473. Europe vs. Trump: Competing Visions for a Ukraine Peace Deal (Question Time)

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Speaker 1 welcome to the rest is politics question time with me alasta campbell and with me rory stewart and a bit of an about face week this week because we're going to be doing the main episode on the budget live after the budget the uk budget the uk budget yep oh sorry i forgot you were such an internationalist and i'm just very domestic and focused on exactly that's the uk budget presented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

Speaker 1 So, we'll do that Wednesday afternoon. This is a sort of budget, UK budget-free zone.

Speaker 2 Yes, Alistair. So, we're going to look, I think, at the big international issues at the moment.

Speaker 2 We're going to return to Ukraine, which people, I hope, have listened to our pod where we went in detail into the Russia-Trump-Ukraine plan.

Speaker 2 We're going to look at these big multilateral meetings that have been happening this week, in particular, COP and the G20, so climate and the G20.

Speaker 2 We're going to be looking at Russia and the far right in Europe, and in particular, the prosecution of Nathan Gill.

Speaker 2 And we're also going to be touching on some other issues that really matter, including Addiction Awareness Week.

Speaker 1 So, Ukraine, Diane Stevenson, Triplus member from Hampshire, does the rest of Europe, the democratic parts anyway, not realise that Putin has to be rolled back here and now? Why are we hesitating?

Speaker 1 Is it that we can't do without the USA, or are we really so stupid to think he won't continue to invade if he's allowed to? So there's a lot in that. Now, we went through the...

Speaker 1 I think you're doing it a huge service by calling it a plan, the U.S.-Russia plan. I think you mean the U.S.-Russia 28-point paper.
I think you'd be struggling to call it a plan.

Speaker 1 What has happened since then, as we suggested it would, is that the Europeans and the Ukrainians have pushed back. Now, we went through it point by point.

Speaker 1 And I think what we should do in the newsletter is try and put side by side the us russian 28 point quotes plan close quotes and the counter proposal by the eu because it's a very clever piece of rewriting i do i have to say detect the hand of jonathan powell in some of it just to give you a couple so the american text said you ukraine's sovereignty will be confirmed okay

Speaker 1 the rewritten european text says it will be reconfirmed in other words it is never in doubt and we're not going to put it in doubt now the american version talked about all ambiguities from the last 30 years will be settled.

Speaker 1 The European version says they will be resolved. The paragraph about the expectation that Russia will not invade neighbors and NATO will not expand further has been deleted.

Speaker 1 The suggestion that the Americans should be a mediator between Russia and NATO has been deleted. Instead, it says there will be a dialogue between Russia and NATO.

Speaker 1 It talks about robust rather than reliable security guarantees. It ups the limit of the Ukrainian forces, which the Americans wanted capped at 600,000 to 800,000, but adds the words in peacetime.

Speaker 1 So through the whole thing, and including membership of NATO, it basically says that in peacetime, there can be one set of attitudes. And should

Speaker 1 Russia ever try to

Speaker 1 be aggressive again, then the all guarantees and all bets will be off.

Speaker 1 And reading it, what struck me was the extent to which, if the Americans really were serious and had been serious about this, I think this would have been the paper in the first place.

Speaker 2 But I think let's go back to it. I mean, this is the fundamental problem that the Europeans have had from the beginning, which is believing that the Americans are on the European side.

Speaker 1 Well, in which case, Diane is absolutely right, and we've just got to stop pretending. Yeah, and that's what I feel.

Speaker 2 I feel the fundamental way in which, unfortunately, the Europeans keep deluding themselves since January is they think America's basically on Europe's side against Russia and that there's some small misunderstanding and if they just get on a plane or rewrite a draft, Trump will suddenly see the truth.

Speaker 2 He'll suddenly realize that actually Russia poses a threat to Europe, that Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine should defend itself.

Speaker 2 And they've tried it in different ways, haven't they? They tried it by these endless getting on planes. They've tried it with documents, with intelligence sharing.

Speaker 2 But by now, they should be beginning to realize by November that they fundamentally disagree and that these two different documents show two completely different worldviews.

Speaker 2 The first document is the Russian worldview which says basically Ukraine is really naturally part of Russia, that Ukraine is controlled by corrupt neo-Nazis, that the reference to Nazis has gone, by the way, surprisingly.

Speaker 2 That the whole expansion of NATO since the 1990s has been a provocation against Russia, and that Russia is just defending its own national security interests, that Russia is obviously winning and is a major geostrategic power comparable to the US and China, and that the natural thing to do is to hand over eastern Ukraine, including bits Russia hasn't currently got to Russia, settling the issue because Russia really deserves to dominate that part of the world.

Speaker 2 And the European point of view is the view that the United States had until the end of Biden, which is this is the most outrageous invasion of a European country, breaking of sovereign borders.

Speaker 2 Russia has gone into Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.
Almost a million have now been wounded. Cities have been destroyed.

Speaker 2 Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage have been done. The international borders have been shifted.

Speaker 2 Russia is responsible for war crimes, breaking of international law, and that if you care at all about sovereignty, the United Nations, the democratic world order, we need to get behind Ukraine, push Russia back.

Speaker 2 And if we don't, we're going to face conflict. And those two views are totally different.
And I'm afraid Trump is very much in the Putin camp.

Speaker 2 So the idea that you're going to turn him around by producing yes another bit of paper, making exactly the same arguments that you've been making for 11 months, isn't going to work.

Speaker 1 Okay, but what's happened, I think, with this piece of paper, this plan, this counter-proposal? And look, there is a pattern to this. We've seen it several times.

Speaker 1 Now, the war is now going into its fourth winter. Come the middle of June, this war will have gone on for as long as the First World War.
Okay?

Speaker 1 So there rightly should be an impetus by everybody to try to bring it to a halt.

Speaker 1 And every time that Putin seems to have wheedled the American side over to a certain way of thinking, the Europeans have managed to wheedle him back.

Speaker 1 What I think you're saying, what Diane's saying, is Europe has to stop playing that game and understand actually this is the time to step up.

Speaker 1 So Kirstam has got this yet another, hosting yet another coalition of the willing meeting today, Tuesday, that will probably push back a little bit more on the Americans.

Speaker 1 Zelensky will probably come out and welcome what they're saying, what they're doing. But I think we have reached this point of saying that Trump is a deeply unreliable ally.

Speaker 1 And we keep, you and I keep saying it, and lots of people that we know in those circles keep saying it.

Speaker 1 Does a point come where one or more of these European leaders takes the inevitable hit diplomatically, economically, in all security, all these other ways that would come from actually coming up and saying Trump can no longer be relied upon either to respect the rule of respect international order, or to be a reliable ally for Europe.

Speaker 2 And now beginning to realize something that we didn't emphasize enough, I think, over the last eleven months. We've tended to say, look,

Speaker 2 there's nothing lost by hoping that Trump is on Europe's side and by going in and being polite to him and flattering him. Actually, something has been lost.

Speaker 2 This delusion since November that Trump can be pushed over to the European position and isn't actually on Putin's side in this conflict conflict has had a huge cost.

Speaker 2 And the cost is, because Europe had it in its head that there's no way that Ukraine and Europe can win without the US, so the only game, even if it doesn't work, is to try to keep the US in the game.

Speaker 2 And its delusion that maybe the US is ultimately on Europe's side has actually meant that we have not stepped up with our financing, haven't developed a system for defending the Ukraine independent of the United States.

Speaker 2 And actually worse than that, Ukraine has been firing a lot of American missiles, which it probably would have kept in reserve if it had known that the U.S. was going to stop the future weapon supply.

Speaker 2 So we're actually in a weaker position now, in November, in negotiating with Russia, than we would have been if we'd been clearer in January that Trump was not on our side.

Speaker 2 If in January we had said, okay, basically this guy is on Russia's side.

Speaker 2 We can keep talking to him, but we need from this moment to put a rocket up our whatever and completely transform our defense security funding policy towards Ukraine.

Speaker 1 Which is kind of what Sikorsky was saying when we were talking about the US. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Because the end of this story is always going to be the same, which is a moment is going to come where the United States at best will walk away, but more likely will say, we're not providing key weapons, we're not providing intelligence and security, and we might even go so far as to sanction the Ukrainians because we want to force the Russian position.

Speaker 2 And at that point, we're not ready. And we should have been getting ready since January for that.

Speaker 1 You see, I said we weren't going to talk about the budget, but in a way, I think that when the debate was going on about whether Labour should be putting up tax or not, I actually think it could have been and should have been related to this debate.

Speaker 1 Because Britain is not remotely having this debate about whether the French are, the French, as I said on that episode we did in Ukraine the other day, the French chief of staff addressing all the mayors of France.

Speaker 1 and saying, are we preparing our people for what might lie ahead? Now, when you and I said that the other night, we had all the bots coming out saying warmongering, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 But just as what you're saying is we have to take Trump at face value and reach the conclusion that this guy is not on our side, equally we have to take Putin at face value, which is that he's going to keep going.

Speaker 1 He has not budged an inch in all of the talk that's gone on.

Speaker 1 And the other thing, somebody that I was talking to in sort of spook world was saying the one thing that they really are shocked by is the extent to which Witkoff in particular just buys the line from Putin that Russia is winning this war.

Speaker 1 Now, the Russian economy, were it subject to a bit more pressure,

Speaker 1 and Trump did put on the sanctions on the two big oil companies, but then as the other spoke the other day about criticising Europe, when actually he's helping the Russians because Hungary and Slovakia are still buying it.

Speaker 2 And there's a small subtext here also, which was he was supposed to put on enormous sanctions on November 22nd, which he never did.

Speaker 1 On China.

Speaker 2 I think this is part of a general pattern.

Speaker 2 of one of the reasons that Trump has lured us into this false sense that maybe the US is on our side, is that in many occasions since January, Trump has signalled, I'm going to sanction Russia, I'm going to put secondary sanctions against Indeed, Turkey,

Speaker 2 I'm going to say at the UN that I totally defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine. All these things have convinced us, well, maybe we don't really need to step up.

Speaker 2 Maybe we're not really going to be in a world where we're fighting this without the US. And the fact is, in some ways, it's a contric.
In fact, Philip O'Brien, that's St. Andrews, calls this long con.

Speaker 2 He actually goes as far as says it may be deliberate policy, and it certainly would be from the Russians' point of view, which is to keep the illusion going that maybe the US will remain on Europe's side, and by doing so, stop Europe and Ukraine really stepping up.

Speaker 1 So every time he sort of threatens something,

Speaker 1 we gratefully, breathlessly

Speaker 1 take it at face value, think it's going to happen, and then something else happens to make us stop thinking that it was ever going to happen.

Speaker 1 It is conmanship, I think.

Speaker 2 But final thing on this. Again and again, the US will keep saying this is about the fact that Europe has not spent enough on defense.
Here, here, we all agree.

Speaker 2 And therefore, Russia is Europe's problem and Europe needs to step up. But the problem is that the US is not actually saying, in this Russia-US deal, we're going to allow Europe to step up.

Speaker 2 What it's actually saying is, yes, this is Europe's problem. Europe's facing Russia.
And by the way, we're going to tie Europe's hands behind its back.

Speaker 2 We're going to make sure they can't put planes forward to Poland. We're going to stop them putting European troops into Ukraine.
We're going to stop the expansion of NATO.

Speaker 2 We're going to constrain the size of the Ukrainian army.

Speaker 2 This is not actually the Elbridge Colby fantasy that the United States is focusing on China and Europe is going to be empowered to push back Russia through Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

Speaker 2 Nothing of the sort.

Speaker 2 Actually, what the United States, it would be like, I don't know, I keep trying to think of the analogies to illustrate some Americans, but let's say for some weird reason I decided that I was going to go out for the night and put my young child in charge of my house.

Speaker 2 And I had told him to get ready and do his karate training, and he hadn't done it. And then I finally think, okay, well, you didn't do your training.
I'm leaving the house anyway. Fine.

Speaker 2 But America's going more than that. They're actually saying, and by the way, I'm going to disable the alarm.
I'm going to hand a pepper stray to the person who's coming in through the door. Farewell.

Speaker 2 See you later.

Speaker 1 Very interesting analogy. And I think when

Speaker 1 your children are on the psychiatrist's couch in 20 years' time, Roy, they'll be playing this one back. My God.

Speaker 1 You and I should definitely do a podcast or a book about parenting.

Speaker 1 We have very different approaches.

Speaker 1 Anyway, my final point is that, and it's interesting you made the point there about, because you said this when we did the episode the other day, where the American document said that Poland would be hosting these fighter jets, and they talk about NATO hosting them.

Speaker 1 And the other big change, thank God, is they removed all reference to this notion that there should be no comeback for war crimes. They haven't addressed it specifically.
They've just removed that.

Speaker 2 What have they done on America making 50% profits?

Speaker 1 That has gone. What there is is a total rewrite.
There's an acceptance that there's got to be kind of, you know, big investment, Ukrainian fund, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 And that it talks about Ukraine working with the Americans on that. But all reference to United States making 50% profit.

Speaker 1 And what's amazing, Rory, the number of people who've said to me in the last 48 hours that our podcast was the first, including politicians, our podcast was the first time they were even aware that it had this plan for basically Trump to take 50% of all the proceeds of any reconstruction.

Speaker 2 Well, putting in no money. He was going to take 100 billion of Russian money, 100 billion of European money, and he was going to make all the profit.

Speaker 2 And let's see what happens to this European proposal. I'm a bit gloomy, but we'll see.

Speaker 2 Next question from India, who's actually got a question coming in from Johannesburg herself, which is, of course, where the G20 summit, the summit of the 20 wealthiest nations on earth.

Speaker 1 Minus one.

Speaker 2 Minus one, the G19, and we'll come to that in a second, was hosted.

Speaker 2 So when major global forums like the G20 or COP, because actually extraordinarily this week we've also had the end of the climate summit in Brazil, end up functioning because a group of middle powers keep the process alive while the United States either disengages or actively undermines consensus, how useful are these summits in shaping real global outcomes?

Speaker 2 Are they still effective spaces for cooperation? Or have they become platforms that master the fact that the real decisions are now being made outside formal multilateral settings?

Speaker 2 Let me have a starter on you for this.

Speaker 2 Essentially, since the Second World War, the whole multilateral system, this whole idea that instead of just country A doing business with country B is replaced by a system where the whole world gets together and small countries and big countries agree rules, was underpinned by the United States.

Speaker 2 It was the way that America, after 1945, as the kind of big hegemon, 40% of the global economy at the end of the Second World War, chose to run the world.

Speaker 2 They didn't run it like the British Empire, which was bilateral. They decided to create the UN, the World Bank, the IMF,

Speaker 2 NATO, all this stuff, right? It was going to be multilateral. And my fear is that when the United States is removed from the system, the basic heart and engine of multilateralism collapses.

Speaker 2 And the problem started actually earlier with your friend George Bush, because

Speaker 2 when he comes in is when...

Speaker 2 America leaves Kyoto on climate, when it gets out of some of the ballistic missile and biological weapons stuff, when it leaves the International Criminal Court, that's already the beginning of America disentangling itself.

Speaker 2 But by the time you're with Trump, as you say, he doesn't even turn up to the G20, despite the fact America is the next country to host the G20.

Speaker 2 And of course, he doesn't turn up to the climate conference in Brazil.

Speaker 1 If you're a European leader, you talk about whether these summits are useful. They have gone.
Obviously, Keir Starmer went to COP, then went to the G20.

Speaker 1 The European leaders then went straight from there to Angola for the EU-Africa summit. So

Speaker 1 these summits are still going on. Now, the question from India is whether they still have merit, I guess,

Speaker 1 underpinning that, without the Americans taking part. And I said on the Ukraine episode we did that, I'd been speaking to people who were there, and it was interesting how

Speaker 1 they sort of feel in a way it matters even more at the moment.

Speaker 1 And that while they're there, while they're addressing some of these issues, and when you read the stuff that came out of Johannesburg, there was lots and lots of stuff that hasn't got any coverage here but actually was about further engagement in africa and we've talked a lot on the podcast the extent to which china has been all over africa militarily russia is all over africa so i think these summits do still matter i get why people think you know why are these leaders always on a plane why they're never sort of focused on stuff here but i think right now in this kind of weird moment in history that we're at, I think these alliances are going to become more important.

Speaker 1 The more that America retreats, the more I think that we,

Speaker 1 UK, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, like-minded countries with similar values, have got to, we've got to start shaping our own agenda.

Speaker 1 And that relates to our previous discussion about Ukraine.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I think the change in the world, though, is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you think back to your time in government, I suppose the four big things probably would be the G7 meeting, the UNGA meeting, the G20 meeting, and COP, right?

Speaker 2 Would be the big meetings this year. So G7 was June in Canada, which basically became the G6 plus Trump.

Speaker 2 Trump left early and went on to do some funny bilateral thing on Ukraine, whereas actually the year before, the G7 had been at the heart of all the Ukraine-Russia sanctions.

Speaker 1 And he did it very deliberately to say,

Speaker 1 I'm going off to deal with really big stuff now on my own.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. Then the UN General Assembly in September was another extraordinarily weird Trump fest.
It was actually used by Netanyahu in Israel as a sort of cover for its strikes.

Speaker 2 There was the banning of the Palestinian delegation, etc. And now we've had this G20 COP, which America doesn't turn up to at all.

Speaker 2 And you've also got this other very odd thing happening, which is it isn't really that the middle powers are driving this. Europe and the UK are playing it pretty straight.

Speaker 2 But if you look at the G20 resolution in Johannesburg, you've got Saudi Arabia, India, signing up. to climate agreements, references to a lot of things which are incredibly progressive.

Speaker 2 And at the same day

Speaker 2 in Copenhagen, Brazil, those same countries are blocking any language about eradicating fossil fuels. So

Speaker 2 the G20 becomes this, or G19 becomes this talking shop where the very same countries that are screwing up real progress on agreements on climate are making gentle noises about it at the other end of the world.

Speaker 1 But it also shows how these things develop. So the G20 emerged out of one of the financial crises that was developing in Asia when Gordon Brown was chancellor.

Speaker 1 And I remember Gordon being obsessed with this idea that, you know, the G7 is not the place to have these debates. We've got to bring in all these other countries.

Speaker 2 Because G7, as we said, is too small. It's only a third of the world economy.
G20 is nearly 80% of the world economy. It includes China, Russia.
India. India, Turkey.

Speaker 2 It seems so much more. And if you were going to deal with climate, 80% of the world economy, 90% of the world emissions, it's the G20 that matters.

Speaker 1 But the politics then, so it's born out of one purpose, and then it sort of develops in the way that these things do. So it's now addressing everything.

Speaker 1 So a very, very, very long communique that was written. The word Ukraine came in once.
Why?

Speaker 1 Because you've got people there at the G20 who aren't in the same place as Europe, who aren't in the same place even as Trump. They're much closer, much, much closer to the Russian line.

Speaker 1 So there's diplomacy goes on. But I think if you're South African and if you're Ramaposa, I think you're thinking actually you did pretty well here.

Speaker 1 The other thing that's really interesting both about COP and the G20 is that they were both this year, for the first time in a while, held in places where protest is possible.

Speaker 1 Very interesting example of that in South Africa where femicide and violence against women and girls is a really big thing

Speaker 1 and where the government is often felt not to have taken it seriously enough.

Speaker 1 So these protests one of which was women in 15 towns and cities lying down for 15 minutes in protest at the 15 women murdered every day.

Speaker 1 And Ramaposa, he probably didn't want to be focusing on this so much, but in the end did declare that South Africa had a national emergency when it came to violence against women and girls.

Speaker 1 So that's just a sign of how protest can have an impact, whether that gets followed through into policy change, attitude change. But I think that was another reason why it was a good thing that

Speaker 1 the G20 happened. I think from their perspective, it felt like a really big deal, even though Trump wasn't there.

Speaker 1 And once they got past day one and people have stopped talking about Trump, the ones I talked to said they got a lot done.

Speaker 2 Well, I've been talking to people who were at COP and they produced a great line from one of your Dutch footballers saying this was a game that they couldn't win, but the important thing was that they shouldn't lose.

Speaker 1 Who was the which footballer was it, do you know?

Speaker 2 He was the famous Dutch.

Speaker 2 I think it was Cruff, yeah. Is that a line that you associate with Cruyff? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Tell me it again.

Speaker 2 Probably it works better in Dutch. I think the idea was this is a game we can't win, but you know, our objective in this game is to make sure we don't lose.

Speaker 2 So the idea here was that we couldn't come out of the COP with anything substantial, but the worst case scenario was America would completely torpedo the system, more countries would walk out of the climate process.

Speaker 2 They got to the end of it with America being the only country that's actually walked out. Everybody else is still part of it.
But that said, my goodness, things are going wrong.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you look back to the sort of optimism of Paris or even Glasgow, we've been through these very eccentric locations for cops.

Speaker 2 You remember we've been through Sharm al-Sheikh, we've been through Dubai, we've been through Azerbaijan.

Speaker 2 But UAE now looks like a sort of beacon of light because in UAE there was an agreement to phase out fossil fuels.

Speaker 2 And now in this COP, we had Russia, Saudi Arabia, predictably, but the big thing is India coming out so strongly against any language.

Speaker 2 So we end up with a situation in which 80 countries sign up to a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and 80 countries reject it. And Brazil got in a total muddle.

Speaker 2 You know, was this going to be the implementation cop, the people's cop, the truth cop?

Speaker 1 It was the indigenous cop, wasn't it? And even Brazil.

Speaker 2 Even Brazil couldn't decide whether what it was doing is selling itself as Lula climate deforestation, or was it Brazil as the major oil producer on the side of the fossil fuels?

Speaker 2 So I think, again, we've come out of it with Europe being quite well behaved. You know, they've committed to a 66%

Speaker 2 reduction by 2030 compared to their levels in 1990 and a 90% reduction by 2050. China did make some commitments.

Speaker 2 You know, China is not totally like in Saudi India in this, but China's commitment was 10%. It was well below about a third of what people were pushing for.

Speaker 2 And the fundamental story remains that every year we continue to put about two parts per million into the atmosphere. Every year we continue to generate about 80% of our energy from fossil fuels.

Speaker 2 So even though the renewable bit goes up, the fossil fuel bit goes up just as much as the renewable bit. And we're not remotely on track for one and a half degrees.

Speaker 2 The most you could say, you know, my my friend who'd very sweetly been through this whole COPC,

Speaker 2 absolute optimist and wants to believe in it, he said, well, what we achieved is, you know, if it hadn't been for Paris, we would have been on track for four degrees.

Speaker 2 We're now on track for two and a half.

Speaker 2 And where, of course, I'm going to be grumpy is saying

Speaker 2 is that despite this panel on global inequality, it's getting worse. All the figures are the inequality is getting worse.

Speaker 2 The British government has massacred its international development budget. It's less than half of what it was even five years ago.

Speaker 2 The US government has wiped out its international development assistance. The number of people living in extreme poverty in Africa has gone from about 180 million in 1980 to about 470 million today.

Speaker 2 And every indicator of inequality across the world seems to be going wrong. Inequality of income, inequality of wealth, stagnation of median incomes.

Speaker 2 So without any money and with everything going the wrong direction, what on earth is this panel going to do consisting of Spain, Brazil and South Africa?

Speaker 1 Oh, Roy, you're being so cynical about this. They're providing a useful leadership role on a vital debate for the future of the planet.

Speaker 1 And they say this, too much, this is stray out of New Labour book, the first bit, too much wealth and power is in the hands of the few goes on as monopolists reign over entire industries, including much of the media and the 21st century town square of social media.

Speaker 1 So there's a debate that they need to have and they need to do more about.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean it's harder without America for sure.

Speaker 2 So the thing that breaks my heart is that things that you and I violently agree on and values that we would have taken for granted, when you now say them aloud, seem beginning to feel more and more naive and mad.

Speaker 2 I was looking at the UN General Assembly in September.

Speaker 2 The UN General Assembly, just three months ago, was committed to leaving no one behind, acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development, and human dignity for present and future generations.

Speaker 2 Now, what can we possibly disagree with that statement?

Speaker 1 And yet for the first time, thanks to Trump, Putin, Modi, and the rest of them it's beginning to seem a bit ridiculous right these these phrases are beginning to seem laughable well they might but you've got to keep you've got to hold you've got to keep fighting for noble causes rory you can't just you can't give up now let's go to uk nick moss from hexham nathan gill's conviction raises serious security concerns for reform uk as a former senior ukip figure and mep he repeatedly promoted pro-Russia lines yet there's no sign reform's leadership ever questioned this given their close ties to gill their silence invites doubt about what they knew or whether they condone his actions.

Speaker 1 Why isn't this receiving more scrutiny from reform voters and the general public? If reform is poised to enter government, these unanswered questions could pose a national security risk.

Speaker 1 I've got to be honest with you, I am banging my head against a wall on this one.

Speaker 1 So, today, Tuesday, there is finally a bit of coverage about Nigel Farage on the media, and it's about whether he did or did not use racist abuse against his fellow pupils at Dulwich College.

Speaker 2 That's a school.

Speaker 1 At school,

Speaker 1 serious to be examined,

Speaker 1 fair enough. But

Speaker 1 Nathan Gill should by now be a household name on a par with the spies of the past. You know, Philby has gone into British historical legend, okay?

Speaker 1 Even since the conviction, I have been doing events and saying, who here has heard of Nathan Gill?

Speaker 1 And yes, it's gone up a little bit from the 0% of last week, but we're still talking single figures. That is a total chronic failure.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk a bit about the BBC of our media who have chosen that because their chosen narrative right now is Farage is en route for power to overlook virtually one of the most significant political, diplomatic, security, and crime stories of modern times.

Speaker 2 Very good. Well, given, as you say, that only a small percentage of people have heard of Nathan Gill, let me try to explain who Nathan Gill is.

Speaker 2 If you're right, 92% of our listeners haven't heard of Nathan Gill.

Speaker 1 I suspect more of our listeners will have, but it is shocking how badly our media is reported this.

Speaker 2 So Nathan Gill was a politician associated with all the different incarnations of Nigel Farage's party, which was, of course, UKIP and then the Brexit party and then reform.

Speaker 2 And he kept moving as Farage moved between them.

Speaker 1 And he was their leader in Wales.

Speaker 2 Yep, he was the member of the European Parliament for UKIP. He was then in the Welsh National Assembly.
Then he was re-elected in the Brexit Party and became leader of reform in Wales.

Speaker 2 And in 2018, 2019, he began to develop these very close relationships, particularly with a man called Olek Voloshin, who

Speaker 2 was a Ukrainian member of parliament, very, very close to Ukrainian oligarchs, to a man called Medvechuk, and also to a whole media industry. And what they began doing is giving cash to Nathan Gill.

Speaker 2 It now turns out they probably gave him some £30,000, £40,000. pounds.
It turns out to be extremely cheap to bribe British members of parliament. £5,000 at a time.

Speaker 2 It's not like a million pounds and a thing. And what they got him to do was to read out speeches in the European Parliament defending this media enterprise.

Speaker 2 So it's basically a pro-Russian media operation that was running in Ukraine, attacking Zelensky and making the Russian point of view and doing all it could to undermine the Ukrainian position against Russia.

Speaker 2 And the Ukrainians were moving to to shut down this media, which they thought was a Russian push of influence.

Speaker 2 And Nathan Gill gives a speech in the European Parliament, which is worth bearing in mind when you're being suspicious of politicians. I've watched the whole speech.
It's not as you would expect.

Speaker 2 What he actually says is, I'm very much on Ukraine's side. I'm very much against Russia's invasion of Crimea.
I very much believe in the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine, but freedom of speech.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it's very unfortunate that this country that I support is shutting down this media organization and we need to allow freedom of speech to happen this country for which he gets money and the man who gives money then has a meeting with Putin the following day and it's how well he's doing in getting this MEP to

Speaker 1 this but I just show you the fact that Putin takes an interest in this but what's interesting about reformed reaction since the conviction they can't believe their luck I even suspected that this morning reform would think oh great they're going on about Nigel being a racist when he was a kid rather than this which is much much more serious honestly if I were the the Labour government right now I would publish all the stuff that came emerged during the Brexit referendum.

Speaker 1 I would have a major inquiry into Russian interference in our democracy. And you can throw in China as well.

Speaker 1 And you can just, because we are pretending, we're pretending that this isn't really a problem. And the media is totally playing into that game.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And

Speaker 2 we have to be very careful on what we're suggesting here, but it might be worth asking some questions about some other people from Nathan Gill's party who

Speaker 2 are also making speeches in the European Parliament in favour of the same pro-Russian media organization, served on the board of the same pro-Russian media organization, who absolutely deny that they took any payment from Russia to do this.

Speaker 2 But it's pretty peculiar that they're all making speeches in favour of it, serving on the board of it, turning up to meetings with it. And so that's worth looking at.

Speaker 2 But clearly, what we need to ask is: is there a bigger systemic problem here? So Oleg Voloshin

Speaker 2 and actually a man called Janus who was the Polish agent in all of this, a lot of this is coming from their debriefing, Janus's debriefing by Polish intelligence and in particular his WhatsApps.

Speaker 2 And they were connected to many, many members of parliament and members of European Parliament all the way across Europe. So far only one of them has been prosecuted.

Speaker 2 Now, we're not going to get into legal problems by accusing individuals by name or even implying anything by name, but there is a much bigger investigation that needs to happen.

Speaker 2 Is it actually plausible that there was only one involved?

Speaker 2 So somebody needs to, I would imagine, if you were investigating this, look at the other people who were making speeches at the same time and check whether this was genuinely their views, or is it a bit odd that they were making almost identical speeches to Nathan Gill on the same issue, serving on the same boards, going to the same meetings?

Speaker 2 We need to look at people across the system who had contact with these people.

Speaker 2 I mean, again, you know, very much Nigel Farage will say in his defense, I'm sure, that the fact that he had a photograph with Nadia Borodi, who then pops up in the same photographs because she's the partner of Oleg Voloshin, or that Marchevsky, who does the voice of Europe and is closed down by the Czechs, isn't indirectly connected, well, fine.

Speaker 2 May all be enormous coincidence. They may just have been foolish.
They may have been caught with the wrong photograph in the same way that you and I often get photographs of people.

Speaker 2 But there's clearly a much, much bigger system going on here. And I'm a bit suspicious about the fact that only Nathan Gill and the whole of Europe has so far been prosecuted.

Speaker 1 Several MEPs were

Speaker 1 their names came out in evidence in court. I've barely seen them anywhere.
I've certainly not seen them pursued by the media to be asked the sort of questions you're putting.

Speaker 1 All of these other names who have not been in the papers but have been raised in court, they all deny any wrongdoing. So take them at face value.

Speaker 1 But your question about whether there is something bigger and systemic going on, my hunch is if Vladimir Putin is sitting at a desk waiting for his man to come back and report how they're getting on with Nathan Gill, I don't think Vladimir Putin would just sit there interested in one MEP.

Speaker 1 And likewise, Richard Tice, big figure now, never off the television in Reform UK.

Speaker 1 He said he never met the guy. So you talk about pictures, then pictures emerge, and the pictures emerge of him sort of being introduced, introducing him at speeches.
So

Speaker 1 they're trying to do exactly what News International did when the phone hacking thing started. One bad apple.
One bad apple. Very good headline in the Daily Mirror today.
Any more Vlad apples, Nigel?

Speaker 1 I think we need to know, as Nigel Farage might say. I'm only asking questions here, Nigel.
I think we need to know the answers.

Speaker 2 But there's the bigger issue of corruption in general. I mean, we've talked about this before.

Speaker 2 We've talked about the way that Azerbaijan basically corrupted a whole series of British and European members of parliament through its caviar diplomacy.

Speaker 2 We've talked about the way that European parliamentarians were found with bags of cash, almost certainly from a Middle Eastern state, trying to bribe them to do stuff.

Speaker 2 And I think we haven't begun to think about the ways in which the American private sector can begin to corrupt our members of parliament. And what do I mean by corrupt?

Speaker 2 What I mean is it'd be much more difficult to catch them. In a sense, actually, the Russians and the Gulf states who are handing over cash are being naive.
They're doing it in a too obvious way.

Speaker 2 It's extremely easy to change the behaviour of our members of parliament if you are a big American tech company by saying, come and give a speech for which we will pay you X thousand.

Speaker 2 Or here's an opportunity after you leave Parliament to help us with consultancy.

Speaker 2 Or here's some stuff that we can do in your constituency, non-party political, but helping you with the digital infrastructure in your constituency and understanding how to use these platforms.

Speaker 2 And that general sense that these are powerful, wealthy organisations that could give you money, that could do you harm, that could be useful to you, can do an extraordinary amount to stop parliamentarians regulating those social media companies, confronting them, calling them out.

Speaker 2 And so I think we need to worry about our democracy, not just in the really obvious, here's some dirty bundles of cash, but all the other ways in which different countries use paid trips, parties, gifts

Speaker 2 to get people on their side.

Speaker 1 You know, we'll talk about the BBC in a minute. I mean,

Speaker 1 how many days did Angela Reyna's

Speaker 1 stamp duty issue lead the news? Lead the newspapers? I mean, I, and to be honest, even now, it's not that long ago, I can't remember the full detail.

Speaker 1 But at the time, you turn on the television, you turn on the radio, you open a newspaper, it was wall to wall.

Speaker 1 We're talking now about a guy who is presenting himself as the next prime minister, who has thus far, so far as I can work out, addressed this issue zero, other than saying he was a bad apple.

Speaker 1 And do you know what made me, that reminded me of? It was exactly the defence used by News International over the phone hacking. One bad apple.

Speaker 1 Well, let's be assured of that by properly investigating Russia's attempted influence on UK democracy. And that will involve talking to people like Farage, other party leaders, etc.

Speaker 1 But we are are kidding ourselves if we think that Russia puts this at your point about this going to Putin. This is a strategic interest for them.

Speaker 1 Putin taking an interest in the corruption of a Welsh member of the European Parliament, right?

Speaker 1 Who else and what else is he interested in?

Speaker 2 Well, there's a wonderful book by a man called Shakovstov, who's based in Vienna. It's called Russia and the Western Far Red, looking at this whole relationship.

Speaker 2 And it's not just what's going on here with Brexit reform UKIP, it's what's going on with the Front Nationale in

Speaker 2 France, where you end up with them taking huge loans from Russian banks. It's to do with the way that they're inviting people from the German AFD, their far-right party, over to meetings in Moscow.

Speaker 1 And they're getting plenty in return in terms of the politics of pro-Russian statements.

Speaker 2 And he continues to develop this, the Golden Dawn in Greece, etc., etc.

Speaker 2 This has been a Russian policy really at the heart of Russian intelligence since the 1920s, 1930s.

Speaker 2 One of the great chiefs of the, what KGB became the SVR, said, the difference between us and the British is that we're not fundamentally an intelligence gathering organization.

Speaker 2 We're fundamentally about destabilizing and shaping other people's politics by the way in which we create connections with social media, opposition groups, party members, party leaders.

Speaker 2 So this Russian move is part of a much broader Russian move across many, many different terrains.

Speaker 2 There will be hundreds of Russian intelligence officers working in different ways through different intermediaries to shape the space and basically what they want to do is shape the space against liberal democracy against NATO against the European Union and they see all these groups as being proto-Brexit groups so destroying the European Union pro-Russia groups destroying NATO pro-Trump groups undermining liberal democracy and the rule of law and all of that is to Putin's advantage.

Speaker 1 And you and I, for saying things like that, get portrayed by people on the right and on the hard left, apologies, as sort of cranks, almost like paranoid cranks.

Speaker 1 But the point is, they do this stuff for a reason. And Nathan Gill should be a massive, massive warning cry to the rest of our politics and our democracy.

Speaker 1 And the extent to which both politics and media, it seems to me, are now just saying, oh, well, Nathan Gill's gone to jail. That's the end of that.
It's pathetic.

Speaker 2 And more MPs need to speak out. And I'm worried that one of the reasons more MPs aren't speaking out is that they will have a bit of a guilty conscience.

Speaker 2 There are far too many all-party parliamentary groups sponsored by foreign governments paying for MPs to go on guided trips, sharing the propaganda of those countries to them.

Speaker 2 All this stuff should be stopped. We should have much, much stricter rules against trips, benefits, lobbying.

Speaker 1 Not against this trip.

Speaker 2 Not against this trip. This is the rest is possible.

Speaker 1 No sanctions on trip. Okay, Roy, let's take a break and then come back and talk talk about the BBC, West Bank, and also Addiction Awareness Week.

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Speaker 2 As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and division, one national consensus still stands firm. Roast potatoes.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, all this British stuff.

Speaker 1 If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to the rest is politics plus?

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Speaker 2 Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

Speaker 1 And me, Alistair Campbell.

Speaker 2 And this next question is brought to you by People's Postcode Lottery.

Speaker 1 And on that, People's Postcode Lottery's biggest ever prize pot, 38.2 million, will be shared among winning postcodes across Great Britain in the December draws with 30% of every ticket supporting charities and good causes in local communities.

Speaker 2 And to mark that milestone, they've asked a fitting question.

Speaker 2 Of all the moments that define us as a species, from fire to flight, democracy to discovery, I like the alliteration, what's the biggest ever human achievement?

Speaker 1 I think the biggest ever political human achievement, I actually do think it relates to global public health.

Speaker 1 I think the efforts that have been made successfully to eradicate some diseases and massively to cut down on others, malaria, TB, AIDS, etc. I think I'd put that right up there.

Speaker 2 I'd maybe develop that and say underneath that, the biggest ever human achievement, I think, is our ability to actually think about other humans and other species.

Speaker 2 We are very, very selfish in many ways as species. We have a real tendency to be like, let's look after our own families, ourselves first.

Speaker 2 But the amazing thing, along with all the damage we've done on the world, is we did have an idea of international development.

Speaker 2 We did have an idea of tackling global poverty, of trying to work together on climate change, of setting up democracies where people have equal rights, of having a redistributive tax system where wealthier people contribute to people who are less well-off, of having systems where in the end we actually do begin to care about nature, conservation, the environment.

Speaker 2 So I think our biggest achievement as a species is we're not quite as selfish as we sometimes think. And I think I want to...

Speaker 1 Keep going.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we'll sort of lean into it. I mean, we should lean into our generosity.

Speaker 2 Here's a question for you. How many southern white rhinos do you think there were about 1905?

Speaker 1 I have got no idea, Roy.

Speaker 2 Okay, answer is about 25. How many do you think there are today?

Speaker 1 More than that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, 25,000.

Speaker 1 There we go.

Speaker 2 So that's an interesting example when we're generally very gloomy about humans.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of species are being lost.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and we're doing huge damage to biodiversity, but just occasionally, humans are able to pull their socks up, concentrate, target a species, and improve it.

Speaker 1 Well, one of my favorite current show of hands in my show of hands obsession at speaking events is we talk about everything's going well and the government's this and the government's that.

Speaker 1 And then when it gets really moany, I'll just say, okay, let's just hold on. Hands up if you quite enjoy your life.
And everybody puts their hands up.

Speaker 1 It is worth holding on to that.

Speaker 1 We're quite an optimistic sort of breed, really.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe the biggest ever human achievement isn't one invention or moment.

Speaker 2 It is, as you suggested, Alistair, the way we keep moving forward together.

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Speaker 1 Waiting to be won across Great Britain with 30% of every ticket supporting charities and good causes in local communities.

Speaker 2 Because just like progress itself, I guess guess this is built on connection. Millions of people taking part or contributing to something bigger.

Speaker 1 Here's your door in the drawer. Sign up for midnight, 30th of November at peoplespostcode lottery.co.uk.

Speaker 2 Here's a question for you. Jackie Muggleton, Trip Plus member.
Wiltshire, thank you, Jackie, for being a Trip Plus member. Is it now time for Starma to stand up to Trump to defend our BBC?

Speaker 1 Well, if you haven't seen my speech on behalf of Gear Starber about the BBC, which we did when we were on tour, strongly recommended.

Speaker 2 And how's your campaign for becoming Director General? How's that going?

Speaker 1 I think it's an on-starter. But I've got to tell you, Rory, yesterday I watched some of the evidence of the DCMS committee of the BBC executives, but I found it very, very frustrating on many levels.

Speaker 1 So I gave up. And while I was then went off and do something else, and I started to get these messages saying, they're talking about you at the DCMS committee.

Speaker 1 I thought, oh, great, somebody's decided they should throw my hand, my name into the ring.

Speaker 1 But in fact, what it was was Robbie Gibb, Theresa May's former communications director, was being asked how he thought the Conservative Party would react if Keir Starmer appointed Alistair Campbell to the board of the BBC.

Speaker 1 And Robbie Gibbs' reply was that a bit of a sort of faux humility at the start. He said, well, I don't think I was as good as my job as Alistair was at his.

Speaker 1 In any event, I'd work for the BBC for a very, very long time. But it's a good question.
I've actually had, since saying, half in jest on tour that I'd like to be the Director General,

Speaker 1 I've had more than one person from within the BBC say, go for it. Here's a question for you, Rory.
How important do you think a voice is in public life? The physical voice?

Speaker 2 I think incredibly important. I think this is a fundamental problem for Keir Starmer, unfortunately.
I think his voice sounds strange, nerdy, and strangled.

Speaker 1 Because I thought Samir Shah's voice was a real problem yesterday. He just sounded really weak.

Speaker 1 So when the thing being put towards him is giving weak leadership of the BBC at a time of crisis, it didn't really help. The committee didn't do a good job, though.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, but it was, it was, it was just a sort of friendly chat with them all. It wasn't forensic.

Speaker 2 Well, I chaired the Defense Select Committee briefly and I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee for four years before that. And I was struck by the fact that we were not remotely as prepared.

Speaker 2 I testified to the Senate and that's something, right? I testified to the Senate, I think, 2008. They are really sharp.

Speaker 1 Afghanistan. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And they have their staffers preparing every question and it's completely legalistic and they're drilling into it. I felt that we let people off too much.

Speaker 2 Often the chair are thinking, well, you have one question. As soon as you've gotten on the rope, it moves on to the next MP.

Speaker 2 Some law firms offered training, but actually very few MPs turned up for that training. I mean, there's a general story around professionalism training of MPs and ministers.

Speaker 1 Apparently, Caroline Dinage is the chair of the committee. She was on the Westminster Hour or 10 o'clock news on the radio, apparently, and said that she didn't think the board was in safe hands.

Speaker 1 So maybe that was the judgment they discussed afterwards. But I think that the witnesses will have left thinking, because they did prepare

Speaker 1 and the message they wanted to get out was that we're united and we care about the BBC. But there was no, that's why I gave up.
It just wasn't forensic. It wasn't a proper interrogation.

Speaker 2 It's such a fascinating thing, isn't it? So the chair of the BBC, I suppose, came up at the tail end of the last Conservative government. And you can see how different the world is.

Speaker 2 Because I was having a few very informal conversations about whether that was something I might be interested in, right? Chair of the BBC.

Speaker 2 Fast forward 14 months, it's kind of unimaginable that a figure like me could be chair of the BBC. The thing has become so politicised and complicated.

Speaker 2 Whereas Chris Patton, of course, was chair of the BBC, right? He's not a figure massively different, kind of a centrist Tory.

Speaker 2 Maybe not as senior as Chris Patton, but we're now in a world in which it's almost unimaginable that a former politician could be chair of the BBC.

Speaker 1 Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to say that politicians should be ruled out.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it was very, very, very disappointing. I always got the feeling, Roy, that when I turned up at select committees as a witness, that they had prepared quite well.

Speaker 2 But you presumably didn't feel as worried as you did when he went in front of Hutton or judge-led or lawyer-led and quite different.

Speaker 2 What I discovered watching select committees, and the masterclass was always William Haig, is that if you turned up and massively flattered the committee, they all curled over, it didn't matter which party they came with, and took it.

Speaker 1 That's a very good question.

Speaker 1 I think a lot about that.

Speaker 2 They've learnt that, right?

Speaker 2 The only people who get in trouble are the people who try to be antsy and argue back against the committee, and then the MPs can sort of slightly wake up and start going a bit harder.

Speaker 2 But if you spend your whole time being incredibly subservient and polite to them, the MPs are so flattered to have a foreign secretary or a chairman of the BBC be polite to them, which is not their normal experience in their constituencies, that they stop asking hard questions immediately.

Speaker 1 Now, Thomas and Bristol, what explains the lack of international attention to the West Bank's collapsing economy, made dramatically worse by intensified Israeli restrictions as the Gaza War?

Speaker 1 And what are the implications of this silence for regional stability? Now, I know you've been looking at this, but just before that, I think this is so relevant as well to

Speaker 1 the discussion about Ukraine, because it's not that long ago that Trump was parading in front of huge great signs saying peace 2025 and saying that he had delivered peace and stability.

Speaker 1 There have been over 300 Palestinians killed since then. There have been Israelis killed as well.
And it's as if it's not happening. So

Speaker 1 what's Thomas's worry about the economy in the West Bank?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so this, of course, is about the West Bank, not Gaza. In other words, those bits of Palestinian territory in the West, you know, towards Jordan.
So Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, etc.

Speaker 2 Fundamentally, the Palestinian economy is an import economy that's completely cut off from the world and it's controlled by the Israeli state, divided up into areas A, B and C.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 before

Speaker 2 October the 7th, it was often in trouble because of security rationales. So checkpoints go up, difficult to move back and forth.

Speaker 2 But since October the 7th, the finance minister, Bazel Smotrich, who is on the very, very far right of Israeli politics, has used his position as finance minister to completely cripple.

Speaker 2 the economy of the West Bank. There's been very good work done by this, by a man called Jost Hilteman, who's who's connected with the International Crisis Group.

Speaker 2 We interviewed Comfort Eero from the ICG

Speaker 2 a bit earlier. But

Speaker 2 there are three ways in which it's been crippled.

Speaker 2 One of them is quite technical, which we're not going to get into on the show, which is about an excess shekel problem and about how you convert Israeli cash back into bank accounts.

Speaker 2 The second problem,

Speaker 2 though, is a really big problem, which is about customs clearance. So because it's an import economy, the money that traditionally came to the Palestinian authority was from import taxes.

Speaker 2 And the Israeli government collects those import taxes, passes them on. And there are two problems.
One is they haven't been passing them on.

Speaker 2 And the second is they've been putting more and more charges on them before they pass them on under various excuses. So even if they did pass them on, they'd only pass on about 35% of the income.

Speaker 2 So currently, the Palestinians are facing a 2.5 billion black hole, which doesn't allow them really to pay for anything.

Speaker 2 They can't pay for their civil servants, they can't pay for their public services. They basically can't keep going because Israel has this financial grip on their windpipe through Smotrich.

Speaker 2 And then the final thing, which could actually collapse the entire system if Smotrich were allowed to get away with it, and everybody's gambling Netanyahu won't let him, is that the entire Palestinian economy depends on Israeli banks.

Speaker 2 It's the only way of getting money in and out. And he might stop the letters which give indemnity to Israeli banks, which would basically destroy the entire banking system of Palestine.

Speaker 2 And that would be the end of the entire Palestinian economy. Now, the US Treasury, Trump putting pressure on Netanyahu and the hope is that Netanyahu isn't going to go that far.

Speaker 1 But the World Bank has published a report warning that this could lead to the absolute collapse of the Palestinian Authority economy.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And two.

Speaker 1 So it's a form of economic warfare alongside the psychological warfare that Ben Gavir and Smotric essentially saying that Mahmoud Abbas should be

Speaker 1 taken out, that other members of the Palestinian government should be executed. That's a sort of psychological warfare going alongside the military and the economic.

Speaker 2 And then there's the people bit, because 240,000 Palestinians worked in Israel and were sent back after October 7th. None of them returned to work.
They're all out of work.

Speaker 2 And more and more gates have now emerged around and between each different settlement. Movement is becoming increasingly impossible.
So this is mass unemployment,

Speaker 2 massive collapse in government revenue. threats to the banking system, real problems with inflation and the cash economy, and this macroeconomic damage

Speaker 2 increasingly deliberate. I mean before October the 7th some of the stuff happened under a security pretense.
Now it is quite clearly driven by Smotric as a punishment measure.

Speaker 1 But it does go back to the, in a sense, the I don't know whether it's strategic or tactical, but the sort of

Speaker 1 the stupidity in a way of the attack in the first place. You had lots of people going backwards and forwards every day.

Speaker 1 And okay, it might be a bit of buggeration from time to time, but essentially Palestinians could go to Israel. They're working in Israel, getting paid, remittances being taken back to Palestine.

Speaker 1 That's all gone. So all of the economic pressure has kind of been one way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, why was this not tied into the so-called peace plan?

Speaker 2 When Donald Trump and your friend Tony Blair were putting this all together, this is exactly the kind of stuff that should have been specified and tied into it.

Speaker 2 Because if there's no economy in the West Bank,

Speaker 2 those millions of Palestinians in the only part that Palestine is not in Gaza can't function at all. But for some reason, that wasn't in the deal.

Speaker 1 Well, in the deal, or the plan, was the statement that there would be prosperity for Palestinians who have suffered so much.

Speaker 2 Yes, but as you will remember from the Good Friday Agreement, what you need is not just a statement about prosperity. You need to talk about excess shekels.
You need to talk about bank indemnity.

Speaker 2 You need to talk about customs revenue and percentages of customs revenue. The devil's in the details, and it's through the details that Smotric is crushing the economy of the West Bank.

Speaker 2 Well, question for you

Speaker 2 As we come towards the end, maybe the last serious question.

Speaker 2 Joe Woof, who's a Trip Plus member from London, with the sheer scale of addiction we see worldwide, a billion obese people, a billion smokers, 400 million alcoholics, according to international organizations, social media, etc.

Speaker 2 Why do we not see addiction as an infringement on individual freedom when getting customers addicted is the intended outcome of these industries?

Speaker 1 Ah,

Speaker 1 I know who Joe Woof is. He wrote a very, very, very good piece for the New World about this a few weeks ago,

Speaker 1 which essentially is saying this is the business model of tobacco, of alcohol, of gambling, etc. And social media.
And social media, 100%.

Speaker 2 It's to get you addicted. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I tell you what was really interesting this week. I've been doing a bit of stuff with Addiction Awareness Week with the Forward Trust who are behind it.

Speaker 1 Very, very, very pleased, Rory, to see that the daughter-in-law of your friend the king was spearheading this this week the princess of Wales yeah as you know I'm not a monarchist but the extent to which if those guys embrace an issue it can move the dial I remember one of the saddest things I think about the whole William Harry bust up is that when those two were campaigning together on mental health they were pretty formidable yeah in terms of the arguments they pursued the way they pursued them but it's also I mean just on the royalty point very quickly before we get back to addiction I think it's really good what the Princess Wales has been doing.

Speaker 2 So she's been doing stuff on addiction in general. She's also specifically been talking about trying to encourage people not to use phones at meal times and stuff.

Speaker 2 But it also requires a public that is receptive to that, because if it went wrong, of course, you would get people saying, how dare the royal family tell me whether or not I should use a phone at a meal time?

Speaker 2 What do they understand about my life? So it shows that she has at the moment enough goodwill and legitimacy to be able to lead these campaigns.

Speaker 1 Well, and also you have to do them over time. So like, you know, your friend the king,

Speaker 1 he has been going on about the environment and the built environment for decades.

Speaker 1 But I just thought the way she did it this week was really, really powerful and very, very effective because she was talking about it and that was getting the headlines and what have you.

Speaker 1 But on the back of it, because I still think we've got problems with stigma around addiction and around mental illness more general.

Speaker 1 So around the on the back of it, we were being encouraged, lots of people were being encouraged, not just well-known people, but everybody, to share their stories on social media on the theme of the conversation that changed everything.

Speaker 2 And you did a very powerful one, which I watched.

Speaker 1 Well, I did it.

Speaker 2 I did it about... We'll put it in the newsletter as a link.
I mean, tell us a little bit about it.

Speaker 1 Well, I did it about, it was when the guy, Mike Trace, who's the former drug czar in our government, he phoned me up and he's involved in this addiction awareness stuff. And he said, would I do one?

Speaker 1 And literally, as he asked me the question,

Speaker 1 the conversation that I then relayed literally popped back into my head.

Speaker 2 Remind us of the conversation.

Speaker 1 It was a guy called, it was 1986. I was in hospital, having been arrested and then released on condition I went for medical treatment.
And this guy from Paisley, Ernest Benny

Speaker 1 now sadly dead but he he basically just this very nice calm guy I'd been medicated for a few days I was calmer than I had been and he just said to me

Speaker 1 of all the reasons why you're here do you think excessive alcohol might be one of them I said no I've had a breakdown.

Speaker 1 I was hearing voices.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay, okay. He said, do you ever record what you drink?

Speaker 1 And I said, no, why would I do that?

Speaker 1 Oh, he said, some people do. He said, I noticed when your belongings were brought back by the police, you keep a diary.

Speaker 1 And I said, I do. He said, if we went through your diary recent days, do you think you'd be able to remember how much you had to drink? And I'm now getting irritated.

Speaker 1 Boy, where's this guy going? Why can't he just believe me that these terrible forces are trying to destroy my brain?

Speaker 1 And, you know, I'm being tested by God and all the other mad stuff that I believed at the time.

Speaker 1 And I said, okay, yeah. So

Speaker 1 he definitely deliberately chose one of the pages that was most manic with my tiny, ridiculous scribbling and what have you. So he said, take me through that day.

Speaker 1 And my first words were on the day where I woke up, threw up,

Speaker 1 waited for Fiona to go out, threw up again, went through. And then as I got through to about 11.20,

Speaker 1 went to the Lord High Admiral pub.

Speaker 1 Didn't record how much I drank. Chatted to so-and-so,

Speaker 1 working on such and such. Okay.

Speaker 1 And I went through it and then I got to lunch with David Meller,

Speaker 1 the former cabinet minister. And so the Ernest Benny was saying,

Speaker 1 would you have anything to drink at lunchtime? I said, yeah, a bit of wine. Any idea how much?

Speaker 1 A couple of bottles?

Speaker 1 Suddenly, this very, very large penny dropped.

Speaker 2 Why is it so powerful for him

Speaker 2 to do it through these very gentle questions?

Speaker 2 What would your emotional reaction have been if he'd been more explicit from the beginning and saying this has been done by alcohol?

Speaker 1 Well, it would have been the emotional reaction would have been the emotional reaction that subsequently I realized had been the reaction I was

Speaker 1 I was using to anybody who suggested to me that I was drinking too much, like Fiona or my friends or colleagues.

Speaker 1 And you do this thing of saying, when somebody says to you, do you think you've got a problem?

Speaker 1 You say, why are you saying that? You're the one with the problem for asking that. You turn it right back on them.
So I think he just had a way. Maybe it was experience.

Speaker 1 Maybe he'd been through that process lots and lots of times before. Maybe it just had found me at my rock bottom and he kind of opened it up.
He's such a nice guy.

Speaker 1 And of course, I saw him quite a bit. And then a few years later, I made a documentary about my breakdown for the BBC.
And this brilliant researcher, Judith Dawson, used to work for Sky.

Speaker 1 She tracked him down in retirement. And

Speaker 1 we had this meeting at his house where he was living. And he said, you know what? I've often wondered if it was you.
I've seen you. I've seen you.

Speaker 1 I've often wondered, is that Alistair Campbell who I had back in 1980?

Speaker 2 He hadn't put the two together.

Speaker 1 Well, there's no reason why he should have done. Aleister Campbell's quite a common name in Scotland.

Speaker 1 I probably wasn't the only Aleister Campbell

Speaker 1 he'd ever treated. And so he said, I'm so happy to have made the reconnection.
And I said to him, Well, no word of a lie. And I dedicated my first novel to this guy before I'd re-met him.

Speaker 1 And I said, no word of a lie. I honestly think that conversation saved my life.
And he said, it's very nice to hear that.

Speaker 1 But, you know, you'd be amazed how often it's something unexpected that will just open the door. And that's why I think this theme of the conversation that changed everything is.

Speaker 2 And also, how wonderful that he responded. so modestly.
I think that's a wonderful story, Alistair, and I think we're going to use that to wrap up the question time.

Speaker 1 And thank you very much for that.

Speaker 2 And by the way, anybody who's listening who's got any sort of conversation, just go on social media post a film of yourself uh up to two minutes just a conversation that changed everything on the theme of addiction and make sure you hashtag letstalk addiction and mention the forward trust for that on the forward trust and addiction and for many of the other issues that we've discussed today and including the ukraine peace plan and articles and books please sign up on therestispolitics.com to our newsletter which hopefully will keep the conversation going in more detail and one final thing before we go.

Speaker 2 So when I was an MP, it used to be a tradition, certainly in my constituency, to have an annual Christmas card competition.

Speaker 1 And let me guess, lots of primary school children were encouraged to draw nice sheep from Cumbria and Jesus.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. My Christmas card in the first year was Ellie, who was, I think, six and did a lovely picture of angels, and who probably now, I guess, must be well into her 20s.

Speaker 2 But anyway, yes, absolutely. So a trip, we'd like to open it up to all children who listen to the podcast here and abroad.

Speaker 2 And the top three designs that we get will get an annual Trip Plus membership.

Speaker 1 Oh, Lord.

Speaker 1 Well, so hold on. All around the world,

Speaker 1 people can design Christmas cards. How do they send them?

Speaker 2 They take a photograph and then they email it in, and you can see the details on our website. Okay, so we have to have a deadline.

Speaker 1 Rest is Politics.

Speaker 1 Let's set the deadline of December 10.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 You send your Christmas card design to the RestisPolitics at goalhanger.com. You have the title Christmas card.
And are we the judges?

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
Yeah. We're good judges.

Speaker 1 Do my Grinch be a good idea.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you don't get that job at the BBC, you know, you might be able to get a job as a Christmas card.

Speaker 1 I couldn't be the dread judge of the BBC, but I'm now a Christmas card judge. That's it.

Speaker 2 Looking forward to the cards. Thank you.

Speaker 1 And I will see you again, Rory, very, very soon because 12:30 Wednesday, Rachel Rees presents her budget, and not long thereafter, we shall opine.

Speaker 2 Looking forward to it. See you then, Asta.

Speaker 1 Bye.

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