The Rest Is Politics - 573. Burnham and Carney vs. Trump, and the Diana Dispute

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

As Burnham meets Trump face-to-face for the first time at the UN General Assembly, will he adopt Mark Carney’s or Keir Starmer’s approach to dealing with the US President? With Carney receiving a standing ovation in the European Parliament and championing “deep cooperation” between Europe and Canada, is Britain in danger of being outflanked in its relationship with the continent? Where do Rory and Alastair stand on the allegations made by Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, about the King? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Gordon Brown 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 Lead Video Editor: Josh Smith Video Editors: Caroline Kaye, Bruno Di Castri Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're recording this as world leaders gather now in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Andy Burnham, the British Prime Minister, is preparing for his very first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. And across Europe, governments are confronting Russian sabotage. In Germany, the far right and the far left have just dominated elections. And countries like Canada are looking for new alliances as the old Atlantic order becomes less certain. And at the center of all this, sits the United Nations, an institution created for a very different world. For 80 years, we've talked about a rules-based international order. But what happens when the rules are no longer agreed?

The great powers no longer trust each other, and America itself is questioning the system it once underwrote. So what is the United Nations actually for now? What should it become? And if the old order is disappearing, what institutions can still keep the peace? This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. 100 pounds. That is what one message to a friend.

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So to get the best discount of your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash Restors Politics. That's NordvPn.com slash rest is politics. and the link is in the episode description. Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

They all heap to blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant. What would happen if I stop doing? You starve. You freeze to death.

That's what? With great power comes great deniability. I'm not the earth, Danny. Digger. See the trail online. Only the years October 2nd. Welcome to the rest of politics. We're me, Alecester Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart.

So, Rory, we're going to talk a lot about the UN. Andy Burnham's there today. Lots of World leaders there. He's got his first sort of big meeting with Trump. But also, what's the UN for? Is it functional? What's it future look like? Who's going to lead it after Gutierrez,

of whom you're not a massive fan? And we're also going to talk about whether you like it or not, the Charles Spencer attack upon your friend of king. It sort of feels incredibly both consequential and inconsequential. And I'll say what I mean by that. I watched Gutierrez talking about his priorities for the summit, for the hunger, and he said, he set out three, runaway artificial intelligence, climate change, and growing inequalities. Okay. And he said these were existential threats, plug for Rory's new miniseries. And he then said, and we need to work hard towards peace in the

Middle East and ending the war in Ukraine. And as he said those five things, I thought, yeah, he's probably right, but the UN's voice in that is, well, it's sort of, it's, I can't even use the word weak. It's like, what is it? Where is it? Where is the UN place in all this? And of course, we can all criticise as you and I do, Donald Trump's endless failures on different specific policy areas, but he set the strategic goal to weaken the United Nations, and he's done it. And it's with consequences. Yeah. I think the first thing is, US weakened it in a very straightforward way. Money? Yeah. In many of these agencies received almost half their funding from the US. So when the US stopped its funding, there was complete crisis in all these agencies.

And they still owe up to nearly four billion, whereas the Chinese have actually paid their dues. Right. And owing four billion, which one imagines under Trump, they're not going to pay. He's not famous for paying his debts, is it? And then you've introduced the second point, which is, of course, as the US contribution goes down, the contribution of China, the other major economy in the world becomes more and more important. And raises the question, what are the UN's for? And this will become more and more important as we get close to hiring a new secretary general. My sense of it is the UN's probably been through three phases and it's now looking for a fourth. First, see, set up after the Second World War, where I think if you were Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin or Churchill Truman Stalin,

you thought that really it was going to be a way of the great powers together, the people who eventually became a security council, the great powers of those days policing the world together. Then they got an awkward shock in the 50s and 60s when it suddenly turned out that all these new countries joining the UN turned out to be considerably more independent than people thought. First shock was when Nero put formal criticism of South Africa on the agenda. And then you had this amazing guy, Utant, and Doug Hammerskolt, these were two really interesting figures who made the UN central to peace. Doug Hammerskult on Suez, Utant on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Newtown, of course, a relatively mild-mannered, middle-aged Burmese civil servant-turned minister, who suddenly became a kind of rock-star celebrity in New York. And it's a lovely book about him by his grandson, Tampin New, which is a really lovely account for that. Then we fast forward to the period where you and I, I think, were mostly dealing with the UN, which is the period after 1989. So America emerges triumphant. And at this point, the UN goes from being something that's doing niche peacekeeping to a much more expansive vision, where it's going to be doing human rights, governance, peace and security all over the world.

And it's part of a general story that in the 90s, the whole world is, and you can see it in the data every year, there are fewer refugees, there are more democracies, there are fewer conflicts, right? All going the right direction. Somewhere at the heart of this is the UN. It lets everybody down in Rwanda. It manages to recover a bit of credibility in its involvement maybe in places like Bosnia and Cambodia. And now we're in a completely different world. And I guess the question is, given, firstly, a succession of useless Secretary General's. I mean, this current Guy Gutierrez is just no good at all.

That is harsh. Terrible, terrible, terribly, we don't get into that in a second. And then collapse of the rules-based international order and the US backing, because in some ways maybe this story I'm telling the 90s is a story about the US and how the US want to use it. Where does it go now? Over to you?

I think he's useless. I think he's just inherited an incredibly tough wicket. I don't know if the Portuguese play cricket, but is inherited a very, very tough wicket because of this sense that the big powers are seeing the United Nations as more of a challenge to them

than something that they're controlling. I still think United Nations, you know, our friend Tom Fletcher, the humanitarian stuff that they do, I think there are some of the peacekeeping missions that they do where the UN's played a really important role. But I think in terms of their place in the dominant global agenda,

they've just been squeezed out. And if you go back to, you mentioned the time we were there, of course, you know, in the, say like the buildup to the Iraq war, one of the really big things was Tony Blair persuading George Bush at least to try to take it through the United Nations. We do these things better if we do have the authority of the United Nations. But I think what you've got now, so if you go back to the start, most of the vetoing, so just to explain to those people who don't know,

but you've got five powers who are the permanent five on the Security Council, and they all have the power of veto, and that's you. China, UK, France, Russia. Back in the day, back when the whole thing started, the Soviet Union was the biggest vetoer. I don't know if vetoer is a word, but the biggest vetoing power. It's now America. It's now America that is stopping the international approach. Now, you still have bilateral deals going on. So America and China quite recently, for example, on Afghanistan, America has divied up to pay for Afghanistan. They have let China take the lead in terms of it. So there's these bilateral deals going on. And then you have these interesting partnerships. So it's Denmark and Pakistan

have come together, leading together on trying to deal with the issue of UN peacekeepers coming under attack, which happens, sadly, all too often. But the point about the leadership is so important. So you say, harshly, I think, Teteris is useless. I think it's just that he's operating with these incredibly powerful, particularly the America and China and Russia, of course, doing what it's doing in Ukraine. But if you, so he's now coming into the end of his term, 10 years and it's the end. And I mean, you and I follow this stuff very, very closely. So Michel Bachelet, who was the former president of Chile, she's just pulled out, she's no longer standing. So the candidates we're left with to take over, Yvonne Abaki, Maria Fernanda Espinoza Garses, former Foreign Minister

of Ecuador, Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rebecca Greenspan, or Grinspan, former second vice president of Costa Rica, and head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, who apparently at the moment is the favourite, Olara Otunu, former Aguanda Foreign Minister, Carolyn Rodriguez Birkett, Guyana permanent representative. at the UN. And I have to be honest, the only one that I knew anything about, Mackie Salle, who is the former president of Senegal. So they are the runners and riders to take over. Now, what does that say? And partly there's the old rotating thing. It's meant to be somebody from the Latin America or Caribbean next up. But I think what you're seeing with those names

is that people know that America, China, they're not going to have a big figure. They don't want somebody who's going to be able to... Well, it's interesting. Only one of them is that actually a head of state is interesting. So if you're Andy Burnham, because Britain as a member of security council, will be a relatively influential voice in trying to guide this. And I remember when I was a minister in the foreign office, how much time we spent sitting, scratching our heads, looking at candidates, lobbying for candidates, often very unsuccessfully for different UN agencies. There's a choice on what type of person they want. Are they looking for somebody who's going to be a very, very skilled peace negotiator, which is,

a kind of UTAM model. Are they looking for someone who's going to be an extraordinary communicator? Or are they going to be looking for what the US often talks about, which is somebody who does the management administration, cuts the costs, gets the bureaucracy going on. Well, that's obviously what the Americans keep wanting. They're constantly pressing for cuts to programs, cuts to budget, some of which are incredibly important. You know, they're trying to cut down the Kosovo mission. They're cutting down in Colombia. So there are these places where the UN have, you know, done a good job. I don't think we should, you know, and often incredible, difficult, dangerous circumstances. Let me come in on that. I mean, like you, I've kind of grown up

around the UN and a lot of my international life was about working with the UN, admiring the UN. In fact, if you'd asked me five years ago what the great job I would want in life and that I haven't had yet what to do next to my life, I would love to be an SRSG, a special representative secretary general in a country, you know, working like the amazing... This is the latest job advertisement for Rory's shirt. Exactly. Whichever you are, you know, deputy vice president, whichever country, I will back your candidacy if I can come the SRSG and DRC. No, but I mean, they are amazing figures. So, for example, Hans Gruber in Yemen has done an incredible job. Lacked Abrahimi, maybe in Afghanistan. It's a towering Algerian figure. Sergio de Mello, who I was with in Iraq shortly before he was killed in 2003. These extraordinary figures, and on the ground, they held their own with any general ambassador, foreign minister, and they really convened.

Then on another level, the technical expertise can be incredible. I'm very struck in Ethiopia and again in Jordan by UNICEF and their water work. In that case, it was a huge tool. I think he was an Australian who was running the UNICEF office, who was doing crazy. incredible work in the desert, moving water around, and he was funny and relaxed. UNHCR and all the camps. Exactly. They did loads of good stuff.

I think, but I think we're dealing with America in particular and Trump in particular. They don't want strong people. And I think one of the criticisms, I'm not going to, I say, useless, but one of the criticisms made of Guterres by people inside the UN, I think is that he hasn't focused enough on the core purpose of peace and security. And partly because he maybe felt pushed out from that, let's just take Gaza and Israel. Trump got the support of the UN for his approach, but the consequence of which has been to sort of push the UN out of the process. And we now have the ridiculous Board of Peace.

Which essentially would in the past have been a UN-conve body. Correct. And so the United Nations, I can't remember the last time that there was a sort of serious discussion about Israel, Gaza and the United Nations Security Council. Just quickly to remind people, the Board of Peace is kind of one of the great symbols of our time. Apart from the fact, it's a lovely pun, and it sounds like Trump is Board of Peace. But it's also that it's personal to him. It's not even connected to the US government. It's him.

He nominates his successor. There's a membership fee, which mostly the Gulf states seem to be paying. They can get rid of him, provided that he agrees would be got rid of. Then they really can't get rid of him, can't they? That sounds like a real ability. Putting in a billion dollars, who controls the money, where does the money get? It's a really incredible sort of medieval entity. I mean, more like, I don't know, Henry II setting up some new,

Church Foundation than any way of doing global governments. Now, why is Guterres useless? I believe he's useless, and you don't want to use these words, but exactly in that area you're talking about, it is astonishing that he was not right on a plane in the middle of the Russia-Ukraine thing on the ground dominating that. Because what are UN Secretary-General's good at? It's not necessarily the kind of long-protracted civil war stuff, where, as you say, the causes are so complicated, and they go back so many hundreds of years that you really do need civil society, women's movements, all this stuff that was going on in the Northern Ireland peace process alongside the big guys. They're particularly good at state conflict or should be, where it really is a question of

sitting Russians and Ukrainians together or Iran. You know, why on earth have the mediators been Pakistan and Oman? Yeah, yeah. Or even, to be fair, you know, Qatar or UAE, which has been doing stuff on the Great Dam between Ethiopia and Egypt, right? Why is it then? Why is it not the UN? And the answer is, Guterres should be saying, excuse me, Pakistan has vested interests. It's a very complicated player here. Why should Pakistan be mediating between the US and Iran with the United Nations? This is our job. But when I go through that list of his potential successes, and it's a quite sort of opaque process, they have all these sort of, you know, straw poles and you're not meant to overtly lobby and there's all that sort of nonsense. But you go through those, it's, now look, there may be within them a hidden. character and leadership skills that you and I sitting here in Britain have not necessarily been aware of. But it's unlikely. It's unlikely that a list of people that most of our listeners

and viewers will not have heard of, one of whom is going to become the leader of one of the most important organizations in the world at a time when we know, because they say it, that the big powers, particularly US, China, Russia, don't want the United Nations to matter quite so much. So if you don't have that leadership symbolic figure who is strong, who is respected, who is seen as what do they think, what is he or she going to say, then we can further. I think we're violently in agreement that the key role should be somebody who can do the peace and security stuff and secretary stuff. I think we're also violently in agreement that a lot of the agencies on the ground do really good work. Not all of them. Although I liked

Akim Steiner who ran UNDP, I've got some questions about the huge UN development program and whether that's really what we should be doing, which is pumping traditional development money through UN agencies in that way. But certainly, UNHCR, UNICEF, etc. But there's the third bit, which I think they should be much more confident about and they're not doing enough on. And my example on that is that dam. So that's a classic example. It's something which brings Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan together. It's very complicated cross-border work, because it's to do with what you do if there's a drought, what happens upstream. It's got massive environmental impact. So it's got the first thing which the UN's about, which is it's multilateral and it's owned by all the member

states. But secondly, theoretically, it's impartial. And thirdly, it's got the technical expertise. It's got all the hydrologists. It's got the water experts. It's got the political experts. So that's exactly the kind of thing, particularly environment climate, where the UN should be doing more and more and more. But the problem is that what actually happens on the ground is it turns that is the United Arab Emirates leading on it. The funding's very uncertain. If the funding, and often the funding is coming from one or two particular countries, which makes everyone unaccused of being biased. And then the technical experts, the hydrologists, don't feel confident politically. They sort of shuffle around the background.

Let's just take people into the United Nations. It's quite an ugly building. I thought you quite like that kind of scandy look of all that kind of stripped pine and brass and big windows looking at the Hudson. Maybe it's because I think the building is quite ugly. But inside, particularly during Unger Week, it is just chaos. And so let's talk a little bit about Andy Burner or what he's going to do, because this is his first meeting with Trump. You know, we talk about Andy having quite a lot of luck along the way. I think he's quite lucky at this.

It's not going to be as big a deal as if he was going to Washington. It's not going to be as big a deal as if Trump were in the UK. Why? Because lots of leaders are meeting lots of leaders. And the other thing is happening at this time where Trump has had his latest tantrum against the media and has kicked out some of the key media, including CNN, at which, Alleluia, how often are we been saying, when are they going to stand up for each other? The broadcasters, including Fox News, have said, we're not going to do the poll.

Isn't that amazing that Fox News were the first to announce? Yeah. And this is a real problem for Trump, because there's nothing he enjoys more than dominating all of television. And suddenly now he's had to set up his own television channel. Well, it's hilarious because he was doing a ribbon-case. thing yesterday. And the pool didn't turn up. So there's no for live coverage. And of course, one of the problems with the media is they think that whatever Trump does is newsworthy,

which is not. So they cover everything he does. So they put it on the White House YouTube channel, but the pool also does the audio. So there was no audio. So you've got nine minutes of watching Donald Trump holding a pair of scissors and talking to guys in hard hats. Nobody knows what sort of rubbish he's talking coming out with. So it's sort of And they need to do more of this. Take away his oxygen because he doesn't deserve it. So let's just say, I don't know, Andy Burnham may have a pull, okay? Right.

So Andy Burnham probably will want to be filmed, seen, etc. So this meeting will not happen in the place that we all know so well, which is this horrible British basement down a whole series of side corridors. Well, it probably been the American one, but that's not much better. It's a bit bigger. But you really have to, I remember once we had a meeting, I can't remember who it was with, but we really had to struggle to get the flags in the background because it was like this tiny, little long. The British one is extraordinary. You actually look like you're going down the sort of

service bits of the elevator shafts through various bits of covers. Yeah. And then they put, they prop up the flags and then I certainly as a foreign office minister then pretend to look like, I mean, I'm some shaking hands with a president of Somalia looking as though I know what I'm doing. Exactly. So Andy Byrne, and the thing is, what's the risk when you're dealing with Donald Trump? It's that he comes out with some nonsense that kind of drives the agenda suddenly. Let's say he did. I'm also going to be talking to Millie. He's having a few problems, but I can help him on this Falkins thing, or he does his United Ireland thing. Or he says something about, I don't know, Sadiq Khan and immigration. He can come up with anything. Just to get inside Trump's head for a second. It's not necessarily that, you know, he sits down with this little paper before he goes in saying one of my three points. It's that he somehow with some animal instinct. Yeah. Senses where the story might be. And where the weakness of the person is. Right. So I think, for example, when, do you remember we did when we did our live show? I showed the video of Trump dropping the papers and Keir Starman bending down to pick them up.

I think that was deliberate. Right. I think he was trying to make him look small. I think in Scotland, when he sat there in the United Kingdom and started laying into Sadiq Khan. And I was sitting there saying, Kier fucking hit back. Yeah. Right. And Keir just sort of sat there.

So I think Andy, I hope Andy Burnham, and of course we'll know, because this episode is going to go out after this meeting has taken place. Obviously, Andy Burnham will hope that nothing sort of ridiculous happens. But I hope if there is something like this, if for really, if for really, you know, example, he talks about Ukraine. You know, and it's Zelensky's fault. I really hope that Andy says, well, no, I've got to say the British position is, we totally support Ukraine and Zelensky's a fine man. So on our map where we've got Kani, who comes out pretty clearly saying, I'm not going to be a US vessel. We're setting up an independent middle-pass thing. And Stama, who's down there picking up the bits of paper. The cliche in the British papers at the moment is that Burnham sort of puts

himself in the middle, has a little bit of both. I'm not sure that's... a very clear value statement or a very clear way of driving the foreign office. And this is something that worried me, if people haven't listened to the Ed Miliband in view, I thought it was terrific. But one of the things that worried me a little bit in the heart of that is I was struggling to really read beyond Gaza what the big Kani-like foreign policy vision was, particularly in relation to the US. You know, for example, it sounds as though, as usual, our security services, our military and everyone is defaulting into a pro-U.S. position on Iran, despite this. fact that they are bankrupting our economy in every single way. I mean, the major problem

the Chancellor is facing is Trump's war in Iran. I'll give you an example of that where I think a different approach would have been appropriate. Hexeth this week said it was, quote, shameful that Europe did not support the Americans and the Israelis in the attack on Iran. Now, I would have liked several European leaders to come forward and said, well, you can say it's shameful. We all have to represent our own national interest. And right now, our national interest is most represented by the need to deal with the economic consequences of what you've done. And point out, say, not only was it not shameful, it was completely the correct decision. It was sensible.

Let me just run through the 17 catastrophes you've imposed on the world by your stupid decision. Now, I don't think they can necessarily say that. This is the thing with, I thought with Ed Bilibad, I thought I had a long, long chat with him afterwards. And I think because his head was so in the weeds of Israel, Gaza. and I wouldn't underestimate how much of a push that was to get that through the system. That actually when it came, I think he thought, Israel Gaza, that's all they want to talk about. And then when we get on to Iran, I agree with you. I think he sort of defaulted to a position.

I think Ed is going to be doing some pretty big, difficult things within the foreign office. So I wouldn't be too harsh on that. What I would say, though, is I think the, I think Cardi is showing real leadership. Weirdly, no, not weirdly, because, you know, I think she's pretty good. I thought von der Leyen's response to Carney, or the statement she made in advance of Carney, I thought was showing really... And this was the offer of the associate membership of the European Union. And I was really disappointed by some of the Europeans' response to that.

It was basically this is not, you know, would have to change the treaty. This is more complicated than it sounds. What were they doing? Why were they responding so bureaucratically and foolishly? So depressing. What this should be doing is saying this shows that Europe understands the scale of change in the world and that we have to make change as well. And this was a big deal.

This was the European Parliament where the Prime Minister of Canada is invited to follow the speech by von der Leyen, which is like the State of the Union, the State of the European Union. And he is in the room for that. And then a day later, he makes this, well, he comes to Liverpool to watch a football match,

Dundi Burnham. He goes back and he makes this speech, which essentially was, I guess it was the next challenge. after the Davos speech that you and I saw, where he was talking about this being a rupture rather than a transition, and he was setting out how we really don't have to just buy this other vision, even though it's noisy, even though it's loud, these are my words, not his, we have our own interests, we have a good understanding of the big issues that are facing

us, let's meet them together. And such leadership, because it's about a solution. It's so unusual to have someone like that, not just to do. describe the problems of the world or pretend or pretend we can go back to the world that used to exist, but come up with a new vision. I mean, Karni's, I thought, look, Karni's a very good speaker, and it was a very clever speech. I loved the starting with trees, ending with trees, Gertrter. I wonder whether, do you think Trump's ever heard of Gertr? No. Not even heard of him, even though his dad was

basically German. Very confident he's not heard of Gertr. He's not heard of Gertr. Not heard of Gertr. You can get a friend to ask him in the press pool, but I can guarantee he hasn't heard of Gertr. Okay. So, anyway. It was a really clever speech, and it spoke to this change, the scale of change that is being inflicted by Trump, by the undermining of the international rules-based order, but also saying, so therefore we have to adapt. And I just think the other leaders need to be a bit stronger. Well, tell us about the speech. People sort of talk about historic. You know, he's the prime minister of Canada, okay, over there on the top of the North America.

and you have von der Leyen, the President of European Commission, who makes a speech sort of just a tribute to this guy's leadership, the change is leaning into, offers this associate membership. Now, okay, the bureaucrats come out and say, well, it doesn't mean anything. And even the Canadians were coming out and saying, well, we prefer to think that strong alliance. It's absolutely awful. Just lean into it. Yeah.

Lean into it. Well, let me just sort of on that one. They've got to begin developing the muscles and the confidence in which Carney is beginning to develop. I mean, because this is something you would talk about. It's going through the whole Canadian system. It's not just Carney. He's the National Security Council actually does planning around how do we get

strategic autonomy in 10 critical areas. How do we think about what would happen if the US did X, Y, or Z? I mean, it's soaked into the system. And so they know how to do this. Now, Vondelion's obviously getting there. Macron, France. Which I was surprised by. Which is very exciting.

Yes, no, you're right. You're right. You wouldn't necessarily guess that. Macron and France presumably have a goldist tradition where they know how to talk a little bit about strategic autonomy. But my God, this is the opportunity for Burnham. Because if you could add to that Carney's voice, I mean, Britain, Canada's a wonderful country, but Britain is a larger economy. It's a larger military. It's more influential potential in the world. And we're in Europe. And Burnham could be doing this. The two of them together. And why not a partnership? After all, we have the same king, part of the same Commonwealth. Why don't they make? make that a partnership together. Look, I think I could be completely wrong, could be wishful thinking. I think the government is going to do a big move on Europe at some point. I think at the moment, one of the things that's holding them back, I'm afraid, is, as you call him, my friend Emmanuel Macron, I think the French are being quite difficult on this. But I was surprised even, I know we're going

to talk about Germany in question time, but the Germans were sort of a bit iffy about this and why won't we consult it, or isn't the bureaucracy takes over. What she was doing and what Carney was doing was actually setting out what people are desperate for is sort of a projection of a future vision beyond this world that Donald Trump is trying to create. And it's hope and it's a solution. I think the danger over the last four years is all of us have exquisitely analyzed the collapse of the rules-based international order. The great thing now, which is giving us energy over the last year, is there's a solution. There's a vision for what it could look like, which is the middle power of lights and how to get that.

Which does go against what we've just been talking about, which is the importance of the United Nations as the body in which this is held. So I think the United Nations... Not sure, though. Let me put... I think these things could... If the UN is doing a Secretary General who focuses on two or three major conflicts

and fixing them, great agencies on the ground, delivering water with UNICEF and refugee stuff, fantastic technical expertise cross-border, that could sit very comfortably with US-China middle powers. And I think the middle powers should be contributing more to the UN,

because that will be part of their multilateral values. Let me just so make the Tory argument for why Burnham being lockstep with Carney. I mean, I almost want two eyes, meld them together. It actually provides him with some cover on the Europe story. For Tories, people who are suspicious of Europe, they love the Commonwealth. They love the idea of the king. They love the idea of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. So actually, what Burnham would be doing there is demonstrating that he can do both.

I can be closer to Europe and I'm reaching out into traditional Commonwealth. And we'd all be so excited. There's literally 85% of the British public will be with him. The only people who are nervous are a few bureaucrats hovering around number 10 who are like, oh dear, we don't want to do these love actually moments. That's not annoyed Trump. We need him for Ukraine. You can imagine the conversations.

You know, we talked to Gordon Brown on leading this week. And we talked a lot about his book he's written, The Future, starts with us. And because he's got a lot there about the need for the UN to reform. When we talked to Alexander Stubb, President of Finland, you know, the UN Security Council is not really fit for 80 years after the war. But to get the changes needed, you need to buy in the support of China, Russia, America, France, UK, because they can veto anything they don't like. So I think that is the very, very hard bit. But, look, I thought the reason I was so like Carney speech, first it was well written, second, it was well delivered, even though he's not a rabble-rousing sort of orator. But, I mean, look, I don't know if you ever been to the European Parliament.

It's a tough gig. It's not an easy place to get the worked up and roused up. He got virtually a standing ovation across the piece. The public gallery was giving him a standing ovation. Why? Because he was saying, look, don't be too scared by this crazy stuff. Why is Britain still so scared? I don't think Britain is scared.

I think they're getting there. But I agree with it. It's got to be. Look, Britain should not be outflanked by Canada in our relations of Europe. That is not good politics. No. nor outflanked by Canada and our relationship with the US. I mean, we're being outflanked every which way.

I really would like to see, I cannot see really what the downside is of Burnham saying, Carney and Carney's vision is my lodestar, and we're putting the full big weight of Britain in behind that vision. Well, let's see what he says at the party conference. And just as a sort of small footnote in the background, you will have noticed today, we're recording on Tuesday that Britain's announced that they're going to provide air refuelers for the Saudis. in the fight of it was the Houthis we talked about. And you'll see Canada's doing that too. Part of the middle power play is going to be working with Gulf allies who have a very, very different view of the world. You'll also see that Qatar, UAE, Saudi are beginning to make statements about how they need to make a deal with Iran, which is not a U.S. deal, just in order to stabilize the region and start to get stuff moving through those straits.

And I think Britain's opportunity, now that Saudi, Qatar and others are so shaken. by the way in which Trump didn't deliver from them, made them a target, and has actually destroyed their economies, basically, through this unnecessary war that they never wanted. I mean, it's unbelievable what's happened to their economies now, and now the Saudi economy as well. This is another real opportunity to get these very, very wealthy, rapidly developing states part of that alliance, because they don't want to be beholden to China or the US idea. If we'll go to the break, maybe just reflect a little bit on the Gordon-Brown interview.

You've got very good feedback on it from all sorts of people. But what was, you were quite taken, I thought. I've always really been taken with them. I mean, people will also pick up. There's a fascinating dynamic in the background between you and Gordon Brown, which I'll leave the psychologists and the anthropologists to analyze. It's an intriguing thing because you've known each other for so, so long. I mean, it's really weird.

I mean, you're... Who's a Tory equivalent if you were sitting there with? Oh, for goodness sake, I don't know. David Cameron. David Cameron. David Cameron, no, Cameron's a good analogy, but I'm not as close to Cameron as you are to Brown, but it's a good analogy because he's someone who's basically on my side politically, but who I have a massive personal anxieties and problems with.

So you're right. I mean, fundamentally, you share so much with Gordon Brown in terms of your political vision, your new Labour vision. But there's obviously an enormous amount of history being played out of violence. So funny, because I didn't feel it, but although the production team came and he'd be watching it backstage as it were and said, God, that was tense. I didn't feel that at all. Maybe I'm just so used to it. He's such an extraordinary figure.

You know, I think I've told you that my first meeting with him was when I wasn't anything to do with politics. I think back 2006-7, when he was chancellor, he called me in to talk about Iraq. And I was so kind of flattered because I was very young. I guess I was in my early 30s and I was going to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer number 11. And I went in for an hour and it's a little bit disloyal to say this to him because I do admire him. but he literally talked to me for 55 minutes about the Treaty of Westphalia, the history of 17th century, Europe and all this. I sort of sat there and listened and then the end he said,

thank you very much. That's very informative. Yeah. Well, it's good that he called here because he's not fond of Tories. I've got to tell you, Rory. Well, I wasn't a Tory then, of course. Oh, you were. Yeah, of course you were.

Then when I became a Tory, he became absolutely furious. He saw me in a video with the King who was visiting the Tocross Mountain Project in Afghanistan, in 2010. And he mounted a formal proton. to the palace, threatened to get the electric commission involved on the grounds that the king visiting me a few months before an election

and me being on television would give unfair advantage to a Tory candidate. I went to see what I read, yeah. I went to see, we were thinking about Gordon's, we went to see this new James Graham play, The Standard of Living, which is all about John Maynard Keynes. And it's extraordinary. And we both came out and said, you know,

he's just incredible that an economist is one of the key historical figures from that period. And actually so much of it is brain power, isn't it? Totally. What's so weird about Keynes? And I think it's true. Gordon Brown's very, very clever too. Keynes is clever.

I mean, I think even Gordon would accept that. But it is incredible how just sheer processing power and a certain amount of charm and determination carried Keynes to this incredible position. Yeah, but we were both saying that he, in some ways, you know, not the whole sort of Bloomsbury set and all the kind of, you know, all the kind of promiscuity and all that. But the brainpower and the belief that it was brain power that you needed ultimately to make change,

in some ways it did remind me of Gordon and the way that he operates in relation to politics, economy and change. It's a great play by that. I mean, James Graham, he's an absolute genius. I mean, he's every subject he takes. I saw him afterwards. I said, look, I do prefer your working class stuff, to be honest. but it's absolutely brilliant how he takes these really complicated issues.

And the politics of it is, because part of the story, there are lots of different stories going on, but part of the story is the battle, the intellectual battle between Keynes and Thatcher's favorite guy. What's his name? Hayek. And of course it plays out through the play. They use the amazing black and white photography through the whole thing. And it plays out is no doubt who James Graham thinks is the same. superior economist and human being that is Keynes.

And so it's sort of you see. And Fiona came out. She actually said, you know, let's be honest, what did good Hayek's influence on Thatcher actually do to the country compared to the good that Keynesism did for the world? Again, shout out for people who haven't listened to it. There's a wonderful interview that we did on leading with the playwright that you're talking about with James Graham,

which people should listen to. I also was very lucky to be able to go and see Arcadia in the West End with Tom Stoppard's play. It's Tom Stoppard who died recently. the most brilliant production, funny, intellectual, beautifully staged, beautifully acted, incredibly charming, unexpected plot lines. So, yeah, huge tribute to that. Okay, and we're giving a shout-down as a de Gaulle film. De Gaul film. Absolutely brilliant. God, they don't make them like him anymore.

Okay, now, let's take a break, and then we'll come back from the break. And when we come back from the break, we will be talking about the king. both the allegations which were made by L. Spencer and also the summit on artificial intelligence, which I was lucky enough to be in this week. See you. The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister. With high confidence, it was Russian.

Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet container. 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing! We would need to understand the policy context.

All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, and disseminated into an operation order, or Fraggo. A Fraggo that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger Who is going to be able to pull this off You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuffie

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Bear Hunt Available now Wherever you're ever get your podcasts. Welcome back to The Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart. I mean, Alastair Campbell. I know you're gagging to talk about the King's views on artificial intelligence, but may I suggest that so far as the Republic are concerned,

there does seem to be a lot of interest in this book by Charles Spencer, which I see has gone surprise, surprise, straight to number one in the Amazon lists. Very annoying that it's bringing it out three weeks ahead of my own book, Percivilience. at Cadoganhall.com for tickets for the launch. And the mooch as well, whose book is flying. So to summarize what Charles Spencer is saying, he's essentially claiming that the king, then the Prince of Wales, said to him that Diana would soon be forgotten.

And he also said that the king was giddly, excited, about what was going on. And needless to say, they are the bits that have been serialized in a newspaper. I believe it's called The Daily Fail. That is serialising the book, and the book has had massive publicity and has gone straight to number one.

I mean, I was very, very involved in that period of the funeral, the death of Princess Diana and the days that followed. And I was aware, because in the meetings, there were members of the Spencer family team, as it were, who came to all the meetings where we discussed all this, And there were tensions. There's no doubt about that. There were tensions.

But I have to say, in defence of your friend the King, who was then the Prince of Wales, anything I heard or sensed about his posture on the whole thing was completely at odds of this sense of, what did you say, giddiness and excitement and saying that she'll soon be forgotten and all that. I just didn't have any sense of that at all. Now, that being said, I'm sure they were having direct conversations as well, to which I was not remotely privy. I'm imagining the king is pretty pissed off with that. I think the first thing is that I've never seen him ever behave in that kind of way.

I mean, it just doesn't sit with his character. And I think that was my sense talking to people who've known him all their lives, is they just don't recognize that. So I don't believe it. Now, I also am very interested in memory. I think I've told you before. I'm still mesmerized by this study that was done where they interviewed people on 9-11

and then the same group of people every year for the next 20 years. And when they first interviewed them, there's ordinary members of the public, they say, I was in my kitchen in Connecticut, I didn't hear about it for a couple of hours. 20 years on,

almost everybody says they were in Manhattan and saw the buildings come down. Yeah, including Donald Trump. And when you show them the video of what they said 20 years ago, They say, no, no, that can't be right. That's AI. That's fake. These are normal humans.

These not politicians trying to bluff. Our memories are unbelievably weird. Yeah. And if you go back over whatever this is, almost 30 years. Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting question about why he's doing it after 30 years, why it's still central of 30 years. So I can absolutely believe that Charles Spencer believes this.

I also just don't think it's true. Hmm. The thing about memory is fascinating because, I mean, that was, That was one of the most extraordinary weeks of my life. But if I didn't have my diaries, I don't think I'd remember that much of it. And now when I read my diaries, I don't remember most of it. And Spencer says he didn't write anything down, but he told people at the time and all this kind of things. So, no, I think it's very weird.

And I think you must have had this experience because you're such a diary keeper of going back and then reading a diary and be like, whoa. Yeah, totally. No. I completely get that. So I think what he's doing probably is either, look, he's a pretty well-few. guy, isn't he? Incredibly worth it. I'm not sure he needs.

I believe he's just... People seem to think it for money for the book. I believe there's just been another very successful sale of a couple of fields some miles from his house. It's just raked in a few more million. Yeah. So I don't think it's that. But I think there is a, yeah, sense of revenge.

I also think it was very interesting that he allied himself so closely in talking about the book with Harry and Megan. And Diana and this idea that the media are. are a kind of, you know, real enemy. But look, I've met Charles Spencer a few times, and I spoke, he has this, I don't know if he still does it, but he has a book festival at Ulthrop,

and I've been at it, and I stayed there. And I find him perfectly sort of charming and clever and quite funny and interesting. And absolutely, he does feel, I think, that the media were largely responsible for her death, and he feels that the royal family didn't treat her well. I think both of those things are clear. I think if I knew something or I was holding on to something as quite as dramatic as Charles,

who let's not forget was the father of the two boys that Diana brought into the world, one of whom would be the future king. I just, I think if you've heard that, him saying those things, I'm not sure he sat on them for 30 years. And he says he sort of talked to people at the time. I mean, okay, people can have a circle of trust, but that sort of stuff, I think if it's that dramatic, it kind of gets out. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the, the sadness was that this has all come at the same time that the king was doing this big summit that I was lucky enough to be at Dunfrey's house on AI. And it was pretty amazing.

Hmm. You want to see an example of the king doing impressive stuff. There was that speech, which I think you write about in Percivillian, very well, and the Trump speech. But this was the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, oh, the charles. speech to Trump. To Trump. And I think you've analyzed that very well. And I think, you know, you put that up with Kani's speech as one of the great speeches

the year. This AI summit was very interesting in another way. Firstly, timing. Unbelievable. I mean, this happened just at the moment when Hugging Face have blown up, when the big AI companies are talking about safety, when even the Lib Dems in their conference have woken up and made it the central piece of Ed Davy's speech was about AI in his conference. So absolutely of the moment.

And secondly, he was able not just to get the Great Titans of AI, you know, Jensen Huang, who runs the biggest company in the world, NVIDIA, this $5 trillion company, Sir Demis, Savas. But astonishingly, they sat at that table throughout the entire day right into the evening, contributing to the conversation. It wasn't, they turn up for half an hour jet off, and which is what you normally get in these kind of things. And even in Davos, nobody sits at the table throughout the day, right?

Next thing, he managed to get the Chinese set. So, Xi Jinping sent, I think it's the dean of Singhua University, the greatest technical university in China was there at the table at exactly the time when everyone's saying, well, the problem is you'll never get the US and Chinese to agree, the Chinese aren't interested. He actually sat him there. And then the final thing is the UK government, because suddenly it was an opportunity for the most senior figures at every level of the UK government, including senior self-servants and the AI minister, to be able to spend hours with these guys in a way that would have been

very difficult to do otherwise. And the conclusion of it, they got to the idea that there needs to be independent verification of these systems. They absolutely got to international cooperation requires China. And this has then been followed this week with Scott Besson, the US Treasury Secretary, saying he's now setting up a working group with China for the Trump's Xi Jinping summit on AI. Now, Trump remains the big spoiler here. Yeah. Because he says the whole thing's a hoax. There's no need for any safety regulation at exactly the moment when Open AI and Anthropic are terrified.

And also at the summit, we're a couple of people, we've gotten our mini series on existential risks. So Yuvon O'Harrari was there. Toby Ord was there making their arguments about why they're worried. And I encourage people maybe to listen to that stuff as well. And did you leave it? Because I've been very interested in seeing your sort of journey of development on this issue. Over quite a few years now, because I remember right at the start, you were saying this is the most important thing happening. world and in the future, et cetera. Did that meeting and that day totally immersed in it in the way

that you were? Did it leave you more or less worried, more or less skeptical? What's your own sort of take out from it? I think always more worried. Every time I do anything, I think it's more worried. But it's more worried in this contradictory way, which is it is the hinge technology that is going to underpin everything in our lives. It's going to be right at the heart of our businesses in Britain, of the NHS, of our defence and security, and we will be reliant at the moment on a US and Chinese stack, which is an unbelievable dependency and vulnerability, and we need to work out how to get out of that. And at the same time, everything that makes these models powerful also makes them very dangerous. Because all the benefits of them are around autonomy,

getting humans out of the loop. And the more humans you get out of the loop, the more responsibility the AI has. And everything the AI does positive, it can do negative. I mean, avoid which probably the most dramatic is biosecurity risks. Yes, it can potentially solve cancer, but it can also create viruses. And that's before you get on to what Yuval was talking about in this interview we've just put out on the... Which is pretty terrifying. Pretty terrifying, which is all about superintelligence. And the really interesting thing, which is, of course, where Trump comes in.

It's the first time I really understood Trump's position. I mean, I'm trying to understand why on earth is he against this? And we were saying, well, he's just trying to make money. Well, maybe part of it. I think he's also instinctively anti-regulation, but I was also reminded there that very senior figures are telling him there's nothing to worry about. So certainly David Sacks, his AI advisor, Mark Andreessen, who's the investor. But Jensen Huang also comes pretty close to saying, nothing to see here. There's no real risk of this stuff.

Let's go. Let's roll. And that anyone trying to talk about safety is doing something called regulatory capture. In other words, they're just trying to exclude small startup AI companies. companies and they're all bullshit. Which is easy to believe given the way that they've operated as businesses over time. Which is why Trump will be pulled into this narrative, but it's very dangerous because these companies, I've never known any company in the world about to launch a product saying,

my product is unbelievably dangerous. I mean, I would take that seriously. I can't see an obvious financial interest in people about to launch trillion dollar companies saying, I don't trust my product, it can get out of control, it can cause mayhem, it's a 20% chance it could end the world. There we go. Right, on a cheer you know, how was my friend Finley the Piper? Finley the Piper was there.

So we had this amazing thing. That was also the amazing thing. That's how I found out you were there, by the way. But you've got all these grandees of anthropic, open AI, NVIDIA, etc., Google Gemini, there in the room. And then you have this incredible Piper, incredible drummer. I mean, of course, quite loud. We're in a small room and down for his house right up and personal.

with the pipes. And of course, I was very struck by the Dean Senghor, who was being very polite, but he looked like a visitor from another planet looking at a strange cultural event as the pipes and the drums were hammering around. That's right. It reminds me of Mandela when he was at the he was at Chogam in Edinburgh,

and there was this display of Scottish culture and all the pipes and the drums of the dancing, and he said, I'm not sure these people are ready for independence. No. No. Really? There you go. That's a great line. Let me just finish with a final tribute to the team that put this together, because of course the King made it possible,

but the team that spotted this opportunity and put Britain right back in the centre, back to this AI Safety Institute, the Bletchie Summit that Rishi Sunak put together all the way through to this. I think it is Britain showing again and again that we may be a distant third, but we're definitely,

if you're getting behind US and China, Britain still matters and AI. Right. Well, excellent. Let's close there. Then in question time tomorrow, we're going to talk about Germany. And we're also going to talk about rural Britain and a lot of the challenges that they're facing. So we'll see you then. See you then. Bye-bye.