The Rest Is Politics - 568. MAGA's Plan to Make Britain Look Broken and Iceland's 'Brexit' Moment

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Did Iceland's rejection of EU membership talks repeat the same mistakes as Britain's Remain campaign, and does it hand a dangerous propaganda win to Farage, Putin, and the wider anti-European right? As Russia warns of "consequences" over British missiles built in Ukraine, is the West sleepwalking towards direct confrontation? With one in four Americans now convinced British society is broken, is Trump deliberately weaponising Britain to justify its own domestic agenda? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Dan Neidle by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. 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. 🌏 Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee! __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Vasco Andrade Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The people of Iceland have spoken and it is a no to reopening talks about possible future European Union membership. The result is a blow to the EU which was hoping that Iceland could spark a reboot in its stalled enlargement process. And it's a victory for the kind of negative campaigning and disinformation that won Brexit here. The news will please Vladimir Putin, for whom a weakened and divided Europe is a strategic goal. And that a country of 400,000 people should even matter to a nuclear-armed giant like Russia underlines just how fragile the geopolitical landscape is right now. That's why Andy Burnham, despite wanting to be a domestic Prime Minister, made his recent trip to Kiev and promised help with longer-range missiles,

prompting Moscow to say the UK is now a bigger enemy than ever. It's also why Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will be attending the EU State of the Union event this month, building ever closer relations with Europe as the hostility from Trump's USA deepens. But if Iceland won't even agree to talk about talks, what chance to the current accession candidates, let alone the UK, Ukraine or Canada, have of joining an EU strong enough to rival an assertive China and a wayward and reliable America? This episode is powered by fuse energy. 100 pounds. That is what one.

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Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Welcome to the rest of politics question time with me, Alistair Campbell. I'm with me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, we're going to talk about Iceland referendum. We're going to talk about UK, Russia. We're going to talk about why MAGA tries to tell everybody that Britain is a basket case. We're going to talk about party conferences and maybe have a little bit of fun at the end. But let's start in Iceland.

Georgie, did Iceland's yes campaign make the same mistakes as the remain campaign in the UK? What does the result mean for European unity? And Brian in Reykjavik wants to know whether we were pleased that Nigel Farage congratulated Iceland on his referendum result. A dubious honour, I'd say, says Brian, given he was one of the principal architects of the Brexit fiasco. And it was interesting that Farage's response was to say, well done Iceland on voting to keep your independence. So that means, Roy, that independence means you can, be in the EEA, you can be in Schengen, and you can have access to the single market. Fantastic. Let's have it for Britain. Lots to dig into. But I think, first thing is that I think it's disappointing

because this was a vote which was just about whether to negotiate or talk at all. And you and I are passionate about trying to build up middle powers and bring countries together. And this is an example of a wealthy country that's already very close to the European Union, not even being prepared to vote to consider negotiating about a closer relationship. It's not the end of the world, and I think we can get on to why it's not the end of the world and why actually there might be a silver lining to it. But I think we begin with a sense of disappointment. And also maybe being a little cheeky, I wonder, listening back to the interview that we did with the Icelandic Prime Minister when you were in Iceland, whether actually part of the problem isn't leadership.

I mean, this was relatively close. Again, it was not far off a 52-48 result. I did not feel that your friend, the Icelandic Prime Minister, was really putting heart and soul into getting this across the line. I think she would disagree with that because I think her strategy, and this came through in the interview, our interview was kind of the first big international, it was about the only really big international thing that she did. And I think she was using the hour that we had to set out some of the arguments, but also the nature of the campaign. And part of her thinking was that the Iceland is not ready just to be told, do as you're told, come with me, I'm the leader. She had to

go out there. And she did tons and tons of quite small meetings in fairly rural, remote places. But I think I wonder, where I might sort of meet you halfway, I wonder if part of her thinking was, if we lose this, I don't want people to think this is a massive personal blow. And so I was a bit worried. I think I said to you at the time, I was a little bit worried that that means you don't do everything that you might maybe do to win. And of course, the other side is very organised, well-funded, very passionate. And that was definitely the true in the Brexit campaign, that if the people advocating for it are a bit sort of technocratic, lukewarm, well, you It's not going to be the end of the world either way.

And the people against it are absolutely take back control, red-blooded. They're going to take our fish. A lot of this was about fish, wasn't it, 45% of Iceland's exports of fish, and they were worried that they'd lose control of their fishing quotas. No, I think when something's that close, presumably you do, I'm sure you do, despite your great affection for the Icelandic primacy, you are somebody who believes in political leadership. And I'm sure you would say to me that the right campaign with the right leadership could make that 2% difference to carry it across the line. Yeah, and I think that definitely, no doubt about that. And she was front and center, even though the idea for the referendum came from one of her coalition partners who basically exist to fight for Iceland to become a member of the European Union, she was more out there as a bit of a kind of, you know, explainer, explaining why the referendum, explaining what the issues are,

as opposed to full-blooded, this is why we should do it. And of course, you know, George's question, did they learn from the referendum campaign here in 2016? There's no doubt that no campaign did. They were, I mean, for a place that's pretty wealthy and quite very nice people and, you know, don't have a lot of the kind of social issues that we have, the campaign was very, very close to the sort of thing that we had here. So, for example, they absolutely model the £350 million from the NHS. They talked about 50 billion Icelandic crona that we'd have to give to the European Union. They had a part of the campaign running was that kids from Iceland would be conscripted into a EU army.

Well, the EU army doesn't exist. And what's more, Iceland doesn't have a military. And yet those sorts of arguments get through. And I also wonder Russia takes an interest in these things, whether Russia was sort of, you know, doing its usual propaganda funding campaigns. They're taking lessons from the Dominic Cummings campaign. Flip it around. Let's say you'd been the campaign manager. What lessons should the people in favor of the European Union have taken from what didn't work in the British campaign? And what could they have done better if you're running this kind of campaign? And this is relevant because this is going to matter in Moldova. It's going to matter in Ukraine. let's hope it's going to matter in the Western Balkans and any other place

you want to get in. Well, I think a little bit like in our campaign, maybe I'm old-fashioned this, I just think you have to rebut these lies, you have to rebut them really aggressively. And that doesn't mean you say

that's not true. It means that you have to make sure that anybody who's hearing your kids are going to get conscripted to the army. No, don't just hear you say it once, but actually you

then make it part of a bigger argument. this is the Brexit lie machine infecting our politics. Do we really want to go down the road that Vladimir Putin has created? You know, you make a bigger argument. And I could sense when we did the interview that she was maybe a little bit uncomfortable going down that route, because Iceland is a much nicer political culture than most of ours. But I think when you were talking about in a population of 400,000, so it's very, very small population, as you say, it was 52.

point something to 47 point something, you're talking about hundreds, just hundreds of votes which either way could swing it. So yeah, I'm with you, I think it's disappointing. And the reason why on the bigger picture is disappointing, I think what the Europeans were hoping for was that this will reboot the enlargement story, that maybe Norway would start to reconsider its position. And of course, if you've got Iceland and Norway moving in that direction, that's a big, big game because these are wealthy countries, not like maybe some of the countries in the Balkans. Well, let me try my silver lining why this is not the end of the world, but maybe a chance just to rethink how we think about the middle power geometry, to use that kind of pompous word, which is that one of the major reasons Iceland didn't get in is the one that you hinted out at the beginning, which is that Iceland already has an enormously close relationship with Europe. it already is part of the single market. It benefits from all its closeness to Europe.

And maybe what we need to take from this is that the way to construct a new middle power coalition is to think about getting countries like Britain into something that's more like Iceland and that maybe that actually is also the first step for Ukraine, the first step for Serbia. In other words, it's actually the four freedoms. It's the freedom of movement. movement, it's the single market access, that people care about more than being part of the political center of the whole thing. So if we're trying to create an outer circle of Europe, maybe what you take from Iceland is not, well, let's give up because Iceland didn't want to join the European Union, who else is going to. Instead, say, actually, maybe what Iceland shows

is that there is a very attractive position of being part of the single market, part of Schengen, part of the four freedoms without being a full member. And that that should be the first step for Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine, and who knows, Britain, Canada, etc. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great, by the way, that Mark Carney is going to the State of the Union event in the European Parliament, and he'll be speaking after Ersler von der Leyen. I think that's going to be a very big moment later this month. Of course, Iceland's a small country,

which is now not opening negotiations with the European Union, where my big worry at the moment is in the big countries in Europe. France, where I saw a poll last week where Marine Le Pen, if she gets in the second round, every single polling option says she wins. Everybody listening, or 90% of people listening will know this. But just to remind younger listeners, Marion Le Pen is the leader of the far-right party in France with Badella. And therefore, what Alice is telling us is that there is a staggeringly high chance that

the next president of France is going to be from a far-right party. Yeah. You know, her father was a, you know, who founded this part, is a genuine, proper, fascist, anti-Semite. This is not an innocent party. This is a party that took millions from Russia and loans to get itself off the ground. She herself has been convicted of fraud, and yet it looks like she's on the verge of winning. And the other point that you've made in the past, we need to really reinforce this. Becoming President of France is a much more powerful position than Maloney becoming Prime Minister of Italy,

because the President of France controls France much more directly in many ways than the Prime Minister of Italy and is a much bigger player in the European Union. Back over you. Absolutely. the other thing, we talked last week about the horseshoe theory, and the horseshoe theory is happening in France. There was a debate the other day, and Le Pen was filmed backstage with Jean-Luc Melanchon.

So there's Le Pen from the hard right and Melanchon from the hard left, and they were laughing and joking and teasing each other, and, you know, because they're both basically pro-Russia, anti-Europe in different ways. And then the other one, just to terrify you further, Rory, when I was in Germany, I picked up this book. This publisher, C.H. Beck, they've done this amazing series of scenarios. Remember we talked about the one, if China invades Taiwan.

We had the one about if the AFD wins. Well, this one is Deutschland 2030. The AFD is in power in this book. And it's an Alice Vidal coalition with the CDU. The CDU quit the coalition fairly early on, at which point, a bit like Donald Trump, Alice Vidal realizes you can have, you have a lot of power, even if you're not changing the law. And it's just an account of how she uses that power. And it's absolutely terrifying. And when I see this sort of stuff I've

been watching on this election next week in Saxony, Anhalt, where the FD are so far ahead now, and people are talking, this is what Farage is trying to create with reform here. They're talking about this like it's a kind of normal party. Well, the others have had their go, give them a go. This is a party that is openly pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine, wants Germany out of Schengen, which completely destroys the European Union effectively. Now, what is the big strategic goal of our enemies right now? It's to destroy the European Union. It's totally gifting them that. It strikes me that there's something that connects what you're saying now with our AI episode that we did yesterday, which is we need politicians who are prepared to have a real sense of

hope, hope about our ability to control and manage AI, keep humans in charge of AI. And that was what was so wonderful about Maoz and Aziz, the Israeli and Palestinian guests that we just had on leading, who do the most extraordinary, powerful moving task of trying to argue for peace, not explaining the 10,000 reasons why peace is impossible, just like you might, instead of focusing on the 10,000 reasons why it's impossible to regulate AI, just working backwards. We need to have humans in control of AI. We need peace in a thorough power sign. And we need the middle powers coming together by hook or by crook. They gave us hope, Roy. They gave us hope. But on that last one, I think it takes two to tango. I mean, one of the things that's so sad is that here are people like

us saying we want Iceland to engage more or Canada to engage more or Ukraine or Moldova or Serbia to engage more. Where's the other side of that? Where are the leaders inside the European Union showing the big, imaginative, generous offers to bring people in? Well, I think the only one who is sort of showing that level of imagination is, is Carney. I think Carney is sort of signaling that under pressure from America, he's going to reach out. Now, we've got to go the other way. Yeah, it'll only work in the end if the EU leaders themselves are showing real imagination and willpower to try to create this stuff. big thing. Rachel here, are we risking war with Russia? Andrew, what's your thoughts on Russia's

increasingly open threats towards the UK and NATO and the CIA Chiefs Visit to Moscow? Now, you and I spoke the other day to Anthony Scaramucci for an episode that's coming out, basically just a naked book promotion for Anthony Scaramucci, and we're pretending that he's a leader, so it'll be on leading soon. And it's a good chat. But he was very interesting on this Ratcliffe, the CIA Chief Visit to Moscow. He was saying that the last, the last line that the White House had put out to newspapers and broadcasters that this was to tell the Russians don't dare threaten NATO was absolute bullshit. What he was there to do was saying, listen, let's do a deal. I'll get your sanctions lifted if this, this, this, this.

Now, none of us know the full truth, but I'm more likely to believe the mooch than the White house line machine. On the Russian threat, so this follows on from the thing that we covered last week, which is our Prime Minister visiting Ukraine and saying that they are now licensed to produce missiles, partial British missiles in Ukraine, and Russia is saying there will be consequences. And there's two things going on. One is the cry wolf phenomenon, which is Russia has threatened consequences repeatedly over the last four years, very successfully. In fact, one of the reasons why Biden was so slow to provide the support that Ukraine critically needed in the first year and a half is Russia kept signaling that if that support was provided, horrible things would

happen. Ultimately, all that support was provided. It was just provided too late. The missiles arrived, the tanks arrived, the patron missiles arrived, but it just arrived too slow and too late, and Russia didn't retaliate. However, the problem with this cry wolf phenomenon is that at some point Russia may retaliate. We've seen these attacks in Leipzig. We've also seen, which remind people again, this was the detection of a drone and now there's been another event at Leipzig Airport, which is one of the big supply chains for Ukraine. But it's also true that the nature of the war is changing. now that Ukraine is striking into Russian territory and killing Russian children in some of these strikes, the sense amongst the Russian public that a British-supplied missile is now directly killing Russian civilians deep inside Russia may begin to change people's calculus away from when it felt like it was a fight on the front line. Yeah, you see, I watched, I don't know, Ukraine, it's so depressing that it's, you know, fifth year and it's no sign of ending. There's a guy, another German journalist that I follow, Paul Ronsheimer, who's a big cheese that built Saiton. And he's just put out a two-part documentary on Saxony-Anhalt.

He's been there. And he does this quite a thing. Maybe we should think about this, Roy. He sits himself up in a town square, in a chair. Yeah. And he has a table with a sign that just says, tell me your opinion. Yeah. And another chair.

And he interviewed about 40 people. Yeah. and he was talking about, you know, some of them were totally anti-AFD, but others were pro. But then in the documentary, I've not finished yet, but I watched part of it last night. He's with this guy who's a leading figure, leading, leading, figure in Saxony Anhalt in the AFD. And Ron Saamers in his kitchen, and he spots that the guy's got a mug, and it says Russian army in Russian. So Ron Saama really, really sort of gently grills him. It's a bit sort of Louis Therouish in the style.

Oh, that's interesting. Why have you got a Russian army? Oh, it was a present? Who was it a present for a word? I can't remember. But anyway, the point that comes over, as they talk to more and more AFD supporters, and he has this phrase, It is not our war.

And Sir Ron Saim says to him, where's your mug from the German federal army? Oh, they've never given me a present. He's pro-Russian. It's not just that these people, people want to sit it out, the AFD and the Asamlama on national, they are pro-Russian. They want Russia to win. And the reason for that, and I think maybe this is part of the clue on Trump, too, is that they're pro-Russian because actually they share the same worldview. What they believe is a lot of

the stuff that Putin says, nation states, anti-immigration, family, fight for Western civilization, folk, family values, against decadent Western civilization. And yet, they've got a gay leader. I mean, this is the thing that's mind-blowing about it. They're totally hope. The Russian worldview is utterly homophobic. But it's a really interesting, it's actually the way in which the culture wars is turning geopolitics insanely on its head. I mean, here you have a country which is objectively the most extreme enemy of the United States, you can imagine. Yeah. And the biggest potential threat to Europe. Yeah. And simply because Putin sounds conservative and right wing on culture war issues. Suddenly, people like Trump and the

AFD and the Penn think maybe it's a good idea to take his side. Yeah, but also the other thing that comes through this book, I mean, Trump sort of weaves in and out of this book is just how the AFD have learned from the way that he communicates. Truth doesn't really matter. Facts don't really matter. building up your following on social media is way more important and it's important to insult the mainstream media because that then makes your people feel better about where they go to see you on social media

and also that you have to be making the most noise you must be making the most noise and up against kind of fact-based, rational, calm people like Mouts and Klingbile you know and even though Alice Vidal is not the most charismatic but she's got a certain tone and a certain style, and then around her, I mean, some of these characters who are running for a minister president,

I mean, they are, I'm afraid to say they are very charismatic. They know how to communicate, effectively. There was a piece in the Financial Times magazine, a huge piece at the weekend about the Saxony Anhalt, and the journalist followed this guy, O'Reckman, who looks like he could be the first minister president. That's a big step, because they're then in charge, because of the federal structure, they're then in charge of policing.

They have access to intelligence. Well, that'll be nice and useful to Vladimir, won't it? So, yeah, this book is yet another one publishers. Get it in English. And yet another reason why we need hope. I mean, all these people are giving us the pessimistic vision. We've got to have that hope. We've got to have hope.

Well, listen, Roy, let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and find out from Izzy, who writes our newsletter, and you wrote a brilliant piece this weekend about just why the Maga lot are spending so much time saying that Britain is a total and complete basket case. And we'll talk about that. And we'll talk about the party conference season, which is upon us. Very good.

Looking forward to it very much. See you soon. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on SMP Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Welcome back to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart.

And me, Aleister Campbell, and a special guest, which is Izzy, Isabel Stanley. Isabel writes our brilliant newsletter, which I have to say is he gets better and better and better. And the reason you're making your global international media debut in this way is because I thought and Rory thought that the one of the weekend was particularly good. So tell us what it was about by answering this question. Martin, Isabel Stanley's recent article in the newsletter on American attitudes to Britain made for interesting reading and gave more fuel, I would say, to the streak of self-abasement we seem to be indulging at the moment. But it left me wondering, what would a reciprocal survey reveal about our attitudes towards American-Americans? As someone with an American wife, I rather fear the answer would be even more negative.

What do you both think? Before we answer that, Izzy, just tell us who you talk to, where you went, how you talked to them, and the big impressions you were left with. Yeah, of course. Over the past few months, we've all sort of seen this. string of attacks on the UK, the sort of negative commentary coming out of the US. Things like Trump, you know, he in June was saying that the UK is dying. Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, both at different times said that the UK was heading for a civil war. And so we saw all of that and we were sort of thinking, well, that's all, you know, well and good, but what impact is that

actually having on the way that the American public? So that's, you know, they're traditionally our closest ally. But what impact is that having on how they see us? So the first thing we did is we asked Ipsos in the UK to carry out some polling. They were super helpful and they found some pretty striking stuff. So they surveyed 1,100 Americans all across the country and they found that one in four Americans, 25-ish percent, believe that British society is broken. And that jumps to 37 percent among Republicans. And obviously, that's not everyone. You know, that's not saying that the entirety of America thinks Britain's gone to the dogs. But the other very striking thing is that there's a very high sort of level of unengagement. So my favorite statistic that came out of it is that more

than half of Americans admitted they had no idea who the British Prime Minister was. And, you know, fair enough, it's quite confusing. We've had a lot of them recently. But three percent thought that it was still Tony Blair, which sort of shows when they were maybe last engaged. So we were sort of thinking about that, I went to the US as well and did a very, while I was there, did a very sort of unofficial straw poll of what people were talking about and thinking about in terms of the UK. And most of the things that they mentioned were sort of related to crime, in particular phone snatching, immigration, sort of negative trends that were coming across. The main positive thing was Harry Stiles, which again is great, but maybe not the engagement you hope for with your

closest ally. Can I come in on this? One of the things that was also, I think, striking in what you did is that things seem to have changed quite quickly over time. I mean, I was very struck by data that suggests that relatively recently 40% of Americans said they wanted to visit the UK, and it's now dropped down to 20%. I mean, that's a really catastrophic fall. Exactly, yeah. So that's data from the British Council, and they do this survey every year where they ask, like, how likely you're going to be to visit a country, how much do you appreciate its values, how much do you trust their politics? And they found in the past 10 years, so since 2016, Britain's attractiveness to America or Americans has fallen from 78% to 59%. So it's exactly that.

It's now only 20% of people in America, young Americans want to visit the UK. They're less likely to want to study here. They're less likely to sort of appreciate our culture and values. And yeah, that fool is the really striking thing because it's like that that demonstrates that It's not just a negative mindset now. It's that this has sort of been steadily dropping, exactly. This also, though, speaks to one of the people you interviewed was Kim Darach, who I know very, very well, used to be our ambassador, got kicked out by, effectively by Johnson caving into Trump. But he made the point that some of this is self-inflicted in the Brexit.

We were at one point, America's closest ally and, in a way, America's bridge into the European Union. Brexit has weakened as on both. but also I think that this is, we have, I've been saying this for months, we've got to wake up to the fact this is a deliberate American strategy. And Roy and I talked last week to the mooch for an episode of leading that's coming out shortly. And he was saying that the only institution in the world of which America has any real fear, apart from China, is the European Union. So this is part of doing down and doing in Europe. And so I just think we've got to wake up to that. And the only way, Rory was asking how do you fight Baukud with,

how could the Icelandic yes campaign have fought back harder, you have to rebut this stuff and you have to take a risk. I honestly feel when Musk comes out with his crap, I think, by the way, the crime stuff, a lot of this is about Trump's attack on Sadiq Khan. Trump has had a strategic attack on Sadiq Khan as mayor of London. So they just talk the whole time about London. You can't walk down the street.

I was at a conference recently here in the UK. There was an American there who said, I really thought long and hard about coming to London, but I got some protection. Fucking nuts. You need more protection in America than you do in Europe. Yeah, I mean, exactly. I think Laurel Rapp, who's the, she's director of the North America program at Chatham House, so I spoke to as well. And she had a great term for it, which was that Trump uses Britain like a, she called it a helpful cudgel. So sort of to reinforce his own domestic narratives and to essentially say, look how terribly they have it, we can't go down that

path. And then the other thing that Kim Darrick was talking about, which is very sort of interesting, is that there's been a massive shift in the US on a broader level. So in 1980, I think, something like 30% of Americans trace their ancestry back to the UK. So that's census data. And now in 2010, the comparable figure was 12%. So he sort of put it like that. He said, you know, that's now a massive proportion of the country who look to other parts of the world, who see Britain as just another country. So those sort of historic ties are declining too. So two other things that maybe we didn't bring out enough.

One of them is that British attitudes towards the US have turned significantly negative. I guess that was picked up in Marston's question with him having an American wife. And then the second thing was there's also data that suggests that US views of the whole world are collapsing. Positive attitudes towards Canada has dropped by 20 points. their attitude towards France has dropped by 19 points. I mean, are these young people basically saying, I don't want a passport, or are they saying that somewhere else they really want to go, somewhere else that they really imagine being terrific?

Yeah, so this is what Christine Wilson from the British Council were saying, and it's fascinating. So essentially, there used to be, from this survey they do, they sort of have studied this, there used to be two things that would define if someone was going to be, a young person was going to view a country's attractive, and that is if they were as if they were, were wealthy and liberal. And so the US, UK, you know, and now that's really no longer true. Instead, they're much more drawn to sort of traditionally authoritarian countries because they like, crucially, their stability.

So while the UK has dropped, we are still very high up, you know, it's not all crisis stations, but while the US, UK has dropped two points since 2016, Saudi is up 17 points, China's up 13. Yeah, so there's been a real shift. She essentially says that the way that people view what's valuable is just changing around the world. It's also a very weird. I'm sorry, final thing that Alice is coming in. But, you know, one of the complaints from the US is we're not relevant anymore because our economy is not booming.

We're a kind of museum. But you would have thought that a museum was at least somewhere you want to go on holiday. I mean, I'm not exactly sure that, I mean, Saudi Arabia got many strengths, but it's not exactly Venice or Florence. I mean, there's a limit to how many cultural sites you can. fit in. I've got to say that, Roy, you know, Phil and I've just had this European tour. I think I told you that everywhere we went, we're meeting Americans saying, God, we love Europe. You've got so much stuff that we just don't have. And so I think there is a, I think, I'm not alone, and I know other Brits who've taken the decision. I am not going to America while Trump is president. I just

think, you know, however pathetically you have to make a stand every now and then. But I I just thought it was really interesting that we, because of Trump, and back to my point about Justice Bender's book and Trump saying, you have to be the loudest voice in the room, because Trump is the loudest American voice in our heads, certainly in my head and certainly in your head, Rory, then we sometimes forget there are millions of really good, decent Americans. And Fiona and I met lots of them wandering around Europe, basically to say, listen, we're really sorry. We're really sorry. We met this couple in France not long ago. who basically we were, I was sitting reading a newspaper and raging at the latest thing that Trump had said or done.

And this woman just lent across this, can I just say we're really sorry? So, you know, there are good Americans out there. See, what was the most surprising thing you found in your research? Well, I was going to say, I'll leave you on a slightly happier note. That same survey from Ipsos in the UK that found one in four Americans think British society is broken. and 67% of them think American society is broken. So, you know, it's not only us, and potentially we don't have it that bad.

So that's the sort of takeaway for you, Martin, as well. Yeah. What surprised you about, I mean, you went to the US too. When were you last there? Have things changed? Did you get a different sense of a different tone? Were you meeting different people, seeing different things? So I lived out there for two years.

And, I mean, I was in New York, which is kind of, I guess, a bubble anyway, protected from me. some of it. But I think the striking thing really, when I was seeing to young people, particularly, it's even that the soft power, so the things that we've always kind of taken for granted, so like our music, our culture, things like that, they were saying, like, you know, I remember when I was younger and I would see on the TV all the time, I don't know, a band or a movie or British products. And now they're even seeing less of that. And so I think it's a much broader thing. And that's what Christine from the British Council was saying as well.

It's like that is our biggest asset in some ways. And that's what the UK should really lean into in going forward. It's making sure that, you know, you don't take those things for granted and you know that they have to be worked at. Well, what was it we said to Lisa Nandi when we interviewed a Britain as a cultural superpower? That has to be the global strategy. Well, Lizzie, thank you for the newsletter. What are you about this week?

Have you decided yet? This week I have interviewed David Blunkett, which is going to be very good, who all about sort of Andy Burnham, he's one of his greatest mentors, as Andy described him, and sort of, you know, what he thinks should be next on Andy Burnham's agenda. All right, Izzy, thanks so much. Thanks very much, guys. Take care. Thank you, Ossie.

I do think this newsletter has been a real boom. It's been a real boom. And also shout out to Emily, who's been bringing it together and keeping all the energy going with it. It's lovely. I mean, I know it involves you suddenly having to do. yet more journalism and yet more writing. But I think we're getting some really interesting stuff in. No, but also I think it was great about, like, so this is his piece on America,

it feels like a proper, old-fashioned piece of newspaper journalism. It's like, it's the sort of stuff that newspapers just are doing less and less of, because they're all clickbaiting and, you know, headlining. Yes, I was sort of thinking about that. I mean, I wonder actually how many, you know, would the mirror still send someone like, is he to the states to do long-form interviews with young people and bring them back and write an article? Unlakely. When I was on the mirror, we had, in fact, sadly, he just died not long ago, but we had a New York bureau chief, we had somebody in Washington. We had our own photographer who just did Hollywood.

The newspapers have become smaller and smaller in terms of their global footprint. And I think that's another reason why we've become more insular. No, so anyway, if you don't get the newsletter already, I do strongly recommend it. Right, should we go to party conferences? Tash, with the reform party conference starting this week, what is the point of party conferences? How have they changed? What will each party expect from theirs this year? Well, let me begin with the conference that I knew best, which was the Conservative Party

conference. So I obviously was a MP and a minister when the party was in government. And it had moved from doing events in places like Blackpool, Brighton, to doing them in Birmingham and Manchester. And so you do them these enormous conference centres. And it was very flashy. I mean, there were huge numbers of stalls hired by different companies. You had all the ambassadors coming in. And really, a Tory party conference was somewhere between a massive networking event, a chance for Boris Johnson to turn up uninvited and give a friend.

meeting and completely destabilise the sitting government. It's also a place where young party activists go and get really drunk and misbehave. I think controlling them is quite difficult. Yeah. But it wasn't, unfortunately, by the time I got to it, really something really for party members, which was what it's originally designed for, because the tickets got more and more expensive. And you'd gone from a world when my mother was young, when we had one and a half million members of Conservative Party to about 100,000. And increasingly, it was corporate lobbyists. and very, very highly organized choreographed speeches. And I wondered why journalists were still turning up.

I could see why the lobby turned up, the kind of inner core turned up to get their gossip. But it was very, very rare to really find that anything happened other than Portrait May getting in trouble because she would trip over or she would seem to be on the edge of tears. It was an opportunity to sort of look for symbolic, moments and premierships. Over to you. Party conferences, no doubt about this, they have changed a lot. I sometimes get the blame for the change at the Labour Party conference, but I think it came at a time

when they were all changing. And I think it was the television age that changed them. Because, you said, when I was a journalist, party conferences, particularly the Labor Party conference, they were, you know, the big political story came from massive, genuine political disagreement and debate. And so what that did was just communicate to the public a sense of a sort of disorganized rabble, which of course, you know, didn't necessarily reflect terribly well on the party. So we, you know, we had a very deliberate strategy to make them more organized. But I think now, I mean, I'll probably go to, I'm going to go to the Labour Party conference. I was moderately tempted to go to the Reform Party Commons, but just

diary means I can't. The other thing is that I think the Reform Party Commons will be interesting this time. They've got a lot of money. They're going to look like an American party Congress. Boy, have they got a lot of money. They've got a lot of money. Don't want to ask too closely where their money came from. Well, can I just say to journalists, we do not yet have

Nigel Faris on camera properly being grilled about the financing of reform. Any journalist who is going to Reforms conference, if you don't get him doing that, then you're not a proper journalist. I'll just say that, put it out of there now. If all you do is go and say welcome to,

you know, age 10, we're now going to talk to Zia Yusuf about some latest bullshit line that Robert Jenrick has made up. Party conference, journalism, you should be there to scrutinise and challenge not just to say what they're saying the whole time. Shout out to Tom Burgess, who's written another really good article in The Guardian, called Arms and the Five Million Pound Man, Farage Megadona Christopher Harbourn's military empire. Yeah, well, Tom Burgess, of course, is one of the great experts on dirty money in London. So I wonder why he's been drawn to talking about the reformed financing story. Very interesting. Just talking to money.

if you do go to the reform conference, Rory, for a nice $3,600, you can have breakfast with Nigel Farage. Beautiful. You get the food for that as well. You get eggs, you get toast, you get coffee, get orange juice, 3,600. I mean, do you actually get to talk to him? You're on like a table of 100 people where you get a little selfie.

I suspect that for this platinum tier, you probably, they're basically saying, however many we get, we're going to take them. So if he gets 10 people paying $3,600 for breakfast, he'll have 10, but he might get 100, he might get 1,000. Then he's got, what's 3,600 times 1,000?

3 million. So that's almost as much, almost as much as he got up from Christopher Harbourn for his gift. And the problem is you're joking about this, but of course, actually people will pay. I mean, if you're a company, you might well be tempted to think

I really need to get Farage because Farage's economic policy is not clear. So let's say you're an energy company. You want to know, has he changed his view on wind turbines? If you're a bank, you want to know, is he still talking about windfall taxes? If you are in the land property business, is he interested in land taxes? Whereas if you're an international investor, what's he doing about capital gains tax? So there will be a lot of people trying to find out what on earth this party, which still, in some of the polls, James Johnson's poll, again, looks like they will have.

have more seats than anyone else in the next parliament. Yeah, and that's why, if I can repeat my point about journalism, I can imagine the journalist going and seeing that, oh, and business has got itself really interested. And there's the guy from this firm, and there's the guy from that firm. The story is the money. We don't have the answers to where the money's come from and why and what they're doing with it.

So can you just stop falling for the reform PR bullshit the whole time? Now, the other party conferences, is, Lib Dems have really got a final way of cutting through because at the moment they're not. Just sorry, just remind people, they have a staggering number of members of Parliament. I mean, it's one of the most successful elections they've ever had in terms of the numbers of Parliament. Yeah. And yet, oddly, despite having more than 10 times the number of members of parliament as reform, they get 1% of the coverage. Yeah, well, that's partly because of the media, but it's also because they're not cutting through in the way that maybe they've got to find a big argument.

How do they cut through? I think they need a national message. And it's true. every time I say this, they send me boring speeches saying, oh, we've already made that point. It's not fair. Well, the fact is they're not successfully communicating. It's all very well sending me speeches and saying, well, he made that point. I know there's a risk in this, but I think it should be Europe. I know there's a risk, but it should be Europe. And then you've got Labor, which obviously is going to be interesting because it's Andy Berners' first conference,

and Labor's the party of government. Labor grassroots still do have an ability to influence the debate. I mean, it's very controlled, much more control. than it used to be. But I think Gaza could become an issue, you know. I think Gaza could become an issue. I wonder if AI might become an issue. So we'll see what happens there. And then the Tories, it's a bit of churn going on in the Tories, Rorya.

Pritipat out, Tom Tugan Hat in, James Cleverly off to try to become London mayor. Now here's one for you. I'm sure you don't know the answer to this because you won't have talked to get me about it. Has Pritty Patel being given the boot? Or is Priti Patel telling the truth when she says she's going off to rebuild, develop links with other Conservative parties around?

the world. I think that's an unlikely story. I don't think on the basis, I mean, this is, you know, this is pretty listening to this, maybe throwing things at the radio set. The Pretty Patel, I know, would not have stepped down from being shadow foreign secretary to build links with other parties across the round around the world. Does Pretty listen to podcasts, Vera Wireless, that we have said. How it is, he's not very bold, is it? And what about James Cleverly? Can you see him becoming the mayor? Well, interestingly, I got some polling on that. I mean, obviously, this is the same. something I've got a set interest in because I ran to be a Laramare. But somebody's just sent me something saying, I don't think cleverly can win. He can't get the reform's second preferences

a Tory would need to win and is too conservative for the left. Where would reform the second preferences go, re-restore? That's a really interesting question. Or there might be none at all. But this guy is obviously writing to me saying this is the perfect chance for the Rory independent candidate to coming through the centre that I get into second place behind Sidde Khan and then I can scoop up the Conservative Second Preferences. Yeah. There was, by the way, I went to Norwich Burnley on Saturday and there was a restore Britain gathering protest outside the railway station.

I don't think it was for me because one of them on the return journey asked me if I would stop for a to take a selfie, so he was much nicer to me than Rupert Lowe. Although Norwich fans enjoyed singing. Yeah, this was a pretty nasty story. Are you prepared to share that on the podcast? I thought it was quite funny. Well, it does show that you're quite famous, but it did sound quite unpleasant.

Go on, tell us what happened. Well, what happened was I was going, because I loved Delia Smith and Michael her husband, I was going to go to the director's box with them, because they're big Norwich figures, but for various reasons, they couldn't go to the game. So I went to the way end with my sons,

Roy and Callum. But I was very, very close to the front. And it was bad enough that we lost four-one, and we had a man said toves. It wasn't a great game, gave out. But I started to hear these voices, go, Campbell Campbell, you're a word that cannot be repeated, beginning with C. Okay, so I thought that was a bit unpleasant.

But then they started seeing a much more innovative song about, I don't know how to put this without sort of being too crude, fallacious. Yeah. And myself and a former prime minister. Yeah. Who's well known to all of us. Maybe for the younger listeners, we could recharacterize that as a sexual relationship between you and a former Labour Prime Minister that you're very close to.

And I did deny the centrality of the allegation, but it was moderately funny. I was very pleased that there was a couple of... But was this, like, a few people, or did quite a lot of the crowd get into this chart? It wasn't the whole lot. It was about, I'd say, we were talking maybe about 100 or so, I don't know. Does that often happen to you at football matches, that they start? I've heard it's not the first time. It's the first time I've had that particular song.

Yeah. I've had the first one quite a lot. I did have, as you, once, we were playing at QPR once when this was during, I think it was probably after the Iraq war, but I was still around on the scene. And they invaded the pitch, these protesters, they knew where I was sitting. And the way, had these posters, Campbell is of this, Campbell is of that war criminal, whatever. Anyway, I spoke to our manager, I inquil after the game. And he said, it was all that about. He said, oh, you know, he's just sort of anti-war thing.

He said, one of the assistant coaches, Tertram, has said, why are they protesting against soup? Oh. So at least the Norwich fans were sort of moderately well-informed. Oh, that's good. Let me do probably the most awkward tilt of all, which is to say that we talk a lot about politics in terms of communications, mood music, money, but in the end, it's policy.

and we've bring in a very serious policy analyst, Dan Needle, to talk in particular about the options that governments could face around taxes really relevant because we've got a budget coming and we've got stories now on the front of the papers that John Healy is considering stealth taxes, wealth taxes. And this is Dan both arguing against things that a lot of our listeners like listeners who favor,

you know, Gary Stevenson, for example, and believe that we should be doing more taxes. Dan's trying to argue why that's the wrong approach. He's a progressive, labor voting tax expert who's making, I think, some very, very sensible old-fashioned centrist arguments for how you should think about taxing people in the country. Really worth listening to it. And I'm desperately hoping the government's listening to it before the budget. I also want to recommend it because it reveals yet again that if there's one issue, that can really provoke a visceral emotional response

in the normally calm, collected Rory Stewart. It's wealth taxes. It really, really, really gets to him. By the way, just talking to John Healy, if it's true that he's going slow on the commitment to 3% of GDP on defence, can you imagine how Kyrsaver feels right now?

I know. I know. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, just to remind us if you haven't fully got that connection. John Healy, the sort of solid member of Kier's government, basically brought down his government resigning because it wasn't going to hit the 3% commitment on defence.

He's now the chance for the exchequeror in charge the money, and it sounds like he said he's not going to hit the 3% target on defence. The last question, Rory, Felix from London, is a question to me, but I'm going to flip it to you. Alastra, I enjoyed your piece in the newsletter, another plug for the newsletter, about your trip to Slovenia. what are your favorite places in the world? Well, Slovenia's definitely gone into my list for sure.

Was your number one? If you were only allowed to go to one place before you die, what would it be? I love places up on the edge of the Himalayas. So I would probably, if I had one last chance, I'd go up to Afghanistan, go up to the Bamiyan Valley, get up into the hills there. People who haven't done it and it's difficult to do and people have strong views on not maybe wanting to go on the Taliban are in charge. But Afghanistan is unlike anywhere on earth. I've just done an interview with Annan Gopal, who was talking to me about Syria, talking to me about Iraq. And he agreed with me that of all the places he's reported in the world, Afghanistan is the most unique, the most different, the most extraordinary people. And partly it is the dry, deep, Prussian blue sky over the mountains that makes it so unique. We're thinking I was only allowed to go to one country ever for the rest of.

to my life, I think it would have to be Scotland. I love Ethiopia, and I have really very, very fond memories of Ethiopia, and back to mountains, some of the mountains above, just not that far from Madis Ababa. And I've got a very, very, very soft spot for different parts of Australia. Well, Scotland on that, I mean, I've just come back from five weeks from Scotland, and I, you know, was meeting as I came down to London, all these people who'd gone off to France on holiday, who were Boiled to death. And it's been incredible, particularly that whole region, which I love so much, which is less exotic than your Western Isles, which is the junction between the lowlands, the highlands, that whole Perth-Sherangar stretch that takes you from Locker and Head right the way up to Blair Gowery. I think it's one of the most lovely places on Earth.

Yeah, yeah. Well, Slovenia, I think one of the reasons I love Slovenia is actually in lots of ways they'd remind me of Scotland. Water, mountains, forests, really warm people. Really warm people of Slovenia. They were really, really nice. So I would definitely recommend Slovenia Felix if you've not been there. So, Roy, there we go. We've talked about what we talked about.

We had a long shift today, haven't we? Well, we went from Iceland. We then did UK Russia. We did UK-US with Izzy, the author on our amazing newsletter. And then we got into party conferences, and we finished with what our favourite place to visit is. But along the way, we had the fans chanting at you at the Norwich game. I'm not going to sing the song.

Although I am going to say this. I am going to say this. Matt Ford, very funny comedian, very, very big Tony Blair fan. Yeah. He did send me a message saying, is this true? I'm jealous. Now, what his wife is going to think of that? I just do not know.

But there we are. She's Scottish, so she'd probably give him a bit of a hard time. What I want coverage on it, she asked her, is at some point if it ever becomes possible. and I know this is difficult because you keep dropping up and down, but I'm very interested in relationship between Burnley and I'm inipswich, just as I'm interested in relationship between Alastair Gamble and David Gork, who's my... Oh, why are you

interested? Well, Burnley, Ipswich are in the Premier League, and we're not? That's the... But do you not keep swapping? Are you not both on the margins back and forth? It's called yo-yo. It's called being a yo-yo club. Yeah. And if we don't yo-yo again, I mean, we've got the parachute payments this time,

but, you know, some clubs, once they've been yo-yoing, and then they stop yo-yoing up, they can go into sort of financial difficulties. I hope we don't do that. Just talking about eipschish, though, Rory, talking about hope. Well, is this hope, but it's certainly positivity. Most of the front pages today were recording on Monday, really. They've got the picture of the two sons of the police officer, one of the police officers who was killed in the awful incident in Middlesbrough. And he was a big Manchester United fan, and so are they. And they were the mascots yesterday at the Man United Games. So fair play Man United for doing that. But also fair play

to those boys. I mean, to do that, they're aged eight and six, and they're marching out, and there's a moment's sort of remembrance for their dad. And I've also noticed Nigel Farage yet to say anything about the death, as I understand it, of those police officers. I wonder what he'd have said if the five people in the car had been called Muhammad or Aziz or Ali. There we are. Right. Well, Alison, that's a slightly grim note to end on. But thank you. Look forward to speaking very soon. I'm off to California, off the West Coast, to see more of your dreaded AI people tomorrow morning. Excellent.

And I'll report when I'm back. Yeah. See you soon. Take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

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