Football Finances and World Cup

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts, and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therest ispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics. com . Is NATO finished? I don't think it's necessarily finished, but I think it has never been more embattled. He was asked if he was reconsidering membership of NATO. He said, Oh yes, it's beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were paper tiger. And get this, Putin knows that too, by the way. I know. So unsettling. How do you answer the anxieties of people? Because they're not just economic anxieties, are they? They're cultural anxieties about people who are frightened by change. Too often we're liable to say, oh, because you're being exploited by populists, somehow your grievance isn't real. Whereas what we should be doing is your grievance is real and we have to do something about it . Welcome to the rest of Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Dominic Sandbrook. Hello. Hello, Dominic. So stepping in for the absent Rory Stewart for the second time, thank you very, very much indeed. Lots of questions. And one of them relates to something we discussed on the podcast. We had a lot of questions on these lines. This is from Harper from Sandwell in the West Midlands. Is NATO finished? Wow. I mean I didn't think you hadn't listeners in the West Midlands, but I stand corrected. We've got listeners everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. I mean we have the history of history with your little sort of cultural cliques around university cities around the world. We we spread far and wide. Yeah. Every time I go and do a show at the Sydney Opera House, I really lament the fact that uh our audience is so limited at the rest of history as as you can well imagine. But anyway, carry on. Is NATO finished? NATO finished. Is NATO finished? Uh I don't think it's necessarily finished, but I think it has never been more embattled. From the nineteen fourties when NATO began as an alliance, as an anti communist alliance, to keep the Americans in Europe and to hold the line against Stalin's Soviet Union. NATO ever since then has actually been pretty solid , I would say, as military alliances go. Trump is the first president to really call it into question. I think he clearly has no emotional investment in NATO. And the longer that this second term has gone on, the more dicey its future has looked. Obviously, the stuff with Canada and Greenland could have been toxic, absolutely toxic for NATO. And his rage, his anger and resentment at what he sees as the lack of European support for his, to my mind, very misguided war in Iran. I mean, I think that poses a real, a real problem for NATO because it's pretty clear now that he wants revenge. That he wants revenge in some way on the European countries that he thinks um have abandoned him. What do you think ? This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long. Usually arises for the bill. And from the first of April, seventy-five percent of renewables obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation. So if bills are meant to fall from April , why would anyone bother switching? Because policy sets the floor. The saving itself is automatic. What suppliers offer beyond that isn't, and that's where real competition operates. Fuse goes beyond the mandated saving. Customers who switch save around an additional £200 on average. In the Fuse Energy app you can see exactly what you're using and what it costs with twenty-four-seven support if you need it. Listeners to the show will also receive a free Trip Plus subscription when they switch. Get more than just lower rates. Switch today at fuseenergy.com slash politics using the code politics and save around two hund£2red0 po0und on your bill s. Visit fuseenergy.com for full details and terms and conditions. Let's just imagine that something happened to Estonia tomorrow. Now, when 9-11 happened, that's the only time ever that Article V, an attack on one is an attack on all, was activated. It was activated for the United States, even though he's since then insulted all the British, Australia, and Denmark and other, troops who were involved by saying they stayed away from the front line. And he said something very interesting in all places this week in the Daily Telegraph. He was asked if he was reconsidering membership of NATO. He said, Oh, yes, it's beyond reconsider ation. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were paper tiger. And get this, Putin knows that too, by the way. I know. So unsettling. Even there he's he's kind of he's speaking for the the P utin worldview. And who who has had as a strategic objective, almost top of his list, Putin has been break up the European Union and get America out of NAT . And he's now doing that. It does sort of beg the question that Rory and I and the Mooch especially speculate a lot about is what has what has Putin got on Trump? 'Cause the worst thing in a way, because Trump has always been very skeptical about NATO. Is Marco Rubio , the state Secretary of State, who's always been very pro-NATO? He even got a thing passed in Congress that no president could unilaterally pull the U.S. out of NATO. He now, as another mini me, is kind of saying the same thing. And I think it's important that that we that we understand. I had a spat this week with Ari Fleischer, who was my opposite number with George Bush when I was with Tony Blair during the Ira q War. I don't know whether he's desperate to get in with the MAGA crowd, but he did a really offensive to my mind tweet, basically saying that England, as he called it, I pointed out that we are the UK, Scotland, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ir ish troops were also involved in the wars that we helped them with in Iraq and Afghanistan. Us, Spain, Italy, above all, France, he said, we're going to pay a big, big price. We've always been weak. We've always relied on America. It was a really kind of offensive sort of thing. And I just reminded him of that, that you know, when it push came to shove in nine eleven, at considerable political cost, which some would argue we still pay, Tony Blair and his reputation and how he's treated around the world. I get the same thing, get abuse about it every single day on social media. We stood by the United States. That was NATO, the only time Article V. And they're now saying that because these countries, us, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Albania, all of them, said no, this is not what NATO is about, this is not a sensible thing to do. Sun suddenly, NATO itself is at threat . And the America gets a huge amount out of NATO. Yes, they put in the most money. Yes, they put in something like four billion into European defense. But the fact is, the economic stability that we all want. A lot of that has been built on postwar safety and security in Europe, which is one of America's most important markets. I I agree completely, Alistair, but I think something that people don't appreciate as much as they should outside America. There's been a strain of American opinion that has always been extremely critical of any form of foreign entanglement. And that goes right back to you know, the people who didn't want to join the First World War, people who didn't want to join the League of Nations in the uh after the Treaty of Asign in the early 1920s, people who didn't get involved with the Second World War in the 1930s and then the early n and then right up to Pearl Harbor in 1941. And then actually all through, I mean it's people don't notice it outside America because we tend to visit the coasts, you know, you go to California or you go to New York or something. You don't go to the heartland, you don't read the kind of readers digest , national review kind of publications that appeal to conservative Americans. But there has always been a strain of American, particularly on the American thinking, particularly on the right, but not just on the right, there's also a kind of isolationist left, which has been why do we get involved in these things? America should be sovereign. We shouldn't be part of the United Nations. It's part of a drive to set up a world government and overthrow our freedoms and all of that kind of thing. And I think we were lucky in the West in that between, let's say, the nineteen forties and the two thousands, we had a succession of American presidents who were committed to the kind of Atlantic alliance and to America's role in the world and to sort of responsibly upholding that and seeing America effectively as hand in glove with Europe and that relationship as being central to American identity. And what's actually happened from Trump onwards is that we have a different and in perhaps in some ways older American way of looking at the world, which is the rest of the world contaminates us. We want to be the city on shining city on a hill. Why should we get involved? You know, basically, here's your point about Estonia, I think, is dead right. If I was Vladimir Putin, I have to say that's what I would do. Not because I'd want to seize Estonia, particularly, although there are a lot of Russian speakers in in the east of Estonia. But I would do it to break the alliance. I would just, you know, you just go over the border, take the first town or something, and you would say, What are you gonna do about it? And then you just watch as NATO tore itself apart and as Donald Trump said, you can just see him and Heggseth and all these guys, Vance, going on TV and saying, why should people in Wisconsin care about Estonia? The Europeans should sort it out themselves, they've never been there for us, and all of this kind of thing. That's what would happen. That's why last week. And I don't know whether you've had this on your book club yet, Dominic, but my book of the year last year was Carlo Massala If Russia Wins, where it's a scenario as he calls it, and that's what it's the story is Putin takes a village in Estonia just to see if NATO and the Americans react and they don't. I think the other thing, I've I've spoken to two or three European leaders this week, and it's really been interesting talking to them. I think that the iron which started to enter the soul over Greenland has now solidified into iron in the soul. They now know. I think Mark Carney was the first really to understand this is not normal presidency. This is not a normal president. We are in a completely new age. Yeah. We all have to deal with it as best we can. It's why I keep arguing with Rory that you know, Keir Starmer can't say he's a blethering idiot, he's liar, he's a crook. We can say that, but prime ministers and presidents can't. But it's why Sanchez feels so emboldened. It's why Macron this week, ri when Trump made that disgusting comment about, you know, Macron and his wife, and his wife gave him a beats him up and all that stuff. And, you know, Macron just went back and says, this isn't unworthy of leadership, this is not a reality, this is not a show. So I think Europe is getting , you know, as somebody in the pool said to me this morning, starting to put up two fingers. But the truth is we are still so reliant economically, in our case, the nukes, the intelligence, the air defences, and in Ukraine's case my big big worry is that the combination of Iran and Trump pissed off with Europe, he just in the end says, you know, fuck it, I'm out of Ukraine, including our intelligence and our and the rest of the stuff we give. I could totally agree with that. And if you remember when we did the um election night broadcast in New York with Anthony Scaramucci and Marina Hyde and Rory, we were talking a lot in that broadcast about what this meant for Ukraine, about what Trump's victory would mean, about the threat to because I I'm still very much of the view that if Ukraine is allowed to fall or is dismembered in some way, that that would be a catastrophic moment for European security. Oh, yeah. Because if you were Vladimir Putin or Viktor Orban, you would think, well, you know, these people are complete paper tigers. You know, they you cannot rely on them at all. And Europe still, I think, partly because of our economic weakness as a continent. I mean it's sad to say, but our lack of productivity and all of this kind of thing, just not generating enough money. And for that reason, we are not investing as much in our own defenses as we should be. And Trump in this case, I hate to say it, but he's not wrong. No, he's got a point. He's got a point that Europe has been too content to I I don't like using the word kind of the words that he used now, freeload and all of that kind of thing, but to coast, to coast, thinking that the American Shield would always be there. And it that was great folly, I think. So talking of Victor Orban, I know you're a huge fan of his work, Alistair. Uh, we have a question from Lexi in Portsmouth. You'll be delighted by this question. After nearly two decades in power, could Victor Orban finally be unseated and a really good point, even if he was, would he actually leave? So what do you think? Well, one of the reasons I'm not a fan of uh Victor Orban is that I think he follows the far-right populist playbook pretty closely. It's why MAGA love him. It's why Putin backs him, and I think he follows Putin playbook as well. The day before we recorded this, there was what I imagined was a false flag exercise. They found an explosive device on a gas pipeline between Hungary and Serbia. Orban summoned his emergency defense council, etcetera, et cetera, et cetera. He controls most of the media, so this was big news. Alongside if you go to Budapest at the moment, uh Dominic, you will see more posters of Vladimir Zelensky and Ursula von der Leyen than you will of Orban because their message is vote Magyar, the opposition guy, and your kids are going to fight for Ukraine, not for Hungary. So it's a very it's an it's a nationalist message, it's a populist message. I think he can lose, and I think if the election is free and fair, there is there was an amazing documentary that did the rounds last week. It's called The Price of a Vote. And it was exposing a lot of the the buying of votes, mayors in villages who decide so much about who gets firewood, who gets a parking place, who gets medical appointments. Basically. And and the other thing, we had all that nonsense with m uh Matt Badlos, the Gordon and Denton loser, Nigel Farage's mate. Is that what you call him? Is that his official name? But that proves you know, listen to the podcast. I've done it for the last four weeks. Yeah, so there's the whole thing though, wasn't there? People call him Matt GPT because there was the claim that he used AI to write his book. Yeah, which he is denied in such a convincing way that the New World managed to cover it in three pag es this week. But you remember all that stuff about so-called family voting where people were, you know, taken into the booth and shown how to vote? In Hungary, there was quite liberal, uh, I don't mean liberal, liberal, I mean quite sort of relaxed rules. If you are illiterate or if you have a health problem, so you just have to turn up and say, I can't read and write, and your mate from Fidesch can take you in to show you how to how to vote. But I see why I think it's really, really interesting here. This is the dynamic that I hope is playing out and that I hope will follow around Europe . If you think of the the way that populist leaders come to power, they present themselves as men of the people against a corrupt ruling elite. Okay. Of course, the corrupt ruling elite in Hungary is Orban and the Fidesz Party. And especially the young, I think they're now see them as that. So populism has always depended on the ability to of the leader to project the sense that they, the people, are the victims of the elite, and I am one of you. It's amazing that Trump pulled it off, but he did. It's amazing that Johnson pulled it off, but he did. And Auburn's pulled it off for 16 years. I think this is his fifth election. If he wins it, it'll be his fifth election win. And of course, when you have Trump and Putin backing you , when your best friend, a guy called Lawrence Masharos, is a gas fitter who has become the richest man in Hungary, it kinda word gets around that maybe there's something a bit dodgy going on in the way that you rule this country. So I look, I think if the f if it's free and fair, he's lost. The question then does become how big does that win have to be for him not to play the game that Trump played with Joe Biden when he lost in 2020, that this has been stolen. So I was thinking about precedence for this, and I think there's a good one in a neighbor of Hungary, so it's Serbia. So Serbia and Hungary are not so different in this regard that in both cases you had so you had Slobolan Milosevic in Serbia in the nineteen nineties. And in both cases, you have a country with a profound sense of kind of historic victimhood, a country that thinks it is surrounded by enemies. And Hungary, you know, they will circulate m aps showing how Hungary was reduced and dismembered in the course of the twentieth century. And they were felt very hard done by they once owned Transylvania and Croatia and whatnot, and they've they've lost it so much, and Hungary is smaller than it's ever been, and all of this kind of thing. Of course they speak Magyar, they're surrounded by you know people who um speak Slavic languages. So they feel isolated. There's a kind of isolationism to the Hungari an mentality which explains why Orban has been able to appeal to it, much as Slobodan Milosevic appealed to Serbs in the 1990s. Slobodan Milosevic was a populist leader, nationalist leader who became the embodiment of a corrupt establishment and then was beaten narrowly in an election by Voyoslav Kostunica, who was another nationalist, but an independent one and an outsider in two thousand . And the uh Serbia you know the the Milosevic people who were controlling the election apparatus basically lied about the result. They tried to claim thated he hadn't been beaten, um, and that it would have to go to a second round where they were clearly going to rig it. And at that point, young people in Serbia said, enough. They went out on the streets and Milosevic fell. And I just wonder whether that could be the the answer to Lex's question. You know, that's what Orban would presumably try to do. If it was a very close race, he would say, Well, actually we've narrowly won. You know, Maggie hasn't won, I've won. And at that point, what do all the students and whatnot in Budapest do? Do do they go on the streets as their counterparts did in Belgrade in two thousand? And that I mean, that would be a really, really interesting scenario. Because then of course we know what Orban would do. Orban would say George Soros has paid them to go on the streets . The usual thing is you blame the CIA and whatnot. He would probably blame Brussels, wouldn't he? He would say they're all working for the EU and uh these people all want your children to become transgender soldiers fighting for Ukraine and whatnot. But would that work? I don't know. I think there's a point where people see through you, don't you? That where people get sick of it. I think the other thing that's that's fascinating about this, so we're recording at a time where JD Vance is on his way to Budapest to campaign for Orban. Now, one, that shows the extent to which Orban is completely plugged into this international far-right populism. I have a hunch, even with the war going on , that if they thought Auburn was nailed on to win, Trump would go, so that he could claim that he swung it in the last few days. But Vance is going to go, Rubio's already been. W the the idea that now the European Union leaders, all of whom, frankly, want Orban to lose, pretty much, apart from the Slovakian probably, maybe one or two others, but they basically want him to lose. But none of them are getting involved in the election. The Americans are openly interfering in this election. The other point that I think I'd like to make is about polarization. We talk a lot about polarization, the way that populists use it. And I was just looking at a poll. You have Fidesh supporters on one side and Tisha Magyar Party supporters on the other. On the question, do Hungarians have a lot of freedom? Fidesh 88% . Magyar people 17%. Do Hungarians believe that our elections are honest? eighty four v twelve. Are you optimistic about economic conditions? Fifty two versus eighteen. Do you approve of Brussels? Seventy four against thirteen? So you know, I think the that's the other way round. So Fidesch supporters obviously. Do you think that um Fidesz supporters uh do they see the government as corrup tion? Ninety-four percent of Magyar's people, thirty-eight percent of Fidesh. Now, anybody who lives there knows it's corrupt. You you've actually have to take part in the corruption to get get through your your daily life. Good point here before we go to the next question, maybe to plug our mini-series. This is a series I've done with Liam Byrne, the Labour MP, and we've had a really extraordinary feedback on this because I think that we talk a lot about popul ism, but I think what Liam done is he's really gone into it in depth. And uh I don't know if you've listened to it, Dominic, but it's one of the most intelligent analyses of populism that I've ever heard. And we've had lots and lots of people on right and the left who are who are saying that. So that sounds good. Okay. So just to go into this film, The Price of a Vote. I mean, lots and lots of kind of different examples. People are saying how it works, how the you know that different people get given money. When we were in Moldova interviewing President Sandhu , we were told that Putin would literally order one oligarch. We were given the name, but given I know how litigious he is, I think I might might as leave the name, leave the name in the intro for now. But a very well known oligarch, put it that way. And they basically have to hand over the money , and then the mayors essentially worked out how it goes. And so, and you're talking, you know, you're talking between £1 10, £130, £150 per vote. And this is in a this is in places where child benefit is about twenty-six, forty-three quid per child per month. And the other thing that happens is that they the the the film claimed that they were using drugs. They were giving people, you know, this cheap , very addictive synthetic drug, which is widespread. This in a country with some of the toughest anti drug laws in the world, but they're using drugs to sort of say, here you go, you you vote the right way and we look after you in this way as well. Foreign interference off the scale. The Washington Post ran a story recently that we're gonna do a false flag assassination attempt. Putin's money all over the place. That's why you see these massive post campaigns, massive online campaigns. So um I don't know whether this film has been subtitled or whether it's just in Hungarian, but uh and of course because he controls the media, you only know about this stuff if you're following Maggie's campaign online. They're very anxious about Brussels, for example. I mean, Warban hasn't Auburn is tapping these feelings and he's amplifying them, but he hasn't created them, right? They are there for a reason. And I wonder whether what you and maybe what Liam Byrne would think about how do you answer the anxieties of people 'cause they're not just economic anxieties, are they? They're cultural anxieties about people who are frightened by change and I was talking to, you know, the pollster, Sir John Curtis. Yeah. And he st a couple of weeks ago and he said he still thinks the biggest issue in Britain, in British politics, the defy the dividing line, is cultural and educational. So it's whether you went to university or not, and it's how you feel about culture war issues like the flag and all that kind of statues and that. And he said they're still the best determinants of how people vote. And populist politicians or politicians of any kind, they exploit the I think Liam Burma here, he would say he would agree with the premise . And he would say that the first step is actually to understand that that too often we're liable to say, oh, because you're being exploited by populists, which you are, somehow your grievance isn't real. Whereas what we should be doing is your grievance is real and we have to do something about it. And that's why, of course, at a time when you know the global economy is in trouble, when Europe has been stagnating economically, when kids are feeling that their opportunities are being taken away from them, denied, can't get to university , can't afford a house, can't afford university, whatever it might be, can't get a job, then wide open to a Trump or a Farage to come in and say, Come to me, I'm a strong man, I can sort all this out for you. And but I think then what Liam goes on to say is that we have to understand the grievances are real, we have to understand where they're coming from. But we also have to understand that within that, what we call the populist population, there are grad ations . There are people who are angry for different reasons. There are people who are culturally offended, economically weakened, and some of them he says are are just they they're as it were gone. They're gone. Yeah. The centre right, the centre left are never going to get them back. But he actually thinks a good forty percent, for example, of people who are currently saying they're going to vote for reform, he thinks they are b they can be brought back, but only if we understand why they got there in the first place. Aaron Powell That makes total sense to me. I think you have to my view has always been on these things that that people these are not contrived grievances necessarily. So when people say, you know, I don't like people slagging off our history, I don't like people slagging Britain off, I don't like people, you know, I don't like Jeremy Corbyn saying we're always in the wrong in every but conceivable historical issue or whatever. That these are not contrived or confected grievances from these people. They are genuine what they feel, but you can't but you don't necessarily need to reduce people to that. So that people might have think people think lots of different contradictory things at once. I think you have to you listen to people, you respect them, you don't pander to them, you don't have to agree with everything they're saying to you, but you treat their right you make them feel heard. And often that's the mistake that politicians make is they don't make people feel heard. That's a very interesting way to set up a question that we're going to take in the second half about who uses history better, the right or the left. And I say that you mentioned the statues at a week where Donald Trump has chosen to resurrect the big Christopher Columbus statue that was taken down uh and we know why he's resurrected it because it was taken down um okay let's take a quick break Welcome back to the Resist Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Dominic Sandbrook. Right. Um nearly called you Rory there. Right No, don't do that. I won't, promise you. Who would be more offended there? Me or Rory? Hard to tell. I'm not gonna go there. Sunny in Lincolnshire. This relates to what we're just talking about just before the break. Why does the political right often seem more effective at utilizing history when constructing political narratives? I feel take the UK, I think that the way that I mean church ill is an obvious case in a way, but I think even Thatcher, the way that the right has turned the legend of Thatcher, I think, into something far more powerful and effective than on so many levels she was. And yet we, I would argue that you know Tony Blair has a record every bit as defensible as Margaret That cher, but the left has contributed largely in my view, not just the right who are entitled to do that because they're political opponents, but the left has played a big role in a sense sort of down playing his kind of historical strengths and historical achievements. Such an interesting question, actually. And um I think there are a couple of possible reasons. I think if you're on the right, you probably tend to be a little bit more invested in history. There may be you are so for example, if you're a conserv if you're a member of the Conservative Party or reform in Britain, the chances are that when you're asked about Britain's history, um, you say you're very proud of it, you're quite invested in it emotionally. You think more about preserving the glories of the past than you do about building a better world in the future. I mean, that's just a sort of very basic point. Then on the way that um people react to individual political heroes, you know, the Tory Party for, example, has always been very good at um putting people on a pedestal and creating a slightly simplified um Hollywood version of them and turning them into political heroes. So Benjamin Disraeli, Churchill, obviously, Thatcher and so on. Why don't the left do that? I would argue, and maybe I mean I uh you will know much more about this than me, Alistair, but I would say there is a tendency among the more the more fervent left-wing activists tend to believe that their leaders have let them down. Oh, yeah. That they have betrayed them in some way because they have It's the betrayal thesis. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say that, you know, the Labour. How many people in the Labour Party Random Labour activists who shouldn't really care about nineteen thirties politics will suddenly start muttering to you about how Ramsay MacDonald sold out the Labour Party in nineteen thirty one, and that's what they all do, you know, Attlee didn't go far enough, Darold Wilson was a waste of space. Tony Blair, well, of course he was just America's puppet. He was really a Tory. You know, they they'll rush to do that in a way that people on the right don't really . I mean, there are some people on the right, some Tory Prime Ministers. So you would Ted Heath, for example, people would say, Oh, Ted Heath was really a socialist. Or they would say of um maybe you know Cameron, oh Cameron wasn't really a you know, because he was romaine and all this kind of thing. However , I think people on the right tend to be much keener to celebrate their election winners. Whereas by and large, the the surest way to get yourself a place in the Labour Party's hall of infamy is to win lots of elections and make decisions in government, because then your supporters will say, Well, you were just a Tory and you've let us down. The betrayal is the key. And I also think you're onto something about the you know it',s like the the slogans of the right, take back control, make America great again. Whereas as Bill Clinton always used to say, you know, elections have always got to be about tomorrow. But if today feels pretty shit, then projecting that tomorrow can be can be quite difficult. Listen, sort of related to this, Dominic, when Donald Trump won, you argued that many politicians throughout history failed to understand that most voters don't follow politics closely, tend to vote based on how their lives feel day to day. Do you two think Keir Starmer has learned the lessons from the Democrats' loss? And looking ahead to the May local elections, what are your predictions for Labour's performance? Oh, this is a big question. And now I would say I think you and I will disagree about this, because I think Kirsten is useless. I think he's a useless politician. And I think he hasn't learned the lessons. And I think I mean I wrote a column about him in the Times this weekend. And I said the politician he reminded me most of in British history was actually Ted Heath. So Ted Heath, rather like Keir Starmer, technocratic. Took us into Europe. Yeah, which Keir Starmer talks about doing but hasn't delivered on. Anyway, so dog ged, um, duti ful, does all the you know, does all the paperwork, prepares for the meetings, you know, you you just know that the school swap kind of person is gonna stay up at night doing all the red boxes and whatnot. But in both cases, really, really poor communicators. And I know it drives Keir Starmer and his partisans bonkers when people say this, but a politician just has to tell a story. A politician needs to have, you know, Tony Blair, your old boss, was brilliant at doing this. David Cameron was pretty good at doing this. Your absolute bogeyman, Boris Johnson, was quite good at do ing this, at saying, This is what I'm going to do, this is what I stand for, leaving the conversation so that the voters with whom they were talking kind of had a smile on their face and then and they were like, Oh, that was a nice guy. I knew what he's, I know what he's about. Do people know what Keir Starmer is about? Not at all, I would say. I I even I, you know, I I read a lot about politics. I don't really know what makes him tick. I don't know what his end game is. I don't know what his vision of Britain is. And I think the failure, his belief, actually, that that is trivial and tawdry, and he doesn't want to get in dirty his hands with it, I think is colossal folly not to construct a story. I mean, I don't disagree with every word of what you've said. I disagree with quite a lot of it. And and and and I I you back to the point you made on the main episode, my tribalism does make me say, and I think this is true by the way, of all the current potential prime ministers across the parties, I'd rather have him there right now than Beid nock, Farage, Polansky, Davy, or anybody else. But I think the point, listen, I make this point all the time about the lack of a compelling narrative that people feel the country's going in a certain direction. I think the point about the the lessons from the Democrats though, because Democrats have pretty much, you know, you could argue about Michael Dukakis, but they've always had pretty charismatic leaders. Kamala Harris for all her weaknesses and her faults. She could tell a story, she she had an energy, she had a charisma about her. But what I think Ke'irs Starmer hoping, and it may be a forlorn hope, is that actually your point, most people are not following politics closely. Yeah. His hope is that come the next election, they've been able to turn the economy around, made a lot more difficult by recent events, obviously. Turn the economy right, get the country moving in a different direction. So they think, yeah, well, say what you like about him, but I trust him to to carry on. Yeah. See, I think there are lessons that we can learn from the Republicans that we're not learning. And one of them afraid is about communication. Trump at the moment is seen as a pretty much as a global monstrosity. But the reason he there and he got back is because he's a genius modern age communicator. Now, Keir Starmer, as you have pointed out very, very eloquently, is not a modern age genius communicator. But around him, you then have to turn what he says and does into the genius modern age communication. Agreed. I agree completely. Now on the May local elections, what are your predictions? I think they're going to be bad. I was in Scotland last week. Rory and I interviewed Anna Sawa, Scotland's Labour leader, that'll be coming out fairly soon. And he was obviously fighting hard, campaigning hard, but you know, you talk talk to people on the streets and they're basically saying, it's pretty tricky for Labour. Wales, I think, could be really bad for Labour. The elections are going to be really bad. Um so I don't know on numbers. I think predicting the numbers is pointless, but I don't think any Labor supporters are viewing these elections with massive confidence So I I think we're in uncertain waters precisely because of the fragmentation of the political system. So unlike you know maybe local elections when you were in your pomp in Downing Street, it's going to be very hard to impose a single narrative on these 'cause they'll there'll be it'll be such a fragmented picture across the United Kingdom. Yeah. Totally. But just on Labour, things look really tough for Labour. And the reason is that for the first time, really, they're being squeezed from different angles. So reform on one side, let's say in Wales, you've got reform and you've got applied Cumbria. In London, let's say, you've got reform, but you've also got the Greens, by the way, I'm not a fan of Zach Balansky at all. But it's the first time the Greens have had a spokesman that most people have actually heard of. Yeah. You know, and that seems to have cut through particularly with voters in their twenties. Yeah. I mean, for reasons that frankly I find utterly baffling. But you but with with respect, Dominic, you're not in your twenties? I'm not. No, not certainly not anymore. Haven't been for some time? Ah, that's arts. I don't come on this podcast to get abuse. I am I am somebody with very young at heart, very young in mind, and I I get the vibe of the 20-year-old, of course. Of course you do. Now listen, here's what I really want to ask you, because and I know you've got to be appalled at my contribution to this discussion. This is from Samantha in Michigan. Dominic, as a well-known lover of the Lord of the Rings, what is your perspective on the contemporary tech rights fascination with Tolkien . And here is where I have an admission to make, Dominic, which will truly appall you. I have never read Lord of the Rings. And I think that the fact that it has played such a big part in the mindset of Teal and Musk and Zuckerberg and all these awful people who are reading the world. I don't intend ever to read it either. Well, the first thing to say, Alistair, is that what you clearly need to do more of is you need to listen to our new book club podcast. I've already plugged that. You can educate yourself about the world beyond Westminster, which I know you'd you'd really enjoy doing. As for the Lord of the Rings, it's absolutely right that the people on the right have taken this up. So Maloney, Georgia Maloney, is a massive Lord of the Rings fan. And she makes references to it. There is a Lord of the Rings festival in uh Italy that people on the right go to. You know, extraordinary . J.R. Tolkien himself was a very reactionary person. You know, he was a cons small c conservative. When I say reactionary, I don't mean in a sort of bigoted way, because he definitely wasn't. Um, but he was somebody who genuinely, you know, loved the world of the Middle Ages and more on wished t that he could turn back the clock. He was Daily Telegraph before it became today's Daily Telegraph. I suppose a little bit. Although he he wasn't really interested in politics, but he had a he had a sort of fantasy in his mind of a sort of middle England, unspoiled by industry. He'd grown up in Birmingham, you know, he'd grown up in a village that was actually swallowed up by Birmingham when he was a boy, as in in the Edwardian period. And he sort of had a horror of, you know, the city and change and technology and all of this kind of thing. He w had a horror of the I mean he fought in the Battle of the Somme . Uh his sons had been involved in the Second World War. He hated, you know, hit Nazism, totalitarianism, fascism and whatnot. And he worried that the Allies were using totalitarian methods. And so he has a sort of f hatred of power and modernity and technology and all of this kind of thing. And technology, I mean this is the weird thing, right? He hates technology. And actually the the tech bros have taken this up. I think they've there's um perhaps a slight element of I mean Tolkien himself was absolutely not a racist and I think when people say Lord of the Rings is racist or whatever they are wrong. But I think there is something about it that clearly appeals to the sort of white supremacy It's an English book, it's about white people, it's about fighting dark-skinned people, all of this kind of thing. They they they like all this. Um, but I think they're completely wrong to see it as a as a book that endorses their worldview. I mean the whole I I know that this is bonkers that I'm having to explain the plot of the Lord of the Rings to you as something I never ever imagined I would be doing but they have this incredible this super weapon, this technological super weapon, and the whole point of the story is they have to destroy it because it will corrupt them if they use it. You know, and obviously you can see how that would be inspired by the nuclear bomb that was in the news when he was writing it. D do Peter Thiel and and all of these people think think like that? They do not at all. They have a super weapon in AI, which they are proposing to roll out and they don't care if it you know, what are the implications for the world are. So I think they are misunderstanding the message of the Lord of Rings, undoubtedly. Well, I I will I will happily listen to this episode as long as you promise me also to do Balzac, Zola, Thomas Hardy, and and possibly a little bit of Dickens as well. Would that be okay? Well you're naming a lot of very good authors. Now the thing is you're hiding your lights under a bushel here because you read in German, don't you? You read fiction in German, which is very impressive. So have you read Thomas Mann? I have read Thomas M ann. I've read Thomas Mann. I've I read the Budenbrooks in a few months ago in Auf Deutsch, yeah. God . That is so impressive. That is genuinely. And Dominic, what you're exposing here is the British arrogance about languages. Why is it impressive that I read a book in German? Every German reads English books pretty much every week. I agree with you. I did French at university and I used to read liter I read Zola, Balzac, Standard, Flaubert in French. Could I do that now? I'm not sure because I've actually my my French is atrophid. Yeah, it's become I've let it go. The reason I become obsessed about reading in German is because my German atrophid and during COVID, because Fiona knows I'm not very good if I'm trapped in the house all the time, she got me she bought me these courses at the Goethe Institute to relearn German and I loved it. So you should do the same with your French. Happy to help. Yeah. Alistair Campbell, life coach. Brilliant . Exactly. Look at there are many, many, many joys of doing the podcast with Roy Stewart, but one of the the non-joys, if I can put it like that, is he doesn't really get football. Right. So we can't really talk about football, but I think football is so important and including in politics. So a couple of questions to close. Felix in Glasgow, what are your thoughts on the extortionate ticket prices of the World Cup next summer? And here's one from Graham, So uthampton Football Club, Rest is politics and rest is history fan from Weymouth. As a Saints fan, he says, it's really disappointing. We won't won't be able to welcome your two teams, Wolves and Burnley, to St. Mary's next season as we pass each other and go up into the Premier League while you both go into the championship. Would you like recommendations on the best half-time food? It's worth pointing out their seventh. They might not get in the playoffs. They're all they're they're they're gonna they're in the FA Cup. They did very well against Arsenal. But I think there's a bit of hubris there, Graham. I think if you don't get promoted, you're gonna get the blame. What how do you feel about going down, first of all, Wolves. Well, we were down in August, which is very unusual. Which is very unusual. Um, so I've had a long time to get used to it. Uh I think it's very depressing. I think there is actually for a politics podcast, there's a lot to talk about here because we are uh a Chinese owned club, Wolves. We're historic you know, we're one of the founder members of the football league. Uh we are we have become a symbol of the globalization of football because we are Chinese owned, and we came to into the Premier League and did really well, finished seventh two years in a row. But that was when you had George Mendez, the famous Portuguese superagent, bringing you all these amazing players from Portugal. He basically ran the club. Exactly. But uh post COVID, um the Chinese government basically said to Chinese companies, stop blowing money on Western projects, um, dissuaded them from doing so. So Foson, the conglomerate that owns Wolves, have become very semi-dach ed. Uh so I think our relegation was probably always coming. I think, but frankly, because they want to make their money back, they will invest to try to get us back up because otherwise they're gonna lose a lot of money. Um, but isn't it I mean, here's the thing. You know, when you're following a club like Wolves or Burnley , the tragedy of football now is that you know you can never do what Nottingham Forest did in the nineteen seventies. Les did it a few years ago. But it was such a freak though, Alistair. It's never gonna happen again. I mean the tragedy is you know, I know that in the last few years we had as good a Wolves team as we've had in my lifetime, easily. Arguably the best Wolves team we've had in my lifetime in fifty years. But there was a ceiling beyond which we could not break. And it was obvious that once we'd finished seventh twice in a row, we would end up selling all of these brilliant players, Ruben Nevesh or Pedro Neto or Jotta, who went to Liverpool or Rao Jimenez or whoever, that they wouldn't stay forever because the nature of the finances now and financial fair play and all of these kinds of things have enshrined a cartel And if you're not part of the cartel, y now you will never break in. And I think that's a tragedy for clubs like ours. Well, I can't wait to talk to Rory about this because I think his views will be very, very, very similar. But this is this underlines why he he he he's missing something, not just in why football's a wonderful game to watch and get involved in, but also it is so political. And briefly on Felix's point, by the way, uh Domin, just to remind you, only two clubs in history have won all four divisional titles. Did you know that? There are two clubs, aren't they? Burnley Wolves. Yeah. Well. 'Cause we go up and we go down and we go up down a bit more and then we come back. Yeah, that tells you something about the trajectory, that the nature the the size and and the nature of our clubs. They will always bounce back because they're really resilient, but they're not quite big enough to establish themselves on a permanent basis in the top flight. So Felix wants to know what our thoughts are on the ticket price of the World Cup. Well I'm not going to the World Cup because I'm boycotting America for four years because of the decision they made to get Trump and I'm I'm very sad about it because Scotland have qualified. But I never mind the ticket prices. I was looking the other day at the parking prices. Oh my god. Some of the parking prices are into the well into the hundreds. I think it's Scotland, Morocco. You you need it. You can't get there by public transp ort. And I think the parking places were something like 800 quid, $800 . The the the price of a ticket for the final, which they said at the start was wasn't going to be above fourteen hundred dollars, it's already up to ten . Wow. And then you look at Infantino, who the head of FIFA, sort of going around the world on one of the biggest Instagram tours since Liz Truss . Every day he's kind of, you know, spreading goodwill, spreading this, that, the other. And he made up that prize, the peace prize, and gave it to Trump, didn't it? And we've s we've seen how deserved it was. We've seen how deserved it was with the over the last five weeks. The other issue with the World Cup, the World Cup has completely and utterly sold out polit ically and commercially. It's expanded beyond the realms of beyond the realms of avarice. So now it has 48 teams. It will last longer than ever. The entire first stage of it is really superfluous. You know, how many people have what really want to watch, you know, Jordan versus Uzbekistan or whatever it might be? Yeah, I can't imagine there gonna be that many people want to see Cape Verde against Saudi Arabia. The parking for that one's only eighty-five dollars. God, I mean who I mean, has there anybody in ever who said I'd like to see a match between those two teams? I'd like to see it, I'd like to see it in America in punishing heat. Yeah, no, I think it's a real shame because I used to love so when I was a student, I can remember my friends and I well like let's watch every game. And we watched every game, you know, the most obscure games. But now you know you physically can't do it for one thing. There are too many. But also there are too many dead rubbers. It they've really s they've really they've really destroyed the romance of the tournaments. I think it's a massive, massive shame. Yeah. I th I think four war's going through a very, very bad phase. I've probably been to fewer games this season than most seasons in my life. Now partly it's been travel and work and illness and stuff like that. But no I'm I'm not looking I'm looking forward to Scotland being there, but I'm not really looking forward to the World Cup as an event. And Trump and I'm convinced by the way, let's go back to the first part of our discussion on the main episode. I have a horrible feeling Trump's going to use it like Hitler used the Olympics in 1936. Well it depends how well the United States team does, and thankfully they've got a rubbish team. That's true. Anyway, listen, Rory Rory, if he's listening, will be falling asleep by now, Dominic. So I think I think we'd better call it a day. Yeah. He hasn't listened to all this, surely . Well thank you very much again for stepping in. It's been a pleasure to talk to you aga Hi it's Steph McGovern here from The Rest is Money. Now, obviously, there are big economic consequences to all the geopolitical turmoil. Listen to us to find out how investors are reacting and whether we're heading to a financial Armageddon. I'm talking to Karen Ward, a ch ief market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management. Listen to the rest is money to get her take.