402. Question Time: India vs. Pakistan | What Happens Now?

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 therestispolitics.com.

The Rust is Politics is as ever powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

And if you've got an electric vehicle or you're thinking of switching, Fuse can help you with that.

They're offering a new overnight charging tariff that makes things very, very simple.

It's available now through their iOS app, and Android's on its way.

It works with a wide and growing range of home chargers.

No obscure hardware, no complicated setup.

You just plug in, you charge overnight and you're on your way.

And you can even get that electric vehicle charger installed at home in as little as seven days depending on your setup.

Hardware fitting the whole lot handled.

Which, let's be honest, is not something you hear about every product you deal with.

And when you sign up, you'll get Trip Plus membership completely free.

That's not just ad-free listening.

That's the amazing bonus episodes and unique interviews that we do, early access to question time, and pre-sale tickets to our live shows.

So while your car charges, you're also helping our podcast.

Just head to getfuse.com/slash politics, download the app and use the code Politics when you sign up.

Practical, painless, no committee required.

Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart.

You will notice that we are dressed in a certain way now, me in a shirt and tie and Rory in one of his Afghan waistcoats, and then later in the program wearing very different clothes.

And the reason for that is that we recorded most of what you're about to hear yesterday.

And we also talked about Kashmir because we had a question from none other than a man named Mustafa Suleiman,

internet guru.

and who's been on leading before and he asked a question our introduction to the history of kashmir was what he called extremely lightweight and completely glossed over the important colonial context.

So we talked about that and we talked about Kashmir, but of course since then,

and I regret to say, as we predicted after the terrorist attack in Kashmir a couple of weeks ago now, India has taken action against Pakistan, blamed Pakistan for the terror attack.

They've launched, they've targeted nine different sites, insisting that they're all what they call terrorist infrastructure.

So we have India saying that 10 people have died, 32 injured, Pakistan saying 26 people have been killed, 46 injured, and Pakistan also saying that they claim to have shot down five Indian fighter jets.

So this is very, very, very tense.

Rory, what do you make of it?

Well,

two weeks ago we discussed the options that face Modi.

So there was this very, very

disturbing attack in Kashmir targeted against Indian holidaymakers, where they were massacred in this beautiful Swiss valley.

And Kashmir, as we explained, is the absolute sort of crucible of a lot of the violence in India, in particular because a predominantly Muslim population,

which was reluctant to join India after 1947, we can get into the details of how that worked, Mustafa Suleiman's question later, but anyway, became part of the Indian state.

And after a period of relative peace, this terrorist attack happened.

And that then, as we said, was likely to lead to a series of options for Narendra Modi.

2016-19 when there were attacks India did respond and what we pointed out two weeks ago is that the big debate

was what kind of response.

Was it going to be a response within

Jammu Kashmir?

Was it going to be a response within Pakistan occupied Kashmir?

Was it going to be within Hybra Pakhtunwala?

Or was it going to go into Punjab itself?

And the closer it got into Punjab, the more risky we thought it would be.

And indeed, it has happened in Punjab.

One of these attacks is only 30 kilometers away from Lahore.

And the reason that matters is that Punjab is the big population economic center of Pakistan.

This isn't an attack simply up on the border region.

So it's got symbolic importance.

But as you say, it seems to have been a relatively

limited strike.

Now, these are all relative terms, but the footage suggests it was more on the precision end.

And India, at least, is claiming that the people struck were people actively involved in planning new terrorist attacks on India.

Now, you and I will remember from Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere that that is what governments tend to say, and sometimes it turns out not to be the case, and you can hit the wrong targets and your intelligence goes wrong.

But anyway, that at the moment is a story.

Well, Jazz, just jump in there.

There is a guy, Maulana Masood Azhar, who is a UN designated terrorist based in Pakistan.

He has

said publicly that 10 members of his family and four of his closest associates have been killed in the strike.

Now, I have

no idea of knowing that's true, but that

I thought that,

although I can see why he did it and why he said all the things he did, in a way that may have helped the Indian narrative that we are only targeting people involved in what they call the terrorist infrastructure.

Absolutely.

I think that

so the most optimistic scenario from the point of view of what we I suppose the world is concentrating on most, which is peace,

would be that India has done a relatively precise strike against terrorist infrastructure.

But, and here are the buts, I talked about the Punjab but.

The next butt is the butt you mentioned, which is the shooting down of these planes.

Now, India at the moment, I think, has acknowledged two planes down, not five.

But Pakistan is saying that three of the planes shot down were Rafael fighters, which India recently purchased from France and were meant to be great game changers in the Indian Air Force, because they allow you to shoot from the Indian side of the border remotely.

So there is a real sense of potential humiliation for the Indian military.

that these famed fighters were shot down.

Now, again, that isn't necessarily the end of the world because, again, in 2019 Pakistan shot down a plane, captured an Indian pilot who was quickly returned and Third World War indeed did not happen.

But there is a question of whether Modi will come under political pressure because those planes came down and then the bigger question of course is what does Pakistan do now?

And in 2019 Pakistan responded with strikes into India which India denied really happened at all and said didn't cause any damage.

What sort of strikes can Pakistan do?

Well, there are not the equivalent of these terrorist bases in India.

So they would have to hit military, paramilitary infrastructure.

And the question is, does Pakistan hit Indian military bases with soldiers in, killing people?

Or does it more symbolically hit half-deserted border posts?

And this is where the danger comes, because there are

certain factors which make it more dangerous in 2019.

One of them is the new Pakistan Chief of the Army Staff,

comes from a more religiously conservative, more nationalist background, and has been making much more inflammatory comments about India.

So you've got that Pakistan side and the Pakistani South Africa.

I think I'll just jump in on that as well, Ray.

I think what's worth saying about him as well, and about Pakistani military figures more generally,

we look at arms, we think of our military figures, and American military figures, and European military figures, who tend to be very much subordinate to the political leadership.

This is a guy whose face you will see on posters, you will see it on the back of cars and lorries.

He is a big public figure with a big public profile.

Absolutely.

And in fact, to some extent, Pakistan is a democracy under a military government.

The decision to, for example, lock up Imran Khan was driven very much by the military.

The military organized in inverted commas the elections, which means stuffed ballot boxes.

And quite a lot of the country, there are, I think we talked about this, that

when you go to the Pakistan parliament and go to visit the chief whip's office, you see a colonel standing there in the chief whip's office, effectively telling people how to do the whipping operation.

So

yeah, this man is probably the most powerful man in Pakistan, and so how he thinks about the world really matters.

On the other side, you've got a different modi,

a more confident Modi, an Indian economy that is a stronger position, that may feel under more political pressure to respond vigorously if Pakistan strikes him.

Again, the tit for tats back and forth.

And then the final difference is that we're in the world of Trump.

So

2016, 2019, there was a huge concerted effort, as you can imagine, by the old kind of international players led by the US to try to help broker peace.

This time, Trump signals strong supports for Modi, but more than that, he signals indifference.

He's not somebody who's particularly interested in getting involved in an India-Pakistan dispute.

And Modi may feel that he has more freedom and even Pakistan may feel they have more freedom to be aggressive.

So

Trump was asked about it last night and he talked about it almost as if he was a bystander.

Yeah, I just heard about that as we were coming to the Oval Office and you know these guys have been fighting for a long time.

It looks like a bad one and you know I hope they can sort this out.

And it was like very, very, very passive in the response.

And I guess the other point to make, I mean, it's not as if we don't have enough international crises going on at the moment.

I think to have Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Sudan, all the other conflicts that are going across Africa, and then to have India-Pakistan, and as we said when we discussed this a couple of weeks ago, with China very, very closely involved as having the third part of Kashmir.

I mean, I guess the other thing we have to be very wary about is in those countries, including ours, where there is a very large Indian population and a very large Pakistani population, sometimes living in the same

places.

I mean, whether we've just got to keep an eye on that kind of leading those sort of tensions spilling over as well.

Yeah, you're completely right.

When I was in Parliament, and it would have been true for you when you were in government, that the

three big issues that really hit British communities were Israel-Palestine, Cyprus and

India-Pakistan over Kashmir.

And you different MPs with different constituencies would come under huge pressure on those issues.

They're very much live issues in the British Parliament.

They're not just international issues.

So

I think

we have to watch this space.

It is a dangerous moment.

The danger, of course, is around miscalculation.

Best case scenario is Pakistan responds with a relatively calibrated, limited response.

India says, okay, that's done now.

And the whole thing dies away as it did after 2019.

Worst case scenario, Pakistan hits in a way that Modi feels forced to respond to and off we go and then of course people will point out the obvious which is that these are two nuclear armed powers.

Yeah.

Two nuclear armed powers with a very very bad history of relationships between them.

Now Kashmir.

The chief minister in Kashmir

Omar Abdullah and I don't know exactly where he stands on the on the political perspective he has been out straight away saying that the onus lies with Pakistan to, as he put it, lower the guns.

Now, is that because he is the chief minister of Kashmir wanting to bring down the temperature, or is that because he's the chief minister of Kashmir?

Because what I'd heard before is he didn't have very good relations with the Indian government.

So, Umar Abdullah is

a very interesting figure.

He is, of course, a Muslim who strongly opposed the decision by Modi to make Kashmir a federally administered territory.

He

was criticized for having meetings with the Pakistan government.

So to some extent, if you're a Hindu nationalist, Umar Abduro is a slightly suspect figure, and in fact, he's actually been detained in the past.

But he's also now the chief minister of an federally administered Indian state.

and therefore from the Pakistani point of view, a little bit suspect on that side.

Probably, you know, without sounding too centrist dad about it, maybe a sign that he's doing a good job if both sides are a little bit suspicious of his stance.

Final thing on him.

He was born in Rochford in Essex.

His mum is English.

And both his father and his grandfather were chief ministers of Jammu Kashmir.

And we talk about this a little bit with Japan, we talk about this a little bit with India, but you with your class analysis of politicians and their backgrounds, here's another example.

I guess the other final point for me is that economically, this is going to hurt Pakistan a lot more than India.

India, much bigger, bigger military and so forth.

And Pakistan at the moment, they've got this massive IMF bailout programme underway, and

they've got real economic problems.

So India can probably endure this

longer and with more titting and tatting than the Pakistanis.

Yes.

Although I think Pakistan's resilience and nationalism can be fueled by the economic problems, so that we have these sort of weird things.

Now, listen, because we won't now have in this episode your answer to Mustafa Suleiman,

do you want to just briefly give

an edited version of the answer that you gave and rebut the idea.

No, I don't think we should rebut it, because what we said was, we said when we discussed this, let's start in 1947.

And he essentially, Mustafa is essentially saying we didn't focus enough on the history.

Fair point.

Yeah, so Mustafa's point, which is a good one, is that a lot of the tension between

Muslim and Hindu communities in India does partly reflect the fact that the British Empire, the Raj,

emphasized those identities, lent into them and created different legal structures.

for Muslim communities.

And part of this was a policy, frankly, of divide and rule, pitting communities against each other in order to keep the British government in place.

And partition, which created the problem in Kashmir, tore India apart, was put together very, very quickly, very hastily, the Radcliffe Commission that drew the border.

And this is something I'd love to talk to Willie Dalrymple and the Empire Pod team about, how odd it is.

Britain in India along with all the unbelievably negative things, racism, colonial exploitation, killing, looting that took place.

The one thing they traditionally prided themselves on was granular knowledge.

So, you know, John Lawrence, who was the viceroy, spent 40 years in India, spoke Indian languages fluently, spent a lot of time in rural areas.

And yet, when it came to partition, Radcliffe, who chaired the commission,

hadn't visited India, and the thing was put together in five weeks, drawing lines right the way through the middle of villages and somehow ignoring 200 years of British granular study of India in the process.

And it's also finally true that the creation of this

Kashmir problem is about the Maharaja of Kashmir, and that's partly about the British relationship with what's called the princely states.

In other words, the British Empire in India directly administered certain places, you know, Bengal and Calcutta, for example.

But there were 537, I think,

princely states ranging from tiny things about the size of my constituency around Penrith to enormous places like Hyderabad, which were ruled indirectly through political agents.

And Kashmir was one of those territories.

So thank you, Mustafa, for drawing attention to the fact that British rule is also part of the backstory for the tensions happening in Jammu and Kashmir, although I would also say it's a very, very

classic situation, which would remind you,

Arasarabit of Northern Ireland, of the real problems of

a

government, increasingly Hindu nationalist government, administering a predominantly Muslim territory, where wherever those sectarian divisions came from, even if they were exaggerated by colonial authorities, are very real.

Well, I think I've told you before about a time when we were in India and Pakistan, and we went to Pakistan first.

And I remember as we were leaving the dinner to go to India, one of the military guys just saying to me, just remind them that the missiles are not very far away.

And then with this sort of big toothy grin,

the hatred is deep, and the politics is to a large extent defined by Kashmir.

This hasn't almost become an emergency podcast, Rory, but it's what we'll call a QA,

top-up kind of emergency question.

And now, listeners can get on with listening to the stuff that we recorded yesterday.

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

And me, Alistair Campbell.

Alistair, just to put you on the spot here.

Deborah from Germany.

I think I can guess your answer to this, but should Tony Blair be expelled from the Labour Party for his egregious, backstabbing manoeuvre on the eve of the local elections?

I'm quoting Deborah here, trashing the government's net zero policy, which led to rejoicing in the ranks of reform and the conservatives and will definitely have caused some voters to switch to either reform conservatives or the Green Party.

Or Sam from Cambridge, does Alistair think Tony Blair's climate change outburst was wise, given the clear conflict of interests with the Saudi interests, or perhaps more politely, so we don't actually get your back up from the beginning and put you into fuel defensive mode.

Douglas Thackway,

do you agree with Tony Blair's intervention regarding net zero policy in the UK?

Do you agree?

Well, I'm guessing that Deborah and Sam and Douglas and the many, many, many others who asked questions about Tony Blair and net zero have not necessarily read the Tony Blair Institute report that led to the screaming front page headlines.

However, I did remind him in an exchange of messages and a phone call that he is a very experienced politician.

He knows that in the week of the local election at a time when the reform in particular are banging on about net zero, the timing was far from helpful.

Presumably in his defence, what he said to you on the phone or the text is, you know, that really wasn't what I meant.

And if people had read the full report, they would have realized they had a much more nuanced position to which your response would have been.

That's all very well, but we are three days away from the local elections, and nobody's going to read it in the way that you'd like them to.

If you do read the report, which I did afterwards, actually, there's lots where he supports what the government is doing.

He's actually making a bigger point about some of the strategic issues involved

in the move towards net zero.

But I think it's fair to say Ed Miliband was not happy.

Well, then, let me try to play devil's advocate and see if I can make the case for Tony Blair.

So channeling Blair, I think what he'd probably say is

we're in real danger of ending up with expensive energy.

You saw that British steel.

50% more for the energy to run British steel than European competitors, probably four times more than US competitors.

We are chasing dropping carbon production in the UK and killing our industries potentially in the process.

And we're not making much impact impact on the big global picture in the end because we're a pretty small economy.

That's why he was actually addressing the world rather than the UK, but yeah.

Yeah, and we're not properly taxing carbon consumption.

In other words, we push all the factories into China and we continue to buy just as many t-shirts and toys as we did in the past.

So we're not actually affecting our full carbon footprint.

So I think there are two sorts

of pretty serious arguments you can make, politics aside.

which actually have been made in some of our leading interviews.

The first argument is the argument that Dieter Helm made when we interviewed him on leading, which is that the whole thing is nonsense and the climate stuff is nonsense and the Paris targets are nonsense unless we actually put a proper global carbon tax in place, which properly puts the cost of embedded carbon into place.

And the second argument, which is the argument that was made to some extent when we interviewed Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman on the show, that the real answer to this is technology and that rather than cutting production, what we should be doing is putting a lot of money into carbon capture, AI,

nuclear fusion, and other ways.

This is exactly what Tony was saying.

And presumably because he hangs out with people like Reid Hoffman and Bill Gates.

Yeah, also because I think he has thought it through and his institute's thinking it through.

And I don't disagree with that, but I don't resile from the point that he is ultimately one of the most high-profile, experienced politicians on the planet.

Anyway,

we had some very friendly lively exchanges about uh whether it would have as i said yesterday i don't want to sound like roy keen but tony that wouldn't have happened in my day very good okay

now can i ask you about another fascinating massively important political event not well it is an election isn't it yeah we've got quite a few questions about conclave hugo craggs seems to think he speaks for all humanity.

We have all watched Conclave.

We don't know that we've all watched Conclave, but fair enough, Hugo.

A lot of people have watched Conclave, the film.

So a question to you is, who are the front runners for the papacy?

From which wing of the church are they?

And how will the various different factions play out in this Trumpian world?

Well, of course, as we said yesterday, Trump thinks he should be the Pope, but let's park that.

Let me begin by saying it's an amazing election.

And people have really seen this in that film, that Robert Harris book and the film that came out of it.

I've been talking to Rupert Short, who was the TLS religion editor and now teaches at Oxford and has written a really interesting book called The Eclipse of Christianity and Why It Matters and he's been very patient with me two hours on the conclave and what's happening with the Pope.

I'll try to digest it with apologies to Rupert who objects to simplification.

I think the first thing he'd say is that every one of these elections is a massive, massive game changer.

And the really classic example is Pius XII was in for 20 years.

They brought in someone called John XIII, who they thought was an elderly man who'd be a a safe pair of hands and not shake stuff up too much.

And he came in and brought in the Second Vatican Council, which was this biggest thing in 400 years.

Massive drive towards the kind of liberal willing, got rid of that en masse, blah, blah, blah.

But unfortunately, it was only in for a few years, at which point Paul XI arrived, who suffered from something called hamletismo, in other words, indecision,

and seemed to push

it.

Hamletismo, yeah.

Is that a genuine word?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it a Vatican word or is is it an Italian word?

I think it's more Vatican.

I think it's something that really

he embodied this.

Then we had John Paul II, who was supposed to bring strength of character and who was very, very reliant on Cardinal Ratzinger for his theology and was on the more conservative side.

And Ratzinger, of course, became Pope Benedict.

And then Pope Francis came in.

And again, this is another point, which is the complete unpredictability of these people.

And actually, I'm going to be very interested in this in a lot of these elections, because I think one of the stories of elections is you have, as you keep saying, no idea what somebody's going to be like as a leader until they're actually there.

You can't really tell whether they're sounding cautious before an election and then they come in and they're massively radical or they're sounding radical before the election, they come and don't really do very much.

Also, are these guys allowed to campaign?

Can they sort of go round the conclave?

saying, look, I don't know if you've thought this about me, but actually, I'm very this and I'm very that.

Can they do that?

Robert Harris illustrates it very well, what's happening.

So they're all locked up together.

All the cardinals are locked up together, and it's very important for this election.

No phones?

That no phones, no contact with the outside world.

There's a very naughty thing happening in Conclave, which is the man organising the election, played by Ray Fiennes, has a bit of contact with the outside world, but basically you're not supposed to have any contact with the outside world at all.

And the Ray Fiennes character in the film, is he the Irish guy who's the current sort of stand-in for the Pope, or is he the state secretary who's also one of the candidates?

Can you be the organiser and a candidate?

Yes, absolutely, which indeed Ray Fiennes was in that movie, an organiser and a candidate.

So Francis, for example, came in and people thought he was going to be quite conservative.

He'd been quite an authoritarian provincial and came in and became quite a liberal pope.

And one of the big controversies at the heart of this whole thing about what direction the church goes in is that a lot of conservatives, particularly American conservative Catholics, the kind of J.D.

Vance wing of the party, did not like the fact that he thought that you could bless divorced couples.

They also didn't like his line when asked about a sexuality.

He said, Who am I to judge?

The basic answer there is, well, you are.

You're the Pope.

You're the top man.

You're supposed to be judging.

So, so, in terms of

you mentioned Vance there, do you think that Vance's visit to meet the Pope and be publicly the last person to see him, which started all that stuff about, you know, whatever you do, don't meet J.D.

Vance, you could die the next day, added to Trump's AI photo.

Do you think that will

weaken any American influence?

Because the politicians do try to influence this event.

Yeah, they do.

They do.

And Americans are the big, big fundraisers, big philosophic fundraisers.

So one of the problems has been that some of the figures associated with sex abuse have been big American fundraisers.

And that's been a big problem in the past.

Sex abuse has has kicked in again also because the two of the leading candidates, so Paroline, who's the kind of continuity candidate.

He's the state secretary or the foreign minister, yeah.

He's the guy who did this very controversial deal with China, where China seems to have been given a sort of veto over the appointment of bishops, which led to

Cardinal Zen, who's the very famous Hong Kong bishop who bore witness against the Chinese government.

And there's some guy from the Philippines who would be the first Asian pope for a long, long time.

He's another one who

criticized him enough.

He was a big leader, but there's been a big article in the Times, very, very

credible female journalists now coming out and pointing to their role in all of this stuff so they could be taken out at the last minute by this when you say taken out we're talking

we're not talking

we're not talking mafia no no no no no but but you but you saw in the conclave that the yeah you're suddenly up and then you're gone then you're gone because you're up in the votes very very the the the voting system is almost identical to conservative leadership election the way in which it works less trust for pope and also this sort of weird thing that you see illustrated in conclave which was true for someone like me running leadership which is you can get relatively few number of votes in an early stage, but as people drop out, you can suddenly jump lots of number of votes, and then you can drop again as people flip back and forward.

I can't, I mean, I saw the film a long time ago, I can't remember.

Does it go down in the end to a vote of two between two candidates?

Two candidates.

It's not a single transferable vote thing.

You actually go through, you just drop out and then you have the vote again.

Exactly.

People drop out.

It's quite exciting, isn't it?

So very, very exciting.

And should be on telly, really.

The question, I guess, for the church is:

are they going to look, and the rumour is what they're going to be looking for, is a slightly more conservative, steady hand than Pope Francis?

Because Pope Francis, a bit like Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs in Britain, is somebody who was almost more popular with people outside the hierarchy,

the sort of general population, than he was within the hierarchy.

They thought he was maybe a bit loose.

You know, we were talking about Tony Blair.

He maybe, as an experienced man, he shouldn't have been creating headlines quite as much as he did off there.

So we'll see.

And there are some very interesting sort of marginal characters.

There's a very interesting Ghanaian candidate.

I've been reading a book recently by Robert Sarah,

who's from Guinea, who is a formidable intellectual, very profound mystic.

but also can be extraordinarily kind of conservative and intolerant about the modern world.

And I think that would be sad.

And he's almost 80.

I'm going for Matteo Zuppi.

Oh,

right.

An Italian Pope again.

I think so.

Yeah.

I think so.

Although I want, the guy I want is a guy called Aveline.

And the only, I don't know anything about him other than the fact that he's from Marseille.

And I, and I like Marseille.

I love Marseille.

I like the football team and I like the place.

Yeah.

There is an American-born guy in the running, this guy, Robert Francis Prevost, or Prevost.

The other thing I didn't realize is that one of the things that's being held against my man from Marseille is that he's not entirely fluent in Italian.

And this is a really stupid question, but is Italian the language of the Vatican?

Well, traditionally it was Latin.

Yeah,

but actually, increasingly, they don't speak Latin to each other, they speak Italian to each other.

So they do speak Italian.

Yeah, so that might be...

All the cardinals sort of speak in Italian all the time, yeah.

The reason I like Zuppi, and this is really trivialising and a very important thing, his nickname is Don Matteo,

who is a crime-solving priest on Italian television.

Very good.

Very good.

So I'm going for Zuppi, and I think to have a name beginning with Zed is quite dramatic.

Thank goodness you're not voting.

You're doing it all on the base of their names.

No, I do think it's important.

And what's extraordinary because when the white smoke comes out, which is how they announce, you know, we've got a pope,

a person that now, today, you and I have probably not heard of is going to become overnight one of the best known, most recognised, most talked about, most written about people on the planet.

It's a really interesting thing that, where suddenly they become big figures, and they could become big big figures for good, which I think most people would argue Pope Francis did, or for bad.

Well, I'm going to come now to a question for you from Ronnie, but just a sort of small note.

The church in many ways pioneered democracy.

I was very struck by the fact that...

That's not a small note.

That's a really big note.

We could do a whole episode on that.

Well, it just struck, when I stayed in monasteries, it's almost always been the case that the abbot is elected.

by the other monks.

And that's been true from the very, very earliest days.

And it's really interesting because they'll spend 20 years looking at this person and then they'll even Trappist ones who don't even speak, they look at this person and choose them.

Right.

Ronnie, given Germany's history, it seems appropriate that the German spy agency has labelled the AFD an extremist group.

Why have so many Americans leapt to the AFD's defence?

So tell us about this as our German expert.

Well, so the German...

It's not quite the equivalent of MI5, but it's a sort of the intelligence agency that

part of its role is to ensure that the German constitution is upheld.

And there's been this debate, there was a debate actually about whether they should have done this before the election and they felt they had to stay out of politics.

So they didn't do it before that, but it was widely expected that they would identify the AFD as a far-right extremist party.

Interestingly, one of their MPs has stood down on the back of it.

I think if this was Trumpian, and it's the same as Le Pen, Le Pen, the judgment that she cannot stand, seems to have been broadly accepted by the public.

And likewise, so this is one of of their representatives who said, no, if we're identified as right-wing extremist, I can't be part of this.

But I think what the danger with it at a time when you've got the new government coming in, Mertz, as we're speaking, has just lost a vote to become chancellor in the parliament.

He was expecting to win on the first vote.

So there is the danger that you have the Romanian effect, this sense that if you're taking people away from what the public have done, the public have voted for these people to have some say in their lives and you're then saying no they can't be part of this debate.

We're going to see similar here by the way.

We talked in our local elections yesterday.

You've got a very interesting case in Doncaster where the mayor has been re-elected, who's Labour, but the council has gone overwhelmingly reform.

And it's, you know, how does that relationship now work out?

So

I think this debate, the government, Mertz has been quite cautious about it.

He said the Interior Ministry has to study the report, et cetera, et cetera.

But they're going to have to make big, big, big judgments because how can you identify a party as being right-wing extremist and essentially anti-constitutional?

Yeah.

And yet at the same time, they've got this huge block sitting there in the parliaments.

It's quite a big problem.

Yeah, a big, big problem.

And of course, set up after the Second World War

deliberately to prevent the rise of another Nazi party.

And so there's a very formal technocratic procedure where these agencies, spies, the Constitutional Court, weighs all the evidence.

And so they determined in the past that it was okay to refer to some AFD members as fascists.

Now they've been labeled as extremists, but this really matters because it's all about trying to protect the German Constitution.

Yeah.

And the other part of the question about the people weighing in, I mean, two of the first people to weigh in were J.D.

Vance and Marco Rubio.

If I were Mark Carney,

a head of the G7, I think I would, which is coming shortly, I think I would sort of write to all the leaders and say, I'm happy for this meeting to go ahead, but I really think it's about time that we stopped interfering in each other's domestic politics.

Shut up about the 51st State.

Shut up about the AFD.

Tell your friend Musk to shut up about riots in the UK.

I mean, what the hell has it got to do with J.D.

Vance?

The Marco Rubio thing is also weird.

And also, he doesn't believe it for a second.

I was talking to a very senior American State Department diplomat who was responsible for all their policy in Africa.

And she was explaining to me that in African elections, you know, even as recently as four months ago, inconceivable that they would ever have backed one party over another, made any public statements as the American government.

In fact, they actually went out of their way always to reach out with equal time to all the leading candidates.

This thing of, I mean, the CIA, of course, in the 70s and 80s, they used to feel it all time.

But covertly.

But not the politicians.

I mean, it's really, really weird.

But also Trump last week had, is it the Polish presidential election that's coming up, and he had the opposition candidate in the White House last week saying what a great guy he was.

So this is absolute blatant interference.

And it's usually based on ignorance.

It's usually based on them not understanding.

So the fact is, would J.D.

Vance understand what the German Constitution says, why this matters, why it's rooted in law and in history?

I think what's so interesting about this particular Trump government is I think I'm right in saying it's the American government which is the least European in terms of its experience of any American government that I can ever think of.

Many of them in the past would have spent some time studying at European universities, they would have served in the military in Germany, they would have fought alongside Europeans.

It's very, very interesting how little contact emotionally they have to Europe.

The other thing about Vance, I thought of this in relation to the Pope,

when Trump did

the AI picture of him as the Pope, here's this guy who's like, you know, allegedly a kind of really big Catholic.

Why is he saying nothing?

The MAGA crowd, you remember when the French, the Paris Olympic opening ceremony, there was that sketch about the Last Supper?

The MAGA crowd went nuts.

They went absolutely crazy about it.

This is sacrilegious.

There's

his boss,

Trump, posing as the Pope, and Vance says, oh, that's all fine.

Let me rant on about the AFD in Germany instead.

Okay, Rory, quick break.

Then I want to ask you about King Charles heading to Canada.

Good.

Look forward to it.

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.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

No.

Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome back to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart.

So Patrick Kealty, I'm assuming, because I do know he listens, that may be Patrick Kealty, the presenter of the Late, Late Show in Dublin.

What do you make of the timing of King Charles' visit to Canada, where he will open Parliament and deliver the speech from the throne?

A monarch has not delivered a throne speech in Canada since 1977 or opened the Canadian Parliament since 1957.

Now, I think this is your friend the King sending a very strong message to DJ Trump.

Well, yeah, to remind everybody, of course, King Charles is

the head of state of Canada and Australia and New Zealand and the United Kingdom and other places too.

And he's in a very interesting position because the king is somebody that Trump seems to venerate.

He seems to have, and Trump claims it's because of his mother, this very strong interest in the monarchy.

And I think the Mooch has reflected on this a bit that because maybe because Trump sort of sees himself as a bit of a monarch, he's really interested in these kind of ancient institutions.

And so the king is in a a very interesting position because he seems to have this kind of credibility and leverage.

It was used by Kierstama because of course King Charles is a constitutional monarch so he has to respond to the elected government.

Kiostama used a letter from King Charles

to invite Trump on a state visit, which caused a lot of controversy.

And Canadians felt very angry about this because this was happening at the same time as Trump was saying that Canada should be the 51st state.

What the king essentially symbolises is a statement of, excuse me, Donald Trump, Canada isn't a 51st state.

I'm the head of state of Canada.

And insofar as you claim to have this great reverence for me and my institution, you're trying to take part of a country that I'm the head of state of.

They also have a strong relationship, Mark Carney and the King, because they work very, very closely on climate finance and sustainable market initiative back when Mark Carney was working at the Bank of England.

They had a huge interest in.

We talked about Tony Blair and Net Zero.

What the King and Mark Carney were really focused on is how you get the corporate sector and the trillions of finance behind shift to renewable biodiversity.

And of course, Mark Carney visited the King when he was over.

So I think it's something which is very deliberate and it's an interesting question of the ways in which British soft power could continue to operate this trouble.

Also because, I mean, look, Mark Carney's had huge attention around the world because of the nature of his rise, becoming prime minister, winning the election.

But it also means that here we are today,

we're speaking on the day that the new German government is taking office.

Now, it might be on the news a bit, but it won't be kind of wall-to-wall across the news channels.

But the fact of

King Charles going to open the Canadian Parliament means that Mark Carney's first King speech is going to get way more global attention than it otherwise would.

And you can bet your bottom dollar it's going to be shown live on all the American channels, which, of course, Trump will be hopping between.

I think it's a great move.

And I, you know, as you say, when the king does something on behalf of the UK government, whether it was taking part in the VE Day things or whatever, or as you say, opening the parliament, he will not have done this without probably having had it suggested by Mark Carney and would probably wanted to have checked with the UK government as well.

I don't know how

this specifically works.

So that means he has been confronted with the choice and he's decided, yep, I'm going to do that.

Good for him, I say.

Question for you on the UK and Europe.

Geishfar from Scotland, what effect would Britain returning to the European single market have on the British farming sector?

Would it benefit or harm agricultural interests in the UK?

Positive and benefit.

And one of the things I said yesterday that

I was worried that the reaction to the local elections will be to kind of be a bit more reformy in some areas.

I am really

more and more of the view that on the Brexit issues, the government has to be less timid, more ambitious.

Got this big meeting on May the 19th, Kirstama hosting European Union heads of government.

I really think something

really big has got to come out of that in terms of signaling direction.

It won't be this, but I think there are so many different areas where the government could be coming to an arrangement with the Europeans that would get us in a better place.

But it's a big, big, big political choice.

And, you know, I do think we've just been too timid about this because we don't, we keep saying we don't want to revisit the arguments of 2016.

It's almost a decade ago now.

But I think it's become settled, even amongst Brexiteers, I mean loads of them, that, you know, well, regardless of what I thought at the time, it's not really gone as planned.

So that gives the government an opportunity.

A small footnote on farmers.

The small farmers in particular were a real beneficiary of the common agricultural policy because France and many of the Mediterranean members of the European Union really believe in farmers, really believe in their role in culture, their role in communities, their role in the landscape.

And so they had these single farm payments designed basically to keep small farms alive.

And

in Scotland and Wales, essentially these structures remained in place, but England, under both the Conservatives and Labour, went really weirdly ideological and basically against small farmers, put all the emphasis either on biodiversity and rewilding from the environmental side or on production and scale, big farms on the other side.

And in my former constituency, Cumbria, you can see so quickly that we're going to be losing, in some cases, hundreds of years worth of landscape and things we've preserved, in some cases almost since the Norman Conquest.

falling very, very quickly away.

And within 10, 15 years, people will go into the landscapes of places like the lake district and there won't be farms there anymore and we will miss them terribly and it's nowhere in our debate now we've got a question here rather shameless self-plugging by one of our colleagues in the podcast world mr al murray oh yes their podcast on the second world war we have ways hi chaps we interviewed sakir starma on the podcast yesterday episode is out today if anyone wants to listen after our historical chat i think by that he means they talked about history as opposed to it was a historic conversation in itself.

Starmer mentioned the importance of rearmament for UK economic growth, not just strengthening NATO.

Where should the government focus investment in terms of defence, land forces, naval strength, emerging warfare-like drone technologies?

We actually talked to Alex Younger about that.

He was talking about the, you know, in the Ukrainian context, the defence manufacturing industry is changing so fast.

So there you go.

Help Al plug his podcast.

He's obviously on the lookout for new listeners.

Well, firstly, both Al Murray's podcast and our podcast are coming out on Victory in Europe 80th anniversary.

And many of you who live in London, for example, will have seen Lancaster bombers flying over on the Bank Holiday Monday.

And I'm really struck by this.

I've been doing a little bit for the amazing Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which helps preserve the graves, including my father's brother, my uncle's grave in...

in Sicily and the graves that I saw in Iraq and elsewhere.

And it's also interesting in the family because my sister's been trying to get going on VE Day celebrations in our town in Krief and has been sending my mother stuff from the Daily Mail about memories of people who remember VE Day.

And my mother's like, well, don't be ridiculous.

Why don't you talk to me?

I was 10 years old when VE Day happened.

I'm quite happy to talk to you about that.

On this question, we should do a bigger thing on this.

Technology is changing very fast, and what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine is right at the heart of this.

Particularly cheap drones, electronic warfare raises huge questions about these expensive platforms, you know, $150 million F-35 planes, aircraft carriers, all of them now under threat from drones that cost a few thousand dollars.

And there's a very, very complicated story about how all these things are coordinated in the information space, how an iPhone links up to what you get from a plane and how this all works.

So we should do this properly, but Alma is completely right to ask it.

And if one was really brave about drones, AI, cyber technology, a huge amount of legacy weapon systems will become obsolete.

But you still ultimately need to fire missiles and drop large amounts of munition on people that are not able to do it.

And have ships and have an army, have a big army.

I mean, I think it would be interesting, maybe we should dig this up for next week and talk about it.

Is the

comparison?

I know the technologies are changing, but if we just look at the sheer numbers and how they have changed in what were then the major powers and what are now the major powers.

And I was looking at the stats the other day for the growth of the Chinese military.

It is absolutely phenomenal.

phenomenal whereas you know we can now fit the entirety of our army into one of our bigger football stadiums um anyway thanks for that al and um

sticking on security issues mr dominic thorington i've just finished listening to the excellent interview you did with sir alex younger that's the head former head of mi6 on leading at the end of the episode rory mentioned that he'd met sir alex in four different positions at sis

i'm not for one minute suggesting that rory's let slip any past work at sis after maintaining for years that he's never been a spook.

Dominic, I don't think you've been listening closely.

So could Rory please discuss just a little how he managed to meet the future C whilst in these different roles?

Well, I mean, I met him.

You met him, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I met him as a minister, I met him as a member of parliament, I met him as a member of the-

Yeah, I met him as somebody running a charity in Afghanistan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But really encourage people to listen to it and also encourage people to listen.

If we haven't, we haven't plugged enough Atul Gawande who I thought was incredibly wonderful who's this extraordinary impressive doctor who I'd like to see almost given a Nobel Prize who talked both about what's happening in the world of international development infectious diseases but also about advanced medical technology so that's me avoiding the question right over to you question on towns and cities Wilbar is the political divide between the inner city metropolitan areas and the rest of the country now bigger than ever how big a problem is that for our national politics quick explainer Answer as we go into the question.

Essentially, parties like the Conservative Party don't have any votes in under city metropolitan areas anymore.

They're Labour heartlands.

You know, London's a classic example of this.

Do you feel there's a big divide, and is it a big problem for our national politics?

I remember after the

Brexit referendum, somebody said that this referendum was won and lost in towns that few of us have ever heard of because they don't have Football League football clubs.

And I was over the weekend, I was in Gainsborough, I was in a couple of smallish towns in Lincolnshire, Lincolnshire, which has always been pretty Brex City, but has gone very reform.

And I think there is this sense of the divide.

And interestingly, the Australian elections, one of the many, many criticisms that's being made against Dutton, the leader of the Conservatives there, who just lost, is that he was open in saying that I'm going after, he called them the forgotten people in the suburbs.

Now, obviously, Australia is a vast country, whereas, you know, we're pretty crowded.

But I think there is a feeling in, I regularly hear people,

you know, in fact, this happened.

I went to the Burnley Player of the Year Awards the other day, and there's quite a few of the fans were there, and I was chatting away to some of them.

Some of them, they absolutely have this belief that London has everything.

And then a sort of dialed-down version of that is Manchester has everything, Leeds has everything.

And I think there is, if you look at the people who Labour now look to, used to be sort of traditional working-class voters.

I mean, the classic Labour voter now is the sort of professional graduate.

I saw some data on this the other day: that

if you have no education beyond 16, you are four times more likely to vote reform than if you are educated beyond A-levels.

And obviously, you've got uneducated people in cities, and you've got lots of educated people in towns.

But I think that sense of cities feeling vibrant, dynamic

about the future, and a lot of towns feeling pretty run down is a problem is a problem and I think the new towns fund although it's got I think a lot going for it I just give you a very very small example I had a phone call last week for Keithley Cougars a rugby league club in Keighley where I come from and they'd been promised funding over the under the new towns fund

and suddenly they see the council trying to undo it and I think that's just because you combine resources really tight control on resources and people feeling that in the smaller towns, maybe they don't have to worry so much because the backlash won't be that great.

That is another message of these local elections.

You know, we were talking the last podcast about what the difference might be between Britain, Australia, and Canada, despite all the similarities.

And it strikes me that the biggest difference is that those are federal systems where you have these very, very strong local regional governments.

You know, we interviewed Peter Malinorskas, for example,

who's doing very different things in South Australia to elsewhere.

And if you have a more devolved federal system, inevitably you're going to get more investment and infrastructure prioritizing those places instead of what we have in Britain, which is the Treasury gets its numbers out, does its calculations, and every pound invested in London always looks better on their spreadsheets because they get a better return for it.

They're thinking short term, not long term.

So I think if we're really going to fix this over the longer term and get moderate centre-ground politics back, we need to have something more like a federal system where we properly devolving down.

Well, if you look, you know, I was in Manchester, as I say, over the weekend, and, you know, Manchester just feels kind of buzzy.

And

it's always been a buzzy place, and it's always been one of our bigger, better cities, but it feels very, very different.

Now, I'm not saying that's all down to Andy Burnham, but I do think that sense of Manchester having its own identity through the football clubs, through an elected mayor that people know inside Manchester and outside Manchester.

I honestly do believe this.

And it's got to be more devolution, but with the power and with the financing and not having screaming hab dabs every time that for example andy burnham recently said we've got to start calling out the disaster of brexit so he has said the same eleanid morgan in wales saying that you know she's going to campaign against some of the welfare changes now i know that peter kyle if he's listening will say oh he's he's asked to go on his going on his you know you say it would have happened if you were day it exactly would have happened in your day that you'd have got a grip of all this but if we believe in devolution we've got to genuinely genuinely believe it now how about this as a final question Rory, from Nick Longson?

You can always judge a person's character by their musical tastes.

What are you into?

Can you expose any shockers or speculate on the taste of any world leaders?

Well, of course, we know about Albanese because he told us about

it.

He pointed out he missed K-pop entirely.

He did.

He did.

But he's a big rock, he's a rock music guy.

He's really into rock music.

Tony Blazer was into rock music.

We had a band, didn't he?

At university?

He was in the ugly rumors, yeah.

The ugly rumors, yeah.

So, come on, I've never really got to the bottom of your lack of musical taste.

Okay, so here's the shocker.

I went to a restaurant's history show, live show at the Albert Hall, where they were playing Tchaikovsky.

Padultery, we call it, but yeah, padultery.

And I suddenly realised that some of Tchaikovsky is actually my vision of hell.

I have never felt so bored, appalled, and sort of revolted in my life.

That's the podcast.

What about the music?

No, it's not the podcast.

Tchaikovsky, the composer.

Sometimes I sit there listening to some of his ballet music and I actually feel my life going away from me.

I remember at the age of 15

a more painful experience.

It was a nutcracker.

More painful experience listening to that.

And also one of his violin concertos.

I actually

feel more unhappy listening to Tchaikovsky's music than almost anything on earth.

So there's my little revelation.

Go on, tell us what's going on.

What is something you like, though?

That's something you don't like.

I completely love church music.

I love Mozart.

I love Bach deeply, deeply.

I can stretch as far as Beethoven.

I can get about as far as Schubert.

Okay.

By the time I got it.

Let's come into the model.

Yeah, by the time I've got to get out of here.

What's your favourite book?

By the time I've got to Tchaikovsky, I've given up.

Rolling Stones.

I like Rolling Stones.

What's your favourite Rolling Stones song?

You're not allowed to say satisfaction.

No.

What do I like?

What's that one about?

It's also the one about.

Okay, what's the one about?

It's the devil speaking.

This is all staying in.

This is like trouble he was asked about which is his favourite bit of the Bible.

Anyway, listen, the reality is,

the reality is that I don't really listen to anything except classical music before about 180.

Right.

Yeah.

Do you want to know what I listened to all the way from through the Manchester, through the Peak District,

which is beautiful?

Well, ABBA was part of it because I was channel hopping between heart greatest hits, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.

You can do it by the decade.

So, heart is your thing, heart and the city.

No, not heart.

Sometimes it's the other channels, but what's the other ones you like then, of those radio channels you see on when you go to

magic?

I sometimes do the radio one to try and sort of stay in a bit with what's happening.

But radio one's a bit trendy for you, is it?

It's a little bit magic.

The other one I listen is Magic Soul.

Magic Soul, and you get load.

I mean, I'm really into Motan.

And is it six music?

Do you do that?

Yeah, a little bit, but you know.

My devil song, the producers just pointed out is called sympathy

sympathy for the devil sympathy for the devil yeah yeah i just think it's sad because it's i mean i i i find music i mean i i like some classical music i'm like you i mean fiona loves going to ballet and opera and all that stuff and sometimes i like it um but sometimes i don't but i i could listen to

a lot of modern pop music all day long.

I could listen to Handel all day long.

Yeah.

I love, I love

tenor voices.

I love Gregorian plain song.

Yeah.

All that stuff.

Philip Gould,

he, when he was dying, listened to Gregorian chanting quite a lot.

That's good.

Hey, I had a final final story in dying.

One of my most grand aristocratic friends, her grandfather, when he was dying, he rigged up his bed with his pillow behind him and he attached a set of reins, like the sort you use to ride a horse, to the to the four-poster bed at the other end.

and his butler read him from his hunting diaries while he held on to his reins till he died what's that got to do with music well it's just a story about philip gould and dying oh i see there's a dying story is music okay okay well listen i'm sticking with music because i'm leaving from here to go to pentonville prison to play my bagpipes to the prisoners if they haven't suffered enough they're gonna have me explaining to them how bagpipes are final story from this from the same man you should love that we're taking music into prison really cool that you're taking music in prison i'm really pleased and and also pay tribute to the amazing work that's done on with the opera in prisons yeah thank goodness there's not much ballet in prisons going on otherwise I wouldn't go and watch it um listen um final anecdote to really annoy you uh in terms of this this guy and his horse so he he

during the second world war he he was he was who was this guy fox hunting I don't want to dissipate but he's fox hunting and he's he's got his full he's got his full hunting pinks on and he's charging with his horse and his hounds and things he's a real hunter's business

chasing that fox and and the fox gets into

a football pitch where some young men are playing football.

It's on 1943.

And the fox manages to get out the other end.

And so the hunt has lost the fox.

And the lord leans down from his hunter and looks at these young men and he says, What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?

Don't you realise there's a war on?

You got laves for it.

You can't tell stories about that about your fellow TOFs.

Well, there you go.

We've covered a lot of ground today, haven't we?

We have.

Thank you very much.

I'm still determined to educate you in modern music.

Good luck.

I'm going to take you to Apple Voyage.

Good luck.

Thank you.

See you soon.

Bye-bye.