522. Has Hungary Shown Britain How to Beat Farage? (Question Time)

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People thought that it was going to be very difficult to defeat him.

He didn't just win, he absolutely trounced him.

How do you dismantle what the other lot have done in a way that is legal, effective and quick?

On day one, he called for the country's president to resign.

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Welcome to the rest of this politics question time with me, Rory Stewart.

And with me, Anastica Amble.

Lots of questions.

We're going to do quite a lot on Hungary where there's been an incredible result.

We'll also look at the local elections coming Britain, Scottish elections and Welsh elections

and much more.

But Anastica, I wanted to start with a question from Joe.

Is it not possible that the Hungarian people have just pinched their noses to vote for Marcia

due to fatigue from 16 years of Orban's government?

Given Mayer's own politics, are they really out of the populist quagmire?

I think that is a little bit harsh on the new incoming Hungarian Prime Minister.

It is true, Joe, that a lot of people who would not normally vote for Magyar who essentially

is a centre-right politician did so because they just wanted to get rid of Orban.

No doubt about that at all.

Including people considerably well to the left of him.

Quite a few people who might have still didn't.

Some of the parties pulled their punches and essentially anybody who was not for Fidez and Orban

wanted Magyar to win.

Sorry, I'm interrupting this very naughty of me, but I've got a note from a Hungarian telling me

that the correct pronunciation is Peter Majer.

Okay. Well, Peter Majer did a pretty amazing job and yes, it's true, Joe.

The lot of people who wouldn't necessarily vote for a centre-right politician

decided to do so because the big driving goal of the election for so many people was just to get rid of Orban.

Are they out of the populist quagmire? Well, the answer today is hopefully.

I thought it was very interesting, it is press conference, because Orban is much more than

the Prime Minister of Hungary's big global figure, part of the populist, nationalist, authoritarian

politics that is spreading like a virus. It was why it's so good that Magyar has managed to

sort of put a stop to it. But I thought his press conference, he covered an awful lot of ground.

He was definitely being more reasonable towards Europe.

He was being pro-Ukrainian saying Ukraine has to be able to sort out its own future.

He said if Trump phoned him, he'd take the call, but he wasn't looking for it and he said the same

about Putin. He said he hoped that the UK rejoined the European Union, tick in my book.

Let's just not underestimate this. In any election you have to fight whilst in front of you.

And he had to fight a guy who's been in power for 16 years who has set the institutions of the state,

basically his extensions of his own political project, with a massive control of the media,

Russian money pouring in, Trump sending Vance and Rubio to back him up, Trump himself saying on

the day, you know, vote for this guy if you want to direct line to the White House. And he won.

He didn't just win. He absolutely trounced him. It's an incredible day, isn't it? It's a really

incredible day because in many ways, many people who knew Hungary well thought that Orban had stacked

the cards in a way that it was going to be very, very difficult to beat him. What Orban essentially

had done over 16 years is demonstrate, or it felt like it could demonstrate that you could create

the beginnings of a proper authoritarian non-democratic state without doing any of the formal things that

you would expect from the authoritarian government to do. So use a genuine majority

in parliament to re-rig the constitution and stack the judiciary, use state money to rewire

the media. So he didn't need to actually censor independent media, but basically use market

mechanisms and enormous subsidies to boost his own media, use government contracts and procurement

to create a new class of corrupt oligarchs to reinforce gerrymandered district boundaries.

And so with district mountaineers gerrymandered the courts captured, the media captured,

and all the stuff you're talking about, real interference, people thought that it was going to be

very difficult to defeat him. And such credit, I think, to Margea for doing this, because I mean,

the guy visited something like 95% of all the parish hits in Hungary during this campaign.

So he managed to see 327 towns, 517 times, visited 161 parishes out of 174, often managed to visit

six or even nine towns in one day. So I think it's a real inspiration that absolutely populist can

be beaten, but I think the second point is it's not inevitable. It takes real boot level, it takes

real energy. And if people are going to do this, my goodness, they got a work cut.

Because all of that has been such a dominant figure, not just in Hungary, but as part of this

broader political debate around the world, I think we underestimate as well the role of civil society

that it did keep going. There were lots of organizations who did keep trying to call this stuff out

as it was happening. But listen, the campaigning, literally as you say, went right around the country,

again and again and again, just trying to get his message through, because he couldn't get access

to the mainstream media. It's maybe a point here where we to plug the populism series. We delayed

episode two because of the Zelensky interview, but it's out for members on Friday. And this is an

extended interview, Liam Byrne. And a lot of what Magyar has done, sorry, I'm finding the

Magyar are very difficult, a lot of what the new Hungarian privateist has done relates to some of the

lessons and the messages that Liam Byrne is putting in his book, Why Populous, A Winning and How to

Beat them, which is what we talk about. So for example, I saw a lot of the kind of celebration

of people on the left was based on the assumption that this was a traditional left-right

contest and the guy in the right is lost. No, he stayed very much as a right of center politician.

He refused to get pushed into a lot of the kind of so-called woke debates. They kept trying to

lay a trap for him to come out on LGBT. They kept trying to sort of suggest that he was going to

you know be so pro-U Ukrainian that your kids would have been sent to war as soon as he became

prime minister. And he just held very, very firm in the center. And so I think that's one lesson.

The other thing is I think that and this is something that Liam Byrne said, you don't win people

over to your side by telling them that they're wrong the whole time. I think the other thing that

he did is he created a new framing for why somebody who did support a Orban could be persuaded to come

back to something more mainstream and sensible. And when we get to part two on Friday, it's very much

where we're talking about how to beat populism. And I think that you know, Magyar is going to be

part of that story going forward. There was a question from Douglas, one of our listeners, after

democratic success and Hungary, in part due to Fidesz's pro-Russian stance, what do you think UK

voters as red lines are? Do you think reform and other European right wing parties will change

their tactics now? Some of you keep pointing out, Hungary which is quite a small country. And

my goodness, you don't envy Peter Marge, because he is dealing with a country which is in demographic

decline. Women are having on average 1.3 children. The Hungarian population has been dropping since 1980,

has a serious debt problem, serious problems, productivity, and quite a small population. But

why did it matter? And you keep pointing out this tiny country matter so much? Well, Panikas

Orban became, for 16 years, increasingly the global cheerleader of the populist right. He used

Hungarian state money, for example, and Fidesz linked banks to fund marrying the pens party.

Yeah. And he put these huge global conferences together and he had, he thought this wonderful

recipe that he was sharing with Trump's team and Maga, which was this whole recipe about how

you could, while apparently still operating within a pretence of a constitutional market framework,

rig the whole system in favor of your populism. I just think though that in terms of reform,

and this is a point you've made in the past, and I'll be interested how we develop this.

One lesson from this is that Trump is increasingly becoming a liability. Second lesson from this

is that if we look at three people that we've discussed a lot recently, Majer Mamdani, the

person who's won in New York, and Zelenski, who you've just interviewed, these are people who

ran very unconventional campaigns outside the mainstream media. They challenged the sort of

Trumpian model not by doing conventional campaigns in the mainstream media. In the case of Majer,

he had to, he couldn't get to the mainstream media. In the case of Mamdani, basically the

Democratic establishment under Quema had stitched the whole thing up and had the money running behind

Quema. So what they have found is the other side of social media. On the one hand, of course,

social media has superpowered people like Trump and the new media environment, but it also gives

these chinks of light, these opportunities for insurgent and dependent candidates to come out

and know where we see this maybe with Zach Planski and the Green Party, getting a kind of name

recognition that's never been seen for anyway, over to you for the UK implications.

Yeah, look, I think it is interesting how Farage is without a doubt trying to distance himself

a little bit from Trump. He went in both feet into the start of the Iran war saying we should

be alongside him quickly realize that was a stupid mistake and he's trying to sort of wriggle his

way out of that. Vital, the leader of the AFD in Germany, she has become increasingly quite

critical of Trump. I noticed that the weekend that Maloney, right wing populist in Italy, she

was critical of Trump because of his attack on the Pope. Mark Carney, who in a sense partly became

prime minister because of the Trump attacks on Canada which so damaged Pierre Polly Ever,

the right wing populist candidate who was so far ahead, Mark Carney spoke at his party conference

of the weekend and he was not messing about in terms of hitting back at Trump. Sanchez,

you mentioned in the main podcast, he's another one. So Trump's brand is tanking and if you just

think about some of the judgments that Nigel Farage represents, propute in, terrible, pro Trump terrible.

Absolutely obsessed with money and I think that one of the really big things that damaged

all bands so much was this sense of corruption. Even though it wasn't that widely reported because

the media was controlled, people knew that he had these massive mansions, they knew that he's best

friend, the gas filter would become a billionaire and if you project yourself as the man of the people

and suddenly you become the corruptor that you're meant to be fighting against, you're going to

pay a price. I think that Farage vital, the pen, I think they also lost in this election but here's

the thing only if the progressive left learned the right lessons from what's gone on here don't assume

that this mean the sorts of culture wars that lost the Democrats support in the United States.

No culture wars and I think a second lesson is you really need very, very aggressive active

charismatic campaigning. I mean just coming back to both Mamdani's skill with social media and

Marges relentless turning up in every village hall over two years building his basement. If

Starmer wants to do one on the next election, Labor wants to do one on the next election, they need

to either find a way of Starmer communicating like this or they need to get rid of Starmer and find

someone who can do this. The only way I think of defeating the populace I'm seeing over the last

six, seven years is real communication skills, charisma, skill with social media and all those

people that you've talked about have that and I think what can't happen is kind of gray, steady as you

boring technology, safety first, tempting though that it didn't really work for Theresa May,

it's not really working for Starmer, you didn't work for Biden, you need a very different type

for approach. Final one for me and you've made this point but the reason of course we're talking

about the Hunger and Election is the really big change is in terms of what it means for Europe.

Orban was the big disruptor, the big veto holder, the big guy who could really disrupt

Europe coming together and on Ukraine Peter Majors first statement which I just want to read out

because I just think it's so startling for the difference. Everyone in Hungary he said in this

speech knows that Ukraine is a victim of this war and no one should tell them under what conditions

they should enter a peace or sign a peace treaty, we cannot tell any country to give up their

territory and this is what the Fidesz politician said then I'd like to ask them what would you do if

Russia attacked Hungary which Hungarian counties would you be willing to give up. Ukraine should

receive security guarantees and territorial guarantees that can be observed and kept. Ukraine

under the Budapest memorandum something you discussed was Zelensky gave up its nuclear arsenal

for guarantees but those guarantees were violated repeatedly by Russia.

Very good very strong he's still pretty young he's mid-40s

he's got something of a checkered past and all these accusations related to how he treated his wife

he was also minister and he says it's all smears and all that but I just felt he thought an amazing

campaign that met the moment and I'm sure he came on the lots of pressure to be maybe a little

bit less centered in the strategy that he pursued just on this corruption thing because I mean

I'm staggered that the issue of corruption in the United States is not far far far bigger than it is

but I think there's always something Gary Kasperov makes this point there's always something about

the far right that they really like Putin and they really like money. We've done a lot on Hungary

I think there's a lot more that we could do because I think it's probably one of the most exciting

moments and we've been leading up to this for four years where we actually at the beginning of this

show covered Orban's first re-election so 16 years of Hungarian populist rule finished

but something that we maybe need to get into a little bit more is the challenges that Marshall

will now face in not just kind of demographic economic but as with Poland one of the challenges

is the way in which the whole thing is stacked and we had a question from Henry who asked

are there lessons from Donald Tusk and Poland for what Marsha would have to do in Hungary to turn

the situation around and to remind people the problem there that Donald Tusk defeated the

law and justice party which had been in power in Poland since 2015 but he found that the whole

institution structure of the potter state had been rigged in favor of the populists. Marsha's now

taking over a situation where the judges have been appointed with a central bank governor where most

the leading business people are all stacked on Orban side or Bern will be gambling he can just

wait this out have another go in a couple years time and try to make sure that Marshall can make

no progress because he can basically paralyze him and that the challenge to polls have faced is

how do you dismantle what the other lot have done in a way that is legal, effective and quick

because often what you find is that in Poland you have these very strange situations where Tusk has

been criticized for firing judges that the last government the populist government was criticized

for appointing in the first place so yeah well I think that this is why the the two thirds super

majority was so important because it means he does have a greater power to make constitutional change

but so for example on day one he called for the country's president to resign why because the

country's president is there basically as a sort of tool of of Orban so he knows he's going to be

oppositional there are all sorts of new bodies institutions that Orban set up that

Maggiar will want to get rid of we've talked a lot about the media he essentially what you have is

a sort of Russian style propaganda outfit running as the state broadcaster he'll need to change that

and of course as you say now that he stops being the challenge and he becomes the incumbent

it then becomes a little bit harder that's why I think he should really go for this the old

cliche hit the ground running he should really make some big moves very very quickly and Orban

interestingly yesterday two interesting things about Orban first is he threw the towel in very very

quickly I hope that wasn't to do some deal about you know not being gone after himself because

or Major has been very clear through the campaign people who have looted the country you know like

the best friends who've become billionaires and all the rest of it he feels that they have to be

some sort of accountability but Orban did a very short piece to camera which said to me he's

not going away quietly he kept talking about the patriots in the country I've got to stick together

I suspect we'll see a lot of him on the list trust CPAC circuit he's not going to go away as a

voice and he's not going to go away as a thorn in in the new government side so well the other

thing that won't go away is that he still has a lot of supporters I mean this was a huge

victory for Marcia but we mustn't forget that there is still a very very big group and this

is something you've been discussing in your pop it doesn't many series who genuinely remain

very polarized very divided and will be very angry about Marcia's victory so there are a lot of

Orban supporters out there who buy into the narrative that Europe is rigging things against Orban

that they're facing cultural decline that they're fighting for the survival of the hungarian

nation against immigration that they're being dragged into a war in Ukraine by Zelensky and a

global elite and so we're not in a world in which it's easy to sort of do round tables and

compromise and bring people together he's got to find some way of re-engaging that group with

the body polity he won't get them all on board but but just quickly because this was a theme of

your miniseries and populism what is the lesson about how one would re-engage what I suppose

of the hungarian equivalents to the reform voters well this is where I found Liam Burns analysis

so interesting because essentially he's he's done a lot of research a lot of polling a lot of

survey work breaking them down into different groups and essentially he's saying there are a

fairly sizable group of people who are reform minded or reformed curious who are just not going

to vote anything but reform a lot of them may not vote but they're not going to vote labor they're

not going to vote Tory they're not going to vote Lib Dem you reckon it's about 40% that labor

could get back and partly it's this thing about respect it's this thing about understanding why

they're so pissed off with the main parties why they fit their lives have not got better but you

have to give them the arguments of that and the policies for that and you have to back to your

point about communication of being out there the whole time you have to make them feel that you

get their lives and you want to be part of making their lives better and then I think the other

thing that that he was really strong on is that you know we've got our three peas populism

polarisation post-truths and he's got his three A's that he says are absolutely fundamental to

the way that populists operate appeasement autocracy and avarice now appeasement basically means

and this is what all banded brilliantly for four terms even the opposition felt we're never

going to beat this guy he's got too much control so you give in or you give up and that's what trump's

gambling on in the global system isn't it the end everybody will appease trump and we'll just

suck up whatever America does and then autocracy is the system that you build around yourself

but he says that the third one which is so important I'm really glad that the Philip Reichoff

review is underway I think the government needs to go even further and cleaning up the financing

of our politics because the third A is avarice and there is something very very strange I mean

why aren't people appalled at the money that trump and his family are making being in power

why has it taken the Hungarians 16 years to realise that this is just utterly seconding and yet when

you see Nigel Farage and some of his money making schemes the one that I nearly fooled you on April

is bitcoin thing with with choisequartang all the money that they make from GB news and the

one of the other interesting things that Liam Bern as analysed is that there's this huge over 150

million pounds worth of media infrastructure that is essentially built there to help the populist far

right we've just got to be far better the progressive left in particular but centrist politics and I

would argue the the Tories who were sent to write as well far better at exposing this so listen I

think there's a lot in Liam's book but there's also and the series but there's also a lot in what

Magyar's done that I think parties are the left can learn from not just parties of the right we had

a question from Robert from York what did you make of British crypto billionaire Bendello's recent

4 million pound donations reform it's apparently made before the government's cap on donations

to political parties by bridge citizens living abroad and was brought in but he's actually

moving back to the UK so he'd be able to donate more in the future I mean just before you get on to

that it is interesting why on earth are all these rich people giving so much reform and given that

there will be a lot of business people who won't believe that reform will be good for the British

economy a lot of more conventional British people who traditionally would have given money to

labor or the conservatives believing that a little bit more predictability a little bit more

reasoner maybe even a little bit more of getting close to the European Union will be good for their

businesses why are they staying away and why are all these other guys coming in is it that a lot

of them made their money in crypto and that makes them in a sense naturally quite anarchistic

anti status quo anti elite and of course crypto money is made so quickly and has so little to do

with normal predictable functioning economies that maybe that is the sweet spot for a lot of these

people on the pop it is far right. Totally I think you've answered your own question

they don't want any sort of government oversight not just of crypto but of anything that they do

to make money you know we're back to my argument about the sovereign individual we're back to why

Musk projects himself as a believer of free speech what he means is that he should be free to do

whatever he wants to make more and more money and assimilate more and more power. I just think we've

got to wake up to this that the the sorts of you know I don't know these people individually they

may be very very nice they may be very nice to their mums and very nice to their dogs and cats but

you know I'm instinctively very suspicious of somebody who lives in Thailand and and makes his

money in crypto and gives loads of money to Nigel Farage I'm very suspicious of this guy who comes

being portrayed by Richard Tyson Nigel Farage in the Daily Telegraph as a great patriot because he's

coming back to put his money into reform I'm sorry I do not see this as patriotism I see this as

people who have clocked that if they can get Nigel Farage into power people like them are going to

be able to make more money with less oversight and the public will not have a bloody clue what's going

on and inequality will widen rather than narrow and just before we go to the break rory to listen

and view as our not yet members of trip plus who want to hear our fantastic series on populism and

all the other bonus content that we put out there just remind people we've got AI series out there

we've got your series with Michael Wolff on Murdoch we've got our series on JD Vance a lot of

stuff to get into and much more coming because it's where Alice and I pursue our specialist

enthusiastic projects anyway episode one and two of the rest is politics mini series on populism

get them by joining trip plus by going to the rest is politics dot com now take a break

welcome back to the rest is politics question time with me Alistair Campbell and with me

Rory Stewart now we've done a lot of international stuff recently we have but there's some very

interesting things happening in the UK so tihan who's a trip plus member from Bristol

what role will binary divisive populism play in these upcoming local elections I noticed both the

SMP and reform are reframing these elections in referendum terms SMP leader john swine is pitching

another Scottish independence referendum for 2028 while for arches pitching these local elections

as a referendum on stomach just on that issue that's quite interesting um what tihan's picked up

there what's happening in campaigns were essentially you say in a local election and in for

our case you know you talk about local council elections this is a referendum a binary choice on

a biggest who should be prime minister or whether Scott should be independent every well it plays

into something that I've always felt is really really terrible about the way that we talk about

cover and campaign in local government I mean local councils are so important of so many of the

things that people really care about when their bins get collated how clean their streets are

whether there's actually a local youth club to go to and what have you and the media has always

done this game and they're doing it in this one as well is essentially they play into the idea that

actually what you do at the end of the local elections you add all the votes together and it's

like a gigantic opinion poll and you say whether the party of government is in trouble or not

and it's really really really tedious but of course for ours you understand the media frankly

better than most of the media do that's the game that he's playing with this Fiona and I were on

our way to the Heath the other day and the reformer handing out leaflets outside our local railway

station and they actually look like labor party leaflets because they're red and there's a picture

of Kierstamer and Tulip Sadiq local MP on there and you think it's nice interesting it turns out

it's highly attacking Kierstamer Tulip Sadiq and say if you want to get rid of them vote reform

well if you want to get rid of them you have to vote for them in a parliamentary election

so this is election about Camden council so I can see the politics of it but I just think it's

really sort of pathetic and pure oil if you go to the Scottish question in Cheyenne's point

then it's true we've interviewed Anna Sawa and it's on leading on Monday we interviewed John

Swini a few weeks ago the Scottish First Minister and when they did they did the first of the big

TV debates the other day the news that came out of it the news as decided by Amages BBC

was that John Swini has indicated that if they win the election it's the Green Life of a referendum

it's not really what this election is about and I get why he's doing it because

Labour is trying to make it a referendum on 20 years of SMP government he's trying to make it

an opinion poll about whether Scotland wants another independence referendum and meanwhile all the

issues that the Scottish Parliament is responsible for and that people in Scotland fought to get health

education transport, grime and all the rest of it they barely get a look in it's very frustrating

just on the UGov polls and you know we've had a lot of painful experience on this podcast of how

wrong polls can go but just to want to sound why people see this as so seismic I came into parliament

2010 and if we look at the elections since 2011 it looks as though in this election you know after

15 years we're going to end up in a position where the SMP are basically in one of their strongest

positions ever and where reform which didn't manage to elect any MSPs into Holyrood it's only MSP

and Holyro is actually a Tory who's defected across is going to go from zero in the 2021 election

to 14 15 even 20 MSPs meanwhile conservatives and labour literally will fall off a cliff I mean

conservatives might go down from 31 MSPs to seven labour might go down from 22 down to about 15 so

we're really moving into a world in which instead of where we were in 99 when you were you know

first set up Holyrood which was 56 labour 35 SMP and for a long time basically a

two-party system in Scotland labour SMP I mean 2007 47 SMP 46 labour into a world which is

dominated in seat terms with the SMP potentially with reform which was nowhere emerging as the

second party and labour and conservatives almost vanishing because I think Anna Sawa is a genuinely

good campaigner and good candidate and when the interview comes out Monday I challenged him

you know big because I wasn't that happy when he sort of came out at the time that he did send

here as thumb as to go but when he explained the strategy and the reason why they are polling so

badly you kind of get a sense of why he felt he had to do it and it's true this goes back to the

conversation about populism I think we've always felt or too many people have felt that reform was

always going to really really struggle to get any sort of foothold in Scotland you know if you remember

previous visits when Nigel Farage went there and you get hounded out and and what have you so

there's always been a kind of right-wing populist streak in Scottish public opinion but as you say it's

why where it's going to reform is because of the collapse of the conservative party.

Can I just challenge challenge that because presumably what you've done on your miniseries also

suggests that quite a lot of those reform voters will also be coming from labour that's certainly

true across the United Kingdom as a whole yes a lot of them come from Tories but a lot of them come

from labour too I mean it's basically the implosion of the two main parties with their traditional

voters going to either SMP or reform. Yeah or in where there isn't the SMP what's happened in

parts of England is they go those on the left go to green and those on the right maybe more

curious about reform but I think that what what will happen if you know it does seem to me

extraordinary going about you know power corrupts absolutely if you actually look at the SMP record I

think this is something you feel even stronger than I do you've had these you know gigantic

figures in Scottish politics Alex Salman who's let's be frank whose career ended in ignominy you've

had then Nicholas Durgeon whose husband's career is you know not ending exactly where either of them

would have wanted it to do which is a polite way of saying about your friend that the guy's under

massive police investigation I was I was conscious of the of the legal revivocations as I was

speaking my journalistic training of essential law for journalists many many many years ago and

then you've got John Swinney who literally has been a big figure in the SMP for 20 years and he's

essentially he's the change and it so it just feels a bit weird and because what Scottish

Labour people I taught you say say they're being dragged down by the sense of the Labour government

of Westminster not being what people thought that they that they voted for because Scotland did

go very much to Labour at the last election with at the last general election I don't know what

the odds would have been but you'd have been pretty nailed on if you'd have put a bet on and you know

people thought that Anna Sauer is going to be coasting to First Minister doesn't look like that

is happening and then Wales is you know Wales which has always been Labour and there it's not impossible

that well that Labour comes there there with plied and and the and reform so we do we now have

these systems that were devised in a very different era for what we now appear to be the development

of this very very multi party politics I've got to say by the way you often say I don't criticise

as you call it my friend the carestama for that I didn't much see the point of the party election

broadcast that Labour put out because it was essentially it was carestama at a lectern with two union

flags behind him talking mainly about Iran and the war now it's incredibly important but he does

press conferences he does parliament for that I you know I think there should have been a really

strong local government message why your local council matters why these choices matter that's

where I thought Anna Sauer's interview was interesting the strongest bit the message that would

appeal to me and that I hope is going to get him to win over some centrist voters the kind of I

suppose the centrist Tory voter or the centrist Labour voter is that he was basically saying it's

about performance it's about sorting out Scottish economy he'd like to see taxes come down he'd

like regulation to go he'd like to grow businesses he talks very openly about the fact his father

was a very successful businessman entrepreneur it's a kind of pro business let's sort out the

education system set up standards quite an optimistic local vision for a more vibrant Scottish

economy and public services I felt and I have interesting some feedback that he could have actually

been a little bit more colourful and developed a few more more striking phrase about the moral

corruption of the S&P I would have gone with that and let me you know let me reinforce this I know

you disagree with me but listen we've just seen Peter Mario win a whole election by going against

the corruption of another party it's a massive valence salience is you and so I would be tempted to say

that in modern politics if you want to campaign against and I see the S&P is actually being

equivalent of popular nationalists you want to run against them you've got to have striking

impressive things and it can't just and the problem with Anna says I love the underlying message

which is solid good competent pro business policies fine but it's got to excite people and

you've been given a gift I'm afraid by the incredible moral conundrums that the S&P found

themselves and if you can't land something on a party that managed to produce Alex Salmon

and Nicholas Sturtian's husband you're really struggling well I hope this has made people want

to listen to the interview when it comes out of leading but the reason I was laughing Roy is because

when I got home and I said to Fiona this is what Anna said and what did she said what did Roy

think about him and I said he sees he's better adjectives and so it is true you just say so I

was walking by the kitchen going what do we want better adjectives what do we what do you want

them now so anyway I think he's an interesting character and I hope people listen to and enjoy

our interview with him on on Monday now here's one Rory I know how much you like my form of

I nearly said form a friend my friend and former colleague Peter Hyman this is from Emma

Emma in Glasgow should we ban the social media for kids tick tick and instead be teaching what

Peter Hyman recently described as the lost art of discernment in schools did you have time to

read it I sent it to you it was this substaki wrote about a teacher that he'd hide when Peter

was a head teacher who he said was a brilliant a teaching and getting kids interested in writing

and reading and language but actually this point about discernment and kind of I guess separating

week from chaff and have understanding motivation understanding that is you scroll endlessly through

Instagram somebody's making money out of you and starting to think of those things and it was sort of

a kind of deeper form of critical thinking mother was a lovely old fashioned word discernment

I mean I think one of the challenges in a way is not that young people are gullible it's that

they're unbelievably cynical I mean I noticed with my now nine-year-old and eleven-year-old that if

you watch advertisements with them or you watch Trump give us speech they are incredibly quick to say

this is a scam who's making money out of this they're very very alert because they're being

scammed all the time I mean there were on social media that you know they're trying to buy some

five-pound thing for their video game add-on and it turns out to be a brilliant video that ends up

in a rubbish product they're very very conscious when they're watching Trump speak that it's all

nonsense they'll be very aware of his kind of image of himself as Jesus etc so one of the

challenges I guess if you're teaching in schools is not how do you develop cynicism I think basically

the world is making young people very cynical and you know they're also taught critical thinking

in school which involves questioning politicians questioning historical text they're very good at

part of the problem is how do you encourage them to actually believe anything how do you encourage

them to work out where the skepticism and the questioning ceases and where you're actually prepared to

say in the end this person though flawed is the less evil this person may not be perfect but actually

it's the kind of politician I want to support and I want to support passionately here's the

compromise I'm prepared to make because the real challenge I think is that we create and this

I'm worried about sometimes my Yale students which is a hyper intelligent hyper critical but

ultimately quite cynical and nihilistic culture Peter ends his piece by he goes through all these

things that you think you have to that are part of this discernment establishing whether something

is true understanding the context working out whether it's actually worth your time thinking

and caring about it is there a value attached to it moral purpose self-knowledge what triggers me

what flatters me what confirms my biases what kinds of narratives my to read to believe on it goes

and then he says this is the hardest thing of all to choose to live life with a greater repertoire

of experience to be discerning about what we watch read consumer do and without teaching the next

generation discernment without all of us asking these questions we're likely to drown under the

vast never-ending weight of content or be momedown by the AI juggernaut heading towards us

you know it's an interesting piece we'll put it in the newsletter and also Roy just those

that are listeners and youngers of all ages but particularly the young I hope we'll be

interested in this we're planning a mini series on Gen Z which is going to be presented by somebody

else not us because we're very very not Gen Z you and I Roy but we are we are going to try and find

out how Gen Z are perceived how they perceive themselves and what they think about their prospects

in life can you remind us I'm so non-GENZI I don't even know what Gen Z is what is Gen Z if you're

aged 14 to 29 you are Gen Z and we've put together two surveys we're already getting a fantastic

response to them one is for members of Gen Z i.e. 14 to 29 and the other is for the rest of us

above the age of 29 so Gen Z means anyone who was born after Tony Blair's first election victory

well no but then it stops stops stops basically I don't know sometimes two years into David Cameron

correct we've asked all sorts of questions would you ever consider going to politics we'd

ever consider joining a political party how do you see your own future how are you how worried

are you about AI so anyway please take part especially Gen Z people take part but also getting

some very interesting insights into what older people think of Gen Z which I think is a lot of it

misaligned with reality but there we are so the forms to fill in whether you're Gen Z or not are

in our free newsletter and they're in the episode description below so either just go follow the

link in the episode description or just go to the rest of politics.com final question Rory

is he wants to know well first of all she says welcome back how was your week off did you do

anything exciting well so I was in the Galapagos and the Galapagos people who don't know is a set of

volcanic islands about a thousand kilometers off the coast of Ecuador so I was in Keto and then I

went across the family very very lucky I was on a national geographic boat and for people who

haven't visited I mean it's tough getting there it's expensive getting there but it is a life-changing

experience because the animals are quite unlike any animals that you'll see anywhere else on earth

the the particular group of animals is a very unusual one it's giant tortoises I think people

have heard of iguanas blue-footed boobies but the main thing about them is that they grew up

effectively without any predators and because it's so inhospitable very little freshwater no humans

until very recently in geological time Darwin visited and became very interested because it's a

real sort of way of telling the story of evolution it's isolated enough from the continent to have

developed these very independent species but the little island chains produce tiny micro variations

species to species but this means that you can sit as I did on a beach and a sea lion will come

straight up to you or it will play with you in the water giant tortoises will walk straight past you

as though you're not there iguanas will sit on your foot birds will almost land on your head you

can see albatrosses I mean and it's it's some it's like a sort of picture of the garden of Eden

it's very very strange and something and of course the one thing they're not worrying about is

Donald Trump so I had a very very happy hour lying on a beach with a sea lion being and essentially

the sea lion was teaching me do you just lie on the beach just that water wash you up and down

again you get very sandy but you don't think about Donald Trump but you know I'm just looking at

some pictures now and I mean the beach is incredible they're like they're kind of they're

might be the hebrides there's sort of goldy light gold is how I describe them well it does

that but it's also that these are very recent islands and geological terms in Scotland you know

bits that are 450 500 million years old you know my bit of perthishers like that these are islands

that came out of the sea between 500 thousand and five million years ago and therefore some of the

islands you go to are basically just black volcanic lava with one or two tiny sprigs of grass

that's the sort of newest ones and there are active volcanoes even the oldest and inverted

commerce islands and are still just establishing themselves and and it is that sense of being almost

at the beginning of creation yeah where did you stay say it on the boat say it on the boat because

the whole thing Ecuador has turned the whole thing into an enormous national park and it it

regulates very very carefully where you can go where you can snorkel how many people can go

on each place they actually tell you which bits the islands you can go to at any one time it's

very very well organized and lots of restless politics listeners so when I was lying embarrassing

myself looking pretty unattractive and my swimming trunks playing with a sea lion people would walk

up to me and say you know well done on the restless politics they didn't say why weren't you with

the Alistair interviews Alinsky no didn't didn't ask that but but a very particular demographic I

mean our little boat was basically a doctors university professors that seemed to be the the

demographic being picked up people like your dad are they trying to develop a tourist infrastructure

or not no they're trying to keep most of it offshore on these boats so they take you in on on these

on these zodiac these rigid inflatable crafts that take you into the shoreline and they're very

limited on where they allow you to walk unless you're actually you know like my great friend Robert

Sapolsky a genuine naturalist who could sit under a tree and stare at the sea lions for 20 years

no I'd really recommend it it's unbelievable and it made me so moved by nature and so moved by

the sense when you're underwater snorkeling and I'm sure many people love snorkeling as much

I do that you're looking at such an ancient world that you know horseshoe crabs that have been

there 400 million years sharks that have been there hundreds of millions of years turtles that have

been there hundreds of million years there before the dinosaurs moving around in these strange dark

submarine environments you said that Charles Darwin went there and I know if you read about Darwin

his visit to the Galapagos was that not did not all play quite a role in his developing theories

of evolution what happened to him that when he went there well he he arrives on the beagle this

amazing five-year journey that he takes as a young man and he collects all these specimens and he

notes in it that a man says to him that you can tell just by looking at it which island and a

tortoise comes from so the islands where the tortoises have to stretch their heads up higher to get

to the prickly pared trees their shells have a different shape they have a sort of saddle shape so

their heads can go up and they have a more dome shape in the place where the vegetation's near the

ground there are these finches which have totally different beaks depending what type of fruit they're

going after nuts they're going after now Darwin didn't catalog this very well at the time in fact

captain Fitzroy he's traveling with does a much better job but cataloging properly which I

but later when he writes the origins of species he gives a lot of credit to his voyage to the beagle

a beginning to get him thinking about natural selection and the species they're beautifully written

books there's a wonderful audio recording at your origin species read by Richard Dawkins if people

want to to listen and essentially what the Galapagos Islands tells us even if he wasn't fully aware

when he was there at the time is through these island environments you can see most clearly of

all the way that evolution works the way that very specific micro environments can generate entirely

new species fantastic fantastic well it sounds amazing and the kids at no point said can't we go to

Euro Disney because it's wonderful for kids too because because they get to literally walk and look at

they I mean they've got I really got penguins and flamingos very oddly these very cold water

meets very warm water so you have animals together that you'd never expect to see together and

they're so tame so you don't need binoculars I mean you're literally right next to an arbitrator or

right next to a flamingo or a penguin those are great well done well thank you for letting me off

and I hope that's going to encourage Alice to take a holiday sometime yeah yeah whatever whatever

all right see you soon see you soon bye bye take care bye bye