556. The US-China AI Arms Race and Badenoch vs. Rory’s Centrism

A

Three months ago, the defining story in artificial intelligence was the race between China and the U.S. with China seeming to be a long way behind. And yet today, China is unveiling AI systems that are strikingly close to the US frontier, while Xi Jinping launches a new international AI organization and invites the developing world to join it. So what exactly are we looking at? Is China genuinely catching a America technologically? Or is it become extraordinarily good at taking American breakthroughs, building on them and making them cheaper, open and more accessible? And is this summit really about artificial intelligence at all? Or is it something much bigger about soft as well as hard power? A belt and road initiative for AI. An attempt to make Chinese technology, Chinese standards, Chinese institutions, the default digital infrastructure for the global South. Because if that's that's right, then the real competition, both in AI and in geopolitics, may no longer be over who builds the single smartest model. It may be over who shapes the technological order that the rest of the world ends up living in. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

B

Right now Fuse Energy's tariffs are up to £200 below the offgen price cap. Plus they've just launched a new referral offer that can bring your bill down even further.

A

What I love is the simplicity of it. If you refer a friend, one of those few people who haven't heard about Fuse from us every week and they switch both their gas and electricity, you each get £50 towards your next bill.

B

So it starts with one conversation. No prize draws, no chance, no complicated reward scheme. Just the power of one smart recommendation that rewards you both.

A

And remember, energy prices are more volatile than ever. But don't wait for rates to spike again. Switch to Fuse in just three minutes and move to cheaper energy designed to help you and your friends cut bills.

B

So don't just listen to another price cap story. Switch to Fuse, save up to £200 and get trip plus free with code politics@fuseenergy.com politics.

A

This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. There's a trade off with modern technology. As it advances, our lives become more convenient. But they also become more exposed.

B

And I don't know about you, I find it exhausting because you spend so much time worrying about spam calls, data tracking you don't quite know to trust.

A

That's, I think, why Nord's VPN app isn't just about hiding your IP address. It's now a broader digital defense with built in next gen antivirus, anti tracking, scam, call filtering and anti malware.

B

And all quietly operating in the background so we don't all, even if we want to have to become cybersecurity experts, is the ultimate tool for navigating the modern Internet agreeably and safely.

A

That's quite a tribute Alice, from you, who we often see as a bit of a tribute act to the analog world.

B

To get the best Discount off your NordVPN player and go to nordvpn.com restispolitics the link is in the episode Description

C

for adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphya offers self injection or intravenous infusion. From the start, Tremphya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self inject Tremphya, proper training is required. Tremphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about tremphya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tremphaiaradio.com.

A

Welcome to the rest is Politics Question

B

Time with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell. Sir Rory China and AI Daniel, what does China's new AI organization reveal? Reveal about its ambitions in artificial intelligence and its rivalry with the United States, which is kind of what you addressed in the introduction. First of all, you help me on how we pronounce this Waco Wacko World Artificial Intelligence Corporation Organization.

A

Exactly. So two big bits of news and of course the Chinese have very cleverly coincided the two things together. So first big bit of news, the launch of something called Kimik 3, which is a new Chinese frontier large language model. If you were to look at it on your phone, it essentially looks a bit like ChatGPT or Deepseek or Gemini. But it's a remarkable breakthrough from the Chinese, which I can come to in a bit because on certain indicators it's doing as well as or even better than the American models. China having traditionally been seen as being nine months behind.

B

Rory, just on that, how much of that has been down to their famed industrial espionage tactics?

A

Certainly a lot of it seems to be to do with them learning from the American models, reverse engineering them and building systems which are, if not outright theft, at least copying a lot of the innovation. But it's very interesting because what's happening is that America is spending 27 times as much in terms of private investment on AI and about seven and a half times as much if you look at the hyperscalers investment. So hyperscalers are probably going to put in about 700 billion when China's going to put in about 100 billion. And yet China is developing things which are almost as good as the American models now. So there's something really interesting. You put in 27 times more investment and you're just a couple of percent ahead. And why is that? Well, almost certainly because there's a real advantage to being a follower rather than the first mover, because you can learn all the stuff, you can work out what the benchmarks are. And in the case of Kimike 3, where they've really astonished people is encoding and they're right up there with the top models from OpenAI and from Anthropic with ChatGPT and with Fable 5 on the coding, which has really shaken people to the core because America has been telling. When I was going to these grizzly conferences in the US three years ago, the story was that they were comfortable two years ahead of China. It would always take China two years to catch up. By the launch of Deep Seq, they were beginning to worry that China was six to nine months behind. But they were always a model behind. With this launch, it looks like the Chinese on some indicators are better than a lot of the American models. And just behind the frontier of Anthropic

B

and OpenAI, you mentioned the issue of soft power and of course America's soft power has been damaged by quite a lot of the things that Trump has said and done in his second term. But it's also becoming just part of the general US China rivalry. So this new organization, should we call it Waco? Let's call it Waco.

A

Let's look at Waco. That sounds a bit like some mad American far right attack, doesn't it?

B

Texans town, isn't it? Wasn't there lots of bad things happen there? Yeah, yeah, okay. Waiko. Waiko, we'll call it Waiko. So they've now got 29 countries signed up to it and Washington has this A1 opportunity statement with 35 countries. But what the Chinese seem to be saying is that we're going to, whereas the Americans are seeing this very much as sort of you know zero sum game, we're going to dominate. We're saying, come in, learn from us, take our training. So I think it is part of their broader soft power gambit. If you look at where they're going, Latin America, ASEAN Africa, it's amazing.

A

So the core American offer is something called the Pax Silica. So apart from this AI initiative, the Pax Silica was an American attempt to try to integrate supply chains and it got Japan, South Korea, UK and some others signed up, including Qatar, uae. But the Pax Silica, the American version, is very, very low on any commitments or any institutional framing. Essentially it's saying the great word that America keeps using is America will endeavor to share its products. And the killer blow to Pax Silica happened when America held back the frontier models and didn't allow non US citizens to use them. And I don't think we've fully taken on board what that meant because of course it was very, very worrying for companies in Europe, the economy in Europe, if suddenly it turns out that we can't get the latest American models that we're building all our systems around. But it's even more worrying if you are GCHQ and Cheltenham, our signals intelligence people who are relying on, on having these frontier models in order to deal with cyber attacks. And suddenly British banks, British intelligence, security organizations, the US was no longer sharing the frontier technology with us. And the Pax Silica then began to seem remarkably empty because there were no guarantees, no institutions you could follow through on. Contrast, China wo is much more institutional. It has a secretariat, it has a headquarters in Shanghai Guterres. The UN Secretary General has been involved. They have formal relationships with organizations like the African Union, the Arab League, ASEAN brics. And what China is saying is, firstly, our models are open weights. So if you buy a Chinese model at the moment, you get to have all the weights yourselves. That means that you essentially get key bits of the code. And if you have the chips and the data centers, you can host and tinker the Chinese model and it's yours. The Chinese can't take it back. The American model is completely different. The American model is that the technology remains in the us. They license it to you and as Trump demonstrated effectively, they have a kill switch. They can switch it off whenever they want. So there's something much more appealing about an open weight model which you control and you can build on and somebody can't kill switch. Secondarily, the Chinese models are much cheaper, less clear on the latest Chinese model, but on the deep SEQ models You're looking at them doing things for a few cents that are costing nearly 100 times more per unit to run for. So if you're the Nigerian Health Ministry or the Indonesian Education Ministry, it's much cheaper to run off Chinese models. You can make it much more suitable for your own local language or your own. Suitable for your own local databases. And the Chinese will then follow up with technical training, with loans, with infrastructural investments. So, effectively, this is a story about China not. Not just making huge technological advances, but being much more thoughtful than the US in terms of how to create a system that people might want to actually buy into.

B

I tell you recently, when I was in Hong Kong talking to Kevin Rudd, who's genuine China expert and has written this extraordinary book analyzing Xi Jinping's speeches down the years. And the one thing I found reading that book was just how quite dry and technocratic Xi can be. But his speech on AI was sort of, for him, extraordinary, kind of lyrical. He said, this is a major move by China to answer the call of the global south and unite the international community together. We often say in China, a single string cannot make music. A single tree does not make a forest. AI should not be a solo performance by a single country, but. But a symphony of international cooperation. I mean, that struck me as being a kind of direct. That's your way, Trump. This is my way. And we're going to be getting far more people involved internationally. It is a belt and road initiative of AI.

A

Yeah. And it's happening at a time when the Chinese economy, we shouldn't underestimate this, is facing really big, serious problems. Right. I mean, the property sector is still a catastrophe. It's 30% of Chinese GDP. And it's not just houses, it underwrites the banking system. It's basically people's pensions, savings, they're underwater. There's a lot of youth unemployment, it's aging. So the population will shrink by about 200 million over the next 30 years. So China is some problems, but they have made these incredibly smart technology bets. They're still the greatest manufacturer and exporter in the world, and their export figures are very impressive. They're struggling to get Chinese consumers to spend. Still a big, big problem. They're going to face challenges if Europe starts putting up tariffs. And we haven't talked enough about Volkswagen laying off 150 to 200,000 workers. I mean, extraordinary, the changes that are coming largely because the Chinese competition to European industry and where that goes. But what they're showing with AI is that even if their economy is slows, they are still going to be the most formidable technology and defense player and they're making the most of it. And whereas Trump is taking a country with so much potential and making it less than it could be by shattering his alliances around the world, China is playing a relatively weak hand. It's not as if anybody wants to sign up to the Chinese system of government. Very few people want to move to China and live there. Their AI models are not as good as the US models. That frontier at least haven't been until recently. But with Waco, they're showing exactly how very thoughtful international cooperation can compensate for a lot of weakness.

B

Let's use the picture caption of the week as a bridge to Samantha's question about whether China did interfere in the US election. I thought that the best caption of the week, Roy, was in the Guardian a picture of Infantino with Trump next to the Spanish World cup winning team, which said Giano Infantino gently attempting to persuade Donald Trump that he is not part of the Spanish World cup winning football team, as he just would look. Get out of the picture now. What do we make of it? So Trump is back on election denial, election meddling, and remarkably, given that we know how hard the Russians try to interfere in elections, not least theirs. Not a mention of Russia, but it's all about China. China, he says, accessed 220 million voter records. And this comes as he's trying to get the SAVE act through Congress, which would make it harder for an awful lot of people to vote. So, Rory, you as our China expert, did China interfere in the US election or were they trying to stop Donald Trump become president?

A

Well, I don't think there's any evidence of that. I think it's very plausible that they've accessed the voter records. Never underestimate Chinese cyber attacks or the amount of information they're hoovering up all the time. I'm a bit doubtful about whether actually they get much advantage from getting voter records. I mean, imagine what those voter records are. You get registration sheets, you and I have campaigned in streets, you get people's names, addresses. What do you do with that that China hasn't already got through 10,000 other forms of interference? The kinds of Chinese cyber attacks and interference that you want to worry about are much more about critical infrastructure and industrial secrets, I think. And certainly I don't think that Trump is to be relied upon in trying to provide some theory on Chinese interference in elections. And I would have thought that from the Chinese point of view, Trump becoming president is the greatest gift they've ever received, and it's a gift that keeps on giving. I mean, nothing has consolidated China's position as it tries to position itself as a kind of predictable, reliable partner in the world than the catastrophe of Trump. So if they were interfering in elections at all, I think they would have been trying to get Trump elected.

B

But isn't it incredible? How so? This thing about I was robbed of the election, Joe Biden didn't win, I didn't win. And he's never, ever, ever acknowledged the lack of veracity to that statement. He's never even sort of hinted that, yeah, maybe, but. But what he's done, and this is what we were talking to when you were in your retreat at Medihas, Amazon, he was saying that when the Trump denialism started, he made a decision that they would not interview any Republicans unless they admitted that Joe Biden won the election. Okay? They had to scrap it because they couldn't get any Republicans to talk to. And you even have judges sitting in hearings where they're trying to become a judge, refusing to say that Joe Biden legitimately won the election, but the way that he just keeps going with it. And of course, what this is partly about, it shows that if and when he does very, very badly in the midterms, he wants to be able to say, China was involved in this, the vote rigging was going on, all these dead voters, all these. And when you look at the stats, you know, we have problems here. Every democracy has problems in being as functional as it wants to be. But this thing about, you know, you have to have either a passport or a birth certificate, something that proves who you are to vote. Even today, Rory, 51% of Americans do not have a valid passport. 69 million American women do not have a birth certificate that matches their current legal name. Okay? 24% of Americans under 30 or 30 who are eligible to vote do not have access to the documents that are needed under this act. And of course, this particularly disproportionately affects immigrant population, black population, et cetera, low income. So it's very, very deliberate, very deliberate

A

attempt to try to get them out. Now, because this is question time and a more jolly showdown, I think I just want to introduce the thing that's making a noise in the background to the audience if people are watching on video, but you can describe it for people on audio, and then I'm going to release it.

B

What the hell's going on now? Oh, it's an animal.

A

So this is Jahan. Oh, Jahan is Ivo's possession. Johan is a Herman tortoise. He's a little nervous at the moment because he's being held off the ground. You can see his head coming out as he's saying hello to you.

B

Aw. What does that mean, when their head comes out?

A

Well, it means that they're less nervous than they were.

B

Welcome to the rest. Is Tortoise with me, Alistair Campbell. And what's the noise he's making? Because I can't hear anything.

A

Oh, you didn't hear? So he was tapping against the nesting box that he lives in to come out and come for a walk. And he travels at quite a pace. You know, this dining room. He'll make it round the dining room.

B

Excellent. Quite a pace.

A

We keep hoping that he may outlive us all yet. I mean, they are wonderful in there and they're one of these animals that. I know we're not doing the rest is nature, but we should. These are kind of animals that look prehistoric and turn out to be prehistoric. I also sort of feel that certain kinds of fish, certain kinds of crab, tortoises, certain kinds of lizards that you look at and you think this thing looks very, very, very ancient. And generally it turns out they are. These things were genuinely around before the dinosaurs. And I feel that. Do you like snorkeling? Do you like snorkeling? I love it. That sort of sense that you're sort of hanging around in the water looking at these sort of prehistoric life forms.

B

But do you go down with oxygen and stay deep?

A

I done a little bit of that, but generally I just float around with a little snorkel.

B

If you read that book, did you read Nord Stream Conspiracy? Because the most terrifying thing is the description of what it's like when you're diving.

A

Yeah.

B

Oh, my God.

A

Yeah. And the fact that. Well, anyone who hasn't read it, I mean, it is the most incredible book. But one of the things I think that you pointed out from it is that the Ukrainians had to recruit people who could dive much deeper even than their special forces divers in order to get to this pipeline and blow it up.

B

I know. Incredible.

A

Who practiced in what? Abandoned quarries in Ukraine just before this.

B

Can we. Can we, as we're having a wildlife moment?

A

Yes.

B

I hope we put in the newsletter. I. I had the most wonderful experience in Iceland, where I just went. I was looking at these Arctic turns and one of them came by and it was. It was like she was on a treadmill just for my pleasure. She was like. She was not flying forward. She was just doing the motions. And it was, it was the best moment of the year so far, obviously, apart from Scotland beating Haiti.

A

How wonderful. So she was sort of floating over. She was sort of floating, yeah, it

B

was like just treadmill flying. It was beautiful. Yeah. Anyway, let's get onto Ukraine.

A

How lovely. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. Yeah. So the segue is from the Nord Stream, where it now turns out the Ukrainians did indeed blow up this massive Russian gas pipeline to Germany. But a question from Chloe, which is why did Zelenskyy just fire his defense minister? Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about Mykhailo Fedorov, who must have been in when you were there visiting.

B

Yeah. And who is a very, very popular figure in Ukraine. And as Chloe rightly says, Zelenskyy, who is also, for somebody who's been in power so long, pretty popular. Still very, you know, on the one hand, not having to have elections because you're banned by their law from having elections if you' War is an advantage to him in that there's no sort of immediate threat for him to get kicked out of office. But on the other hand, it's, I think, sometimes harder to maintain authority in a democracy if you don't at least have a sense that you're being tested and challenged. I think Fedorov would have been maybe somebody. He's certainly seen, he's young, you know, mid-30s, which for, you know, that level of politician in that part of Europe is pretty young, seen as incredibly energetic. He's one of the people who's been part of this development of Ukraine, as, I mean, you've talked to military people. I do. They say what Ukraine's done in terms of adapting to the changed circumstances, particularly drone warfare is. And he gets a lot of credit for that. But the answer to Chloe's question is it's come down to a straightforward old fashioned power struggle between the minister and the commander in chief, this guy Oleksandr Syrsky. And Syrski has one. It's as simple as that. And Zelenskyy's pretty much admitting that. He basically said, I would like to have kept them both. But in the end I had to make a choice because these two guys were. And I don't. I can't really get to the bottom of whether it's personal or whether there's something about the difference in strategy that both of them have wanted to pursue. And these relations are always quite tricky. I mean, that you. We were very lucky back in the day with A series of. Well, actually, no, we had some pretty strained relations as well, but we had difficult times. We had pretty good relations with the military. And if you have the head of the armed forces who's there thinking, you know, rightly, to some extent, I know much about how the military work. I know much more about war than you do. And you have some guy comes in and says, I want to shake this and shake that up. It seems to me that that relationship has broken down, down, and Zelenskyy's had to make this choice and he's chosen to go with the generals.

A

A couple of things. One thing is that I'm not sure that we've fully taken on how unbelievable what Ukraine's managed to do is. I mean, if you go back to Trump taking over, Trump taking over was the introduction of a very, very pro Putin anti Ukraine policy from the White House, putting huge pressure on Ukraine essentially to give up and settle, disarm, get rid of a lot of its military, accept Russian de facto control, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then the U.S. followed up by stopping all its funding, drew $50 billion a year of funding to Ukraine, at times turned off satellites, didn't deliver on missiles which Ukraine had been promised, including Patriot missile defense Systems. And the U.S. of course, has been firing patriots like Billiot out in the Gulf in its Iran war. All of that meant that if you were J.D. vance, you thought that Ukraine was going to be forced to come to a deal with Russia because they completely depended on the US the story actually has turned out to be very different. We now have these long range Ukrainian strikes against vital bits of Russian infrastructure. So these clouds of smoke going up from Russian refineries around Crimea, the Sea of Azov seems to have been almost closed by Ukrainian attacks, so that the Crimean garrison of the Russians is in real trouble. And a lot of this, presumably, or some of this Feodorov the Defence Minister, should have been able to take credit for. I mean, it's a slightly odd thing. I mean, we've had it twice now from Zelenskyy. Zaluzhny, who's now the ambassador in Britain, was doing an amazing job and was removed and now he's removed someone else doing an amazing job.

B

I think with Zaluzhny, it was part, I think that there was a real sense that Zaluzhny was seen as possibly taking over from Zelenskyy at a time when Zelenskyy didn't want that talk. That was something I kept hearing when I was out in In Ukraine, Fedorov has been very, very clear that in his view Syrsky was doing a bit of divide and rule. He actually said at his press conference, instead of thinking about how we defeat Russia, he figured out how to split our own country.

A

And sorry, just quickly, the story that I've heard, and maybe this is nonsense, is that there is actually a big tactical disagreement between Syrsky the General and Fedorov the Defense minister, which is that Fedorov was all about drones. It's probably very simple, but drones AI devolve local commanders, let them run these almost autonomous things forward. And Syrsky was still trying to run quite an old fashioned centrally command military, infantry first drone and support. So very, very weird to remove the man who seems to be doing the more radical, relevant, contemporary tactics and leave in place the guy who represented the more old fashioned side of Ukrainian fighting.

B

Yeah, but I think this is what's so interesting about Ukraine is that we see it and even yesterday talking to the Prime Minister in Iceland, she was saying that, you know, it's a long, long way away, but we don't even have an army. But people in Iceland really feel that Ukraine is, you know, fighting for all of us and something was so special about them. And that is a kind of outside image that a lot of countries have when you, it's interesting when you go there, how quickly you pick up on some of these political tensions and political divides. And that's an obvious one for the military, isn't it? Because you have a military that sees itself as the professional military. And then in some comes some guy from outside who sort of says we need to do this. And he's on the phone to Elon Musk trying to sort out Starlink. And it's just very, very different world. And I think what Zelensky's on this one has decided I've got to stay a little bit closer to the old world, otherwise I'm going to be under pressure. And the other thing he got rid of, one of the other people I met when I was out there was the Prime Minister, Yulia Sievedenko. And she's been sacked as well. Well, she was offered a different job. She asked her to be ambassador in Washington. She refused. So we've now got a new Prime Minister. So the tensions are there at a time when Ukraine actually militarily seems to be doing pretty well.

A

Yeah, just finally, and not to be uncharitable to your, your mate Zelensky, is it not possible that actually quite a lot of this is about power politicking and these people being potential rivals, that if you were being uncharitable, you'd say this isn't really just about resolving a fight with the General, it's about the fact that Fedorov was becoming too popular. And a bit like Zaluzhny, he's moving him aside because he's a direct challenge to his authority. And in fact, ironically, what seems to be happening with Zelenskyy repeatedly as he moves these people aside and they become ever more popular.

B

But then the other thing that seems to be a given is whether if, when, hopefully this war does end and there will be an election that you, that Zelenskyy will, you know, will probably move on. That's the kind of the sense you get now. Lots of people when they're in power, they don't want to leave power. So listen, there's no doubt, certainly by Zalus, people say that openly. They will say to you, look, you know, he was getting too big for his boots, he was getting too popular. Ship him off to London, quite an important job, he stayed close to the Brits, etc. Etc. So anyway, it just shows that even when you're at war and perceived to be doing pretty well, politics will always have a way of coming back and making life difficult. Apologies. Don't be confused by suddenly we're in a different place at a different time. But we recorded on Tuesday, it's now Wednesday. And since when there has been a major development which is under the threat of enormous and continuing protests about the sacking of Fodor, the Defence Minister. He has now, Zelenskyy has now sacked the commander that we were talking about, Syrsky, and has basically admitted that this is because he wanted to be able to get the two working together. They couldn't. He sacked one of them and the public has been in revolt about that. So he's now sacked both and we are yet to see who for the long term is going to replace them.

A

Yeah, he's brought in at the moment a man called Mikhailo Drapati. He's only 43, so nearly 15, 20 years younger than the outgoing general, who's a real kind of, I guess, a battle hardened general. So that's very interesting. And Fedorov, as you say, at the moment has been replaced by someone called Yevgeny Kumara, a former top official at the SBU, which is their equivalent of the MI6 or KGB. And the question remains how much of this is about disagreements, how much this is about military tactics and how much this is about personalities and political jockeying on the ground in Ukraine. But it's not great, to be honest. I mean, Ukraine, you know, let's be brutal about this. Ukraine over the last few months has got itself in a much stronger position. They've gone from the defensive onto the offensive. The Russians are seriously worried. It doesn't look good to me to be removing your top general and your defense minister or when you're on a roll and you're winning. And I think that raises some questions about Zelenskyy's judgment.

B

Okay, there you go. Chloe, we weren't ignorant. It's just that we were speaking before the events that have since taken place. Okay, Roy, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we'll talk about how Kemi Badenoch is handling your beloved party, former party, whatever we call it these days.

A

Lovely. Look forward to it.

B

So good, so good, so good.

D

New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores. Now get ready to save big with up to 60% off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you wreck.

B

I'm archmanning. I'm Madison Skinner. I'm Eva Jovic. I'm Decoria Moore.

A

Wanna train like a Red Bull athlete?

D

Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bull Athlete Challenge.

B

You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an

A

ultimate Red Bull experience.

B

Think you have what it takes. Welcome back to the Recipe. It's question time with me, Alistair Campbell.

A

And with me, Rory Stewart.

B

Now, Rory, this is definitely for you, Kamran. Rory, what do you think about the purge of the Tory Wets, by which I think they mean, particularly recently, Theresa May's former chief of staff, former Housing Minister Gavin Barwell.

A

First thing, just put my cards on the table. Gavin Barwell is a friend of mine, and this general tendency to move against this group is moving against my group in Parliament. So this comes on the back of an attack by Kemi Badenoch. Also on David Gork, my great hero who'd been the Secretary State for Justice because he'd got a knighthood for running a review of justice for Keir Starmer. She has decided to portray those of us who were, I guess we would have been called under Margaret Thatcher, Tory Wets. Or if you're an American listener, we would have been, you know, Mitt Romney, Republicans, maybe she's decided that we need to be evicted from the party and she's setting more and more loyalty tests and narrowing the bandwidth of who a Conservative can be. So, I mean, obviously, look, I'm going to criticize this and I'm going to be difficult about it, but let me explain firstly what she's doing and then maybe we can get into the rights and wrongs of it and whether there's a logic behind it. The fundamental thing she's doing is, is she's saying that you can only run to be a Tory candidate in the next election if you sign up to two things. One of them is rejecting Net zero.

B

Oh, damn. I won't be able to stand, Roy. That's me out. I can't stand as a Tory mp.

A

No, exactly. And the second thing is you'd have to reject the European Convention on Human Rights. Now, just to explain why this is so extraordinary. It's so extraordinary because it was we, the Conservative government, who introduced this Net zero legislation and I as a Tory, was to be found on my hind legs giving one hour defenses of the European Convention on Human Rights against Jacob Rees Mogg in the House of Commons. And there's a couple of things you take from that. One is she is actually saying that people who sign up to what was our government policy and we all voted for it, any MP in the House of Commons who was there before 2019 would have voted for this net zero and actually right the way through to 2024 would have supported that policy because it was all part of our policy. So by definition she is asking her existing MPs to change their conscience to say I voted for something, I believed in something, and now in order to remain as a Conservative mp, I have to reject what I once voted for and supported. But the second thing that that ECHR story of me having an hour long debate with Jacob Rees Mogg shows is that the whole point of British politics is that these parties were broad coalitions. And so it was possible for Jacob Rees Mogg and me to be in the same party. And it was possible for us literally to sit in the House of Commons debating each other for an hour with me in favor of the European Convention on Human Rights and him against European Convention on Human Rights. But neither he nor I would have been thrown out of the party. And the most dramatic example of that was Brexit. David Cameron did not say, I mean, the Prime Minister was in favor of Remain, Most of the MPs were in favor of Remain. But The Prime Minister did not say to our MPs, unless you favor Remain, you're going to be thrown out of the Conservative party. He allowed 40% of the members of parliament to be Brexiteers, 60% to be Remain. And that remained the case. And why is that necessary? It's necessary because the whipping system, which Andy Burnham is so angry about and I'm so angry about, if you're not careful, creates a sort of electorate dictatorship in which the Prime Minister can simply use the whips to drive through his agenda. It's not like the US Senate or the Congress, where the senators and congresspeople, at least until Trump, were relatively independent of the President and there was a balance and there was a check of power. Members of Parliament are so vulnerable already to a Prime Minister because he gives them their jobs. A third of them end up on the payroll. They're whipped all the time, they're punished all the time. The one hope for any discussion, dissent is to accept that these parties are coalitions where people can have different views. That began going wrong with Boris Johnson, who of course kicked 21 of us out of the Conservative Party because we tried to ask for more time to debate the European Union legislation. But it then went wrong with Keir Starmer, who started kicking out the previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, because of Jeremy Corbyn's views on Palestine. So this is really worrying, and I think, Kemi Badenoch, it's bad for the Conservative Party, I think it's bad policy, it's bad for the consciences of the MPs who signed up. Sincerely, one hopes to views that they're now being asked to publicly reject. It's like a Stalinist show trial in which four years ago you were expected to champion one thing and say one thing, and then in some Animal Farm situation, you're now supposed to say exactly the opposite or you're for the chop. But it's also very bad for British democracy because we need different voices in the House of Commons, within parties, to have any form of accountability or debate at all.

B

Yeah, I've been reading an advance copy of Johnny Mercer, his book, who we're going to have On Leading soon, because he's written about his career and actually, there's a lot of similarities with you in terms of his assessment of what Parliament and government is like and this sense.

A

And I suspect Andy Burnham too.

B

Well, Andy Burnham is openly saying that this is partly what drove him out of Parliament, because he's now gone back and says he's going to change that Just on the broader political judgment, though, I've thought from the word go that whoever takes over from your last load of your last lot of leaders had to regain some sense of the Conservatives being a party that could appeal to a broad network of people, as it's always done historically. Whereas what it's done, I mean, Andy Burnham said when he took over, we're not going to win back Greens by outgreening the Greens and we're not going to win back reforms voters by out reforming reform. And I think that the put the Greens to one side for a minute, but in terms of reform, that's the message for Kevin Badenoch as well. This is so clearly about trying to say to reform voters, because she keeps reading the Daily Press and the Daily Mail, that they're all up in arms about the ECHR because it's got the word European in it and Farage keeps banging on about it. That's not the way she's going to win these people back. She's going to win these people back if she can sow the Conservative Party to be serious, particularly about the economy, to have learned the lessons from the past and to have a policy agenda for the future, not some kind of, as you say, some sort of ideological purge test that most of them, if they were being honest with themselves, would fail.

A

It's so weird, isn't it, because it's all very well turning against someone like me because I wasn't an old party hand and perfectly legitimate to say I was the Johnny Come lately and wasn't a proper bluebird Tory. Maybe because I'd been in the civil service, I'd been abroad and I came back. Whereas Gavin Barwell, who she's just thrown out, is absolutely at the core of. When I first was standing as a candidate, he was right there in Conservative Party head office running the candidates list. He's a real proper party person. He ran very, very effective campaigns in a marginal seat in Croydon. He, as you say, was Theresa May's Chief of staff and chosen as the chief of staff because he was one of the most liked, popular central figures amongst the Members of Parliament. I mean, he was a really trusted, true blue Conservative. It's a very, very weird move to make. I mean, I don't know who the Labour equivalent to someone like that would be, but you're really hitting at a very strong strand of the Tory party. And it connects to an article in the Spectator I read by Lionel Shriver in which she said she was congratulating Kevin Badenoch and says the Tories need to become the nasty party again. So she laid out all these things they were going to do. They were going to throw out net zero, they were going to be much more brutal on immigration, they were going to be much more brutal on welfare and also. But her basic line was, the Conservative Party needs to become much more nasty. I think this is mad. I mean, even, you know, think of the impact that Margaret Thatcher had on people. The sense that a lot of Andy Burnham's political life is defined by his hatred and despair of what Thatcherism represented. But Margaret Thatcher was balanced by a lot of people, you know, Peter Walker, Willie Whitelaw Carrington, a huge range of people. And then ultimately Chris Patton, William Waldegrave, who represented another side of the Conservative. Ken Clark would be another one. Right. That the only possibility of the Tory party doing the tough stuff that it wants to do on tax and business is that there's some sense of conscience, some sense of compassion, some sense of care. To actually set out to be the nasty party seems to be catastrophic. No? Or am I? Or am I missing the politics here?

B

No. I think actually to say we need to be nastier doesn't strike me as a very sensible strategy. We should say, just for the historical record, Maggie did have quite a few ideological purges of the Wets from time to time once she'd worked out exactly where she wanted to go.

A

But she never fired any of them from the Tory party. Never would have considered firing from the Tory party.

B

No. She fired from the Cabinet, but she didn't kick people out of the Tory party. That's true. That's true. Rory. Food security and farming. James wants to know, will Andy Burnham's government do more or less to address the climate crisis? Hope so. Including our food security. Hope so. I've got to replug Caroline Lucas miniseries that she's doing for us on the climate crisis. Part two is about food security and it's pretty terrifying. I think this is. The guy sitting next to me on the plane from Reykjavik is absolutely right. He just said, why are the political leaders, why have they all gone quiet on climate crisis years? A few years ago we were all talking about it. Now things are getting worse, but we're not talking about it. And so what Caroline series she's interviewing, as she's done through the whole thing, somebody who really knows about this issue of food security, who says there's a realistic possibility decline of forests, glacier fed rivers is going to lead to global competition for food code for we're going to have wars over who's got the food beginning in the 2000 and 30s and when you look at our country, we are so far behind. I was in Finland, I remember when I was in Finland recently talking to President Stubb and he was telling me just how self sufficient they are in a crisis both on energy and on food. So for food, if they were suddenly in trouble tomorrow, they've got eight and a half to nine months. They're fine. We are between just in time and all that. Three days and three weeks if something really bad.

A

And actually to be honest on that one, let me just come in on that because your Finland points are really good. The honest answer is we don't have any strategic food reserves of any sort in Britain. I mean that figure that we've got three, five days, a couple of weeks. That's not that the government has strategic food reserves. Finland literally has strategic food reserves in the way that China has strategic oil reserves. And it's something the British government could choose to do. And it's something that so many countries and governments have have done in history, which is to say we need to have standing by, you know, silos full of grain, effectively.

B

So first episode out last week, second episode Friday. You can get it at the restispolitics.com and it's Caroline talking to Professor Paul Behrens who specializes in exactly this issue, food security.

A

Here's a thing. I mean it's a bit late maybe for Andy Burnham, but, but maybe not too late at a non cabinet level. One of the things that happens in Finland is they have an agency tasked exactly with this question of food security. And it brings together all the different bits. The problem at the moment, Angela Eagle's just taken over in Defra, but she doesn't have all the levers around this stuff because food security is not just about producing more food. We could produce more food in Britain. One of the things that's happened is that we've gone from about 11 million acres under production to about 9 million acres under production because quite a lot of land has been set aside. Some land, a minority of it has been rewilded. A lot of land has been planted under trees. So a deliberate choice has been made in Britain not to plant crops. Where we planted crops during the Second World War, there were millions more acres under cultivation. It wasn't just people putting potatoes in their backyard. All the fell sides were so we could be producing more. But it's not just about production, it's about resilience, it's about how we think about water management. The sun is very good for growing crops, but it's absolutely no good if you have these water shortages that we keep having. And then there's the whole issue around distribution, packaging, global supply chains, all this stuff we saw around Covid. So let's imagine wildfires in Canada, which are unbelievable. I was just in Cape Cod and the US just got back. The whole sky in Massachusetts was black. The sun at four in the afternoon was a tiny red speck because all this smoke was coming over from Canada. Unbelievable. And you looked at a map, there were wildfires right away from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.

B

Wasn't Donald Trump saying he was going to put tariffs on Canada unless they could stop the smoke coming in?

A

Well, that was particularly mad.

B

Mad Trump close to home for both of us. Fires, the cairn gorms in the north of Scotland. I mean, back to my point, when are we going to wake up?

A

Arthur's seat is up in flames and it's going to take the fire brigades days to get grips of that right on the edge of Edinburgh. But if you put together, let's imagine there were wildfires in Canada, let's imagine there was a drought in Brazil, let's imagine India imposed rice export bans, there's a war in Ukraine. Then you suddenly see where the problems come from because why we're likely to end up in a food security crisis. There's multiple crises, overlapping, and it's very difficult for DEFRA to think about this on their own. So if we're serious about this, firstly, listen to Caroline Lucas's report, but secondly, think about what machinery of government we need to put in place to deal with this.

B

Oh, God. It's quite, it's been quite heavy.

A

I want to get you, if you can bear onto the question of the World cup and some football. And we haven't had proper, proper questions from this. So this is a question from Derek, which is, Alistair, being honest in yourself, what did you learn about the world and football? What surprised you? What was interesting for you? And if you were trying to convince someone who wasn't a football fan why it was something worth watching, what did you learn about humanity in the world?

B

Q Plug the new world who've done this wonderful photo spread of Fans from all 64 countries, face painted. I think the World cup was a. Was a gigantic success on many levels, despite who leads America and despite who leads FIFA. I learned, as if I didn't know, that Donald Trump is a total narcissist. And I know it's pathetic and childish and petulant but this is what happens when you've got Trump derangement syndrome. I was watching in this pub in Iceland when the crowd booed Donald Trump. The crowd in the publisher cheered the crowd in the stadium. I learned that I was in when I was at the Champions League final. I met this guy Karanko, who used to be a manager of Middlesbrough, top footballer. And I said, come on, you guys know what's going on. Who's going to win the World Cup? He said, well, it's pretty easy to work out. It's going to be Spain, France, England or Argentina. They were, they were the last four. And he thought Spain, he thought Spain and Spain won it.

A

What stage did he guess the last four?

B

Oh, this was before the tournament started.

A

Oh, my gosh. So he managed. Wow, wow, wow, wow.

B

I think the other thing I learned is that even though it lasted a long time, if you love football, you can cope. You, you can, you can cope with several, you could cope with several, several games. I also think that, I think underlined. If you talk to the people who were there and you listen to people there, there are two Americas, two very different Americas. There's the Trump America that we all hear about and it's just noise and it's performative politics and people. Most of the fans from most parts of the world said they had a kind of amazing time and they had really good receptions everywhere they went.

A

I was in Boston and they were so funny in Boston. So pleased about the Scottish fans. So pleased about the fact that the Scots have managed to drink out all the beer in Boston. I mean, I heard this from so many people in Boston. We had no beer left. They drunk us totally dry.

B

That's proof that the market economy doesn't work. That's why you need socialism, Roy. You need socialist approach to beer.

A

I had a question for you from Stocky, my father in law. So he is a big, big. Loves playing sport, loves watching sport, but played American football. Watched American football, but he was a bit bewildered by watching what he calls soccer. He loyally sat through all the games with us, but he said, can you get Alistair to explain to me and many, many, many other Americans, where are the plays? What they're used to in American football is these very, very complex 95 different plays that have been set up there. The quarterback gets ready, one person sets in stretch. Another person sets in, stretch. And he was looking at soccer as a new soccer watcher without knowing much about it. He found it a bit boring compared to American football because he wasn't able to spot 97 detailed, choreographed in advance plays. Are you able to explain this to the American viewer?

B

First of all, I would say to Stocky, that is why I find NFL so boring is because it's relentlessly stop start. It is rehearsed, pre programmed almost. The great thing about so football managers set up with systems so you can see roughly what the system is that they're playing. And then as the game evolves, they adapt tactics and systems and the joy of watching football, particularly with somebody who knows about football. I've had the pleasure of watching football with some great managers. They see a different game. They see it like an NFL guy might see an NFL game if they've worked in it their whole lives. I'd also think the other. I thought what you were going to say because the main criticism you get from Americans is that it's such a low scoring game unless it's England against France for the bronze medal. But the reason that it's low scoring is because when two good teams are playing each other, it is really, really hard to score against each other. So that's why it needs these really special players. They talk about unlocking defenses because they're looking for gaps and they're looking for. They're looking for their players understanding what they might do with the ball. So Luke Stocking needs to come to, I'd say, let's say Burnley against Wrexham next year. We can sit down, we can watch it and I can try to explain, but it's way more exciting than any American sport. I'll tell you the other thing I learned. The other thing I learned because I didn't go, I'm. Deep down I'm think I'm glad I didn't go. I think I'm glad I didn't go. But I did miss the Scotland experience. But it meant I watched a lot of pundits. You asked what surprised me, I'll tell you what surprised me is how good a pundit Wayne Rooney is because Wayne Rooney reputation, etc, etc, etc. And he had the best line of all because the other thing that I loathed about the World cup was that the modification, the celebrification, I mean the final, if they, they just kept scanning the crowd for kind of, you know, celebrities, some of whom I recognized, some of whom I didn't. And the halftime show, I just thought Wayne Rooney spoke for the world. When Gabby Logan said what do you think of it? And he said, well, I was glad when it was ended. I thought it was crap. That is so keep all that American this is Batford. Stocky. Keep that American shit out of it.

A

I was incredibly impressed. I was watching. Obviously the only way of watching in the States is watching the dreaded Fox. But Thierry Henry, I thought, was incredible on explaining Spanish plays. I mean, so fluent and such a wonderful. I mean, I thought he was incredible. Does he do a lot on British telly too?

B

He does a fair bit, yeah.

A

He was so good at both getting the overall picture and also giving us the detailed plays.

B

Was Zlatan Ibrahimovic on as well?

A

He was, yeah. Zlatan was up next to him. Yeah.

B

And what do you think? Because he's my teammate in Croatia.

A

Is he? Is he? Well, he. He was. I mean, he didn't. He wasn't quite as fluent as Thierry. Just fine. Finally on that one. Finally on that one. Will you just. Sorry this is so boring, but funny. Can you just give us a bit on our German manager and what the hell went wrong? Is there anything interesting to be said on that or has it all been said on how we managed to lose the semi final?

B

I think it's all been said. And Afiona, as you know, isn't a big football fan, doesn't understand why I've devoted so much of my life to traveling up and down the not very reliable train line to go and see Burnley. But she did watch the England Argentina game with me and she now thinks she should be the England manager because as the substitutions, as the substitutions were being made, she said, why does. Why is he taking off attackers to put on defenders? Why don't they want to score another goal? Look, I think he fought the last war. They did something similar against Mexico, but that was with 10 men, very different. And they did something similar with Norway and he thought, it's worked before, but this is the difference. Messi had been very, very quiet for most of the game. He suddenly realized they are going, they're pushing themselves back. This is where I'm going to go and open them up. And he did it. So now I don't think it's more complicated than that. That being said, I thought so. This is what's wrong with our fandom and our media. Tuchel has done a pretty good job for England and he doesn't go from hero to zero just because of one bad period, really. But the truth is the best. The best team in the world is France, but the best team in the tournament overall won the tournament. My big worry watching in Iceland was that Argentina, who didn't have a single shot in 90 minutes, were going to hit one shot in the 97th minute and win it. But no justice. Justice was done. And so happy for the Spaniards, so happy for the Palestinians who support Spain because of their stance on. Oh, and by the way, Rory, just on that, did you see the story about the guy who devoted himself to erecting huge screens in Gaza so that people could watch the World Cup? He was killed by an Israeli attack.

A

I mean, I'm sorry to hear that. Sorry to hear that. Okay, well, let me try to bring us to an end on a slightly happier note. So we've done some pretty tough stuff. We've done China and AI, these amazing new Chinese models. The latest, Most advanced model, Kimik 3. Most of you are not going to be able to download, so don't rush to your phone. In fact, it's one of the limitations, the model almost certainly because they don't have the compute behind it. They're not able to take many more subscribers at the moment. But we've done China and AI, soft power. We've done quite a lot on food security, done quite a lot on the Tory party, Treasury, Tory Party, done a little bit on football. I just want to finish though, maybe with football and you for a second, bring us back to Andy Burnham, our new Prime Minister, who, like you, his two great loves in life seem to be football and music and in particular the Manchester music scene. Talks a lot in his book. It's a lovely book. Thank you for making me read it. About Smith's Morrissey UB40 Manchester club scene and how important that was to him. And a lot of his time at Cambridge was playing football and going to concerts. Quite European. I mean, he's married a lady who is, I think a Dutch speaking woman who was living in Belgium.

B

She's a Dutch Belgian called Marie France.

A

And we're all getting a bit excited by that. And also he's an English graduate, whereas Keir Starmer famously wasn't able to name his favorite book and seemed to slightly struggle to communicate his kind of cultural interests. Andy Burnham seems very comfortable with that. So tell us a little bit just to finish, about music, football, what that tells us about Andy Burnham.

B

Yeah, well, the first thing to say, I think it's real, it's authentic and I think the football thing is very, very deep. I mean, he really, really, really loves Everton Football Club. He's also a rugby league fan, like I am. No, it goes deep. And also he's not a bad footballer.

A

He's got a lovely story about playing with Mike Atherton at Cambridge, about how useless this famous cricketer was at playing football.

B

But yeah, yeah, he was. He was a bit. He was a bit disparaging in Mike Atherton's footballing skills. But no, he's a good. He's a good sort of midfield general, quite physical. Will go into a. Won't back out of a tackle. I was thrilled to see that Peter Reid, former Peter Reid, who's probably most famous, he listens to the podcast. Roy. I'm going say, to say this, he's most famous for being one of the many, many players that married on a beat as he went to the other goal in the hand of God. Goal, game. And I've always said to him, Peter, just stay there, just don't wobble. Just stop wobbling from side to side. But I was great to see. It was great to see Peter Reed in the. In Downing street with his white jacket on with Steve Rotherham bottle feeding his grand. His grandchild. Now, the football thing is real and I think that speaks as well to his kind of absolute belief in local community. The sport thing is real. I think a lot of sports people have been in touch with me. I was at the Diamond League Athletics on Saturday with Sebko and Brendan Foster, both of whom have had dealings with Andy through the work that they do, and both really, really positive about him in terms of sport. The UK athletics people are there, really positive. They know that he really gets sport. And it was great as well. Roy, to see. You've got a Scottish tortoise there. Josh Kerr, your fellow Scott setting a new world mile record. So that was. That was a good day.

A

Unbelievable. The speed. I mean, somebody pointed out that over a mile he's traveling at a speed that most of us would struggle to achieve over 100 meters.

B

Most of us would struggle to go anything close to that pace for. For a yard. It was fabulous to watch. It was fabulous to watch. So, no, I think the sport thing is important and it'd be interesting to see how, you know, Keir Starmer, who was an Arsenal season ticket holder and the security wouldn't let him go where he used to sit, had to go in the box and all that. Be interesting to see whether Andy does all that stuff or whether he tries to stay in his usual seat.

A

He claims he's been guaranteed that he can sit in his normal seat for the Everton game. So we'll see where that happens.

B

That might end up pissing off other fans who suddenly have to have their legs sniffed as they walk in.

A

Lots of things have pissed off fans. Right. Thank you, Alistair. Very much. Look forward to seeing you again very soon.

B

It's just so heartening that you wanted to talk about football, not me. I was going to try and get through a whole episode without talking about Trump. I know it already failed, but anyway, we didn't make it. See you soon.

A

See you soon. Bye bye.

D

Foreign.

A

Hello everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you.

B

We do indeed. As you all know, the rest is politics. Plus members get early access to Question Time, they get ad free listing, they get exclusive series and a host of other benefits.

A

And probably for me, the most exciting thing is these exclusive mini series we're doing. And right now we're holding a summer sale so you can get an extra 20% off on an annual membership from now until the end of August.

B

If that sounds good, head to theresetespolities.com and use the code summer26 when you purchase an annual plan.

A

Make the most of this deal and join us for a busy summer ahead. We've got some brilliant new series coming your way, so new stuff coming, for example, on Existential Threats. And then there's all the stuff. Alison, what are some of the miniseries that you've enjoyed you think people should be listening to?

B

I've enjoyed them all. To be honest, I really liked the Gen Z series that Vicki Spratt did. I've enjoyed the recent one on on the funding of Reform.

A

I've been very proud of some of the stuff we've been doing on AI. We now have a really good package for listeners going deep into AI around the world. So sign up now and start catching up with our special Summer 26 code purchase on the restispolitics. Com.