573. Burnham and Carney vs. Trump, and the Diana Dispute

We're recording this as world leaders gather now in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Andy Burnham, the British Prime Minister, is preparing for his very first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump. And across Europe, governments are confronting Russian sabotage. In Germany, the far right and the far left have just dominated elections. And countries like Canada are looking for new alliances as the old Atlantic order becomes less certain. And at the centre of all this sits the United Nations, an institution created for a very different world. For 80 years, we've talked about a rules-based international order. But what happens when the rules are no longer agreed, the great powers no longer trust each other, and America itself is questioning the system it once underwrote? So what is the United Nations actually for now? What should it become? And if the old order is disappearing, what institutions can still keep the peace? This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. 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Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Transcription by CastingWords Michel Bachelet, who was the former president of she's just pulled out she's no longer standing so the candidates we're left with to take over yvonne abaki maria fernanda espinoza garces former foreign minister of ecuador rafael grossi director general of the international atomic energy agency rebecca greenspan or greenspan former second vice president of costa rica and head of the un conference on trade and development who apparently at the moment is the favorite olara otunu former agenda foreign minister carolyn rodriguez birkett guiana permanent rep at the un and i have to be honest the only one that i knew anything about mackie sal who's the former president of senegal so they are the runners and riders to take over now what does that say and partly there's the old rotating thing it's meant to be somebody from the latin latin america or caribbean next up but i think what you're seeing with those names is that people know that america china they're not going to have a big figure they don't want somebody who's going to be it's interesting only one of them is actually a head of state it's interesting so if you're andy burnham because britain as a permanent member of security council will be a relatively influential voice in trying to guide this and you know i remember when i was a minister in the foreign office how much time we spent sitting scratching our heads looking at candidates lobbying for candidates often very unsuccessfully for different un agencies there's a choice on what type of person they want are they looking for somebody who's going to be a very very skilled peace negotiator which is the kind of utah model are they looking for someone who's going to be an extraordinary or are they going to be looking for what the u.s often talks about which is somebody who does the management administration cuts the costs gets the bureaucracy going well that's obviously what the americans keep wanting they're constantly pressing for cuts to programs cuts to budget some of which are incredibly important you know they're trying to cut down the kosovo mission they cut down in columbia so there is places where the un have you know done a good job i don't think we should you know and often incredibly difficult dangerous circumstances let me let me come in on that i like you i've kind of grown up around the u.n and a lot of my international life uh was about working with the u.n admiring the u.n in fact if you'd asked me um five years ago what the great job i would want in life and that i haven't had yet what to do next in my life i would love to be an srsg a special representative secretary general in a country you know working like the amazing this is the latest job advertisement for exactly exactly whichever you are you know deputy vice president whichever country i will back your candidacy if i can uh come the srsg and drc no but i mean they are amazing figures so for example hans gruber in yemen has done an incredible job lakdar brahimi maybe in afghanistan is a towering algerian figure sergio de mello who i was with in iraq shortly before he was killed in 2003 these extraordinary figures and on the ground they held their own with any general ambassador foreign minister and they really feed an extraordinary then another level the technical expertise can be incredible i'm very struck in ethiopia and again in jordan by unicef and their water work you know in that case it was a huge tool i think he was an australian who was running the unicef office who was doing incredible work in the desert moving water around and he was funny and relaxed unhcr and all the camps exactly they did loads of good stuff i think but i i think we're dealing with with america in particular and trump in particular he doesn't they don't want strong people i think one of the criticisms i'm not going to say useless but one of the criticisms made of guterres by people inside the un i think is that he hasn't focused enough on the core purpose of peace and security and partly because he maybe felt pushed out from that let's just take gaza and and israel trump got the support of the un for his approach but the consequence of which has been to sort of push the un out of the process so we now have the ridiculous board of peace which essentially would in the past have been a un body correct and so the united nations i i can't remember the last time that there was a sort of serious discussion about israel gaza and the united nations security council just quickly to remind people the board of peace is kind of one of the great symbols of our time apart from the fact it's a lovely pun and it sounds like trump is bored of peace but it's also that it's personal to him it's not even connected to the u.s government it's him he nominates his successor there's a membership fee which mostly the gulf states seem to be paying they can get rid of him provided that he agrees with being got rid of then they really can't get rid of him that sounds like a real ability putting in a billion dollars who controls the money where does the money go it's a really incredible sort of medieval yeah entity uh i mean more like i don't know henry ii setting up some new church foundation than than any way of doing global governance now why is guterres useless i believe he's useless but you know and you don't want to use these words but exactly in that area you're talking about it is astonishing that he was not right on a plane in the middle of the russia ukraine thing on the ground dominating that because what are u.n secretary generals good at it's not necessarily the kind of long protracted civil war stuff where as you say the causes are so complicated and they go back 700 years that you really do need civil society women's movements all this stuff that was going on in the northern island peace process alongside the big guys they're particularly good at state conflict or should be where it really is a question of sitting russians and ukrainians together or iran you know why on earth have the mediators been pakistan and oman yeah yeah or even to be fair you know qatar or uae which has been doing stuff on the great dam between ethiopia and egypt right why is it them why is it not the un and the answer is guterres should be saying excuse me pakistan has vested interests it's a very complicated player why should pakistan be mediating between the u.s and iran with the united nations this is a very complicated play here why should is our job but when i go through that list of his potential successors and it's a quite sort of opaque process they have all these sort of you know straw polls and you're not meant to overtly lobby and there's all that sort of nonsense but you go through those it's now look there may be within them a hidden character and leadership skills that you and i sitting here in britain have not necessarily been aware of but it's unlikely it's unlikely that a list of people that most of our listeners and viewers will not have heard of one of them is a person who is a leader in the world who is going to become the leader of one of the most important organizations in the world at a time when we know because they say it that the big powers particularly u.s china russia don't want the united nations to matter quite so much so if you don't have that leadership symbolic figure who is strong who is respected who is seen as what do they think what is he she going to say then they we can further i think we're violently in agreement that the key role should be somebody who can do the peace and security of the world and i think that's a very important thing and i think we're also violently in agreement that a lot of the agencies on the ground do really good yeah well not all of them although i i liked akim signer who ran undp i've got some questions about huge un development program and whether that's really what we should be doing which is pumping traditional development money through un agencies that way but certainly unhcr unicef etc but there's a third bit which i think they should be much more confident about and they're not doing enough on and and my example on that is that dam so that's a classic example it's something which brings egypt ethiopia and sudan together it's very complicated cross-border work because it's to do with what you do if there's a drought what happens upstream it's got massive environmental impact so it's got the first thing which the un's about which is it's multilateral and it's owned by all the member states but secondly theoretically it's impartial and thirdly it's got the technical expertise it's got all the hydrologists it's got the water experts it's got political experts so that's clearly the kind of thing particularly environment climate where the un should be doing more and more and more but the problem is that what actually happens on the ground is it turns out it's the united arab emirates leading on it the funding's very uncertain if the funding and often the funding is coming from one or two particular countries which makes everyone accused of being biased and then the technical experts the hydrologists don't feel confident politically they sort of shuffle around in the background let's just take people into the united nations it's quite an ugly building and i thought you quite like that kind of scandi look of all that kind of stripped pine and brass and big windows looking maybe it's because i think the building is quite ugly but inside particularly during hunger week it is it's just chaos and is it so let's talk a little bit about andy burner what he's going to do because this is his first meeting with trump you know we talk about andy having quite a lot of luck along the way i think he's quite lucky at this it's not going to be as big a deal as if he was going to washington it's not going to be as big a deal as if trump were in the uk why because lots of leaders are meeting lots of and the other thing is happening at this time where trump has had his latest tantrum against the media and has kicked out some of the key media including cnn at which alleluia how often have we been saying when are they going to stand up for each other the broadcasters including fox news have said we're not going to do the poll wasn't that amazing that fox news were the first to announce yeah and that's a real problem for trump because there's nothing he enjoys more than dominating all of television and suddenly now he's had to set up his own television channel well it's hilarious because they they he was doing a ribbon cutting thing yesterday and the pool didn't turn up so there's no for life coverage and of course he one of the problems with the media is they think that whatever trump does is newsworthy which is not so they cover everything he does so they put it like they put it on the white house youtube channel but the pool also does the audio so there was no audio so you've got nine minutes of watching the show and then you've got the whole thing and then you've got the whole thing and then you've got they need to do more of this take away his oxygen because he doesn't deserve it so let's just i don't know andy burnham may have a pool okay right so we andy burnham probably will want to be filmed seen etc so this meeting will not happen in the place that we all know so well which is this horrible british basement down a whole series of side maybe an american one but that's not even that's not much better it's a bit bigger but you really have to i remember once we had a meeting i can't remember who it was with but we really had to struggle to get the flags in the background because it was like this tiny little cubicle the british one is extraordinary you actually look like you're going down the sort of service bits of the elevator shafts through various bits of exactly yeah and then they put they prop up the flags and then i certainly as a foreign office minister then pretend to look like i mean i'm some shaking hands with the president of somalia looking as though i know what i'm doing exactly so andy burnham and and the thing is what what's what's the risk when you're dealing with donald trump is that he comes out with some nonsense that kind of drives the agenda suddenly let's say he did well i'm also going to be talking to miller he's having a few problems but i'm i can help on this falklands thing or he or he does his united ireland thing or he says something about i don't know sadiq khan and immigration i don't he can come up with anything just to get inside trump's head for a second it's not necessarily that you know he sits down with this little paper before he goes in saying one of my three points it's that he somehow has some animal instinct yeah senses where the story might be and where the weakness of the person is right so i think for example when do you remember we did when we did our live show we showed the video of trump dropping the papers and kirsten bending down to pick them up i think that was deliberate right i think he's trying to make him look small i think in scotland when he sat there in the united kingdom yeah and started laying into sadiq khan and i was sitting there saying clear fucking hit back yeah right and kia just sort of sat there so i think andy i hope andy burnham and of course we'll know because this is this episode is going to go out after this meeting has taken place obviously andy burnham will hope that nothing sort of ridiculous happens but i hope if the is something like this if for example he talks about ukraine you know it's zelensky's fault i really hope that andy says well no i've got to tell you the british position is we totally support ukraine and zelensky's a fine man so on our map where we've got carney who comes out pretty clearly saying i'm not going to be a u.s vessel we're setting up an independent middle class thing and starmer who's down there picking up the bits of paper the cliche in the british papers at the i'm not sure that's um a very clear value statement or a very clear way of driving the foreign office and this is something that worried me if people haven't listened to the ed milliband interview i thought it was terrific but one of the things that worried me a little bit in the heart of that is i was struggling to really read beyond gaza what the big carney-like foreign policy vision was particularly in relation to the u.s you know for example it sounds as though as usual our security services our military and everyone is defaulting into a pro-u.s position on iran despite the fact that they are bankrupting our economy in every single way i mean the major problem the chancellor is facing is trump's war in iran i'll give you an example of that where i think a different approach would have been appropriate hexeth this week said it was quote shameful that europe did not support the americans and the israelis in the attack on iran now i would have liked several european leaders to come forward and said well you can say it's shameful we all have to represent our own national interest and right now our national interest is most represented by the need to deal with the economic consequences of what you've done and point out say uh not only was it not shameful it was completely the correct decision let me just sensible let me just run through exactly the 17 catastrophes you've imposed on the world by your stupid decision now i don't think they can necessarily say that this is the thing with i thought with ed billiband i thought i had a long long chat with him afterwards and i think because his head was so in the weeds of israel gaza and i wouldn't underestimate how much of a push that was to get that through the the system that actually when it came i think he thought israel gaza that's all they want to talk about and then when we get on to iran i agree with you i think he sort of defaulted to a position i think ed is going to be doing some pretty big difficult things within the foreign office so i wouldn't be too harsh him on that what i would say though is i think that i think carney is showing real leadership weirdly no not weirdly because you know i think she's pretty good i thought von der leyen's response to carney or the at the statement she made in advance of carney i thought was showing really and this was the offer of the associate membership of the european union and i was really disappointed by some of the europeans response to that it was basically this is not you know we'd have to change the treaty this is more complicated than it sounds what were they doing why were they responding so bureaucratically and foolishly so depressing what they should be doing is saying this shows that europe understands the scale of change in the world and that we have to make change as well and this this was a big deal this was the european parliament where the prime minister of canada is invited to follow the speech by von der leyen which is like the state of the union the state of the european union and he is in the room for that and then day later he makes this well he comes to liverpool to watch a football match dandy burnham he goes back and he makes this this speech which essentially was uh i guess it was the next chapter after the davos speech that you and i saw where he was talking about this being a rupture rather than a transition and he was setting out how we really don't have to just buy this other vision even though it's noisy even though it's loud these are my words not his we have our own interests we have a good understanding of the big issues that are facing us let's meet them together and such leadership because it's about a solution it's so unusual to have someone like that not just describe the problems of the world or pretend or pretend we can go back to the world that used to i mean carney's i thought look carney's a very good speaker and it was a very clever speech i loved the starting with trees ending with trees goethe i wonder whether do you think trump's ever heard of goethe no no i haven't heard of him even though his dad was basically german very confident he's not heard of he's not heard of good not heard of good in fact you can get if he's goethe was a little bit of a friend to ask him in the press pool but i can guarantee he hasn't heard okay so but anyway it was a really clever speech and it spoke to this change the scale of change that is being inflicted by trump yeah by the undermining of the international rules-based order but also saying so therefore we have to adapt and i just think the other leaders need to be a bit stronger well tell us about the speech what it was people sort of talk about historic you know he's the prime minister of canada okay over there on the top of the north america and you have von der leyen the president of european commission who makes a speech sort of leaning into offers this associate membership now okay on the bureaucrats come out and say well it doesn't mean anything and even the canadians were coming out and saying well we we prefer to think which is awful it's absolutely awful just lean into it yeah lean into it well let me just sort of on that one they've got to begin developing the muscles and the confidence in which carney is beginning to develop i mean because it's this is something you would talk about it's going through the whole canadian system right it's not just carney he's the national security council actually does planning around how do we get strategic autonomy in 10 critical areas how do we think about what would happen if the u.s did x y or z i mean it's soaked into the system and so they know how to do this now von der leyen's obviously getting there macron france which i was surprised by which which is very exciting yes you're right you're right you wouldn't necessarily guess that macron france presumably have a gaullist tradition where they know how to talk a little bit about strategic autonomy but my god this is the opportunity for burnham exactly because if you add to that carney's voice i mean britain i mean canada's a wonderful country but britain is a larger economy it's a larger military it's more influential potentially in the world burnham could be doing and we're in europe and burnham could be doing this the two of them together and why not a partnership after all we have the same king part of the same commerce why don't they make that a partnership together look i i think i could be completely wrong could be wishful thinking i think the government is going to do a big move on europe at some point i think the government one of the things that's holding them back i'm afraid is as you call him my friend emmanuel macron i think the french are being quite difficult on this but i was i was surprised even i know we're going to talk about germany in question time but the germans were sort of a bit iffy about this and why won't we consult in all isn't the bureaucracy takes over this is what she was doing and what carney was doing was actually setting out what people are desperate for is sort of a projection of a future vision beyond this world that donald trump is trying to create and it's hope and it's a solution and i think we you know we the danish government is going to be a little bit over the last four years as all of us have exquisitely analyzed the collapse of the rules based international order the great thing now which is giving us energy over the last year is there's a solution there's a vision for what it could look like which is the middle power alliance which does go against what we've just been talking about which is the importance of the united nations as the body that in which this is held so i think the united nations not not not sure though let me put i think these things could if the un is doing a secretary general who focuses on two or three major conflicts and fixing them great agencies on the ground delivering water with unicef and refugee stuff fantastic technical expertise cross-border that could sit very comfortably with u.s china middle powers and i think the middle powers should be contributing more to the un because that will be part of their multilateral values let me just so make the tory argument for why burnham being lockstep with carney i mean i almost want two eyes meld them together it actually provides him with some cover on the Europe story. For Tories, people who are suspicious of Europe, they love the Commonwealth. They love the idea of the King. They love the idea of Canada, Australia, New Zealand. So actually, what Burnham would be doing there is demonstrating that he can do both. I can be closer to Europe and I'm reaching out into traditional Commonwealth. And we'd all be so excited. There's literally 85% of the British public will be with him. The only people who are nervous are a few bureaucrats hovering around number 10 who are like, oh dear, we don't want to do these love actually moments. That's not annoyed Trump. We need him for Ukraine. You can imagine the conversations. Do you know, we talked to Gordon Brown on leading this week and we talked a lot about his book he's written, The Future Starts With Us. And of course, he's got a lot there about the need for the UN to reform. When we talked to Alexander Stubb, President of Finland, you know, the UN Security Council is not really fit for 80 years after the war. But to get the changes needed, you need to buy in the support of China, Russia, America, France, UK, because they can veto anything, they don't like. So I think that is the very, very hard bit. But look, I thought the reason I was so like Carney's speech, first, it was well written. Second, it was well delivered, even though he's not a rabble rousing sort of orator. But I mean, look, I don't know if you've ever been to the European Parliament. It's a tough gig. It's not an easy place to get the worked up and roused up. He got virtually a standing ovation across the piece. The public gallery was giving him a standing ovation. Why? Because he was saying, look, don't be too scared by the fact that you're going to be by this crazy stuff. Why is Britain still so scared? I don't think Britain is scared. I think Britain is, I think they're getting there. But I agree with you. Look, Britain should not be outflanked by Canada in our relations with Europe. That is not good politics. No. Nor outflanked by Canada in our relationship with the US. I mean, we're being outflanked every which way. I really would like to see, I cannot see really what the downside is of Burnham saying Carney and Clinton in behind that vision. Well, let's see what he says at the party conference. And just as a sort of small footnote in the background, you will have noticed today, we're recording on Tuesday, that Britain's announced that they're going to provide air refuelers for the Saudis in this fight with the Houthis we talked about. And you'll see Canada's doing that too. Part of the middle power play is going to be working with Gulf allies who have a very, very different view of the world. You'll also see that Qatar, UAE, Saudi are beginning to make statements about how they need to make a deal with the United States. And I think that's going to be a deal with Iran, which is not a US deal, just in order to stabilize the region and start to get stuff moving through those straits. And I think Britain's opportunity, now that Saudi, Qatar and others are so shaken by the way in which Trump didn't deliver from them, made them a target and has actually destroyed their economies basically through this unnecessary war that they never wanted. I mean, it's unbelievable what's happened to their economies now. And now the Saudi economy as well. This is another real opportunity to get these very, very wealthy, rapidly developing states part of that alliance because they don't want to be beholden to China or the US either. Yeah. Now, before we go to the break, maybe just reflect a little bit on the Gordon Brown interview. You got very good feedback on it from all sorts of people. But what was, you were quite taken, I thought. I've always really been taken with them. I mean, people also pick up, there's a fascinating dynamic in the background between you and Gordon Brown, which I'll leave the psychologists and the people speaking, I think, because you've known each other for so, so long. I mean, it's really weird. I mean, you're. Who's a Tory equivalent if you were sitting there with? Oh, for goodness sake, I don't know. David Cameron. David Cameron. David Cameron. No, Cameron's a good analogy. But I'm not as close to Cameron as you are to Brown. But it's a good analogy because he's someone who's basically on my side politically, but who I have a massive personal anxieties and problems with. So you're right. I mean, fundamentally, you share so much with Gordon Brown in terms of your political vision, your new Labour vision. David Cameron. But there's obviously an enormous amount of history being played out. It sounds funny because I didn't feel it, but I know the production team came and they'd be watching it backstage as it were and said, God, that was tense. I didn't feel that at all. Maybe I'm just so used to it. He's such an extraordinary figure. You know, I think I've told you that my first meeting with him was when I wasn't anything to do with politics. I think back 2006, 2007, when he was chancellor, he called me in to talk about Iraq. And I was so kind of young. I guess I was in my early 30s and I was going to see the chancellor of the Exchequer, number 11. And I went in for an hour and it's a little bit disloyal to say this to him because I do admire him. But he literally talked to me for 55 minutes about the Treaty of Westphalia, the history of 17th century Europe and all this. I sort of sat there and listened. And then in the end, he said, thank you very much. That's very informative. David Cameron. Yeah. Well, it's good that he called in because he's not fond of Tories. I've got to tell you, Rory. Rory Sutherland. Well, I wasn't a Tory then, of course. David Cameron. Oh, you were. Yeah, of course you were. Rory Sutherland. Then we're talking about. David Cameron. Rory Sutherland. Then when I became a Tory, he became absolutely furious. He saw me in a video with the king who was visiting the Telco's Mountain Project in Afghanistan in 2010. And he mounted a formal protest to the palace, threatened to get the electric commission involved on the grounds that the king visiting me a few months before an election and me being on television would give unfair advantage to a Tory candidate. David Cameron. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah. David Cameron. I went to see Fiona and I last night. We went to see. We were thinking about Gordon. We went to see this new James Graham play, The Standard of Living, which is all about John Maynard Keynes. And it's extraordinary. And we both came out and said, you know, it's just incredible that an economist is one of the key historical figures from that period. Rory Sutherland. And actually, so much of it is brain power, isn't it? David Cameron. Totally. Rory Sutherland. What's so weird about Keynes? And I think it's true. Gordon Brown's very, very clever too. Keynes is clever. I mean, I think even Gordon would accept that. But it is incredible how just sheer processing power and a certain amount of charm, and determination carried Keynes to this incredible position. David Cameron. Yeah, but we were both saying that he, in some ways, you know, not the whole sort of Bloomsbury set and all the kind of, you know, all the kind of promiscuity and all that, but the brain power and the belief that it was brain power that you needed ultimately to make change. In some ways, it did remind me of Gordon and the way that he operates in relation to politics, economy, and change. It's a great play by the way. I mean, James Graham is an absolute genius. I mean, he's. Rory Sutherland. Every subject he takes. I saw him afterwards. I said, look, I do prefer your working class stuff, to be honest, but it's absolutely brilliant how he takes these really complicated issues. And the politics of it is, because part of the story, there are lots of different stories going on, but part of the story is the battle, the intellectual battle between Keynes and Thatcher's favorite guy. What's his name? Rory Sutherland. Hayek. David Cameron. Yeah. Rory Sutherland. And this, and of course, it plays out through the play. They use amazing black and white photography through the whole thing. And it plays out, it's no doubt who James Graham thinks is the superior economist and human being, and that is Keynes. And so it's sort of, you see, and Fiona came out, she actually said, you know, you could, let's be honest, what did good Hayek's influence on Thatcher actually do to the country compared to the good that Keynesianism did for the world? David Cameron. Again, shout out for people who haven't listened to it. There's a wonderful interview that we did on Leading with the playwright that you're talking about, James Graham, which people should listen to. I also was very lucky to be able to go and see Arcadia's Idea on the West End with Tom Stoppard's play. It's Tom Stoppard who died recently. The most brilliant production, funny, intellectual, beautifully staged, beautifully acted, incredibly charming, unexpected plot lines. So yeah, huge tribute to that. Rory Sutherland. Okay. We'll give you a shout out. It's a De Gaulle film. David Cameron. De Gaulle film. Rory Sutherland. Absolutely brilliant. God, they don't make them like him anymore. David Cameron. Okay. Now let's take a break and then we'll come back from the break. And when we come back from the break, we will be talking about The King. Rory Sutherland. Both the allegations which were made by Earl Spencer and also the summit on artificial intelligence, which I was lucky enough to be in this week. David Cameron. See you soon. Shag here. What's it like to buy a car from Carvana 100% online and get it delivered to your door? Let me tell you. Your car is here, Mr. Shag. Thank you, Mr. Carvana guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shag. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? David Cameron. Not always. I was six and ten once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shag. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home road warrior mom, home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save. Welcome back to The Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, I know you're gagging to talk about the King's views on artificial intelligence, but may I suggest that so far as the public are concerned, they're a lot of interest in this book by Charles Spencer, which I see has gone, surprise, surprise, straight to number one in the Amazon lists. Very annoying that it's bringing it out three weeks ahead of my own book, Perseverance, cadoganhall.com for tickets for the launch. And the mooch as well, whose book is flying. So to summarize what Charles Spencer is saying, he's essentially claiming that then the Prince of Wales, said to him that diana would soon be forgotten and he also said that the king was giddily excited about what was going on uh and needless to say they are the bits that have been serialized in a newspaper uh i believe it's called the daily fail that is serializing the book and the book has had massive publicity and has gone straight to number one i mean i was very very involved in that period of the funeral the death of princess diana and the the days that followed and i was aware because of the meetings there were members of the spencer family team as it were who came to all the meetings where we discussed all this and there were tensions there's no doubt about that there were tensions but i have to say in defense of your friend the king who was then the prince of wales anything i heard or sensed about his posture on the whole thing was completely at odds of this sense of what did he say you giddiness and excitement and saying that she'll soon be forgotten and all that i just didn't have any sense of that at all um now that being said i'm sure they were having direct conversations as well to which i was not remotely privy um i'm imagining the king is pretty pissed off with that i think the first thing is that i've never seen him ever behave in that kind of way i mean it just doesn't sit with his character and i think that was my sense talking to people who've known him all their lives is they just don't recognize that so i don't believe it now i also am very interested in memory um i think i've told you before i'm still mesmerized by this study that was done where they interviewed people on 9-11 and then the same group of people every year for the next 20 years and when they first interviewed them there's ordinary members of the public they say i was in my kitchen in connecticut i didn't hear about it for a couple of hours 20 years on almost everybody says they were in manhattan and saw the buildings come down yeah including donald trump and when you show them the video of what they said 20 years ago they say no no that can't be right that's ai that's fake these are normal humans he's not politicians our memories are unbelievably weird yeah and if you go back over whatever this is almost 30 years yeah i mean it's a really interesting question about why he's doing it after 30 years why it's so i can absolutely believe that charles spencer believes this i also just don't think it's true the thing about memory is fascinating because i mean that was that was one of the most extraordinary weeks of my life but if i didn't have my diaries i don't think i'd remember that much of it and now when i read my diary and he says i don't remember most and spencer says he didn't write anything down but you know he told people at the time and all this kind of thing so no i think it's very weird and i think you must have had this experience because you're such a diary keeper of going back and then reading a diary be like whoa yeah totally no i i completely get that so i think what what he's doing probably is either look he's a pretty wealthy guy isn't he incredibly i'm not sure i believe he's just thinking for money for the book i believe you know there's just been another very successful sale of a couple of fields some miles from his house it's just raked in a few more million yeah so i i don't think it's that but i think there is a yeah sense of revenge i also thought it was very interesting that he allied himself so closely in talking about the book with harry and megan and diana and this idea that the media are a kind of you know real enemy but i i look i've i've met charles spencer a few times and i spoke he has this i don't know if he still does it he has a book festival at althorp and i've been at it and i stayed there and and i find him perfectly sort of charming and clever and quite funny and interesting and and absolutely he does feel i think that the media were largely responsible for her death and he feels that the royal family didn't treat her well i think both of those things are are clear i think if i knew something or i was holding on to something as quite as dramatic as charles who let's not forget was the father of the two boys that diana brought into the world one of whom would be the future king i just i think if you've heard that his father was the father of the two boys that diana brought into the world him saying those things i'm not sure you sit on them for 30 years um and and he says he sort of talked to people at the time and okay people can have a circle of trust but that sort of stuff i think if it's that dramatic it kind of gets out it's it's it's i thought it was very disturbing and of course it for me the the sadness was that this has all come at the same time that the king was doing this big summit that i was lucky enough to be at dunfrey's house on ai and it was pretty amazing if you want to see an example of the king doing this big summit i was lucky enough to be at the king doing impressive stuff there was that speech which i think you write about perseverance very well and the trump speech but this was the child speech to trump to trump yeah um and i think you've analyzed that very well and i think you know you put that up with carney's speech is one of the great speeches of the year this ai summit was very interesting in another way firstly timing unbelievable i mean this happened just at the moment when hugging face had blown up when the big ai companies are talking about safety when uh even the lib dems and their conference have made it the central piece of ed davies speech was about ai and in his conference so absolutely of the moment secondly he was able not just to get the great titans of ai you know jensen huang who runs the biggest company in the world nvidia this five trillion dollar company sir demis but astonishingly they sat at that table throughout the entire day right into the evening contributing to the conversation it wasn't they turn up for half an hour jet off and which is what you normally get in these kind of things and even in davos nobody's sits at the table throughout the day right next thing he managed to get the chinese there so xi jinping sent i think it's the dean of xinhua university the greatest technical university in china was there at the table at exactly the time when everyone's saying well the problem is you'll never get the us and chinese to agree the chinese aren't interested he actually sat him there and then the final thing is the uk government because suddenly it was an opportunity for the most senior figures at every level of the uk government including senior civil servants and the ai minister was able to spend hours with these guys in a way that would have been very difficult to do otherwise and and the conclusion they got to the idea that there needs to be independent verification of these systems they absolutely got to international cooperation requires china and this has then been followed this week with scott besant the u.s treasury secretary saying he's now setting up a working group with china for the trump xi jinping summit on ai now trump remains the big spoiler here yeah because he uh says the whole thing's a there's no need for any safety regulation at exactly the moment when open ai and anthropic are terrified and also uh at the um at the summit where a couple of people we've gotten our mini series on existential risk so you've on a harari was there toby ord was there making their arguments about why they're worried and i encourage people maybe to listen to that stuff as well did you leave it because i've been very interested in seeing your sort of journey of development on this on this issue and i think it's a very important issue and i think it's a very important issue over quite a few years now because i remember you right at the start you were saying this is the most important thing happening in our world and in the future etc did that meeting and that day totally immersed in it in the way that you were did it leave you more or less worried more or less skeptical what's your own sort of i think always more worried every time i do anything it's more worried but it's more worried in this contradictory way which is it is the hinge technology that is going to underpin everything that's going to happen in the future and i think it's going to be the most important thing in our lives it's going to be right at the heart of our businesses in britain of the nhs of our defense and security and we will be reliant at the moment on a u.s and chinese stack which is an unbelievable dependency and vulnerability and we need to work out how to get out of that and at the same time everything that makes these models powerful also makes them very dangerous because all the benefits of them are around autonomy getting humans out of the loop and the more humans you get out of the loop the more responsibility the ai has and everything the ai does positive it can do negative i mean of which probably the most dramatic is biosecurity risks you know yes it can potentially solve cancer but it can also create viruses and that's before you get on to what uval was talking about in this interview we've just put out on the which was pretty terrifying pretty terrifying which is all about super intelligence yeah and the really interesting thing which is of course where trump comes in it's the first time i really understood trump's position i mean trying to understand why on earth is he against this and we were saying well maybe part of it i think he's also instinctively anti-regulation but i was also reminded there that very senior figures are telling him there's nothing to worry about so certainly david sacks is ai advisor mark andreessen who's the investor but jensen huang also comes pretty close to saying nothing to see here there's no real risk of this stuff let's go let's roll and that anyone trying to talk about safety is doing something called regulatory capture in other words they're just trying to exclude small startup ai companies and they're which is easy to believe given the the way that they've operated as businesses over time which is why trump will be pulled into this narrative but it's very dangerous because these companies i've never known any company in the world about to launch a product saying my product is unbelievably dangerous i mean i would take that seriously i can't see an obvious financial interest in people about to launch trillion dollar companies saying i don't trust my product it can get out of control it can cause mayhem it's a twenty percent chance that could end the world. - There we go. Right, on a cheerier note, how was my friend finley the piper finley the piper was there so we had this amazing thing that was also the amazing piece that's how i found out you were there by the way you got like all these grandees of anthropic open ai nvidia etc google gemini there in the room and then you have this incredible piper incredible drummer i mean of course quite loud we're in a small room and down three steps right up and personal with the pipes um and of course i was very struck by the dean of who was being very polite but he looked like a visitor from another planet looking at a strange cultural event as the pipes and the drums were hammering around that's what it's like it reminds me of mandela when he was at the um he was at chogham in edinburgh and there was this display of scottish culture and all the pipes and the drums and the dancing and he said i'm not sure these people are ready for independence no no really no there you go that's a great line well let me just finish with a final tribute to the team that put this together because of course the king made it possible but the team that spotted this opportunity and put britain right back in the center back to this ai safety institute the bletchley summit that rishi sunak put together all the way through to this i think it is britain showing again and again that we may be a distant third but we're definitely if you're getting behind us and china it's britain still matters in ai right well excellent let's uh close there let's go on to the next one which is britain let's uh close there then in question time tomorrow we're going to talk about germany and we're also going to talk about rural britain and a lot of the challenges that they're facing so we'll see you then see you then bye tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save ryan reynolds here for mint mobile with your summer price forecast now unfortunately we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100% now over here at mint mobile we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just 15 dollars a month give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch upfront payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra new customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms hi everybody it's dominic sambrick here from the rest is history and we are here to tell you about a thrilling new situation series on the blood-soaked climax of the french revolution the reign of terror so the french revolution is one of the most significant episodes in the whole of world history it essentially lays the foundations for contemporary politics as we know it but it is also unbelievably dramatic we'll be discussing the murder of the firebrand jean-paul marat in his bathtub we will be going to the guillotine with the marionette and we're going to be talking about the murder of the marionette and in our final episode we will be telling the story of the extraordinary grotesque downfall of one of the chief architects of the terror one of the most evil men in history some would say maximilien crobisbier so if you want to hear this epic series search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts