The Rest Is Politics - 539. Embezzlement, the Mandelson Texts, and Hasan Piker's UK Ban

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

What does the SNP embezzlement case reveal about how scandal-ridden British politics is? Is the banning of prominent left-wing American commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur a sensible decision or a serious threat to free speech? After Rory and Alastair discussed their most “evil” handshakes last week, who is the most “angelic” person they have each shaken hands with? 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. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Adam Thornton, Vasco Andrade 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 Restis Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to the rest is politics.com. That's the rest is politics. This was the power couple right at the heart of SMP politics for years and years and years. Her husband's spouting a new £5,000 watch, and she thinks what exactly? Peter Morel, the husband of Nicholas Sturgeon, is currently in court. already been convicted of charges related to corruption. The police went in there, they put up those tents. It looked like a kind of murder scene, not a fraud investigation. I don't know what

she thought. How do you explain to yourself how you've ended up with £450,000 of extra kit, right? After you've paid tax, how could you possibly think that's normal? There's something just wrong about having the leader who's married to the chief executive of a political party. That is just wrong. This episode is brought you by Fuse Energy. Fuse has introduced the tracker tariff designed to give customers what matters most from their energy supplier, savings clarity and a bit more control. And it guarantees that your rates stay below the off-gem price gap, which saves you up to £200.

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Switch to FuseEnergies tracker tariff at fuseenergy.com slash politics and use code politics to get a free trip plus subscription. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Beer 52. A good international squad needs balance, depth and variety. So does a case in the fridge. With an incredible month of football ahead of us, our friends at Beer 52 have expertly curated a case of eight outstanding beers

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It really is the ultimate travel tool, even for those who actually try to relax on holiday. To get the best discount of your NordVPN plan, go to NordvPN.com slash Restis Politics. The link is in the episode description. Welcome to the Restis Policy Question Time with me, Alice Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. We're going to get into the incredible scandal around the Scottish National Party and corruption. We're going to get into the revelation of emails from Peter Manelson, our former ambassador of Washington. We're going to get into the decision of the British government to ban two left-wing American

YouTubers. We're going to talk about our travels and surveillance states emerging. And we're going to finish with the question of who is the most good person, the best person, the most moral person that we've ever shaken hands with. Looking forward to it very much. Where do you want to start, Halvesta? So, Rory, we are talking at a time that the political world is digesting a massive dump of documentation relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassadors of Washington and also at a time when Peter Morel, former CEO of the Scottish National Party and husband of Nicholas Sturgeon, is currently in court having already been convicted of charges related

to corruption. So Clem wants to know, do the two Peter M's reveal that British politics is a scandal ridden as anywhere else? Are we becoming the next? next Italy. Bit of an insult to Italy there. It's a completely amazing story. Let me start with Peter Morel. This is one of the absolute lynch pins of the SMP. He was the chief executive of the Scottish National Party and was married to Nicola Sturgeon, who was First Minister of Scotland and the leader of the Scottish National Party. So this was the power couple right at the heart of SMP politics for years and years and years. And it turns out that Peter Morel had been systematically taking party funds and using it to buy stuff for their own personal consumption.

Now, the claim is that Nicholas Sturton knew nothing about it, and she keeps giving interviews saying she's as disgusted under anyone and shocks as anyone. But let me just try to put it to you like this, right? The guy decides to buy a brand new top of the range, 85,000-pound Jaguar. he buys it partly with SMP money and he puts it through the accounts as buying Apple products, Apple business products. Then he sells the Jaguar a few years later and he doesn't give any of the money back to the SMP. He pockets all the money when he sells it. He's buying coffee machines. He's buying 5,000 pound watches.

He buys an enormous 110,000 pound motorhome and parks it in his parents' drive, right? through all of this, we are supposed to believe that Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Meryl, who are on pretty modest salaries, I mean, she says they're well paid, they're not that well paid, right? These are people on public sector salaries. She looks out of her window, and there's a brand new 85,000-pound Jaguar sitting on the driveway. She goes to visit her in-laws as a brand-new motorhome. She comes downstairs, there's three top-of-the-range coffee machines, her husband's spouting a new £5,000 watch, and she thinks,

what exactly? I don't know. I don't know what she thinks. I was trying to think what I would think if Fiona suddenly pitched up outside with a brand-new motorhome. It was actually $124,000, Rory. You're selling it short, this motorhome.

I think I would think... You see, let's be honest, Roy, you're with Shoshana, I'm with Fiona, Peter Morel was with Nicola. None of us know what really goes on inside the dynamics of another marriage. You know, we can see that we can know people. So I don't know what she thought.

What she's depending on at the moment is the fact that, and she was humiliated. They were both humiliated by the fact that the police went in there. They put up those tents. It looked like a kind of murder scene, not sort of, you know, fraud investigation. So what she's hanging on is the fact that she was cleared. She was cleared by the police investigated her as well as him. They've obviously decided that he committed a crime and that she didn't. And so I guess what we're being asked to believe is that she either paid no attention to the things that he was buying

or I wonder whether she realized that he had a sort of bit of a purchasing weird things issue. This is something that I don't understand because I don't even have a watch. I would no more buy a motorhome than, you know, fly to the moon. My guess on this is that it's about the way, and this is really powerful for understanding political malfeasance and how corruption happens and how embezzlement happens. This is embezzlement. He's basically taking funds which people have given for the SMP. He's buying a motorhome and he later tries to claim the motive home was for the SMP. But the day after he buys it, he's buying a tour guide for motoring around Britain.

he parks in his in-law's house, the SMP's not paying the insurance, it doesn't appear on the SMP account. So I guess the only way in which this works is firstly he is very, very, very important to her. So she's not going to look too closely because she has an incredibly powerful setup where she's the leader and the first minister and he's the chief executive of the party. That's not power you ever want to give away. That would be like a chief executive having their own husband as the chairman of the board. you wouldn't want to bring someone else in, because when you've got that control, why would you take a risk? Can I jump in there?

This is to your credit and in your favour, as it were. We've interviewed several leaders of the SNP, including Nicholas Sturgeon. And I think I'm right in that all of them, you made the observation either to them directly. I think you definitely did with Holmes Eusef, making the point that there's something just wrong about having the leader who's married to the chief executive of a political person. party. That is just wrong. Now, in a way, it does all flow from that. You're absolutely right. And you can see why she would want that, right? You can completely understand why that's convenient for her and why she's not going to look, I mean, apart from that she loves her husband.

She's not going to look too closely at a situation that gives her absolute control over the S&P. One of them runs the party completely and the other one runs the government completely. So it's a fantastic combination of power. The second thing is, I think, possibly self-deception and maybe a little bit of entitlement. So maybe they think, because they're building this together, they're an incredibly successful couple, well, you know, we deserve a good coffee machine because we need some coffee to keep us awake in the morning.

And, you know, we're doing a lot of work, driving around the country all the time, so we deserve a nice car. So the line begins to blur a little bit between what your public duties are and what your private duties are. But ultimately, it gets a bit more crazy because by October 2020,

the auditors are resigning. saying they can't sign off on the accounts. And she's got to be saying to herself, listen, really on our incomes? She would have been paid just over £100,000. How do you explain to yourself how you've ended up with £450,000 of extra kit, right? After you've paid tax, that's earning an extra £900,000 in order to have that stuff. How could you possibly think that's normal? Surely you'd say to her, darling, how do we afford that car?

like a top of the range, Jaguar. How do we get this brand new motorhome? That looks like a really nice watch. Where do we get this new coffee machine from? I mean, surely you'd ask that question, wouldn't you? I think so. People will be possibly staggered to hear that I let Fiona take care of absolutely everything in relation to the running of our lives. This is not a very good commentary on myself, but most things I wouldn't even be able to guess the price of what something costs because it's just not, I don't find it that doesn't motivate me. You're not the first minister, Alison. You're a private citizen. If you were the first minister of Scotland, you would be absolutely, you know, when I was in politics, I think about my chance,

I'm completely paranoid about these things. And, you know, you don't have to be in politics very long to realise that these are the things that bring you down. So I think you would, if she suddenly parked a Ferrari in the driveway and you were earning, you know, 150,000 pounds a year, you'd be like, darling, what the hell is this thing? Where did this come from? No, yeah, yeah, you would. You would. There's very little future for the marriage, it seems to me. He is going to go to jail, possibly for quite a long time, by the way. And she's probably thinking, well, I've had my whole life torn apart, my marriage is wrecked. And she's also in that position where she's trying to set out her life story, because she's written a book. So the first

commentary she gave on this was in, I saw this when I was actually abroad and I was just channel hopping. And there she pops up, I think it was on Sky News, where she was being endorsed, she was talking at an event in County Kerry because she's promoting her book. So I guess she's thinking, quotes, I've been punished enough. And he may be thinking that he's being the noble martyr, that he's taking one for the team. The other thing we don't know, we don't know whether in the interviews that he did with the police, his line all along was, I was acting alone, my wife had no idea about this, we just don't know. So I think it's quite hard to make a judgment. But the truth is, it's not going to go away. It's not going to go away for him because he's going to go to jail.

But the other thing that's happening is that some of the old enmities within the SMP. So Joanna Cherry, who is no fan of Nicholas Thurgeon, was a big fan of Alex Hammond. And she's actually calling for John Swinney to resign as the first minister and the leader of the SMP because, you know, she's saying, well, he was part of the team while this was all going on. Jack McConnell, who is the former first minister, Labor first minister, Minister. He's actually had quite an interesting proposal, which is the idea that this should be investigated both by Holly Roode's Public Audit Committee and Westminster's Public Accounts Committee. And I don't know what the, I don't know what there's a constitutional niceties of

that are, but that BMPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee have also said that if, if Holyrood doesn't do a proper investigation into this, that maybe they should take it up. One more problem to this, which is that the police claim that they presented the evidence to the prosecutors in Scotland a year before the election. And for some reason, the decision was made to hold back on this whole thing until after the Hollywood election. Now, presumably, this would have been devastating for the SMP going into that election. And John Swinney's ability to get as many votes as he did was partly because this decision was made to hold back. Is somebody going to ask some questions on why they held back? that investigation. And that, by the way, was part of the chatter that was going on at the time.

So we had the whole dramatic thing of the police sort of raid on the house, all the stuff being taken away, the investigation going on. And I can remember in the run-up to the election, people say, well, of course, you know, they're sitting on this thing until, et cetera, et cetera. So, look, I don't know. None of us know the full facts. What we do know is that he has been convicted of pretty serious crimes. And politically, she has taken a further hearing. hit on the back of it. And of course, it is quite extraordinary that a party that has been quite a scandal ridden that they just have won this pretty extraordinary, remarkable win to keep themselves in power. They're becoming one of the longest running governments in the

world at a time when most governments are sort of tipping left, right and centre. So I think the point you've raised there is the most interesting question. Were the police put under political pressure to delay something which they actually felt they had a strong enough case to take earlier than they did. Don't know. Well done on the police, at least for following through. Because, I mean, some people were saying when they were putting up the white things, that this was political persecution, that he didn't do anything really wrong.

And what they've proved is that he was absolutely conscious of what he was doing. He was literally putting in false receipts. I mean, you know, claiming that he was buying from Amazon when he was buying a Jaguar. He was putting his watches against codes against the party office. I mean, he really knew. I mean, this isn't naivety. This is a guy who had been the chief executive of this party for a very long time, understood inside out what the legal rules were, what the accountancy rules were, and set about very carefully and thoughtfully working out how to steal money. Yeah.

And on Clem's question, whether British politics. is a scandal-ridden and are we becoming the next Italy? As I told you, I was in Italy last week. And actually one of the questions I was asked is whether we Britain are becoming the new Italy, not because of this, but because of the way that we keep changing our prime minister. Georgia Maloney is now one of the longer serving Italian prime ministers,

and there's a distinct possibility that we're going to be moving to our seventh within a decade before too long. What did you make of the Peter Mandelson stuff yesterday? I mean, the thing that I think is likely to be leapt on to do the most political damage is actually deeply unfair to Pat McFadden, but sometimes politics is not fair. It is Pat saying to Peter in one of their exchanges that every time he has a meeting with Labour MPs, they're basically saying, who can be taxed to spend more on welfare? Yeah. Just again, to just do a little explainer for people who aren't following this.

And Mandelson resigned really about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, resigned as the ambassador of Washington. And now there's been a request to get hold of all his emails and WhatsApp. They don't seem to have got everything, but they've got a lot of it. And the trove has now been released. And what it's now beginning to reveal is Mandelson networking to try to get colleagues to vote for him to become Chancellor of Oxford, Mandelson networking around his dealings with Murdoch,

and him gossiping endlessly with his friends. former colleagues about what a rubbish job Kyrsama seems to be doing. And of course, entrapped in this net are his friends who are writing back saying, yeah, it's a bit rubbish in number 10. One of the problems, though, the whole thing, just to begin with, is your bloody Freedom of Information Act. I mean, a lot of this stuff is low-level gossip. This is not stuff that is central to the good ordering of government. It's not particularly really in the public interest to know that Pat McFadden thought that Kirstearn was. was doing a good job. Would it have made any difference if he'd said it to him on the phone

and it wasn't recorded? Would it have made any difference if you had a disappearing WhatsApp message? All MPs now when you get a message from there, messages disappear in seven days. They don't want this stuff being dragged forward. In fact, it's extraordinary that Maddleston and Pat McFadden weren't on disappearing messages. Why on earth should the... I mean, I guess it's fun for us as podcasters and journalists to get to see the internal gossip, but why on earth should we be entitled to see industry private gossip between people, or even worse, you know, we're being asked to look at Peter Kyle's what he asked chat, GBT. I mean, you imagine how embarrassing it would be if I had to release every conversation I have at the large language model, every WhatsApp

I've sent to. Why is none of this stuff private? And what on earth has it got to do with the question of the vetting? You say that we find it fun. I didn't find it fun at all. I found the whole thing made me feel a bit sick in the stomach. The minute I saw, I mean, Pat McFadden is one of the most discreet, sensible, intelligent political operators you will meet. And yet, that will be, of all of the 1,500 pages, whatever it is, of stuff that's been published, that is the one that the Tories and Reform and others will try to land as this is what the Labour government really thinks. They don't care about your taxes. They just want to, and what Pat was actually saying was whenever the Labour of MPs are saying, you know, we need to do this,

we do this, they're not saying, well, where's the money coming from? So he's sitting there thinking, well, we can't do that because you've got to put up taxes. So it's actually something that in context of a private conversation, as you say, wouldn't stir the feathers, rustle the feathers at all. But in this context, it does. What it says to me is actually that given how much was published, there wasn't that much to get the press terribly excited. And I think the other thing it shows, so if you think about this story and it's going to get massive coverage again on Wednesday

when there's the debate, Darren Jones is going to be announced yesterday there's going to be a full debate in the House of Commons, which means that stuff was going to happen on the health service isn't happening. So it just gives the sense of the government being a bit of a mess. But I do think, it's interesting you take the observation. If I'd have made that point, I think people would have said, oh, God, you just, you know, you just can't stand it when Labor's getting, if this was the choice, you'd be kicking them all over the place.

But I think there is a real danger that if people can't have private conversations in some shape or form. And what happened? You know, when we brought in freedom information, you know, I broadly think it was a good thing. Tony Blair thought it was an absolutely stupid thing. And he said in his memoir, it was one of his biggest mistakes. Because it stopped the ability sometimes to have frank conversations. And it definitely led to a culture in some places where people were just writing stuff on post-its, which is nuts. You should be able to have those discussions. But I think what this showed is that

ultimately, there are two reasons why this has caused such political damage. One is Keir Stama made an appointment that now he knows he shouldn't have made. And the second is that the Jeffrey Epstein connection is so sort of toxic. The other thing that came through to me is how little Jeffrey Epstein appears at all, which says to me, nobody's really saying, hold on a minute, there's a very good letter from Ollie Robbins in there, by the way, where Ollie Robbins, who, you know, lost his job over this thing. Ollie Robbins is actually saying to Peter Mandelson, he is saying, hold on a minute, what about these Epstein connections?

But there's not enough of that driving through the narrative. And you're right. What it says about Peter Mandelson, you know, this is not breaking news, is that Peter spent and spends a lot of time networking, looking after his own ambitions, as it were. And it is crazy to think that he thought he could be both ambassador to Washington and Chancellor of Oxford and that he was still lobbying. Yeah, yeah, incredible. I mean, absolutely incredible. But I think both with this and the other big WhatsApp trove revelation was around Boris Johnson, COVID, Dominic Cummings, Matt Hancock, which we went through on the podcast. These things

will be interesting for historians, for anthropologists of government, it gives you a very unique glimpse into the private thoughts of people that we've never had before. So, you know, if you're an analyst, it's a lovely thing to have. But none of it is really a surprise. I mean, the revelation that Pat McFadden and Peter Mandelson think that Keir Stama isn't very good at communicating doesn't have a very clear policy and that the Labour Party has been taken hostage by left-wing backbenchers who don't care too much about where the money's coming from. It's not a big revelation. And the same is true with the Boris Johnson stuff. I mean, surprise, surprise, it turns out that everybody's sitting around the cabinet table as Boris Johnson thinks that Boris Johnson is dishonest, careless,

inconsistent, irresponsible and can't be trusted to navigate his way through COVID. Well, and we kind of know this about these people. I mean, a lot of journalists who were yesterday breathlessly reporting that, you know, it's extraordinary to think that Pat McFadden might say this in private and this in public. I suspect he said versions of those things to the journalists as well, because they sort of all bump into each other. They're chatting the whole time and what have you. But the other thing it shows, it shows that, you know,

yes, Kirstarckxepsy made a big mistake, but also it shows that he just does not get any luck. And let me tell you, Roy, you know, for the last three years, you and I have done this event in Leeds for UK Reef, the investment infrastructure and real estate conference. I did it on my own last week, so you were away, or the week before. And I did one of my show of hands with them. And I wanted you to guess what the result was.

I said, do you think Kirstama should stay or go? What do you think the result was? You know the audience, because you've been there several times. And it's the same audience that last year was pretty uninspired by the Labor government and pretty dismal about the whole thing. I bet what's happened now is they've reverted to thinking Kirstama should stay. they've got to cling to nurse for fear of something worse. Well, you're right.

The result was 85% stay, 15% go. I was talking to Harry Harm the other day. She was down at the Hay Book Festival. So that'd be quite a sort of well-informed, broadly middle-class audience, I think. Probably quite, you know, Lib Demi, quite Tory in some respects as well, maybe. She said there were 600 people, and she asked them the same question. and 12 said he should go. I mentioned in the main episode

that when I was in Budapest for the Champions League final had quite a lot of political discussions. It was a similar thing there. People saying, why are they getting rid of him? He's not grave. He's not terrible.

He's not evil. Is it because they think, is it sympathy now? Or is it what is it? Well, I think it's going back to your central point, isn't it, that when we had this argument

in the first place, which is that, of course, it's a risk. Now, my view is that, you know, he's like a manager of a football club who's never going to actually in the end win the championship. So you might as well spin the dice, get rid of him and try someone else. The other view is perfectly reasonable, which is, well, listen, none of the other candidates seem very good. And what happens we end up being even worse off than we are now? So it's a question, it's a question of how optimistic you're feeling. My view is, listen, I don't think Kiyosama can lead them into the next election. I don't think he's the prime minister. that's really going to be able to transform the country. So however horrible the other options are, you know, my analogy is, you know, you're running into the Titanic into the icebergs. And we're arguing about whether the lifeboats are going to be any good. I don't know whether the lifeboats are going to any good.

We can't stay on the ship, right? But at the moment, I think, when they see the other candidates, people are far from confident that Andy Burnham or West Streeting is going to be an improvement. I wonder, though, I wonder, because, you know, look, I can see Tony Blair's anxieties, his anxiety. are that West Streeting is talking about stuff that certainly for me as a pro-business centre-right guy, I'm a bit worried about it. I don't like him suddenly saying he's going to put capital gains tax up to the same level of income tax. I think Blair's right to say people have looked at that and passed and rejected it for good

reasons. And I think some of the wealth tax is a bit dubious and all that kind of thing. On the other hand, it's difficult for me not to believe that Burnham's got a certain vim charisma and he's really grown in this role of Mayor of Greater Manchester and he will bring something to the job that Stama hasn't got? I was thinking yesterday. So buried in, I can't even remember where I saw it, but it wasn't sort of big on the news anywhere.

But two stories yesterday, which in a normal day, I think, would at least have got some coverage that suggested the Labour government's doing stuff. That was several train companies that are now in public ownership, as promised. And also the UK government winning this case against Rwanda, saving 100 million quid out of the madness of Johnson's crazy scheme that Rwanda said it was owed. So this is what I meant when I said in the main episode that Kier Stahmer's essay or his substack in response to Tony Blair, he actually listed a lot of things. And even I, who follows it quite close, when you put it together, they've done more

than they get credit for, but they don't get credit because there's no, one, there's no real communication around it. And secondly, they just seem to sort of, you know, limp from scandal to scandal, problem to problem, this case being a case in point. Peter Mandelson, big news yesterday, and Peter Mandelson can be big news again on Wednesday when they have the Commons debate. And just while we've been talking about scandal, Rory, reform, funding of reform. We've got some great feedback on the first part of the series that we're doing. This is a series that we're doing in conjunction with the observer on where the money comes from that flows into Nigel Farage

and reforms coffers. And I think it's time that the country took it a bit more seriously than it currently does. And it's a great series and I'm loving some of the stuff that people are finding out about reforms finances. Episode 2 on Friday, so just go to the restless politics.com in order to sign up and follow up on our reporting on reforms finances. Listen, there's one thing. I'm going to be very cheeky and do a plug here.

And I'm not going to try to connect it too closely. But we're not doing so many live shows this year. there is a live show which people have kindly signed up to, and you've just done UK Reef, but I forgot to mention, and I want to mention, that if people would like to have a chance to engage live with me at least, 13th September, Dominion Theatre, London, 15th September, Richmond Theatre, London, I'm doing two live shows on politics, which could be fun. So apologies for the plug, but if you're interested, 13th, 15th September, I'm doing it with Fane. Sorry, and presumably you're doing that because you want to promote a book,

opposed to promote the podcast? Is that what you're telling me? Because I want to promote my book on politics in Cumbria and talk about politics. I would, of course, obviously love to have you on stage, but I think it's a bit cheeky to ask you on stage, promote my book. Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll be able to sell the tickets without any problem whatsoever, Roy, without me. But if you do need any help at any time, then I really appreciate it. Quick break, and then we'll come back from the break. And we've got some great stuff to get into. We've got your trips to Hungary, some of the Middle Eastern trips.

and the best person we've ever shaken hands with. So see you after the break. See you soon. It's nearly that time, everyone. The rest is football will be on Netflix every day for the world's biggest tournament. Join myself, Alan and Micah for daily debates, unfiltered takes, and the most special of guests. All from the heart of New York City.

Yeah, that's right. We're excited too. See you soon. The 2006 Chevrolet Equinox awarded the most dependable compact SUV in the US by J.D. Power is designed for your everyday. And with available all-wheel drive, you can handle your to-do list with total confidence. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Details at J.D.Power. com. Welcome back to the rest of politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair, and a question here from Sanjith. Why have American left-wing YouTubers

Hassan Piker and Schenke Ugar been banned from the UK? And do you agree? My answer is, I don't know and no, I don't agree. It is a bit of a problem that we don't really know. I mean, it's really interesting for freedom of speech and all this kind of stuff. I mean, I think what we're beginning to see is legislation which in the past was really targeted at terrorists. I mean, so, you know, post-9-11, the government did intervene to prevent hate preachers coming to the UK, who they thought would actually genuinely increase the risks of terrorism. But American citizens who, yes, admittedly, are very critical of Israel and its actions in Gaza, but being banned from coming in?

And, you know, what would that mean for you and me? I mean, what happens if we go to the U.S. and the Trump administration decides that we're left-wing YouTubers and we should be banned from the U.S.? I mean, what kind of countries are Ukraine? And who gets to determine this and what are the grounds for it? and is it explained transparently? Is the suggestion that these individuals are anti-Semitic, and who's making that case? Is it a legal case?

Some ministers making it? Or is it just happening behind closed doors? Well, there's this general phrase, you know, not conducive to the public good. And I am guessing, but I don't know, I am guessing that the judgment is that they are anti-Semites and that they might therefore be here to spray, anti-Semitism. Now, they deny that. What they are definitely is very anti-the-Israeli government,

but I'm very anti-Israeli government. You're very the anti-Israeli government because they do terrible things and they continue to do terrible things, not least in the last 24 hours in Lebanon. The circumstances in Gaza continue to be absolutely terrible. We talked last week about Ben-Gavir and the awfulness of the way that he was treating people who were trying to get that flotilla that was trying to get aid to Gaza. Now, I don't know. I don't know much about these guys at all. There's no doubt, sorry, just so that to be fair, so that we can understand the problem that the government's facing. I mean, I think it was wrong to ban them, but to explain why

the government's ban them, it's these guys, some are on records saying Hamas is a thousand times better than Israel, and other ones had to apologize to saying the United States deserve 9-11, et cetera. So the question is, though, are we treating people on the, in these debates around the world in the same way, right? So how are we treating Israeli politicians who say that Palestinians don't deserve to get food? Exactly. And what is the principle here? I mean, I think, you know, one can be, think these people are unpleasant, regrettable, saying horrible things. What's the line between that, freedom of speech, and banning someone from entering? Because certainly J.D. Vance is, you know, I'm not quite saying that kind of stuff, but he said a lot of stuff. But he said a lot of

that I find pretty disturbing. Donald Trump has definitely said stuff that I find deeply disturbing. So what is the categories? And I think this is quite important for democracy to decide where we draw the lines on these, because traditionally, I think we tended to say we can put up, particularly with YouTubers influence comedians saying pretty outrageous and disgusting things, we can condemn them, we can be horrified by them, but we don't actually ban them from entering the United Kingdom. Well, Elon Musk, appeared, admittedly by video, appeared at last year's Tommy Robinson rally.

Saying there was going to be civil war and that we needed to fight, fight, fight. Nobody's going to ban him coming to the UK, are they? Well, they should think about it because his influence on our politics and our debate is far greater than these guys and added to which, the reason why I think it was, look, unless there's something we don't know,

in which case they should explain it, these guys have now got a far bigger platform, including into the British political debate. I mean, you know, I was going through social media last night. They were popping up every two minutes. One of them was at the airport explaining he can't believe this. This is how oppression starts. Then Jeremy Corbyn, Wade in, Zach Polanski weighed in. This is actually for this South by Southwest conference,

which I was invited to speak on a panel on mental health, but I can't go because I'm not going to be here. But it's like they've ventilated the platform. And I just, I think unless you explain this, and your point about, you know, where you draw the line, I think one of the worst things about this is it does allow people to say that Israel gets treated differently. And so the guy that he was the uncle, this is an uncle and a nephew,

and the uncle was standing at the airport saying, what I find most extraordinary about this is, that it's another government persuading your government, the British government, to stop somebody from another country coming in. Now, we don't know that that's the case, but you can see why he might say that, because it is the Israel-Gaza comments that they've made in the past that prevented them coming in. I think the best and strongest articulation of the problem is actually made by a guy called Aaron Tur, who is the director of a big US nonprofit on public advocacy. he says it's one thing to exclude someone who poses a genuine security threat or intends to engage an unlawful activity.

So did these guys pose a genuine terrorist threat? Were they going to engage an unlawful activity? But if the government's decision was based purely on these individuals' views, then that should concern anyone who values freedom of expression. This guy, one of them said that, you know, America deserved 9-11. And as you say, they've made some very offensive comments about October the 7th, about equating Israel with Hamas, et cetera. This, I think, is where we have a problem, because I can't, I can think, I hate doing what a bountry, and I'm not going to do it, but I can think of quite a lot, well, I guess I did it with Musk. I can think of quite a lot of what a dietary points that I could make from a different political perspective. So there has to be a proper explanation of the principles, and I don't think we had that.

in the communication yesterday, added to which the government in a sense allowed them to control the means of communication. They were the ones who were explaining what was going on. So I think all in all, I think this is a bit of a bit of an own goal. Okay, next question. Nat from Swindon. This is for you, Alistair. What's going on in Hungary? You've just been in Hungary. Just seen that my eye is going after the oligarchs, including with the wealth text. Did you find out how to pronounce the leader's name, instantly on your Hungarian trip. Well, I asked several people.

And you've been with me when we're traveling around. I do tend to talk to anybody I meet about, you know, what's going on in politics and what you think, because it was a very interesting time to do that. In answer to your question, the closest I could get, I think, is Majjar. Major. Very good. Very good. And what did I find out?

Well, I'll tell you the first thing that was, I'd forgotten just how beautiful Budapest is. It really is a beautiful city. It was very nice to seeing the Euro. seeing the European flags. They really have put out a lot of European flags. And the other thing that I saw were a lot of defaced posters. And I see that on this wealth tax proposal that Majjar is coming out with, he's targeting people who have made a lot of money on the Orban,

in his view, you know, in very dubious circumstances. But one of the people who is complaining is the guy who owns a lot of the billboards because he was getting loads of money from the government. and from the Fidesh to plaster the place with billboards. And it is interesting just how many of them have been defaced. And they'd covered up loads of them just announcing that Arsenal and PSG were in town, as if we didn't know that.

I'll tell you the general message I got from talking to people was sceptical hope. I think almost everybody said, it's got to be better. It's got to be better. We're really glad he's gone, really hope he goes after them. but we've just been scarred by too much.

And so, and Manjia's got a lot on his plate. He really has. And he's making, he's getting progress on the European front. He's made progress on the Ukrainian front. But I didn't meet any sort of massive enthusiasts. I met a lot of people saying, a lot of people saying I voted for him.

I bumped into a young couple at a cafe and was chatting to them. And they said, you know, they hadn't voted before, but they felt they had to get rid of all bad. and it was like, let's see, let's see what he does. And they quite like the thing about him saying he's going to fly economy and he's going to take a lower salary and all that. They quite like that.

But they know that ultimately it's about a totally different change of direction. But the place felt really good. And I have to say, they organized the final really, really well. And the other thing, really, something, I know you're not a football fan, but I find it really strange that the Parisians rioted. on the back of winning in Paris, sufficient to have 700 arrests. And we, not far from where I am now,

had this incredible parade that really did show kind of North London had its best. It was so kind of multiracial, multicultural, the vibe was amazing. Hundreds of thousands. Somebody even said over a million, I don't know. But even I, much as a football fan, even I don't fully understand why you riot when you win. They've now done it two years in a row. I don't quite get it. Just quickly before we get, I'd love to tell you about where I've been. I've just been, I just drove, in fact, from Amman in Jordan to Medina in Saudi Arabia and just got back yesterday. But tell us a little bit about Hong Kong, because when were you last there and what was your sense of it?

Well, I've only been twice, I think, since the handover. My sense of it was real change and real change. And I mean, if you remember back in 1997 when we were there for the handover, and it was one country, two systems, I think you can safely say it's one country, one system. You'd have very little sense of being in a place that was once, you know, run by the Brits. So it doesn't feel. a visitor very different going to Shanghai or Beijing now. It doesn't feel like a very different

system. It feels a bit different. It feels a little bit different. I mean, for example, you know, in the hotel, you could pick up Western newspapers. I think that I did speak to some journalists who said that the freedom of the press has been almost fundamentally eroded. There was a journalist who was jailed while we were there. He'd been stopped by the police who asked him for his identity. He said, the last time you stopped with my identity, you live streamed it. And I was humiliated and I'm not doing it. He was jailed, I think, for five days or something. And the other thing that was interesting, I did talk to quite a few Hong Kong Chinese people, some of whom were at the conference that I was speaking at. And the thing they said was that

they're as interested in politics as ever, but they don't talk about it very much. And I think that was interesting. The other thing that had big news that was there when I, big news in Hong Kong, Hong Kong has now overtaken Switzerland as the world's biggest wealth hub. My goodness. Because the story, of course, after COVID, was Hong Kong was really struggling. And of course, Hong Kong's economy very bound up with the Chinese economy. I mean, your point about not talking about politics and arrests is also connected to the thing we did yesterday on AI and the Pope, which is the nature of the surveillance, authoritarian security

states is now being shifted a lot by technology. Yeah. So if you walk down the streets in Shanghai, there are cameras absolutely everywhere. Everybody is conscious that their phones are picking up everything they say, that their digital identities, there is no privacy at all about their data or identity, and it's all filtered through. I was talking to a Chinese friend recently who was explaining that they couldn't get a job in the Chinese government and what that felt like.

I mean, you can't get a job in Chinese government if you've done an undergraduate degree outside China, give you a sense. I mean, it'll be totally Chinese, but if you go and do an undergraduate degree in Europe or the US, you can't work for the Chinese government. So we're getting into a world where this very, very powerful country, and which in many ways, of course, is demonstrating more predictability,

more certainty, more long-term planning capacity, but it still is very much. an authoritarian security state. And as we're getting into a world of AI, autonomous drones, robots, I don't know whether you saw in Hong Kong, but if you go to Shanghai, Beijing at the moment, you are beginning to see robots in the streets.

Oh, well, I saw quite a few robots. And of course, part of the conference I was at, there was a whole thing on robotics, some of which were absolutely extraordinary. You know, not just playing chess, but also, you know, which you see everywhere, but there was a presentation on how robots were being used in the workplace and what they could do.

All that was going on. And the thing about the surveillance is like, you know, I mean, coming through the airport was as efficient as I can recall. But you realize that, you know, they've got the facial recognition thing as pretty much as soon as you're there and the gates are just opening when they put your thing in and through you go. One fabulous story, Roy, I went out for a run one day to find my tree of the day. And it's not a great place for trees because,

It's so, so built up. But I found this wonderful banyan tree, and I posted it, and I got an email from a guy called William Atkinson, who told me this story, complete with a message from his dad, who's a retired squadron leader called Richard Atkinson, and he told me the story that these two trees used to stand on the jetty at HMS Tamar. And HMS Tamar, just sorry to explain to the... to listen to you on this, was the British military headquarters. It's actually where my father worked.

So we lived, when I was born in Hong Kong, we lived in a little building just behind it. And that's where he went to work every day. So it's called a ship, but it wasn't a ship. It was the defence headquarters, the British government. Exactly. It was the headquarters. And so this squadron leader Richard Atkinson, who's now in his 80s and not very well, but he said that he could see the trees from his office window in the UK headquarters. and he learned that the Chinese had no plans to preserve the tree. So he fought a campaign as a result of which one of the trees, the one that I pictured, without knowing this story, was dug up, it was put on a 200-ton barge,

it was towed across the harbour and it was replanted along with all the props that were needed, new water supply brought in. And anyway, I spotted it, and we'll put a picture in the newsletter, it's absolutely beautiful. Well, how wonderful, because the joke when I was growing up in Hong Kong is if it moves, eat it, if it doesn't redevelop it. But I'm glad to hear that this energy was going into the trees. Yeah, that's lovely. Well, this tree survived. So tell us, listen, you went to, you were allowed into something of a sacred Muslim site, weren't you?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, firstly, an amazing trip. So we drove thousands of miles down through the desert from Amman, through Aqaba down to Medina. People watching Lawrence Farabia will have a sense of that landscape. We went through Wadi Rum and, you know, people who can remember that 1962 movie. This is where Aouda Abu Thai comes down the hills. And it is absolutely extraordinary historically, because this is, if Scotland is the very northern edge of the Roman Empire, this is the very southern edge of the Roman Empire. And this is basically where Rome ran out. We went from Petra,

which, you know, people remember the rose red city, half as old as time, these amazing rock cut cliffs, to the Saudi equivalent of that, which is hundreds of miles south in a place called El Ulla, which was closed until pretty almost impossible for foreigners to access, because it's a pagan site dedicated to pagan idols. And the Saudi government, for many years, Saudis and Wahhabi Muslims saw this as a pretty horrendous infidel site.

It's now been turned into a tourist location. which you can visit. Not many tourists around either in Jordan or in Saudi at the moment. In fact, there haven't been many since the first strikes on Iran last July. Heat, unbelievable. But then, as you say, we got down to Medina. And Medina is, along with Mecca, one of the two great sacred sites of Islam. This is where the Prophet Muhammad is buried. It's where this great mosque was. It's where many of the early caliphs were buried. And first see, Medina has become a completely modern town. So one of the things the Saudis did, the Wahhabis did, is demolish all the historical buildings, all the historical tombs because they thought it was idol worship to maintain these great, beautiful, early medieval tombs and built this new concrete city in this oasis. But actually, the center of it is actually very beautiful.

The modern architecture is quite sympathetic. There are lovely colonnades. The area around the mosque is there to. accommodate million, two million pilgrims. And for the first time in, I think, 1,400 years, it's possible for me as a non-Muslim to get right up to the edge of that mosque, right into the center of the Haram area. I, we didn't, Shatana, I didn't see anybody else who were non-Muslims there. But everybody was very friendly towards us. In the past, we would have been approached by the police and pushed out. There would have been big signs saying no non-Muslims can enter.

People would have shouted at us aggressively. So it's a real sign of how quickly Saudi Arabia is changing something. It hasn't really changed 1400 years. It's still, of course, quite conservative. I mean, other parts, you go to re-add, you can see women now beginning to uncover their heads and drive cars and drive Uber's. In Medina, women are still very much in blacker buyers. But it was right at the end of the Hajj. So this is the moment where, you know, it's one the great obligations of the two billion Muslims in the world to travel. So they'd travel to Mecca and then to Medina and that was all happening as we were there. But don't forget, just connect back to China. It is also a surveillance security state. I mean, never underestimate that this,

in democratic terms or in surveillance terms, in terms of cameras and your phones, Saudi, UAE, are closer to China than people understand that in, you know, you land at Dubai airport, do not be very surprised if your telephone is beginning to report on every single one of your movements. Do not be very surprised. You know, for example, there was a little, seems to have been, a whip around in one of the Shia mosques in Dubai to raise money for people affected by the U.S. strikes on Iran. And almost immediately after, something like 8,000 Shia-Pakistani Uber drivers were expelled from UE. It's a country where the expatriates, and I was with some people who live in UAE,

we went on to a beach leaving our phones hundreds of yards behind with the wind blowing and the waves crashing, and they still were very, very reluctant to say anything, critical the UAE government. People in Jordan reluctant to say anything critical of the Saudi government. And we also, final thing, we drove through the middle of neon. And neon was this amazing lineal city that he was going to build that was going to cost $80 billion, which was going to run across the desert for 125 kilometers, that was going to be taller than the Empire State's building.

The whole thing has been abandoned. Yeah. I mean, it's completely abandoned. They spent a colossal amount of money on architects, planning, etc. Probably good that it's been abandoned. but again, it's something that nobody's talking to openly about. Unlike HHS too. On the surveillance, Fiona and I have been watching Peter Capaldi's new series

Criminal Record, which is a sort of police drama. And it's fair to say the police in this one don't lack for surveillance and foe tracking technologies. So I think we've got a fair bit of it here. Rory, final question. this is from Ali. After your discussion last week on your most evil handshakes, slightly more positive one, who is the most angelic person you've ever shaken hands with? And I've got to say, we've got some fantastic, we asked people to send in their most evil, and there was lots of

sort of interesting things. We also ran a poll of our listeners on Spotify, asking them if they would share your use of the word evil to describe Boris Johnson. Who? 38%. 38% said they. would. 44% of listeners said they wouldn't and 16 were unsure. So there we are. I was hoping it would be 52-48, but never mind. So who's the most

magical hand you've shaken? Okay. A small footnote, my mother will kill me if I don't point out that my father shook Chairman Mal's hand. She wanted to get that on the record. Oh, that's cool. That's cool, yeah. I did Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro, Lavia. Chairman Mell, though, great leap forward. word, great famines. I mean, that's quite

mad. Would he have been your dad's most evil hand? Yes, I think so. Yeah. I think so. I think he'd probably most disturbed by shaking chairman of mouse hand. So, I think this is very cheesy, but I, and he won't like me saying this,

but I have such admiration for Rowan Williams, our previous Archbishop of Canterbury. I think he is the most extraordinary man. I think personally, his ability to listen, his humility, his prose style, his writing, but also his sense of what matters, his sense of silence, of work, of human suffering, of human thinking. I mean, if I'm looking for a guy who, you know, somebody on Speeddell that I would want

to ask advice from on almost every aspect of my life, it would be Rowan Williams. Oh, yeah, over there you. Wow. Wow. Let's get him on. Let's get him on. Let's get him on. We've had Justin, Welby, who's a very fine man, both shaking his hand.

I really enjoyed thinking about this question. I was tempted to say Maradonna, but I just don't think people would believe it. That great moral example. Well, it is the hand of God. It's the hand of God. And it would definitely, if I'd shaken the hand of the Pope last week, I would have said the Pope. I have shaken Mother Teresa's hand, but I was never, I never fully brought into them.

Mother Teresa legend. I thought there was too much stuff going on in the margins that I probably wouldn't have liked. I have been thinking, because obviously we want David Attenborough to live forever, but if and when he goes, then there has to be a replacement national treasure. And my shortlist of two, I have shaken both their hands. That's Paul McCartney and Michael Palin.

I think Paul McCartney is just a, and he's got a new album out, age, whatever he is now, absolutely. amazing. And Michael Palin is one of the most successful, nicest people on the planet. But I'm afraid the winner has to be a politician, because this is the rest is politics, and it is Nelson Mandela. He is, without that, the most saintly hand I have chosen, even though he had non-saintly aspects to him. But yeah, I'm going for him. Which is also selected by the Pope. And just final thing from you, and then back to you, we talked a lot about the Pope's username, but the thing that we didn't register, which is maybe his most radical thing, is he says that the problem with the way

that tech bros think about the world is they think that human beings can be endlessly perfected, that death is like a sort of bug in the system they can get rid of, that suffering and pain can be got rid of. And he says that he's all for alleviating suffering and pain, but that in the end, suffering pain is not just part of the human condition. It's actually what leads us to relationships, humility and love, that without suffering and pain and death, we wouldn't really have desires. We wouldn't really have love. We wouldn't really have empathy. And this magnificence of humanity is about our capacity for good, our capacity for evil, but also our capacity for suffering.

Yeah. Well, I sort of wanged on so long about the Pope's brilliant and cyclical that I didn't actually read out what was my first. favourite section. Oh yeah, come on. What was it? I'll read you. It's this, it's this so-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences. They do not possess a body. They do not feel joy or pain. Do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations or bear responsibility. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills or even simulate empathy and understanding,

but they do not understand what they produce for. They lack the effective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. And he said, even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history. Oh, that's pretty good. I wish I'd written that. It's pretty good. I'm not going to ruin it. Let's end on that.

A human face to be gazed upon remains the central of our history. Excellent. See you next week. See you soon. Bye-bye.