing Gabriel Atal is that he sees that as being an obvious position for France to take to North Africa, but seems to find it a bit more difficult to see it as a position that Britain could take towards France.

Anyway, Macron and Starmer seem to have agreed this, although sadly still in pretty limited terms, because they're only talking about being able to do it to 50 a week and people who haven't tried to cross before.

And I'm not quite sure why they're limiting the numbers in that way.

Anyway, over to you.

Well, I think they're limiting the numbers in that way because they're going to see whether it works as a pilot, as a pilot scheme.

Can I just interrupt there for a second?

I don't think it will work unless it's 100% of people.

I think the whole point of it, unfortunately, is a deterrent.

The whole point has to be to see whether it'll work.

What you, I think, would find, and this is the risk Macron would have to take, is that in the first few weeks, you would be returning thousands of people, but thereafter you wouldn't have to return anybody because nobody would go to the trouble and the expense.

You're paying 10,000 euros to get on a boat.

You're taking the risk of drowning.

If in 100% of cases you're just going to be returned to France, you'd never do it.

So the numbers would drop literally to zero from however many thousands, but doing it with 50 a week destroys the whole thing from the beginning.

Yeah,

I just point out to all those right-wing newspapers who've already decided this is an absolute disaster, and to Nigel Farage, who was busy floating around the channel on the day that this deal was announced, that we did, under the Dublin Convention have an agreement that we could send

asylum seekers back to the first port of entry into the European Union.

So that is this is a consequence of Brexit and I shall keep pointing that out.

I thought I mean the state visit generally I thought was pretty good and

I thought there was and actually I thought one of the we talked about defence on the main podcast I thought there was

I actually thought the nuclear deal that they did was pretty amazing to think that this was sort of, you know, anglo-france european nuclear protection thing i also thought that your friend the

your friend the king came out and did his bit and uh so i think as a as an event i thought it was very very good can i just stop on that for a second i mean obviously i'm i'm fishing for compliments the king but i i do think there's a sense in which these state banquets since the king's taken over we saw it with france we saw it with qatar we saw it with his opening of parliament in canada there is a real sense in which quite a lot of british soft power foreign policy is partly played out through the mechanism of

these royal events being tied in with what the Prime Minister is doing, or am I missing something?

No,

I think you're right.

And

he's going to have to rely on all of his diplomatic experience and skills

mid-September when the

President Orange arrives to go and be put up at Windsor.

But the thing is that on this one-in, one-out thing, the only thing I felt was that I think they've got to be very, very careful on this about the oversell.

By the way, in answer to the question, Fatima, I don't see it as another Rwanda deal remix because the Rwanda deal, I think, was just this massively expensive, constantly being ramped up nonsense.

It was never, ever going to work.

But I think the way to sell, to project this idea is not to say this is going to solve everything.

It is an idea to see whether they can make a difference and hope that if they do, they can then ramp it up and ramp it up and ramp it up.

I think there will be difficulties within the European Union on this because, you know, we interviewed the president of Cyprus a few weeks ago.

And if you're Cyprus, Italy,

Spain, Portugal, Greece,

you may be thinking, well, hold on a minute, what's all this about?

Are the Brits kind of, you know, going to be able to send people back to France?

Because once they're in France, they're not going to stay there.

They might want to, you know, travel around all over the place.

So I think it's fraught.

But I think where it played to Takirstan's strengths

and I think the

work that went into this was, I think, quite impressive.

It's not going to change overnight.

I think we should be honest about that, but it could make a difference provided this scheme starts to work.

Well, the next stage, I think, is to integrate, and this is where I give credit to Atal, is to integrate it into a broader European position.

on returns from Europe to safe third countries, like the EU-Turkey deal.

So not returns to Rwanda, Rwanda, but returns to North Africa or Turkey.

And if it was integrated into that, you could have a system where Europe was deciding how many genuine asylum seekers it would take every year, shouldn't be heading for zero, how many genuine asylum seekers Britain would be taking every year, but also not accepting the idea that just any young man who gets on a boat across the Mediterranean or the Channel is almost automatically accepted because that is just,

well, partly it's driving extreme right-wing populist parties that will destabilize all of our governments and partly it just doesn't make sense in terms of natural justice compared to the other people who are more deserving of asylum yeah can I make one final point on on Macron's visit at the press conference I don't know if you saw the press conference that he did with Keir Starmer and at the speech that he did at the state banquet and another couple of times he sort of did call out Brexit and did say look Brexit's been bad for us but it's been very very bad for you and da da da da and the more I think about about it, I am absolutely convinced.

Now, this may be me falling into the trap of the

labor source who thinks that I'm not in touch with the sentiment of the country.

But I honestly believe that one of the best attack lines against Nigel Farage is along these lines.

I could see that Keir was a bit comfortable, said, Oh, Emmanuel, don't go on about Brexit too much.

I don't want to talk about that.

But I actually think it would have been really powerful to come in and said, you know, and while I'm sorting this out, there's Nigel Farage out on a boat as we speak with his friends from GB News, because he's trying to exploit the problem rather than address the problem.

And this is the line I would use, the line of attack I would use.

This guy's one achievement in his entire career is Brexit.

And it has done the country a lot of harm, which we're now trying to fix.

But for heaven's sake, do not give the whole country to a guy whose one big achievement has been such a disaster.

I actually think that is a better line of attack than, you know he's going to privatize the health service and he's a bit of a pal of putin do that all as well but anyway that's my um

what do i know rory what do you know right well on to spain lilia raya given prime minister pedro sanchez's initial ascent to power on a promise to clean up spanish politics how do the ongoing corruption allegations involving his party and family coupled with his claims of an orchestrated campaign affect his political credibility and stability of his government so we've covered Spain a bit, we've covered Portugal a bit, and of course we talked about the Iberian exception in the sense that Spain and Portugal traditionally were supposed to be the countries that didn't have these great populist parties, but populism is now on the rise in Portugal and Spain, as are these corruption allegations.

And this one, just to sort of, for international listeners, essentially three of his of the Prime Minister's very, very closest advisors, allies, strategists.

I mean, this would almost be like for Britishists as

Tony Blair's relationship, I don't know, with you, with Jonathan Powell, with Angie Hunter, with Peter Mandelson.

And it's them, and they're called, I think, the Peugeot gang, because they were the people that traveled around with him in his car, have now been caught up in these unbelievable corruption scandals, which have included the Civil Guard basically taping the guy that Sanchez has been defending to the hilt,

saying that he's going to be taking money from government construction contracts.

Over to you.

And then, in the middle of all this,

in a debate in Parliament, the opposition leader stands up and says that Sanchez's father-in-law, father of his wife, and therefore part of the wealth that he enjoys, made all his money from running gay brothels.

I've missed that.

This actually has given Sanchez the ability to go out and say, this is now just a complete, you do the Trump you think.

It's a witch hunt.

They just had to get me.

They're going for my family and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

But it's a bit of a mess.

And at a time when, economically,

largely thanks to migration, they say, Spain has been doing reasonably well.

I said in the main podcast I was at Wimbledon, and also there same day was Nick Clegg and Miriam Clegg.

And Miriam Clegg, who we talked to about, you know, her campaign to sort of get sensible centrist politics in Spain.

But this has the feel of a not necessarily, I don't know anything about the gay brothel stuff, but the other thing feels very, particularly as he made such a big thing about corruption, feels pretty ropey.

And we're going to have to see how he gets through it.

And also right in the middle of this, I mean, this is how politics goes, right in the middle of this, they've had these terrible floods suddenly, another sort of climate crisis disaster but terrible floods who's having to deal with that and he's also being being being threatened i mean just to sort of sidebar to relate to the podcast we did yesterday he's being threatened by trump because he's also said that he won't uh increase defense spending up to the nato uh five percent from two percent he says frankly spain can't afford it and he doesn't think it's the right thing to do and and we're now getting trump suggesting he may take economic sanction action against spain yeah Where the opposition are trying to push this is, you know, to try to force him to have another election, which he's currently resisting.

But I think it's one where

we may be

coming back to that one.

Now, Rory,

Talya Jole wants to know, we're really asking us about the PKK's disarmament.

And I find this incredible.

I agree.

It's just an extraordinary story that nobody seems to be talking about.

Just quickly as an explainer explainer for listeners, this is Turkey.

This is the Kurdish movement in Turkey.

So people remember the Kurds are a completely separate ethnic and linguistic group that

are located in the east of Turkey, the northwest of Iraq,

the west of Iran, the east of Syria.

In fact, they almost got their own independent state after the First World War, but ended up being divided amongst four countries and

have been conducting a long ongoing insurgency against the Turkish government and the Turkish military.

Great book about it by Christopher Berlaig that I need to plug.

He actually spent serious time out in very dangerous parts of eastern Turkey living with Kurdish separatists, living to Kauravis.

And then, as you say, suddenly, astonishingly, after decades of conflict, this announcement of peace and disarmament.

Back over to you.

Yeah.

And, you know, so when I heard it, and this came from the PKK leader Abdullah Oqchalan, who's been in jail for decades, but is obviously,

I think he's been in prison all of this century and maybe a bit more.

And

they're basically saying they'd like him to be released.

Well, you know, who doesn't want to get released from prison?

But in order that he can maybe lead the process of disarmament.

So they're essentially, so it felt to me a little bit like, I thought, well, this is going to be like the Good Friday Agreement all over again.

It's going to be like a massive sort of, you know, but it sort of came and went.

It was hardly,

I bet most of our listeners aren't even aware of this, that this, this has happened, I think is an extraordinary thing.

It tells you a lot, doesn't it, about

how weirdly the world has changed.

Because my guess is if this had happened in the 90s,

this would, like South Africa and Ireland, be seen as one of the great peace deals.

People be talking about Nobel Prizes, instead of which now the whole world is all about conflict, authoritarianism.

So if we think about Turkey at all, we think about it in terms of, you know, what's Turkey doing with Europe and Russia?

What does Trump think of Erdogan?

How is Erdogan stealing elections?

Here's a thought.

What about if, let's just say this thing holds and it sort of all works.

What about Erdogan gets the peace prize?

I mean, Trump could hardly complain about one of his fellow strongmen leaders getting the peace prize.

Actually,

your point, Rory, and maybe this could be the final question.

It relates to this.

L.

Cowley, is it just me who was depressed by the 40th anniversary of LiveAid?

I love the nostalgia, but it was proof of how we've lost our soft power and also how disengaged artists are.

We need more Bob Geldoffs.

Will we ever see a return to this kind of movement?

Now, I've got a lot to say about this because I was at LiveAid as a Daily Mirror journalist 40 years ago this week, age 28.

It was an incredible event, absolutely unbelievable.

And I looked up all all my old cuttings the other day, and it really was amazing.

Just for international listeners, younger listeners, just to remind us, there have been a horrible civil war and conflict in Ethiopia, which ended up with millions of people starving.

BBC Michael Burke did a report on the horror.

That then led to this massive movement to try to raise money.

I suppose food, shelter, support for people dying in Ethiopia, which led to this incredible musical event and maybe sort of contributed towards other things which is make poverty history

sustainable development goals millennial development goals and this was the first real visible attempt at that over to you yeah there was the Bangladesh concert that George Harrison started that was a pretty amazing thing but I think this was an extraordinary event the the day itself was just amazing I mean you know every

major singer and band that you can think of as I know you're not big into music Rory but even you will have heard of you know, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, and David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury, and Adamant, and Spandau Ballet.

I could go on and on and on, on.

It was just incredible.

And so, last night, I was at the

gala performance of the Live Aid musical, which John O'Farrell has written, and it is absolutely brilliant.

Honestly, for people who haven't seen it, it's unbelievable.

Partly because of the music, but also the way he tells the story.

Because the story essentially is Bob Geldof watching that report

and just basically saying, in typical Bob Keldoff way, you know, fuck it, we've got to do something about this.

Michael Burke was there last night, went up on stage at the end with Bob Geldoff and Harvey Goldsmith, the promoter, and John Kennedy, the lawyer, who's been the lawyer for Bandaid for 40 years, unpaid.

Just an amazing group of people.

Michael Grade, who BBC gave time for the single, when

how the story started, they first of all did the song, Do They Know It's Christmas, then the Americans did a song, then they decided to do this Wembley concert, and then they had it on the simultaneously one going on in Philadelphia, and famously Phil Collins performed in Wembley, then got on Concorde and performed in Philadelphia before it had finished.

So it was just an amazing day, but the question is actually a brilliant question, and Bob Geldoff kind of answered it.

And Midge Yore, who was the other founder, Bob Geldoff and Midge Your they wrote the song that started the whole thing.

And I saw Mid Your last night and had a chat with him.

He listens to the podcast, by the way, Rory, and so does his wife.

I think even Bob Goloff does occasionally, although, as you can imagine, he's occasionally quite weird about it.

A bit grumpy about it, yeah, and sort of disagrees.

But he'll presumably say something unpleasant about this relentless plugging of his brilliance and his genius.

He had a great comment on that.

He said, I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history.

That's saying his other one was We Are the World.

No, listen, I'll tell you what,

he's an amazing guy.

I mean, if most politicians could think he has got a legacy, we talk about legacy in politics.

He has got a legacy.

Live aid is a real thing.

It's still going on.

It's still giving money.

And the fact that people are going to see musicals about it 40 years on.

And I watched some of them.

They showed the whole thing again on BBC Two the other day.

It was amazing.

But the point is.

Could it happen again?

That's what El Cowley is asking.

Could, you know, why aren't we doing this now for climate or for Gaza or for Sudan or whatever it might be?

And I think there's lots of reasons.

One One is, I don't think we watch the same things in the same way anymore.

So, if the BBC did a report like that today, would we all be affected in the same way?

Has social media made us a bit more uncaring about some of this stuff?

Have the artists become less outspoken because they're constantly worried of being cancelled?

What Mid Yours said when I was talking to him, by the way, he said that the problem is I think that people are now so distracted in their lives.

There's so many distractions, and a lot of them are just on their phone the whole time.

Anyway,

I would recommend it to anybody.

I left the place singing, whistling, springing in my step thinking, let's find a way of doing this kind of thing again.

Let me just add a couple more thoughts on that.

I think it's a hugely important thing because it goes to the heart of how have we managed to cut UK development aid from 0.7% of GDP.

Boris Johnston got it down to 0.5.

Kirstam's now got it down to 0.3.

So

it's less than half of what it was when I was responsible for that budget.

How have we done it?

Well, partly,

this is the story of

Live Aid and everything that's going on there, which is that

we've become much more cynical, much more focused on corruption.

much more doubt about whether charities do a good job, much more suspicion of celebrities, but also the

falling away of other things, not just the charisma of musicians, but also churches, which were very, very important right the way through the 90s and raising money for international development, the trade union movement, its sense of solidarity also crumbling away.

It's civil society in general.

I mean, once civic society is dismantled, then government doing things with public money becomes more difficult.

I remember talking to Bob Geldoff about this, and actually, I think he's great.

And if I can, I'd like to twist your arm into getting him on leading, because I think he is terrific on this stuff.

But he sort of saw the high point of this being your G8 conference in Glen Eagles.

He saw that as sort of the end of it.

And I guess 2000 was the last moment where he really felt that musicians and celebrities were really able to move the dial on things.

And this returns to the whole narrative we keep coming back to, which is this sort of strange moment of the late 80s, 90s, early 2000s, when

this sort of idealism, make poverty history,

international development, rules-based order all seem to be on the rise, democracy on the rise, compared to a world which seemed to turn quite suddenly about 20 years ago in the direction we're going today.

Yeah, if you look at, you know,

Bob, in classic Bob style,

he was told not to make, I think, you know, the theatre said, look, don't...

don't swear too much.

Well, that's ridiculous, you know, but don't make it, don't make it too political.

And one of the first things he said was, you know, how have we gone from that to this world where these thugs, these fucking thugs, Trump and Musk and Vance, are killing kindness in the world.

I thought that was a great phrase, killing kindness in the world.

And if you think about the whole celebrity thing,

it'd be interesting to know what Taylor Swift thinks about her experience of getting her head above the parapet in politics during the last campaign in America.

and whether she would want to put her voice to something political.

Look at Lastonbury recently, you know, we had the whole debate about the rapper and the chance for the IDF and what have you, but that aside, there wasn't much politics

in that event this year.

A bit of Rod Stewart and Nigel Farage, and that was about it.

So I think that

I felt very nostalgic at this thing yesterday, but I also felt I don't believe

that there isn't still within us the energy and the passion and the politics to not, you're never going to recreate the same thing, but I still think you could find a campaign issue that did generate that sense of energy around culture and the arts.

And I think if we, if, if it doesn't, then I don't think culture and the arts is as healthy as it was.

And your point about cynicism, Roy, I mean, the headline of the week has got to be, needless to say, the Daily Telegraph.

I just saw it on somebody's phone and it was How Live Aid Ruined Pop Music for Good.

I don't know what the piece was about,

but

I thought,

where the fuck are they coming from?

How Live Ed ruined pop music for good.

Anyway, it's a great night out, and I'll tell you, arise, Sir Bob.

I know he's already got his knighthood, but

and your friend Charles and Diana, they were both there at Live Ed as well.

In fact, one of the pictures in my cuttings was Charles looking a bit grumpy because Diana she looked like she might have had the eye for David Bowie a little bit.

He was looking very fondly towards him.

Well, there we were, finishing with a lovely sense of idealism and hope for music and culture.

So let's get back to that and away from your dubious insinuations.

Back to I love that point that we should find

themes and stories that we can get behind, that we need modern heroes, that we need noble purpose.

And

let's aim towards that.

Thank you.

That was a lovely chat.

See you soon.

See you soon.

Bye-bye.