457. Is Trump Planning Regime Change?

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Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me Anister Campbell. And Rory, s let's start with George Leighton in Leeds. Please could We have a little explainer on what's going on in Venezuela. Is the US gearing up to invade? There's very little in the news about it other than the targeting of drug boats.

From what I'm hearing, says Georgian Leeds, the Trump administration is framing Maduro as the leader of the cartels. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that. Just wanted to get your thoughts on what's going on and how this could affect the wider region.

Well l let's start with Venezuela. If if people want more detail on Venezuela, we actually did a podcast looking in depth at Venezuela, but of course Oil rich Latin American state are famously associated with Ugo Chavez, a general who led a populist revolution. Now run by President Maduro, who on all accounts stole the last election and has created an authoritarian state.

Big focus for American administrations, partly because there are hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States, partly in this case because Marco Rubio, the section of state, has long been committed to the idea of getting rid of the Venezuelan government. Fast forward. The US hit a Venezuelan boat, blew it up, destroyed it, and has now done it a number of other times. So a number of these boats have now been destroyed.

As we said at the time, it is a sign of a Trump government that is no longer remotely interested in international legal guidance. The American government has been pushing the boundary on international law since it began using drone strikes against terrorists, but at least when it did that it had congressional authorization to do it.

And the congressional authorisation was to protect the United States against terrorist attack and that justified them using drones in Pakistan. In this case These are vessels carrying drugs.

There's no clarity in fact where these vessels are going. It seemed from Rubio's statement that one of these vessels was actually going towards Venezuela. So they're killing foreign nationals in foreign territory, on the ground they're carrying drugs, to push it to the extreme that literally nothing would prevent them sending a drone over Britain, blowing up a bunch of people in the British streets and claiming they're drug runners and they're taking them out.

and they provide no evidence whatsoever of who these people are, there's no legal process at all. Along with that The military have now the US military have now deployed eight warships several navy surveillance planes, M Q nine Reapers, which is a type of attack drone, and an attack submarine to the region. They've beefed up their F thirty five fighter fleet in Panama,

There are thousands of US Marines now there. A fifty million dollar bounty has been announced on Maduro's head. And people in Venezuela are absolutely convinced that this is a prelude to regime change. And Marco Rubio is often hinting at this. The idea would be either To do what they did in Iran, which is literally send in missiles and just kill Maduro and his palace, or send in the Marines and abduct him in order to generate regime change.

Why? Well, very strange thing to do, given that we know that Trump is very suspicious of regime change and these kinds of interventions. One theory is that it's because he's trying to expel hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants from the States and he's using an executive order which is designed for getting rid of illegal aliens at a time of war.

And therefore in order to justify his expulsion, he needs to declare war on Venezuela to do it. And he's also thereby creating two of his favourite dividing lines. One of them is Again i essentially what he's saying is look are you a are you for dealing with the war on drugs or are you not?

Because these are people who are bringing in narcotics into our country, they're part of the drugs trade, therefore we're entitled to take them out. Are you with us or are you against us? And that's basically where he likes to be. And then the second issue is this thing called TPS which is Temporary Protected Status. So you've got over a quarter million Venezuelans in the States, uh and they're not winning everything in the courts. And one of the most shocking things that happened this week

Not directly related to this, but was the the house of a judge who had stood in the way of one of Trump's decisions going up in literally going up in flames. Terrifying the the judge with her family still in the house, apparently, this house literally going up in flames. Um, so this is about basically signalling another dividing line because of course a lot of these people came in during the Biden regime.

So it allows him basically to say, We are dealing with problems that we've inherited and he then adds the point, and I said I would. So he's sort of giving himself the cover by saying, I said I'd do this. when I was running for office. I'm now doing it and basically the details of whether I need approval, whether it's leading or not, you're either with me or against me. But I I'm really beginning to sense how much um people's giving up on basic ideas of law

the rule of law, right? I had a friend who's a Harvard graduate from a liberal family, an American, came over to see me last week and she said to me, Rory, why are you so upset with what he's doing? Because actually there have been reports that there was some cocaine floating around in the water after they hit the boat, so they were guilty. And I'm thinking, what the hell has happened? I mean, all of us were supposed to be brought up from childhood.

to say, I can't go into the streets in Britain shoot someone with no evidence, no arrest warrant, no legal process.

and then say, well anyway, some drugs were found on the thing, so it's all justified, right? The fact that a liberal Harvard educated person is now beginning to buy into that narrative It it effectively means there is no limit at all on what they do abroad and at home, and I I'd love to do this with you maybe in more detail next week or the week after is is to look at what's happening with the ICE. Hundred and sixty billion dollars has now been voted for immigration enforcement.

the budget of this ice body, this crazy immigration. Yeah. It's it's higher than any m annual, higher than any military except the US and China annually is the new calculation. These Agents are masters of completely unaccountable, no civil cases can be brought against them, basically no criminal cases can be brought against them because that would require Trump's Department of Justice to go after them. advertising with full on white nationalist

mid nineteenth century stuff. One of their advertising posters represents the white American angel with a gr group of settlers chasing off Native Americans off their land with Protect the homeland, protect the heritage. Wow, yeah. And I mean I'm I'm trying to spend a lot less time on social media, with some success, I have to say.

Um but whenever I do go on there you're seeing relentless videos of I saw one the other day of literature two y and you've got to be careful'cause you never know what's fake and what's not. But it was two people I think in Poland, where he says they're at war, they're at war in Poland, which managed to run a very successful marathon uh the weekend with tens of thousands of people taking part in this war.

One of whom suddenly just got out a pepper spray and sprayed him in the face. Lots of people just being dragged out of buildings. And I think we talked about Kemi Badenok on the main podcast. I think She made a mistake in saying that this deportation plan that she's talking about is going to be modelled on ice. I th I d I I don't feel that Britain is quite in the place to accept that this sort of stuff. And the other sort of Trumpian crossover to our politics was Kent County Council this week.

uh saying they're gonna have to put up cancel tax because hey, guess what? It turns out that all this wasted money that they said they were gonna find, they've not been able to find it. Th that's quite a jump from to from ice going back and farage. saying we're going to model our approach on what Trump has done. Ice and don't.

Right. Well life is more complicated. So j just to reinforce why you're completely right on ICE and why nobody should ever vote for any party in Britain that was modelling itself on ICE. They are now on a recruitment drive, and to get people in, they are recruiting people who are excited by videos of ICE agents. Throwing people at the back of vans going around with masks on.

they are now arresting people who are turning up for their legal hearings. One of the easiest ways that they get people is that they're turning up for their asylum cases. They're targeting people on the base of their IRS records. In other words, if you are somebody who's come to the United States who's doing what you should do, turning up to your court hearings and paying your tax.

you're now being particularly targeted by the ISIS agents. And as you say, it's the theatre of cruelty. They're videoing everything that they're doing. Yeah. Putting it up. Yeah. I guess the other big thing happening in the States this week was the government shutdown. Melissa Bell

wants to know what we think of the government shutdown and who do we blame. Melissa, why do we have to blame all the time? Why can't we just analyse this from a non blame perspective? Well first thing, big plug for Restless Politics US. So Katike and uh Anthony Scaramucci did a good show on the details of this lockdown and the way that A lot of this is about Democrats trying to protect Medicare. Yeah.

and Trump weaponizing it and saying they've shut down the government in order to help illegals access the health system and no rational conversation about what the costs are of stripping out Medicare and driving people into emergency rooms instead. And another shout out, uh fantastic analysis on Russell vote, done by the New York Times Daily Case. Oh, I read that, yeah. Yeah, the Officer Management Budget Guy. Extraordinary account, this kind of man who was part of Trump's first administration.

tried to do a lot of the things first time round, didn't succeed, went into the wilderness, spent four years brooding and working with Project twenty twenty five to develop his entire legal strategy so that he came in with Trump two. Just firing on all cylinders with all the executive orders ready to go, all the legal moves ready to go, and Trump's been putting out videos. of him as the grim reaper.

uh walking through Washington. Yeah. No no I mean I I I think the the the blame game thing though that that the question highlights is I it is a big part of what's wrong with American politics right now. And we've you know, we've got something similar here, but I I think there it's on a different level. Uh we talked last week about, you know, Trump had the meeting with the Democrat leaders from Congress and immediately put out this AI video of them ridiculing them basically.

Um so th you know, they're blaming uh, Trump and saying he doesn't want the government to carry on'cause it means it gives him an excuse to cut budget. And he does, he talks about, you know, these are I call them democrat layoffs, they're democrat layoffs. They're causing it. So it's it's absolutely as th this is a consequence as well as a cause of polarization. The way that Trump talks about these it's almost as if all government spending is bad.

um, unless it's something that's one of his little pet projects. But and of course there's the other thing you've got so many times when he was on the record when B Baden was president of him basically saying if the government ever shuts down, you've got to blame the president because but of course now that it's him doing it, it's very, very different. Okay, Alice, a question here for you from Alice Palmer. And I'd love to hear from you on this.

What are Macron's options? Now his prime minister has resigned after twenty six days. Can you give us a brief explain on what the hell is going on in French politics and try to keep people up to date? We did interview on leading.

uh one of the the longer serving one of Macron's Prime Ministers, Gabrielle Latal. But now we seem and then we we also interviewed another one of his Prime Ministers Michel Barnier but At the speed at which they're going, it's quite difficult for leading to interview every French prime minister at the moment. Twenty twenty four, twenty five days ago. And people thought he was making progress because he wasn't announcing a government.

And and he sorry, he was appointed after the resignation of the man who wanted to introduce the cuts and he said I can't get my forty four billion euros of cuts through, I'm resigning. Correct. He he well but also the parliament wouldn't pass it, so he he had to go.

And so Lacorne is basically thrown in the towel before the vote because he's basically worked out he's not gonna get it through. But he's why why can you see this in advance? I I don't even get this. He must have taken the job knowing that this was the deal. I mean Macron must be pretty annoyed with him. The guy took the job knowing the m the electoral mathematics, knowing what these parties were twenty five, twenty four days, whatever, going round talking to all the parties.

trying to get them to sign up to something. And he obviously thought at certain points he could and at other points that he couldn't. It seems that the re the the the kind of right wing, the more traditional right wing party, not the Le Pen party, Pull the plug on him fairly late on.

and he realised he wasn't going to get it through. But the point is it's actually it will go down in history as the the shortest serving government ever because he didn't name a government during that period. He was obviously, I think Holding back the naming of a cabinet. So that w if and when he got to the point of thinking he might be able to make a deal, his cabinet would form part of that picture. And then what happened is this guy Bruno Rutaillot pulled out

Um, and that's when he realized that his jigsaw was falling apart. So he goes to Macron and says, Look, this isn't gonna work. I'm really sorry. Uh and the p and the fundamental problem is that you've now got these three separate blocks in the parliament. You've got the far left, you've got the centrist, and you've got the far right.

And they're not giving each other anything. And and you can't make a majority because they're roughly a third each. So y you you need at least two of them or or half of one of them. the parties that you're n of of which you're not a member. Now, Macron has clearly got we said this when he appointed Beirut. I think I said look, he maybe have t has to take the risk

of appointing somebody from the left. He's tended to try to go on the right. He's all about fiscal responsibility and cutting spending and getting the deficit under control, is that why? Partly that, but also I think he just hates the left he hates the the sort of Mélenchon left so much. um added to which he probably thinks he can never agree with them. Right. But he's now really only got

Le Corneau will be near the end of the forty eight hours he's been given to try again. Oh. So Macron has said to him I get where you're coming from, but I'm not accepting your resignation.

Try again, I'll give you to give you two days. And and could I don't understand why it's not gonna work. Why does Macron not take responsibility and try to form this government himself? Why is he delegating all this to his prime ministers? Because that's the job of the Prime Minister. The only option he's then got left after that. it's gonna become increasingly inevitable if he loses them again and again and literally can't do anything.

The demand for him to hold the election will be almost irresistible. It may be. Um, this does go back and fair play to you, you said it right at the start when he'd had the snap election, that you thought it was madness. Now uh he obviously thought there was a chance that the country would face up to the p to the warning that if you don't elect a decent strong government now, we are in Le Bordel. Mhm. Absolutely in the mess. And he took that gamble. It didn't work.

And every time since then, I think Essentially it's become when I did this fundraiser the other day on the back of um the the the killings in Manchester, somebody asked the question, Is Britain becoming ungovernable? To which my answer was very strongly no. Britain is not ungovernable. Um but you get the feeling that France actually is right now. So it may it may be that is where we end up.

Uh and that of course is an absolute gift to the far right. What one thing that some people say is that it's to do with the design of the Republic and the Constitution. Yeah. And that this whole constitutional model as mad of this sort of super powerful president who's completely detached from the realities of Parliament.

But w what would be actually involved in creating a sixth republic? You'd have to you'd have to say that the constitution is broken and that we're gonna get a new one. And and is Macron tempted to do that, or any of these parties tempted to do that? I d I don't think Macron would be allowed to do that. Uh I think his

I think he's and the and the extraordinary thing of course is he's still going out there in the public and making big s statements on foreign policy in particular. But no, this isn't this is an absolute mess and uh it's quite hard. To see how he gets out of it. I think just having another Prime Minister unless he does something very, very bold and does say I go left, I go right, but

And he's not gonna do it. He's he's not gonna do it. And it it's heartbreaking because it means that at exactly the time when Europe needs to be stepping up in the age of Trump and speaking up for the rule of law and sorting out its defence and security, we've got

a very, very weak Macron who doesn't seem to have the right kind of relationship with the German Chancellor and somehow You know, Starmer's obviously made a lot of positive steps, but we simply do not have that sense of kind of unified momentum UK, EU big grand vision of how they work in this world. A new prime minister, the New elections, which will probably produce a similar result, or nuclear option, is he basically says, Hands up, time's up, gotta go.

And then heaven knows what happens. He'd probably do the elections first, wouldn't he, before he resets. Okay, final final one, um before the break. Jill Hart, Trip Plus member, Melbourne, Australia. Hi, Rory and Alistair. Massive fan of your work.

just finished watching The Hack, and was pleasantly surprised to see Alistair's cameo. For an Aussie, who was aware of the News of the World scandal but not much else about the hacking, could also give us a rundown on what happened to him in relation to the hacking scandal, and then Phil Davis. Trip Plus member from North Wales, following on from Alice's surprise cameo appearance in ITV's The Hack, Leverson two, yes or no.

If not, why not? There we are, Alistair. I think the fact that Phil Davies is a TripPlus member and you just skipped over the name of the place that he comes from in in North Wales. Why was that, Roy? Why did you Skip over Penman Mauer Can't imagine Alistair can't imagine. Anyway, uh at least at least at least I tried there, Phil. Um yeah the hack. If you watch the hack.

Oh no. Tell us about it. It's quite good. It's it's so it's a dramatisation of the phone hacking scandal and also the murder of Daniel Morgan, which was this very long running unsolved murder. So it's looking at sort of press illegality, press and police corruption. Um and the the main the star, other than my very very brief caveos myself, the star is David Tennant as Nick Davis, the Guardian journalist. And Toby Jones was

plays Alan Rustbridger, the guardian editor, which is really is really, really interesting. It shows you what a great actor can do'cause he doesn't look remotely like Alan Russbridger. Alan Rusbridger is taller than I. I'm Toby Jones is very short. And and yet he captures him somehow. uh, really well. But I think I watched it in a c you know, it's it's quite a few hours, but I watched it with Fiona and

I got I got quite angry by the end. My role, funny enough, um is this very, very it's one line in my diaries that the Jack Thorne, the writer wanted me to to to deliver. Okay. And the line is when it was when Stephen Byers was um on the receiving end, uh our transport minister.

was on the receiving end of the kind of tabloid treatment over an a affair. And I uh wrote this line in my diary. It's like when they they set out to kill you And then when they've killed you, they get a bit bored and they're missing something, so they try and kill the corpse.

Okay. So that was my line. So David Tennant marches in as as uh Nick Davis and then I deliver this line. So you're you're acting with David Tennant. I mean that's the you've you've made it co my co star yes. You've made it to the very big big stuff, yeah. Yeah. But funny enough, we had an example of this this weekend.

Well, are you acting with a a major of the of them being wanting to kill the corpse. Oh, right. Which was Angela Rayner. Angela Rayner has been, you know, driven out of office over the stuff to do with her her stamp duty. And yet several of our newspapers led at the weekend on this complete total non story about the fact that her boyfriend was spotted in in her car, her government car.

Um but you know, it that that sort of hammered home the point that even though they've managed to sear off, they want to kind of So uh yeah, what I found ang anger making was that it brought it back. I mean the question was, you know, what happened to me? I mean, I was m one of many, many, many, many people whose phone was hacked. um and got some money for it and what have you. And I've still got another case going on with another newspaper.

Um but the scale of it and I think what made me angry by the end of it was so the th this is pretty high level crime. Okay. It's pretty serious crime that they were doing and they knew they were doing.

And and the crime for international listeners is that they basically were often Calling your voicemail, guessing what your PIN code was, listening to your voicemail messages and using that to write stories attacking you, which could be very, very personal'cause obviously what's in your voicemail could be from almost anyone. And and and they f they first really got onto it through when they star the royals started to realise that things that very few people knew.

Um so and and the thing is I got I got damages even though they it was impossible to know whether there were stories from my voicemails or not. So it was the fact of it. Right. But the point is they knew it was going on. It was happening on clearly on an industrial scale. And yet they blamed it on one rogue reporter. Right. And the only person I think I'm right of any seniority who got

properly punished as it were, was Andy Coulson who went to jail. And he went to jail really I s or he he he became a high profile case. largely because he ended up working for David Cameron. Right. And so but then at the end there's these, you know, it ends with these graphics on this thing and it points out that Rebecca Brooks, for example, who was the Uh Use the World Editor. Use the World Editor at the time and also sort of you know senior executive in the organization.

She resigned and got an eleven million pound payout. And then within a year was back in an even more senior job. And a c and so you have the whole the Murdoch fa the Murdochs there and it leaves a very, very bad taste. But unlike Jack Thorne's adolescence, Which colour went whoosh and just m sparked a massive national debate. I don't feel this one has. Why? Because the press don't want to be talking about it. So the question Levison two, is there any way back for it?

There should be. This is about corrupt relations between the press and the police, but I suspect that, you know, Keir Starmosos. shows no indication that he wants to do because he senses that the media are really against any form of regulation and will punish anyone who tries to push ahead with them. Um, but listen, it's very it's uh it's a very good watch and uh it will bring back a lot of um

memories for a lot of people and and I think we'll anger a lot of people. And and plug as we go to the break, um you've done a great series on Rupert Murdoch. Indeed. Mini series, four listeners, subscribe to the Restless Politics Plus, become a member and you can hear you discussing this

Extraordinary man, Rupert Murdoch, who I guess is now in his nineties. Um and it is yeah, I think people enjoy it. We're we're trying to we both try to be dispassionate. Um, but I think it's fair to say we both got quite strong views about his influence on the world. I mean I I think he's mesmerizing. I I as I've often said on the show, I've really struck by how even before I became a politician, he kind of found me in New York and drove me into his newsroom and sat me down with the editors and

He seemed like a real newspaper man. He seemed to really want to challenge his editors get to the story. Um what what are a couple of things that have struck you fresh about him in making these series? Well obviously I've I I read a lot um before we put it together and I mean a lot a lot of memories came back to be absolutely His Australian background is important. His father's a very important figure in his life. His father is I mean, Murdoch is not a self made man.

Yes he made a huge thing of himself, but he was given a pretty good start in life. I mean, for example, when he first came to to to Europe, uh, his dad thought it'd be really nice if they could pop in and see the Pope. Well not many people get to do that. Likewise I think uh his first visit to America, Rupert Murdoch met the then president. So, you know, he's he's operated in those levels a lot of his life.

Presumably, given how old he is, he's met popes and presidents seventy years ago. And and and I think Michael and I both came to the conclusion that if you if you sort of analyse power. I mean power's a very subjective thing, okay?

So you can we can have a debate about whether the Prime Minister of Denmark is more or less powerful than the Prime Minister of Sweden. We can have a debate about whether the British Prime Minister is more or less powerful than the Secretary of State of the United States. But so it's subjective, okay. But I reckon if you go through the last seventy years and give a score to Rupert Murdoch's power in that year.

Over the seventy years I think he's kind of he's up in a pretty high place in a global league table. Um but w spoiler alert, presumably one of the really big moments though is when he thinks he has the power to stop Trump and it turns out he doesn't quite

Well that is very'cause when we get on to Trump, which is, you know, towards the end of the series, we have lots about his his relationships with Thatcher, his relationship obviously with my old boss Tony Blair and and how we kind of manage that. We go in some detail into the famous visit that we made to Australia.

Tony to deliver a speech to all his lec his editors for which we got quite a lot of flack. We don't gloss over any of the criminal stuff and the phone hacking, what have you and but w once we get on to kind of Michael's area of expertise, which is the relationship with Trump. Uh you know, in Michael a bit like Trump, Michael speaks in very black and white terms. And he basically thinks that Murdoch absolutely despises Donald Trump but

And it's the presidents you've got to deal with it. And amazing, isn't it? Because that's the moment at which we think this is the man who makes or breaks presidents, this is the man who controls Fox News. And Murdoch must have felt if I think this guy's an idiot I can stop him becoming president. What happens there is that actually Trump becomes a more powerful player inside Fox News than Murdoch. And that is Murdoch kind of feeling the sense of losing control of what he's creating.

Um anyway it's f I hope people enjoy it'cause you know, I mentioned Murloc to a couple of my daughter's friends recently and they didn't really know I was talking about. The answer is this is The the next succession. Anyone who likes watching succession should be listening to a miniseries. Yeah, we do make quite a few references to Logan Roy, it has to be said. Very good.

Anyway, if people want to have a listen to that, just go to the restispolitics.com. You have a free trial, and um, if you like it, you can sign up. Let's take a break.

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Welcome back to the Rest of the World It's Question Time, me Alexander Campbell. And with me Rory Stewart.

Now this episode is brought to you by Google. And in particular, Google's AI model, which is Gemini two point five pro, which has been used by the government's incubator for AI to build a new tool. for the government, which is called Extract. It's a system which is helping local councils process planning applications more quickly. Extract uses Gemini's advanced abilities to understand text, reason about images, use tools and more.

Turn old planning documents, including blurry maps and handwritten notes, into clear digital data, speeding up decision making timelines for council staff. So Google have asked us if AI like that had been available during your time in politics, where and how could it have helped to make faster, more informed decisions? Well, I've tempted to

My old friend and colleague Peter Hyman he wrote a very funny substat last week about party conference speeches and he was he was reminding us of the the use of fax machines. I mean we used to do everything on fax. So I think it would have been incredibly useful. Let's just say you had three different people working on a speech.

Now you know more about this than I do. If I took three different drafts from three d very different people who'd all been given the same brief, okay, would I be able to use this then to say, Okay, what I want this speech to do is A B C Can you merge these three speeches for me?

And cut it down to four thousand words. Would they be able to do that? Yeah, they would. They would. They they do it very slickly. Yeah. Very, very slickly. I mean, there's some hallucinations, so you need to think of it more as a kind of bright graduate assistant. I mean you have to check the thing at the end. But yeah.

Um listen, couple couple of examples I thought about from my own time in government. One of them is I was the environment minister doing flooding. And one of the things that AI can now do very, very powerfully is begin to predict flooding events with more accuracy. And that's really important because

If you can get support to communities before a flood happens, it's far more cost efficient than trying to do the emergency stuff after the flood happens. So that's one thing. Second thing is I was the prisons minister and in prisons we had over a hundred different databases which didn't speak to each other. Bringing together those hundred databases so that you can begin to have thoughtful conversation as straightforward as

You know, what would be involved in my saying we're gonna provide um financial support for prisoners to do a degree? I need to know how many people are graduates or not, right? taking all this massive pool of data that we have about prisons that's never integrated

can really help on uh managing reoffending, providing education, reducing violence. When I was up in Liverpool for the Labour Party conference I was I was talking to somebody who works for one of the Current cabinet, who said that this current member of the cabinet, he likes everything to be on the screen. And the civil service is finding it really hard to get out of the red box Syndrome. You know the system where you'll know this is a minister, you have the red box.

ac mae'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r what they need to see overnight, what they need signed off as well. And even the sequence in which it goes into your box is very important. I mean this is a joke in yes minister you always have to kinda look at the bottom of the box first, yeah. So a list minister does doesn't doesn't want a red box, wants everything.

Online. Well I to be honest, I didn't really want a red box. I mean, they're they're these huge, unwieldy things. They're plenty heavy as well. Lined with lead. Yeah. Either to defend you from an a a Fenian bullet or so they can sink when you drop them into the Thames. Oh, we're such a marvellous country. We're so modern. Uh but that but pretend AI would this thing would help

that office transition to the minister who wants it done in a different way. The point is that all these um you know productivity benefits are not abstract. You can already see it. Extra, this Google platform is already there to help cut planning backlogs and workers and businesses across the UK are already saving time with AI tools and training. It's already been tested with councils in Westminster, Hillingdon, Nuneaton and Exeter.

So it's an example of public sector innovation, one of the many ways Google's AI is fueling the UK's growth and transformation. Find out more at go dot gl e forward slash AI works. Question

from Jess L from London. Reform has five MPs, the Greens have four. And with the Green Party conference this weekend, the Green Party leader, Zack Plansky, was the only party leader not interviewed on the BBC, Laura Kay, and zero airtime. About the Green Conference. How on earth can the BBC try and claim with any type of sincerity that it is impartial, blatant bias and not giving the Green leaders any opportunity at all? Added to that

Zack is the only party leader that is both Jewish and Mancunian, and so also given recent events, wouldn't he have been an obvious person to speak to? The answer to the last part is definitely yes. Although he has a very strong pro Palestinian line. I mean that they've got a point because the the BBC and others in the media argument for why they give so much coverage to reform.

Is that they're doing well in the polls. Well, the Greens are doing reasonably well in the polls, and particularly since he's I must give a shout out to, am I allowed to mention, the new statesman. They had some amazing data. I'll give it to you, Roy. Somebody did a an analysis of one point five million mentions of MPs in the media. Of parties and MPs in the media. Reform. have had seventy thousand seven hundred and thirty two mentions per MP. Okay. The Liberal Democrats have had

six hundred and forty five per MP. Less than one percent of the mentions that Farage gets. I think on the Greens there is Lo this Sak Polanski, I hadn't noticed that he wasn't getting much coverage on conventional media because he certainly gets a lot on social media Make sure you watch our party party broadcast tonight. I think you'll like it. You see? Smart that. So so this was part that used to poll two percent, now regularly polling about ten percent, got about nine hundred counsellors.

four MPs which was a big breakthrough in the election. We interviewed Caroline Lucas on the show, which I think people enjoyed. And we will I hope be interviewing Zach Polansky soon. We felt we are the reason I was in touch with him is why haven't we got you on the podcast yet?

And he said, Have you checked your diary of late? And I'd I'd completely forgotten we'd arrange we'd already arranged it, so we are getting him on. I thought his conference I d I can't pretend I watched lots of it, but I sort of went and watched bits of it. There was a lot of energy, no doubt about that.

When I was a journalist, w honestly I feel bad about this now looking back, we used to cover the greens as a complete joke. We used to literally have photographers going round just taking pictures of sandals. and f see how many of them were sandals and carried Hessian bags and had sort of wacky haircuts. I don't know not good. Whereas I think what's interesting about the Greens is And this isn't just in the UK. This happened in this has happened in Germany and other parts of Europe.

Their main message is move away from the environment. And my challenge, I just gotta get to the bottom of this. Um your friend Peter Hyman has talked very well about the way in which he thinks that a lot of the big issues on the American progressive left.

some of the ways in which Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Gaza demonstrations, etc. went alienated a lot of mainstream American opinion. And I guess the Challenge maybe for the Green Party is if they have become the party which has passed a motion designating the Israeli military as an international terrorist organization, if they're leaning hard into key issues, transgender, issues around race,

they may begin to feel to people a little bit like the problems that people had with the progressive American left that it had gone too woke and that it it didn't speak to mainstream opinion. Well he is definitely to the left of um the people he stood against, those who are currently in parliament. But I call me a victim of spin, f heaven forfend the thought. But as a result of his message I did watch his party election broadcast last night.

And I've got to say it was a very effective piece of communication. He's a very good communicator. And he didn't do that stuff. It was all about wealth and inequality. Gotcha. is that you can get a very strong loyal base, but you'd never get above about ten percent. You'd be a party with about ten percent of votes if you went too hard on that. Yeah, I mean look, what's happened is that they they have decided that Labour is moved to the right and they're gonna fill that gap.

Um his whole message, he actually it was filmed in Manchester and it started off with saying this is this is the area where I grew up and when I was growing up, I always felt there was hope. And I think what people are feeling right now, there's no hope. People are running out of hope. But we mustn't. We and he was trying to be positive and the whole time. I don't think he mentioned Keir Starmer or another leader once.

He might have mentioned other parties at one point. And then it all worked through this idea. He had this very powerful piece of communication when it was dark. And he said, you know, up here you've got people sleeping. And you've got people who can't sleep'cause they're worried about their kids or they're worried about they don't have a job and they're worried about whether they can keep their home, whether they can feed their kids, etcetera.

And there are also people sleeping tonight who by the time they've woken up will have made more money on the wealth they already have than everybody who lives in this street and everybody who lives in this area put together. And that was his argument for a wealth. And then he he sort of summed it up with this I thought very effective slogan, make hope normal again. That's very smart. The other thing that's interesting about about leadership and all that.

John Curtis, the polling guy from the BBC, he's we talk a lot about charisma and what it is and why it matters and what have you. The only two leaders in the currently who poll well in relation to charisma are Farage and Palancy. And he has got a very populist side to him. Um so he does project the wealth tax as being able to sort the health service, will give everybody a bright future, education will be fixed, jobs will be plentiful, etcetera. So there is that sort of populist element to it.

But I think what he's doing trying to do is deliberately say And there's a risk to this by the way,'cause some Greens are fighting Lib Dams and Tories in I not least on the environment, which I don't think he even mentioned last night. I could be wrong. But I I listen, I think he's we are gonna get him on the podcast. I think he's very I think he's interesting and He's but he's I think he's aware of the trap that you've talked about. And I don't think he looks to me like he's gonna jump into

Okay, Rory. Um a couple of things before we go to the final question. First of all, is we talked about Czech elections

last week, as we predicted. Babis, the guy who leads the it's so weird, his party s means yes, but it's ANO. It's spelled ANO. He won, uh not with a convincing result. He's gonna have to put together a coalition, but that's gonna be quite significant. And the other big political election, in quotes, was of course Syria, where uh most listened to interviewee, Ahmed Al Shahra,

uh has put together this sort of hybrid parliament. They've elected them in through councils and the people. But it's a it's a positive step. I mean remember when we were there interviewing him, there were many people who believed he'd never hold an election at all, that he was entirely anti Democratic. This is hybrid, but it is about not just getting rid of the former regime loyalists, but also getting rid of the terrorists who were on his side.

and trying to create some of the indirect mechanisms for getting some representation going. So I think it's definitely a step in the right direction. And he still faces all those problems we've talked about, huge problems with curds, huge problems with

Uh the economy, etc etc. Final question. We did a thing recently about the importance of maintaining hope. And I'm gonna ask you, even though it's about her death, Jane Goodall. Well a question here from Tim O'Callan and It points back to the time when we talked last week about people who recently died. He wants to ask if we have any memories or insights. into Jane Goodall. Well, my uh look, I she was extraordinary, so great expert on chimps. I mean my my big memory of her is is um I

was given a an honorary degree in the the University of Paris and she got a degree at the same time. So this is like fifteen years ago. Sorry, what had you done fifteen years ago to deserve an honorary degree from not very much. Go to Eton. Not very much exactly. I got it I got exactly I got it purely for that.

She, on the other hand, got it for fifty, sixty years of distinguished scientific research. So, um I get up on stage, I make my little speech, and I I thought it went quite well. Um, and then I sit down and she stands up and she does a Probably a seventy-five second full imitation of a chimpanzee's mating call down the microphone and the entire room is rising to their feet in kind of standing overshadow. And I realise

I just was not remotely in her league and never will be. Her communication is amazing. We should put in the newsletter a an interview that she's done for Netflix. And it's one of those interviews only to be put out after I've gone. Uh, but she actually addresses the theme that we talked about in relation to the United Nations and the sustainable development goals, which is hope. You have to keep hope and everybody has to have hope in their hearts and we can all make a difference.

And Shaucer talks about her desire that Elon Musk Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping could be put in the first spaceship uh and never come back. Um, so no, she's an amazing woman and um very, very sad that she's died, but yeah, what a legacy. Brilliant. Well, thank you.