The Rest Is Politics - 527. Are American Tech Billionaires Threatening British Democracy?

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Given Palantir’s controversial manifesto – described by some as having “techno-fascist” tendencies – why is the UK Government expanding its work with the company? Why has the Foreign Office closed its international humanitarian law unit, and what does this say about the UK's commitment to international law? Is the government doing enough to address mental health issues, particularly among young people and Gen Z? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. __________ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Stream Secret Service now on ITVX. Visit https://www.itv.com/watch/secret-service/10a3104 __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter __________ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Video Editor: James Clayden, Lorcan Moullier Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics.com. A lot of people feel very, very angry about a US company connected to defense and CIA getting their hands on British data. Would Palantir be prepared to set up an independent European subsidiary, which couldn't be instructed by the White House suddenly to. switch off all access. Why is a company publishing a manifesto argues it's a moral duty for tech firms to build weapons? Karp, he's somebody who believes that the world is out to get him and out to get the West. I think the public feel very, very scared that guys like this are right at the

heart of the wars in the Middle East, right at the heart of Ukraine. Are these the people that now have not just economic power, but a developing military power as well. Isn't that a bit scary? This episode is brought you by Fuse Energy. Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long, usually arise for the bill. And from the 1st of April, 75% of renewables' obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation. So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching? Because policy sets the floor. The saving itself is automatic. What suppliers offer beyond that isn't, and that's where real competition operates. Fuse goes beyond the mandated saving. Customers who switch save around

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Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alice Campbell. Well, we've got a lot of really interesting questions this week. We're going to begin with a conversation about Palantir under a lot of scrutiny and criticism recently of this enormous American tech company having access to all this data and what does it do with this data. We're then going to get into the issue of why the foreign office has closed. It's international humanitarian law section. We're going to talk about mental health, young people, Gen Z, including the question of how people reported the war in Gaza, the language they use. use, the types of adjectives they use, and the way in which bias can be identified,

simply almost through sampling statistics of the use of words. Now, where do you want to start? Andrea Miehalser, what do you think about Palantir's impact so far globally, is recent public manifesto, seen by some as evidence of techno-fascist tendencies, is ongoing contracts with the UK government across defence and health, and its subsequent access to sensitive data. We've had a lot of questions about Palantir in recent weeks. Yeah. Well, look, the Palantir debate in terms of the public debate involves a lot of people who feel very, very angry about a U.S. company connected to defense and the CIA getting their hands on British data. The story is, of course, like a lot of these stories, a little bit more complicated. What does Palantir actually do? Well, what it does is it deals with how data is managed between different databases and government and through looking at data promises to deliver real efficiency. So I, when I was the

The prisons minister, for example, was pitched by Palantir. And what they pointed out is that it was impossible for me, for example, to find out how many prisoners had an undergraduate degree, which was important in terms of my funding with that. They pointed out that, well, I can't remember what, like 92 different databases in the prison service. And none of them speak to each other. You know, some of them were essentially put together in very old software systems. Often the data entry is no good.

you type in a prisoner's name wrong or you don't format it right. And what Palantir developed to do is to develop plumbing to connect all these database systems together. So maybe a good illustration was after the debunk in Afghanistan where the U.S. were trying to evacuate people from Afghanistan, Palantir was brought in to connect information on which American planes were currently in maintenance, which had spare capacity, who was on the runway. They would even connect the with social media, and they were able to, they argue, bring together a much more efficient operation. Now, why are they controversial? They're controversial because that pitch that came to me in prisons has been successfully made to the NHS, to the Ministry of Defense, to police forces and to others.

And what are they saying? They're saying to a police force, listen, there will be a loss of data information that you have, which will give you a lot of ways of predicting where crime is likely to occur, when it's likely to occur, what kind of crime will help you target resources. NHS, you'll be able to manage your waiting list much better, and you'll be able to do patient aftercare much better if you can put together all the complicated information. Is there any evidence that is happening, that that is working? Well, this is another question of debate, right? So Palantir claims that there are reductions in X percent.

I mean, they're not like President Trump-style percentage reductions, right? We're talking about, you know, somewhere 12%, 18% increase in efficiency in particular types of post-off and stuff. But presumably they're setting the metrics for that. Do we actually know whether this stuff is delivering, as promised? I think it's delivering and it's improving my instinct before I get sued by Palantir is that it's making a difference at the margins. And probably if you're running the NHS, the difference at margins actually results in saving hundreds of millions over. the time. What was the cost going to be to the prison service? Initially, they were pitching to

to come in almost for free. Basically, what Palantir said is the first response to yourself, so you come in and say, you know, we're going to clean up your data, we're going to make it talk to each other and we're going to give you better information is we don't have any money. We can't do it. So Palantir said, well, why don't we do it for free? We'll provide the product to you, and if you like it, you can pay for it after you've seen what we've done. Anyway, fast forward, British government's now using it a lot, but not just the British government. I mean, the US government, it's across absolutely everything. Why is it controversial?

One anxiety is around data. So obviously they're getting all this data information. Do they have access to it? Palantir says, no, that is absolutely not true. They don't have access to data any more than Microsoft does to the stuff you're putting into Excel. They are the software plumbing process. And do you believe that?

Yeah, that seems reasonably plausible. I don't think what they're essentially doing is they've got a secret vault where they're keeping all our data somewhere in the United States. I think that's what they're. I think the bigger issue is around dependency, that as they become more and more central to the way in which we manage all the information in government, the fundamental bet that Alex Karp, their boss, has made, which is that he believes he lives in a Western world where the US and Europe and increasingly Israel are all one team and there's there, and we're all

developing our hard power together, and there's never going to be any tensions between any of these players and therefore he would argue there's no risk to using a US company as the backhaul for almost everything you do with your military. Well, if you go back to our discussion on the main podcast, that's being tested profoundly at the moment. And that's probably the biggest strategic threat they face. So they have a good software package. I mean, I think they have good software engineers. And they would argue that they are just another American product like Microsoft or cloud computing or increasing the AI platforms, which we're going to run on. And don't need to worry about the fact that their domiciles in the US, if it's a good product, just buy it.

But as you said, the last show raises real questions about dependency. You know, would Palantir be prepared to set up an independent European subsidiary, which couldn't be instructed by the White House suddenly to switch off all access? So there are always two questions with these American companies. Data, which is what we've traditionally worried about, you know, can they read our private data? I'm more worried about the second question, which is sovereignty and control, and the US's ability, in the present, Trump's ability to say to Google, I'm switching off the accounts of the head of the International Criminal Court and Google complies. Why is a company publishing what's being labeled a manifesto, an extension of arguments that Cart made in one of his books, The Technological Republic? So this manifesto claims, some cultures have produced vital advances, others remain dysfunctional and aggressive, debate, says the West Muslim.

resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism, whatever that means, calls for mandatory national service, what the facts have got to do with you, argues it's a moral duty for tech firms to build weapons, embraces religion in public life, and of course Mr. Teal, who is a big promoter of J.D. Vance, nothing wrong with that. He's a Democratic, the elected politician, but we kind of, we know where he's coming from. And he said this about our great country. Highways create traffic jams. Welfare creates poverty. Schools make people dumb and the NHS make people sick. Yeah. This is not a guy who, he strikes me, has our values in the same place. No. So I've read Alex Karp's Techno Republic and I've also read a biography of Karp.

Well, I think the first thing is that you're right, broadly speaking, the guy claims to be a registered a democratic voter, but his worldview is not a million miles away from J.D. Vance's worldview. And some of it is sort of weirdly traditional. You know, there's a whole chapter in the book where he bangs on about Kenneth Clark's civilization. Essentially, like, it's an Edwardian gentleman in the 1970s pontificating about Michelangelo and Leonardo and all this kind of the great. So he clearly has a kind of hankering for Western civilization and Western values, and he's clearly worried that the whole world is getting flattened out. and we're all losing our definition.

He's obviously also somebody who is very driven by fear. He's somebody who believes that the world is out to get him and out to get the West. And he particularly felt this after October 7th. He sees Israel as being part of the West. And he thinks that we've got to wake up, invest in hard power in order to fight Russia, China, the Middle East, or whoever it is. They're coming to get us. It's quite a paranoid world view. He's also obsessed.

I mean, you'd have a connection with him on this. He's completely obsessed with Germany. He does doctorate in Germany. He speaks German. Carp now. Carp. Carps surrounds himself by Germans. A lot of his staff are either Germans or Norwegians, and he talks. He spends about half the day talking in German. Are they good Germans or bad Germans that he surrounded with?

Well, sometimes they're German bodyguards. They're like Norwegian personal trainers. There's quite a lot of that kind of edge going on. But to make it more complicated, because there's bits of it that sound a bit kind of fascist. He's also half Jewish, half African American. Yeah. So it's not a sort of straightforward story here. And even weirder, the guy did a doctrine in Germany.

But in his book, he sort of refers to Jürgen Habermas in a book that's essentially saying, the world needs to be about decisiveness, executive power, tech, getting on with things, when Habermas is really about kind of deliberative democracy. Do they not understand that because I don't think they've explained what they do well at all, We once discussed them on the podcast and they called me in for a briefing. And it was interesting and they were obviously putting their best foot forward and trying to persuade me. They're really good people. But I actually don't think they've done a very good job explaining who they are or what they do.

Is that the sort of tech bro arrogance that I think most of them share that they don't think it's their job to do that. But I think the governments that are using them have done a very good job either. So essentially, governments who are using them are very much back on the defensive. Yeah. And the public, you talk about them being scared. I think the public feel very, very scared that guys like this are right at the heart of the wars in the Middle East, right at the heart of Ukraine. Are these the people that now have not just economic power, but are developing military power as well? Isn't that a bit scary?

Yeah, the fundamental thing, just to finish before we move on to the next question, is that Karp, like a lot of the big tech bros, essentially doesn't really believe in institutions. He believes in heroic good people, generally good men. And the general idea is, you know, the good men should be given the power. The good men should be given the technology and the weapons, and the good men will save the world. It's amazing how these people all see themselves as good. Yeah. When Elon Musk, they probably don't like this, but I'd say Elon Musk and Sam Altman are probably the two most famous. Zuckerberg, maybe.

Any of them don't strike as good people? No, and of course the most powerful people pointing out that those people are evil, are those people themselves. So Musk points out that Alkman's evil, Auckland points out Musk is evil. They all point out Zuckerberg's evil. A huge amount of what Alex Karp does is attack Facebook and Zuckerberg. So quite a loss of what's going on is I have to get there first because I'm good and all the others are evil. And given that those people you're calling evil say that they're the good ones and that the person speaking is evil. The problem with the idea of decisive executive power is that you end up with someone like

Trump operating that decisive executive power. The problem with no regulation is you end up someone like Musk. That's why we build all the things that Karp's so suspicious of, which is slow-moving, bureaucratic, institutional, liberal democracies, which he says, because they're not run by founders are not capable of changing the world overnight. Right. Let's go on. This is Gemma, Trip Plus member Bristol. Front office has quietly closed its unit. responsible for tracking potential breaches of international law, including by Israel and Gaza and most recently 11. What does this say about the UK's commitment to international law and practice? And why does nobody seem to care?

Well, you care. I care. Yeah, but it's part of a bigger program, isn't it? I mean, this is just one tiny glimpse of what's going on. We're talking about a world in which we hope that Stahma is going to reach into a bigger international position, reshape Europe, reshape the Global Alliance, stand up for the rules-based international. What is he actually doing? He's basically a lot of the funding decisions feel like mini-Trump, cutting international development aid, shutting down the department that does international humanitarian law,

dismantling so many bits of British soft power, foreign office being cut by 20% international aid down to 5.7.3. So it's really, really strange. Given that Stama is an internationally minded person with the background human rights law, what on earth would he be doing shutting this down? I'm assuming that this is a consequence of the case. cuts to overseas development or the merging of the foreign office is a budget thing. Absolutely.

But the amount of money saved on this will be tiny, right? Peanuts. This is a time when we need more tracking of breaches of international law, not less. By the way, I was listening to Tommy Vita's Pod Save America. He did a brilliant interview with a guy called Nick Enrich, who has written a book called Into the Woodchipper. I haven't read it yet. I've ordered it.

And this is a guy who worked in, he was on the receiving end of Doge. and it's just incredible. Elon Musk goes in their doge, okay? The people are now living with the consequences, which are mind-blowing in their reach. The number of projects that have been cut, the number of people who are now dead because Elon Musk went in and decided,

I'm just going to chop things out. You mean things like the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are now dying of malaria because of cuts? Yeah, yeah. And so all these projects, the USAID, was running, the projects that Doge went in and cut in all across the government and then just walked off. And he describes, this guy Nick Enrich was describing these kind of, you know,

20-year-old tech kids who were coming in and didn't have a clue about what USAID was, what it did, and we're just in there with a spreadsheet that been given to him by Elon Musk and his parasites. So this, the foreign office cut is bad. But honestly, when you hit LISD, was, Listen to this guy talking about what he was responsible for in which no longer now exists. We talk about good and evil. There is a special place in hell, in my view. Yes, he's done some amazing things. But what he did in relation to Doge is an absolute abomination.

Well, first obvious thing to say in relation to Gemma, I think, is that this is a cut that's not going to save much money. And it's interesting that of the things they chose to cut, they chose to cut this. And I wonder whether it isn't that it's a little bit. uncomfortable having a whole section whose job is to keep telling ministers this may be against international humanitarian law so you can't sell these weapons, you can't allow these overflights, etc. And that may be not having someone saying that might be a bit convenient. Yeah, okay. The second one though is that if we're looking for the big test, you know, Starma is going to

stand up and really show he cares about middle powers and a bigger conception of Europe and a new world order, the first things to look at, the canaries and the mine are, is he going to get get international development going? Is he going to stand up the international humanitarian law department? Because that's what the rules-based order is about. Is he going to put more money into the foreign office? Is he actually serious about international policy? Because it feels to me at the moment, as though we're putting a lot of emphasis as kind of almost Alex Karp like on the good man, who in this case is Jonathan Powell, who seems to be doing an incredible job, flying around the world, everybody's very impressed. Every time you talk to anyone on the Iran file or in the Gulf or Ukraine,

and they also had Jonathan Powers doing great job. But that is not a long-term institutional solution to Britain, Europe and the United States. And that's where we want to look at funding aid sections. Here's a man from Janet, Tripluss member from Exeter. Have you come across any issues recently where there is actually a surprising level of consensus? Have you? I do think it's really interesting how much Europe and the world has moved on the US just in the last 18 months. I don't think America's caught up to this.

I just keep feeling when I go to the US, they don't realize the change. I had some amazing figures. US perceptions of the UK have gone from, in one year, from 38% of Americans thinking the UK is their most important ally, 20, 28%. And from people saying that the big reason for alliances in US is democratic values, in 12 months it's now become trade and defense, not democratic values.

This is Emerson College polling, which Harvard's Kennedy schools just shed. So I think a consensus is emerging that the world is changing. I think this thing that we've been banging on about for four years, people now agree on. What do people agree on for you? Well, I'm going to go on mental health

because we were in Belgrade, I couldn't be at the launch of a campaign I was supposed to help launch in the House of Commons, which is a campaign called Head-on, which is bringing together 20 organisations in the mental health field, plus people with lived experience, as it's called. And they welcomed trust funded this.

And they've been good on mental health for a long, long time. And they did some polling with more in common. And it is really interesting because three quarters of Britain say the government should do more. But you know when we did our populism series with Liam Byrne and he had these polling groups, and more in common have got these groups, progressive activists, politically active left, incremental left, they are left-leaning but not very political. established liberals, prosperous pro-remain centrist who trust institutions, I guess I'll be one of them, rooted patriots who are the Red War, skeptical scrollers online don't like elites, traditional conservatives,

says what it is, and dissenting disruptors who want radical change. And which of those groups, would you reckon, is the most believing that we need to do a lot more on mental health? One assumes that people who are more to the centre-left are going to be more sympathetic to mental health. Is that wrong? 81% of rooted patriots. So what that says to me is that the red wall that we often get portrayed as homogenous, it's all about frarge, populism, Brexit, etc. Probably because of their lived experience, of family or self, they are the most. keenest or the strongest believers that we have to do more mental health.

I thought it was really interesting. Really interesting because it shows that the left-right division isn't what you'd expect. Because sometimes when you hear the kind of Trumpian right, they would almost portray, you know, sort of almost 19th century. People talking about mental health, they're just kind of weak and everyone needs to pull ourselves up and start weak and woke. No, I thought it was really interesting. And what it says to me, and look, I've been saying this ever since the election,

I think the government should be doing way more mental health. And I keep hearing that something is coming and let's hope that that's true. What about polling system is that politically, this is a much stronger and more important issue than people realize. And it also relates a lot of it to young people as well who are feeling a bit kind of let down by the government. And without being, again, a bit over grandiose about this, how do we differentiate solutions which are targeting mental health head on compared to an analysis that maybe says, actually this is partly caused by a society where the schools are no good, the NHS is creaking, work doesn't seem to be delivering dignity to people, and that really what one needs is a country that's really sorting that stuff out.

Yeah, I guess the question is there is how much of this is a consequence and how much is a cause. And look, you've got to deal with all of those things, but I think on its own terms, and you will get people still who will say, although I hope this polling might actually do that. get people to dial down on the kind of woke, you know, generation, Gen Z, just everything is terrible and anxiety. There's no doubt anxiety is a real thing and has grown particularly amongst young women. And is it dealable with them? I mean, if I mentioned mental health self, what are some relatively straightforward things that a government could do that could help people? Well, it's the things that we've already done.

It's talking therapy. and there is the data there to show how effective. It's not always effective and it's not effective for everybody. It is for a huge number of people. If you can get talking therapies for people who are starting to feel anxious, depressed, anorexic, whatever it might be, all the kind of common mental health issues. Fund it properly, have it available. And also recognize that if you do put the money at the right end,

you end up saving so much money further down the track. And is there, I mean, so it's ridiculous, but would you, you know, can technology help with doing more of the stuff online help? What do you feel that needs to be traditional face-to-face? Well, it's really interesting. The other thing that they did in the survey was the most trusted communicator of mental health remedy were people who talked about their own mental health experience. Search yourself. The least trusted was online chatbot.

Now, I think there's a place for that. I do think it's a place for that. But it's, you know, I've seen this so often with people is how much, I've got a friend. at the moment who's really struggling with depression, it's got an absolute blind spot about medication, just does not want to take medication. Now, that's fine, that's fine, you can do that. But medication is hugely helpful for lots of people.

Totally. And for me, it's been a lifesaver. Did you have a block initially? Oh, for years. Okay. I had a block about seeing somebody. Yeah. Nothing wrong with me.

It's everybody else who's crazy. And I had a block about using medication for a long long time. And this is why the thing about talking therapy is so important, because in the end, I found somebody. guy called David Sturgeon who suddenly who I totally trusted. And on the medication, one of the things that you, that one of the,

I don't know it was an urban myth, but the story that you often hear is people feel that it sort of has side effects and they don't want to keep taking it because they don't... Well, it can. It can. It does have side effects and you just have to manage those. I mean, the medication I'm on now, or certraline, is probably the sixth medication that I've been on

and some of them have been terrible side effects. Okay. Do you have to keep experimenting? You do, and you have to kind of, this is why the relationship is so important. And I had this, David, it was so wonderful because he wouldn't say this is going to work. He'd say, let's give this a go. Okay. And you give it a go, and eventually you find something.

And I find too many people give up too soon on the talking therapy, and they give up too soon on the medication. But this really, really interested me, because that says to me, if you're thinking the traditional Trumpian Farragist view, I bet Farage's view of mental health is very much, I'll pull yourself together. I don't know that. You won't come on the podcast to tell us. But I think if this says to me, if you're going into tough working class communities,

a lot of the stuff that is making their life worse than it should be is about mental health. And this to me is those people saying that, and government needs to listen. We also had a question about grief that interested me. And maybe that's a good segue, because you've just been reading a book on grief. So the question is from Emily, which is, do we talk enough about grief, think enough about how to cope with grief?

Now, I've got to declare an interest. My name is, we've talked before about when your name is on the front cover of a book. Which mine was with Gary Stevenson, but it didn't stop us having quite a spicy. Yeah. If you buy Gary Stevenson's book, mine's the only name on the book. Well, I'm in the middle here on this book by Lindsay Nicholson, and I should declare an interest, Lindsay Nicholson is one of my oldest friends. When Fiona and I were training journalists, half a century ago nearly,

Lindsay was also a trainee journalist and her husband was a guy called John Merritt who was my best friend who died in his 30s this is like a Tavostock thing We were all in the West Country all down in the West Country and the book's called How to Survive Losing It All

and Lindsay has written a previous book about John, my best friend, her husband dying followed by her daughter dying both died of leukemia and her daughter died She was age nine And her husband also died to leukemia In his sort of late 30s

In his 30s yeah And is that related? I'm presumably genetically. Well, they say not. They say not. And then Lindsay was pregnant at the time with her daughter, Hope. So the book at the thing is says, how to survive, losing your husband, losing your child, losing your career, which she did recently, losing your health. She had breast cancer, losing your hope and losing your mind.

So it's how to survive losing it out, losing it all without losing hope. She's a brilliant writer, which helps. But it is just the kind of, and she talks very openly about the fact that there have been times when she's been completely suicide. I mean, I still think one of the strongest interviews who've done with leading is with Nas Shah, but some people felt that it was a bit depressing. I actually felt it was quite uplifting to here.

Is this book a bit depressing? No, I think it's uplifting because it is about keeping hope and she does get through these. How do you survive those things? She would argue friendship, she would argue family. she would argue the ability just to kind of keep going. And the fact that she was pregnant when John died with Hope,

I think Hope has kept her going. And Hope's now married with a family. And so she's a grandmother. She did find another guy. And they got married, and it seemed to be a kind of perfect second marriage. But it all went wrong when he ran off with somebody from his swimming club. So she went through, and she's, I mean,

there's the reason she had a terrible car crash in the middle of all there. So it feels like she's got a misery memoir to tell, but it's not. It's like it's how you keep going. And she talks, she says there's not a single hour of the day that she doesn't think about her daughter, Ellie, who would now be 37. And we've stayed very, very close to her. She comes with us to Scotland every Christmas new year. It is incredible. And so John's death, her husband, who was my closest friend and he died, I don't know.

know how you get over that, but she then had all the other stuff on top. But I think it's important. The point about grief, I mean, you do get through it in the main. People do get through it. Well, it's very different, isn't it, with different people? I mean, I think there's, I was thinking about this a bit on the way in today that sometimes if you would, I don't know, go online, you'd get a sense that there's a sort of recipe. You know, grief follows these paths and That's what she said. I thought about a lot because my father died when he was like 92. I was with him when he died.

And actually, I think it's, I haven't felt sort of shattering grief. I was very sad, but I also felt that I'd got to know him very well. We talked about everything we could talk about. He told me every story he could. And I've been expecting him to die for 15, 20 years. Partly because from about the age of 75 onwards, he kept saying, I'm almost done. And we talked about death, and I was with him at the end. I think that's how you create a good death.

Another great book about this, Philip Gould, I've had so many close friends who've died, and he wrote a book called When I Die, because he knew he was going to die. And I just think we don't talk about death enough. We don't think about it enough. We're scared of it. I mean, Fiona's mom's in her, she's 101.

And so, you know, we know she's not going to be around for long. She doesn't want to talk about it, Which I think it's fine. But I think there is something, I think there is something. It's helpful if you do. I think so. I find it very helpful that my father was happy to talk about it, joke about it. And he had a good life.

He had a good life. We've had an amazing life. And if you won't talk about it, then you're slightly sort of accelerating towards the edge of the cliff and dropping off. And you just have to assume that they sort of knew they were going to die. And I think it feeds panic when you're alive if you're not thinking, actually, there's a kind of natural, logical, perfectly healthy conclusion to this. So your dad died. in old age. My dad died in it.

He was, you were done, my dad were born in the same year. My dad was 82. My mom was 88. Did you feel great grief at that? Or did that feel sort of more natural? My dad felt, I'll tell you what I felt is I wasn't there for either of them. My dad, because I was doing, I was doing a marathon. And by the way, we must give a shout out to the Mr. Sebastian Saway, the first

sub to our marathon. And obviously I thought I was going to do that one day. But, you know, turned out. Do you want to tell us your time? That year was 353.01. 353. It was actually almost identical Shishana's time. And I was probably 20 years older than Shishan.

So we were going to have a shout out. Sorry, while we're talking about heroes, Yomif Kacheltra, the Ethiopian. I feel so sorry. Who came in just 15 seconds behind, broke two hours and was second. And he's Buzz Aldrin, isn't he, in the history books? It's very extraordinary to break two hours. set the world record and then find us another guy 15 seconds ahead of you. I was a wonderful,

parents was a wonderful interview with Sebastian Sawway's parents this morning. We were talking about he's going to come home, he's going to build a new church for the village, he's going to buy his a new car. He's like the guy, and he was so kind of diffident and modest about it. That's what I found it basically, watching a big interview afterwards.

So with my dad, I wasn't there because I was doing this marathon, and it wasn't like he was expecting to retire that day, but he did die that day. And with my mum, it was even worse because I was in Jordan. in your old neck of the woods. For the king of Jordan's funeral?

No, I was, no, no, no. I was just doing some work there. And I was in a meeting and came out and there was 10 missed calls from Fiona, five from my sister. And I thought, my mum had a stroke. But, you know, I now think it's the best, I think her death in a way was amazing.

And was the one of the two of them that was easier with you, or were they both very difficult? I think my mum's was more difficult because I think when you lost your second, but your mum's still alive. The one is the second parent, you feel that sense of,

it's now your generation. Yeah. You're in charge kind of thing. And so, and also that fact that she died unexpectedly. My dad was expected, my mum was unexpected. Are you doing a good enough job

with your own kids in case you got knocked over by bus? In talking about death and would they be able to cope with it and handle it? I mean, have you prepared them for your end up? No, no, probably not. In fact, Grace regularly talks about

I had a terrible dream of dream that you died and she waited up crying and da-da-da-da. No, Grace finds all that stuff very, very difficult. But I definitely will do. I definitely will do. I'd love to be like Philip Gould and say, right, I'm going to die. I'm going to plan it. These are the hymns that I want.

This is the service I want. Get on with it. Well, I've got the music. I've already sorted the music. Okay, good. All right. That's all been written down. The music changes.

Okay. This is the great thing about music. But basically, it's going to be a lot of Scottish folk music, a lot. Is Burnley going to feature in this? I think there'll be a Claren't Blue Flag somewhere. Yeah, yeah. I did say to Tony Blair. Tony Blair and I worked a funeral a couple of weeks ago.

And I said, by the way, it just says, you know, Sean Dyke is going to be doing the bade eulogy at my funeral. Former Burley manager. And Tony just said, not if I have a life, he's not. Oh, that's very sweet. There we are. Okay, let's take a break and then come back and talk about people seem to love knowing what we read, Rory.

so we're going to tell them what we read again. This episode is brought to you by ITV. There is a new drama on ITV and ITVX called Secret Service. A political thriller that appeals both Aurora and me, not least because of our very different and varied backgrounds, I might say, makes it uncomfortably plausible. Yeah, the premise is simple. What if Russia had an asset right at the very top of the British government?

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Welcome back to the rest of the politics. We'll meet Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Talking to books, we've also been asked, who was this, Josh, what have you been reading or watching this week? And I know you keep saying you want to mention this documentary on Channel 4.

Yeah, I just did a documentary on Channel 4 on the Suez Crisis. And I just thought maybe it's a good way of kind of wrapping up my contribution, then back over to you. I've done a number of documentaries recently on history, a bit on which I did with Tom Holland on Caesar against Cato, just done Suez. So hold on, Dominic Sandbrook stood in for you here. Yeah.

And then you stood in for Dominic Sambrook on the BBC history thing. A bit of pedultery going on. A bit of pedultery going on. Suez is really interesting. So it's interesting for two things. Firstly, the Suez Canal was thought about in the same way that we think about the Straits of Formuz today. This was the great artery which everybody was dependent on for their oil. And the idea is you cannot let a kind of anti-Western nationalist regime have their hands on our throats.

And that was the reason why Israel, France and the United Kingdom intervened to, you know, reopen the Suez Canal. And that feels a lot like what Israel and the US is saying about the Straits of Formos in Iran at the moment. Similar consequences. Similar consequences. Israel. The second thing is it's about US power because actually it's really a story about the fact that the UK, France, Israel assumed that the US would have their back. And actually what happened is the US turned entirely against them, organized the United Nations to vote them down,

and then threatened to bankrupt the entire British economy and destroy Sterling so that the chance of the Exchequerque and McMillan has to go in and see Eden the prime minister and say, we need to be out of this war in 24 hours or we're bankrupt. And this is fascinating, Because it's a moment, only 10 years after the Second World, tells you a lot of that special relationship, where Britain is still manufacturing 25% of the manufactured products in the world. Britain is still a pretty major country.

It's still spending nearly 10% of gross national product on defense. 7% of the British population is directly employed by the armed services and somewhere another. And Germany is spending about less than half of what Britain is spending on defense. Japan is spending about a fifth of what Britain is spending, and their economies are beginning to take off. And we keep going with services, Navy, Army, Air Force, even after the humiliation of Sue is spending and spending on defense. Meanwhile, Germany and Japan gets to a situation

where Britain goes from 25% of the exports world to only 10% of the exports world in 20 years, and Germany flops up to 20% and Japan's overtaking us. So it's a really, really, you know, It tells you a lot about power, world waterways, and the United States. So is this a one episode? There's two episodes. Right. Two episodes. Is that already?

Yeah. And you can see it on Channel 4, Catchup. Yeah. Okay. Well, listen, I had a fabulous weekend because Bernie weren't playing, because one of the other teams were meant to play, were in the cup semi-final. I stayed in the house all weekend, apart from going swimming in the morning and taking the dog for a walk.

Oh. And I sat on the sofa with three books and nonstop football on in the background, which occasionally I watched. So you sort of read and then you look at the screen, read. And I did a bit of work. And then on the Sunday. It's a sound on on the television. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And I only put it up when there's something sort of. So I've got a feel for whether it's going to be exciting. Some of the Scottish football in particular was fantastic at the weekend. So I was reading these books. And I then decided on Sunday morning when I heard. heard what had happened to Trump or what hadn't happened to Trump when the guy going into the hotel a long distance from where Trump was. And I thought, this is going to be a complete new

sponge. So much blather and babble is going to be spoke. I don't want to watch it. So I just didn't look at my phone. I didn't watch the news. I just read and watched football. Much better for your mental health. And better for actually instantly for all of our mental health, because then we don't get so many WhatsApp messages from you. I'd like to encourage this to happen over the weekend more often. Exactly, exactly. You mean, okay. Sorry, don't give away our trade sequence.

Anyway, one of the books I read we've already talked about, how I survive. The next one, which was this, Peter, and I wonder if, do you remember my book of the year last year, Carlo Mazzala, what if Russia wins? Peter Chappelle, what if Reform wins? A scenario, and it is, I mean, Ferdinand Mount on the cover says, hilarious, terrifying. Anthony Selden says, we all need to take this scenario very seriously. So it's a scenario. So it basically starts and Farage is winning the election. And then it goes through, it's written as a diary,

and it goes through the utter total chaos that ensues. And what he's done is he's taken policy positions that Farage, Tice, Yusuf, the rest of them have set out. And he then goes through the process of them being put into practice. So he goes, coming out of the use. he goes defunding the BBC he goes he doesn't do much on health and he does anything on health and of course net zero okay and I won't give away the ending but shall we just say it doesn't last long before it goes completely totally tits up and it's partly it's very

there's a bit where I'm reading it thinking this is actually happening it's very credible but then as you get into the thing working it's a complete and total disaster so I strongly recommend that one and then this one I'm three-quarters the way through, how to sell a genocide. Which I've read, yeah. And what do you think of it? Well, I thought it was really, really moving. I mean, what Adam Johnson's doing there is he's forensically documenting the way in which people

reported the Gaza War, everything from the adjectives they use, the way they describe the two combatants, the amounts of attention they pay to casualties on the Israeli side compared to the Palestinian side. No, I, and what's interesting is he doesn't cover Fox News. He doesn't cover the right-wing media. He covers the liberal media, CNN, MSNBC, New York Times. And I guess his point is that that's a more powerful case, that if it was just Fox News, you know, all our listeners would be like, yeah, well, obviously Fox News does that. Yeah, and essentially what it does is it, it paints a pretty credible picture of what I think

they sometimes call it the BBC institutional bias. And the bias is very much against any real portrayal of the Palestinians as anything other than kind of barbarians and anything other than Israel as victims. So it changes. It changes over time. And he also makes a point that he uses headlines to illustrate that in Ukraine, the headline will always be Russia bombed somebody. And in Gaza, the headline was always a bomb went off,

with no subject. So Israel's never identified. He also points out that when it comes to Russia, they're very happy to use the word genocide, to take the views of the Ukrainians, to always be skeptical of the claims the Russians make. Whereas when it comes to Gaza, they assume that the Israeli military is always speaking the truth.

They make no real attempts to verify. They refuse to report things which the Israeli military hasn't itself verified. And they also talk about institutional pressure. So, I mean, this will make, I think, some of our listeners very, very uncomfortable and will feed into their general sense that we are anti-Israeli. But I think if you can bear to read it, it's definitely worth looking at. And interesting, when you say if you can bear to read it, because it sort of feels at times like you're being hit over the head with a hammer. It's utterly relentless.

I mean, it is compelling, but I several times had to put it down. and go back to one of the other ones, or go back to the football, because I found it really, not just disturbing, but, and, you know, the one thing I'd like to have seen

is whether he couldn't have also maybe have done Al Jazeera or a Spanish TV station that was very pro, just to see whether there was another. Be interesting to see, actually, if he did us,

what he'd find. I think he, how much did we pull our punches? I think in the first, I was thinking about that, I think in the initial period after the, October 7th, he'd have felt we were very much in this space.

Like the New York Times. We're like the New York Times. Yeah, being instinctively prosority. And I think over time, we got, but do you think, by the way, he's used AI to do things like, I mean, it literally sort of says, you know, they use the word massacre 3,614 times. How do you get that? That's relatively easy to do with that. Is it? Yeah, yeah.

How'd you do it? Well, you simply get a program that gets into those articles and counts the words. Are I sort of missing a trick With some of our research I often do it So for example if you Well let's say you took a One of my running jokes

Is I will get the South Sudan development Project And I will search for the word You know One of the tribal groups, Dinkran it'll appear zero times You go to find And it tells you how many times

Okay And then you type in a word like sustainability And it'll be like 352 times So you can do that with all these documents Yeah Your point about Russia as well As a lot of you know In the first 100 days

after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 262 children were killed. In the first 100 days of Israel's assault in Gaza, more than 10,000 children were killed. Mentions of child deaths and related terms were 33.4% higher for Ukraine than for Gaza. He really goes for Jake Tapper on CNN. There's an introduction that really goes for the BBC. Talks about people who have been interviewed about Palestine for years,

who suddenly find they can't get on the shows. And a big hit on Morning Joe, which is what can't. John. Absolutely. They get a real big hit. Yeah. Anyway, I'm glad you felt like I did. It's a really tough read. There will be some of our listeners who think it'll just be completely biased. But it's got a lot of data in here. It measures it. He's clearly done the work. And it's a horrible read in a way. But I think it's important that people do see it for what it is. And he's clearly very much on the Palestinian side. So I imagine that, you know, if you were on the side of Netanyahu, you could go through that book and you could point out that he's equivocating about Hamas atrocities and lots

of other things. But some of that stuff, the direct comparison on reporting on child death, whether or not you actually accept that the Israeli government claimed that the Al-Shefa Hospital had a massive underground terrorist bunker underneath as their reason for attacking. Then it turned out there was nothing there and that was never reporting. Or right at the start, immediately after October the 7th itself, the stories of 40 babies being beheaded. Yeah. Which became a fact. And which, which then actually, I mean, he also points out of course that Biden repeats a lot of the stuff without fact-checking. Yeah. That's the other thing that strengthens the case here. This is not a left-wing pro-Palestinian guy going at Donald Trump.

This is all during, this is one year of the Biden. Yeah. Biden's term. And then this thing, this headline from the, the Onion, the satirical publication, run the headline, Dying Garzans criticized for not using last words to condemn Hamas. It was the thing that, you know, you wouldn't get heard in any of this in any of this unless you first went on and said, of course. He also had something I thought that was interesting in terms of government communications. He points out that the Biden administration's strategy for dealing with this was to use unnamed sources inside the administration to brief headlines in New York Times saying, the president is powerless, he can do nothing. Or the president is very

angry. It's about to change. And he said it was like a skit, not a story. The same line would be repeated again again. Nothing would ever change. But clearly the administration aware how uncomfortable people were, despite the fact, clearly the US actually had enormous power. They were providing so many weapons, so much money for this. And in fact, the Israelis are very open. He quotes them saying, thank goodness Biden never asked for a ceasefire because we would have had to do it almost immediately. But the administration briefing, he's powerless, or he's angry, he's powerless, he's angry. Anyway, it's a very, very interesting, challenging read.

So that's what I was doing at the weekend, Rory. And I'm sorry if you missed all my WhatsApp. To be encouraged, more weekends with books and football, please. Kate, what does the government need to start prioritising to help young people? Well, mental health, definitely part of it. I actually, yesterday was sitting here in the studio with Vicky Spratt, who is a journalist who was talking to. She's talked thousands and thousands of Gen Z, and she's doing a mini-series for us.

We're now commissioners, Rory. We're commissioners as well as presenters. She's doing a series on the Gen Z story. I'm really sorry, but roughly Gen Z, roughly how old? 14 to 29. Thank you very much. Born in 1997. Yep. And 15 years on, and otherwise you become a millennial.

Very good. And she's looking at debt, student loans. She's looking at the housing. So broadly speaking, teenagers and young people. Yeah, yeah. So she's going to be looking at housing, debt, student loans. We get so much feedback on student loans. And also social media as well.

So she's doing several parts and then we're going to wrap it all up. She and I are going to talk about it. And then we're also going to talk to Angela Rainer, who's done all of the stuff that's actually been aimed, particularly in the housing and the rental market. And then I think at some point you and I should listen back to the whole series and talk about it too. Lovely. Looking forward to it. Thank you. And the first episode is out on Friday. That's the Genzi story presented by Vicki Spratt. Starts Friday, go to the restis

politics.com and you'll find it. Well, Alasett, let's just, just to finish on a very serious note, Bella, how tall is the president of Serbia? Well, should we guess? I'm going to guess at six, I'm six three and I reckon he was a good four inches taller than me. So I'm, I'm going to guess at 6-7, what are you saying? God, they're tall people. I mean, all I know is that his staff are complaining that he's taller than Eddie Rama, and Eddie Rama wears platform heels to make himself look taller than beach. That's not true.

Ah, well, Wikipedia says he's one metre 99. What is that in feet and shillings and pence? Famously, Wikipedia's really, really bad on height. I really struggled to find out what Arnold Schwarzenegger's height was, Rishi Sunak's height was, Boris Johnson's head. I'm often quite interested in this. And a lot of film stars, their height is not public. It's actually surprisingly difficult.

Who is the one who stood on the box? Alan Ladd, he used to stand on a box. Humphrey Bogart stood on a box. Yeah, yeah. But it's actually surprisingly difficult getting to. Do you ever feel you need a box when you and I are doing a show together? I should do, should do. I quite like being a little and large.

Little and large is good. You think it's good? Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised he's only 199 because that's six foot six. I had thought he'd be bigger than that. And also, I think Eddie's tall. than that. Okay. Now, Alastair, thank you very much. So we covered a lot of ground, but I think maybe the things that stick with me most, planetary and international humanitarian law, which is about

how Britain thinks about a little bit more sovereignty and independence, and then a lot on grief, mental health, and the complicated issue of how you report conflict and war, how you actually get balance, and finishing with this extraordinary controversy over the height of present Luchich. See you soon.