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UiPath, the AI everywhere

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foundation of innovation. Welcome

0:49

to The Rest Is Politics Question Time with me, Alistair

0:51

Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Now,

0:53

one of the big stories that we didn't

0:55

cover in the main podcast was the terrorist

0:57

attack in Moscow. So let's start with that,

0:59

Rory. Aaron K. Wilson, what is

1:01

your take on why ISIS K attacked Russia?

1:05

Tim Harries, how will the Moscow concert attack affect the

1:07

war in Ukraine? Did you want to have a go

1:09

at that one? Yeah, well, it's very interesting. I mean,

1:11

I think one thing that maybe

1:13

people haven't focused on enough is that the attackers

1:15

were almost certainly Tajik's from

1:18

Central Asia, so from the little country

1:20

that's on the northern edge of Afghanistan.

1:22

And it's complicated for a number of reasons.

1:24

One is that Tajik seems to

1:26

be increasingly radicalized and involved in terrorist

1:28

attacks around the world. There's

1:31

a lot of activity, partly because

1:33

ISIS is struggling to survive in

1:35

Afghanistan. The Taliban have been pushing

1:37

them back. They've been a kind of rival terrorist group.

1:41

They've been recruiting a lot in Tajikistan. About

1:43

4,000 Tajik's went to join ISIS when

1:46

it had this caliphate

1:48

across the Iraqi-Syrian border. And

1:51

they seem to have been involved in a

1:53

spate of recent attacks, including an attack that

1:55

was filed to attack Cologne Cathedral, Germany, Tacken-Holland.

2:00

And now most recently this attack

2:02

in Moscow. It's

2:04

really complicated. It's

2:07

very complicated because on the one

2:09

hand, there are very close economic

2:11

connections between Russia and Tajikistan. The

2:13

largest Russian non-naval base

2:15

in the world is in Tajikistan.

2:18

There are well over a million Tajikhs

2:20

living in Russia, huge numbers of remittance

2:22

payments going back, people sending

2:25

cash back, families from Russia to Tajikistan.

2:28

But this is likely to lead to

2:30

a big clampdown on

2:32

Tajikhs living in Russia. And

2:34

on the other hand, of course, one of the things

2:37

that may be driving this is because there is quite

2:39

a large Tajik community and because they often feel that

2:41

they're treated as second-class citizens in Russia, it's

2:44

a potential breeding ground for terrorist attacks

2:46

against Russia. I suspect that's one of

2:48

the reasons why they

2:51

displayed yesterday the four guys that they

2:53

arrested. They displayed them

2:55

yesterday in court, surrounded by dozens of

2:57

cameras and they

2:59

had clearly been tortured, beaten up, calling

3:01

it what you want. There was one

3:03

guy who had a huge bandage where

3:05

apparently his ear had been severed. There

3:08

was another guy, I don't think he

3:10

saw it, Rory, couldn't open his eyes.

3:12

There were sort of black eyes and

3:14

bulging temples. So

3:16

I think that was a deliberate message

3:18

saying, okay, these guys got

3:21

away with it in that they managed to kill a

3:23

lot of people, but this is what

3:25

happens if you decide to go down that route.

3:28

And I guess the other interesting

3:31

element to this is the fact

3:33

that Putin and the Kremlin so

3:36

quickly tried to link

3:38

the events to Ukraine without

3:41

any seeming evidence at all. So

3:44

I suppose that shows also the Putin,

3:47

whatever happens, whatever is happening that

3:49

he doesn't control, he tries

3:51

to link it to the things that he

3:53

thinks he can control. It's very complicated, isn't

3:55

it? Because you're exactly right. When I

3:57

first heard about it, I thought, well, maybe this

3:59

is... Ukraine connects it. But

4:02

it completely complicates the strategic

4:04

narrative in Russia

4:06

because everything was meant to

4:08

be about Russia saving world civilizations

4:11

through its fight against Nazis

4:13

and Ukraine. And suddenly

4:15

now it's back to

4:17

terrorism, Chechnya, the war

4:20

in Syria and all this kind of

4:22

stuff. And it's interesting. I mean, Putin

4:24

used Chechen attacks in Moscow paradoxically

4:28

to really drive his popularity up because it

4:30

then led to this very brutal campaign in

4:32

Bosnia. So it's going to be interesting to

4:34

see whether people

4:36

feel as they might that he's taken the eye off

4:38

the ball and he's not doing his

4:40

job properly or whether he manages yet again to

4:44

try to make his brutal response part of his

4:46

sales pitch. Final thing

4:48

else, just before I let you come in again, I

4:50

also think it's a reminder of the fact that we

4:52

shouldn't be complacent at all about terrorist attacks in Europe

4:54

now. Gaza is

4:57

really radicalizing opinion. We've

4:59

had a few years in which

5:01

there's been less visible big

5:04

terrorist attacks in Europe, but this

5:06

colonial cathedral attack, the attempts

5:08

in Holland, it's very likely that we

5:10

will begin to see more

5:12

attacks happening in Europe and people will attempt to

5:15

mount attacks in the United States again. So one

5:17

of the things that we were talking about in this

5:19

great leading interview with the ex-head of MI6 and MI5,

5:21

which is coming up quite soon, I

5:24

was talking about the way that these intelligence

5:26

agencies took the our foreign intelligence agencies

5:28

switched after 9-11 to put

5:30

more and more emphasis on counterterrorism instead of

5:32

their traditional work. And then to

5:34

some extent, they sort of flip back and they're fixing much

5:37

more and things like Russia and Ukraine. I

5:39

fear we're going to have to get back

5:41

to a world where we're putting more resources

5:43

into counterterrorism. Yeah, I think people will be

5:45

interested in just how Frank John

5:47

Soar's the ex- I'm a six guy and Eliza Manning

5:49

and Buller who ran MI5 just how Frank they are

5:52

about some of the issues we talk about. And for

5:54

example, Eliza absolutely crystal

5:57

clear that she sees what's happening

5:59

in Gaza. as

6:01

catastrophic in terms of the

6:03

radicalization of a generation, and

6:06

that we and every other country in the world will have to

6:08

deal with that down the track.

6:10

Also very, very, very strong views about

6:13

Trump as well. So that is one to

6:15

look forward to. Now Rory, last week we

6:17

talked about free ports and special economic zones.

6:19

Do you remember Anna Turley? Was she in

6:21

parliament at the same time as you? I

6:24

know her, but I don't think in parliament at the same

6:26

time. Okay, well she was in P for red car and

6:28

she's standing again in red car. And

6:30

she starts off very nice here. She says, I'm a big fan

6:32

of Rory's, okay? But

6:34

at the end of the box is coming. Found

6:37

myself disappointed in his

6:39

uncharacteristic lack of intellectual

6:41

curiosity on the free port

6:43

and tea side. He seems to dismiss

6:46

the issue as a situation where the government has

6:48

been ripped off and out negotiated. What

6:52

happened here is that

6:54

a huge site in public ownership

6:56

after compulsory purchase was turned into

6:58

50-50 joint venture project with a couple

7:00

of businessmen with close links to the

7:02

mayor after no procurement process, no

7:05

tendering opportunities for any other businessman. How

7:08

can you assess value for money without

7:10

a tendering process? This was then turned

7:12

into a 90-10 joint venture with no

7:14

publicity and no scrutiny. And

7:16

there was a piece in the Financial Times

7:19

about their profits, these business guys, absolutely

7:21

soaring. So Anna goes on, contracts are going

7:24

to family members. We see the developers buying

7:26

stately homes worth 3 million. Their sons swanning

7:28

around tea side in Rolls Royces while we

7:30

have some of the biggest child

7:33

poverty rates in the country. And

7:35

so I guess she's making the point I was trying to

7:37

make that this isn't just about business. It's

7:40

about a new system, new systems

7:42

which are tipped towards

7:45

this kind of, I'd

7:47

call it kind of cronyism as opposed

7:49

to proper tendering anti-corruption

7:51

processes. Yeah, well look,

7:54

I'm not in favour of these things. I

7:56

think, you know, this is where

7:58

I follow my hero David But if

8:01

there are other reforms that you need to make

8:03

to get the economy going, and if

8:05

there's too much rent tape and too many regulations, too much

8:07

planning in the way of business, be brave

8:09

and do it across the whole country. Don't create these

8:11

little islands where you try to change

8:13

the rules. But I guess what's

8:16

going on behind it is this question of how

8:18

you get the balance right. Because

8:20

as you point out, at the same time, is this

8:22

absolutely true that there seems to be shocking examples here?

8:25

We also know that Britain is unbelievably

8:27

bad at launching anything, building any infrastructure,

8:29

getting anything done. And that's partly because

8:32

our processes, our planning rules, our tendering procedures

8:34

are unbelievably slow and bureaucratic, which is why

8:36

you often make jokes about the fact they

8:39

were talking about the third runway when you

8:41

came in in 1997. Yeah.

8:43

This guy, Ben Howtren, though, he's clearly an

8:46

operator. I

8:49

didn't see question time, but people were amused

8:51

slash angered at the fact that there was

8:54

a woman in the audience last week who was talking

8:56

about a wonderful man, Ben Howtren was. And

8:59

it turned out that she's the wife of one of his

9:01

colleagues who was also

9:03

sitting in the audience. So it's a bit like

9:06

you being nice about Kia Starmer. I beg your

9:08

pardon? Well, presumably, she's related

9:10

to a colleague. It's like you being nice

9:12

about Kia Starmer. Yeah, but I wouldn't go

9:14

and pretend to be a sort of random

9:17

member of the public in a question time

9:19

audience. I said it's the dangerous. Yeah, exactly.

9:21

That's true. I get it. Look,

9:24

Tasmania election, something that you know a lot about.

9:26

Aaron, I've just turned 18, be voting for the

9:28

first time in the state election just

9:31

over a month away. Tasmania is the only state

9:33

in the country with a liberal government still in

9:35

power. So it'd be fascinating to see how this

9:37

plays out. Tell us about what's happening in Tasmania.

9:39

Well, they've had the election and

9:42

very interesting. So it

9:44

is the only state in the country with a liberal government and that's

9:46

their Tories as it were. But they've not

9:48

done very well. They've taken a bit of a hit. However,

9:51

the Labour opposition weren't the main

9:54

beneficiaries. The main beneficiaries were smaller

9:56

parties and independents. So

9:58

it's now going to be. some sort

10:01

of coalition that gets cobbled together. So

10:03

I don't know how you voted, Erin, but

10:06

that was very, very, very interesting election.

10:08

Had it gone to Labour, it

10:10

would have meant that Australia was red,

10:12

as in Labour, at the

10:15

federal level and in every single state,

10:17

which would have been quite a thing. So Tasmania

10:20

probably still going to be Liberal

10:22

Premier, but with a

10:24

pretty shaky coalition. Now

10:26

Rory, what about this one? You are, I don't want

10:28

to be too hard on you because, you know, but

10:30

given you did give Rachel Reeves a bit of a

10:32

kicking, I don't feel too bad about it. The

10:35

other place where you were getting

10:37

a lot of pushback last week is what he said about

10:39

the health service. So now here's

10:42

one. Jim Down, Rory seems

10:45

convinced that investment is not the problem with

10:47

the health service and the reform offers a

10:49

solution. But in the new Labour years, we

10:51

were ranked first by the

10:53

Commonwealth Fund, the head of Europe, America,

10:56

Australia, etc. Since then, our

10:58

cumulative underspend even including COVID spending uplift is

11:00

322 billion. Innovation, data AI, etc. is vital,

11:02

but changing

11:06

the system will be expensive and exchange

11:08

one set of problems for another. Aren't

11:11

the big picture answers ultra

11:13

processed food taxes to

11:15

reduce chronic illness and a more preventive

11:17

approach? P.S. healthcare does not meet the

11:20

requirements for a successful marketplace, not

11:22

even close. Well, I mean,

11:24

I think he's absolutely right about the

11:27

fact that even if you look around the world

11:29

and you see systems that seem to be doing

11:31

better, you know, sometimes people for example, Envious of

11:34

France, or Envious of Australia, changing

11:36

to one of those systems would be

11:38

incredibly painful. And I can really see

11:40

the argument to say that we're not

11:42

starting from the same place. And that

11:45

trying to shift midway is

11:47

always impossible. He's also right

11:49

that the NHS, the way it's

11:51

currently run, desperately needs more money.

11:54

And it runs much better when there's much more money

11:56

given to it. I Guess

11:58

where we part company is. When

12:02

I get that money from. And

12:04

experts have it. Is I think that's

12:07

worth such a job is pointless if you look at the.

12:09

Mosquito. Which is a good a flexible

12:11

but of government spending. we've gone up twenty seven

12:14

said being spent on the richest forty five percent

12:16

about get up to lift to the isn't a

12:18

do because the It Is is one of the

12:20

few budgets that was not frozen. To.

12:22

Most of the other bodies to use their

12:24

as you were frozen. Absolutely it's it's a

12:26

higher and higher proportion, but of course he's

12:29

implying that we need to put much more

12:31

money and and and it's true that was

12:33

a big increase Real to Switch is caught

12:35

Osborne and camera would off. That was nothing

12:37

like enough because. I health

12:39

inflation is always a few percent above normal

12:41

inflation because as we had older this more

12:44

more people needing treatment and drugs get more

12:46

more expensive suits. I think there's no doubt

12:48

that one way of solving it would be

12:50

to try to do what on branded which

12:53

is just put an enormous smelt more money

12:55

into the system except. West.

13:00

Coast. Is Summoning

13:02

met Morgan metal? Kind of? that? Three.

13:05

Ways to make a health service for was

13:07

the question co insects more like Denmark. Rush,

13:09

like the French will collaborate with

13:12

industry like Australia. The Uk seems

13:14

to do all three. right?

13:16

It does tax more it does. Rushmore did

13:18

have club or it than districts but it

13:20

isn't honest. so transparent about it which passed

13:23

should we choose? And did

13:25

say improve efficiency. If. You've

13:27

got all these debates which which we've had them.

13:30

Sit. At least he was a conservative mp with

13:32

me and then became a lip them he said

13:34

a Gp from. Of the mp

13:36

for Britain. I think unless I'm

13:38

being unfair to them with one of a number

13:40

of and piece on the health committee analysts. Suggest

13:43

people should be charged. A.

13:46

Nominal amount for appointments A Gps to consider

13:48

these very very large numbers of people to

13:50

stop. Turning up the plinth and

13:52

I think that's true in some of the health

13:54

systems around the world, which is that. You.

13:57

Do need to pay a small amounts.

14:00

To access it. And I guess there's sumption

14:02

a psychologically that might make you. Think.

14:04

That will cassie before monsieur appointments what were you

14:06

on all assessment but we will do a me

14:08

put it from with uk is that we sort

14:11

of we won't. If you live

14:13

in the best European levels of public

14:15

service but we want an American approach

14:17

to taxes, it were. In

14:20

the truth, as you probably don't have both, So.

14:22

Where I'm with you. And. To

14:25

a lesser extent with Sajid Javid. I

14:27

do think that the has to be

14:29

some cause I think the base or

14:31

the gym down is right, the bases

14:33

system is fine and the principal his

14:35

fights and by the way I went

14:37

to the funeral I went to see

14:39

a know i the play about Nye

14:41

Bevan but the necessity of the day

14:43

a my God is brilliant. Michael Sheen

14:45

isn't absolutely amazing actor. Spurious is a

14:47

fantasy reminder. Of. You.

14:50

Know we We told an interview with Antony

14:52

Gormley. He was bemoaning the lack of imagination.

14:55

In Politics and there's a lack of

14:57

imagination that leases to downgrade the arts is

14:59

a lack of imagination at least a bright

15:01

sets the power of the imagination of

15:03

the idea that that the that labour government

15:05

had of a health service free, the point

15:08

of need regardless, the ability to pay

15:10

and the drive and determination that it took

15:12

to make it come about. A is

15:14

a brilliant play but it's also fantastic story.

15:16

nothing is a reminder that we do need

15:19

to keep those. High levels of

15:21

imagination of the what is possible.

15:23

Point. I think that you know I wouldn't have a

15:26

problem with the being some kind of. The. Party

15:28

Commission approach to

15:31

review. The workings of the

15:33

Health Service with a view to improve

15:35

it and with a view properly to

15:37

exploiting the advantages of technology. Obvious

15:39

talking to.is a said some of the stuff of

15:41

the city in relation to cancer care. And.

15:44

Ai in the developer technology is his

15:46

mind blowingly brilliant. So. I

15:48

think they can be both of these things

15:50

going on, but I'd be very very low

15:53

to to dismiss the strength in the power.

15:55

Of. That founding principle thou service.

15:57

absence a canister. Quick break. Mukhlas.

16:00

in a minute. Now

16:08

Rory, can I give you this? We

16:10

talked very, very briefly about this in the main

16:12

podcast in the context of the flag. Bobby

16:15

O'Malley, last week DWP released

16:17

record highs of children in poverty, but

16:19

it's basically been ignored by most news

16:21

media. Why is it that they've just

16:23

got so used to it or are

16:25

they just so far away from understanding

16:27

the consequences of this that it doesn't

16:29

seem that important? Polly Purvis quoted

16:32

from the Joseph Rountree Foundation, the number of

16:34

people in households at risk of being unable

16:36

to afford enough food has risen by 53%

16:38

in a year from 4.7 million to

16:43

7.2 million. And I mean, we are

16:45

talking there, we talk about millions of

16:47

people who are really, really, really

16:49

struggling. And it seems to me they

16:51

have no next to no voice on the

16:53

media at all. So why don't we cover

16:56

that stuff? So two things on that. I'll

16:58

come back to your thing in a second.

17:00

But clearly the main responsibility for this must

17:03

lie with the conservative government, right? They've been

17:05

in government for 13 years. And

17:08

a lot of these poverty indicators are going absolutely

17:10

in the wrong direction. We should dig into that

17:12

and look at the mistakes they've made. But

17:15

the reason it's not getting in the news is

17:17

partly that Labour has not decided to make

17:19

this an issue. We talked in the main

17:21

podcast about that speech given by Rachel

17:24

Reeves. And she barely

17:26

mentions poverty. I think she mentions it

17:28

three times, one in a historical context

17:30

and one in a sort

17:32

of much more abstract context. So before we get on

17:35

to what can be done to sort it out and

17:37

what the Tories are doing wrong, why has Labour given

17:40

this shocking news and given that Labour is absolutely on

17:42

the side of a quality and progressive politics, why is

17:44

Labour not made more of this? Well,

17:47

it's a very, very good question. And I'm not

17:49

sure I know the answer. Are

17:52

they thinking that if they're just seen as the

17:54

people who bang on about poor people, it loses

17:56

that sense of aspiration? But I

17:58

think you can do both. I

18:00

think you can do both and you have to do both

18:02

because the sort of economy that Rachel

18:04

Reeves was talking about. You

18:07

know, she did talk, for example, about the fact

18:09

that post COVID in particular, there's

18:11

been this sort of huge surge of

18:14

economically inactive people, people on disability benefits

18:16

and so forth. She's talked about the

18:18

need to, you know, to reverse that

18:20

trend. But the cost of poverty

18:22

now is astronomical, even if it

18:24

is the voluntary sector that's picking up a

18:27

lot of the pieces. But I think Labour should make more of this. And

18:29

I really do. I think that you

18:31

can't have, I saw, I mean, there was a

18:33

thing on German television the other day, on ARD.

18:38

It was a long report about shoplifting in

18:40

Leeds. And we should put it

18:42

in the newsletter because there's a subtitle version that's doing

18:44

the rounds. And it's

18:46

stuff that honestly, it was the sort of stuff and the

18:48

kind of interviews you just, I just can't remember the last

18:50

time I saw anything like that on British television. It

18:53

was talking to these guys in a pub who

18:55

were talking about, you know, they were saying that

18:57

they know so many families who've been touched by

18:59

suicide. They know so many families who literally

19:02

can't afford to eat or heat at the

19:04

same time. And then they were talking to

19:06

these people who were shopkeepers

19:09

who were losing so much to shoplifting

19:11

every day. And it just

19:13

seems to me that it's absent from our political debate.

19:15

And I think you're right. I think I probably, I'm

19:17

too quick to blame the media sometimes for not covering

19:20

it. But they probably would cover it more

19:22

if there was like a Labour Party campaign

19:25

on this. Gordon Brown, to

19:27

be fair to him, Gordon Brown bangs on about

19:29

child poverty as he did in government. He bangs

19:31

on about it all the time. He's right. And

19:33

I think there's also this issue that everybody

19:36

gets confused about differences between

19:38

absolute poverty, measured one way

19:40

relative poverty, which is about the gaps between

19:42

between people. But there are

19:45

certain kinds of statistics that you could use to bring it

19:47

home more. So I was talking to a man

19:49

who is one of the senior people at

19:51

Eissen Foods and he talked about

19:54

the fact that they can see moments in

19:56

their statistics, a big uprise in people's

19:58

shoplifting. and baby milk

20:00

powder. And those are

20:02

difficult to explain away except in

20:04

terms of people in

20:07

absolutely desperate situations. It's not a normal thing to

20:10

shoplift and you can just see it in the figures

20:12

and see buckets. That's very interesting because that was one

20:14

of the things that this report, this German report featured

20:17

was the rise in the theft of nappies

20:19

and baby food. Yeah. And

20:21

this also goes to an issue

20:23

that Labour's been for some reason

20:25

that I don't think, well, now I can

20:27

understand why but hasn't been prepared to challenge.

20:29

So the Conservatives have imposed a

20:32

two-child limit on benefits and the idea is

20:34

that they're worried that people have more kids

20:36

to get more benefits. The

20:39

problem with those limits is even if it's

20:41

true that there are a few people who

20:43

might have more kids to get benefits, the

20:45

impact on large families who have

20:47

more than two kids who are living in

20:49

poverty is unbelievable and it's brutal. And

20:52

I think Labour traditionally would always have challenged

20:54

that kind of policy and they're not yet

20:56

challenging it. And one would like to see

20:58

them challenge it because again,

21:00

the answer to this, I'm afraid

21:02

brutally, is cash. You

21:05

need to give cash to poor people

21:07

so that they can meet

21:09

their immediate needs and priorities. And

21:11

that extends to feeding their kids,

21:14

closing themselves, making sure

21:16

that kids are in school. And

21:19

again, we need to challenge this ludicrous

21:21

idea which is shown in all the

21:23

data and research to be false, that

21:26

giving cash to people just encourages dependency

21:28

and idleness. In fact, there's

21:30

such good evidence from randomized controlled

21:33

trials across the developing world, across

21:35

the developed world, that the

21:37

most straightforward way to tackle poverty is,

21:39

I'm afraid, to make people less poor.

21:41

Yeah. There was a conference last week

21:43

in Liverpool and there's a guy called

21:45

David Taylor Robinson who's a professor expert

21:47

in public health. And

21:49

he was talking about children

21:52

who were turning up to school with no shoes. He

21:55

was talking about children who were sharing their only

21:57

meal of the day with their brothers and sisters.

22:00

And he was saying that in

22:03

Liverpool, infant mortality is on

22:05

the rise. So these are all

22:07

signs of something far bigger than the

22:09

political or media debate are prepared to

22:11

countenance. And I just do not understand

22:14

why. And it's all part of this sort of

22:16

denial of the real world. We deny that

22:18

Brexit's damaging the economy. We deny that

22:20

we've got all sorts of sort of

22:23

structural, social problems that have driven inequality.

22:25

And if we don't admit them, we're

22:27

never going to address them. But I

22:29

think there's a bigger issue in the

22:31

way that we think about politics, which

22:33

is that we think a lot in

22:35

terms of economic numbers.

22:38

Your friend Tessa Giles said once in a speech, and it

22:40

really stuck with me, that when she went into a hospital,

22:43

she'd ask herself, you know, would I want my mother to

22:45

be in this hospital? And

22:47

I began thinking about it with prisons, you know,

22:49

would I want my sister or brother to be

22:51

in this prison? And

22:54

it's true on poverty too that we need

22:56

to have a sense of just how shameful

22:58

this is, or lacking in decency, that ask

23:01

yourself, would you want to invite someone from

23:03

another country? Would you be

23:05

proud of Britain if you showed them the

23:08

conditions in which the extreme poor in

23:10

Britain are living or the conditions in which prisons are living?

23:13

And the answer is absolutely not. And we need

23:15

to get that sense of decency again. Absolutely.

23:17

Now, Rory, I'm sorry to keep throwing questions at you,

23:20

but we did seem to get a lot of questions

23:22

pointed at you this week. Jack Harbach,

23:25

Rory seems to think that we, brackets

23:27

the Lib Dems, are in trouble.

23:30

Yet, if our strategy pays off, we could

23:32

be looking at around 50 MPs at next

23:34

election. Why is he always so

23:36

pessimistic about us? And we do want to return to

23:38

the single market after all, says Jack. And that's one

23:40

of your things. Well, why

23:44

am I pessimistic? I'm pessimistic because

23:46

I don't feel that

23:48

they are defining anything interesting in terms

23:50

of national policy at the moment. I

23:52

mean, you're right that there's very little coming out

23:54

of Labour because they've got a kind of Ming-Vao

23:57

strategy. They're trying to be careful before election.

24:00

That should open huge space for the Lib Dems

24:02

to talk about all these issues, talk

24:04

about poverty being much more radical and re-joining the

24:06

European Union. I mean, there's tens

24:08

of millions of voters out there looking

24:10

for ideas and there's a

24:13

real sense of a sort of stale establishment

24:15

consensus that the Lib Dems could be blowing

24:17

apart and they're not doing it. All right, here's

24:19

another one for you. Oh, fine. I want one for you.

24:21

Before you come to me, here's one for you. Yeah, go on

24:24

then. Throw in a minute. You

24:26

got to throw in a minute. Paul Cowley,

24:28

MB. In today's society with a labor shortage,

24:30

cost of living crisis, public spending cuts, crime

24:32

costing around £18 billion a year, businesses

24:35

struggling in so many ways, why

24:37

don't more UK businesses look at employing

24:39

men and women from prisons? Statistics prove

24:42

they're more loyal, their ex-prescers are more

24:44

loyal, their retention figures are better and they take

24:46

less time off work, but still it's a slow

24:48

take up. So he's writing for an organization that's

24:50

employed 130 prison leaders over the last 15

24:54

months. I think that's the beginning. But why is

24:57

more of this not going on? Yeah,

25:00

I agree with the premise, by the way. I think

25:02

we still have a kind of view of people

25:04

who've been to prison that that sort of marks

25:06

them for life and that is wrong. Just

25:09

around the corner from where we live,

25:11

there's this place, Redemption Roasters, which is

25:14

a cafe and I think they're now developing

25:16

into a chain and it's called Redemption Roasters

25:19

because the people who work there are people

25:21

who have come out of prison.

25:24

Which was before we got the clink and

25:26

in fact we've both met prison governors recently

25:29

who are keen for us because we've only talked

25:31

about prison so much to go and do a

25:33

live podcast either in a prison or at the

25:35

clink, one of the restaurants, whatever it might be,

25:37

which we would love to do. And

25:39

I think the Department of Justice might

25:41

have quibbles about it, but if they

25:43

do, we'd love it even more if

25:46

we could do it with the Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk.

25:49

Yeah, we'd love to interview the Justice Secretary. So there

25:51

we are, shout out to Alex Chalk if you're listening to

25:53

this on your run and shout out to the Ministry of

25:55

Justice. Can we please interview him in a prison and get

25:58

onto the subject of prisons? I

26:00

also think that the point about loyalty is

26:02

incredibly important. I feel the

26:04

same in this about mental health. I

26:06

think that people who've gone through mental

26:09

health crises and mental illness, I think sometimes if

26:11

they admit that in an interview or on a

26:13

CV, it's held against them. But I think it

26:15

should be held in their favor. Just

26:18

quickly on that one, people may have heard of something

26:20

called ban the box in this, which is that you,

26:22

instead of getting people to tick a box whether they

26:24

have a criminal conviction right before they even get an

26:27

interview, which often means they never make it through. It

26:30

takes that box up and infuse them later in the

26:32

process. Once you've had a chance to see someone and

26:34

get a sense of their experiences, then you find out

26:36

whether or not they've had a criminal conviction. Okay,

26:39

interesting. Interesting. I like that.

26:42

I like that. Yeah, so look, there's no doubt. And

26:44

of course, what will happen is

26:46

that, you know, you might get an isolated

26:48

incident of somebody who employs somebody at a

26:50

prison and they end up, you know, raiding

26:52

the till or whatever, or beating somebody up and, and

26:54

people say, Oh, this is terrible. This is why you

26:56

should never. But that happens in real

26:59

life anyway. And it happens with people

27:01

who have not been to prison as well. But I just think we've got it.

27:04

You talk about being a more civilized society, part

27:06

of being a civilized society is to give people

27:08

second, even third, even fourth chances.

27:11

And I think that it would also,

27:13

if we had a business culture that

27:16

thought about wanting to take people who

27:18

are serving towards the end of their

27:21

sentences, it would also change the culture

27:23

inside prisons as well. So

27:25

there's a kind of, I think there's a win-win there. Now,

27:28

Rory, here's one for you. This is my last one. Theresa

27:31

McCrone, Rory, if

27:33

you were London mayor, would you

27:35

build housing on golf courses? London's

27:38

golf courses add up to an area

27:40

the size of Wandsworth and they're used

27:42

by a tiny minority of people. Well,

27:44

the problem with that, it's a lovely,

27:46

lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely. Be brave, Rory,

27:48

be brave. Well, the challenge around it

27:50

is, this is green belt stuff. A

27:53

lot of those golf courses are on green belt and

27:55

I do think that it's going to

27:57

be very, very dangerous if we start digging high. hard

27:59

into the green belt because I think we will then

28:01

end up with sprawling megacities and

28:04

you'll basically have, I'm afraid, I mean you

28:06

can see this already in bits of Hampshire,

28:09

just a sense of urban sprawl going on and on

28:11

and on. What London needs to

28:13

do is build up and

28:16

not skyscrapers, we talked about this before, medium

28:18

density, six, nine story buildings, we need to

28:21

be much better at giving planning permission for

28:23

that. I also

28:25

would like to see, I mean I'd like to

28:27

get rid of the golf courses, absolutely get rid

28:29

of all golf courses, I'd like to be taken

28:31

to the forest. You want to get rid of

28:34

all golf courses? Yeah, I'm going to go anti-golf

28:37

but what I'd like the green belt to become

28:39

is the largest forest in England. I'd like hundreds

28:42

of millions of trees planted in the green

28:44

belt, I think it would transform our carbon

28:46

targets, it would transform air quality in London,

28:48

it would transform nature and access

28:50

for young people, particularly the urban poor and

28:53

justify the green belt instead of what it is at

28:55

the moment which is a lot of wasteland and golf

28:57

courses. Yeah, okay,

28:59

good. Large round for you.

29:02

Keithley Perkins, why do you think there's been such

29:04

underreporting on the election of a new first minister

29:06

in Wales, especially compared to Scotland, does it reflect

29:08

the way Wales is seen by the rest of

29:11

the UK? What are your predictions

29:13

for the way Welsh Labour will go under Vaughan Gedding?

29:16

I don't think he's, I mean I think he got a

29:18

fair bit of coverage, did he not? I think that, you

29:20

know, we talked about it last week, I think that I

29:23

certainly saw his acceptance

29:25

speech, I saw his first, I

29:28

heard about his first presentation as

29:30

first minister, I saw coverage of

29:33

Mark Drakeford's very moving departure

29:35

speech, so I don't think it

29:37

was that low profile,

29:40

but I think Scotland is

29:42

a bigger country, I think

29:44

it's probably been more

29:47

interesting in terms of the

29:50

politics because in recent years it's been central

29:52

to the UK debate because we had the

29:54

independence referendum, Sammam and Sturgeon

29:56

in particular have been absolutely UK

29:58

household names, in Scotland whereas

30:01

I guess because Wales has

30:04

been Labour, Labour, Labour, Labour, Labour, less

30:06

kind of volatile and

30:08

that probably explains why it doesn't get

30:11

quite the same level of coverage, isn't

30:13

that right? Good. I'm also, I'm going

30:15

to be dishonest by asking Tim

30:17

Buckle, anything cheery this week? Other

30:20

than the Labour land side, I'm a regular listener, it's all

30:22

been a bit doom and gloom recently. So just to give

30:24

you a second, why do you think it's something cheery? I

30:27

had a really interesting dinner, says

30:29

he name dropping massively. Will

30:32

I am? Will I am exactly in

30:35

my house this week and he's been doing a

30:38

lot on AI, AI on

30:40

music, AI on radio, AI

30:43

on cars, he was showing me some of the

30:45

new applications he's developed and

30:47

it really is incredible if

30:49

you get the prompts right, the designs

30:52

right, the tools right, just how much

30:54

AI is now able to do. And actually,

30:57

I talk a lot about GPT despite

30:59

grumbling about Gemini which is the Google

31:01

app, it's all factoring some

31:03

amazing things on creative writing at

31:05

the moment. So, and you talked about

31:07

health, I think the possible

31:10

applications, again, I had a meeting three

31:12

weeks ago in New York with a

31:14

man who is designing new vaccines using

31:17

AI, AI at

31:19

four different stages in four different countries

31:21

and then synthesizing them.

31:24

And this is happening right across the world, he's got stuff

31:26

going Canada, the US. Roy, let's just

31:28

get off vaccines. I think quite a lot of our

31:30

listeners will be thinking, hold on a minute,

31:33

Rory Stewart had Will I am in his

31:35

house. One, my first question is,

31:37

did you know who he was? Two,

31:41

who did the cooking and three, what did you have? We

31:45

got takeaway Indian because he

31:47

turned out to be a vegetarian. I got in

31:49

a real muddle because I got it from a lovely

31:52

Indian restaurant called Dashoom, but their biryani was

31:54

so convincing that he and I convinced ourselves

31:56

that maybe we'd been sent chicken

31:58

instead of jackfruit. I had to keep munching my

32:01

way through it to work out what I was. That

32:03

was the food. And did I really know who he was? Not

32:06

really, no. But you didn't know who he was. I did.

32:09

I did. Give us your good

32:11

news for the week. Well,

32:15

I had a fantastic day yesterday because

32:17

I got approached out of the blue

32:19

by an indie rock

32:21

band from Wales. See, we talk about Wales all

32:23

the time, called Cardinal Black.

32:26

And I was the only person they knew, or they'd

32:29

heard of, who played the bagpipes. And

32:31

so they asked me if I would do the play. They'd

32:35

written this song, which they felt needed

32:37

bagpipes in the background. So

32:39

I spent the day in a recording studio. And

32:41

particularly on the day that we had Anthony Gormley

32:43

on leading, I just felt so

32:46

sort of part of something wonderfully

32:49

creative. And I do

32:51

think I'm really going to

32:54

bang on about this Britain as

32:56

a cultural superpower until it happens.

32:58

Because I think the arts are

33:00

going to be. I love that thing Anthony Gormley said

33:02

about, you know, if AI is going to take all

33:04

our jobs away, then as Gormley said, we're all going

33:06

to have to be artists. And so for a day,

33:08

I felt like I was a bit of a rock

33:11

star and I quite enjoyed it. I

33:13

think that's amazing. And of course, it's a

33:15

luxury for us, but it makes such a

33:17

difference. My really good friend Emma in

33:19

Yale, I hope she doesn't mind me dropping her name in,

33:21

but she's taken up ceramics and

33:23

pottery classes. And I just think it's

33:25

just bringing so much happiness to her

33:27

life, making pots three

33:30

hours a week. So there we

33:32

are. Shout out for Anthony Gormley. Thank you, guys.

33:34

Excellent. See you soon.

33:36

See you soon. Bye bye. This

33:42

week on Disorder, to celebrate

33:44

our six month anniversary, we're joined

33:46

by our first ever guest, Brian

33:48

Klass. Part of the disorder

33:50

isn't that we misdiagnose things, it's that the

33:52

world is changing every single day and

33:55

our systems and our institutions are

33:57

relatively static and that creates problems. Cheyenne

34:00

and I discuss, you know, those really

34:02

small topics like, do humans crave order

34:04

so much that they perceive it even

34:06

when it's absent? And

34:08

should policymakers avoid optimization and

34:11

prediction and embrace experimentation and

34:13

resilience? You have 25 years

34:16

in the 21st century, just black

34:18

swan events that have defined most

34:21

geopolitical structures. And we order the

34:23

disorder together, proposing solutions to our

34:25

predicament. We're better off,

34:27

in my view, embracing the complexity

34:29

and therefore having less hubris about

34:31

manipulating controlling systems that we fundamentally

34:33

cannot control. Search disorder wherever

34:36

you get your podcasts.