577. Is Badenoch Finally Stopping Farage and Why Are French Schools on Fire?

By any reckoning, Labour had a good conference last week in Liverpool as the Burnham bounce continued to lift the party in the polls. And this week at the Tory conference in Birmingham, there is a much better mood than there was a year ago. Both Andy Burnham and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch seem firmly in control of their parties. Pessimism these days is more likely to be found in Reform UK, which has been hit, continued by scandal and personality clashes, and the Greens, with Zach Polanski struggling to make a mark in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election taking place on Thursday. Both Polanski and Nigel Farage, it would seem, might well have peaked. But how confident can Labour afford to be with such a challenging economic scenario and a budget later this month in which some very tough choices are going to have to be made? And with the Tories still behind Reform in the polls, how confident can they be of ever regaining power without some kind of deal? With the parties to the right of them. To help me answer all of this, I'm joined by someone to the right of Rory Stewart, otherwise engaged this week, and that is the former Tory Cabinet Minister Michael Gove. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. Most energy companies are counting on you doing absolutely nothing. Not questioning what you're paying, not switching, just letting your tariff roll on, which is costing you hundreds of pounds every year. But the apathy goes deeper than our bills. We've almost given up on energy itself. We seem to all be accepting energy's expensive, the system's outdated, but that complacency is costing us. Fuse Energy does not accept that because the energy transition is not something that just happens somewhere else. Fuse is building an energy company which is designed to bring down the cost of energy, and right now its tariffs are up to £100 below the Ofgem price cap. So switching isn't just about paying less, it's about expecting more from your energy company, and it only takes you three minutes. Switch to Fuse at FuseEnergy.com slash politics. Use the code POLITICS and you'll get a free TripPlus subscription allowing you to hear all the extraordinary members content that Alistair and I are now producing for you. Visit FuseEnergy.com for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by WISE. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone over the phone, or if you're overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. WISE keeps things simple. WISE is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries, and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. WISE uses the mid market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the WISE app today. Be smart, get WISE, T's and C's apply. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alistair Campbell. And me, Michael Gove. So, Michael, thank you for standing in for Rory Stewart, having yet another week off. I've had a great time. I've had none thus far in our four years together. And we are going to talk about your party and my party and their various conferences. We're going to talk about Kemi Badenoch's leadership style and how she's developed and grown and a very interesting document that she wrote on the eve of the conference. We're going to talk about France and Spain, where there are a lot of protests going on in France, very violent, involving school kids, and in Spain have led to the calling of a number of political parties. We're going to talk about Brazil. And we're briefly going to talk about the election in Bosnia as well. So looking forward to that and looking forward to even more looking forward to question time, where I suspect you and I will disagree agreeably possibly on Brexit and Israel-Gaza, where I think we have very, very differing positions. So thank you for being here. Let's start with the Tories and Labour. It's an absolute pleasure, Alistair. And I know that I can't live up to the standards set by Rory of reasonableness. And I know that we're going to disagree, but I will do my best to make sure that it's agreeable. And the first thing that I would have to say is that I agree with your broad analysis. I think that the introduction that you set is absolutely correct, that both the principal parties have over the last two years faced pesky insurgents who've been energised and who've been successful in eating away at the votes, the core votes of both Labour and Tory. But for the reasons that you've outlined, the Greens being in hock to a particular group within the party, you've elevated Palestine over other issues. And with reform, because of the scandals that have hit their leadership and the splits that that's exposed, both of those parties have had difficult summers. And that's given the Conservatives in particular, a sense that they're back in the game. But while the Conservatives, you're absolutely right, are united behind Kemi Badenoch, they still remain anchored. And around 20% in the polls. And this week, there was a very sobering message from John Curtis, the polling guru, who said to the not quite exuberant, but certainly more confident Tory grassroots, that their polling position was exactly the same as the 2024 election. And of course, that was the election that resulted in the most humiliating defeat that my party ever endured, and one which saw my own seat fall to the Liberal Democrats and my Lib Dem successors secure a five and a half thousand majority. Now, I want to come back to the Tories, and in particular, this very long essay that Kemi Badenoch has written, which I read yesterday, The Right Way, as it's called. But I just want to first of all, ask you about your impressions of Labour, because you were at Liverpool. I just wondered, first of all, how weird that is for you to be at the Labour Party conference, what your impressions were, and what you think the big change has been from Starmer to Burnham. Well, the key thing about governing party conferences is that there's an eerie similarity to them. So I don't want to dishearten those people. I think that the big difference is not so much between Labour and Conservative, but between Labour last year and Labour this year. Last year, there was a sense, if not of despair, of, oh, we're going to win this election. We're going to win this election. We're going to win this So there was a willingness on the part of the grassroots to give Keir Starmer more time to prove that he could be the leader that they'd hoped, but also a sense of deep anxiety that despite the successful 2024 election victory, that Labour wasn't doing anything worthwhile with it, that it had alienated its core support, that the sense of hope that a majority of over 200 should bring was entirely absent. This year, it was very different. It was very different. That Andy Burnham had infused the party with a renewed sense of optimism. I think that for Labour, there are going to be very, very challenging days ahead when the budget comes with economic difficulties and also with some security questions that remain unresolved. But nevertheless, it was undoubtedly the case that across the party, there was that enthusiasm. I think Burnham's taking the party to the left, not to the further shores or the outer reaches of the left, but he's situating the party, the family in its soft left, kinnikite comfort zone. But what was striking is that there wasn't any disquiet from those people whom you might think of as on the right of the Labour Party. So some of those who might call themselves continuity Blairites were just happy that they had a Labour leader who was articulate, engaging, could forge an emotional bond, not just in the hall, but with the viewing audience at home. And so in that sense, I think for Team Burnham, it was a wholly successful exercise. Roy and I interviewed Shabana Mahmood last week, and she's our current episode on leading. And she said something I thought, well, she said a lot of interesting things, but something that stuck with me. She said that she felt Andy Burnham had given Labour a second chance to make a first impression. And I thought that was very, very well put because I went to that conference. It's the first one I've actually been inside the conference zone for some years, because I find it quite stressful. I was struck by a complete change in mood from, as you say, despair to a sense of confidence. And it is extraordinary how quickly that has emanated to the cabinet as well. I felt that Shabana is a very, very, very good example. I think that the feedback we've had to her interview has been extraordinary. And yet this is somebody that people think they have known quite well for some time, and they have an image of her. So I think that's what he's done. He's injected a a sense of confidence and maybe that's a good link to, to Kemi Badenoff. and the Tory conference where you are now, because the one thing I have to say about Kemi Badenoch, she sort of does exude an extraordinary self-confidence. I just wonder whether I'm right about that. You know her better than I do. And secondly, where it comes from. Where does that confidence come from? I think you're right about it. And there is a parallel, funnily enough, with Shabana Mahmood. I found the interview that you and Rory conducted with her absolutely fascinating. And right from the off, she was candid about her faith and the impact that it has on her politics. And you all remarked on the fact that probably for the last sort of 20 years in politics, maybe longer, having someone talk so openly and honestly about their belief in God, how it motivates them, why it's so central to their life, that would have been the sort of thing that for any politician would have involved. Invited skepticism or hostility from some. In the past, the view would have been, as you pointed out, in the case of Tony Blair, are you trying to claim God for your party? Are you trying to claim the mandate of heaven for your policies? Come off it. But actually, in Shabana's case, what it was, I thought, was both moving and powerful. What you see is what you get with Shabana Mahmood. She is someone whose faith and also whose position in the Labour Party is devoid of. self-spin or self-consciousness. And one of the reasons why I admire her, though I don't always agree with her, is that at a time when people seek authenticity, she has it and she can't be anything other than the type of politician that she is. And the same, I think, is true of Kemi Beidner. So Kemi, partly because of her life experience earlier on, partly because she was a student at Sussex University, where she was almost alone in having. conservative views, partly because people assumed, both when she was a student and when she was a young professional, that because of her Nigerian background, she must be on the left. That's meant that she's got use not just to defending her position, but asserting it. And that confidence carried through to her time in Parliament. She was a junior minister when I was a secretary of state. And I often remarked afterwards that if people came in to any meeting that the two of us had, they would have assumed that she was the secretary of state and I was the junior minister, because she had that intellectual self-confidence. Some people find it irritating because she's so clear in her own mind that she can be sometimes brisk, almost to the point of rudeness with people with whom she disagrees. But actually, in her mind, she's paying them a compliment. She's saying, okay, you take your politics seriously. So do I. There's no need for any politesse. Let's get down to it. I will defend my ideas. You defend yours. I mentioned this booklet. She calls it a booklet. But it's actually, I think, a much more, you know, booklet sounds a bit trivial. It's actually, I think, quite a serious piece of work, the right way. And it's obviously modelled on Margaret Thatcher's The Right Approach back in the 70s. In fact, she says that that's largely inspired by that. And the reason why I find it interesting, yes, there's a bit of party political knockabout within it, but you get a sense of there being some sort of pretty big ideas and big intellectual analysis going on. I'll come on to some of that. I feel, however, that, and I was, honestly, Michael, I was going to come to this podcast prepared to praise Kebby Bailock for this serious piece of work. But I think it's clashed with the way that your party is conducting itself at this conference. Because she says that we've got to get away from this idea that thinking an announcement is more important than actually what the policy will do over time. And, of course, what have we seen so far this week? A lot of announcements that strike me as being not very thought through. At the eve of conference, on the back of Labour following through with your prisoner release scheme, out she comes saying we're going to build, is it 50,000 new prison places? I'm going to pay for them by getting rid of overseas aid, of which there's next to none left, and cutting some budgets on DCMS, including, I would imagine, for youth clubs and that sort of thing. Pipeline back to more prison population. That felt a bit weird. I then think this morning we wake up and we've got a £10 billion pledge on some kind of iron dough Israeli-style defence system, which, again, does not feel to be terribly thought through. We have this thing about we're now going to, anybody earning over £100,000 a year will get the same childcare as somebody earning less. And here's one I'd love your opinion on. She says we're going to keep the triple lock, as was. Now, I've talked to many Conservatives over the last decade who all have said to me the triple lock is an absolute disaster, it's fiscally incoherent, and we've got to get rid of it. And yet there she is saying we're going to keep it. So less serious this week than her document, I would say. So there are two things there. The first thing is the document, and I agree with you. And I think that we're asking a lot of the Restless Politics listeners to go through a 30,000-word document, from a party leader, but I think. Well, I did it. Exactly. I think the listeners can do it if I did it. Precisely. I think the first thing is I'm glad that long essays are back. As ever, Tony Blair was the trailblazer. His essay, which shaped or framed, or should have framed, a Labour Party leadership election. I don't think many of the contenders or wannabe contenders paid enough attention to what he was saying. But I think that that has raised the bar overall. And I think. I think Kemi Badenoch, to her enormous credit, wrote this herself. You can hear her voice in the pages. And the fact that one of the thinkers that she cites is the American academic Thomas Sowell is reflective of that. He's the biggest intellectual influence on her. And he is the person who makes the point that you make, which is that you should judge a policy by the incentives it creates rather than the intent that you cloak it in. So you may say that this policy is designed to generate growth, as this trust did at the time of the mini-budget. Of which Kemi Badenoch is very, very critical. Very critical. But the key thing is, never mind your good intentions, what are the concrete consequences of what you've done? And that, I think, is core to the Kemi view. She is, as I say, sometimes scornful of the idea that you need to demonstrate your good faith, your bona fides, and your good faith. What she is absolutely focused on is the logical outcome of what she's done. And she makes great play with the fact that she's an engineer and that as an engineer, the judgment you have to make is about how your input changes the system, hopefully for the better. And that, of course, takes us to the points that you make about the policies announced. I remember once at a political cabinet making the point that we shouldn't rush out policies for conference simply in order to, you know, be seen to be dominating the media grid, that almost always those policies fell apart on contact with reality, and that the ultimate desire or appetite for the country for good government trumped the need to fill the immediate media appetite for those three or four days. But this time round, I think that, as we were touching on earlier, what the Tories feel they need to do is to demonstrate momentum. Because reform. has stalled, not just in the polls, but more broadly in terms of generating any sense of excitement. The Conservatives are locked in a death match with some. And the Conservatives feel that they've got to show that at that point where people are asking the question, which is the energetic force on the right, which is the rising party between the two, that they've got to show on tax, as you quite rightly point out, but also on the questions of national security and migration, that they're the party that is capable of taking things forward. Now, as one looks at each of those individual policies, I can see the merits in all of them. But I do think you are right that there is a natural risk that if you throw policy out at this rate, that your opponents will find the weakest policy plank in what you've put forward, scrutinize that, and if that falls apart under pressure, it damages the most important thing which an opposition leader needs, which is credibility. Yeah. I mean. So, you see, I think she would have been better to have actually stayed true to the conviction she's trying to put across in this document and actually taken some of the talking points from that and built the conference around them as opposed to these sort of big policy positions, which I think will either disappear or fall apart because I don't think they do stack up. I mean, I'll just give you one example. Actually, this comes from the document. The removals force, the removals force will have double, the budget of the current Immigration Enforcement Directorate and Border Force. This will cost an extra $802 million a year or $1.6 billion in total. This will be funded from closing the asylum hotels at the wider costs of the out-of-control asylum system. Well, there is an awful lot of wishful thinking in that. And I think you saw that in the prison's announcement as well. But let me just read you one part which I thought was really interesting because she's very critical of trust and the mini-budget. She's quite critical of the government. of which both you and she were part. And Rory. She says this, and indeed Rory, but he's having a day off, Rory. You don't have to kick him. No, I won't. Britain's problems did not begin with the 2024 Labour government. Some began under earlier Labour governments, I can dispute that, and became worse under Conservative ones. I don't dispute that. Others arose because assumptions shared across the political spectrum went unchallenged for too long. We promised lower immigration without a strategy for delivering it. You, Michael. Net zero was legislated for before we had an economically feasible route to get there. We left the European Union, you, Michael, without the economic plan that should have gone with it. The path to failure was paved with announcements, targets, and good intentions. Now, I think that is a very strong thing to say, and I broadly agree with it, and yet I think that is what she has undermined by some of the announcements that have been made in the last few days. I think you are right. And more to the point, so is Kemi. However, I think that the key thing that the public will take away from the Conservative Party conference will be her speech. We can look at each of the individual policies, and all oppositions feel the need to command attention by announcing these policies, even though we are probably two years out from an election, even though the state of the public finances then could be far better or far worse than we have now. They've become the sort of entryway, they've become the down payment that political parties feel that they need to make in order to enter contention. And it will be, I think, ultimately, the clips of Kemi Badenoff, not just on the evening news, but also on social media after she's spoken, that will determine whether or not this has been a success. So all of these policy canopies, you might find them indigestible. I might think that they. Only whet my appetite for more, but they are not what the chef is going to be judged on. And I think that your analysis of those three things, those three policy errors is, as I say, your judgment is right. Kemi's analysis is spot on. And it reinforces, I think, a hunger for a degree of candour and seriousness from a political leader. And that's what I think is going to happen. And I think that's what I think is going to happen. And that is where I think that the contrast between Kemi and Nigel Farage works to her advantage. Until recently, Farage was in the position where he could present himself as the truth teller, the person who was the insurgent outside the uniparty tent, not constrained by the rigged rules of the establishment game. Now, however, after the summer, he looks like just another politician on the take. And Kemi, and here I draw the comparison with Shabana, is someone. Who tells the truth, even though some of what she says will alienate or confuse potential supporters. But she doesn't care because it's more important to her to be true to herself than to offer honeyed words to lead people to support her when she knows that the policies that she is going to implement and to which she is committed are not those which her listener wants to hear. Yeah. And there's another very, very interesting, very interesting passage where actually it reminds me a little bit of what Andy Burnham is saying about past Labour governments. She says this, that This is the root of the often heard criticism you had 14 years. You know, and I do think, by the way, I don't think your party is going to recover until there is more honesty from both the people who were there and the current leadership about, some of the mistakes that were made. She goes on to say, in relation to this 14 years, the charge which we must accept is that we did little to reverse the structural changes Labour had made, which, in her view, took the country in the wrong direction. Now, Andy Burnham makes the same case, as it were, from the left, says that we, the Blair government, the Brown governments, we did not change the neoliberal or Thatcherite model. So I think that's what's interesting about the battle that's been developed, that is going to develop between the two of them. And on your point about, Nigel Farage, Andy Burnham's name comes up a lot in this document. Some of it is the sort of party political knockabout that we might expect, which he's trying to get rid of. But actually, I thought there would have been more of an attack upon the populist right. And I still worry, from your perspective, that she's not yet decided whether her future lies in having people like Rory Stewart and Gavin Barwell and David Gauke back in the fold, or whether she has to try to get some of the soft reform voters back in the Conservative camp. And I think until that's resolved in her mind, I'm not sure where she goes. I think those are fair points. And I think you are right that both Burnham and Badenoch are in effect saying that the promise of the country was not realised over the course of the last two or three decades, four decades. And that reflects the fact that we are in broadly a populist moment across the West, ever since the global financial crisis, low growth, sluggish product, and in particular, growing inequality between generations has created this profound sense of discontent. So if you are now saying the centrist dads got it completely right, and it's time to recover our moderate mojo, there are big sections of the country that say, no, you're the guys that got it wrong. You're the guys that have landed us in the current mess. We have voted consistently, consistently for change. So of course, different people will mean different things by that. We don't want a pose of moderation and an approach which essentially says, trust us, we're the establishment. We want something more radical. Both Burnham and Badenoch are offering that. And that I think goes to your point about the rejection of Farage and the populist right more broadly. Farage is a flawed advocate for whatever cause he leads. Articulate, charismatic, charismatic for some, but flaky. And reform bears the imprint of his character. But the country has moved, particularly on questions like migration, over the course of the last 10 or 15 years. And I think that any party that aspires to govern, particularly a party of the right, has to take account of that. And therefore, positions that you or I might have thought were quite outre in 2005 and 2010, are now positions that are actually in the European mainstream. And if you look at what Macron or the CDU or Maloney certainly are now articulating, or the Danish Social Democrats, they're articulating policies that when we were, I hesitate to say in our prime, because you were in your prime, Alastair. When we had jobs, when we had proper jobs. When we had proper jobs, those positions would have been regarded as pretty spicy. And so I think that's one of the explanations. Interesting, yeah. Well, look, there's a lot in this. I think we should put it in our newsletter the right way. I think if you could strip out some of the more obviously party political thing, and I'll tell you the thing at the left hand when she talked about dealing with activist judges, that sort of made my flesh crawl somewhat. But I think there's a lot in it. I can see, put it this way, I think I underestimated a year ago. I think she grew when she got rid of Robert Jenrick, which was a very, probably a very good move. And it is extraordinary how both of them now, Burnham is completely in charge of Labour. It strikes me that she's very, very strong within her own party. I'm also very pleased that she pointed out that Brexit made immigration worse. We'll talk about that in question time tomorrow, along with the Middle East, because I think we should maybe, I think some of our listeners will be horrified at the extent to which you keep telling me how right I am, but that's because you're a very polite person. We'll disagree more tomorrow, but in the meantime, we'll take a break. I will come back. We're going to talk about France, we're going to talk about Spain, and we're going to talk about Brazil. And if we've got time, we might even squeeze in a bit of Bosnia. Thanks very much, Alistair. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's Corporate and Institutional. Over the next few weeks, decisions will be made that will travel far beyond politics and into boardrooms around the planet. We will, of course, have next week's IMF meeting in Thailand, the UK autumn budget resetting domestic priorities, and of course, the US midterm election in the coming weeks. These are not headlines to wait for. They're signals to turn ambition into action. When big decisions need to be made, the quality of your intelligence is critical. And that's, I think, Alistair, why we often talk about things that other people aren't covering, such as the civil war in Ethiopia or what's happening along the coast of Yemen, because these things, too, can have massive market impacts in ways people can't predict. So through Daily Insights and the annual market summit and the specialist sectors report, Lloyd's Corporate and Institutional combines the strength of one of Britain's most trusted institutions with the innovation shaping the future of finance. Search Lloyd's Market Insights because big ambitions need more than capital. Bank on Lloyd's. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork and BJ's knows savings. This is your home. home coach home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bjs.com slash mesquite and save ten cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bjs home of the save ryan reynolds here for mint mobile i don't know if you knew this but anyone can get the same premium wireless for fifteen dollars a month plan that i've been enjoying it's not just for celebrities so do like i did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to mint mobile today i'm told it's super easy to do at mint mobile.com slash switch upfront payment of forty five dollars for three month plan equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra default terms at mint mobile.com welcome back to the rest is politics with me michael gove and me alistair campbell and michael gove is standing in for rory stewart who is otherwise detained now rory oh god now michael that was it that was force of habit michael we're going to talk about the country where i am right now which is france there is so much going on we're recording this on tuesday morning france is today bracing itself for three separate things the first is continuing protests at their lice their senior schools which have seen some extraordinary scenes of violence in the last couple of weeks other protests going on in the last couple of weeks going on today is a public sector a series of public sector marches to protest against the planned budget cuts which the government is trying to take through and the third big thing big thing happening today is marine le pen has got a big speech where she's going to try to persuade the french people and perhaps more importantly the markets that she actually has a bloody clue when it comes to the economy because thus far in her very very long career that has not really been the case you wish secretary of state for education um the probably i think that was the the job you served in the longest in your various ministerial roles in britain have we ever seen anything like this that's going on in france now because i can't recall anything like it no i'm tempted to sort of reflect ruefully um on the the most thunderous denunciations that the teachers unions or indeed some students directed my way um the worst that ever happened is when uh the socialist workers party occupies the country and they're not the lobby of the department for education to protest against what they considered to be my crime in getting rid of to kill a mockingbird from gcse i hadn't actually cancelled it but they were but it was it was their campaign but apart from a few surprisingly well-mannered trots attempting to get in my way when i was on my way to get my pret a manger sandwich there was nothing really to compare and i shouldn't really make light of it because it's horrifying we've had schools being banned and we've had schools being banned and we've had schools being banned and we've had a student as i understand it whose hand has been blown off uh because of the way in which a police grenade was somehow deployed accounts various as to who's to blame but it's undoubtedly the case that we've had millions of euros worth of damage we've had people hurt we've had scenes on the on the streets of uh students and the crs uh at loggerheads it's horrific and it speaks to a French society we mustn't consider ourselves superior in the uk that would be a mistake but there is a fundamental problem in French society which i think is rooted in the sense in particular but not exclusively amongst ethnic minorities in poorer areas that French society operates a two-tier system the education for the elite in France is uh pretty good but if you're in the banlieue or if you're in any of the cities that are uh less fashionable that have been overlooked in the past you're not going to be able to get into the banlieue and you're not going to be able to pass by Paris then your educational opportunities are narrower and the amount being invested in your future smaller this whole thing because it's become so huge and so and it's getting covered this is getting coverage right around the world it actually started with a very small protest by teachers at a particular school so it started at one school there's lycée saint-exupéry in a place and it was teachers protesting about the fact that teachers that they were losing were not being able to get into the school it wasn't a strike it was a protest and then the kids at this school they they joined the protest and this is where it developed into something about class sizes i had no idea i come to France a lot i had no idea that you have some of these classes in senior schools class sizes of 40 the other big big thing that happened was during the heat wave which we had a while back that the the kids were just complaining that it was impossible to learn in this sort of you know horrible hot environment in buildings that were say in some cases falling down so this protest started and then spread so quickly and whether i don't think this is just social media it's also organization and then it's also it's now playing into we've had today 500 schools shut we've had over 5 000 arrests we've had hundreds of police officers who've been injured and as you say some pretty horrific acts incidents involving the protesters as well and of the arrests 85 percent are minors under the age of of 18 but it's also playing into the of france which are very very tense and very very tricky got election presidential election coming up and both the government and the and the le pen party the rassemblement national they're trying to pin this on jean-luc melanchol the left-wing leader who has been encouraging these protests there was one and one of his senior figures who said that actually in some instances violence can be legitimate which is of course being seized upon and saying that they're fueling this but it's very hard to see how the french bring this under control in the short term because of course you have a i mean i'm really interested what you think about this i was watching some of the coverage in france and you had parents who were effectively saying the kids have got a point and they were effectively they were all they were sort of saying there was a parent of one child who was saying well you know what do you expect them to do is that a a generational thing do you think if this kind of thing did happen in britain that parents would actually be supportive of supporting their children in setting bins on fire in some cases you say setting schools on fire including one that's named after nelson mandela would parents in britain do you think still be of a view that there is never ever any excuse for violence would you think there's been a generational shift i think there may have been some shifts across the generations but i i'd like to think that the basic attitude of of the overwhelming number of british parents would be get over yourself that there is something literally self defeating about objecting to the fact that you're not getting a good enough education by burning down your school it is the case that uh there has been a growing sense amongst some parents i don't want to overstate it that uh if their children are unhappy in school that may be the fault of the teachers or the system rather than a requirement on the part of the the student to buckle down as there is that but i don't think it's at anything like this scale but we've seen uh exhibited in france and again i i have to be very wary about being someone who's too patronizing and too inclined to indulge in stereotypes but it is the case that in france social discontent finds its outlet on i has found its outlet on the streets in a way that has been uh far less frequent in the uk but michael you're you're you're a radical you're a radical is there anything in you that admires that is there anything in you that sort of admires the fact that they they had a proper revolution no and that in 1968 nothing at all no 1968 they had these extraordinary riots that it led to real change nothing at all one of the things i admire about the french is that they take ideas very seriously um and french political debate is absorbing and fascinating and french political leaders they attract attention on the basis of the the rigor of their ideas i find that genuinely admirable but however i'd might be uh the crusty old tory in me means that i like order on our streets and so you know french farmers are um they make jeremy clarkson look positively uh reticent and self-effacing when it comes to drawing attention to their discontent and similarly french students you were around at the time i was just a babe in arms in 1968 french students are prepared to take to the streets in order to demonstrate their discontent at times of sort of high political temperature and and again one of the things about french politics at the moment and that relates to the street protests and to the school uh uh insurgency as it were is that both political fringes i was going to say fringes but now the leading figures in french politics can see something in it for them so melancholy can say this is an example of inequality and discontent and le pen and her auxiliaries can say this demonstrates the failure of the government and the need for order and there is an echo of 1968 in france in that in that the street protests then were exhilarating for figures on the left who saw this as a chance finally to break the sort of bourgeois hold of the republic but then for figures on the right it was also empowering this was the a demonstration of the need for for greater authority and the need to protect property and the need to rally behind conservative forces so these sorts of protests are polarizing they do speak to a populist moment on both left and right. And actually, that's one of the reasons why, as I say, the hoary old Tory in me feels that these things are unsettling eruptions into the body politic, which rarely end well. Before we flip to another European country, which has got a lot of protests going at the moment, Spain, which is leading to a new election, just briefly on Le Pen, this speech that she's made yesterday, we've been promised she's going to give us details of how she's going to get 125 billion of government spending cut in five years of a presidential term. Thus far, this sounds a bit like the criticism I was making about the Tories and their big announcements. Thus far, she said it's going to be done by reducing fraud, we've heard that one a million times, cutting public spending on migrants and illegally withholding France's payments to the EU. So I think the markets are going to want to hear a little bit more than that. And the other point about the interesting thing going on with Le Pen at the moment is Jordan Bardem. This young, handsome chap who thought he was going to be the presidential candidate until she decided, no, you can just be prime minister. He has been exposed by this investigative website, Mediapart, for making anti-Semitic statements when he was a young party member 13, 14 years ago. And what's interesting is he's not come out and said, oh, well, I might have said that, but I'm now a very different person. The party's changed. He's actually come out and said, these messages have been faked. Mediapart say they have the proof that these are real messages sent by him. And I think that will become a problem for them if he's shown to have lied on this subject, which is so central to Le Pen sort of saying that they've cleansed this once under her dad, a validly anti-Semitic racist party. So interesting stuff going on there. Now, what about Spain? We interviewed Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister a while back, and your fellow conservative Rory Stewart was very impressed by him, as was I. We were both impressed. I don't know if you've been following this story about the, this is a housing rental crisis, which has been, he has tried to make changes to the law to prevent these sort of rogue landlords from whacking up rents as much as high as they want. And the right wing parties voted him down. So he has now gone to the country saying, I need a proper majority, which he's not had for a long time. I need a proper majority to be able to get through the changes the country needs. Yeah. So Pedro Sanchez is a formidable politician. And he's in power at the moment because he also, on a previous occasion, just over two years ago, outfoxed his opponents by calling an early general election, one that he was expected to lose. He did actually record slightly fewer votes in that election than the conservative opposition. But he knew that he had a path to government through the smaller parties, the regional and separatist parties. He hung on to power. And this time round, he knew that he would face defeat. He knew that he would face defeat at the next election unless he managed to change the terms of trade. And he succeeded. Well, he certainly succeeded on finding an issue where a majority, particularly of younger Spaniards, will be on his side. Because if you're a party of the right, your natural tendency to defend property rights can lead you into sympathy for landlords. And at the moment, across Western Europe, we're living through a housing crisis. That housing crisis is experienced most acutely by younger people in the country. And it's a crisis that's been going on for a long time. And it's a rented accommodation. And being on their side, even if it may not make long-term economic sense, makes short-term political sense. And there's another thing as well, which is that he can, as he did in the last election, turn the argument against his opponents, not just by saying, I'm on the side of the young and the aspirational, but also by saying to the Partido Popular, the mainstream Spanish Conservative Party that's in the lead, you guys are only going to, you manage to construct a majority with the help of Vox, the party to your right. And last time round, the PP suffered because people thought, well, I might like the moderate Conservatives, but I don't want them dependent on Vox. And also, Vox's overall approach to Spanish federalism, as it were, is we don't like it. So if you are a Catalan or a Basque, even if you are a Catalan or a Basque, you don't like it. You don't like it. You don't like it. If you're on the right, you might be worried about what Vox might do. And so, or how they might influence a centre-right government. So I still think Sánchez is on a losing wicket, but he's managed successfully in the past to frame an election, to put the pressure on his opponents. And I wouldn't underestimate him going into this contest. No, I think that's right. And I think, as you say, the right-wing parties face the same challenge that Kevin Badenock does, is how close do you get to the right-wing parties? These parties that those who like them, love them, but actually a lot of the people that you're trying to win over are very, very wary of them. And it's just worth underlining the specific, because sometimes it is this sort of specific thing that will act as the kind of the light, the flame that really flies up and sets this thing off and has led to him calling this election. And this was about an 87-year-old woman called María Carmen Abascal, disabled. And she'd lived in this same flat in Madrid for 70 years. The block was bought by one of these big faceless investment funds and suddenly slapped on a 230% rent rise. So her rent went immediately from 500 euros to 2,650. They later cut it, but still it was well, well, well above what she gets in as a pension. And the thing that really pictures are so important in politics, as you know, and as a journalist, you know, a picture of her being carried out on a stretcher, being evicted, just became the sort of symbol for these extraordinary protests that have taken place right across the country. And I think in that Sanchez has seen, right, well, there is a cause, there is a left-right cause. I think he thought at one point, you know, that maybe the position he was taking vis-a-vis Trump and the very strong position that he was taking on Gaza in particular, that that might've been the cause that united the left. The funny thing, well, there are many funny things about Spain, but one, one of them is, maybe I should mention this, but it's had relatively good growth recently. Now, I believe that it's had relatively good growth because austerity was imposed and endured, and that meant that the Spanish economy was rebooted. But the, the, the striking thing is that many of the things that Sanchez does and stands for, I don't like at all, but he's a politician of great guile and Spain's relative economic success at the moment means that he's in a stronger position than almost any other European left-wing leader. We're coming back to it. And to those who haven't listened to our interview with Sanchez, I do recommend it. He's a, as, as, as Michael says, he's a, he's a very impressive political operator. He's also got these corruption charges regarding family members hanging around, which never good as you go into an election. Now, what about Brazil? Let's stick with the, the theme of elections. So in Brazil, these two giant names in Brazilian politics, Lula and Bolsonaro. And it looks to me like Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the serving a 27-year sentence for doing what Donald Trump tried to do in America on January the 6th. I think his was on January the 8th, Bolsonaro. But his son, who says the first thing he'll do if he wins his pardon, his dad, I think he looking pretty nailed on because he's 2% ahead in the first round. And the smaller parties who now get eliminated before the second round, they tend to be more right-wing than left wing. So it's looking pretty tricky for Lula, I would say. It is. And again, Brazilian politics, again, like a lot of Latin American politics and indeed American politics seems increasingly dynastic. So Lula wins, loses, then returns again. And then similarly, Bolsonaro wins, loses, and then his son returns again. But behind that, there are deep divisions in Brazilian society. And actually, if you look at a map of Brazil, to see which regions Lula is strong in and which regions Bolsonaro has won, it tends to be the South, which actually tends to include some of the richer areas, both the areas where the beef barons are stronger, but also where you've got the sort of the gilded business elite. They are Bolsonaro's stronghold alongside, and this is a striking thing in what was a Catholic country, what is still a majority Catholic country. There's a growing evangelical Christian movement, Protestant movement in Brazil as well. They're very strongly behind Bolsonaro. And I think that the strength of that base combined with economic discontent, and also the fact that Latin America as a continent or South America as a continent has moved to the right. You can attribute that to the Trump effect, you can attribute that to a populist effect, but it's broadly moved to the right. So I think it's only Uruguay now, and of course, Brazil at the moment, that has a left-wing progressive or even center-left government. That means, I think, that the wind is in Bolsonaro's sails. And it is striking that South America, which we looked to five or 10 years ago, as a place where there was a sort of left alternative to globalization, where, you know, discredited though he may have been, Chavez was acting as a, in Venezuela, was acting as a flag bearer for that. And there was a strong feeling across the continent. It is striking now. that it has uh succumbed or opted into that broad right wing move yeah and of course you've still got claudia schaumbach up at the top in in mexico but as you say that mexico and uruguay but about all that's left and i mean i shared with our team we'll put it in the newsletter a map of latin america and it has literally gone from red prominent red to dominant blue yes if we if we have the the british european red and blue rather than the the american one and i guess i you know hard to know exactly but i guess trump the factor of trump is a it does a play into all this he's somebody who has been very very clear that he he even he even announced tariffs on brazil because they sent bolsonaro to jail which i think gives you a very clear clear idea as to where his his sympathies lie so we'll see where this goes but i think if i was um on the lula side of things i'd be feeling i mean who's he who's he going to get to turn unless he feels he can squeeze some some of these people who voted for right-wing parties because they so don't like bolsonaro i don't know but if you look it's not like a french election where generally people will come back to the the more centrist candidate because both of them are very very polarizing figures it's a very traditional left-right battle yes and the bolsonaro brand is so strong he's even got his own his own uh bolsonaro's third wife michelle she's been elected his son has been elected into and one of his other sons has been elected to another position and they did very very well in the congressional and the senate elections as well the bolsonaro lot so there we go very finally very very briefly michael um the would you like to explain the bosnian electoral system to our listeners and viewers michael do you be able to do that well i think i think the main thing about the bosnian electoral system is that it is is unfeasibly complex so complex that only um uh an alistair campbell uh with his gif uh rendering uh the esoteric uh accessible would be able to explain it to even the discerning rest is politics audience but the key element in bosnia is that the ethnic divisions between bosniak muslims uh croats and bosnian serbs mean that there has to be even within bosnia-herzegovina um a recognition not just of uh how you uh reconcile those three ethnic identities but also a proportional system which if it can do seeks to encourage working across ethnic boundaries but that is formidably difficult and of course one of the challenges that we have in bosnia is that the people who've been least reconciled to bosnia's existence as an independent state has been its minority and they've been strengthened by a resurgence in serb national feeling you and rory interviewed alexander vucic on leading um a fascinating interview but one of the things that was pretty clear about that is that serbia is probably the one country in the balkans that has decided pretty firmly that in the choice between the eu on the one side and russia on the other it does not want to be forced into the eu camp um i wouldn't say that it was firmly in the russian camp but it doesn't want to be forced into the european camp and it doesn't want to be forced into the european camp and it doesn't want to be forced into the european camp and it doesn't want to be considered um a candidate country in the same way that others do um because there is a some would say sturdy nationalism others would say a compromised attachment to russia amongst serbian elites well i thought that was very showed a considerable depth of knowledge there michael may i say so um just on the election it is an incredibly complicated system and it was set up by the the peace agreement back in the mid 90s under the dayton accord um but if there is a big and it's impossible to say there is an overall winner because you have you have this three-headed presidency you have one from each of the ethnic groups who sort of rotates as as president but if you look at which party's done particularly well i'm afraid to say the big winner is this guy milorad dodik who is pro-russia he's anti-nato he's a bosnian serb he's banned from office he cannot stand but he will is a big big big part of the debate and uh and he's now going around saying that he won because his party won because of support from from trump and putin so their stated goal a bit like serbia of becoming a member of the european union i think it's looking i'd say quite quite tricky i was in belgrade um on holiday over easter and if you're in belgrade it's a beautiful city or most of it's beautiful um a lovely lovely place incredibly friendly people and it feels like a city overall feels like a prague or a budapest or uh uh not quite a vienna but uh certainly or uh you know any standard european city however one thing that you are aware of is the strength of national feeling and there was fresh graffiti on one wall um uh in a quite a attractive area that we were visiting which said the real victims of the genocide were the serbs and so there is the unique uh amongst uh sections of the serbian population that going right back to the war in the 1990s they believe that they were not the oppressors but the victims and it is also the case for historic and commercial reasons that russian business and political interests have their tentacles very deep into serb society again we have to be wary about tarring everyone with one brush or characterizing a whole nation on the basis of one single piece of graffiti but what is clear is that it's not just the victims of the genocide it's the victims of the genocide clear and the bosnian elections as you point out reinforce this is that putin wherever there is an opportunity to suborn or to seduce a political movement will take it um and the the problems that we face with putin aren't restricted to um the horrific slaughter in ukraine it's also the case that he's in a constant campaign of political subversion across the continent i'm glad you enjoyed our interview with you which we've got quite a lot of stick for it in from the sort of vucic vucic brigade in serbia because they felt we were far too soft on him but actually i think we i think what we did bring out was his the difficulties he has in deciding which way he wants to go on a strategic level and and the jet generally one senses he's going into the into the comfort zone yes um but this result this result in bosnia i i regret to say will be uh as welcome in the kremlin and in the parliament and in the parliament and in the parliament and in the as was the brexit referendum result michael which we will talk about tomorrow michael it's very interesting for you and i to be saying roughly the same thing in relation to the balkans because there was a time i remember when you used to attack me ferociously about the role i played in supporting kosovo in the dispute the war with the vile evil slobodan milozovic that is absolutely correct so my my record in uh campbell fandom and anti-campbellism is a very mixed one so it was the case uh you may not remember and you may not rejoice in it that i was an enthusiastic supporter of you during the iraq war and stood up for your position however i was also a foam-flecked opponent of what you were trying to do in kosovo for a variety of reasons but i'm very happy to admit alistair that i was wrong about that so the terrible thing and i know that this will only enrage listeners of my own podcast quite right and the conservative sort of blog of us uh more broadly is that uh alistair campbell warmonger well i'm on the same side as alistair in all of the wars that he mongered well thank you for that thank you for admitting you were wrong it's a rare rare thing to hear maybe that's something we can see we continue in question time when we talk about brexit because i think you were wrong about that too but we shall discuss to be continued but before we go michael rory and i always plug something and you'll forgive me if i if i plug my own book a copy of which has now arrived this is number 22 and you're in it oh really and would you like to know the circumstances in which you're in it is it my attack on experts it's not your attack on experts it's on june the 22nd june the 22nd 2011 less than a year after his first labor labor leadership election defeat andy burnham came to our house for dinner he was shadowing then education secretary michael gove and really not enjoying it so the theme of the book is perseverance and my point is that andy burnham learns from the things that set him back and learns from the things he doesn't enjoy i think you're one of the reasons he left westminster how do you feel about that now that he's come back as prime minister uh conflicted i think it's probably fair to say um but so far you'd have to say he's quite a character uh perseverance is his middle name michael we shall see you tomorrow and uh i'm looking forward to it thanks very much hank joined bj's wholesale club the day he became a member of the bj's wholesale club He became a father of 30. Now, Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's. Home of the Save. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. The real cost of a break-in. Isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with 3 layers of protection. 1. Smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. 2. We sound the alarm at points of entry. 3. Our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash spotify. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information.