Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics, sign up to The Rest Is Politics plus to enjoy ad-free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to TheRestisPolitics.com. That's TheRestisPolitics.com. This is Wendy from Science Verses. This month, our friends at Ford are the presenting sponsor of Science Verses. If you're curious to learn more about things like electric vehicles,
Science Verses is a great lesson. We dive into topics like how beavers are helping the fight against climate change, what the greenest way to die is, and what a 100% renewable future looks like. And more, listen to Science Verses on Spotify. Brought to you by Ford. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Anastak Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So Rory, I think we should talk a bit about Ukraine. We should talk about these appointments by President-elect Trump, some of which are
truly mind-boggling. And then I think we should have a bit of a deep dive into Britain for a while. Good. We haven't really talked much about Britain. Good. With all the Trump stuff going on. Yeah. Well, it must be interesting. Let's just sort of quickly get on. I mean, presumably if you were at number 10 and you're thinking about this, you must be a bit frustrated because they had quite a lot of momentum coming out of the budget. But since then, a lot
of the focus has been on the US election. And now, in fact, even on things like assisted dying domestically. Yeah. Listen, within they feel that they're doing lots, they're doing lots of stuff and it's getting out there. But I still think they struggle to kind of land an narrative. And that's maybe what we'll talk about in the second half. You and I did some events last week where I was struck by one in particular where the business audience was just, wasn't angry,
wasn't sort of wholly negative. It was just a bit sort of underwhelmed and feeling there wasn't enough engagement going on. Yeah. Anyway, we'll do that in the second half. But let's just start with Joe Biden. Here we are, a re-thousandth day of the Ukraine War. Not about time to take stock, but also we had this quite big development from Joe Biden, big, big shift in terms of the missiles that the Americans will allow the Ukrainians to use.
That's right. So Joe Biden has now approved the use of attackums, which allow the firing of missiles much deeper into territory and particularly into Russian territory. And this will then unlock other missile systems, including the UK Storm Shadow system, which was being delayed by the White House. The context of this is that the Russians have been making
pretty steady advances over the last few weeks and months. On average, about 100 meters a day, we can talk a little bit about why they haven't broken more dramatically through the frontline. But basically, the war is not going well for Ukraine. Russia's making advances. Russia has many, many more people than Ukraine. Ukraine's struggling to recruit. A lot of the central systems that Russia uses to attack Ukraine are based quite deep into
Russian territory and can't be accessed by most of Ukraine's weapon systems. But what was your first thought before we get onto what's happening in frontline? You thought about what this means by an announcement, something that suddenly that he's been delaying on for almost two years? Well, my first thought was, given that he'd just had the meeting with Donald Trump in the White House, where, you know, to be fair to Joe Biden, he did the constitutional thing. He
was proper. He was politely. Did all things that Trump didn't do when he lost. It's hard to imagine that they didn't discuss you great. They had an hour together. It's hard to imagine that didn't come up. So my first thought was, well, this is Joe Biden, but he's not going to be there in January. Is Trump involved in this in any way? Is Trump even
aware? Trump, I don't think, has said that much, but Donald Trump, Jr. has put out something basically saying, why are they doing this without even giving my father the chance to go and make peace and save lives? Well, let me push that from him, because I think the Republicans, last thing I want to do
is end up becoming too much of an advocate for Trump. But I guess, I guess if Trump had done this, you know, in the last dying six weeks of his presidency, made a massive defense foreign policy decision, which he knew his, the person who was coming in as president was going to reverse probably there would be an enormous media outrage, because it's
pretty good argument to say Biden is more than a lame duck at the moment. And we know that Trump's policy is absolutely opposed to continuing to provide more lethal support for Ukraine and Biden has just done it. So presumably, Donald Trump Jr. has got a point
here, which is this is a pretty peculiar thing to do. You'd be pretty annoyed. Let's say you were an incoming labor government and the Tories, because there isn't a transition as less likely, but suddenly did something in the very last few days that completely poisoned one of your central policy planks. You'd be pretty angry, wouldn't you?
Yeah. I think you would. That being said, what you said earlier about the state of play in the war itself could underline why an American president feels this is the right time to do this. The more mysterious is the question why the hell he didn't do it for, because the normal criticism from us is that as usual, Biden is too little too late in the pattern for almost a thousand days. I know. Maybe a request for a big weapon system. The US
saying, no, no, we can't possibly provide it. And then eventually they provide it by which I mean, while the bit that you've missed in there and the Russians mean while saying that if you do, that's going to provoke. I think that phrase yesterday was an appropriate and tangible response. They've got various formulations to meet people think that one
day Putin is going to fire off the nukes. I think the other thing it does bring home. So there's Kirsta Am at the moment at the G20 with lots of other world leaders around the place. It does, as you say, bring into sharp focus a big decision for Britain as well about the storm shadow missiles. And my sense is that Starmer is pretty hard over on this. Well, this is something I'd really like to get your instinct on. So this unlocks storm
shadow from the UK. It unlocks German missile systems. It creates the whole possibility of a new stage in the war, which would be allowing the Ukrainians to suddenly strike all these different Russian ballistic cruise missile drone systems, which are located in Russian territory. Till now, they've only really been able to strike them with drones. And the problem with drones is the drones are not going fast enough and they can't carry enough
of a munitions load. So they're not inflicting the damage. The Russians plies at these things can do. So in the dream scenario for Ukraine, this is now the possibility, not just of weapon systems, but a full joined up coordinated response to this Russian aggression. But if Trump, as seems likely, pulls back, is the UK going to step up? And there are a lot of people in Europe who hope the UK will step up because a lot of Kierstheim statements to European leaders
have been pretty bold on Ukraine. And I think if you were Poland or the Baltic states, you might see the UK as an absolutely critical ally putting a bit of lead in the German pencil and pushing forward. Problem doesn't come cheap. And the UK Treasury, presumably, would get the HBGBs about the idea of Britain getting involved in a massive ramp up of defense spending if the US removed $50 billion. It also plays into this extraordinary kind of
geostatic canundrum that Trump's re-election has posed. So I was on the tube this morning and the great guy next to me was reading the Daily Telegraph and the story down at the bottom. It said that Jonathan Reynolds, essentially saying, you know, we've got to be very careful not to disrupt the already destructed trade of the European Union, which the Daily Telegraph interpreted as the government being ready to appease Europe following the election of Donald
Trump, trying to frame this as a kind of either or. I think we said last week, the state craft challenge for Labour right now is to resist the blunt choice and try actually to even to restore our role as a kind of something of a bridge. But I think if Kirstner was out on his own because Trump does go down the path that he might, Trump, by the way, has been a bit less hard over, say than his nominee for defense secretary. This guy, Pete Hesketh,
who is a real kind of, I don't even know how to put it. I mean, he talks about, you know, he's very, very critical of European defense. He's not a supporter of further support for you, Craig. Now, of all the many under-qualified nominees, he's right up there. So he may not survive. Well, we'll come back to the combatism, saying, how far we can do a bit more of a deep dive. But let me put you on the spot again. So let's
say Trump does decide that he's going to stop support. So there isn't another $50 billion forthcoming from the US. In order to fill that gap, there's a big, big problem for Europe. It's not just a UK and Europe. It's not just a financial problem. So it's not just finding 50 billion. It's actually massively ramping up production capacities, starting new plants to manufacture missiles that were not currently manufacturing.
This could become part of the growth plan. Could become part of the growth plan, but it would involve a huge amount of money because the US can afford to get away with only 50 billion because they've got quite large production capacities and all they've got to do is guarantee to buy one-year's production. If the Europe tried to do it, they'd have to spend much, much more because they'd have to open new factories and guarantee years of
purchases or provide state guarantees. So let's say for the sake of argument, Europe needed to find twice that amount of money with the UK. Is your sense of British politics, John politics, French politics, Polish politics, that they would be up for doing this if the US suddenly stopped writing check? Is the appetite there to spend £100 billion in the US doing this?
Well, I don't know what the numbers would be. I would argue Poland, yes, Britain probably, France very tricky, but Macron definitely, French politics tricky, and I would argue Germany is going to depend on the election. And just just to want to send that. So some of these far-right groups in Europe basically don't like this Ukraine more. So politicians in France are generally putin.
Yeah. So politicians in France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere are having to decide what to do with maybe 20% of the population that really does not want to spend any more money on Ukraine. And is that sort of growing so much that centrist politicians are inclined to say, well, that's a fight I don't want to have. So actually, we're not going to outspending on this stuff.
Listen, let's just say Germany. Germany is really interesting at the moment. So if I wanted the big things in relation to Ukraine this week was Schultz, Chancellor Schultz, phoning Putin. Yeah. First time there's spoken for two years. Yeah. Zelensky, very unhappy about it. Talked about it opening a Pandora's box. This is kind of a weak signal, etc. And an odd timing because he called him after Trump's election.
Very odd timing also because he's now in this political crisis at home. He's a sort of Biden, isn't he? Yeah. Is he doing it for electoral reasons? So you've got quite a lot of criticism. So just to remind lessens, he's a Biden in the sense that his polling rating is terrible. There's likely to be an election in January. He's likely to lose that election. Well, there is going to be an election early in the new year that he's looking at the polls.
He is probably going to lose it. I think the SPD's only chance of turning things around and even then very difficult is actually to put the very popular defense minister Boris Pistorius in charge. Schultz is not really probably going to wear it. So Mouts is going to be Chancellor.
He's a leader of the center. I think you probably will end up with some kind of grand coalition, which is probably more likely to commit to more long term support because they'll then manage to keep out as it were the fringes. But back to the phone call. So Schultz in the slightly lame dark position who may well not be in office in a few weeks time calls Putin shortly after Trump's election. Zelensky's angry. Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, also angry and took to Twitter saying
look, he called and then Russia mounted some of its biggest assaults ever. This proves that calling Putin doesn't do any good. What happened in that phone call? What Schultz trying to achieve? I mean, the briefing that came out from the Germans was pretty firm. They have to stop this war. It was sort of putting on to them. But because what the Russians did essentially was project it as they're all ready to negotiate. They're all looking for a deal. But we are going full on.
And I guess if you've been advising Schultz, one of the first things you've pointed out is regardless the content of the call, Russia is going to spin it as weakness and the Germans then sort of tried to say that Schultz had been planning this for weeks. He'd been talking to other world leaders and it was done almost like he was speaking for them. But that didn't really hold water. I mean, interesting how the other governments didn't really
row in behind that. So I think it was a bit of a freelance operation. And of course, the reason he's ended up being attacked for it at home is because people are saying, look, this is a bit desperate. You're in political trouble. Therefore, you're trying to signal that you're the great piecemaking chancellor. So I'm not sure that it achieved his purpose.
And the position of is that imagine being Zelensky right now, he's having to do what other world leaders are doing in terms of sort of, you know, we welcome President Trump and we had a very constructive discussion. But he probably is there sitting there thinking, what does Trump mean when he says he's going to sort it out in 24 hours? Right. So let's say here's one for you. Do you obviously not go into sort of 24 hours?
Is a sort of Trumpian figure of speech? Do you have any confidence that Trump could lead the way to a deal that doesn't involve one, Ukraine having to see the considerable amount of territory and two, the rest of Europe becoming more alarmed about the extent of Putin's power? No, frankly, because there are two problems. One is that even if he had the outlines for deal and we don't really know what this deal is, he doesn't really have the team to
do the detail work to deliver it. I mean, one of the tricks of making these kind of deals as you lived through with the Good Friday agreement is that it's not just about the boss having an idea that they want to deal. It's an enormous amount of very, very detailed work on the ground, which he doesn't seem to have. But the second problem is that there's
no incentive for Russia at all. Russia is currently advancing. Now, they've got a bit of a problem and I don't, I don't want to sound like I'm a kind of enormous ex, but on Ukraine for that, again, I encourage people to read Jack Watling's work was Rusey. But what seems to be happening is they're punching through and then they're having difficulty of reinforcing in order to exploit their breakthroughs. But there's no doubt they're making steady
progress. If a negotiation started and I were Putin, I would simply keep delaying and keep making advances while the negotiation continues. Ultimately, why would Russia stop? What's the deterrent? If they sense that Trump doesn't want this war, doesn't want to
found Ukraine, doesn't want to provide missiles? What's the stop you're just pushing, and you could keep saying in international forum, we're having an interesting conversation, Donald Trump with some details, still to be worked out, you just keep pushing. As though I think that is the fundamental weakness of the position that Trump set out. If you're Putin, you're sitting there, OK, Trump wants them to this war. We know how he operates,
we know what he's like. He likes the big dramatic move. I'll say a few words that look like we're heading in that direction and I'll just keep going. That is a big problem for you at that. And then there's the other issue, which is that some people in the Republican party think that the answer is to put in a pro-Putin puppet in Kiev and then Putin will stop.
But it's not an America's gift. I mean, Ukraine is an independent country and you can't just announce to the Ukrainian parliament, by the way, we're getting rid of Zelensky, we're bringing in someone from the pro-Russian party. So I think Trump is in a very weak position. He's in a weak position towards Russia, he's in a weak position towards Ukraine. But then
I, before we leave it, I'm just going to flip it back. I'm getting the impression that you think it's unlikely that Europe and the UK are going to be able to make a massive heroic 100 billion euro lift next year if the US pull out. I think if they did that without an American being involved with Americans moving in diametrically opposite direction, I think that's going to be very, very difficult. That's why Trump's
position is so important. Should we flip to the, let's talk about his appointments, because I think it relates to this. I think this is a really good way in because in the end, the reason why we care about who Trump appoints is the US president is in charge of these unbelievably consequential decisions of which Ukraine is just one example. So you started on the subject of the Secretary of Defense, nominee Hezgoth.
Do you think Hezgoth is the most bizarre appointment? Or do you think there are more bizarre ones? There's some more bizarre appointment, which is Matt Geitz, the attorney general. But do you think, do you think, do you think he's sitting there just carrying on the campaign strategy of owning the lips or trolling people? Trolling us. Yeah, yeah. So just, I think that he is determined to get these people. I don't buy this idea that he's basically, you know, say, well, if I throw in 10 names
and the Senate kicks out three, I'll still get seven. I don't buy that. He's going for the lot. Yeah, big context for people who aren't following microd, minute by minute, his appointments. The first thing to understand is traditionally American cabinets, unlike in a parliamentary system, often have quite a lot of heavy weights at these senior positions. And so even under Trump one, he brought in a section state, a guy called Rex Tillerson. He brought in his
secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, who was a four star Marine Corps general. And Mattis, because he'd been in the military for 40 years, brought in staff around him that he knew from years of administrations, even even Trump's first attorney general appointments were very, very long serving establishment members of the Republican Senate. So there's Jeff Sessions and then Bar came in.
And that I was always plays the back part. You know, I see a little bit of this because when I was at the Harvard Kennedy School, you would see a lot of these people rotating through this as sort of whole US system where there's sort of elite, which goes all the way back to Kennedy. They often go to fancy schools. They often get road scholarships or Marshall scholarships. They often work in think tanks. Then they go into government and
they go into the business and they come back into government again. Richard Holbrook would be kind of classic itself. So that's the norm. And Trump 2016 was still doing that. And I remember thinking then what a contrast with Britain because you know, we've got Gavin Williams in the side of the fence secretary who is like a fireplace salesman. They've got this four star Marine Corps general. Right. I got Liz Truss as our foreign secretary.
Right. And they've got somebody who's got 40 years of serious international experience. Trump has now gone full trust. I mean, this now feels as flimsy as a late Boris Johnson Liz Truss cabinet. The people that are being brought in are all about loyalty over competence, atmospheric, sober expertise and have nothing to do with maturity. It's to do with capacity
or ability. I mean, you go through some of them. And the other thing he's doing of course is that this thing called recess appointments is trying to get them appointed without having to go through all the approvals. He's also cutting out the FBI from doing the usual checks and recess just remind people again in the US system to become a cabinet minister unlike in the UK system. Traditionally, you have to be approved by the Senate.
Yeah, exactly. The one thing he's lost, by the way, was the Senate leader. He wanted somebody that did not get selected and they got this guy John Thune who's not really a big fan. I mean, just going through some of them. So you've got Elon Musk. He's running this thing called the Department of Government Efficiency. Now, it is not a department and only Congress can create new departments. So that may be less effective than we think. Musk merrily
talks about $2 trillion. Let's see. And also, let's see whether the Trump Musk love in isn't already looking at the body language in some of these pictures that Musk keeps tweeting out. I get the feeling Trump is thinking, listen, mate, you've had your fun. Now, just get back to where you've come from. So you've got Musk. You've got Robert F. Kennedy and he's he's actually on the one hand, completely crazy, anti-vaxxer. COVID was all about,
you know, killing different sorts of people who have you. But he's also very anti-big food. And I saw one of the other pictures that came out this week. And I think you saw the one with some hilarious beeps about it. Trump on the plane, Trump Musk, Kennedy, Donald Trump Jr. and Johnson, all with the table covered in McDonald's food.
So that's his nomination for health and human services. Then I think the more dramatic ones, Telsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, who very popular on Russian state media. Exactly. That should be a sacking offence already that she's welcomed by Russia. And she's somebody she basically she bought into the line that Ukraine was the war in Ukraine was a result of the West Expo NATO expansion, which is a putin talking
point. She had a meeting with Assad during the whole and came out saying very nice things about Syria. This also poses a problem for Britain, by the way. And for the so-called five eyes, the whole intelligence sharing thing. You're basically talking about people here who we would identify as kind of enemies of the state or certainly friends of our enemies. So what about CIA guy, Rackliffe? He's he's maybe less. Yeah, I think there's two categories
here. So broadly speaking, there's the slightly less eccentric appointments. So state, which is Marco Rubio, he's a relatively conventional right wing Republican politician in in a normal Republican administration, wouldn't really raise eyebrows. Interior Doug Berman, who's the governor of North Dakota. Not billionaire, but not particularly controversial. Lee Zeldin, an EPA maybe might Walt Snatches could advise right. I know a bit. So he's somebody
that I've known for a few years. He's very approachable charming. Wasn't very much a part of a Trump camp. But what he has in common with Rubio and a lot of the other appointments is very, very much a China hall. Really Cold War with China. Ran a Congressional committee on China. You know, I've been in rooms with him where he's standing up, talking about Chinese human rights abuses against the weger TikTok, Chinese infiltration, Chinese threats
and so on. I mean, you really see China. Which is fair enough. And there's an interesting sort of paradox here, though, is it paradox for contradiction that on the one hand, so we talk about this kind of access as developing between China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the kind of autocracies. And yet you look at this team, particularly on the foreign policy and intelligence side, and they're very anti-China, but actually quite pro-Russia, which
I think is a Fox News staple. I think a lot of these people and actually three of them are big Fox News commentators. Their story is we've been distracted by Russia, Ukraine, our real enemy is China. And we can tilt back towards China. So we talked about two categories said, so there's the people who are relatively conventional and then there's the eccentric people and the eccentric people are an energy secretary, Chris Wright, who is the CEO
of the more massive oil and fracking company. And he's a major trolling. And who says there is no climate crisis, there's no energy transition. Talsy Gaba, which has talked about direction, national intelligence, pop-the-russian state media, the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who denies the existence of Palestinians, refuses to accept any two-state solution, says they're not settlements, they're perfectly the gentleman.
There's another thing to add on him. He's a really big evangelical and attached to that sort of wing of the evangelical church that sort of believes that the whole land that is defined by Jews as Israel has to be taken over because that's preparation for the second coming. Now of course we thought that Trump was the second coming up, but in fact it turns out that Jesus Christ. So he believes in a one-state solution and it's interesting to even see the words that
he used in taking the job, like no real mention of Palestinians at all. So I think that one's pretty horrific. I'm just sort of trying to see if we can bring European or British listens to try to understand what the analogy would be with these kinds of people. So, defensively Peter Hexath is like a mega pin-up, big, musly major in the military. Really hair. Good hair.
I mean, this is a very unfair to Johnny Mercer, but in some sense he's like a good-looking guy who went to war but was not a particularly senior officer when he left the military. Matt Gaetz, the other side of the... Just one more of him though. There's some sort of pictures of him topless and he's got on tattoos, some of which are white supremacy. Yeah, so one of them is a big thing that says, Desvalt and Desvalt is a Latin phrase used by the Pope to launch the first crusade.
So it's a subliminal message to Christian crusaders. And it was a reason why he was not allowed in his former job to be part of one of the parade for the president when Biden's tattoos. Because if he's extreme tattoos, yeah. And then Attorney General Mercer was the most... We've only got sex offences and drugs on him. Yeah, so he was a really chaotic, outspoken, crazy media-grabbing congressman who was on the virtue of being expelled from Congress for allegations of drugs, sex, the satan other.
What would be the equivalent in the UK for kind of defense secretary who was a massive popular tattoo wearing Fox News commentator and a really outrageous right wing member of parliament who was on the virtue of being expelled? I mean, I think that's what we have to sort of bring across the sort of tone of this whole thing. Well, I wish you'd give me a advance warning of that question. I think it's very... I can't think of any off the top of my head.
I guess Boris Johnson and Liz Trust becoming prime ministers. The obvious barrel in terms of, you know, utterly unqualified. But they did at least go through the quiet detail, sustained process over many, many years. No, I think maybe it says that there's more madness in Trump world than there is in UK politics, whatever, however depressed we get about it.
It's got a bit of the Liz Trust feel in the sense that it's sort of shock, jock, provocative, not very serious loyalty ever competence, no expertise, raging against the deep state. But it's a sense of both what Liz Trust has, which is seeing the whole thing as a game, utterly superficial. I don't really care what people's competence are. Presumably because Trump and Trust simply don't believe in the bureaucracy or the system of government to talk to the deep state.
Yeah, well, a lot of these guys are sort of, you know, they believe that there is a deep state that tries to sort of take out people who don't conform to the monoveu. There's another one they call my eye, Brendan Carr, who is going to be the head of the Federal Communications Commission. Barry Meade, that Donald Trump said he actually had nothing to do with the project 2025 stuff. He wrote the chapter on the future of the Federal Communications Commission.
Just one hour after he was appointed or the nominated, he did a tweet. He said, we must dismantle the censorship cartel, restore free speech rights for everyday Americans. And who was one of the first people to give it back into that, Mr. Elon Musk? And Barry Meade, this is a guy, this is kind of not just off-gum. This is a guy who will be in charge of decisions, which upon which will depend levels of subsidy to some of Elon Musk companies.
So this is kind of, to me, this reads like potential for corruption. And also, for those of us who feel that one of the reasons why politics has become very polarized, why populism has taken off is because of the social media ecosystem and have been trying to push since 2015 for more regulation, looking at these algorithms, working out what you can do to stop this fueling extremism. We've got, with the FCC appointment, somebody who's going to very much go in the other direction.
If anything, social media will become more unbounded, more polarized, more extreme, less regulated under a Trump administration. Because I guess, for obvious reasons, it sort of benefits him, hasn't it? I mean, in a way, he will see his victories being... But how does free speech, how does this sort of thing about free speech?
And we've got the thing going on here at the moment, so I don't even fully understand this Alison Pearson thing, but it looks part of the same ridiculous nonsense where the right, they love free speech, providing it's their free speech. And yet you've got Trump saying that he wants this guy to come in and sort of start shutting down TV stations. Now, we'll see how that goes. So I think the free speech argument is so kind of... They weaponized it from a very, very particular perspective.
There's one other sort of moderately, possibly quite sensible appointment, which you may not have seen. The White House Council is a guy called William McGinley, who was an advisor to Trump first time round, who people said, I don't know, but people said, was kind of not crazy. Right. So he's going to be the main... He's mainly you going there. I've just been reading three books on the Trump administration. And one of the things that's at the core of all this is, how does this all work?
If you appoint these kind of people, how does the machinery of government respond? How does the civil service, the departments respond? And there are very, very different ways of dealing if like Trump, you have an obsession with the deep state. You can bring in people who are real inside players. Bolton maybe was a bit of an example of this, who are trying to achieve a massive cultural shift.
Or you can bring in very organized people who force through an agenda, but don't try to change the system itself. Or you can have people who make a lot of noise and just preside over a system that refuses to cooperate with them. And I guess a lot of what will determine the future of America and have a lot of consequences of world over the next four years is, are these people going to be able to achieve the effect?
I mean, if a Liz Trust figures put in charge of a department, how much damage can they do? How much can the department resist them? How much can they change policy? And how does that... I think these heads of department in the States have more power than the Secretary's of State because the, you know, the fact that the president appoints them, they can make considerable numbers of appointments.
If you think about the fuss there is here about a cabinet minister appointing a handful of special advisors, but they will, I think, have considerable power, particularly in this first two years before the midterms and where Trump has this sense of the mandate. By the way, we should point out on the mandate, he's now below 50% on the popular vote. And when you dig down to the numbers, it was way closer than even you and I felt on the night. But they're, you know, forget that.
They're going to operate, this is going to be like Brexit 52%. They are going to operate like they have got absolute power. And then to finish, I guess, as we go into the break policy, he has signaled, nasty portations, big tax cuts, drill, drill, drill on the environment tariffs against rest the world, 10% against rest the world, 60% against China and a big shift on Ukraine. And a lot of these appointments, I guess, are about reinforcing that policy agenda.
Yeah. And maybe you'd find on this, the one thing I did see about Rackliff, the CIA, guy, this relates to what you said earlier about China. He has likened the, the, the country of China's rise to, it says on a par with the defeat of fascism and bringing down the eye curtain, that is his big focus. I think where they could get, he could get tricky on this, though, is with this woman Gabbard. She, she, she is attacked. See, I think Trump does this deliberately.
He's putting people who are going to, who are going to fight because he likes the chaos and he likes being the person on top of the chaos. Gabbard, one of her more colorful quotes about Rubio, who she said represents the Neocon War Mungering Establishment. So there's going to be tensions in this top table policy. So the direction of the territory, that's commenting on the incoming section state.
Correct. Yeah. So a lot of these Trump books that I've been reading, exactly show what you're talking about. He seems, a lot of the scenes in them describe him sitting there, sort of playing his advisors off against each other, mocking them, humiliating them. And his family.
Maybe like I forget you, you're a globalist, you can go, and they literally have to go and sit in the corner of the room on a sofa, and then he listens to the other one, and then he brings the other one in, and then he's, and his response to tweets, how often he see something on social media, or Foxy, is he's like, that's the guy we want. I love that guy. Here's my little reading list of people want to be honest that I've been looking at. Just on this room, you say you read three books.
Do you actually, no, I know they're on your kindle, I can see them. But when we say, we're interested in define reading. Have you read them all from start to finish? No, I've skimmed them, and I'm off to. How long did it take to read? So I've been, I've been, fire and fury, probably two and a half hours. Oh, okay. Okay. So fire and fury, Michael Wolfe, yeah, Bob Woodwood, fear. Yeah. John, John Bolton, the run where it happened.
Yeah. And there I read first two chapters, and then I skipped forward to when he actually became not a security advisor, because there was a lot about him trying to get appointed and getting frustrated. Yeah. But the best of them, I think, is Maggie Haberman's confidence, which is just an extraordinary, so she was in New York. She was in New York. No, but she'd known him forever. She covered the Trump beat for decades before he became president. Oh, when he was in business.
Yeah. So she really knows how his father did dodgy deals with the Democratic Party in Brooklyn in the 50s and got taken out of federal contracts for overcharging in the 60s and this kind of stuff. And then the other thing I've been reading, which I'm afraid to say, is incredibly engaging and using like reading, is Trump's art of the deal and sort of suggests some of the Christmas appeal of him. Yeah. The fact that you read it is one up on Trump. He hasn't read Trump.
I don't know if he's Trump's read Trump's art of the deal. He just knows that it's the greatest book in the world about the Bible. That was quite on that one. Okay. Well, listen, much more to be done on this, but it's as usual with Trump. We're still on that funny oscillation between buffoonery and threat, taking seriously his appointments and his policies and at the same time accepting that some of this is just trolling the world.
One thing we do know, Roy, is that Project 2025, which we've read, is now being rolled out. Very good. Take a break. Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Roy Stewart. And with me, Alice Campbell, a little bit of plugging, if we may, Murray Black, the current leading interview, I thought was brilliant. It's funny, when I'm doing the interviews, I don't always get a sense of what they're like as interviews, but I thought she was terrific. You get it more when you listen back.
Yeah. Yeah, it's difficult to judge how their voices are going to come across. No, and also, because you concentrate on the interview, you don't necessarily absorb what they say. If you hadn't listened to it walking over the Heath and judge it to stop because she was laughing so much about Murray Black, say, of course, you shouldn't speak ill of the dead before absolutely putting the boot into Alice's cupboard, who had just died. But I think it's really, really sad that she's left politics.
I really don't left parliament. I've been really enjoying some of our recent leading interviews. I also loved Kim Leadbeater, who we've just done. Who's another example of a really talented woman who's come into politics with a slightly quirky outsider's perspective. And I obviously relate to them because, like me, they see the whole thing as an unbelievable horror show fiasco.
And the reason we're talking to Kim, of course, is because she's bringing for this private member's bill on assisted dying. So that's going to be out on Monday. And the other one we should listen to coming up, very excited about this, Rory. Do you remember who was top of my list when we had a target list of interviews? I've been married on instead, so I think it must be the other M. Is it? And it's not my current angle of Merkel. Coming up soon. So there we are.
And I should talk about the UK economy. UK economy. Well, we did a thing. So let me put you on the spot. You did one of the things we were talking to a group last week. And you mentioned the missions. And I slightly cheekily said to this room of nearly 300 business people, have any of you heard of the five missions? And I think it was like two hands out of 300 went up. That's a bit problematic.
Yeah, but I think the question, a fairer question, Rory, would have been, have you heard of any of the missions? I just remind you, remind us what these missions were and when they emerged. Are they still, what's guiding the government, is the government still guided by these missions? Yeah, well, they are. And this was something they did in the election campaign. They did it before the election campaigns and missions. And would they have expected me to know what the five missions are by now?
Yes. Okay, and what are they? Growth. Growth, yeah. And not just growth, but the highest growth of any G7 country. Got you. Yep. I've come back to why that's a problem. Yeah. Getting the health service back on its feet. Now, safer streets and smashing the class ceiling, which is all about aspiration, education, et cetera. So they're the five missions. I think they are still driving government agenda, but they've not been communicated as such.
And I think that's because some of the work is still being done on what the policy solutions are. And so just, just remind me, if you were in number 10 in your old job, those five things would be up on your wall and you'd also presumably be communicating in cabinet and through the special advisors and to all the departments. The things that the primers to really cares about are growth, health, crime, energy, energy and smashing the glass ceiling. Seeing the education and the aspiration, yeah.
Yeah. And in fact, what Kier said recently was that his two big things were economy and immigration, got a sort of immigration. Well, that wasn't in the list of fighting. No, no. So that's where it gets a little bit confusing. Again, presumably, if you were a brutal business person, you'd say having a list of priorities also tells you what you're not prioritizing. I mean, otherwise it's not a priority.
You have to be honest about, okay, so what is it that they're not prioritizing that another government might prioritize implicitly in those five? Because education's not listed. Asperation. Asperation. So asperation just includes everything. Then it's not really a list of priorities. But I think the point about the missions is that they will cover different policy areas from different departments. So it's not a priority list, really.
Now, the mission led government is just a different way of thinking about government. Now, one of the key people on this is Pat McFadden who's working away putting this together now. So I don't think we've definitely not heard the last of the missions. Okay. The point you're making, let's just take the first one. And the other point that came from our meeting with these business guys was that they didn't love the budget.
And I think that it's interesting to me the way that the farmers, and we said right on the day, didn't we, that this farmers think could become problematic or big campaign going on that. And actually, I think in terms of business, the national insurance changes are provoking. It seems to me quite a lot of angst and grief. But just on the growth mission, so we're, yes, we had these figures last week. The basically the economy grew by 0.1% over the first three months of a labor government.
You can't blame labor for that. That's taking on the economy. However, when you look at the current figures, this is about global kind of stagnation, not just the UK. But the seven G seven countries, US is top 0.7 France 0.4 Canada is in the kind of 0.25 Germany 0.2 Japan 0.2 UK 0.1 Italy 0. So that indicates the scale of the challenge.
And I've always thought the big challenges given the last 10 years in which basically the US has gone from being almost on par with Europe in terms of its GDP and its GDP for the two now being certainly 25, 30% larger.
The real challenge is how are they really expecting, if they're going to be the fastest green G seven to be growing faster than the US economy, with everything we know about, US natural resources, US taxes, US entrepreneurial ability, US Silicon Valley concentrations, etc. Rachel reason she did the budget, she called it a budget for growth. But actually, what did most of the people in that room understand about the budget? It was the taxes we're going up to pay for the health service. Right.
So the other thing is that the budget is one of the missions. So I think there was an understanding the health service needs more investment alongside reform, so they get it. But I think that what I'm hearing more and more is actually they want to see the detailed plan for growth, which is, is that about innovation? Is that about AI? Is that about planning? Is that about infrastructure? Exactly. And this is something we've talked about a lot.
And this is where, without getting too much in micro detail, I think one way of framing it is that the Tony Blair Institute and Tony Blair spent almost three years before the selection, writing their sort of project 2025. They're kind of manifesto for a new labor government. And the way that Tony Blair would imagine growth happening, which oddly is actually not very different from the way William Hague would have seen growth happening, is huge emphasis on technology and AI.
And so they celebrated Richie Sue Nux' investment in supercomputers, money for batteries, etc. Secondly, more globalization, they would have been much more in favour of Tony Blair of more movement of people between the EU and the UK, closer links with the European Union.
And he's also very interested, Tony Blair, in the ways in which you could get the economy going by freeing up the rules around things like pension funds to provide more investment into startup British companies and create more of a risk appetite and more energy, British investments etc. Against him is this man who has now taken over as the chief of staff. And the interesting thing about the new chief of staff that is that... Morgan McSweeney. Yeah, who? You can against us.
You pull, I mean, interesting. You pull me up to this. I was talking about Morgan McSweeney with this large group and you said to the group, how many of you here have heard of Morgan McSweeney and almost no hands went up. So we can't assume even amongst our lessons everybody's got it, but just remind people, this is the guy that pushed out Sue Gray who was the chief of staff and this is the guy who basically ran the labor campaign. He's from a political side.
He did this stuff, which I keep praising him and barking and he's now right at the center of it. Now he is seen as more of a kind of centrist, old-fashioned blue collar labor guy who has expressed some frustration with the more new labor globalization tech stuff, which he sees as a little bit maybe out of touch with the real concerns of Redwall voters. Yeah, but I'm not sure that's right.
I think he understands that the reason why Peter Carl was given this job of technology AI and I think we'd like to hear more Peter Carl, but talking to him soon is because they do understand the importance of AI to growth. And AI by the way is also inside the health mission. Very interesting by the way, I think we've got Google coming up as a sponsor and I've just reading up on them. So this is interesting.
Google's innovation are already demonstrating the use that cases of AI in addressing challenges, including delivering on the government's fond of missions. And why do policy goals across the UK? So they know what the fire missions are. They know what the fire missions are. So I think that's a good sign, Rory. That's a good sign. Let me make a kind of boring policy point here, which I guess I've made before, but I just want to reinforce.
The problem with relying on technology, AI robotics, nanotechnology to transform government is that it's not just about what the technology can do. It's about the many ways in which the system will resist it. The classic example of this is there's basically no reason why we should have any drivers on our tube trains go around the world. There are underground systems that don't have drivers. Why do we have drivers on tube trains?
Not because the technology doesn't exist because the unions rejected it. Another example, I remember in Cumbria trying to convince GPs to use video conferencing in order to see patients who were elderly and wouldn't move in and GPs responding. It's just as easy for us if the patients come into the clinic. And then I said, what is change that? A bit, but not completely, as you will have discovered.
I mean, I, again, you know, when I say to doctors, they often say, well, we've embraced the telephone. Well, that's been around since the 19th century and they've embraced it relatively recently. So the point I suppose I'm trying to make is that we underestimate the fact that often the barrier to the adoption technology isn't what the tech can do. It's the willingness of institutions to accept it.
People barriers to taking it up, people being concerned, sometimes unnecessarily about risk and health. So they're the question is, do you think this is a government that is going to take risks, be radical and force tech through when there's opposition? Well, if they don't, then they're not going to succeed. And if they don't succeed, that is going to be a big, big, big deal because where does the country go if a progressive labor government doesn't succeed?
Does it go to Kemi Badenock or does it actually go to something even more extreme? And the one thing I think Morgan Smith really absolutely does understand is that the policy has to meet the scale of the challenge. And if you take things like the challenges facing health and the cost and the choice that you have to make between whether everybody can have everything or whether you have to make really blunt, difficult choices, I think you definitely get us that.
And I think they do have a sense that AI, the tech stuff, I get, I think, I think I'll tell you a point about the tube trains, but I think you're looking here at some really big changes that can be delivered across the health sector and across the education sector. So that's the kind of stuff that we're looking at, which I don't think is yet a big enough part of the debate. Rachel Reeves did, I don't know if you read her a mansion house speech.
Now normally a mansion house speech, you remember we taught a lot about her maize lecture, but the mansion house speech kind of came and went. And they're usually very big deals. So to remind people of the chance that turns out everybody works, white, tight, and tells us, that's been stopped. That's been stopped. 86, thank God. But I remember the chancellor did not have to wear white tines. I did not wear white tines. A Gordon Brown's mansion house speeches were very, very famous.
Yeah. Just remind us a little bit about how big they were because I seemed to, you must have been involved in the way in which I got the size and the amount of. The thing is your response were quite famous. Exactly. If you're the chancellor, the maize lecture has become a big thing. The budget is obviously huge thing, the spending review is a huge thing, but the mansion house speech is a very, very, very big thing. And it's where you set strategic course.
Now the big news in Rachel Reeves speech, I think, was this what she called the biggest pension reform in decades. And you were saying recently, you don't have a sense of which countries this government is looking at. Are they looking at Scandinavia or what? Yeah. She very specifically said we want to follow what has been done in Australia and Canada, where these pension schemes have been brought together and made into mega funds.
So we have 86 in this country, local government pension pots, which she wants to bring together in six, which can then invest far more on a bigger scale, hopefully in our economy.
But so for example, she pointed out that some of the biggest, just last week, Canadian pension fund, the public sector pension investment board, brought for one and a half billion, the company that owns Aberdeen Glasgow and Southampton airports, the Ontario Teachers pension plan, owns already Bristol Airport and Birmingham Airport. So you know, these are pension funds from Canada, Australia that are basically buying up huge chunks of British infrastructure. It's amazing.
I remember when I first met those Canadian pension funds and teachers funds in particular, how they come. And it's certainly you suddenly find in these financial meetings in London, you will have found this too, along with the guys from BlackRock and famous hedge funds. One of the smartest, most powerful people in the room will be the guy from the Canadian teachers fund. Yeah. And it said that that will be interesting. So that and again, that will be, will that be challenged?
She brings a bunch of pension reform. So the problem on it is this that in effect for understandable reasons, government made pension investments in the UK, pretty risk of us. And the idea was that they would only go into instruments, which were going to be pretty low risk play return. Well, part of her message is that we've become too risk of us.
Absolutely. So, Conservative governments talked about, but never achieved the idea that these pension funds can take more risk and invest more in equities in particular. More upside, more downside. And the argument is that because it's a 20, 30 year investment you're making off from the pension fund, you can afford to take more risk because the activities market saw itself out. But they never really got it done.
And they never really got it done because you can imagine the counter-argument, which is a risk of us argument about pension. So let's see, if she does it, that will be really interesting because it's something that the Tories talked about for 14 years and never mentioned it. Jeremy Hunt talked about it in his last mansion, last piece. Yeah. And we talked about our culture and the media landscape. Is it because we're all talking about Trump at the whole time at the moment?
But I find it really interesting that the speech came. It was live on the news and all that. But I think we would do another business audience today and say, what was the big news out of right to Racial Rees Mansion, her speech? I think we get pretty low turn out. Maybe also comes from, maybe to be honest, the way in which she speaks, the way in which she's speech delivered on the way in which it's communicated may make it more difficult to land it.
So remember, the point is that you would have had a comms challenge here. However important changes the rules of how pension funds operate at the margin and whether they can put 0.5% into equities or 4% to equities. Sounds pretty obstruous and boring if you're running a television news item or a newspaper item. So you presume it's a big deal though. It's a very, very big deal. But unless you get the comms right, it could sound a bit boring.
So the question is, is the number 10 machine good enough at saying, listen, this sounds quite boring, but this could change an enormous amount. And the way you do it is you'd say, listen, if I was pitching it, I'd say we developed amazing things in the UK universities from graphene through to AI and they've all gone off to Silicon Valley and all the money's being made in West Coast.
Because in the West Coast, there are venture funds that take risk and the problem in the UK is we're far too conservative and we're not taking risk with these businesses. So Britain could be, the pitch would be leading the world in tech investment if we free up these venture funds. And then I think you pitch the story around the tech, not around that. Yeah, yeah.
And then you make that part of, and this is where this is all heading in a way, and this will come, you make that part of your big 10 year growth plan. And that I think is what business wants to hear. Because at the moment, there are a bit pissed off about national insurance, there are a bit pissed off about the workers' right stuff. Both of which can be defended, but they've got to keep making the argument as part of long-term plan for Britain. Well, great.
Well, so many other things to talk about, but people are interested. The next episode of the podcast will be Question Time, and in it, we'll be able to get more into Farmers and Agriculture and we'll be able to talk about Kierstarma meeting Sieging Ping at the G20. So some really exciting issues if people want to listen to Question Time, where we're going to focus on China, farmers and much more. Cheers!