398. Question Time: Trump’s Plan to Overhaul US Diplomacy

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

And with me, Alistair Campbell.

And Alistair, very, very large number of questions this week focusing on Israel, on the Red Crescent, on the killing of 15 rescue workers, Gaza in general.

But I wanted to ask you this one in particular from Francis.

Who or what do you think is stifling debate on Israel's war crimes?

As one example among many, on Radio 4 last week, statements that Assad had committed war crimes went unchallenged.

But as soon as a guest tried to discuss Netanyahu's possible war crimes, the reporter silenced him, saying Netanyahu was not present to defend himself.

Interesting, interesting.

I guess the fact that Assad has done a runner and is somewhere in Russia with nobody really knowing where, living under Putin's protection, maybe makes broadcasters think they can get away with saying more than if they're talking about somebody who's a current Israeli leader.

That being said, you know, I said on the main podcast that had the Pope not died, we were going to talk Israel and Netanyahu on the main podcast.

And as you say, we've got loads of questions about it this week.

And, you know, there's so much going on that, again, Trump takes so much of the oxygen out of the debate, and we've had the Pope dying.

But Israel, there is, I've been looking at Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, and a couple of other Israeli media outlets.

There's so much going on at the moment.

You had the Red Crescent, where the government has finally admitted that they made some pretty bad mistakes.

And I think it's fair to say that a deputy head is going to roll.

You've got the chief of Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet,

who has made this really remarkable statement about Netanyahu in an affidavit, essentially saying that he was, Netanyahu asked him to spy on Israeli citizens who were involved in anti-government protest,

that he asked him to put personal loyalty above the rulings of the Supreme Court.

Netanyahu, needless to say, has dismissed it.

And in Britain as well, Rory, I mean, this did get a fair bit of coverage, though maybe not as much as it might have done.

A very substantial group of the British Board of Deputies of British Jews published this open letter in the Financial Times, very, very critical of the Netanyahu government, very critical in the interviews around it, particularly of Ben Gaveer and Smotridge.

I'll just give you one line from it.

Israel's soul has been ripped out, and we members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews fear for the future of the Israel we love and have such close ties to.

And then going through some of the other stuff that's going on, obviously you've got Médine Saint-Frontière, one of the big medical organisations there.

They said that Gaza has been, quotes, turned into a mass grave of Palestinians.

We're witnessing the real destruction and forced displacement of the entire population.

That's from their emergency coordinator.

And

I just think that Another one, a piece in Harretz, the situation in Gaza, no longer a war, but an unrestrained assault on civilians.

Ehud Olmert, Israel is closer to civil war than ever.

Amos Harel, these are all commentators.

A month into resuming the Gaza war, Israeli army strives to conceal its confusion.

Editorial, Netanyahu, who's considering a limited strike on Iran.

This is complete insanity.

You're getting to something

really interesting.

But there's another side of this story, too.

So I'm in the States at the moment, and I was talking to someone who, on the basis of this letter, said that they thought almost nobody was still defending Israel's bombing campaigns in Gaza, that people who'd been sympathetic a few months ago were finding it now indefensible, and they quoted that letter.

Are you talking about people in Israel or people around the world?

People around the world.

So I think they were saying nobody who doesn't feel a very close connection is really defending what Israel is doing at the moment.

But it was then questioned.

Somebody else said, no, that's not true.

If you look at the American Senate and Congress,

they are almost unanimously supportive of what Israel's doing.

There's no question from Republicans or Democrats in any way of the actions that are being taken.

And I'm here at Yale, and today

a society has invited Ben Gavir to speak.

So Ben Gavir is this, you know,

really a very, very unpleasant, troubled person with connections to far-right nationalist groups and crime, who's a member of Netanyahu's government, is being invited here to speak on the campus.

So we're still far from a sort of uniform story here, particularly in the US.

No, and also, don't forget, you just had Donald Trump hosting Netanyahu, and although Netanyahu didn't get all that he wanted, he certainly has still, I think, a lot of political support.

I'm just reading this book.

I'm going to plug yet another foreign language book, which I think should be translated into English.

It's a book by a guy called Mikhail Ludas, and he very much comes from the left-wing perspective.

He's a senior member of the party named after Zara Wagenknecht, the kind of Corbyn-plus figure in Germany.

He was a candidate at the last election.

But it's called Krieg und Ender, War Without End.

And the subtitle says why we have to change our attitude to Israel if we're ever going to get peace in the Middle East.

And it is, yes, I say, it's written from a particular perspective, but he's unbelievably critical of Britain in relation to our role in the history and this sort of succession of sirs and earls and lords and viscounts who sort of you know paved the way to very critical of the balfour declaration felt it was all done in a very cavalier fashion set up the nakbur when the sort of half the palestinian population were forced from their from their homes very critical of germany essentially saying that germany has has made it a sort of you know he has this phrase staatsheison that it has it's a reason for the state of germany is to protect the security of israel because of the the holocaust and that has then led to a stasis in policy development.

Very, very critical of America.

But essentially, as you go through it, he's painting a picture which does lead you to the place where we are now, where you have people like Ben Geveir and Smotrich who are absolutely open about thinking, no, there's no such thing as a two-state solution.

There is a greater Israel.

And that includes the West Bank and includes Gaza.

And so it's a difficult read, it's a troubling read.

And the point he's making actually goes to the point you just made, that actually Israel has phenomenal support around the world,

and especially in those places where it needs it most, which it sees as America.

He quotes David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, at one point, as saying, listen, we don't need to worry too much about Britain and the Labour Party.

The British Empire is gone, the Labour Party doesn't have many Jews in it, and they're in government.

The focus has got to be on American and American politicians.

And you know, as you say, it's very rare that you'll find somebody in an American senior political position who doesn't instinctively automatically say I stand by Israel and what this guy argues what this guy luders argues is that Israel's right to exist which you and I would support and which I suspect most of our listeners would support has been taken by people like Netanyahu, people like Ben Giver and Smotrich and their supporters around the world to mean we have the right to do whatever we want and we don't have to be judged in the same way as other countries because we can say we are the quotes only democracy in the region so they are british publishers it's um

it's a very very interesting read and it's um it's worth getting into english good should we go to harvard how far is harvard from yale it not not that far it's it's up at boston you're in connecticut where are you in new haven connecticut and you're in connecticut yeah as you say a bit bit in the news at the moment harvard is it sort of oxford cambridge do they see each other as their rival they say no we're the top dog now we are we definitely would see it as that but it is true that harvard is is now increasingly the big, famous international brand.

I mean,

it's become like Ethan or something.

It's become...

Oh, my lord, not that bad.

Well, Poppy Fleming, Poppy Fleming wants to know, how significant is Harvard President Alan Garber's pushback on Trump's demands?

Is it naive to see this as a sign of hope?

What does it say more broadly about the conservative relationship to academia?

So just step back for a second.

One of the things that Trump is doing is attacking universities, along with many, many other things.

And in the case of Harvard they wrote to Harvard and they said we're going to withhold over two billion dollars worth of federal grants and they've threatened to strip its tax exemption and they've demanded that Harvard report international students they've accused them of anti-Semitism

and they want an outside overseer appointed to make sure there are diverse viewpoints at Harvard.

So from the point of view of the MAGA cultural warriors,

these universities are seen as left-wing, woke, anti-Semitic places which receive far too much federal money and have too much wealth.

And it's not just Harvard.

I mean, Columbia has had its money taken away, as we talked about, being moose against Northwestern.

And there's something also happening at the state university level that we don't talk much about.

So I was at Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, two weeks ago.

And there the state government is also trying to get involved in what can and can't be taught, trying to challenge wokeism, trying to set up centers to bring in diverse viewpoints.

Just don't know,

they don't really mean diverse viewpoints, do they?

I mean, Trump when he means diverse viewpoints, because he means he wants the universities basically to be full of people who support him.

And J.D.

Vance has talked about Orban's success in taming the universities.

Yeah, this is the basic theme, isn't it?

That what they say, if you say it quickly, they might have a bit of a point.

So it's obviously true that universities tend to be pretty left-wing and 90% of professors are left-wing, not right-wing.

And it is true that I have had colleagues who feel that there's a sort of left-wing censorship going on and it's very difficult.

For example, we talked in the last podcast about transgender issues.

And obviously, Kathleen Stock in the UK would be an example of somebody who feels that her career was completely blighted because she tried to say things openly about biological sex and gender and that universities don't welcome that and they cancel you and that it's a very intimidating environment.

Yeah,

you've just said that Ben Gavir is on campus today.

Yeah, so it's a bit unclear.

It's not something the university is celebrating.

It seems to be a sort of group associated with the university run the university itself.

But yeah, this is right at the heart of the culture war, though.

And in the case of Harvard, Larry Summers, the previous president of Harvard, said there was genuine anti-Semitism at Harvard and supported the sacking of an Ottoman scholar, scholar of 18th century Ottoman government, who was the director of the Middle East Centre at Harvard, who I knew lost their job.

Anyway, in the middle of all of this, and this is where you're absolutely right, there may be a point about universities being pretty lefty and right-wing views not being welcomed, but Trump is not doing it in a spirit of sort of good faith and trying to encourage diversity.

He basically wants to shut down anyone who disagrees with him.

So I used to be at Harvard.

I used to teach at Harvard.

I used to run a center at Harvard.

And one of the things I used to do is raise money for Harvard.

So the first problem raising money for Harvard and getting any sympathy for Harvard is Harvard is unbelievably wealthy.

I mean, it's sitting on an endowment of $54 billion, $54,000 million.

And in some figures, well into the 60s, it's total wealth if you take its land and debts into account.

But, and this is what I discovered, I ran something called the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.

A Carr Centre?

The Carr Centre, yeah.

We were a kid.

Two hours.

Every centre has its own bucket.

So in fact, the endowment's broken into 11,000 separate restricted endowments.

80% of the money is restricted.

So you can't move it around around very easily between bits.

And 300 million of these cuts has fallen on the medical research side.

And that's a problem here for Yale, too.

So Yale is supporting, I think, about 37,000 patients in different trials around the New Haven area.

A lot of that funded with federal money.

So federal money stops.

And they're also going after visas.

So they're also saying that they're not going to allow visas for foreign students to come to these universities unless they choose.

Gerber has chosen to stand up.

Columbia didn't.

Columbia basically caved, got frightened by the the money and caved.

Very sad.

Gerber has said, okay, we'll stand up.

But we're now getting into some of these questions that you're quite interested in because fundamentally Harvard's private and tax exempt and gets government money.

So you get some of the grumbles that you'd get from that you had about private schools in the UK.

Why are they tax exempt?

Why are they getting all this stuff?

They spend $6 billion a year.

And these universities are the kind of crown jewel of the United States.

I mean, America, as we've often said, doesn't have very good public education, doesn't have very good public infrastructure.

But one of the few things it does have is these universities.

And most of these great tech geniuses go briefly to places like Harvard or Yale, often dropping out after a year and a half or two.

You know, Bill Gates went to Harvard for a bit and then dropped out.

Zilka Berg was to Harvard for a bit, dropped out.

They are a lot of what makes America extraordinary.

They're very wealthy and they can get the very best academics in the world because it's not just that you can get a big salary, it's also that they'll pay for your research assistants, your laboratories, your kit, your investment if you're a scientist.

And so just to finish, on the one hand, yes, it's true, these universities are insanely wealthy and their endowments are mad.

And so at some moods when I was at Harvard in 2008, I thought this was a bit like the monasteries before the Reformation.

You know, we as professors were like fat abbots sitting around in these monastic institutions, eating fine food and wearing fine clothes, which wasn't what these things were supposed to be set up for.

On the other hand, They're actually the goose that lays the golden egg for a lot of America services, exports, technology, the American economy and American status in the world is based on having the best universities in the world.

And that's what Trump seems destined to kill.

I mean, it does seem strange.

It reminds me a little bit of

elements of the last government and their constant undermining of the BBC.

I think the BBC is a, whatever complaints I might have had with it from time to time, I think it's a very, very big part of our global reputation and it's worth protecting for that alone.

And it seems weird that when, as you say, one thing thing that America has got is this reputation for a, you know, a sizable number of really top quality universities.

When you look at the list of Nobel Prize winners from these top private league universities, I mean, it's quite phenomenal.

And yet they want to seem to undermine it.

And just before we started recording, I was watching a thing at one of these town halls.

It was a Republican politician, I can't remember his name.

And somebody in the audience worked for one of these universities and said, as a result of the decisions that the Trump administration and and Doge has made, we are having to end a program which was making progress in scientific development of a program to treat Parkinson's.

And you could sort of feel in the audience this sort of, whoa, oh, like, you know, not necessarily relating the way the debate is going.

So the line of the White House, when Harvard, who have now announced that they're taking legal action against the administration for the demands that they're making, and the line from the the White House went as follows.

The gravy train of federal assistance to institutes like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families, is coming to an end.

Taxpayer funds are a privilege.

Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege.

So it's full on, you know, we're with the people.

struggling American families against you who are just there to feather your own nests.

And that is, I'm afraid, populism in a nutshell.

A bit like attacking USAID.

And we've got this leading interview with Attil Gawande coming, who's a Harvard professor in medical science, who talks about the real impact for real people from this.

But politically, it is something Trump and Vance probably can get away with because these particular targets, overseas development aid, professors at Ivy League universities, are not exactly the most popular thing with a voter in Dayton, Ohio.

No, but they're doing an awful lot of damage to their soft power.

And maybe they just don't think that matters.

But I think if you look at their reputation around the world as measured in all sorts of different ways, but you know, look at the tourism numbers.

There's a piece in one of the French papers the other day.

There's an absolute American boom at the moment on the south of France.

And one of the reasons is, I just don't want to be in America while all this is going on.

Maybe just before we go to the break, Roy, this is a really good one.

Staying in

the States, Emily M.

I hope that's not the presenter of a rival podcast that occasionally appears just below us in the charts.

Can you please explain what on earth Trump is doing to the U.S.

State Department and its embassies abroad?

This relates to what we've just been talking about.

Yeah, amazing story.

So this was leaked by the New York Times.

It's still a proposal, and the State Department is vigorously denying it.

But the proposal is basically to shut down all the Fulbright scholarships, with a few very limited exceptions.

shut down all the attempts to get access into state departments.

So it's an attempt to make American diplomats more diverse by encouraging people from minority backgrounds to join the state palm, which is exactly what should be happening.

And the administration wants to shut that down.

But then also closing embassies.

You know, talk about closing a lot of their embassies in Africa.

It's a very, very odd thing to do if you're the global superpower at a time when China and others and Russia are reaching into Africa, doing more and more in Africa.

So as you know, we're both very big fans of the New York Times and think it's a pretty good newspaper.

The Trump administration clearly hates it.

But what was your sense of that story?

So they're in the story, people speaking on condition of anonymity, etc.,

and then the administration flat out denies it.

Where did that leave you at the end of the reading?

Well, so the theory that I got, I talked to a senior State Department official yesterday about this, and they think that what's happening is that the administration's rolling the pitch, seeing how people respond, and will probably come out in the next 24 hours with a slightly milder evisceration of the State Department.

But because because it's not quite as big as it sounded, they'll get away with it.

Is that a kind of playbook?

Is that something people sometimes do in politics?

They announce something very big and then see how it plays and then do something a bit smaller?

Yeah.

I mean, I can't think of any examples, obviously, but yeah.

His me blowing to happen from time to time.

What about, listen, have a quick yes or no before we go to the break.

Pete Hexeth, the Secretary of State of Defence, will he survive?

Yes or no?

It's all about loyalty.

I think if he shows loyalty, he can be pretty incompetent and survive.

But there is briefing against him starting, isn't there?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm a no.

I think he's toast.

Final quick one for you.

Julia Wren, there were lots of reports on how Zelensky's approval ratings spiked after a shouting match with Trump, jumping from 57% of Ukrainians' trust in Zelensky to 68%.

Where is this now and how much does it matter?

Well, last time I looked, his ratings were good.

And there was a spike after the shouting match in

the Oval Office.

And listen, I've got no doubt at all, Zelensky would wish that had not happened.

But one of the things I think makes him a very effective campaigner, communicator, politician, strategist, if you like, is that he's very good at using things that go badly to his benefit.

And I think what he did on the back of that was to do a renewed blitz around the world, getting promises of money and political support.

He's still doing these nightly messages, putting out his message out there.

So his ratings are good.

And no matter how many times

Putin

and Trump and Witcoff echo the Putin talking points, which they do now as a matter of course, I think Zelensky remains very, very popular.

I've got to say, Rui, one of the high points of the week was Witkoff in the Elysee Palace.

comparing the decor to Mar-a-Lago

and saying, in fact, I saw Jonathan Powell was in the shot.

Jonathan was sort of nodding with this sort of, you know, what the fuck is going on now.

And he basically said, and the thing is, Jonathan, you go to Mar-a-Lago and, like the president himself, he designs all that, you know.

And Maurice, have you seen the White House recently?

Global Office?

It looks like a sort of bazaar.

It's just all these bits of bling everywhere.

The mantelpiece is covered with all these bits of bling.

So yeah, I don't know when the Elyse Palace was built, but I suspect it was built before the United States existed.

And he's there basically comparing Bar-a-Lago to the Elyse Palace anyway.

Okay, now, the restless politics, as everyone knows, is powered by Fuse Energy.

And we've got a question from Brian.

So, Brian asks, the UK seems to be finally gaining some momentum on EV rollout, that's, I guess, electric vehicles, catching up with the US.

But government policy is still lagging behind in terms of promoting use of electric vehicles.

Are government subsidies sufficient in the face of Trump's tariffs?

Any views on electric vehicles?

Do you have an electric vehicle?

Do you have friends with electric vehicles?

I have a hybrid.

The only time I really use my car is when we drive through France.

But I think what we did notice on our last drive through France, through a couple of towns, was actually this mention of BYD, the Chinese car.

I haven't really noticed that many of them in Britain.

I don't know if you have, but I've noticed more of them in Europe this time that I've been here.

And I think what's happening with the Chinese in relation to tariffs, and look, they've got these massive tariffs on them, 145%.

So they are now going to be trying to get into other markets.

And I think that's important.

I mean, last time I was in Norway, I was really struck by just how many fully electric cars you see around the place and also just how much of a system that they have.

So I think the infrastructure is still something that

we have to crack.

And China, which is incredible, the number of electric vehicles now going.

So you're right, BYD, the Chinese did something which is a sort of miracle.

I mean, we've talked about Chinese industrial policy before, that they decided they wanted to be a leader in electric vehicles.

And then they have this odd combination of massive state subsidies and then massive competition.

So there were sort of thousands of little electric vehicle companies competing with each other, which eventually ended up with a lot of innovation and three giants.

And BYD can basically sell a really good electric vehicle for about 40% cheaper than any of the American or European competitors.

And so that's a really good thing if these governments want to let people on low incomes get electric vehicles, which is essential because in Britain there was meant to be this 2030 date, only five years away.

That was then pushed out by Rishi Zunak to 2035.

Then charges, as you've pointed out.

When I was the environment minister in DEFRA, I think we reckoned we needed about 300,000 charges.

I think we've only got about 55,000 in place at the moment.

Big problems trying to get them into rural areas and central urban areas.

They're easier to put in a kind of spread out suburban context.

And still, quite a lot of people don't really like electric vehicles.

You know, is BYD able to deal with people's anxiety about range and time it takes to charge other forms of technology?

Yeah.

We had Ezra Klein on the podcast recently on leading and I listened to an interview he did the other day.

He was interviewing his colleague at the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, who just got back from China.

He was really praising the BYD product, as it were.

And, you know,

I did on the back of that, I did take a look.

Now, I would much prefer to buy British.

We're back to the Pope and the Order of Love here.

I'd like to buy British, and if not, British European.

As I said, recently, I've never been that impressed by American cars.

Sorry.

But I think I would take a look at BYD.

Will I be accused of being unpatriotic if I did that?

Well, and also, you're going to get yourself into this whole question about manufacturing jobs at home and tariffs and all this stuff, which is right at the centre of the trumpet.

We're going to do it now.

I mean, we're going to get released.

We're going to get released.

But it's probably the most powerful powerful example in the world, isn't it, of the trade-offs, which is on the one hand, we want people to have cheap electric vehicles because it's really good for the climate and our transition.

And on the other hand,

we're trying to protect manufacturing jobs at home.

Anyway, Rory.

He gets to the segue to the plugging bit.

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Take a break on that.

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

And with me, Alistair Campbell.

Now, here's a great question, Rory, from Sam, who's from Wakefield in Yorkshire, but currently, very luckily for him, in Sydney.

If you had to swap lives with a politician from the other side for a month, fully embedded in their job, who would you choose and why?

It goes on to say, thank you for keeping myself and my partner entertained and informed on our road trip around Australia.

Well, thanks for that, Sam.

I hope you enjoyed our interview with Anthony Albanese at the weekend.

So, Rory, who would you swap with on the other side of politics?

I'd be tempted to say, but he's not really the other side, that the most interesting and exciting job in the world at the moment is Friedrich Metz as Chancellor of Germany.

But if he's not on the other side, I think I'd have to say I'd swap with David Lamy.

I think this is an amazing opportunity for Britain to get much closer to Europe, to be much more imaginative about the customs union, to recreate a European defence and security architecture.

This is the kind of Jean-Monnet moment.

And so I'll take David Lamy's job, if that's okay.

Well, if I'll take Donald Trump's.

I would definitely take Donald Trump's job.

I think there's one job on the other side of the political fence that I'd feel more comfortable.

If I'd take pretty much anybody being there right now, but yeah, I think I'd

go for Trump.

Here's one for you.

Annie Brough, Gensac, France.

One of my neighbours is trying to twin our French village, presumably Gensac, with Limekilns in Scotland.

There'll be Haggis Bagpipes Bordeaux, men in kilns.

Would Alastair and Fiona come and play the pipes for the event?

I presume Alistair playing the pipes, not Fiona.

Annie, that's a very, very kind invitation.

And what I'm going to do is, subject to my diary, I'm happy to look at it.

On twinning, I don't know whether everybody who listens to Tinati is aware of this practice, but as you drive around

towns in the United Kingdom, you see the village or the town name and then what it's twinned with.

And my two favourite ones were dull in Scotland.

is twinned with boring in Oregon and Bland in New South Wales.

No, that's not true.

Yeah, that's true.

And then my favourite one is Rutland.

So I went to give a talk for Alan Duncan and Rutland, the MP, and Whitwell, which has got 19 houses, is twinned with Paris.

Blyme,

is that the Paris?

Well, the Paris, except Paris doesn't recognise the twinning.

Only Whitwell has it on its sign.

Ah,

my daughter, who's got a comedy podcast, and she was interviewing earlier, the comedian Joe Lysert, who has just done this brilliant TV programme.

He's famously from Birmingham and he's gone to every Birmingham in America.

Of which there are many.

Now, here may be a real Alistair question.

So from Mike Korn from Derbyshire, who's a Trip Plus member.

Thank you, Mike, for being a member of Trip Plus.

Alistair, this morning, my German teacher was unable to give me an appropriate translation for disagreeing agreeably, Auf Deutsch.

Oh, Lord.

We speculated whether such an expression existed in the German language and wondered if you could find the necessary vocabulary to express the sentiment.

So there we are.

There's our disagree-agreeable, plea, that being our byword.

How would you say it in German?

Oh, that is a great question because

you see, if

disagree agreeably, which if people don't know is the motto of our podcast, what's nice about that is disagree, it's a very simple verb, and then agreeably, and the agree-agree bit goes together.

And in German, the trouble is in German,

to say I disagree, there's two words in Britain, in English, ich bin nicht einfellstanden.

I am not in agreement.

So you're talking about four words, one of which has got four syllables.

I think what I would end up with is

angemein argumentieren,

which means argue pleasantly.

But I don't think disagree agreeably works in German for some reason.

Or you could do, you could go with Wieder Spreichen one Grahl, which means contradict with no resentment.

Contradict with no resentment.

Yeah, this is not the same, is it?

Contradict with no resentment, though, seems to have sort of

more profound philosophical depths, doesn't it?

Yeah.

What about argue, argue,

argue pleasantly?

Does that work?

It doesn't really work, does it?

No, no, no, no.

I like contradict with no resentment.

I think resentment is a very powerful word.

Okay.

Here's a really strong question.

Laura Neumann Orblinger from Bavaria, which is one on the German theme, and a Trip Plus member, thank you, Laurie.

Theoretically, could the blue states secede from the US, and what would it actually take practically to do so?

The answer is, Laurie, absolutely not.

This is what the Civil War was all about, right?

The Civil War was all about these southern states trying to secede from the US.

The Constitution does not allow states to secede.

And this was settled by the Supreme Court.

in a case relating to Texas.

It's one of the things that makes the United States very unusual.

You know, when we were talking about Scottish independence, it's almost impossible to find an analogy in the United States because,

in effect,

Abraham Lincoln went to war about the ability of someone like Scotland to decide they wanted to leave the United States.

Yeah, but it doesn't mean it can't be an option sometime in the future, surely.

Well, it would theoretically, within the U.S.

Constitution, would require the full consent of the whole of

probably ratification of three-quarters of the states.

Let's say 38 out of 50 of them would have to agree.

So it would be much more like Scotland can secede provided England and Wales vote for Scotland to secede.

What about those like you had, say like you had an American state that became to the United States of America what Hungary under all ban sometimes feel it is becoming to the European Union, where the other 49 states wanted to get rid of one.

Would that work?

Can they boot it out?

Interesting question.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's also this interesting question of new states.

I think Americans focus on certain things quite selectively in school.

They focus a lot obviously at the moment on civil rights and Westwood extension.

But I discovered very few Americans have a sense of how Hawaii became a state, which was basically a kind of colonial operation financed by American business to

topple a queen.

Now here's one Rory and this will allow me to revisit an argument we had a while back.

from Tanya Newton.

With more and more officers now responding to mental health crises, addiction issues and homelessness, situations they're often not trained to handle.

What role should the police actually play in dealing with society's deepest challenges?

Should they step back and let social services take over or are these issues now inseparable from public safety?

Well it's fundamental and it's something that prison officers also worry about a great deal which is that police officers are trained to be police officers primarily, but increasingly they're being asked to be so many other things, social workers, mental health counselors,

family conflicts advisors and a dozen other things.

And that's because they're being asked to fill a massive space left by the dismantling of so many bits of public health and infrastructure that used to exist around.

AKA austerity.

Yeah, aka austerity, but not much sign that your dear government is really rebuilding much of this or putting much money into getting it going again.

Well,

they're trying, but I definitely would argue that they might be doing more.

The reason I say it allows us to revisit an argument, Roy.

Do you remember recently you were making one of your sweeping statements that all Labour MPs come from the spawn of Labour and the womb of Labour MPs?

With the absolutely astonishing stat, which I still am reeling from, if it's true, that someone did some research and discovered 25% of them, 66 times the general population, have a parent who was actively involved in politics as a counsellor or as a person.

I can't quite say that.

Very political.

You're very political in Eddie Morgan.

Anyway, you also said that police officers tended to be the children of police officers.

And I thought that is absolute nonsense.

So I checked with the Police Federation.

According to their latest pay and morale survey, this is really sad.

75% of police would not recommend joining the police to others.

That is, and it's the fourth year in a row that that number has gone up.

That's very sad.

That's pretty dangerous.

It's very bad.

Very bad.

And I think you often hear that, don't you?

You often hear people in a lot of professions saying this, teachers saying it, civil servants saying it.

Yeah.

No, and I think it is due to the sort of the fact that they have, I know quite a lot of police officers, and they, you know, I think we still have an image of them either chasing people around in cars or catching criminals or, you know, a lot of their work now is out in the community dealing with really difficult stuff that they would probably be the first to say they're not fully trained.

I've had a really positive experience recently with the police, both

the Met and the Norfolk Police, who were incredibly thoughtful, courteous at following up on a difficult issue that I was dealing with.

And I was so impressed by how thoughtful they were and how professional they were.

I've seen police recently involved in a situation where somebody we knew was in real psychological distress and they were absolutely terrific.

They were really, really, really good.

So listen, there's bad cops and there's good cops, but I think they, you know, we should all be worried that three-quarters of police say to their kids, hey, you don't want to do this.

It's pretty crap.

Jamie O'Neill, final one from me.

If you could bring back one forgotten or failed policy idea from the last 50 years and give it a second chance, what would it be and why?

So given I'm dropping that on you with no warning, I'll give a first tab for me.

For me, the big change in Britain that we need is to make sure that adult social care, so looking after the frail elderly, is is something that's properly funded in the way that the NHS is funded.

And actually it would take some burden off the NHS because one of the problems that the NHS faces is because we don't have a proper NHS for the frail elderly, for adult social care, it ends up taking a huge amount of the burden of that back onto the state.

And the failed policy idea that I would bring back was Theresa May's idea, which was the right way of funding it, which is a sort of wealth tax.

What it does is say that

after people die, the state state will take some of the cost of looking after them out of the value of their house.

Not while they're alive, it won't be about taking their house away when they're alive, but after they die, some of the value of their house will be taken back by the state.

And I thought that was a very good way of resolving two problems at the same time.

massive inequalities of wealth, partly to do with a lot of valuable housing being in the hands of older people, and also a real problem with funding something where in Cumbria, at least when I was the MP, I often found that elderly people were were lucky if they got 15 minutes a day with a carer, which isn't enough to change you, let alone feed you.

Yeah.

Okay, if I could bring back one forgotten or failed policy idea from the last 50 years and give it a second chance, what would it be and why?

I wonder about being full members of the European Union, Aurora.

I wonder if that might be, I wonder if that might be quite.

And if I'm not allowed that one, maybe sure start.

I think that's

quite a good idea.

But look, clearly it failed in that.

The Cameron government failed to persuade persuade people that the policy had been good for Britain, but I think most of Britain now thinks that maybe that wasn't a very good thing to do.

So the policy failed in part

because we were given the chance to put our future in the hands of chances and charlatans like Johnson and Farage.

So yeah,

I don't think I'll ever give up on that.

And by the way, my friend Eddie Ramo, another upcoming election on May the eleventh, he's going for his fourth term, and he sent me a poll the other day.

Eighty six per cent of albanians um want to join the european union i like your surestart thing and i think maybe we could join forces and see if we can put a bit of pressure on the current government both on sure start and on adult social care

i mean they're both things that cost money and rachel rees will be reluctant to do them but um

but but the tragedy of surest is it was such a successful policy

It was a really successful policy.

I mean, the data showed that it was.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, I'm with you.

I'm with you and and you know my adult social care I'm going to have enough time on this but it is true that a lot of the problem that the NHS is facing is that because people aren't adequately looked after at home they end up in hospital much more than they should and that's hugely expensive.

It blocks beds.

puts huge strains.

They're much more expensive in the long run than having a decent system for looking after people at home.

I'm sure that's one of the reasons why despite the amount we spend on the NHS, all our money ends up going to hospitals and we get worse health outcomes.

You know, life expectancy, this is Ato Gwande's point in Costa Rica, is the same as what it is roughly in the UK, and they spend about a tenth as much on health.

I think I'm right in saying that is our Ato Guandi is out on Monday on leading, so people should look forward to that.

See you soon.

Thank you all.

See you soon.

Bye-bye.