The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 117. Is the UN fit for purpose? (Tom Fletcher)

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

As the US retreats from the international stage, who is going to fill the gap? What will the ‘peace processes of the future’ look like? Who has more power, the tech giants or political leaders? Rory and Alastair are joined by the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN, Tom Fletcher, to answer all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Video Editor: Kieron Leslie Assistant Producer: India Dunkley + Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the restispolities.com. That's the restispolitics.com. Welcome to the Restless Politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell. And our guest today is somebody who for quite a long time now, several decades, has had a pretty good view on some of the most significant political and diplomatic events. in the world. I first met Tom Fletcher when he was a young diplomat during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister. He went on to become the main foreign policy advisor to both Gordon Brown and then David Cameron, both of whom are on record about saying how much they valued his advice. And then still in his 30s, he became an ambassador to Lebanon. He's an author of fiction and nonfiction. He's something of an innovator in ideas about what diplomacy should be in the modern age. He's also run in Oxford College. But a few months ago, he was kind of tapped up and pulled out of his semi-retirement and urged to go back into diplomacy. So he's now the United

Nations Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. And he's joining us today from Ukraine. So Tom, thank you very much indeed for being here. Thank you, Alistair, and hi, Rory, too. It's great to be on. I'm an avid listener to the show, and it's good to join you from Keev. So, Tom, you have had this extraordinary job in the United Nations and charge of all humanitarian affairs for just six weeks. So it'd be amazing to just give us a sense of how you approach the first six weeks in the job and what you've done since you've taken over. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredibly daunting job. And I wanted to get out in the field straight away. So spent much of the first period in Sudan. I was there. for a week or so, basically trying to blast through the borders, checkpoints that are blocking our aid delivery and our life-saving work. So particularly wanted to get into Darfur, where we haven't had an international footprint for some time because of the conflict there, but also

making sure we've got the convoys moving across the Chad-Sudam border. So it's very important to see that. A bit of time in New York, which is my headquarters, also in Geneva, which is the headquarters of the humanitarian movement, where I've got quite a big office. And then in the New year into Syria. And I was down to see Bashar al-Assad. And then obviously circumstances changed. And by the time I got there, I was seeing Ahmed al-Shaba, the new Syrian leader of the caretaker government, but then drove from Babal-Hawar, which is the crossing point from Lebanon, where I used to be ambassador into Syria, all the way across Syria, Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, and all the way up and through the Turkish border, Babel-Hawah. So made that drive, and that's the first time anyone at my

level's been able to do that for years and years. A fascinating trip. And then here I am now in Ukraine. I've been here now, five, six days. And I've just come back from the front line. I was two kilometers away from the Russian shells yesterday. And actually, the shells were falling not very far from us. Got back into Key this morning in the middle of a fairly big mass casualty attack. And so we've been under the sirens and out of the bunkers all day. So Tom, I mean, so much to talk about in terms of your life and where it's going. But last time I saw you, you were in a relatively leisurely life as the president of an Oxford college where you'd been sitting for a few years. You have a young family. And you've turned on a dime from supporting students and the fantastic kind of calendar

of a university life into now being on the road in war zones. And I imagine the first six months in your job, you'll be just out everywhere, seeing everybody. Just talk us a little bit about just some of the personal choices that you've had to make with family and children and relationships in terms of throwing yourself into something quite so different. Yeah, I mean, thanks for asking. I mean, that's been very, very tough. Look, I have to correct you though, Roy, because I've heard you a couple of times on here talking about my very leisurely coseted life in Oxford. That was a serious, tough job. And, you know, I always say education is frontline diplomacy. It's upstream diplomacy. And we were trying to do all sorts of things, introduce a curriculum around head, hand, and

heart and not just knowledge. When I was running for that job, the Don said to me, do you have any experience of negotiation? And I said, well, you know, apart from Hamas and Hezbollah and the IRA, no, not very much. And they said, well, this will be much harder. And of course it was. But I was really enjoying that. And I had planned to do it for eight years. You know, I'm firmly of the belief that you can't really make a difference somewhere, an institution as durable and as difficult to change as Oxford, unless you do a long period. And I've been telling everyone that over the summer. And then, you know, as Boris Johnson would put it, the ball came loose at the back of the pack for this one. And I got a call at the end of August at home. And they said, look,

we've been thinking about various options for who to run for this job. We want to stick you on the list. They don't just want someone who knows just the humanitarian world, important as that is. They want someone who's got a bit of politics, bit of comms, bit of diplomacy experience as well. And of course, I said, you know, here is 17 other people who I think would be much better at this than me. But also, it's a definite no. It's a flat moo. I said, I cannot believe that my family will agree to this. It's too much upheaval.

The boys are 18 and 13. And I've been able in Oxford to be a very present father in the last few years. And I took the idea to Louise, who's also an avid listener of yours. And she just said, you've got to be joking. Get back on the phone right now and take it. this is the job of your life. You've been preparing for this forever. We wrote our own marriage vows and she said, I'll be with you when you climb your mountains. And this is a pretty hefty mountain and she's been extraordinary. You may have listened to the one recently, Tom, when we

talked about you getting this job and Rory said it's the job that he would have liked. So that's probably why he's asking you about all these choices. He wanted you to say it's an absolute nightmare. I wish I hadn't taken it. I think my marriages and family are going to fall apart. But you seem to be handling it pretty well. Can I just ask you, what was there in your background, do you think, that made you become what you've become? Because when I first met you, I wouldn't have put you down as kind of traditional foreign office. Interesting. I'm curious as to why you'd think that. I always look at the school that people go to. So I didn't go to a classic foreign office school. But to be honest, I mean, that's a bit of a myth, as you know, that we're

surrounded by sort of tarquins and double-barreled names and posh. elitist schools. No offense, Rory. The world's not like that anymore. The front office hasn't been like that. It has changed a lot. But now, I suppose I always wanted to get overseas. I mean, like both of you, I'm fascinated by the world out there. And I think we need to have a worldview form by actually seeing the world. I'm curious about other cultures. I'm interested in this gray area where coexistence happens and where cultures and ideas interact. So I guess that was what really drove me to the foreign office. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was university. I'd been a bit of a failure. I'd failed to get into Oxford. Over time, I'd been a failed

teacher in the Middle East. I was a failed boxer earlier in my diplomatic career. I had a boxing match in Kenya, and my opponent's motto was Fletcher goes home on a stretcher, which is pretty much what happened. I was a failed door-to-door salesman. So I tried various things before falling into the foreign office, and I found that diplomacy was something I loved. But for me, diplomacy is bigger than the kind of maps and chaps. Perception is bigger than the protocol and the flags and the etiquette. It's about that human connection, what we call the last three feet between people. And, you know, you can divide the world right now into people who think that the answer to 21st century is to build a bigger wall, and those of us who believe in coexistence. And the conversations you have

on the pod are mainly with people who believe in coexistence and are trying to reach across difference and find ways to rub along. Tom, you've written a great book called The Naked Diplomat. And in it, you locate yourself in 2016, the time the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump elected for the first time. And you try to ask yourself how we got there. And can you just give us your vision of what's happened since, I guess, 1989 or wherever you want to start and how we end up with 2016 and 2025 and how you saw that unravel as a working diplomat? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, look, as you guys aren't shy about promoting books on the podcast, so I will just know, I've written four great books, including two great novels

about diplomatic life. They only got published because I gave you a great agent. You're revealing the behind-the-scenes secrets of our world there, Alistair, but you did absolutely get the best agent in the game. And, you know, I owe everything in my literary career to the great Victor. Get off this smug self-congratulation and onto the nature of the collapse of the universe. Perish the thought that we'd have any smug self-congratulation on here. Look, you're right to ask it, Roy.

And I think you guys have been right in diagnosing that for our generation of, people who care about foreign policy, international relations, liberal democracy. You know, that 1989 moment, I was 14, Berlin Wall comes down, that image goes viral, long before Instagram, campaign for end of apartheid going viral, long before Twitter, Tankman in Tiananmen Square going viral. They marked us, you know, that Napoleon line that you can take him out at 20 and you'll understand his worldview. Take me at 14. And I did think history had ended. I scoffed at it in my undergraduate history essays, but this sense that the world in 2024 would look more like Sweden and less like North Korea is in the background of my diplomatic life and almost every politician and leader

who I worked closely with. And that defined my worldview. And yet, here we are. And I think that did start to crumble. I think that chapter ends 2016. 1989 to 2016 is a chapter in the book. And it ends with, you know, let's not be periculate about Brexit. It ends really with Donald Trump. It ends with Vladimir Putin. And that sense that suddenly this worldview is under deliberate, sustained attack. And that we've come now into a period when I think the great trends are the rise of distrust, the rise of inequality and then the rise of tech. And somehow all of us have got to work out.

And this goes for my role now leading the humanitarian movement. Am I gaming or losing trust for what we're doing? am I really dealing with the causes of inequality and not adding to them? And am I using the tech or am I being used by it? And I think we should run those tests over everything we do. If I was like a maga person listening to what you just said, even though you're a pretty skilled diplomat, I could have heard you basically saying that Donald Trump is a big part of what's gone wrong in the world.

I mean, look, during Trump in office the first time round, I was pretty unrestrained at that stage. And I said that he was a man setting out to previous critics right. and that the US had become a kind of country that used to try to fix, and that he'd created a vacancy for leader of the free world. And I was worried about the international system being orphaned by the absence of American leadership. And at a time, it was also being vandalized,

including by Security Council members. So at the time, I was pretty forthright. Now, when I ran for this job, I did say to the Secretary General, you know, I've said some pretty spicy things in the past. Is that going to be a problem? And he said, you know, well, let's see what you say in the job. And here actually, in some ways, easier than being a British diplomat because I can be forthright. I can speak truth to power

because I have to be completely fiercely independent as a humanitarian. I have to call time on this age of impunity and age of indifference. And that means being critical of the Donald Trump administration, where we feel it's crossing a line and where it's not protecting civilians, for example, in conflict, but also being critical of the UK of Russia, China and of the governments that I'm visiting. Tom, can I come in on this? And one of the things that is worrying is that as America seems to be retreating a little bit more from international systems, you know, we've now had Ron Paul and Elon Musk, for example, saying that they're interested in cutting all international development aid, which presumably would be catastrophic for responses

and places like Sudan. There's also a sense potentially that Europe and the UK and others are slightly withdrawing from the world, which wouldn't have been true in the 1990s. They're not really filling the gap. It's not as though Europe and the UK are saying, we're going to step in in Syria, we'll step in in in Sudan, we'll step in in Ukraine in the absence of the US. Is that something that also is concerning you? Absolutely. And I've just been in Washington and was thinking with the NGOs there and with friends on the hill and some people who are going into the new administration, how do we reframe the argument for international solidarity? Not just for the UN system, because none of us are really in the market at the moment for defending institutions and hierarchies.

It's got to be for the values that underpin the UN system. You know, we're at the moment, we're already underfunded, overstretched, and literally under attack. Last year was the most deadly year to be a humanitarian since records began. You know, 300 colleagues. I lost a colleague yesterday in Janine. So this is a really tough time to be a humanitarian, and it's about to get even tougher because it's not just a system. that is those values which are under sustained and deliberate attack.

The rules of war have been taken for granted, really, certainly for all of our working lives, but really since the Second World War, we've had this scaffolding that protected us, even in times of conflict. And now those rules of war are being questioned alongside the role of humanitarian. My job is to effectively drive the ambulance

that goes towards the war to try and help the survivors. Now we've been asked to turn that into a fire engine that actually puts the fires out. But it's a fire engine with no water in the tank because we don't have the funding. It's a fire engine that's being fired at, literally. My convoy is going into Gaza are being shot up as they go in.

And it's a fire engine that actually is without a driver because we're in a driverless world right now. So it's got much, much harder. And you're right that we shouldn't just talk about this in terms of the American administration. And I'm thinking about ways to make the argument afresh for why the work that we can do, overseas to deal with conflicts at source is actually in the interests, even of a more inward-looking

America. But also make the case that if you don't lead guys, someone else is going to step into that vacuum, and you're not going to like that. So if you're a big man leader in this world of big-man leaders, then show us some leadership. Get out there and engage with the world. But you're right. It's not just in America. We are losing support across Europe and beyond as more skeptical, more nationalist, more inward-looking, introverted governments come to power. You know, the UK has cut its aid budget in recent years and pretty much set up a circular firing squad for much of the last decade as it looked inwards. Many European governments, I'm heading to Germany and to Sweden in the coming weeks to talk to them about their aid budgets, but there are real

cuts coming our way. So in response, and sorry, this is a long answer, we have to be clear about what we're here for. I'm here to save lives. Now, that sounds grandiose, I know, but that's the job. That's what it says on the tin. We have to be absolutely clear about that. We also have to get better at delivering. I think that means we have to be much more efficient. We have to reform ourselves. There's far too much waste in bureaucracy. So I want to get ahead of the sort of Elon Musk-world view on efficiency and reform ourselves. We've got to devolve power to those we serve and listen to those we serve, innovate much, much more. Rory, you're on the front line of this with the work you've done on cash, but we can be using

technology to deliver much more of the work we do. And that alongside that, we've got to absolutely be rock solid in defending humanitarian values and the international system. And I'll go anywhere and talk to anyone to do that. Tom, is there a risk that the United Nations as an institution has outlived its time and that something else has to emerge. Because institutionally, the way that it's set up with the big five, with the power of veto, and with the fundamental divisions that now exist within that five, is there a danger that that is no longer ever going to be able to meet the sort of challenges that you're talking

about? And something new has to emerge. There is that risk. And I think we have to take it head on and not pretend that things are working perfectly. The UN is flawed. It's imperfect. And believe me, from where I sit, I can see where it needs to change and the layers of bureaucracy and the struggle we have. You know, my job is to coordinate the international humanitarian system and, you know, believe me, that is a struggle. But it's still the best idea we've had for global coexistence. I didn't see anyone come up with a better idea. It's a lubricant in the system, really, as countries and ideas rub up against each other. And, you know, it was created with extraordinary kind of patience and tenacity after the Second World War, at a time when we'd learned to our cost what nationalism

does if there isn't that international scaffolding, that international system. So I think we have to be very careful about smashing it down until we've got a better idea. But then, yeah, the UN itself has to get much, much better at what it does. You know, I've described a world of distrust. We have to find ways to build trust back up again of the people we serve. What's happening to the world? I mean, when your job was done by Sergio de Mello or by John Holmes, the world felt quite different. What's happened to the UN? I've just been reading an amazing book that you may have looked at by Tantminu about his grandfather U.Tant in this incredible moment in the 60s and early 70s in the UN. What's happened? What's made this job feel as though the job you've got is quite different to the job that Sergio de Mello had or John Holmes had? going back 20 years. Yeah. I mean, so I don't think you can blame it all in the UN. I mean, in some ways it's the splintering of the Security Council and particularly the sort of great power standoff and the age of autocracy that you often correctly identify as a real challenge now.

It's also this context we're working in. I mean, if you look around now, and I've just launched this big overview of humanitarian needs, these massive humanitarian needs, we've got to reach 300 million people now. And we're not going to do that. I've got to make brutal choices over whose lives we don't save. And we're aiming to say, the lives 190 million. But, you know, that's 110 we're not going to reach, even if we're fully funded, which we won't be because we need 47 billion. So if you look at what's driving that need, why is that situation getting so bad? And yes, it's the failure of the international system. It's our failure to end conflict. The conflicts that I'm dealing with are much longer duration

and much more intense. I mean, look at Gaza. The intensity of the killing there. Palestinian civilians are being killed in Gaza, 10 times the rapes that you're, you're Ukrainians and millions are being killed here. You know, that is really staggering. It's also the fact that these conflicts, longer duration, more intense, are hooking up now with existing inequality. And you know better than I, the way that that inequality is stretching and the way we fail to mind that gap between the haves and the have-nots. So you've got that. And then on top of that, of course you've got the climate crisis. And those three factors, climate conflict and inequality, you know, I saw it. I flew over Chad.

And you can see the way, literally looking out of the plane, you can see the way the climate crisis and poverty and conflict are hooking up and creating that perfect storm. And I think, by the way, one of the great trends, and Guy Vince's book is great on this in the next over 10 years, is that we're entering a new era of climate-driven migration, which will dwarf anything that we've seen. And migration is the human story. Our ancestors were migrants and our descendants will be migrants. But every degree of temperature rise, which we know is coming at us, will drive a billion people out of the area where humans have lived for millennia. And so I've been doing to work on the peace processes of the future, trying to get ahead of where those conflicts will be. And a lot of the conflicts will be between migrants and host communities as people are on the move.

But also, those peace processes include peace between the generations, between humans and the planet itself, between humans and big tech. And you've talked a lot about the dangers of Musk and others. And also ultimately, between humans and the technology itself, between humans and artificial intelligence, that will be one of the great peace processes of the future. But Tom, as you're talking, I'm feeling two very strong surges going through me.

One is it all feels overwhelming. And I wonder whether you do feel overwhelmed. I sometimes look at Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, and he looks quite overwhelmed at times to me, and no wonder. And then the second thing that what you were saying there provokes in me is a kind of feeling of a lack of match-up between our political systems and our politics and the scale of the challenges that you're defining. You're a pretty optimistic, confident sort of guy, but do you feel optimistic about those challenges being met?

I probably feel less idealistic than I did. Certainly when I was ambassador in Lebanon, I write these sort of very optimistic blogs about the future of the Middle East called things like Beirotopia and so on. I'm probably a bit less optimistic than that. And believe me, I mean, this job is hardening me up. I can feel it. I can feel it happening to me every day.

You know, people keep telling me it's an impossible job. Actually, when I saw Ashara, the new leader of Syria, the first thing he said to me is I've read in your bio that you're doing the hardest job in the world. Well, now you're doing the second hardest job in the world. But it's right up there. So you look around the world. Einstein said, we don't know how World War III will be fought,

but World War IV will be fought with rocks. And I get to see the worst of humanity, the absolute worst, and I'm seeing it out on the front lines the last couple of days here in Ukraine and seeing, you know, meeting people escaping from that devastating war. But, and it's a big butt, I also get to see the best of humanity as well. I get to see the people marching back towards the sound of gunfire in order to try to stop it. I see the emergency responders. I sit there with parents who are working to get their kids back into school in Sudan,

who have exactly the same concerns as we do. And look, we'll evolve, we'll adapt. I think we'll find ways through. The stonage shouldn't end because we ran out of stones. And I do genuinely believe that my grandkids will live longer, happier lives than my grandparents. Now, that's a big bet. and it depends on us. And, you know, without getting back to the idealism again, you know, that Martin Luther King line about, you know, the arc of the moral universe does bend to justice.

But as Obama says, we have to work to bend it. And that's what I'm trying to do is get out there and try to bend it. But yeah, there are times in the last six or seven weeks when I have, you know, I admit, I've despaired. And, you know, you ask me how I cope. I'm starting therapy. I've not felt the need to have therapy before. But I'm spending a lot of time. talking to people whose lives have been utterly ruined and you can feel yourself absorbing that. And I don't want to get so hardened that I'm no longer hearing those stories. And I find that there are moments of real emotion. You know, we talked about the family and when I get into the car on a Sunday night

to get the plane back to New York or wherever I'm heading, you know, I find that the emotion gets overwhelming at those points. I can do the job when I'm out in the field, but there are moments in the car when it feels really daunting. But you draw strength. I talked to a lot of my predecessors, and they said, you draw strength from the people you serve. And they're absolutely right. You know, you've just got to get out there and listen and listen and listen. And then you feel you don't have the luxury of pausing for too long. That drives you on. At the risk of deepening this further, can you tell us a little bit about what you've seen in Sudan, what you've seen in Ukraine, try to bring alive

for listeners, what the situation is actually like on the ground? So in Sudan, in Darfur, you know, I drove through these sort of charred ruins of the towns that we hadn't managed to get through for months. The most distressing thing there was a sexual violence. You know, the weaponisation on a massive scale of sexual violence. And sitting with the women and hearing their stories, you know, being passed around these armed groups. You know, stories that, you know, I wouldn't want to mention even on your podcast. And utterly shocking. then you get to Syria, you know, talking to one guy who'd gone back into Sibnanda prison

to try to find 14 relatives the day after the prison had been liberated. And you saw those pictures, you know, people were breaking down the walls to try to get to loved ones. He hadn't found them, but he showed me a noose. He'd taken a noose out of that prison where so many people had been tortured. And he handed it to me and said, this is my only connection, my physically connection to my brother. I don't know if he was hanged by this noose, but maybe he was, and if so, this is all I have left of him. You know, these are tough stories to hear. And then

yesterday, yeah, out there on the front line, wonderful old retired teacher, could have been one of my teachers, Tamara. And, you know, one day she went out for a walk. A shell hits her house, absolutely everything destroyed. And she's there in the reception center. We'd met her at the front line, got her in a van, driven her to a reception site, given her a blanket, put some warm food in her belly, started to help her recover documents, you know, so she could start to rebuild her life. But in all these situations, the conversations you have, they can be very mundane. Often people talk to you about the same things that we'd be talking to each other on a cold water swim, Anister. You know, people are talking about their daily lives, they're worried about their

kids, they're thinking about staying in touch. I tell you one thing. that's really difficult here in Ukraine. You know, I've felt it the last few days, but I hear it from my team as well. It's living with this constant threat of shelling and the siren's going off the whole time. The anxiety, the psychosocial impact of that on a whole people is really tough. The other one I've really noticed here and anyone, you know, when people start to come and talk to you who've been in Gaza the last few months, they'll tell you this as well, the drones. You know, Every time a drone comes near our window or near one of the vehicles, you know, we don't know it's a friendly drone.

We don't know if it's an offensive truck. We don't know if that's the drone that's going to take us out. And people are living with that all the time. And it's a reflection on how warfare has changed that these drones are everywhere now. And it's quite terrifying to think that there is someone there watching you. People here are telling me, my staff, the drones come in their windows, fly around and then leave again. I mean, that is utterly, utterly terrifying. You know, I know you guys are critics of Elon Musk, but a few years ago,

I was part of a letter that he and I wrote, 200 tech leaders wrote, saying we've got to have rules about the drones, these lethal autonomous weapons systems, we've got to find a way to regulate them. And this is a measure of the challenge we have in the UN system. We wrote that to the UN, and it took a year and a half to get a reply back because the UN couldn't decide whose job it was to answer the letter. But I believe we were right, you know, because the tech companies are saying, we are creating risks faster than you guys can manage them. And so that's a real challenge to us. It's to find ways to regulate and manage these new technological challenges to our security and to our liberty. Tom, we're talking at a time where the Israel-Gaza situation feels quite fluid.

But given you're in Ukraine, how do you see that situation resolving itself? Well, I've been working quite hard from here over the last few days and talking to the mediators and the parties on the ground. You know, my part of it is that if there's a cease-by deal, I've got to massively ramp up humanitarian assistance. I've got to get hundreds of trucks into Gaza, into a security environment, which is very, very difficult. You know, I've mentioned that our convoys are being shot up. They're being looted. The other day, I had 80 trucks go in and 79 trucks got looted by armed gangs. And then the community organizers, you know, who helped to escort those trucks, were then taken out by an Israeli drone.

You know, it's virtually impossible to get aid through. And it won't suddenly get easier if there's a ceasefire because there will be a lot of action. between different armed groups, between Hamas and the other armed groups, the gangs within Gaza, but also we don't know whether the Israelis will start to make life easier for us or will continue to make it very difficult for us to deliver aid. And that's before you start to rebuild the hospitals. You know, there's no functioning health system in Gaza right now. We've got to get in there and do that. We've got to rebuild the infrastructure. Cash will be a big part of this, Rory. You'll be pleased to hear. And we're working with partners to see how we can get money in the pockets of

Palestinian families. But the problem right now is there's nothing to buy with it. Obviously, if the ceasefire comes through, there's going to be a lot of talk about reconstructing Gaza, and there'll be talk about international partners coming in to provide security to support new government, society reconstruction. And there'll be echoes from that of the kind of conversations we had in Iraq and Afghanistan about nation building. But this presumably will feel very different because in this case, Israel will continue to have very, very strong views on security, will continue to have very strong views on the border. So whichever administration comes in is going to be in quite an uncomfortable position between Palestinian demands on the one

hand and Israelis on the other and likely to be distrusted by both sides. Could you reflect a little bit on how you'd think that through? It's really hard. And it's something that my colleagues are doing and the mediators are doing, ultimately you've got to stand up a proper Palestinian administration with independent authority. Ultimately, you've got to have a state, as all of us would agree. But the prospects for that, you know, as people say that, you know, there may be light at the end the tunnel, but there's not much of a tunnel. It's very, very bleak. And remember that everyone who's been part of any kind of infrastructure, governing infrastructure, including doctors and teachers, has been a target in recent months. So there's a whole sway of expertise there

that's just been wiped out because of the ferocity of the killing. So it will take a long time to do. And all of us, I think, you know, Rory, you've reflected a lot on this in your books. We're all thinking about, you know, what is the new model for the state building and rebuilding after conflict? And probably the pendulum swings for us, I think, having worked on it, and many of us are scarred, as you and I are by the experience in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And sometimes I think that means we swing too far the other way. We start saying, well, there's nothing to do with us anymore. We're no good at this, so let's not even try. Curiously, the person I had the best conversation with about post-conflict reconstruction was Ahmed al-Shara, the new leader of Syria. And he said, and we talked long into the night, he said, we're not going to be Libya. We've learned the lessons of Libya. We can't have power to decentralised. But then he also said, we've learned the lessons of Iraq. We can't send home the people who have to build the state, including the people with the weapons and the army.

He said, we've learned the lessons of Afghanistan. This was particularly when I pressed him on the rights of women and girls. And he said, we've learned that we won't be the Taliban. And he also said, we've learned the lessons of Lebanon that you can't just have an authority built on power-sharing agreements between different religious or sectarian groups. So it was curiously, he had a kind of governing model in his mind of how you try to rebuild a central administration. And curiously, and the three of us have all worked.

in the UK government. He was asking me questions about number 10. And, you know, Alistair, you're a guru on this, but the way in which different administrations functioned or didn't function. Okay. Tom, Alistair, quick break. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK science, are launching a clinical trial of lung vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer

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visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Samaruk here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your list. show, The Rest is Politics when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now, we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are

arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Fatchel. obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and

Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts.

You mentioned number 10 there. You worked for three British prime ministers, in particular Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Just give us your assessment of the three of them and maybe try and think of an incident or a situation where you felt that their character and their judgment came into play in a, you know, in a way that maybe impressed you or moved you or struck you as a kind of piece of statecraft that mattered. So my job title, I was the private secretary of foreign affairs, and it was once mistranslated on a visit to China as the intimate typist for the prime minister's affairs overseas. And now whenever I go to Beijing, I always get sat in a really important position

because people thought that I wrote the Prime Minister's love letters, which was not something I ever did for any of those three. Not that you can tell us. I think it was a more recent Prime Minister who had someone right. Anyway, let's not get into that. You know, one thing you learn, working in such close proximity with people like this, you know, these are extraordinary people, and it's very easy to be really cynical about politicians. We love to hate politicians. but they all had extraordinary strengths. You know, I think great leaders can set the vision.

They can bring people with them, but then they also put the structures in place, the delivery plans in place. I'm really trying to learn from that model in this job. And I suspect they would agree, and I think their books bear this out, that when it came to foreign policy, each of them was really good at two of those things,

but then sometimes struggled on the third. So Tony Blair had a very clear sense of vision, He was very good at engaging people. He was a part thanks to you, Alashter, you know, a master communicator, we set the framework for how we tried to communicate now on Front Policy. But you used to get very frustrated about delivery. Gordon had such a clear vision of the world. If you sat with Gordon on a plane on the way back from a G8 summit, my goodness,

he would just take it apart and put it back together again. And, you know, we saw that in the G20. He was also very good on delivery, you know, seeing through the systems and the structures, you know, the famous clunking fist. but struggle to engage people, struggle to get that message across or communicate it in that kind of 21st century media environment. And then working with David Cameron, and I really enjoyed that year working with David. He was a great communicator on foreign policy, and you saw that when he came back as foreign secretary.

He was great at doing the delivery, actually, incredibly hardworking, always up before us in the morning, put the red box on the table to show as he done his homework. But I think in that period as Prime Minister, he struggled to really set out what he thought was his foreign policy. vision. In fact, he very deliberately recoiled from there and used to say to me, look, I'm not like Blair and Brown. I don't have to have a sort of set foreign policy vision that's described as muscular internationalism or whatever it would be in, you know, whichever two words we picked. And I mean, I think he did have more of a vision when he came back as a very effective foreign secretary, by the way. But each of them had that struggle. Now, on the examples, I mean, I worked,

it was only at the very end that I worked for Tony Blair. So I'll give you one for Gordon, one for David. I mean, Gordon Brown, it was the G20. He pulled the world together at that moment. No one else could have done that. And at the end of that G20 summit, Sarkozy did one of those classic Sarkozy rants. And he said, the problem is no one's got a plan. No one knows what to do. And Obama just leant forward and tapped the microphone and just said, Gordon's got a plan. And Gordon absolutely did have a plan. And actually, at that moment, Sarkozy went off to go and give his press conference. And Gordon was finishing his speech with a big marker pen, you know, taking time over getting the words exactly right. And I was worried Sarkozy would make his press conference first. So I had to

race around the back and literally unplug Sarkozy's press conference so that he didn't get to speak before my Prime Minister. That's the commitment of the British Civil Service. Then David Cameron, the moment to me when I felt that David Cameron in front of my eyes became like Prime Minister was the Saville inquiry. I was also the Northern Ireland advisor. And I took him in the draft speech, response to the bloody Sunday and said look I don't think this goes far enough but you know only you can decide what you want to say but by the way and this was an Irish colleague had come and told me this when it's on sky news it'll be a fixed screen on one side you'll have you in parliament on the other side you'll have people in in dairy and their reaction and we have to bear in mind how people on the

ground will be reacting as well and David Cameron took the documents he went off on his own he read the whole report that he called me back in and he said, get someone in here and he dictated the first page and he said, I never thought

I'd have to make a statement like this but I'm sorry. It was a real moment that only actually he could have done maybe only a Tory prime minister

could have done actually where he he stood there and he owned the mistakes as a past including of the military in that way. By the way,

just to kind of cap that story, sorry, it's a long one. My great uncle, wonderful great uncle was actually the chief of police on Bloody Somebody.

in Northern Ireland. And I'd had to go to David Cameron and say, look, if the report points the finger, Uncle G, then of course you're going to have to take me off the job. I can't possibly be part of writing your response if it does that. Happily, for me, it didn't. I guess what you're saying about Gordon is that some of the characters and characteristics of modern politics and the show-busy side of modern politics, he really didn't get it and didn't like it. So where I was in number 10, I was really worried about being away from the board. for so long, and my oldest son at the time. So I collected this book of advice from world leaders. And every time I met a world leader, I'd get them to write a page of advice for Charlie. And, you know, Obama said, look, Charlie would very rich or very clever, depending on whether he sells the book or reads it. At one point, I was in the middle of the room and Berlusconi came across and wanted to sign this book. And of course, of all the world leaders, he was the last person. I wanted to sign Charlie's book because I'd had these two experiences with him. One one with Gordon and one with David Cameron.

So with Gordon, we're in the Palacio Chiqui, Bologna's residence. And he said, I'm going to give you a tour, Gordon, of my private apartment. And he took us into the bathroom. And he said, look, this is the two-way mirror, and this is the bath where I have baths with the girls.

And, you know, there's probably two types of leaders in the world. There are leaders who would understand what Berlusconi was talking about and maybe even jump in the bath too. And then there were leaders like Gordon Brown who had no confidence. apprehension and was really wanted to get the subject back to fiscal rules. And Berlusconi started going off on this rant about how there was a two-way mirror

and how he could sit on the other side and look through the mirror and see what's going on in the bath. And to this day, whenever I see Gordon, he'll say, what was Berlusconi talking about? I mean, still, to this day, doesn't it? He's completely perplexed by this horrific story from a world leader. And then after the election, you know, and I was there through the transition, you know, I did the Obama call. farewell call with Gordon and then the Obama welcome call to David Cameron, for example. I took David Cameron to his first G8 summit and diplomacy is very theatrical. And so I said to David, look, you've got to do something to show you the new guy, you know, you're Fira, you're strong,

you know, you're energetic. So we went for a swim in the lake, Lake Muscoca, I think it was, in Canada. And then I put the word round the other world leaders. Now my guy, you know, he swims in cold water. You know, he's like an Alastair Campbell of world leadership. So when he got to the meeting, the other world leaders were, you know, feeling his muscles and saying, you know, it's so good to have a vigorous, energetic guy on the block. It's a bit like when you guys came in in 97, Alastair, and you know, yeah, Blair on bicycle. On the vice, yeah. He won the race. Brilliant. Job done.

You know, I was sitting back thinking I've really delivered for my new boss. And then Berlusconi rocks up. And he looks around the room and he sees them all sort of hanging on every word of this new, energetic young leader. And he's very jealous. And so he went away and came back with eight photos, the G8 Summit, eight photos of himself, oiled up from head to toe in what I think we can describe in this podcast as a pair of very tight red. budgie smugglers and handed these photos out to the leaders of the free world. So you had this moment in the room where, you know, Obama, Merkel and the other utterly speechless that

Sylvia Berlusconi would do this. So Trump wasn't the first to have a slightly narcissistic tendency. Tom, in a lot of these stories, you come across as a very sort of quite wily and light-hearted and good-humored, it's sort of surprisingly so for a more traditional diplomat. You've got a little sort of flair for kind of publicity and images and things. Have you ever at any time in your life been tempted to enter electoral politics?

And if not, why not? Because I would have thought, unlike many diplomats, you have a lot of the skill set of a politician when you're telling us about budget smugglers and cold water. I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult. He's got good hair as well, Roy. Good hair, yeah.

It's got two. Very good hair. I don't think that works on a podcast. Look, I've always taken the job in front of me that looks most interesting at every time. And I've sometimes done Zigs when I should have gone Zag. And that's why, you know, I left government when the expectation was I'd stay in.

And now I've come back in to the UN when the expectation was I'd stay out. I do an exercise with my students where I get them all to write their CV, something every 18, every 21-year-old can do. And then I get them to walk five times around the park and then write their eulogy. You know, what is it that people say about you at the end of your life?

And people don't read out your CV and they don't read out your Wikipedia page or the list of jobs you've done. They ask, you know, were you kind, were you curious, were you brave? You know, were you a good dad, good mum, good friend. And so I'm quite happy doing the job that's in front of me. And I've always, people have asked the question before,

and I've always worried that it's such a demand. I mean, it's crazy for me to say this, having taken the job I'm doing now. But, you know, when you hear politicians, and you guys know this, but than I do, when politicians say my family is the most important thing to me, you know, it's not because that job is so demanding, and not only are you away from your family,

but you're in a situation where people hate you. You know, Rory, you've written about this incredibly powerfully. And in some ways, Rory, you know, your book would be, for me, a reason not to go into politics. Maybe I lost this book is then a reason to go into politics. But I think that's, I've always shied away from that, that sense of the demands of the world and then being far away from the people who mean most to me. But I say that, you know, sat in Kiev when I'm about to take another night train

out to the front line. Tom, you pointed to this amazing thing that Gordon Brown did and getting international cooperation in the face of the financial crisis. And then you talked about signing up with a letter with Musk to try to get international rules around the use of drones. We're talking at a moment where some of the really leading figures in AI, three or four of the biggest names in AI, are now saying that within three to four years we're going to have full autonomous, general intelligence, super intelligent, autonomous AI with incredible potential, yes, to do good, but also to, to, to do incredible destructive harm beyond anything we can imagine. And yet it's difficult at the moment to quite imagine a British prime minister stepping up and saying, okay, we're facing this existential threat. We're going to get the US and China and everybody around a big table and we're going to

set the rules on what we are and aren't going to do. In fact, the tendency would be to say there's nothing we can do. US and China are just going to push ahead, do whatever the hell they want to do. And Britain might as well put its foot on the acceleration and the hope that it doesn't get crushed. Am I right about that or are we just missing a bit of imagination idealism? Is it possible to say actually we could have international cooperation on something as important as this? You're absolutely right that we need moral imagination here as we do with the other peace processes of the future and as we do with healing the wounds of history and dealing with the

legacies of the past. But thinking about the wounds of the future, AI is absolutely going to drive conflict and crisis in the future. We're seeing it already. my problem is, and I did a report for the UN, SETA. General in 2017, on the challenges and opportunities of AI warning about the peril that we faced if we didn't keep up. My problem is that the people working for us who understand these issues, you know, we're completely outgunned by the tech companies and government too. The tech companies are hoovering up the talent now that should be sat on the other side of the table working out, how do we protect liberty and security? and human dignity in an age of AI.

So when the tech companies come to us and say, you need to give us guidelines, you need to give us rules, you know, that's my pushback, is you've got to help us with this. You've got to help us understand the tech. And you both know as well as I do that within government, there is enormous insecurity. There aren't many people who can really tell you what's going on, who've really sat there in Silicon Valley

and understood what AI will do the way it's rewiring our brains. I spent a lot of time in California working on a curriculum for the future to basically educate kids to live in an age of AI. What it comes down to there, by the way, is that we've got to not bring up second-class robots, but bring up first-class humans. And too many young people are being educated. Learning the wrong things in the wrong ways. We've got to teach them emotional intelligence. We've got to teach them that understanding of other humans, that understanding of difference, that ability, I used to say to my students, the ability to take off your own Instagram filter on. the world and recognize that everyone has a different Instagram filter. Ultimately, that's,

how we coexist with AI is developing those human skills. But in the meantime, to your question, we've got to get some of the smartest people in a room and work out how to do this. Now, I despair at times over that, but we've managed to do it with every other form of horrifically dangerous technology that's come at us over time. And that's why I back humans to do it again. but the pace of change and the slowness of our own response is a real challenge. Tom, my final question is this. It's really about what you've said there about the gap between the pace of change and the pace and quality of global political leadership right now.

Who has more power in the world? These tech bosses or the elected or sometimes, sometimes dictatorial leaders of governments, the nation state. Are we seeing, and is this making your life more difficult, are we seeing the kind of death of the nation state at the hands of these tech giants? I'm not sure we are yet. The tech giants don't yet have armies. They don't yet have that popular legitimacy. I did a radio series recently on how we defend liberal democracy, and part of the answer has got to be that we've got to get better at delivering. We've got to rediscover our sense of wonder about the institutions we've created to hold the powerful to account,

you know, to make sure that the new emperors, whether it's Edon Musk or an autocrat, learn what the old emperors didn't learn, which is that empire's fall. And, you know, I believe we can do that, but it's a very, very difficult time to be a diplomat. It's a difficult time to be working in diplomacy. Diplomacy is easier when you're a country on the rise and people take your call and when the systems work. It's much harder in a time of national introspection than when you don't have enemies that you can find on a map or that you can kind of characterize in a bond film. But that's why we've got to evolve. And diplomacy, you know, I've written it's Darwinian. You know, it's always evolved. When the fax came along, someone said, you can replace the

foreign office with the fax. And, you know, the foreign office is still there just about. And the fax machine, not really anymore. You know, when Palmerston first saw a telephone, he said, my God, it's the end of diplomacy. Because suddenly leaders will just talk direct. And we found ways to adapt, but it ultimately comes down to what I said earlier. Of course I'd say this as a recovering ambassador, but it comes down to human connection and holding on to that human connection. There was an amazing scene. I don't know if you remember it, that series, the Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski,

on human development, the evolution of humanity. At the end of there, Brunovsky stands at Auschwitz in a swamp where his own ancestors remains a decaying. and he says, I owe it to these people, I owe it to my ancestors and those who died in the Holocaust. And he wades then into the swamp. It's very striking footage. Find it on YouTube. And he reaches down and picks up the mud. And he just says, we need to reach out and connect. We need to reach out and connect. And that is the key to diplomacy. It's the key for me of education, too. It's why I was in education. And ultimately, it's the key to being a good

ancestor. And I think we all have to think about how we can be better ancestors. And it's got tough out there. It's a driverless world. It's absolutely brutal out there. As I say, I'm seeing the worst of it at the moment. But we've got to get stronger and better and more confident and get out there and try and resolve these crises. And that's what I'm trying to do. And I know it's what you were trying to do on the podcast. So Tom, I guess my final one is to come back to the structure of the way the world's set up. So when you were a young diplomat in Kenya and Nairobi preparing for your boxing match, the UK economy was still bigger than the Chinese economy. Now the Chinese economy is seven times larger than our economy. When you were there, the US economy was about the same

size as the European economy. Now the US economy is 50% larger than the European economy. So we're really in a world in which it feels as though there is the US and there is China. And countries like the United Kingdom are no longer remotely touching that league. As I say, Chinese economy seven times our size now. So what is the role for France, Britain, Germany, Europe, or not to mention Sweden, when you're on the way in this world? And how do we, if we're concerned about climate, if we're concerned about AI, if we're concerned about Gaza. How do we reach up to Trump's America or Xi Jinping's China to get anything done? Yeah, I mean, to start with it in terms of the America relationship,

but I know it's something that Lord Mandelson will be thinking about as the next ambassador and Jonathan Powell as the NSA, you've got to establish load-bearing relationships and load-bearing issues. You've got to show that you are an exporter of solutions, not problems. And for much of the recent, the last decade or so, we've exported problems to the world, not solutions. you've got to get stuck in, I think as well. And here, you know, we've got to get our AAA rating. I say we, I'm no longer speaking for the UK, of course, but you, my former country, we've got to restore that reputation for competence. When you travel around the world, you'll have experienced this. We had the legacy of that sense. We're quite good at banking and

education and problem solving. But that really took a hammering in recent years. And it's not just a Brexit point, even on this podcast. It's about the fact that, you know, the world took a good look at us, and they've assumed that we're much cleverer than we actually turned out to be in the manner in which we handled ourselves in the last decade. So getting back that reputation for competence is really important. And then I think it's about standing up for freedom and liberty, that human desire to seek security, justice, opportunity. I think we can be in the front line of that argument. I think it's also about standing up, and it's a boring phrase, but the rules-based international

order. One really encouraging thing I'm finding on my travels at the moment is, yes, people are worried that America is maybe backing away from that world it created after the Second World War, that scaffolding. But many other countries are coming forward now and saying, this really matters to us. We need these rules, actually. And if the Americans won't stand for them, then we'll have to work harder to protect that international system. So I think there was a role in all of that for the UK. And, okay, we don't have the clout that we once did, but we've still got, you know, We've still got a fantastic scientific sector. We've got a fantastic education sector.

I would say that after my last job. And we're still good at some things. We've got to stop going around saying we're wealth beating at everything and think about the things we do really well. And not vandalised, by the way, the things that we do particularly well like the BBC and like our aid work and like our diplomacy. I've got through the whole interview without mentioning Brexit. But, I mean, you two in your last exchange have triggered me. I mean, you say it's not just Brexit, but it's a very, very, very. very, very big part of what you've just described. Is it not Tom Fletcher? Yes, is the answer you're

looking for. Yes, it's the answer I'm looking for. We, you know, we don't have the clout that we, that we did. We still have that security council membership. And even in a polarized security council, that's serious. We still have the strength of the armed forces. We've still got that soft power, I described. But we're not playing the role we were able to play back when you and I run number 10 together, where each day you'd be that bridge between Europe and America. And, okay, we probably overstated it. They probably didn't need us as much as we thought they needed us. And, you know, let's not get on to the special relationship and so on. But we were able to translate, to interpret between Europe and America. And that gave us a certain power. And that has gone.

And we'll need to find different ways to influence in the world. But, you know, I'm still optimistic. I don't want to be one of those diplomats who comes on or former diplomats recovering ambassadors who comes on and just says it's all hopeless. I don't think it's all hopeless. Tom, this was really wonderful. We're so grateful and we could do this for ours. We need a promise from you that you're going to come back on the show in about a year's time and tell us how things are going. But we should let you get back to your very important work in Ukraine. And thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you. Well, if I'm still going in a year's time, I will be thrilled to come back on. In the meantime, I'll carry on listening to you in the moment. I'll carry on listening to you and the troubled spots around the world. See you soon. Bye-bye, Tom. Well, that was good. I liked it.

You know, I think people were like Tom. I think they will. I think they will. I was interested in he slightly slipped my question about whether he's going to be an elected politician. There's clearly part of him that's a little bit tempted in that direction. Yeah, that wasn't a yeah. It wasn't a no. That wasn't a no.

No. I think he's rather a wonderful appointment, despite obviously my immense green-eyed envy that he's got the job that I want. because he's actually really, really good at sounding human and funny and outspoken rather than being so intimidated by this kind of big diplomatic job that he's become stiff. And it's actually better than many politicians that we've interviewed, really, in terms of being able to be quite relaxed and funny. Well, I can, you know, I said in the introduction that I first met him when he was quite a young diplomat.

And the reason was he was in Paris and we were in Paris and I went for a run with him. just he's got a kind of energy and a and a vibrancy and what's really interesting as well is i mean gordon brown and david cameron very different sorts of people but he got on very well with both and both would say that he was a very very important part of of their team and so i think he's got that that sort of human touch as well and i thought his analysis was was interesting i mean i do worry about how that will affect him in and a very interesting sort of open First time in my life, I feel I've got to go and get therapy because of all the stuff that he's that he's seeing. I said about Guter, every time I see Guterres, I just look at him and think,

God, you are exhausted and you look a bit overwhelmed. And it's hard not to be in that job. Well, I mean, I think the thing we didn't maybe push him on, because we just get an answer that would make him uncomfortable and wouldn't really work for the audience is that I think both you and I think that the United Nations, sadly, is profoundly broken. And that one of the things that will be really frustrating in that job is that it's a completely out of control bureaucracy. So he's called the coordinator. And he's dealing with these immense kind of independent feudal baronies, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Food Program, you know, billion dollar organizations with their own bosses,

frequently duplicating what they're doing. So he talked about cash programming. They all have their own independent cash systems with their own independent tech. They have scarcely concealed contempt for each other. And he's trying to bring them all together in one system. And that's before you get into the other thing, which is, does Trump care about the UN? Not really. What does China and Russia really think about the UN?

Well, in Zafar as he does, he cares about it from a negative perspective. I was that thing he said about, was it 100 trucks, 99 got mugged? And hijacked? Yeah, absolutely unbelievable. And I think the other thing, again, maybe if we do talk to him again in a year's time, the risk of humanitarian work is although you are doing incredible work, saving lives, you are, of course, at the kind of sticking plaster end of things, if you wanted to be brutal, which is that the causes of what he's looking at in Sudan,

the causes of what he's looking at in Somalia are political, our conflict, climate, and he's having to deal with the starving babies and the death downstream in a system where we're not really good anymore at getting upstream and trying to address the root causes if we ever knew how to do that. My final point, I hope there are some of our younger listeners

who thought, oh, that sounds quite an interesting life being a diplomat. He's had a very, very interesting career. And I think he's been brave. I think another thing that's interesting is that if he'd stayed in the foreign office, he would now be at least the Director General, if not on his way to being permanent secretary. He was doing very well. He was a real high flyer.

He'd done all the right things. And then he suddenly chose randomly, very, very young, to leave and go into writing and teaching. And now he's come back and again. So he's a real example to people of taking risk. And I think he believes the future is like that. I mean, one of the things he was communicating through his book and with his students is that they're not going to be in the same job for 40 years. And they need to learn how to roll, adapt, to take opportunities. I'm very pleased. I think it's a wonderful appointment,

and I think it's great that the Guterres made that appointment. It's great that the Labor Government got behind him. And I'd really pleased that he came on the show. Great. See you soon. See you soon. Bye-bye.