568. MAGA's Plan to Make Britain Look Broken and Iceland's 'Brexit' Moment

The people of Iceland have spoken and it is a no to reopening talks about possible future European Union membership. The result is a blow to the EU which was hoping that Iceland could spark a reboot in its stalled enlargement process. And it's a victory for the kind of negative campaigning and disinformation that won Brexit here. The news will please Vladimir Putin for whom a weakened, divided Europe is its strategic goal. And that a country of 400,000 people should even matter to a nuclear-armed giant like Russia underlines just how fragile the geopolitical landscape is right now. That's why Andy Burnham, despite wanting to be a domestic Prime Minister, made his recent trip to Kyiv and promised help with longer-range missiles, prompting Moscow to say the UK is now a bigger enemy than ever. It's also why Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will be attending the EU's State of the Union event this month, building ever closer relations with Europe as the hostility from Trump's USA deepens. But if Iceland won't even agree to talk about talks, what chance do the current accession candidates, let alone the UK, Ukraine or Canada, have of joining an EU strong enough to rival an assertive China and a wayward, unreliable America? This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. £100. That is what one message to a friend could earn for you. Fuse Energy has one aim, keeping energy prices down for everyone, not just for those who ring up and threaten to leave. Their tariffs are already among the lowest on the market and now they're doubling their referral offer. Refer one friend and you will get £100 off your bills. And that's each of you, £100 off your bills. So the math does itself. You save on the tariff and then you both benefit from the referral on top. Simplicity rarely seen today in today's political climate. And just remember, the £100 is a limited offer and it drops back to £50 when it ends. Energy prices, as we keep reminding you, are not settling down. Switching takes three minutes. Go to fuseenergy.com slash politics. Use code politics to get your free Trip Plus membership on top and start referring, earning money for both you and your friends. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go. I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef and of course the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks. Well, I think you're not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this or should I say Fiona managed to do this. I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash Restless Politics. That's nordvpn.com slash Restless Politics. And the link is in the episode description. Ah, my toes are killing me. These shoes feel so tight. Still wearing those pointy things. I mean, aren't all running shoes like this? Nope. You need Altra. Altra? Their shoes are shaped like your feet with a roomy toe box. Way more comfort. You crush your run, not your toes. Okay, that sounds dreamy. Balance, strength, comfort. All from the fit. Altra just gets it. Altra. Stay out there. Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, we're going to talk about Iceland referendum, UK-Russia. We're going to talk about why MAGA tries to tell everybody that Britain is a basket case. We're going to talk about party conferences and maybe have a little bit of fun at the end. But let's start in Iceland. Georgie, did Iceland's Yes campaign make the same mistakes as the Remain campaign in the UK? What does the result mean for European unity? And Brian in Reykjavik wants to know whether we were pleased that Nigel Farage congratulated Iceland on his referendum result. A dubious honour, I'd say, says Brian, given he was one of the principal architects of the Brexit fiasco. And it was interesting that Farage's response was to say, well done Iceland on voting to keep your independence. So that means, Rory, that independence means you can be in the EEA, you can be in Schengen, and you can have access to the single market. Fantastic. Let's have it for Britain. Lots to dig into. But I think, first thing is that, I think it's disappointing because this was a vote which was just about whether to negotiate or talk at all. And you and I are passionate about trying to build up middle powers and bring countries together. And this is an example of a wealthy country that's already very close to the European Union, not even being prepared to vote to consider negotiating about a closer relationship. It's not the end of the world. And I think we can get on to why it's not the end of the world and why actually there might be a silver lining to it. But I think we begin with a sense of disappointment and also maybe being a little cheeky. I wonder, listening back to the interview that we did with the Icelandic Prime Minister when you were in Iceland, whether actually part of the problem isn't leadership. I mean, this was relatively close. Again, it was not far off a 52-48 result. I did not feel that your friend, the Icelandic Prime Minister, was really putting heart and soul into getting this across the line. I think she would disagree with that because I think her strategy, and this came through in the interview. Our interview was kind of the first big international, it was about the only really big international thing that she did. And I think she was using the hour that we had to set out some of the arguments but also the nature of the campaign. And part of her thinking was that the Icelanders are not ready just to be told, do as you're told, come with me, I'm the leader. She had to go out there and she did tons and tons of quite small meetings in fairly rural, remote places. But I think I wonder, where I might sort of meet you halfway, I wonder if part of her thinking was, if we lose this, I don't want people to think this is a massive personal blow. And so I was a bit worried. I think I said to you at the time, I was a little bit worried that that means you don't do everything you might maybe do to win. And of course, the other side is very organized, well funded, very passionate. And that was definitely true in the Brexit campaign. If the people advocating for it are a bit sort of technocratic, lukewarm, well, you know, it's not going to be the end of the world either way. And the people against it are absolutely take back control, red blooded, they're going to take our fish. A lot of this was about fish, wasn't it? 45% of Iceland's exports of fish, and they were worried that they'd lose control of their fishing quotas. No, I think when something's that close, presumably you do, I'm sure you do, despite your great affection for the Icelandic prime minister, you are somebody who believes in political leadership. And I'm sure you would say to me that the right campaign with the right leadership could make that 2% difference to carry it across the line. Yeah, and I think that definitely no doubt about that. And she was front and center, even though the idea for the referendum came from one of her coalition partners basically exist to fight for Iceland to become a member of the European Union. She was more out there as a bit of a kind of, you know, explainer, explaining why the referendum explaining what the issues are, as opposed to full blooded, this is why we should do it. And of course, you know, Georgie's question, did they learn from the referendum campaign here in 2016? There's no doubt that no campaign did. They were, I mean, for a place that's pretty wealthy and quite very nice people, and, you know, don't have a lot of the kind of social issues that we have. The campaign was very, very close to the sort of thing that we had here. So for example, they absolutely modeled the 350 million pounds from the NHS, they talked about 50 billion Icelandic krona that we'd have to give to the European Union. They had a part of the campaign running was that kids from Iceland will be conscripted into EU army. Well, the EU army doesn't exist. And what's more, Iceland doesn't have a military. And yet those sorts of arguments get through. And, you know what, and I also wonder, Russia takes an interest in these things, whether Russia was sort of, you know, doing its usual propaganda funding campaigns. They're taking lessons from the Dominic Cummings campaign, flip it around. Let's say you'd been the campaign manager. What lessons should the people in favor of the European Union have taken from what didn't work in the British campaign? And what could they have done better if you're running this kind of campaign? And this is relevant, because this is going to matter in Moldova, it's going to matter in Ukraine, let's hope it's going to matter in the Western Balkans and any other place you want to get in. Well, I think a little bit like in our campaign, I'm maybe I'm old fashioned this, I just think you have to rebut these lies, you have to rebut them really aggressively. And that doesn't mean you say that's not true. It means that you have to make sure that anybody who's hearing your kids are going to get conscripted to the army, no, don't just hear you say it once. But actually, you then make it part of a bigger argument. This is the Brexit lie machine infecting our politics. Do we really want to go down the road that Vladimir Putin has created? You know, you make a bigger argument. And I could sense when we did the interview that she was maybe a little bit uncomfortable going down that route, because Iceland is a much nicer political culture than most of ours. But I think when you're talking about in a population of 400,000, so it's very, very small population, as you say, it was 52 point something to 47 point something, you're talking about hundreds, just hundreds of votes, which either way, could swing it. So yeah, I'm with you, I think it's disappointing. The reason why on the bigger picture is disappointing. I think what, what Europeans were hoping for was that this will reboot the enlargement story, that maybe Norway would start to reconsider its position. And of course, if you've got Iceland and Norway moving in that direction, that's a big, big game, because these are wealthy countries, not like, you know, maybe some of the countries in the Balkans. Well, let me try my silver lining, why this is not the end of the world, but maybe a chance for us to rethink how we think about the middle power geometry, to use that kind of pompous word, which is that one of the main reasons Iceland didn't get in is the one that you hinted at at the beginning, which is that Iceland already has an enormously close relationship with Europe, it already is part of the single market, it benefits from all its closeness to Europe. And maybe what we need to take from this is that the way to construct a new middle power coalition is to think about getting countries like Britain into something that's more like Iceland, and that maybe that actually is also the first step for Ukraine, the first step for Serbia. In other words, it's actually the four freedoms, it's the freedom of movement, it's the single market access that people care about more than being part of the political centre of the whole thing. So if we're trying to create an outer circle of Europe, maybe what you take from Iceland is well, let's give up, because Iceland didn't want to join the European Union, who else is going to instead say, actually, maybe what Iceland shows is that there is a very attractive position of being part of the single market, part of Schengen, part of the four freedoms without being a full member, and that should be the first step for Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine, and who knows, Britain, Canada, etc. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great, by the way, that Mark Carney is going to the state of the union event in the European Parliament, and he'll be speaking after Ursula von der Leyen. I think that's going to be a very big moment later this month. Of course, Iceland's a small country, which is now not opening negotiations with the European Union, where my big worry at the moment is in the big countries in Europe, France, where I saw a poll last week where Marine Le Pen, if she gets in the second round, every single polling option says she wins. Everybody listening or 90% of people listening will know this. But just to remind younger listeners, Marine Le Pen is the leader of the far right party in France with Bardella. And therefore, what Alice is telling us is that there is a staggeringly high chance that the next President of France is going to be from a far right party. You know, her father was, you know, he founded a genuine, proper fascist anti-Semite. This is not an innocent party. This is a party that took millions from Russia and loans to get itself off the ground. She herself has been convicted of fraud. And yet it looks like she's on the verge of winning. And the other point that you've made in the past, we need to really reinforce this. Becoming President of France is a much more powerful position than Maloney becoming Prime Minister of Italy, because the President of France controls France much more directly in many ways than the Prime Minister of Italy and is a much bigger player in the European Union. Back over to you. Absolutely. The other thing we talked last week about the horseshoe theory and the horseshoe theory is happening in France. There was a debate the other day and Le Pen was filmed backstage with Jean-Luc Mélenchon. So there's Le Pen from the hard right and Mélenchon from the hard left. And they were laughing and joking and teasing each other. And, you know, because they're both basically pro-Russia, anti-Europe in different ways. And then the other one, just to terrify you further, when I was in Germany, I picked up this book. It was published by C.H. Beck. They've done this amazing series of scenarios. Remember we talked about the one if China invades Taiwan. We had the one about if the AFD wins. Well, this one is Deutschland 2033. The AFD is in power in this book. And it's an Alice Weidel coalition with the CDU. The CDU quit the coalition fairly early on, at which point, a bit like Donald Trump, Alice Weidel realizes you have a lot of power, even if you're not changing the law. And it's just an account of how she uses that power. And it's absolutely terrifying. And when I see the sort of stuff I've been watching on this election next week in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AFD are so far ahead now. And people are talking, this is what Farage is trying to create with reform here. They're talking about this like it's a kind of normal party. Well, the others have had their go, give them a go. This is a party that is openly pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine, wants Germany out of Schengen, which completely destroys the European Union, effectively. Now, what is the big strategic goal of our enemies right now? It's to destroy the European Union. It's totally gifting them that. It strikes me that there's something that connects what you're saying now with our AI episode that we did yesterday, which is, we need politicians who are prepared to have a real sense of hope, hope about our ability to control and manage AI, keep humans in charge of AI. And that was what was so wonderful about Maaz and Aziz, the Israeli and Palestinian guests that we just had on leading, who do the most extraordinary, powerful, moving task of trying to argue for peace, not explaining the 10,000 reasons why peace is impossible, just like you might, instead of focusing on the 10,000 reasons why it's impossible to regulate AI, just working backwards. We need to have humans in control of AI. We need peace in Israel, Palestine, and we need the middle powers coming together by hook or by crook. And they gave us hope, Roy, they gave us hope. But on that last one, I think it takes two to tango. I mean, one of the things that's so sad is that here are people like us saying we want Iceland to engage more or Canada to engage more or Ukraine or Moldova or Serbia to engage more. Where's the other side of that? Where are the leaders inside the European Union showing the big, imaginative, generous offers to bring people in? Well, I think the only one who is sort of showing that level of imagination is Carney. I think Carney is sort of signaling that under pressure from America, he's going to reach out. Now we've got to go the other way. Yeah, it'll only work in the end if the EU leaders themselves are showing real imagination and willpower to try to create this stuff. Now, the other big thing, Rachel here, are we risking war with Russia? Andrew, what's your thoughts on Russia's increasingly open threats towards the UK and NATO and the CIA chief's visit to Moscow? Now, you and I spoke the other day to Antony Scaramucci for an episode that's coming out, basically just a naked book promotion for Antony Scaramucci, and we're pretending that he's a leader, so it'll be on leading soon. And he's a good chap, but he was very interesting on this Ratcliffe, the CIA chief visit to Moscow. He was saying that the line that the White House had put out to newspapers and broadcasters that this was to tell the Russians don't dare threaten NATO was absolute bullshit. What he was there to do was say, listen, let's do a deal. I'll get you sanctions lifted if this, this, this, this. Now, none of us know the full truth, but I'm more likely to believe the mooch than the White House lie machine. On the Russian threat. So this follows on from the thing we covered last week, which is our Prime Minister visiting Ukraine and saying that they are now licensed to produce missiles, partial British missiles in Ukraine, and Russia saying there will be consequences. And there's two things going on. One is the cry wolf phenomenon, which is Russia has threatened consequences repeatedly over the last four years very successfully. In fact, one of the reasons why Biden was so slow to provide the support that Ukraine critically needed in the first year and a half is Russia kept signaling that if that support was provided, horrible things would happen. Ultimately, all that support was provided. It was just provided too late. The missiles arrived, the tanks arrived, the missiles arrived, but it just arrived too slow and too late and Russia didn't retaliate. However, the problem with this cry wolf phenomenon is that at some point, Russia may retaliate, right? We've seen these attacks in Leipzig. We've also seen which remind people again, this was the detection of a drone. And now there's been another event at Leipzig airport, which is one of the big supply chains for Ukraine. But it's also true that the nature of the war is changing now that Ukraine is striking into Russian territory and killing Russian children. In some of these strikes, the sense amongst the Russian public that a British supplied missile is now directly killing Russian civilians deep inside Russia may begin to change people's calculus away from when it felt like it was a fight on the frontline. Yeah, you see, I watched, I don't know, Ukraine. It's so depressing that it's, you know, fifth year and it's no sign of ending. There's a guy, another German journalist that I follow, Paul Ronsheimer, who's a big cheese at Bild Zeitung. And he's just put out a two-part documentary on Saxony-Anhalt. He's been there. And he just described, I think maybe we should think about this, Rory. He sets himself up in a town square in a chair. And he has a table a sign that just says, give me, tell me your opinion. And another chair, like he interviewed about 40 people. And he was talking about, you know, some of them were totally anti-AFD, but others were pro. But then the documentary, I'm not finished here, but I watched part of it last night. He's with this guy who's a leading figure, leading, leading figure in Saxony-Anhalt in the AFD. And Ronsheimer's in his kitchen and he spots that the guy's got a mug and it says Russian army in Russian. So Ronsheimer really, really sort of gently grills him. He's a bit sort of Louis Theroux-ish in the style. Oh, that's interesting. Why have you got a Russian army? Oh, it was a present. Who was it a present for? I can't remember. But anyway, the point that comes over as they talk to more and more AFD supporters, and he has this phrase, it is not our war. And so Ronsheimer says to him, where's your mug from the federal, the German federal army? Oh, I've never, they've never given me a present. He's pro-Russian. It's not just that these people want to sit it out. The AFD and the they are pro-Russian. They want Russia to win. And the reason for that, and I think maybe this is part of the clue on Trump too, is that they're pro-Russian because actually they share the same worldview. What they believe is a lot of the stuff that Putin says. Nation states, anti-immigration, family, fight for Western civilization, family values against decadent Western civilization. And yet they've got a gay leader. I mean, this is the thing that's mind blowing about it. The Russian worldview is utterly homophobic. But it's a really interesting, it's actually the way in which the culture wars is turning geopolitics insanely on its head. I mean, here you have a country which is objectively the most extreme enemy of the United States, you could imagine. Yeah. And the biggest potential threat to Europe. Yeah. And simply because Putin sounds conservative and right wing on culture war issues. Suddenly, people like Trump and the AFD and the pen think maybe it's a good idea to take his side. Yeah. But also the other thing that comes through this book, I mean, Trump sort of weaves in and out of this book, is just how the AFD have learned from the way that he communicates. Truth doesn't really matter. Facts don't really matter. Building up your following on social media is way more important and it's important to insult the mainstream media because that then makes your people feel better about where they go to see you on social media. And also that you have to be making the most noise. You must be making the most noise. And up against kind of fact-based, rational, calm people like Mertz and Klingbeil. And even though Alice Weidel is not the most charismatic, but she's got a certain tone and a certain style. And then around her, I mean, some of these characters who are running for minister president, I mean, they are, I'm afraid to say, they are very charismatic. They know how to communicate effectively. There was a piece in the Financial Times magazine, a huge piece at the weekend about the Saxony-Anhalt and the journalists followed this guy, Ulrich Siegmund, who looks like he could be the first minister president. That's a big step because they're then in charge because of the federal structure. They're then in charge of policing. They have access to intelligence. Well, that'll be nice and useful to Vladimir, won't it? So yeah, this book is yet another one publishers get it in English. And yet another reason why we need hope. I mean, all these people are giving us the pessimistic vision. We've got to have that hope. We've got to have hope. We've got to have hope. Well, listen, Roy, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and find out from Izzy, who writes our newsletter and who wrote a brilliant piece this weekend about just why the MAGA lot are spending so much time saying that Britain is a total and complete basket case. And we'll talk about that. And we'll talk about the party conference season, which is upon us. Very good. Looking forward to it very much. See you soon. We are getting a statement from number 10 on that flight with 350 passengers. The great game strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister with high confidence. It was Russian holding the Russians accountable as they took down a British passenger jet containing 350. The Kremlin is playing. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the prime minister. We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order or Frago. A Frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapon. Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. Where Britain plays its strongest against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell, and a special guest, which is Izzy Isabel Stanley. Isabel writes our brilliant newsletter, which I have to say is he gets better and better and better. And the reason you're making your global international media debut in this way is because I saw and Rory thought that one of the weekend was particularly good. So tell us what it was about it by answering this question. Martin, Isabel Stanley's recent article in the newsletter on American attitudes to Britain made for interesting reading and gave more fuel, I would say, to the streak of self abasement we seem to be indulging at the moment. But it left me wondering, what would a reciprocal survey reveal about our attitudes towards American Americans? As someone with an American wife, I rather fear the answer will be even more negative. What do you both think? Before we answer that, Izzy, just tell us who you talked to, where you went, how you talked to them, and the big impressions you were left with. Yeah, of course. Over the past few months, we've all sort of seen this string of attacks on the UK, this sort of negative commentary coming out of the US. Things like Trump, you know, he and June was saying that the UK is dying. Elon Musk and Steve Bannon both at different times said that the UK was heading for a civil war. And so we saw all of that. And we were sort of thinking, well, that's all, you know, well and good. But what impact is that actually having on the way that the American public so that's, you know, that traditionally our closest ally, but what impact is that having on on how they see us? So the first thing we did is we asked Ipsos in the UK to carry out some polling. And they were super helpful. And they found some pretty striking stuff. So they surveyed 1100 Americans all across the country. And they found that one in four Americans 25 ish percent believe that British society is broken. And that jumps to 37% among Republicans. And obviously, that's not everyone, you know, that's not saying that the entirety of America thinks Britain's gone to the dogs. But the other very striking thing is that there's a very high sort of level of unengagement. So my favorite statistic that came out of it is that more than half of Americans admitted they had no idea who the British Prime Minister was. And you know, fair enough. It's quite confusing. We've had a lot of them recently. But 3% thought that it was still Tony Blair, which sort of shows when they were maybe last engaged. So we were we were sort of thinking about that I went to the US as well and did a very while I was there did a very sort of unofficial straw poll of what people were talking about and thinking about in terms of the UK. And most of the things that they mentioned was sort of related to crime, in particular, phone snatching, immigration, sort of negative trends that were coming across. The main positive thing was Harry Styles, which again is is great, but maybe not the engagement you hope for with your closest ally. Can I come in on this? One of the things that was also I think striking what you did is that things seem to have changed quite quickly. Over time. I mean, I was very struck by data that suggests that relatively recently, 40% of Americans said they wanted to visit the UK and it's now dropped down to 20%. I mean, that's a really catastrophic fall. Exactly. Yeah. So that's the so that's data from the British Council. And they do this survey every year where they ask, like, how likely you going to be to visit a country? How much do you appreciate its values? How much do you trust their politics? And they found in the past 10 years, since 2016, Britain's attractiveness to America or Americans has fallen from 78% to 59%. So it's exactly that it's now only 20% of people in America, young Americans want to visit the UK, they're less likely to want to study here, they're less likely to sort of appreciate our culture and values. And yeah, that fall is the really striking thing, because it's like that that demonstrates that it's not just a negative mindset. Now it's that this has sort of been steadily dropping. Exactly. This also, though, speaks to one of the people you interviewed was Kim Darroch, who I know very, very well used to be our ambassador, got kicked out by effectively by Johnson caving into Trump. But he made the point that some of this is self inflated. In the Brexit, we were we were at one point America's closest ally, and in a way America's bridge into the European Union. Brexit has weakened us on both. But also, I think that this is we have, I've been saying this for months, we've got to wake up to the fact this is a deliberate American strategy. And Roy and I talked last week to the Mooch for an episode of leading that's coming out shortly. And he was saying that the only institution in the world of which America has any real fear, apart from China is the European Union. So this is part of doing down and doing in Europe. And so I just think we've got to wake up to that. And the only way Rory was asking, how do you fight Baukud with how could the Icelandic Yes campaign have fought back harder, you have to rebut this stuff, and you have to take a risk. I honestly feel when Musk comes out with his crap, I think, by the way, the crime stuff, a lot of this is about Trump's attack on Sadiq Khan. Trump has had a strategic attack on Sadiq Khan as mayor of London. So they just talk the whole time about London, you can't walk down the street. I was at a conference recently here in the UK, there was an American there who said, you know, I really thought long and hard about coming to London. But I got some protection. Nuts, you need more protection in America than you do in Europe. Yeah, I mean, exactly. I think Laurel Rapp, who's the, she's director of the North America program at Chatham House, I spoke to as well. And she had a great term for it, which was that Trump uses Britain like a, she called it a helpful cudgel. So sort of to reinforce his own domestic narratives and to essentially say, look how terribly they have it, we can't go down that path. And then the other thing that Kim Darroch was talking about, which is very sort of interesting is that there's been a massive shift in the US on a broader level. So in 1980, I think something like 30% of Americans trace their ancestry back to the UK. So that census data, and now the or in 2010, the comparable figure was 12%. So he sort of put it like that. He said, you know, that's, that's now a massive proportion of the country who, who look to other parts of the world, you see Britain is just another country. And so they sort of historic ties are declining to two other things that maybe we didn't bring out enough. One of them is that British attitudes towards the US have turned significantly negative. I guess that was picked up in Martin's question. Yeah. With him having a, an American wife. And then the second thing was, there's also data that suggests that US views of the whole world are collapsing, positive attitudes towards Canada has dropped by 20 points, their attitude towards France has dropped by 19 points. I mean, are these young people basically saying, I don't want a passport? Or are they saying that somewhere else they really want to go somewhere else that they really imagined being terrific? Yeah, so this is what Christine Wilson from the British Council was saying. And it's fascinating. So essentially, there used to be from this survey, they do they sort of have studied this, there used to be two things that would define if someone was going to be a young person was going to view a country as attractive, and that is if they were wealthy, and liberal. And so the US, UK, you know, and now that's really no longer true. Instead, they're much more drawn to sort of traditionally authoritarian countries, because they like crucially their stability. So while the UK has dropped, we are still very high up, you know, it's not all crisis stations. But while the US, UK has dropped two points since 2016. Saudi is up 17 points. China's up 13. Yeah, so there's there's been a real shift. It's she essentially says that the way that people view what's valuable is just changing around the world. It's also very weird. I'm sorry, final thing that has come in. But, you know, one of the complaints from the US is we're not relevant anymore. Because our economy is not booming, we're kind of museum. But you would have thought that a museum was at least somewhere you want to go on holiday. I mean, I'm not exactly sure that that, I mean, Saudi Arabia, you know, got many strengths, but it's not exactly Venice or Florence. I mean, there's a limit to how many cultural sites you can fit in. I gotta say that, Roy, you know, Fiona and I just had this European tour, I think I told you that everywhere we went, we're meeting Americans saying, God, we love Europe. You've got so much stuff that we just don't have. And so I think there is a, I think I've, I'm not alone. I know other Brits who've taken the decision, I'm not going to America while Trump is president. I just think, you know, however, pathetically, you have to make a stand every now and then. But I just thought it was really interesting that we because of Trump, and back to my point about Justice Bender's book, and Trump saying you have to be the loudest voice in the room, because Trump is the loudest American voice in our heads, certainly in my head, and certainly in your head, Roy, then we've sometimes forget there are millions of really good, decent Americans. And Fiona and I met lots of them wandering around Europe, basically saying, listen, we're really sorry. We're really sorry. We met this couple in France not long ago, who basically, we were, I was sitting reading a newspaper and raging at the latest thing that Trump had said or done. And this woman just leaned across and says, can I just say, we're really sorry. So, you know, there are good, there are good Americans out there. Izzy, what was the most surprising thing you found in your research? Well, I was going to say, I'll leave you on a slightly happier note. That same survey from Ipsos in the UK, that found one in four Americans think British society is broken. 67% of them think American society is broken. So, you know, it's not, it's not only us and potentially, we don't have it that bad. So, that's the sort of takeaway for you, Martin, as well. Yeah. What surprised you about, I mean, you went to the US too. When were you last there? Have things changed? Did you get a different sense of a different tone? Were you meeting different people, seeing different things? So, I lived out there for two years. And I mean, I was in New York, which is kind of, I guess, a bubble anyway, protected from some of it. But I think the striking thing, really, when I was seeing to young people, particularly, it's even that the soft power, so the things that we've always kind of taken for granted, so like our music, our culture, things like that. They were saying, like, you know, I remember when I was younger, and I would see on the TV all the time, I don't know, a band or a movie or British products, and now they're even seeing less of that. And so I think it's a much broader thing. And that's what Christine from the British Council was saying as well. It's like, that is our biggest asset in some ways. And that's what the UK should really lean into. And going forwards is making sure that, you know, you don't take those things for granted. And you know that they have to be worked at. Well, what was it we said to Lisa and Andy when we interviewed her? Britain as a cultural superpower, that has to be the global strategy. Well, Lizzie, thank you for the newsletter. What are you writing about this week? Have you decided yet? This week, I have interviewed David Blunkett, which is going to be very good, who is all about sort of Andy Burnham. He's one of his greatest mentors, as Andy described him, and sort of, you know, what he thinks should be next on Andy Burnham's agenda. All right, Lizzie, thanks so much. Thanks very much, guys. Take care. Thank you, Lizzie. Also, I do think this newsletter has been a real, it's been a real boom. And also shout out to Emily, who's been bringing it together and keeping all the energy going with it. It's lovely. I mean, I know it involves you suddenly having to do yet more journalism and yet more writing, but I think we're getting some really interesting stuff in. No, but also, I think what's great about, like, so Busy's piece on America, it feels like a proper, old-fashioned piece of newspaper journalism. It's like, it's the sort of stuff that newspapers just are doing less and less of, because they're all clickbaiting and, you know, headlining. I was sort of thinking about that. I mean, I wonder actually how many, you know, would the Mirror still send someone like Izzy to the States to do long-form interviews with young people and bring them back and write an article? Unlikely. Unlikely. When I was on the Mirror, we had, in fact, sadly, he just died not long ago, but we had a New York bureau chief. We had somebody in Washington. We had our own photographer who just did Hollywood. The newspapers have become smaller and smaller in terms of their global footprint. And I think that's another reason why we've become more insular. No, so anyway, if you don't get the newsletter already, I do strongly recommend it. Right. Should we go to party conferences? Tash, with the Reform Party Conference starting this week, what is the point of party conferences? How have they changed? What will each party expect from theirs this year? Well, let me begin with the conference that I knew best, which was the Conservative Party Conference. So I obviously was a MP and a minister when the party was in government. And it had moved from doing events in places like Blackpool, Brighton, to doing them in Birmingham and Manchester. And so you did these enormous conference centres. And it was very flashy. I mean, there were huge numbers of stalls hired by different companies. You had all the ambassadors coming in. And really, a Tory party conference was somewhere between a massive networking event, a chance for Boris Johnson to turn up uninvited and give a fringe meeting and completely destabilize the sitting government. It's also a place where young party activists go and get really drunk and misbehave. I think controlling them is quite difficult. But it wasn't, unfortunately, by the time I got to it, really something really for party members, which was what it was originally designed for, because the tickets got more and more expensive. And you'd gone from a world where my mother was young, when we have one and a half million members of the Conservative Party to about 100,000. And increasingly, it was corporate lobbyists, and very, very highly organized, choreographed speeches. And I wondered why journalists were still turning up, I could see why the lobby turned up, the kind of inner core turned up to get their gossip. But it was very, very rare to really find that anything happened other than Portraits of May getting in trouble because she would trip over or she would seem to be on the edge of tears. It was an opportunity to sort of look for symbolic moments and premierships. Over to you. Party conferences, no doubt about this, they have changed a lot. I sometimes get the blame for the change at the Labour Party conference. But I think it came at a time when they were all changing. And I think it was the television age that changed them. Because when I was a journalist, party conferences, particularly the Labour Party conference, the big political story came from massive, genuine political disagreement and debate. And so what that did was just communicate to the public a sense of a sort of disorganized rabble, which, of course, didn't necessarily reflect terribly well on the party. So we had a very deliberate strategy to make them more organized. But I think now, I mean, I'll probably go to, I'm going to go to the Labour Party conference. I was moderately tempted to go to the Reform Party conference, but just diary means I can't. The other thing is that I think the Reform Party conference will be interesting this time. They've got a lot of money. They're going to look like an American Party Congress. Boy, have they got a lot of money. They've got a lot of money. Don't want to ask too closely where that money came from. Well, can I just say to journalists, we do not yet have Nigel Farage, on camera, properly being grilled about the financing of reform. Any journalist who is going to reforms conference, if you don't get him doing that, then you're not a proper journalist. I'll just say that, put it out there now. If all you do is go and say, welcome to H10, we're now going to talk to Zia Yousef about some latest bullshit line that Robert Jenrick has made up. Party conference journalism, you should be there to scrutinize and challenge, not just to say what they're saying the whole time. Shout out to Tom Burgess. He's written another really good article in The Guardian called Arms and the Five Million Pound Man, Farage, Megadona, Christopher Harbourne's military empire. Yeah, well, Tom Burgess, of course, is one of the great experts on dirty money in London. So I wonder why he's been drawn to talking about the reform financing story. Very interesting. Just talking of money, if you do go to the reform conference, Rory, for a nice £3,600, you can have breakfast with Nigel Farage. Beautiful. You get the food for that as well. You get eggs, you get toast, you get coffee, you get orange juice. £3,600. I mean, do you actually get to talk to him or are you on like a table of 100 people where you get a little selfie? I suspect that for this platinum tier, they're basically saying, however many we get, we're going to take them. So if he gets 10 people paying £3,600 for breakfast, he'll have 10. But he might get 100, he might get 1,000. Then he's got, what's 3,600 times 1,000? Three million. So that's almost as much, almost as much as you got from Christopher Harbourne for his gift. But, and the problem is you're joking about this, but of course, actually people will pay. I mean, if you're a company, you might well be tempted to think, I really need to get Farage because Farage's economic policy is not clear. So let's say you're an energy company. You want to know, has he changed his view on wind turbines? If you're a bank, you want to know, is he still talking about windfall taxes? If you are in the land property business, is he interested in land taxes? If you're an international investor, what's he doing about capital gains tax? So there will be a lot of people trying to find out what on earth this party, which still in some of the polls, James Johnson's poll, again, looks like they will have more seats than anyone else in the next parliament. Yeah. And that's why, if I can repeat my point about journalism, I can imagine the journalists going and saying that, oh, and business has got itself really interested. And there's the guy from this firm and there's the guy from that firm. The story is the money. We don't have the answers to where the money's come from and why and what they're doing with it. So can you just stop falling for the refit reform PR bullshit the whole time? Now, the other party conferences, lip gems have really got to find a way of cutting through because at the moment they're not. Just sorry, just remind people they have a staggering number of members of parliament. I mean, it's one of the most successful elections they've ever had in terms of. And yet, oddly, despite having, you know, more than 10 times the number of members of parliament as reform, they get 1% of the coverage. Yeah. Well, that's partly because of the media, but it's also because they're not cutting through in the way that maybe they've got to find a big argument. How do they cut through? I think they need a national message. And it's true. Every time I say this, they send me boring speeches saying, oh, we've already made that point. It's not fair. Well, the fact is they're not successfully communicating. I don't, it's all very well sending me speeches and saying, well, he made that point. I know there's a risk in this, but I think it should be Europe. I know there's a risk, but there should be Europe. And then you've got Labour, which obviously is going to be interesting because it's Andy Burnham's first conference and Labour's the party of government. Labour grassroots still do have a bit, an ability to influence the debate. I mean, it's very controlled, much more controlled than it used to be. But I think Gaza could become an issue, you know, I think Gaza could become an issue. I wonder if AI might become an issue. So we'll see what happens there. And then the Tories, there's a bit of churn going on in the Tories, Rory. Pritip Patel out, Tom Tugendhat in, James Cleverley off to try to become London Mayor. Now here's one for you. I'm sure you don't know the answer to this because you won't have talked to Kemi about it. Has Priti Patel been given the boot or is Priti Patel telling the truth when she says she's going off to rebuild, develop links with other conservative parties around the world? I think that's an unlikely story. I don't think on the basis, I mean, this, you know, this is Priti listening to this, maybe throwing things at the radio set. The Priti Patel I know would not have stepped down from being shadow foreign secretary to build links with other parties across the road, around the world. Does Priti listen to podcasts via wireless? Oh, this is all very bold, isn't it? And what about James Cleverley? Can you see him becoming the mayor? Well, interestingly, I got some polling on that. I mean, obviously, this is something I've got a set interest in because I ran to be a mayor, but somebody's just sent me something saying, I don't think Cleverley can win. He can't get the reform second preferences the Tory would need to win and is too conservative for the left. Where would reform second preferences go? Restore? That's a really interesting question, or there might be none at all. But this guy is obviously writing to me saying this is the perfect chance for the Rory independent candidate coming through the centre that I get into second place behind Sadiq Khan, and then I can scoop up the conservative second preferences. Yeah, there was, by the way, I went to Norwich Burnley on Saturday, and there was a Restore Britain gathering protest outside the railway station. I don't think it was for me because one of them on the return journey asked me if I would stop to take a selfie, so he was much nicer to me than Rupert Lowe. Although Norwich fans enjoyed seeing... Yeah, this was a pretty nasty story. Are you prepared to share that on the podcast? I thought it was quite funny. Well, it does show that you're quite famous, but it did sound quite unpleasant. Go on, tell us about it. Well, what happened was I was going, because I love Delia Smith and Michael, her husband, I was going to go to the director's box with them, okay, because they're big Norwich figures, for various reasons, they couldn't go to the game, so I went in the way end with my sons, Rory and Callum, but I was very, very close to the front, and it was bad enough that we lost 4-1, and we had a man said tops. It wasn't a great game, but I started to hear these voices go, Campbell, Campbell, you're a word that cannot be repeated beginning with C, okay? So I thought that was a bit unpleasant, but then they started seeing a much more innovative song about, I don't know how to put this without sort of being too crude, fellatio, and myself, and a former prime minister, who's well known to all of us. Maybe for the younger listeners, we could recharacterize that as a sexual relationship between you and a former Labour prime minister that you're very close to. And I did deny the centrality of the allegation, but it was moderately funny. I was very pleased. But was this for like a few people, or did quite a lot of the crowd get into this chant? It wasn't a whole lot. It was about, I'd say, we were talking maybe about 100 or so, I don't know. Does that often happen to you at football matches? It's not the first time. It's the first time I've had that particular song. I've had the first one quite a lot. I did have it once. We were playing at QPR once when this was during, I think it was probably after the Iraq war, but I was still around on the scene. And they invaded the pitch, these protesters. They knew where I was sitting. And they had these posters, Campbell is this, Campbell is that, war criminal, whatever. Anyway, I spoke to our manager after the game, and he said, what's all that about? And I said, oh, you know, he's just sort of anti-war thing. He said, one of the assistant coaches turned to him and said, why are they protesting against soup? So at least the Norwich fans were sort of moderately well informed. Let me do probably the most awkward tilt of all, which is to say that we talk a lot about politics in terms of communications, music, money. But in the end, it's policy. And we've bring in a very serious policy analyst, Dan Needle, to talk in particular about the options that governments could face around tax is really relevant. Because we've got a budget coming. And we've got stories now on the front of the papers that John Healy is considering stealth taxes, wealth taxes. And this is Dan both arguing against things that a lot of our listeners like listeners who favor, you know, Gary Stevenson, for example, and believe that we should be doing more taxes down trying to argue why that's the wrong approach. He's a progressive labor voting tax expert, who's making, I think, some very, very sensible old fashioned centrist arguments for how you should think about taxing people in the country really worth listening to. And I'm desperately hoping the government's listening to it before the budget. I also want to recommend it because it reveals yet again, if there's one issue, that can really provoke and visceral emotional response in the normally calm, collected Rory Stewart is wealth taxes. It really, really, really gets to, by the way, just talking to John Healy, if it's true, that he's going slow on the commitment to 3% of GDP on defense. Can you imagine how Keir Starmer feels right now? I know, I know. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, just to remind us, if you haven't fully got that connection, John Healy, the sort of solid member of Keir Starmer's government basically brought down his government resigning because it wasn't going to hit the 3% commitment on defense. He's now Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of the money. And it sounds like he said he's not going to hit the 3% target on defense. Last question, Rory, Felix from London, it's a question to me, but I'm going to flip it to you. Alistair, I enjoyed your piece in the newsletter, another plug for the newsletter, about your trip to Slovenia. What are your favorite places in the world? Well, Slovenia has definitely gone into my list for sure. What's your number one? If you were only allowed to go to one place before you die, what would it be? I love places up on the edge of the Himalayas. So I would probably, if I had one last chance, go up to Afghanistan, go up to the Bamiyan Valley, get up into the hills there. People who haven't done it, and it's difficult to do, and people have strong views on not maybe wanting to go when the Taliban are in charge. But Afghanistan is unlike anywhere on earth. I've just done an interview with Anand Gopal, who was talking to me about Syria, talking to me about Iraq. And he agreed with me that of all the places he's reported in the world, Afghanistan is the most unique, the most different, the most extraordinary people. And partly it is the dry, deep Prussian blue sky over the mountains that makes it so unique. I think I was only allowed to go to one country ever for the rest of my life. I think it would have to be Scotland. I love Ethiopia, and I have really very, very fond memories of Ethiopia. And back to mountains, some of the mountains above, just not that far from Addis Ababa. And I've got a very, very, very soft spot for different parts of Australia. Well, Scotland on that, I mean, I've just come back from five weeks in Scotland. And I was meeting, as I came down to London, all these people who'd gone off to France on holiday, who were boiling, boiled to death. And it's been incredible, particularly that whole region, which I love so much, which is less exotic than your Western Isles, which is the junction between the lowlands and the highlands, that whole Perth-Sharanga stretch that takes you from Lough Erne Head right the way up to Blair Gallery. I think it's one of the most lovely places on earth. Yeah, yeah. Well, Slovenia, I think one of the reasons I love Slovenia is actually in lots of ways, they remind me of Scotland. Water, mountains, forests, really warm people, really warm people in Slovenia, they were really, really nice. So I would definitely recommend Slovenia, Felix, if you've not been there. So Rory, there we go. We've talked about what we talked about. What a long shift today, haven't we? Well, we went from Iceland, we then did UK-Russia, we did UK-US with Izzy, the author on our amazing newsletter. And then we got into party conferences and we finished with what our favourite place to visit is. But along the way, we had the fans chanting at you at the Norwich game. I'm not going to sing the, I'm not going to sing the song. Although I am going to say this, I am going to say this, Matt Ford, very funny comedian, very, very big Tony Blair fan. He did send me a message saying, Is this true? I'm jealous. Now what his wife is going to think of that, I just do not know. But there we are. She's Scottish, so she probably gave him a bit of a hard time. What I want coverage on actually, Alistair, is at some point if it ever becomes possible, and I know this is difficult because you keep blocking up and down, but I'm very interested in the relationship between Burnley and Ipswich, just as I'm interested in the relationship between Alistair Gamble and David Gauke, who's my... Oh, why are you interested? Well, Burnley, Ipswich are in the Premier League and we're not, that's the... But do you not keep swapping? Are you not both on the margins back and forth? It's called yo-yo. It's called being a yo-yo club. And if we don't yo-yo again, I mean, we've got the parachute payments this time, but some clubs, once they've been yo-yoing and then they stop yo-yoing up, they can go into sort of financial difficulties. I hope we don't do that. Just talking about Ipswich though, Rory, talking about hope. Well, is this hope? But it's certainly positivity. Most of the front pages today, we're recording on Monday really, have got the picture of the two sons of the police officer, one of the police officers who was killed in the awful incident in Middlesbrough. And he was a big Manchester United fan and so are they. And they were the mascots yesterday at the Man United game. So fair play Man United for doing that. But also fair play to those boys. I mean, to do that, they're aged eight and six and they're marching out and there's a moment's sort of remembrance for their dad. And I've also noticed Nigel Farage yet to say anything about the deaths, as I understand it, of those police officers. I wonder what he'd have said if the five people in the car had been called Mohammed or Aziz or Ali. There we are. Right. Well, Alistair, that's a slightly grim note to end on. But thank you. Look forward to speaking very soon. I'm off to California off the West Coast to see more of your dreaded AI people tomorrow morning. Excellent. And I'll report when I'm back. Yeah. See you soon.