¶ Podcast Intro and Guest Welcome
Hey everybody. Uh I am going to be live streaming again tonight. So come hang out with me on uh YouTube or Substack. We'll be taking your questions. We'll be doing some politics talk. It's also my excuse to talk about other stuff. I'm very mad about a Wired article about geese. I can tell you my faves from Coachella.
Whatever. We'll just hang out. I'll tell you my favorite British curses that I learned from this podcast coming up. And uh it'll be a good time. So we'll be live at seven in the east. So if you wanna hang out, ask me some questions, pop on to our feeds. Also, uh once again a reminder about the live shows coming up in California. Uh tickets are on pre-sale now if you are a Bulwark Plus member. So this is the moment.
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See you all there. Up next, we've got Aleister Campbell from The Rest is Politics. Very excited. Stick around for it.
🎵 Music
Miller, uh delighted to welcome the show for the first time, somebody from across the pond. He's a British writer, political strategist, and co-host of The Rest is Politics. It's Alistair Campbell. How are you doing, sir?
I'm very well, lovely to be here.
Let's just do a little first date stuff first before we get to the news. You know, tell us your backstory before you came a podcaster, favorite Oasis song, how you take your tea.
Ooh, okay. Tea, milk no sugar, favourite Oasis song, probably all around the world actually. All around the world, love that. Yeah. And backstory born in Yorkshire in the north of England, but very Scottish family. played the bagpipes, wore a kilt when I was a kid'cause my dad made me. Wow. And went to university, did languages, went into journalism.
through journalism, political journalism, and then got into politics. And that's when I ended up working for Tony Blair, did that for about a decade, and since then I've been doing lots of different things. There you go.
For Tony Blair, you achieved the job that I never did, right? You're his you're his communications man, his flack.
Yep.
Congratulations. Yeah, all my candidates lost. So I never got that job.
We did a lot we won three in a row. No Labour leader had ever won two full terms, let alone three. Yeah. I mean it's nice when people sort of say things like you know I was the architect of this and invented new labor and all that. The truth is Tony was an extraordinary candidate and an extraordinary politician. So it wasn't like kind of you know, working with somebody who wasn't really good.
Oh you guys still check?
You were with people who weren't great. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So you're considering like a future?
Sure about I'm not sure about his board of pieces.
Yeah. I was gonna say communications director for the Board of Peace, maybe might be a future role for you after podcasting.
¶ British Perspective on Trump
I think that Donald Trump's people might check out a few of the things that I've said about him on the podcast and that might make it quite difficult.
So yeah. So you're not you're not a big fan of our president?
I'm really not. I was not a big fan of him during his first term, but it feels to me like the second term is even worse. It's a lot worse. I just think he's completely amoral. I think he's corrupt, I think he's amoral, I don't think he thinks things through, I don't think he cares about other people or other countries. You know, last week in Britain or the BBC, the main news in the morning, five days out of seven, led with the word Donald. Too much. Get out of my head, get out of my life.
It's too much. I know. It's consuming my prime years of my life. It's very sad. I guess I'm a little bit disappointed. One of my favorite thing about the Brits is the creative insults that you have in general, but also Trump's and you know, the Oasis guys are good at that and You didn't offer any of those right there. I want you to call'em like a numpty plonker or something.
The thing is with that, okay, what could I call him that would maybe kind of get your Americo British juices flowing? He's a total, complete wazock. He's a pillock he's a wazoock. Have you never heard Wazak? Wasick is a kind of there's another great word, I'll give you an Irish word, langer. You know how lying it is?
I don't
He's all like it. Basically Wanka, Wanka.
Basically.
The other thing is very funny,'cause you know Antony Scaramucci does the American version of our podcast and
Yeah.
can't get over the fact that the C word in i in Britain is kind of Used a lot. Whereas you
American men are very jealous about this. Yeah. We're jealous. We'd like to be able to use it as much.
Well we he and I did an event in Ireland recently. He was he was using it a lot'cause he just felt liberated.
He's like liberated. Yeah, it's just like all of those guys who said we wanted to get Trump back in there so that we could say pussy and the R word again. You know, it's kind of like that. Yeah.
Yeah, well a so yeah, I'll as we go through I'll try and think of some more colourful Anglo Saxon phrases that that suit it.
have a couple more. We'll get to JD Vance towards the end. Because he uh he is particularly uh Not a favor among either of us.
Yeah.
He's the worst.
¶ European Anger at Iran War
I want to talk about the Iran war, but before we get into like the status of the negotiations and stuff, I'm just the view from Europe, I've been trying to get my head into like the mindset of kind of an average person in Europe. And just how like frustrated and gobsmacked they must be about this. I I mean it there it's g it's causing real economic harm already and it seems like it's gonna cause more. He didn't talk to you guys.
It was not really expected that he was gonna do this, it's gonna be opposite of what he said he was gonna do. And then he then he yells at you and berates you for not putting your men and women at risk. It must just be Enraging. I mean, I I know that Trump was not popular before, but I have to imagine in this moment it must be particularly acute.
Well, I saw some polling the other day. I think it was down to three percent of Danes had a positive image of him. I think it was about thirteen in Britain, something like that. Um I also read yesterday the Arab Barometer, which tracks opinion in the um Arab world. where he seems to have been overtaken by both Xi Jinping and Putin.
And even Kim Jong un I think is kind of, you know, creeping up on him a little bit. I was speaking at an event this morning with some business people and I think in the first term, when you talked about things like, you know, the Jesus Post, where he pr he now pretends that he was just being a doctor. Term one, people found it moderately amusing. I think the reaction now is that it's just sick. It's really sick.
So I I think yeah, people are really angry about it and but I also I think feeling a bit helpless because the truth is between them, Trump and Netanyahu, and it's them, they have unleashed this war. which is taking w every single president and prime minister in the world today and every single CO of every single major corporation is at some point today addressing the consequences of that decision.
through the decisions they're having to make. Whether it's the Irish government who are talking about putting the army out to quell these protests about fuel I was in France yesterday and somebody was telling me that their their heating fuel that the cost has doubled in seven weeks. Qatar talking about fourteen percent drop in GDP. Wow. And he doesn't care but when I say he doesn't earlier doesn't care he just doesn't care about any of that. What he cares about is
himself. That's it. Nothing else. And so yeah, people are pissed off And yet the politicians are still very, very cautious about really going for him. I see Maloney's gone for him today.
Why is that? Why is that?
Because Well let's just take Ukraine. I mean the thing I really worry about with Trump is Ukraine. Yeah. And, you know, the vile J D Vance yesterday was doing that that pathetically attended event for Turning Point. I don't know if you saw the pictures. It was like a lot of empty seats. It was it was like a kind of, you know lower league in fact no, lower league football matches in England get bigger crowds than JD Vance got at his turning point thing.
But he said he was proud one of the things he was proudest of was
We actually have this audio. Let's let's play it. Let's play it. We've got this place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It it was actually during a Senate event that I had done where I had somebody who came up to me and I'm sure a great person, like a wonderful person. It was a a Ukrainian American in Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah, I was campaigning for the Senate. There are a lot of Ukrainian Americans in Cleveland, Ohio. And this person got really agitated at me because I was saying we should stop funding the Ukraine war.
Okay? And I still believe that obviously and it's one of the things I'm proudest that we've done as an administration is we've told Europe that if you want to buy weapons you can, but the United States is not buying weapons and sending them to Ukraine anymore. We're just out of that business. So very good thing.
I mean it's like mind blowing because on so many levels that because You know, politicians talk a lot about what they're proud of doing. Like, you know, I was very proud to work with Tony Blair in the Northern Ireland peace process. I was very proud of what we did to sort of spend more in schools and hospitals. Very proud of Scottish Parliament being established. Very proud of a minimum wage.
To be proud of the fact that you've stopped funding a democracy who which has been invaded by a dictator on the doorstep of Europe when NATO is meant to be the transatlantic alliance between the United States and the U it just makes me think I don't understand the what goes on inside the guy's head. I don't understand it. So that's what worries me about Iran. And w you know, I talked to Zelensky recently and he was he was saying that he's worried about
American support was being pulled anyway. And let's be honest, since Trump came back term two, the Americans the stuff that they're doing on the intelligence side and Ukraine does not want to lose that. But now lots of the kind of missiles that they were using for air defences, they're having to go to the Gulf.
Yeah, that's the stupidest thing about the JD Vance being proud thing. I mean, uh obviously it's insulting and it's gross and uh these people were invaded, they did nothing and he's like, I'm so proud we abandoned them. Like that's disgusting on a moral level. But just on a even on a practical, like real politique level, it's like
Okay, we're not purchasing weapons and sending it to Ukraine anymore because we care about America first. And here we are, we started a war of choice in Iran where we're like using up our stockpiles. We're losing way more in weapons and materiel in the Middle East in the last month than we did the entire Ukraine war.
¶ Illusion of American Omnipotence
And the thing that gets me about Vance, and I'm afraid Rubio's in the same boat now, is that Whatever it is that Trump says on that particular day, that's what they go out and defend. So at the moment we're very down on Ukraine. Now, to be fair to not to be fair, but Vance has always had that position. Yeah. So what he said yesterday is entirely in keeping with what he thinks.
But we also know he's been against the Iran war. But when Trump tells him to go to Islamabad and basically make a fool of himself by thinking you can solve this. I mean he comes out and talks about a marathon, right? Twenty one hours, whatever it was. We spent twenty two months on the Good Friday Agreement.
Bill c Bill Clinton spent nine months getting Arafat and Rabin to shake hands. Nine months of bringing them together to do that. The I and and this is the thing, we I talked on the podcast recently about this amazing essay. that was written by a Scottish historian called Dennis Brogan during the middle of the Korean War. And the headline was The Illusion of American Omnipotence. And that's what we're seeing at the moment. They think that because they're America and because he's Trump
Whatever they say is going to happen, that is what is going to happen. And guess what? It doesn't happen because other factors come into play. But your point about why the European leaders are still so kind of mealy mouthed. Is that a good British mealy word? Mealy mouthed?
We do that. We use that one here, but that's okay.
Oh do you use that one? Okay. I'll tell you what, I'll tell I'll give you a really good one for Vance. Okay. It's a Scottish word. Do you know the word sleek it? Sleek it, S-L-W-K-I-T, sleek it. It's a Scottish word, Vance's sleek it. Vance's sleeker, yeah. You wouldn't whatever whatever is coming out of his mouth is not what's in his brain.
So that's sleeker. Yeah, true. Okay. He's sly. Um so Sanchez in Spain, he's no holes barred. Yep. Uh we now consider Mark Carney in Canada basically to be a European. So we're co-opting him as
¶ China's Strategic Trolling of Trump
Honorary, bitch.
He's yeah, he's no holes barred. But if you think about it say from Keir Starmer's perspective, one Keir Starmer is not somebody who likes getting down and just being rude about people, he's quite a nice guy. Do you remember the famous shot of Trump dropping the papers on the floor and Keir Starmer picked them up?
Um and it turned out there was actually nothing on the papers at all. It was just Trump holding a folder to look like a president. Oh really And Keir picked them up and people were saying how pathetic, how humiliating and what have you and this part of me thinks Trump did it on purpose. But what he showed basically is Keirstam was quite a nice guy, who knows that this guy's very old, his knees probably aren't very good, I'll pick up these papers for him. So he's not a rude guy.
So he's tried to craft this positive relationship with Trump. You know, I have a letter, here it is, it's a letter from the king. This has never happened before. Another state visit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he gets nothing in return. I think we're reaching the point where Europe is gonna start hitting back a lot harder. A lot harder.
Uh, who knows? I the domestic politics of this feel unpredictable. You mentioned those stats about the energy prices. I I mean we're gonna be coming to a period of shortages probably, and there's already kind of this populist wave happening through Europe, which we we can talk about. And so I mean it would seem to me that like the right thing to do is get in front of it and make Trump the boogeyman and rage against it because I like this pain is
You know, even if they magically figure this out in Islamabad in a week, which I I find hard to believe, but who knows? We can talk about that. But like the supply chains and the like all this is coming. All the economic pain is coming no matter what.
I mean Sanchez in Spain, he has decided he's just gonna go for Trump and he's not holding back. Maloney today, and interestingly the Italian Parliament yesterday or today, the opposition leader got a standing ovation because she came out in favour of Maloney and and attacking Trump. Now, the only thing is if y you take it from let's just say in the UK
We are still very tied. Intelligence, defence, all that stuff. We're very, very locked in. And I think what they're worried about, all of them, is that Trump who probably isn't following the day to day of who does what where and what have you, but the Americans are still doing a lot in relation to Ukraine. Europe is trying to step in
Mm you've just got to m maybe try and keep the locked in a little bit. So when I interviewed Zelensky last week, there's lots of little digs. There's lots of little digs. You know, he said for example, Yeah, I don't think it's a good idea to send JD to campaign for Orban. You know, a little dick.
Yeah.
A hundred percent. And we I th I think you know you didn't have to be a genius political strategist to work that one out, but he nailed that one. But also he said in terms We have shown the Americans that Russia has been sharing intelligence with Iran. Including on where the American troops happen to be hanging out, okay? And the Americans don't seem interested. Now that's quite shocking, but what Zelensky doesn't say is and that's really shocking.
Yeah, you asked him directly, I thought it was interesting. You asked him directly if sometimes he wonders if Trump's on Putin's side. And he was very diplomatic in response to that. He didn't say no, though. He didn't say no. I don't ever wonder.
He didn't say no. He didn't know. He didn't say that. I can't remember who first said it, but it's you know, you you you see this quite a lot of people saying, Well, I don't know if Trump's a Russian agent or not, but if he was a Russian agent, He's doing everything that a Russian nation would do. Right. It's like, you know, and I I have reached a conclusion and it's a pretty big thing to think in a way.
is the okay, m on his side maybe is the wrong thing, but when he has to choose between do I believe Trump, do I believe Putin, or do I believe Zelensky, he believes Putin every time. Which is kind of weird,'cause the guy has built his entire political machinery and his dictatorship on kind of lying and fear and intimidation. And I think my theory about Trump is that he's jealous of Putin.
It's not that he's tr Putin has necessarily got anything on him, which he may have. I don't know what he got up to in the past in my view, but he may do. But I think it's just that he's jealous of him and he wants to be like him. He wants to be as powerful as him within his own country as Putin is within his.
He is probably a little jealous. He also is the cowardly bully. You know, he likes to pick on the weak. And uh maybe he doesn't realize how weak Putin actually is, but there's this jealousy. I I noticed this this morning, he posted this. Untruth social
He did another all night bleeding rant last night, uh, between like eleven and two AM after like a dozen posts where we're concerned about his mental health. And he woke up and said he was God's chosen one again in a different meme this morning. But but this was the one that caught my eye this morning. China is very happy that I'm opening the Strait of Hormuz. I'm doing it for them also and the world.
This situation will never happen again. They've agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together. Doesn't that beat fighting? But remember we are very good at fighting. That's just all not true. I I China is helping Iran. I there's an F T report this morning about how China's giving Iran satellite images and and that has helped Iran attack our bases in the Middle East.
The strait is open to China. We let their ships go through already over the weekend. And, you know, Trump threatened to tariff them for providing stuff to Iran, but is now backing down off that. He's too scared. Like he doesn't want that big conflagration, right? He doesn't want to take on China and Russia. He wants to take on the weak little countries and bomb them and feel tough.
Did you see the um the comment that Xi Jinping himself made yesterday of Oh here we go. Uh so this is Xi Jinping yesterday. Propositions on safeguarding and promoting peace and stability in the Middle East. Number one, stay committed to the principle of peaceful coexistence. Number two.
Stay committed to the principle of national sovereignty. Number three, stay committed to the principle of international rule of law. Number four, stay committed to a balanced approach to development and security. That is mensa level trolling.
¶ US as Global Instability Threat
It is absolute genius trolling. B and but what it's doing, this is the kind of really weird thing. I did an event this morning with some British business people, okay? And I I asked this question at a lot of events that I do. The question was we had those instant polling apps. Which of the two superpowers is currently the greatest threat to global stability, USA or China? It was ninety one to nine, okay?
and
That is crazy.
It's crazy. You guys here in your pinstripe suits and your British accents and all the rest of it You see the USA is a greater threat to global stability than a country which is an out and out dictatorship, that has no free press, that suppresses so people, that has got the Uyghurs in concentration camps, that steals our intellectual property, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And the answer is yeah, because this guy, Trump, is actually causing far more instability than China.
He's unstable. He's chaotic. It's a weird thing thinking about our domestic politics is he has a lot of supposed China hawks. in the administration, people who, you know, when you looked at like the papers they put out for their security strategy and what the geopolitics was, you know, it was it was basically two things, right? It was like
We're gonna care more about our hemisphere, the Donro Doctrine, and do more to counter China decouple. But Trump is the opposite of that. I mean has done more to empower them and embolden them than any President since Nixon went there.
Well d did you see the um the front cover of The Economist last week?
I don't know if I did. What was what did it look like?
Let me show it to you. Hold on, it's on the floor right here.
I love that you have the economist right there. So that is on brand.
It is right by left foot. So there you go.
Yeah.
Never interrupt your enemy.
Oh that is really good.
So that was Napoleon. Okay, that's Napoleon. But that is kind of what Xi Jinping is doing. Trump is gifting. He's attacking his allies left right and centre, so like UK, France, Germany, Italy. He's whacking them left right and centre. He's created mayhem for the Gulf. These Gulf countries I read a thing yesterday, Qatar's GDP looking at a fourteen percent drop, okay?
So these countries in the Gulf that have created this sense of security, stability, investment, tourism, they're losing six hundred million dollars a day at the moment in the Gulf, okay? How did they build that sense of stability? Through the the close relationships with the United States. That was the key to it. And he has single handedly blown that up.
¶ Diplomacy vs. Trump's Approach
And then expects them just to still want to be his best friends. And if you take it to the Iranian guys, this is what's so kind of nutsville about the way that Vance behaved at the weekend. Because he talks of the Iranians as though they're not really human beings. Just try and put yourself in the mindset of a guy who's now the new Ayatollah. Now we don't have to like him.
to understand that he's been given quite an important job. He's clearly badly injured, which is why we haven't seen him. He's lost his dad. He's lost some of his kids. He's lost his members of his family. Okay. And Vance thinks he should just turn up and say, Right, we've won, therefore we get everything that we want to ask you to do And they think, No, that's not how it's gonna work.
And they don't understand back to the illusion of omnipotence. They don't understand that in negotiation, there's always another side.
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at oneskin.co slash bulwark. That's fifteen percent off. Oneskin.co with code bulwark. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell'em we sent ya. I was listening to you talk on your show about the uh kind of going back to those negotiations in Northern Ireland you you had mentioned earlier and And just like how these processes usually work and like the value of the optics and the handshake and how different
In addition to all of the other ways in which JD Vance, the vice president going to Islamabad and having to call Donald Trump twelve times and BB a couple times, like as weird as that is, it also th they did nothing to kind of demonstrate rapprochement to everybody else, right? Like we didn't see any pictures of it. We don't really know what is happening. We don't know who the counterparties are. JD Vance has two people with business ties to the Middle East as his two wingmen, not any experts.
I I mean the contrast between how this stuff usually works is pretty stark.
And that says to me that they weren't serious about it, that they either don't know how to do this stuff. And I think there is a problem with you can see every time Putin meets Witcoff I mean it's like watching it's like watching a baseball fan meet, you know, whoever I don't know, follow baseball, who's the most famous baseball player in the world right now? It's like that. It's like
Not Mike Trout anymore. It's the Japanese guys and the Dodge Dodgers. I'm footballing.
Oh the Japanese guy. Yeah, give the Japanese girl.
basketball, yeah.
Okay, it's like a football fan who suddenly bumps into Cristiano Ronaldo, right? Is that better?
you go. Yeah, sure. Okay. I was talking about American football and like Patrick Mahomes, but that's okay.
That is not football. That is not football. And we and we and and by the way, I'm boycotting the World Cup as well, so that's another thing. And I've just I've just read here's another
Painful for you.
The whole thing's painful. The whole thing's painful watching Infantino and Trump turn it into kind of, you know I nearly said Berlin nineteen thirty six. Oh I did. So I think that the where was I?
No, I just laughed. What were we talking about? How strange is the Islamabad negotiation?
Yes. And and did you notice in the interview that we did with Zelensky, Zelensky's saying that Whitkov didn't want to see him. You know, he was going to see Putin and then he was going to see Putin, then he went to see Putin, then he saw Putin again, then he saw Putin. And they keep saying
When was it? Was it after Alaska that Trump said there's gonna be a trilateral meeting of the leaders? When has that happened? Yeah. It's not happened because Putin doesn't want it to happen. This is what makes you think he's on his side. You know,'cause he does have a lot of leverage over Putin if he wants to use it, but he clearly doesn't want to use it.
¶ Iraq War vs. Current Crisis
You know, not to not to trigger ya. I have Bill Crystal on the podcast every Monday, so every once in a while I've got a needle him about Iraq. So so you're gonna get it too. The difference here is also just pretty stark. Kind of going back to this like view from Europe. Right, for all of whatever, like the questions and the you know, anger that ends up bubbling up both here and in Europe, you know, over the Iraq war, like on the front end
Everybody understood kind of why it was happening, right? There was at least a period of time of the allies negotiating, of explaining it to the public, of making the case for why it's important. And like none of that happened here. And so I'm just curious for your kind of perspective on like the compare and contrast from from your time with Blair versus what we're seeing now.
Let's just take the you know, the United Nations. One of the most extraordinary meetings I was ever at was at Camp David. Where George Bush was basically using Tony Blair to try to persuade Dick Cheney that it would be the right thing to do to try and take this thing down the United Nations route. Because Cheney didn't want to do that.
Now Ch Cheney who now not least because of his daughter, and I know he's dead, but he was seen latterly as a kind of moderate conservative, right, who called out Trump and what have you. But at the time he was like a kind of he was like a bogeyman for most Europeans.
Well it's cause Cheney was a moderate because he was for the rule of law domestically, just not for the rule of law anywhere else anywhere else.
Right, okay.
So that's the moderating moderating board.
The point I was making though is that George Bush understood the broader political ramification and he was he he was reluctant as well. He felt that America had the right to do it, but yeah, if this guy Tony Blair is saying that the UN's important, let's kind of let's give it a go. And he gave it a go. Congress. Okay. Congress now
I saw a wonderful comment the other day. It s somebody said, I'm so glad that Congress isn't alive to see all this happening because it's like you you at least had a sense that Congress had a voice And the President took the Congress voice seriously. To this day on social media I get relentless grief about Iraq and so does Tony Blair and You know, that's fine, but but the the point is that the reason why we get so much grief is because we were actually trying to share with the public
the intelligence that was making Tony Blair more concerned, not less. Okay. So we were tr we were trying to build an argument and we we put that argument to Parliament and Parliament voted in favour of it. I know that the lots of the people who voted for it now now say they wish they hadn't and that's their right. But the point is that when you're saying compare and contrast, I think those are the big ones to me. We went through the democratic institutions.
We tried to engage and involve the United Nations and we built an alliance. That was why people got so offended. when Trump said the thing recently about, you know, oh, they'll say they sent a few troops but they stayed back from the front line because actually there were people from Australia, from Denmark, from different parts of Europe and different parts of the world. So I think they're the big differences to me.
Yeah, also the ramifications. I this is why I just I think that people are not prepared for the degree of popular unrest and upset over this, especially if it continues to to go on. Because of those cases of of that
On the economic side.
Yeah, because A, number one, the case was at least made on the front end. Some people agreed, some people disagreed, probably voted for it, right? So there is at least a period of I I think the natural human reaction is, Okay, let's give these guys a chance and then they end up getting upset'cause it doesn't go well, right?
Uh in this case, they didn't even do that part. And the pain that they're gonna feel is real. The Strait of Four Moose didn't close during the Iraq War, right? I mean there was I obviously the troops that went there and there were ramifications or certainly ramifications here at home, but like the scale of the ramifications across the board among the European populace.
Across the world. Yeah. I was in France yesterday and th this guy was telling me so his heating bills have got up double in seven weeks. In Ireland they've got the police and the army out dealing with protests over fuel shortages. In Australia, the haulage companies are saying that they can, you know, they're going out of business because they c they can no longer afford the the fuel. You had every single stock exchange in the Gulf the other day just going phew like that.
You know, of all the many, many crazy mind blowing things that have come out of Trump and Hexes and Vance's and Rubio's mouth recently. The one that really, really shocked me was when they basically seemed to say that they didn't im ever imagine that the Iranians would shut the Straits of Hormuz. And then Trump the other day, Trump the other day came out and said, you know, these guys have got no cards apart from the Straits of Hormuz. Well, that's quite a big card.
Thank you. Yeah, maybe the ace guy. The other crazy thing about this is just as far as the security risks. At least in Europe somebody could make a plausible security risk that, you know, the long range ballistic missiles that Iran had could reach some of the European mainland. I th they can't reach Orlando. I are there any Hawks over there who are like, hey, this is actually good. This was a real security threat for us. We should be helping more.
¶ Europe's Response and Trump's Motives
Um, if there are, they're not shouting very loudly. I mean it was interesting on the day that the war was launched and Keystarmer came out and really upset Trump by saying, you know, we're not involved in this. And both the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badmack, and Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, who's our kind of right wing populist guy, they've dived straight in saying we've got to be alongside Trump.
They have pulled back from that very, very, very, very quickly because they realise there's there are so few people who think this is anything other than than a mistake, a catastrophic error. Now, none of that is to say and of course what what Trump does when you say it's a catastrophic error, as he's done with the Pope, is to come out and say he's pro Iran.
Yeah, you're an idiot.
No, I'm not pro Iran, I've never been pro Iran, but the reason why previous presidents who've been under the same pressure from the Hawks to do something quotes do something about Iran One of the reasons they've held back is'cause they did think they might play the Straits of Ormuz card.
And it would have a massive effect on the global economy. But you get the feeling with Trump that you know, uh I remember talking a while back to Michael Wolfe and he said, Listen, the thing you've got to understand about about Trump Is he's not a conventional politician like you and I might be used to. He's always a reality TV star, and every day has to be a new story.
I think that's the only way you can think of him because every day is a new story. And when the story's not going well, he invents another plot line. So things were going badly the other night. I know what I'll do. I'll do a tweet basically saying, I'm Jesus. That'll get them talking about something else. And away he goes. And that's the story for the next half news cycle and then something else. There's no way to run a country.
¶ European Self-Reliance and Economy
On the question of decoupling, I was talking to Michael Weiss about this yesterday and you know, the Europeans obviously this was you know, kind of a re almost a ridiculous suggestion in the Trump first term, the idea that maybe they'd be better off going at it without as much cooperation, reliance, relationship with America. Now this that conversation is is bubbling up a lot more. Is it even possible? Like does does Europe have the
economic capability to do it go it more alone. Like how how are those conversations going?
Well, y where you're right is that the conversations are happening. You know, even in Germany, I mean look for Chancellor Merz, he's a pretty traditional conservative sort of figure. And Merkel always used to say the three fundamental pillars of her foreign policy you never attack Israel because of our history, you always stay close to the United States and we're a proud, you know, member of the European Union.
And I would say that two of those are are fraying somewhat in the German public debate. Chancellor Mertz has actually been quite critical of Trump on several fronts in in recent days. I mentioned Maloney. I mean Maloney uh and of course Trump has gone for her and so I think what people are th seeing is that this this guy is just not reliable. They have to try to keep things as calm as they possibly can for the reasons that I mentioned.
But I think that that debate is being had. And to me the most interesting the most interesting part of the the chat we had with Zelensky last week was when he said that he wanted Ukraine, UK, Turkey and Norway all to join the European Union on the same day and for the European Union to become a kind of military alliance as well as an economic alliance because, you know, Turkey and Nor Norway and us and uh and Ukraine have got maybe more military heft than some of the other European countries.
Are we sure we want turkey?
Well it's a big thing, isn't it? It's a big thing. I mean look, Turkey's a member of NATO. Turkey's in NATO.
I know. That's a concern, I think. It's on the I mean c NATO might already be a walking corpse, but an Israel Turkey conflict, which seems probably likely eventually, it might be the death knell of it.
But listen, Turkey is definitely one of those countries that's got a lot more hef than it did. And the question is where you want to see that hef being used. I think the point that Zelensky was making. is that Europe does have a lot of mil military clout. But it doesn't organise itself well. And European defence is very um you know, it's chaotic. You guys have, you know,'cause it's the United States of America, you've got very kind of simple procurement systems.
We've got very, very complicated procurement systems country by country. Crazy.
¶ UK and European Economic Struggles
This is where my old my old former Republican element comes in, thinking about the European red tape and regulation and and stagnation. You know, you guys, we'll just start with the UK first. You guys are a mess economically, even before Donald Trump caused an energy crisis. I saw a s a chart the other day that said Poland was gonna pass the UK in GDP per capita.
coming up here in about the next ten years. That's not a great sign. What can be done to reverse that? I and I think that as much as the military, you know, strength is an issue for Europe. You know, having that economic base that we have here, you know, that's something that is a problem in the UK, but also across the EU.
Okay. Well I can push back in let's imagine you're still a Republican, okay? Yeah. I can argue that w some of the reasons why.
Do I do I have to be a Republican? Can I be a Tory?
You're now a Tory. You're now a Tory, right? And so so basically what you people did, so we went through the gl the glob the global financial crisis, right? And the conservative response was austerity. And that was a big driver of inequality. And it basically the message to the people was the guys who caused this global financial crisis, we're gonna bail them out, right? But we're not helping you much. You're gonna pay a big price, okay? And that in part led to Brexit.
Brexit was driven by the right, by Ch Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, these people who told the public if only leave the European Union. One of the reasons we're not in as strong shape as we should be is because Brexit has taken a gigantic chunk.
out of our GDP. Some people say five percent, some people say eight percent. Whatever they say, it's not insignificant. Okay? Then we had COVID and we didn't come out of COVID well. We had a total charlatan, Trump's friend Boris Johnson as Prime Minister at the time. So we've had these kind of these shocks, then the Ukraine war, and we just haven't come through them well. Now, I would argue you're still a Tory, I'm still Labour.
Go back to the sorts of levels of investment that we were getting into the economy at when Tony Blair then Gordon Brown were in charge. And I think that's just a far better approach. Harder to do now. because the pressures on the public finance are so are so great. But I still think Europe could become much, much more competitive than it is if it actually followed some of the some of the policies and the initiatives that it's been trying to promote for the last God knows how long.
Okay, if I'm with my Tory hat back on, I would say, Hey, look, there are a lot of these business guys, the guys in the pinstripe suits you're talking about, um, they don't wear as fancy looking suits in America. A lot of times they've stopped wearing suits altogether and they're in like hoodies and stuff, but these
To be fair, a lot of hours have. Yeah, a lot of hours.
These guys they're at least, you know, some of them have thrown in with Trump, of course. There's another category that's quiet right now. And they're looking at American instability and they're saying the same thing that the British businessmen are. And they're like, you know, maybe I should diversify. Maybe I we should be
putting, you know, another office or another plant or another whatever in a European country. And they're held back from doing that because of the red tape and the hassle and the fucking rules and You know, and maybe this could be a moment for Europe to say, Hey, we're gonna bring in a lot of investment into Europe because the Americans are so fucked. And so maybe we should relax some of our your some of the European nonsense.
Well, I think the nonsense is overstated. I think the MAGARIT have created a massive industry on saying that, for example, London is a complete hellhole and it's a basket case and Europe you can't cross the road without getting permission from a an official and all this sort of nonsense.
¶ Europe vs. USA: Quality of Life
Europe is I would argue, particularly now, but I would argue even without Trump. Europe is a better place than the United States of America. I'm sorry to break that to you, but it's more beautiful, it's more cultured.
You don't even have dryers. How do you dry your clothes? You're still using a hanging line for drying your clothes. They don't put they don't put ice in the drinks.
Uh sorry. Anything you want about Europe. Europe is gr Europe greater than USA. Okay. Where you're doing really, really well. is in stuff like tech and you know, yeah, great. If you want to have Elon Musk running your economy and you want him to be completely free of any sort of regulatory oversight, then fine.
But I think what you'll find I saw Keir Starmer recently and he did agree with the point you just made that we are over regulated. There are too many regulations in too many areas of the economy. What you can't do is lose the values that we've got. The fact is, let me give you another thing, our food is better than yours. Because we do have higher standards of what you can put into Britain? Yes, in Britain. Listen, don't give me that Republican looking face either.
Come on. I was in Manchester last year and it was hard to find a good meal, okay?
I could have given you some good restaurants in in Manchester. I I really could, yeah. But certainly listen, London has got better restaurants than Paris now. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. But my point is my point is that what you what you what you call these Brussels rules and regulations, they're not all bad. They're not all bad. What sometimes happens is there are too many of them and they put people off. But you see, why has the MAGA right got this massive campaign going on?
to project a picture of Europe as a basket case, because they want Europe to fail, because they see Europe as a potential big competitor. And that's how Europe has to start thinking of itself as a big potential competitor.
I agree with that. And look, I mean I I I I do like to tease. And we do have a lot better fresh fruits and veggies here than that wilted cabbage you guys are eating. But uh the
So with all your with all your GMO stuff, the pump them up and your strawberries the size of a melon.
Yeah, so we got the Popeye Arugula over here. All right, Australia? Yeah, brilliant. Um but the uh I I look the the Magorite, they're full of shit on the crime stuff, on the migration crisis. I I I I'm with you on that. On the economic part though, it is just true, like we have a real affordability crisis here that is coming to a head.
And it's n nowhere in America is it as bad as London. I mean, I have friends from study abroad who are from London who are middle class, upper middle class, that are like really struggling to afford you know, housing there, you know, young families, rent I it's it's a real yeah I like that's not fake. Like the the pr the affordability problem in the UK and and other European capitals is made.
But yeah, I'm not I'm not denying that there is a there is a problem the cost of living crisis is real for a lot of people. But I would still argue that if you walk around London or Manchester or any of our big cities You're gonna see fewer people living on the streets than you do in the United States big cities. You're going to get better healthcare. You're going to get better health care if you fall ill. So there's, you know, you can pick and choose where I think there is no doubt at all.
is that on the innovation front, you guys are just a lot better. There's no doubt about that. And your universities are plugged into that. Our universities are struggling, some of them, financially.
So
I'm not denying that but
Manchester was rejuvenated, I should say. We should shout out Manchester. I was picking on them for the food, but it was kind of nice. But part of it was because London's so expensive, I think a lot of people were moving moving there, it seems like when I was talking to the locals. But it is nice.
L Montis' got a lot of energy. Lot of energy and and a lot of good restaurants. I'm just surprised you didn't find you looking like an intelligent guy. You probably just didn't look around enough or has to
I was mostly focused on the Oasis cloud. I was mostly focused on the pubs.
Oh, is that what you were? Okay, that's fair enough. What's your favorite Oasis song?
Ooh, probably little by little. Um probably little by little. Maybe importance of being idle, I like. They didn't play that one. Um Rock and Roll Stone. Yeah. Live forever. Live forever. Live forever.
¶ Unpopular Leaders and Political Apathy
Lif forever is pretty good, yeah. And on the cultural front, I mean you're a bigger country than we are, but I think we beat you in culture as well.
I will say it was the Hungarians were singing Queen when uh in the streets. uh after after they beat Orban. And so that's that's not nothing. Here's my question though for you. I guess yeah the serious part of this, I mean part of the reason why I'm concerned about this is, you know, because if America's unraveling, we need Europe to be strong.
And I looked at this poll, you know, it was a collection of polls of kind of the G seven leaders and their popularity. And uh we've been feeling pretty good here at the Bulwark in the Trump slide in the polls. You know, his numbers are going down, going down, getting worse every day. I felt a little less good when I looked at the comparison to Europe. Trump is minus nineteen right now in fave on fave, Starmer minus fifty one, Macron minus fifty two, Mers minus fifty four.
Yeah. What is happening? Like why are they all so unpopular?
It's it's really hard to I honestly don't know'cause I think there's something really weird about it. I mean Keir Starmer's look, he's not Barack Obama, he's not Bill Clinton, he's not Mahatma Gandhi, but he's not a terrible human being. And he's actually on this kind of Iran thing, he's he's he's done a pretty good job in very difficult circumstances.
I think partly what's going on is that people's lives are not getting better at the pace that they expect them to. And the gov you know, if you if you win an election on a mandate of change. And the first big change you make is taking winter fuel benefit away from all people. And then you get into some of the kind of, you know
the sense that all you're doing is kind of this foreign policy stuff and people are thinking, well, what about home and what have you? But Macron's a really interesting example because I I I help Macron and he's despite him being, you know, a bit to the right. But I wanted him to win his first term and I helped him in his first election campaign. And I think the guy's unbelievably clever and an extraordinary politician in many ways, okay? But the French hate him. The French absolutely hate him.
Uh Merz is a is an interesting one because he's he's literally just been elected. So what it says to me is that for a lot of people now, it's not just the leaders that they don't like, they don't like politics at all. They don't like any politician. So if you're the Prime Minister or the Chancellor or the President, you're the one who's gonna cop it'cause you're the one who's on T V the whole time.
And my message to them all when I see them and speak to them is you've just got to keep going. You've just got to keep going. And you've got to trust in the end that because this isn't just about you, it's about people hating politics. Change politics. Change the way you do politics.
What that guy Magyar in in Hungary has shown is I mean he he fought a very old fashioned campaign, you know. He had no access to the media, you know, he did his first ever state T V interview last night because he wasn't allowed on the state T V. He just went round village to village, town to town, campaign, campaign, campaign, persuading people. And I think we've got totally wrapped up in the idea that everything has to be on truth social, social media, on the television.
People are turning away from that big time. You can do a lot more now, I think, with much more old-fashioned sort of campaigning. That to me is the lesson from Magia.
Any other lessons? I mean obviously you guys are dealing with this in the UK. Uh I think there's some good signs that we've seen a little bit of the populace wave abating some places, but maybe it's rising again in Britain with reform. But these forces are still happening everywhere.
Hundred percent they're still happening. But I think uh look, this could be my over optimistic nature, which isn't something I normally feel, but I think we've gone through peak reform. Other lessons I think from Magyar, one is and this is definitely a lesson for the Democrats, by the way.
He didn't fall into any of the traps that Orban laid. Orban wanted him to come out and say, let's make it all about LGBT. Yeah. And he didn't. And it's not that he's anti. Yeah. It's just that he wasn't going to fall into a trap. He was gonna keep focusing on the things that he knew really were motivating people. And I'll tell you I've just done a mini series on the podcast with a a Labour MP, a guy called Liam Byrne, who's written a book.
called Why the Populists Are Winning and How We Can Defeat Them. And one of the lessons that he has in the book, which Magyar definitely shows, is you have to listen to the people who say they hate you. You have to understand what is what has happened that Keir Starmer has gone from a landslide win to the sort of ratings that you just outlined and to people that you meet the whole time say, I hate that guy.
You've got to you've got to try and find out what it's about. And it's not in the end personal. It's because they don't like the link between or the lack of a link between politics and their lives. So fix it.
Yeah. They don't think the people are listening to their concerns and their matter.
Exactly.
¶ Courage in Politics and Populist Defeat
I I'm totally with you on that. The one other good thing about the Magyar victory, which um which we can both just celebrate, is that some of our enemies in our relative domestic politics are no longer gonna be receiving money from the Hungarian taxpayers.
Well
I was dying that on day one he went out and was like, By the way, uh Matt Schlap, that sex pest for America, was getting cash from the American taxpayers. We're gonna stop
The Hungarian.
I assume that some of your guys were getting it too.
That's gonna be happening. And you know, again, I think people this is what's happened with Mark Carney. People respond To a sense of courage. So Magyar coming out, you know, Magyar had a meeting with the president of uh Hungary
This is so good. people what happened here. This is so good.
So he had the meeting'cause he's the president, he's the head of state, and he has to sort of anoint him as Prime Minister as it were,'cause that's his kind of constitutional function. A manga goes straight in there and says, You're not fit to do this job you know, as soon as I leave here, you people who space you to resign. You'll see what happens. But so and likewise with with Carney, Carney has shown real courage. When Carney went to Davos, knowing that Trump was there.
and sent made that speech saying this is not a transition, it's a rupture, that was a big, bold thing to do. So people respond to boldness. The thing you've got to learn from Trump is that the b you know People do want the big, bold, bright colours, but they just want them to be related to their value. The reason I think that Trump I mean, you tell me you're in the States, but you s you look at the polling, you see it, it feels like Trump is on the slide and Vance and people are on the slide.
But I think in the end, if you if you've got no values at the heart of your politics, you know, what have you got? And that that so I think we're seeing kind of uh we're we're in a kind of emperor no clothes setting now.
I think that's right. Though I was hoping again for something at the end besides Emperor for No Clothes. Like what about JD Vance as a minger or Trump is a cockwomble?
A minga. A minga but minga minga just means ugly.
Ugly. Yeah. Well JD has a recessed side profile and he's obese.
I I came up with a good one. I I I got a lot of flat but I did say um I called Tr uh Vance, I said he's an Osempric.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's great.
And it's quite clear how he's become so thin. Köszönöm szépen!
Yeah. That's quite clear.
I like that.
I'm not sure.
Sorry, I'm sorry. I feel bad I've let you down though, not having sort of witty
No, this is pretty good. I learned a couple new ones. Um I already forget what they were, but I'm gonna have to listen. I'll sleek it. I'll listen on the retape. Sleek it.
Sleek it. Well pillow.
СЛИКЕТ ВАЗАК
Pillock.
Sleek it was. That's good. Uh his show's the rest is politics. It's you and like another it's kind of like a a me type figure, right? Kind of a never Trump like a former Tory, yeah.
Well, he's an ex Tory minister. Rory Stewart. And m part of the dynamic of the podcast is I'm trying to bring him over Much more to the left and
But he's not going to be able to do that.
I think so. Yeah, I think so. But it's very hard. It's hard to be a Tory.
Reality is kinda setting in is kind of the problem for those of us formerly on the right, you know. Uh uh reality is working out in in your favor. A lot of areas.
You'll feel a lot happier. I think you should come right over. Right over. Yeah. Yeah, be be like, you know, really left wing.
Well you have a lot of parties though. Couldn't I stop at the Lib Dems? Couldn't I take a quick pit stop at the Lib Dems or something?
Could do, but we wouldn't take it too seriously if you did that. And don't break it. I think you should be a Labour. I think you look to me like a Labour kinda guy.
All the way to Labor. Kirstarmer seems fine with me. I mean, I like I guess I am Labor kind of because I like Kirstarmer better than most Brits, it seems like.
Like I think what do you lo what what do you like about him? Steady. He's steady.
Yeah. I look, I I mean he studied I I wish I I I I've already expressed my complaints. Like I wish that there would be a little bit more economic dynamism. I understand I don't live in London, so I understand people are upset. you know, that uh you know, if you're losing um benefits right now, but part of the reason is because there's no economic
There's not enough economic growth to create wealth, you know, and you can only, you know, pass around so much money. But besides that, I mean what is there to be so mad about? And the other options are horrible. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm very much motivated by, you know, negative partisans. And if it's like if my options over there are the greens or Farage, then it's like, Okay, well Kear Starber seems fine to me. Yeah.
That's good. Yeah. I think you I think we should get you should bring your message to the UK, go on tour and
All right, send me a hat. Uh we'll see. Next time the next time Oasis is on tour, I'll come over and we'll do we'll do a show as well.
So good. That'd be great. That'd be great. It's been lovely to join with you. I'm sorry I haven't come away. Now and so many witty phrases are gonna come into my head and I'll be flying off, but there we are.
You did wonderful. It's the rest is politics. You can check out Roy Rory and Alistair there. And uh we'll be back tomorrow uh with one of our old friends. Looking forward to it. We'll see you all then.
🎵 Music
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