The Rest Is Politics - 543. The Disaster Britain Still Can't Escape and Trump’s Iran ‘Deal’

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

What is the true cost of Brexit? How have British and European far-right politics evolved since the historic Brexit referendum, and can liberal democracy survive it? Is it possible to see Trump’s Iran ‘deal’ as anything other than a defeat for the US? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with James Cleverly by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Father’s Day discounted gift memberships available HERE. Treat your dad to early access to Question Time, members-only miniseries, and much more. 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: Emma Jackson Video Editor: Josh Smith, Bruno Di Castri 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

Happy anniversary, 10 years since we've voted to leave the European Union, how has Brexit been for you? Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage may be a lot wealthier than they were, but they are the exception. A decade has been long enough to establish Britain is poorer and weaker, and Brexit is one of the reasons. An economy is 6 to 8% smaller than it would have been, investment lower, productivity lower, and businesses who were promised an end to red tape drowning in the stuff. And yet, the divisive populist politics that help fuel it is far from dead. We've seen the worst of it on the streets of Belfast last week, a horrible stabbing by an asylum seeker whipped up into riots and a house-to-house hunt for immigrants.

We've seen its exploitation by Russia in the evidence that arson attacks on Kirstama's home and car were organized by Moscow, then backed by the far right here. An evening quiet, wealthy Switzerland. Their weekend referendum on whether to have a population cap was the brainchild of their right-wing populist party. And in Germany, I'm hearing of fresh legal moves to establish that their far-right party, the AFD, is in breach of the country's constitution because of its commitment to what they proudly call remigration. So, a decade on from the toxicity of the referendum campaign, how worried should we all be about the far-right's continuing influence on our lives

and what hope is there of liberal democracy fighting back? All this and more to come in today's episode. This episode is brought you by Fuse Energy. Moving Home has a way of revealing a mountain of background tasks and endless to-do lists. That's dealing with the boxes, the broadband, the change of address forms, and the discovery that you own far too many mugs. And because of that, people often just accept whatever supplier happens to be there. They're too busy unpacking.

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Sign up today at fuseenergy.com slash politics. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. Now, we both travel. an extraordinary amount with work, and in our line of business, it's hard to fully switch off. Because news and politics tend not to take a summer recess. But keeping up with Westminster, when abroad, means constantly logging in to all manner of dodgy airport and cafe Wi-Fi networks. Don't we know about it?

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Visitactivia.ca for more details. Welcome to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. Today, we are at the 10th anniversary of Brexit, and we're really going to get into how did that go? And on the second half, extraordinary news, which is that it seems as though, finally, despite all our skepticism, we're on the cusp of a proper deal in Iran. I'm still skeptical. And you're still sceptical.

Let me start you, though, with Brexit. So 10 years on, a bit of post-traumatic stress. I was a member then of David Cameron's government, an environment minister campaigning for Remain. So I was not hard enough. Not hard enough. and I was at the great royal show in Edinburgh, the agricultural show, Royal Highland Show, up all night in my hotel room, watching the results, David Dimblebee coming on. And then, of course, as somebody who then went to Theresa May's government,

I was right in the heart of this fight where you and your friend Tony Blair were very much saying, this is ridiculous, we need a second referendum. And I was trying to say, let's make the best of it and try to get a customs union or a single market compromise out of this. Let me though just take us back to where I think the fundamental arguments were and how weird that moment was. Fundamentally, you had the Brexiteers saying two things. One of them was Singapore on Thames, which is if we leave the European Union, we can deregulate, cut taxes, become more pro-business, more pro-innovation, and Britain will boom like Singapore or G-Regi.

The second argument was the global Britain argument. Europe's slow and sclerotic. All the growth in the world is US, China, India, and we need to lean into those places with new trade deals, new relationships, and throw off the shackles of this old place. And the problem with it is twofold. Number one, Britain didn't want to be Singapore on Thames. Turns out, actually, if you look at the last 10 years, we haven't deregulated. We haven't dropped tax. In fact, corporation tax has gone up. Why? Because actually, we're much more social democratic and European. than anyone want to acknowledge, but it's the global Britain thing, which has been the biggest disaster. Because of course, that story we can rely on the US, we can do wonderful integrated trade deals with China, looks much bleaker 10 years later, because we've understood how vulnerable we are to being exploited by our dependence on the US, how vulnerable we are to Chinese supply chains, how vulnerable we are to Russia and gas, and how actually in Ukraine, in energy crises, in the economy, with AI, we need to be much closer to the people right on our borders, which is the European Union.

In other words, a whole security argument has emerged that has wrecked global Britain. And on the other side, we had Remain. And Remain had its fair share of pretty extreme apocalyptic predictions, some which didn't come true. Total collapse of the city of London, World War III, total inability for Britain to survive. And actually, the reality, and this is what I want to provoke you with, is damage. underwhelming, slow decline, you know, maybe 3%, maybe 8%. So it was neither the heroic, certainly not the heroic future of the Brexit years, nor was it quite the complete extreme catastrophe of the total breakup of the European Union,

the collapse of our financial sector, etc., that some on the Remain side predicted. Look, I think going back, it was a terrible campaign on both sides. I thought the Remain campaign led by Cameron and Osborne was pretty complacent. It allowed itself to be projected as Project Fear. And the leave campaign was just riddled with charlatans and chances and liars. I did a debate at Bloomberg the other day with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who they can't even bring themselves to admit there's any downside to any of this stuff. That's what I find extraordinary.

Even though the audience, and of course he immediately said, oh, we're in London. If you went to Cornwall or Wales, it would be very different. I don't think it is very different. As you know, I'm obsessed in audiences of asking them what they think. And fair enough, people who come to hear me speak might be sort of less levy than Remainee. But I think the country has decided it's been, you know, you're right. It wasn't apocalyptic.

But when you say sort of quite casually, well, might be 3%, might be 8%. 3% is bad enough. Take that out of your economy. But if you go to the latest analysis by the government's official kind of data people, they're talking about between 6 and 8% take out of GDP. between 12 and 18 on investment, 3 to 4% on productivity, exports down, red tape massively up. And I thought that, I mentioned Reese Mogg as one conservative on one side of the argument. Michael Heseltine, who was our first interviewee on leading four years ago.

And who I was just up at the Lake District Book Festival with. So it's still firing on all cylinders. He's amazing. So was this a book about trees? Yep, but he talked a lot about Remain. Of course he did. Of course he did, because he's passionate. But he wrote a piece in The Independent at the weekend, which I thought was absolutely brilliant.

But just this one line, never have so few done so much damage to so many with so little ability to execute what they lied about. Where are the peans of praise to Brexit from Johnson Go, Farage Cummings, and their accomplices for the land of milk and honey they told as it would deliver? They don't normally hold back from giving their opinions. The reason is obvious. Their scandalously false prospectors has turned to dust and ashes. the guilty men and should hang their heads in shame, it has all proved to be a con. And yet, very interestingly, as you keep pointing out, Farage is actually not very damaged. This is so weird.

So he remains very popular. Popular. I would delete the very and say quite with some people. More popular than the most of the other leaders, given what he delivered. I mean, given all that. I mean, I agree with you on all that. And there is still a sort of fondness for Boris Johnson out there in the country that you sometimes encounter. Is that?

People thinking it's funny. Yeah, yeah. I've found it on the train on my way up to Cumbria. And Dominic Cummings, I was talking to someone yesterday, absolutely on our side, but the cliche with Dominic Cummings, they repeat again and again is he may be a bit radical, but my goodness, he's right about a lot of things. And the general, he's managed to reposition himself as this kind of profit on technology, defense, the civil service, etc. And Michael Gove, you just mentioned, he did a whole podcast laying into us in which he basically the thesis, the podcast is why is Dominic Cummings more right than we are about things? and the story was because Dominic Cummings is such a brilliant historian and so much cleverer than we are and etc. Actually, it wasn't so much clever.

It's because he has a sort of different form of intellectual education. And oddly, at no point does anyone say, if Dominic Cummings is such an amazing prophet and a genius, why did he decide to lead us into Brexit and inflict all this damage on us? Why is he not judged by their one big scrub? Why is Michael Gov not? Why is Boris Johnson? Well, and the answer in part is this is a form of madness in our. politics and in our media, that these people who have done so much damage, I mean, Hesleton

is right about this, they've done so much damage. And in any other political environment, I think they'd be done. I think they'd be, I think Johnson's finished, I really do think is, but Gove's moved on back to the world he loves, right-wing media pontificating. Cummings, I'm not sure what he does, but as you say, he sort of parades as this great sort of tech guru. And Farage is kind of still doing the rounds of. and if you look at the polls, may think he's going to be the next prime minister. It is utter madness.

I must plug, Rory. In fact, this is literally just off the press. I'm going to give you this copy. I've written the forward, so I declare an interest. The new world has done this. A history of Brexit, 256 disasters. And I think we should get the cartoonist Martin Roast. There's Paul Dacre.

Isn't he beautiful? We've got in between the factual analysis, we have these chapters on Brexit bullshitters. And I've got to say, it's the finest, there's Cummings, there's your friend, the Gideast, Dominic Cubbings. Look, absolutely awful. And then we have... Can we get the quote from Cummings? That's quite interesting.

The quote from Cummings, would we have won without immigration, no. Would we one without $350 million for the NHS? No. Would we have won by spending our time talking about trade in the single market? No way. They're all real quotes these. Michael Gove, I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronism and saying they know what's best, or we know where that.

But this is the best one. I mean, there's Nigel Farage. If Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad. I'll go and live somewhere else. And he's still sort of, you know, hanging around. Instead, he came up with something else. He decided he'd instead, he'd send his donors to go and live somewhere else. And then he could get it.

They're money. They'll be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside. So they are utterly shameless. Let me now do the boring thing of playing the devil's advocate, right? And because obviously we agree on this stuff. We were both remained voters. We both think it was the wrong thing to do and Britain would have been better off in the European Union. So what would they say? What they would say, I think, and I don't know whether, and tell me, tell me whether I've misunderstood this and other Jacob Rees-Mogg said something different. So here are the arguments that they'd make. First argument, I think they'd say it wasn't all about the economics. It was about sovereignty and control.

So they'd say it's no accident that actually Dominic Cummings's campaign was take back control. They would say probably on the economics, and anyway, the economic data is clouded by the massive impact of COVID, the Ukraine war and all the sort of thing. It makes it quite difficult to count. And they also say the European economy is not doing so well, so what you're all about? Absolutely, which is what we got from James Cleverly. European economies are not doing so well. So I was going through a little checklist, and I think the argument doesn't quite work because fundamentally the problem of Brexit, is on the Singapore on Thames, there was never any public willingness to exploit those kinds of opportunities. And on the global Britain, the globe changed. So let me just try those two. So on Singapore on Thames, look, theoretically, yes. I thought you were going to put their case here. But you've now quickly gone straight back to why they were wrong. Well, let me try to put their case once more then.

Okay, I'll put it in the strongest form. The strongest form would be this. It wasn't done right. So I guess if you're Dominic Cummings or your Jacob Rees-Mogg, what you really think is actually, if you leave the European Union, you could develop a real niche for yourself being different from the European Union. And what were being different from the European Union means, well, exploiting all the opportunities. You could cut your corporation tax down. You could change your VAT. You could get rid of all the regulations. And here's the model, the optimistic vision for the next 10 years of Brexit. Let's imagine a massive Brexiteer got in.

What they would say is, we could become the technology innovation test bed of the world. So let's say AI. They'd say, look, European Union's just passed a whole series of very restrictive regulations on AI. We have nothing to do with it. American companies are going to be reluctant to invest because of all these data restrictions. We could become the great test bed and partner for the US for pioneering the most exciting cutting edge AI models. could do the same on pharmaceuticals, you know, all their regulations might stop them. We could cut taxes massively. We could bring in global wealth. We wouldn't need to worry about state aid

rules, so we could do an enormous investment program where we could bet the house on certain kinds of things. We don't need to worry about fiscal rules, etc. So that would be the story. What would be your response to that? Well, that is kind of what Nigel Farage says, isn't it? He says that, and because he's the, in some ways in this contest, the Uber charlatan, because he's absolutely getting away with it, unlike Johnson who's out, unlike all the rest of, you know, Riesmogg lost his seat, goves out, etc. What would I say to that? There is an argument that says that the politics of the Conservative Party, which is what gave us this mess in the first place, then went post-referendum, whereas you say, Theresa May doing her best trying to make sense of

this, David Cameron's off in the wilderness, Johnson's sitting there trying to sort of, you know, wait to pounce, which eventually he does. And so their argument, Farage's argument, is we didn't do we didn't actually do Brexit. We haven't had Brexit. We haven't really left. And now you've got people like, you know, Kier Stahma or Rachel Reeves trying to get us closer. And that's the argument that they run. But I think that overlooks, and this is the argument I tried to have with Jacob Rees-Mogg. And it was very interesting with Rees-Mogg because you know how normally he prides himself on being very polite and very charming. Yes. He absolutely, I think because he knew he has no real argument to go on, he went absolutely into, to me, you're a liar. We can't

believe anything you say. It was really interesting. You're right. Normally he's super courteous. He's absolutely cautious. And so because I said, as I always do, you know, these people lied and they think they've got away with it. And he came armed, sort of rather dramatically, a bit like Kier Stahler with his, with his, you know, I've got a letter to give to Travis. He said, ah, I've got notes. I've taken notes from Peter O'Bord's book, and his book has footnotes. So he goes through it. And I couldn't get him off this thing. And this is Peter O'Born, Chris has him about Iraq. Not just Iraq, but, you know, my life as a journalist, my...

So he'd come prepared to attack Alexa Campbell. He decided that was the good. And to be fair, and poor old Michelle Hussein, who was moderating, this audience had come along to hear about what we thought of Brexit. And it got sort of very... But I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. Because Jacob Rees-Mogg's normal modus operandi is very calm, very sort of faux factual.

Doesn't play the man. Doesn't play the man. And so I said to me, I was rather quite pleased by it. And I'm so used to being called a liar. Tories that never bothers me. And I didn't even really bother rebutting with all the public inquiry and all that stuff. Because he just said to me, you've got no argument. And you know when we, I then said to the audience, Brexit, successful failure, it was 100% failure. So then Jacob Eastmog just goes, oh, well, this is because we're in Bloomberg. And if we went to Cornwall or if we

went to South Wales, it'd be very, very different. It was like this in the referendum. And I'm sort of say, well, are you saying these people who've got no, they know the economy, they're all working in the economy? And then he said, yes, and then I gave the figures, 8%, 6%, whatever it'll be, well, there are very different figures. We're into alternative fact territory. Okay, let me try another argument against Jacob Rees-Mogg, which is... Oh, good, you're back on my side. Okay, back on your side again. Which is that actually the fundamental problem is that the, this vision of Singapore on Thames, misunderstood what kind of country Britain is, that actually

the British public, including most of the Red Wall Brexit voters, are not actually up for our low tax, highly deregulated. Let's look at the actual debates. What could you have done by leaving the European Union? Well, you could have said, we don't need to waste billions of pounds meeting EU water standards. We can put poo into our lakes. We can save all that money and we can put it into something else. You could say, listen, now that we've left the European Union, we can cut our tax rates

down at the very minimum. We can get rid of all the workers' protection. We can get rid of all that stuff because we really can become. Well, this is the Faragenda. But the problem that they face is that all the polling suggests there is almost no support amongst the public. There is support amongst a small group of entrepreneurial businessmen who love Singapore, loved you by. That's why Rishi Sunak was quite interested in this. Obviously, this was Liz Truss's vision. But what did Liz trust discover over her 49 days, she discovered there was no support from the public or the markets for turning Britain to that kind of thing. In fact, the problem actually is that Britain isn't Singapore or Hong Kong or even the United States being held back by a European manacle.

In many ways, our cultural social attitudes are very Scandinavian. They're very sort of European. So it turned out that what stopped us doing this wasn't being in the European Union. It was us. But also, if you go back to that cartoon about Cummings, it's not for nothing that they decided that the National Health Service. It was a massive lie, but not for nothing that it decided actually money for the National Health Service was the way to win the referendum. Okay. Right. So not cutting the national health service. Yes.

So this is why the whole thing is this kind of network of myths and mythology. So one thing Reese Mogg and I agreed on is that I don't sense in the public an appetite to sort of have another referendum. many time soon. But I do sense in the public a growing acceptance that Brexit has not been good for the country and therefore this government has to, in my view, do more to get us back to that closer position, but politically it's very, very difficult. Another paradox. I absolutely resonated with one of their points, right? Totally want to grant one of the Brexit has points, which is that as an MP, I observed that we were blaming Europe all the time. And there was a problem with sovereignty or accountability, but again and again,

if the public complained about something to the local council or their MP, they were told we couldn't do it because Europe wouldn't allow us to do it. And civil servants would frequently say, you can't do that because European laws won't allow you to do it. And I felt that was bad for a democracy, right? I'm standing up as a member of parliament. You've elected me. I'm going to be a dynamic government. I'm going to get things on. What real issues were that where that applied? Well, it turns out, and this is the problem, that firstly that many of those regulations we wanted to keep anyway. And partly it's dishonesty, right? So in Instead of saying, the reason why you can't do whatever you want to do on water quality is because of a European Union regulation on clean water. Which has driven up the quality of our water. We would have had to say, actually, we want clean water, we want dirty water, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if they said, Minister, you can't plant all these trees because something in the common agricultural policy doesn't allow the use of the single farm payment for that.

If they weren't at the Union of the Green Union, they would have had to be more honest and said, the way we've designed our farm support package wouldn't allow you to use it for this. And the real indicator of why this went wrong is that we haven't got, I imagine one of the only benefits of Brexit might be that we'd get a bit more accountability and a bit more trust in government. You know, if we go back to that fundamental idea that we love, the buck stops here. The only advantage of Brexit is we might end up the situation where ultimately ministers, prime ministers, councillors are able to say the buck stops. here, I made this decision. It's not the fault of. But instead of which, we've just found another baddie. It's not the European Union. Instead, we blame laws. We blame the European Convention on Human Rights. We blame processes. We blame civil servants. They've moved on to a new set of lies. Listen, let's broaden it out to other bits of Europe. So I mentioned in the introduction,

Switzerland had this referendum at the weekend. Now, as it happens, it lost. But it wasn't, you know, people said it was a comprehensive defeat for this idea. You have a popular. But it's 5545. I mean, it's like, you know, it's a lot of support, quite a low turnout. Not a mad idea, right? It seems to be a perfectly sensible idea on the surface that you decide what kind of population you want and you plan towards it. But the problem is, the small print was, if you breached the population cap, you would

leave all the European agreements on moving to people. Exactly. Exactly. So Switzerland would have had to completely reorder its relationship with European Union. And it was interesting how, you know, the immigration debate here tends to be about you know, labor cost, people who are working in kind of, you know, lower end of the economy. There, it's about the Swiss saying, why are these French Germans taking all our top jobs as scientists and doctors? It's a very different sort of debate. But then the other thing that I

think is worth talking about, which I'm going to bring together. We had this extraordinary story. I've been worried about this for some time because do you remember when we're in Poland, I was in Poland, Donald Tusk said, I'm really shocked that the Prime Minister's House and car get attacked. And it's covered in the British media like Liverpool 2, Arsenal 1. On the one hand, this, on the one hand, that he thought it was truly shocking that the prime minister's house and car were being firebombed. And it now transpires. And there was a, you know, I have regularly criticised the BBC political coverage, but there was a brilliant investigation on the BBC yesterday. The background to this case of this Ukrainian and Romanian who have now been

convicted on these offenses. And basically, they're organized by a Russian dirty tricks. And the far right are instead of, this is Tusk's point about it, you see it as a football match. So Tommy Robinson, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who's just been in Moscow, one of Putin's jamborees. And he has been ventilating this conspiracy theory that what this case was actually about was that Kier Stahmer was involved in sort of sexual relations with these three Eastern Europeans, even posting fake pictures of them together. Okay. And if you,

I don't know if you've been across this, but that this has been quite a big thing. The idea that Kier Stama is like kind of kind of a threesome or foursome. Well, all that he's, that he has these Ukrainian rent boys. Oh, they're men.

I'm sorry. They're men. Oh, right. Okay. And, and yeah, so it's like,

you know, so. And does this really sit with our normal idea of here summer. It's quite an interesting thing to do. I don't understand these social media companies. I mean, normally you find someone who looks a bit dodgy and then you project these things. Or does it work better if the guy seems really respectable and then you're like, he seems respectful. And also, and it's, but the thing about a lot of these conspiracy theories, when they start online, they get ventilated is that the more outlandish they are sometimes

that, look, Hillary Clinton and the pizza, you know, the sort of bloodline, Q&ON, all that stuff. So that's partly all this is about. And so you have people, I felt this, you know, I mentioned the troubles in Belfast. And we talked recently about Henry Novak's murder and the way that Farage responded to that. The instinct of a lot of our political base now on the right is to say whatever happens, our job is to try to turn that into a problem for the government. So why Tusk is right, we should all, regardless of our politics, we all, All should be appalled if Keir Stahmer's former house where members of his family are living gets firebombed.

And listen, listen. But a lot of people were there. I don't want to be pompous about it, but I imagine 10 years ago we would all solemnly have stood up in the House of Commons, given condolences, said we stand four square behind the privacy. For example, when Joe Cox was murdered. Regardless, yeah, of party. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But Nigel Farage did not attack condemn. the violence. In Belfast, he said, this is going to happen. This is going to happen unless you deal with it. Now, the Belfast situation is very, very interesting because horrible, horrible stabbing, asylum seeker, stab somebody, it's filmed, it's horrible. And again, I think 10 years ago, yes, there'd have been a visceral reaction on so many levels, but you would have at least listened to the police, listened to the politicians for a bit, instead of which, not least ventilated by people like Elon Musk and people like Tommy Robinson, etc. It's whipped up literally into a riot and also there's been some very interesting reporting.

And then the hit list. And then the hit list of... And then the use of checkpoints. I mean, one of the things that's interesting in reporting you sent me is the sense in which they're using a playbook that goes all the way back to the troubles in Northern Ireland in the 80s and 90s. Well, there's a lot of reporting. Which is you use checkpoints to delay people. Yeah. And that then stops the police getting.

And even the fire bombing was another thing. I think there were tens of thousands of people displaced from their homes during the trouble. through firebombing. So it's as though people are learning from paramilitary techniques. Well, there's some very, I think the police are reluctant to sort of load it onto paramilitaries, but there's some very interesting reporting in the Northern Ireland press from journalists who live there, who know this stuff inside out, who are saying, without any doubt in their mind, there was paramilitary involvement to this. But my point, again, you're saying what would have happened 10 years ago? Ten years ago, most paramilitary activity would have been condemned to

the political establishment. But no, what you have on the right is, well, you know, they've got a point. They've got a point. They are having their jobs being taken. So these, what used to be kind of British National Party, BNP argument, is now with people like Lowe, Rupert Lowe, the leader of his store, center stage in part of our politics. Well, let me see if I can sum it up in the way that I see this. I think what you're saying in both halves is our whole politics is about finding problems, most of those problems are actually internal to do with us and blaming someone us. It's the classic nationalist move. If Scotland's not performing well, it's the fault of London. If Britain's not going great, it's the fault of Europe. If my life's not going well, it's the

fault of the immigrants. And what we found, if I just thought, I maybe wasn't, I'm worried I wasn't structured enough in thinking through the European Union, if we go through the little list of arguments they would have made, they would have said 10 years ago, Britain was too regulated, too uncompetitive, Europe was growing too slowly, and politicians weren't accountable. And I think it's possible for us to say all those things were correct, but leaving the European Union didn't fix any of them. Or what you could say is there is a point, they had a point, whether the point was sufficiently strong, in my view, it wasn't, to say, let's tear up the whole thing and then pretend that we're

going to tear up the whole of Europe. Because what it turned out what happened is that we left the European Union, we didn't fix any of those things. So it would be a bit like my life's going badly and I blame my friends or I blame my partner and I imagine if I just leave my partner, I don't talk to my friends anymore, everything will be better. Norma Percy the veteran documentary maker, I couldn't

watch the whole thing because watching Govan Johnson and these people just sort of, you know, the whole thing was like a sort of boys game Cameron as well. But the end of Norma Percy's two-part documentary on Brexit essentially is Boris Johnson admitting there was no plan.

And that's the worst thing. Final point for Germany, there's something really quite interesting happening there, which, and I'd really be interested in your take on it. So, Dmitrieff, Putin's right-hand man, has been busy posting absolute pions of praise to the alternative for Deutschland. And when I posted a reply to one of them, he came back straight away, warmonger, you know, the change is coming. So they're very on this all the time. So, Kiddell Dmitrieff, like Jacob Rismog, has his Alistair-Cambled dossier. Well, he seems to, yeah. Well, it wasn't sort of, it was basically saying that the warmongering bureaucrats who opened the borders, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they're the ones who need to wake up. Now, what's interesting, though, is so that's the Russians openly, like J.D. Vance did in Munich, like Donald Trump knows, you've now got MAGA and the Russians basically saying in Germany,

AFDs are party, okay, at a time when the AFD is doing quite well. Now, if you're a German person who believes in the Constitution, and they've got a written constitution unlike us, so there's something very interesting going on which there are only three bodies that can refer anything to the constitutional court. That's the government, the Bundestag, the elected chamber, and the Bundest, which is made up of the lender. Okay. And there's a debate going on at the moment. The government is weak, the parliament, tricky, as whether the Bundestat should not refer. the AFD to the Constitutional Court because there are a lot of their leaders who are on record as saying things which go fundamentally against the Constitution. Again, just to explain to the audience, basically this is about banning the AFD.

Or banning parts of it. Parts of it. So what you would do is you'd use this procedure to say, actually, this is a neo-fascist organization that is a profound danger of the German Constitution. These were the things that were put in place after the Second World War. What are the lessons that how would we have stopped the Nazi party from rising? Well, we should have said in 1929, the Nazi party is not a legitimate democratic political force. It's banned by the constitutional court.

It can't run? So all that stuff's there. And there are two questions. Can they do it? And should they do it? Back over to you. Well, can they do it? Yes.

And the constitutional court in Germany is respected much more than most institutions are in most countries. And the case that I think would be made, and it all depends on there are two. very popular leaders in the lender. There's this guy, Usdemer, who's the new leader in Barton Wuttenberg, and a guy called Vust in Nord Ryan Vesphalia, one's green, one's CDU, and essentially there, if it happens, they are going to have to lead this movement within the Bundesrat. And they could do it, because it's been done before. The thing is, it sounds extraordinary to us. You ban a political party from standing, but they did it twice under Ardenauer, and then they did it twice with the

neo-Nazi party. They're now called the... the work called the NDP, they now called DeHimar. So it's been done before, but you have leading figures in the AFD. A lot of this is, you know, we've talked before about Martin Selah, this Austrian identitarian guy. A lot of this is about remigration. And remigration is about people who generally are not white and generally Muslims being hundreds of thousands being booted out of Germany, including, it seems, German citizens. Including if they've been born in Germany and they have a German passport and German citizenship. So that says in the Constitution, they're all equal, okay? So that policy basically says, no, you're not equal, because if we get into power,

you're gone. And the reason why these lender elections coming up, particularly in Saxony and Halt, is so important, is because they have policing powers. And the other thing that I read this week, the Björn, who's this very out there, very, very, I can call him a Nazi, a neo-Nazi on here now. And not be sued. And not be sued because a German judge has decreed that that is a fair label for him. And by the way, Turingia, where he is from, that's where Hitler got his first sort of electoral foothold. The AFD are going to be deliberately

holding one of their main conferences on July 4th, 2026, because on July the 4th, 1926, was one of Hitler's most famous rallies in Weimar. It's kind of deliberate trolling. But so I think

this, I think this, you know, to us, it sounds like, well, let's say the government tried to ban Tommy Robinson. Or Rupert Lowe. Or Rupert Lowe. You and I both probably think, oh, that's not going to, people are going to think. But in Germany, I think it might be a little bit different, partly because of the history, partly because of the respect to the court, but also so many of these people are on the record saying things which on the surface are anti-constitutional. And then the question, sorry, just to fast forward, is that if the AFD actually ultimately takes power in Germany and starts pushing ahead with remigration and 8.

hundred thousand Germans are expelled from the country. We would then be asking ourselves, shouldn't we have taken them to the constitutional court and banned them? Because it's too late by the time they're actually running a neo-fashist state. That is the argument. That is the argument. And look, even within the people who absolutely load the AFD, there is that worry. Their big worry was you'd take them to court and you didn't win the case. But I think if you look at the, you don't have to say it's the whole party. So I think they're going to be focusing on Turingia and Brandenburg, where they've got some pretty extreme leadership and also on some of the youth organizations.

But I think we need to understand that this stuff happening in Europe is linked. And the point of mate, you've now got Trump and Maga, you've got Putin, you've got the hard right here, who are all basically pushing the same message that you sort of limp-risted European liberal Democrats, you're done and we're coming for you. And my final thought, which I keep saying again and again,

is when you see the same thing happening in America, Britain and Europe, it's probably not about any of the things we think it's about. We tend to think it might be immigration, European Union, economic growth. No, nonsense, right? America's growing strongly, it's got strong employment, Europe's not growing. Some countries have got high immigration, some have got lower immigration, some have taken back control, others haven't. It's social media. The only thing that can possibly explain in such a short time frame that 30 countries with completely different socio-economic trajectories, constitutions, structures end up in the same place. I'm afraid of social media.

Okay, Roos, before we go to the break, a couple of plugs. You mentioned James Cleverly. He's the former Foreign Secretary for the Conservatives, still in the shadow cabinet now, and he is our current guest on leading. And that's good, because if people want to hear a pro-Brexit argument, don't rely on me to try to venture a request. Listen, James Cleverly. He's quite tough. He's quite clear. He's a Brexiteer, and he does his best to call us out and push back against our arguments on Brexit. So you want to hear the other side of the story. Listen to James cleverly on leading. Pretty half-hearted, I thought.

Just search the Restis Policy's leading, wherever you get your podcasts. And another plug, finally, before the break, is part four of our mini-series on Reform that we've done in conjunction with the Observer. And this one focuses very, very heavily on Mr. Farage. So just go to the RestisPolitis.com to find that, and now we'll have a break,

and then we'll come back and talk about Iran. Hello, dear listeners. As many of you will know, Father's Day is coming up on the 21st of Jail. June. And we know that a good number of you will be wondering what to get your centrist dad this year. And we have the perfect idea. Get him a membership to the rest is politics plus and make the most of our 25% discount on a gifted annual membership. And that gives you access to all these members' only miniseries that we're making. It gives you early access to question time. Just head to the restispolities.com and click on gifts. The gift will land straight in your.

your dad's inbox on the day. It's the only present for a centrist dad. 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. Hi, it's Rory here. To celebrate the release of my book, Middleland and paperback, I'm doing two live shows on stage in London in September. and I'd love you to join me for the conversation. Middleland is my portrait of rural Britain and politics.

It draws in a decade of living in Cumbria, being the member of Parliament, writing about its resilience, its beauty, and what this corner of England can teach us about community, purpose, and if you'll allow me to sound a bit grand, democratic renewal. Every ticket to the show includes a copy of the book, and it should be a great opportunity. I'll be in discussion with people, we'll have questions, I'm happy to engage with almost anything.

We can talk about global politics as well. I'm playing the Dominion Theatre in London's West End on Sunday the 13th of September and the Richmond Theatre in Richmond on Tuesday the 15th of September. If you'd like to buy tickets, you can head to Fane.co.com. UK forward slash Rory-Dash-Stewart.

That's Fane.combe.org slash Rory-Dash-Stewart. Welcome back to the rest of the politics with me, Alist Campbell. And with me, Rory. Roy, you sound very excited very excited about this Iran deal in the introduction, but I am far from convinced that this is actually a deal in the conventional sense. It's a memorandum of understandly. It seems to be that the really difficult stuff is now being parked for these negotiations. So we're going to have Vance and the Hapless Kushner and Wittkoff up against

the Iranian nuclear scientists again. Yeah. So listen, it's far from resolved, but it's a hell of a big change because it's what we've been waiting for for two months, which is finally the Iranians and the Americans signed a memorandum of understanding with the Pakistanis, and they've both said publicly that they've signed off on this MOU, and the key point is that the Straits of Hormuz now look like they will reopen. Not immediately, and there's many things that could go wrong. Could be the Iranians, could be the Americans, could be the Israelis could torpedo the whole thing. But it feels to me as though finally Trump and Iran actually want to get this done. My mother's theory is Trump wants to get it done before the 4th

of July, 250th Independence Day celebrations. He doesn't want to be distracted by everyone endlessly grinding on about Hummus. That's the Sally Stewart view. The Iranians, listen, they have really enjoyed the fact that despite the American and Israeli bombardments, 75% percent, of their entire ballistic missile launch capacity and indeed their missile stockpiles are still intact. Three quarters are still intact. This is some of the largest bombing on world record. I mean, the number of targets, they were doing 500 targets a day.

This was the highest precision weapons, the greatest targeting ever, and actually it barely took out a quarter of what Iran has. So, big sort of that. But nevertheless, the Iranian economy is groaning. They're desperate for the oil exports. Trump's announced that he's stopping the blockade and they can go through and Iran's announce stop. Now, how could it go wrong? Many, many different ways.

And I've been talking to friends in the Gulf about this. And I've talked to actually people who are in Pakistan, people who've read the MOU. They think that one of the big sticking points, which is Lebanon, maybe less than in the past. So the big sticking point there was Iran was saying, so long as Israel keeps attacking our allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, we're not going to sign this deal. And that's why Trump got very, very angry with Netanyahu. because just on the cusp of the deal, he struck Lebanon. Look at the response to this deal in Israel.

The hard-right figures that we talk about a lot, Spottritch and Ben-Gabir, they've come out and said this is bad for the world and bad for Israel. The politics of this for the Nia are really, really tricky. He does seem to have lost that sort of grip on Trump. You've put your finger on it. How important is Israel? You're absolutely right. Israel's furious.

They want to continue the war with Iran. They want to continue the war with Lebanon. They're being stopped, not just in Iran and in Lebanon. So the question is, is that going to be enough? Will they be able to derail the US and Iran? They've been able in the past because basically they do things in Lebanon without US permission. The US feels forced to support them and the Iranians were outraged. I think, though, what happened with this deal is finally the US and Iran decided we're going

to get beyond the Israel thing. We're going to see Israel as a spoiler. Netanyahu tried a last-minute attempt to derail with yes, another attack in Lebanon. And actually it just hurried up the MOU, which got it out. I think the sticking points that could unravel it are firstly that there's a lot of legal argument inside the MAU, literally legal language on a non-aggression pact between the US and Iran and on sanctions relief and release of assets. And my guess is Trump will probably not follow through, particularly on the latter. And then what is Iran going to do?

If he doesn't lift sanctions, if he doesn't release assets, do they return to war? Well, the gamble is they might not. Or do they just turn the tap off on the straight. They're not. That is the terrible thing about this. They basically have been handed a tactic that they probably, I'm not sure they thought of using before. If they thought of it, they never did it. But they now realize they can do it with catastrophic consequences and that Trump doesn't have the global support that he thought he would have.

So I think, look, I think this deal, well, we haven't seen. it. The Memorandum of Understanding is pretty short. A page and a half. The JCPOA was like hundreds and hundreds of pages backed by incredibly detailed documents. So it feels to me a little bit like the Gaza plan that was projected as this is peace in our time, but then the detail wasn't there and we're still in a complete mess there. And I think with this, I think there's so much that can go wrong and can go wrong quickly. This is fascinating because if you go back, and I know Trump's rhetoric, you've got to, so he basically said that the attack was to deal with an imminent threat, okay? Well, it wasn't. We're going to destroy their missiles and raise their

missile industry to the ground. You've pre-rebutted that one. It will be totally obliterated. We're going to annihilate their Navy. They've done a lot of damage to the Navy. They have. We're going to ensure that their terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack all forces, no longer use their IEDs or roadside bombs. Well, and on that one, the key two proxies are Hizbullah, Houthis, and probably you do, add the Iraqi militia. And actually what we found, oddly, is that despite Israel's amazing intelligence operations and attacks on Hizbollah and Lebanon, the Pager attacks, which killed 1,500 people, Hizbala remains surprisingly resilient. And they're now managing to manufacture

their own drones. And it turns out they can manufacture them without Iranian backing. Furthermore, the Houthi, who are their proxies in Yemen, fighting with the Red Sea, reminding people they can still shut that down. So they did not achieve the objective on the proxies. Right. So, and then let's go into what I think is the big one. I'm going to read the whole thing. To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard,

the armed forces and all of the police, I say tonight, you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, you face certain death. Lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death. Finally, to the great proud people of Iran tonight, the hour of freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered.

Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will probably be your only chance for generations. In other words, regime change. And that has not happened.

The regime was toppled in terms of the top people, but the regime is still in place. It's stronger. So to just that final one, there was always a fight, even at the top. the Iranian state about where their security lay. Did their security lie on reaching out to the international community, getting support in the UN, getting a peace deals in place, making agreements on sanctions or nuclear? Or did their security lie in rearming, building up massive missile bases, pushing ahead with a nuclear program? And the problem is it's the hardliners who've won. Because every Iranian will have concluded, the one thing that saved them was not.

being nice, being moderate, negotiating. The only thing that saves them is that they buried their missiles a long way underground and they were able to disrupt the Straits of Hormuz, and the Revolutionary Guard has been completely vindicated narrowly in their view that actually what stops regime change is being armed to the teeth and refusing to cooperate. If you're an average Iranian, I don't know what an average Iranian is, but if you're a kind of middle-of-the-road Iranian, not a massive fan of the regime, but you're just kind of keeping your head down, What do you think in terms of who has won or lost this? I think the Iranians think that survival is winning, and they've survived.

They now have a strength because of the way they've handled the straight-of-hormuz that they didn't necessarily have in the same way before. They've shown American power to be weaker than the Americans project it. And the Americans keep saying that the great triumph in this, so I saw an interview with Pete Hexert, the Secretary of War. And the great triumph is that, you know, they've made sure Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. But that was signed up to in the nonproliferation treaty. It was signed up to in the JCPOA. And in fact, there were moments when Ayatollah Khomey suggested that he thought it was un-Islamic to have a nuclear weapon in the first place. Yeah.

Yeah. And 97% of the stuff was kind of moved out the country. So I think it's very, very hard unless you are absolutely believing every single word that Donald Trump says to you to see this as, a victory, even by the objectives he said out for himself. So I think the answer on Iranian people is 90%, 85, 90% of Iranians absolutely hate their regime. They think they're a bunch of violent, corrupt, theocratic people who've locked them in a horrible, isolated world.

And they would be hugely relieved if this regime went and Iran could become a normal country. They're totally fed up with the Revolutionary Guard trying to turn their whole country into a crusade against Israel and the US and they think this nuclear program is mad and they think that this regime has invited war and horror. But also, they are so furious with what US and Israel did. Why? Because what they did is they bombed Iran, they killed hundreds of schoolchildren and they did not topple the regime. So all the people who were supporting the crown prince, the formal Shah and everyone who were promising that if we're nice to the American in Israel,

that's going to be a lovely toppling the regime and a democratic future is going to emerge. It's all nonsense, right? So I think they're in the sort of bind that you would feel in if a government that you really, really hated and that you'd been trying to get rid of, suddenly vindicated you in a war against someone else. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I think you're right. I think Israel has the potential to be the real difficult thing because the Iranians will be on the lookout, for Israel trying to undermine this. The Israelis, it seems to me, Netanyahu will be under pressure to undermine it, including from within his own cabinet. And then the question is how Trump reacts. And we're talking about a 60-day period where these continuing negotiations go on. And we've also talked a lot about the economy and the impacts on the economy. And we'll be doing some more episodes around this. And the honest answer is the economic damage of this is very,

very lasting. In the best case scenario, vessels might start moving through the straight next week, but you can see all the ship owners saying we need many, many more assurances before we start sailing our vessels. There's going to be a massive logjam because there are thousands of vessels and it's quite difficult navigating them through. There are thousands of sailors who need to be evacuated from these boats. There are certain bits that are ready to move. Fertiliser, for example, is ready to move. It's stockpiled in places like Qatar, but it's missed a lot of this year's growing season. Yeah. So the impact on this year's growing season is dramatic.

Oil can be moved relatively more easily. Gas is a problem, partly because the Iranians attacked some of these gas fields. Some of them will take two months, four months. It's difficult to put a number on it to get going in. Some percentage of it won't be able to get going in for some years. And none of these states still quite know. Are Iran going to charge tolls? They're going to try to charge a million dollars of a vessel.

They said they won't, but there's some weird, ambiguous language in the MOU. And we don't know whether, and nobody can model this. Nobody knows whether the impact, if you're a catarie, is it going to be, in the best case scenario, okay, there's been a bit of disruption for a few weeks, but we'll be able to get back to where we were within a year or two, or is it going to take three years or seven years? Is your economy contracting 17% this year, 10% this year? Dubai, I was talking to someone in the UAE who was being very optimistic and saying, And yes, Dubai is suffering, but people wrote us off in 2008. They wrote us off in COVID and we bounce back, so we'll bounce back again. But to be honest, nobody knows. And it isn't just the Gulf. As we said before, the Asian economies are shattered by this. The European economies are shattered by this. And it's going to take a long time, even in the best case, to untangle.

Well, there we are. Ten years on from Brexit and now a few months on from the launch of the Iran War, both of them, pretty difficult, big subject. It's got more difficult big subjects to cover in question time. We're going to talk about defence. We're going to talk about AI, and in particular, this extraordinary decision by the Americans to say to Anthropic, you cannot give your latest frontier model stuff to anybody who is not American. You know a lot about that, and we'll hear about that. We're going to talk about an astonishing close election in Peru,

and we're going to reflect a little bit on possibly the greatest, well, Donald Trump said it was the greatest sporting event in history. That was the UFC fighting on the lawn. the White House which made me throw up. Brilliant. And I'd like to do a bit of a deep dive also into what is actually happening with British defence spending. How should we be spending this money? Why did Healy go? What's this new man going to do? Cool. See you there. Finally on day eight of the World Cup, England play tonight. We've assembled a top team to work out

how we win it. Harry McGuire and Micah Richards at the back, Georgia Stanway, jinking in midfield, and it's Shearer and Linneka up top. Come and join us. on The Rest is Football on Netflix, available right now.