481. Polanski, Macron & al-Sharaa: The Best & Worst Politicians of 2025

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Speaker 2 Welcome to the Rest is Politics Christmas Eve special with me, Rory Stewart.

Speaker 1 What's special about it?

Speaker 2 Well, you sometimes can be quite grumpy about Christmas, but recently I've noticed you were saying Christmas is all about Jesus, which I thought was something that would appeal to your old friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Speaker 1 That was why I'm grumpy, is because we all go on about what it's not about all the time, and it doesn't make me any more or less of an atheist. I'm exactly the same, but

Speaker 2 I thought we had a bit of hope. Well, you know, I'll try to do a

Speaker 2 bit of a promotion job.

Speaker 1 I'm definitely happy with people wanting to be happy, but, you know, it's not our favorite time of the year. I'm going to be honest.

Speaker 2 Well, I see. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 2 Well, there's lots of things to be said for Christmas. There's

Speaker 2 the miracle of the birth of God, and then there's all those wonderful

Speaker 1 presence. Yes, he's God.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 That's the thing about the Trinity.

Speaker 1 You don't say that, the miracle of the birth of God. You say the miracle of the birth of Christ.

Speaker 2 Well, that's the amazing thing about the Trinity. But when we can get onto that, when we get a more of our theology that literally

Speaker 2 Christ is God, and so is the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1 And he's with us all the time.

Speaker 2 Yeah, three and one, one in three. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you back on your Gareth Southgate football tactical perpetration again? Well, listen, Marie, Merry Christmas.

Speaker 2 Happy Christmas to you, too.

Speaker 1 And to all our listeners and viewers.

Speaker 2 Have you managed to get onto... I know you were in Presents Only.
Gave you a little book on trees in French.

Speaker 1 I did, and I loved it. Oh, good.
Yeah, I'm good. I'm about a third of the way through.
On the oak.

Speaker 2 It's quite technical language. Is that stretching your French at all? A little bit.

Speaker 1 A little bit. As did the, because the great book, The Hidden Life of Trees, which was written in German originally.
So I read that and that stretched my German as well. And Le Chen does...

Speaker 1 Some of the French is very, very technical. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I found even in English, to be honest, I must confess that I've been reading it in English. And even in English, I'm looking up some of the words and trying to work out one another.

Speaker 1 And that's what's great about reading books in foreign languages, or your own language.

Speaker 1 In your case, you learn, you stretch yourself.

Speaker 1 My own language, in my case.

Speaker 2 Very good.

Speaker 2 Okay, now, Alisa, what we we were going to do, which we traditionally do every year, and maybe we could look back at what we've done in some of the last years on this, is we do things like best UK politician of the year, favourite leading interview, speech of the year, biggest political moment, all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 To remind people, we recorded this last year at an amazing moment where we were actually hadn't quite got into Trump.

Speaker 2 So we were still very much in the top optimism about AOC at the Democratic National Convention.

Speaker 2 But we were already six months into a Labour government and into a very interesting British politics, which wasn't quite where it was now, but we were maybe already beginning to see some of the seeds of it 12 months ago.

Speaker 2 So let's start with best UK politician of the year.

Speaker 2 Last year, you chose Kim Ledbeater,

Speaker 2 who was taking through her Assisted Dying Act, which is still sort of

Speaker 1 in part because the Lords are being incredibly difficult about it and putting down hundreds of amendments to try and slow the whole thing up, which I think would be a terrible thing.

Speaker 1 I have really, really struggled on UK politician of the year this year, I must be honest. Last year, you chose Nigel Farage, which is a sort of easy populist thing to do.

Speaker 2 Well, it's actually, I think I feel a little bit vindicated because although he was doing okay in the polls, we go forward 12 months.

Speaker 2 My instinct, and of course, in my defence, best UK politician does not mean I support Nigel Farage.

Speaker 2 I think he would be a terrible thing for the country and we must do all we can to make sure he doesn't become Prime Minister.

Speaker 2 I'm talking here about technical skills and I think to some extent I've been vindicated. I mean it's an incredible story given he only got five seats in the last election.

Speaker 2 The fact that he is now well ahead consistently of the Tory Party and the Labour Party in the polls shows he's got something despite all his problems, despite being a one-man band,

Speaker 2 being unable to work with colleagues, people resigning, all of that's happened here, but his rise still seems pretty unstoppable.

Speaker 1 So is he getting your title for the second year running?

Speaker 2 No, second year running, I think, again, although I profoundly disagree with him, probably Zach Polanski, as people will have heard on leading, I have a big issue with Zach Polanski, which is that I'm completely horrified by the fact he doesn't think it's necessary to get the most basic economic data.

Speaker 2 You know, what's the difference between a debt and a deficit? What's the tax rate? All this stuff. But

Speaker 2 there is no doubting that... he has done something unbelievable.
He's taken over the Green Party this year and he's tripled its membership, tripled its position on the polls,

Speaker 2 taken a lot of the left away from Labour. And I think if Farage was the story of last year, I think Splansky is the story of this year.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, you've stolen my thunder slightly, so I'm now going to go to the second name on my list.

Speaker 2 That's very good. Was Polanski your first name?

Speaker 1 Well, I was also going to caveat it even more heavily than you.

Speaker 1 I was going to say that I would never vote for him because if you're going to vote for somebody who's a party leader, you've got to imagine them in a real position of leadership.

Speaker 1 But I think technically, technically as you say to have gone from where the greens were to where they are now the only thing i'd say is i think that that is as much to do with the labour party and its strategy of having appealed too much tried to appeal too much to the right and reform voters that's what's opened the door to polanski but he's gone through the door and he's seized it so i think that is a fair judgment but because you've said that i'm therefore going to pick ed miliband ed miliband yes because

Speaker 1 controversial choice i think it is a controversial choice but i like as you know rory I like resilience. I like perseverance.
I like people who just keep going.

Speaker 1 And Ed was one of our leading interviews, and actually,

Speaker 1 a lot of people seem to like it. He's come under a lot of flack internally.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of suggestions that Keir Stahmer wanted to move him from this brief because, like you, he worries that the green agenda is being pushed back and the government has to go with that.

Speaker 1 And even though Polanski in the interview we did with him was sort of pretty condemnatory of Ed Miliband's green credentials, I actually think he has stuck to his guns.

Speaker 1 And I think if you go through the cabinet, there aren't that many where you can say I am very, very clear about what they're trying to do in their brief.

Speaker 1 So I was going to go Polanski, but I'm sticking with green, but going for Ed.

Speaker 2 Okay, my final one, if I'm allowed, on Labour politicians.

Speaker 2 I have been very, very impressed by Al Kahn's, who just to remind people is this amazing full colonel, originally a Royal Marine, who was plucked out of Ukraine, I guess, by Kiristana a few weeks before the election and is now the Minister in the Ministry of Defense, focused on operations.

Speaker 2 And he's a really, when people are worried about professional politicians, people without real-world experience, this is a man with a lot of experience. He joined the military at the age of 18.

Speaker 2 He comes from a straightforward background in Scotland. He is funny, he's wise, he's worked,

Speaker 2 he's worked with the most senior American generals.

Speaker 1 And I was saying to him, this is this year.

Speaker 2 I said, you know, he'd went off these, we have these tiny recesses, occasionally apartment. And I said,

Speaker 2 what happened during the recess? And he said,

Speaker 2 I climbed Everest.

Speaker 2 And I said, how long did that take you? And he said, well, I didn't have much time. So six and a half days from leaving Britain to getting back to Britain.

Speaker 2 I would have liked to climb it slur, but our recess is quite.

Speaker 2 I don't think he's going to be doing it again. It wasn't, as you know, climbing Everest is unbelievably dangerous.

Speaker 1 As I know.

Speaker 2 Two of his Sherpas turned back, saying this is too dangerous before the summit.

Speaker 2 He and his friends, they were raising money for a veterans charity, pushed on through terrifying weather that had driven basically all the other climbers off the hills.

Speaker 2 They had Everest to themselves, popped out on the top, sun came out, turned around, straight back home to the voting lobby.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if we were the United States, he would already, just because of his military record, being talked of as a future prime minister, president, president.

Speaker 2 And I think it could be amazing for the Labour Party to look at him as a really serious thing.

Speaker 2 Because if you're taking on Farage, if you're worried about populism, if you're worried about relating to ordinary people,

Speaker 2 this is a straightforward hero.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm all in favour of people in positions of leadership who are L C

Speaker 2 and Scotts.

Speaker 1 I'd said to you when we, in November, when the Cenotath was being filmed on television, they just, the camera, I don't think they knew it was him, but the camera kept coming to this group of Green Beret chaps, and he was banging there in the middle.

Speaker 1 He's very charismatic with a lot of medals. A lot of medals.

Speaker 1 Worst UK politician.

Speaker 2 Well, last year I said Rachel Reeves,

Speaker 2 and I'm afraid I feel a little bit vindicated.

Speaker 1 Full of RS vindication.

Speaker 2 I am feeling a bit vindicated. And I'm only feeling vindicated because I obviously my big misprediction at the end of last year is I thought that Camille Harris would win the US election.

Speaker 2 So I'm really falling over backwards pointing out that I got some things right this year, despite getting that call wrong.

Speaker 2 Look, I think that she's revealed other bits of weakness that I hadn't maybe noticed before. And I'm afraid the latest budget this year reveals them.
I mean that was extraordinary.

Speaker 2 It now seems, Robert Peston, our colleague on the rest is money, has pointed out that the entire tax rises in the budget now seem to have been almost entirely unnecessary and that it was driven purely by trying to buy off her backbenches with a policy that she had rejected and that she then gave in on and building up a bit of headroom but essentially that

Speaker 2 I do support the building up of headroom I do support the building of headroom but the sense that this was not a budget driven by a big economic idea or what you would call I don't know a narrative or a story or an argument that's one of the less you like the word argument right it's not Gordon Brown saying this is my argument for growth but instead something which is buying off the labour-backbenches and buying off the bond markets.

Speaker 1 So my worst politician of the year,

Speaker 1 somebody that very few people outside whichever prison he's now in have heard of, Mr. Nathan Gill.

Speaker 1 MEP, former MEP, convicted or admitted to charges of bribery. Some argument as to whether it shouldn't have been treason.

Speaker 1 Bribery Act came in, and he was certainly the first politician to be done under it. With a supporting actor, can we give a supporting actor role

Speaker 2 absolutely.

Speaker 1 So the Oscars. To Nigel Farage.

Speaker 2 Nigel Farage, you seem.

Speaker 1 Your former politician.

Speaker 2 We've got to get our definitions right here, right? There is the Machiavellian definition, which is like success.

Speaker 2 And then there's the like moral judgment, which is, do we approve of them? I mean, obviously, let's take Trump, for example, right? In some ways, he's very successful.

Speaker 2 In other ways, we think he's an absolutely terrible human being, a terrible person.

Speaker 1 Some people would say Trump is the politician of the year because he dominates everything. We'll come on to Trump.

Speaker 1 But the reason I think that Farage has to be put in the same breath as Nathan Gill is partly because of the way Farage has handled this since.

Speaker 1 With the help of the media, being so supine about the whole story, so that most people still don't know who Nathan Gill is, because

Speaker 1 when he went to jail, it was a sort of one-day wonder. But I think that

Speaker 1 the fact of Nigel Farage's leadership of all these right-wing populist parties, Nathan Gill's centrality to Nigel Farage's political rise and political experience in Brussels, where he led the campaign to get Britain out of Europe.

Speaker 1 I think that makes him a very, very close, more than a close associate. So I think that Gill is my worst politician of the year because of what he did.

Speaker 1 But I think it's foolish if we don't realize that there is a lot more to this story than is yet known.

Speaker 2 Very good. Okay, well, we'll keep our eye on that.
Now, favourite leading interviews, rather jolly things we come into Christmas. We get off politics.

Speaker 1 I think we're going to agree on this one.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Shall I go first?

Speaker 2 Yep, I'll try to be honest. Yep.

Speaker 1 Okay. The ones that came close were Baroness Hale.
Oh, she's lovely. Former leader of the Supreme Court.
I thought she was great.

Speaker 2 Absolutely lovely. People haven't listened to her.
She is an extraordinary woman.

Speaker 2 Was she the first woman to lead the Supreme Court? Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And she did this extraordinary ruling on the proroguing of Parliament by Boris Johnson, upheld the Constitution with a spider on her chest.

Speaker 1 Great. So I liked it.

Speaker 1 She was terrific. I love the fact that she never arms, never never R's, and speaks in perfectly formed, grammatically perfect sense.

Speaker 2 Which some people say about you, you don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I die occasionally go, you know, and like and all that.

Speaker 1 Alex Younger came close, the former head of MI6. I thought he was stunningly informed, insightful, interesting, etc.

Speaker 1 But I'm afraid I think we have to go to the one that has by some distance had the most listeners,

Speaker 1 which was Ahmed Al-Shara.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can't describe that. I mean, that was

Speaker 2 really exciting.

Speaker 2 As people will remember, we traveled together to Syria.

Speaker 1 You almost felt like a proper journalist, didn't you?

Speaker 2 Proper journalists, yeah. A few weeks, just a few weeks after he got into Damascus,

Speaker 2 we were one of the very first live interviews, which is why it got such coverage.

Speaker 2 We did it in this incredible moment where he'd just come back from his first ever foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, which turned out to be completely decisive because actually that led to the U.S.

Speaker 2 lifting sanctions for the whole recognition of Syria.

Speaker 2 We got him at a moment where he was being extremely frank in a way that he probably wouldn't today about his past in al-Qaeda and the terrorist movements.

Speaker 2 And there was the added drama of your and my involvement with the Iraq war, where he'd cut his teeth and been locked in prison.

Speaker 2 And as you say, an interview which got an incredible number of listeners in Arabic as well as in English.

Speaker 1 It had more listeners in Arabic than in English. Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, so I think that's right. Just to go through some of the other interviews, because I thought it was the most extraordinary list.

Speaker 2 So jumping out at me, Ben Wallace, who I thought was charming and funny, the former UK Defence Secretary.

Speaker 1 It's interesting how many former Tories that most of our listeners, many of our listeners, loathed, they actually quite liked when they heard them. Jeremy Hunt was another one.

Speaker 2 Jeremy Hunt, you liked Jeremy Hunt, didn't you? We should probably get some more Tories on sometime next year. I'm not sure we got that many in the line.
Marwan Barghusi, I thought, was very moving.

Speaker 2 Moving Palestinian.

Speaker 1 And just on that, I mean, just those who haven't listened to that, you should. His dad is a lot of people's favourite to leading New Palestine, should such a thing happen.

Speaker 1 But he's still stuck in jail.

Speaker 2 Right. And I think we would both agree it would be a good idea to release him.
For sure. Probably the best path.
Last couple for me. There may be others you'd think of yet.

Speaker 2 Jonathan Haight talking particularly about the impact of mobile phones on children. And then a very, very good listen, scratchy, controversial two-part with Michael Gove, I thought.

Speaker 1 I'm very sure you haven't mentioned Gareth Southgate because I thought you had a total

Speaker 1 massive crush on him, Rory.

Speaker 1 I certainly did.

Speaker 2 As I said to you at the time, the only guy whose number I've tried to get, I'm going to have lunch with him in the new year.

Speaker 2 And put it in context, the only people I've been having lunch with recently are Church of England clergymen.

Speaker 2 So I must somehow have my head have Gareth Southgate in my head as

Speaker 2 a kind of almost religious figure.

Speaker 1 Are you thinking of becoming a priest?

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know. Would I still be able to do the podcast if I was a...

Speaker 1 The rest is God. The rest is Christ.
The rest is Christmas.

Speaker 2 The rest is the Holy Ghost. It's all the same.
So I was trying to explain at the beginning.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay. The other one I thought you were going to say was Jonas Garstora, the Norwegian Prime Minister, because you loved him as well.

Speaker 2 He was terrific. And he's your friend, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he's quite an unusual politician, I thought. Did you enjoy Jacinta Arden?

Speaker 1 Very much. We've had a great year on the leading front.
We really have. But I think Ahmed El-Sharo, and what was so interesting about it was...

Speaker 1 having done that interview at the time that we did it and him saying the things that he said, particularly about his goals in relation to getting sanctions lifted, to trying to persuade the Americans that he wasn't still a terrorist and all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 So I guess one of the big moments of the year really was Ahmad El-Sharo going to the White House and having Donald Trump spray him with perfume, which was extraordinary.

Speaker 2 He kept saying this is a male scent and then he was like, give some to your wife. I got very confused by the whole direction in which that whole thing was traveling.

Speaker 1 Right. Best foreign politician.
I don't think it's going to be Donald Trump for either of us. No.

Speaker 1 Where are you going?

Speaker 2 Well, I would probably here I suspect we're going to agree, unfortunately.

Speaker 2 Sometimes, sometimes we'll be able to. Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 1 Sometimes Let me guess what you're going to get. You're either going to say Mamdani or Mark Carney.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was going to say the latter, Mark Carney.

Speaker 1 Okay, he's definitely on my list, but he's not my number one.

Speaker 2 He's not your number one. Okay, go on then.
Give us your number one.

Speaker 1 My number one is Maya Sandhu.

Speaker 2 Maya Sandu. Okay, talk us through Maya Sandu.
So Moldovan.

Speaker 1 President of Moldova.

Speaker 1 Good news for our listeners and viewers. And by the way, she didn't know I was going to say this or even that we do this, but she is going to be one of our first interviews in the new year.
Very good.

Speaker 1 For leading. I think what she's done is amazing because because she's a tiny country,

Speaker 1 feels inevitably hugely at risk because of where it is geographically in relation to Russia. She fought an election with massive interference from the Russians and she saw it off and she won.

Speaker 1 And I think she's got guts. I think she's got real leadership skills and I'm really looking forward to interviewing her.

Speaker 2 Well, one of the themes to try to get a bit of optimistic Christmas messaging going is that next year we will be interviewing some people on leading who actually represent a bit of hope for the kind of progressive centre.

Speaker 1 Which Carney does by a long way.

Speaker 2 Carney definitely does. Maya Sandy does.
We're also going to be interviewing Rob Yetten, the extraordinary Dutch centrist leader who did so well in

Speaker 2 the Dutch elections. And I think we should keep thinking about these people around the world who really do give us a sense of hope.

Speaker 2 I mean, when I think about liberal democracy and where to feel hopeful, I often end up in Australia. But I also think there are some fascinating things.

Speaker 2 The Greek prime minister who we interviewed, I thought, was actually a really interesting example of somebody who had something to him.

Speaker 2 I'm sure some Greek listeners at this point will be throwing their phone out of the window in rage.

Speaker 2 That's one of the things I noticed that, you know, you and I will think these guys are absolutely terrific, but of course, politics remains so divisive that even in the best case scenario, you're always going to have about 48% of the population that thinks he should be in jail.

Speaker 1 So you tell us why Carney? I mean, look, I think Mark Carney is terrific. I'm really happy that he's the Prime Minister.
And the thing I like about watching him when he speaks,

Speaker 1 and I think sometimes,

Speaker 1 especially if you've known somebody before they become a politician, as you and I have with Mark, he's just the same person. He's totally comfortable inside his own skin.

Speaker 1 You see that when he's making a big speech in the parliament. You see it when he's on Instagram, messing around with kids, playing football.
You see it in his dealings with Trump.

Speaker 1 Whatever he's doing, he's just the same guy.

Speaker 2 And I think what's amazing about Mark Carney, and the reason I've chosen him as best foreign politician of the year, is that

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 2 is a surprise. I mean, there are so many

Speaker 2 smart,

Speaker 2 very able technocrats with big brains who communicate very fluently, who you would have thought could be great prime ministers in a sort of romantic sense.

Speaker 2 You know, people said this about David Petraeus, who we interviewed last year. They'd say it about Gareth Southgate, who we just interviewed, right?

Speaker 2 But generally speaking, speaking, when they become politicians, I certainly felt this with Michael Ignatieff that we interviewed a couple of years ago, that they struggle that, you know, and

Speaker 2 it's true for a lot of really, really nice, able people. You know, let's say, for example, I thought Hilary Benn was wonderful.
Maybe if he became Prime Minister, it wouldn't all work out, right?

Speaker 2 And I don't know, maybe some of the other people I love in the Labour cabinet, maybe if they became Prime Minister, it turns out to be very, very different.

Speaker 2 I mean, for example, I was a very pro-Gordon Brown person, and it didn't really work out as prime minister.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I was worried with Mark Carney that we've all fallen in love with the story of the governor of the Bank of Canada and the governor of the Bank of England.

Speaker 2 But generally speaking, particularly in Europe, when central bank governors become leaders, it looks pretty rubbish.

Speaker 2 I mean, Italy didn't exactly fall in love with Mario Monti or Mario Draghi, this kind of dry technocratic.

Speaker 1 Is it because it's Christmas that you keep talking about love?

Speaker 1 What's going on in your life at the moment?

Speaker 1 You think you're becoming a priest? You're talking endlessly about love. And God.
And God.

Speaker 2 God is love.

Speaker 1 God is love. God is love.

Speaker 1 What do I think of that? Is when you go into Tomomori

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the father of somebody, I think a child fell and survived. And God is love is purpainted there.

Speaker 2 I saw this extraordinary thing

Speaker 2 on that, just quickly.

Speaker 2 There's a Buddhist meditation which the Buddha taught his monks when they were frightened in a forest. It's a love meditation.

Speaker 2 One of the benefits of the love meditation, because Buddha likes numbers, is he, I think he gives 40 benefits for the love meditation in the tradition.

Speaker 2 And one of them is, exactly, could be the chancellor.

Speaker 2 One of them, though she didn't come up with this in the budget, is that if you do the love meditation properly, he says that if you fall off a cliff, you will be caught by a tree.

Speaker 1 There we are. So connect with your tables.

Speaker 1 You see? I think that's what happened. There we are.
Ryan, let's leave God and love for a moment and go on to our worst foreign politician.

Speaker 1 And I think we've got to have a rule here that you can't say Trump. Right.
Were you going to say Trump?

Speaker 2 Well I mean yeah we could give up our normal speech on Trump but I think that's a bit boring for listeners. Let's take it as read that we think that Trump is a threat and a an atrocity and all that.

Speaker 1 I am going for the deadly duo of Ben Gavir and Smotrich.

Speaker 1 I think their influence on Israeli politics, the Israeli government, the Middle East peace process and their

Speaker 1 clear belief that there shouldn't really be one that involves any sort of rights or respect respect for Palestinians. I think they are terrible people doing terrible things.

Speaker 2 I agree. I think they have done more damage than almost anybody conceivable, really, to the reputation of Israel.

Speaker 2 But I also think that Netanyahu needs to take full responsibility for including them in its cabinet and making them his security ministers and finance ministers.

Speaker 1 So is he your worst politician? He doesn't get away with it.

Speaker 2 No, my worst politician here, of course, is predictably Emmanuel Macron, who I think is the most catastrophic bluffing.

Speaker 1 It's the first time you've ever

Speaker 1 said those words without your friend in advance. Mon Ami.

Speaker 2 That would have been a bit aggressive before Christmas to say your friend was my worst politician of the year.

Speaker 2 No, I think Macron has absolutely demonstrated the most catastrophic failure of what could have been the incredible potential of a highly intelligent centrist politician has, through sheer vanity and ineptitude, blown his position in parliament, blown the power of his presidency, failed to achieve any of the things he should have done in the big picture on Europe.

Speaker 1 I think you're completely blown.

Speaker 2 I think he was in for February, but well, you know, I think he should come on and prove me wrong. I I think he should come on and prove me wrong because I'm sure I'm underestimating him.

Speaker 2 And I know how much you admire him. And I know how much the economist correspondent in France and why I said.

Speaker 1 No, you are kidding, my friends.

Speaker 2 So Macro should come on and prove us wrong. Because I think he's somebody who, again and again and again, I've thought, you know, E.M., the great Emmanuel.
Oh, come, O Cum, Emmanuel.

Speaker 2 And he says the right things about Russia and he says the right things about AI and he he says the right things about Europe.

Speaker 2 But when it comes to the real stuff, making the alliance with Starmer and with Maz,

Speaker 2 really working together, how do you stop Farage getting into British politics?

Speaker 2 You work ambitiously and bravely to fix the boat issue, which only Macron can really fix and which he's he's half-heartedly failed to address again and again.

Speaker 2 When you look at the big issues on defence and European security, industrial policy for Europe, reforms on the European budget, he talks a good game. It just doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 And all of us are beginning to get a bit frustrated with the gap between rhetoric and reality.

Speaker 1 God, you sounded like Boris Johnson then. The gap between rhetoric and reality.
By the way, Johnson has to be mentioned in the worst politician of any year ever.

Speaker 1 And given we had the COVID inquiry this year,

Speaker 1 the latest stage of that, I think we should give him an honourable mention.

Speaker 1 Look, I'm not going to pretend that Emmanuel Macron has worked out as I had hoped, hoped, but I think you're being very, very harsh.

Speaker 1 There is the point about arrogance, and I think that that is something that he's never properly dealt with in relation to people's sense of him.

Speaker 1 I don't see him as being arrogant, and I've seen him with quotes, ordinary people, where I think he's got far better relationship with people that he meets than he gets credit for.

Speaker 1 But I think where you're right is I think this is a sign of just how bloody hard politics is without making big own goal mistakes.

Speaker 1 The truth is, you you were right about this on the day, I remember you said it, on the day that he called that snap election.

Speaker 1 I could see the logic for it, but I think actually it was one of those moments where he really damaged his own authority and he's never fully recovered for it.

Speaker 1 I still think he's one of the brightest and we've got one of the best brains in politics, but that took me, that one took me aback.

Speaker 2 Speech for the year.

Speaker 1 Well, I might take you back here.

Speaker 1 I'm going for three in different categories. Most consequential, which I'm going for J.D.
Vance in Munich.

Speaker 1 wow okay just to remind people what happened there to tell us about the jd vance so jd vance turned up at the munich security conference where all the great sort of brains and policy makers and diplomats and military figures turn up to talk about defense and security at a time of kind of peak opportunity as well as threat in relation to the ukraine war and he made the most awful speech But the reason why I think it was consequential, because I think this was at the point at which America's real foreign policy intentions were laid bare.

Speaker 1 He basically said, you lot think that Putin's your biggest threat. Your biggest threat says you don't believe in free speech.
Most of the people sat there thinking, what the F are you talking about?

Speaker 1 He then went off to have a meeting with Alice Feidel, the leader of the alternative for Deutschland, a neo-Nazi party that he basically said should be running.

Speaker 1 Germany and therefore in their minds of the Americans, Europe. So I think that was the most consequential speech.
I think the best

Speaker 1 parliamentary speech, this is where I think I'm going to shock you, was in fact Kemmi Badenock's response to Rachel Reeves in the budget. Now, a lot of people hated it.

Speaker 1 We got pushback on the day that we did our special episode on the budget. We got a lot of people saying, well, we both said we thought it was a very effective, brutal speech.

Speaker 1 A lot of people saying it was horrible, it was personal, it was nasty, they're still the nasty party, etc., etc., etc. But she did three things actually.

Speaker 1 The first is important, especially just before Christmas, she settled, I think, any doubts within her party that she's tough. And so therefore she might have what it takes.

Speaker 1 Doesn't mean she has, but she settled that in their minds. The second thing she did was

Speaker 1 she, and a lot easier when you've been given the budget in advance, but she really, I think, went to the heart of a dividing line that they're now going to drive, which is Labour is putting up tax.

Speaker 1 and putting up welfare and we believe in bringing both down.

Speaker 2 And so she's making an argument to relate to your brand point. She had a clear argument.

Speaker 1 She's creating a very clear division.

Speaker 2 She knew what that argument was.

Speaker 1 Yeah, now, whether she can then bring forward the policy to deal with it. That being said, my speech of the year...

Speaker 1 Do you know who Pep Guardiella is, Rory?

Speaker 2 Yes, yes, he's a football manager.

Speaker 1 That's the one. He's the manager of.

Speaker 1 Manchester City. Well done.
Round applause for Rory, Manchester City.

Speaker 1 He got an honorary graduate thing. at Manchester University and he made a really quite beautiful speech about Gaza.
The thing I remember about it most was he had this line.

Speaker 1 He basically said, this whole thing hurts me. It makes me scared.
I hate the lack of humanity that's attached to it. I'm not speaking here about taking sides or ideology.

Speaker 1 I'm speaking about our basic humanity.

Speaker 1 And he told this story of this parable of a bird that can fly and fill its at a fire, fill its mouth, fill its beak with water, fly back, drop a bit of water, fly back, drop a bit of water.

Speaker 1 Bang on message for what can I do? A great book, as you'll agree, Rory. So, you know, the point is, we can all do something.
So I thought it was a, you know, for a football manager.

Speaker 2 We can all do something small. And that all those little beaks of water ultimately can put out the forest fire.
Yeah. So beautiful.

Speaker 1 Here's my speech of the year.

Speaker 2 Beautiful. Well, look, I don't want to be too

Speaker 2 gloomy at Christmastime. But following on from your point about J.D.
Vance, I thought the most revealing speech, if you want to understand

Speaker 2 what's most dark and terrifying about the direction which Trump is leading, not just America but Europe, is for people to watch Stephen Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's funeral.

Speaker 2 This was a speech in which he says that Charlie Kirk and his family, to quote, stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up cities, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves, out of the darkness into the light.

Speaker 2 We are the light. They are the darkness.
And the implication here goes right back to the right in America after the Civil War. This is all this language, civilization, warriors.

Speaker 2 He then goes on, we are Athens, we are Rome. It's about white European civilization.

Speaker 2 And originally, this whole language was simply developed to attack African Americans, to say these are people who live in primitive societies.

Speaker 1 I can't remember who did it, but somebody did

Speaker 1 an analysis of that speech related to a speech that Goebbels had made in the 30s.

Speaker 1 I mean, when I see Speech of the Year, I'm trying to find the good speeches, but you're basically going with my consequential speeches.

Speaker 2 I thought it just sort of tore the mask off because you're absolutely right. Yeah, even the language about the warrior stands up to the storm.
We are the storm. The stuff, as you say, is

Speaker 2 exactly taken very much from that.

Speaker 1 Did you have a good speech, a nice speech?

Speaker 2 Well, I thought Mamdani, in his short snippets on social media, I mean, it's a very different way of doing speeches to the kind of honorary degree at Manchester University.

Speaker 2 But I guess, yeah, my speech the year

Speaker 2 is a sort of memory speech from a university acceptance speech, which I talked about at the time, which was the extraordinary Jane Goodall watching her deliver an acceptance speech for her honorary degree at the American University in Paris, where not only was she modest, funny, and charming, but she did a full, I don't know, it felt like minute, two minutes, maybe it was only 45 seconds, full chimpanzee mating call to an audience of 2,500 people.

Speaker 1 I mean, it says something about the state of our politics, that we both really quite struggle to go for politician of the year.

Speaker 1 And for our speeches of the year, I've gone for a football manager, you've gone for somebody imitating a chimpanzee.

Speaker 2 I'm a collector. That's true.

Speaker 2 That's not very inspiring. I think both of us have been impressed by some of the people speaking in the Senate and the House exposing Trump.

Speaker 2 We talked about Senator Murphy getting into some of Trump's corruption.

Speaker 1 James Comey did a very, very short speech in response to some of the different stages of the persecution of Trump, by Trump of him.

Speaker 2 Smith, who's one of the prosecutors that Trump is going after, did an incredible thing at LSE way.

Speaker 2 He talked about the basic elements, the rule of law, which I thought was very moving. That's an American standing up for the rule of law.

Speaker 2 But yes, we're struggling a little bit, and we keep coming back to the chimpanzee mating call. I can do a good impression of a white-handed gibbon, but I can't do a chimp.

Speaker 2 A white-handed gibbon? Yeah. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Like that.

Speaker 1 Sort of owl. It sounds like an owl to me.

Speaker 2 Well, I just heard it at the Cotswold Zoo. If people can do better than that, they can.

Speaker 1 Well, we've done the Christmas card competition. Let's now have a Gibbon imitation.

Speaker 2 They're very noisy and their whole chest vibrates. It's one on your environmental stuff.

Speaker 2 If you ever have an opportunity to go to the rainforest and to see the gibbons flying through the top canopy with this noise erupting across the jungle, it is just the most exciting thing in the world.

Speaker 2 Excellent.

Speaker 1 Okay, Rory, well, on Gibbons, let's have a quick break and then we'll come back.

Speaker 1 Biggest political moment, and we're going to talk about issues, people that are under-discussed, undercovered, under-debated, even on the rest of politics.

Speaker 2 Even on the rest of this politics. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, see you then.

Speaker 2 As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even 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?

Speaker 2 It's the thoughtful kind of present.

Speaker 2 Ad-free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q ⁇ As, book discounts, and perhaps perhaps I think most interesting, it's our mini-series available only to members focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics.

Speaker 2 We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J.D. Vance and we're doing many more subjects to come.

Speaker 1 So think of this as a civilised gift to allow families to disagree agreeably over Christmas. What could be nicer?

Speaker 2 And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is it's digital. No cues, wrapping or panic.
The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.

Speaker 1 So spread a little political peace and goodwill. Head to therestispolitics.com and click gifts.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Christmas Eve special with me, Alistair Campbell.

Speaker 2 And me, Rory Stewart. Yeah.
Are you feeling now more Christmassy? Now we've made it through the break. Did you spend the break reflecting on...

Speaker 2 You're becoming a bit like Scrooge. This is kind of terrible.
Oh, not Scrooge. The Grinch, maybe.

Speaker 1 Do you know, it's really strange. It is strange.
There's definitely something in my psychology. I don't like things

Speaker 1 where everybody is meant to feel the same.

Speaker 2 Are you sure it's not some sort of grim Scottish Presbyterian anti-Christmas thing back in your DNA? It could be. You know, the Scots, you know, basically banned Christmas for some time.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 As you know, I'm not really a party person. I'm not a wedding person.

Speaker 2 If you ever found God, would you become a slightly grim Presbyterian minister?

Speaker 1 Well, Tony Blair always used to say he was really worried

Speaker 1 I'd get God because he thought I'd become an Islamic fundamentalist.

Speaker 2 That's another possibility.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think the one thing you wouldn't do,

Speaker 2 the one thing the ministers used to do, which you might not do, which is ban the playing of sport on Sunday.

Speaker 1 100% wouldn't do that.

Speaker 2 You wouldn't do that, no? No. No, no, he allows us to play sport.

Speaker 1 Anyway, happy Christmas, everybody. I hope you're all having a lovely, lovely, lovely time, as we all are, because we're all meant to.

Speaker 2 Go on. Tell us about your biggest political moment of last year.

Speaker 1 Zelensky in the Oval Office. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Okay, so

Speaker 2 this brings us not just to Trump, but to J.D. Vance.
So everybody remembers Zelensky. It's the big moment.
Trump says he's going to fix the Ukraine war in 24 hours.

Speaker 2 Comes into office for a few weeks in. Everybody's a bit off balance.
Zelensky's first big meeting, question mark. Is he going to get US financial support? Is America going to support his borders?

Speaker 2 He comes in, he's wearing his trademark

Speaker 2 fatigues, walks into the Oval Office, and very unusually,

Speaker 2 the whole format changes for the first time, doesn't it? Because traditionally, you point out it would have been a short little thing before a private meeting.

Speaker 1 I think Trump had already sort of set that precedent that he was going to use these as big rolling, rambling press conferences.

Speaker 1 And and it wasn't just trump and the president speaking because the vice president was sitting there like a peanut gallery weighing in ted talk us through this moment i i thought it was truly horrible i watched the whole thing on my sofa and i felt sick because i think we had kidded ourselves that trump was going to try to bring this war to an end now in his head that's what he was doing bringing this war to an end.

Speaker 1 Vance lit the fuse, but once Vance lit the fuse, Trump went along with it and he was basically they were doing it by saying to Zelensky, you're little, we're big, Putin's big, you're still little, you've lost, give up.

Speaker 1 That was the basic message. I don't think Zelensky had any sense that was coming in the way that it did.

Speaker 1 I did an interview that night on Channel 4 News where I almost said the F and even worse because I was so angry. And that I think it was just, I used the word consequential for Vance's speech.

Speaker 1 I think this was part of that pattern.

Speaker 1 It was hugely consequential because it was basically saying, you lot in in Europe are sitting there thinking we're on your side. We're going to say that from time to time, but this is us.

Speaker 1 This is really us. And I saw Zelensky behaved as he does so often with amazing kind of courage and dignity.
But to be the leader of a nation at war and essentially get asked to leave the White House.

Speaker 1 because he's not buying this idea that you have none of the cards. And then pushing this line that Zelensky shouldn't have started this war if he didn't believe he couldn't win.

Speaker 1 As if Zelensky had started the war, playing into the kind of pewter narrative that NATO provoked this and all this stuff. So

Speaker 1 I thought it was horrible. And the thing is about Trump, we'll talk about this a bit more in the next episode where we're talking about what surprises about this year.

Speaker 1 So much stuff happens with Trump. that we don't kind of hang on long enough to reflect on these massive moments.
It just moves on to the next one.

Speaker 2 Well, the moments are unbelievable, aren't they? I mean, as you're thinking through, I mean,

Speaker 2 we're talking after this astonishing revelations that basically Witkoff took the entire Russian talking points on Ukraine and tried to drive them through as a peace deal.

Speaker 2 We're talking in a year in which Trump pushed through the ceasefire in Gaza in the most extraordinary, strange, last-minute brutal fashion.

Speaker 2 We're talking about a year in which Iran has been attacked by American missiles, in which Qatar has been attacked by Israeli missiles, in which Syria has begun to bring itself together, in which Sudan continues to disintegrate, in which military governments backed by Russia all over the Sahel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 But my big choice is that moment at the very beginning of April, just after April Fool's Day, the Liberation Day tariffs.

Speaker 2 And again, I think if historians looked back in 30 years' time, this was the big change

Speaker 2 because it changed so many things in a single moment. The first thing is it showed suddenly that

Speaker 2 the American president had a type of power that people weren't really aware of before.

Speaker 2 He found an obscure law, an emergency power ready for war, which allows him personally to move up and down tariffs without congressional approval. Hadn't really been done for decades, right?

Speaker 2 And it suddenly showed Trump can do stuff, and it was perfect for Trump because, as you point out, it means that every country in the world has to come and watch him do the signature.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Yeah, and give him weird presents. And the Swiss will turn up with gold bars and the Japanese have to give him $300 billion sovereign wealth funds to spend at his discretion.

Speaker 2 So sort of tribute bearers, but not just countries, American companies having to come. And

Speaker 2 Apple has to give him special gifts to get changes on whether or not they can do stuff with iPhones in China.

Speaker 1 Power.

Speaker 2 Second thing is unpredictability. What we discovered

Speaker 2 is what you call a hokey-cokey. The tariffs go up, the tariffs go down, the tariffs go up, the tariffs go down.
And the whole thing is completely bewildering.

Speaker 2 I mean, so that most people in America and in the world would still have absolutely no idea whether the tariffs are really up or down.

Speaker 2 Right? I mean, but the reality is the big picture is at the end of last year, the average tariff rate in the US was 3%. Today, the average tariff rate in the US is 18%.

Speaker 2 Last year, global trade growth was projected at 3%. This year, it's projected 0.3%.

Speaker 2 So, massive massive consequences for the global economy. And then I think the final thing that comes out of that is tearing up the whole world order.

Speaker 2 He's broken this whole American idea since the Second World War that American power was behind certain kinds of multilateral institutions and rules like the World Trade Organization, which tried to balance the interests of small countries and big countries with relatively transparent rules that you could apply to courts, etc.

Speaker 2 Blown that all out of the water, and he's gone after his allies.

Speaker 2 I mean, what's so astonishing about it is that everybody assumed that if he was going to go after China, he would correspondingly try to keep allies on side, you know, India, Vietnam, Switzerland, Japan, Europe, because he'd need them.

Speaker 2 Instead of which, it's turned out that he actually inflicts more damage on his allies than he does on his enemies.

Speaker 1 Partly because China and Xi Jinping has stood up to.

Speaker 2 Well, I think that's partly because China knew that the United States was its enemy and therefore spent the last 10 years making sure they couldn't be taken for right.

Speaker 2 We thought the United States was our allies, so we opened up our entire economy to the US. We allowed them to do open heart surgery on us.
Consequently, we had no defenses.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's like letting a virus into your body with absolutely no defenses.

Speaker 2 We've allowed the United States over 70 years to become totally central to every element of our defense, security, economic life.

Speaker 2 And so that's what allows the long con. That's the real long con.

Speaker 2 It's that America is spending 70, 80 years being so well behaved that Europeans, Japanese, Canadians

Speaker 2 allow themselves to be that vulnerable.

Speaker 1 Right, but the reason for that is not the United States of America, it's Trump. I think every previous president would have

Speaker 1 not.

Speaker 1 I can't think of a president living or dead that would be sitting there approving what Trump is doing in relation to their relations with Europe.

Speaker 2 No, but of course the problem is once Trump has revealed it, once he's really brought out into the open the fact that we are this vulnerable, that America has actually done more damage to Europeans, Japanese, Canadians in the last 11 months, the last year, than the Chinese or the Russians.

Speaker 2 Actually, more damage to our economy, more damage to our security, more damage to our democracies.

Speaker 2 And the problem is that

Speaker 2 we've always in the past asked the question when we're looking at our enemies and adversaries,

Speaker 2 is this country a liberal democracy? Are they part of the Western alliance? And if they're not, we think they're an enemy. What we fail to understand is this question of vulnerability.

Speaker 2 If you integrate too much, I mean, we saw this in microcosm with Russia, where we integrated too much with our energy, but our dependency on the US is 90 times greater than our dependency ever was on Russia.

Speaker 2 And this is what Trump's exploiting. And now suddenly, I mean, honestly, if he decided to invade Greenland, we we could do absolutely nothing about it.

Speaker 1 Most underdiscussed, underappreciated domestic moment or issue. Last year, I went for Brexit, and you went for unemployment in the UK.
So, I don't think, I don't,

Speaker 1 I think unemployment's looking not too bad at the moment, Rory. Brexit's still a disaster.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, unemployment is a little bit up in the UK. And what I'm really talking about here, which hasn't been fixed, is the million people who just aren't working.

Speaker 2 And this is people living on different forms of disability benefits and payments, which hasn't been fixed.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's been, it's the one big difference between the UK economy and all our peers that everybody came out of COVID with a lot of people out of the workforce, but only in the UK, out of the major economies, have all these people remained out of the workforce.

Speaker 2 And if you don't get those million people into the workforce, the benefits budget is skyrocketing.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is part of the problem that Rachel Reese is struggling with and trying to generate growth, get the public finances going.

Speaker 2 I don't think in the last 12 months they've really come up with anything to do about it.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go for SEND special educational needs.

Speaker 1 And I think this relates to the change in media landscape as well, because the whole kind of internet revolution and the way the media has developed has sort of destroyed so much of our local media.

Speaker 1 Local authorities are trying to do more and more with less.

Speaker 1 And I think send has grown and grown and grown and grown as a problem. And it was briefly mentioned in the budget in the context of what is now a £14 billion

Speaker 1 black hole, call it what you want.

Speaker 1 And this is where there's been this thing called the override where debts that the local authorities are building up and building up, they've not been going on the books, they're now going to be taken over by central government.

Speaker 1 And it sparked this debate finally about whether if it's not coming from local authority budgets, is it going to come out of education budgets?

Speaker 1 Or are we now going to look at another massive spending cost that the government's just going to have to fix?

Speaker 2 And the issue behind it, I guess, is that we've become increasingly thoughtful about understanding how different children are and how many needs there are.

Speaker 2 So I suppose there are probably two things happening. One of them is a genuine increase in certain kinds of conditions.

Speaker 2 And the second is more awareness of them and more sensitivity to them and schools realizing that there's a lot more that they can do to help children at different parts of the spectrum, from relatively mild, who also benefit from a huge amount of support, through to more serious cases.

Speaker 2 And also, the ways in which COVID feeds into that, social media feeds into that, in loneliness,

Speaker 2 people facing serious challenges with their mental health, all the stuff with young people, and how on earth do you finance this?

Speaker 2 Because it's clearly vital if you can get that intervention right in early childhood.

Speaker 2 It's incredible what you can do with results. I mean, again, I don't want to make this too much personal, but our kids' school has with my eight-year-old

Speaker 2 Been so thoughtful about thinking about how to occasionally give him a few more minutes in an exam or just helping him write down what the homework is for the night.

Speaker 2 And the results have been unbelievable. I was very, very worried in September that he would find it incredibly academically tough.
He's come out of the end of his first term so confident, cheerful.

Speaker 2 He was saying yesterday, it was kind of an extraordinary parental moment. You know, I'm so grateful for the fact I'm learning something every day.

Speaker 2 So they've turned somebody who could have been incredibly anxious, insecure, and was saying six months ago, I just can't do this, I can't do school. It's

Speaker 2 into somebody who feels really confident. And these are small tweaks.

Speaker 2 And we're very, very lucky. But of course, this takes funding and backing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing is you've got all these graphs showing massive rise in diagnosis, a lot of controversy, debate about reasons for it.
Then you have lunatics like R. F.

Speaker 1 Kennedy coming in saying it's related to taking, was it paracetamol or whatever it was?

Speaker 1 And so you got experts divided, you got medics divided, you got families divided, but it's it's an issue the government is going to have to grip.

Speaker 2 Is it a bigger issue, though? Just listening to you, is it is can we put this in a bigger issue about how we think about the future of looking after citizens, the welfare state?

Speaker 2 In other words, presumably there would be an analogy in health care too, which is

Speaker 2 as the state tries to provide more and more thoughtful, tailored care in education and health, as people's expectations go up, things become more and more expensive.

Speaker 2 I mean, I noticed because I teach in America that in American healthcare, they will do a lot of things the NHS wouldn't do on more

Speaker 2 minor lifestyle things, dermatology, diet. Whereas the NHS is really, really good at the kind of extreme kind of surgery for the acute case.

Speaker 2 And this is partly about the fact that to provide the really tailored care for people at every stage on an autism spectrum is a little bit like thinking about the full challenges in somebody's health.

Speaker 2 This is the problem. Can we afford to do this? Have we got the tax balance right?

Speaker 2 You know, one thing we talked about during the budget is that in the UK, we're actually very oddly skewed. The top 0.1% is paying as much tax as the bottom 50% now in the UK.

Speaker 2 So it may be that we need to also talk about increasing the basic rate of tax.

Speaker 1 Well, that was

Speaker 1 we're now revisiting the arguments that preceded the budget. But I think what this speaks to,

Speaker 1 you know, you mentioned social care. Social care we have still not got a grip of.

Speaker 1 We've talked a lot about there is going to be, whether we like it or not, increasing demand on defence and security because of what's happening in Russia and Ukraine.

Speaker 1 Have we really got a grip of that? Have we really got a grip of this issue?

Speaker 1 What this said to me is that they're starting to try to get a grip, but the sums of money involved are absolutely astronomical. And I'll tell you who,

Speaker 1 if he manages to crack it, our politician of the year next year might be Pat McFadden, because I think he's got one of the toughest jobs in government now. Labour tried to do

Speaker 1 welfare reform. MPs rebelled against it, weren't able to do it.
One of the factors behind

Speaker 1 the tax rises in the budget. I think there are some really, really big issues here.

Speaker 1 And I do think the Labour MPs have got to understand it's the easiest thing in the world to stand up and say, no, you can't do that, because that's going to affect some of my constituents.

Speaker 1 Sometimes, I'm afraid you have to look and you have to really sit back and say, Why is this happening? Why is the scale of this problem now so big? There we go.

Speaker 1 Most underdiscussed, underappreciated, international moment.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go with Nvidia stock reaching five trillion dollars in October.

Speaker 2 NVIDIA is of course the chip manufacturer that's at the core of the AI revolution and this of course brings us to the mini-series that I've been doing with Matt Clifford on AI which if you sign up become a Trip Plus member and I hope some people are considering doing this as a little gift for each other at Christmas you'll be able to listen to it because what we're trying to say is that

Speaker 2 Here is something which in technology terms potentially could change the world more than the Industrial Revolution and far more quickly.

Speaker 2 Far more important basically than politics, transform all of employment, all of defense and security, all of the way that our lives work, and potentially pose a massive existential threat to our politics, our security, our lives.

Speaker 2 And yet, almost nobody's discussing it. I sat down with a friend of mine in the U.S.
Congress

Speaker 2 just two days ago. who said to me, frankly, none of us are discussing it because none of us understand.

Speaker 2 We feel very, very insecure dealing with technology technology issues and therefore we don't want to go there.

Speaker 2 And which is why the politics of today often can feel as though it's stuck 20, 30 years in the past, as though nothing's really changed.

Speaker 2 In some sense, the kinds of things that people are discussing in Parliament are not very different from what they were discussing in 97, right?

Speaker 1 And in the same way.

Speaker 2 And in the same way, yeah.

Speaker 1 Positive order.

Speaker 1 You can't say this, you can't say that.

Speaker 2 So anyone who's interested in the bigger argument around this, please sign up and listen to our mini-series where we really get into everything.

Speaker 2 We get into what what AI is, we get into what it could mean for the economy, what it can mean for defense and security, what it can mean for existential risk.

Speaker 2 But that for me is the most undiscussed international moment.

Speaker 1 I think this year,

Speaker 1 the UK economy is going to work out as being worth about 3.9 trillion.

Speaker 2 So smaller than a single American company.

Speaker 1 This feeds into one of my, I don't know if we're going to do a book of the century at any point, but it might be my

Speaker 1 sovereign individual by Jacob Reese Mogstad, because this is kind of playing out pretty much as he said.

Speaker 1 These tech guys are going to become way more powerful than any country and far wealthier than any person on earth.

Speaker 2 And maybe there could be the other moment. This is the year in which it was announced.
If Elon Musk meets his targets, he will get $1 trillion.

Speaker 2 And so to repeat, because Elon Musk is obsessed with this, he's obviously obsessed with how rich he is. To put it in context, a million seconds ago is 12 days ago.
A billion seconds ago is 1994.

Speaker 2 A trillion seconds ago is 30,000 BC. To get a sense of how different a trillion is to a billion.

Speaker 1 Right. My most underdiscussed, underappreciated international moment, you might be surprised by this because it relates to Gaza.

Speaker 1 Now, Gaza has had a lot of discussion, but my most underdiscussed episode is what's happened in Gaza since the so-called bringing of peace by Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 It's almost a Trump is such a brilliant salesman, con man, communicator, you would think, to all intents and purposes, that he's brought peace to Gaza and the Middle East.

Speaker 1 Life for most people in Gaza remains utterly horrible. People are still being killed.
We're recording not long after the Pope visited Lebanon at a time when Israelis were dropping bombs on Lebanon.

Speaker 1 So I just think it's one of those things where Trump manages to shape a moment. and go, bang, that's the end of that chapter.

Speaker 2 So, Alistair,

Speaker 2 I think that's a moment maybe to finish.

Speaker 1 I thought you were going to maybe weave effortlessly from that into telling me a story about Bethlehem or something. Well,

Speaker 1 maybe something Christmassy.

Speaker 2 Well, that's a great thing. Okay, well, of course.

Speaker 1 Let's imagine you're a priest. Let's imagine these meetings you're having with clergy.

Speaker 1 What would they say?

Speaker 2 Well, I tell you, one of the things that I've got for that, I mean, you're right, you could make a little pivot to the fact that Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the West Bank

Speaker 2 with Palestinian Christians. We often forget Palestinian Christians in the story, And a place that's very, very difficult at the moment to access.

Speaker 2 My wife's charity, Tokos Martin, is working with craftspeople in Bethlehem.

Speaker 2 And a lot of the proposals that are coming now from smart literature about cutting Bethlehem off from Nablus and the other parts of the West Bank. But I think the move I want to end on is this.

Speaker 2 A lot of the people I've been having lunch with recently, these priests, are getting older.

Speaker 2 And they are...

Speaker 1 Do you want to replace them?

Speaker 2 No, I'm saying they're going through extraordinary personal challenges. Sometimes they're in health, sometimes aging, sometimes tragedies within their own family.

Speaker 2 And they're having to try to apply consolation to themselves that they've spent 50 years providing to other people. And that is an extraordinarily difficult moment.

Speaker 2 I mean, what's the moment in which one of them said to me,

Speaker 2 He's somebody who's a man who meditates a lot

Speaker 2 and had a family tragedy beyond imagining, and was saying to me, honestly, he couldn't meditate anymore. And he was literally flattened back on his bed.
But then he turned to

Speaker 2 listening to other people he admired, giving little talks on meditation. 10, 15 minutes listening to it just

Speaker 2 pulled him back enough to keep going. But just these

Speaker 2 I'm just so moved by

Speaker 2 how at the center of the Christian message is the sense of human frailty and weakness and that nothing's ever perfect.

Speaker 2 It's not like some of the Buddhist traditions where you pretend there's a moment where you're suddenly enlightened and you become a saint and everything's over, that right the way through to the end,

Speaker 2 people are learning, struggling, and sometimes finding that they can't cope.

Speaker 1 We can't end a Christmas Eve episode on the words can't cope.

Speaker 2 Well, they can't cope, and they would say without God, without other people, and that they're not alone, and that actually it's an unbearable burden to think that you've somehow become a superhero saint who can do it all on your own.

Speaker 2 That for them, it is other people, other voices,

Speaker 2 and whatever in different ways people are trying to get at when they talk about God, which in the end provides that final consolation at Christmas.

Speaker 1 Well done. You got it back.
You wrestled it back. Happy Christmas to you and your family, Rory.
And because we're just sort of, we never stop, let's do another episode on Christmas Day.

Speaker 2 Should we do that? We will. And we'll be back on Christmas Day with our message, and I'll try to make it a little less happy.

Speaker 4 Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

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