560. Trump's Hamas Disarmament 'Deal' and Europe's FIFA Boycott

There are moments in international politics when military success and political success move together. And then there are moments when they begin to split and diverge. And I think the Middle East is at one of those moments. Israel today probably enjoys the strongest military position that it has had for decades. Hamas is badly damaged, Hezbollah fatally weakened, Iran under enormous pressure. And yet the fundamental questions look almost as intractable as they did before October the 7th. Who governs Gaza? Who controls South Lebanon? How do you stop Iran rebuilding its influence? And what ultimately is Israel's long-term vision of security? That's why the announcement of a roadmap for Hamas to disarm recently from President Trump is so fascinating. It isn't simply a story about Gaza. It's really asking whether military dominance can finally be converted into political order. Or whether we're simply looking at another pause before the next round of fighting. 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So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restlesspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restlesspolitics. And the link is in the episode description. Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Okay, Rory, we're going to start in the Middle East. Eamonn, Triplus member from Dublin. If Hamas disarms, how likely is Israel to hold up its end and withdraw? Who can actually force them to, given they've ignored the earlier ceasefire commitments already? And if the IDF does leave, who goes in behind them? Who keeps order? And who does Israel actually hand Gaza over to? And I think Eamonn there is reflecting quite a lot of the skepticism that was the immediate response when this text of this deal was published last week. So what do you think? Two things. One of them is that a lot of this is about sequencing. A lot of this is about the question of when a group disarms, could be Hamas, could be Hezbollah, and when Israel withdraws. So from the point of view of these armed groups, Hamas or Hezbollah, they're not going to disarm and then find that Israel is still in power. They're still there. Obviously, they believe that they're keeping their weapons so that they feel they're fighting for the independence of Lebanon, they feel they're fighting for the independence of Gaza, and they're not going to disarm until Israel withdraws. Israel, on the other hand, feels that they're not going to withdraw until these groups disarm. And in a sense, there isn't really an obvious answer to that question. I mean, people try and your friend Jonathan Powell did a lot of this and a lot of the Middle East peace process has been about this. Can you have a partial disarmament, a partial withdraw, trust-building measures? But in the end, what needs to happen, we can see what the end game is. The end game is there needs to be legitimate governments that control these territories. So a Palestinian government, which actually has statehood and controls the West Bank and Gaza, and in the way that Jordan does, has a stable, ordered state. Which doesn't pose an existential threat to Israel and doesn't get bombed by Israel, but is able to run its own affairs. And the same would be true in Lebanon. Now, the complicating factor, and I want to throw back to you on this, is that probably the biggest elephant in the room is that Israel are going into elections on October 29th. And usually elections are a very, very difficult time for Palestinians and neighbors because Israeli politics is increasingly right wing. So the main candidates are going to be competing to show that they are very, very tough on national security. And they're going to be looking at Gaza, they're going to be looking at Lebanon, they might look at Syria, they're going to be looking at Iran, they're going to be looking at the West Bank. Potentious ways of demonstrating they're tough on national security. Over to you. Look, I think there are two, well, three very, very big problems with this. The first is we should put the full text in the newsletter. And if you remember when Trump's big Gaza peace plan was first published, we went through it line by line and found that there was a conflict. We found lots of points. I think we were both trying to be hopeful, but we found lots of points where it felt the problems here are just far bigger than this agreement is making out. And I think we've got the same with this one. There's a lot of wishful thinking. There's a lot of building on things that haven't really thus far worked. And then I think the two other big problems I think worth just reflecting on briefly. The first is the reality of what Hamas is. I think the new leader of Hamas is very interesting in this regard and we should talk a little bit about him. And then the final area I want to get into is what's happening in the West Bank and how as we get closer to that Israeli election, it seems to me that the Israeli government position is getting harder and tougher and more political. So first of all, on Hamas, just to go back, I went back and read Hamas's charter. Launched in 1987, two main goals, resist the occupation and challenge Fatah, who at the time was the president of Palestine. And it says this, "We reject any attempt to undermine the resistance and its arms. Armed resistance is the strategic force for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people." And I think it's also just worth pointing out that, I mean, it is still possible to poll Palestinians, including those in Gaza and those in the West Bank. October 2025, which is the last one I could find, 60% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, slightly more in the West Bank than in Gaza, satisfied with Hamas. 69% opposed to the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So that's quite a big thing that they're being asked to do. This is the absolute key. I mean, I talked in the opener about the gap between Israeli military success and political failure. The fundamental truth since October the 7th is that Israel has deployed precision weapons. It's inflicted incredible damage on the infrastructure of Gaza, killed tens of thousands of people. And it was doing it, claiming that it would completely eliminate Hamas. It has entirely failed to eliminate Hamas. And the story floating around in the background, which is driving all of this, is that the Israeli security establishment knows that if it withdraws from Gaza at the moment, there strong likelihood that Hamas will take control. There is also, and this also affects elections, that if elections were held in the Palestinian Authority, including the West Bank, Hamas could well win the elections. So if you're from the Israeli national security establishment, you say that you've got a choice between Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which is seen increasingly as corrupt, inept, a useless elderly leader, or Islamists. And in some ways, this helps people like Netanyahu because they're able to say, "We can't give statehood to Palestinians, we can't allow legitimate governments to emerge in the West Bank or Gaza, because they're either going to be useless and corrupt, or they're going to be Hamas Islamist terrorists." Back over to you. Yeah, and I think this is worth just reflecting briefly on this, on the new leader. So if you remember, the previous Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in one of the many, many elections. Since then, there's been this five-member leadership council, and there's now been an election. And of course, conducting an election of the Hamas leadership, given that a lot of these guys are under threat and living under threat the whole time, many of the leadership has been wiped out already. So it's taken time to conduct this leadership election. And who has emerged as the winner? A guy called Khalil al-Hayah. And he is somebody who's survived some of these assassinations, these killings of the Hamas leadership. He's lost, I've been trying to work out exactly how many, I think he's lost four of his sons in previous killings. He is identified as something of a hardliner. Now, maybe he's changed, but I find it very hard to imagine how he is going to change the basic position that does flow from that constitution. Now, so are they both, are both the Israelis and Hamas, knowing that Donald Trump likes to announce deals, knowing that he exaggerates, knowing that he will say this is the best deal that's ever been done, are they both for the different purposes, kind of agreeing to go on with that, but now they're into a process, and that that process sees them through the Israeli elections, where Netanyahu hopes to come back, where presumably Hamas hopes that he doesn't come back, but then you have to be careful what you wish for. Interestingly, the right wing that we talk a lot about, Ben-Gavir and Smotrich are the most identifiable of these, they have come out against this already. Netanyahu had a meeting with Trump in the margins of Lindsey Graham's funeral in Washington. Now, unusually, they did not publicize it, there were no pictures, there was no pool spray at the top where Trump could go, off on one of his rambles. That says to me that the relationship with Netanyahu and Trump is not good. Trump's public statements on this deal has basically been Hamas has signed up for this, and the Israelis have been helpful, but they better not mess it. Now, I don't know how many, which of it, if any of those parts of that statement are actually bottomed down and pinned down? In a way, Israel's problems in Gaza are also Israel's problems in Lebanon and Israel's problems in Iran. So, although Netanyahu talks again about finishing once and for all any threat from Hezbollah, which is this Shia armed group in Lebanon, the group that was hit by the pager attacks and the mobile phone attacks, and which has led to Israel reoccupying large sections of southern Lebanon. I mean, it's an occupying force and somebody else's government, but it's an occupying force and somebody else's government. I mean, it's an occupying force and somebody else's government. And again, in Iran, where Netanyahu talked about regime change, but ended up simply with the son of the Ayatollah who, a bit like your Hamas leader, has of course lost an enormous number of his close family relatives, and where we find that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is ever more radicalized, ever more reluctant to come to the table, we're seeing a very, very similar dynamic. And I suspect that Netanyahu's rhetoric, which some voters in Israel may think of as radical, but it's not. And I suspect that Netanyahu's rhetoric, which some voters in Israel may believe, which is that we can fix these problems, isn't actually what the generals believe. It seems to me more plausible that the generals are following some version of a policy that they've really had in place for more than 20 years, which was informally referred to as mowing the grass, an idea that actually, they're never actually going to get rid of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran. What they're going to do is be fighting continual campaigns to degrade them, weaken them, punish them. But of course, that leaves no long-term peaceful solution. All it leaves is these very angry, radicalized, fragmented groups who then build themselves up again and get knocked down. And the challenge to Israel is, can they imagine something else? Could they imagine where they got to with Egypt and Jordan? Jordan is the opposite. Jordan is not a fragmented, failed state, which is what it sometimes feels as though the Israeli security establishment is trying to create in Syria. Jordan is actually quite an autocratic security. Jordan is actually quite an autocratic security state. A lot of Palestinians in it, which doesn't mount attacks on Israel, but that would require a very, very different type of imagination. What's your sense of what's going on here? I mean, I think that if we were to look forward six months, 12 months, 18 months into Gaza, we might find that Israel has cleared a small area of territory, let's say, two, three square miles, sanitized it, and said, this is now free Palestinian territory, and continues to occupy 70% of Gaza. And there continues to be talk about peace and withdrawal and disarmament, but we never end up with what we were supposed to get, which was a multinational security force on the ground, a technocratic transitional administration, leading ultimately to elections and a Palestinian authority, and Israel getting out of Gaza. Now, the question is, can Netanyahu or the next prime minister continue this, this forever? Are the Israeli public going to accept that the IDF is basically going to be continually fighting on all its borders forever? Or is there a moment at which they're actually prepared to take risks to get a political solution? This is why I say that the whole thing feels very largely like wishful thinking. So the very first paragraph in the full text of the deal talks about reaffirming the commitment to Trump's comprehensive plan to achieve peace in Gaza. Through this process, the party's aim are ending the cycle of destruction, securing the pleat Israeli withdrawal from Gaza's strip, restoring normal life, enabling Palestinian governments, reconstruction, security, recovery, and economic development, rehabilitating damaged sectors, and facilitate the launch of a credible political path that achieves self-determination and statehood. Well, literally within seconds, there were people inside Netanyahu's coalition government saying, that's not going to happen. They talked about the yellow line, which is taking more and more of, of Gaza. You mentioned Jonathan Powell. And obviously when you say sort of what sort of impression do you get? I, I'm always sort of inevitably making parallels. And so you have Trump comes out, truth social, where if you now pay a hundred thousand dollars, you can get it before everybody else and says that Hamas has agreed to this. Okay. That's a massive, massive step. That would have been like us, out of a clear blue sky saying the IRA has agreed to decommission all its weapons. Okay. And then literally a day later, Hamas says it would only begin surrendering heavy weapons once Israel halted all attacks on Gaza. Okay. So it immediately makes me feel that this is Trump doing what Trump sometimes successfully has done, which is the famous bulldozer that Tony Blair admired. He sort of is thinking, if I say something is happening, thereby I will make it happen. But I think if you look at all the different elements that we've talked about so far, I think this is highly unlikely. Let's just go back to the kind of the bigger picture on this. Have you ever been to the Millennium Stadium, Rory? The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. It's one of the- Yes, yes. I have been to the Millennium Stadium. Okay. You know how big it is, right? That's a very, very big stadium. Right. 73,375 Palestinians have been killed since October the 7th, 2023. That is almost exactly the capacity of the Millennium Stadium. Okay. That's a lot of people. 1,250 have been killed since the ceasefire, 4,110 have been injured, and at least 13 more have been killed since this latest disarmament deal. I just can't help thinking that if these deals had been strong and solid, we would have felt that those numbers were rather more significant than they appear to have been within the debate that we've all had about this. The Trump dimension and the American dimension is interesting. Israel doesn't openly defy Trump. It tries to get around the corner, but it's interesting how much power and influence the United States still seems to have over the issue. And as we go into these 29th October elections, which are important in Israel, if you look at the opportunities for these politicians to signal that they're tough on national security, Trump is closing a lot of their options. He's not going to be supportive of the idea that they can terrorize Syria because he's become, it seems, quite good friends with the new, as he sees, good-looking, tall, former Al-Qaeda leader of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, who we interviewed. He doesn't want them to continue operations in Lebanon. It feels as though, although this Iran story keeps going and going and going, at some level, Trump wants Iran to go away. And I think the likelihood as the weeks and months go forward is that we probably end up eventually in a state where Iran de facto controls the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States does not launch grand invasions and doesn't support Israel continuing to strike Iran. And he seems to want some sort of deal in Gaza, which means that the pressure is all on the West Bank. Trump doesn't seem to care about the West Bank, doesn't seem to care about settlements, doesn't seem to care about settlements. All of which is radically going up, and it's probably going to go up even more as we get into the elections. You can see politicians beginning to get out ahead in the Israeli election saying, I've never prosecuted a settler. I wouldn't use the military against settlers. Politicians giving big interviews in settlements. And some of the key figures in the potential anti-Netanyahu coalition, for example, Abigol Lieberman, who delivers a lot of Russian voters, is himself. A settler. Back over to you on the West Bank. This morning, our friends at The Conversation, they've got a piece by a woman called Julie Norman, who's a professor of international relations at UCL. And she's also an associate fellow on the Middle East at Chatham House. And we'll put it in the newsletter. It's really, really worth reading. She has just been there in the West Bank for a month. And she herself, who's a regular visitor, but also reporting to the NGOs and the others that she talked to, says that the place is literally like a pressure cooker. And people are really, really scared. Scared about what's going on there. She's posted some pictures. One of them, and it was Gerald Knauss, our fourth P, talking about the importance of pictures in the main episode on immigration. Where these illegal settlements have been taking place. These are illegal under international law, but the Israeli government kind of encourages, turns a blind eye, slashes, encourages. The settlers have put Israeli flags up all over the place. They've gone around spraying paint on the bilingual road signs to take out, just to leave them as in Hebrew and to take out the language for the Palestinians. And it's kind of, it's shocking. They're also running out of fuel. Hospitals are running out of medicine. She talked about visiting a place called Tulkarem, two big refugee camps. Used to be more than 30,000 people there. They're now ghost towns. These people haven't all vanished. They're now living in temporary shelters and mosques. And of course, Israel Katz, I think you sent me Rory a clip of Israel Katz, the Australian defense minister, essentially saying, you know, we're interested in protecting the settlers. We're not really that interested in seeing justice for the Palestinians. And then you've talked before about Area A, Area B, Area C. Area C, she says, this is under the Oslo Accords, where the different gradations of security and control. Area C, she says, is now under Israeli civil and military control. A hundred new settlements approved since 2023. Final one for me, which is responding to a question from Lucy, which is how will the Israeli elections affect this? And thank you, Lucy, because I think it is something we're really going to have to focus on. The first thing to say is Israel has the most extreme proportional representation system in the world, which has basically created a situation where there are, I'd say, I don't know, almost 10 parties that might get more than eight seats. So to explain the mathematics, 120 seats in parliament, you need 61 to make it through. Netanyahu's party Likud is likely to be the largest party, but will probably only get, you know, 23 seats. So he's got to put a coalition together. In the past, he put that coalition together by bolting on Smotrich and Ben-Gavir. The alternative that might emerge out of this elections, and you know, the biggest cliche of all time is never count out Netanyahu's ability to delay or create scandals and emergencies to stay in power. The alternative is that you have Gadi Eisenkot with his parties, the former defense minister who left the war cabinet, maybe getting 22 seats, getting together with Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid might get 15 seats, maybe Yair Golan, who's a more centrist, another major general, maybe Avigar Lieberman, but even that doesn't quite get you enough seats, right? The opposition can't put a coalition together. So then comes into play, who gets the ultra-Orthodox vote? Maybe 16 seats goes with the ultra-Orthodox, and maybe another 10 seats, depending on turnout, go with the Arab parties. However, you know, I'm making it very complicated. The bottom line, I suspect, is that even if Netanyahu leaves office, which he isn't going to want to do because he'll probably end up going to jail if he leaves office, but even if he leaves office as prime minister, the parties that take over are still pretty right-wing. These are not parties that are interested in Palestinian statehood at all. What might happen is that the language will calm down. You won't hear people like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, if they're not in government, being over-confident. You won't hear people like Netanyahu and Netanyahu being over-confident. You won't hear people like Netanyahu and Netanyahu being open about annexation and revenge against Arabs. But the substance will probably remain pretty much the same. And the question, I guess, for Trump or Saudi Arabia, whose Trump's trying to get into the Abraham Accords, is, is that change in tone from a new Israeli government going to be enough to kind of reset the region? Or actually, are people going to be judging them by their actions, and the collapse for support of Israel amongst the Democratic Party in the US, and the collapse of support for Israel in Europe, so profound that it's extremely unlikely that they're going to be able to reset in the region? Back over to you for a final thought. My final point, before we go to the next question, is this: while people in Gaza and the West Bank fear that there is no real route towards any meaningful self-determination by and for the Palestinians, why are they more likely to give up on the idea that maybe Hamas and its military strategy is the only route to keep that going? What Julie Norman says in her piece is that she met with all these different youth groups, Palestinian youth groups in the West Bank, all of whom said to her that their big, big fear is that Palestine won't exist by the middle of this century, that the Israelis will just slowly, bit by bit, have taken over, destroyed Gaza, taken over, destroyed the West Bank. And while there is no hope for them that there might be some credible path to a Palestinian self-determination, that's why you see those very, very high numbers, I would argue, in support of Hamas. And maybe the only people who are being honest, paradoxically, in the setup are Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, who are very open that that's their objective. I mean, effectively, without using inflammatory language, they're imagining an Israel that stretches almost from the river to the sea, and are basically saying that the West Bank is going to become Israeli, and that if security problems continue in Gaza, that also will be resettled. So one of the questions people are going to be looking at is actually Smotrich and Ben-Gavir are so offensive and radical, but is even a more moderate, rhetorically more moderate, Israeli government, not, in practice, pushing ahead with almost entirely the same policy. And one of the clues on that is going to be around Marwan Barghouti, who we've talked about before, who is the only credible Palestinian leader. I mean, if you're going to imagine a world that doesn't either have this decrepit, elderly, corrupt, hopeless Palestinian authority in Ramallah, or a Hamas leadership, you need Marwan Barghouti, which is almost certainly why Ben-Gavir goes out of his way again and again in videos to humiliate, abuse, torture. Marwan Barghouti, because probably he suspects that this guy is the only significant threat to the plan. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll talk about another leader in some certain difficulties right now. That's Gianni Infantino. And we'll also talk about the role of comedic characters in politics on the back of our interview with Count Binface. A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day. Every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy, tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/restpolitics. 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, Coach. Home of the save. Join for just $20. 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. Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Alistair, this, I'm afraid, I feel a bit idle stepping up, but I genuinely think listeners will support me in the view that these are questions well directed towards you, and we've had a lot of them. Eddie, Donald, and Aidan, I'm not going to read all your questions, but let's start with Eddie, who's a Trip Plus member from Amsterdam. What's going on with this FIFA forward nonsense? Delighted to hear UEFA unilaterally will pull out of the World Cup. What's actually going on? How can the head of FIFA seemingly hate football so much? Listen, just for people who are not big football fans, I'm afraid you're going to have to explain what FIFA is, what UEFA is, and what on earth is going on here, and then get into the analysis. Rory, you must be the only person on earth who doesn't know what FIFA is and doesn't know what UEFA is. But just for you, Rory, FIFA is the body which governs world football and is responsible for the World Cup, which we've just seen. And UEFA is the similar body that covers 55 football associations in Europe. So Gianni Infantino, friend of Donald Trump, friend of Mohamed Ben Salman, friend of Vladimir Putin, just to go through some of the recent winners of the World Cup bid. I think has had a bit of an Icarus moment. I think we're talking here about hubris. The World Cup was successful. A lot of the things that people like me and you said might go wrong, didn't really go wrong. The quality of football was pretty good. The games were good. The smaller countries really added something. The best team in the tournament definitely won. That was Spain. Since when this plan, we should give a shout out here. We're quite critical of journalists sometimes. Martin Ziegler on The Times broke this story about this plan that Infantino had hatched in conditions close to secrecy, given that his right-hand man seems not to have known about it, and he's subsequently resigned. But essentially, the World Cup could be part privatised. It could be 20% sold off. And into the mix comes none other than somebody by the name of Joshua Kushner, brother of the United States. He's a very good guy. Jared, son-in-law of Trump, and the whole world of football goes a bit crazy. Now, let me try to play devil's advocate on behalf of Gianni Infantino, who I actually know, paradoxically. I've seen quite a lot of Gianni Infantino. I met him in Davos. You met him in Davos. Very good. So his line is this, that we need to invest more in smaller, poorer countries, that it's really sad, for example, that African nations are not doing better in the World Cup, given that many of the greatest football stars and some of the most talented players in the world come from Africa. And part of the problem is that they just simply don't have any money. They don't have money for facilities, for training, for this, that, and the other. And that FIFA generates a huge amount of money every time there's a World Cup, but then it doesn't really get any money in the years between the World Cup. So this is a fancy financial instrument, which allows them to draw down on their future profits and get a package of money that can be pumped into the world. And that's what I'm talking about. into developing countries and help building up, for example, African nations. Back over to you. Well, Roy, I did not come on this podcast expecting you to become the spin doctor for Gianni Infantino, whose social media videos attempting to put this case, I have seen. They would be more convincing if we hadn't seen the development of Gianni Infantino during the decade plus that he's been in charge of FIFA, which has seen the World Cup going to, now they've all been successful in their own right. But you put them together, Russia, Qatar, United States under Trump, and you begin to see a pattern. There is also the suggestion that he sees himself as the leader of this commercial side of FIFA on a gigantic salary, well into the eight figures. But I think the other thing, I mean, look, Trump does have a habit of once people get too close to him, that he burns them. My friend, Eddie Rama in Albania, where he his problems coming from the fact that he's got this planning deal with Jared Kushner, brother of the guy who's now involved with Infantino. And yesterday, Trump was asked about this deal. And the questioner in the White House said in one of these pool sprays, did Gianni Infantino talk to you about this proposal for selling off part of the World Cup? Do you know what his answer was? Who? My little insight from people who know Infantino and Trump is that the story is that Infantino has desperately been trying to get Trump on the phone over the last few days and has completely failed to do so. And as you say, the reason why the who is so funny is that Infantino presented Trump with a peace prize. He sat next to him at the World Cup final. Sat next to him at the World Cup final. Yeah. Can I just sort of, before we come back to the details, sorry, one more question though, if you just help us understand. I remember David Cameron being completely furious with FIFA. I don't want to put words into his mouth, but he went out to campaign with then Prince William to try to get Britain to host the World Cup. And David Beckham felt that everybody lied to him. He was completely blindsided and maybe being unfair, but he basically came back and said, this is the most corrupt organization he's ever dealt with. I also have a sort of vague memory that the International Olympic Committee has also had incredible scandals in the past. What is it about these global sporting organizations that seems to have this incredible sort of corruption horror? Why do these people at the top of these, was it Sepp Blatter? Is that the name I'm looking for? Well, Sepp Blatter is a very interesting, we had Havelange before him, the Brazilian, and he had a pretty colorful track record. It is a sign of just how bad things have got that Sepp Blatter with a straight face could tweet that he's worried about the growing corruption of FIFA under Infantino. Just remind us of why that's ironic. What did Sepp Blatter do? So Sepp Blatter was dogged by scandal and accusations of corruption throughout his entire time, pretty much. Although he was cleared ultimately by a court of appeals process. And by the way, I'll tell you my answer to your question, why is sport like this? Because sport is incredibly important, genuinely important to billions of people around the world. Governments know that it's important. So therefore, things like trying to get the World Cup, as David Cameron was doing, or getting the Olympics as we did for 2012, and as we're trying to do again now, it really matters. And therefore, these people in sport, what they managed to do is to become public. High profile political figures without the usual constraints of politics, like democracy and not worrying too much about where the brown envelopes are going. So that I think is the reason that attracts that sort of person. Infantino has operated a strategy, and this is why I'm shocked that you've fallen for the spin. There's 211 members of FIFA. When it comes to the votes to who the next leader is, and it could be anyone, it could be anyone. It could be anyone. It could be him. They got one vote each. So he wants the Africans and the poorer countries to think, Gianni's the man who's going to get us more money. Now, that might be more money for playing fields, and it might be more money for amateur clubs, but it might also be money for nice holidays for the family. And it might be nice money for handbags and all the other jewelry and all the other stuff that seems to be to go down well with some of the people who are in football. So I think that's the problem. And the big problem for Infantino is that the trust level also has just been eroded and eroded and eroded. There was genuine, I know quite a lot of the European kind of football hierarchy. There was genuine shock at the FIFA Peace Prize thing. There was no consultation. He didn't pick up the phone to anyone and say, we're trying to get the Americans to really get behind this World Cup. You know how naive he is. You know how vain he is and such a narcissist. Do you mind if we give him a Peace Prize? There was none of that. So he does that. Then we had the red card. We talked about this when you were in your retreat, when you came out of your retreat. Yeah. American guy gets a red card and Trump phones up Gianni and says, can't we suspend this red card? And lo and behold, the independent processes. And added to it, you then have this Kushner name drops in. I mean, just do the basic stuff. So what you then had was UEFA had a meeting. 55 countries came together and said that if this plan goes ahead, UEFA teams will not take part. Well, imagine a Spain, France, England, Germany, Croatia, Portugal. It's not going to be great. And so the whole problem, the plan's now dead. Am I right that Andy Burnham managed to find a political moment to get out ahead of this? He did. He was straight out. He was literally straight out. And actually Fiona, who doesn't follow football that closely, but she was saying to me, she said, you know, Keir would probably have waited a bit. Keir's a massive football fan, just as Andy Burnham is, just as I am, but would probably maybe have waited. Andy was straight out and he's also straight out saying Infantino's not the right guy to lead FIFA. One small thing, because a friend of mine was saying to me, who knows these people, that football is actually quite important in understanding the way the top of the Labour Party works, that Andy Burnham and James Purnell played football together. You play football, these guys, Keir Starmer plays football. You all know how everybody plays football. And it's no accident to our fury that the rest of this football has managed to get interviews with a lot of these players. Is there an interesting group of kind of middle-aged, men in labor who play football together? Is that part of the the kind of culture i hope this is breaking news to you but a lot of people play football yeah yeah but is it true that james pernell plays plays football in the same team as andy but there is an mp's team so when they were mps i mean i've got to say i've been talking to steve rotherham for this series becoming burnham which is coming out on august 21st coincidentally the day that i'll be playing football not with andy burnham and steve rotherham but zlatan ibrahimovic and luca modric you'll look alike um so if you want to get that by the way and i really think it is a story i'm very glad we've told and just join up to become a member of the rest is politics.com steve and i have both played in these matches with andy burnham who is actually not a bad footballer he's not a bad footballer however steve and i both reflected on the fact that in various games we've played steve and i have created opportunities for andy burnham to score a goal and run around taking the ball and i think that's a really good thing to do and i think that's a really good thing to do the credit so no i think but football is important and so for example david cameron had that experience which was humiliating because i think the team that was trying to generate votes for the bid had been told oh we've got a few dozen in the bag and if you could maybe just talk to this and talk to that turn out we've got next to no votes okay and i remember there was a picture of cameron and william and becca in this looked like a bit of a prison cell i don't know where they were probably uefa headquarters or something they looked just really sad and cameron did look very very angry we had the same thing we had to host set blatter and we got this letter in advance and it said there must be a red carpet similar to when you know heads of state and government arrived he'd like the prime minister meet him on the doorstep he must be referred to as mr president he must all this sort of bollocks right and so so that's what they do and of course infantino had the same when infantino went to canada recently he put his team put a bid through to the canadian police saying that he wants the the same police escort that's given to trump when he comes and they said no maybe a couple of motorbikes but so i think that anyway this plan for now is dead the question then is whether infantino is dead and he's a lot more dead than he was when he was riding high with the world cup and that's how hubris works isn't it very good well look really good there's a lot of politics in that and i think it's worth doing a bit of wrestlers football politics the thing i was listening to in for a man called david nabarro so david nabarro to become the head of the world health organization against the ethiopian candidate tedros and i was flown out with my civil service team to geneva and i went around meeting all the voters and again like fifa each country has one vote and i was sitting down uh with uh countries and it was a pretty strange negotiation we came pretty close to hinting you know maybe we could bring forward this lovely investment in health clinics in your country and thank you so much for supporting us and all this kind of thing and i think it's worth and yet again i sat down with my team at the end of the thing and i think i said i think we've got them all you know every person that we've met seemed like they were fine signed up behind david nabarro and we were completely humiliated all these people that were dealing with me to whom we made some pretty significant promises did not deliver at all so this is really really really interesting stuff okay next question from scarlet what does the popularity of a joke candidate actually tell us about how people feel about our real politicians what's the dangers of voters taking a national vote and what's the dangers of voters taking a national vote and what's the national view on local politics and why do comedic characters have an increasing role in our politics to explain to those few people around the world who aren't following this day in day out nigel farage the leader of the right-wing party reform resigned because there have been lots of scandals around the funding for his party triggered by election said he was going to stand against the establishment show the tories and others he comes through and the candidate who's emerged as the big rifle because the other parties refuse to stand is a man called count bin face who wears a dustbin or a trash can on his head and what scarlet is getting out here is the slight anxiety that the voters of clacton are not really being offered a choice where they can really talk about local constituency issues over to you yeah i i um listened back to the interview we did with camp bin face in the car with fiona i was driving along and she was sitting there the first thing is she laughed a lot there were bits of it she found very very very funny but also then when we talked about it afterwards there were quite a few sort of serious points that emerged if you just look look at the scarlet's question what does the joe candidate tell us about how people feel about our real politicians when camp bin face stood against andy burnham in makefield he got 95 votes andy burnham was offering a serious agenda and it was part of a serious plan why is he likely to do better against nigel farage because even though nigel farage got a very big majority at the general election i don't think he's going to be able to do better against nigel farage i think a lot of people in clacton realize that this is a stunt that he was finally getting serious questions about the corruption issues related to him and pos george and richard tice who's now also been referred to the parliamentary standards committee and this was a way of he thought parking all that the main parties as you say cleverly and rightly said this is a stunt we're not doing it so that's what has made camp bin face emerge in the way that camp bin face emerged in the way that camp bin face emerged in the way that camp bin face emerged with the other parties and their members and supporters and really put together a ground operation because what i think we got right in the interview with him is we got a bit of serious and quite a lot of funny but i think if you were actually to turn the joke into a joke about how farage had reduced clacton to a joke and this comedic character was going to make clacton serious again i think he could be in with a shout i'm disappointed by that so the interviews on leading people can listen to it it's very funny but um actually comedy can be at its most powerful when it's satirizing power and when it's pointing out what's wrong so i would have liked him to be leaning not into the position of the hand dryer in the pub but really leaning in through his comedy into satirizing the corruption the abuse the populism the polarization the post-truth of politics and also signaling that he would be a really dedicated local constituency mp he could have got so many votes volunteers you know when i tried as an independent to run as mayor of london i was overwhelmed by people volunteering you know we got i think over 10 000 people offering to have me to stay in their houses we had thousands upon thousands of people happy to deliver leaflets in their areas come and meet us countries he could have done that so many idealistic young people from around the country would have swarmed to clacton to deliver leaflets for him knock on doors instead of which i'm afraid for whatever reason of whatever is going on inside that bin he decided he was never going to win and that he wasn't going to criticize farage and he was going to keep going with the joke that he's been doing for 10 15 years rather than flip around and actually become a bit more of a martin bell figure martin bell being the guy in the white suit that won as an independent at a in a corruption scandal yeah and that was in tatton in 1997 against neil hamilton of course then one of the many many people who has fallen out with nigel farage when in his same party i don't know if you've heard of him but he's been over the weekend by the way i read a book by john sweeney it's not out yet i was reading a proof john sweeney who a lot of our listeners may know from what he's been doing in ukraine recently but he's written a book about nigel farage i was asked for a blurb quote as we often are already my quote was nigel farage will hate this book almost as much as i liked it it is it is pretty brutal brutal about his time at school basically saying the guy was a nazi at school i mean this is a book which if nigel farage doesn't sue him you're going to have to go to court and you're going to have to assume that this is all pretty true and it's very and brutal about his time as a business guy and then it's this whole succession of people that he falls out with but also you've reminded me with neil hamilton a slight pattern of people who are slightly disgraced coming into the party we've just done an interview with dan needle on leading who of course focused on nadim sahawi's finances when he was a conservative chancellor and now he's gone over to reform the same is true uh as you say with with neil hamilton who had this big flirtation with reform generics finances are under investigation richard tice's finances are under investigation one of the chapters is about how how cavalier they are about money and also about farage's greed he's got a whole chapter on his greed well i i i feel that very strongly i mean i that's the thing that i think we haven't talked about enough legal or illegal what i can't believe is just how much money farage keeps wanting uh you know i i'm the last person who wants to be sympathetic with chris harbourn who's this thai crypto billionaire who gave him money but the whole thing is about how much money farage keeps wanting uh you know i i'm the last person who wants to be sympathetic with chris harbourn who gave him money but the whole point of the donation i think was to free him up personally from having to be dependent on anybody he keeps emphasizing the personal nature but there's clearly a big political meaning which is that if you're worth five million pounds you don't need to take dodgy political donations through indirect means from other people which is why i suspect chris harbourn who also gave uh nine million pounds directly to reform uh will be pretty annoyed that despite having given five million pounds personally to farage farage continued to try to take money in ways that has ultimately got him in real trouble i want to plug a book that i love and i haven't plugged enough by robert skadowski who died recently and his son edward skadowski called how much is enough and it says short, lovely book reflecting on this question. Really important human question. How much is enough? Is there a moment at which people feel that they've got a fair amount of wealth that we can redistribute, that maybe we'd work less? I mean, it comes out of a Keynes lecture nearly 100 years ago where Keynes imagined people's GDP per capita in Britain would be about fourfold by today. He was right about that. We are four times richer than we were. But he thought the result was that we would start working half as much. And in fact, we're working almost just as much as we were 100 years ago because we want to accumulate more and more. Anyways, how much is enough? That's my plug. And it relates to Farage. Look, maybe he was never going to win. Maybe that's right. But just look at the numbers. So last time, Farage got 46.2% of the vote. He got a majority of 8,400. Most people don't really enjoy being asked to go out and vote. They think we've had a general election. So I think turnout is probably going to be lower. So he certainly should have publicly set himself the target of not losing his deposit. Maybe set that as the barrier that is a defeat. If Bin Faiz keeps his deposit, Farage is lost. I thought it was quite smart that Bin Faiz said that Farage is lost already. I think there's a lot in that. But I think you could have, with a decent ground operation, you could have had a sense of excitement that this was going to be a big moment in politics where somebody who's taken Clacton for granted, that's going to be a big moment in politics. And I think that's going to be a big moment in politics. Lied to the country many, many, many times about Brexit, currently exploiting the whole immigration debate with a new set of lies. You could actually come out and said, listen, Clacton deserves better than this. There's more to me than just being a comedian who lives inside a bin. And here's 10 things I'm going to do for Clacton. I'm with you 100%. I don't get why we couldn't get there with him. Maybe next time I'm going to campaign with a bin on my head. I wonder actually, it's possible. If I put a bin on my head and being a bit more serious about it, maybe I could have taken down Farage and Clacton. I hadn't thought about that. Anyway, final question for you from Kitty. Top books you must read before you die. Oh, sorry. Final thing. But before we get onto that, I'm very interested at the moment on making a program, potentially with the BBC, on dying and death. And the producers keep saying to me, you can't possibly call it dying and death. Nobody wants to listen to something. What are you doing with the BBC? What are you doing with the miniseries? I don't think the rest of the political listeners want my philosophical reflections on death. What's different to our public opinion? The public opinion isn't the BBC. This is where you reveal your total conservatism. It's a different world. What are you going to do with Micah Richards? I'm just going to sit there and stroke my chin and talk about death. I think you'd get really annoyed with how pretentious that was. Anyway, listen, over to you on top books you must read before you die. Okay. Well, first of all, we should say that you and I, I suspect this is what's provoked this question. You and I for the newsletter have written suggestions for books that we suggest people read over summer. And we'll put a link of that in the newsletter for those who missed it. And also tell us about, you know, your books as well, because we love book recommendations. Books before you die. Well, I suppose I have to replug Philip Gould's book, When I Die, which he wrote while he was dying. What had a really profound impact on you? Can you remember a book that you read when you were a teenager or in your twenties, which really did sit with you for some weeks and might have really kind of inflected your life or affected you? Well, I'm going to. I'm going to say The Castle by Kafka. Ah, wow. Okay. Wow. Why did that have a deep effect on me? It made me very, very depressed. Right. He was quite depressed too, wasn't he? He was a very, he was a pretty depressed guy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a sort of vision of meaningless nihilistic bureaucracy, isn't it? Yeah. The other book that had a very, very profound, profound effect on me at university was Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot. So there's a bit of a theme. You love pretty grim existential. I didn't say I loved them. I said they had a profound effect on me. Yeah. The book that I remember being most moved by in my late teens was Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which is about a sort of holy fool called Prince Mishkin, who slightly. Yeah. Those Russian books, I realized that as a teenager, I sort of saw them completely differently to the way that I see as an adult. I remember reading Turgenev's Fathers and Sons and being completely on the side of the sons. And now I read it and I'm on the side of the fathers. And when I read The Idiot, I was completely on the side of the idiot. And now I can sort of see there are some problems with his idiocy. Yeah. I can tell you the book that made me fall in love with the French language was Madame Bovary. Oh, The Elephant. The Elephant. The Elegance of Flaubert's Language. Just an amazing story about an extraordinary woman. Well, interesting woman. Or as he said, that whore, Madame Bovary. That's the one. And also for the time, I remember thinking, God, I can't believe he wrote this back in the sort of 19th century because it was, you know, quite racy in parts and did start a kind of moral panic in France at the time. But I just think, that is the book. That's the first time I can remember reading a book in a foreign language and thinking, I am completely thinking about this, responding to it in French. So that book made me fall in love with Madame Bovary and the French language. One book about politics everybody should read before they die is Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Abraham Lincoln. Oh, that's lovely. She'll really appreciate that. I think that's the best book about politics ever written. What else? I'm trying to think of a book. I'm going to be a bit cheesy here, but Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela's story is beautifully written. The Pope's Encyclical on AI, obviously. So I've done five, Roy. You give me two more and then we can go. I should tell you, by the way, I'm in France and I've had to change my shirt halfway through our recording because I'm drenched in sweat here. Oh, I'm here in Scotland and I've just been, it's raining, because I've had to change my shirt halfway through our recording because I'm drenched in sweat here. I'm here in Scotland and I've just been, it's raining continually. I've got a massive dripping nose. I took Ivo, a nine-year-old, camping, which was incredible, really fun, just the two of us. Sascha and Shoshana are on a culinary tour of Naples while he and I were trudging through the Scottish Highlands. I wondered where you were because Shoshana sent me a photograph with the caption, "He's everywhere." Who was it of? Who was it of? I don't know. Who was it? Luke Conway. A gigantic mural of Diego Maradona in Naples. Oh, oh, brilliant. So we went up into the hills, which was really exciting and moving, and I cooked a really rubbish macaroni cheese, and I managed to spill all the milk for his hot chocolate in the morning, and we had a great time. But I've now got a miserable cold and it's raining all the time. Is he going to write a book about walking with his father like you did with yours? I doubt it. I mean, he did enjoy it though. He loves the camping bit. He actually wants to be living in a tent in our garden. I don't think he'd like the walking bit as much, but he really, really loves the camping bit. Well, look, here's another book then for me. Haji Murat by Tolstoy. Very, very short book, but incredible. We've been talking in this question time about terrorism and different perceptions and the way Israel perceives things and the way Hamas perceives things. This is an incredible book by Tolstoy because the leader is basically a sort of Chechen, Islamist rebel leader. And he wrote it as an old man. He rewrote it, I think, seven times, eventually making him into the hero. And it's just the most beautiful kind of anthropology. And then for children's books, if people are interested, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, not just a trilogy, but the full lot, where she writes them over nearly 40 years. And initially, they're hero stories about young men becoming wizards. And as she becomes older, she becomes more and more of a radical feminist. And in the later books, the male wizards are sort of slightly pompous, failed figures. And the heroes, are the women who don't pretend to be magicians, but actually bring things, solve things in a very practical way. So Ursula K. Le Guin. And I'm going to connect your point about Flaubert with death, because I think what he said is, as he died, "La putain Madame Bovary vivra eternaillement t'ont dit que je mourrai comme un chien." The whore, Madame Bovary, will live forever while I. Die like a dog? Die like a dog. Yeah. Yeah. That's very, very. She provoked strong feelings in men. Final two for me. You mentioned the Middle East. Avi Sharratt's book, My Promised Land, I think is a really good primer on Israel and how we've got to where we are. And I must give a shout out to Gerald Knauss, who was our guest on the main episode. I had a very big hit this week, Rory. I got a message from a guy, Andrea Fulda. I mentioned his book about China. On the podcast months ago and said, "This book deserves to be translated into English." It now has been. So that's good. And I think Gerald's book, What Borders Do We Need? Roughly translated, What Borders Do We Need? It's a really, really, really good book. And I think anybody who's genuinely interested in the immigration debate, as opposed to just wants to exploit it, should get hold of it, find somebody who speaks German and get it translated and get it published. By the way, I hope you've been listening to Caroline Lucas' brilliant series on climate and national security. It really has opened a lot of eyes, I think. Next week, Rory and I are going to So send in all your questions to restispolitics.com. Well, thank you. It's lovely to talk and talk again soon. See you soon. Bye-bye. Hello, everybody. We've got some exciting news to share with you. We do indeed. As you all know, the Rest Is Politics Plus members get early access to Question Time, they get ad-free listing, they get exclusive series and a host of other benefits. And probably for me, the most exciting thing is these exclusive mini-series we're doing. And right now we're holding a summer sale. So you can get an extra 20% off on an annual membership from now until the end of August. If that sounds good, head to therestispolitics.com and use the code SUMMER26 when you purchase an annual plan. Make the most of this deal and join us for a busy summer ahead. We've got some brilliant new series coming your way. So new stuff coming, for example, on existential threats. And then there's all the stuff. So what are some of the mini-series that you've enjoyed you think people should be listening to? I've enjoyed them all, to be honest. I really. I really liked the Gen Z series that Vicky Spratt did. I've enjoyed the recent one on the funding of reform. I've been very proud of some of the stuff we've been doing on AI. We now have a really good package for listeners going deep into AI around the world. 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