Andrew Muller

You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 8 July 2026 on Monocle Radio. US President Donald Trump attacks Iran and Spain. The apparently unstoppable onslaught of short form video and the Southeast Asian country which wants foreigners to come and work from home. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello, and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Isabel Hilton and Evan Williams will discuss today's big stories. And we'll hear from the Secretary General of the Konrad Adenauer foundation about the legacy of post war Germany's first and arguably greatest chancellor. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. Welcome to Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Isabel Hilton, founder of China Dialogue and a visiting professor at King's College London's Lao Institute. And by Evan Williams, independent documentary director and producer specializing in international investigations. Hello to you both.

Evan Williams

Good afternoon.

Andrew Muller

Isabelle, first of all, you have recently been to a jazz festival. Why on earth. Why on earth would anybody do that?

Isabel Hilton

No, no, Andrew. It was very pleasant. It was in Sussex in the grounds of a famous opera house and it. Very pleasant. And I was a guest speaker, so it would be churlish to refuse.

Andrew Muller

Actually, it wouldn't be. It would be just the obviously sensible course of action. Were you talking about jazz?

Isabel Hilton

No, no, I wasn't. I was talking about climate change.

Andrew Muller

So it was.

Isabel Hilton

There are serious people who goes to jazz festivals, unlike the hard rock crowd that you hang out with.

Andrew Muller

I know there's a hot air joke here somewhere. How do you attract the attention of a crowd at a jazz festival? In a talk about climate change, do you advertise it by saying it's not jazz?

Isabel Hilton

They turn up, they're very serious. They turn up to all the talks and you know, it was, I repeat,

Andrew Muller

they're thinking, at least, this isn't jazz.

Evan Williams

He's being very rude, isn't he?

Andrew Muller

He's being extraordinary.

Evan Williams

I don't think I'll have any of this.

Isabel Hilton

No, I think she'll walk out.

Evan Williams

I think we should go.

Isabel Hilton

Shall we boycott?

Andrew Muller

I haven't had a guest storm out yet.

Mark Speich

That's quite exciting.

Andrew Muller

Well, Isabel, you were rude about rock fans. I am therefore at this point not going to rise above the joke about the difference between jazz musicians and rock musicians. Which is a rock musician plays three chords in front of a thousand people and.

Isabel Hilton

Okay, got it.

Andrew Muller

Evan, you will shortly be going to France As I understand it, this is topical. You are going to France to make films, et cetera, about the far right, who a few years ago might have been written off as a somewhat eccentric French sect and now look like likely to be the people running the country.

Evan Williams

They are, according to all accounts, they are in a better position than they've ever been to probably take the presidential election and an extraordinary amount of power in France soon after that. Obviously, the way the French system works, the first system, the first round tends to be a protest and then the French people go, actually, do we really want to vote? The far right end, and then they sort of tend to pull back. But Marine Le Pen, having just gone through her appeal process in the past couple of days, can now run. And some people would say that her protege Jordan bardella, the young 30 year old with massive appeal, could have possibly done a better job and got more votes. But she's definitely in the running now for the next presidential election. And yeah, I mean, given the fracturing of the centre, they could do very well.

Andrew Muller

Well, there is more on that very subject in the Foreign Desk explainer, which will be available either later this evening or tomorrow. But we start today's daily in Ankara. And with the NATO summit presently winding down to scarcely calculable relief of all involved, it could probably have been worse. US President Donald Trump didn't witter about Greenland too much and didn't offer membership to Ruritania or threaten to bomb Fredonia, and was at any rate distracted by the resumption of whatever the United States currently believes itself to be doing in the Persian Gulf. He did, however, find the time to tee off at Spain, a nation he characterised as hopeless bad people, while pumping furiously on his invisible accordion, and with whom he suggested a complete abrogation of all trade, including tourism. Trump remains peeved with Spain over its laggardly defense spending. It is the only NATO member not to commit to 5% of GDP. Evan, first of all, this is always a. Well, actually, it's not always a question worth asking about Donald Trump. It is sometimes a question worth asking about Donald Trump. Are we in the realms here of just because Donald Trump says it doesn't mean it isn't true. Spain's defence spending is kind of ridiculous, right?

Evan Williams

Mark Rutte, the NATO chief, obviously pointed out to Trump, apparently at this moment that Spain had actually almost doubled its defence spending to over 2%.

Andrew Muller

Yeah, from a very low base indeed.

Evan Williams

But I think what riles Trump more, I mean, of course there's the spending, the defence spending, but I Mean, you know, Spain is a country that can make up its own decisions without pressure from Trump, really. And it's a NATO thing. So, you know, yes, it's increased, but I think what really riles him is that if you back over the past several months, they have been the ones that have resisted most vociferously Trump's edicts. And I think that's really riled him, particularly the President. And I think, you know, it just raises a question. So he, at the moment, he said, let's stop all trade, including tourism. And then he looked at the Secretary of Trade, I think it was Besant, and said, just do it straight away. Now, it's not. I did a little bit of digging on this this afternoon.

Andrew Muller

I think you'd only need to do a very little bit of digging to discover that this is not actually how it works.

Evan Williams

It can't actually be tr. Not only are they a member of the eu, which means all trade negotiations go through the eu, indeed, but the President doesn't have the power beyond a 15% tariff for a limited period of time to do that sort of thing. So what's really going on here? It's the typical Trump, you know, noise.

Andrew Muller

I mean, the United States is Spain's sixth biggest trading partner. See, Evan, it's not just you who can do a little. Indeed. But nevertheless. Which obviously would put a massive dent in Spain's economy if the plug was pulled. But is this one of those things that Spain should be taking? Neither literally nor seriously.

Isabel Hilton

Neither, I would say. Besides, if it did happen, the United states would be $4 billion worse off because there's a, you know, they have a positive trade balance.

Andrew Muller

We've all been doing some digging.

Isabel Hilton

Yeah. So it is, you know, it's another in the long line of Trump actions and threats that hurts the United States more than anybody else, and certainly it won't happen. Also, you know, if he gets too fed up with Spain, you know, Spain could point out that it supplies some pretty strategic stuff to NATO. It may not spend a lot on, or, you know, it spends now 2% on its own defense, but it supplies a key naval base, it supplies strategic air bases, and most of the kind of Mediterranean actions, and that would include the Gulf need Spain. So he really shouldn't get too fed up or he might find that he can't actually project power where he wants to project power without Spain.

Andrew Muller

I mean, is this, nevertheless, Evan, still something that perhaps other NATO members could be yelling at Spain about a bit? I mean, Spain is a proper country. It is the sixth biggest economy in NATO, a spike in its defence spending would be pretty significant.

Evan Williams

Yeah, I mean, quite possibly. And I think this has been something, a reality check for all NATO countries. I mean, if everybody's going to increase it, particularly for hard military spending, there would be an argument that Spain should probably come to that party within the NATO family as well. I mean, I think, as Isabel points out, there's already some significant Spanish contributions that are more strategic. I just think, you know, being pushed around by Trump on this particular issue, I think people just do get fed up with it, you know. And so the other thing that he said at the same time was that I might pull out all US Troops from Europe if I don't get Greenland. So, I mean, you know, where does it all start and stop is a bigger question, I think.

Andrew Muller

I mean, it is very difficult, Isabel, for any of the United States alleged partners to know what, if anything, to take seriously, which is a difficulty when the person who you don't know who to take seriously is the President of the United States. But among the things that may or may not be worth the air into which they were breathed was Trump's offer to Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of a license to build Patriot missiles in Ukraine. Now, again, not entirely clear that Don Trump has the power to do that. The actual manufacturers of Patriot missiles may have one or two things to say about this, but if that happens, if Ukraine is able to build its own Patriot missiles, that is not at all insignificant.

Isabel Hilton

That is extremely significant. And it was certainly something that Zelenskyy wanted, partly because Trump has blown the entire stock of Patriot missiles pointlessly in Iran. It's going to take them four years in the United States to restock, and that's assuming that they can get hold of critical minerals that they need for these missiles. So even if he was prepared to sell them, there's just going to be a huge waiting list for Patriot missiles for a long time as a result of his excursion in Iran, building them in Ukraine. Well, I mean, they will have a supply chain issue as well, but it would be much faster, I think, than waiting for a supply from the US

Andrew Muller

the president was also preoccupied, Evan, and understandably so, by an apparent resumption of hostility with Iran. But as is always the case when we get large amounts of unfiltered President Trump on video there, we do have a fairly hefty blooper reel from this summit as well. Do we even dare imagine how American media in particular might have reacted if Joe Biden had fretted about American warships being bombed by the Islamic Republic of Japan.

Isabel Hilton

Never trust those Japanese.

Evan Williams

That's right. Never quite gone over that, have we?

Andrew Muller

Yeah. I did some digging on this earlier to be clear to our listeners. There has not been an Islamic conquest of Japan.

Isabel Hilton

Okay.

Andrew Muller

Yeah, good.

Evan Williams

Glad to hear it. It's a little hard to say. I mean, I don't know that Biden obviously would have reacted in any way, anywhere near the same way for the. If there'd been an attack by the Islamic Republic of Japan, I think there possibly would have been negotiations opened immediately to work.

Andrew Muller

Exactly.

Evan Williams

This man was. But, you know, so the. But the Gulf, I mean, you know, like it's falling apart, but in the background there, they're still having negotiations. I mean, where does this actually go? What happens? It's obviously tit for tat, but it's very serious. And the bigger question, of course, the MOU that the vice president meant to be in charge of is now scuppered. So where does that leave the process and where does it leave J.D. vance, and where does it leave Trump? What do they do next? I think they're continually trying to find a way out of this situation. And the Iranians are not going to bend over too easily.

Andrew Muller

All topics to which we shall in due course return. But now to China and a big bet thereon by the hotel group Accor. Accor, whose upscale brands include Raffles, Fairmont and Sofitel, wants to double its already considerable footprint in China in the next five years, which is to say that by 2031, it wants 1600 hotels in the People's Republic. Accor has some reason to believe all those beds will be filled. After a dramatic drop off, for obvious reasons earlier this decade, tourism to China has rebounded spectacularly. With all due caveats about the relationship of official Chinese statistics to reality. In 2025, China reported a year on year increase of 17.1% to fully 154 and a half million inbound visitors. And China wants that number to clear 190 million by the end of this decade. Isabelle, first of all, this is a country in which you have spent considerable time indeed. What is the appeal of holidaying there? I haven't been for eight.

Isabel Hilton

Well, it used to be back in the day when they first opened up for tourism, it was the people who had been everywhere else and particularly American groups, and they would go to, you know, feeling with this little thrill of danger going to communist China. And I have to say, back then, conditions were pretty crude. I remember actually Accompanying an American group whose first morning was started with a wake up call from the Chinese desk when the phone rang and a boy said get up. So they came downstairs rather pale and trembling, but it has got a lot better since then. And now you may have noticed that China has allowed vis a vis travel from an increasing number of countries and they're clearly quite keen to get people to come. And China certainly at various provincial levels is responding with a much more sophisticated offer, kind of, you know, virtual reality tours of places as well as real tours. And it's a big country with a lot of nice things to look at, you know, nice variations of scenery, good mountains, they haven't destroyed all the cultural monuments. So yeah, it's attractive and the food's good.

Andrew Muller

All true. Evan, would it or indeed has it enticed you?

Evan Williams

It did indeed. I must confess as a younger person I went backpacking into China very, very early days just after they opened up to independent travellers for the first time. I'm not entirely sure why I did this, but I did and I remember finally getting into mainland China, going to one of those big old traditional. It was like a restaurant, but it was almost like a canteen type thing where you had to buy tickets at the front and then go and explain. Of course I had no Cantonese at that point in southern China, had no idea what I was really doing. Some very nice people tried to help me but I do remember at one point being so hungry that I'd made the physical signs of a chicken to try and explain to them what I wanted to eat because it wasn't working and to the mirth of everybody involved. But I finally did get some chicken, I think.

Andrew Muller

So your chicken impression is clearly very convincing.

Evan Williams

It did work and then I discovered they cut it across the bone of course, so it's very bony. But I had an extraordinary time and it was just in the very early days of opening up and I got to Tibet and Xinjiang and traveled all around the place. But it was very, very early days of opening up and everybody was as curious about me as I was about them. Really extraordinary place.

Andrew Muller

Isabelle, is it counterintuitive that the Chinese Communist Party is so keen to welcome so many people from democratic nations in particular, I mean authoritarian countries and I think, you know, it's fair enough to call China such can be a little bit cagey about this. There is this conventional wisdom, possibly self congratulatory at large in this country that the demise of Franco in Spain was hastened by British package tourists descending on the place in the 1970s and telling the locals how marvelous democracy was.

Isabel Hilton

Yeah, I think. I'm not sure that the Chinese are totally worried about that. I mean, they have, after all, had hundreds of thousands of students from China studying abroad and looking at democracies. So I think, particularly with the behavior of the United States at the moment, the kind of democracy standard is a little bit ragged. But I think what is true is that the places where you went, Evan, backpacking around Tibet and Xinjiang, that's not really on anymore. You can go to Tibet in highly organized groups where you don't really get to talk to anyone. And Xinjiang I think you'd find quite difficult, certainly as an independent traveler. So there are places which are now much more tense and difficult to access. And, you know, the Chinese do have ways of keeping an eye on you and making sure that they know what you're doing and who you're talking to and what you're spending your money on. And, you know, if you're. If you're doing something that you. That you shouldn't be doing as a tourist, they'd be on it pretty quickly

Andrew Muller

on which thought and just finally on this. Evan, would you have or have you had in recent visits any concerns around data security in particular? Because one of the things that sort of disquiets me somewhat is having spoken to people from who work for various. Various governments who have been there on official business, and before embarking, they are given a laptop and a phone. They are told to hand that laptop and phone back in when they return, and said laptop and phone are ceremonially smashed into several million pieces and interred under, as I understand, at several feet of concrete.

Evan Williams

I would take data security very seriously in China. I think they would be looking at any opportunity to get anything of interest at all. And often we can be a gateway to that, whether you're a journalist, a researcher, an academic, anything. And, you know, they've got the resources, they've got the knowledge to do it. And, yeah, I would take it extremely seriously. I mean, I would even think there's a question also about going there as a tourist. You know, it is this one party, you know, state it is this monolith. It is the repression that you mentioned in Xinjiang and Tibet is terrible. And by going as a tourist, are you somehow, are we endorsing that, or is it better to keep the gates open and keep the exchange going? It's something to think about as a tourist. I don't think you just go there blindly and just accept it's all wonderful. I think there are issues about it, let alone the social controls they've got over the Chinese. So yeah, I would take that seriously.

Andrew Muller

Well, moving along to the accelerating dwindling of the human attention span, we'd better do this item quickly, etc. Netflix, for whom the infamous pivot to video would obviously be redundant, appears to have thought, what about pivoting to really short video? Netflix has accordingly done deals with a variety of other media brands, including buzzfeed, Conde and Hearst, to create videos of circa two or three minutes in length. The idea is apparently to address Netflix's concerns that they are losing audience to people who simply cannot concentrate on one screen at once and are zoning out of television programs and films in favour of scrolling YouTube and TikTok. Evan, as a documentary maker, this must be music to your ears. He said sarcastically.

Evan Williams

I saw this with horror and it's just like, is this just the race to, to the bottom? I mean, it's just like really your Netflix subscription is going to get you like the 30 second 1 minute spots from all these people basically sort of influencers spouting their opinion about everything. I mean, why on earth would we need more of that? I know why Netflix is probably experimenting with this because they're feeling like it's territory that's being. They're losing. I know that the attention span that they've got problems with people going back to repeated, repeatable series. So is the era of the binge watching over? Because Everybody's now watching YouTube. But it's. I think it's horrible to think that that's where everything is going. And hopefully what I've found when we talk to students who are desperate for documentaries that will tell them just something serious about that's going on. They're not. People are young people are not stupid, they want material. So hopefully if this does go down this path for a bit, there will be also a rebound or at least an understanding that the longer form and the series need to be there as well.

Andrew Muller

I mean, Isabelle, obviously the market is doing as the market does here. This is someone attempting to create supply to meet demand and fine, etc. But does it seem to you, as it often does to me in all fields from documentary television to cricket, that the longer form stuff aimed at the grown up always ends up losing out?

Isabel Hilton

Well, that does seem to be the lesson here. But I, I feel that at some point everyone is just going to kind of get totally fed up of meaningless content and long for, you know, the Brothers Karamozov or whatever it is.

Andrew Muller

This strikes me as I'M not unsympathetic, but this strikes me as somewhat wishful thinking.

Isabel Hilton

Well, we'll see, we'll see. You might find that, you know, people just feel they've, they've done this, they've overdosed. It's not because it's like eating junk food. It doesn't actually do anything for you except for the momentary sensation of eating it. And apart from that, it sort of rots your brain and leaves you unsatisfied. So I think that people will eventually discover that serious content is worth the input.

Evan Williams

I'm with Isabel on this because I need the work.

Andrew Muller

Well, I mean, I was going to ask literally that. Evan, you do this for a living. Has it been your experience in recent years that it is getting harder and harder to get people to commission still less to watch actual serious documentary television, which, heaven help us, does actually require the viewer to make some goddamn effort?

Evan Williams

Yes, I think people are. I think all the channels are under pressure. They're feeling under pressure anyway, with the fracturing of the market, if you like. So what you often have, as a commissioner that might say, yes, you know, this is a great idea. Is that really going to punch through? Are we going to get a front page pick up on this? Are we going to get something else? Is it going to talk to our cultural moment? Whereas I might be doing something like an international investigation on say, Burma or Africa or something that a couple of years ago we would have got up because we had something really special to say. That is much harder now than it ever has been. The Americans are probably through Frontline. They're still commissioning this sort of thing, but it's equally hard here in Britain. It's got much harder. And I think it's partly this fracturing, it's a fear. But I think Isabel's right as well. People do come to these things when you time it right and you've got something special to say because they've all heard, it's all the white noise of stuff. And then if you go, okay, here's one thing that will be a special version of something you've heard about, people will come to it. Another problem is that channels are pushing this increasingly late at night because they're saying, well, everybody's watching it online so it doesn't matter. Well, my wife disagrees because she often falls asleep during my documentaries when they're on at 11 o'.

Andrew Muller

Clock.

Isabel Hilton

Oh, dear.

Andrew Muller

You're absolutely sure that that's because they're on at 11 o'.

Evan Williams

Clock.

Andrew Muller

There's nothing else going on there, Isabelle, just finally on this one, do you detect here? Because I sure did. As somebody who has been around the block as well a few times, media wise, there's that classic pattern of self sabotage by a media entity. They get suddenly paranoid that they are not keeping up with the times, so they do that pivot in which they usually end up losing the audience. They already had to chase another audience audience which was never going to be interested in them anyway.

Isabel Hilton

It happens over and over again. And particularly kind of, you know, driven by the advertising market, mature institutions suddenly panic that they don't have enough 18 year olds because advertisers like 18 year olds because they have yet to decide what favorite, what their favorite brand of toothpaste is. Right. It's not that 18 year olds are going to be interested in the content, but they just feel their future is dead if they, if they don't. If they just wait, waited, you know, eight or nine years, those 18 year olds might gravitate towards their content but they, but they repeatedly panic and as you say, repeatedly self sabotage.

Andrew Muller

Well, to South Korea now, which wishes to encourage the digital nomad a new visa. The F1D will allow foreign nationals employed by foreign companies to live in and work remotely from Korea. As distinct from the current arrangement which necessitates employment by a Korean firm. There are some rules around minimum earnings and a maximum stability of three years. The idea is to encourage talented folk from around the world to set up shop in Korea and see if it works for them. I have little to contribute here, Evan, as I. My total experience of being actually physically in South Korea amounts to having once that I can recall, changed planes in Seoul. Do you know it any better than that?

Evan Williams

I have had a couple of very, very interesting trips to Korea, filming trips to Korea. I actually went on a Hyundai South Korean tourist trip to North Korea when they went to the famous Jade Mountain. So I've had a little bit of experience. Look, it's a fabulous place. It's got great culture, it's got great cultural depth. I'm sure Isabelle knows it probably much better than I do. It's got a fantastic chicken, hot pot in winter. It's got a great restaurant scene, it's got fantastic food. But. But in this working visa thing, they originally sort of started off in a very North Asian way. I think it had to be double their national annual wage. You had to be working for a Korean company. It got very complicated. So now they've reduced that, as you've said, they've reduced the conditions they've made it a bit easier. But in the competition for this sort of visa, South Korea, not to be rude, is not Portugal and it's not Greece and it's not possibly some of these other countries that young nomads, the digital nomads, may like to go to. So if they're trying to compete for that, I think they've got to sort of be a little bit more open.

Andrew Muller

If our many listeners in South Korea would address all their complaints directly to Evan, it would save me a lot of forwarding. Isabelle, what about you? Would you do digital Nomad from South Korea?

Isabel Hilton

Yeah, I certainly would because they've got fabulously efficient WI fi. I mean they're really anywhere across the country, they have high speed Internet access. But the other thing about, I mean, just to push back a bit against Evan, South Korea is a cultural power in itself and it is, you know, that has been a state policy for decades. So they dominated, you know, the Asian soap opera market, K pop, all of this, and now there's kind of the beauty industry in South Korea. So South Korea has a very successful track record of promoting itself as, you know, kind of beacon country for particularly for Asian travelers. And I think that I don't know who this exactly is aimed at, but they seem to be wanting kind of, you know, culturally attuned and interesting and creative people to go to South Korea. I think certainly in the region they will find some takers for this.

Andrew Muller

What would you want Evan in a digital nomad?

Evan Williams

Well, I must agree with Isabella also the point that they're world leading in their feature film industry as well. I mean just their craft is extraordinary and they're producing an extraordinary number of very high profile and very successful directors and camera people and everything else. So if I was going for a digital hub, seriously as a media professional, I'd want to tap into that sort of area to see if there was some sort of expansion or collaborations or co pros you could work in that sort of area rather than just laser about on the beach like I suggest suggested in Portugal perhaps. So it could be and I think you're right, they'd be targeting a very highly active Asian, possibly American, Australian type media professionals. It could be very successful because you could tap into that hub. That's what I'd be looking for. And the high speed Wi fi, definitely. So it could work if you had to focus, I think on that sort of thing.

Andrew Muller

I mean, is this though just finally on this, Isabelle, a an idea that might hopefully be coming back into fashion, particularly in this country because my sentimental attachment to ideas like this is that I first arrived in this country on a working holiday visa which was an option given to young folk from other Commonwealth nations. And then I returned here on. I can't remember the name of the visa now, but the basic gig was that you could come here as a self employed person. And the line from the United Kingdom, Kingdom was basically, sure, come and have a shot. If you don't make any money and go broke, that's your problem, not ours. But if you manage to make a thing of this and pay all your taxes and don't break any laws for however long it is, we'll see about letting you stay.

Isabel Hilton

Yeah, well, I think that seems to be the approach that they're taking and they have, as Evan said, reduced the requirements for earning, which were pretty, pretty stiff, right?

Andrew Muller

They were.

Isabel Hilton

And so, you know, they seem to be making an effort. And you know, if you look at the sort of Asian cultural scene, where is somebody going to go if they're interested in, I don't know, Internet culture or soap operas or drama or just the creative industries or tech, you know, it's not a bad place to go. It's not authoritarian. It's got a fairly stable political scene. It's not China. It's probably easier than Japan, which is not very friendly to outsiders. It's kind of more mature as a cultural scene than, than, than Thailand, I think, I think that it's, it's a reasonable shot.

Evan Williams

Yeah.

Andrew Muller

Isabel Hilton and Evan Williams, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, this year marks 150 years since the birth of Conrad Adenauer. Post war Germany's best known chancellor, if you adjust for Angela Merkel, benefiting from recency bias that is and responsible for steering West Germany as it then was from international pariah after the horrors of Adolf Hitler into the modern liberal democracy. The that it is today. Adenau's Christian Democratic Party is now helmed by the country's current Chancellor Friedrich Merz, at the helm of an unpopular coalition which is once again in danger of letting the far right into government at Germany's next federal and state elections. Monocle's Chris Cermak spoke with Mark Speich, Secretary General of the Conrad Adenauer foundation, at Madori House on a recent visit to London. They began by discussing Adenauer's legacy to.

Mark Speich

I think his legacy is still very timely because I mean, if you try to describe his legacy in a sentence, it's certainly that Adenauer anchored Germany very few years after the most Unspeakable atrocities that were done by Germans. He anchored that Germany firmly in the political west against a lot of opposition at that time. That is sometimes forgotten. That was his personal success, I would say, of course, supported by his party and by government, but it was his firm commitment and I think that is still true today. And the other legacy, I would say that he had a foreign policy perspective that I would describe as principled realism. And I think that is coming back now. You could very easily describe the approach of Friedrich Merz as a kind of principled realism. I would say so in that way he is connecting to that legacy of Konrad Adenauer, his pre. Pre. Pre. Predecessor and turning away from that more, I would say, idealistic lecturing others which didn't lead to any consequences if we are true to ourselves and having a more realist, sober approach to foreign policy.

Chris Cermak

Back in Konrad Adenauer's time, the Christian Democrats were the big party, or at least there was Christian Democrats and one other party in opposition, basically the Social Democrats. Yes, Free Democrats as well. But nonetheless it was a different time than the very fractured politics that we see now in Germany and elsewhere. What do you make of how the Christian Democrats have managed that time with the rise, especially of course of the alternative for Germany on the. The right wing?

Mark Speich

I think you have to set this discussion in a European perspective. And obviously you see that Christian Democratic or center right parties are losing out to more populist, more radical parties all over the continent. So it's not a situation or a development that would be in any way special to Germany. So in a way the CDU is one of the last big elephants when it comes to centre right parties. But obviously you're right. Also the CDU is losing out to the AfD we see in the current polls. I think it is necessary to have a more granular look here because you can clearly see that the AFD is strong in regions that are economically more deprived and it's much less strong in economically prosperous region. I think the question of. Of state performance on the one hand, and regaining economic strength is an enormously important factor to bring down those approval rates of the AfD.

Chris Cermak

Was there an assumption that this would not happen again in Germany, kind of bringing this back to also Konrad Adenauer in that sense, that because of his leadership after the war, the lessons, the history that it teaches in schools about the rise of the far right and the. And so on and so forth. Was there perhaps an expectation that Germany was immune to the rise of a far right party?

Mark Speich

I would say that you are right that there was that kind of assumption. But if one had taken a closer look, one could have seen that there always was a kind of radical right political force, even at Adenois time. I mean, the Constitutional Court had a ruling that forbid a party, the SRP, in 1952 that was a radical National Socialist Party. So even at that time you had those kind of political movements. You had different parties who were entering parliament at a time. So there was always not in the numbers, of course we see now with the AfD, but there was always that kind of radical right. And you had it in other European countries as well. But of course Germany is a special case because of that historical burden. And what is striking from my perspective is that we got now a populist far right party that is clearly more radical than other European radical right parties. I mean, if you see the program, the manifesto of the AfD, I mean, if you see public speeches and appearances by some of the leading politicians, you can clearly say that the radical wing of the party has taken over, which is connected to a politician like Bjorn Hacke. And there we clearly see a latent, sometimes a more open anti Semitism. We see a clear commitment or a closeness, a proximity to Russia. We see a very challenging relationship to the German historical past. Where the National Socialist past is. You even find allusions to that past that are positive here. And that has been a thing that never happened, I would say, in post war German history. That kind of maybe exception of the case I mentioned where the Constitutional Court ruled. But that open allusion to National Socialist language terms, that is something new. And it's striking that it is happening in Germany.

Chris Cermak

Is there something as well about people needing to protest? One reason I'm asking that is because of the existence of this grand coalition. Of course, currently in Germany you have the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats together. You've had that quite a few times over the last 20, 30 years. It's not working very well. These two parties struggle to compromise on things. And perhaps, perhaps again, this is something that happens in Europe too. We don't really like compromise anymore and we like big giant plans. Is that a problem for Germany? Is that perhaps also a reason that people are voting for the fringes?

Mark Speich

You're pointing to a real challenge because obviously in the past elections were about clear alternatives. Clear alternative between center right or center left. If you have a coalition between the two larger parties, center left and center right, the center becomes slightly blurred. You don't have that kind of clear alternatives anymore. And that is certainly a problem. But there is no way around it, I would say, given the majorities that we have. And that leads to the fact that we need more compromise, not less, I would say, and we need more moderation, I mean, that is. But obviously you have a point in saying that there is an element of protest when it comes to supporting the AfD. And I would always say it's not helpful to fight the voters of the AfD. One has to fight the political party that I just described as a very radical one. But I think the voters are much more diverse and if you are polling with 41%, these are not all, all radical right wing voters. There is an element of protest to it and I think you have to address those voters and get them back to the center. If you give up on them, As I said, 41% right now in Saxony Anhalt, then you are giving up on the political future of that state. And that cannot be.

Andrew Muller

That was Mark Speich, Secretary General of the Konrad Adenauer foundation, speaking to Monocle's Chris Church here at Midori House. And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Isabel Hilton and Evan Williams. The show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Josefina Astrad Nagla Gomez. Our sound engineer was Steph Changu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

Chris Cermak

It.