450. Question Time: How Gen Z Took Down the Government

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Hi, it's Rory.

Before we start the show, we just wanted to let you know that this is an episode which contains discussion of suicide, rape and sexual violence.

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

And with me, Rory Stewart.

And our first question is from Denise Williams.

The UN's just confirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Israel's already denied this, calling it distorted and false.

What's the point of these UN inquiries, and how does this all work given that Israel has now just launched its major military operation into Gaza?

Well, there's a lot to unbundle in that.

I mean, I think the UN,

I mean, you've said many times Antonio Guterre is the head of the UN, has been declared persona non grata.

The line now on any criticism of anything the Israeli government does seems to me to be this is anti-Semitic and you are all proxies for Hamas, no matter who or what is doing the saying.

But I think and ultimately the judgment as to whether it's genocide

will be a matter for an international court further down the track.

So I think this is probably the United Nations

putting down a marker.

I think they had their top investigative team on it.

Others are basically basically saying, even if they don't go as far as genocide, they think that multiple war crimes have been and continue to be committed.

And of course, as you say, it's happening on the day when you're seeing this,

they've been talking about it for some time, but absolute move against Gaza City,

hundreds of thousands of people on the move again.

And basically, the biggest operation I think we've seen for a very long time now.

I mean, this is going, this is now divisions of troops moving in.

These are tens of thousands of Israeli troops moving in this is potentially moving just under a million people out of gaza city so this is huge this is probably the biggest operation they've put together in 18 months this is since shortly after the october the 7th attacks so this is a massive escalation and of course the israeli chief of the army staff argued that it was a waste of time it made no strategic sense so the military is doing it basically reluctantly because they're under orders to do it without really believing they're going to to be able to win the war in this way.

And that this whole idea that Netanyahu keeps selling to the world and that he seems to have sold to Marco Rubio, who's just been in Israel, that they can win the war once and for all by continuing these operations, the army doubts.

And I think most mainstream political opinion, security opinion in Israel now doubts that you can win a war.

Even if they're very supportive of Israel, very, very anti-Hamas, this idea that there is a victory that you can get, that you can somehow eliminate every last person and end the thing, Very few people seem to believe outside Netanyahu's cabinet.

And there were people outside Netanyahu's house last night, or where Netanyahu lives, protesting on behalf of the remaining living hostages because they basically say that

they are now really at risk.

Because what's happened is that right through this thing, we've had the Israelis taking military action on this target, that target, this target, that target, and always saying that this was because there was a Hamas this or a Hamas that.

What they've been doing in recent days is raising residential blocks to the ground and saying, this is where Hamas intelligence was run, this is where Hamas this outfit was run.

And

the limited remaining number of journalists who are on the ground and who are not dead are interviewing people coming out of these buildings.

some of them who've already moved several times.

I mean, they could be Hamas,

but they can't all be Hamas.

And what they're doing, the trouble is, I think that they're radicalizing a new generation in a way that ultimately is going to damage Israel.

I had a long conversation with an Israeli friend who came to see me very, very hurt listening to the podcast because he feels that we're not talking enough about how evil Hamas is.

We're not talking enough about Hamas using civilians as human shields.

He feels that we are not acknowledging the trauma of Israelis.

And he was asking me,

what can an Israeli government do to improve its reputation in the world

and I was saying what I increasingly feel which is that it's so difficult now to defend I mean I said to him you know why are you not allowing international journalists in and he said well because frankly we believe international journalists would just buy the Hamas lines to which my response was it cannot go any worse Literally can't go any worse because nobody now believes your spokesman.

Because you're saying this was a Hamas thing and it turns out there's a shallow grave and ambulance men have been killed and put in a shallow grave and you're saying these are Hamas fighters.

So you can't but and then he went on to say that the to defend the attack on Qatar that we covered last week saying well what do you expect this is just the same as the Americans killing Osama bin Laden and again I said

it's nothing like the Americans killing Osam bin Laden.

Osam bin Laden was the most famous terrorist in the world who they had been chasing for 15 years and they'd been working with the Pakistan ISI in order to catch him

and in this case who can even name who these Hamas leaders were that they were trying to kill and what was the purpose and again he said well there were two reasons we did it number one because we believe that negotiations are complete waste of time Hamas is not serious about peace deals and negotiations so we might as well kill them anyway and number two it will encourage them to negotiate.

And again, I was saying, but these two arguments don't hold together.

And in the process, and my final point, they are alienating now

UAE, for example.

So the United Arab Emirates was the only

Arab country that's been pretty supportive under the surface of what Israel is doing.

It signed the Abraham Accords with them.

It's tried to make all these trade deals.

By attacking Qatar, you had an immediate, not just a statement, but you had Mohammed bin Zayed, MBZ from UAE, flying directly to Doha to embrace the Qatari Emir, who had been his adversary not very long ago.

The whole Gulf now thinking, whoa, who's next?

We thought we were countries which were strong allies of the U.S.

We have had cordial relationships with the Israelis.

We've been hosting negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

And now you're firing missiles into our territory.

Why can the Israeli government not see that this is so provocative, so unnecessary, achieves nothing tactically?

I mean, how does Netanyahu even think about the cost-benefit analysis of what they were doing in Canada?

What do you hope to achieve, given all that he loses in terms of international reputation, international support?

I mean, look,

I think he went well past worrying about that some time ago, other

than as it relates to the United States.

And of course, what you saw with the Marco Rubio visit was almost like a kind of I mean, at time it looked like the two of them were on holiday together, going visit this and visit that, and all very friendly and so forth.

And of course, he thinks thinks that he he basically thinks that trump is never going to haul him in which is correct and that's true which is what which is what putin thinks too i mean the two the two countries that seem to have complete immunity at the moment are russia and israel as far as the us is concerned they are their two unbreakable allies anyone else canada mexico the european union japan south korea india

australia oh poor old elbow albanese can't even get in to see trump whereas netanyahu

seven months in yeah still hasn't had a meeting.

And then the other thing, we had James Elder from UNICEF on leading recently, and I had a series of meetings this week with people from the United Nations, the World Food Programme, and they were echoing what James said, that they have never, ever, ever seen anything quite as bad and quite as difficult as Gaza.

When there was the ceasefire, They were able to get, I mean, the stats, we'll put the stats in the newsletter, but they were able to get a lot of people fed.

But since then, it is being made more and more difficult, verging on impossible, added to which when they do get stuff in, unsurprisingly, their lorries, their trucks are being attacked, and essentially it's young men now are about the only people who are fit enough, healthy enough to get in there and actually take this stuff off.

I thought the other really interesting thing in the United Nations report was that to their eyes, they've decided in the terms of the 1948 genocide conviction genocide is being committed in Gaza, other war crimes are being committed and they basically say the rest of the international community they were pointing out this clause that is about other countries being complicit if they do not do everything they can to prevent a genocide.

And so this is something that's going to play out in the history of the Middle East probably for decades to come now.

So your friend who's saying, what can they do to get a better standing in the world, to stop themselves being seen, frankly, as a pariah state now by quite a lot of people and quite a lot of other governments, they've got to change the way they're operating.

But of course, Netanyahu politically, I don't think it feels he can, because he's got these two monsters, Ben Gamira.

And it's not enough, I'm afraid, to change the way they're operating.

A new prime minister coming in would also have to have a reckoning with what they've done wrong.

And one of the things that you get a sense of in Israeli politics is nobody would be prepared to step up and say we got this wrong we apologize for what we've done we acknowledge that we committed crimes all they're offering is well we might stop doing it in the future but if there's no real internal reckoning with what's happened it's going to be very difficult to move on so just to go back to the point i made there during the the pause in the fighting the world food programme and others they got in 70 000 metric tons of aid fed 1.3 million people, helped bakeries produce 3 million loads of bread every day, and distributed 12.5 million hot meals across 60 community kitchens.

That's what they can do when they are able to operate properly.

And so since the blockade between March, May 2025,

that is what has led to the malnutrition.

And as we've said before, when we're talking to James and before that, once you're into that process of malnutrition, then even getting the food in does not necessarily prevent you from dying.

Okay, now we've had a lot of questions about what I think is probably the biggest news story

almost of the last few months, which is Nepal,

where there has been basically a revolution.

So Abraidel, can you cover what's happened in Nepal?

Ax,

explainer please, on what's happening in Nepal with these Gen Z protests.

Will Hookie, can you talk about the Gen Z or Gen Z revolution in Nepal?

So, Nepal, a Himalayan country, 30 million people, predominantly predominantly Hindus, stuck there between India and Chinese Tibet.

And it's a country which I know reasonably well.

I walked across Nepal in

2000, 2001, and what I saw then was a Maoist insurgency.

I was being stopped all the time by often 12, 13 year old boys with automatic weapons at checkpoints.

I was on my way to visit another man who'd been at school with me called Prince Dependra of Nepal and I was going to go and stay with him and before I turned up he tied a bandana around his head and shot his father, his mother, his brother and then himself but was briefly crowned king while he lay in a coma for a few hours before he died.

He was at school with you?

Yeah.

And Jani Kruger.

Yeah, he was in the karate team with me.

Yeah, that was how I knew him.

Yeah.

He was quite violent, I felt, when we were in the karate team together, but I had no idea that he was actually going to turn into a it was very strange so this basically this semi-absolute monarchy in nepal and bit variation got a bit more constitutional towards the end was brought down essentially in a mass shooting by the crown prince who and what was what was his political motivation he seems to have been affronted by his father getting involved in who he could marry and who he couldn't marry so it wasn't a desire to bring down the constitution unless you don't know it seems to have been a it seems to have been a

completely losing his temper with his own family and just killing his whole family and then trying to kill himself at the end of it.

And how long before

when did the transition to some sort of democracy take place?

Right.

So not long after his uncle then took over, his uncle was then toppled.

And then by the time I was a minister, I was visiting a Nepal that had had a series of governments.

Some of them from the Maoist party, some of them from Congress, some of them from the Communist Party.

And I went to see, for example, Prachandra, who'd been one of the great Maoist leaders who'd become the prime minister.

And since then, these prime ministers have cycled in and out.

They've often done three, in one case, four terms for a year or so at a time.

And this began to develop a very strong idea in Nepal that the whole country, despite these elections, despite getting rid of the king, was run by this completely out-of-touch political elite, which then started this Gen Zhen Z protest.

So this for people who aren't following their generations, I think is people born after 1997.

So these are people in their teens or late 20s, up to their late 20s, got out on the streets and they originally started with a campaign against what they called nepo babies or nepo kids and they particularly images all over social media of children of the ruling elite particularly the foreign minister's daughter's wedding and standing with Mercedes and things.

And it's a very poor country, still a very, very poor country.

GDP per capita, maybe $1,400 a year.

Most of the money coming to the country, 30% of the GDP is remittances.

People leaving Nepal, 750,000 people left Nepal last year to go and work with

which presumably is why when

what Robert Jenrick ludicrously calls the tinderbox here the tinderbox there it in part was fired because

the government stopped Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and presumably the remittance people, that is the way that they keep in contact with the families.

That's a very big thing, exactly.

There were two problems.

One of them was the government shut down these social media platforms because they wouldn't pay digital tax, they wouldn't register with the government.

So they were trying to show control over these global media platforms.

But the pushback didn't come from the global media platforms, but for ordinary people, for two reasons.

One of them is, as you say, WhatsApp is the way you communicate with your relatives.

Secondly, also because people felt freedom of speech was being stopped.

So then the next stage, and this is when we were beginning to record last week, so on Monday last week, you began to see 8th September, you began to see crowds of young, quite idealistic demonstrators getting into the street arguing for freedom of speech and human rights.

That then rapidly got out of control.

And this is something that...

I think you'll be aware of.

I remember very much being with demonstrations in the streets in Indonesia back in the 90s, how quickly what starts as idealistic student demonstrations, suddenly people with with masks on motorbikes start ramming police barricades and they began breaking through the barricades and they set fire to an astonishing range of things they set fire to the prime minister's house to the parliament to the supreme court to hotels with people in them with people in them to banks they attacked cars and torched the cars they they beat up ministers at which point the police deploy and the police then start with tear gas and then with plastic bullets and then start firing live rounds and so more than a dozen people are killed and now the demonstration becomes we're fighting for our martyrs against the killing

and within 48 hours the prime minister who'd initially said these are young gen z people who don't know what they're talking about had resigned and and the gen z protesters they were part of the discussion that then led to the appointment of a new prime minister for now with their approval.

So they absolutely went then as part of the decision-making process.

So that's why you, you know, when you say it's a revolution,

that's kind of, that is the wheel turning.

Yeah, and it's a revolution, a very Gen Z revolution.

So they've chosen Sushilo Kharki, who's the

ex-Supreme Court justice, who comes from a very political family.

Her husband famously hijacked a Nepali plane in 1973 to steal the money that was on it.

And she was chosen through partly through the Discord app that we use with members.

So it's this extraordinary sort of digital engagement platform led to the selection of her.

The other thing that I can't believe you didn't weave in a plug of the Tim Berners-Lee episode there.

I mean it was absolutely wide open for it, Rory.

And you just, you know.

And I missed the thing.

Well, the other thing that you'll be very, very aware of is, of course,

the Gen Z protesters were carrying...

pirate flags, Jolly Roger flags from the Japanese anime series One Piece, which you'll be very familiar with.

The great best selling on it.

Now, I'm making a joke there, but this is quite serious because, in fact, it shows how protest is becoming globalized amongst young people.

People say, you know, what on earth binds together Indonesia, where we've had these protests with a big Muslim country in Southeast Asia with Nepal, this Himalayan Hindu state.

Well, it's One Piece in both cases.

You have Gen Z protesters carrying Jolly Rogers signs, pirates against a corrupt government.

I read an amazing piece in one of the American papers about the burns.

I mean, burning is quite a big theme in this.

And I think historically through protests has been

setting fire to houses, setting fire to people.

And

they're really, really short on burns specialists.

And there was this piece inside this Burns unit, which was absolutely horrible, reading what had happened to some of the people who were burned.

And there's an account in one of the, I read an account of, I think it was one of the former prime ministers or former ministers whose house was set on fire and of his family just trying to get ever higher within the building.

And I think one of them ended up with life-threatening burns.

What do you think the broader implications are?

You said it's the most significant thing to have happened in the last few days.

What's the with what's the India-China context and how does that play out?

How do are they are they trying to calm things down?

What's their role?

They'll be very worried.

I mean, usually when something like this happens,

driven by social media, conspiracy theories develop and people ask, you know, is this in China's interest?

It's definitely not in China's interest.

China and India had come to understandings with these governments, and the last thing they want is complete chaos, unknown student protests toppling, releasing 12,500 prisoners who've now escaped.

But the reason I really thought it was significant is that it's a pattern with Bangladesh, which we covered almost exactly a year ago, and Sri Lanka, which we covered just over two years ago.

In each case, and these are all South Asian countries around the edge of India.

These are the only examples I can think of in the last 15 years where you've had these sort of street demonstrations toppling governments on allegations of corruption, the leaders fleeing, their houses being ransacked.

This is quite unlike what's happening in Europe or Latin America or Africa, right?

Africa there's been military coups, Latin America

governments have come down, but we've never seen anything like this.

And it's that funny moment that we talked about with Bangladesh a year ago, where the security services initially protect the government, stop people from looting, and then when they flip, and particularly when the army flips and says, we can't support you anymore, the army then creates these caretaker governments that come in.

And I suppose this is something interesting about democracy.

These are all theoretically democracies, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

Sri Lanka, much more than the others, very deep democracy.

All of them have actually been growing reasonably strongly.

Bangladesh, Sri Lanka are doing better economically, obviously, than Nepal.

And all of them are sense of this fragility of countries from lower income to almost upper middle income countries, which haven't quite got to that stage of wealthy, mature democracies, aren't in the state of poor autocracies.

but where social media has become a tinderbox, which is why people are talking about a South Asian spring, a little bit like an Arab Spring.

So it's a phenomenon.

It's a thing.

Yeah, and I think

this relates to what we were talking about yesterday with the UK.

is social media, there's no doubt, is making government within democracies a lot harder, possibly than it than it used to be.

My own, I don't, I've never been to Nepal, and my only real link with it, a friend of mine, Peter Chittick, is a Canadian entrepreneur, and he founded this charity called Stay at School in Nepal, which Fiona and I have supported in the past.

And it's a wonderful charity.

They go right out to the most remote areas in Nepal, and they're trying to keep children in school.

So, anyway, check that out.

Good people.

Right, we've got a lot of of questions about Russia.

Kate is a Trip Plus member from Poland.

Considering that the Polish government sees the recent drone attack as intentional and several figures have called it an act of war, what action would Russia have to undertake for NATO to consider itself at war with Moscow?

And how can the alliance ensure that one day Russia will not be a threat?

This is something we've talked about before,

this line that, you know, we don't know if Donald Trump is a Russian asset, but if he was, it's hard to see what different he would have done.

I mean, Trump's response to this was just extraordinary.

It was like, I'm not happy with it, but it was probably a mistake.

When you look at the map of where these drones were going and the extent to which the Poles, with the help of the Dutch and others, were sort of bringing them down, very, very hard to see that it's a mistake.

And then you had the same in Romania.

And I think the obvious thing is that this is Putin testing NATO.

And he'll be looking at this and thinking, well, they didn't pass that test very well.

This is a return to the conversation around Qatar.

So if you're one of America's allies and somebody does something to you,

Trump's tendency is to say, well, I'm not very happy with this.

But he never follows through.

So if you're Qatar, you're sitting there.

Well, hold on, Matt.

What do you mean by allies?

I mean, do you include, is Canada an ally?

Is Denmark an ally?

Right, right, right, right.

So you mean the new allies?

You mean the Russia, Israel?

No, no, no, I I meant it the other way around.

I meant if you're Europe, old Europe, or you're Qatar, and you get attacked by Russia or Israel, and you think, because you're Europe or Qatar, you're an American ally, what happens, as Trump will say, well, I'm not very happy with this.

Qatar would have been expecting much more, right?

They would have been expecting Rubio to demonstrate in his trip to Israel the anger.

Poland would have been expecting Trump to really speak out.

And then that flips it around to your point, which is, what is it that then leads Netanyahu or Putin to really push the envelope, to do increasingly provocative things?

You would have thought, if you were Putin, that there's not much to be gained.

I mean, he's got Trump where he wants him.

Why poke the bear?

Why take the risk?

They all want to prove now they can do anything.

They want to prove they have total immunity and there's nothing that can stop them doing it.

And the other thing related to the drones is that some of them came from Belarus.

And what did he do last week in relation to Belarus?

Lifted sanctions on the Belarus airline, Belavia.

This is also

extraordinary media manipulation that Trump brings in to bear now.

He's now running a story which is being loyally reported by some of the British press as though it makes sense that he's done enough on Putin and Russia and sanctions and it's time for Europe to step up.

We now need to impose 100% tariffs against China, incidentally, which would shatter the European economies.

The European economies are exposed to China in a way the US is not remotely.

He Trump hasn't done it.

He Trump backed down.

You remember he blinked on China, dropped the tariffs down, but he's telling us to put 100% tariffs on China.

Knowing that we won't.

He's cut the funding for the Baltic.

He's signalled that he's cutting all support for Ukraine funding.

He's cutting support for NATO.

He's making us spend 5% of GDP.

He's making us step up in all these ways.

And then his story, which has been reported in British newspaper, is, I, Trump, have done enough.

it's time for Europe to step up and do 100% sanctions we talked last week about the way that some of this is framed by our media so the the the truth post social that you're referring to essentially the headline in most of our media was Trump threatens Putin with sanctions read on as you say and the big if is provided that Europe puts these 50 to 50 to 100%

sanctions on on China which as you say is not going to happen where he's got a point, by the way, is I think that Europe has talked a better game than it's delivered in maybe weaning itself off all of the Russian energy stuff.

He's got a point on that.

Where he doesn't have a point, frankly, is in saying that he has ever really pushed the envelope back.

You talk about how far computer can push the envelope.

He's never really pushed it back.

And all of the big threats that he made at the Alaska summit, the trilateral that was going to happen, this is my warning to Putin.

He's got 50 days, then it was 12 days and so forth.

I think

if you step back from his rhetoric and look at his actions since he's taken office, every single month he has done something which has strengthened Putin and weakened Ukraine and weakened NATO.

Every action he's taken, and forget his words, every action he's taken has cut American funding, cut American support, cut American deterrence for Europe and Ukraine and strengthened Putin in Belarus.

And then then he's saying, I've done enough.

I mean, it's completely mad.

I mean, it would be like I do less and less and less and less and less and less and then say, I'm doing so much, it's time you stepped up.

But

this is kind of industrial scale gaslight.

And we're seeing the same on the

aftermath of Charlie Kirk's

assassination, where

this violence is all on the left.

When if you just look at all of the data, that is not true.

What do you think, just finally before we go to the break, what do you think of Channel 4?

Channel 4 are doing this program.

While Donald Trump is here on his state visit, they're going to be broadcasting this program, debunking over what they call 100 lies from Trump.

It's so great.

And look, I wish any of us had a brain big enough to be able to remember all the things that Trump's done, you know, off the top of my head.

Betrayed Ukraine, completely failed in Gaza.

interfered in Brazilian politics by trying to put 50% tariffs to get his mate Bolsonaro out of jail, destroying the world trading system with completely unequal tariffs, weakening his closest allies, cutting USAID,

sending the National Guard into Los Angeles, hitting the American universities, arresting his political opponents.

Absolute clampdown on free speech.

That's the other thing, the great irony.

They are absolutely clamped down in speech.

Whether it's the people in the restaurant who should be in jail, he says, or it's the newspapers that shouldn't exist because he doesn't like them.

And that's before we get on to RFK, vaccine denial, shutting down all the data that seems to suggest there's anything wrong with the American economy.

Meanwhile, employment figures are dropping off in the US.

People are very uncertain about where this is going.

And the story that we keep hearing from businesses is, oh, he's a good guy, really.

You know,

his bark's worse than his bite.

We can be confident stock markets doing well.

Bond market.

Although I see that Sadiq Khan has put out a thing today about the

continuing record rise in Americans applying to live in London.

That's good.

Well, final one for me is a little

shout out to a sort of unusual figure, Max Hastings, who's very much kind of a figure of the right and editor of rightly newspapers, who wrote an article explaining why he, in his rather tweedy way, is joining the anti-Trump protests.

saying, you know, he's a bit embarrassed because he's going to be there with Diane Abbott and the rest.

But his basic point is that he understands why the government is hosting.

But what he cannot believe is that we are hosting somebody not out of in the way that we would have done with U.S.

presence in the past, out of some lingering affection or trust, but simply out of fear for the consequences.

If we don't, what's he going to do to us on terrorists?

What's he going to do to us on Ukraine?

What Ursula van der Leyen calls his weaponizing of dependencies.

Very good.

Take a break.

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Welcome back to the Rest of this Politics Question Time with me, Roy Stewart.

And me, Alastair Campbell.

Carmen Flint, my daughter is starting university this week, and having read just how high sexual violence rates are during the first few months at university, I'm understandably concerned.

We like to think so much has changed, but has it really given so many women and girls feel so vulnerable?

Awareness is a positive step.

If you want to end rape, we need actionable solutions.

What should the government be doing?

We talked about this a few weeks ago in relation to rape crisis centers and the need for more investment in those.

But I hadn't realized

this is like a horrible thing to say, but a kind of peak week for rape and sexual violence.

Freshers week.

Lots of drink, lots of drugs, lots of people.

And lots of people away from home for the first time.

Yes.

Settling in new.

So the numbers are pretty horrific.

I've been talking to people who are running this campaign called Enough,

and it's partly awareness, but it's also they have this thing where they give out on university campuses, and not all of them, because they're a small charity, but they did one in Bristol, for example, where they're giving out these DNA kits.

So if you are sexually assaulted, you can...

take a swab and you then got it.

You've got that.

What often happens is when somebody is subject to rape or sexual violence, they don't want to go to the police for reasons which we talked about last time, but then they might go to the police later, by which time no evidence.

And then it's kind of he said, she said.

So, this is part of

a campaign to try to raise awareness.

But, you know, when you read the numbers, a woman today

is twice as likely to be raped as to get cancer.

Okay.

And survivors are not reporting.

So five in six women don't report it, four in five men and 90% of students do not report rape and sexual assault.

And

what this campaign also does is it allows people to report it.

They can report it, as it were, online.

They give an account of it straight away.

And then they may or may not, at a later date, take that to the police.

And is...

I mean, this is a really

troubling story.

Is the sense that this has always been a problem but people didn't talk about it uh is there a sense that it's getting worse it's it's getting better um is this about and a lot of this presumably is about um

education of young men these numbers are crazy but but presumably i i thought you know because the story five ten years ago was that young men were now very, very aware of these issues.

And I was talking to young teenagers who were saying, you know, they felt very nervous, they weren't really sure how to approach women because they felt that they would get in trouble but that doesn't seem to be the story at all it seems to be completely the opposite it seems to be as though young men are being incredibly aggressive uh and and things haven't changed very much i mean i don't know i think in answer to the question of things getting better or worse it may be that there is more reporting of it within

women's groups, people going to rape crisis centre and so forth.

But, you know, if you're a woman and you're raped and you kind of go online and look at some of of this stuff, the figures for

punishment, conviction, are very, very low, under 1%.

The feeling of all of these organisations is that it's getting much worse.

I was talking to Katie White, who runs This Enough campaign, and she was saying that one of the most common things is that young men's sex education, a lot of it is actually coming through pornography.

And therefore, they're seeing things in pornography that they think are

normal, acceptable.

She told me this story about a woman who'd been subject to a pretty vicious sexual assault and the young guy's defense was that he didn't realize that you shouldn't be doing that.

And this is where he was pulling her hair and throttling her

because that's what he sees a lot when he's watching pornography.

So I think this is partly about education.

I think the other thing and the reason why

we should maybe talk about it even though sometimes it's difficult to kind of white middle-aged, in my case, old men, talking about this stuff.

Is actually, they do one of the best things they've seen at the universities where they've done these pilots and they've taken out and got the funding to go and engage is actually a lot of it is about the conversations they're having with men.

Presumably, I mean, maybe this is too unrealistic, but it is partly about modelling behavior, isn't it?

It's about almost, I don't know whether you could almost role play to get young teenagers to begin to feel their way towards how you flirt with someone, what consent is, how you make a move in a way that leaves someone comfortable and gives them the opportunity to say, no, I'm not interested.

So 320,000 women start university this year and the best estimate is that around 8% will be raped whilst at university and 62%

are going to experience some form of sexual violence.

The other question is whether the universities, I'm sure some of them do take it seriously, but whether a bit like the Catholic Church in the old days or whether you prefer to believe it's not quite as bad as these figures might suggest, so you don't necessarily create that culture where people feel that they can report.

And then, of course, I think

the police,

clearly women, and of course we shouldn't forget, you know, men get raped as well, but women in particular feel that they really feel they can't go to the police.

But just as we leave this subject, I think it's also important to be clear about what's going on so that it doesn't doesn't get pulled into a

sort of manosphere debate.

I mean, remember, there's another current, and this does connect to what we were seeing with the Tommy Robinson demonstrations of men feeling marginalised, feeling that they're in an increasingly feminised society, feeling that women are taking all the professional jobs, that there's no role for men anymore.

And that narrative

means that there are people out there saying, well, all this stuff about rape is not really rape, it's not really sexual assault, the whole world's gone sort of crazy about this stuff.

So I think being clear, no, this is rape.

Listen, let me describe what this man has done.

You know, this is not an example of somebody who slightly got a signal wrong.

This is horrible and will traumatise a woman for the rest of her life and will have been, you know, the worst experience of her entire existence.

Well, I think education is absolutely key to this.

And just to tell people that enough at the moment, a small charity, so it's called enough.

And these, the only way to get these DNA swab things, you probably have have to be attached to one of the universities that's running a pilot.

You can get them online, myenough.com/slash kit.

And by the way, you mentioned the hard-right stuff there.

The other rape issue, rape situation that I want to mention as well, because

I think you said yesterday that a lot of what Tommy Robinson does is to try to sort of promulgate this idea that immigrants and Muslims are sort of committing sexual offences left, right, and centre.

There was a truly horrific rape in the West Midlands last week of a Sikh woman early in the morning, 8.30 in the morning in a public place.

And the police are now looking for two white male suspects.

They're saying it was, judging by the way it was done and what was said, that this was racially motivated.

And I just, can you imagine in the context of that march that happened at the weekend, if this had been

what politicians would be saying, what the Gen Ricks would be saying?

And how much the TikTok narrative we talked about yesterday, which is the idea that a lot of people are angry with Britain because costs of living, inflation,

but that other narrative, which is about protecting our women, protecting our daughters, and this incredible thing that the BBC said to Keir Starmer, would you feel safe with your daughter walking past an asylum hostel, which...

You know, two years ago, even GB News wouldn't ask a prime minister.

I mean, it's a completely insane question, has become sort of normalized.

So, yeah, no, I mean, this isn't just intense personal trauma.

It's now incredibly political.

No, it's been weaponised.

Like every other issue, it's been weaponized.

Anyway, and of course, the other thing that they're emphasizing is that there can and should, it's shown that there is a deterrence effect if on a university campus people know that these kits are around and that a lot of them have been given out, students have got them, and that a bit like the old days when you knew that the breathalyzer existed you thought well i better not drink just in case uh so maybe that deterrence will be effective as well i wonder this is a very sensitive subject but i i don't think it's like breathalyzers uh breathalyzer the point is that everybody understands that if you have a drink and drive it's against the law the problem here is that for whatever reasons poor education, poor socialization, the kind of stuff that people watch, many of the men committing these things do not think they're raping someone.

And therefore, the fact that someone has a rape test kit, I don't think is going to make, I'm afraid, as much difference as the campaigners believe, because

the men believe that what they're doing is consensual and enjoyable.

When it isn't, it's traumatic and it's horrible and it's rape.

But that's the problem.

So the drink driving issue is also cultural.

as well as political.

And it took time for attitudes to change.

And I think what this is about is trying to change people's attitudes and also to involve men in that debate.

And I saw a really, if people go on their website, it's a really interesting film that they did talking to some of the students, I think it was in Bristol, and some of the blokes who were saying how they hadn't really thought about this in the way that maybe they should.

Anyway, all power to their all but not everybody in the in the rape crisis world is is happy.

They think this is this is not as important as sort of getting the investment to the rape crisis centers, but I think it's a it's a really good it's a good thing to try to get as fresh as week, when you see the stats, just think get people talking about about rape rape, consent, because these are issues that I think, as you say, men may be in a not a very good place on it.

Okay, final question, which is from Deshevny, who's a Trip Plus member on Discord, of course, the famous platform that just selected the new Nepali Prime Minister.

There always seems to be some crisis.

At the moment, it's immigration.

How does one decide there's a crisis?

Is it because we constantly compare things to what they were meant to be, like the way economists make the error of making assumptions on the rational economic man?

On a personal note, I get crisis fatigue.

Constantly seeing that society is facing some kind of crisis is stressful.

And I switch out.

And how do you analyse the spectrum of crises from my phone is out of battery to Eden has invaded Suez?

So I'm going to let you end on this, but let me just quickly just remind people, the word crisis, originally an ancient Greek word, and it originally for the Greeks meant decision.

So sort of decisive moment.

What's your definition of crisis?

My definition of crisis, this is a subject about which I've made many, many speeches and done seminars and what have you.

My definition of crisis is an event, set of events or situation

which threatens to overwhelm the organisation unless the right decisions are made.

So I always think you have to have a kind of, because that's where you get the way out of the crisis.

And where the questioner is absolutely right, the word is one of the most overused in the English language because of the way our media operates.

I would argue argue that in all of our time in Tony Blair's premiership, I reckon we had about half a dozen.

Genuine, genuine full-blown crises.

Iraq, Kosovo, 9-11,

foot-and-mouth, fuel protests.

I would argue that what Keir Starmer has at the moment is a

potential crisis.

But they can get through this.

They can get through it.

I don't think it's going to.

How would you define his crisis?

I'd say that

they're in a very difficult political situation governed by lots and lots of different factors, all of which have to be addressed.

And the threat is that actually he would be toppled.

He'd no longer be prime minister after the May elections or going to the next election.

Yeah, so that's that's for him.

And then I think you could argue that whether, if, for example, the budget doesn't go well or if

we don't get growth in the economy and the debt levels continue to rise as to whether we have an economic crisis.

Even though it's economic crisis, you think about the sort of banking crisis, right?

Which was massive.

We kind of got through it.

Lots of consequences and lots of things that we're still having to deal with.

So I think crisis is a word that we shouldn't overuse.

I also don't like your bit where you say unless you make the right decisions.

That relates to your Greek.

Yeah, and I also think that this is, if I was going to make a criticism of Keir Starmer, there's a slight tendency for his defenders to say, well, it's a really difficult economic situation.

The British economy is in trouble.

True.

But he made decisions, and he made two big mistakes.

One was to rule out tax rises before the election when it should have been incredibly clear to them that they needed to raise taxes.

They certainly might have to.

And secondly, not using the opportunity of Trump and having to increase defence spending to 5% GDP to say, okay, the world's changed and we're going to raise taxes.

And those things cripple them because it means that the type of tax rises they could have done, which were not as economically damaging, going for those main taxes that generate 75, 80% of our revenue and allow broad shoulders to hold them have been ruled out, instead of which they're basically punishing business and chasing away wealth.

Yeah.

So the way out of this crisis, I would argue, is for the Labour government to be a good, strong, solid Labour government.

Very good.

Well, strength to that.

And if only they'd followed your advice on appointing David Miliband as ambassador to the U.S., which you did advise him, right?

Did I?

Yeah, I think you did.

I think we can reveal here on the podcast

that you mentioned that in the back of a car somewhere.

That you told Kier Sama to make Dave Millibound the ambassador, and he should have listened to you.

Yes?

Yes or no, Anister?

Come on.

Yes or no?

Should he have listened to you?

I think David would have been a very I'm sure Peter has many, many strands.

I think David would have been a very good choice.

Yeah, and for professional listeners, that means yes, he did advise him, and yes, he feels he should have taken his advice.

Right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Rory, for breaking the confidences at the back of a car somewhere.

All the best.

All the best.

Bye-bye.