562. The Right’s War With Itself and Burnham’s Prisons Challenge

We spend an enormous amount of time asking what's happening to labour, but I wonder if the

stranger story in British politics isn't what's happening to the right. Two years ago,

the Conservative parties suffered their worst defeat in modern history, and then things

have just got worse. Reform overtook them, it stayed ahead, and it points the Conservatives

to be projected to drop below 100 seats in a 650 seat Parliament, with reform getting

significantly more seats. What do they do? Well that's one of the questions in the episode

today. Kemi Badenock has decided that the answer is to move closer to reform, to become

tougher on immigration, tougher on culture wars and try to get back those voters. But meanwhile,

these abandoned, what I think, would be the much more interesting constituency, a very large

number of people in the centre. Floating voters who are going to be increasingly alienated,

if Kemi Badenock starts chasing reform. Or is there perhaps an even more tragic problem?

Which is the Conservatives may not be able to win back the reform voters, and they also

may not be able to win back the centrist, in other words, their internal decline, a story

that we've seen again and again, across Europe.

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

And me, as to Campbell, and Rory, today we are going to be talking a lot about your former

party, the Tories, but also the threat they're facing from other right-wing parties like

reform and restore Britain. We're going to talk about Andy Burnham's first real big

challenge, which is prisoner release. We're going to talk about US politics after Abdul

El-Said has become the nominee for the Democratic Party in Michigan. We're going to talk about

catastrophe in the river Rhine, and you're going to tell me about it, and you gift that

you found for me. We had a lot of questions about what's happening, not just the Tories

party, but on the right of British politics more generally. And Sarah asked this, why is

the British right seemingly Terry itself a part? At the very moment, Andy Burnham's

ascendancy is giving Labour a boost. Will there be an electoral pact between the parties

of the right, or have these various feuds become intractable?

Let's start with a big existential question. So the first question is, what is the British

right? And this really matters because normally, if you are, for example James Johnson from

JLA partners, who's been one of the guys that has really been advising the Conservatives

to try to be more like reform, he would say that the way that you count right-wing voters

is you add the reform voters, Nigel Farage, restore, which is Rupert Lowe's smaller French

party and the Conservatives' voters, and those are the people to play for. I think they

are forgetting a much more important fourth group of potential right-wing voters, which are

the people in the old centre, floating voters who could vote Conservative, if instead of chasing

reform, they began getting themselves back to a more sensible pitch. But so long as they're

stuck in this cage fight, fighting over those voters, and the figures go up and down and

reform is weaker than it was a few months ago, but it's still a most poll so ahead of the

Conservatives, you're generally looking at something like 22% for reform, maybe 20% for

the Conservatives and Rupert Lowe coming in, who knows, 5%, 6%. That's a pretty substantial,

exciting block in some ways if you just put maths together because you're looking at sort

of 47% of the British public that you're fighting for, and the answer to why are they fighting

like rats in a sack? Well, it's existential survival. I mean, the Conservatives are now,

and this was the European analysis again, it's one that you can explain much better to

listeners than I can, but what we saw in France, what we saw in Italy, what we saw in the

Netherlands, and maybe to some extent what we may be about to see in Germany is that their

equivalents of these huge governing center-right machines, the party tradition that in France

produced everything from St-Gol all the way through to Chirac and Sacozzi vanished,

all the Italian equivalent which produced people like Andréotti that dominated Italian

politics for decades vanished. So the real question for the Conservatives is, is this

a temporary blip? Is it like what happened to them when you were in office in the 1970s,

2001, which is they have very few seats, but they eventually rebuild and come back again

in 2010, 2015, 2019, 2017 with victories? Or is this actually something much more like

what we're seeing across Europe, which is that the center-right is an impossible position

that the populist right is never coming back, and the centrist is never going to trust

them again? Yeah, well, that's why I guess we might as well start by looking at leadership

because when we talked to Johnny Mercer on leading this week, he was very clear that

somebody from a military non-political background never voted in his life until he became an MP

was largely inspired to become a Tory and try to become an MP because he was really impressed

by David Cameron and what he was trying to do with the Conservatives party, David Cameron

was trying to signal going much closer to the sort of vision of the Tory party that you've

just set out. I have felt since she became leader, that Kenny Badek has not been taking

that decision on the contrary, as you say, she's thinking, right, well, the votes on the

right are going to Nigel Farage, they're going, some of them to Rupert Lowe's restore Britain

party. I've got to worry about getting them back. I don't think her strategy is doing that.

I think the parts of her strategy that are working better are that she's tough, she's

tough, she seems to know what she stands for. I think she's recently been much better in Parliament

than she has been for a while. I was interested that she went halfway towards meeting Andy

Burnham and saying, okay, yeah, let's maybe talk about this, but you mustn't dare put up taxes

and you mustn't dare increase borrowing. I wonder whether she's slightly starting to move

as well on zero, there've been some straws in the wind on that, two daily telegraph columnists

now. There's one paper as you know that the Tory party tends to read. It's the daily telegraph,

maybe the daily mail and the times as well. I think there are straws in the wind that she's

maybe tacking. Explain to me in this, what's happening at Zera, because the story was that

a loyalty test to be put in place that you could only run to be a Tory MP in the future if you

committed to leaving European comment on human rights and you rejected NetZera, which seemed to be

a very strong loyalty test to driving out people who were more on the centroid or more left wing of

the party. Now, I wasn't, when I told about Storzenly, I didn't mean that Kenny Bain was changing

her position, but the politics inside the Tory party was changing. If you've got two pretty high

profile columnists in the daily telegraph and the editorial writer essentially saying this climate

crisis is real, we've got to face up to the damage it's being done, I can see that position moving.

But as things stand, you're right, if you analyse just the broad politics of it, she's pretty much

staying in a very right wing, tacking reform and restore as she goes. Now, one of the reasons you

might be doing that is, I mean, polls, they come and they go, but you've got to spot the trends.

Reform has lost about six points in the last 12 months, okay? It's favourability, that's those in

favour those against doing a good job, doing a bad job, is now the worst of all the major parties,

okay? So, and the Conservatives are on 30% favourable, that's their best since October 2021.

By the way, I wouldn't necessarily look at restore as fringe in that, yes, they're on about 4%,

and that's pretty small. But if you look at what they had in the Make a Feel by-election and the

Greater Manchester Merrill by-election, when it came to real votes, they did better than people

expected, and they did it in a way that damage reform. And also, was catastrophic for the Tories,

I mean, let's just take that Manchester thing, they beat the Tories. Yeah, well, the Tories,

I mean, maybe padding themselves on the back, but one of the strange things is that although

Kemi-Badenock's net popularity has done well, and people are admiring the PMQ's, it's having

very, very little effect on how the Tories are polling nationally, it's barely moving the

dial, I mean, they're barely moving off 20%. These reform restore voters are actually drifting

if anywhere back to Labour, they're not drifting the Conservatives, and the Manchester, I mean,

I mean, this is one of the biggest cities in the United Kingdom. The Tories used to be in play

for Manchester, one of the reasons why George Osborne, who was in Manchester MP, puts so much

money into Manchester, is that he saw it as part of his Northern powerhouse dream. The Tories came

fifth, fifth in the election, 7.7% of the vote. Seven point seven so the latest data

is this is a party, which whatever, you know, the Chattering Class seems to have got

excreting excited by the leader of the Conservative Party, but look at the raw numbers,

this is a party in existential crisis. Listen, I think that's right, and by the other point I was

going to make, I saw an interesting poll that was testing the reliability of all the parties

supporters who say that they're going to vote for party A or party B, and restore had the highest.

So if you say you're voting restore, your commitment to that is higher than it is even for if

for our voters voting reform. Now, what does that say? So the serious question talks about these

fractures fused, and that's kind of what it feels like, and there is a nastiness about right wing

politics. You see that when it comes out in violence, as often it does on the sort of Tommy Robinson

marches, but you see in the language all the time, I mean, Zia Yusuf seems to think he's a kind of

modern day Norman Tebbet, but Norman Tebbet had real politics and real political skills as well as

being able to put the boot in very effectively. But I think there's something, there's something

about the way they relate to each other. John Swini just written this book that I read last

weekend, I mentioned the real, I think it's called the real Nigel Farage, and a lot of it is about how

he finds it really difficult to maintain relationships. So Rupert Low, he has become the leader of his own

party, restore Britain, because he fell out with Nigel Farage, he was elected as a reform UK MP. I think

even though Rupert Low is kind of pretending to sort of say we must get together, he's doing

so on conditions that make it virtually impossible for that to happen. There's an interesting question

there strategically for Farage, which is I was talking to someone who's very close to Farage who was

saying that the risk is, electorally, that Farage is getting too obsessed with Rupert Low, that Rupert

Low has really gotten to his head, and that this has put him on tilt because it means that Farage is

increasingly worrying about shoring up his right wing, whereas probably strategically what he should

be doing is reaching further into the more moderate conservative vote, if he wants to actually

have the majority and end up as prime minister, he shouldn't be chasing Rupert Low. What he should

actually be doing is reassuring some of Kenmy Badenoch's supporters and getting more of them back on.

The problem for both Badenoch and Farage is that chasing restore voters, and Kenmy Badenoch, I'm

afraid, is doing more of this than people understand. She's spending a lot of time online,

and a lot of that time online is following and reading mega-influenced stuff, which people

talking about suicide or empathy and a lot of the right wing chat that Musk loves. There's

the speech that's on her website, which she gave in December, which is really interesting because

it shows you that the thing that really gets Kenmy Badenoch out of bed in the morning isn't the economy,

and this is why I think they're making mistake. I mean, Prosper UK, which is David Gork,

Andy Street, the traditional conservatism, I believe, and is all about the economy, right? They

would be saying that the real response to the problem that Britain's in is not culture wars,

it would be trying to be pro-Besonist and grow the economy, and that that's actually Labour's

weakest point that Andy Burnham hasn't made it clear that he really gets how to generate economic

growth. I mean, disagree about that, but that would be the position, not culture wars.

She is not really very interested in it. Where she gets passionate is when she starts talking about

left-wing ideologues, freedoms under threat, the radical left, undermining our culture,

undermining our institution, liberalism has been hacked, radical green leftism. I'm quoting all

this stuff from her own speech. And here's another question. What is Kenmy Badenoch doing?

We talked about her knocking out Gaffan Barwell. That just seems nasty. It doesn't seem to,

you know, she might say that it's rebranding the Tory party and making it more acceptable to the

voters. I've, I'm very fond of Gaffan Barwell, but he's not a household name. It's not going to make

a massive difference to the way that the public perceives it. Why is she not letting Grant Shaps run?

Is she lessing Penny Morden back on the candidates list? Now, the reason I'm asking these

questions is these people, she doesn't disagree with their policies. I think she's worried that

they're actually threats to her, that she doesn't want big beasts re-entering her orbit.

And the final thing I'd say is that chasing the group at low populist votes isn't just about

parties that are nasty at their centre. It's about a very, very toxic voter group.

You really do not want to redesign all your policies around that group. Firstly, you're not

going to win them over. Or if you do, as Boris Johnson did in 2019, you can't keep them

because they are so viriantly angry anti-establishment outraged with the government that you can't build

a stable coalition on the back of those people. And the things they're demanding are incredibly

unpleasant and incredibly damaging for the British economy, right? She's already chasing it.

She announced 230,000 foreigners were going to have to leave their council homes,

and they were going to leave them in six months, at which point reform says, oh no, it'll be three

months, right? That's a classic example of the kind of traps you get yourself into once you start

playing these games. And that happened in the middle of these protests going on in

Sepford and Norfolk, where far right thugs I would call them were literally going around the homes

of people they said, but asylum seekers and trying to force them out of their homes. So she's

got to be very careful, I think, I'm with you on this, not to get involved in that. You also

have mentioned Gavin Barwell, somebody less well known, guy called Joshua Bonehill Payne,

who had been convicted for an anti-Semitic campaign that he'd been running against,

Luciana Berger. And he stood down as a local candidate, but not before she had okay that going on.

And even though she then accepted, she should stand down as a candidate, he's now advising her

commissional culture and integration. So as you say, very, very odd signs that she's sending out.

This point about nastiness though, I saw a tweet this morning about Zee Yusuf, and somebody

said, it must be absolutely exhausting to be so angry and so nasty all the time. This is on the back

of Zee Yusuf calling Ben Wallace, your former colleague and former Tory quick cabinet minister,

calling him a moron because he disagreed with something that reform was saying.

And the other thing that they do a lot is they call any of you disagreements with them,

traitors. I had the traitor treatment a few months ago from Rupert Low. I can't remember what it

was I'd done that was so traitorous. I get it from Dominic Cummings. Yeah, exactly. And Elon

Musk is always calling people traitors. He was at it this week with I come with somebody in

France that I saw he was saying you're a traitor. And he's always an Italian, and Zannie

Mint and Beto is an editor of the economy. She was a traitor because she gave him a bit of a tough

time in an interview. And I had another touch of the the Rupert loan hasten as this week. He did this

jaw-droppingly bad interview with Nick Robinson of the BBC. During which, this is how mad this

stuff is. So, Rory, let me ask you a straightforward question. Your friend King Charles, is he your white

Britain? Can you answer that question, Rory? Is he your white Britain? Well, I suppose so, yeah.

Yes, he's a white Britain. Rupert Low could not bring himself to answer that question. Why could

he not answer that question? Because Matt Goodwin, aka Badloss, he wrote a report which Rupert Low

was quoting to justify his prediction, the data which Britain would become a non-white majority

country. All parts of the sort of great replacement theory that these people spew out all over the place.

So, Nick Robinson was aware that Badloss's calculation required that you were not a white Britain

if one or both of your parents were not born in the United Kingdom. Well, as you know, your friend

King Charles's father was born in Greece. And I wasn't born in the United Kingdom. I was born in

Hong Kong, so am I not a white Britain? And nor was Boris Johnson, a norwenigial frarge's children's

mother. So, this is this is why this thing so mad, but Rupert Low could not bring himself to say

Charles is a white Britain. He said, well, you can split hairs about that. No, you can't. He's a white

Britain just to admit it, okay? If Charles fills in a census, white Britain tick Christian tick, okay?

Now, somebody then puts up and of course, as I keep saying to you, you have pulled me into this

disagree agreeably thing. I've actually written my column in the new world about this. I lapse.

I lapse when I go on social media. So, somebody said, how would you describe Rupert Low in a word?

And I just put, I'm sitting there idly and I was watching the cricket or something. I just put

musk puppet. Ah, clever. I like it. I said, okay. It wasn't that good, I've had a bit of a

sock puppet, musk puppet. Exactly, exactly. He must probably, yeah, and he's doing it. And also,

it was later proven because his response to me, which I shall tell you in a moment, I hope you're

children aren't listening. And because he and all my platform says, we've got to get behind Rupert

Low, he's the future in Britain, have tens of thousands of likes in no time at all. His reply to me was,

and I think you're a despicable piece of shit. No, no, he's entitled to think that. But

that's taking a different level from musk puppet, isn't it? It also reveals a thinness of the skin

that is kind of off the scale. And then we saw Richard Tyson, not the same party, he's one of Nigel

Verage's puppets, he said, he's getting a few difficult questions over all this money, stuff going

and George Kotsel, the author of the Money and Onering book, post George and Verage's money and

and George's mum and all this nonsense, right? Richard Tyson, the coverage of whom I barely noticed

if I'm being absolutely frank out here in sunny France, he does an interview where he says,

I'm being treated by the mainstream media, worse than murderers, rapists and pedophiles. And I thought,

oh, what level of projection is this crazy stuff? But what it says to me is this is politics

of them, it's just being nasty to each other. Let me finish off the segment with a more positive

vision. So I talked about Prosper UK and this work is being done by to try to rebuild the

centre ground of British politics. And there's been some amazing research, so Sam Friedman's written

a sub-starch article on it where he's done research into what he calls the centre ground of

British politics. What he defines by the centre ground is the group of people who would consider

floating, consider changing their vote. And what he finds basically as British politics is divided

into three thirds. There are people who are always going to vote left, there are people who are

always going to vote right and then surprising there's almost a third of people who are floating

voters. And he also finds that the left and the right are much more similar than you'd think

compared to the centre. The left and the right tend to be whiter, older, in favour of retaining

the triple lock, more exercised about immigration, generally more socially conservative. The centre

ground turns out to be younger, more professional, more educated, often more prosperous, happy to

let the triple lock pension guarantee go. Interestingly, less worried about business, less worried about

AI, more positive about business, more positive about AI, less worried about immigration, positive

about Europe, but also positive about Britain engaging globally, more international, less white,

more less, and this is the group which is all to play for. This is the space that some parties

should be occupying, not a space the Lib Dems can possibly occupy, they haven't really worked out

the language to speak to them. It's a space that Andy Burnham can reach into and I think that

one of the things that he's really good at is for the first time, seeming normal, thoughtful,

intelligent, relatable, huge improvement. But I think he's going to struggle to actually come

across as pro-business, entrepreneurial for this group. And this is where I think the conservative

party has gone completely wrong. They're never getting back. Those reform voters, well at least 15%

to the British public is going to remain out on the populous far right and they're never coming

back to the Tories. There is this whole group there where if you could produce an Andy Burnham

like figure, so somebody who was relatable, intelligent, who people trusted, but who seemed a little

bit more pro-business friendly, a little bit more serious about economic growth, there's a huge

number of voters to hoover up. And that's the opportunity that's being missed.

I did a little bit of scribbling with my kind of you know, still trying to think like a strategist

hat on and I was trying to work out of these three parties at the right how they should

view each other. And I came up with this. I think what reform can with some justifications say

to the Tories is we have already replaced you and it's not even close. You were nowhere in the

Welsh elections, you were nowhere in the Scottish elections, we were out of you in both

and England is our base anyway. Okay, so that's quite a good line of attack.

Well the Conservatives I think, Badellox, approach to them should be, you guys are unelectable,

you could not run the country, we're becoming electable again. That's got to be a long-term

strategy. And I think restore if I were to go low rather than sort of sit there thinking how best

to abuse you know, random podcasters, I think he should be focusing on Farage becoming like a very

standard politician. He then becomes the kind of you know, the insurgent because if you look at

this, this scandal stuff, it's really interesting how they're handling it in exactly the same way

as you and I have seen Labour and Tory politicians, handless scandals you know, it's not quite

wait for Sue Gray but it's an establishment stitch up, everybody's out to get us, let's wait

for this, let's wait for that. And so I think if restore Britain were to say to reform, you are now

just another, you talk about the uni party, you're part of it, you're part of it, we're the real radical

outsider, that's my free advice, Rupert, I'm maybe a despicable piece of shit but it doesn't mean

that I can't think strategically thinking about your positioning and I think it would improve

markedly if you maybe thought a little bit more deeply about the future of the country not just

your own, there's another free bit of advice. And so just before we go to the break, there was a

really interesting question, Elka given the difficulties around the early release scheme,

practically speaking, why haven't governments generally built a few new prisons and Dominique

from London about, questions about women's prisons but the key here I guess, Alice, as I hand

over to you is that Sir David Gork did this report in which he argued for early release from

prisons and he made a number of arguments and one of them is actually about reoffending and one of

them of course is the fact that our prisons are absolutely chock full and unless we start

releasing people from prisons, there's simply not going to be any room to accommodate any prisoners

and Andy Burnham stepped into this, he's tried to push back on it, we're actually speaking today

when today program was announced that he was going to ask for the killers of a police officer to

be exempted from this scheme and it's becoming a really life issue for reform and conservatives,

many issues put over to you. So Rory you mentioned Dominique's question which I thought was really

interesting, she talks about this early release scheme scandal, she then says I believe there

are about a dozen dedicated women's prisons in the UK, could the more dangerous women be moved to

occupy fewer of them so that the remaining empty prisons could potentially house male prisoners,

women are far less likely to commit violent or sexual crimes, children would benefit etc etc etc,

I hope that kind of thing is being thought of. Look this is turning up to be, turning out to be

Andy Burnham's really first big, he said a pretty good honey mean so far but this is going to be

very very difficult, difficult politics, difficult reality in terms of security but the truth is

the question why we haven't built prisons is because it's so bloody expensive and it takes so long

and the reason why one of the reasons why prisons are so full is because again partly because of

politics and populist campaigning people are in jail for longer, we've got this very extraordinary

thing where crime is falling, the prison population is rising, it's doubled in the past 30 years

and that's largely down to getting longer sentences at Crown courts now,

Kirstaama and when we were talking about the Tories earlier Rory I think one of the things can be

baiting not could do and should do is admit that some of this is absolutely on their watch,

the way that Chris Philp is trying to project this, he's the shadow, my homophares guy for the Tories,

trying to project this as a sort of Andy Burnham created crisis, I think it makes it worse for the Tories,

that's what then opens the space for for Arge to come up with his nonsense about we're going to

send them all to El Salvador or Albanian, all that stuff he came out with at his latest press

conference the most of the media covered live in fall, which they never do for most party leaders,

brackets. So I just feel this is a real issue but I think this is a place where Andy Burnham is

going to have to whole firm, yes look for exemptions, yes look to sort of the most obvious cases

that people are going to get very offended by but at the same time there's a long-term practical

solution that has to be put in place which is about sentencing, it's about prison population,

it's about probation service in crisis and until those things are addressed over the long term

we're going to keep coming back to this. Keir Starmies to talk about sticking plastic politics,

if we're not careful this becomes the definition of sticking plastic politics.

Yeah and the the problems that we're facing are pretty fundamental, I mean I was the

prison minister so I was writing the heart of this question of capacity building new prisons.

I mean the first thing is when people talk about prisons being overcrowded,

they're already massively overcrowded, we're already keeping two prisoners in cells which the

Victorians built for one and these prisons particularly a lot of the locals are frequently in

horrendous conditions. If you read the inspection reports they are filthy, the windows are broken

which is the key to the drones thing that we were talking about in the in the last episode. I mean

the truth matter is there is absolutely no reason for there to be any problem with drones and

prisons. I mean there's a mad world in which everyone gets excited by drones and you know we're

going to laze the drones, this trust had dogs barking at drones but the truth matter is the

prison is a guarded compounds only two ways of getting stuff in and I go through the gate where it

goes over the wall and the way in which most people were getting things off drones is sticking

their hands out the window. Wait you shouldn't be able to stick your hands out of a window in a prison.

These windows don't open right and the only reason you stick your hands out when is you

broken the window. In other words you've broken the window nobody's inspects at your window and

nobody's fixed the window and nobody's punished you for breaking the window. So that goes back to

one of the fundamentals when we're talking about prison places and drones and all this kind of

thing. There's a real problem with the way in which we've actually built the culture and the systems

and the prison service. Being a prison officer is really tough right it's like some combination of a

police officer a social worker a teacher a security guard all rolled into one. These should be

well paid well trained jobs with a proper training college proper morale proper monitoring

so that you actually know your prisoners you're keeping these things clean, tidy, well-inspected

the windows fixed. That's where I'd begin the culture of the prison officers. Now the second

question is this question about how many people were putting in prison. It's terrible right?

When David Gaulk was the Secretary of State of Justice and I was the prison's minister we had

everybody, labor, conservatives, every MP you could imagine, wandering in trying to get longer

sentences usually called after an individual, Mungo's law, you know, Hamish's law, Angus's law,

which usually meant some terrible tragedy had happened and infant had been killed. They might have

been run over by a speeding driver or they might have been the victims of domestic abuse and the

demand was for longer sentences for that crime and when David and I were in we said no to all those

requests because it's the longer sentences which drive the system into crisis. As soon as we left

a more right wing government under Boris Johnson came in, Dominic Rob and they started

extending these sentences then Kier Sam started playing this game. You remember when he was

campaigning against Rishi Sunak he started putting out social media coverage saying Rishi Sunak

believes that people who are guilty of sexual assault should not be sent to prison. I will change

that. So he was signaling a few thousand people who judges have determined had not committed once

you looked at the context that sexual assaults something that required them to go to prison and he

was committing to another 6,000 people going into prisons. That was somebody who was the lawyer

coming from the left. So the cumulative change and this is about populist politics from the left

and from the right. Andy Bernan's playing it to this too. In the end, Starmor decided to bring

in David Gore can try to get a relatively technocratic solution to this and of course, Bernan's

census is this isn't popular. Well, there's two things you can do. You can either build many many

many more prisons and where are you going to build them? Well, I'm also 7 billion 7 billion

quidawak. Absolutely. Incredibly expensive. Very unpopular with the communities near which they're

built or you can reduce sentence length. The reason why we have many more people in prison than

in the Netherlands were the Netherlands actually offering us prison places because they're not using

although they were because they weren't using their prisons. But that's because the politicians

have been prepared to have a row with the public. It's not that the Dutch voter wants people to have

short sentences. It's that Dutch politicians have recognized that the only way of controlling this

shorter sentences and then the final thing which is much much better community sentences and probation

and looking after people when they leave prison so that we don't have this mad situation where 70%

of people on short sentences reoffend and return to prison again, 50% of all prisoners reoffend

return to prison so that a lot of these numbers are just about the fact that we're not remotely

looking after people when they leave prison so it's an endless cycle effect where they're all

going back again where it's places like Sweden have much much lower reoffending rates.

Yeah, we're agreeing agreeably and violently about this one but we have we have done for some

time. It's a long long long battle to win with political and public opinion. Let's take a break

and then when we come back talk about what's going on with the river Rhine, what's going on in

Michigan and the democratic primary and also Rory this I don't know if you've been following the story

about Anthony Albanese and a pair of giant melons. That's it. It sounds like you've gone on Benny

Hill on me but I look forward to hearing about that. Okay back from the break. See you soon. See you. Bye bye.

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

I'm the Aleister Campbell. So Aleister listen having covered the fight in Maine against Susan

Collins. We're now looking at the Michigan democratic primary. So what are your thoughts? This is

Lael's question on Abdul El-Saheads win in the Michigan democratic primary. How should sensible

Democrats approach DSA encroachment in the party? So Michigan this is Detroit. This is the great

old industrial rust belt. This is somewhere that became a key question because this is where one of

the great Democrat governors Gretchen, a witness is located and it was a key battle ground for Trump

and it isn't the candidate that the Gretchen Wittner wanted to win. It's not the conventional

candidate one but a man called Abdul El-Sahead over to you. Well I can't quite work out why there

seems to be such angst about this guy. Now look I can see that for some people who might come across

as very abrasive he gives a sense of always having to be the cleverest guy in the room which is what

you always say about my friend, Emmanuel Macron. But I think there's something very exciting about him.

This is a absolutely 50-50 state so it's a very very big choice and I think the Democrats are making

the democratic parties making mistake in the debate having happened, the victory having been secured,

now having this soul searching about whether it's the right move or not. Get behind the guy for

God's sake. And what's the next thing to say? Just to try to understand what the the issue here is.

So on the surface he seems like a real kind of amazing candidate. He was a high school sports star

and wrestling champion. He got a fully funded scholarship to university. Then got a Rhodes scholarship

to Oral College Oxford. He returned. He became the youngest ever public health official at the age

of 30 where he seemed to make huge progress on public health in Michigan. He's a charismatic,

good looking, sporty doctor. Is it more than the fact that he's been very critical of Israel? What is

it that he's done? I mean he's obviously a Egyptian ancestry. He's got an Egyptian academic father.

What is it that he's supposed to have done that makes everybody so shocked? Why are they all treating him as

though Jeremy Corbyn suddenly being elected? Well I'm guessing it is a lot of it. Is it about Israel?

Because he had tens of millions spent against him. He was outspent. See I think this is an

incredibly exciting thing. Part of his message was money out of politics, money in your pocket,

Medicare for all. That's a really good democratic message if you ask me. And the money that was

spent against him, a lot of it by A-PAC. And I guess that is frightening some people because these

Israeli supporting groups are very, very important to democratic funding. But I think it's

incredibly exciting that he won on that ticket. And he won it. And by the way we talk about strategic

framing and messaging. He was going to big rallies and big events and they were reciting his

message back at him. That's when you know it's cutting through. And it speaks to the three big

issues. What do people keep saying they're concerned about affordability, money in your pocket,

corruption under Trump, money out of politics, future of health, Medicare for all. It's a brilliant

message if you ask me. Now, so I'm afraid, look I don't know, I'm not in America as much as you,

I don't follow it maybe as close as you do. I can't help thinking a lot of this is just

straightforward racism or fear of racism, fear that electing somebody called Abdul with a wife who

wears a headscarf and who is absolutely open about his belief that the American policies

on the wrong side of the argument on Gaza, I think is that. It's a really interesting one,

isn't it? Because he's not Graham Platner with his neo-Nazi appearing to two and his

history of allegations of sexual abuse who had to resign out of the main race. This is a much more

clean cut, successful, professional figure. Maybe people are drawing analogies with Mammdani who's

also a highly educated, strong critic of Israel, who's seen as being on the far progressive left.

Medicare for all is considered very, very controversial. In the UK context, that's the

national health service. So we're less likely to think that's the most radical proposed

learning ones ever come up with. But it is I suppose, if we're serious about it for a second,

I don't know whether he's a good symbol of it, but the way in which people would

conjure it and why they'd be interested in your view or surprised at the view you're taking is that

when we interviewed on leading, for example, the Connecticut Congressman who made a very power

flag, and indeed the Massachusetts Congressman who made a very power flag on both of them for the

imports of the Democratic Party returning to the centre, the fight seems to be, does the

Democratic Party energize itself by reaching for the Bernie Sanders left and pushing for the

turnout and running the risk that moderate voters begin to see the Democratic Party as being

of what was it, woke week and what was the third thing they were supposed to be. Can't

work week out of work. I don't know what the thing goes. Anyway, go what they broke, what was it?

Yeah, I think we can work week and break. So is what they're mostly worried about that the

swing voters are going to think the Democratic Party is too radical, even if their views in

European political context seem pretty mainstream? Or is that the fear that actually if you try to

trim too much and head too much into the centre, don't speak for your members, real views on

guards, they don't speak for their real views on inequality, medical care, et cetera, you're just

not going to get the turnout and you're going to lose by default. Yeah, I guess that is the fear,

but I think it displays a lack of confidence in their own values and their own beliefs. That's the

argument that's going to be run against him. Trump is already out. Trump has said he's a communist

loser who hates Jews in Israel. So that's how they're going to fight this. That's how the

republic is going to fight this guy. This thing about communism. No, you and I know that he's not a

communist. You talked about Jeremy Corbyn. Most left-wing American politicians are not as left-wing

as most European left-wing politicians. I think what he has to do is authentically show

that the nature of that campaign he fought to be the nominee learns the lessons good and bad

from how he won it. Now to be fair, I think he's already doing that. He's already talked a little

bit about he thinks he went over the top in some of his attacks on his opponent. He said at one

point, she's the worst possible candidate. You could imagine. He said he wishes he hadn't said that.

But my sense of misrepid, like when we talk about Mamdanin, I know New York's different, but when

you're trying to win a campaign like this, which is so important to the bigger picture,

this is why I don't understand. I saw one guy who's a sort of moderate Democrat. He was talking

about the war that we face ahead. We've got a war ahead. This isn't a war. This is about this guy

winning on a platform that most Democrats ought to be able to support in a seat that is

unbelievably important. Why is this seat so important? Because Rodgers, who he's now his opponent,

Trump won Michigan by one point from Kamala Harris. Democrats last time round won the seat by

0.5%. It's so close. I'm interrupting and just to explain to the very basics, what the Democrats

trying to do is defend a Democrat held seat, not win Republican because the Democrats Senators

retiring after three terms. Correct. That says to me, regardless of what you actually think I'm

afraid, once this race is run and this guy is the candidate, it's about Democratic candidate

against Republican candidate. That's it. I mean, the post-mortem the Democrats should have had

was after they lost the Donald Trump, not because the more moderate candidate so called has lost

to this guy Abdul El-Sahed. Who, as you say, I think strikes a very confident posture. I think if

you could just iron out this thing about I saw an interview, I was reading the transcript of an

interview that you wrote times. Now, what he said was fine, but he's got so little, I can see why

he grates on some people. There's a bit where he says, he's a bassist point that he said,

I'm sorry about this, but I do read books. It was a way of saying Donald Trump, but he's crowd

is stupid, right? But it sounded a bit patternizing to everybody. I on that out, I on that out,

just be a guy who gets up there and he clearly can motivate people. Like Mamdaadi did in New York.

He had tens of thousands of people out and knocking doors for it. Look, I just think this is such an

important seat when it comes to the midterms and they've got to win Michigan. So get behind the guy.

Okay, now final serious question, then you're going to tell us about your melons. So Judy,

how concerned should we be about the Rhine in Germany falling to record low levels since every

part of Germany is the heat wave and wildfires continue across the European hit UK? Let me just

sort of try to set up my understanding of this and then you who are right in the depths of this

kind of German debate. Germany's papers can explain it to us. It seems from the outside an

extraordinary story because it's very medieval oddly. I mean, we talk a lot about just in time

supply chains and we worry a lot about semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan or exactly how the

Japanese process a particular oil petroleum product. But this literally is the big waterway that

connects the low countries into Germany and its water levels getting too low that they can't move

barges up and down and it turns out that barges are far more important to the German economy

than everyone really thought about. And while we were worrying about all this kind of

resilience and supply chains and the state of hallmews, something that would have been kind of

recognizable to a medieval king which is that the water levels are too low on the Rhine to get

your barges up and down is proving really catastrophic over you. Yeah. Look, the question how

concerned should we be? The answer I think is very, very, very, very, very. And while our listeners

and viewers may think that I'm having a lovely holiday in France and you're having a lovely holiday

in Scotland, not only are we recording this today but tomorrow we're going to be recording a special

episode with Caroline Lucas about her brilliant mini-series on climate and national security.

And I guess this is much more climate and the economy because you're right about the scale of this

four out of five ships that are carrying goods and trade around Germany four out of five use the

Rhine. Okay, it's a massively important waterway. And what's happened is that the water has got

lower and lower and lower. So I saw an interview in one German newspaper with a Dutch barge owner

who has had to reduce the load of the barge by two thirds because the water is not deep enough

to take the bigger load. Okay, now that is having an impact upon supply chains. And just to give you

a sense of how shallow it has to be, the, this thing is, these water, there's some shockingly

terrifying pictures all across the German media of where you can see where the watermark normally is.

You know, when you see, it's just sort of black on the wall because that's where the water

has normally been. And some of these ships are going up and you can, you can basically put your

arm into the water and you're touching, touching the bottom. So what's happening is that they're losing

trade. The Rhine normally carries 285 million tons of freight, 80% of inland waterway traffic.

And one of the big loading places is in Doosburg and they're down to a third of the normal. Okay,

so then you think, okay, well, the one sort of specific policy response to the German

government has made is they're suspending the ban on lorries on Sundays and holidays. Okay,

now the green person in me and the sort of let's have a quiet life at the weekend person,

he says, that's terrible. But that's the scale of the damage that's been done.

Am I right? It's some people calculate the lowest level in the 150 years and that there's

talk even of the Rhine splitting in two. It's got so low. It's the lowest level since records began.

One of the big drivers of it is the melting glaciers in Switzerland. So this is climate crisis,

climate change, if not caused absolutely exacerbated by. And so the glaciers, once the glaci is

melt, it means they can't do it year after year after year, which is what's happened before.

So the water's gone lower and lower and lower. There's now talk about rebuilding the river so

that you make it narrower. But all that does, yes, you have deeper water for a bit, but you don't have

any more water. They're not actually going to cure this unless we start getting more rain.

I'm hoping to be in Switzerland more from January and I'll try to show some images because

around our flat, what's happened to the glaciers is staggering. I mean, I'll try to show you

some pictures over the last 20, 30 years. It's really bizarre. I mean, people, if you see it and

you live it, you're looking hundreds of feet of glaciers have disappeared and have left this horrible

kind of mess of rocks and rubble where there used to be ice coming all the way down. And we often

focus on on Greenland or we look at images up in the Arctic, but this Swiss story is terrifying.

Yeah, yeah. And the Keel Institute, which one of the big German economic institutes,

they've calculated that this thing going on now in the Rhine, the Elbron, the Danube in particular.

And the Danube, by the way, is so shallow that they've got pictures now of second world war

planes and other debris down at the bottom of the river that we can now see, which used to be

covered by water. And they've calculated, Keel Institute has calculated this is going to take up

0.2% off German GDP in this quarter, okay? Because that's the impact on trade.

Which again, it's not what we need because European GDP is already really struggling because

of productivity and aging. It's struggling because the competition was China, which is wiped out.

We didn't talk about this enough, but you mentioned it. Hundreds of thousands of jobs been lost in

Volkswagen. Real problems on energy prices add to that the fact that the straight of hallmouse

is putting a direct squeeze on European economies that the United States are pulling out of Ukraine

as forcing us to spend tens of billions of dollars more in Ukraine and ultimately forcing Germany

to spend up to a hundred billion dollars on defense and increasing defense expenditure.

This is a real, I don't know, quintuple whammy hitting Germany.

Yeah, totally, totally. And we think, I think we just think of rivers sometimes,

we just take them for granted as they're beautiful to look at and they've got this extraordinary

history, but this is a massive, massive trade waterway. And so the German government, I mean,

the mayor didn't, but several ministers broke into their holiday to have a crisis meeting with

business organizations and so forth because they're really worried about it. And the BASF,

you know, one of the big chemical, but part of the big chemical cluster in the in the northwest,

they've declared force measure as a result of this. In other words, if they're not able to fulfill

contracts, they're basically saying it's because of force measure, which is normally used for,

you know, when you get caught up in a war that's unexpected. So we're going to have a lot to talk

about when we talk to Caroline because I think this is, I think it's terrifying. And where I'm

in France now, we're seeing it everywhere. The rivers are just dry. There's just not the water

that they used to be. And all we've all go to next question, I mentioned the chat we're having

tomorrow with Caroline Lucas. She's done this brilliant series. I cannot recommend it strongly

enough where she's been talking to real experts in different parts of the world about what the

climate crisis is and the impact it's having in all sorts of different ways. The conversation

social we have with her is going out to everybody on Friday. And if people want to catch up in

the series, just go to therestispartics.com. Very good. Well, final question from a very alert

listener called Lucy, who's following the Australian debate, which tees into you, what's all this

stuff about Albinazy, Presence, Japan and Melons? Oh my lord. So, Rory, you've been a minister.

I've worked with Prime Ministers. You know and I know that diplomacy and gifts, it's a tricky world.

I can remember the time that Leonel Jossber presented us with a horse. And we thought, what the

fuck do we do with this? And what did you do with it? What should you be horse? I honestly can't

remember. Did you give it to the queen? No, I think we took it. I think it was taken care of by the

embassy ended up having children ride it around the place. I honestly can't remember what we did.

Leonel Jossber sadly not around to to reminders, but no, I'll try and find out if an

eight-way what happened to the Josspan horse. But this story that Lucy is raising relates to

Japan and Australia. So, Anthony Albinazy, who's been on the podcast, Sanai Takaiichi, who

would laugh down on the podcast, they meet and she presents Albinazy with a melon. Very traditional

Japanese gift. Very traditional and it's a crown melon. This is like the the piester of all

Japanese melons. She then gives him another one. Very auspicious. Very auspicious. Yeah.

So, he then a little while later, Albinazy is doing a podcast. Podcasts can be so dangerous,

Rory. He's doing a podcast with a comedian by the name of Nikki Osborne. Okay. And Nikki Osborne,

at one point, asks Albinazy whether he's ever had any strange gifts. In fact, no, what the question

was, what's the most crap gift you've ever received on overseas? Can I just pause for a second?

Okay. So, the gift of the melon, I do know a little bit about this because I've been given

melons in Japan. Yeah. And it's a very, very old tradition, goes back, I think, to the sort of

least the 1600s. And they grow these melons often on a single plant. So, just one plant of the

melon and like so many other things in Japan, done with the most exquisite care, it'll be the

most perfect melon. Correct. And it can cost up to $10,000 for a really, really good melon.

Yeah. So, it's a really profound sense of respect. Toes of gratitude. Okay. Every year.

We're not talking about the sort of thing that I sometimes buy on the roadside. Yeah.

When it says a melon, a tomato, a male a free. Right. It's not that. Not that. So, he's doing this

interview with his comedian. Yeah. And she says, what's the most crap gift you've ever received

on an overseas jaunt? Okay. He then says, I'm quoting accurately here, something I got recently

here was pretty strange, but ended up being quite good. The Japanese Prime Minister brought me a

melon. They then banter, banter, banter. And then he says, actually, it was a couple of melons.

And the way he described the couple of melons was to hold his hands like that. I will now describe

to those who are listening rather than viewing, I am holding my hands like they're holding melons

in front of my chest. Okay. It's like you're holding breasts. Correct. So, Osborne, the comedian

pipes up. So, she just came in looking like Pamela Anderson. Right. Okay. Alvin Aesie says,

she brought two and they're beautiful. Okay. Okay. Now, exactly. You're shaking your head.

And that's you as a Brit, worry. Yeah. You know what the Japanese are like. They're very proper.

Yeah. Respect is incredibly important. Yeah. And what happened was quite a lot of Japanese journalists

and then a former ambassador to Australia really, really put the boot in. Yang Yamagami,

the former ambassador, he said, although Albin Aesie recalled it as quite strange, there is nothing

strange about this gesture. A crown melon is the most prized fruit in Japan. It is treasured

as something special. What dismayed some, and this is a very good point, was that Takaiichi has

recently been subject to derogatory remarks about her body and her gender. So, the Japanese really

seem to have taken offense. Australian opposition has piled in and said, Albo should make an apology.

He's saying, no, there's no need for that because no offense was intended and none was meant.

And he's not aware of any being taken. So, end of as far as he's concerned. But it just shows you,

be very, very careful about gifts. Yeah. And making jokes about gifts and accepting revolvers and

things. We did just final things. Reporters. Yeah, yeah. Because final thing to finish, and we

didn't tell people enough about the fact that when we went to interview the President of Serbia together,

we went to see Vuchich together in Belgrade. Oh, Serbia, yeah, the guns. Yeah. It has a massive

cabinet after cabinet, a gift that the President of Serbia has received. And a staggering number of

these gifts are firearms. They are semi-automatic pistols, guns, a lot of them from Putin, actually.

The Russians seem to really specialize, but not just the Russians. The Middle East and

Potentates give swords and guns. The Turks, Famous Sea, give revolvers with ammunition to

Kierstamer and to Belgian and Dutch leaders when you go to NATO, NATO visits. Meanwhile, we tend to

give slightly lame a cheaper gift, don't we? Although the greatest one ever is that we managed to

present President Trump with a bellend called Trump. That was your friendly king. I wonder if they've

worked that well, don't get, Rory. The King Charles presented a bellend with the word Trump written

on it. Rory, talking of gifts. Fjörn and I were in a place called Montey up in the North recently,

which is where the British headquarters were during the First World War, fascinating place.

We're sitting there having dinner and this guy comes over and says, would you mind later, my

sons about to arrive with his family. He's a big fan of your podcast. He'd love to sit down and have

a chance at the end of it. The guy came to talk to us and he said at the end of it, I really want to

give you and Rory a gift because you've given me so much with the podcast, etc, etc. As you

really don't need to bother, you're honest. This is fine. This guy is the marketing guy for a French

jam company. I gave him my address at home and a couple of weeks later, this box of every single

flavor of their jam. You and I have been, we've not actually seen each other physically for a while,

but I've given a few way already, not least to some of the team, but I've kept some of the best

flavors back because for you and your family. Well, thank you. Well, little shout out,

finally, then on the gift thing to Krief. I'm having the most amazing few weeks in Krief.

If you want to see a vision of Britain working, come to Krief at the moment. I've

ranted on about how amazing the park runs are. I've talked about the incredible work done in

remake of refurbishing staff and the work done by the former teacher at Morrison's on bicycles.

But let me add to this pin of praise. I could add the incredible Beth performance in the McRostee

Park with Strathorne Arts that we saw on Sunday or Rachel and you, Priest, who's turned up,

who's the most incredible woman, who she's married to a GP, two women have a lovely baby,

she's your baby. But amongst all of this excitement was a lady arriving at church saying that

there is a gift for you, Aster. And it's back. I'm going to keep it secret. It was one of these

great moments where she comes up and says, I'm a very, very great fan of Aster Campbell. And I was

expecting her to maybe add something. No, just Aster Campbell. And the gift is coming. And it's

so bagpipe themed gifts I will be coming. Oh, another lovely thing coming from Krief.

Excellent. Excellent. I think we should also maybe say, Roy, this is possibly why you're giving

such love to Krief. You're looking, may I say, sharper and with a better backdrop than you normally

have when you're in Krief. So where are you, Roy? Well, I'd like to, this is this is another great

thing about Krief. This is the Krief leisure centre, which is also the Krief High School.

And it's a really cool investment. Initially, I was a bit nimbly about it because

this and 400 houses has gone just on the edge of where my house is on what used to be part of the

the agricultural land around the house. But I've got to say, it's really great. It's squash courts,

it's a swimming pool, it's a great library, it's a great school. And actually, it was built over

an archaeological site, which is beautifully presented. And I'm really feeling quite good about

Krief. I think we've got about 400 new houses built around my house, which again, you might be tempted

to film them be about, but actually their young families, they're bringing a lot of energy,

the high streets looking much better. So come to Krief. Roy, if you're going to be plugging

Krief as relentlessly as that, I have to give a proper shout out to the Jamman, the Montré Jamman

from Essex. His company is called Saint Dalfour, and he's got an awful lot of flavours.

The thing about Jamroy, you and I have talked about my mental health, shout out for Johnny

Mercer, brilliantly talking about his mental health on our latest episode of Leading.

Keta, my mental health is a Jamjar, which is why Jamzin Port, it's an empty Jamjar that I use as a

tool and that's Labor Mamon. It's the red and white tablecloth on top. Yeah, I know this one.

Well, he sent me 30 odd different flavours. If you'd like to tell me what your favourite flavour of Jam is.

Strawberry. Oh, that's so boring. That's so boring.

Strawberry, raspberry, apricot. Oh, boring, boring, boring. There's a reason they're the great

favourites. It's just like there's a reason why the Labrador is the world's favourite dog.

No, they're a cavalier K. Charles Roy. How can you say you're the friend of King Charles,

and you don't acknowledge that cavalier K. Charles is the best dog in the world.

I've got to sometimes, sometimes, the boring options. There's a reason for it.

Reason why? Okay. An all day breakfast as the greatest meal in the world.

A Labrador is the greatest dog and strawberry jam is the way to go.

Well, I look forward to my backpack cup. Very good. Thank you, Alessandro. See you soon. Bye-bye.

See you soon. Bye-bye.

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