The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 132. Former Head of MI6: Russia, China, and Trump (Sir Alex Younger)

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

What is the real job of a spy? What is the role of the UK’s intelligence community in Trump’s new world order? How does the relationship between politicians and intelligence services work? 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] Social Producer: Harry Balden Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell 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

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 restispolics.com. Welcome to the restis politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alist Campbell. And we're very lucky today to have with us Sir Alex Younger, who was C. He was the head of the British Intelligence Service, one of the very longest serving heads of British intelligence. service taking over in 2012. And in some ways, he can seem on the surface like some figure from a John Buckin novel. He's a Scott. He comes from a rural background in Scotland. He served as an officer on the Scots Guards in the late 1980s. He then joined the intelligence service in the early 90s. And it's one of the big themes of the podcast, of course, is the way in which the world has changed since the early 90s. And his career sort of echoes that. He served in the Balkans and was connected with all those strange humanitarian interventions, which seemed quite successful in the 90s. But then he found himself in Afghanistan, where I remember him as a very patient, a somewhat

perplexed figure, occasionally serving me tea in Afghanistan and trying not to interrupt me too much when he was obviously desperate to do so. And then he moved on. on to take responsibility for counterterrorism, which of course was absolutely at the center of what the world was most concerned at at that period, and then found himself as the head of MISXSIS through these extraordinary events, the rise of ISIS, you know, creating that caliphate across the Iraqi-Sirium border out of nowhere, Putin's invasion of Crimea, chemical weapons attacks in British cities, the election of Donald Trump. the fall of Afghanistan, all of this happening on Alex Younger's watch, and not blaming him

for it, but he had to try to respond to all those things through his time and office. So thank you very much for joining us, and I'm going to maybe Alex sort of begin with a sort of sense of that first question of how the world's changed. I mean, what was the world that you saw as a young Scots guard's officer in the late 1980s? what were your expectations in 87, 88 for the world, and what then happened to it? Well, look, thanks, Rory. Thanks, Alistair. It's great to be here. You've both become rock stars, so this is a slightly intimidating interaction. But I will do my best. And it's a great question, Rory, because whilst the MI6 that I joined in 91 would have been insofar as how it operated pretty

well familiar to someone who joined in the 1940s or 50s. The SIS that I left was entirely unrecognizable as compared to the one that I joined. When I joined, three things were true, which weren't true when I left. The first was that democracy had triumphed. The second was that secrecy was a thing, that you could use a false name and adopt a cover story and pay in cash and get away with it. And the third was that there was, albeit imperfect, a difference between peace and war. Digitalisation fundamentally upended the whole concept of secrecy and therefore our operating model. And increasing our amenities were employing what we call hybrid techniques across the

spectrum, which completely transformed us and kind of put us in the middle of things in a way that we never were before. We're going to go over all of those kind of big geo-strategic things that you've raised there. But I'm going to go to go to. something I heard you say. You and I did an event together in Norway a few weeks ago. And you told a story that I thought was absolutely wonderful. It also relates to one of the changes, which is the fact that in the past, when you joined MI6, you could only tell one or two people. Probably actually you weren't meant to tell anybody at all what you did. But you told a story about when you were getting married, your wife to be said she would only

accept your proposal. If you told your mother in all honesty what you did, she felt it was just unbecoming to marry somebody who couldn't be honest with his mother. So if you don't mind, tell our listeners and viewers the rest of that story because it was a great insight, both into your family, but also into the way that MI6 has changed. Well, Lou, it's first of all, she was completely right. Let's be clear. You know, I'm naturally a mildly introverted person. I'm British, I'm male, I'm middle class. We're not renowned for our communication skills generally. She is none of those. Well, she's not that type of person. And I think it was reasonable I had a kind of challenge this. And when she discovered that, I hadn't even tell my closest kitten kin

that I was a spy, then as you say, that was it. She was keen that I put that right. So we went to see my mum and we said, I did a lot of sort of Hugh Grant-style beating around the bush and eventually spat it out that I was actually a spy. And she looked to me and said, yes, darling, so was I. And it was one of the best moments really of my life because to look on my wife's face

just sort of said it all. What was she getting involved in? You're still together though. Still together. And actually, when I joined us, I was tested psychometrically. And the guy came out and rather worryingly said to me, you're perfect.

And I said, what do you mean? I'm perfect. You said, you're an introvert pretending to be an extrovert. That's exactly what we want. So I suppose obvious reasons. Interestingly, my wife and her family, who are incredibly centered people, the effect has rubbed off on me and I was tested when I left. And I have become an extrovert.

It's a lovely story. It's a redemptive story. I'm not sure we actually believe it, Alex. I think there's still quite a lot of an introvert going on there. Again, looking back to you as a young person. in your 20s. Presumably, there was a certain amount of romance, a certain amount of attachment to public service, certain amount of idealism. I mean, you come from a family which has been involved, at least cousins of yours, involved in politics and public service of different sorts.

Tell us a little bit about that sort of, again, the worldview of an idealistic introvert in the 1980s. I think you're dignifying something, and it's flattery. But I mean, you mentioned John Buckin earlier. At that age, you want an adventure and you want purpose. And however rude that is, it's a very powerful impulse, and it's thought to then be into the army and other jobs. And the problem, at least then, joining a secret organization was, well, the clues in the name.

You have no idea what it actually does. So it's a leap of faith. But I think at an instinctive level, I understood two things. one, it's about curiosity. That's what drives it. And that is incredibly attractive at that age and as it has remained. And the other is that whilst it's wrong to glamourise espionage, which is a tough business, the premise is appealing, which is that humans can make a difference. Humans have agency. And you can do stuff that actually makes a difference. And helplessness in the face of complexity is the most debilitating thing or a feeling of helplessness. And I think

I could see that there was an opportunity to be consequential one way or the other. You said that MI6 that you joined would not be recognizable to MI6 today. Give us a flavor of what these people do. Is their job now mainly technical? Are they mainly sitting at desks? Are they looking at screens? Are they analyzing data? Or is the classic spies to all the person who is out in the field all around the world cultivating relationships? What's the balance? Well, look, the environment, as I've said, in which we operate, and probably the way in which we operate, is fundamentally transformed by the winds of globalization and digitalization and all sorts of other stuff. The essence is exactly the same. It's about relationships of trust created across forbidding linguistic and political and physical boundaries, which allow us to persuade people to give our country the intelligence that it needs to stay safe. and puts on us a duty to keep those people who've placed their trust in us safe in return.

And that model, that is the essence of it, and that hasn't changed. But to your question, Alistair, yes, it could be mediated online as easily as it could be done in Ulaan Bataur. It doesn't remove the central premium on emotional intelligence and a capacity to create connections and inspire trust. Alex, before we get right into where we are now, just again, history and the way in which things change. I guess by the sort of mid-90s, we were not putting much focus on counterterrorism, the British government. You know, we were thinking about more traditional stuff. We might even been thinking about economies, globalization. We might be thinking about weapons and mass destruction. New things were emerging.

I guess we'd, and I'm just trying to get my head straight on this, but it felt, you know, from the outside, it looks like it was a moment where it was all about the cost of, Cold War, and then the Cold War sort of a just-ending, communism collapsing as you join. Then the world is now thinking about new things in a new global, liberal world, what these new threats might be. And then after 9-11, there is this huge shift where, I don't know, it feels like national security in the Britain goes from thinking very little about international counter-terrorism to thinking about very little else. I mean, it becomes a huge percentage of your work. And I wonder

what you learned from these lurches. I mean, is there a risk that these sort of pendulum swings back and forth and we keep throwing babies out with bath waters? We learned an enormous amount as a result of that shift, which was quite as violent as you described, Rory. And I can remember sitting in my office and watching the towers going down and understanding that this did change everything. And it was a painful and difficult period for us because we had to relearn muscles that we hadn't really used since the 1950s, by which I mean alongside the duty of finding stuff out, we had to do stuff about the things that we knew, disrupt plots.

And that brings me into a whole different area of physical and legal moral hazard that we were frankly unfamiliar with. And so there, as is publicly documented, there were a set of growing pains, which we learnt from. That aside, I'm deeply proud of our instincts, which were to step up and stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends who'd suffered such an appalling and grievous attack. And of course, that was echoed by the Prime Minister at the time. And that was an unfullified and simple response, which I remain proud of. And, as the smaller partner, admittedly, but with a sort of different set of capabilities and a different history, we were able to make a really substantial contributions.

For all of the sort of complexity of counterterrorism in the end, it comes down to the quality of teamwork between allies. And I think it was really interesting to watch secret organisations configured to keep foreigners out, actually have to learn to work with each other. It felt unrecognisable at the end as compared to the beginning. And it's one of the consequences of 9-11. Of course, we had the immediate aftermath, then the war in Afghanistan, and then the war in Iraq. And I think about this a lot, and Roy and I've talked about a lot on the podcast. And I guess that if there is a revised history of the SIS, I will be a footnote in there somewhere

because of the so-called dossier on weapons of mass destruction. And we were dealing then with the people at the very, very top of the organisation, and always felt supported, but kept hearing that there were grumblings lower down about what we were doing and trying to present some of the work that you were doing into a public forum via Parliament. Just give me your honest assessment of what the feeling was and what you think the impact, if any, has been on the service. Well, I think to Rory's point, it was, for me, a really important learning moment. I was pretty well of the view, honestly, that Saddam Hussein was one of Al-Qaeda's greatest enemies. So it was perplexing, to say the least, to her a cow's vass at least, that actually

encompassed the idea that he was a friend of Al-Qaeda. To be fair, the UK chose a different and more justifiable approach to dealing with him. But, you know, I was a reasonably junior officer at the time. I was in the region. You know, I was trying on my gas mask and talking to Iran. But it's interesting at the human level how quickly this resolved into my personal experience of talking to Iraqis who had suffered at the hands of a genocidal dictator. And to go back to what we were talking about earlier, the nature of your motivation is stuff that you rapidly come to identify with that. And I think that's what was in my head. But to your very important question more broadly, the abiding lesson that I took for all that the term has become appropriated by all sorts of people is the value of diversity. And I think fundamentally, I don't know if you agree, Alistair,

there was a group of people who wanted to come to the same conclusion reinforcing that conclusion in each other's minds and at least an implicit culture that pushed out countervailing opinions. Honestly, I think that's what it was. And when I became the leader, I was very focused on our values. And one of those was to make sure that we had an environment under all circumstances where people could speak up. So just explain to me how in your mind a good relationship between a service like yours and serving politicians should work. What is a good way that that works?

As the official, not the democratically elected person, it's important for us to fundamentally understand and empathise with the aims of our leaders and what they are seeking to achieve and to configure ourselves to be as useful as possible to them and by extension to our country and the public. I think that that does not extend, first of all, to a suspension of your own freight work, moral framework that you bring. So that I think is a distinction between us and the Russians, for instance. I never thought that any SSIS officer who worked for me was anything other than directly personally responsible for the moral consequences of what they did. There's no laying that off. And then ultimately, the thing that I emphasized at every term was that spies are useless if they're not prepared to speak truth to power.

So Donald Trump's decision to sack secureaucrats for doing their job seems to me to carry a very significant risk that the appetite for speaking truth to power will be diminished. And that generally leads to intelligence failure. Alex, I remember a brief conversation with Donald Rumsfeld. and he was focusing on an event 2003, right at the very beginning of the Iraq War. And I don't know whether you remember, but at least in his memory of it, he had received intelligence from multiple sources in the CIA, telling him that Saddam Hussein was in a vehicle traveling to a particular farm. And he became very focused on this because he wanted to be able to strike that farm,

ideally before Conan Powell spoke at the UN to take out Saddam Hussein. In the event, it turned out that Saddam wasn't there at all, and that somehow multiple sources which had told him he was in this particular vehicle, they were tracking this particular car, he'd been seen by different people, the whole thing was nonsense. And now, obviously, you don't know about that particular case, but can you explain how something like that could possibly happen? How could you end up with something quite so specific,

apparently validated by multiple sources that turns out to be nonsense. No, I think it's interesting, and it cuts the whole issue of what is objectivity, and it comes to Alistus question, which is, how do you sustain your objectivity whilst working for a set of politicians who very much want a particular thing to happen and a particular answer? And it's all really difficult. I suppose I would deduce the Tchaulkot report, which was produced after the Iraq invasion, which actually looked in very technical terms of bitterly at exactly this issue, and that report should be credited with the advent of a steps change in intelligence tradecraft, which put a real

premium on validation and started to pull in in a way that means that the situation is transformed today, the power of open source and the power of technology, the power of behavioral science, you name it, to try and give the best sense of where the truth lies. A thing that we need to explain to politicians that we are not as good as explaining to them as we should be is, of course, though, that there will always be uncertainty and doubt, and that these are, you know, legendarily shards of light in the dark, and that it is being very important not to overstate the certainty of what has been produced. Okay, so if I can sort of summarize what I think you're saying, the Americans were very, very clear about what their policy objectives were.

Tony Blair, as British Prime Minister, was clear about what the UK objectives were. He decided at one stage, we decided at one stage that part of the making the case should be to put as much of the intelligence as we could into the public domain because Tony Blair was in Parliament saying, almost saying if you knew what I knew kind of thing. And you're saying, I think, that your predecessors at the top of the organisation were perhaps too keen to please, as opposed to actually put the subtleties that they, is that what you're saying? Look, I don't know. I wasn't in the centre at that time. I was on the edge. I think, including true personal experience, I should say, that, and including as chief, that you cannot underestimate the pressure you feel to tell the person

on the other side of the Green Bayes table what they want to hear. I think it is a standing human feature, which you have to guard against every term. So whilst, of course, the Chilcott inquiry, I think broadly supports what you've just said. The bottom line is it goes much, much more broad. And it needs to be fundamental to the way we are in our culture and our DNA that you have the courage to say what you think. And where I get to the diversity point is that decision makers are grouped in a way that deliberately includes the widest possible range of dissent and points of view and challenge. I don't think, honestly, British society, Lernerner SIS had a lot of that in the 90s. I think it's got more now. Alex, like you, my professional career took me from the Balkans through Iraq into Afghanistan.

So I sort of saw what seemed to be going well in Bosnia and Kosovo and then what was increasingly going badly in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I'm still struggling with, I just spent, in fact, two hours with the U.S. commission on the Afghan war set up by Congress trying to get to the heart of what went wrong there. my sense of it was increasingly that it was quite mad. I mean, even when I was coming in to see you, I thought these guys have lost the plot. They cannot see just how much optimism bias there is. What was going on there? Yeah, I mean, you're a polite chat, Rory, but I did sense that. Don't worry.

Rory, which guys had lost the plot? The Americans or SIS? Or who lost the plot? Everybody had lost the plot. Oh, everybody lost the plot. No, I mean, so having sort of taken the fifth on Iraq because I was a junior officer, I need to be clear I was in the middle of things when I was head of station in Afghanistan. It's a completely different perspective.

But spoiler alert, slightly self-serving narrative, when I was there, I think it was pretty clear to us on the UK side that there was no military solution to this problem. In large part, by the way, because there never is. terrorism and insurgency are ultimately intrinsically political things. And this is something I think Mr Netanyahu needs perhaps to reflect on. Yeah, we can talk about that, definitely. So at the time, I and we were pushing very hard, and my predecessors in fact, the need to advance a policy to integrate, albeit at the expense of compromises, as much of the Taliban as we could into the governance of Afghanistan. And I'm pretty sure you would have agreed with that, Rory. And accepting

there would be an irreconcilable rump as small as possible, which would be subject to military action. We pushed that hard, and in fact, I don't know if you remember, but there was a very public row. I don't know if you were there, it sort of broke out into the open. The Afghan government were having none of it, because they weren't prepared to make the compromises necessary. And frankly, the US were ambivalent as well. This was only what, six or seven years after 2001, and the idea of treating this anything other than as a military problem was still in Athavan. Looking back, honestly, I think that was pretty well our last chance. I didn't predict the appalling humiliation the West was going to have visited on it in the end.

But at that point, it became clear to the Taliban that we wanted this more than later. And it's where this phrase, we were taunted by, by so many of the detainees, came into currency, which, you know, famously is, you have the watches, but we have the time. Yeah, you mentioned there that there was no military solution. There could only be political solution, and you immediately made that connection with what's going on in Israel, Gaza now. Can you see any way that this ends, well, ends at all right now, is the two-state solution, frankly, as things look dead?

And what do the intelligence agencies do in an environment such as the one that we've got, now in the Middle East? Well, I mean, there's a lot in those questions. I mean, firstly, I would say that, you know, I stick to my view, notwithstanding the unrealistic expectations attached to a two-state solution, particularly in the eyes of Israelis, and particularly given their history. But I stick to my view that while ordinary Palestinians and Gaza don't have an alternative to supporting Hamas, they will support Hamas. That's just the sort of political physics of this. And while that's true, it's almost self-fulfilling. this is just a cycle of violence after a cycle of violence. Alongside that, Donald Trump has

effectively signaled to Netanyahu that he is happy for Netanyahu to just treat this as a security issue exclusively and just continue to apply military pressure to contain the problem with no real expectation that it will be solved, emboldened, of course, by this pretty mad idea that you move Gaza to Egypt, etc. And then there's just the politics in Israel, which is that if there is a ceasefire, it's likely the Netanur whose coalition will fall apart, and that will be difficult for him politically and personally. So all of this makes me very bearish. Intelligence has a big role to play in all of this.

We haven't talked about Iran, but that is critical. Also, there are enormous lessons to be learned from October the 7th and what happened there, which kind of loop back to some of the conversations we've been having already. Can we pick you up on that, then? What sort of things do you observe about what happened on October 7th? and what lessons might have been learned and what surprised you about that event? Well, first of all,

notwithstanding the grandstanding I'm doing, it's, of course, intrinsally uncomfortable for me to talk about other services, intelligence failures, but nonetheless, I think it illustrates quite usefully a couple of aspects.

One is what I would call technology hubris, a sense that, because you've got all of the tech covered and that a mouse can't squeak without a red light flashing, you're safe. the relative to Hamas employed levels of operational security that I don't think anybody would have

anticipated as effectively went dark, issued all modern means of communication, and therefore evaded detection. And just to go back to the very start of this conversation, that is a reason why you need human sources. The second thing is that however much we strive to be objective, we are operating in a political environment. And the pretty strong reality in Israel on October the sixth was that Netanyahu that Hamas was coerced. He wanted to focus on the West Bank. I think 75% of the deployed IDF were in the West Bank the day before. And so this would have surfaced as an inconvenient fact. Now, I'm not inside. I don't know whether it was something that was actively ignored, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been prioritised.

So the politics do matter, even if you're striving as intelligence officers to be disinterested, professionals. And of course, he's now been trying to get rid of one of his domestic intelligence chiefs because he's going back to the earlier conversation, not speaking truth to power. What's the cooperation between the international agencies on, as we're in the Middle East, let's take the Middle East first. What are you guys all talking to each other and trying to, even with countries that aren't necessarily seen as allies, is there a community there that develops and tries to make sense of what's going on? I mean, I think, you know, there are various constellations within the covert world,

five eyes being the most famous, I suppose, where we certainly have very strong analytical, common analytical relationships and often operational as well. And, you know, it's important for you to say, notwithstanding all the travails that we face from Washington, people on this podcast need to understand how many people are alive in Europe because of our cooperation with the US agencies over time in the counterterrorism struggle. So this stuff really works. But it works best where there's a really significant alignment and political consensus. So I think that sort of answers your question on the Middle East where there's a pretty divergent set of objectives. Just on the five eyes, you mentioned the five eyes there. Do you feel uncomfortable with some of the personnel

that Trump has appointed to really senior intelligence positions and also the sacking of some people because they have been speaking truth to power? Yeah, so I worry about the sacking. I think that is a route to an intelligence failure because it is to invite yes men or yes people into the tent and that's potentially disastrous. I think one of the things propelled Putin into his fateful decision to invade Ukraine for instance. So not a fan of that. I'm not going to comment on the personalities. I'm not there. But I would say that I was the intelligence chief last time Trump was in power and we absolutely did make it work. And whilst you shouldn't put ultimately store by this, the reality is the force of relationships between these different communities means that absent, you know, a direct order,

the fault will be this extraordinarily in-depth cooperation. You had direct dealings with Trump, didn't you? I did on occasion, yes. What do you make with it? Well, I think I will plead the fifth again. You can't plead the fifth twice. Yeah, you can. You can plead the fifth a lot.

Alex, let me push you into something which I think you think is unlikely, but I'm going to push you to explore a worst-case scenario. which is uncomfortable. What we've just seen in my world of international development is the total dismantling of USAID. It's all stopped in a way that nobody could have predicted. And that means that 40% of the budget of UN agencies gone out the window.

And things are collapsing in development all around the world very quickly. The worst case scenario, I guess, is that at some point, for whatever reason, Trump begins to collapse intelligence relationships in the same way around the world. And I think there are two things that would strike me about that. One is that for 60, 70 years, part of the relationship with the US has been about sometimes backfilling. So, you know, we might close our presence in a country and rely on the US to then give

us the information from that country after it's closed. And sometimes it's been about what Britain's role is in the world. And I suppose it's the second thing that's maybe the more important thing. Over the last 60, 70 years, Britain hasn't necessarily needed to have a very strong independent foreign policy. In Africa, for example, I felt as Africa minister that when I was trying to have grand ideas about what we were doing in Africa, there wasn't much support from the British government front because, understandably, they thought, well, you know, we're a medium-sized power and whatever. whatever Rory's notions of how he's going to do this stuff doesn't make much sense, because the US is doing it. If the US retreats from the world, powers like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to step up.

They're going to have to have views about part of the world. And part of that is going to involve rebuilding intelligence infrastructure in some of these places that we've completely lost. I mean, can you reflect a bit on that? Yeah, look, I mean, I sort of don't miss being a spy because I've been it for 30 years. It was pretty exhausting. my successes are doing a brilliant job, etc. But this is one aspect that I really wish I was present for. I think, I'm not so much talking about intelligence,

but more broadly the security relationship with America and Europe between America and Europe. We have been infantilized. And it hasn't been healthy. And we should be extraordinarily grateful to America for its generosity and its provision of its security guarantee. But we should recognize a bit, you know, a bit like a child that gets a trust fund.

It's meant that we have. haven't had, through necessity, to develop a set of really important life skills, the most important of which I would describe as the creation and exercise of hard power. And that is now the problem that Europe's got. It's going to be awful. It's going to be difficult. We're going to have to make really difficult spending decisions. It's culturally alien, et cetera, et cetera. But my view is it's overdue. And in fact, I think we will be quite surprised by the way in which which it changes us, because we won't be passive spectators, and I recognize exactly what you say, Rory, by the way. It will feel different. I don't want to be hubristic about this. It will be tough. The other point is that I actually think it will improve our relationship with the Americans. It's not healthy to be in this completely asymmetric, dependent relationship. Where we're bringing stuff to the party ourselves. It will get much, much easier to deal with our most important allies. And I've seen that, by the way. So the, the, The thing about S-house is it does have some very powerful capabilities that the United States really

value and need. And that creates a different dynamic. In some ways, I think that's an example of what we need to do more broadly. Okay, Alex, Rory, let's have a quick break, and then back for more. 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 scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on Tracer X, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot

these signs early on, destroying faulty cells before cancer developed. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is here. history. Now, some of you may have heard me on your 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 Thatcher, 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 Alistaira 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 grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people.

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. Alex, on the hard power side, we tend to focus on things like Russia, Ukraine. I'm trying to work out, though, if you were national security advisor and trying to think about Britain more broadly in the world, where the limits of our power is. I mean, I felt when I was the African Minister, real tensions coming back from civil servants, including people in your department saying, frankly, Minister, we don't have the resources all the time to provide what you want on that country.

It's not a priority for Britain. We don't really care about that. How do you begin to think about in a new world where the US isn't doing all this? what Britain can do, what Britain ought to do, which regions we ought to focus on, and what's beyond our capacity? Well, of course, this is hugely topical because the Strategic Defence Review is taking place and it's yet to publish, and in fact it's been delayed a lot. But it's trying to answer exactly this question. And I think my suspicion, I don't know, is that Putin will be seen to have provided the answer, which is that it's going to be a NATO

first Europe first approach. I can completely understand that, but we may come onto this. I think the pacing threat provided by China's mastery of key technologies is just as important to us. I think that when it comes to the generation of hard power, it is, of course, about military capability. It's about military industrial capability. It's about organization and culture in countries, they need to organize the total defence. But to my mind, the thing that really is going to arbitrate whether my kids have the choices that I've enjoyed is actually whether we're at the front of the development of key emerging technologies. And I think that's the thing that's really kept Britain safe ever since the Industrial Revolution. So if you're talking about making

hard power, focus on military stuff, of course, we've got to. But if we, as Europe, cannot regain our place at the front of the world. of emerging technology and which we've voluntarily relinquished, I think that our security prospects will be pretty dim. Alex, Rory asked you to imagine one worst case scenario. Let me ask another one,

which a few months ago would have seemed unimaginable, but now I think is not wholly unrealistic. If the United States, frankly, decided just to walk away from what's happening in Ukraine, can Europe handle that? situation. So first of all, I don't think that's a remote possibility at all. I think that Putin has shown absolutely no sign that he's actually in practice willing to retreat from his maximalist aims, which are the subjugation of Ukraine, or at least condemning it to eternal instability. He's playing

games at the moment. The game is to see how little he needs to do to keep Trump on side. He's emboldened by the fact that Donald Trump, so a large extent, shares his worldview that big countries get additional rights over small countries and can have a sphere of influence and the security is about deals between those spheres of influence. So I think he feels pretty emboldened. At the same time, whilst, you know, Zelensky has been put under a lot of pressure to concede, there's only so far he can go before it becomes untenable for him politically. And therefore, I think, notwithstanding the tier headlines that are coming out in some outlets today, I think the gap between Ukraine and Russia is still as wide as it ever was, and I think there's very little chance of any sustainable

peace coming out of this. What does Donald Trump do in those circumstances? I think it's quite possible that he forces the guns to stop firing for long enough to claim victory and to leave. I think that is, if not the most likely case, it should be our planning assumption. And I think in those circumstances, you've got to ask two questions. One, can Ukraine hang on and two, what does Europe do? The reality for Ukraine is that it is a totally different country to that which it was when it was invaded. And in terms of its technological capability and its ability to produce cutting edge drones and other pieces of military technology, it's the most powerful in Europe.

This is a completely different thing that Putin is dealing with. Putin's army, while brutal and moving forward, knows that it can't take Ukraine. But equally, Ukraine can't push Putin out. You are in a position where Putin isn't going to achieve his aims, where Ukraine, I think, can hold on. I think where Putin is hoping that Trump will do quite a lot of his work for him, and where for all of the confusion, at the end of this, it's obvious that Europe's going to own the problem. And then it gets to whether Europe has got what it takes to respond to this signal. And personally, I think that it has.

Alex, let me push on the worst case. So let's say in the very worst case scenario, Trump pulls everything. It's not just a sort of continuation of a stalemate. It's suddenly Ukraine has lost its satellites. It's lost a lot of its intelligence. It's lost its patriot missiles. It's lost its ability to deal with aircraft. It's lost its long-range artillery.

It's lost a lot of its electronic warfare. And these are capabilities that Europe doesn't have today. So, you know, if I really had you in the cabinet room, and you were trying not to sound optimistic and cheerful and boosting technology in Ukraine, and you were trying to be honest, imagine Alice as the Prime Minister, about what the worst case could be there.

Talk us through what that could look like in a nasty scenario. Well, I think when Putin invaded, His army was, you know, ready to go, completely fresh. They had lots of ammunition and tanks and stuff. And it became rapidly obvious that they couldn't subjugate Ukraine. At the point where it was clear that Ukraine wasn't going to play along and just fold, it was obvious that they didn't actually have the military capacity to subjugate a country the size of France. I think that's still true.

And maybe the Russian army is bigger now, but its quality has fallen precipitately. So I do think, if America removes its capabilities, the consequences for Ukraine. and the rest of us will be dire. And certainly I can't see the front line hold it. But equally, the idea that they're going to cut through and put tanks into Warsaw is overdone. I think what will happen is that you'll be into some sort of chronic insurgency where Russia makes very significant gains, but can't consolidate them,

and where Ukraine holds on, and where Europe has a choice about whether it continues to support Ukraine or not. Because in truth, Donald Trump pulling the plug, It isn't the worst case. The worst case is that Europe, he pulls the plug in, Europe doesn't stand up. At that event in Norway, you said something on the lines of, in Russia's mind, in Putin's mind, Russia is at war with us. And in our minds, we're not at war with them. Can you just sort of elaborate on that a bit?

You know, again, I want to be sober about this, but the reality is that the time, the point where I knew Putin was going to invade wasn't so much where this exquisite intelligence was produced. that predicted exactly his plans. It was the essay he wrote on the destiny of Ukraine and Russia. And that was about not just Ukraine and the fact that an independent sovereign Ukraine was anatema to a rising and great Russia, but also about the unacceptable of Eastern European states, formerly members of the Warsaw Pact, the Russian sphere of influence, having an independent foreign policy of their own, and a demand that they put limits on their own choice, including by not being in NATO. He's been super clear about that. And when he talks

about the root causes of the war, that's what he's talking about. So we shouldn't be under any illusion. For our part, in the West, I don't think we've thought about that stuff for 10 minutes. We thought that this was a settled thing, that the Soviet Union had collapsed, that Eastern European countries were now the same as Western European countries and had sovereign choices. I don't think we've ever thought of that being in contention. But that's not how it looks to Russia. Subsequently, of course, in addition, Putin has actually optimized for war. You know, he's changed the structure of his economy. You can argue about how sustainable that is. Indeed, I don't think many people think he can keep on going for more than about 18 months before for a trenching.

But, of course, there's nothing like that's happened here. And that's why I think it's so interesting. And I think when you look at Germany, it's particularly interesting. Have we smelt the Are we going to change the structure, including of our economies? We don't have to go on to a war footing. If we all spent 3% at PPP, we'd match Russia. But we do have to do something. Alex, just to kind of extend this a bit more, J.D. Vance often seems to be suggesting,

or at least people around Trump seem to be suggesting, that it's okay. You know, maybe Putin gets Ukraine, but that's the end of it. And he's always wanted Ukraine. It's really a bit of part of Russia. On the other hand, there would be people in Europe saying, no, no, no, no, no, wait a sake. It's just like Hitler going to Czechoslovakia. You have to worry about Moldova.

We have to worry about Baltics. And in this mindset, we're going to have to fight Putin somewhere, and it'd be better to fight him in Ukraine than elsewhere. Where do you sit on this? I'd sort of characteristically, I suppose, land about halfway between the two of those. I think that if Putin seemed to be vindicated to Ukraine, he will have been emboldened. but he's visited a terrible price on his people and he's going to have to make sure that it appears justified. I've already said in any case that he seeks more broadly to overturn

what he sees as Western bad faith and an unjust order in Europe. He won't have the capability to do that. I think a Russian army will take at least five years to grow to the possibility where it has any expeditionary capability. I think it's much more likely that we just see really significant challenge in the hybrid space. So, you know, in the way that we've seen before, I think Moldova and Georgia are rapidly in trouble. And I think you get probing in the Russian-speaking communities in the Baltic

states. You get all the sort of stuff that we're seeing already the disruption and the sabotage and the misinformation, but more so. And what he will be doing is probing for weakness. I think he's got a really overstated reputations as strategist. He isn't one. But what he's very good at doing is just insistently probing for weakness. and then reinforcing success. So our task again, you know, we can't let the best be the enemy of the good. We're not going to build up Russian-scale military in that period of time. We've just got to make sure that we can rise to what will be a set of provocations or probes, recognising that the reason he invaded Ukraine in the first face is he got the wrong idea

about our willingness to respond to his aggression. And slowly we won't want to make that mistake again. What's the nature of China's hostility to us? Is it the same? Are they up to the same sorts of stuff in this hybrid space that you talk about and sabotage and the disinformation? Is there a danger that with Russia taking up so much of our attention because of Ukraine that we're missing a bigger picture? Or are you more sanguine about the Chinese? No, I'm not. And indeed, I think it's actually the bigger issue.

It would be overstating it, though, to say that they were engaged in the intent. of hybrid conflict with us as rotterers. That's absolutely not the case, even if, as US revelations have shown, their cyber intrusion into all of our networks and our capabilities is quite extraordinary. And we've seen a readiness to them to use traditional espionage techniques to get into the fabric of our societies and all of that. Are they very good at it? Well, the cyber stuff, I think we've all been surprised by the quality, absolutely. And I think what the US government was basically saying is that for a while, while they could go onto any phone they wanted in the United States, which is pretty extraordinary.

So this needs to be taken seriously. But at that point, I think the comparison with Putin does break down. He regards himself as being at war with the West. I don't think it's reached that stage with China. But longer term, it is going to be the pacing threat for us. They are defining the technology that I think represents, you know, the benchmark. Can you explain something to me, Alex? There's these Chinese recruiting agents in Britain and trying to gather intelligence to Britain. There's something I don't quite understand.

I mean, my colleagues in Parliament respond like sort of shocked Victorian old maids and think, you know, this is the most terrifying thing in the world. But presumably the Chinese might say, well, wait a second, presumably you're trying to do the same thing to us. you also would be trying to recruit agents in China, gather intelligence in China. So why are we so astonishingly shocked when they do it to us and behaviour services at the end of the world? And presumably we're trying to do it to that. Well, you can try and decide how shocked I was.

Okay, you weren't shocked at that, but how shocked were you? Okay, how shocked were you that the US Secretary of State for Defence and the National Security Advisor were involved in this signature. group to which a journalist was accidentally added. I mean, when you've heard that, what was your professional reaction? Well, no, I mean, they're new. They've never had any experience in the business. You know, maybe this is going to happen.

But the thing that really stunned me was that the US had put out an advisory only two months before to the effect, as I've already said, that the Chinese can be on any phone in the country. So it did look like a slightly surprising decision, if I'm to be honest. It is absolutely amazing. Presumably, if the Chinese had managed to capture that chat, you could have gone as an ambitious young Chinese intelligence officer into C.Jing Ping and say, look at this, look how clever we are. We got this lovely chat between all the top people about that Yemen strike.

Instead of which they just... I risk my case. Alex, can I just sort of develop the China bit then? One of the results of what Donald Trump is doing is that Europe is suddenly for the first time questioning whether the U.S. is a long-term reliable ally in a way that it hasn't for 70 or 80 years. And Xi Jinping spots that. So you get positive statements towards Europe and the China Daily. You get him for the first time going around Southeast Asia, saying to Southeast Asian nations,

you know, we're the reliable ally. And as tariffs go up, there's more and more economic pressure on people to look at closer free trade arrangements for China rather than with the U.S. What's the other side of the story? And what would you be saying to European leaders who think, OK, you know, the answer to our problems now is to bring in Chinese electric vehicles, create a close relationship with China and balance the US with China? I'd be saying, well, I'm a polite person, but I'd be thinking that's facile. I think that for all of our frustrations with Donald Trump, and he is a very frustrating character,

can we not draw a moral equivalence between the United States and the Communist Party of China? And I think to your point, Rory, that's absolutely what's happening in some political quarters in Europe. And I've heard in continental Europe often this idea that, you know, the Europe must carve a third way and not take a position on all of this. Really? In the end, you know, who's really going to want to send their child to university in Beijing to be indoctrinated as opposed to the situation, you know, going to Georgetown? Now, I am not saying, I'm not belittling the seriousness of what's happening in the United States, but this is nowhere near in my mind creating the equivalence between the two. Secondly, I think that it is Xi Jinping's golden foreign policy objective to see a split

between the United States and Europe. And to your point, you can absolutely expect a ton of love from China, who are also, by the way, are trying to sustain their export machine in the face of tariffs. So I think that tells me we should probably be careful about falling into that trap. And that gets you to some quite interesting decisions around electric vehicles and stuff. Thirdly, I think the regional stuff is on the money. And it's why I think the tariff effort from the White House is destined to fail. I actually think it's a reasonable enough ambition to deal with China in the way that China has historically dealt with us through a mercantilist set of trade policies.

China in this respect is the worst offender of all. And I think it's been fundamentally destabilizing for the world economy. And to that extent, I think the US is justified in seeking to respond. But at the end of all of this, the most powerful weapon that United States has always had is its allies. The most earnest wish on Xi's part is that he can build a regional sphere of influence, which China can dominate. And this policy is just handing that to Xi on a plate. He's alienating his allies and making it easy for Xi to build up. I mean, what would you do if you were Vietnamese or Cambodia at this point?

But that's what's so difficult about the current moment, because as you say, there's Putin who has a strategic goal of taking Ukraine and then who knows what next and basically undermining Europe and disrupting the relationship with the United States. China, the same in terms of Europe's relationship with United States. And there's the president of the United States, who, as you say, is giving those objectives on a plate. It's hard in those circumstances to think, right, well, we've still got to hang in really throw in our lot with the United States, is it not? I think that there is an issue here. I mean, I've spoken publicly about this a lot, and it's a rather overdone analogy,

but I think that we are moving from the Helsinki world where states have rights, regardless of their size, to the Delta world where big countries get to call the shots. And spheres of influence and strong men making deals. Now, we have to accept, I think, that that is what is happening, and there is a consequent slide from a world governed by institutions and rules to a world governed by strongmen and deals. And to answer your question, do we do ourselves no service by pretending this isn't going on? But do we have to accommodate it?

No, I don't think so at all. We should recognise, as I've already said, that in this world, hard power accounts for a great deal. And if you haven't got any, you're not going to count for. much. But as Europe, we're capable, along with all of the other bits of the collective West that aren't America, we're capable of generating this hard power. We're strong economically. We've got a set of other attributes. The global South remains up for grabs. This is a very, very dynamic situation. But we do need to recognize, I mean, I think, honestly, Europe fell prey to

hubris. We thought history had ended, democracy had triumphed, etc. We thought we'd won the philosophical argument, but in fact, we were just in a bubble created by the quality of the US security guarantee. It was like the Truman Show. So we're just getting a bit of reality therapy, and we need to respond. And I've already said that. I think I could actually be quite healthy. Alex, I just struck by your idea, which seems likely that the national security focus is going to be on Europe. And I keep coming back to Africa, and you've tempted me there because you just mentioned the Global South. A really ambitious grand strategy. for the UK and Europe

would say that actually you challenge the threat from these strong men in China and Russia, not just by fighting them on their borders, but by investing in the global south in positive ways. With all the benefits that that could bring

in terms of economy, security, relationships, allies, why are we hearing so little about that? Is it that we just think it's beyond us and we can't have any impacts on the global south? I think it's just because we can't be are terribly binary people. So, you know, it was when, when you're in their size

and I was all about soft power and now it's all about hard power. And these are these are sort of false distinctions. A thing that Britain could do rapidly to enhance its position is to be much better at integrating those two things. And with all deference to the development community, I never shared the idea that our development goals should be constitutionally divorced from our board of foreign policy goals. I think this all needs to come together. And I actually think at that point, it produces the sort of conclusion that you're pushing for. A more strategic approach, recognizing, for instance, the inroads China's making into Africa is based as much on a positive economic offer as coercion and question, what are we going to do about that? You know, we're,

we're closer. We've got, we've got a great deal to bring to the party. Africa's demographics mean that it's increasingly going to be unignorable. I mean, all these, I think, could no brain us. And it's, feel free to tell me you don't want to talk about this. But can I ask you about the son that you lost? Yeah. Anytime I've met you, I felt I've seen somebody who's, even in this sort of turmoil, optimistic, funny,

always trying to find the kind of good things in life. And I just wondered what that did to you as a human being to lose your son when he was, what, 22? and whether you kind of ever really come to terms with that? I don't think you ever can come to terms with it. It's a terrible thing, so terrible that you can't articulate it, and I won't even try. A lesson I learned, though, is that you find dehumanity in the oddest of places.

And I've spoken about my job and its intensity and the ferocity of the rivalry in all of that. In the aftermouth of that, there was a curious time where we all developed some humanity and even some of our most placable inversaries wanted to reach out to me. And did in a strange way, that gave me some hope. Thank you for that. Thank you. I suppose as we come the end, and thank you for everything. What is it looking forward 20, 30 years that you see in the world?

Let's imagine somebody starting off on your career in 30 years' time. What would somebody in, I don't know, 20, 50, who shared some of your love of adventure, the equivalent of joining the Scotscars and joining SIS, what sort of world would they come into, what sort of Britain would they come into? Do you have any thoughts about that? No, I would never have predicted when I joined as a fresh-faced young officer. that it would be like it is now. And certainly, if you told me I was going to be the chief, I would have just laughed you out of the room. So we need to approach this with a large dose of

humility. If you look at the premise on which intelligence and MI6 is based, which is about dispelling complexity and ambiguity and trying to give strategic shape to really complex issues, I don't think that's going away. If you look at the premium on human relationships, I don't think that's going away. If you look at this sort of ideological contest that animates all of that, I don't think that's going away. I think just about everything else I have got no idea. I mean, we haven't talked about artificial intelligence yet.

But what does that, you know, in what respect does that disrupt all of this? And what does the likes of Elon Musk and Zuckerberg say about the relative power of states and non-state actors, let alone, you know, all the other ones we've been dealing with, it's almost impossible to predict that stuff. What do you say about that is, do you see those guys as being as powerful as nation states? Well, I think the budget of some of those companies is bigger than many nation states in Europe.

And I think that they are not accountable, and I think that's a problem, because they're in charge of what my children think. So, yes, I think it is a problem. And Alex, you've tempted me to come back in, but Musk's worldview, they've got lots of weird bits of a worldview, but one bit is that we've become a bit inert that our bureaucracies have become a little bit inefficient, a bit hidebound, a bit process-driven,

a bit overly legalistic. And of course, you know, you and I were in government when we championed those sort of things, and we're very proud about those things. And we've interviewed John Sores, who's a great, great advocate for all those things. But do you think he might have a small point, I mean, not in any way exonerating the mad excesses of Doge. Yeah, I mean, it's mad, he's unaccountable, it's a big problem. But I absolutely, to answer your question, too, and when I look at what Malé is doing in Argentina as well, I do. I think that government, over time, becomes sclerotic, and I think that bits of it inevitably have been created in a way that people have actually forgotten the initial purpose of what they did. I still, honestly, would find it hard to draw a line from some of the decisions we took in the NSC through the cabinet office to stuff happening.

I actually don't have a problem with the idea of a sort of external and pretty dramatic look at how all this operates. But I think that the approach that Doja has taken has been neelistic. I mean, it's just been to switch the whole thing off and switch it on again. And that has been a somewhat arrogant approach. It is much more subtle than that. But the central idea that government has inertia and is too slow to adopt new technology and doesn't necessarily adapt as quickly as it could to change your circumstances is uncontestable. And in that sense, we shouldn't be complacent.

Well, listen, thank you for so much for your time. And hopefully we should maybe have you back because I think our listeners will absolutely love you, the sort of the scope of your analysis and the clarity with which you set it out. So I think your stated goal of becoming one of the most famous, what was it, cantankerous intellectuals? I think that's a great goal. As I said, I'm halfway there. Thanks so much.

Alex, thank you so much to see you both. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you again. Take care. So, Rory, very, very impressive guy. I think he's wonderful. I mean, I have a really soft spot for him.

And he's rather wonderful. I mean, obviously, for someone like me, who's sort of romantic, British. person. He is like a kind of John Bucken hero and I love his sort of self-deprecation. You love Scots with English accents, don't you be honest? That's part of it. That's why I love you, Alistair.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I've always really liked him and I knew him a little bit when he was doing his job in different roles. I saw him, I suppose, in four different roles in that organisation and there was a sort of wonderful kind of, well, you get it in the recording, that sort of self-deprecating modesty, a certain kind of irony.

But in the end, I think the moral values. I mean, if I was going to be pompous for a second, I think that he was quite refreshing, partly in his old-fashionedness, the best bit of old-fashionedness, which is that he did very much believe in that thing that he said, a very difficult thing, which is that every person in the organisation carries moral responsibility for what they do. Can't just say, I'm following orders. and that means that you also need to ask yourself, do I think that the information, the intelligence I'm providing is true?

Have I actually pushed my agent too hard? Am I trying to impress my boss with something that I think I can get away with? Or do I really think it's true? And then that goes all the way up to really difficult ethical decisions he had to make, drone strikes, which are killing people and might be killing also civilians who aren't part of that. And I think it was really good to see the way that he navigates that, without jargon, without too much kind of bureaucratic stuff. Anyway, what did you think? I think he's definitely got a kind of heart and a moral compass.

One of the things we didn't have time to raise, I don't know if you remember when there was that time when he objected to an editorial in The Economist that had been talking about the way that spies operate. and he had this line, we break the rules, certainly, we do not break the law. And I thought, for example, you can see why he's so good at getting on with people. It's possible to take what he said when I asked him about, you know, the role of the dossier in the buildup to the war in Iraq. And he was clearly of that view that, you know, that shouldn't have happened. And he didn't like the outcome of it and the product that we put forward to Parliament. And as I said to you, when we discussed Iraq, you know, we never had that complaint from the people that we were dealing with because we were dealing with mainly, not exclusively, but mainly from the people at the top of the organisation.

But he said it in a way that I didn't feel offended or pushed back or I know exactly what he was saying, but he did it in a very subtle way. I hesitate to quote the National Security Advisor, but when we, in future, Jonathan Powell, remember when I was being obstreperated, with him. He said, it's all right, Rory. I'm used to dealing with terrorists. And that's absolutely true for Alex. What you're seeing there is a really, really good intelligence officer. So, yeah. And they have to be both have the moral compass, but also be surprisingly tolerant and humane of human weaknesses. So you're absolutely right. He almost certainly would question what went on with you and Richard Dielav. And he definitely thought in Iraq and Afghanistan that Ivers a bit wild and occasionally a bit over the top.

But he's got a lovely way of sort of encompassing that and sort of forgiving people while also keeping going forward. And I think that's the core of what makes him good at his job. The other thing I thought was interesting is he was, you know, he clearly has views about Trump. He didn't particularly want to talk about what he actually thought of Trump having had dealings with him directly. But very, very clearly, I thought particularly when we're talking about it.

China saying, look for heaven's sake, and we stop this nonsense of a moral equivalence between the democratic United States of America and the Chinese Communist Party. And I thought that was interesting, because it's true. We, you and I get regularly into a sense of, you know, just rage at America because of Trump and some of the people around him. But I think they, because he's got a sort of world view and he's got certain pillars that he holds on to that have dictated how he has conducted himself in the various positions he's had, that he was kind of not moving away from those points of principle. I hope people will enjoy listening to that. I'm sure they will.

Thank you, Alistair, and I enjoyed it certainly very much and learned a lot. Thank you. Good. See you soon. Bye.