537. Indicting Trump, Israeli Prisons, and Rory vs. Ed Miliband

Thanks for listening to the rest is politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to the rest is politics .com. That's the rest is politics.com. You would have a lot of grounds to prepare case against Trump for war crimes or corruption. How would the US public react if we actually took seriously the fact that this man had broken multiple laws and that he would be under our jurisdiction? Which government of the world would do it? How much can Netanyahu continue to distance himself from this man and say that he isn't speaking from Israel so long as he leaves him in his government as the security minister? There is going to be an election. Netanyahu probably feels that politically he's not strong enough to do that. Well, what does what does that mean, Alistair? I mean, of course he can fire him. Well, he could. But what it means, what it means in political management is he thinks his coalition falls apart. 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Plus, it automatically connects to the nearest server so you aren't stuck with sluggish internet. It really is the ultimate travel tool, even for those who actually try to relax on holiday. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash Restless Politics. The link is in the episode description. Welcome to the Restless Politics question time with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. First half of question time, we're going to cover two big issues that relate to some of the things we're always talking about. Collapse of laws and collapse of norms. And we're talking about Cuba, and we're also talking about Israel. And then we're going to talk a little bit about reform. And also who, I hope you've thought about it, Rory, who is the most evil handshake we've ever had to endure? It's a disturbing question. Well, let me start you on Cuba. Yeah. Anandi Mahadeo from Belfast. The US is doing to Cuba what Israel did to Gaza in the form of blockade. Why is the UK government silent? Am I allowed just a very quick explainer on Cuba? And then straight back over to you. Cuba is this Caribbean island, which is only about 90 miles off the coast of Florida. In other words, it's closer to the United States than Manchester is to London. Got about 11 million people. And famously, having been very closely tied into the US economy in the 40s and 50s with sugar and casinos and tourism. In fact, my Scottish great grandfather worked as an engineer in a sugar plantation in Cuba from 1920 to 1940 and would have been one of many, many foreigners as part of the slightly exploitative United Fruit presence in Cuba. But in 1959, there was, partly driven by the abuse of United Fruit and the US and everybody else, a communist revolution where Fidel Castro was elected and a very large number of Cubans fled to Florida, creating a very strong voter base in Florida of Cuban exiles who have pushed the United States very strongly to try to topple the communist government there. Fidel Castro handed over to his brother Raul who become president and Raul Castro now in his 90s remains very much the power behind the throne, very much the person that American administration is dealing with, although there have been two other presidents recently. But the reason it's in the news is that President Trump and Marco Rubio, his Cuban American Secretary of State, who's been very focused on this issue because he's also from Florida, have really decided to apply maximum pressure and appear to see this as the moment to finally topple the regime in Cuba. Over to you. Yeah, where to start? I guess a lot of this is about oil. Cuba, since the revolution has always had a big oil producing international sponsor. So for a long time through the Cold War, it was the Soviet Union. Soviet Union collapses, they had an economic crisis then. Venezuela more recently and since the Americans took out Maduro and installed Delcey Rodriguez as president, there has been a blockade. And Andy's question, is this doing to Cuba what Israel did to Gaza? I can see the parallels, but I think the difference here, I think this more relates to what we've already seen with Trump's administration, where they signal intent very, very strongly. They did it in Venezuela, did it in Iran. What I worry about, what's going on with Cuba, which is basically running out of fuel. There's no kind of, people are living, you know, day to day, hand to mouth because it is, and it's just underlining how we all need energy and these energy flows in the modern age where norms are breaking down, it becomes so important, even more important. But there is effectively a bit of a humanitarian catastrophe going on in Cuba. And interestingly, going back to some of the things we talk about with Trump and the changing world order, the question there, why is the UK government silent? I'm sure the UK government has been saying things, but they haven't cut through to me. The things that have cut through to me have been China and Russia condemning this as a violation of sovereignty. So it is underlining once more that we're in this very, very different world. And of course, Trump is, as ever, he's really sort of using every weapon at his disposal. There's economic warfare, there are the military threats. He sent the head of the CIA essentially to sit down with the government and say, you don't need to go or you don't need to change or go. And of course, the threat of military action at the back of this. So I think we're talking here about Trump. We constantly talk about Trump wanting sort of, you know, right history. He keeps saying that he's going to be the president who sorts out Cuba once and for all. Now, he says that about a lot of things. We'll see whether he actually manages to deliver. But if I were Cuban right now, I'd be very, very worried. We covered this actually a few weeks back where we talked about Lindsey Graham saying Iran now, Cuba's next. And you've got this, a similar phenomenon that we have in all these interventions, which is this large expatriate community who somehow feel that regime change is going to work out. You know, the number of Iranians who said to me, I don't understand, I thought this was going to work out, that they'd be able to topple the regime. And we saw the same actually with Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya that often educated people from a country living elsewhere, particularly in the United States, develop very optimistic ideas about what will happen if they can just trigger regime change, that they can somehow put the world back to the world that they knew, which in the case of Cuba is a very long time ago. Back to the 1950s. I think your point also about how anomalous Cuba's getting, how devastating the collapse of the Soviet Union was to their economy, how they hoped under Obama that because Obama was quite brave on Cuba, in terms of opening up and really thinking about how to integrate Cuba into the American economy and what a more gentle way of reintegrating with Cuba would be, which of course was destroyed by Trump one. I think the other final thing just before we move on, that strikes me again and again, when dealing with the US, is the sense that America is reminding us day by day that it is willing to do things to other countries, that it would never countenance anyone doing to it. I was talking to one of my sons yesterday, and I was describing Trump's corruption. And he said, well, obviously, what needs to happen is if the US won't arrest him for corruption, is when he lands in some other country, a European country, we need to have a sealed indictment and arrest him, put him on trial. Which child was this? That's actually the younger child. Brilliant. Sealed indictment. It's good. It's good stuff, right? So I thought, actually, that's really interesting because, of course, you would have a lot of grounds to do it, a lot of grounds to prepare a case against Trump for war crimes or corruption. But my goodness, the American reaction would be so hostile when they're very, very happy. You know, the number of Latin American presidents they seem to be able to indict, lock up, people they arrest when they step down in the United States, people they actually extradite when they're not even in the United States, they capture them in other airports. But it would be fascinating, even with everybody who hates Trump, how would the US public react if we actually took seriously the fact that this man had broken multiple laws and that he would be under our jurisdiction in the way the US tries to claim that almost everyone in the world is subject to US Department of Justice jurisdiction. Which government of the world would do it? Spain. Sanchez. But this goes back to this point about how the norms are breaking down. For example, when Netanyahu was traveling to different parts of the world, having to go navigate through complicated airspace because there were certain countries he feared getting arrested. Putin, the same thing when he's traveling around the world. It's a very interesting thought. But of course, what's happening is that Trump thinks he can get away with anything. The Nine-Year-Old also pointed out that I shouldn't say this on the podcast because Trump might notice the threat. He really thought it was important we concealed this and then sprung it on him. His idea was that he'd turn up on holiday and we'd be able to get him on holiday. Well, we could get him at a golf course near you any weekend, I suspect. Including when he doesn't go to his own son's wedding. Listen, Alastair, just to be serious for a second. I don't think I'd ever, until I really saw Trump do it, completely understood that the American government basically decides that American law is international law. And that if the Department of Justice decides that somebody has broken American rules on corruption, or money laundering, or drugs, or terrorism, or anything, effectively they can be captured pretty much anywhere in the world and put on trial in the United States. So what would they think if we did it to them? They wouldn't be very happy. But I'm trying to, I mean, you say Spain. I honestly can't think of a government that would do it. China one day, maybe? It's fascinating, though, that one wouldn't. And it'd be interesting to see how a Democratic president would respond. Would they somehow be so USA, I guess, they'd be so pro-USA, that they would launch a massive formal protest against the arrest of a US president, regardless the fact it's Donald Trump. But just on, you know, if you look, you mentioned Raul Castro, Fidel's brother. So he's now 94. And when we talk about his using economic and military and legal, the Department of Justice indicted Castro at 94 on murder charges, okay? So they've decided, so we've had several governments in the American, in the White House since 1996, but they've now decided that these two civilian aircraft that were downed, that Castro was responsible, okay? And Todd Blanche, the Attorney General, who clearly does whatever Trump tells him to, stresses this is not a symbolic indictment. I suspect it is. I don't think Raul Castro is going to be hauled off like Maduro was. But I think it's a very good point. It's a very, very good point. I'm going to spend the whole evening thinking about which country might actually, what about Denmark? Why Denmark? Denmark, pretty good. Denmark, pretty good grounds for indictment. I mean, if you're allowed to do what the US does, which is apply its domestic law to other people's presidents, there's a lot of things he could be indicted on. Well, maybe on the point about why is the UK government being so silent, maybe your children should become the UK government. Well, that's a possibility. Except as we pointed out in the last episode, that wouldn't be as profitable as putting them in these amazing private sector positions. Indeed, indeed. Now let's move on. Richard, what did you make of the treatment of Gaza flotilla activists by Itamar Ben-Gavir and the Israeli forces? And if people haven't seen this, it's this flotilla, I think about 400 people from 40 or different countries. I mean, largely symbolic, but you know, with stuff that they're going to try to get to Gaza. They were essentially, you know, picked up by the Israeli authorities. And they were put in this place. And the pictures that were put out were of Ben-Gavir taunting them, abusing them. They were made to kneel, their foreheads on the ground. And he was basically laughing at them for, frankly, for being activists. It's very interesting, isn't it? I mean, I think it's we often talk about how norms have been eroded. So it takes a little bit of time to remind ourselves of what any other country would have done. Or in fact, actually, what Israel might have done even quite recently compared to what Ben-Gavir did. I mean, let's imagine for whatever reason, I know it's a daft analogy, but let's imagine for whatever reason, there was a flotilla protesting the policy of some European state, and it chugged them on. I guess what would happen is the police would intercept them, and they would politely take them away, right? In this case, what happens is the Israeli military board these vessels hundreds of miles off the Israeli coast in international waters. They board them with full face masks, full body armor, full weapons. Although as far as one can tell, there is no military threat posed by the people on those. It's a peace flotilla, right? They're a bunch of peace activists. And despite the fact these people do not pose any form of plausible threat to the Israeli military, they are handcuffed and put in stress positions. So they're made to kneel down on the deck with their heads on deck. And Ben-Gavir then walks amongst them waving an Israeli flag, shouting, this is what happens to you, this is what's going to happen to you. And I was trying to think, have I ever seen any government do this? I don't think the Chinese government would do it. I don't think the Russian government would do it. I mean, it's actually very non-governmental. It's much more reminiscent of what non-governmental armed groups do, which is to stage humiliations with people with flags shouting at social media with people kneeling down in front of them. You know, you've had hostages that have been used by states, but I think you're right. I think this is more synonymous of a kind of non-state. If you think about what the hostages normally do, they normally present them on state television, don't they? But what you don't see is the ministers sort of striding amongst them, waving flags and shouting abuse. I mean, there's another video that Ben-Gavir put out a few months ago, which is him in prison. So, I mean, I was a prison's minister, so I was looking quite closely at the video that he put out. In the video, he has lined up a whole series of Israeli soldiers who are pointing their automatic weapons through the windows of the cells at the unarmed prisoners, all of them in a line. Now, firstly, none of the prisoners has a weapon because they're searched before they enter the prison, right? Secondly, in our jurisdiction, our prison officers don't carry guns at all. The idea that you would have an automatic weapon pointed through every window, and then they're all pulled out, they're all made to kneel again in the corridor, and Ben-Gavir's walking amongst them. It's obviously been staged for him as the prison's minister saying, this is how we treat people, I'm very pleased to say, except one thing I say to you, Mr. Netanyahu, they should all be killed, they should all be executed, I don't care how, electric chair, doesn't matter, they should all be executed. Now, Netanyahu then says that he disapproves, but he doesn't fire him, so how much does he disapprove? How much can Netanyahu continue to distance himself from this man and say that he isn't speaking from Israel so long as he leaves him in his government as the security minister? Ben-Gavir has got a track record of, he says he's really, really proud that he's basically brought in a regime of effectively brutality in the prisons. It was a horrible thing I read recently about, you know, rape inside prisons has been used as a kind of weapon against some of these guys. Israeli prison officers raping Palestinians, which has been covered by Israeli non-profits who've reported it, right? Correct. Israeli human rights organizations have exposed the sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners. And why is that relevant? Because on the other side, Israel weaponized sexual abuse of Israelis who had been captured by Hamas. And yet the conversation is never integrated. It's spoken about in two completely different ways, as though it's happening in two totally different worlds. And also, although Netanyahu, as you say, has rebuked publicly Ben-Gavir on a couple of occasions, on that specific thing, he basically said that he did not criticize what was the evidence, the people involved in the evidence that was produced. In fact, he called them heroes, didn't he, at one point? He did. He did. He did. And this one, you've got to go some as Ben-Gavir to have both Netanyahu and the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who basically is one of those, let Israel do whatever the hell it wants, it seems to me. He called Ben-Gavir's actions despicable. But can I just ask, but did he do anything about it? Did anyone stop the money going? Are there any sanctions? Is there any action? It's all very well. Netanyahu doesn't fire him. The Americans aren't taking the action against him. So what does Ben-Gavir conclude? Yeah, I don't know. He concludes he can carry on. But I was looking at the law. And again, you know, back to one of our central themes, there's international humanitarian law meaning anything anymore. But he says those involved in the transport and distribution of relief must be respected and protected during armed conflict. They are to be treated as civilians, so long as they do not directly take part in hostilities. And they have the rights if they are in circumstances where the civilians are detained, they have under international law, they have to, they must be informed of the reasons, be able to challenge the decision, receive adequate food, hygiene, medical care, be given access to lawyers and consular representatives and be held in conditions consistent with health and humanity. And here's where we get on to Ben Gavir and how he treats them. They are to be protected from cruel, humiliating or degrading treatment, intimidation and insults and public curiosity or degrading public exposure. And public curiosity is meant to be prohibiting any display of the detainees for propaganda or for public spectacle. Well, that is exactly what Ben Gavir was doing. Well, the thing that's that's so striking to me is I'm continuing to receive endless emails from my friends in Australia. And these are highly educated Australian Jewish friends of mine with relatives in Israel, whose response to this is not in any way to criticize Ben Gavir, but instead to immediately send me something saying that the whole Nakba, the whole expulsion of Palestinians was a fraud, and that it was all a lie and that it never happened. So the narrative bubbles and this is painful, right? I mean, the guy that's sending me this, I like very much. But I've known him for many, many years. But I have a sense of people in total silos and bubbles, in which it's almost impossible to have a common conversation in which the vast majority of the Israeli population still support what's happening in Iran, which the rest of the world thinks is damaging the global economy and achieving nothing. The vast majority of people in Israel support the actions in Gaza. And my friend in Australia is saying, well, if you're trying to describe this as war crimes or genocide, are you suggesting that the vast majority of the Israeli population support war crimes and genocide? Because if so, that's an anti-Semitic trope. Well, that is kind of where part of the debate is. I still think there are enough Israelis who will be absolutely horrified by seeing what Ben Gavir did. That being said, there is going to be an election. Netanyahu probably feels, you know, that's your question, why doesn't Netanyahu fire him? He probably feels that politically he's not strong enough to do that. Well, what does that mean, Alastair? I mean, of course he can fire him. Well, he could, but what it means in political management is he thinks his coalition falls apart. So in other words, he has to accept the risk of not being prime minister to get rid of a man who is utterly abhorrent from his government. Rory, we're talking about somebody who's been prime minister for many, many years over a long, long period of time. He was prime minister when I first went into Downing Street with Tony Blair as prime minister. So the moral question is fairly obvious to you and to me. The political management question he's thinking through is because Netanyahu is desperate to stay in power for all sorts of reasons, including personal reasons to do with these corruption charges that he's facing. He's got to have an election at some point. And I don't know what outcome he would want from that election. He would probably like to have a majority where he didn't necessarily need to fill his government with people like Ben Gavir. I don't know. But Ben Gavir, when the video is being made of him waving his flag and abusing the people from the flotilla, part of his mind will be thinking, this will be a good campaign video for me. Yeah. And that tells you a lot about politics. I mean, I'm doing this. You're in Hong Kong. I'm two miles from the Israeli border in Jordan at the moment, talking to you. I mean, I think one of the things that is so striking for me is how radicalized people are becoming on both sides. You know, the local Starbucks, for example, no longer exists because people have boycotted it. I went into the local bookshop and where there used to be lots of children's books and travel books, the tables are now simply piled with books about Palestine and people's experience of Palestine and their memoirs of Palestine and what's happening in Palestine. And I also feel that there's a risk that he gets away with Ben Gavir and Smotrych by saying to people, of course, I don't want them in my government, but I leave them in as finance minister, security minister, because it's vital for my political survival and my coalition. And that he shouldn't be able to get away with that one should be able to say, Ben Gavir and Smotrych are horrifying people. If you put them in your cabinet, you're endorsing them. You don't get to say, well, I don't really like them, but I'm keeping them anyway because they're important for me to be prime minister. I don't think he even goes around the place saying he doesn't like them. I think he felt on this one, he had to condemn it because virtually, you know, most governments around the world were doing so. But I think all of that will have boosted Ben Gavir's own sense that from his perspective, politically, as a guy who's known to be such an extremist and who says some terrible things about Palestinians. And he probably felt the same about these people. I mean, he was, he was abusive. He was insulting. But look, the point you're making about your Australian friends though is, I've not got anybody quite like that. But I do think there is definitely of all the issues around which there is this extreme polarization. I would say it's probably top of the list right now. It's very hard to have conversations with people on either side who feel really, really, really passionate. But I think that's what we've all got to try to do, even when provoked by something as bad as this has to be called out. But then we somehow have to get back to some of the basics. The worst thing for me in relation to Gaza is that we're not talking about it. And what's happening with the settlers? I mean, that again, I mean, many of the people I've seen recently are people who are Palestinians and who have relatives in Nablus and Hebron. And, and as we've described, the settlers now seem to be able to do almost whatever they want. They can drive in with SUVs into the middle of olive groves, wave guns around. One friend of mine was saying, settlers can almost go into the main streets and shoot someone and the Israeli army will protect them. And the gamble, I think, is that they're just hoping that Palestinians will leave. The economy is collapsing in Ramallah and in other Palestinian towns. The Israeli controlled areas are expanding all the time and they're coterminous. And I think any idea of a two state solution is completely, completely out the window. I mean, it, uh, and Smotrich appears to have a kind of cruel and inevitable logic on his side in suggesting the whole thing is just going to become Israel. Well, I'm not very depressed, you know, let's take a break. Changes in sexual performance are more common than most people realize. And support doesn't need to feel awkward. With MedExpress, everything happens privately online. Start by completing a short consultation reviewed by UK registered clinicians. If eligible, treatment is delivered discreetly to your home with ongoing support whenever you need it. You're not alone in this. Visit medexpress.co.uk slash podcast to learn more. Welcome back to the restless politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, Vinod, a gentleman by the name of Vinod, have you seen the car crash interview that Richard Tice did with Bloomberg, where he refused to engage with simple factual questions about the science of climate change and its economic realities? Curiously, this is getting virtually zero coverage. Right. Well, let's first try to sort of summarize what actually happened in this interview. So he was presented with graphs. He refused to look at them. He calls it net stupid zero. You can't present with a whole lot of graphs that I can't read that may well be bullshit. This terminates now. It's the end of the podcast. I want to do two things. I want to agreeably disagree with you on your friend Ed Miliband's energy policy, which I think is actually becoming a real problem. And I'm hoping strongly, but I think it's unlikely that whoever comes in gets in the heave-ho. But I'm not prepared to go as far as defending Richard Tice, who I think is clearly a climate change denying bizarro on this. And over to you on Tice first. No, I want to go straight into why do you want to get rid of Ed Miliband? Well, are you buying the Richard Tice arguments that Ed Miliband is in trying to sort of, you know, play a leadership role on climate change? He's kind of destroying the world. Is that where we are? No, I don't think Ed Miliband's destroying the world. But I think that in looking for the kind of things which are causing a big problem for the British economy and its competitiveness and its productivity, we've got to be honest about the fact that our industrial energy prices are very, very high. I mean, they're four times those of the US and they're one and a half times those of key European competitors. But how does that relate to what Ed Miliband's trying to do on the green agenda? Well, because the reason why the energy prices are high is because of the policies pursued by the government. I mean, we are gas dependent, but in theory, that should apply equally to France and Germany and to other countries that use a lot of gas, including the US. The reason our prices are so high cannot simply be about wholesale gas price, or if it is, we're doing something weird in the way that it's calculated, which again, falls at Ed Miliband's door. But it's about the way in which the whole energy market is run in the UK, and in particular, the hurry with which Ed Miliband is pushing ahead for his particular 2030 targets. And why does it matter? Well, it matters because if you're a steel producer, it's really difficult to compete with European steel production. But most importantly of all, and I'm, as you know, obsessed with AI and what we can do for our sovereignty, and how we can stop ourselves being completely in hock to the US and China when it comes to AI, we need to build data centers. If we don't have in the UK, the chips and the data centers, and they consume an enormous amount of energy, we're going to be completely vulnerable to the US destroying our economy, taking away all our jobs, threatening our national security, and we can't get them built. And one of the major reasons we can't get them built, along with normal British problems with planning, is the energy costs are just too high. I mean, many cases, we're paying 24 pence when people like the Norwegians, the Portuguese are paying 10 pence for the same unit of energy. But you can't put that all at Ed Miliband's door. Listen, Roy, nor can we have a question about Richard Tice become a big discussion of Rory Stewart saying Ed Miliband should go. Can I just say something interesting on AI, Rory? I was in, I was at a lovely place called Brescia yesterday in Italy. You just jumped from Italy to Hong Kong in a day. I know, my green credentials are not very good this week. But anyway, this conference in Brescia is called the Future Proof Society. And it was sort of looking all sorts of, different this and that. But you'd have loved this discussion I had with a couple of people. Actually, one of them was totally against AI and just wants to stop the whole damn thing. But one of the other people who's involved in this discussion we're having said that the UK is actually extraordinarily well placed. America and China are absolutely running away with everything. That is true. But if you were looking for a kind of, you know, best placed to get into the runner up slot, it is the UK. And this was an American guy who basically said a lot of it was about our education, but also about some of the stuff that the government was doing. You mentioned that 2 billion pound thing that we're doing on quantum last week. But essentially, the infrastructure that's been built, and I guess Rishi Sunak was part of this when he was prime minister as well. So I was quite, I was quite cheered up by that. You're completely right. We've got outside the US and China, we've probably got the strongest global talent pool. So we talk about Demis Hassabis and DeepMind. We've got language, we've got legal system, but time zone. Our real problem is energy and the data centers. These new frontier models can involve 100s of 1000s of advanced chips, even a million advanced chips. So you can be looking for one gigawatt, two gigawatts in the US currently, they've got about 45 gigawatts of built power around these data centers. And that's probably going to double in the next three, four years. In the UK, we're hovering around depending on which figures you look out between 1.6 and three, to give a sense of the difference. UAE is looking to build out five gigawatts. Now, why does that matter? It matters because at the moment, if all the large language models exist in the United States, President Trump can do effectively what's happening at the moment with mythos, which is say this thing can't be exported from the US and all the latest technologies in the US, all the innovations in the US, all the growth is in the US. It's sort of extreme example of what's going on already with the Magnificent Seven with all these hyperscalers stuck in the world economy. And we will then find that all the native AI law firms are created in the US, not with us, all the tax revenue will go to the US, we'll lose jobs. So let's say we talk about the last episode, we suddenly start massively laying off people in banks, people in call centers, people in software. Suddenly, the UK government's got to find the revenue to pay the unemployment benefit, but it's not getting any taxation revenue because it's not taxing any income and all the companies in America. So how do we deal with that? I think having the data centers allows you to do one of three things. In the best case scenario, you could actually build your own frontier model and actually be able to run it and have the chips and have all the parameters and the weights in the UK. Second potential is you could provide a safe haven for one of the American companies. So let's say Trump suddenly decided to go crazy on anthropic or open AI, you could actually say, why don't you come to the UK to host your model here, which you can't do at the moment, because we simply don't have the infrastructure, they couldn't come here. And the third thing is, even if you weren't able to do that, maybe that's unrealistic. If these companies were able to use data centers, the UK to run even 20-30% of their models, we would have leverage. A future President Trump wouldn't be able to switch the stuff off and say, you know, I'm going to abuse the United Kingdom and get the handover, whatever, because we would have leverage over the United States. But to get there, we've got to build these data centers. And one of the major reasons we can't build them to kind of link back is that our cost of energy is too high. Well, Roy, I'm going to issue an apology to Vinod, because he asked us a question, basically wanted us to put the boot into Richard Tice, since when you took us down the Ed Miliband rabbit hole, and I then led you into the AI rabbit hole. So Vinod, what I'm going to do to hit back at you, because I feel I should defend Ed Miliband, because he was my Politician of the Year last year. He's a regular listener. I'm going to ask whether he might do his own rebuttal for the newsletter. I think that'd be a very good thing to do. Because I want to get back to the point about why reform don't like being scrutinized. It's very, very true. Look at Farage with these, I mean, Farage will normally leap in front of any TV camera anywhere in the world to give you his bon ami and his shtick. This 5 million donation where he keeps changing his story, he's nowhere to be seen. The funding generally of reform, nowhere to be seen. And they won't come on our show. I mean, you know, you started by trying to get Nigel Farage and he wouldn't come on. I've now asked reform MPs, I've asked reform policy leads, all of them say, I'm afraid this isn't one for me. None of them will come on their show. Now, open invitation. We're very happy to have an open conversation. Look at our interview, even with people we have serious disagreements with, like President Vucic in Serbia, will give you a fair hearing. But why won't you come on a huge show where millions of people can hear your views? What's going on reform? And also we discovered that we do have some reform supporters who listen to the podcast, probably so they can shout at us. But even so, we do have some. Now, I think, look, the answer to the question, Roy, is that Trump has created his own media ecosystem. And that's what Farage is trying to do in the UK. Trump has Fox News and the MAGA people. That's their safe haven. Farage has GB News. Farage has several newspapers that absolutely give him the easiest ride in the world. As Vinod says, Tice's interview, where he just behaves like a child, gets zero coverage. This is a guy who's going to, if reform become the government, he's going to be a very, very serious figure. There's these amazing videos doing the rounds online of some of these reform counsellors, who basically, the one that's really sort of, I think, please stop selling to be people, is the one where the woman who says, you know, I don't know what constitution is. I don't understand what a standing order is. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And she's leading a council. So, you've got all these counsellors are falling by the wayside. But do you see any of that in most of the media? No. So, basically, Farage thinks if you just ignore this stuff, he'll go away. Now, if I were him, if I were Nigel Farage, I'd think, well, when he was presenting LBC, I used to go on his show quite regularly. We had perfectly civil conversations. We did once have a very aggressive shouting match on television, but that was right after Brexit. Nearly came to blows, but not quite. But if he came on our podcast, we would do what we do with every other guest. We would go through their childhood. We'll go through their life. We'd ask them what they think. And yes, we would want to challenge him and press him over certain things. Yes, I would absolutely want to hold his feet to the fire about the damage that Brexit has done to the country. But we would not do it in a way to try and get cheap headlines, gotcha stuff and the rest of it. But I think Vinod's got a point. I think they are scared of genuine scrutiny. They like nice, short videos. They like newspaper headlines that they write with the right-wing press, and they like GB News. Anyway, we're on the subject of reform. We had a wonderful discussion in the main episode with Vicky Spratt, who did our mini-series on Gen Z. Lo and behold, we've got another mini-series. And the first episode arrives this Friday, the day after this Question Time episode. And it's all about reform and where the money comes from. And it's very, very interesting. The first episode will be available for everyone. Mr. Tice, by the way, features prominently. But if you enjoy the whole series, you'll need to sign up to The Rest Is Politics Plus at therestispolitics.com. Well, Alastair, here is a question, which comes from Matthew, who's a Trip Plus member from Biddingham, that he's been wanting to ask you for a couple of weeks. And I think you mentioned that you were going to answer it for us. So go on. Give us an answer. The question is this. I recently watched a documentary that Alastair featured in. And it was a clip of TB and Alastair, Tony Blair and Alastair meeting Vladimir Putin. And I saw that Alastair shook Putin's hand. Question to both Rory the Tory and Alastair, wasn't it Rory the Tory? Rory the Tory and Alastair, who's the most evil person you have shaken hands with? Go on, then, you first. I've thought about this a lot. Oh, blimey, I haven't thought about a lot. Okay, so I think I would put people into three different categories. What I would call the brutal leader, the violent warlord, and the careless destroyer, right? So first category, brutal leader. I mean, I have shaken hands with President Suharto, who we were talking about, President Kabila in the Congo, President Emerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe. And the second category down of the people who actually commit the violence on the ground. In Iraq, the heads of all the Shia militias that were putting shape charges against this, in one case, a guy called Assad, who I had lunch with in the morning and who attacked my compound the following evening. Afghan warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum or Saif. And we've, of course, both shaken hands with the former head of Al Qaeda, Syria, now the President of Syria. But the category of evil that I'm most interested in is one which we don't talk about much when we talk about evil. And I think it's something that C.S. Lewis is quite interesting on, which is that we tend to think about evil as though it's sort of Voldemort or Hitler, sort of very, very extreme cartoonish figures. My sense is that evil is often something closer to each of us. And partly it's about extreme carelessness and selfishness and not really caring about other people. And that's where I feel people like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson come closest. What I felt with Boris is, of course, he's not a genocidal guy. He's never killed anybody. He's sort of hail fellow Wilmette. But in the extent of his carelessness, his recklessness in private relationships, his relationship to truth, what he did with Brexit, the way he ran the country, the sense that everybody else is a sort of joke or a game, that also is a form of sin. And if I was going to push it higher, maybe even a form of evil, and maybe one that I'm closer to myself before I land Boris Johnson. Then over to you. Oh, you sort of sounded like a bit like a vicar there. That was a very good sermon. I enjoyed that. I think you'll have a publisher on in the morning. Roy, it's very interesting what you say about evil and the various categories of evil. Could be a great book. We got the question a couple of weeks ago, as you say, and I've been thinking about it. And I'm assuming that he imagines that it would be Putin. And certainly Putin, I think, in my defense, I didn't think he was totally evil at the time. But I also think the truth is, and you've gone through with some of the names you've mentioned that in politics and in government, you have to shake hands with a lot of people that you wouldn't necessarily want to go on holiday with them. During the Northern Ireland peace process, I definitely shook hands with quite a lot of people who'd killed people. I remember once meeting a guy who had been on the IRA army council. And somebody told me afterwards that, you know, he was the guy who really knew how to do the bombs and made them and all the rest of it. So Putin gets close because of course, the other definition, I think, of political evil, you know, at the moment, President Zelensky is responsible for a lot of deaths of Russians, just as the Russians are responsible for a lot of deaths of Ukrainians. Putin also does kill some of his own people. We mentioned Navalny. Fiona and I were in the car last week, we were listening to this amazing book, London Falling, by Patrick Radden-Keefe. I've been reading it on your recommendation. It is extraordinary. Incredible, isn't it? Small subtext on that. Did you know that he, at the age of 50, got a J.Crew modelling contract? No, I didn't. Is this what you just said, 50? There's hope for us all. But one of the sections of the book where he's just going through, because, you know, Russia gets involved at a certain point, just going through all the people who kind of fell out of windows. And I'm reading at the moment, I'm now reading the book Nord Stream Conspiracy. And again, Putin and his ability to, I mean, honestly, Angela Merkel has not come well out of this book because basically, you get the sense that Russia is playing her and keeping her in the Nord Stream thing. And anyway, it's just, it's a bit like the, it's a bit like London Falling. It's a kind of, it's a nonfiction book written as an absolute thriller. So Putin sort of weaves in and out all these terrible stories. But I think the reason why he's only my runner up is because the winner of The Most Evil Hand I Ever Shook was actually somebody who really killed a lot of his own people and just ruined, totally ruined his own country. And that was Mugabe. I really had a sense meeting, did you ever meet Mugabe? Matthew 27 No, because that's why I went to Mnangagwa's inauguration. Oh, of course, you went to the inauguration after Mugabe was toppled. Yeah. Matthew 28 And he was just, he just emanated, he just, he just didn't enjoy being in the same space. He had this horrible manner about him. He was surrounded like a lot of authoritarian leaders by sycophants sort of, you know, buying and scraping as he walked. He had the most ridiculously expensive suits. I think even Xi Jinping would struggle to match Mugabe on the suit front and his little, his handmade shoes with his little, with his initials on inside them and all this sort of horrible stuff. But I just think in terms of what he did to his own country, absolutely evil. And of course, you know, going back to the discussion on the main point about, in the main episode about corruption, all that too. So I think it's probably him. I think that he takes, he takes the gold medal from Vlad. Matthew 29 Good. Okay. A final thing, you were pretty tempting with book recommendations, which we sometimes do at the end. And in doing a bit of research on corruption, shout out for three books I really took to. Actually, one of them was London Falling, of course, which links quite a lot to issues of money in London. Matthew 30 Yeah, totally. Matthew 31 Cleptopia by Tom Burgess, which is an extraordinary story about international money. Moneyland by Oliver Bullough. Matthew 32 They are both absolute, those two guys have done, and I've got to be honest, reading their books, which I did a while back and listening to this, the corruption part of this book, it does make me feel slightly sick that when we were in government, we didn't do more to stop this whole Russian laundromat situation in London. Because there's no doubt that we were, I think there's a line in London Falling, we didn't just sort of open the door, we kind of rolled out the red carpet to them. So yeah, both brilliant books. Matthew 33 Well, my final one is Sarah Chase. And Sarah Chase was in Afghanistan when I was there, running an amazing nonprofit in Kandahar. And she became very focused on corruption in Afghanistan, and then became an advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and tried to make anti-corruption central to the project in Afghanistan. But she's now written a book on corruption in America. And it begins with this McDonnell case that I was talking about in our main podcast yesterday. This case of this governor basically getting away with taking this huge amounts of money and not being prosecuted. And it hasn't got the pickup it should have done. People seem to be much happier buying her book, criticizing corruption in Afghanistan, which was, you know, really celebrated everywhere. When she starts trying to point out corruption in America, people sort of struggle a little bit more. I think the story is extraordinary. And I think it's partly to return maybe to what we were talking about, what Sarah shows us is how the American legal system and the constitutional system is just not fit for purpose in an age of billion dollar campaign financing, crypto, and the growth of the new tech sector. And I think we should maybe listeners tell us who your most evil handshake ever is. And you can't say nobody's allowed to say they're in-laws. I was actually trying to write down a list and it became a very long list in the end. Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, you met Jeffrey Epstein, didn't you? You shook his hand. I did shake his hand, yeah. Yeah. So there's very different forms of evil we could be talking about. I mean, I was trying not to say that I had teachers at school who were subsequently prosecuted for child abuse, who I knew well. I mean, so there's lots of different types of evil from inflicting horrible pain on children right away through to conducting genocidal campaigns in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through to the casual carelessness of some of our democratic politicians. There's also the thug who stole my Burnley hat when I was eight on Main Road in Manchester City. What, a man stole it from an eight-year-old? An adult. Stole it from an eight-year-old? Yeah. Well, that's a bit mean. That is a bit mean. That's a kind of steamy handshake. Evil, it's evil. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah, if you're listening to this in your old people's home, I hope you're sorry. Yeah, and I hope, you know, baby serves you right that Arsenal won the Premier League and you didn't, eh? I've got a long memory, Rory. Anyway, lovely to talk to you as ever. Lovely to talk to you. Speak soon. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye.